You already admitted there was something absurd about it.
Show me where I admitted that an omnipotent God is absurd. Those are your words, not mine.
That's why you have to revise the definition of omnipotent to mean, "having all power...except power to do things which are absurd."
God would have the power to do things which are absurd, but God would not do things that are absurd, since God is All-Knowing and All-Wise.
That means that even if you think it is absurd, it cannot be absurd if God did it.
So what you see is what you get, logically speaking of course. In other words, if you what you think God should do is wiser than what God did, God would have done it by now.
No, he doesn't. Humans set the standards of human morality, all the evidence indicates this. So if God tortures someone, you find nothing morally problematic about that?
Sorry but no. Humans set the standards, but those standards originated in scriptures. They did not just drop out of the sky.
God does not torture anyone; that is words mean wrote about God from the Bible. Sometimes I think that Book should be burned, every single copy.
Any you know what God does exactly how?
Hypotheticals, Trail. Everything I'm discussing about what God does is hypothetical. I don't think God actually does anything, because I don't think he exists.
Okay, fair enough. You can say anything you want to about God, but that won’t make it true.
“God is responsible for creating the universe and maintaining it but God is not responsible for one single thing that goes on down here on earth,”
That's completely incoherent.
That is completely true as well as logical, fair and just, because God gave humans a brain and two legs and two hands and free will, as well as natural resources, so we could take care of our world.
On theism, if the universe is a house, God is far more than the construction superintendent or maintenance guy. He's something like Dr. Frankenstein on steroids, designing and creating each person who lives in the house down to the subatomic level and having full knowledge of everything they will do and how they will react to all stimuli. If you design and create every detail of a person who you know for a fact will be a psychopath and murder people without remorse, sorry, you are responsible for that.
Absolutely not. You just love to pass the buck. Just because God knows what will happen does not mean God is responsible for what happens. People make choices and act on them. Free will is what sinks your ship, right down to the ocean floor.
In a court of law psychopaths are held accountable because everyone on a jury knows they are responsible. God does not go on trial, except with atheists. They just want to pass the buck. The 100-dollar question is why atheists who believe this way about God would ever want to believe in God. I know I wouldn’t want to believe in a God I think is derelict in His duties.
Do you think it is a good idea for you to pursue belief in God, IF that is what you are doing? Maybe it is best to let sleeping gods lie.
And so, God's alleged method for disseminating accurate information about himself is painfully flawed. Again, it's no better than the method used by any charlatan.
It works almost perfectly, since almost everyone in the world believes in God. If people do not get the latest information, it is not God’s fault. It is there for the taking.
If they had recognized the latest Messenger of God they would not be in disagreement anymore, but instead they cling tenaciously to their older religions.
And if junk food were healthy, everyone would have a six pack. But it isn't, and they don't.
And whose fault is that if you go down for a six pack instead of eating healthy food? It is not God’s fault, it is your fault. Free will sinks your ship, again.
You're contradicting yourself. When asked directly, you'll admit belief is not a choice, but everything else you say about beliefs presuppose that people choose their beliefs. Pick a lane.
It is questionable as to whether people have a choice to believe in God or not, but Imo once someone believes in God, it IS a choice what religion to adhere to.
I know the definition of omnipotence and omniscience. If I can imagine an arrangement in which God accurately disseminates information about himself to everyone, so can God if he exists.
So what if God
can accurately disseminate information about himself to everyone? God doesn’t
choose to do this and is under no obligation to do so. You try to use omnipotence and omniscience to suit you, but you seem to forget that they work against you, because an omnipotent God that has all power does not take orders from humans, and an omniscient God who knows everything knows the best way to communicate to humans.
It is the epitome of arrogance to dictate to an Almighty God what He should do and how He should do it. I am done with that atheist on my forum after six years, and I am not about to start over with anyone else.
I am sorry if you do not understand why everyone does not deserve a free ride, why they have to work to obtain a belief and maintain it. Everyone can understand why everyone does not get a PhD sent to them in the mail, just because they want one; they have to pay for their education and work for it. That is how the world works, so there is no reason why belief should work any differently. There are no free rides and there is a reason for that, because then everyone would just sit on their duff and expect someone else to do what they are responsible to do.
In short, nobody deserves special delivery from God because they can get the same message through general delivery.
But they don't, so it doesn't work just fine. It works terribly.
So what, whose fault is that that some people in the class flunk out and some get an A+? You certainly cannot blame God fro human failures unless you are irrational.
Sorry, it is. God knows exactly what would convince non-believers to believe, and he doesn't provide that. 100% his choice.
It does not matter what God
knows. It is 100% your choice whether you want to choose what God provides or reject it. God does not provide
something else because God does not want believers who are not willing to accept what He provides. This is how God separates the wheat from the chaff.
So you believe me that I have an invisible dragon in my garage? If not, why not?
I would not believe it because there is no REASON to believe it, just because you said so. I am not even suggesting you believe that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God
just b
ecause He said so. That would be ludicrous because anyone can claim to be a Messenger of God.
Then once again, you think it's "childish" to expect the same kind of evidence we expect for anything else we're asked to believe. That's not childish. It's critical thinking 101.
No, it is insane thinking 101 because God is not like “anything else.” God is the incomparable Creator.
That black and white thinking doesn't make sense. It's possible for a religion to have some perfectly nice or true teachings without being entirely true. You actually believe exactly that about every other major religion.
To be clear, all religions as revealed by God were like pure clear water, but later they became contaminated. The older religions have false teachings embedded in them because man has tampered with the original revelations over the centuries. The Bible is an enigma because we do not even know who wrote it. However, Baha’u’llah wrote His own scriptures, and if He is who he claimed to be, a Messenger of God, everything He wrote was true. If He was a false prophet, what He wrote might contain some truth, but that is not the truth from God.
“I did not say to pretend God is not omnipotent.”
You said:
Trailblazer said:
Realistically, what other “means” could God use? When I asked this nobody could come up with anything that would work as well as Messengers or work at all, to get the same message out to everyone. It is ludicrous to think that God should reveal the 15,000 tablets He revealed to Baha’u’llah to every one of the 7.7 billion people in the world. Please do not tell me “God is omnipotent so God can do anything.”
So yes, you are asking me to conjecture about what God could do, but not employ his omnipotent powers. That is ludicrous.
No, I did not ask you to pretend that God is not omnipotent. I said “
Please do not tell me “God is omnipotent so God can do anything.” Do you understand the difference between these two statements? Regardless of God's omnipotence, God has to work within parameters that will work for humans.
Pretend God is omnipotent and tell me how God accomplish what Baha’u’llah accomplished without Baha’u’llah, or some such Messenger. (As an aside, Baha’u’llah wrote that even if His enemies had succeeded in killing Him, God would raise up another Messenger in His stead. Nobody can stop an omnipotent God from achieving His Purpose.)
Please remember, God’s Purpose was accomplished whether or not many people know about or believe in Baha’u’llah, because
how many people believe something has nothing to do with whether it is true or false. That is
the fallacy of argumentum ad populum. The converse of this is that
if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.
How can something natural "represent and reveal" something supernatural? How can I ever demonstrate something supernatural exists using only natural things?
Good question. Some things that Baha’u’llah did demonstrate that He was supernatural. It was the same with Jesus, but becoming God and rising from the grave were not any of those things.
And without god around to confirm whether the messengers got the message right, there's no rational reason to believe them. That is what this all boils down to, you're right.
Okay then, I think we are done here, because God ain’t coming to earth to confirm who Baha’u’llah was.
I see no reason for me to post a thread about evidence for Baha’u’llah if you do not consider it rational to believe in Messengers. Besides that, if you are going to hold to your position that God is responsible for what humans do, you would not believe what Baha’u’llah wrote, so what’s the point of believing in Him?
The thing is, I already told some other people I was going to post it, so I would feel bad not keeping my word.