Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!microsof!uw-beaver!cornell!vax135!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!unc!tim From: tim@unc.UUCP Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: To Tim Maroney Message-ID: <5534@unc.UUCP> Date: Sun, 10-Jul-83 12:49:24 EDT Article-I.D.: unc.5534 Posted: Sun Jul 10 12:49:24 1983 Date-Received: Tue, 12-Jul-83 15:03:56 EDT References: itm.1017 Lines: 108 This is a reply to an article titled "To Tim Maroney" from Bob Langdon at Inter-Temple Ministries (itm). He is responding to an article of mine that went in part as follows: And why did Infinitely Merciful God drown all those innocent beasts when He could have just vaporized the bad humans without fuss? I also borrowed a bit from Twain and asked how Noah could have collected animals which never were native to that area of the world, yet which have survived to the present day. Now, take it away, Bob! Tim, this my reply to you concerning your artical [sic] above: [I have omitted five Bible quotes that appeared here. Their gist is that God is a whole lot smarter than I am, so I shouldn't ask too many questions. -- Tim] Tim, is so hard for you to except [sic -- read "accept"] the ways of the almighty God? Is it so hard a thing for God who created heaven and earth to gather the animals of the world together? Apparently Bob does not understand the question. I am not saying "Look, God did this and I reject it." I am expressing doubts about the truth of such a nonsensical story. If you can point to something that is definitely a work of God, then I will accept it. I do not happen to accept the Bible as necessarily true in all cases, however. Get this straight -- I AM NOT AGAINST GOD! I just don't believe in your version. About your second question: No, of course not. That is my whole point. God can do anything, right? Then why did he go about this whole business in such a needlessly cruel fashion? For him to use his omnipotence to bring animals from the far corners of the Earth, only to be loaded aboard a boat which he required to be built by a human, when he could have just used his omnipotence to vaporize the evil humans, seems rather unlikely, to say the least. (Drowning the infants was also a pretty despicable act.) In fact, the omnipotence of God is called into question by several incidents in Genesis. In particular, when the Angel tells Lot to hurry up and get away to a nearby town, since God COULD NOT ACT until Lot got there. How about just teleporting him there? How about just excluding him from the holocaust? After all, God is omnipotent, right? These bits just don't make any sense, and that's why I can't accept them as absolute truth. God does love you no matter what you say or do. I know God personally and have a satisfied mind as well as a satisfied spirit. If you really wanted to know the truth you would find it. But Vickie said it best when she said you do not really want your questions answered. You are too sarcastic to really be seeking. Pardon, Bob, but you're being a bit hypocritical here. I could say exactly the same things about the two questions to me with which you began your article. You obviously didn't want answers to them. (I love it when someone criticizes someone for doing something right after doing it himself.) In any case, I don't think that God hates me. I just don't believe that there is such a thing. Sentience seems to be an attribute of certain phenomena within the universe, not of the universe itself. Finally, I accept Thelemism, and I have a satisfied mind and spirit. I don't believe that this means that I should turn them off, though. Seek with an open mind and an [sic] sincere heart to know the truth. Then ask God to show you. But untill [sic] you really seek to know you will go on asking vain and foolish question [sic]. Never really wanting an answer. You're missing the point again. You are asking me to start by accepting that the Bible is true and then trying to make sense of it. >From my point of view, though, why should I accept a thing that is so hard to make sense of? I can make a lot more sense of the scriptures of some other religions, for instance Thelemism and Neo-Paganism, and I can make an awful lot of sense out of just sticking to science as the ultimate arbiter of truth (although this is not the tack I take). Finally, about the quotes. We've talked about this before. Of course the Bible claims that it is true. Of course it has excuses for those parts of it that seem questionable. But what kind of excuse is "God is a lot smarter than you, so just accept things that don't make sense"? This is also popularly stated as "God works in mysterious ways." I dealt with this a few weeks ago, but since it didn't seem to sink in then, I'll try again now. If God is so all-fired mysterious, then how do you KNOW that he is telling you the truth? Maybe in his mysteriousness he derives satisfaction from seeing people believe obvious absurdities. If he really is beyond human understanding, you can never know whether or not this is true. The fact is, Christians only use the excuse that "God is mysterious" when there is simply no way around a contradiction in their beliefs. At other times, they prattle on quite knowingly about what God is, what God wants, what God does and doesn't approve of, and so on. They continually give the lie to the mysteriousness claim, which is nothing but a VERY weak excuse for the many contradictions in their worldview. It is the last refuge of the person who cares more about being right than being reasonable. ______________________________________ The overworked keyboard of Tim Maroney duke!unc!tim (USENET) tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill