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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Response to Ken Nichols' article on Tim Maroney (part 5)
Message-ID: <194@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 18-Oct-84 10:56:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.194
Posted: Thu Oct 18 10:56:30 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Oct-84 09:52:16 EDT
References: <239@qantel.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
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Keywords: conclusions

> The greatest evil in the world today is man's twisted perception of the way
> God should act.

I'll agree with that!  Twisted perceptions involving a god who controls and
metes out justice and sends anyone it dislikes to eternal damnation.  Since
I have no reason to believe that a god exists, I'd venture that I don't have
any preconceptions as to how it "should" act.  Mr. Nichols, on the other hand,
is quite clear as to what his preconceptions are.

> Do you give a child everything he wants because you love him?  No, of course
> not.  You must love in wisdom, thinking of what's best for the child.  Well,
> God's love and mercy are the same as that.  You may think you know what's best
> for the world, just like the child who thinks he knows what's best for him.
> I think in both cases the higher authority is most likely right. 

Some people simply presume the "higher authority" to be right simply because it
is DEFINED as a higher authority.  They often make good tools for manipulators
of human thought.  Others question 1) the basis of the decision of the
authority, and 2) whether or not the authority exists.  To Ken, it exists
because it MUST, in order to emulate the parent-child model he describes for
his image of god and human beings.

> Please except God's offer of Jesus Christ as Savior while He still offers it
> to you.  Don't wait until you become bitter, and your heart is hardened like
> Tim's.  God loves you, and desires to commune with you.  But he can only do
> so if you confess your sin and relinquish your pride in yourself for the joy
> of the Christian life.

  As long as we are proselytizing, let me say this:
Please look at what religious believers, Christians and non-Christians alike,
are saying.  They take hopes and dreams and wishes of many human beings, hopes
for justice, dreams of eternal life, wishes for someone to watch over them, and
they first *assume* these hopes, dreams, and wishes to be reality, telling them
that what they hope for does exist, with the more gullible among them more than
ready to hear an "authority" claim that it is all as they hope, sans evidence.

Then they further impose other preconceptions on top of these presumptions.
Humans are low in the sight of god.  God can blow you away in a microsecond,
so you should be thankful you're still alive.  God will offer you good only
if you obey and worship his laws.  What IS this image of god?  Take the most
horrible human beings in history (your pick), the ones that these people use
AS THE BASIS for judging the human race, and seat an amalgamation of those
human beings on the throne of god!!!  A throne that is just as much wishful
thinking as the desire for justice, and eternal life.  A deity that is just
a projection of what these people BELIEVE god MUST be like!!  Once this
rationalization and presupposition is complete, judge all the "evidence" that
presents itself, USING THE AFOREMENTIONED PRESUPPOSITIONS AS GIVENS, AS AXIOMS.
Put it all in a blender, and you've got a religion.  Pure and simple.

> P.S.  Any and all responses welcome.  Flame me if you like, but don't you dare
>       revile the God I love.

What is being reviled are your preconceptions, your presumptions about how you
expect god to be, your assumption that these presumptions and preconceptions
are true simply because you believe them to be so, and your failure to answer
questions about incredible contradictions and rationalizations in your essay.
Tim Maroney and I disagreed on many things; he replaced god-directed religion
with humanity-directed religion, while I chose to engage in neither (both of
the two being based on opposing but equally unwarranted assumptions about
humanity and the universe).  But he hit it right on the head with his EVEN IF I
DID BELIEVE essay, so much so that Yosi Hoshen saw fit to repost it again at
this time.  (Thank you.)  

In answering this essay in the past, many Christians have fallen into the same
trap that Ken fell into:  answering Tim's "attack on god".  Tim *didn't* attack
god.  Neither did I.  We examined the god described by Christendom based on
the only source:  the books written about that god.  Moreover, since we never
have seen a reason to believe that this god exists (based on the lack of hard
evidence found in those books), what we are "attacking" is the belief system
that has led YOU to believe (we think unjustifiably) in the existence of this
god, by pointing out the contradictions, the arbitrary tenets that seem thrown
in to cover up inconsistencies in the system, the presumptive nature of
believing in a god AS YOU WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE IT TO EXIST, etc.

I do hope to hear answers to the questions/points raised here, explaining why
you (collective generic you, not just Ken) feel they are either incorrect or
irrelevant (with some explanation of why this is so).
-- 
"Come with me now to that secret place where
 the eyes of man have never set foot."		Rich Rosen    pyuxd!rlr