Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr 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. Lines: 80 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