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From: davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: How come God doesn't affect Dave?
Message-ID: <539@oakhill.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 06:52:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: oakhill.539
Posted: Mon Sep 23 06:52:31 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 11:03:27 EDT
References: <305@pyuxn.UUCP> <630@ihu1m.UUCP> <309@pyuxn.UUCP>
Reply-To: davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel)
Organization: Motorola Inc. Austin, Tx
Lines: 190

In article <347@pyuxn.UUCP> pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) writes:

>	You are persistently misunderstanding my questions. Yes, you gave
>examples of negative things in your life. My point was that you have chosen
>to lump them all together, the trivial with the severe, and describe them
>all as ``minor.'' My question was why?

Probably the worst thing to me was losing my house in a flood.  It was
a real hassle, but it certainly didn't mess up my life at all.  And the end
result was that I ended up with a much bigger house which netted me lots of
profit when I sold it last Thanksgiving.

Now, you could claim that I'm brushing such a major event off.  (More on that
tactic later.)  You could also claim that D-God caused the flood, but you'd
first have to prove there's a god to begin with and then explain why he/she/it
created floods for millions of years all over the earth which didn't bother
any humans. Another retort would be "If God can cause floods why can't he
make me miserable most of the time?"

>It seems to me that you are doing
>this because the evil God has conditioned you to not care about the damage
>done to you, perhaps to the point where you accept it (or even like it,

The trouble with this type of logic is that one can believe whatever one wants
and disregard all counterindicating facts.

For example, I could claim that the Damager Pig God fools you into liking
ice cream - getting you to actually eat that poison with all its sugar. You
will suffer later by having to be fat, ugly and guilty, or you'll
have to go on a very unpleasent diet, or you'll have to constantly abstain
from something you "think" you want.

Don't try telling me that you really like ice cream because I know you are
only being fooled by the Pig Damager God into thinking so.  Don't you see
how right now the Pig Damager God is trying to keep you from knowing the
truth about how ice cream really tastes bad?  It's just his way of keeping
you in misery.  You are kept by Pig God from seeing the truth.

----end of parody---

Yes, to repeat yet a second time, there have been a few major negative things
in my life.  But to tell me that I'm being fooled by an evil God who wants me
to be unhappy into thinking that I really am happy when I'm not has got to be
the utmost in absurdity.  That's what I gather your conslusions have been.

> ... [hurricanes and divorces etc.] ...                      Remember that
>unforeseen circumstances like these are often called ``acts of God.'' Ever
>stop to wonder why?

Yes I did.  And I figured it out as I grew up.  At first people don't know
why things happen so God is the ultimate answer.  Then as knowlege progresses
we learn that hurricanes and such are not created by God but are normal
consquences of atmospheric air flow turbulence.  I have yet to see a divorce
caused by any God intervention.  In every case it was pretty obvious
what the character traits were in the individuals that caused the problems.
You could claim that God causes the bad character traits, but what proof would
you present?

>       You keep harping on the idea that, because God doesn't damage you
>with regularity and severity, He is ``weak.'' I have explained that it is
>very egocentric to assume that if God doesn't harm you He must be weak.

But then by your very own argument such a God is nothing to fear anyway, since
he/she/it doesn't have time to cause gremlin-like problems for us to begin
with.

Another problem you have is the contradiction you bring upon yourself.
In your first postings you mentioned how you had outsmarted the D-God by
doing careful planning on a trip you took (skiiing, if I remember correctly.)
Do you really take yourself to be so important that God has it out for you
(and you managed to beat him that time) yet most others are too insignificant
for D_God to worry about.  What was that you said about being "very
egocentric"?

>Certainly He interferes in the lives of millions of people every day.

Some examples please.  Don't say hurricanes and the like.  I mean something
that you can really prove that God was behind. If there are personal things
that happened to you all the better. You don't seem to want to talk about
your personal life.  Any reason?

>And what of that ultimate damage that He plans for the Earth: Armageddon?
>Wouldn't a project like that take up a lot of time and effort?

No.  All D-God has to do is to make one solitary nuclear missle out of
thousands go off toward Russia or the US and you would have your Armageddon.
Since this isn't happening right now while I type, I can only presume that
D-God is either not as bright as I am, or he/she/it is so powerless that
they can't cause a missle mis-fire let alone cause Armageddon.

Either way, D-God is nothing to fear.

>Remember,
>this God is by no means as omnipotent as He claims, though the documents of
>history have shown His capabilities through evil acts of great magnitude
>that we have some evidence for (the flood, the destruction of Sodom and
>Gomorrah).

Let me see, you say flooding the earth was done by D-God, but he can't give me
a headache.  Why?  Is he too tired from creating all that water?  You say he
destroyed two cities by fire but can't cause the mis-launch of a nuclear
missle.  Do you understand why people aren't taking you seriously?

>                ...        I guess planning Armageddon is hard enough
>work. Has it already begun? Isn't the recent spate of plane crashes part
>of God's plan for Armageddon as He ``prophesied'' in the Bible?

History shows that the 1917-1919 Spanish Flu epidemic killed millions around
the world - and you think a few plane crashes with some people killed means
Armageddon's here.  Maybe if the Mexican Quake was repeated all over
the world with planes crashing for several weeks then you're Armageddon
scenario would be more appropriate.

>Why do you so blithely accept the fact that there is ``horribleness'' at all?
>Has God convinced you that a certain amount of horribleness is ``O.K.?''

Huh?  I admitted that I'd had some bad things happen to me but I guess you
want to force me to a "everything's all bad" or nothing scenario.  Sorry, no
dice.

You do raise a good point, however.  If there is a God then why do bad things
happen.  The Christian religion postulates a bad god known as Satan to blame
You on the other hand seem to take the opposite view.  Since there is a god
and yet evil exist in the world, then god must be behind the evil.  Plausible
as far as it goes.  In fact, this seems a little more comprehensible than the
typical Christian's view.

The only problem is that even though I grew up believing in the Christian
view of god, I finally saw that other, more natural, things cause events
like hurricanes and divorces and floods.  For example, floods follow from
the fact that water runs downhill and heavy rains naturally occur.  Nothing
mysterious at all.  And certainly no reason to postulate that a God had
anything to do with it.

>You
>ask ``if God is so bad why are you happy?'' And you say I have not answered
>this. Yet certainly we need to ask why you choose to view your life as good
>in light of all the damage from God that you dismiss and ``minor.'' Have you
>answered that?

Huh?  You claim my life really isn't as good as I think it is.  What a joke.
You know practically nothing of me and want me to "fess up" to how unhappy
I really am.  This says a lot more about you than me.

Does it bother you that I'm happy?  Don't you really like ice cream?

>               ...                      Indeed, He WOULD enjoy us suffering
>``regularly'' while He openly laughs. But how long would it last? How long
>could he keep that up? No, Dave, He may be a heinous evil pig, but He has
>a certain amount of intelligence, and He is skillful at knowing just how much
>evil He can ``get away with,'' when to start and stop, when to ``test'' His
>enslaved subjects ...

Paul, I find this a very weak excuse for why the D-God doesn't make us
miserable all the time and laugh in our faces while doing it.  You say we will
eventually catch-on.  So what?  Isn't that the point?  That would make our
misery all the more so wouldn't it?

>       Finally, I apologize if I lumped you in with those who did claim
>that I was ``mad or crazy'' because my beliefs differed from theirs.
>However, you were persistent in claiming that I was the one being selective
>in how I interpreted the Bible to reach my conclusions about the nature of
>God. I asked you whether it might be you who is being selective in
>interpretation when you conclude that God is good. I do hope to hear your
>answer.

Apology accepted.  Actually, I don't remember making any claims about how
you interpreted the Bible.  My own view is that the Bible certainly shows some
"evil" things done by God, especially in the OT.  And since I don't believe
in God (at least not in any classical way) I certainly don't favor a good god
over a bad one.

The Christian all-powerful good God is highly unlikely to me since as you
point out why then would there be any evil?  The "fallen angel" story just
seems plain silly to me.  By the same token, I can't see god as an all evil
being because I am too happy in this life for that to be the case.  Therefore,
if there is a god it must be somewhere in-between.  Thus, I would agree that
your hypothesis of a bad but weak god (along with that of a good weak god)
would seem more probable than the totally good God Christian scenario.  But,
I don't believe any of these.

Like I said before, the events I see happening in the earth
are all easily explained by natural phenomonae.  I find no use for a god
hypothesis.  If there is a god it seems to me that it is beyond good and evil.
This is because things appear to be pretty well balanced between the two from
what I see.  I figure I'm on the happy side of the line and it may be possible
to match me with someone else on the other side who is unhappy most of the
time.

 -- Dave Trissel        {ihnp4,seismo}!ut-sally!oakhill!davet