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From: pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Who gets the Glory? (Reply to Tim Brengle)
Message-ID: <389@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 08:21:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.389
Posted: Fri Oct 25 08:21:58 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 07:49:29 EDT
References: <1489@vax3.fluke.UUCP> <383@pyuxn.UUCP> <2766@hplabsc.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Piscataway, N.J.
Lines: 84

Tim,

	I may not be able to convince you of the fact that your idea
of a loving benevolent God is based on more assumptions than my belief
in an evil Damager-God is. (Then again, I may. A person should never lose
faith. :-) I hope that this article will convince you at least part way,
that your belief is at best ``no better'' than mine. From there, who knows?
Since you ask me to ``assume for a moment that [both our views] are equally
good at explaining the facts,'' I hope this can serve as a first step in
approaching the truth of the matter about God. I am glad to see you are at
least willing to go this far.

	You wrote that I ``seem to imply that the evidence for your Damager-God
is overwhelming.'' As a matter of fact, the evidence is just as overwhelming
as YOUR evidence for your God. Because it is exactly the same evidence! It
is simply interpreted differently by you and me. You look at the evidence in
your own Bible, showing a God who autocratically says that His will is law,
destroying anyone who disobeys, crushing entire peoples who might interfere
with His plans for the world at His say-so. And what is your conclusion?
That all of this is fine and dandy, because it is God we are talking about,
God ``defines'' good. And what is my conclusion? That such abominations are,
quite simply, abominations, acts of an evil filthy pig Damager-God. Which
of us is making assumptions here? Me, who judges evil as evil without
presuming or reconfiguring my analysis? Or you, who sees the evil and
insists that God is good anyway?

	You cite the dichotomy of good versus evil, saying that good can
only be called good in relation to something called evil. You say that the
reason that ``utopian communities'' dissolve because there are some who
are ``less good'' than the rest, who cause dissension (whom you classify
as ``evil''). I'm not at all sure how you can insist that people are to
be stratified into ``good'' and ``less good'' categories (based on,
according to you, the process of finding identity). What are your criteria?
How well the ``less good'' people fit into the ``good'' people's decreed
norms? But the most curious thing of all is your statement that your
understanding of my views is that I have "just taken Good and renamed it
Evil, and vice versa". How CAN you say this after your position takes
the vile disgusting actions of a despicable God (as described in your
own Bible) and calls them ``good'' because God did them? Certainly it is
you who is taking evil and renaming it ``good.''

	Getting back to the assumption you asked me to grant you (that
our views represented equally reasonable concepts, that yours makes no
more assumptions than mine. Yet in your own article, your complaint is that
you don't like my system because it represents ``a total lack of hope.''
Because I ``do not allow God to be omnipotent.'' It sounds like you
choose your beliefs based on how much hope (or other things you want)
the beliefs offer, and that you get to ``allow'' the components of your
beliefs to have certain characteristics (regardless of what they are really
like)! What's more, you claim that since God is so powerful, we can never
hope to defeat him, thus making my struggle ``futile and hopeless.'' Again,
do you choose your beliefs based on how pretty they depict life to be?
Point of fact, I do have my hopes that someday mankind can find a way to
beat and destroy God. (Who's to say that this is impossible?) But I hope we
can (as they say on Hill Street Blues) do it to Him before He does it to us.

	No matter, I find the problems of a life in a world with a pig filth
God to be challenging, not futile and hopeless, even though in the end He does
make mincemeat of us all. Regardless of your beliefs about His false
promises of afterlife. (Have you ever wondered why He only promises you
things you can never verify? Like a corrupt used-car salesman?) You say
``a belief system without any hope is not worth the trouble,'' that you
``choose instead to believe that God has a plan.'' Thus you prove my point
that your beliefs are based on what you WANT to believe about God, and that
you are not concerned about whether your beliefs correspond to reality,
as long as they profess ``hope'' or other things you want.

	Forgive me for sounding gruff, but when you say so proudly that you
are ``in league with God,'' I have no choice but to state my utter distaste
for such association with pure evil.  When you call Him your ``very powerful
ally,'' you sound like someone who has procured the friendship and assistance
of a vile gangster to aid and abet. You have the gall to ask if MY beliefs
contain any notion of love, making the assumption that because you claim
to have found love through God, as if this were the only way to learn about
love. (Indeed, if it is A way at all!) I happen to have very real love for
all people, indeed, for every living thing on this planet. It is for this
very reason that I despise God, because He seeks to interfere with and
damage it all for His own pleasure. You can hardly claim that belief in
Him can be equated in any way to real love.

Be well,
-- 
Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories
pyuxn!pez