Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxn.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!bellcore!petrus!sabre!zeta!epsilon!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxn!pez 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