What If God Is A Brutal Authoritarian?

His holiness the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not and would never be a brutal authoritarian, and it is heresy to say otherwise.

Oh yes and Spaghetti-O's are holy relics, in case anyone didn't know. Not that it is of any relevance here. Of course neither is this entire thread.

"Life is full of choices, but you never get any!" - Linus

https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/welcome/psych243/samplec...

I'm atheists and i don't like being preached to, so i give that same respect to anyonewho my be religious. The only thing i will say about this subject is the state should not recognize it.

On May 12, 1797 while living in Paris, France Tom Paine wrote the following letter to a Christian friend who was trying to convert Paine to Christianity. Paine's response fits perfectly with my opinion on organized religion.

"In your letter of the twentieth of March, you give me several quotations from the Bible, which you call the Word of God, to show me that my opinions on religion are wrong, and I could give you as many, from the same book to show that yours are not right; consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it.

"But by what authority do you call the Bible the Word of God? For this is the first point to be settled. It is not your calling it so that makes it so, any more than the Mahometans calling the Koran the Word of God makes the Koran to be so. The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books that now compose what is called the New Testament to be the Word of God. This was done by yeas and nays, as we now vote a law.

"The Pharisees of the second temple, after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose the Old Testament, and this is all the authority there is, which to me is no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they were, and I think more so, because, as they made a living by their religion, they had a self-interest in the vote they gave.

"You may have an opinion that a man is inspired, but you cannot prove it, nor can you have any proof of it yourself, because you cannot see into his mind in order to know how he comes by his thoughts; and the same is the case with the word revelation. There can be no evidence of such a thing, for you can no more prove revelation than you can prove what another man dreams of, neither can he prove it himself.

"It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says that God spake unto Mahomet, do you believe that too? No.

"Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; and so because you do, and because you don't is all the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving except that you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor?

"For my own part, I believe that all are impostors who pretend to hold verbal communication with the Deity. It is the way by which the world has been imposed upon; but if you think otherwise you have the same right to your opinion that I have to mine, and must answer for it in the same manner. But all this does not settle the point, whether the Bible be the Word of God, or not. It is therefore necessary to go a step further. The case then is: -

"You form your opinion of God from the account given of Him in the Bible; and I form my opinion of the Bible from the wisdom and goodness of God manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all works of creation. The result in these two cases will be, that you, by taking the Bible for your standard, will have a bad opinion of God; and I, by taking God for my standard, shall have a bad opinion of the Bible.

"The Bible represents God to be a changeable, passionate, vindictive being; making a world and then drowning it, afterwards repenting of what he had done, and promising not to do so again. Setting one nation to cut the throats of another, and stopping the course of the sun till the butchery should be done. But the works of God in the creation preach to us another doctrine. In that vast volume we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable, passionate, vindictive God; everything we there behold impresses us with a contrary idea - that of unchangeableness and of eternal order, harmony, and goodness.

"The sun and the seasons return at their appointed time, and everything in the creation claims that God is unchangeable. Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing, and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.

"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. That bloodthirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (I Sam. xv. 3) `Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'

"That Samuel or some other impostor might say this, is what, at this distance of time, can neither be proved nor disproved, but in my opinion it is blasphemy to say, or to believe, that God said it. All our ideas of the justice and goodness of God revolt at the impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

"What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amalekites appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites, four hundred years before, according to the account in Exodus xvii. (but which has the appearance of fable from the magical account it gives of Moses holding up his hands), had opposed the Israelites coming into their country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders of Mexico. This opposition by the Amalekites, at that time, is given as a reason, that the men, women, infants and sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses, that were born four hundred years afterward, should be put to death; and to complete the horror, Samuel hewed Agag, the chief of the Amalekites, in pieces, as you would hew a stick of wood. I will bestow a few observations on this case.

"In the first place, nobody knows who the author, or writer, of the book of Samuel was, and, therefore, the fact itself has no other proof than anonymous or hearsay evidence, which is no evidence at all. In the second place, this anonymous book says, that this slaughter was done by the express command of God: but all our ideas of the justice and goodness of God give the lie to the book, and as I never will believe any book that ascribes cruelty and injustice to God, I therefore reject the Bible as unworthy of credit.

"As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary; but I know you can give me none, except that you were educated to believe the Bible; and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that education makes all the difference, and that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case.

"You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or from the New.

"When you have examined the Bible with the attention that I have done (for I do not think you know much about it), and permit yourself to have just ideas of God, you will most probably believe as I do. But I wish you to know that this answer to your letter is not written for the purpose of changing your opinion. It is written to satisfy you, and some other friends whom I esteem, that my disbelief of the Bible is founded on a pure and religious belief in God; for in my opinion the Bible is a gross libel against the justice and goodness of God, in almost every part of it."

If God is (that which is) omnicient, omnipotent, and omnipresent; and

If wisdom and understanding come from knowledge, strength, and presence; and

If envy, anger, cowardice, fear, and pettiness come from ignorance, impotence, and absence; and

If Love becomes unconditional from wisdom, strength, and understanding, and is conditional or absent coming from ignorance, impotence, or in the presence of envy, anger, or fear; then

God is (unconditional) Love.

"Hell" sounds like it was invented by someone who was angry, impotent, and unloving. Probably a bureaucrat who thought force and threats of force were more effective than any kind of other power at his disposal, like communication. It wasn't invented by a wise being.

It wouldn't be the first time that a being lost confidence in their abilities to win people over, and resorted to threats, but that being could hardly be God.

In the November 13, 1995 issue of Christianity Today, page 31, we read, “Questions about the authority of Scripture had been troubling the young preacher (Billy Graham) for weeks. Knowing that the matter must be settled in his mind if he ever hoped to preach with authority and power, he wrestled with his doubts until he was able to pray; ‘Oh God, I cannot prove certain things. I cannot answer some of the questions my friends are asking. [Yet, here and now I am ready to accept the Bible] by faith as the Word of God.’”
Perhaps some of Graham’s doubts regarding the Bible were: the talking donkey at Numbers 22:28; God threatening people by saying, “Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces” at Malachi 2:3; God commanding the Hebrews/Jews to kill people by stoning for working on the Sabbath as is found at Numbers 15:32-36; that God would order someone to “eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight” as Ezekiel 4:12 claims; that Jesus would condemn the Jews for NOT killing their disobedient children as Matthew 15:4-6 claims. Billy Graham must also have had very serious doubts about salvation through Jesus since the Bible is not even clear about this center piece of Christianity. None of the above material from the Bible can ever be accepted by God-given reason. Plus there are hundreds, if not thousands, of additional Biblical claims that are contrary to our God-given reason which Graham would not be able to align with his gift from God of reason.

The article goes on to say, “That simple prayer transformed Graham’s ministry – and convinced him, once for all, of the Bible’s absolute authority. Since that special moment at Forest Home, no conviction has marked his ministry more deeply. Across the years, the Bible has remained the foundation for his preaching and the ultimate standard by which he judges both his relationships and the conduct of his evangelical work.” The Bible remained Graham’s “foundation for his preaching and the ultimate standard” because he turned his back on God’s gift to him, and to all of us, of reason in order to accept the unreasonable ungodly nonsense in the Bible.
Mr. Graham, by his simple prayer and admission, has given Deists and all people who value their God-given reason much more than books written by men and merely masquerading as “revealed” religion, an unbeatable weapon. He admits there is no logical reason that is satisfying to our God-given common sense and reason to believe the Bible is the inspired word of God! And he is the most highly praised influential Protestant Christian leader in the world! Revealed religionists are therefore forced to replace their God-given reason with faith (which is a human invention designed to dull the mind), as Mr. Graham has done, in order to believe the Bible was written with the authority of God. We can add his prayer to our collection of arrows designed to penetrate through to the core of superstition.
Many people think there is something miraculous to Graham’s rise to prominence in the Christian evangelical world. In reality there is nothing God related to it. Instead of God, it is based on advertising. And not just any advertising, but advertising promoted by one of the most powerful men of the 20th century – Bernard Baruch.

Bernard Baruch was a very powerful and wealthy Jewish financier. He saw some of Graham’s sermons in a South Carolina newspaper and was impressed. What may have impressed him was Graham breaking away from the standard Christian doctrine of the time that the Jews where “Christ-killers,” and children of Satan. For example, John 8:44 has Jesus telling the Jews, “Ye are of your father the devil, . . .” John 5:16-18 says the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him. And at John 7:13 we read, “Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews.” Graham stayed away from these Bible teachings and that must have been very pleasing to the Jewish financier, Baruch.

this forum topic to be retarded.

Just sayin... :)

This person, for whom this site is named after, has advocated all his life while living it, teaches the idea of freedom also recognizes the source of it. It isn't from a tyrant that such freedoms are root in. It is out of love, 1 John 4:7-19. Note verses 18, 19 that fear is not part of this love of God.

“There is only one kind of freedom and that’s individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.” -Ron Paul

It is only through this individual self governance called Christianity that a nation of ideas of freedom came into existence. Only by this self governance will it continue to thrive or even continue to exist. Deny this need of self governance we become no longer that light upon the mountain to other nations, we become divided and are divided terribly today. As a nation divided we shall fail to agree to protect liberty and eventually fall.

Have a blessed day.