God can't talk. Or, why Pascal can sod off.

So you don't know.

Nonono, I answered it.

Honestly, Scientists and their fucking non sequiturs.

Lol @ the triangles reference.

Anything I say will just be a repetition of Max, so I'll just point you to his comments.

We weren't talking about a loving god. We were talking about a Just god. Very different things. The question of whether God is Just or Love or whether he's both but one overrules the other at certain times is answered differently by every religion.

This. Judaism states that the longest anyone can be in hell is one year. Also that you don't get punished for disbelief or even believing in a different god, as long as you don't actually practice idol worship.

How do we know that that year is not like a Genesis day in the Jewish tradition?

Because the people who state that the period of time in hell is a year are also the same people who state that a Genesis Day was one 24 hour period exactly equivalent to a modern day.

And, to pre-empt your response, the phrase 'exactly equivalent' includes the fact that the period of the earth's spin has varied by a few seconds over the last few millenia.

You're operating under the impression that might is right, or that such a being would be infallible. The first idea is abhorrent and the second is possible but not to be taken for granted. Just because a creature has the power to create life does not mean that they are necessarily a moral or ethical authority. Tormenting a person for eternity is not just. If god exists, I'm sure it would have the power to do this. That doesn't make it right.


I can't remember how to do quote tags correctly.

Fixed in case you wanted them fixed.
I’m operating under the awareness that if God created all of existence, including the very nature of right and wrong and fallibility, then God is perched on the pinnacle of correctness. What He says is not just to be taken as true for the sake of worship; it is because God made it true. The only assumption there is that God doesn’t tell porkies.

Please note casual readers that I do not believe in any form of God, whether He’s the ultimate cause of everything or just some Boltzmann entity that happened accidentally or intentionally to shape the causes and effects that created the world as it is today; I just don’t like these theological straw man arguments. They ignore the claims made by the devout, and that’s no way to encourage rationality.

If God is just...

Alright, a guy has just broken into your house, raped your female relatives and shot everyone else.
He's taken to court and the judge listens to the case and then lets him off free.
Is that just? Was the judge being fair?

In ignoring God, we are doing wrong, and we deserve punishment. God is just in punishing us. However, since he loves us even though we're rubbish, he gives us the opportunity to avoid punishment, by letting his son, Jesus, take the punishment instead of us. When Jesus died on the cross, he didn't just suffer physical pain, but he also suffered total condemnation from God.
If we believe in Jesus and accept him as rightful ruler of our lives, we are freed from the punishment we deserve.

In other words, it’s the one wrong which cannot be forgiven?

What about the people who live in societies completely untouched by christianity? What about the people who lived before the concept of the jewish/christian God?

They never came into contact with the idea of christianity, are they going to hell too?

Also consider my analogy of parents spanking children again.

Children grow up.

Are you seriously equating rape and murder to a lack of knowledge? Are you really saying that being unsure of somethings existence is the same as taking life?


@ Max. It seems that we are in disagreement about what comes with supreme power. With supreme power comes the ability to say that this is wrong and that is right. However, there is nothing to say this creature isn't fucking insane. I understand what you are saying. He created the rules. I get it. I still fail to see how that means a damned thing.

Because those rules aren’t like a legal system, which is fallible and you can take exception to it. They’re the rules that govern the nature of reality, and you can’t take exception to them any more than you can gravity.

Also, if everything is the creation of an insane God, then we are not exempt from the inherent insanity of existence, so our personal or collective values are still no more valid than God’s.

Good wombs have born bad sons, the inverse is just as true.

But God transcends the universe in a way quite unobserved in biological parents’ relations to their offspring.

As an addendum to what Max has already said; If you believe in a God, then the definition of Right and Wrong are fundamental constants in the universe. God created them at the same time as he created gravity and the speed of light.

Thus, the concept of right and wrong is as integral and unchangeable a part of the universe as any other of the constants.

@ Max

He transcends the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

He created it and He transcends it.

And we not only say we can understand him, but base Our knowledge of his word on four interpretations from thousands of years ago?

I find all theological wheelings and dealings to be far too convenient. Also, they lack the crucial quality of falsifiability.

It seems to me that you guys are just taking this idea for granted and that it isn't necessarily so. Just because it made everything doesn't mean that it made everything well.

Two problems with that. If God didn’t create us well, then we again can’t expect our flawed opinions to supercede God’s. And ‘well’ is subjective, still requiring our opinions to be better than God’s.

The infallible God viewpoint is not convenient; it didn’t just happen to fall into place, it persists because someone realized it isn’t falsifiable. I suppose what I’m trying to point out is that we should stop trying to falsify it because that’s not the way to make people realize the world around them is natural, not supernatural.

I'm not trying to falsify it, necessarily. I'm just pointing out that.... oh, fuck it. I don't know what I'm trying to point out anymore. You win.