A project I started a few days ago. Finally, I decided enough.
Some of these questions I have asked theists here on these boards. Some I have not. Of those I have asked, none have answered.
- Why is God so capable of healing the invisible maladies, like cancer and disease, but is so incapable of healing the visible maladies, such as amputees, persons being horribly burned in an accident, etc.?
- If God is omnipotent, then why is it so afraid of just showing itself and making us atheists eat crow?
- If God is the epitome of objective morality, then why does it not follow its own morality codes?
- If God is omnibenevolent, then why is it so horrendously evil?
- If God is omniscient, then why does it speak only one language?
- If God does exist, then why is there absolutely no compelling evidence of its existence?
- What is God’s gender? If it has a gender, why? If it has no gender, why?
- How do incidents go out of God’s control if it is omnipotent, and well aware of everything that has happened and will happen?
- Why are there so many flaws in God’s creation if it is omnipotent?
- Of this incredibly vast universe, why is God so damned interested in us puny humans?
- If God is only love and good, then why does it become so angry and hateful?
- Why is God such a voyeur?
- Why do most of God’s believers tend to have a lower education level than those whose do not believe?
- If God is supposed to be all-loving, then why would it create a place of eternal torment and torture?
- Why does God have the traits of a tyrranical totalitarian despot?
- If the Theory of Evolution is wrong, then why did God put the vestiges of evolution in the human body and DNA?
- Why did God put a great many dinosaurs on the planet, yet did not mention them in any of the scriptures?
- If God created this vast universe with billions and billions of other planets which may have life, some possibly as advanced as we are, why is it only interested in us lowly primitive primates?
- If God “fine-tuned” this universe for life, then why is almost none of it able to support life?
- Why would God create pigs, shellfish, and dogs if it hates them so much?
- Why did God create billions of species that are extinct today, if it intended to allow them to go extinct?
- If the Theory of Evolution is wrong, then why did God make so much evidence for that Theory?
- Why do God’s scriptures have serious scientific and logical fallacies?
- Why do God’s scriptures need human interpretors while it said that the scriptures are precise and easily understandable?
- Why does God, in the scriptures, sound like nothing but a self-centered narcissistic and megalomanical psychotic sociopath?
- If everything needs a reason to exist, what is God’s reason to exist?
- Why did God forbid Adam to eat the "fruit" when it already knew that Adam would eat the fruit?
- Why is God jealous and angry over the other gods if they do not exist?
- Why does God name itself “Jealous?” (Exodus 34:14 For you shall worship no other god; for Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.)
- Why does God punish humans for their actions when God has already predestined those actions?
- How could humans be able to abolish slavery while God could not?
- Why does God despise women so much when they are the only ones who can bear children to perpetuate the species?
- Why does God promise to destroy the planet instead of promising to save it?
There are other questions, but this should be enough.
Any theist willing to answer?
rmfr
EDIT: Those wishing to answer should not feel they need answer all questions. Exception: JoC, you still must answer all.
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For the question about the lower IQ of believers, are there serious studies with a clear causal link? Anyway, I think you're wasting your time writing this? Theists here are as agile as a cat tryingto escape a grip. They did not anwser the other times, they will not now.
@ Talyyn
I did go back and edit that IQ question to read "education level." Thanks pointing it out. I was very tired from some housework, work from home work, and trying to think of all the questions I have asked. And I am still tired today after fighting a sinus cold yesterday and today. Again thanks.
rmfr
@Arakish
After reading your excellent list of unanswered questions I have to add one more:
Why is there so many unanswered questions around the concept of god?
And perhaps a related question, why is religious holy books so worthless for answering these questions?
Theist apologist are right to stay away from this thread. It would take a lot of effort and word salad to answer just one, and in the meantime a critical thinker could come up with a dozen more valid questions.
@ LogicFTW
Thanks for the addition. As replied with Talyyn, haven't been in my full game the last two days.
Everybody else is welcome to add theirs. And thanks.
rmfr
I am just DYING to get in here with my thoughts. I am not afraid to give my input. Problem is it is impossible for me to do so on my mobile. Alas, I will have to wait until Tuesday. I hope y’all are still interested by this question by then.
Edit: that is, if these arent completely rhetorical questions...
No. Just questions I have asked all my life and no theist has even come close to an answer.
rmfr
Sorry. Should have also added there is no hurry. This sinus cold won't leave me the fuck alone. Hard to think when it feels like your face just wants to explode...
rmfr
Just how many of the members here are Christian? Anyone have any ideas?
"Why does God promise to destroy the planet instead of promising to save it?"
I know the answer to this one: it make for more compelling reading of scripture.
I have often wondered how many people attend church on a regular basis and believe it’s bullshit. They go for the reasons far from religious beliefs. My question to Christians: “ How do you trust a god who has already flooded the world, killed millions by his own hand, allowed countless atrocities, and you trust him to forgive you of your sins just for asking? Makes no god damn since whatsoever!
That’s a lot of questions. Pick one and I’ll try to answer.
@ JoC
Either answer them all, or admit you ain't got any.
rmfr
I'll admit I have no time to answer them on this forum.
JoC: "I'll admit I have no time to answer them on this forum."
Here is another match to that list of how to the determine a Religious Absolutist.
• They LIE by utilizing whiney-ass pleas.
I still work my ass off but still have enough time to visit these forums. How hard is it to select the questions, hit Ctrl+C, switch over to Notepad, then hit Ctrl+V, save the file for later? I NEVER said you had to answer them all at one sitting. Please show where I said you could NOT take your time and answer them. Hell, I NEVER said you truly had to answer them all. Except for you, JoC. You must answer them all or admit you ain't got any answers.
…"utilizing whiney-ass plea"…
I have done it many times here. Copy/Paste the text of a post into HTML-Kit, save the file and answer it later. How hard can it be?
…"utilizing whiney-ass plea"…
rmfr
EDIT: fixed tags
JoC,
"That’s a lot of questions. Pick one and I’ll try to answer."
That is what Job should have told Jealous when he asked them all of those questions in Job chapters 38 & 39 =
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job38-39&version=CEB
I never got how anyone ever actually read the bible and then came up with the idea of a "Loving God." Horseshit! Even Jesus is a complete asshole. telling people he did not come to change the (Old Testament Laws), that he would divide families. that you have to hate your families to follow him, that he does not bring peace but a sword. and don't bother talking to people who are different from you (casting pearls before swine). Then of course there is the fact that Jesus actually IS God. He is the very same bastard responsible for all the murders in the old testament. Worship that ass? Are you insane?":
One question I have been asking recently, is why does magic man choose as its most vocal advocates, a range of charlatans, crooks and outright dumbfucks? If I was a god, I'd make damn sure that the people representing me were of Nobel calibre. Instead, the Christian magic man chose Kent Hovind, a convicted felon, Ken Ham, a professional liar, and Joel Osteen, a fucking money vampire.
I'm pretty sure the same applies to other mythological candidates.
@Calilasseia: Instead, the Christian magic man chose Kent Hovind, a convicted felon, Ken Ham, a professional liar, and Joel Osteen, a fucking money vampire.
He also chose a rogues gallery of Benedicts, Alexanders, Pius', etc., as well as such charming spokespeople for the religion of love as Charlemagne, Savanarola, Torquemada, and Bloody Mary. Talk about tough love.
A lot of these are obviously very good questions. What sucks is, I have seen theists "answers" to some of these - meaning they WILL answer - but the answer will be terribly vague, only tangentially on-topic, or just involves making a bunch of other crap up to "explain away" all of your objections. That is to say, theists are willing to answer quite a lot... but what they never have are answers that actually satisfy.
Oh... and then when you point out that the answer isn't satisfactory, they claim that you're just closed minded and nothing they say would ever convince you, or they claim that everything is satisfactory, but you just don't understand.
@ AM
Ain't that the sad fucking truth? Except you missed out that when they cannot answer, they inundate the thread with links to lame apologist videos....saves actually thinking I suppose....
I have some questions for theist to answer if they can.
Did god make Adam from clay or dirt?
Did god make Eve from Adams rib?
Why do all fetuses start out as female?
Quite a lot of them either don't understand the concept of a substantive response, or think that apologetic fabrications will suffice in lieu thereof.
Making more shit up, in order to pretend that mythology isn't composed of large tracts of made up shit, simply isn't going to cut it, and quite a few of the pedlars of apologetics either don't understand this, or think we can be fobbed off with tinselly discoursive baubles instead of actual precious metal.
The standard evasive excuse which, when translated, actually stands for "if you're not going to treat my made up shit as fact, I'm going to insult you".
One of the most pervasively insidious malaises that the whole apologetics enterprise suffers from, is the fallacious idea that coming up with a fabrication, in the attempt to devise something that purportedly cannot be wrong, will somehow constitute the ultimate checkmate in the face of objections to treatment of mythological assertions as fact. This is, quite simply, complete nonsense. A statement that cannot be wrong is pretty much useless as a basis for knowledge, as anyone who has actually studied propositional logic understands only too well. The genuinely informative statements, are those propositions that, whilst being consistent, allow for the possibility of their truth-value being false, because such statements point to constraints which, when applicable, allow the determination of this choice. We can then test to see which of the constraints is observed to be in place, and as a corollary of so doing, determine which of the choices of 'true' or 'false' applies to a proposition of interest. Which is precisely the reason that science has been so successful, because scientists have known for a long time, that statements capable of being wrong, and capable of being demonstrated to be wrong by observational data, are the statements that provide genuine, substantive knowledge. Unfortunately, the memo either hasn't reached the world of apologetics, or wasn't read when it arrived.
Ah, the dual fallacies of appeal to mysticism, and the attempt to portray one's proper suspicion of unsupported assertions as a purported "deficit", instead of proper discoursive conduct. Seen this being deployed plenty of times in my travels too.
Indeed, the whole "these assertions are sacred, and therefore not to be questioned" approach that supernaturalists are so fond of, is such a manifest crock of shit to anyone who has spent time learning the proper rules of discourse, that one is tempted to wonder how this egregious violation thereof ever gained any standing, in what is purported to be a properly constituted discipline. The short answer being that it's easier to have low standards when peddling fabrications.
@OP Thank you for your patience! Taking a second look I realize how many questions there are posted here, and I obviously can't address them all in detail. For future posts like this one, numbered questions would be helpful in order to reduce the length of my reply. I will answer a handful of them now.
"Why is God so capable of healing the invisible maladies, like cancer and disease, but is so incapable of healing the visible maladies, such as amputees, persons being horribly burned in an accident, etc.?"
Just because He doesn't, doesn't logically mean He can't
"If God is omnipotent, then why is it so afraid of just showing itself and making us atheists eat crow?"
God has revealed Himself to us in miraculous ways. Even when He walked the earth and raised people from the dead, those who were present still found excuses. There is a nice mention of this is Matthew 12:23-32, when the people illogically accused Christ of performing miracles through the demons, instead of acknowledging His divinity. Point is, you've said it yourself. Even if He were to reveal Himself, you still wouldn't love Him, so what's the point? Also, conceding that He is omnipotent, wouldn't it be illogical to even question "why" He does what He does?
"If God is the epitome of objective morality, then why does it not follow its own morality codes?"
God does not provide the law and tell us what is moral for His sake. It is only for our benefit. Don't you think it would make sense to listen to an All-Knowing being? The objective morality is built into OUR nature, which is separate from God's. He is not restricted by any of the laws of nature, which He created. Including time and space.
"If God is omnibenevolent, then why is it so horrendously evil?"
I would not say God is evil. He is the antithesis of evil. You can cite all of the biblical passages you want that show "tragedy", but you can not define it as evil. (especially since you claim morality is subjective)
"If God is omniscient, then why does it speak only one language?"
Not even sure what this means....
"What is God’s gender? If it has a gender, why? If it has no gender, why?"
Genderless. What do you mean, "why"? The bible describes heaven as a place where "there is neither male, nor female". 'Gender' is a tool used only in our state of being, not in Gods'.
"How do incidents go out of God’s control if it is omnipotent, and well aware of everything that has happened and will happen?"
Nothing is "Out of God's control". To remain consistent with our Free Will, He just allows things to happen, yes, even knowing the end result.
"Of this incredibly vast universe, why is God so damned interested in us puny humans?"
We are not "puny". We are God's greatest creation. There are 9 orders of angels, and WE are held in higher regard than even those.
"If the Theory of Evolution is wrong, then why did God put the vestiges of evolution in the human body and DNA?"
I believe in evolution.
"Why does God despise women so much when they are the only ones who can bear children to perpetuate the species?"
God does not "despise women". On the contrary. Mary, the mother of God, is the most exalted in Heaven (other than God Himself)
"Why does God promise to destroy the planet instead of promising to save it?"
God promises to save US, what is better than that? He created the planet, anyway, why is wrong for Him to take it back?
Jonah 4: 9-10 (NIV) But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant[a] and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Anyway, I had to skip a lot because it was taking longer than expected. Feel free to reply to a couple of these (preferably not all of them, because I don't have all day). But if there are a couple of your questions that I did not answer, but you feel are important, let me know and I will address them.
What was it someone said about Religious Absolutists and their answers. Vague? Not even answers? Just woo woo?
Now I have to go the the hospital due to all the facepalms. Need to write a new commandment about wearing a catcher's mask while reading forum boards…
rmfr
That's it? That's all I get after writing that? I mean, it's like you want me to repeat every line in the bible + 2019 years of historical tradition with EVERY answer.
@HumbleThinker - I'll tell you what's wrong with your entire stream of assertions (only some of which you even provided a shred of evidence for and that evidence was nothing more than quoting The Bible) by pointing out two specific quotes from your reply:
The problem with these two statements (and this actually applies to your entire set of explanations/answers) is that these are only opinion. The reason I brought these two forward as evidence of this is because these are known to be opinion EVEN FROM WITHIN YOUR OWN BELIEF SYSTEM. The first (evolution) is definitely not accepted by all of your creed, and the second appears to me to be a decidedly Catholic view, and definitely not something held as "true" by all Christians.
This is a real problem, and if you don't see why then shame on you. Here you are, asserting things without any real support for your statements, no way to demonstrate the truth of anything you're saying. And then you point to The Bible, which also provides no way to demonstrate the truth of any of the claims made about God within it. None. If the two quotes above were verifiably supported or "true" of your religion and/or reality, then there should be no way for anyone to hold views that oppose these within your chosen faith. It's kind of like a mathematician claiming that 2+2 does not equal 4 and somehow also being just as right as his fellow mathematicians. Or a civil engineer going against the other engineers in his field and saying that load-bearing members are not necessary when building a bridge. Particularly with the "Mary" comment, you've stated what should be an objective fact of the reality of heaven, right? And yet even your own fellow believers would disagree with you. This kind of thing simply does not happen with items considered "fact" within other disciplines.
@spammer
Agreed. I didn’t come at this with definitive definitions and facts and empirical evidence. You are correct. But I also never claimed them to be. He asked the questions, I gave answers according to my belief. Take them or leave them. Simple. All I ask is that you think about them.
@HumbleThinker - and my sole point was to get you consider that in many other areas of life, we don't come to the table with nothing but opinions in answer to questions. And I know that certain disciplines (psychology for example) amount to only a bit more than educated guess-work, but in the case of religion, even the "education" is based on something for which there is no empirical investigation to even be done. In psychology (furthering the example) at least you have actual examples of real-life situations/conditions/people/etc. to study and come to conclusions. And that's still worlds apart from knowledge gained during "religious study," within which there is nothing of the kind. For the most important questions within a religion, there is nothing to examine that manifests in reality as we experience it.
@ HumbleThinker
The Bible is the claim NOT evidence. You expect me to accept your answers when they are not answers. I have copied the text of your answers and am addressing it now when I have time.
Later.
rmfr
@Arakish Re: "Need to write a new cammondment about wearing a catcher's mask while reading forum boards…"
Hah! See? I told ya!
@ Tin-Man Re: "Told Ya"
Yes, you did ask me to write another Forum Board Reading Commandment about the facepalms.
6) Thou shalt apply a catcher's mask to thy head and face so as to prevent self-injuries due to facepalms. Thou hast been warned.
rmfr
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