Comments by "cchris874" (@cchris874) on "Voice of America" channel.

The more you read, the more you should have discovered that the authorization for a shoot down came too late; and that there's next to no evidence it was shot down, and plenty of counter evidence it wasn't. Such as the .003 percent of the plane found outside the crash zone, and then exaggerated into major wreckage.
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All that's missing is the proof.
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You are speaking to a vacuum. People have always confused belief for truth. And the worst ones are right here at Youtube.
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Yes indeed, because your alleged creator just loves to see people suffer gratuitously. Go for it.
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What a farce: the government decided it would be a quaint touch to crash a plane in the middle of nowhere so no one on the ground would get killed. How thoughtful of them.
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@kojithegermanshepherd7056 Leviticus 20:9 "If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death." I'm having a little trouble with this. Can you help me understand how those words could come from an alleged wise, loving and compassionate Being?
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@kojithegermanshepherd7056 Yeah, but it's the Bible. So what do we do about that? Do the rational thing and conclude that ancient man wrote the bible.
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@kojithegermanshepherd7056 With or without Jesus' love.
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Spare us your drivel.
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Well let me ask you a question, and I'm not sure of the answer. But is telling potential gay posters they will burn in hell when there's not a shred of proof that they will -- is that showing respect?
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@godislove363 If don't see how God loves us so much, as He, being allegedly omnipotent, could have created a world without evil. He choose not to. He knew in advance, for example, that he was creating imperfect beings, who would then go on to create the holocaust, and other ghastly things, yet chose to create us anyway. Had He wished, He could have fine tuned human beings to have a built in mechanism linking harm to others with the same degree of pain when we are hurt. He chose not to arm us in such a manner. He chose not to provide us with the level of empathy that would prevent atrocities. Alternatively, he could have used his omniscience to foresee which human beings would misuse their free will, and eliminate them from the creation. It's therefore obvious that the biblical God is man's invention. Man loves suffering. So no wonder God does too. And He kills us all off, designing us with a hundred different mechanism that ensure our certain death, making him the biggest mass murderer in history. The real question therefore is, how come so many people cannot see through to the obvious: that suffering of the scale imagined by religious believers is out of proportion to the sin committed. It's a simple truth staring one in the face. Would you kill your child if he cursed at you? Of course not. If a real God existed, He has better things to think about than who sleeps with whom. Those pettinesses arise out of human vice, not virtue. Any undergraduate psychology major understands that.
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@godislove363 Thank you for your reply. That's all fine and good, but I never said anything about robots. I gave two exmples of how God could have made the world more perfect. -He could have made a decision to eliminate evil depraved people from his creation. Thus, everyone who is born still has free will. -A simple feedback mechanism that makes us not have any desire to commit atrocities against humanity. This doesn't make us robots, any more than all the other constraints our creator (nature or otherwise) has endowed us with: we can't flap our wings and fly like a bird. Does that mean we're robots? He gave us the ability to have empathy, which acts to limit depravity to a degree. Did that turn us into robots? We can't escape feelings of grief. Perhaps that makes us robots? None of that makes any sense: the idea that because we don't have complete and total unconstrained choice, that we are robots. This is again why the traditional answers given by true believers don't turn the needle. The logic is always flawed.
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@godislove363 I appreciate your reply. For me, there's a genuine paradox of an alleged perfect being so intent on bringing imperfection into the world, which then results in massive suffering. I think God it ultimately an attempt to make the world more palatable, to explain its hideous ways, by suggesting we are the ones who have complete control over it, and thus we who screwed up. That just doesn't work for me, for a few reasons. 1) lack of any independent evidence of a biblical God; 2) that ordinary everyday misbehavior ought to be punished with excessive cruelty. This goes against all of the more humane standards we have devised to treat other humans decently. For example, what loving Being, in any context, would say, he who curses their parent should be put to death? Yet that's exactly what God allegedly said in Leviticus. It's a grotesque lack of proportionality to the crime committed. Should we start administering the death penalty for cursing? 3) We can only choose based on our hardwiring. And there can be little question that we are hardwired for violence. Serial killers for example, seem to be hardwired differently than you and I. In observational studies, they don't flinch the way you and I do when observing another human being in pain. That's God's alleged constraint lacking in serial killers. Does that mkae them robots? Does it make the world a better place? It's a total myth, unsupported by an evidence, that humans have complete unconstrained free will. We can only choose what our hardwiring allows. That's probably why gays choose gay behavior. If God disapproves, why did he put gay attraction into his lexicon of human attractions? For what purpose? This is the problem with the free will versus robot analogy. Humans don't choose in a vacuum. If God had not invented the concept of violence, there would be no violence !! Don't you see that basic truth staring one in the face? But depriving us of violent urges would not renders us robots. We can freely choose all the other decisions we make; our careers, our spouses, our friends, our vacation hangouts, or mull over whether we want to become vegetarians. As I said, God gave us the power of empathy. That constrains out choices, making it virtually impossible for most of us to choose depraved behavior under normal conditions. Are we robots because of that? 4) The existence of massive unspeakable suffering. I contend that such suffering isn't worth the price of admission into the world. No human being deserves this, no matter how depraved. The world is not made a better place by it. But even its some extremely depraved humans deserve such suffering, certainly not the lot of ordinary people who have not killed or tortured others. Only a depraved Being would be intent on washing them away in floods, and indeed ultimately killing all of them off. 5) Which leads back to the question, if God is perfect, why was further perfection needed in the first place? And how does one get more perfection out of massive suffering???????? As long as no definitive answers exist to these questions, God should be totally understanding and forgiving for people like me. Why should He be so angry? Wouldn't a truly enlightened Being not get so worked up about what one little earthling thinks? Thank you for a nice discussion.
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@godislove363 "hi there you typed mouthful" Yes I certainly did. Please take your time, I'll wait until you've covered everything you want before if I have any more replies. You have been more than polite and cordial. Thank you.
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@godislove363 "threw Freewill did choose to sin and When sin began the same line says you sure she'll surely not die when they thought there was .." Well that's where I part company with the biblical God. One doesn't deserve to die for an ordinary sin, do they?
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@godislove363 I'm trying to digest the things you've written, but I'm not sure I have been successful. Maybe you could spell out for me in very clear terms, because maybe I've got this wrong since I'm not a student of the bible. But what was the worst sin committed by Adam and Eve. Did they commit murder for example?
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@godislove363 Thank you for being such a good sport. I'll just reiterate, I still see no reason why sins that do not cause permanent injury or death to others should be punished by death. Why would a loving and beneficent Being inflict such a gratuitously cruel punishment? What is the purpose? How does it make the world better?
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@godislove363 I do thank you again for your reply. And I agree, I'm not so much trying to debate you either for debate's sake. But in the process of trying to understand, and seeing if I could really become a potential believer, I would have to air my concerns. I think God, if He's up there, would understand that. ? Let me go back to Leviticus for a moment: if you curse your parent you should certainly be put to death. I understand that it was based on a certain context. But what I can't seem to figure out is, why would ANY context justify that? Where would it ever be OK to recommend death for cursing a parent? Maybe you could help me try to wrap my head around that. Thanks
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All that's missing is the proof.
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@johnpeters9961 That heaven exists, that gays will not enter into heaven, the words of the bible. There's no independent proof of any of these things. It's pure belief and faith, which is a very different matter.
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@johnpeters9961 That's fine with me. But without an accompanying proof, you're basically talking only to fellow believers.
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@Pitts DaThird Just happened to be perusing the same threads you are it seems, not trying to hound you or anything. But of course God created homosexuality. By definition, he created the whole world, did he not? So how can you logically leave out bits and pieces of the world from his creation? God allegedly has complete and total omniscience and omnipotence. So God had absolute say in determining whether he would allow there to be homosexual attraction in the world. he could have said, "I will eliminate gay attraction from existence." or equally he could have decided to simply eliminate gays from his creation. If he could not, then he's not omnipotent.
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@Pitts DaThird Well, I don't see how I could know more than a non-existent invention of ancient man. But for the sake of logical coherence (of which Christianity is in short supply,) yes, it follows 100% logically that god created sin because he knew in advance man would sin. Whether he created it directly, or contracted it out to man, as it were, the result is the same. he knew all this was going to happen, but let it happen anyway. It's pure sleight-of-hand to hide behind man's failings when you yourself created his failings. He had the power to create beings who would not sin. If not, then by definition he is not the omnipotent being you and the bible define him as. Time and again god is said to be all-powerful but is rendered impotent when subject to specific tests of that omnipotence. Religion has done as good a job as it can, I suppose, of trying to reconcile an imagined all powerful and benign entity with the blunt reality of tragedy, alleged sin, and basic common sense understanding of logical concepts. But on even elementary reflection, it dissolves into incoherence. That's just my take on it of course. And one can go on and on with that theme. Thank you for your reply.
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Ddot Norreh Easier to name-call than the harder task of critical thinking. So God, the all powerful, is powerless to stop evil. If you can't spot the problem, you're the clown.
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@Pitts DaThird Restating your beliefs doesn't add to the conversation. I take it you will not take on the deeper questions I raise. This is one reason there are atheists an agnostics. They never get adequate answers to rational questions. If you like the fantasy of an all-powerful god who is powerless to prevent evil - or even better, WANTS to create evil -- then you can expect the rational response of many people rejecting this.
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@Pitts DaThird Do you accept, as I do, that you could be mistaken and absolute proof is unjustified?
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@Pitts DaThird And BTW, evidence comes in many forms, including logical consistency, and overall plausibility of many converging factors. One particular paradox for me is, why would a supreme being, existing from time immemorial, suddenly decide in 4004 BC to create a world. And not just any world, but a world with the most horrific suffering one could imagine. What is a perfect being doing creating not just minor imperfection, but the savage and most cruel type of imperfection imaginable? When one detaches oneself from religion, the notion of a perfect Being hell-bent on creating a world with massive suffering makes not the slightest sense whatsoever. It's the failure to acknowledge these glaring holes in the fabric of belief that ensures agnosticism and atheism will remain quite healthy.
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Ddot Norreh If you really weren't interested, you would have stopped replying. As trolls go, you're pretty average.
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@Pitts DaThird "God creates whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases, just like we do things ourselves. " But there's an important difference. God has been defined (without any supporting evidence) as a perfect being: all powerful, all knowing, and morally perfect. So he's not just like us. He creates only that which is in accordance with these qualities. "God didn’t make imperfection. He created choice by giving human beings an alternative. " That's just more sleight-of-hand. God's omniscience means he knew in advance that by creating man, he was creating imperfection. He knew in advance the holocaust would occur. He knew in advance man would create every manner of depravity. The free will/choice thing is ridiculous, as God could foresee which people would misuse their free will, and simply eliminate them from his creation. In which case we would have 1) No evil and; 2) no diminution in free will. Again, all these common defenses of god's alleged ways have no logical coherence. God is omnipotent, but then rendered time and again impotent. It's pure unadulterated contradiction. You can't both be all-powerful, but powerless to stop great evil. Or worse, thinking that such evil is deserved for non-violent transgressions. God believes in truly sadistic punishment, as in Leviticus, death for cursing one's parent. In any context, these are not the words of a loving Being. There is no place for torture or execution for cursing in a loving world. It should be uncontroversial to any thinking human..
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@Pitts DaThird "Once again you’re flawed." Yes, we are all flawed. Finally you're making some sense. "Knowing something in advance doesn’t make you guilty or culpable for those occurrences. People hire employees all the time, knowing that there may be a possibility they’ll get fired. " Again, a sleight of hand argument. The correct analogy would be: the employer KNOWS FOR SURE that hiring the employee would lead to great suffering but still hires him. If you create an erroneous analogy, you of course will get a false equivalence. Surely you can come up with something more intelligent and not so strikingly effortless to refute as this. "Parents have children even though they know in advance, that their children are probably going to disobey them. " The same false equivalence. Again, it should be obvious the correct analogy would be: parent knows in advance child will become serial killer. Then their choice would, as with God, be extremely evil. So your main theme here is completely at odds with modern day ethics. In the real world of more enlightened wisdom (sometimes at least) , if you hire a sexual predator as a camp counselor, you are rightly held accountable for that bad decision. I'm sure you would agree. Which means your argument should be self-evidently contradictory to basic moral standards even you agree with. But God, the MOST moral Being of all, is off the hook? Again, detaching oneself from the fantasy of organized religion , none of this makes even the slightest bit of sense. Thank you for a civil discussion.
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Ddot Norreh Free will may be a gift from God. How convenient to leave out suffering and evil. Is that a gift from God? Let me guess, since I'm 10 steps ahead of you. We brought it on ourselves through sin, right? So even minor sins deserve rotting in hell. Cursing your parent calls for execution. That's your vision of love and beneficence, right? That's why fundamentalists will always be a minority. They think the most Perfect Being would wash all of us away in a flood for even trivial offenses.
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@Pitts DaThird I already dealt with that. A truly all-powerful and all-knowing and loving kind being, would say to himself: I can foresee which people would misuse their free will, so the MORAL thing to do is eliminate them from my creation. Then I would have a 1) a world without evil and 2) complete and total free will for all of my human creations. Do you have a reason why God chose to create evil beings instead? If so, let's here it.
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Ddot Norreh That's fair. But you still can't seem to get enough of me. Keep on replyin.
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@Pitts DaThird I think we have exhausted our dialogue. Thanks for being a good sport.
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And those are words of a Loving infinitely wise Being, right? Obsessed with killing.
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@nihilisticotaku7907 The verse is right above. Those are not the words of a loving Being.
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@nihilisticotaku7907 What is the correct translation?
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@nihilisticotaku7907 Very interesting, thanks. Would there be a scholarly consensus on that? That's even worse than I thought. To wish death upon the boy too makes Him doubly cruel. Are there no passages at all then about adult homosexuality or "gay sex" of any kind?
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And you have verified all of this yourself? Could you prove the bible's word in a court of law, with a panel of biblical experts? Go for it.
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@Sleepy Hollow Show us.
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@passionforyarn1990 But they don't follow it, do they.
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@Sleepy Hollow What I'm specifically asking is proof that the bible is the word of God. Lots of people have read the bible and don't see a convincing proof of God in its pages. So rather than ask ME to find the proof, why don't you? You're the one who says you have it. Rather than ask me to read the entire thing, why don't you start by citing some passages that you think are going to help me. Then I will gladly mull those passages over. But you cannot, say, bring the bible to a court of law, or a panel of scientists, or skeptics and say, "Here's the bible. That's my proof." That's not how proof works - as I'm sure you would agree.
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@Sleepy Hollow "what does a court of law have to do with the Bible?" It's just an example of venues which require serious evidence gathering; places where you would expect a high standard of evidence .So, court of law, peer review journals, writings which conform to rigid standards of historiography and so on.
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@Sleepy Hollow There are a number of reasons why I find the notion of a biblical God perplexing. Consider the famous passage from Leviticus which states that if you curse your parent you should certainly be put to death. Do you find that passage at all problematic?
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@Sleepy Hollow "Scientists recently discovered that the universe had a beginning." Well I'm not so sure there's a scientific consensus on that. An essay by Stephen Hawking, for example, was recently uncovered which stated he's not sure there was "nothing" before the Big Bang. To me, it's no more problematic to suppose God was always there than to suppose matter (or "something" was always there. Both theories are perplexing and not self-explanatory.
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@Sleepy Hollow And BTW I do appreciate your taking time to discuss these things. For me, the proof is all around us there's no biblical God. That proof is the suffering all around us: genocides, babies being blown up, torture, you name it. It seems to me the prevailing theory among believers is that we all brought this on ourselves. But if this is so, it implies a few unpalatable or questionable assumptions: -that, short of acts of violence, ordinary sins deserve cruel and gratuitous punishment -the paradox that if God is perfection, why was it necessary to improve things? -If God is omniscient, and all powerful, his believers have made him out to be impotent: he cannot create a world without suffering -knowing in advance man would turn against him, he still thought it important to bring into operation a system he knew would cause great suffering - and then of course blame it on us. None of this makes the slightest sense to me, and I have found the traditional stock answers to be pretty silly, to be honest. For example, believers say that giving man free will allowed us to choose suffering. But, for example, it doesn't follow that man would not have free will if, say, God did not hardwire us for violence to begin with. Or was God also rendered impotent because he has no control over the very existence of violence. Or alternatively, God could foresee which people would misuse their free will, and thus leave them out of his creation. Then all the remaining humans would be both free of sin, but also have free will. Thank you for your replies.
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@Sleepy Hollow And as I mentioned above, the very idea of killing someone for cursing - how can that kind of sentiment have any place in any context within a loving and wise Being? Would you ever say such a thing, IN ANY CONTEXT?
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@Sleepy Hollow You've said a lot of interesting things. Thank you. I'll pick just one point for this post. "That implies that it had to be put there." Why? If we say it's literally impossible that something could have "always been there," then why wouldn't that also apply to God? Why is God exempt from the rule? If God could always have been there, then why not matter also? I think it wiser to be humble and say we humans in our infinite unwisdom and perpetual state of stupidity (by God's standards) are not in any position to claim absolute knowledge in this realm. We don't even know how our minds really work, we still can't cure the common cold, but somehow we ought to be smart enough to definitively parse the universe and all its mysteries? That doesn't work for me. OK, those are my thought for now. Thank you for being a good sport.
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@Sleepy Hollow I will be retiring from this thread for the evening. I may have more to say tomorrow. You have been very polite and I appreciate it.
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