- The Problem of Evil
This is the first thing that comes to my mind when I see these types of statements. If nothing can interfere with God's will, then why do bad things happen to believers (or anybody for that matter)? And we are not just talking about skinning a knee or some other hardship where a lesson can be learned. I don't even have to go to big events like Sandy Hook or the Boston marathon, we can just think about all of the people who die on a daily basis from cancer or getting hit by a drunk driver or any other number of random things. All of this apparently random tragedy is part of God's will? Many times the answer to this is that God doesn't want to mess with people's free will. This would seem to contradict the statement that "nothing can interfere with God's will", but we can just go to my next point
- Natural Disasters
People are hurt and killed in natural disasters all the time. My wife and I watched the recent Tsunami movie last weekend, so I have a handful of images in my head about this right now. It's really hard to imagine that all of that destruction and hardship was part of the will of an all loving God.
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- Hell
It seems that most Christians believe in hell, and the people who wind up in hell are tortured forever. If nothing can interfere with God's will then this is completely according to plan. Some people say this is man's doing for not accepting Jesus, or that it is the devil's work that hell is such an awful place, but whatever justification you have, it is all according to God's will. He doesn't let everyone into heaven and he doesn't blink the bad people out of existence. Nope, he wants people to be tortured for all of eternity. This is God's will.
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Nothing can interfere with God's will ... except iron chariots! Brownie points to whoever gets the Bible reference.
ReplyDeletehaha, nice :)
DeleteIf it weren't for the atheist experience crew I doubt I would have gotten that reference.
Got it. Too tired however for clever banter.
DeleteAll of this essentially says that God is a dick and nobody ought to worship him. Seriously, who would want to bow down to an all-loving deity that knowingly and purposely sends people to hell forever to be tortured in a lake of fire? I will never understand how so many Christians revel in the knowledge that their God is a monster and are somehow surprised that we're not falling all over ourselves to bow down before him.
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that a lot of my mental wanderings lately have centered around "if God does X then he isn't all loving". It comes up surprisingly often.
DeleteAs to God being a monster, it's amazing how good people are at rationalizing things away. Noah's ark is a perfect example. It's a horrible story, and yet everyone spins it to be a virtuous story, so people see it that way. "Those people were evil, so God killed them...God is so great". It's like, wait a minute, think about what you are saying.
I still think that everything anyone thinks about what "God's will" is...is what man wrote it to be thousands of years ago when so many believed in superstitions and demons and devils. Why they still do remains a mystery to me, and everytime I hear them say God "allowed" his "only" son to be crucified a horrible death in order to "save" us, I have to shake my head in wonder again as to why they think so shallow about any God.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely. What I find amazing after reading so much of the bible recently, is how transparently it is just the writing of some primitive guys. God's will is so clearly just in line with the desires of whoever is writing the story (or at least with the main character of the story). For example, look at all of the stuff with God promising the Canaanite lands to Abraham's descendants. That makes no sense from the perspective of an all-powerful creator. But from the perspective of one ancient dude who wants his kids to have land and doesn't care who gets in the way, it makes sense. Or from the perspective of one of his descendants trying to justify the horrible things that his ancestors did to get the land.
DeleteAs to God giving his only son, but the more I see it now the more disgusted I get. As a Christian we always just focused on the sacrifice "look how much God was willing to give up for us", but now I look at it and just think about how stupid of a sacrifice it was, and how little sense the whole thing makes. He's God, he makes the rules, why did a sacrifice have to happen at all?
Wait, didn't Jacob just wrestle God?
ReplyDeleteThis statement also makes prayer pointless and our free will either gone or severely limited. If God's will is for the future to be a certain way, then we can't deviate from our path, hence no free will. (I thought theists get on atheists for the no free will argument.)
Well, God lost, but he lost on purpose. Losing was part of God's will to bolster Jacob's confidence...or something.
DeleteBut it definitely makes prayer worthless, and it definitely kills free-will as well. It also makes original sin meaningless. If God's will was for Adam and Eve to stay in the garden forever then that would have happened, and they never would have eaten the fruit. It must have been God's will for them to disobey him.