Straw God

[_sock puppet]

...people's objections to bacon.

I've been a devotee of Darth J for more than two years now. But he and I are now on divergent paths. He thinks there are people with objections to bacon? What next, he'll suggest there are people with objections to sex?

[_just me]

God sure killed a few with a tornado in the War of 1812 - that is about as Biblical as you can get.

Prove it.

[_Tobin]

God sure killed a few with a tornado in the War of 1812 - that is about as Biblical as you can get.

Prove it.

Yes, a tornado appears out of no where, puts out the fires in the city, and drives the British (and kills a bunch of them too) out of the city. You sure have a lot of faith in chance.

[_Darth J]

Yes, a tornado appears out of no where, puts out the fires in the city, and drives the British (and kills a bunch of them too) out of the city. You sure have a lot of faith in chance.

Of course! Nobody can prove that this was not an act of divine intervention. Therefore, it must have been divine intervention!

Similarly,

1. There was no tornado at Normandy on June 6, 1944.
2. Lots of Americans died in the Normandy landing because there was no tornado to drive out the Germans (and kill a bunch of them, too).
3. Therefore, God wanted lots of Americans to die during the D-Day invasion.

[_just me]

Yes, a tornado appears out of no where, puts out the fires in the city, and drives the British (and kills a bunch of them too) out of the city. You sure have a lot of faith in chance.

Oh. So in your narrative the British are Evil and God killz them because the Americans are the Good Guys.

I see.

[_krose]

Darth, I'm embarrassed at your igg-nernce here. Of course the Americans troops didn't get the same divine weather assistance at Normandy that they did in DC. Europe isn't the Promised Land. North America is. Dummy.

God also destroyed the Spanish Armada in 1588 to protect England, because the English were the good guys then. Their calling was to hie themselves over to the Promised Land to punish the dark and loathsome Lamanites, and become the good Americans whom God would later save from the newly evil English. It was all part of setting up the environment for Joseph Smith Jr. and the great Restoration.

Although now I'm a little confused regarding the chosen status of Japan, which God protected in 1281 by sending a massive typhoon (the original kamikaze, or divine wind) to destroy the invading Mongol navy. That one's hard for me to fit into the Restoration narrative. I'll have to think some more... I mean receive more personal revelation.

[_RockSlider]

Are you able to give any examples of the wicked he has recently slain, or is this just theoretically what he might do?

I think you're confused here. God does not tend to get his own hands dirty with this kind of thing but instead puts out bounties for those willing to accomplish these things for him. For example, that a paradise with 72 virgins are promised to those willing to sacrifice all in destroying the wicked.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

An interesting thought by Sartre:

“The existentialist . . . finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: ‘If God did not exist, everything would be permitted’; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. . . . Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour. Thus we have neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. – We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free.”

Jean Paul Sartre, “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” 1946

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Are the British attacking DC again?

http://wtop.com/41/2885406/Severe-weath ... ble-Friday

- VRDRC

[_KevinSim]

I question the concept of a limited God merely because it begs the question of just how limited is a limited God? The other problem I have with it is the concept of free agency. If God is unable to do anything he imagines, then free agency is a fiction since no-one, including God, can decide between all possible choices.

Tobin, could you explain this? Why is it that a limited God, or anyone else for that matter, can't "decide between all possible choices"?

I'd propose an alternative to the limited God and the all-powerful/all knowing God that is responsible for everything including evil. That would be an highly technologically advanced, evolved and eternal being of immense knowledge and power that makes no mistakes, is dedicated to truth and doing what is best, and knows all that has happened, and based on that can see and predict all matters (vs the minutia) of consequence that does and will happen. In essense a timeless being that for all intentional purposes is all knowing and all powerful in any way that really matters, but devoid of the questions of limitations that a limited God might engender.

What exactly is the difference between this "highly technologically advanced, evolved and eternal being" and the God I postulated?