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Answer 66 out of 99
 
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A:

Deborah,

"By the way, recall... (how did you learn about Jesus)?"

(I think this is a rhetorical question, but I'll answer.)

In Western civilization, he is a familiar figure.

 

 

Woodman,

"If you believe in Jesus, was he lying, crazy, or is Mk 13:19 the parts not accurately reported?  "

There are two possibilities.  Either
1. It's not accurately reported---someone is putting words into his mouth.
2. He's tailoring his teaching for an audience which would reject the idea of no-creator-god out of hand, without even thinking about it.  Remember, he's speaking mainly to peasants in a backwater 2,000 years ago.  Their parents told them there's a creator god and they accepted it uncritically.  Most of them had no education at all and weren't used to following logical arguments, even extremely simple ones like:

Since suffering exists, it is evident that there is no one with both omnipotence with compassion.

"[lots of things about trees and external movers] I'm sure you know what I'm saying."

I'm afraid I don't, really, but it sounds like what you're saying is that the world would be completely static without little angels flying around and moving everything.  This amazes me.  Even during the dark ages Christians never considered this---they would have thought it absurd that, when it's time for an apple to fall, god has to go there and pull it down to the ground.  They looked for natural causes for natural phenomena, just as the Greek philosophers had.   Things may be interdependent, but this doesn't require an operator.

"By the way, your anylysis of my wasted life of painful blunders is so far off it's laughible."

I don't mean that they're painful yet.  I mean they will be in the future, just as a seed takes a long time to grow into a giant tree (or, a mustard bush, I think you might say), so your bad deeds may take a long time to grow into suffering---red hot pinchers tearing the flesh, things like that---just like in Dante.  If you have the wrong world-view, you're bound to make such blunders.  So, you may be doing fine now, but when it begins to unravel, don't say I didn't warn you.

"To answer your questions, no suffering in heaven. "

So, you were saying that everything is a dichotomy and that happiness can't exist without suffering (I disagree)---but heaven is the one exception to this?

"And yes, The force has both the dark and light side. Thats the dichotomy."

God is half-evil, you mean?

"That's the Ominpotontence."
"You stated "If there is a single person with both compassion and ominpotence You'll have nothing to worrie about. But since suffering exsist there is no such person." I thought we weren't talking about a person. "

A person of whatever kind you want to call it---a man, a god, whatever.  What I mean is this:

1. Anybody who is omnipotent can do anything he wants.
2. Somebody who has compassion wants to remove suffering from others.

If somebody had both of these qualities, there would be no sufferring in the universe---he would have removed it.   Hence, there's no one like the creator god you talk about.

You were asking this in the context of what would happen if one of us were wrong (about the existence of god).  In short:  If you are wrong, you're in big trouble---stumbling around with the wrong world-view, you're likely to get hurt.  If I'm wrong, then there's a compassionate, omnipotent person who will free me from suffering, and I've got nothing to worry about.  Since suffering exists, there is evidently no such powerful, benevolent character, and we're on our own.  I think it's best, then, to take responsibility for our actions rather than rely on a fictional character to clean up our bad deeds for us.

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