Re: Do u beleive in God?
And he is omnibenevolent..
Any omnipotent being that would allow any kind of suffering, particularly the inescapable, eternal, afterlife variety is
not omnibenevolent.
I keep seeing the argument that suffering is necessary for free will, but that ignores the fact that humans don't have complete control over their lives, and therefore don't have true free will. You don't choose whether you're born in a safe, stable, and prosperous society, in the middle of constant war, conflict, and violence, or in an area full of perpetual poverty and disease. You don't choose whether or not you will be born with a lifelong disease which will bring you constant pain and suffering. You don't choose whether or not a natural disaster will come and destroy lifetimes of work and countless lives. None of these possibilities are consequences of your actions, your choices, your thoughts. None of this suffering is necessary to free will.
The notion of the Christian Hell, or any of it's equivalents in other religions is particularly repulsive, as nobody would make a conscious decision to suffer for eternity. This is even worse if you adhere to the, not uncommon, belief that it is neccessary to follow you're particular religion to escape eternal damnation. If this were true, then if anyone has the misfortune to be born in a place or time where that religion is not dominant, they will most likely be doomed without any real choice in the matter.
The lack of free will naturally present in the world would mean that any omnipotent being that was interested in, and took an active role in interfering with the world, would be evil. The Judeo-Christian god is undoubtedly malevolent, as any reading of The Old Testament portrays him as jealous and proud of it, a petty unjust, unforgiving control freak. A vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser. A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.*
I do not think there is anything wrong with me describing him this way, because this is how the character was originally written. The original stories of this particular god were created by a polytheistic society. The Old Testament supports this, as it contains many mentions of other gods as if they were real. The particular tribe in question believed that the god of war in this pantheon was the god that watched over their tribe alone. This is why the god in these stories is as violent as it is. When creating the stories the members of the tribe doubtlessly used their own warlords as inspiration. When they imagined what a god of war would be like, they imagined how one of their own warlords would act if he had divine powers, and as any history lesson will tell you, the warlords of the day were incredibly brutal. As time passed, the tribe which believed in the existence of multiple gods, but only worshipped their own god of war under threat of death, began to believe that only their patron god existed. As they slowly became a monotheistic religion, their began to view their former god of war as a more generic, general purpose deity. Eventually one of the many people who claimed to be the savior of this religion, gathered enough followers to make a more credible claim to the title, and two thousand years later, the followers of the latest incarnation of this religion are trying to reconcile the stories of this ancient bloodthirsty god with the relatively new benevolent one.
*This is paraphrased from a comment made by Richard Dawkins, the full statement can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKnWxfc820c&feature=related
