Why haven’t you provided any evidence for your claim?
Do you know what “Gott mit uns” means?
That isn’t what you said. Nevertheless, your reason to think he has a reason is itself vacuous. It’s merely saying that we must think there’s a reason for whatever happens, because God must have a reason.
Ah, burden-shifting. Please present your best case for a particular miracle so I can know what you’re talking about.
Sure, it could be. There could be no evidence for such miracles. Anything that would leave no evidence could be true, and there’s no way to say it isn’t. But isn’t it odd that the only miracles you think might be common are those for which there could be no evidence? Why would God do only these "easy"miracles. Is he trying to hide? Is his greatest trick convincing people he doesn’t exist?
As you can see, that was a very bad choice of words. Perhaps you should consider more before typing.
Surely you wouldn’t need a physicist for that. What would happen to any material object, say a human body, if it instantly found itself moving at 1000 miles per hour relative to earth’s surface?
Is it? What’s the difference? I’d say the difference you’re flailing around might be “noticeable” vs. “not noticeable”.
The punishment should fit the crime. The death penalty for mocking is way out of proportion. Killing for petty offenses is evil.
Not true at all, unless you think that everything in the Book of Exodus is about the Exodus. And in that case you would be wrong.
Of course. God could have any reasons at all for doing or not doing anything. Still, if he hides, there is no way for us to tell that he exists.
Oddly, I’m constantly having Christians tell me that fear of Judgment is the reason they don’t commit all manner of crimes, and that I should repent for fear of the same. This motivation which you consider discreditable seems very common in believers.
And yet it’s only recently that he began doing that sort of thing. What about all those miracle clusters you keep mentioning? Don’t they violate this principle of hiding that you’re on about?
Now you’re arguing agains your position from the just previous paragraph.
Why then but not now? Why did he want strong beliefs then but not now? Your scenario is completely ad hoc. You seem to have run through all the common arguments about why God hides, but none of them can hold up to serious consideration.
No, you went on to make excuses for various examples of things happening or not happening. Provide enough excuses and you can fit any pattern or no pattern. Of course you don’t think God is capricious, but you have described capricious, or at least completely inscrutable, behavior on his part.
I hereby invite God to show me he exists. Of course I don’t believe that he’s reading this, so I can’t actually make the request seriously, any more than I can invite Sauron or Sponge Bob.
That’s not the same thing at all. “Using” is something that happens in the present. “Setting up” is something that happened long in the past. Don’t confuse yourself.
So what? Why should God care how much intervention was necessary, since nothing takes effort for him.
Why?
What makes you think you’re fully aware of moral issues and obligations? I’d say that you’re at best partially aware. And “partially” ought to be good enough. This is still an arbitrary point along a continuum of awareness. You keep trying to make dichotomies out of continua.
Then do you deny the reality of hell? Seems heretical.
I presume that just imagining isn’t enough, and one would have to show that it had actually happened. Fortunately, your only example is untestable. I think we’re agree that no conceivable event that we could actually know about could show that God is not good. Still, one can draw conclusions even from incomplete data. The data we have suggest that either God is not good or God doesn’t exist. You would have to assume that our current sample is wildly biased in order to draw other conclusions. Why would it be so biased?
Nope. It’s not a test at all. If God is good, we see X; if God is not good, we see X. X is a test of nothing.
How is it verifiable? Anything verifiable only after death is not a test we can discuss.
There can be no such evidence. Again, if we see X whether or not God is good, that’s not evidence and you can’t use it so. On the other hand, we can certainly try a statistical approach. How long do you think it should take, on average, for apparent evil events to produce sufficiently compensating results? We could look at events older than that period as a sample.
No, I assume a scenario in which you just do what you want, and if God didn’t want you to do it he would have stopped you. That’s exactly what you propose for marriage and genetics, if you can remember that far into your claims. Why do we have free will to murder but not to marry?
Each and every one of them transparently lame.
On this we can agree, but it’s heretical.
How do they know that? Are not God’s purposes served by whatever happens?
You make no argument. I see no evidence that Christians have greater moral courage than atheists. Many people find such claims insulting.
When did I say that?
I will accept that you think so.
You contradict yourself. If avoidance of punishment is an unworthy reason to believe, why is hope of reward, its converse, any better?
Because I have empathy for other people, moral principles, a wish for justice in this life, and so on. I find your need for eternal justification disturbing. I certainly hope you don’t lose your faith, because you would apparently go on a murder spree in such a case. Other people have better reasons.
Plenty of them would seem to be Christians. But I don’t think that’s what Stalin and Mao were thinking. I bet they thought they were morally justified in everything they did, just as Torquemada, John Calvin, and other Christian mass murderers thought.
No, just many reports. Are you suggesting that the reported incidents were not representative?
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Start here.
How did Christians and their churches in Germany respond to the Nazi regime and its laws, particularly to the persecution of the Jews? The racialized anti-Jewish Nazi ideology converged with antisemitism that was historically widespread throughout Europe at the time and had deep roots in Christian history. For all too many Christians, traditional interpretations of religious scriptures seemed to support these prejudices.
These were some of the reasons why most Christians in Germany welcomed the rise of Nazism in 1933.
The general tactic by the leadership of both Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany was caution with respect to protest and compromise with the Nazi state leadership where possible. There was criticism within both churches of Nazi racialized ideology and notions of “Aryanism,” and movements emerged in both churches to defend church members who were considered “non-Aryan” under Nazi racial laws (e.g., Jews who had converted). Yet throughout this period there was virtually no public opposition to antisemitism or any readiness by church leaders to publicly oppose the regime on the issues of antisemitism and state-sanctioned violence against the Jews.
See also these resources.
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Ok, so you were wrong about that. Unfortunately, it took so long to get you to accept that you were wrong, I’ve forgotten what my follow-up was.
So your god kills children. Not just lets them die, but actively kills them.
And equally, one may not have a genetically fatal disease and your god may kill the child anyway.
You think your god kills children (and does so in ways that cause them to suffer), yet you also think your god is good and loving.
You have a problem.
Yes, it really is “making things up”.
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I think it’s perfectly reasonable to also think of great suffering caused by your god with no justification - such as the killing of children which were not part of his plan - as an atrocity.
You have shown nothing, nor will you.