Random question on God

How the hell did god cause the holocaust?

Originally Posted by Phoenix X

Sorry guys, but Jesus was just a really cool dude who figured out some neat tricks you can do with the right understanding of the quantum field,

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It's all because Adam and Eve sinned orginally, therefore we kind of brought it on our selves.

Pangalin, you just made your first post completely irrelevant. Try making a valid point next time you post, OK? Thanks.

wvlfpvp, if you're going to post a question to a diverse group of people, you should respect the honest answers. We all exist on the same planet under the same sun in the same universe. We all come from the same source, and we all return to it. We all have equal ability to contact that source and find the answers we seek.

Smelnick, you don't have to explain Christianity to me. I was Catholic until I was 14. I know the dogma, and I think it's Satan incarnate. We were created to be free, to think for ourselves, and to make our own decisions. To follow one patriarch blindly is to follow all of them, and that's not what we're here for. Don't stop believing in God, but seriously reconsider going to church. Any institution that discourages independent thought is downright wrong. You will be shown the true way by your inner voice, not some man on a pulpit.

Sir, if you think that the evolving nature of occupational gender terms makes Allah retroactively into a eunuch, you're even more confused than we already knew you were.

I'm sorry you don't know how English works, but this doesn't give you the right to talk down to anyone. Actually, being ignorant makes you LESS able to be condescending! Funny how that works.

Originally Posted by Capo

How the hell did god cause the holocaust?

As I said earlier: If he's truly omnipotent, then free will is an illusion and it's directly his fault. If you don't want to deal with THAT little thing, someone powerful enough to flood the planet is certainly powerful enough to shut down a few concentration camps, and thus God is responsible through inaction.

Originally Posted by Arainach

thus God is responsible through inaction.

You just say that because you're a hippie liberal.

Originally Posted by Pangalin

Sir, if you think that the evolving nature of occupational gender terms makes Allah retroactively into a eunuch, you're even more confused than we already knew you were.

Actually, psychedelic experimentation and the resulting spiritual experience makes me quite unable to apply conditioned gender roles to the creative force that underlies the cosmos. It feels very wrong to me. I am very sure of this. No confusion.

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Allah is a specific entity, and he's completely a dude. "God" is a general term. How is the former MORE generic than the latter.

See, neither is an androgynous term. God is to English what Allah is to Arabic. Same concept, same word. Arabic Bibles and Torahs use the word Allah.

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Language is fluid

If this is true, then your previous post is irrelevant.

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I'm sorry you don't know how English works, but this doesn't give you the right to talk down to anyone. Actually, being ignorant makes you LESS able to be condescending! Funny how that works.

Pot told you to be pointlessly pedantic?

LSD, dude. LSD. Herb doesn't generally induce spiritual experiences. I imagine that the amount you'd have to smoke to get there would ensure you'd never remembered any of it.

I hardly think that my pedantry on certain subjects is unjustified. Maybe I have Asperger's. Maybe you should bite me.

Being pedant isn't going to help you not be pedant.

Originally Posted by Phoenix X

LSD, dude. LSD. Herb doesn't generally induce spiritual experiences. I imagine that the amount you'd have to smoke to get there would ensure you'd never remembered any of it.

I hardly think that my pedantry on certain subjects is unjustified. Maybe I have Asperger's. Maybe you should bite me.

Maybe you're a perfect advertisement for why people shouldn't use drugs.

Interrobang, I'll pay attention to any details I choose, and write whatever feels right. You are free to skim over the details that fail to interest you, and it's really none of my concern whether you choose to exercise that freedom.

RR, I would not trade the insights into myself or life in general gained from my days with LSD for anything in the world. The use of certain substances, with the right intention and ample research, can really heal and foster growth. On another note, I think it was Gautama Buddha who said that with right concentration, it's possible to gain powers such as levitation, clairvoyance, and walking on water. That's why I personally believe Jesus, if he truly existed (because I can never know for sure, he might have just been an allegory for the right way of being), was a Buddha, who simply tried to speak in terms that the local Jews of that time would understand, the same way Gautama spoke in terms that the local Hindus would understand.

On the topic of blaming God for the holocaust and other evils:
If the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is at all valid, then we have free will to choose from a set of pre-determined actions and outcomes that already exist, frozen in time. If a consciousness were aware of the whole space-time continuum, it would probably have the role of passive observer, since action requires time. Thus, you can hardly blame God for any inaction.

And yeah, that's why I don't think you can accuse God of good or evil. I mean, even if it is possible for God to step in, would you really want a being looking over your shoulder all the time, telling you what to do? As much evil might result from God's inaction, it's really a favor to us that we're free to do as we please. Besides which, for every event that's ever happened, it's impossible to predict what might have happened if things played out differently.

Example: The holocaust caused a fucktonne of pain for the world, and we can all agree that it was a great evil. However, it could very well have taught an entire generation the true value of equality and freedom, which might have led to the birth of the civil rights movement. Had God stepped in and stopped it from happening (which would be pointless from God's perspective, since we eventually did that for ourselves), things would be a whole lot different for us now, and the ripples that action would create in the space-time continuum are incomprehensible. I'm not saying that the holocaust was a good thing, but I am saying that if some omnipotent being hadn't allowed events to run their course, there might have been much worse results. Imagine if fascism had come along at a time when it could take over the whole planet. Imagine if it was still socially acceptable to have slaves. Such speculation is pointless, however, because we'll never know for sure. I'm just trying to illustrate that God would operate on far more data than we have at our disposal, and as such we cannot really understand God's action or inaction enough to apply terms like "Good" and "Evil".

Originally Posted by wvlfpvp

Does God ever do stuff that we would consider to be "evil" but it's "right"? You know?

There was a car accident a few years back, a father, mother, and their two young children where all killed, a family gone. That does seem like a evil thing for god to do, and I can't think of any 'right' thing about it, but it has made a lot of the hard-core christians in my area say things like "it makes you wonder if there is even a god up there"

Allow me to summarize, in a few sentences, the important parts that Phoenix X seems to be attempting to communicate but is too inept to successfully accomplish.

It is impossible to assess an act as being good or evil. It simply is, and God allows these acts to occur because we, as extensions of God, choose them. Vicariously, our choices become God's choices because God gave us free will. Our perceptions and reactions are individually unique, but because they differ, nothing is truly evil or good. Even acts of great harm may be catalysts for greater benefit. In this, "good" and "evil" are often opposite sides of the same coin.


All that junk about quantum mechanics is largely unnecessary in answering the original question. Schrodinger's Cat is an exercise in dual objectivity and has very little to do with evaluating the subjective nature of morality.

Sounds like someone has been reading too many texts and is attempting to codify them all into a singular explanation of our world.

Originally Posted by Chibi Neko

I can't think of any 'right' thing about it

They all went to heaven, dude!

That's the secret of religion! Dying means you WIN!

Then why can't all these fucking televangelists and religious lobbyists go ahead and win already?

Originally Posted by Phoenix X

Interrobang, I'll pay attention to any details I choose, and write whatever feels right. You are free to skim over the details that fail to interest you, and it's really none of my concern whether you choose to exercise that freedom.

That's nice. You're still pointlessly inept at basic communication. Your logic is basically that Englishmen retconned "God" into being the name of an entity that some backwoods guys in the desert referred to in male pronouns, therefore you should use obscure terms like "tao" in a retarded fashion. All of this is despite the words you're using having a different connotation than the one you intend them to have, and that "God" already has your desired connotation.

HEART implies LOVE so i shall use PUMP instead