Without God...

Ultimately we'll all find out, eh?

Well, it's actually Satan picking a fight with God saying people worship Him only for the benefits - he basically thinks that Job is only a mercenary - and God saying do what thou wilt but only within my limits. The whole thing is that it's Satan causing the suffering, not God. But that's really a small part of the book. We know that people suffer here on earth - how do we accept it or deal with it, and how do you deal with people who have an incomplete idea of what God is i.e., Jobs three friends. Great literature usually doesn't deal with people at their very best but rather what they do and how they feel and what they become when they have nothing. That's the whole point of that book. And kids need this.

The human condition - it is what it is. But how do you deal when the whole world seems to be against you? You see real humanity in the suffering of Job and his asking why things are the way things are. I mean, you see people just on this forum who deal with some news story and go off the rails - and then get banned How would they handle losing their family, their possessions, and their health? Do you curse God or question Him? I think reading Job is a good way of understanding that your feelings may or may not be correct, and that you are not alone. You sorta see the same thing (to a lesser degree and in a different way) in Jeremiah.

 

Hahaha, great cartoon. that pretty much solves all of our problems.

 

It's still God taking part in this contest with Satan whereby God allowed Job to be severely attacked as a test of God's attractiveness.

You can praise Job for his stout heart.

But, tell me what that story says about God.

 

Yeah, the god of the Old Testament is kind of a dick.

 

"Attractiveness"?

I mean, my main takeaway from it was that we learn more about Job than about God and it is his preserverence in the face of suffering that we learn about hope as well as why we suffer in life - which is why I think it should be read as we all suffer.

I don't think you're going to like my answer, but my takeaway from it is that no matter what Satan throws at us - and make no mistake, it is Satan, not God, who is the cause of our suffering - that God is always in control.

 

God loves the illegal immigrants like you don't.

 

He doesn't do well vs. Jesus, that's for sure.

 

Yet, that story is a strong story about God.

God doesn't get a pass.

 

And Buddha came to that conclusion 400 years before Christ - because a God is not necessary to reach that conclusion - making
your whole premise worthless conjecture.

 

There is the beauty of a setting or rising sun, the laugh of a children you play with, the warmth you feel in your heart when you helped someone, the pleasure to have overcome sickness, smelling the perfume of a woman and feeling the warmth and sweetness of her skin against yours. There is beauty in life, a beauty such that when you're aware of it, that even pain, sickness, suffering can't erase it. A poetry in life that no drugs or show can mimic.

You don't need further rewards, you don't need promises of heaven or hell to see it. You don't need to scorn your own life and having hope only in death and the promise of heaven and God.

Life is like music

 

I don’t know about all that but without gods we would not have many of our basic laws and traditions, at least not in their present form. Religion is probably the center of culture in primitive worlds so probably we benefit culturally too.

Strangely gods also helped to end unsavoury practices like human and animal sacrifice, slavery and even some war.

 

According to the Bible, Jesus was chosen before the foundations of the earth. He actually created all things under the direction of God the Father. So he existed in eternity as the greatest of all, next to the Father of course.

 

Then you love life more than you love God.

 

Have they? Suicide bombers sacrifice themselves fairly regularly in the name of their religion, purifying themselves through prayer before blowing themselves and everyone around them up.. Witch trials burned people at the stake. The pope told the crusaders that those who killed in the name of god would pretty much get a free pass to heaven. That is human sacrifice and war all rolled up into one. There are countless other examples of war and human sacrifice in most religions I can think of. It is usually the result of human corruption of spirituality.

 

What is the propose of the life of a dog, or fish? They have a purpose even though they have no knowledge of God.

Is making divisive political comments your way of expressing love?

 

I actually agree with you.......

I personally do believe that you are correct but.......

if an Atheist were to study near death experience accounts and conclude that they had within themselves the ability to rise up higher and higher and higher and higher over infinite time in the future..... in many unseen invisible dimensions of space and time......
then I believe that that Atheist could find meaning in life even without knowing the Ancient of Days the Heavenly Father that Messiah Yeshua - Jesus told all of us about...... (who will hear Messiah Yeshua - Jesus).


www.CarbonBias.blogspot.ca/

 

All true. But one should not be so enamored by it as to forget that it is a divine gift from a loving God who wants us to be happy. But he also wants us to be good and on the path to eternal happiness. When I was thirteen, I had the best Christmas of my life. I received a new baseball mitt, football, bicycle, and a .410 shotgun. I was beside myself with joy, and sped to another world, larger and filled. But it was my loving Parents who made it possible. They budgeted, worked hard, sacrificed, and blessed me from it with gifts.

 

I think he means that none of us would be alive, and that we would not know to love or honor or do any good thing, were we not somehow associated with God on some level.

 

But you do pray on the altar of government and of course we all mutated from--->

 

And of course you love Democrats, right?

 

And that would be fantasy, That is what you say when you are afraid of the truth.

 

You mean making up fake beliefs provides fake answers.

 

Imagine what a better place the world would be if people didn't have their fake purpose based on a fake god.

Hell, I think I'll write a song!

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today

When you are brave enough to face the truth - that the future is in our hands - you understand that no god is going to save us. Only we can save us.

 

Beliefs provide answers. Or at least enough. I think people who have no belief in anything at all are the same ones who have no reason to live.

I said before that God is the name we give to the most important belief and interest we have, such that it BECOMES your god. Your god could be money or power or your job, I dunno. Political dogma. We had people who thought of Obama as God. But it's from whatever it is that you derive your answers to whatever life throws at you.

 

Actually one might say otherwise than what he said out of a fear of obligation or accountability to truth. Consequently, what he said requires courage and quality of heart and spirit.