Showing posts with label god. Show all posts
Showing posts with label god. Show all posts

The Evolution of God from Yahweh in a Box to the Super Mega Deity of the Universe

0 comments

The God of modern Christian theology is a philosophically supercharged God far removed from the physically limited and dimwitted Yahweh whose identity has as much in common as a horse and buggy does with a Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4.   Ironically, Christian apologists such has WL Craig totally ignore this primitive and limited tribal God in favor of the easy to defend modern concept of a nameless figure that has evolved from the New Testament whose image is rooted in the pagan Classical Tradition. (1)

 When a person “becomes a Christian”, it’s not the ancient Near Eastern tribal Yahweh they are presented with, but a slick modern super deity with few links to the Old Testament . . . known simply as God with a capital “G” who is really an anthology of Classical pagan attributes taken on after having absorbed the myths of other ancient Near Eastern Semitic gods.  This apologetically hopped up deity which grew out of the ideals of Neo-Platonism is constantly gathering apologetic power be they from the Summa Theological concepts of Thomas Aquinas to Karl Rahner’s Systematic Catholic Theology to Barth’s Protestant Church Dogmatics and on to Alfred North Whitehead’s Processed Reality.  The evolution of God is now considerably much like the woman Lucy in the current hit movie of the same title or a God who continues to acquire any philosophical protection the best apologists can mentally bestow upon him.

I'm Building a Hotel. Will You Help Me?

14 comments
I’ve decided to build a Hotel and I am here to solicit your much-needed financial support.

Let me begin by saying that it will be like no hotel you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s going to be a big Hotel – a massive, super big Hotel beyond belief – so big that humans will almost never be able to reach the outer walls and fences of the property. Yes, it’s going to be BIG!

As surely as it is going to be big, it’s going to be expanding in all directions all of the time. We’ll never quit building onto it. It will have many rooms, so many rooms that they will never be used or serve any constructive purpose, but I want to have them anyway. I like empty, unused space. There will be lots to look at…lots of lights and chandeliers and bright ornaments…and they’ll always be running, even when no one is around.

If you call the front desk and ask for a bucket of ice, a couple of extra blankets and a pillow, or perhaps a towel, I may have the items sent to your room…or I may not. I may send 10,000 blankets, so much so that the room can’t hold them, or I may just send one. There’s always a 50/50 chance that I will grant your requests.

Some of the rooms and wings of my glorious Hotel will be either hot or cold. Some guest rooms will have either air conditioners or heaters. Some will have both, but others will have neither. There are rooms in this Hotel that are kept so hot that no human could enter them without being disintegrated. And there are rooms kept so cold that guests entering them would freeze solid in under 30 seconds of exposure. Registering guests have no control over whether or not they will get put in a room with moderate or extreme temperatures. It is based on the accidents of registration that determines who gets what.

You’ll have to prepare yourself when staying at my Hotel as some of the doors and stairwells open to unfinished hallways and rooms. You might take a single step and plummet to your death, so be careful. And once you check in, there is no leaving. You can’t step outside of the Hotel, so make the best of it and try to enjoy the good that there is.

The kitchens in my Hotel are exquisite. There is no food I won’t offer, except in certain places of the Hotel where guests will be left at or near starvation, but for everyone else, there is plenty to eat. My cooks are not what you would expect. They offer such a huge selection of dishes that you have to be careful what you order. My kitchen has herbs and spices and ingredients that are toxic, as well as nourishing and tasty. The cooks might serve you poisonous mushrooms at the breakfast buffet. Only experience can inform you of what foods will nourish you and which will poison you. You can watch other guests get sick and die, and over time, you’ll learn what to consume and what never to consume.

My Hotel does have a maintenance crew, though you wouldn’t know it. When something breaks, the guests usually have to fix it. You can put in a work order to have a door or a safe or your TV remote replaced, but that rarely works. If you want something done, do it yourself! I’ve given you the permission to do as you will. Just so that we’re clear, remember that once it’s done, I want the credit for doing it!

There are no police or security at my Hotel, and so any domestic disputes that arise must be settled in-house by the guests as they set up systems of government to try and keep order themselves. But remember, once law and order has been established by whichever dominant party made it to the top, I want credit for it! I will speak and keep order through that party.

The complaint system is a little different around here—there isn’t one. I hate complainers. Everybody always has something they don’t like, so I don’t want to hear it. It just angers me. If you’re not satisfied with the way things are, that’s too bad. It’s my Hotel. I can run it the way I want.

Guests will be provided with an instruction manual on how to be better and more informed guests of my Hotel. Please try not to fight over how it is interpreted, but use it to show others how to be an effective establishment of good guests.

So…will you help me?

Dig deep now, my dear investors! ☺

Anyone?

Please?

Come on!

No one?

Well, I knew the atheists wouldn’t help me…but you Christians?

Why won’t you help me?

I will operate my Hotel just like your God operates this universe.

How is it you find fault with me, and not with your deity?

I don’t understand...shouldn’t we resemble our Creator in the ways we operate?

Why do I get faulted for doing the same things God does?

I even ask for money like your God does!

Why can’t you support his works by supporting my Hotel?

“Do as I say, not as I do,” huh? Is that how God is? Needless to say, I am very disappointed!

(JH)

Problems of Mountains

17 comments
Word has it that young Timothy Collins of Woodward, Kentucky got chewed out by his father Harry after last Wednesday night's Bible Study. Both father and son are members of the Woodward Street Church where it's no secret that Harry Collins runs a tight ship as an active and devoted member of the church and father.

"I got on my son for talking like an atheist." said Harry. What Timothy did was make reference to it being a fortunate turn of events that a mountain had formed nearby. A big, bearded Harry, being a photographer, was capturing an image of a beautiful tree-covered mountainside. "And my son made it sound like the mountain was 'just there.' That's atheist talk, and it won't be permitted in my home."

Being slightly puzzled, a bright young Timothy clarified his father's position for us: "My dad got mad at me because I made it sound like mountains 'just are.' But nothing 'just is.' As Christians, we are forced to believe that everything that happens happens for a purpose. All things are made of God, from the design of curvitures running along the deepest sea floors to the arrangement of obscure dust particles on the dark side of the moon. My dad was right to get on me. The secular public schools teach a lot of wrong and evil things, and look how they have influenced my thinking."

"It's ok, son." Harry said, nodding with approval at his son's words, and then continuing: "The secular schools are full of atheists who profess themselves to be wise, but are fools. They think they are smarter than God. Think about how atheists perceive a mountain; to an atheist, a mountain is just a bunch of dirt that got pushed up when things got steaming hot under the earth's surface, causing a raising up of the ground. And that the mountain is 'tall' means nothing to an atheist because atheists think 'tall' is just a perceptual difference and that the mountain isn't really big or little. Everything is relative to an atheist. They have no objective standards. We Christians happen to know that God made all things purposely and according to his will, and in the case of mountains, he made them so that we could be impressed with their size and marvel at his creative power (Psalm 65:5). This was the same reason he created big, worthless planets and put them in orbit in space (Psalm 19:1-6). They don't do anything, but God wanted us to get smart and build telescopes and look up at the sky and say, 'Wow, those are big! God must be great!' And without mountains, how could Moses have gone up to Mt. Horeb to speak to God and get the ten commandments? So there is another reason why God made mountains."

Jumping in, young Timothy said: "And the Lord has revealed to me a third reason for why God made mountains. It was so that Jesus could mention it in Matthew 21:21 where Jesus said: 'Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.'"

Amazed, Harry said: "That's my boy! I sure am proud of him. He's no atheist, that's for sure! But the lesson to take from this is how atheism is never very far from invading our thinking the moment we start to use our minds. That's how atheism starts - with us thinking of natural reasons for why things happen - and then it progresses to making people say things like this or that 'always was' or 'just is.' And when you have a natural explanation for something, tell me, why do you need a supernatural one? What need is there for God once you've explained the world naturally?"

"Atheists think that the matter composing the universe just is and has always been while we believers understand that you have to go back one more step and say that God -- an unknown phantom spook -- just is and has always been. That's the true position; God created everything and everything needs a creator except for God. He just exists all by himself some way. That's how Christians reason, and that's how God wants us to reason. Stay away from secular reasoning. It will only lead to atheism and then to Hell. It is an unfortunate fact that using the brains God gave us to reason with can send us to burn forever. So try not to reason, except perhaps when reason agrees with the Bible. Then it's ok."

(JH)