An interventionist God shows up one day. How do you react?

I check His credentials.

Isn’t this the part where I am supposed to strike the Miss American pose with stiff hand wave and say something about world piece…..oh boy…was THAT Freudian or what….I meant to say World Peace. Maybe it amounts to the same thing. (Laughing out loud)

“Tech SUPPPOOOORT!!!!!” – Tom Cruise, Vanilla Sky…

“Hey, dude, let me give you some advice. This time, how about you drown only the people that claim to be spreading your gospel? The world will be so much better off”.

I’d tell him He’d missed the party and that He might as well leave the guests to clean up the mess.

“Hmmm… Craft for me the tastiest Mojito and the finest blunt the Universe shall ever know, and I’ll let everything else slide…”

I ask him who the eff he is to judge me, since he’s the one who created such fallible beings and only one of us is prone to human error.

I’d ask for cures for diseases, including mental illnesses. I’d also ask where he’d been all this time.

“What mess? You’re the omnipotent, omniscient creator. All of this is your fault”.

Who said it was a mess? As Max Ehrmann eloquently wrote “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should”
Plus, I would figure the interventionist God was a phony, like the Wizard of Oz.

Why would God need any input from people in order to form His decision? God is suppose to know all and see all. But I sure would like to know what God thinks about all the crazy religions that are popular these days. I can just see Him giving out a mighty laugh as the joke is on us. HA!

Great Question…

“He is taking questions and requests”

Soooo… I thought that’s how it was now. The problem is with me, not having the ability to understand the answers and see the results.

Sneak into his space ship and download his entire database, then replicate his technology, and start the Star Trek Utopia.

I ask where the F**** you been.?

<to God>
“Okaaay, Mr God, is it? Sure thing. You just sit there, put your feet up, have a nice cup of tea. I’m going to phone some lovely people to come round and have a chat, just to check you’re OK, you must be tired. Just sit and relax.”

<on telephone, whispering>
“Hello, is that the Community Psychiatric Team…”

@Russell_D_SpacePoet That would be my first reaction too.

”...where the F**** you been.?”

That Q has been asked many times… I’ll consider Mary Stevenson’s answer.

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during
the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one
set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most,
you have not been there for me?”

The Lord replied,
“The times when you have
seen only one set of footprints,
is when I carried you.”

God Please Protect Me from Your Followers.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies That little prayer sure doesn’t do all the starving children in the world ANY good. I find that prayer rather insulting. Tell the starving , molested, or abused kids that are dead are dying or will die that “GOD” is carrying them….Please spare me…

@downtide I would just be getting started with that comment…

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Beautiful poem. If only it actually helped it some way….

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Perhaps there is a powerful placebo phenomenon at work with that poem that could yield a significantly important effect. If people truly believe that God is watching over them, then it helps them get through all of the bummers of life and death.

On a personal level, the poem can console those who believe in the traditional God concepts. On a global level, it serves to insult. However, I’m not sure one can truly blame a traditional God concept for that which humans are responsible for themselves.

Starving, molested, abused children… Why would humans need a God to address those issues?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies How about “GOD” address any issue? I don’t blame any one but humanity for our condition. my point is if there were a true God, it wouldn’t let the innocent suffer.

That opinion swims in the same dogma as any fundamentalist God concept. How do you know what a “true God” would or would not do, or be like? It’s just another version of Man’s God in a box. Funny how humans believe we can determine what a G must be like simply to suit our position of the moment. Both Theist and Atheist alike commit that mistake.

There are many classic arguments to support the need for suffering in our world. There are many benefits to suffering as well. Suffering is not synonymous with evil.

If we are to put the traditional Christian perspective of G on trial here, then the notion of suffering has already been explained and accounted for. This ain’t Heaven pal… It’s a fallen world (so the story goes), and suffering is a part of a fallen world.

Lastly, again… Why is G even brought into the equation when speaking of suffering? If G is there or not, nothing is keeping humanity from alleviating suffering created by our own hands. And let’s not forget the opportunities that each and every one of us has to address the suffering issue as individuals every day. Without suffering, notions of compassion, and empathy would never exist. Can you imagine a world without compassion and empathy?

It seems paradoxical to me… the idea of using the suffering argument to decide how a G must behave.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies “It seems paradoxical to me… the idea of using the suffering argument to decide how a G must behave.”

The ‘footprints’ homily you posted does something very similar; it uses suffering to show how the god in question did (supposedly) behave.

“It’s a fallen world (so the story goes), and suffering is a part of a fallen world.”

I must have missed the bit in Genesis where god goes back, after the fall of man, to create Onchocerca Volvulus.

The Devil made it. Clearly.

You bring up a good point @meiosis. I’ve often wondered what the state of animal kingdom was before the biblical fall. There were lions. There were lambs. Did they lie down beside one another before the fall, but change their minds the very second after Adam succumbed to Eve’s direction?

In fun, I will debate the issue with you. But the biblical story is nothing I believe in literally, and it might take up too much time to fully explain what I believe are the metaphorical underpinnings. I’m sure you have your own interpretations as well. How may we legitimately discuss this subject without first sharing a few vodka tonics between us?

Rather than debating evolving volvulus virus variants, let me point out that Stevenson’s apologetic is personal perspective, not a mandate to support universal assertion. The suffering is evil argument is always intended as a universal truth proposition.

I don’t know about a suffering is evil argument, as I don’t believe in a god; attributing evil (which seems to me to be an absence of conscience) to natural selection is absurd.

All I can infer from suffering about the existence or otherwise of a god is that it seems very difficult to claim that they are both compassionate and that they created the earth and all living things upon it.

But how would/could we even know about concepts of compassion or empathy, were it not for suffering?

I’d be disappointed.