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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (4299)	12/6/2000 10:08:04 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

ROFL the fact that he doesn't hold everyone to the same standard is called caprice- and it is hardly something to be admired in a God.

To: Greg or e who wrote (4299)	12/6/2000 10:10:58 PM
From: cosmicforce	Respond to of 28931

Atheist say "if God exists let him strike me down now" then mock when he chooses not to. Now he is mocked because He does. Hard to win with that kind of standard. That capricious (or should I say randomness) doesn't speak of an intelligence. As a balding guy, I support killing brats who make fun of my kind (no, not really). But as a holy principle, I'm on weak ground. God seems to be so secretive that it is much easier to believe in a wave that washes over us. If you ride the face, you get to where you want, but if you fight it you get nowhere. An angry guy settling old scores just doesn't jibe with my sense of reality.

To: Greg or e who wrote (4299)	12/6/2000 10:59:56 PM
From: E	Respond to of 28931

I have not noticed a merciful God prevailing. Have you ever lived in the third world? Mercy is not a reasonable word to describe the way most of the world lives. You are actually in the position of having to call the children whom God killed in a fit of pique "punks" to excuse the monstrosity of it. He knows their hearts? That is straining for a rationalization, but it can't be stretched to fit "merciful" however you may want it to. If your children acted like punks you would call them on it, not have them eaten by a wild animal. If your neighbor's dog ate them, your neighbor's assurance that it was God's will, and he was positive it was to set an example to discourage teasing, would strike you as evil and insane. Pinjira Begum doesn't think God is merciful. Greg, I wish you would rue her fate, and the fate of the 18 million others like her, and the fate of the teasing children toward whom your god had a fit of violent temper: From the New York Times, November 10, 1998, excerpts: DEATH BY ARSENIC: A special report By Barry Bearak New Bangladesh Disaster: WELLS THAT PUMP POISON This fall, the young mother found out that her own slow dying was nothing unusual, that tens of thousands of Bangladeshi villagers were suffering the same ghastly decay, with their skin spotted like spoiled fruit and warts and sores covering their hands and feet. Bangladesh is in the midst of what some experts say could be the biggest mass poisoning in history. Dangerous levels of arsenic have been found in the ground water, entering millions of people sip by sip as they drink from a vast system of tube wells. Most of these hand-operated pumps are 10 to 20 years old, about the same period it takes the arsenic to do its lethal work, killing with one of several cancers.... Doctors and aid workers told Pinjira Begum, 25, of this calamity as they explained to her how seriously ill she was. But news that her misery had a huge amount of company was no consolation to a mother of three with her 4-month-old daughter, Juthi, in her arms. Too many other indignities were rushing into her life. Her husband had decided that she was no longer of use to him. ''She was pretty once, but now she is too thin and smells bad and is uglier by the day,'' he said. On Oct. 21, using a man's traditional right in these Islamic hinterlands, Masud Rahman, 25, took a second wife. Now, as Pinjira's fevered body seems to melt in the bed, her husband sleeps a few feet away with a new bride. These days, such heart-breaking stories are in large supply in Bangladesh and the neighboring Indian state of West Bengal. People come out of their one-room, mud-floored homes and show the skin lesions on the palms of their hands and soles of their feet. These ulcers are advanced signs of arsenic poisoning.... Babar N. Kabir, a World Bank hydrologist who is assessing the problem, believes that he is being conservative when he estimates that 18 million people are now poisoning themselves.