I am, of course, referring to the Christian concept of god here.

If god is a diety, omnipotent, perfect, etc...., then why does he demand that people worship only him?

I mean, it doesn't sound like you're perfect if you're so vain and insecure that you damn people who don't believe in your rules and go to your church.

Not trying to start an argument here, just questioning whether the Christian god is really as perfect as he's cracked up to be.

That was a good question. But you are trying to define God using human emotions like vainity and such. God does not demand us to pray he gives us the choice. I am pretty sure ,correct me if I am wrong, but no where in the bible does it say that you will go to hell if you dont pray to God. We pray because we are thankful for What God has done for us.

Do you mean the ten commandments asks for you to only worship him and no other Gods?

Besides, God gave us free will- which means we're not forced to pray. If He only wanted us to worship him then he wouldn't of gave us free will.

Either way I think praying to God is meant to be a sign of affection and gratitude for what he's done for your life. I don't believe God demands us to pray as much as the churchs want everybody to show their thanks. It's not like praying is slaying a goat and drinking the blood -anymore- but either way God (I'm assuming) isn't vain or using all these words we've created- because He's supposed to be perfect. I still want to know how such a perfect being can feel emotions because emotions lead to flaws- and God's meant to be perfect.

(I'm agnostic by the way).

I hardly consider sending anybody who doesn't worship him to burn in a lake of fire giving them free will.

[This message has been edited by Craftian (edited 02-26-2004).]

god is simply what the signpost says... it isn't it, it points to it.

we become humbled in the presence of creation and the universe and the infinite love that i believe is the essence of what god represents (i don't think i was bestowed with a great ability to spell, so bear with me).

it is the brain that strives to comprehend something that needs no definition. to define 'god' is only an illusion we create to have some intellectual concept of this undefineable force. i think as soon as we have created something separate from ourselves we have missed it. we are creation and heaven for want of a better word, is right here, right now.

i'm not saying i have a continual grasp of this but if we all simply realised that nothing exists as a separate self and everything we ever wanted is present in each moment of our lives, we may have a chance to bring about the healing that the human race is in such desparate need of.

i believe that the most difficult thing to do is simply being. to be in that beautiful place called now, where 'god' always hangs out. not the past or the future, but now. it is beyond my comprehension why the human race fights so hard at separating itself through religion. it's either fear or love and at the moment fear is winning.

love to us all

why would god give us free will if he knows that some of us will use it in the wrong way? Does he want to see people sent to hell, just because he wanted to see if they had faith? Sounds more like the working of man to me.

^^ Exactly. 'If you don't follow these rules, and worship me you will be sent to a place of eternal pain from which there is no escape. If you do, you will be rewarded with everlasting life in a great place!'

Does that not resemble the way we as humans try to live? If you don't obey the laws or your go against your leader [treason] you will be punished by having your freedom taken away and being put in a place of [for the most part] misery from which you cannot leave. If you obey the laws you will be free to do as you will [within the laws] and your life will continue on, uninterupted.

I suppose one could argue that our laws or our system is based around the bible, but I find it much more likely that the bible is based around the instict of humans. Written by humans for humans, using most basic methods to get us to follow the rules. 'Do good we give you a cookie, do bad we give you a smack'.

And also you have to understand that the bible was written in a time when people understood very little about the world and the universe. Soemone could have walked up one day and said, 'You see that big light thats in the sky half the time? Well thats God, he comes out during the day to watch over us, and during the night while we're asleep he goes away to rest up for the next day.' and people would have believed it. People didn't know much of anything so things that we find simple and logical today may have seemed odd and facinating to people of that time. Obviously due to their lack of understanding, and obviously their lack of any science they would come up with these rediculous stories and elaborate plots to explain simple things that they just didn't get.

Ironically enough a lot of people will put down modern ideas or theories pertaining to God simply because they are new. Yet they fail to realize that we now understand so much more, so theories we can come up with are explaining less of the stupid little things [as we already know about those] and more of the complex and extreme things.

ummm amen^