>"You cannot judge god" Why not?<
A person who is all-knowing, omnipresent, and all-powerful cannot possibly make mistakes. I am a human and so are you, and we most certainly cannot claim to have any one of those attributes. Therefore God always knows best. A God who always does what is best has nothing to be judged. Therefore no one can judge Him.
>"It doesn't even phase the guy" How do you know?<
A person who is all-knowing, omnipresent, and all-powerful would know that what He is doing is the right thing to be done. Therefore He would know better than any of our criticisms of His ways.
>and complementing me on being human still doesn't answer the question "Why set it up so the great majority of those who exist in it will suffer for all eternity"<
This is what my Bible says:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
He doesn’t want anyone to go to Hell. No one at all! Yes, He knew beforehand how many would accept Him, but that will be their own choice, not His. He is constantly trying to draw everyone to Him. He gives us all the choice, though, and He won’t force His blessings upon those who don’t want them. It’s our choice to make, not His.
>We are inside god, a statement that denies that god was a creator.<
That statement refers to God’s being omnipresent. There is has never existed a place that from its creation was not filled by God’s presence.
>If god is so serious about his demands (note that word) why does he lie? Sorry, misdirect, test our faith. But hey, he knows the secrets of all hearts so why the tests? Oh it's for our own good - and so on in circles. Remember these are tests most will not pass.<
Yes, they are demands. Make no mistake about that.
God does not lie; He cannot. But which passage(s) of Scripture are you referring to?
If you are referring to God telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac but stopping Abraham from doing this as soon as he shows obedience, there was nothing deceptive about that. God gave Abraham orders on what to make plans on doing. He did, and then God stopped Him from fulfilling what those plans were.
The tests are more for own benefit than His; we grow spiritually in such tests.
These are tests that most will refuse to pass.
>If the world was created from water a) where did the water come from? and b) why does it lie - sorry, test the faith - about its origins?<
God spoke the water into existence. He said let it exist, and it immediately existed.
That it tests the faith is something that has occurred during the last couple of centuries when people adopt presumptions based on the ideas of others. The “test” here is that reality contradicts those strongly held presumption based not on what God says but what some humans say. In this the presumptions are indeed based on a lie, but that lie was told by men, not God.
>Revelation is not a part of certain bibles. It is not in the oldest versions of the bible (Siniaticus for example). There are bibles for all versions of Christianity. Oops, up the fail rate to 99% and then some.<
It is correct that Revelation is not a part of certain Bibles because during the first number of centuries after Christ, scholarly debate arose over which books to include in the cannon and which to not include. During this time different collections of Christian writings were appearing. Some collections had one book but not another, others had this but not that. This continued for a while until finally an extremely official conference was held. All opinions were represented. There was much prayer, as they all knew it would require wisdom that they did not have. And much contemplation. This resulted in the Bible most are familiar with. Sometime after this, though, the Roman Catholic Church became upset with Protestant movements and decided to make a distinction between them and themselves. And so the Roman Catholic Church decided to go ahead and decided upon their own cannon, something different from what the Protestants were using. This resulted in the Bible virtually exclusive to Catholics. The Catholic Bible has all of the books included in the Protestant Bible, but also includes highly dubious books written sometimes a century or more after the actual life of Christ. These new books are the Apocrypha.
In the year 2001, there are FAR too many translations of the Protestant Bible. That you most certainly have right. Some of these Bibles do not even have the original text but have dumbed-down word vocabularies. The two most legitimately translated Bibles are the King James Version and the New International Version. Beyond that you enter the genre of paraphrases.
>he bible is very clear that the Holy spirit decended into JC at his baptism and that he could not begin his work until that baptism. Remember the theology is that JC had free will. He could have turned aside from his path at any time but didn't. If he did not have free will it would negate the meaning of the sacrifice.<
The Trinity was fulfilled in Jesus from His conception. When Jesus was a boy He already was the Holy Spirit because He knew everything, and was also easily capable of turning water into whine. Yes, He did have free will. That is at its most obvious when moments before He knew He was about to be arrested, crucified, and become sin and know, even if only for a limited time, abandonment by the Father, He begged the Father to choose another way than this, but added that He would be faithful to the Father’s will, regardless of the pain that that would require of Himself.
>The deity you propose is not particularly big. He's god of humans. The rest of the universe is merely a backdrop for the testing of 1 species.<
Actually, well, there are other Earths out there so we can colonize them. But, yes, we are the only such species in Creation. But regardless, if there were other such species out there, He would be their God, too, and He would do this with infinite ease; He is all knowing, omnipresent, and all powerful.
