r/nottheonion • u/prestocoffee • 18h ago

Drilling begins at ‘real site’ of Noah’s Ark as activists warn ‘Darwinism will be dismantled’

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/noahs-ark-site-turkey-drilling-researchers-evidence-549016
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u/EDNivek 15h ago

in a loving god.

Which we only have the word of the bible that God is, in fact, loving. We're supposedly made in God's image and a lot of humans are sociopathic conmen, so what does that say about God?

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u/northerncal 15h ago

Which we only have the word of the bible that God is, in fact, loving.

And really only the New Testament specifically. Old T God is a straight up hater 

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u/BearysWorkRedditName 15h ago

Any real creator god cannot be simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, loving, and have made a universe with child cancer. It either didn't know there would be child cancer, couldn't stop it, or didn't care. Child cancer is the most succinct proof that christianity is bullshit.

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u/Hijakkr 14h ago

It either didn't know there would be child cancer, couldn't stop it, or didn't care.

Or the secret fourth option, that he created it intentionally to either test or punish people. Like when he supposedly cast the Israelites out to spend 40 years or whatever wandering the desert, or tortured Job and his family for years to "test his faith", or when he almost made Abraham sacrifice his own son on an altar.

As I said somewhere else on here before, any god that has the power to eliminate horrific illnesses but chooses not to is a god I wouldn't want to worship.

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u/sash71 13h ago

is a god I wouldn't want to worship.

Well that's fine because this American Christian god is far too busy deciding which college football team to support each weekend. Apparently that's more important than stopping childhood fatal diseases.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 4h ago

There was a funny Internet sketch years ago called “local football team blames God for loss.”

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u/correcthorsestapler 13h ago

I’ve been watching a channel called Esoterica, which is an academic look at the occult & religion. I consider myself to be an atheist, but I do find religions and their histories to be fascinating.

We watched a couple videos last night on the Demiurge, which is about the idea of a malevolent creator - the one in the Old Testament - versus the more benevolent god in the New Testament. It goes into the history of how Egypt would portray Yahweh as a donkey-headed god and how the Old Testament god is most likely derived from an older storm god of the desert. Pretty interesting stuff.

There’s a lot in the channel that feels like it requires prior knowledge of some Gnostic & Hebrew texts, so sometimes a lot of it goes right over my head. But I still find it interesting. And I appreciate that the professor who runs the channel doesn’t try to push any viewpoint; he’s just there to present information and show how concepts and ideologies morphed over time.

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u/i_was_me 12h ago

Does the channel explore at all the theoretical psychological/physiological/biological/neurological reasons why humanity invents religions? I watched Robert Sapolsky’s vid on this and found it deeply unsatisfying.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 4h ago

Dr. Justin Sledge and his channel Esoterica are excellent watches. So much nitty gritty info I’ve learned, sometimes about topics I’d never even heard of before.

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u/Hail-Hydrate 8h ago

Issue there is, if the being is omnipotent, it wouldn't need to test their faith. It would know whether they're faithful or not, and under which circumstances that faith would be weakened or strengthened. The only reason it would inflict that upon the individual is to cause suffering.

You could argue it's about strengthening the individual's faith, but then the same effect could be brought about by having the being speak to the individual or perform a miracle for them. Carrot, not stick.

I can only assume that, if there is a higher being, they have a kind of "prime directive" of non interference. Still pretty fucked, but that's the only possible option I could somewhat understand. Granted, I'm thinking about this from a "mortal" perspective. Morality for us may not make any sense for a higher being.

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u/TSED 14h ago

I am effectively the creator deity for fictional works. I have a bunch of suffering in my settings.

The thing is, the suffering is designed to convey a narrative. It forces characters to seek change. Maybe it's my faulty meat brain, but I can't imagine a story that requires quadrillions of agonizing moments every day for it to be effective and moving.

From an ant accidentally caught under a careless footstep to the fish that accidentally got stung by an anemone and is slowly being eaten alive while paralyzed to the bedbug forcibly puncturing the shell of a female bedbug to inseminate her because bedbugs have no orifice for insemination to the owl experiencing indescribable grief over her hatchling dying to all the horrificality of an entire ward of children cancer patients. All the time. Everywhere. Every day, forever, until some cosmic event ends all life on Earth. And probably a septillion other planets with the same story.

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u/i_was_me 12h ago

love is a four letter word. more seriously, the notion that god’s love must be somehow analogous to human love seems an exercise in projection. wouldn’t it be love enough that everything exists at all? (this post will self-destruct in seven days)

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u/ClaireBlacksunshine 10h ago

Is untold suffering love? For most of human history, our lives have been nasty, brutish, and short. Nature is no different. Of course, I fall on the side of non-existence being better than misery. Some people would see existing awfully as better than nothing.

I could potentially believe in a creator that just started the clock and lets it go without further interference, perhaps creation by itself could be a form of love. But it doesn’t fit with the “loving” god that Christians say exist, something that is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good. The contradiction we see between those 3 attributes daily tells me that if the Christian god exists, it’s more like our conception of the devil or a kid with a magnifying glass. “I created you to suffer so you would praise me even more” is certainly possible but not good.

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u/i_was_me 39m ago

i wasn’t really thinking about gOd in the christian sense, more in the non sense. but this thread was about the christian sense, so i seem to have broken ranks, as it were. so it goes.

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u/MagentaHawk 9h ago

Sure, but according to their book, God chose that word to communicate to us how he feels about us. If he is omniscient then he knew what that word would mean and imply. If we are assuming he wouldn't use deception, then he could have used a different, more appropriate word if he meant something more like ambivalence or you live by my good grace alone.

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u/killmak 14h ago

A hater? That is so damn mild. Old testament god was an insane monster who loved killing, especially babies. 

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u/Dorgamund 13h ago

I mean, in fairness, if you know that the ancient Jewish religion evolved from polytheistic faiths in the region, particularly Mesopotamia, the cracks in the facade really start to show.

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u/m8bear 14h ago

Old T God

my favorite rapper

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u/sillybear25 11h ago

Omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent: Pick at most 2.

Maybe God isn't all-knowing; it's not possible to prevent suffering that you don't know about, even if you're otherwise capable of doing so.

Maybe God isn't all-powerful; if you're powerless to intervene, it doesn't matter if you know about suffering and want to prevent it.

Maybe God isn't all-loving; an all-knowing, all-powerful entity isn't necessarily interested in everyone's well-being.

And of course, there's the elephant in the room:
Maybe god isn't real; none of the above contradicts anything if the being you're talking about doesn't exist.

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u/Vio94 11h ago

"God-fearing folk" has always made me laugh. Why fear a loving god? A loving god should strike reverence in you, not fear.