I do not believe God created humans just to torture them, because sending people to hell was not part of the original plan.
What? Not part of the original plan? God, according to Christian doctrine (and according to most people's concept of a supreme being, Christian or not), is omniscient and omnipotent, as well as the creator of everything. So it's logically impossible that God's plan could go wrong.
Because he wants us to be in communion with him.
Christianity teaches that humans are sinful by nature (humanity is messed up ) and because of our sinful nature it prevents us from having a relationship with God and heaven. That is why Jesus was sent to die on the cross, to bear our sins and bring us to God.
Again, your God had the power and foresight to create humanity with a non-sinful nature. Even if we are to accept the paradoxical Christian notion that free will and an omniscient/omnipotent supreme being and creator are compatible, God still knew what was going to happen when he created everything, it was within his power to change things, but he obviously chose not to, because such a being could not make a mistake. Therefore God knew he was creating humans that would defy his will and he would torture accordingly for eternity.
From the moment he created heaven and earth, he knew that he would be condemning billions of his own creation to eternal torment and suffering. How is it you do not see the problem with this?
Could you elaborate more on this?
The Bible said it's an abomination to engage in homosexual activity
It also says it's an abomination to eat shellfish
The penalty for both is stoning to death
The Ten Commandments say that you are not to make or worship any idols*, worship any God before Yahweh*, not to do work on Saturdays, or use the lord's name in vain.
Now there is no rational basis for any of this shit to be called immoral-- immoral to the point that the punishment for violating the rules is a slow death then after you die being tortured eternally, except that "The Bible says so"
*
Incidentally, the punishment for both of these involves punishing the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren of anyone who disobeys, which hardly seems just or moral to me either.Science has not proven as to whether or not people are born with homosexual tendencies.
No but most scientists believe biological factors play a role in determining sexual orientation-- to what extent they do and to what extent social conditioning also plays are the only things science is not sure of yet.
But whatever you think, you certainly cannot deny that there are many people out there with homosexual urges that would rather not have them, can you?
Because of this I can only give my personal opinion on homosexuality: I believe homosexuality is unnatural and homosexual sex is a sin.
That's hardly your personal opinion. That is the opinion of the Christian doctrine to which you subscribe. You did not arrive to the conclusion that homosexuality is wrong independently of your religious doctrine. In fact, it's pretty safe to say you have not put ANY thought into the subject that was not within the pre-existing framework of your religious beliefs.
I would dispute that homosexuality is unnatural, simply because it is a statistical deviation from the norm and does not, presumably, serve a biological imperative/evolutionary end. But even if it is unnatural, how does that make it wrong from a moral standpoint, except that "the Bible says so"?
I have no answer to that question
Really? I mean, I can see you not having an answer to the second part of the question as there is no answer that you can give that is both rational and does not contradict the fundamental doctrinal beliefs of Christianity.
But you don't even for the first part of the question? If a person did many of the things God does would they not be considered horribly immoral? Let's say I...
--Told my children that if they did not blindly obey me and believe in my judgment no matter what, no matter how irrational my instructions that I would torture them eternally, and, in fact, did so to billions of my children (let's assume I have the ability to create that much offspring)
--Told everyone if you don't listen to my son's preaching and believe in him, I'm going to throw you into a lake of fire
--Bred especially vicious pitbulls together to create especially vicious pitbull puppies, then tortured the puppies endlessly for being vicious
--Nuked San Francisco, killing little children, women, everyone, because there was too much buttfucking going on there and a group of them tried assaulting two of my servants (Sodom)
--Told my son to murder his grandchild to prove his loyalty to me, even if I stopped him from doing it at the last second (Abraham)
--Told one of my generals (Moses) to put his soldiers under orders to kill all non-virgin women captured in battle and keep the rest for sex slaves
--Told another general (Joshua) to kill everyone and destroy everything in a given town (Jericho)
--Ruined one of my loyalest followers lives just to prove a point to my rival (Job)
--Sent one of my followers to go randomly kill people, including children, as a bargaining tool (Passover)
If I did ANY of these things, much less all of them, you would consider me immoral and a detestable human being, no?
Ok I know will be criticized for this:
I believe God is showing us the way to him. The reason people are not finding him is because they are not listening.
Yes, you will be criticized for it, because that statement is not readily demonstrable-- you cannot show me how God is trying to introduce some little Muslim boy in India to Jesus and show him that his religion is wrong. And if that little boy dies before he finds Jesus, tough luck, off to be tortured forever.
Which is the whole point I was trying to make-- if the Christian God really did want to save everyone, he would make readily demonstrable evidence available to everyone. But he doesn't, which means one of three things:
1. He isn't doing a very good job of "showing us the way to him", and is therefore incompetent-- which is incompatible with concept of an all-knowing and all-powerful God.
2. He isn't doing a very good job of "showing us the way to him", and is therefore a callous, sick bastard, willing to torture people for eternity because they didn't do a good enough job of piecing together the undemonstrable and irrational clues he's giving them-- which is incompatible with the concept of an all-good and all-loving God.
3. He isn't doing a very good job of "showing us the way to him" because God does not exist, and is simply a superstition created by ignorant desert tribesmen who were obviously also morally-challenged to say the least based on the sick mythology they created.
Guess which explanation I'm going with?
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