I'm purposely not doing this in the form of a poll, because I want more feedback than a poll usually generates.

You are God. You have 20 completely different peoples and cultures, hundreds of thousands of people or more, that you are concerned and looking out for. You've made certain that all the people are able to reason, and that they have their own free will. You've had many different teachers that you have created to teach the people that the goal of their existence is true enlightenment, but none of the cultures know or understand the teachings of all of those teachers. Still, you want them to attain the goal.

Would you:

Come up with one single path, and one teacher that ALL must understand and believe in, in order to achieve the goal?

Allow flexibility, knowing that you gave people the ability to reason for themselves, and simply give them guidelines for reaching the goal?

Grow angry or upset when someone didn't follow the plans your various teachers laid out?

Not overly worry about it at all, since you gave everyone "free choice", and it is up to them?

Force everyone to believe a very specific and certain way?

but none of your solutions sound good to me.

If I were God (I have no problem imagining it : ) then I would leave everything just as it is and see perfection in all.

With other words:
If you want to debate, you can debate. If you want to be a teacher, you can be a teacher. If you want to follow someone elses teachings, you can do so too. I will not judge you for anything you say, do or think. I love you unconditionally. I have given you a life for you to enjoy, but what you do with this life is completely up to you, because in the end you will realize you never had a life separated from me to begin with.

Well, there's the first problem. If I am God, and I created them (in all their variety), why on earth would I expect them to resemble each other in any way?
Since I supposedly gave him both free will and the ability to reason, then shouldn't I necessarily be bound to accept how he chooses to use his will, and what conclusions his reason brings him to?
How is it, I wonder, that I managed to create all those teachers, who each and every one of them taught something completely different from the others, and then I expect everybody to have gotten pretty much the same message. I'm going to have to look up the performance parameters for being God before I have my next review!

But a more important point, if I can create teachers who are enlightened enough to teach enlightenment, how did I so manifestly fail to create that same ability throughout the rest of my population?
Why? What need have I to have freely reasoning people, all different by my own express creative act, come to the same conclusion? Had I really wanted that, I would have created them all the same in the first place. As God, it should have occurred to me that beginning with differences is pretty like to wind up with continuing difference, which is likely to be greater as time passes.
What, and relieve my people of both free will and the ability to reason? After all, if I force them to come to the same conclusion, then it is my reasoning in play, not theirs.
Probably more likely, but why not just make it obvious who I am and what I think the goal ought to be, plainly, explicitly, and without a lot of hemming and hawing and mysteriously coded clues?
Who am I going to be angry at? It was my creation, and my rules about free will and reason. Shouldn't I be accountable for my own works?
Those have been answered.
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But may I point out something, Rev. You began this with an explicit assumption, and it is the same, always, constantly, repeatedly and forever the same assumption:
What I'd like to see is how anybody gets to that assumption, about which -- without anything to go on other than hoping it's true, and often huge evidence to the contrary -- without the slightest bit of doubt whatever.

It's that very thing that the atheist simply can't understand.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

I see where you are coming from, however:


They taught different specifics, but the same basic truths, whether it was Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, or whoever. The teachings were more similar than different.


Using just biblical principals so as to keep it far simpler, the original humans were created fully enlightened. Unfortunately, they were also naive. They were tempted and fell out of grace. Those that followed had the same shortcomings that the rest of us have. God didn't create you or me, he created our great, great, great, great, great (etc) grandmother and father. So creating someone who was enlightened, for instance Jesus, was no more difficult than creating the first two, who were enlightened, but who screwed up.


For the same reason that any truly loving parent wants the best for their children. It would have been simple to have fun with my wife, produce offspring, and just let them go on their merry way, without taking any responsibility for them or showing any compassion or love for them. However, I care deeply for my kids, and I want the best for them. I cannot provide it for the rest of my life, so I help guide them, that THEY might fulfill their own roles and still achieve what is there for them. I don't see that the love that the Grandfather has in all of us is much different, though his knowledge is certainly far greater.


You got my point exactly. He HAS made it abundantly obvious who he is and what he feels that the goal is, but many, many, many people choose not to listen. Some deny it altogether. That is their right, and that is freedom of choice. But again, as a parent, I would grieve if my children had made that sort of choice. I wouldn't have stood in their way, mind you, but it would have saddened me.


I believe that through experiences, mine at least, that there is no doubt that God exists. (I do NOT believe that he meddles in human affairs...as I explained in another thread, my belief is that it is like throwing a rock in the middle of the lake. One does not need to do more, in order to know that the ripples flow outward, and will continue to do so. So nothing more needs to be done.) As far as God wanting something, that to me doesn't take any imagination at all. As a parent, I want the best for my children, and I always will. I will love them regardless of what they do, but I'll still want the best for them. I can't figure out why the Grandfather, the apex of love, would want anything less for his children.

Hmm...... I think I'd be a part of them, "nearing than breathing" and "closer than hand or foot." That way, they'd never be without me.

That is because each of them was human, a member of the same species, and therefore more similar to each other than different, compared to all of the other species on earth. Ever notice how many traits dogs, from chihuahua's to great danes, share in common? That's because they're all dogs.
I don't accept the Bible myth at all. To begin with, there was nobody there to record it, and nobody to write down what happened for at least a few generations more.

And if you accept that God created our great great etc. grandparents, then you accept that God created the means of procreation that led to us. The failure, if there is a failure, is his.
But this doesn't answer my question, and in fact, it tends rather to agree with the premise behind my question. I asked why, as God, I would want everyone to both have free will and also reach the same conclusion. You've just said you want your kids to be what they need to be, not what you need to be.
Perhaps this "goal" is abundantly clear to you. It is not to me. And it most assuredly was never made any clearer to me by a religious text, a religious practitioner or a religious person. And that, by the way, is not a choice. Unlike the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, I am not capable of believing in 6 impossible things before breakfast.

I'm working harder than a lot of people here at actually trying to understand what others are saying and experiencing, but they don't help me much by simply saying "if you don't get it, that's your choice."

And I do not believe that God exists, and for exactly the same reason -- my experiences.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

How long will it take us to realize this fact?

Nobody has to accept it if they don't want to, and even if there was irrefutable undeniable proof that the religious tomes were 100% accurate, there would still be people who wouldn't believe it. In fact there are plenty of people who don't believe things that are pretty well proven. I certainly don't see any failure, however.


I believe that this does answer the question, and very well. I want my children to have their own free will, and I believe that they need to find their own paths, but at the same time, I wish them to find peace, happiness, and success. That would be the 'goal' I'd choose for them. I see this as no different at all with what God wants for each of us. It explains "why" God would give everyone free will and also wish that each reached a state of enlightenment.


I know that this amounts to taking a lot on faith, but I do have faith that something in your future will make it far easier for you to understand what the goal is, and why it is. I understand how very difficult it would be, until this happens. It would be similar to trying to understand a book written in french when you don't read, write, or speak french.