Why do People Hate Jews and Christians?

[Jabi]

I certainly do not hate Jews or Christians. I have some as my friends. And this one Christian guy is probably one of the most balanced persons I've met, you can clearly see he's found his inner peace or something. But it's just I find Bible to be the most depressing book ever. If it's to be taken literally, it clearly teaches election, predestination and endless punishment in a lake of fire for most people who've ever lived. By the way, it also says a lot of Christians are in for an unpleasant surprise on the Judgement Day. No matter how much you love and praise God, he may have chosen to hate you before you were even born, and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it.

I can write more about this when I'm less tired...

[Carcass]

Absolutely. A competent CEO is never really "off-duty". My father, who is a retired manufacturing CEO, used to work 16 hour days, six and seven days a week when he was younger.

Our hypothetical lowlife can barely support his family by flipping burgers during the days and sweeping floors in the evenings, while some CEO enjoys caviar and has personal jet planes.

Not even a small evil here? A tiny one?

[NeonVomit]

Absolutely. A competent CEO is never really "off-duty". My father, who is a retired manufacturing CEO, used to work 16 hour days, six and seven days a week when he was younger.

Our hypothetical lowlife can barely support his family by flipping burgers during the days and sweeping floors in the evenings, while some CEO enjoys caviar and has personal jet planes.

Not even a small evil here? A tiny one?

It's the similar sort of evil that means I'm sitting in an airconditioned room just having had a filling meal wasting time on the internet, while someone exactly my age and intelligence is on the streets of Asuncion, Paraguay scraping together a living by selling stuff to tourists.

[Carcass]

Exactly!

I'm not trying to start a revolution here, if that's what somebody thinks. Neither am I trying to accuse people of being well-off.

I'm merely stating that I see a major flaw where others see nothing wrong.

[Me, My Enemy]

On my opinion, it's a bit of like NeonVomit says and a bit of what Carcass says.
I think...yeah, it's not fair if you-and-me can use this computerstuff while other people in the world are suffering and starving to death a.s.f, not fair at all. But what shall we do about it, not having a computer, not having a car, not having meal, as well? The company we keep almost judges us to have those things, for example: Want to get some job + have no car + there's a quite big distance between the location of this work and my living place, so there are not always a connection with public buses or stuff, the office for job things will tell you: Hey, it's your fault, that you don't have a job, do this driving licence thing or we won't support you anymore! (well, I won't buy a car though because of pollution things and I don't want to take part in this crime to the nature but that's my own thing and one can't expect it from everyone to do that, because it makes you not fitting in)
The other thing is: Getting as much money and so on, how you are able to get, is worse than just using what many people in your region use and whats "normal standard" (if something like that does exist) there. Because it's a sign of greed, reckless greed, and sometimes people get so much money that they don't even have the time to use it and it's really this unnecessary.
One could say now: Yeah, but you, sitting on your laptop is unnecessary, as well, but I for one know this and just do it because there are holidays now and I often head such things (not using it this much and so on) and so I think it's a bit acceptable.
But, hm, that's just my opinion, don't know if it's right or wrong.
And: Please, excuse my english sometimes not being right ^^"

[NeonVomit]

Exactly.

True communism is actually an appealing notion. No bosses, everyone equal, all property held in common, etc. The USSR is not an example of true communism... I don't know what it was, but it certainly wasn't what Marx had in mind.

However I believe that human nature simply prevents it from being possible.

[miditek]

Absolutely. A competent CEO is never really "off-duty". My father, who is a retired manufacturing CEO, used to work 16 hour days, six and seven days a week when he was younger.

Our hypothetical lowlife can barely support his family by flipping burgers during the days and sweeping floors in the evenings, while some CEO enjoys caviar and has personal jet planes.

Not even a small evil here? A tiny one?

Let me tell you something about my father- using him as an example. He came from a family that was dirt poor, and one that eventually went bankrupt due to some very high medical bills that were incurred during a motorcycle accident he had when he was fifteen years old. The accident left him in a coma for months, and then in a wheelchair for two years.
His left arm eventually got gangrene, and the doctors were forced to amputate it.

Now talk about having the deck stacked against you in life! His first job was washing clothes at Goodwill Industries for $25/week! He was nineteen years old at that time, and had just gotten married to my mother. He did not remain employed there for very long- his supervisor terminated him "due to a lack of interest" in his job. The supervisor was mildly retarded, but certainly realized that dad was no idiot, and felt threatened by him, so he let him go.

It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him, since it in no small degree it helped to give him the drive and the determination to get to the top of the corporate world. It was still not easy for him at all after this, since no one back in the early 1960's wanted to (or even had to) hire someone that was handicapped. No one gave my father anything and the reason why he got to where he did was due to the fact that he was able to manage people effectively and run companies efficiently- and at the last job- the company he co-founded, he steered the company through a total of 108 consecutively profitable quarterly reports (27 years) and the company never lost money in a single quarter
ever, while he was at the helm.

No one is forced to stay at a job flipping burgers- okay? I did that when I was a kid, and certainly decided that food service was definitely not what I wanted to do for a career. People make choices in life, and based on those choices, each individual has a lot of say in how that they are going to turn out.
I have plenty of friends who's parents could not afford to put them through law school or medical school, etc., and yet, they persevered and paid their own way through school. In America, there are plenty of opportunities for advancement for those that are interested, and for those that are not, it remains solely their decision.

[Carcass]

In America, there are plenty of opportunities for advancement for those that are interested, and for those that are not, it remains solely their decision.

So you are basically saying that poverty and circumstances have no effect on social mobility? You used the word 'solely'. I googled a bit and found this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/artic ... 85,00.html

It's from The Guardian but it deals a bit with the situation in the US too. Let me quote few sentences:

The report [by London School of Economics] focused on how education affected the life chances of British children compared with those in other countries. It put the UK and the US at the bottom of a social mobility league table of eight European and North American countries, with Norway at the top followed by Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Canada.

It concluded that wealth was more clearly linked to educational attainment in the UK than in the other countries, with children from poor backgrounds trapped in the worst schools and less likely to continue their studies.

The prospects of poor children in the US were similar to those in Britain, the report said, although social mobility there was "static" while in the UK it was declining.

I don't think interest and brains always makes a big difference. And even if they do, poor communities are not very stimulating places.

[JensJohansson]

This, partly, generates hostility feelings, because the other people are perceived like more different than they really are (from to consider them "different" to "enemy", there are, sometimes, a short stretch). Then, we created verbal and nonverbal rules, rites, languages. This "over differentiation" is, I think, one of the problems that religions or other systems of organized beliefs have. But, to be happy or fulfilled we needed, in addition, to have a sense, a deep intention (perhaps you know the book of Viktor Frankl "for Man's search for meaning"). For me this continues being the question (as it says certain song of certain band): Why Are We Here?

Yeah.. I think religious group adherence is just another means to an end, it's something that has developed around and thrived inside the xenophobia which I suspect exists in all of us at some sort of animal level. There seems to have been witch hunts in all belief systems, including some who would be considered atheist or secular..

I think informed reason is the antidote to that, not more groupthink or "groupbelief".

[JensJohansson]

Sometimes I think that it's a wonder that I actually have the beliefs that I do, considering I was a the offspring of this type of dysfunctional household:
Parental alter-egos
wrestleinfo.com/Img76.jpg
geocities.com/Wellesley/3657/danapics/church_l.jpg

Yes, that is frequently an argument that many Christians will use, although it is not one that I've subscribed to for the most part. The overall lifestyle differences in secularists and truly religious people are like night and day. So it is rather difficult to describe the choice of non-belief as an organized set of beliefs in and of itself. Even Spock himself would probably find such a notion to be, well, illogical.

I don't know, atheists and other secularists still put on their pants one leg at a time though. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Do you just judge what is observable to someone external, or also what goes on inside a person?

It's just a choice of non-belief regarding a very specific issue, the same way you have chosen not to believe in Shiva and Ganesh. Hindus, Christians, "secular humanists", etc still have a vast amount of behavior and beliefs in common.

And for some reason, you really don't seem to get quite as excited or irritated when discussing religious concepts as others (both religious and secular) do, and that is a pretty rare thing in this day and age.

I used to, more excited than irritated i guess, and then I just got tired of myself doing that, maybe that's why!

"From these premises it follows directly that Divine labour to redeem the world cannot be certain of succeeding as regards every individual soul. Some will not be redeemed. There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power."

That's one of the problems with immutable doctrine.. that it is supposed to be immutable even if someone has the impulse to question it. What we loosely call "science" has doctrines as well of course, but it's in the nature that these are questioned all the time.. and if a better doctrine comes around, the old one goes on the garbage heap.

I'm not saying that science can be much a moral guiding force, far from it. It's just that science and religion have been .. first on a collision course, and later in a drawn-out collision, for a couple of hundred years now. Religion will lose if it is too inflexible, that is the problem. A belief system can't lay claim to explain the mystical when many of the old mysteries are being unraveled and explained much better by reason leapfrogging on mountains of evidence. The result in some extreme cases has been some sort of moral vacuum. Regarding what to do: I don't have the answer but I know it's not an angry "Allah made it so, and don't question that."

Believe it or not, I learned about the Æsir gods in a Norse literature class at, of all things, a parochial (Anglican) school, no less. I was fascinated with all of the texts that we had to read, and was especially interested in Thor, of course, as well as the epic battle of Ragnarök. I sort of viewed it as Pagan eschatology, if such a thing exists!

I'm not so sure that I'd want Loki as a drinking buddy, though. If he were anything like some people I've known, you might wake up with half-shaved eyebrows, full makeup, toothpaste in your ear and shaving cream in your shoes!

I know some people like that.

Yes, it's a complete story, with a creation at the beginning and annihilation at the end..

Although I think that the worst violence in Europe was certainly within the past 100 years, and probably had very little to do with religion nearly as much as it did with politics. The Church certainly has had its share of crimes, but as far as scale and capacity, the secularists like Hitler and Stalin certainly stand heads above all the rest.

In absolute numbers, yes. But if you think of intent, and percentage of the population, the story has more nuances. If eg. emperor Ferdinand would have had access to nerve gas, or tanks, or a rail network and death camps, I'm sure he wouldn't have hesitated to use them. It's just that killing got a lot more efficient in the 20th century. The thirty years' war for instance wiped out maybe 20-30% of the population, either directly or indirectly... it seems hard to say because keeping statistics might not have been so high on the priorities lists in a situation like that. World War II "only" got like 10%, either of Germans or Soviets. And 0.32% of the US population.. (that's according to Wikipedia anyway)

So perhaps the 1500 years of old European war disasters pale in comparison in sheer numbers, but the idea of killing your neighbor is not something that is unique to secularists. It's just that industrialized warfare came along at the same time as these new progressive ideas started to bloom: The Watt steam engine was improved enough to be useful in the early 1800's... and Das Kapital came 1867.

People calling themselves "good Christians" and people calling themselves "good Communists" seem to be equally apt to pull the trigger or sign the decree or whatever... it appears that neither the bible nor the scientific method immunizes people from being selfish and cruel.

Founding Father's original intent was the freedom to worship as they chose to do so. Nowadays, that has been misinterpreted as a guarantee of "freedom from religion" by a very loud, obnoxious, and vocal minority here. No one is dragging people to the church (or for that matter, the dunking plank or the gallows a la the Salem Witch Trials), but to hear some people talk, they think that all religions should be completely abolished.

I of course follow those debates in the US with a lot of interest. It seems clear to me anyway that nobody is trying to prevent people from believeing what they want, just trying to safeguard that borderline between state power and religion, because a careless mix of the two fucked up so many things in the past.

Did you find yourself laughing at the said programs, or did you simply try to ignore them? Also, was there eventually a backlash among the Swedish voters because of this, or did the programs just eventually fall out of favor or become obsolete?

"Backlash" is perhaps a too strong word. You just sort of laugh. That is perhaps a harsher punishment for someone trying to win the heart and mind of a young person....

By the way, who is your all time favorite robber baron? Murdoch? Gates? Trump? Branson?

My favorite is Gates, believe it or not. Since the memories of the horrors of Windows 98 are starting to fade, I'm starting to forgive him a little.

The preaching class was eventually replaced by the gutter (Nazis and Communists). I'm not sure who was worse (in their hearts/minds), but the Nazis and Soviets were certainly more efficient, given the apparatus and technology of the modern police state, led by despots that were not restrained by anything, not even traditional Judeo-Christian ethics. No belief in God sort of equated no fear (or respect) of God, with tragic consequences.

They were tragic also when people committed atrocities in God's name.. but that is all in the past. I try to resist the impulse to judge any of these, crusaders, inquisitors, conquistadors, Nazis, Stalinists, jihadists, etc. Sometimes it's difficult!!

I think that's an accurate assessment- the not currently entrenched in European power structures type of thing. However, I do believe that radical Islam is given far more tolerance than it should- and therein lies the danger.

You probably saw some exaggerated news reports. There are some heavy integration problems of course, but Europe is not in its way to some sort of breakdown because of them. I've seen the reports eg. on Fox News regarding issues like these. They are caricatures of reality designed by people with a simplified understanding of the world, and remind eerily of the reports on Swedish state TV in the 70s regarding the impending racial/class war in the USA because of the "oppressed southern negro"..

although I personally believe that one is coming (in fact, he may already be here) that will make both Stalin and Hitler (combined) look like rank amateurs.

If so, he too will be dealt with and thrown on the trash heap of history, just like all the others.

It's funny, we played in the Czech republic a few weeks ago and drove past Austerlitz. The only monument I saw was .. a cement factory which had painted some soldiers on cement silos for comical effect... behold, the grand monument of the great midget warlord, at the site of his greatest victory... cement silos:


Napoleon's legacy at Austerlitz

I did read an article that said that the Heer (German army) has stated that they will not assist in the filming of this picture, and that the army will not be used as a vehicle in which to promote a cult like Scientology. So I can see where the allergic reaction analogy could also apply to them as well.

Yes, the Germans know a thing or two of cults... and of starting wars..


:\

[JensJohansson]

TEN COMMANDMENTS OF ATHEISM

1.Thou shalt have no gods before the state.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any church building which mentions the Bible God.
3. Thou shalt not take the name of Charles Darwin in vain.
4. Remember the 5 weekdays because churches cannot undo in one day what folly atheism causes in 5.
5. Honor Mother Earth&Father Time so that your days shall be long and with no real meaning.
6.Thou shalt not kill, except those who the atheists deem as being unworthy, unproductive,imperfect, unwanted and ugly in their eyes.
7. Thou shalt commit adultery, fornication, homosexuality , or any kind of immoral sexual activity as long as "love" is used to justify it. And, thou shalt declare that stay-at-home wives&mothers who follow traditional female roles are lazy, mediocre, no-good women, and shame them for not making a living outside the home/"bettering" themselves.
8.Thou shalt use hard earned taxes to support a failing welfare system which divides families, seems to spread irresponsibility, and in general causes depression, low self-esteem and misery among the participents.
9.Thou shalt not bear any false witness against the theory of evolution.
10. Thou shall covet&enjoy the blessings and freedoms of a Christian nation, yet at every opportunity blaspheme and make fun of the God and Jesus Christ who make it possible for you to enjoy these blessings and freedoms.

Caricature atheists sound interesting, but caricature religious people can be too!

1. Thou shalt behead heretics and stone to death women whose crime was that they were raped.
2. Thou shalt burn down the embassies of countries whose newspapers offendeth thee and thy prophet.
3. Thou shalt try to convert the population of new-found continents to thy religion, and in the process kill and enslave thy fellow men and squander any natural resources you find.
4. Thou shalt prevent women from voting or operating motor vehicles.
5. Thou shalt condemn gay people with fiery rhetoric and political deed, and get then caught soliciting gay sex in airport bathroom stalls.
6. Thou shalt condemn adultery from thy pulpit.. and then get caught with thy pants down, fucking anything that moves.
7. Thou shalt fly jet aircraft into buildings occupied by civilians for thy religious and political aims.
8. Thou shalt hypocritically teach Christ's idea of compassion for thy fellow man, but if actual people around thee are starving or unable to fend for themselves.... thou shalt not give a flying fuck.
9. Thou shalt not kill, except when maybe it is OK to kill because, well, thou knoweth, ahem, who the fuck am I, Gandhi!?
10. Thou shalt make caricatures of anyone who believeth differently than thee.. to make it easier to hate.

[JensJohansson]

*sigh* the religous right...

Somehow seems an oxymoron to me, but what the hell do I know.

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

donno..

[vanustrato]

TWO THINGS:
-THE PEOPLE IS VERY VERY UNCONSCIENTIOUS, but they have light inside yet.
-The religions don't preach things completely certain..they was and are going deformed by the unconscientious people, just take the things that you think are ok and seach answers inside you..

[Rebel]

*sigh* the religous right...

Somehow seems an oxymoron to me, but what the hell do I know.

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

donno..

well it is, but not in the sense you were thinking.
Religous Right as in the right wing, conservative, republican, evangelical movement in America led by guilt ridden closet gays who believe if they destroy the lives of other homosexuals they can justify themselves before God, when in turn they only hurt our Father more and more.

Timo, I think you referred to a deity of some sort as "She". Well, I've had people say to me "Why is God male, why isn't he female, why doesn't he have a gender, is it sexist?"

God is referred to the father in the bible, because it's exactly what he is. A mother would protect us from all evils, we would grow up without Satan, pain, or suffering, But God loved us so that he gave us free will, which without it there would be no purpose. God gives us pain so we can understand it. He gives us Satan so that we will come to him willingly, instead of just always going to him by default. A perfect father shows the perfect son into the world and lets him know what it is. You know the story of the prodigal son? That's who we are supposed to be, and God is the father of that prodigal son, because he accepts us no matter what we do.

[TimoTolkki]

God is referred to the father in the bible, because it's exactly what he is. A mother would protect us from all evils, we would grow up without Satan, pain, or suffering, But God loved us so that he gave us free will, which without it there would be no purpose. God gives us pain so we can understand it. He gives us Satan so that we will come to him willingly, instead of just always going to him by default. A perfect father shows the perfect son into the world and lets him know what it is. You know the story of the prodigal son? That's who we are supposed to be, and God is the father of that prodigal son, because he accepts us no matter what we do

This is a biblical version. It means nothing to me. This is the fear based scenario.
There is no hell, there is no punishment, there is evil, but there is no satan.
And yes if you want to call it God, call it God. I call it Universe and yes, it is she. The giver of life.

[RazielSR]

God is referred to the father in the bible, because it's exactly what he is. A mother would protect us from all evils, we would grow up without Satan, pain, or suffering, But God loved us so that he gave us free will, which without it there would be no purpose. God gives us pain so we can understand it. He gives us Satan so that we will come to him willingly, instead of just always going to him by default. A perfect father shows the perfect son into the world and lets him know what it is. You know the story of the prodigal son? That's who we are supposed to be, and God is the father of that prodigal son, because he accepts us no matter what we do

This is a biblical version. It means nothing to me. This is the fear based scenario.
There is no hell, there is no punishment, there is evil, but there is no satan.
And yes if you want to call it God, call it God. I call it Universe and yes, it is she. The giver of life.

Well, I'm christian. I'm spanish and hey, the way today we understand the christianity is the Latin version, Spain and Italy versions. Once upon a time... well, christianity in the way we know today (churches and etc,) is due to the Roman Empire. The "church" was born to control the people, nothing more. Constantine I or Cayo Flavio Valerio Aurelio Claudio Constantino, as you prefer, was the legislator of the christianity in Milano on 313 BC.
It was all a political decision because the Roman Empire, near to his fall, needed to control the people in just one path, by forgeting all the gods of the past (all the gods = all the meanings of the life, you know: one for the sun, one for the air, one for the family...Romans copied all this from Greek ages, for me the best ages in the human history.

There were a lot of pagans in the empire (pagans or paganus means "countryman, rural or villager". It is a despective way the romans used to name the people who was not into christianity). So there were a lot of "them" (including the old greeks) now they are ortodox for this in some of the cases. So well, the politic Roman Empire needed to do something with this.
Later in the medieval ages, Spain conquered almost all the world (including the Americas) and they expanded the christianity to South America (they are the most religious people today with the moors) and for this and another things christianity is the biggest religion today. Just have a look at some names in America...San Francisco is the name the spaniards gave to the city because they make a mission there with the name of San Francisco de Asis, an italian saint. Los Angeles = The Angels. this is the spaniard name when the first explorers saw a beautiful river there and the decided to named the new village as: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles sobre El Río Porciúncula, or what its the same: the river of Mrs Queen of Angels over the river Porciúncula"

All the names in south america or north america starting with San, is due to a mission from Spain there, a Christian mission. Anyway almost all the names in south america and the south of North America are spanish names translated into English in most of the cases.

Why do you thing the people in south america is so religious today?...

What I mean is that Chistianity is just an invent to control the peoples minds. But the old testaments from the Bible...this is another thing. Jesus and the first followers have nothing to do with the Christianity as today we know.

I don't belive in churches, I don't belive in bishops and I don't believe in the Pope or something similar.
I have been baptized as the 98 % of the people who is Spanish and I had my communion too. But I don't believe in anything regarding this. ALL the religions are created to control people, it is another way to make politics, that's all.

I believe in something, but is not the thing the Christianity or another religions says.

[Carcass]

God is referred to the father in the bible, because it's exactly what he is. A mother would protect us from all evils, we would grow up without Satan, pain, or suffering, But God loved us so that he gave us free will, which without it there would be no purpose.

Wasn't it Satan who gave us free will? God would've wanted us to stay the way s/he (Finnish rules, we have only hän for both sexes) created us, as obeying robots. In a way Satan is a Prometheus -figure.

God gives us pain so we can understand it. He gives us Satan so that we will come to him willingly, instead of just always going to him by default.

So a father is supposed to whip his children to obey him? This is rather old-fashioned, don't you think? Also, the roles of mother and father are not fixed (in time or space) either. You speak from a Western point of view. The concept of fatherhood might have a completely different meaning in the New Guinean highlands, for example. Christianity aspires to be universal, but if somebody from a faraway culture (in space or time) reads the Bible, he/she might give a completely different interpretation of how things are.

Feeling like twisting and turning things today.

[Me, My Enemy]

@Carcass: Dummie (dummie is me because I don't add anything lol and just: ) *nod*

[Rebel]

God is referred to the father in the bible, because it's exactly what he is. A mother would protect us from all evils, we would grow up without Satan, pain, or suffering, But God loved us so that he gave us free will, which without it there would be no purpose. God gives us pain so we can understand it. He gives us Satan so that we will come to him willingly, instead of just always going to him by default. A perfect father shows the perfect son into the world and lets him know what it is. You know the story of the prodigal son? That's who we are supposed to be, and God is the father of that prodigal son, because he accepts us no matter what we do

This is a biblical version. It means nothing to me. This is the fear based scenario.
There is no hell, there is no punishment, there is evil, but there is no satan.
And yes if you want to call it God, call it God. I call it Universe and yes, it is she. The giver of life.

The bible does not act on fear, the church does.

[TimoTolkki]

The bible does not act on fear, the church does.

Hahahaha!! That´s a classic. Have you read the old testament? It is generally
understood that the "God of the old testament" is punitive and merciless, while the "God of the new testament" is considered merciful and loving.
Most of the new testament was written by St.Paul, who never even met Jesus.
Again I would like to point out as my opinion that anything that has dogmas and rules like if you don´t...then..., they are fear based, controlling "belief" systems. True faith and spirituality is a very private and personal relationship between you and your God. It doesn´t require any book, any dogma. Nothing but silence and honesty.

[RazielSR]

Again I would like to point out as my opinion that anything that has dogmas and rules like if you don´t...then..., they are fear based, controlling "belief" systems. True faith and spirituality is a very private and personal relationship between you and your God. It doesn´t require any book, any dogma. Nothing but silence and honesty.

Totally agree.

[JensJohansson]

*sigh* the religous right...

Somehow seems an oxymoron to me, but what the hell do I know.

well it is, but not in the sense you were thinking.
Religous Right as in the right wing, conservative, republican, evangelical movement in America led by guilt ridden closet gays who believe if they destroy the lives of other homosexuals they can justify themselves before God, when in turn they only hurt our Father more and more.

I guess I meant in the "right vs. left" political spectrum when it comes to individualism vs. collectivism (or some sort of capitalism vs. communism axis, or laissez faire vs. big government)

A mother would protect us from all evils, we would grow up without Satan, pain, or suffering, But God loved us so that he gave us free will, which without it there would be no purpose. God gives us pain so we can understand it. He gives us Satan so that we will come to him willingly, instead of just always going to him by default. A perfect father shows the perfect son into the world and lets him know what it is.

My belief anyway is that there are explanations for free will and many other things which map much better (more closely) to reality than a reduction to "God gave it to us".

I do not claim these explanations are the "truth", just that they seem to map much more closely.

I always thought it was funny nobody wants to refer to God as an "it"

It's pretty anthropocentric to assume the Creator has a set of Genitals that map to the ones we evolved here on Earth. No doubt if ears of corn evolved consciousness their Christ would look like this:

[RazielSR]

My belief anyway is that there are explanations for free will and many other things which map much better (more closely) to reality than a reduction to "God gave it to us".

Yes, and that explanations are the ones where the christianism or other religions says: "no, it cannot be like this... You must keep the faith, bla bla bla bla, God gave the life to us, God bla, God bla bla bla...and God bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla"

PD: Blaaaaaaaaaaaaa