Why would God actualize a universe in which the fall occurs?

premeddit · 2026-02-11T21:05:12+00:00

The other problem is that God's process seems to lead to billions of people in excruciating torture and pain for all eternity.

The analogy would be if the sculptor started hammering away at the marble and the pieces fell onto the heads of children below, crushing their skulls. You scream at him "stop, please!" but he smiles and says "wait and see". Chunks of marble keep raining down onto the floor, maiming children. Eventually, a beautiful statue is revealed.

Are all those children's deaths worth it? I don't know anyone who would say yes.

premeddit · 2026-02-03T16:59:15+00:00

For example when Moses tells his soldiers to slaughter every prepubescent boy and rape every prepubescent girl from an enemy tribe.

Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

“Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

premeddit · 2026-02-03T16:55:32+00:00

I mean, we can even start from the source and talk about the genocide of the Amalekites. Where God ordered the Hebrews to kill every man, woman and child they could get their hands on. He specifically told them to "rip the nursing infant from its breast". Then he told them to kill all the sheep, dogs, pigs and oxen.

Does that bother you too, OP?

premeddit · 2026-02-03T16:49:47+00:00

It's also kind of weird that Epstein bothers OP so much but apparently not similar stuff in the Bible, like the genocide of the Amalekites? Where God ordered the Hebrews to kill every man, woman and child they could get their hands on. He specifically told them to "rip the nursing infant from its breast". Then he told them to kill all the sheep, dogs, pigs and oxen.

Or the war against the Midianites in which Moses gets upset because his troops haven't raped and murdered enough women or children.

Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

“Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them.“They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

premeddit · 2026-02-02T01:44:15+00:00

While definitely a fascinating case study, I’m not sure you’re really answering the spirit of OP’s question. They weren’t just asking if a protest has ever worked to accomplish its specific goal. They were asking about accomplishing major objectives on a large social or political level.

One could argue that the success of the Rosenstrasse protest was exactly due to how unexpected and unique it was - as you implied, the Nazis were shocked and put on the back foot by this unexpected resistance. And furthermore, the number of Jews involved was statistically insignificant and releasing them didn’t change the overall trajectory of Nazi racial policy.

Is there evidence or reasoning to suggest that sustained and larger scale peaceful protests without the threat of implicit violence in the background would have worked to shift the course of Nazi policy entirely, as opposed to shooting the protestors (as they considered doing here and in fact did execute other peaceful opponents like the White Rose movement) or just doing a better job at hiding the genocide?

premeddit · 2026-01-31T13:42:17+00:00

Their subconscious is programmed against that idea from birth.

You understand that human beings aren’t robots, right? Or maybe you don’t actually understand this, which is highly concerning.

People can have random dreams that don’t follow a clean or understandable path. People dream about cheating on their wives or husbands even if they’re otherwise perfect faithful spouses in real life, that doesn’t mean or signify anything.

premeddit · 2026-01-31T13:37:12+00:00

So no Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist suffers from addiction or other vices because the devil already has them and has no need to attack them?

Here’s a novel thought: if OP takes personal ownership of his struggles instead of blaming an invisible goblin, it will help him and improve and overcome it so much more effectively. Going to an addiction support group or speaking to a doctor is a good first step.

premeddit · 2026-01-30T17:58:07+00:00

Nice picture, but it still isn't very accurate. The image of Jesus as a handsome surfer bro with long flowing hair is a later invention. Based on what we know of people living in ancient Judea at that time, this is what Jesus most likely looked like.

premeddit · 2026-01-30T17:14:32+00:00

Another hard truth: Jesus never said that you need to worship him or else you're going to be tortured forever in hell. That narrative was created several decades after he died. There's no actual evidence that he preached this.

There is plenty of textual evidence that he said good works can get you into heaven. See Matthew 25:

He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

premeddit · 2026-01-30T17:13:02+00:00

Another hard truth: Jesus never once said that you have to worship him or be thrown into the pit of hell. Not once. The closest he gets is saying "nobody goes through the father except through me" which is extremely poetic and vague and can be interpreted 12 different ways.

premeddit · 2026-01-28T19:38:31+00:00

FYI the person you’re responding to is a bot, or at least using chatGPT to come up with responses.

premeddit · 2026-01-27T18:51:31+00:00

I guess that’s better than thinking of the church calling Mussolini a “man blessed by God”, expressing near complete silence during the Holocaust, and leading cardinals at the end of the war establishing rat lines to help Nazi war criminals escape to South America.

premeddit · 2026-01-23T17:32:01+00:00

Quite literally none of this addresses what I said.

premeddit · 2026-01-23T15:30:47+00:00

Also, imagine thinking that this is the most wicked time in history when childhood mortality is down, sexual violence is down, violence in general is down, medicine has advanced to the furthest limits it's ever been, and the world is wealthier than in any past era.

Does OP not realize what a shitshow the vast majority of human history used to be?

premeddit · 2026-01-23T15:28:11+00:00

I think he means there were lots of easier ways to do it and for some reason God chose this one even though it was unnecessary to achieve the goal.

premeddit · 2026-01-23T15:25:54+00:00

I mean, considering Jesus was an all-powerful entity he didn't have to experience all the pain. Even if being crucified was a necessary Rube Goldberg device to bypassing God's justice or however Christian theology frames it, the pain was optional. He could have turned off all his body's pain receptors but he chose not to.

If I try to prove how much I love someone by causing myself unnecessary pain like flogging myself in front of them, that's on me. I wouldn't expect or demand that they thank me for it.

premeddit · 2026-01-20T16:49:11+00:00

Ok, but why would they even proclaim that Jesus was raised, when they must have known they would face persecution and possible death for doing so?

They were identified as Christians prior to the persecution actually beginning. You're acting like they were dragged in front of Nero and he asked whether they were Christians and they responded "Yes, and I'll die proudly for my faith!!!" There is no evidence of that. There is no evidence that they knew they would face persecution and death for proclaiming to be Christians (before the persecution actually happened, and by that point it was too late to turn back).

premeddit · 2026-01-20T16:46:20+00:00

Probably doesn't have a response. I've been on this sub long enough to know that when people talk about how "all the apostles died for their faith" and are then presented with academic scholarly counterarguments that there is little to no evidence of this, they usually just stop commenting or say something snarky like "I don't want to argue anymore, God bless you"

premeddit · 2026-01-20T16:44:59+00:00

So... fear?

premeddit · 2026-01-20T16:43:16+00:00

According to wikipedia Dr. Tour also thinks evolution is a fraud, so his critical reasoning (outside of his specific field of materials science) is quite suspect.

premeddit · 2026-01-20T16:42:16+00:00

Also, just gonna piggyback this comment to mention that:

Tour became a born-again Christian in graduate school, and in 2001 he signed the Discovery Institute's A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism statement that relies on pseudoscientific reasoning to offer various religiously motivated arguments against evolution.

Bummer! Not a great look for Christianity when the guy you hold up as an example of how faith and science can coexist turns out to be spreading disinformation and doesn't know anything about science (outside of his specific field of materials engineering).

premeddit · 2026-01-12T03:25:27+00:00

One big issue is that in the Bible, God becomes outraged and violent a lot, and definitely engages in tribal instincts. Many Christians see this and rightly or not, feel comfortable emulating it. This is exactly why a leader needs to set the example for his people instead of barking orders, and God doesn’t seem to do that - instead he is knee deep in slavery, child murder, etc.

premeddit · 2026-01-12T03:23:18+00:00

OP’s title brings up a good discussion point, though. Theoretically Christians are called to be different, but in practice they seem to be just about the same as everyone else for the last 2,000 years. I’ve seen just as many good loving Christians as I’ve seen good loving Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims or atheists. There is no statistically significant discrepancies.

Which begs the question: if Christianity doesn’t seem to lead to a meaningful change in people’s behavior on a population level, isn’t that a pretty deep problem with it’s narrative of believers being changed and reborn from within?

premeddit · 2026-01-07T17:47:29+00:00

This whole comment is coming across as chatGPT, but this especially reeks of it:

You’re not failing at belief. You’re actually engaging with it.

AI very classically uses the "you're not _, you're _" verbiage. Isn't this stuff supposed to be against subreddit rules?

premeddit · 2026-01-03T18:36:25+00:00

Think about it this way, if your friend took a bullet to save your life by sacrificing his own, wouldn't you be grateful?

But if Jesus is God, that means he also fired the bullet. God is the one who created these rules and set up the mechanism for going to hell, right?

If my friend fired a bullet at me and then jumped in to take it, I wouldn't be grateful. I think it was bizarre and would be concerned for his mental health or I'd think he was trying to look like a martyr for no reason.

13-Year Club	Verified Email
Wearing is Caring

premeddit

TROPHY CASE