People first, God second. Should people put themselves above God?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Love is seldom painless. Compared to eternity, this life is brief. If harsh correction to a few inspires many to repent and/or avoid sin, is that not a loving act of a loving god? Many of the problems of theodicy are due to a misunderstanding of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not the ability to do everything. It is the ability to do anything that can be done.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Love is seldom painless. Compared to eternity, this life is brief. If harsh correction to a few inspires many to repent and/or avoid sin, is that not a loving act of a loving god? Many of the problems of theodicy are due to a misunderstanding of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not the ability to do everything. It is the ability to do anything that can be done.

Obviously I'm substantially 'on your side' here, but considering that God precedes logic, this has never struck me as an especially good excuse.

Even if one doesn't believe in God, one should believe in Gödel. It's trivial to show there are things no-one, not even God could do.

I'd have to go into much more depth concerning my conception of evil than I have time for right now, but it ties into why God must have limits. It's inherent in how I view the nature of evil.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjxZ6MrBl9E&feature=related

That was an extremely weak argument Dawkins made against creationism, combined with a great deal of vitriol.

The weird thing is that he falls into the exact same fallacy that the intelligent design people do. Intelligent designer's argument is that evolution couldn't possibly create the diversity of life we see because they don't see how it could, and since they can't see it, it can't possibly be true.  Dawkin's argument is that a truthful benevolent God couldn't possibly create the web of genetic relationships we see because he can't see how such a God could, and since he can't see it, it can't possibly be true. What's especially laughable about his argument is he bases it on the presence of so-called junk DNA, but since he gave that talk in 2009, we've come to understand that a good deal of so-called junk DNA actually has a function that we hadn't yet discovered.  Oops.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this physical life we experience is not all we will experience. Moreover, I am not one who holds any text to be inerrant or infallible, be that the text of the Bible, or the text of the genetic code. As painful as it can be at times, the chaos that is life is to me infinitely more beautiful and wonderful than the sterile order some ascribe to God. We live in reality, not Lake Wobegon, and we cannot all have children who are above average.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

You base this statement on what if you do not holds any text to be inerrant or infallible?

While religious and philosophical texts are neither inerrant not infallible, such texts are a valuable insight into the important questions that bear on the meaning of life.  I come these questions from the perspective of a Christian Universalist who finds much support for the answers I have reached from both the Abrahamic and Daoist traditions.  My equanimity concerning our physical existence comes principally from Daoism but I also find much support for it in the teachings of the Abrahamic traditions, tho I find they don't place the same degree of emphasis upon it as the Daoist traditions.

Incidentally, Babylon 5 was quite the philosophical and spiritual TV show, and much of its main story arc centered around how various people four key questions:

•     Who are you? (The Vorlon Question)
•     What do you want? (The Shadow Question)
•     Why are you here? (Emperor Turhan's Question)
•     Where are you going? (The Techno Mage Question)

Personally I'd split the last one into two questions:

•     Where are your attachments?
•     When are you?

I'm very much a person of now and later with little thought given to the past. The past is valuable to me only insofar as it gives insights into the present and future.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

For crying out loud, give it a rest.

Are you talking to DL, those conversing with him, or both?

I'll admit to being guilty of doing so earlier in this thread. However, he's proven so predictable in what he'll say that he doesn't interest me, especially since the hyperliteralist teaching he keeps plugging away at isn't where I am and when I tried to engage him with where I am religiously, he just kept flogging his dead horse. It is a shame he's apparently afraid to discuss religion outside his limited monomaniacal focus. We could always use more people here who can discuss religion intelligently, but his one-note braying is irritating rather than intelligent.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Away from that issue I am happy to and do discus other aspects of religion.

Then prove it and we might have something to discuss.