The nature of the Almighty

Since God is infinitely loving and compassionate, his omniscience dictates that he experiences the evil and hatred inherent in the human race. As a being that is omni-benevolent, these things must produce suffering for said being. He also feels, to an infinite degree, the pain of being rejected by his own children. Since God loves us infinitely, these things undoubtedly inject sorrow into Him. Thus, by the evil actions of the human race, God suffers to an infinite degree. One might ask why God would create humans had he known they would ultimately cause him to suffer. The answer is simply because he loves us and wants us to have the incredible gift of life. He loves us so much that he willingly suffers for us.

When it comes down to it, Jesus is the epitome of what I have just stipulated. Jesus represents the true nature of the almighty. Thus, anyone who knows Jesus as Christ also knows the nature of God the Father. I believe it was the apostle Paul who said those who reject Jesus as Messiah only have worldly wisdom, but to those who are saved Jesus represents the wisdom of God. Thoughts?

Mightn't he be the never-ending graceful flow of existence.

If we were to realise that the nature of the Almighty is nature itself, and if we were to remember that we are a part of that nature, we would have only to look into ourselves to begin to understand.

What if God is quite simply life itself?

(in spite of whatever his PR is saying ...)

Hello Boagie.

Still mesmerized by the talking serpent, eh?

I've been catching up, and I must say I like the content. Would you consider an entity who could change past events retro-actively "supernatural"?
What if a consensus of scientists believed it, theoretically, to such a degree it was taught in secular universities, and moreover, that the existence of a once living creature being alive still, or dead, or both, depended on that entity actually observing it? Would you believe the entity was supernatural then?

Hello Irish!!

I have no idea as to what you are referring too,has science then proved the existence of god?Some new quantum mystery?

C'mon Boagie, humor me and answer the question. Hypothetically speaking, would you?

Hi Irish,

Yes,I guess I would,if you will throw in the riseing of the dead,nothing less than what is promised in the good book.Seriously,people have been trying to prove the existence of god for thousands of years,do you really believe that you are going to do so in these forums? It indeed does sound mysterious though,something being alive or dead or both depending on who is observing it,it does sound like an earth shaking experience.You are rattling my cage Irish,but if you want a greater response you are going to have to give a little more information.:eek: By the way, what is in the concept alive and dead?

Alive is the absence of complete death, dead is the state of not being alive.
I'm rattling your cage with quantum physics, not proof of God, as it were. Funny you should think so.
Look up Schrodinger's Cat, and The Cavendish Black Box Experiments that will clue you in to my direction. :cool:

Irishcop,

To most people's thinking there is no such thing as a little bit dead.Why should it be funny that I should think so,your modivation is always apparent,you lead with your righteous Irish.You are giving me homework Irish,well I will get back to you when I have checked these things out.

Of course there is a state of "a little bit dead", look at Larry King!!

We have cells dying from damage, limbs are severed, patients are clinically dead, but are brought back. Brain dead people are kept alive artifically. One could argue the terminally ill are a little bit dead.
And of course, there was Lazarus

Perhaps, my left hasn't gotten up and gone.:cool:

I'll look forward to your reply on a Quantum level.

"Of course there is a state of "a little bit dead", look at Larry King!!"

your a ok in my book there Irish, i like that.

You've been officially thanked.

Quotes from Hitler:
Hitler's speeches and proclamations, even more clearly, reveal his faith and feelings toward a Christianized Germany. Nazism presents an embarrassment to Christianity and demonstrates the danger of their faith So they try to pin him on other theistic views. The following words from Hitler show his disdain for atheism, and pagan cults, and reveal the strength of his Christian feelings:
-Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept.1938. [Christians have always accused Hitler of believing in pagan cult mythology. What is written here clearly expresses his stand against cults.]
"We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933 [This statement clearly refutes modern Christians who claim Hitler as favoring atheism. Hitler wanted to form a society in which ALL people worshipped Jesus and considered any questioning of such to be heresy. The Holocaust was like a modern inquisition, killing all who did not accept Jesus. Though more Jews were killed then any other it should be noted that MANY ARYAN pagans and atheists were murdered for their non-belief in Christ.]
Here Hitler uses the Bible and his Christianity in order to attack the Jews and uphold his anti-Semitism:
-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922 (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939, Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20, Oxford University Press, 1942)
"Christianity could not content itself with building up its own altar; it was absolutely forced to undertake the destruction of the heathen altars. Only from this fanatical intolerance could its apodictic faith take form; this intolerance is, in fact, its absolute presupposition." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is quite obvious here that Hitler is referring to destructing the Judaism alters on which Christianity was founded.)
"The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (The idea of the devil and the Jew came out of medieval anti-Jewish beliefs based on interpretations from the Bible. Martin Luther, and teachers after him, continued this "tradition" up until the 20th century.)
"With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (It is common in war for one race to rape another so that they can "defile" the race and assimilate their own. Hitler speaks about this very tactic here.)
"The best characterization is provided by the product of this religious education, the Jew himself. His life is only of this world, and his spirit is inwardly as alien to true Christianity as his nature two thousand years previous was to the great founder of the new doctrine. Of course, the latter made no secret of his attitude toward the Jewish people, and when necessary he even took the whip to drive from the temple of the Lord this adversary of all humanity, who then as always saw in religion nothing but an instrument for his business existence. In return, Christ was nailed to the cross, while our present- day party Christians debase themselves to begging for Jewish votes at elections and later try to arrange political swindles with atheistic Jewish parties-- and this against their own nation."-Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (See Genesis Chapter 3 where humankind is cast from Eden for their sins. Hitler compares this to the need to exterminate the Jews for their sin against Christ.)
"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord." -Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
"The anti-Semitism of the new movement [Christian Social movement] was based on religious ideas instead of racial knowledge." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (This quote is very interesting for it disperses the idea that Hitler raged war due to being an Aryan supremacist. He states quite clearly that he has a problem with Jews for their belief not race. That is why many German Jews died in WW2 regardless of their Aryan nationality.)
"Only in the steady and constant application of force lies the very first prerequisite for success. This persistence, however, can always and only arise from a definite spiritual conviction. Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain." -Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf (Here Hitler is admitting that his war against the Jews were so successful because of his strong Christian Spirituality.)

Quotes from Other Nazis about Hitler and Religion: "Around 1937, when Hitler heard that at the instigation of the party and the SS vast numbers of his followers had left the church because it was obstinately opposing his plans, he nevertheless ordered his chief associates, above all Goering and Gobbels, to remain members of the church. He too would remain a member of the Catholic Church, he said, although he had no real attachment to it. And in fact he remained in the church until his suicide." (Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer page 95-96)

:)This should I would think stimulate a discusion of Christianities historical part in genocide, slavery and the general degradation of large segments of the world's population. The forbidden N word was applicable to anywhere christianity played its part in the colonization of peoples of a common humanity. The nature of God is to be found in the psyche of man.

I have a bit of a problem with the above. The SS killed roughly 15 million people, of whom 3 million were catholic Poles and over 5 million were Russian POWs, most of whom were Russian Orthodox. While the Jewish Holocaust was the most comprehensive effort at an extermination program (i.e. 75% of all European Jews and 90% of all Polish Jews were killed), they overall were only a relative majority (i.e. not absolute majority) of the total noncombatant victims of the Nazi extermination programs.

Furthermore, someone was defined as Jewish and subject to the same persecution (i.e. death camps) if they had more than one Jewish grandparent, even if they were worshipping Christians. The Holocaust and Hitler's policies were NOT because of any religious priority. Like the Spanish Inquisition, the issue was about racial "Jewry" and not Jewish religion.

The Nazi rhetoric was very mixed on the subject of religious worship, but they were very anti-Catholic, and many of them (especially mystical people like Heinrich Himmler) were very suspicious about Christianity in general. Naziism had self-consciously strong pagan overtones, and it just can't be argued that Jesus had much to do with their policies.

Furthermore, irrespective of Hitler's quotes and beliefs, the planning and execution of the Nazi racial programs, including their camps and ghettos and transportation systems and censuses, etc, happened far beyond even Hitler's own penchant for micromanagement. Bar none the architects of the Holocaust were Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich (at least until his assassination in 1942). At a local level it was the governers general in occupied territories (like Hans Frank) and the Einsatzgruppen (in the occupied USSR) who carried out their own interpretation of the racial policy. And there's essentially no evidence that I know of that there was any kind of Christian motivation, except perhaps among the locals whom the SS employed to round up Jews for them.

Most of the rhetoric had to do with the threat the Jewish "race" posed towards Germany -- and it was never spoken of in Christian terms. And again, if you do some reading about Nazi mysticism and occultism (there are wikipedia articles about this), you'll find that there was a good amount of rejection of Christianity among the Nazis.

Of course the main reason that the Holocaust was self-perpetuating (despite overall being a huge resource drain) was that it provided the Nazis with slave labor. And while this was not ideological per se, the ideology in large part became a rationalization for the Nazi need for slave labor to support a total war. The Holocaust didn't really get going until Operation Barbarossa, i.e. when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, and that's with good reason -- they didn't have the slave labor needs until they committed themselves to that hopeless war.

Aedes,

I do not doubt you are much more well informed on the topic of the Holocaust, my point is that the history of genocide, slavery, subjugation and colonization was very much under the influence of Christianity. As a Jew you must realize that the Holocaust was not the sole responsibility of any small group, it was the generalized failure of humanity in a Christian nation, and internationally a failure of humanity of mainly Christian countries. Christianity wants now to separate itself taking no responsiablity for the horrors of the past, Christianity was an integal part of most wide spread inhumanity to man and that is history. I would not intentionally disrespect the Jewish people, but I believe the Jewish people understand that their plight during this time rests on the inhumanity of an indifferent Christian world, perhaps the world in general, but certainly the Christian world. The strength of Israel today I would venture is built upon the above realization----NEVER AGAIN!! The qualities of ones God/s are to be found in the human psyche.

Yes, I agree with that. The basic phenomenon of antisemitism in Europe was a Christian phenomenon going back centuries and centuries. It exploded in Nazi Germany in a context that was not philosophically Christian, but the heredity of that antisemitic undercurrent certainly was.

Ironic, though, is that in the generations before WWII antisemitism was FAR worse elsewhere in Europe, especially Russia and Poland. Germany was somewhat of a respite for Jews until Hitler came along.

The other irony, however, is that Jews in Germany even during the Holocaust fared overall better than Jews in Poland and Russia. Germans tended to protect German Jews, so overall a greater proportion survived. In Poland and the USSR (incl Ukraine, Belarus, etc), the Jewish populations were completely overrun and decimated, though. It bespeaks the general German feeling towards Eastern Europeans overall, of which the Jews bore the worst brunt.