Per Knight of BAAWA’s suggestion, a thread to redirect the debate going on in this thread. No offence is intended by the title BTW. Let the flamewa… err, discussion, re-commence!
-Jon
I can’t tell the difference between ABC News, Hill Street Blues and the preacher on the Old Time Gospel Hour stealing money from the sick and the old.
The god I believe in isn’t short of cash, mister.
Upshot of the whole god-thing: god is an incoherent, ill-defined term which has no extension at all. It denotes nothing. All god-arguments devolve into “god exists because I say so”. There’s no evidence nor definition of what god really is. It’s a 3-character string devoid of all meaning. It’s an empty, vacuous word with all the force of absolutely diddly-squat behind it.
Period.
You have a lot of periods. Must go through a fortune in tampons. Doofus.
If there is an all powerful god, he is an asshole.
boinks the theo-libertarians 
What makes you think so?
So you think God is like your paragraph?
I’m glad that everyone participating here paid attention in their logic classes, especially the day where those things called “logical fallacies” were discussed.
Well there is starvation, torture, rape, and murder widespread all over the world and he is too lazy to even tell us to stop. What an asshole.
Aww, what a crummy guy that God is for letting people have free will.
I am sure you, or anyone, has gone through some bad experiences. Have you never come out stronger, or wiser, or otherwise a better more thoughtful person by it? What does not kill me, and all that.
But, let us say an infant is killed. Certainly, this is a terrible thing, especially if that is their only time of existence. However, in the context of multiple lives, is it inconceivable that such an experience might be like any of those unpleasant things you learned from in this one lifetime, or at least, in the context of many, many lives, fade in significance? We, for whom mortality seems so final and significant, do not have enough knowledge or perspective to know whether such horrors truly justify characterizing God as an ***. (I actually just typed in the asterisks.)
Eh?
Either your god’s plan is flawed or my three tours in Iraq were intended to make me a better, stronger, more knowledge person and weren’t inherently immoral.
Deity knows they came real close to killing my sorry ass.
*** hypocrite. Yeah I just typed in the *** too, don’t know how anyone could think evil thoughts while listening to Peter Gabriel—you want to witness the Hand of God go see that *** play live…
Well, if we go by your theory, God is a lot like The Broken Window Fallacy.
Or, your plan was flawed. Free will, y’know?
multiple lives? Please kind sir, submit your evidence.
Oh, I guess free will took all the little babies back to heaven and caused all the other unpleasantness too then?
What’s god’s part in all this?
I think that he means in the context of humanity as a whole, rather than supporting some sort of reincarnation. Doesn’t support his case any better, but makes a little more sense.
Granting the ability to choose or reject him.
I don’t know, man, that first commandment seemed pretty much carved in stone as it were.