pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) (09/05/85)
Dave Clark repeatedly attempts to belittle my position for some reason that I cannot figure out. He tells me I have not presented evidence for the existence of the Damager-God. The evidence of a negative force, entropy, deliberately impeding the natural flow of events (and of our own endeavors), presents itself! Dave, I beat the Damager-God out of chances to harm me by preparing for His evil. Remember what I said about carrying an umbrella? Since God is basically a lazy toad, if I make it inconvenient for Him to harm me, He will go elsewhere and seek me out later. I have no delusions that this will work all the time. But I gain happiness through working to beat Him out, through doing things and enjoying things despite Him. The central issue: is it good, which seems attributable to a mechanistic natural flow, that is controlled by a willful entity, or evil, which strikes us at whim, destroying what we build, acting as if it has a will of its own? Scott Collins wrote about how he prefers Christianity because of selfish reasons: it gives him long term benefits to believe in God. This is yet another case of God's meagerly rewarding those who obey (or propagandize about doing so) to win the sheepish whorship of followers. To top it off, Scott says that he fears being poisoned by the bad fruit of common sense, fearing that he might stop believing if he made use of such sense. That says all there needs to be said about how the evil Damager-God introduces the true poison into people's minds for His own evil ends. Be well, -- Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories pyuxn!pez
swc@cbscc.UUCP (Scott W. Collins) (09/06/85)
~ Paul Zimmerman addressed some issues regarding my recent posting. The most curious item was this: > From: pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman) > Subject: Maltheism: Dave Clark, Scott Collins > > To top it off, Scott says that he fears being poisoned by the bad fruit of > common sense, fearing that he might stop believing if he made use of such > sense. I had wrote: >> The point here is that I am naturally concerned that I might >> be poisoned by bad fruit (common sense). I can see how he could view the aside, "(common sense)", to be a descriptor of what I meant by "bad fruit". Perhaps I should have said, "...bad fruit; this is common sense.". My apologies to those who took it this way and were appalled. My prayers are with those who do think that common sense is bad fruit since God gave us minds of intellect and reasoning. Still, I find it sad that Paul chose to interpret my sentence the way he did without considering the other, more positive meaning that could be attributed to it. Maybe he feels more of a "stranger" to this world than any Christian... (too bad he can't become a stranger to this news group on occasion :-). > That says all there needs to be said about how the evil Damager-God > introduces the true poison into people's minds for His own evil ends. Indeed it does as in your case as above. However, you are turned around on the term Damager-God, as others have pointed out. he is called Satan. Rather than keeping your back to the true, living, loving God and facing Satan (your Damager-God), consider looking over your shoulder for a change. > Be well, Why, thank you. And you, too, Paul. Scott W. Collins "Egads! Who changed all my file permissions to '666'?"