People just aren't that smart. We make dumb choices all the time, despite what we know to be right. "I can beat that train," "I know I'm married, but who will ever know?", "Yes, the volcano's going to erupt, but I'm not leaving my house dammit."

So God appears to everyone, completely erases all doubt of his existence, and manages to convince us that we're not hallucinating. Hell, maybe even Radar is convinced. Then what? When you have kids, and you tell them "God appeared to me," they'll look at you like you've just gotten off the bus from Mars. A thousand years go by, and people reading our record of what we saw God do (our Bible, so to speak) will have the choice to believe it or not. Cue wars, biblical theme parks, blogs, ad infinitum.

Unless what you're saying is that God has to personally appear in Technicolor to every member of his creation at whatever point they decide they want to see him or else they're not going to believe. That wouldn't be a God, that would be your own little dog and pony show. Maybe after the first couple thousand years of people saying, "Oh yeah? PROVE there's a God," he just got a little bored with the whole thing.

Would that be too taxing? The rest of the physical world is available for every generation, not just once every 2000 years or so near the Mediterranean.That sounds more like a Greek or Roman god, ruled by whims, than one of infinite love, compassion, and patience. I'm not particularly impressed by "but God is too big and important and busy to show up to you, just take the word of people 2000 years ago." arguments.

So only WE can make demands? That's kind of arrogant. I think God is compassionate and loving, but I don't think he has a duty to us to be infinitely patient. How convenient it would be if God was like a pay-as-you-go cell phone. No contract, no hassle, just a little gadget to have at your disposal when you felt like it. Come to think of it, if God was a cell phone, we'd be demanding free service with no roaming charges, and if we didn't get it we'd switch back to smoke signals just to make a point.

Maybe this isn't a good analogy, but here goes: If you had a kid who told you every day how much he hated you, did everything against what you taught, ran away from home and refused to come back, would you force yourself on him?

I'm still waiting for the first demand from him.

If I loved him? Yes.

If I had given him free will to see if he could be taught. No. I'd just try again.

As someone who's seen it happen in my own family, I have to say that eventually you reach saturation point. No matter how much love you have for someone, the time comes when their rejection of you and everything you stand for has to just....be.

I don't really care to transcribe the bible word for word, but the info is there for those who want to read it. In addition, my opinions are my own, and don't necessarily reflect those of this station, its advertisers, or its deity.

I have the same questions as a non-believer, but I guess they've been answered on a spiritual level. Why God doesn't answer them for everyone is a mystery to me. I know it's a harder position to defend than "I haven't seen it, so it never happened," and I'm underprepared in any event.

As far as defining evil, though, my point is that it's just something that exists - maybe it's an active force, maybe it's a condition, the nature of it doesn't need to be quantified as long as the effects of it are apparent. But if it's the same condition that causes both minor wrongs (saying something shitty to someone) and major (murder and rape), the only moveable part in the equation is the person's willingness to submit to it.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. If I don't even know whether God exists, how could He have demanded anything of me? If He had, I'd know.
That kid has to know that I exist in order to hate and disobey me.

Wouldn't that come under things like human nature and ego?

It could, I guess. But in my paradigm, human nature is inherently biased towards evil and ego is a manifestation of that.

HM, the 'arrogant enough to make demands' bit referred to the idea that God should be compelled to reveal himself on demand to a being that he created.

Only if He cares whether or not they believe in Him. And "reveal himself on demand" isn't quite the right phrase. I'd say "reveal himself in order to make demands".

.......i'll take it you're the glass-half-empty type.

Not at all, I love life. I didn't say we were EVIL evil, but our natures tend to lean that way. As innocent as little kids are, one of the first words they learn is "mine." When a baby wants a bottle, do you get a polite tap on the shoulder and a pleasant smile? Nope, you get the full volume of baby's displeasure. These aren't evil things, but they do indicate that as soon as we come out of the chute, the first thing we worry about is, "what's in this for me?" and that doesn't significantly change over the subsequent 75 years.

Of course, we do lots of good things too. But during the course of a day's interaction with your fellow primates, you will probably experience their selfishness far more often than their goodwill. It's not that we don't TRY to be good, we're just not good at it.

Are you selfish for curling up tightly into the fetal position during a polar bear mauling? A baby crying when hungry is the same thing. Self defense. To call the baby selfish is really stretching it. Read a book on child development.

Read the dictionary. selfish - concerned exclusively or excessively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others

You're applying a connotation to the word that I wasn't implying. Of course the mauling victim isn't worried about anyone else, nor is an infant. I'm saying that we aren't born with a natural altruism. If you're suggesting that the only time babies cry is to answer a biological survival impulse, I'd suggest that you not read any more child development books. Kids are prone to throw fits when the mood strikes them, for no other reason than they didn't get their way.

Fair enough. I also think we aren't born with any evil in us either. You called kids "innocent" in your previous post. But you seem to think they are not. I think of newborn babies as an innocent clean slate in the good/evil department. I've never heard anyone besides you saying they lean toward the evil side of the equation.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Babies cry when they need stuff. Whether it's food, a clean diaper, physical contact, a good burping, you name it. These are physical needs. Survival impulses. I could go into more detail, but virtually any child development book written in the last 20 years will enlighten you. These books, by the way, are based on scientific studies of babies. But I know science doesn't impress you.

Are we talking about babies, or about kids? You throw these different terms around a lot and they mean vastly different things.

Let's stop the semantic tennis match. Babies cry when they need stuff, but at some point in the first year, realize that the crying thing works for getting what they want, too. Doesn't mean they're evil. Does mean that if there's a good/evil paradigm in the universe, that we are instinctively aligned with the less pure side.

Babies and kids are used interchangeably for the purpose of my argument to mean "humans at an early stage of development."

I think you knew that, though.

I am too, impressed with science