And before anyone asks which one...the Christian God, and assuming he exists obviously.

what

Well, I was thinking earlier about how humans are always striving for perfection. It may even be our main goal. We try to live longer (indefinitely?), we try to get smarter and more insightful, we try to understand the world better, and we try to delve into our own consciousness to see what intangible things we can actually measure; such as love, compassion, intelligence, behavior, and ethics to name a few.

Almost every one of these explorations requires science and almost every one of these explorations meets up with religious adversity. For some reason, Christians feel threatened when we try to become perfect beings. BUT THAT'S (supposedly) THE WAY GOD ORIGINALLY CREATED US! So I don't see why people feel God would have a problem with perfection. Either God wanted us perfect or God wanted us to be imperfect (original sin). It can't work both ways.

I was going to start a specific thread on humans "striving to perfection", but decided to make a more general one instead so that we can get to the crux of the issue as opposed to debating one single example.

Christians claim to know God's intentions, but when non-Christians point out any flaw in their logic, they're often told "You can't know the mind of God."

Is it even possible to know the slightest bit about what God wants?

Yes!

Psa 33:11 The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.

Pletho

If there is a God, I'm convinced I can know nothing about such a thing.

i agree with Pletho. we can know the mind of God.

Isaiah 45:7
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

What a glorious mind.

Genesis 6:7

The LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."

all praise this awesome being!

Great passage. I didn't vote because none of the responses contained the word sometimes or partially. Obviously we can't know all of God's thoughts but knowing his heart is a million times better. He showed how big it was on the cross when it was broken. How do I know the cross broke God's heart? Because the earth darkened over Jesus Christ in his extremity on the cross.

Abba's (Daddy's) heart was broken when the children of God's beautiful, strong, big brother (Jesus) died on the cross. Then God raised him from his dead so he could bestow his Spirit on the world and adopt more children. He just likes to give us the privelege of going out and locating them which the saints call evangelizing (note the angel inside the word) while The World calls it proselytizing (which sounds like a dirty scientific procedure.) Oh well that's how the world's mind works I guess.

Exodus 23:23

"For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them."

only a beautiful all loving mind could come up with such poetry of life and goodness

Jeremiah 50:21

"Against the land of Merathaim, go up against it, And against the inhabitants of Pekod. Slay and utterly destroy them," declares the LORD, "And do according to all that I have commanded you."

Hallelujah!

You made several typical mistakes nonbelievers make:

1. You think you can derive motive from words without knowing anything about the culture or the situation.

2. You think you are good enough to judge God.

3. You think you are intelligent enough to judge God.

4. You forget your judgment has no force or power with God.

5, You utterly discount God's ability to read men's future intent.

6. You challenge God's right to rule over men.

7. You forget the Israelites were actually there and they claimed to experience God and act on his orders. (God saved them from Egypt) And that there's quite a bit of world history validating the bible.

8. You utterly discount that God can have a future plan for the WHOLE world that he is putting in motion.

9. You assume death to be a punishment in every instance in which you blame God.

10. You constantly take things in the Old Testament out of context without even considering a lot of the action in it is from people of fallen natures whch means they almost always operate from wrong motives or forget God or misinterpret how God wants them to act. Much of the bible if you focus on the motives of the various people show that. You can always see the attitudes that please and displease God and the good or evil intents but you NEVER look at the context, intent or God's overall purpose. Its much easier to focus on condemning an act or actions: sort of like I go in a grocery store and steal a loaf of bread and you condemn it. You never look for the mitigating circumstances that explain or excuse it. I may have been starving for a week. I may be missing a hand and can't work. I may not be able to speak the language to even beg for bread while I'm starving. You always overlook those conditions in your eagerness to condemn God.

(Then when this is pointed out to you you take refuge in: God is an absurd concept. You can't have it both ways though atheists on here constantly vacillate between the two positions. )

You make the same mistake all believers make trying to rationalize away clearly written biblical passages that describe an evil god.

If we can't understand the the "true" meaning of those rather clear passages, then we can't understand anything else written in the bible, either.

Yes, he's sufficiently intelligent to understand those passages, and he's sufficiently moral to be repulsed by them.

In other words, if God wants to commit mass murder, it's his right as cosmic dictator, and none of man's business to question it. Just have faith that it's all somehow for the best!

He didn't question the bible's validity, at least not in this thread. Rather, he's morally outraged by God's capriciously cruel acts. Any sane, rational person possessing moral conscious would be.

"Trust me, mass murder is really for the best."

You'd think God could communicate more clearly. If these apparent moral outrages only appear so because we can't understand the "context," then we really can't understand anything. This is just more feeble rationalization.

LMOA! Don't you see the irony in this statement? You just spent and entire post trying to rationalize God's apparent evil by claiming He's really good in some cryptic, ineffable sense that we can't really understand. Then you complain when atheists say that the Christian God is incoherent.

YOU can't have it both ways. Either we can in fact understand the OT, in which case God is hideously evil, or God is nevertheless "good" in a sense we can't comprehend, which (yet again) makes him sink into a muck of contradictions and absurdity.

bluesbassmen God can never commit murder or genocide. You have to be human to do it.

Also God can harvest souls. If he chooses to do it one at a time or in a big clump is his decision and has been for quite some time.

As Abraham said "though I am but dust and ashes" when he spoke to the Lord. He knew it was up to the Lord whether or not he could ever be more than that.

Option 3 imo. There's a typo in it (maybe that's why you didn't choose it? ), because we're not able to edit polls.

Oh, there's also no poll option for "only when he does good things." Sorry to disappoint.

+1

This makes PERFECT logical sense and I can't understand why Christians don't agree.

splendour, god has committed murder, genocide, as well as killing ALL OF MANKIND on one occasion. how quickly we forget Noahs Ark. you take that story as true. he killed everyone on Earth but Noah and his family.

thats beyond genocide. keep those fingers tightly in those ears.

blah blah blah

translation "God has a right to kill everyone if he wants."

edit: and lets not forget, its never actually god comitting genocide. its humans, who say they have permission from god. what could be more sickening?

in what way could a Muslim not also say the same things as justifying his killing of YOU! is it ok then? what if he wholeheartedly believes God wants you and everyone like you dead. is it ok then? when is it ok?

EPFR

The strive for perfection is an imperfection in and of itself. The sooner one realizes this, the sooner they can gain enlightenment. Every individual was made flawed somehow. We use our strengths to complement others' weaknesses.

Enlightenment does not exist, just existance itself exists, like god exists. How can one strive for something that already is?

Is It Possible To Know The Mind Of God?

Colossians 2:9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form

Christianity portrays The Creator as being disclosed in the person of Jesus Christ. Which is also why the Christian God is a personal God.

By learning as much as you can about Jesus's life, Gods modus operandi is revealed.

Without delving into the esoteric I'll say that it's both a process and a state of being that is attainable. Before you ask, no I'm not there, yet.

Realize that words are just words,
how can one see what cannot be seen? When you want to objectify something, you have an agenda, if you have an agenda then you wish to control, and wanting to control something that cannot be controlled is nonsense.
Concepts, ideas of the mind get in the way to seeing what has always been there, and always will be there.