TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has six panels. All of the panels take place in a blue sky with fluffy white clouds.
PANEL 1
A human man, with a beard and a flannel shirt, is standing on a cloud, looking up at God, who is on another, higher cloud. (And is also much larger physically than the human guy). God is drawn in the traditional way: He has a thick white beard and is wearing white robes, and there’s a halo behind His head.
God is grinning and spreading His hands wide in a welcoming manner.
GOD: Hi there, I’m God! Good news! Because I’m so infinitely loving, good and merciful, you get to go to Heaven!
MAN: Okay!
PANEL 2
A close up of God, who as Nadine draws Him has very pretty eyes. He is smiling and pressing his palms together and looking in the direction of the off-panel human.
GOD: But if you don’t love me, I’ll throw you into a lake of burning sulfur where you’ll be tormented day and night forever!
PANEL 3
God smiles down beatifically at the human, who has raised a finger to make a point.
MAN: But… That’s horrible! And it doesn’t make sense! A good god wouldn’t torture people forever!
PANEL 4
A close up of God, with a wailing expression, as He presses the back of His hand to His forehead. He is dissolving into ash, and has already disappeared from the upper chest down.
GOD: Gasp! By pointing out a paradox you’ve defeated me! Now I must turn into ash and die like in that Marvel movie!
PANEL 5
Nothing is left of God but a pyramid-shaped pile of black ash (the ash pile has a halo behind it). In the foreground, the human has mildly surprised body language, and is rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.
MAN: Um…
PANEL 6
God, a merry expression on his face, has reappeared whole on His cloud. He’s crouching down and pointing at the human. Lightning shoots out of God’s finger, engulfing the human and instantly turning the human into a black, charred, and surprised looking skeleton.
GOD: I’m kidding! Have fun suffering in the abyss forever, loser! Hah hah!
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
Chicken fat is an obsolete cartoonists’ expression for unimportant but entertaining details the cartoonist slips into the cartoon.
In this cartoon, in panel one, on the lower left, we can see a little dog sniffing at the cloud it’s standing on. The dog is wearing white robs and has a halo and white feathery wings.
We can’t see the cloud the dog is standing on again until panel five. In this panel, the dog is gone, but there’s a yellow puddle on the cloud where the dog was.
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Where does “Infinitely Loving” come from? I have not heard it in any creed of any church.
Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient are certainly descriptors of God.
God is not all-loving. He is Love, and He is Justice.
Except for 8 people he killed humanity because they were evil continuously. (Genesis 6:5–8)
He called for the total destruction of the nation of the Amalekites, including women and children. (1Samuel 15:1–3)
This is a straw man argument.
He is often said to also be omnibenevolent. I would argue that giving people free will, then sentencing them to eternal torture for using it, contradicts the omnibenevolence.
Even when the term is used in a Christian context (which isn’t often) Omnibenevolence isn’t used to mean all-loving except by the sloppiest Bible readers.
God is good, and is indeed the definition, source, and standard of all goodness.
“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Psalm 34:8
“So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God.” Mark 10:18
Good isn’t “nice.” It isn’t permissive. “Good” teachers don’t let the worst students run the class. It’s a poor analogy, but it makes the point.
Surely we don’t want Jeffrey Epstein or Jeffrey Dahmer or Adolf Hitler or Donald Trump to go to heaven (although it could happen if God intervened). But WE don’t want to be under the microscope! Don’t draw the line somewhere above ME!
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9
Bottom line, when we don’t agree with God and his judgments, it’s our understanding and not his judgments that are at fault.
“Good” is just a word defined by those who use it, like all words. Christians can say that only God is good, and I can disagree with them.
I don’t think anyone should be tortured for eternity, no matter what they do. Punishment is only useful to society to dissuade people from breaking social contracts. No one gains anything by causing unnecessary pain, no matter how much we may think someone “deserves” it. If there is no way for us to hurt anyone in the afterlife, there is no need for punishment. Therefore, if God were to punish someone anyway, it would be out of cruelty rather than love or goodness.
If God’s judgement were fair and our understanding was flawed, then it is God’s obligation to explain in simple terms why it is flawed. Until this happens, I am unable to believe that God is anything other than fictional or cruel.
“Then You are a king!” Pilate said. “You say that I am a king,” Jesus answered. “For this reason I was born and have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice.” “What is truth?” Pilate asked. John 18:37-38
When you essentially say “What is good?,” you sound like Pilate, and it is perfectly within your ability to question “good” and argue against it, philosophize, or even commit your life to it’s destruction.
I think you recognize good and evil. Not perfectly, but well enough to be without excuse. Certainly we both agree that it doesn’t matter what we “think,” but what is actually true. We live by reality, not what we wish was reality. I know I do.
And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith. In that case, we are also exposed as false witnesses about God. For we have testified about God that He raised Christ from the dead, but He did not raise Him if in fact the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men. I Cor. 15:13-19
John 3:16 says God loves “the whole world”
2 Peter 3:9 says God doesn’t want “anyone to perish”
Having this desire and being all powerful and yet people ending up condemned is a contradiction
“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.” Malachi 1:2-3
"The Lord is not slow to keep his promise. He is not slow in the way some people understand it. Instead, he is patient with you. He doesn’t want anyone to be destroyed. Instead, he wants all people to turn away from their sins.’ 2 Peter 3:9
It’s actually an answer to a question that was asked back in verse four. The question was:
“Where is the promise of his coming? After all, nothing has changed—not since the beginning of creation, nor even since the ancestors died.”
It’s just saying God is not in a hurry to destroy everybody. He’s not anxious to get on with it. He wants there to be plenty of time for everyone to come to grips with the fact that they aren’t very kind. That they aren’t good. That they don’t do much practical help for the sick, or the poor, or the downtrodden in this life. That they complain constantly, although their lives are much better than most. That they focus on themselves most of the time and don’t think about others very much at all, except in abstract. Practical help is rarely found in their hand.
“When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when by his own evil desires he is lured away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” James 1:13-15
It’s just saying God is not in a hurry to destroy everybody. He’s not anxious to get on with it. He wants there to be plenty of time for everyone to come to grips with the fact that they aren’t very kind.
Yes, as mentioned more explicitly in Romans 2:4. “Don’t you know his [God’s] kindness and patience is intended to lead to your repentance?”
But this is consistent with what I posted above. God “loves the whole world”, God “doesn’t want anyone to perish”, but what this means in practice is he’s waiting (“kindly”) for people to repent so that he doesn’t destroy them.
So God loves maximally - or at least the Bible writers think he does - being “Omni loving” in their view is consistent with him neither condemning nor saving people, rather giving them lots of time to repent
However this is where I said it was inconsistent with God being “all powerful”. If God desired all people to come to a certain choice, and had all power at his disposal to achieve it, and all willingness on his part to carry it out, then the best possible case would be made to every individual in the world as to why they should repent.
But this clearly does not happen
Therefore the Bible writers are either inconsistent or flat out wrong.
I could point out many “inconsistencies” if you like. Jesus is fully man, and fully God. Man is fully responsible for his actions, but,
A man’s heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. Pro. 16:9
As to waiting patiently, God has clearly set A DAY when things will end. It’s not infinite patience.
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:30-31
For inconsistencies, how about this?
When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and glorified the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed. Acts 13:48
With,
One of you will say to me, “Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “Why did You make me like this?” Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use? Rom. 9:19-21
I suppose you’re in the same position as Job, you want an audience with God.
The Bible is a collection of writings of people wrestling with the idea of a ‘good’ interventionist deity despite the innocent of the world still at times experiencing grotesque pain. The words they put in God’s mouth are, of course, inconsistent or just wrong. Scripture never makes the claim it’s all error free despite fervently held views to the contrary. But those writings are still interesting in so much as they shed light on the psyche of those present at the start of a hugely influential movement.
I don’t want an audience with “God” same way you haven’t given much thought to having an audience with Thor.
There are plenty of arguments for/about various gods that fall apart under basic scrutiny. Apologists still use them all the time, and people who doubts often lap them up.
Put so blunty they do sound like strawmen, but people really argue for these things.
Adonai is not omni-anything, even if He’s the alleged creator of the univers ex-nihilo (which He isn’t.)
Those notions are post-biblical and emerge from Helenic philosophy. So does the notion of Hellfire.
Jesus promised an apocalypse before his apostles all died, which failed to come to pass, and the spiritual ascendence thing is a post-biblical interpretation.
“All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” Daniel 4:35
Omnipotence
“Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite." Psalm 147:5
Omniscience
“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” Psalm 139:7-10
Omnipresence
In the Bible, concepts from the Bible, not post biblical.
In Matthew 24 Jesus tells the disciples when the temple will be destroyed which happened in 70 AD, which he tells them to be alert and aware of the time when it’s happening.
He also tells them of an end time which he says no one will know the day or the time, not even Jesus himself.
That is an interpretation of these passages of the bible, and yet tales are told in which Adonai is surprised, when his own minions turn against Him, and rather than fixing that flaw, He smites them. Even the tale of the flood is the big oops where He decided this build is a wash and has to preload a prior version (which indicates He cannot just go back to the moment the pattern deviated from the intended plan and remove the wing-flapping butterfly that started the problem.)
To be fair, I don’t know what the scholarly consensus is on those specific passages (although the bible teems with literary hyperbole) but the consensus is as a whole, the Bible is not univocal, not inerrant and not divinely inspired. When it is applied, it is attributed what meaning is useful to a given era to lend authority to the ideology of the time.
Of course, if Adonai was omni-x, that would make Him responsible for all the drama in the Bible and beyond. He could put an end to runaway industrialism and war profiteering as He could to volcanic winters and famine, as he could to every case of myiasis or Hantavirus hemorrhagic fever or bone cancer. And that implies He chooses not to create a world with regard to the immense suffering of the life on it, which makes Him, as Epicurus noted, malevolent, at least to His creations.
Whatever your point was in linking to this comment exchange, it was lost on me.
Yeah, I don’t know where I was going with that either.
Is this real?
No, you can tell from the god in it
Yeah, everyone knows that god projects as either Morgan Freeman or Alanis Morrisette.
George Burns is the one true God.
And folks, here in the comments, we have semi-Biblical experts discussing meaning and interpretation like it was LOTR or 40K lore. If someone needs that much explanation for their faith or even a cartoon, then at no point will we ever arrive a solid definition or consensus of the Christian God.
I like to keep things simple. Jesus was a black man and had some really cool ideas. His dad was not really present and second hand-stories about him are often mythical and confusing. Hell, the stories of Jesus are second-hand and often hard to nail down. People can’t agree on the word or rules of this religion so they fight other people outside and inside their religion to distract from the fact we are all going to die and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
I just want to say thank you. I know this is not my instance, and I don’t really want to intrude or proselytize. I didn’t like the comic’s premise and I really just meant to just make the one objection.
I’ve tried to honestly and non-confrontationally to address some if the things people have said to me, but I may have not done that well, and I’m sorry about that if I haven’t.
You have been very accommodating, even to the point that I haven’t been downvoted to hell (lol). Thanks for the visit. I don’t think Atheists are terrible people; actually they think about spiritual/moral things a LOT.
So thanks for your patience. I’ll just be leaving, but I didn’t want to go without saying that to everyone.
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