“The rest is simply creating a god to suit yourself.”
Nonsense. I wasn’t talking about God, I was talking about religions and the people who embrace them. Do you believe a religion is good which has, as a built-in mechanism, a means for punishing all non-members of the faith?
Secondly, explain to me the goodness inherent in demeaning, degrading or defaming other religions that neither do nor wish harm to you or your faith?
Again, these things have absolutely nothing to do with what God may or may not think, since I have stated clearly that I do not claim to know God’s mind. My points pertain to the behavior of PEOPLE and their religious organizations.
No one knows the mind of God, but plenty are more than ready to speak for Him. In the Bible they were called Pharisees. There are a plethora of them around here.
In his first letter to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul makes a statement that seems harsh:
But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. (I Corinthians 10:20, KJV)
I suspect that sacrifice was likely the most common form of worship in the world at that time. You might call I Corinthians 10:20 "demeaning," "degrading," or "defaming" to any or all of the religions of the Gentiles, as Paul is claiming that when they worship their god or gods (or goddesses), they are actually worshiping devils.
By the way, do you notice how this answers the claim that "we all worship the same God?"
I don't care to speculate on what you meant by "inherent" goodness. I will simply say that my God spoke I Corinthians 10:20 by means of His apostle, and that it is good.
Perhaps you would judge the religion of the apostle Paul to be a "bad" religion. You're not alone; there are a couple thousand years worth of people who would agree with you.
I will stand with Paul on this one.
“Do you believe a religion is good which has, as a built-in mechanism, a means for punishing all non-members of the faith?”
It depends whether you are restricting your statement to worldly physical attacks, or beliefs in general. Do you consider hell to be “a means for punishing all non-members of the faith”?
“explain to me the goodness inherent in demeaning, degrading or defaming other religions that neither do nor wish harm to you or your faith”
Please define “demeaning, degrading or defaming”. Euro-style countries have laws that ban such generic morphable concepts, and in practice those terms are used to mean anything the unjust government wants them to mean. They are, for example, used to bring Mark Steyn before a kangaroo court, or to prevent Christians from evangelizing.
Something is either true, or it is not true. It does not depend on whether we consider it to be nice and easygoing based on our view from the 21st century. One of the greatest insights I have ever had is that my attempts to define the world in my own terms were utterly insufficient.
Now I would certainly agree with a lot of what you say - but the principle remains. I am afraid previous posters are right - you are setting yourself up as a "god", in the sense that you are the one defining what is good and what is bad. And like I say, I think your judgement is very sound - but it isn't perfect. No Human discernment is.
This is the faultline with deism. By definition, a deist is someone who believes in god, (or gods, or a supreme being) but has come to that belief by some form of rational or logical process of deduction and reasoning, as opposed to personal revelation. And this is all very well and good, except that it presupposes that all truth can be discerned solely by the powers of the mind. But there are lots of things that cannot be. Human Beings for example. We are creatures of emotion as well as logic. Or love. That is neither logical or rational, and nobody denies that exists.
The reverse does not hold true. All true Christians will have had that personal revelation experience (the exact nature of which varies quite considerably from person to person) - but that doesn't mean that many Christians don't think logically and rationally about their faith as well. I personally had to be intellectually convinced, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
Can you see what I am getting at? I think you have thought very deeply on these things (and that's very good) but I don't think you are addressing all aspects of it.