Quote:
Originally Posted by idi banashapan
what makes a christian god any more real or important than the greek gods? or the roman gods? or the egyptian gods? or any other god from any other belief system? likewise, the same can be said for all gods compared to any other.
the difference is, the greek gods, roman gods and egyptian gods (and many others) are now part of mythology. they were let go because belief in them disappeared. the same will happen in time to the christian gods. in the mean time, for those who believe, i'm glad it fills that hole for you. whatever your reasons to believe, it is not my concern. the fact I may not agree does not mean I would tell you not to believe. likewise, just because someone does believe, I would not expect them to force their gods onto me.
that said, if god were a real person, or indeed someone wrote a biography and removed all reference of 'god' but implied a living mortal, Stephen Fry is right. He / She would classed as a maniac. A narcissistic, sadistic, psychopath of epic proportions.
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The Graeco/Roman pantheon came and went in the blink of an eye, on the scale of all written history. The Abrahamic God has been around a lot longer and shows no sign of disappearing. Not that I'm making an argument for his existence based on how long-lasting devotion to him has been; simply that there is no evidence to justify the kind of equivalence you're trying to draw. "A failed, therfore B will fail" is an error in reasoning. That said, you should also avoid the mistake of reading the religious state of the UK onto the rest of the world - in most places, Yahweh-worship is thriving.
Stephen Fry may claim that God is a narcissistic psychopath, but the problem with that is that God, assuming he exists (I believe he does, and that the only valid reflection of him is to be found in the Christian church), has the keys to the afterlife. If we are to be judged after we a dead, it will be by him, according to his standard, not our own. Objecting that we don't like God's morals is a bit like objecting that we don't like the questions on an exam paper. The paper is what it is, whether we like it or not, and it is the paper, and only the paper, that stands between us and a pass or a fail.