"If me child says "NO" to me he is due a spanking, some for of discipline. If God, given everyone fair chance at obeying Him (like you'd expect a child to obey you with holding your hand while crossing the street for there own safety) and we say NO in His face through our actions/attitudes then why is it "unfair" for God to execute perfect judgment?"
In all the twelve years I knew my father, he never so much as raised his voice, never mind his hand to me. If I was being bad, he simply sat me down and talked things over to me in a calm, reasoned manner. Mayhaps it was down to the fact that (as my mother told me years after he'd died) that he'd been beaten in his youth; usually because he was the nearest soft target by his father. That sort of experience can change a man's attitude when he becomes a parent himself
In those twelve years, he was a father I could trust. Respect. Love. It was the reason he instilled in me that which made me very much the man I am today. Non-confrontational (indeed, I avoid conflict like the plague; I've never been in a fight with anyone). Non-sexist (my father'd never had an argument with my mother, seeing as his father was a wife-beater as well). Also, an Atheist. 'Chip off the old block', and all that jazz.
He'd seen his father's treatment as unfair, thus he'd never acted that way to me. Now, with this 'father' you refer to as 'God', let me ask you - and for the sake of argument, he does exist. A couple of points, if I may:
1- If he's my 'father' (when he isn't my biological father), then he's the ultimate in absentee fathers.
2- What possible 'wrongdoing' by me could possibly warrant unimaginable - and infinitely painful - torture for eternity? Doesn't that make him the ultimate abusive father?
And we Atheists are supposed to not just 'worship', 'believe', nay, respect such a monster... how? Why? You tell me.
He did order the murder of someone else's son - by his own father, no less. Abraham & Isaac ring any bells, GodChaser?
Reading the sort of bullshit spewed out by fundies such as this on FSTDT, no wonder does the act of doing so reinforce not just my own Atheism, but my acknowledgement of the more than infinite superiority of not only Atheism, but Humanist morals.
