Originally Posted by
Bigslug
I think you might be using the term "unbeliever" in place of "rejector", and I don't think arrogance plays into it at all.
1. An unbeliever is defined as one who has rejected God, so actually, the terms are not only synonyms, but equivalents.
Ponder great big chunks of human history: Your firstborn son died of typhus; your third was stillborn and your wife died with it; your crops were devoured by locusts; the barbarian horde appeared on the horizon, and, not finding any grain to pillage, made off with your only remaining teenage daughter after beating you senseless and allowing the funnier ones among them to sodomize you by the warm firelight of your burning house for a couple hours.
2. God lets some of us suffer so that we might show others the true value of faith and trust and hope. God made us. We are His, always. He can do with us as it pleases Him toward making His plans for us come true. He even uses the profane and non-believing in achieving this. And when we err, which is often, He sends us situations in which we are calculated to learn and repent. He cares for us more than you'll ever allow yourself to admit. And in more ways than you'll ever in your wildest dreams imagine. If you're referring to Job, and his trials, this was a battle between God and Satan, and he showed the real value and worth of faith, hope and trust. But if you don't want the message God has provided to you, then pass on by, and go your own way. You don't need my permission to do that, but you need to know that it's YOU who has decided to do that, and it is NOT nearly as funny as you think it is. But that's on you, not me.
So let's say God DOES show up in a blaze of radiant splendor - you don't deny his existence, but you call B.S. on his job as a boss, since it seems that "faith and adherence to The Plan" requires you to receive an endless series of kicks to the balls and be happy about it. "Sorry bro - if you really were all that and a bag of chips, I'd still have all that and wouldn't be starving 'cuz I'd have a bag of chips to eat."
3. If you reject God's power over you, and superiority to you, let's see YOU create your own little universe! It doesn't even have to be as big as this one to impress us all.
If our problem is an inability to understand God - well, it has been said that a failing of the student to comprehend is a failure of the teacher to transmit the information. God's either a bad teacher, or he made the mistake of creating sentient beings that don't want to be pawns when what he really wants is worker ants - either way, lots of room for a vote of "no confidence" in the Perfect Being theory. And if you want chips, they're available at the stores, but you even have to work for THEM. Why not work a little to really understand your Maker and Judge???
A certain amount of atheism must stem from looking at the choices as (a.) there is a guy at the wheel, but he's drunk out of his mind AND texting, or (b.) there is nobody at the wheel.
4. Once again, you're not nearly as funny as you fancy yourself to be. If that's the way atheists look at the pursuit of understanding God, then they're looking for a sugar daddy who'll acede to their every whim and temptation. Such a god does NOT exist anywhere, and I believe you know that. His name is really Satan, and if you follow him, as you lead us to believe you do, then ..... you have no right to complain when the check comes due. And when you wake up after dying, and find you've been foolish ...... don't blame us here who've tried to "reason" with you, if that's what you call responding to trashy mocking.