If God existed, would you repent?

[darthdavid]

If god is real it stands to reason that other things are too. Therefore I start collecting canned goods, make an "iron chariot" and start inscribing my house and newly built iron chariot with runes of protection, placing circles of salt, attempting to contact less psychopathic deities for empowerment and protection and looking to see if I can dig up some sort of anti-deity class weaponry.
Also, very appropriate that LA is home to Hell. I'm sure once we kill the motherfucking sky pixie it'll increase tourist revenue there by a whole bunch. After all, all the cool people spend eternity in hell anyway (I mean, have you ever met any of the people that even come close to qualifying for heaven? They fucking suck.

[Spoonist]

Any jerk who threatens to torture and kill me and my kin if I do not do to others what the jerk threatens to do to me, must be forcefully resisted in any ways possible.
"I was just obeying orders", is not a valid excuse.

[Lord Pounder]

I couldn't in all conscience agree to repent. My very core beliefs are against everything Phelps and his kind stand for. I'd rather die than live as a slave to the whims of Phelp's god.

[Rye]

I couldn't in all conscience agree to repent. My very core beliefs are against everything Phelps and his kind stand for. I'd rather die than live as a slave to the whims of Phelp's god.

Dying is one thing, but eternal torture? I don't think you realise just how much that will suck.

[GuppyShark]

There's a lot of noble sentiments in this group, but I think after a few millenia of torment you'd start to regret it.

Maybe.

[GuppyShark]

Ghetto edit = Replace "group" with "thread"

[Darth Wong]

There's a lot of noble sentiments in this group, but I think after a few millenia of torment you'd start to regret it.

Maybe.

You're assuming that he's telling the truth. Why would anyone assume that such a sociopathic monster is telling the truth? The convenient demonstration he's arranged? That would be in keeping with a sociopath, but it doesn't necessarily mean he's telling the truth about how Satan runs his affairs.

[TithonusSyndrome]

This thread literally reads as one you might find on the Fantasy forum. All the weird canonical entries are being gauged against one another in an attempt to reconcile them. Suprise, suprise.

[darthbob88]

In public, sure I'd repent. Dead men can't act in the anti-Fundie resistance.

[Lord Pounder]

I never gave in to bullies in school and i certainly won't submit to a god bully. I couldn't worship a god that holds a large bat over my head and threatens to batter me if I won't do things his way.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

There's a lot of noble sentiments in this group, but I think after a few millenia of torment you'd start to regret it.

Maybe.

And why would God ever be able to torment us, exactly? We have plenty of resources with which to construct iron war-chariots.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

More to the point, why can't we negotiate a treaty with Satan?

Even if things are as bad in Hell as they're said to be, let's consider the fact that Satan is doomed to lose and be destroyed for all time. Don't you think he'd want to try and change that?

Satan will lose--all things being equal. But it's explicitly stated in the Bible that chariots of iron can defeat God.

So Satan needs chariots of iron on his side if he wants to win in the battle of Armegeddon.

I think he could turn us into demons or something in exchange for the services of our war chariots, and then we'll proceed to take on God and whip his ass (and live forever ourselves, which wouldn't be bad at all).

[Shinova]

Assuming Satan isn't as bad as common culture depicts him as.


I'm going to put myself at the end of the line and see what happens first.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Assuming Satan isn't as bad as common culture depicts him as.

He can be worse for all I care. We allied with Stalin to defeat Hitler, after all. Since we're his only hope for victory and survival, we can name whatever terms we like.

[Rye]

More to the point, why can't we negotiate a treaty with Satan?

I imagine that will happen and it's accounted for under christian eschatology with the various parts of revelation about the mark of the beast and such.

Satan will lose--all things being equal. But it's explicitly stated in the Bible that chariots of iron can defeat God.

No it doesn't, it says that the men of Judah were whooped by iron chariots. How do you plan on using iron chariots against an incorporeal entity that uses plagues, meteors, grotesque amounts of water and pillars of fire to wipe out his enemies?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

No it doesn't, it says that the men of Judah were whooped by iron chariots. How do you plan on using iron chariots against an incorporeal entity that uses plagues, meteors, grotesque amounts of water and pillars of fire to wipe out his enemies?

Meteors aren't worse than nukes, NBC gear is for plagues, pillars of fire aren't much more serious than napalm, and there's no evidence that God can call this stuff down without lots of preparation. He only pulls off a major destruction event every couple of centuries in the Bible.

Also, Judges 1:19 is rather explicit in its description of what happened, and it is not about the men of Judah being defeated, but rather God himself:

And the LORD was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the hill-country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

Emphasis added.

[Rye]

No it doesn't, it says that the men of Judah were whooped by iron chariots. How do you plan on using iron chariots against an incorporeal entity that uses plagues, meteors, grotesque amounts of water and pillars of fire to wipe out his enemies?

Meteors aren't worse than nukes, NBC gear is for plagues, pillars of fire aren't much more serious than napalm, and there's no evidence that God can call this stuff down without lots of preparation. He only pulls off a major destruction event every couple of centuries in the Bible.

Also, Judges 1:19 is rather explicit in its description of what happened, and it is not about the men of Judah being defeated, but rather God himself:

And the LORD was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the hill-country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

Emphasis added.

Judah (& his men) and his military conquests are the focus of all of judges 1. It is clearly about him, not God.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

My guess is that God is an extremely powerful Fae-like creature which is vulnerable to cold iron. The supposition for this is that his only explicitly stated vulnerability is to iron war chariots, and the interesting chronological factor that God's period of rampaging destruction and miracle-working ends almost coterminus with the widespread replacement of bronze with iron in warfare and daily life. He then switched to the Jesus "peace, love, and repentence" tack to hook people, as he could no longer reliably intimidate whole peoples through his powers.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Judah (& his men) and his military conquests are the focus of all of judges 1. It is clearly about him, not God.

If God was with them, how could iron chariots possibly make a difference in the engagement, unless God was unable to deal with them? The reason for failure was explicitly that they possessed iron chariots. Why would this be a problem for God if he wanted them to be defeated, which he clearly did, or else he would have not permitted the attack at all?

[Rye]

Judah (& his men) and his military conquests are the focus of all of judges 1. It is clearly about him, not God.

If God was with them, how could iron chariots possibly make a difference in the engagement, unless God was unable to deal with them? The reason for failure was explicitly that they possessed iron chariots. Why would this be a problem for God if he wanted them to be defeated, which he clearly did, or else he would have not permitted the attack at all?

It doesn't have God playing any active part in the battles, it's like how the nazis had "gott mit uns" and yet were eventually steamrolled by the godless communists and the allies. The god of this hypothetical could say that part of the bible is incorrect or that it didn't get directly involved with that particular battle.

[Jadeite]

I'd abandon being an agnostic pretty fast. Morals and standing up for what you believe in are fine and all, but I'm not going to risk eternal torture. "Onward Christian soldiers!"

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It doesn't have God playing any active part in the battles, it's like how the nazis had "gott mit uns" and yet were eventually steamrolled by the godless communists and the allies. The god of this hypothetical could say that part of the bible is incorrect or that it didn't get directly involved with that particular battle.

Bah, no fun: That produces a contradiction in Biblical inerrancy, which god just supported by having us all follow the Phelpses.

But I know you're just trying to keep people making horrible moral choices, instead of having fun fighting the big Fae in the sky.

[Starglider]

How do you plan on using iron chariots against an incorporeal entity that uses plagues, meteors, grotesque amounts of water and pillars of fire to wipe out his enemies?

If it actually happens, then it is by definition physically possible, we just don't know how to replicate it. I suggest capturing some of those self-righteous angel shock troops and experimenting on them until we can replicate their abilities, unless we can simply arrange a technology transfer deal with Lucifer.

[GuppyShark]

You're assuming that he's telling the truth. Why would anyone assume that such a sociopathic monster is telling the truth? The convenient demonstration he's arranged? That would be in keeping with a sociopath, but it doesn't necessarily mean he's telling the truth about how Satan runs his affairs.

The OP specifies that he's the God of the Bible, and the LA pit is Hell, just like in the Bible. I admit I hadn't considered that it's perfectly possible for similarly powerful beings to impersonate God, or that the Bible might not be telling the truth about Hell, but it does seem to be outside the OP.

The "iron chariots" passage is amusing (and I love the card) but a flawed argument, by the way - if the "he" in that passage was God, it would be He with a capital. Hell, my Bible* says "And they drove out the mountaineers but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the lowland, because they had chariots of iron."

* Got it for an RPG campaign in which I was going to play a Christian paladin in a post apocalypse scenario. I'm not religious. But if God showed up and started throwing down hellfire, I'd change quickly.

[K. A. Pital]

If Mr.God looks inside your head, all your show-repentance is worthless. You can't change the way you think, therefore, God is going to torture you anyway. The best idea would be teaming up with Lucifer, because you can't trust the Bible to depict the REAL outcome of the possible battle - even if this "God" is the real God, I mean, powerful enough to have Hell, Heaven and Earth created by him, it might well be that the Bible is his war propaganda against a similar powered Deity which is Lucifer.