Re: God is Not Great
Dr. LuLworth
Read what I highlighted in your post and read it again and again … until you see that your scenario is a fallacy … A person - does not tell us to bow down to him … For example - let’s say I kill that person then we don’t bow to him do we? Or let’s say this person doesn’t know we are not bowing to him … whenever he visits we bow and when he leaves we do our own thing … By putting a person in that position you have made a blunder in analogy … God is not another person He is The Creator of all those who must bow to Him …
Secondly … God also makes us die regardless of our beliefs … If a person’s disbelief in The Deity benefits him in any way then ask that person to escape death - He can’t whether he was an obedient slave or a rebelious one … Just as our lives are not in our hands our death is also not in our hands … To deny Deity on the grounds of “Arrogance” or for being too proud to be subdued in to obedience is an aimless rebellion because a rebellion must have it’s aims achievable … If our disobedience will gain us anything then surely it should gain us everlasting life in this world and no death … No such rebellion has availed us that … nor do we claim that by being religious we will be saved from death …
Thirdly - your knowledge in world history is tainted with holes … Look to Chinese miltary history … That civilisation is proof of the fact that people have been subdued to obedience through fear of death. Of course, it is better to be offering a reward … and your point is silent on that - Deity has given us the threat of the stick may be, but Deity has also given us the promise of the carrot.
The correct analogy should be like this:
A mother lives on a mountain cliff with her children … The garden is surrounded by a fence for safety … There are big children and little children playing in the garden … The garden is a wonderful area, but the patches outside the garden look appealing, but the elder children know that going over the fence will result in the ground breaking away and their siblings falling to their doom. So the elder children warn the younger ones to stay inside the fence to enjoy play safely … Some younger children however still climb over the fence and fall to their doom - the reason for doing so is that they failed to realise that mother’s fence was protecting them, they thought that mother’s fence was stopping them and imprisoning them …
The fence = rules of morality
mother = the loving nature of Deity
elder children = prophets and guides
younger children = the rest of humanity
falling off the edge = sin and bringing harm to oneself
play = life
safety = moral and good conduct