God quandaries - add your own.

[Kiljaden]

If morals come from God, how do you know God is the moral one?

Would you sell your soul to Satan for eternal life in paradise? If not, switch the word "Satan" with "God" and illustrate the difference.

If you believe in your religion to such a high degree, and others around the world believe their religion to a degree equal or greater (and they do), what makes you think you are right and they are wrong, except egotism?

I pray for my grandmother to overcome sickness. If she dies, God decided it was her time. If she lives, God decided it wasn't her time. Either way, my prayer had no influence on God's decision, so why did I pray in the first place? Unless, of course, I am so egotistical that I think I can influence God, the All-Knowing One.

Got some more?

[Bovril]

I'll see If I can answer each of these, though my answers are only going to be from the point of view of certain religious people, not all.

If morals come from God, how do you know God is the moral one?

I'm guessing you're referring to the Euthyphro dilema. The simple answer is that morality is internal to God. It doesn't make sense in a religious world view to seperate the two. If you try, you're simply misdefining both morality and God.

Would you sell your soul to Satan for eternal life in paradise? If not, switch the word "Satan" with "God" and illustrate the difference.

Selling your soul makes no sense in most religious contexts. What would it even mean? Who gets the reward if the soul is gone? The soul isn't something that can be traded. Besides, Satan, given most conceptions of him, simply couldn't offer you eternal paradise. Your definitions of Satan and soul are all wrong in this question.

If you believe in your religion to such a high degree, and others around the world believe their religion to a degree equal or greater (and they do), what makes you think you are right and they are wrong, except egotism?

Doubt is internal to faith, so being convinced of being right is not actually faith, it's belief, which, in a technical vocabulary, is something entirely different, and is idolotrous. The leap of faith (see Kierkegaard) is not a reasoned, logical event. It's the internalising of a conception of the essential/ultimate. Being right and wrong is not really a good way of looking at things.

I pray for my grandmother to overcome sickness. If she dies, God decided it was her time. If she lives, God decided it wasn't her time. Either way, my prayer had no influence on God's decision, so why did I pray in the first place? Unless, of course, I am so egotistical that I think I can influence God, the All-Knowing One.

Petitionary prayer is, IMO, kind of absurd. A lot of religious people agree. On the other hand, people who use petitionary prayer tend to regard 'fate' as subservient to the will of God. The conception would be that whilst there is a plan, it's God plan and he can change it just as you can change your plans, and since humans have free will, their actions interact with God's plan in all sort of complicated ways.

Hope these answers help.

[The Dude]

I'd like to present a quote from one of the songs in disney's Hunchback of the Notre Dame:

"It's not my fault, if in God's plan, he made the devil so much stronger than a man".

In a sense that is very true. If satan is of god's making, why does god hold us responsible for succumbing to his lure? Did he not design satan to be stronger than men?

[Bovril]

If satan is of god's making, why does god hold us responsible for succumbing to his lure? Did he not design satan to be stronger than men?

Mainly because satan is a symbol representing the necessity of evil in a world with free will. Besides, if that argument held, the fact that God is so much stronger than satan, and man has the ability to chose between the two makes it kind of redundant. But its based on a pretty primitive conception of what satan means/represents.

[Hippolord]

To give you some ansewers from a religious point of view i will tell you this.

Your prayers in the end are worth something to god but he will not diverge from his plans to follow the wants of one being. In the case of your grandmother if she where to die then that was part of his plan and honestly there is nothing you could have done.

If you pray for something like wealth that will never happen you gotta do that yourself. More or less when you pray for something it is basically like in a football game the ultimate decision is up to the ref but your prayers or the equivalant to a challenge where the ref will look over his decision and hopefully change them in your favour.

Yes i do believe god changes his mind ALOT.

Also god is not the ultimate designer of morals i think whgat it is the bible is just another attempt for people to set down there own morals the only reson god does not diagree with people doing this is because he wants us to create our own morals and try to learn he could just tell us everything but that would be like the whole give a man a fish thing.