re: Would you vote for an open atheist for national political office?

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Not necessarily true. A person's religion is typically a very important part of who they are, if they are "practicing", that is. In such cases, their religious convictions can be a large influence on their actions and behaviors.

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Would you decide who your IT guy is based on where he goes to church?

No, that would be absurd.

All jobs should be the same way.

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DisplacedBuckeye

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Joke is on you again. I am an unregenerate. I like my steak cooked well. I will suck it up on the potatoes though. Will let you know when we are heading through and try to make it work. Would be cool to meet you IRL (hopefully after you beat Bama in the CFP).

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I don't believe the God of Christianity is evil, I have no feelings about him at all in fact. I know (as much as one can reasonably know such a thing) that the Christian idea of god cannot exist because in order for him to be, unresolvable universal paradoxes would arise and historical events we know didn't happen must have occurred. That version of God necessarily cannot exist in this reality. Even if he pulled the scientific veil over our eyes, his existence would violate basic rules of universal logic. A God could exist, the Christian God as orthodoxy defines him cannot. It is a certainty.

I'm arguing from the perspective of one who incorrectly believes in that God. Why would I serve a God who created me in his image, and by definition created my emotions and cognitive capacities, and then deals with me and all of creation in a way that is incomprehensibley vile to the senses he gave me?

In other words, if I found God's actions detestable it's only because my mind was created in a way to allow for it.

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I disagree that the Biblical God is paradoxical in a way that would be impossible to exist. I believe that God is a logical God and one of reason that created the natural world with order and structure that uses all of the laws of nature that we are aware of today and rely on to prove that He doesn't exist (or some do, at least). With that, I also believe that God, Himself, exists outside of the natural world, though He interacts with the natural world, and He is not bound by our understanding of this world.

On top of that, I believe that our being is corrupted by the fall of Adam, including our emotions and reason. We cannot, therefore, perfectly comprehend God and all of His attributes. Though we are made in His image, we are wholly unlike God in ontology. While we cannot know Him perfectly, we can know enough about Him to love and worship Him.

I would argue that the human mind was not created to think of God or His actions as detestable, but that due to our fallen and corrupted natures, we can and do see Him and them that way. Being regenerated changes our minds, though. I don't find His actions as detestable. On the contrary, I see them as just and I view fallen man's actions as detestable, including and especially my own.

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I disagree that the Biblical God is paradoxical in a way that would be impossible to exist.

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That's the beautiful thing about science and logic, they aren't dependent on your beliefs or mine. The objectively and impartially show us what can and cannot be true, and the longer we're around the more we discover and the more holes are filled.

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I would argue that the human mind was not created to think of God or His actions as detestable, but that due to our fallen and corrupted natures, we can and do see Him and them that way. Being regenerated changes our minds, though. I don't find His actions as detestable. On the contrary, I see them as just and I view fallen man's actions as detestable, including and especially my own.

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I find this interesting given that most Christians, even the most devout, would bend over backwards to dispute your stance here. Yours would still be the most logically consistent, but clearly the supposed act of regeneration does not change minds so much so that the idea of severely handicapped children Hell is no longer detestable.

The logically consistent view is that all dead babies, mentally handicapped individuals and people throughout history that never heard of Jesus are in hell. That's the only Jesus' death is meaningful. I assert that if that were part of orthodox Christian teaching, the number of Christians would dwindle by a couple orders of magnitude overnight.

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That's the beautiful thing about science and logic, they aren't dependent on your beliefs or mine. The objectively and impartially show us what can and cannot be true, and the longer we're around the more we discover and the more holes are filled.

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Those holes are an awful lot bigger than you seem to think.
BTW, the logic you speak of is greatly influenced by one's worldview. Scientific LAW shows us something can't come from nothing. Where did that something come from? Any scientist worth his weight would have to tell you there a beginning point in time. The logic of many in the science community has immense difficulty admitting that.

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You have a humanistic view of the world (understood). Finite. Limited. You define suffering in one fashion. God defines it is a totally different manner. So sorry, your argument does not hold (again). The ultimate good is a relationship with God, regardless as to the means to achieve it.

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This is the crux of the matter, the inability of religion to hold up to rational scrutiny thus necessitating an conjured scenario by which all thought is unreliable. Because our minds can riddle various theologies with holes we have two choices: Accept our rational conclusions are reasonable, or assume our physical universe is unreliable for the sake of theology.

Throughout history, we have chosen door #2.

Religion is not the matter at hand. Despite what you believe you know, it is still finite. Flawed. Limited. Religion did not teach me that truth. Being a leader taught me that. Being a parent taught me that. The smarter I thought I was the more I realized how little I know. I have no issues with an agnostic. There is much that is unknown and unknowable. I acknowledge that. My issue is with atheists who categorically state they have the ultimate form of truth. They are just as bad as their religious counterparts they mock and decry. They are practicing their own version of humanistic religion with the same trappings and fallacies.

You SOB.

Any idea when that might be? Not sure when we're heading back down. Might not be until June.

Coming up to Montana would be cool. I could use an extra trigger on these damn coyotes.

So long as he's best for the nation, then sure.

And by the way to all you out there, this election was an atheist vs an atheist (or at least agnostic). Neither of them know shite about scripture and didn't really talk about it at all during a campaign. This election showed that the Evangelicals are full of shite when they voted for Trump in mass numbers during the primaries.

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If a perfect being desires something he currently lacks, he by definition isn't perfect. A God who wants is not perfect.

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I'm not sure what definition you are referring to but God desiring glory from His creation does not mean He needs it. Glory from humans is not something He needed to make Himself whole or perfect, therefore "lacking" it did not make Him imperfect.

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We have no responsibility for actions we never could have prevented. Adam had no choice but to sin, because if he hadn't an omniscient being would have been wrong.

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Not at all. If you desire to do something and you do it, whether or not the "game" was "rigged" for you to do that thing doesn't remove the fact that you would do it regardless of whether or not there was another option. Adam's desire to disobey was a real factor; he wasn't fighting against God saying "NO! I DON'T WANT TO DISOBEY YOU!" as he was dragged towards his wife holding the fruit. He willingly partook, which negates any other options that may or may not have been available to him.

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For God to be God, Adam had to sin. Anything else was an impossibility. As such, none of us can be held accountable for our actions because we have no choice.

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Adam didn't have to sin for God to be God. Adam had to sin for Jesus to accomplish the plan of salvation, but God and Jesus didn't have to conspire in that plan for them to exist as they are.

Whether you or forced to choose or you choose freely without any hindrance, you always choose one thing over another. Whether the other options are real or not doesn't change reality of what is chosen. If I told my kid that he had the choice to eat ice cream or broccoli, am I really giving him a choice? Sure, on the surface it looks that way, but I know that he will always choose the ice cream. What if I didn't have any broccoli to offer? Does my knowledge of his choice ahead of time mean he's not accountable for his choice, whether broccoli was a real option or not? Of course not. I think God offers us real choices and knows what we will choose and then directs all of history in accordance to His knowledge.

I think people look at predestination like God is forcing people to do something they don't want to do. It's not that way at all.