[Cyrus]

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The symbol of the moon crescent and the star is unique among the major religions. To some it has been seen as a ludicrous symbol for a religion. "How is this a god worth having? How can this hopelessly romantic symbol do me any good?" Yet to many others it stikes deep chords. "The world gives everyone the same view of the moon and the stars as me" and "I regret being the cause of that beauty kept hidden for others".
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It seems to me that Islam's strength lies in this symbol. It shows ...
etc etc

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"FYP". I trust you realize we can find uniqueness in every religion under the sun.

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I had thought that the realization of a suffering god was so obvious in the symbol of the crucifiction that it was a standard part of Christianity.

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There is a basic, defining contradiction in the tenets of Christianity, one that my primary school teachers were getting upset over whenever I raised it at them time, and one that no Christian friend of mine (I am one too, formally) has been able to address in any satisfactory way. As expected.

This is the (very simple, really) contradiction:

God is all-knowing and all-powerful. Nothing can be outside God, whether it be in time or space (i.e. God knows what's going on in every nook and cranny of the cosmos; and God knows what has happened, what is happening and what will happen.)

How and why can such a God create Man?

Christianity does not answer that satisfactorily. Why would God need lowly mortal subjects to "worship" Him and "celebrate His glory" ? This is becoming of an Latin American tinpot dictators, not God.

If indeed God created Man, He was essentially creating something that, as He would have ascertained, would fullfill its mission whatever it was (eg glorify God, etc). We cannot assume the opposite, because that would mean that God would create something outside His powers! In other words, God cannot be a gambler, and, even worse, a wagering fool.

So, either God has constructed something, us, Man, which has a CHOICE (that decides Man's AFTERLIFE) and then God helped Man towards the path of the Good Choice by sending down His Son (which is Him again really, only as a manifestation of a man born in Bethlehem) to teach Man and try and set him on the Righteous Path -- in which case, God has created a Man-who-can-fail when He could have created instead Man-who-succeeds. Since we assume that God is capable of both creations, He is only proving (to Himself) that he can create something imperfect!

God as supremely bored.

Or,

God has created Man in order for Man to carry out a MISSION that has already been pre-ordered and pre-determined, i.e. to glorify God, etc, and Man is kept in the dark about his fate, and left to suffer pointlessly. This is a course of events which conforms with the Christian Church's definition of God's attributes --- but leaves Man at a most perilous position, like a disposable and much abused appliance in God's kitchen!

God as supreme sadist.

--Cyrus