Coercive Christian Recruiter Claims Coercively That His Deity Refuses To Coercively Recruit

In that context of a larger discussion,
a coercive fundamentalist Christian asked:
"he (my God) knows exactly what it would require to coerce you to believe in him, yep. Should he choose to?"

-- My response: *According to all versions of Christianity*, ... He DOES choose to coerce. That's what this life is; an attempt to coerce humanity into a relationship with him. How? By leaving us all stranded in a nightmarish physical hellscape. Why? Just to prove how unqualified we were are to be autonomously functional adults. Could we ever grow up enough to finally qualify? Nope. Why? Because he designed us to not be able to fully 'adult'. Why? So that we never outgrow the NEED of codependency with a larger-than-life hover-parent. Why? So that HE never has to outgrow it.
[Note: "He" is just an alter-ego puppet-king for evangelizers. It is actually THEY who are making sure they never have to outgrow the codependent Master/Servant dichotomies they feel so entitled to.] That's why "he" had kids (and recruits others) in the first place. Clearly, He wouldn't even know how to define himself without lesser-people cowering beneath. That perpetually needy ego is worse than gluttonous.
It is the all-consuming FIRE that must always be fed. In the stories, he set Adam and Eve up to fail. That way, he could define himself as a victim. Boosting his sense of being righteous requires having some alleged "evil" to posture over. Here, the Father tries to justify the RESULTS of his own parental neglect. How many time did the "God" character (or even the angels) spend with Adam and Eve before the so-called "fall"? How much nurturing and education does it say were given by gods or angels? Someone could imagine they got lots. They could argue "it just doesn't say". They could argue that we aught to assume the best possible "behind the scenes" stuff, for every story in bibles. But it's an essential point. If they didn't get enough, then it's definitely "God's" fault. If they did get enough, then we could argue (poorly) that it's Adam and Eve's fault. But clearly they didn't get enough; because it wasn't physical hunger they were acting on. And whatever they WERE acting on ... could only be something they were created to want and didn't already have enough of. The story is intended a threatening moral-tale to everyone who hears the story. In that story, Eve is very naïve. She's very much a child; exactly how most Christians say we were all meant to be. Like all loving and innocent children, she wants to be closer to Father. She wants to understand him and his world better. She wants to grow in her understanding of herself and her life; especially as she relates to her parent. Father told her something interesting. Father told her she can become more like him if she eats from a certain tree. Father put that tree right in the middle of her garden home. Father could have piled manure there and told her not to eat THAT. But Father chose to test her with a lovely fruit tree instead. "Do not eat from this", said Father. And then he told her the interesting thing. She will grow. She will grow in her experiential knowledge; in her understanding of some higher domain of consciousness. And it MUST be a good domain of understanding, because it's a divine domain of understanding. Otherwise, it wouldn't make her more like "God" at all. She will gain understanding that makes her more like Father and more able to relate to Father. She will gain greater understanding of herself too. All good girls want that. But not because they hate their Father. Not because they hunger after power or prestige. Such things are beyond the scope of any innocent child. Rather, she loved her Father. She had an inborn desire to grow; while reaching UP towards the towering figure who sets the standards. He told her not to. But his warning didn't make any sense, because it was specifically about concerns she could not grasp. What is "right/good"? What is "wrong/evil"? What is "die"? She was not equipped to understand any of these things. She had no frame of reference with-which to provide an understanding. To gain that, she would have to first eat from that tree. That means she wasn't morally culpable until after she ate it. It also means that any and every motivation she had for eating it, before-and-during eating it, was something she was born with. If we want to call the act a "sin", then this means she was born (what I call) "sin-magnetic". She was designed with certain natural inclinations that the snake's words and the fruit itself appealed to. Nobody can appeal to something within you or I ... if we do not already have that specific "something" to appeal to. Turn on the News tonight. Watch. Wait. See if anyone got caught breaking into barn to eat horse poop. It won't happen. Why? Because it's one of many things that are bad for us ... that we have not been "designed" (by God or by nature) to have any interest in. But SHE came into this world with certain pre-embedded interests; which the snake was able to appeal to. Her reasons where innocent; because she was not yet capable of having non-innocent reasons for anything. It was something a Father should be proud and flattered about. It never should have been forbidden. The writer of that story was unqualified to impart moral lessons to his fellow humans. It was probably some Grandiose Narcissist parent. Nobody else reasons that way. He was probably venting through "moral lessons" about: * how his estranged children should have behaved, and * how justified he was to respond by kicking them out (when they were too young to be out on their own) and then * to justify disowning them. He probably wanted his grandkids to read the story ... and "learn from it" so he can then manipulate them into-and-under his control. That would certainly be the usefulness of it. And we do see Christian using it that way with their own (very unfortunate) kids. Although, the writer did steal most of the story-ideas from other and older religions. What would have made a better story? They should have been born understanding right from wrong. Today, Christians say we ARE. They call it having God's laws "written on our hearts". So Christians admit it's perfectly fine for "God" to have us born with such knowledge. But then they rationalize how Eve was denied that understanding, by arguing it would be a violation of Free Will to give us any important moral answers so directly. They want to have their moral cake and eat it too. But it doesn't work that way. Eve either did or didn't already posses the knowledge/understanding of right from wrong. And it's either fine or it's not fine for a God to directly impart people with such knowledge. The story says she didn't understand the difference between right and wrong until after she ate it. Christians rationalize the punishment by arguing that she already understood before she ate it. She was either born innocent or not. If she was innocent until after she ate it, then she could only have innocent reasons for eating it. Meanwhile, that fruit could have been a "coming of age" reward; to elevate humanity into a closer and deeper relationship with "the God of morality" by elevating them into understanding morality. -Or (better yet) start them off with that knowledge. And then let the depth of relationship (which that knowledge makes possible) be its own reward. And if anyone ever strays from the path, let the natural consequences of that divergence be the lessons they learn by. There's no need to get angry and vengeful. But in that story, Father (despite having much better options available) kicked those kids out of the house. Technically, it was a garden. He never let them into the house. They had to sleep outside in the dirt. It was very nice dirt. But there was no society (not even a village) waiting for them outside the garden gates; something all families actually do need. They got kicked out into the cold without being first educated about how to stay alive and healthy in the world. Worse yet: That "Father" preplanned for all of this to happen. Clinical therapists call this "Narcissist rage". It's not real anger. It's theatrical anger; done to amplify their role as a victim. It's an attempt to ensure that the "wrong doer" (who didn't actually do anything wrong) will feel ashamed into never upsetting the narcissist ever again. -- While the "God" character in those stories was setting that stage for all that theater, .... He planted super-poisonous plants, fungus, microorganisms, etc.; all throughout the land and water. He also planted totally safe things that look almost exactly like the poisonous versions. He even laced random water sources with tasteless, colorless, odorless toxins like arsenic. He never even warned them about any of it. Nor did he give them (nor us) the knowledge or tools needed to stay safe. Not even their randomly favored descendants would be given such knowledge. Father also tampered with every human's DNA, to make sure their nerves and brains would amplify every form of pain/suffering, to make countless forms of injury unbearable (and often inescapable); even from causes that we (each individual person) can't be rightly blamed for. Who would do such horrible things? What kind of person would then try to justify such actions? In your culture, you'd say a "good" (or, good-enough) person would try to justify such things. But in the real world, that just can't be justified; except on the premise of "Might Makes Right". -The core tenant of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. But most humans today lament the mistakes of past humans who built social and political power-structures with those "isms". Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes always turn into horrific chapters of the human story. None of us would want to live under Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Abraham, Moses, or the Catholic church. It would be too easy for us and our loved ones to get tortured and killed over ideological differences. Meanwhile, eternal discard is another page from the clinical Narcissist playbook. Worse yet, in that story, He uses them as an EXAMPLE of what will happen to Adam and Eve's own kids, grandkids, etc... if they don't make him feel sought, loved, and feared enough. If we imagine that as being totally real, then I'm not sure who I'd feel more sorry for; the people who are placed under such threats or the people who get punished for never hearing about it. In the course of those stories, sometimes, if he got mad enough (even about petty matters), "Father" would actually poison, burn, disease, starve, and drown humans (even children); as a lesson to whichever people survive. --- MEANWHILE, [here in the real world] ... If ANY sentient person(s) want me to know they exist, all they have to do is walk up and say "hi!". I do it all the time. So am I "coercing" or "violating free will" when I say "Hi"? --

Christianity grossly overcomplicates and skews life and love; into a strange mess of surreal and macabre preachments. And all with a smile.

Granted, sometimes the smiles is actually pleasant and disarming. Credit where credit is due. But that's just good marketing.

But then they get offended and defensive when we try to help them realize just how badly their religious culture has warped their cognitions, relationships, and values. They don't get everything wrong. If they did, they'd all be either dead or in prison by now. How old-school Christians say we should think, live, and love in this world is largely incompatible with what humanity has learned about human psychology, sociology, neurophysiology, biology, etc.. Evolution isn't the greatest scientific challenge to fundamentalism. Neither is geology or various forms of material-dating. No. The greatest scientific challenges to Abrahamic-religiosity (or "faith") are: 1. the ongoing modern, and proven discoveries about how the mind works (alone and in groups) and 2. what constitutes good health (physical health, mental health, social and societal health). Christian-themed cultures do allow those discoveries to upgrade their "spiritual" narratives; but not nearly fast enough to keep pace with the discoveries and growth happening on the larger stage. The only versions progressing at a halfway decent speed at the "progressive" churches. 
-- --
To quote world-renowned scientist Dr Robert Sapolsky (an American neuroendocrinology researcher and author):
“I’m not saying ‘you gotta be crazy to be religious.’
That would be nonsense.
Nor am I saying, even, that most people who are, are psychiatrically suspect.”

What he is saying, he continues, is that “the same exact traits which in a secular context are life-destroying” and “separate you from the community” are, “at the core of what is protected, what is sanctioned, what is rewarded, what is valued in religious settings.” -- On a global scale, the stakes couldn't be higher. Many of us humans are trying avoid going extinct. In fact, with millions (maybe billions?) of people thinking "the end" is going to happen any day now, and actually wanting that to happen, that really steals away so much human resource; away from where it's needed most. It makes our world disposable. It makes most people in our world disposable. We aren't trying to stumble anyone from a path of righteousness. We're just trying to help our old-school religious brothers and sisters realize just how far your religion has detoured you from your individual potential and our collective potential. We want a "close personal relationship" with you. We want to help you learn how to have that; with others and with yourselves. But most of us aren't going to your churches or other gatherings to help. We don't want to be disruptive. We aren't going door-to-door about it either. We are just responding; when fundamentalists bring their cultural "message" to us. If there are any super-designer/creator(s), they absolutely don't resemble anything like what Bible-writers imagined and rumored about them. Maybe Deists have it right. Maybe "agnostic theists" have it right. But Christians? Not a chance. And we should be glad that aren't. Because it would not be "good news". Nobody needs to be "forgiven" for being imperfect. It's an impossible (albeit nebulous), and therefore unfair, and therefore unjust standard to be judged against. Nobody should be held morally responsible for what some fabled distant ancestors did. Everybody's true social, civic, and ethical duties to others (and to self) are a great deal more rational and health-inducing. Bible writers grossly misunderstood humanity. Consider this instead: Try our hardest to avoid causing real injury to others (and to self). Strive, in all matters, to be mutually equitable with what we give and get. Be courageous enough to own it when we've been unfair to others (and to self). Make amends as best we can. Through all of that, we will grow and get reborn (again and again) as better selves. Along the way, just try to find, create, and share as much beauty, joy, and peace as we can. That's all a "good father" should expect of us. In fact, a good father would want us to outgrow our dependencies on him. He would want to remain relevant and loved. But obedience isn't the key to that. The grass is greener where we nurture it. Fear isn't the way. Threats aren't the way. Vengeance isn't the way. Time-limits aren't the way. Infinite love is infinitely patient. And it's very directly involved. That's all we can fairly ask of ourselves and others. It's unethical and unreasonable to reduce the value of each person's existence down to their UTILITY for a super-father's ego (glory). Christians can and will deny such a sentiment. But we DO correctly understand what we're being told. They're being dishonest to deny it. Nor is it ethical or reasonable to threaten people that we all better believe certain people did certain miraculous things in the bronze and iron ages. Calling that a "friendly warning" isn't going to work on any well-matured adult. We know a threat when we hear it. Plus, in your "totally not a religion's" narrative, it was your GOD who set and fanned the fires of ignorance, confusion, and destruction that you are now trying to "rescue" us from. How is that loving? It's also dramatically anti-ethical and equally unreasonable to judge or 'asses' the moral character of ANYONE as being fatally deficient merely because they aren't impressed by your stories. It's even much worse to leverage every human's worthiness to keep existing (in peace) "unless they believe". People can't just "choose to believe" anything;
let alone anything that is fantastically unlikely and unreasonable.
Case in point: DEMANDING and "warning" us to believe: A Jewish carpenter in the iron age was secretly a carefully crafted sack of kosher Jewish man-meat; being covertly puppet-controlled by: the submissive personality of a multiple-personalitied, violently insure deity; posing as a human. That deity planned to de-animate the Jesus-puppet for a few days. Theatrically, it was called a "death" (human sacrifice). Why? Just so that he could give himself permission to "forgive" us for how HE made us. Ignoring how that doesn't actually make any sense, ... Why go through all that trouble? Here's the only answer to that question ever offered by Christians: Just to satisfy arbitrary board-game rules that he himself arbitrarily decided to write in the first place.

But since when is that "God" obligated to his own laws? He changes his laws whenever he wants to; according to the stories. So why not just change the rules of the game so that neither he or nor we have to jump through strange hoops just so he can forgive us for stuff he shouldn't have held against us in the first place? We (you and I) didn't choose to be "created" imperfect.
If you really think about it, it is HE who should be apologizing to US. Moreover, a Super-being could not rationally justify expecting anyone to believe any of it.
Even the people who saw anybody "die" ... couldn't have known that some cosmic Sherriff was mentally attaching all that meaning to the event. To any human, it would have looked like any random criminal suffering a very common death. Nor should a Super-Being kill, discard, or abandon people who don't listen or care. Nor should a Super-Being feel personally rejected by anyone who HAS listened but didn't find it credible. Nor should people be judged by different standards. -- If one person is judged based on their response to a pretty good sales-pitch from a rather impressive person, and another is judged based on their response to a very sloppy sales-pitch from a rather awful person, and another is judged by different criteria entirely because they never even heard that sales-pitch, and many others each heard some of those BUT each responded differently because of totally subconscious reasons which had nothing (at all) to do with their moral character, ... then "God" is unjust. Nobody should be BLAMED for being unimpressed by any version. Nobody should be eternally judged for being tricked into thinking a wrong-version is true either. Catholics aren't "rebelling" or "rejecting" any "God". Neither are Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, deists, pantheists, etc.. In fact, not even anti-theists are "rejecting" any "GOD". It's not a moral failing to think gods don't exist. Nor is anyone just pretending to not think your "God" exists. Nobody in the entire world is "rebelling" against (or hating) any actually-existing "God". Please stop telling them what they "really" think and feel. You really don't know. They know. And a good relationship involves listening. Nor should such persons be damned for not seeking out any invisible, inaudible, intangible, colorless, odorless, non-footprint-leaving, non-feather-shedding, non-cape-flapping Super(god)man. There is nothing about sunrises, sunsets, puppies, kittens, rainbows, physics, etc that logically or morally compels any minimally-decent human to think: *"I feel called to seek out a hidden deity. * Surely there are some such beings, playing a high stakes game of Hide and Seek with all adults * of a minimum age to be accountable,
and
* of a minimum IQ to think in such complicated ways,
but
* not TOO smart; so they don't overthink it. * Surely there is only one, * Surely it's a "he". * Surely he wrote a book. * Surely that book is a best-seller. * Surely I can identify it. And * surely I'll lucky-stumble into some fallible asshole (obscured in a virtual ocean of competing pretenders) who is qualified to "lead" me into a proper understanding of it. * Surely there is an invisible FORCE (like in Star Wars, except more power and more personal) who will GAURENTEE me to get this all correct before I die (but apparently can't guarantee it for everyone else), * Surely Super-He made this entire universe for ME. I am super-humble enough to believe that.

* Surely he has a favorite "one true religion" which is also "totally not a religion". * Surely there are a list of approved and disallowed things to think, say, or do. * Surely we aren't allowed to honestly call those "rules", even though there are serious risks of penalties if we don't at least TRY to obey those "totally not rules". * Surely that "totally not a religion" has thousands of years of history of bloodshed and tyranny, but ALSO did some great stuff sometimes too. *Surely we're supposed to rationalize and excuse the bad stuff away, with fallacies like "No True Scotsmen", "Texas Sharpshooter", etc.. *Surely that great KING can't be blamed for how badly he himself designed humans. *Thus, surely he can't be blamed for how badly he FAILS to be understood by countless-many earnest listeners. Who should blame a king of a general for how chaotic and ineffective his armies are? NOT I. A proper licker of boots would never dare; lest we should be kicked in our bootlicking face for our insolence! * Surely his favorite people are called to righteously lie and gaslight, "whenever that's what it takes" to lead more people into the light. * Although, when the "wrong" religions are deceptive for THEIR religion, we should call that out. Because it's wrong to lie, unless you are lying for the Lord. * Surely God's favorite people, for thousands of years, made it dangerous for non-members to come out as *not-one-of-us*. That way, outsiders couldn't DO anything great unless they pretended to be fellow believers. That way, true believers could get all the credit ("all things for his glory"), etc etc. ALL of this is so obvious. I mean ... *LOOK AT THE TREES!" [*Just please don't notice our cult hiding behind those trees ... attempting to influence what you to think ABOUT the trees.]

-- -- Meanwhile, I'm easy to find. And if I'm not VALUED enough to have coffee with, and speak one-on-one DIRECTLY with, ... then I'm not valued. That's what makes ALL Messengers offensive. Even before they (metaphorically) roll down the front window in their otherwise windowless van in the park, to let all the other kids know that our "Father"

is looking for us and sent (random self-proclaimed messenger) to retrieve us so they can bring us to where there is the most heavenly candy. I already know, from hard-earned knowledge of how the world actually works, ... Anyone who believes it is going to lose more than a kidney if they go with.

I can even clearly notice some of what it has already cost. It made believers less compassionate, less honest, and less accountable (to self and to others). It made them less reasonable. It made them less fair. But I didn't always realize it. I had to earn my way into that growth. And yes, I will always have more growing that I need to do. But along the way, I also discovered my worth. I know when someone is honoring that worth. I know when they are not. And I know when I'm being gaslit by people who either ARE clinical narcissists or who have been trained to emulate that disorder. LOVE and RESPECT aren't rocket science. Stop calling disrespectful abuse "love". Or expect (again and again) to be called out for it. Religions that heal and grow will adapt and change. Those versions will endure.

They are waking up. They are growing up. They are beginning to understand.

We already ARE enough. We already are worthy of life and love in endless abundance. And that includes you. Life is messy. We all need the occasional spiritual cleansing. But you had that power all along. Here's how: