Snippets from QAF

Last night's QAF Session was truly amazing. We had between 7 and 12 people there, as there was always some coming-and-going.

The quotes that follow are not guaranteed for accuracy. That, and privacy, are two reasons I don't credit the source of each quote. Some quotes are actually mash-ups of the comments of two or three different people. At one point, I name the speakers A,B,C, etc. to help explain the flow of conversation.

The central question was "Who is God?", but as you'll see, the discussion ranged pretty widely.

"I don't think you can prove God doesn't exist. I don't think you can prove anything doesn't exist. I could say 'There's no such thing as unicorns' but unless I could scour every inch of the earth at once, I couldn't prove it."

"I'm an atheist. I don't think God would let things get this bad."

"Maybe it's our fault things are so bad. We Americans could just give up ice cream and use the money we saved to completely eliminate poverty in the world."

"If life somehow spontaneously evolved from non-life, it would also have to immediately develop a complex system of reproduction in order to continue life."

"God wanted to create creatures that would love him. But love doesn't mean anything unless there is the free will to not love."

"Gender is a physical designation. God is not physical, he is spirit. God chose to spend 33 years as a male person, and be confined to that for awhile, but if God were confined in his essence to a gender designation, then he could not be the creator of gender. If that's the case then someone else created gender... and that creator would be the real God.

A: "I don't know who my dad is... I don't believe in God."

B: "Maybe those things are connected."

C: "I think my dad is perfect, but I think God is an asshole."

B: "That blows my theory."

D: "My life was perfect, but then I woke up and some doctor was telling me that I was paranoid schizophrenic. I have excruciating headaches every night, but I don't think God is an asshole."

A: "I do!"

E: "I thought you didn't believe in God."

A: "I guess I do. But I don't like him. I don't like him for making you schizophrenic."

"People pre-judge me because I'm a double minority. I'm black, and I'm a woman. Everywhere I go I try to present myself in a way so people don't judge me by their stereotypes."

"I'll never understand why God went through that kind of pain for my sake. I'll never understand how he could take the most powerful bond in the world... the love between God the Father and God the Son, and rip it in half to save me."

"It's like that Petra song... 'Would I die for a person like me?'"