The Devil Made Me Do It

My favorite response to the question 'Does God Exist?' from the Socratic Universe interviews was that of Professor Griesemer from UC Davis. He made a good point in saying that by capitalizing the word God we presume that God is a person and by questioning his existence we first need to decide what we mean by existence. Also, if everyone has a different idea of God then don't we run into the very same problem that Euthyphro and Socrates ran into when discussing piety and impiety? Can we ever really know what is pleasing to "the gods" or what God's will implies?

I find it interesting that a person can pretty much do anything and say "God told me to do it" and on some level, they are excused. If the law was broken, then inevitably they will probably have some legal retribution but it seems, on other levels, they are likely to be forgiven. I don't know if anyone is familiar with the happenings of Eddie Perez Romero (Mt Sac Ethics Professer) who was arrested in China for vandalizing his hotel room in the name of human rights during the Olympic games. When I first heard the story, I applauded his protest and his message. Then...I started hearing that he was giving God the credit and that God told him
to do it and provided the opportunity and he had no choice but to carry out God's will, and, he lost me. How is anyone ever sure that it is the voice of God in their head? and not "the devil" trying to trick them or just their own voice? Don't we generally deem
people who hear voices as crazy? I didn't realize that it depended on Who the voice belonged to. God talked to you? you must be a prophet! You have an imaginary friend named Bernie? You're a nut job and need serious medication! What about the mother who believed God wanted her to kill her 5 children? She believed it was a test like Abraham was tested! How and
where do we draw the line and realize that we all have a voice inside our head, call it Conscience, call it God, whatever you call it, it is still in Your head alone and only your own deductive reasoning skills can decide whether it is reasonable or not to carry out those actions. I feel that when someone can excuse their action by saying they were told to do it, it is an attempt to shift responsibility from themself and therefore they can, in good conscience carry out otherwise unacceptable behaviors.

I was reading a pretty scary article about Joel's Army. Ever heard of these guys? 10,000+ people prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers. That's pretty scary! Under the umbrella of freedom of religion, they are allowed to congregate and practice and recruit conservative Christians any way they deem necessary. Now, I know this is a touchy subject but why is this acceptable but Al Quada is terrorism? Aren't they the same type of fundamentalists set on imposing their views and "bringing justice" to those non-believers? This movement considers themselves to be God's avenging army - Talk about corrupting the youth!