Religion — Page 23

CP3S said:

When you say you hate atheism, you are essentially saying that you hate disbelief in gods.

I can't believe the Bible miniseries on the History Channel tonight just skipped right over Solomon. 

Isn't the History Channel considered largely unreliable?

DuracellEnergizer said:

Isn't the History Channel considered largely unreliable?

Historically, yes.

 

I think I prefer the 1995 - 2001 version. 

just look at bkev's pic.

bkev's picture is not a source, it's a joke.

So be honest...who prefers Hitler?

Bingowings said:

bkev's picture is not a source, it's a joke.

but it is also somewhat true. 

American Pickers is all you need to know about aliens.

Bingowings said:

Go on Warb.

Explain to me how one of hundreds of thousands of human beings nailed up by the Romans in anyway makes my life or the life of anyone else who lived later any better than it was if it hadn't happened.

Taking as a given that Jesus existed, was the son of God and died in that fashion.

What does dying for our sins actually mean?

I promise I will not mock you just explain it.

If it's something I can't understand because I'm not the God of the Bible myself, why should this act in any way impress me?

    Traditions and doctrines of men, confusions, and the nature of the message itself prevent communication of these concepts.

    The Bible is meant to work on the subconcious much of the time. It's targeted at "God's people" who are more "atuned" to the wavelength on an emotional and spiritual level.

    I find it much easier to think of these things in a stark and "naturally" human sort of way.

    Suppose you break into someone's home and steal and destroy and abuse the residents in ways that violate what is generally understood to be the Law. You are caught and brought before the Chief Magistrate. Your case is hopeless. The Judge has every authority and reason to send you up. He can have you executed if you are a habitual offender.

    Now suppose that this Chief Magistrate declares that, because you have done these things, he is going to take your innocent and beloved spouse or child or dearest friend and torture and murder that person in the most horrible way for YOUR crimes.

     Would you still believe that this Magistrate, who is otherwise responsible for enforcing the Law and convicting the evil doers, is still the one to pass judgement over you?

     God is the only one who can pass final judgement at your death. God has presented us with a way for him to withdraw as judge.

     But there is a catch. The one who is agonizingly tormented and murdered must truly be your dear loved one and friend. If you petulantly ignore this person and violate the principals the victim holds dear, you cannot claim the victim as your greatest friend.

     It doesn't matter how many others in history have suffered or if their individual sufferings might have been even worse. They are not your most beloved friend.

     God could have tortured Jesus for months or years. It was for an afternoon to fulfill many things in the correct way.

As I said before not a being worthy of my worship (from my perspective).

If a serial killer were to claim God instructed him it was the appointed time to kill rich old ladies and that the only reason everyone else wasn't doing so was because one had to tune into the right frequency, we would be running out of old ladies but rolling in gold chains and baubles.

If God wants me to worship him (which He probably doesn't lose sleep over) He should make his mysteries less mysterious.

I notice He has eased up on demands for rape and genocide a little, which is a step in the right direction.

It's easier for me to swallow that scripture is human penned and therefore not a fair representation of God in action.

I can also respect a flawed or limited creator.

But if He did all the stuff in the Bible and is ALL POWERFUL He is a bit of a tyrant and I don't respond well to tyranny.

Maybe free will is the problem.

If I was a mindless slave I would do all that devotional obedience without the need for hellfire and wages of sin. 

       ^The claims of human serial killers are suspect by any standards. God is a different matter.

       People love to complain (petulantly;) about some of the orders and endorsements from God found in the other OT.

       To me, these are the easiest to dismiss arguments in Theonomy.

       It's about infinitely more ridiculous than watching a little mosquito accuse an abdominal surgeon of wrongly performing an "unnecessary" appendectomy. The mosquito can't even begin to properly conceive of the problem, much less draw any conclusions about it.   

       God sees past present and future at the same time. The Deity knows the consequences of failing to deliver the hard orders.

       We have no idea of what would happen if a people in ancient times could with impugnity refuse to rest and reflect on heavenly ways, taunt prophets, or allow pagan enemies to escape. 

Why would a mosquito see the Abdominal Dr Vibes as anything less than food?

Why should I even concern myself with this God fellow if His milieu is so conceptually alien to my own? What's the scripture for if only the attuned can fathom it (surely they don't need to fathom it if they are already attuned)?

I can get my head around the notion that the grand cosmic project is a work in progress and that trillions have to suffer in ways which make no sense and seem cruel from within the mechanism to serve an ultimate goal that is perfection.

But that's not what scripture is saying.

It's saying the universe was made in six stages, It's finished. God's the boss and if you don't start feeling sorry about playing with your penises and stop it in the name of an incarnation of Himself He allowed to be nailed to a tree and die for three days you will suffer forever.

Meanwhile you faithful chosen people go over their and kill those male children and rape those women.

If God is all powerful and all knowing, all possible universes are possible to him and yet he picked the one where he knows I will be born and due to free will take qualitative umbrage at the biblical account of himself and be damned.

He made me with hell in mind.

And I'm supposed to like this chap? 

What's more he is supposed to be the same person as Jesus who is by almost every account a likable and approachable superhero with compassion, who feels empathy with the downtrodden, the sick and the bereaved.

It makes more sense to me that they aren't the same person or if they are, the act of incarnation has changed God in ways He hadn't foreseen.

If God can change he isn't always perfect.

Either the Tyrant God is perfect and the gentle Jesus is a corruption of his true self or Jesus is an upgrade Which means the scripture relating to God Mk1 needs to be re-worked.

But the acts of his fully human group of followers don't match with Jesus either. They sound more like devotees of God Mk1.

You can understand where the Gnostics got their groove from. The OT God sounds like a faker, an insecure God wannabe. A Devil (powerful but evil).

Where as Jesus sounds like a representative of a nicer God who doesn't want anyone raped but has interceded as much as he can (Good but limited).

i can see myself being convinced by a Good but limited God. I might thank him for the opportunity of life and forgive him the unavoidable crapness of some of life (mortality for example).

But the the Tyrant God He can just swivel.

My God appreciates multiple-sentence paragraphs.

Burn the heretic with fire!

I think the easy first step to misunderstanding God's motives is to misunderstand and/or misconstrue his message.  In spite of what many have claimed, I don't believe the Bible ever has condoned rape.

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-rape.html

Similarly, slavery is not exactly as black and white as we interpret it today.

http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-slavery.html

Finally, even genocide may have had its reasons.

http://www.gotquestions.org/Old-Testament-violence.html

I don't agree with every answer this site gives, and as you know, Mormons interpret some of the Bible differently anyway, but it at least gives an idea.  But the point is that the God of the Old Testament is often merciful, not just vindictive.  Remember how the Bible teaches of God's compassion towards the Ninevites when sending Jonah to teach them.

Also bear in mind the near-consequences of having not followed through on an order for killing an entire people: in the story of Esther, Haman, a descendant of the not-quite-extinct Amalekites, nearly had the Jews in Persian captivity destroyed.

Finally, at least one ancient scholar even argued that destruction was initially an offer of peace and a commandment to accept God's laws, and if rejected, then came destruction.

Now I'll be honest, these answers don't completely satisfy me, but it at least helps me see that perhaps there is a bigger view that escapes me at the present.

I understand for the most part why Bingo feels the way he does. Not saying I agree, but I can see where he draws those ideas from.

At the surface it might seem that God comes off cruel, and I think it does too without going too deep into things.

I've never come across God-endorsed rape at all. Not sure where that's coming from.

But as far as the rest I had to ask myself the question: Is it possible that God knows something I don't know? Is it possible he allowed this person and that person to be killed because he knew something about the person that we didn't know? Maybe they would have done terrible things, maybe not. Maybe he knew that person would never turn back to Him. Maybe it's something none of us can even fathom. (Probably so.)

God is eternal. He exists outside of time. He knows all, and sees all at once. Anyone able to do that? If not, is possible He knows something we don't know? 

Ted said :

Judges 21:10-24

I can't imagine God knows something about Hitler that we don't.

Bingowings said:

Ted said :

Judges 21:10-24

I like the part where it says, "God commanded that..."  Wait.  Where was that?  Can't find it now.  Hmmmm...  Well, the people were so righteous at this time that surely they would do nothing contrary to the will of God.  But it looks like the theme of the whole book is how unrighteous and disobedient the people were.  Let's look at Judges 21:25, the verse immediately following your reference.

In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.

If rape took place, which sounds plausible in those verses, though not as explicit as verses where the Bible speaks against it, it does not sound like God condoned it.  It merely sounds like a historical recounting of what happened when the people were wicked and bloodthirsty against the Benjamites.

TV's Frink said:

I can't imagine God knows something about Hitler that we don't.

I assume this means that if God had foreknowledge and thus allowed or commanded that the wicked be killed before they brought destruction the righteous, then why didn't he have Hitler killed, well the answer is obvious: he clearly wanted the History Channel to have something to talk about from 2002-2006.

In all seriousness, both in the Bible and outside of it, God still allows wicked people to live and do wicked things, even nearly wiping out God's people.  God does give the most wicked the freedom to choose, and seems to only intervene when absolutely necessary to preserve the righteous.  Often many do die.  But God still gives the wicked their freedom of choice most of the time.

Besides, who is to say how many wicked tyrants God did remove before they actually became tyrants?  We only have hindsight.  He has the foresight.