The god of the old testament has . . . . issues

[Arrian]

To correlate with my needlessly absurd terrorist argument again, this would essentially justify the acts of Osama bin Laden if he'd gone up to Mister Bush and asked nicely, "Please stop being mean to my Arabs."

Ah, but you see his god is false.

Or rather he's got the right god, but the wrong message. Or something like that.

-Arrian

[Lorizael]

Now it's all clear. Christianity here I come.

[Japher]

well, god was getting better... seems as though he scales down his mass murders as the story goes on

Entire planet in giant flood
Entire cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
Just an army at Jericoh
and then just a few kids in Egypt

learing curve

[Last Conformist]

The Bible: best anti-Christian propaganda ever written.

Some Christian theologians give it a good run for it's money:

"That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell."
-- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

[Arrian]

And now he's apparently down to sending the occasional hurricane at people.

He's like totally mellow nowadays, man. Woah.

-Arrian

[Japher]

And now he's apparently down to sending the occasional hurricane at people.

no, that's Bush's fault

[Arrian]

But he's doing God's work, right?

-Arrian

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

The Bible: best anti-Christian propaganda ever written.

Some Christian theologians give it a good run for it's money:

"That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in hell."
-- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

Sounds like god is eager to provide his saints with some amusements for the long nights in heaven

Does Aquinas say anything about nectar and ambrosia being served while the saints sit there, watching the nightly punishments?
Or do they walk around in hell like a QA-Team controlling the punishments and giving the occasional devil good tips on how to get better in punishing lost souls?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Jon Miller


Once again, you aren't understanding the story of Job (I think).

If you are critizing, it would be better to focus on real events (like the Elisha one).

Jon Miller

Believe it or not, there are people out there who believe Job is a factual account of real events.

[Jon Miller]

Apparently Aquinas thought that the US was heaven, and the 3rd world was hell..

JM

[Ben Kenobi]

What a peculiar world it must have been in Noachic days, when there were no pregnancies (so no pesky foetuses to kill in the wombs of their mothers) and no children who had yet to learn how to sin and be evil.

Gen 6:11-3

Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

Even if limited to adults this is quite a statement. Nowhere else do we see God grieve so greatly over his creation. What hope would there be for children to grow up in such a world?

Just adults, who (apart from alcoholic Captain Noah and his floating menagerie and dysfunctional family) were ALL ALL ALL irredeemably evil.

Just because one is righteous in the eyes of God, does not mean one is perfect.

What a shame of course, that the archaeological evidence of other (non-Hebrew) civilizations seems not to have picked up on this supposedly worldwide inundation, and that the Hebrew flood story also bears an uncannily strong resemblance to Babylonian/Sumerian flood myths.

Which raises the question that perhaps they chronicle the same events. As for the archaeological evidence, there has been a real question as to why so many different cultures from the same time period have such similar accounts of a worldwide flood.

[Ben Kenobi]

Now this is the same person who apparently thinks that humans have free will. If they have free will, and are free to sin or not sin, then exactly how did a foetus in the womb or an unweaned child have a chance to sin so much that :

and were thus as deserving of death as a thoroughly debauched adult ?

By the same token if free will meant the freedom to sin as much as possible then how could God judge the world as he did in the flood? Free will merely means that God permits us to sin if we so choose to do so, it does not mean that we will necessarily be accorded the opportunity to sin, if that were so then no children would die young.

The answer of course is that the Hebrews thought nothing of their god supposedly slaying the non-Hebrews, or the non-righteous, even down to the children and unborn.

Considering the status of Noah I would see that motivation as questionable.

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

I find it rather humourous you blame the Hebrews for the judgement of Amalek when they disobeyed God on numerous occasions even when instructed here.

[Ben Kenobi]

The first is that it was okay for God to smite all those Egyptians because Moses was very polite and patient in asking Pharaoh if he'd stop being a bad man. This means that the lives of innocent Egyptians, who played no part in the enslavement of the Hebrews, were forfeit simply because the Pharaoh wouldn't do what Moses wanted him to do.

Oh, not quite.

First of all, what do we say in the case of the holocaust? Do we not hold the Germans responsible as a people for what happened even if they did not actually participate in the events. We are told the plight of the Jews in Egypt and how they were enslaved. When the time came for the Jews to be freed, Pharaoh had several choices.

First he could release the Jews, or he could persist and continue holding the Jews in slavery. Pharoah chose to hold them on slavery. God sent Pharaoh 7 plagues prior to the passover as a warning that Pharoah could only hold onto the Jews at great cost to himself. Had Pharoah relented then none of the Egyptians would have died.

To correlate with my needlessly absurd terrorist argument again, this would essentially justify the acts of Osama bin Laden if he'd gone up to Mister Bush and asked nicely, "Please stop being mean to my Arabs."

Ah, but Moses said, "Let my people go!" Is Bush enslaving Arabs?

The second argument that I can find is that, because Pharaoh did indeed give in and let Moses' people go after the Passover, then everything done in order to achieve that end is justified; that is, the ends justify the means - the classic utilitarian argument.

If so, why then did God send 7 plagues first before the passover? Why not wipe out the Egyptians completely? If the ends justify the means, why bother with all this other stuff?

Do you really mean to say that anything God does is okay so long as it gets the result he wants? This would seem to imply that he is above morality (in which case why should we do what he wants?), or that he adheres to a higher morality than the one he preaches to his followers. If the latter case is true, what is this morality, and how can we possibly figure out what it is?

First off, our ways are not God's ways, and his ways are not our ways. So in a sense God is above all of us, and our relationship with him, is not the same as our relationship to each other.

It's like someone who breaks something that he has made and someone who breaks something that is not his. Who would prevent the author from ripping up his own script?

It would appear to me, from his actions, that his morality is essentially - do whatever it takes to protect the Israelites - nothing else matters.

Again, if this were so, why does God show mercy upon the Egyptians by giving pharaoh 7 opportunities to let the Jews go?

Is the freedom of a small number of God's chosen people more valuable than the lives of thousands who don't worship him, or have never even heard of him?

Consider this. If a man comes to you and says, let the Jews go or else my God will come down and rain toads on Egypt, you would likely laugh at him.

What happens if toads actually rain down on Egypt right after he says this? Quite a different situation. I would think that I would start to listen to someone after the very first warning.

[Sir Og]

Originally posted by CyberShy


If you look even further you can see that there are powers behind the nations. Divine powers. (not per se good-divine powers btw). Some (most) of these powers try to fail Gods plan. The gods of egypt, babylon, Rome, etc. (all the sun-god!!!!) all tried to whipe Israel out or to enslave it. I believe that after all acts of history there's a demonic power that tries to frustrate Gods plan. Even in 1938 Hitler Germany tried to whipe the Jews out. During all the middle ages the Jews were persecuted and murdered. I must say that I'm really surprised that non-christians do not notice the very special position of the Jews in worlds history, and how it matches, even in modern days, the biblical prophecies.

Zachariah profecied 500 BC that Jerusalem would become a huge international problem and that it would ba a burden stone for all nations that are involved with it. Amazing, this was prophecied before Islam was invented and the Golden Rock Mosque was build in Jerusalem.

Would you care to elaborate how the Jews featured in the history of Asia and the world as a whole. Let me remind you that the mediteranean is not the center of the world. Asia has far greater population and was much more powerfull than Europe throughout human history.

Eurocentrists

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Oh, not quite.

First of all, what do we say in the case of the holocaust? Do we not hold the Germans responsible as a people for what happened even if they did not actually participate in the events. We are told the plight of the Jews in Egypt and how they were enslaved. When the time came for the Jews to be freed, Pharaoh had several choices.

Those who were responsible for the holocaust were normally put to death after the trials at nuremberg. AFAIK the german people as a whole (young as well as old) were de jure not found guilty for commiting the holocaust.
Most of the persons which nowadays think that all germans are responsible for it (even germans who were childs or even not born during WW2 ) stem from the far left of the political spectrum.

I´d normally think that god with his divine powers is capable of knowing the truth and separating those found guilty from thodse who aren´t guilty, just like the trials at nuremberg or any other court in the world tries to do
and not to generally punish a group of people (or a tribe or a nation) for things some of the people in this group/tribe/nation do/have done, regardless of if the other people within the group participated in the criomnes or even had knowledge of them.

If, regardless of being able to do so (i.e. separete those guilty from those not guilty) he still punishes all of the group he cannot be called a fair and righteous god (especially not, if, while punishing other tribes for things they did, he turns a blind eye on the crimes his own people commit)