Yeah but the topic is about the stuff hes done in the Bible so I assume hes saying that the stuff that God did was ok because hes the creator. Yeah its a metaphor but im pretty sure he was still relating it to the bible.
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That's as such not a good argument though. It only really gets good when you consider that he might just see us as characters in his "book", rather than humans. Though, that means that he's not omniscient, because if he is, then he's a dick.
An amusing rebuttal to his post, yes. But for a Christian to use the Bible as a reference for belief, they then have to be able to own up to all of its words. So it's a Catch-22. Ignoring the parts that don't jive with one's beliefs, while a common practice, is hypocritical. If you hold that there is no evidence against him, as your post suggests, you must discredit the idea of an Abrahamic God altogether.
Even if much of the Old Testament is myth, as many Christians will hold (though it begs the question of why they can't believe the NT is myth as well), you must ask why much of the OT is included anyway? Historical reference? No, it's supposed to be the Word of God. What purpose do such violent and awful stories serve, except to provide occasional justification for religious bigotry? By today's standards, any self-help book would act as a better moral compass than that tripe.
how can you prosecute someone with evidence you believe to be false?
To be honest it was just a joke, like this thread imo.
As for the OT- I think Christians who try and find their way out the Old Testament because they find aspects of it difficult to understand and even more difficult to try and explain are Christians who are trying to have their cake and eat it. The book exists and should rightfully be included in the Canon- it is fundamental to the ministry of Jesus as it provides context which without would make much of Jesus' work quite hollow and rob his revolutionary attitude of impact. Also did God kill 33 million people over the history of the world? I dunno, maybe many of the stories in the OT are not literal and are just stories...maybe they are true- I dunno. However what I do know is if the Almighty felt it necessary to kill those people then he did it for good reason and its not really up to me or you or anyone else to question him on that.
Now you or someone else will probably go all paradise lost on me and try and make out that God is akin to some sort of tyrant...I don't think he is. I also suspect your gonna want to talk about justice and accountability etc etc putting it all into a perspective of your own. Which I guess is fair... just try to remember when you do that you can treat God and humanity as a general Father and Children sort of thing- in which case the loss of 33 million people is hardly consequential- or you can go for the God and the Individual human...you can of course do both...as is the nature of omnipresence I guess.
All that matters is we will arrive at a neat pre-arranged point you have floating around in your brain right now...because you've thought about this before haven't you?
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Last edited by Grand-Moff-Gav on Dec 14th, 2008 at 06:54 PM
Right, I agree. But it is used as such all too often. So it does work on the basis of the suffering caused by religious interpretation. Now, I could understand if the OT served some other purpose(s), but it really fails to have value in many places, especially in the more needlessly violent parts. God acts like a petulant child, changes his mind, gives us arbitrary and often immoral rules to follow, slaughters people wantonly, etc. etc. It's an awful piece of literature, and should serve no other purpose beyond what other myths do (Greek, Egyptian, Roman, etc.). That it's used as the "Word of God" is laughable.
Why would I be up in arms about it?
So God needed to act like a 5-year-old with a nuke for us to feel the impact of His son? That justification seems a bit lacking to me.
Really?! Such blind obedience, even in the face of despotism. It's scary.
Good for you. Do you have reasoning to support your evidence? Because, myth or reality, we have the murder of innocents in the OT. You're trying to eat your cake as well, since there isn't a rational way to unify the differing views of God we receive in the Bible. I'll happily admit that there's a loving God in the Bible as well, so you're partially right. But therein lies the rub.
So, do you somehow try to reconcile them in your mind? Or realize that it's a bunch of cobbled-together books over the course of centuries that doesn't really present a unified story on the subject of the Almighty?
Hardly consequential? I'll admit some confusion there. Seems fairly consequential to me, regardless of whether we're reading a literal history of God's actions or myths that are supposed to tell us about his nature and being.
I've thought about religion before, yes. Plenty of times. I can't say that this particular conversation has come up, though, so no on that front.
But yes, we arrived neatly at this point due to the unchangeable forces that led up to this point. Causality will do that ( ).
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You don't have to believe the stories, to have your own interpretation of it. We don't need to believe the Joker exists to see that, within the fiction, he killed a lot of people. What annoys atheists, I believe, and probably you, too, are Christians that have a wrong impression of "God", which they blindly follow, which is contradicted by the book they got it from. Again, with Joker, kinda like if people would believe Joker's teachings should be the basis of everything and also call him kind hearted and peaceful....and also believe he actually exists, and live their life according to it, screwing it up for everyone else.
Well, I went a bit out there. All I am saying is, you don't have to believe it is real, to judge what happened in the Bible.
It does have value. You simply reject much of the OT in favor of your own values and beliefs.
All of that is very much open to interpretation, except the arbitrary rules.
Compared to the rest of the Bible it's pretty damned epic. Actually it's pretty epic overall, just poorly written.
Are you pro-suffering and injustice then? In fact just recognizing the idea of suffering and injustice requires you to have some belief in objective morality, ie there are just and unjust actions. Truly subjective morality has no opinion on suffering and injustice because they don't exist.
Good point, but as Digi said Magneto would be better because there are multiple ways of looking that the things he does. God is similar sure it isn't sensible to say God doesn't do awful things in the bible but it's just as ridiculous to say theists have the "wrong" impression of God since there are any number of factors involved.
Also, I mispelled God as Gog twice while writing that.
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You guys are mean
But really, Joker might not be that bad, as it is, apparently, implied by a few writers that he is just on a higher plain of understanding, which makes him cope with our weird, even idiotic, world in the only way that is sane to his superior intellect.
Not saying God's a loony....obviously not, since I don't believe he exists.
And I don't mean to imply all theists, I was talking about a specific group of Christians, which want to accept the bible as fully true, yet still ignore the parts their modern morals are a bit uncomfortable with.
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Dec 14th, 2008 01:24 AM
FER TEA!!
).
