what being apart from the law means.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Drich, have you noticed how the tone of the conversation changed in proportion to the number of atheists? Ye shall know them by their fruits.

[Ryantology]

How was all the smiting justified? It contradicts the Christian doctrine of turning the other cheek and the Golden Rule.

That was a joke, FTR. But the short answer is I don't know. But since I believe there is a God and that He is both merciful and just...I can only believe He acted consistently on His knowledge of their hearts. My guess is that He would know who had so corrupted themselves with evil that they had lost the capacity to repent. As such they had already died within and being removed from this earth was merely a formality.

Until you remember that God's slaughters, both direct and commanded, were all indiscriminate. The all-powerful God, apparently lacking the capacity to assassinate the specific individuals who are actually committing whatever sins he believes worthy of mass murder, kills everybody.

Men.
Women.
Children.
Infants.
Even the unborn, for that abortion-flavored irony.

In several instances, God intentionally targets children, even unborn.

Can you tell us what evil God saw in the hearts of toddlers, infants and even fetuses, so that you can justify your God's many holocausts?

[Esquilax]

Drich, have you noticed how the tone of the conversation changed in proportion to the number of atheists? Ye shall know them by their fruits.

If you actually believed that, you would absolutely want to tone down the smug self righteousness indicative in that statement, boyo.

[FallentoReason]

Paul's letter wouldn't look any different if Jesus hadn't been on Earth. He would still be addressing the issues of the time, because hijacking a religion and moulding it into something new will undoubtedly produce a lot of problems for the ones converting.

This is an argument from willful ignorance.

I just finished telling you the 'believers' of the religion Christ had established were marring their "Father wives," sueing each other into slavery, and on and on...

Problems which are independent of Jesus being "in the flesh" or not. That's the point I made in my last post.

Those people like you thought the 'freedom Christ offered meant they could relish and live in their sins.

Irrelevant to whether Jesus was on Earth or not.

Paul's Job was one past the point of accepting the faith, into a viable working Christian relationship. He was bridging the gap between a works based righteousness, and a righteousness founded on Love and grace.

Which, again, I'll say was a possible thing for Paul to do even if Jesus didn't exist.

whether it be Paul or someone else there was an obvious gap between knowing of Christ/The gospel and a working relationship with the Holy Spirit.

And that gap could be closed by Paul ranting like a mystery cultist about his saviour god.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Can you tell us what evil God saw in the hearts of toddlers, infants and even fetuses, so that you can justify your God's many holocausts?

Once again, I do not know. But I do ponder these things. And when I do I remember that death is not the end. when God by His Providence removes people from earth, it does not have the finality assumed by the disbeliver. Because existence continues, the fate of the departed depends not only on the state of their heart, but on their culpability. Children have no culpability.

Let them know therefore that every child, wherever he is born, whether within the church or outside of it, whether of pious parents or impious, is received when he dies by the Lord and trained up in heaven, and taught in accordance with Divine order, and imbued with affections for what is good, and through these with knowledges of what is true; and afterwards as he is perfected in intelligence and wisdom is introduced into heaven and becomes an angel. (Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell 329)

[The Grand Nudger]

The "just joshing" clause. Epic dodge buddy, now follow it up with a turret.

If a thief took your lollipop, but gave you another one...does that mean that they did not commit theft?

So too a god who executes those who "have no culpability" for any charge will not erase it's own culpability in -that- act by simply providing a cozy spirit life. Your comments on the finality of death are irrelevant.

[Cinjin]

Drich, have you noticed how the tone of the conversation changed in proportion to the number of atheists? Ye shall know them by their fruits.

Good one Woot.
The bloke who wrote that particular verse in the Bible was named, Captain Obvious.


Are you supposed to "know people" by telepathic connections??

[Neo-Scholastic]

Are you supposed to "know people" by telepathic connections??

Hold on! You mean you don't have telepathy? No wonder you guys don't believe us.

[Ryantology]

Once again, I do not know. But I do ponder these things. And when I do I remember that death is not the end. when God by His Providence removes people from earth, it does not have the finality assumed by the disbeliver. Because existence continues, the fate of the departed depends not only on the state of their heart, but on their culpability. Children have no culpability.

Whether or not there's a disneyland afterlife for the children God murders is entirely irrelevant. What is relevant is that he murders children, and orders them murdered. And, often, it is not simply the sanitary kind of death. He orders infants dashed against rocks, fetuses torn from the womb, children to be killed by the sword and the spear by soldiers, all of the above drowned in floods and roasted alive in great fires. God makes sure that these children spend their last few moments in life in terror, misery and agony of the highest order.

You should ponder why you worship a God who is so thoroughly wicked and takes such delight in cruelty, not what evils might be in the hearts of infants and fetuses. Drich chooses to embrace evil and call it good, to hold up arbitrary cruelty and call it justice, to take jealousy and spite and call that ultimate righteousness. He'll say that genocide is not a bad thing if it is what God wants. Is that what you will also do?

[Question Mark]

I'm liking all these assertions about afterlives, god supposed providence, and the nature of humanity, but I'm finding the lack of evidence in favour of these things somewhat curious.