The backbreaker

[athrock]

You INTERPRET the events of the story through your own lenses, Rocket. You are pissed off at God (and your mom), so of course you see God as doing something to the child in order to punish the father. Well, have you read the rest of the story? Does David seem punished to you? In point of fact, after the child's death, David took a bath, had sex with Bathsheba and God blessed them with a second son. So, where is the punishment that you desperately try to read into the story?  

Wooooooooooowwwwww. So wrong. My mom and I have a great relationship, even if it has taken a mutual agreement not to discuss the age of the earth, evolutionary biology, or politics. Your attempt at amateur psychoanalysis needs some work. Sounds to me like you're desperate to find alternate motivations for our conclusions about your favorite fairytale.

lol. Nope. It's wonderful that you have a good relationship with your mom, but it's pretty obvious from the post above that there are some issues that you're just not comfortable talking about with her. (Apparently, you and I can discuss them because if (when!) you get pissed at me, who gives a rip? But that sort of proves my point...if you discussed them with her, you'd get angry at her. And I suspect you have resentments for having been forced to undergo all that brainwashing she put you through as a child. But look, you and your mom are not the issue at hand. I'm happy to drop this line of discussion.)  

Oh, and the punishment was GOD FUCKING KILLED A BABY TO GET BACK AT DAVID FOR MURDERING URIAH BY PROXY.

What happened after the punishment is irrelevant. The hell is wrong with you, dude?

Why is it one or the other, Rocket? Why can't it be that God both punished David and spared the child? If you weren't so wedded to the necessity that God is a moral monster, you might be able to consider the plausibility of my position.

Right. Because your presupposition is that God is a moral monster and this is one of your favorite examples. But if you were able to be OBJECTIVE, you might be able to say, "Gee, I hadn't ever considered that God was actually sparing the child a life of misery."

You're not as open-minded as you atheists want everyone to believe.

A life of misery? As a prince? Are you high?

Deuteronomy 23:2
2"No one of illegitimate birth shall enter the assembly of the LORD; none of his descendants, even to the tenth generation, shall enter the assembly of the LORD.

Now, would you like to re-think your position about the joys of being a bastard son of the king?

Silly Rocket. Now I know you have stopped thinking and are simply typing off the cuff. If YOU take a life that does not belong to you, that is called murder. If you take your own life, that is called suicide. Either way, you may not do so without culpability because all life belongs to God, and you may not end it without incurring His judgment.  

Now, in point of fact, you probably WOULD be doing each of the aborted babies a favor...after all, they will face much hardship in this life, and some of them will grow up to be hell-bound, godless heathens.    But you would not be doing their PARENTS any favors (assuming the parents are not consenting to these abortions), and even with the approval of the mother (and father), abortion is not acceptable to God.

So when God kills a live child to get revenge on its parent, that's cool and not at all psychopathic, because God. Got it!

Given that God loves the child more than its own parents do, no, it's not psychopathic. This is just an emotional blind spot for you.

And it's really not one of my favorite examples... I really tend to focus more on the genocide and misogyny parts.

We could review these passages if you like. You're gonna have to be willing to think, however.

I simply go by what I see you post, and as you pointed out, your mom is a fundamentalist and not a practicing Catholic.

My mom became a fundamentalist. She went all 12 years to Catholic school, and all her five siblings are still Catholic, as are all my cousins, etc. South Louisiana, from whence I hail originally, is almost entirely Catholic.

See, it's the "became a fundamentalist" part that is telling. I'd be interested in chatting with her to understand just how thoroughly she understood Catholicism. It's the equivalent of leaving an aircraft carrier in order to climb into a rubber dinghy.

I did not say it was an overnight thing. And Catholic theology (which you claim to know) is not built on "Young-Earth Creationism". Consequently, what you should have found - if your study of Catholic doctrine was thorough - would be a very comprehensive world-view that is intellectually satisfying. Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas...(those are just the A's)...some of the brightest minds in all of human history have been Catholics. Our doctrines have been pretty thoroughly vetted and tested. We're still here.

I did know that Catholics aren't YECs. In fact, most Catholics I know have zero problem with evolution or any other part of modern science.

And I've read all those guys, during several classes I've taken on religion. Also Eusibius, Jerome, etc.

Now try, try really hard, to stop projecting false versions of me and telling me what I think, d'accord?

But that was not my point which was/is: Catholic doctrine is a comprehensive world-view that is intellectually satisfying as evidenced by the fact that many of the brightest minds in history have been Catholic. My suspicion (and here I will acknowledge that I'm speculating) is that the reason you reject God is because you haven't been taught sound Christian doctrine, and the reason you haven't been taught sound Christian doctrine is because you haven't been taught orthodox Catholic doctrine.

I could be wrong.