RE: How do religious folks reconcile violent concepts in "peaceful" Abrahami...
April 13, 2017 at 8:56 am
(April 13, 2017 at 8:29 am)SteveII Wrote:(April 12, 2017 at 10:19 pm)AceBoogie Wrote: Really? You're really going to start your argument saying that the god of the OT is one of love? seriously? I'll give you a chance to correct yourself on that.
I listed four attributes. I would add Holy and sovereign. A study on the attributes of God would reveal how these are balanced with each other. For example, Holiness and justice have to be balanced with love and compassion.
So when god of the Old Testament not only condoned but commanded and committed the killing of innocents where did he balanced it with love? For instance he killed Canaanites but since he loved the Israelites it's balanced? Just to remind you the Israelites (so the bible says) practiced God ordained infanticide, genocide, kidnapping, slavery, and rape. They killed thousands of animals in religious rituals. They treated their wives and daughters as disposable property. They proudly executed interracial couples, homosexuals, heretics, nonbelievers, and the disobedient.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
