(November 30, 2022 at 10:52 am)tackattack Wrote: You can kill without hate, punish without hate and regret without hate. I'm still not buying God of the OT hated anyone, not to say he wasn't ordering killings, jealous or vengeful.
If you think the bad actions of the God of the OT were deserved punishments by a loving but stern parent that does not mean they were not evil actions. It just means you are the kind of person who thinks violence is an acceptable form of parental discipline.
Like an angry, impulsive, unreasonable, and unimaginative father or husband who repeatedly beats his kids or his wife for the slightest appearance of wrongdoing, God’s hateful "punishments" were excessive and malevolent.
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"
