RE: 3Guys1Hammer - A Question for the religious
January 4, 2010 at 7:43 pm
(This post was last modified: January 4, 2010 at 7:46 pm by Oldandeasilyconfused.)
Quote: How can you justify the Judeo-Christian God allowing terrible suffering to occur, such as genocide, torture and famine etc, and still call him/her your saviour and a merciful and benevolent deity?.
Why on earth would I want to watch a video of some guy being murdered? I first saw films of a couple (of FIFTEEN THOUSAND) of the Nazi camps at age 16. I threw up.
The problems of evil and suffering are perhaps the biggest issues for the Abrahamic faiths. I have long argued that the existence of suffering and evil are incompatible with the infinite qualities attributed to the Abrahamic God. [today]
Originally there was a petty mountain God called 'el'. In the Book of Genesis he is portrayed as petty,vindictive, cruel,jealous and petulant. It's only from The Book of Exodus that YHWH BEGINS to emerge as 'The ONE' with all those wonderful qualities and Judaism BEGINS its journey to monotheism. Of course,at this point YHWH encouraged the Jews to massacre the Canaanites, who happened to be living in the promised land at the time.
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Tangent; The commandment does NOT say "thou shalt not kill" The actual translation is "'thou shalt commit no murder', an important distinction. It was not considered murder to kill an enemy or miscreant ,such as a disobedient child. An enemy could be ANY stranger or member of another tribe,men women and children. I posit that it was this xenophobia which led to some of the powerful and rigid laws of hospitality still found in some places. The laws were to protect the guest from being murdered.
