[quote='Undeceived' pid='233710' dateline='1327994423']
I see this topic of the God of the Old Testament coming up a lot here. Why does He seem so cruel? Well first we need to examine our definition of cruelty. Cruelty is “willfully or knowingly causing pain to others” or “enjoying the distress of others.” Both of these are accompanied by malice toward the victims. Malice is not part of God’s nature.
[quote]
You're wrong. The religion demands that this God enjoys the distress of others.
It's quite simple. The religion claims that people who do not make it into the kingdom of God will suffer everlasting punishment in a place of eternal damnation. Even Jesus is quoted in the New Testament as having stated this. Moreover the "Good News" that Jesus was spreading is that only FEW will make it into the kingdom of God. Thus we can only conclude that by the WORD of Jesus the vast majority of people end up in hell.
That's supposed to be "Good News"?
More over if the suffering in hell is everlasting (as Jesus himself claimed according to the New Testament), then what purpose could it serve?
It certainly couldn't serve to teach anyone a "lesson" since it is an eternal state and therefore no one would ever benefit from having "learned" something.
Thus the only purpose it could possibly serve is to please God in knowing that people are suffering at his will.
So this biblical story actually demands that this God is a vengeful hateful God who actually enjoys torturing people. Otherwise there would be no point to a concept of eternal damnation.
So these stories (as they are written) demand that this God is a vengeful God who actually gets some benefit from knowing that people are suffering endlessly with no hope of ever being relieved of their suffering.
More over, this God is so hateful and so egotistical that he'll supposedly even do this to innocent decent people who simply don't believe that the Bible is his "Word".
Now that's an extremely hateful and unjust God right there.
[quote]
He has no reason to be angry at His creation, because He created it knowing how it would turn out—a perfect world ruined by our free will. [/quote]
This is nonsense. Supposedly if a person asks this God to come into their life he will come into their life and give them the "Strength" to do only His Will (in other words he will remove THEIR FREE WILL to do what they'd like to do).
But the problem is that if this is what this God wanted in the first place he should have designed a world like that. The very idea that he would give people their own free will and then demand that they only do his will is utterly absurd in the first place. That would only suggest that this God is utterly stupid to begin with.
[quote]
Given this evidence, God is good at least in some contexts. If He’s God why would He have mood changes and be ‘bad’ other times? Living apart from time and space, His mind is constant. And because of that mind He sees things more clearly. [/quote]
It does no good to say that God is good "at least in some contexts". Surely any collection of stories as large as the Bible is going to have some instances where the God appears to do wise things. But the fact that this God is actually quite nasty in "at least some contexts" is all that is required to show that this God's goodness cannot be depended upon. Thus we have an "undependable God", and that's no good.
[quote]
If Jews fabricated the Bible, why would they include the portions you take offense to? Why would they risk deterring you when they could create a fairy tale God who answers our every need? [/quote]
There are several reasons for this. To begin with it wasn't made up by a single person or committee. So the people who kept adding to these myths had to work with preexisting stories. So they really had no choice but to create all this nonsense in a desperate attempt to keep the whole myth coherent. Which they actually failed at miserably anyway.
Secondly, they were using these fables to try to control the behavior of the masses. So they necessarily had to add in things that aren't necessarily pleasing.
A better question would be this:
If the Bible was actually the "Word of God" why would it not be a story of a God who answers our every need? Isn't that what God is supposed to ultimately be like? A God who love you and wants to help you in every way possible?
You've just given us even more reasons why we can know that these stories are indeed just man-made fables.
[quote]
For instance, God views death differently than we do. To Him there is no time. We die when our purpose is finished, be it in infancy or after a hundred years. When God oversaw deaths in Old Testament times, He did not maliciously murder individuals. He was only giving them their due, as a judge condemns a criminal. We look at murder like it is the worst thing in the world. But it is not when your Creator is terminating the life He Himself gave you. God is not bound by our laws or predispositions. In the case of the OT, He was showing us in literal terms what happens to unbelievers after life. God was paving the way for the success of His people. The purpose that mattered most was the coming of Jesus out of Israel. And that included His sacrifice for the life of our souls for eternity. Which is more important?[/quote]
That's all baloney and makes no sense at all.
If the purpose that mattered most was the coming of Jesus then why take thousands of years to do that after the fall from grace? On the contrary if that was God's purpose he should have introduced Adam and Eve to Jesus right after the fall and asked them if they accept his grace.
You can't have a God who solves the problem of sin one moment in time by drowning out humans, and then offering them grace through the so-called "sacrifice" of his son eons later. That's just an undependable God who can't seem to make up his mind how he wants to deal with sin.
Notice also that this God's solution are always violent. I think this biblical God solved a problem intelligently the whole way through the bible.
[quote]
Carm.org found a pattern in God's OT judgments:
1. God declares an annihilation form of judgment to stamp out a cancer
2. The judgments are for public recognition of extreme sin
3. Judgment is preceded by warning and/or long periods of exposure to the truth and time to repent
4. Any and all ‘innocent’ adults are given a way of escape with their families; sometimes all given a way to avoid judgment via repentance or leaving a particular region. It should also be noted that expulsion from a land was the most common judgment, not extermination.
5. Someone is almost always saved (redeemed) from the evil culture
6. The judgment of God falls
[/quote]
These apologetic arguments are always pathetic.
The bottom line is that this demonic God is mean to even good people who simply don't believe in these utterly stupid stories. There can no justice in that ever.
The stories are simply nonsense.
[quote]
Most everything God did in the Old Testament was to lead us to Jesus, from Passover sacrifices (symbolized in the lamb) to the rule of David (called the Son of David). The Old Testament is a record of our failures, and a visual demonstration of the usually spiritual judgment carried out against us. It shows us how little we can do on our own. We need a gift—someone to pay the price of our crimes. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God, being just, sends His son Jesus to die in our place. All we have to do is say we’re sorry, make a commitment to loving God instead of ourselves, and accept His gift. [/quote]
That ridiculous. Supposedly humans don't have the ability to make a commitment to loving God. If they had that ability they could have done it without Jesus. Jesus would not have changed anything.
Moreover, according to these stories Jesus didn't die. He is supposedly eternal. He's almighty. Invincible. He never could have been remotely at that the thread of death. So this idea that he "died" to pay for the sins of man makes no sense anyway.
The wages of sin is spiritual death, not merely to die of the body and then have your spirit ascend into heaven. But supposedly that's exactly what happened to Jesus. He died of the body and then ascended into heaven where he will rule as the king of kings and lord of lords for all eternity.
That's not the penalty for sin. If you sin you don't go to heaven and get to be the king of kings and lord of lords, instead you go to everlasting punishment.
So it's a farce to say that Jesus paid for the sins of men. He most certainly did not do that even according to these stories. He would need to be in the place of everlasting punishment in order to do that.
But no Jesus supposedly went straight to the kingdom of Heaven. So he most certainly did not pay the price for sin for anyone.
The whole fable is nonsense and incoherent.
[quote]
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
[/quote]
The words of John are actually a lie. It states "People loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil". But that's hogwash. Christianity has gone far beyond that and claims that to simply not believe in the Bible is grounds for condemnation.
"Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son."
See, this religion is a train-wreck. It tries to condemn decent honest loving people on the simple grounds that they don't believe these outrageous convoluted stories.
That, my friend, is utter nonsense right there. Thus we can indeed know for a fact that the Bible itself contains nonsense. All the more reason to not believe this nonsense.
This is a religion that has evolved to simply have God hating people and condemning them for merely not believing in all its sick demented stories.
And they most certainly are sick and demented stories.
Think about it for for one rational moment.
This God attempts to solve all his problems with humanity by using violent means. From commanding people to stone sinners and blasphemers to death, to having them crucify his very own son just so he can supposedly forgive them of their sins.
Moreover all these methods have failed. Even Jesus is quoted as saying that only FEW will make it into the kingdom of God, thus confirming that this God loses the vast majority of souls that he creates to his demonic hell fire and eternal damnation.
At the very best, this is a story of a bumbling creator who loses the vast majority of souls he creates due to his own inability to manage his pets in an intelligent way.
It's basically a fable of a loser God. Confessed by Jesus to indeed be a loser. Jesus himself supposedly proclaimed that only FEW will make it into the kingdom of God. Thus a total confession that this God loses the vast majority of souls he creates.
Even if the religion were true, this would be an extremely pathetic creator.
I see this topic of the God of the Old Testament coming up a lot here. Why does He seem so cruel? Well first we need to examine our definition of cruelty. Cruelty is “willfully or knowingly causing pain to others” or “enjoying the distress of others.” Both of these are accompanied by malice toward the victims. Malice is not part of God’s nature.
[quote]
You're wrong. The religion demands that this God enjoys the distress of others.
It's quite simple. The religion claims that people who do not make it into the kingdom of God will suffer everlasting punishment in a place of eternal damnation. Even Jesus is quoted in the New Testament as having stated this. Moreover the "Good News" that Jesus was spreading is that only FEW will make it into the kingdom of God. Thus we can only conclude that by the WORD of Jesus the vast majority of people end up in hell.
That's supposed to be "Good News"?
More over if the suffering in hell is everlasting (as Jesus himself claimed according to the New Testament), then what purpose could it serve?
It certainly couldn't serve to teach anyone a "lesson" since it is an eternal state and therefore no one would ever benefit from having "learned" something.
Thus the only purpose it could possibly serve is to please God in knowing that people are suffering at his will.
So this biblical story actually demands that this God is a vengeful hateful God who actually enjoys torturing people. Otherwise there would be no point to a concept of eternal damnation.
So these stories (as they are written) demand that this God is a vengeful God who actually gets some benefit from knowing that people are suffering endlessly with no hope of ever being relieved of their suffering.
More over, this God is so hateful and so egotistical that he'll supposedly even do this to innocent decent people who simply don't believe that the Bible is his "Word".
Now that's an extremely hateful and unjust God right there.
[quote]
He has no reason to be angry at His creation, because He created it knowing how it would turn out—a perfect world ruined by our free will. [/quote]
This is nonsense. Supposedly if a person asks this God to come into their life he will come into their life and give them the "Strength" to do only His Will (in other words he will remove THEIR FREE WILL to do what they'd like to do).
But the problem is that if this is what this God wanted in the first place he should have designed a world like that. The very idea that he would give people their own free will and then demand that they only do his will is utterly absurd in the first place. That would only suggest that this God is utterly stupid to begin with.
[quote]
Given this evidence, God is good at least in some contexts. If He’s God why would He have mood changes and be ‘bad’ other times? Living apart from time and space, His mind is constant. And because of that mind He sees things more clearly. [/quote]
It does no good to say that God is good "at least in some contexts". Surely any collection of stories as large as the Bible is going to have some instances where the God appears to do wise things. But the fact that this God is actually quite nasty in "at least some contexts" is all that is required to show that this God's goodness cannot be depended upon. Thus we have an "undependable God", and that's no good.
[quote]
If Jews fabricated the Bible, why would they include the portions you take offense to? Why would they risk deterring you when they could create a fairy tale God who answers our every need? [/quote]
There are several reasons for this. To begin with it wasn't made up by a single person or committee. So the people who kept adding to these myths had to work with preexisting stories. So they really had no choice but to create all this nonsense in a desperate attempt to keep the whole myth coherent. Which they actually failed at miserably anyway.
Secondly, they were using these fables to try to control the behavior of the masses. So they necessarily had to add in things that aren't necessarily pleasing.
A better question would be this:
If the Bible was actually the "Word of God" why would it not be a story of a God who answers our every need? Isn't that what God is supposed to ultimately be like? A God who love you and wants to help you in every way possible?
You've just given us even more reasons why we can know that these stories are indeed just man-made fables.
[quote]
For instance, God views death differently than we do. To Him there is no time. We die when our purpose is finished, be it in infancy or after a hundred years. When God oversaw deaths in Old Testament times, He did not maliciously murder individuals. He was only giving them their due, as a judge condemns a criminal. We look at murder like it is the worst thing in the world. But it is not when your Creator is terminating the life He Himself gave you. God is not bound by our laws or predispositions. In the case of the OT, He was showing us in literal terms what happens to unbelievers after life. God was paving the way for the success of His people. The purpose that mattered most was the coming of Jesus out of Israel. And that included His sacrifice for the life of our souls for eternity. Which is more important?[/quote]
That's all baloney and makes no sense at all.
If the purpose that mattered most was the coming of Jesus then why take thousands of years to do that after the fall from grace? On the contrary if that was God's purpose he should have introduced Adam and Eve to Jesus right after the fall and asked them if they accept his grace.
You can't have a God who solves the problem of sin one moment in time by drowning out humans, and then offering them grace through the so-called "sacrifice" of his son eons later. That's just an undependable God who can't seem to make up his mind how he wants to deal with sin.
Notice also that this God's solution are always violent. I think this biblical God solved a problem intelligently the whole way through the bible.
[quote]
Carm.org found a pattern in God's OT judgments:
1. God declares an annihilation form of judgment to stamp out a cancer
2. The judgments are for public recognition of extreme sin
3. Judgment is preceded by warning and/or long periods of exposure to the truth and time to repent
4. Any and all ‘innocent’ adults are given a way of escape with their families; sometimes all given a way to avoid judgment via repentance or leaving a particular region. It should also be noted that expulsion from a land was the most common judgment, not extermination.
5. Someone is almost always saved (redeemed) from the evil culture
6. The judgment of God falls
[/quote]
These apologetic arguments are always pathetic.
The bottom line is that this demonic God is mean to even good people who simply don't believe in these utterly stupid stories. There can no justice in that ever.
The stories are simply nonsense.
[quote]
Most everything God did in the Old Testament was to lead us to Jesus, from Passover sacrifices (symbolized in the lamb) to the rule of David (called the Son of David). The Old Testament is a record of our failures, and a visual demonstration of the usually spiritual judgment carried out against us. It shows us how little we can do on our own. We need a gift—someone to pay the price of our crimes. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God, being just, sends His son Jesus to die in our place. All we have to do is say we’re sorry, make a commitment to loving God instead of ourselves, and accept His gift. [/quote]
That ridiculous. Supposedly humans don't have the ability to make a commitment to loving God. If they had that ability they could have done it without Jesus. Jesus would not have changed anything.
Moreover, according to these stories Jesus didn't die. He is supposedly eternal. He's almighty. Invincible. He never could have been remotely at that the thread of death. So this idea that he "died" to pay for the sins of man makes no sense anyway.
The wages of sin is spiritual death, not merely to die of the body and then have your spirit ascend into heaven. But supposedly that's exactly what happened to Jesus. He died of the body and then ascended into heaven where he will rule as the king of kings and lord of lords for all eternity.
That's not the penalty for sin. If you sin you don't go to heaven and get to be the king of kings and lord of lords, instead you go to everlasting punishment.
So it's a farce to say that Jesus paid for the sins of men. He most certainly did not do that even according to these stories. He would need to be in the place of everlasting punishment in order to do that.
But no Jesus supposedly went straight to the kingdom of Heaven. So he most certainly did not pay the price for sin for anyone.
The whole fable is nonsense and incoherent.
[quote]
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
[/quote]
The words of John are actually a lie. It states "People loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil". But that's hogwash. Christianity has gone far beyond that and claims that to simply not believe in the Bible is grounds for condemnation.
"Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son."
See, this religion is a train-wreck. It tries to condemn decent honest loving people on the simple grounds that they don't believe these outrageous convoluted stories.
That, my friend, is utter nonsense right there. Thus we can indeed know for a fact that the Bible itself contains nonsense. All the more reason to not believe this nonsense.
This is a religion that has evolved to simply have God hating people and condemning them for merely not believing in all its sick demented stories.
And they most certainly are sick and demented stories.
Think about it for for one rational moment.
This God attempts to solve all his problems with humanity by using violent means. From commanding people to stone sinners and blasphemers to death, to having them crucify his very own son just so he can supposedly forgive them of their sins.
Moreover all these methods have failed. Even Jesus is quoted as saying that only FEW will make it into the kingdom of God, thus confirming that this God loses the vast majority of souls that he creates to his demonic hell fire and eternal damnation.
At the very best, this is a story of a bumbling creator who loses the vast majority of souls he creates due to his own inability to manage his pets in an intelligent way.
It's basically a fable of a loser God. Confessed by Jesus to indeed be a loser. Jesus himself supposedly proclaimed that only FEW will make it into the kingdom of God. Thus a total confession that this God loses the vast majority of souls he creates.
Even if the religion were true, this would be an extremely pathetic creator.
