Why does God hate babies who have not sinned?

[frankiej]

So, would you say it is true because it is in the bible? Would you say the bible is true because it is the "word of God"?

If so, how do you know it is the "word of God"?

I'm just wondering if you can complete the circle for me or not.

I'm only asking this because I want to know how low your standards for evidence are.

[Darkstar]

Unfortunately for the bible (and your response) babies are not born into sin, as "sin" whatever the fuck it is to begin with (bullshit), doesn't appear to have any means of hereditary transfer (unless you'd like to demonstrate at least two things for us).

The Bible would say differently...that sin is in fact hereditary.

The bible also said that bats were birds...
Sin is a concept invented by religion to incriminate all humanity. Sure, babies aren't perfect; no one is. This does not mean it is justified to arbitrarily send them to eternal torture.

[Greatest I am]

The logical position that Christians should take if they believe that it is a blessing to have children and babies die as that would insure that they go to heaven, should lead all these believing parents to kill their children and thus insure that they end in heaven. Otherwise, as scriptures indicate, they, as part of the majority of adults will end in hell.

You are correct. You have actually prompted me to change my views regarding this.

Before I chose to believe that babies who are killed go to heaven...but you are right, if that premise is true then we should become baby murders.

I think a more accurate/biblical statement (that I have now adopted) is babies that are "elect" go to heaven.

Otherwise abortion would be the greatest evangelism tool ever invented.

Exactly.

Regards
DL

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So, would you say it is true because it is in the bible? Would you say the bible is true because it is the "word of God"?

If so, how do you know it is the "word of God"?

I'm just wondering if you can complete the circle for me or not.

I'm only asking this because I want to know how low your standards for evidence are.

Faith and evidence do not compute.

“Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.”

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”
Martin Luther

Regards
DL

[The Grand Nudger]

The Bible would say differently...that sin is in fact hereditary.

Romans 5:12 (NLT) — 12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.

Why should I give two shits what the bible says? Establish it's credibility or stop sourcing it.

It would be more accurate if your son too was scum of the earth. Then you as a just judge (God is a just judge) should punish them all, but you choose to have mercy on some and take the punishment yourself so that the son (whom in this scenario would be the one that you would take the punishment for) can be shown mercy instead of justice. And yet you are still just because punishment was executed.

I'll modify my question yet another time, and if you don't want to answer it that's, fine, but be upfront about it.

All parties involved are the scum of the earth. Can I now beat my daughters to within an inch of their life to make my gift of not beating my son to within an inch of his life (and giving him a new trike) more wonderful? Is this a display of my glory and mercy and just'ness? I hardly think so. It sounds like a display of petty cruelty. Just say no, because I;m confident that you don't feel that this would be a wise course of action to take. Just say no so I can add "Do as I say and not as I do" to "Shut your face and know your place"...and "justice and mercy -for some- destruction for the rest". Save us both the trouble.

Sin is when you do things, like things, love things, in a way that shows that you value those things more than God.

Right..like not believing in god..therefore valuing all things over a non-existent thing.

We are all born that way, but God in his great mercy redeems those that would place their faith in Jesus.

I agree, we do all seem to be born that way.......and what kind of mercy are we talking about again? Mercy like the mercy above? Thanks, but I'll pass.

Titus 3:3–7 (NLT) — 3 Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient. We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other. 4 But—“When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, 5 he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. 6 He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. 7 Because of his grace he declared us righteous and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.”

Revealed his kindness and love.....yeah, not by the example you've proposed Jeff. More of this mercy eh, again, I'll pass. You are describing a god not worthy of my friendship, let alone worship, and that's regardless of whether or not it exists. What is difficult to understand about this?

[Reasonable_Jeff]

Why should I give two shits what the bible says? Establish it's credibility or stop sourcing it.

Read what I'm going to write below and tell me who this is talking about.

• “Those who hate me without cause are more numerous than the hairs of my head” (Ps 69:4).
• “The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers conspire together against the Lord and His Anointed One” (Ps 2:2).
• “Even my friend in whom I trusted, one who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me” (Ps 41:9).
• “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zch 13:7).
• “Then I said to them, ‘If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.’ So they weighed my wages, 30 pieces of silver. ‘Throw it to the potter,’ the Lord said to me—this magnificent price I was valued by them. So I took the 30 pieces of silver and threw it into the house of the Lord, to the potter” (Zch 11:12–13).
• “They are striking the judge of Israel on the cheek with a rod” (Mc 5:1).
• “I gave My back to those who beat Me, and My cheeks to those who tore out My beard. I did not hide My face from scorn and spitting” (Is 50:6).
• “They pierced my hands and my feet” (Ps 22:16).
• “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1).
• “Everyone who sees me mocks me; they sneer and shake their heads: ‘He relies on the Lord; let Him rescue him; let the Lord deliver him, since He takes pleasure in him’ ” (Ps 22:7–8).
• “They gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Ps 69:21).
• “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed; my heart is like wax, melting within me” (Ps 22:14).
• “Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains; but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted” (Is 53:4).
• “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, He did not open His mouth” (Is 53:7).
• “They divided my garments among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing” (Ps 22:18).
• “He submitted Himself to death” (Is 53:12).
• “He bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels” (Is 53:12).
• “You may not break any of its bones” (Ex 12:46).
• “He protects all his bones; not one of them is broken” (Ps 34:20).
• “They will look at Me whom they pierced” (Zch 12:10).
• “They made His grave with the wicked, and with a rich man at His death, although He had done no violence and had not spoken deceitfully” (Is 53:9).
• “For You will not abandon me to Sheol; You will not allow Your Faithful One to see the Pit” (Ps 16:10).
• “You ascended to the heights, taking away captives; You received gifts from people, even from the rebellious, so that the Lord God might live there” (Ps 68:18).
• “The Lord declared to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool’ ” (Ps 110:1).


Who do you think this is referring to?

All of these scriptures are taken from the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. This was all completed some 400 years before Jesus was born. This is a widely accepted fact, in fact these were all translated from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria roughly 150 years before Jesus' birth.

These writings, these predictions are SO specific that they leave no room for error.

No other religious literature has prophecies so distinct, so specific that have been fulfilled in the way that Christ has fulfilled the Hebrew Bible.

Christianity is not just another religion, Jesus is not just another prophet, the Bible is not just another book.

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Sure, babies aren't perfect; no one is.

Except one...

God is perfect and to be in his immediate presence in heaven you too would need to be blameless. Although like you said, no one is perfect. That is why God sent His Son to make atonement for the sins of those who would come to faith in Him.

Galatians 2:16
English Standard Version (ESV)
16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

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I'll modify my question yet another time, and if you don't want to answer it that's, fine, but be upfront about it.

All parties involved are the scum of the earth. Can I now beat my daughters to within an inch of their life to make my gift of not beating my son to within an inch of his life (and giving him a new trike) more wonderful? Is this a display of my glory and mercy and just'ness? I hardly think so. It sounds like a display of petty cruelty. Just say no, because I;m confident that you don't feel that this would be a wise course of action to take. Just say no so I can add "Do as I say and not as I do" to "Shut your face and know your place"...and "justice and mercy -for some- destruction for the rest". Save us both the trouble.

My intent is to answer you question. If you feel I am not please let me know.

In your modified analogy you too are scum of the earth and just as guilty as they are. You would not have a "right" to beat them.

That is the direct answer to your question, here is my "fiddling" with it to make it more accurate to the biblical teachings.

Imagine that you had a son who was perfect, a paragon. Then you and him decide to make a home for orphans and provide food and clothes for them. The orphans, instead of showing gratitude, begin to tear apart everything that you give them. They begin to show love, appreciation and gratitude to strangers, but never to you. They will come home bruised, tired, hungry and cold and you clothe them and feed them again and again only to be further and further maligned.

Your paragon of a son steps in and tries to show them how much you (his father) cares for them and instead of listening to him they kill him thinking that now they will have the run of the place.

As the father who is innocent you would be completely justified to have the orphans arrested and prosecuted for murder. You have a reputation for being a just man so you follow through with the law.....but you decide to show even further mercy to some and you keep them from being prosecuted for murder.

Justice was executed, mercy was shown.....so it is with God.

[System of Solace]

I do not believe God designed anyone to reject Him, what I do know is God will use people He foreknew would reject Him. He will only do this after one has had a chance to receive Christ as savior.

(implying you know God's intentions)
So he designs people to not believe in him to get the people who don't believe in him to believe in him? Genius!

[Darkstar]

All of these scriptures are taken from the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. This was all completed some 400 years before Jesus was born. This is a widely accepted fact, in fact these were all translated from Hebrew into Greek in Alexandria roughly 150 years before Jesus' birth.

These writings, these predictions are SO specific that they leave no room for error.

No other religious literature has prophecies so distinct, so specific that have been fulfilled in the way that Christ has fulfilled the Hebrew Bible.

Christianity is not just another religion, Jesus is not just another prophet, the Bible is not just another book.

Here's a theory: What if the NT was infected with myth by the time that it was actually written, and the authors decided to bend the facts a little to 'fulfill' some prophecies. There were myths about George Washington even before he died, and Washigton never claimed to be divine.

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Matthew 24:29-35 “Immediately after the distress of those days


“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]

30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

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Here, Jesus pretty explicitly labels the end of days to occur soon, and that "this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened". The authors of the bible can 'fulfill' past predictions by bending current facts, but there is no way they can escape this one.

Sure, babies aren't perfect; no one is.

Except one...

God is perfect and to be in his immediate presence in heaven you too would need to be blameless. Although like you said, no one is perfect. That is why God sent His Son to make atonement for the sins of those who would come to faith in Him.

...god is perfect because he is defined as such. You simply ignore his imperfections (such as condoning slavery) and say that it must be us who is wrong for thinking slavery is bad.

[Reasonable_Jeff]

If you would like to discuss Bible validity more please let me know. To me the prophesies are very compelling but I have other reasons to believe that the Bible affirms truth.

[Darkstar]

If you would like to discuss Bible validity more please let me know. To me the prophesies are very compelling but I have other reasons to believe that the Bible affirms truth.

See my above post and this:
http://atheistforums.org/thread-15262-po...#pid348811

These are serious contradictions, are they not? The one in my above post could even be labelled as 'fatal'. If a prediciton from god himself failed, where can we turn to? Or was it nor god...?

[Reasonable_Jeff]

Here's a theory: What if the NT was infected with myth by the time that it was actually written, and the authors decided to bend the facts a little to 'fulfill' some prophecies.

One of the major problems with the legend hypothesis, however, which is almost never addressed by sceptical critics, is that the time between Jesus’s death and the writing of the gospels is just too short for this to happen. This point has been well-explained by A. N. Sherwin-White in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament.2 Professor Sherwin-White is not a theologian; he is a professional historian of times prior to and contemporaneous with Jesus. According to Sherwin-White, the sources for Roman and Greek history are usually biased and removed one or two generations or even centuries from the events they record. Yet, he says, historians reconstruct with confidence the course of Roman and Greek history. For example, the two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander’s death, and yet classical historians still consider them to be trustworthy. The fabulous legends about Alexander the Great did not develop until during the centuries after these two writers. According to Sherwin-White, the writings of Herodotus enable us to determine the rate at which legend accumulates, and the tests show that even two generations is too short a time span to allow legendary tendencies to wipe out the hard core of historical facts. When Professor Sherwin-White turns to the gospels, he states that for the gospels to be legends, the rate of legendary accumulation would have to be "unbelievable." More generations would be needed.

In fact, adding a time gap of two generations to Jesus’s death lands you in the second century, just when the apocryphal gospels begin to appear. These do contain all sorts of fabulous stories about Jesus, trying to fill in the years between his boyhood and his starting his ministry, for example. These are the obvious legends sought by the critics, not the biblical gospels.

This point becomes even more devastating for skepticism when we recall that the gospels themselves use sources that go back even closer to the events of Jesus’s life. For example, the story of Jesus’s suffering and death, commonly called the Passion Story, was probably not originally written by Mark. Rather Mark used a source for this narrative. Since Mark is the earliest gospel, his source must be even earlier. In fact, Rudolf Pesch, a German expert on Mark, says the Passion source must go back to at least AD 37, just seven years after Jesus’s death.3

Or again, Paul in his letters hands on information concerning Jesus about his teaching, his Last Supper, his betrayal, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection appearances. Paul’s letters were written even before the gospels, and some of his information, for example, what he passes on in his first letter to the Corinthian church about the resurrection appearances, has been dated to within five years after Jesus’s death. It just becomes irresponsible to speak of legends in such cases.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/rediscove...z29JNm9rdP

Matthew 24:29-35 “Immediately after the distress of those days


“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]

30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

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Here, Jesus pretty explicitly labels the end of days to occur soon, and that "this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened". The authors of the bible can 'fulfill' past predictions by bending current facts, but there is no way they can escape this one.

The question here is what generation is he talking about? Jesus was not referring to the generation listening to Him for He had already said the kingdom had been taken from that group.

Matthew 21:43
English Standard Version (ESV)
43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.

That first-century generation would experience God's judgment. But the generation that will be living at the time these signs begin to take place will live through that period and will see the Lord Jesus coming as the King of glory.