Four questions for Christians

[fr0d0]

Frodo,

Yeah I wasted my time looking.

Nothing there.

So how do justify changing the text Rhythm?

[The Grand Nudger]

Oh hai there. Just to be clear...before I go quoting myself....you'd be calling me a liar, correct? It's one thing to disagree, it's another entirely to senselessly obstruct a conversation with such easily checked bullshit, don't you think?

[Consilius]

You said people serve God out of fear and not love.

I said that if god is considered capable of wicked acts, then he must be served out of fear and not love. To serve him out of love for him, he must be defined as good and as incapable of wickedness. Thus, any act that would ordinarily be deemed wicked must be rationalized as a good act.

There is nothing negative in these claims.

I didn't say there was. But none of them explicitly claim that he personifies good or love. As you note, he is a product of the writers of his time, and thus a powerful, angry, vengeful, warlike god is simply par for the course.

Exodus 34:6—"The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandthe generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin."
Deuteronomy 4:31—"The Lord your God is a merciful God, he will neither abondon you nor destroy you."
Jeremiah 31:3—"I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you."
Psalms 34:8—"O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him."

---

Hmm…I couldn't find it. I guess that means you win.

Perhaps thats because you will have had to go back 6 fucking pages to see the point at which you went of the rails? You know what I think though? I think you did find it.

nevertheless, try post 27...or 55....or 59.....or 64.....or 67.....or 71
(after that point I lost interest in explaining such a simple concept, you're clearly invested in the argument, and I don't think that you care that its not a valid one.)

Frodo, would you like an explanation of why a logical fallacy is a poor defense for the actions of a god as well - or did you just feel that this was an opportunity for your standard lolpost?

OK, I went back to your post where you talked about the thoughtcrime and the instance with the judge and the revenge.
Let's do this.
You can't defend the Egyptians by saying that their only offense was thoughtrime because they had, in a very real and material sense, kept the Israelites from crossing Egypt's borders. During those ten plagues, the Israelites were still forced to bake bricks from mud under their Egyptian slavers.
And yes, an Egyptian judge in 2000 B.C. would kill my kid if I killed someone else's. This would be the punishment I would expect, and I would have absolutely no reason to even think that it was arbitrary in any way. Why should God use laws that just so happen to come from 21st century Europe? It would seem great to you, but terribly unjust to the Egyptian people.
Vengeance can only be taken for offenses done. The defensive party takes revenge on the offensive party for what it has done to the defensive party. Revenge is only fair when the defensive party reciprocates exactly what was done to it by the offensive party. The Israelites had their right to take revenge on the Egyptians, but, instead, their God did it for them, and justly. That is why God is described as vengeful in the OT.
The offensive party has every reason to expect the exact actions they took from the defensive party, no matter how it feels to the offensive party in relation to how it felt to the defensive party. So, if the offensive party spends 80 years killing the children of the defensive party, they should expect the defensive party to slaughter their children for another eighty years. The need for direct revenge is eliminated by a third party, or a judge. This judge takes revenge on the behalf of the third party without having been offended. This leaves no reason for the offensive party (Egypt) to retaliate the offenses done to it by the judge (God) who is, rather, standing up for the defensive party (Israel).

[Ryantology]

You can't defend the Egyptians by saying that their only offense was thoughtrime because they had, in a very real and material sense, kept the Israelites from crossing Egypt's borders. During those ten plagues, the Israelites were still forced to bake bricks from mud under their Egyptian slavers.

Blame the individuals responsible for this.

Also, slavery wasn't a crime in the eyes of God (who not only told Moses he was allowed slaves but also gave him pointers on acquiring them). If God is punishing Egypt for the crime of slavery, then it is inconsistent and unjust when he does not prevent his own people from practicing the same institution.

And yes, an Egyptian judge in 2000 B.C. would kill my kid if I killed someone else's. This would be the punishment I would expect, and I would have absolutely no reason to even think that it was arbitrary in any way. Why should God use laws that just so happen to come from 21st century Europe? It would seem great to you, but terribly unjust to the Egyptian people.

God should be using laws infinitely more fair and just than anything we can come up with in the 21st century. If it took us only a few thousand years to do better than God...

[FifthElement]

God should be using laws infinitely more fair and just than anything we can come up with in the 21st century. If it took us only a few thousand years to do better than God...

Hell, if I see rape in progress I will do something about it, I bet my monthly pay that god won't do shit, he'll watch my neighbor masturbate instead

[Consilius]

You can't defend the Egyptians by saying that their only offense was thoughtrime because they had, in a very real and material sense, kept the Israelites from crossing Egypt's borders. During those ten plagues, the Israelites were still forced to bake bricks from mud under their Egyptian slavers.

Blame the individuals responsible for this.

Also, slavery wasn't a crime in the eyes of God (who not only told Moses he was allowed slaves but also gave him pointers on acquiring them). If God is punishing Egypt for the crime of slavery, then it is inconsistent and unjust when he does not prevent his own people from practicing the same institution.

And yes, an Egyptian judge in 2000 B.C. would kill my kid if I killed someone else's. This would be the punishment I would expect, and I would have absolutely no reason to even think that it was arbitrary in any way. Why should God use laws that just so happen to come from 21st century Europe? It would seem great to you, but terribly unjust to the Egyptian people.

God should be using laws infinitely more fair and just than anything we can come up with in the 21st century. If it took us only a few thousand years to do better than God...

Nowhere in the OT did God justify making slaves of neutral peoples, especially ones that had come across their borders seeking refuge.
Also note that the crime Egypt was punished for in the Tenth Plague was the killing of the Israelite babies. The executors of this offense were punished for allowing Israelite children to be killed by having their very own children killed. Therefore, they were punished exactly as they had been offended.

Your suggestion is arbitrary judgement. God cannot say that he will use his own justice system, because that would be unfair to the people being judged. These people would ask why the judge is being unfair, and the judge would say that the justice system he implements is infinitely more fair than anything you could imagine. The only reason that you don't think so is because of your imperfect human minds, also you were born in the wrong country at the wrong time period.
Imagine God spoke to us today and told us that he will judge child-killing by killing children in the exact same way that the dead child was killed, and then insist that he is being just because the ancients had it right and we have deviated from 'the true path of righteousness'. That is your proposition.

[Ryantology]

Nowhere in the OT did God justify making slaves of neutral peoples, especially ones that had come across their borders seeking refuge.

If slavery is okay for certain people and not others, it is inconsistent.

Also note that the crime Egypt was punished for in the Tenth Plague was the killing of the Israelite babies. The executors of this offense were punished for allowing Israelite children to be killed by having their very own children killed. Therefore, they were punished exactly as they had been offended.

Killing babies is not a crime in God's eyes; he orders his soldiers to execute infant Amalekites. More inconsistency.

Your suggestion is arbitrary judgement. God cannot say that he will use his own justice system, because that would be unfair to the people being judged. These people would ask why the judge is being unfair, and the judge would say that the justice system he implements is infinitely more fair than anything you could imagine. The only reason that you don't think so is because of your imperfect human minds, also you were born in the wrong country at the wrong time period.

What, then, is the point of God having his own laws if he is going to judge others according to their own? And, where is the evidence for your assertion that he acts according to local laws? This is the first I've heard of this concept. Reeks of moral relativism, in fact.

Imagine God spoke to us today and told us that he will judge child-killing by killing children in the exact same way that the dead child was killed, and then insist that he is being just because the ancients had it right and we have deviated from 'the true path of righteousness'. That is your proposition.

Would you like to live in a society where every first born child in your nation was killed because some soldiers of your country committed this atrocity?

[Consilius]

Nowhere in the OT did God justify making slaves of neutral peoples, especially ones that had come across their borders seeking refuge.

If slavery is okay for certain people and not others, it is inconsistent.

Also note that the crime Egypt was punished for in the Tenth Plague was the killing of the Israelite babies. The executors of this offense were punished for allowing Israelite children to be killed by having their very own children killed. Therefore, they were punished exactly as they had been offended.

Killing babies is not a crime in God's eyes; he orders his soldiers to execute infant Amalekites. More inconsistency.

Your suggestion is arbitrary judgement. God cannot say that he will use his own justice system, because that would be unfair to the people being judged. These people would ask why the judge is being unfair, and the judge would say that the justice system he implements is infinitely more fair than anything you could imagine. The only reason that you don't think so is because of your imperfect human minds, also you were born in the wrong country at the wrong time period.

What, then, is the point of God having his own laws if he is going to judge others according to their own? And, where is the evidence for your assertion that he acts according to local laws? This is the first I've heard of this concept. Reeks of moral relativism, in fact.

Imagine God spoke to us today and told us that he will judge child-killing by killing children in the exact same way that the dead child was killed, and then insist that he is being just because the ancients had it right and we have deviated from 'the true path of righteousness'. That is your proposition.

Would you like to live in a society where every first born child in your nation was killed because some soldiers of your country committed this atrocity?

If capital punishment is OK for some people and not for others, then it is inconsistent.
Slaves in Israelite society were made of hostile peoples after war. People also sold themselves into slavery to pay off their debts.
Killing infants was, again, done to hostile peoples who had tried to kill Israelite infants. The Egyptians did it to the peaceful people they had enslaved.
Evidence of God treating OT people differently comes from Jesus' teaching on divorce: "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning."
This law code was not local. It was in practice in places all over the world. It was the norm for humanity. God used the general law code of whoever he punished so that the peoples he judged would only receive what they expected to receive. People who think what they are doing is good differ from people who perform the same act that know what they are doing is bad and know the penalty they are risking. Jesus preaches about ignorance of the truth in Luke 12:47:
"And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For to whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
God's law of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" does not come out of nowhere. It comes from the laws and the general sense of justice that the world had figured out on its own (I do not assert that, it's an interesting argument). This imperfect law had come from Adam's sin. God still operated under the laws of these people because absolute retribution was what these people understood and it was what they operated on. When the time was right, Jesus completed the law by instituting God's law of mercy and forgiveness in perfection by making himself the ultimate example. However, God is still described as merciful in the OT (Exodus 33:19, Psalms 28:6).
The killing of the Hebrew babies, as well as the institution and the maintenance of their bondage in Egypt, was a national decision. There was no opposition to Pharaoh's ruling as recorded in the Bible, so there is no base to an argument saying so. Rather, the Egyptians are described in Exodus 10:1, 14:17, and 1 Samuel 6:6 as having the same attitude as their Pharaoh, the stubborness that caused the Plagues in the first place. Based on this, this would not only mean that I, as an individual, would have had decided that my country's soldiers were justified in killing children, but would have supported the idea itself when it was proposed.

[LeoVonFrost]

Consilus, it seems that you can accept a god that kills with divine justice because it was an eye-for-an-eye. The real argument is whether this life on earth matters. Well I don't believe in the afterlife, so you bet I'm going to be upset when millions upon millions have been killed in the name of religion. These are conflicting beliefs that are at the core of this no-win scenario because I can judge god and religion both to be absolutely immoral, and you can judge god and religion both to be absolutely moral. If I may ask, what percentage of the bible do you think is literal?

[Consilius]

By this you mean how much of the Bible narrarates historic events. I am no creationist, and I feel that the legends of the patriarchs could have real foundations. The events of the Exodus are shady, but from there, I believe things become more and more factual.
Note that events become more and more obscure as we go lower in rank and farther into the past. No historian believes Abraham existed, but he was a nomad that had his story written down hundreds of years after his death. The Bible being ordered in myth, legend, and fact does not detract from its authority as God's Word or its moral wealth.