Four questions for Christians

[FifthElement]

Where is your proof that religious people are easier to mold than non-religious people?

Sorry for being this blunt:

9/11 ???

Religious people are by definition blind followers, that is the main reason why they fly airplanes into buildings ...

I witnessed aftermath of atrocities in Bosnian war beyond your comprehension (entire villages completely wiped from the face of the earth, including old people, kids, infants, even cats and dogs), yep, true story, all done by religious people, muslims, christians and protestants, just because their religious identity was "endangered", because they felt that they are going to be "wiped out" by the others.

You have no slightest idea what religious folks are capable of doing when pressed into corner, when they push reason even further than they normally would ...

Murder is more then justified, it is required to protect the flock, and, of course, there is "positive" side effect too: gives them express ticket to haven, isn't that fuckin' convenient ?

[Consilius]

This is my opinion.
God is not appearing on toast and having conversations with people today, nor is he in visions. However, God is an orderly being not restricted by his own laws, but choosing to work within his own laws having promised us so. The moral code is not subject to change.
Therefore, I will judge an alleged prophet like this: if the Pope says that we should go back to slavery, God didn't speak to him. A roadside hippie, whether or not he has recieved the revelation he claimed, is, if not a prophet, behaving like one if he tells us to support the poor.
And no, whatever miracles he performs mean nothing. Even the Pharisees knew that much (Matthew 12:22-24).

---

Therefore, it's good because God said so AND God said so because it is good.

[Ryantology]

1. In a circumstance of an all knowing being able to judge that this was fair.

Omnipotence does not necessitate fairness. You can know everything and still be unfair (and still call it fairness and have people just shrug and say 'yas lawd' like robots because you said you were fair and that must mean it's true).

2. No

Then, the slaughter of Amalakites who had nothing to do with crime God cited as his reason for killing them is unjust?

3. In a scenario where you have an immortal soul

Why even allow that person to be born in the first place, then?

4. No

Then, is God not all-powerful, or is he unjust?

After having been made to watch all of them for a few hours.

Oh, you.

We are all guilty of one sin or another, and even the smallest sin requires death. Thankfully Christ died for those sins so we do not have to.

What sins are infants and small children capable of that made them deserve their deaths?

Free will comes in the way of being able to select the attonement offered by Christ. For your right in that we have no choice but to sin. The choice is in desision to seek forgiveness for said sin.

a: I'm referencing the slaughter of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel, so Christ's atonement wasn't in effect at this point.

b: Why should I seek forgiveness for something I can't choose not to do?

Why are we killing people to begin with? If out of anger and frustration of having been to watch every inner city kid in a given area, then know logic and reason are not in the mix any longer.

In reference to the Amalekites, we have an entire population killed because soldiers of their territory attacked the Jews in the Exodus.

Considering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, why do you limit the question to Christians?

Because the people who ordered those attacks were not omnipotent, omniscient gods who claimed to be incapable of evil.

First of all, Egypt had supposedly killed many more Hebrew boys than God killed Egyptians. He killed ALL males in Hebrew households, or at least most of them. He did this for a span of about 80 YEARS. It could have for been a single day, and the tally would STILL be higher. Actions are reciprocated back on the offender under God's 'eye for an eye' and 'tooth for a tooth' policy. This policy could be found in Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Greco-Roman and, yes, Egyptian literature. "The Teaching of Ankhsheshonqy".
Pharaoh caused all ten of the Plagues by refusing to let Israel go. He had firsthand knowledge of all the Plagues beforehand, and consented to their execution. Now we come upon the issue of 'God hardened his heart'.

I would not say that there were no guilty Egyptians in this scenario, but why not punish only those who were guilty of these atrocities? Why, instead, punish millions of people whose only crime was to be born in Egypt? Why punish so many people who did not commit that sin, while leaving alive every killer who had the good sense to not be their parents' firstborn child?

God didn't harden Pharaoh's heart: the words of his servant, Moses, did.

Why not just punish Pharaoh, then?

So we can say that Pharaoh willingfully caused the Ten Plagues to ravage his people. But, apparently, the Egyptians weren't so innocent either. Exodus 10:1, 14:17, and 1 Samuel 6:6 state that the Egyptians were just as bad as their Pharaoh. So that removes the innocence of pretty much everyone, except the kids.

A biased source, for one thing. A blanket generalization, for another.

If Pharaoh is guilty for not preventing the Ten Plagues (as he had the power to do so), why is God not guilty when he allows atrocities to take place, when he has the power to do so?

In ancient society, in Egypt as well as Babylonia and Israel, children were punished for the sins of their parents. This punishment has nothing to do with sin being 'transferred' to other people. The firstborn son of a parent was an essential family member. First-born males recieved inheritance, could protect aging parents, and could perpetuate the family name, like last names allow them to do today. The loss was a judgement on the parents, and not God getting revenge on kids.

1. Unless God was incapable of punishing the parents without killing their children, then it was absolutely taking revenge on children. It literally cannot be anything else.

2. Regardless, every parent in Egypt was a victim of this, regardless of whether or not they were responsible for whatever crimes God saw fit to charge the Pharaoh with.

3. Does it not strike you as odd that God's sense of justice is no different than any jumped-up warlord of that time period?

Also, there is an age of accountability at around 7-9. So, if we have firstborn males of hardened hearts dying after that age, they would have been accountable for their sins. Anyone who died before it would have gone to heaven, or, as the Catholics like to call it, 'limbo'. So we are left with the kids who died before their 8th birthday.

1. God's punishment was for a specific offense. If God wanted to kill all those other people for their sins, why did he not do so?

2. Why was God's attitude regarding mass slaughter for sin inconsistent? The vast majority of sinners, then and now, do not meet such horribly violent ends. How is it justice without consistency?

These particular kids were not punished, because that was not the intention. All that was needed from them was that their souls be absent from their bodies to produce the desired effect. Also, who's to say that their souls were not simply taken from their bodies during sleep? It was midnight, and I don't think that spiritual beings can walk around with bronze swords to hack the heads off about 69,000 kids in 8 hours.

Not that I believe in spiritual beings, but assuming they do exist, who is to say what they are capable of, especially when acting under the orders of a being capable of doing anything?

Regardless of how gentle their slaughter was, they were still slaughtered.

Note that God isn't simply siding with the Israelites. The entire Book of Judges is about God letting in foreign nations to conquer his own people. But God is only partial in the sense that he sides with the oppressed and works with them against the powerful. God isn't getting back at people, but judging them for their offenses and punishing them justly, despite what he feels for either side. Luke 19:41-43.

In other words, he is playing both ends against the middle, and for what reason if not for enjoyment? What purpose could such senseless misery serve that could not be accomplished without senseless misery?

If God were still engaging in direct revelation (which He is not, revelation is closed), and He directly commanded it.

Though that is a horrifyingly psychopathic response, I appreciate you being honest about it.

If God commands it, we know it is just.

How?

I reject the notion of free will, but nobody is judged for sins prior to committing them. We all enter this world sinners deserving of death and punishment, anything we receive other than that is purely God’s grace. God withholding His grace is not unjust because grace is freely given and taken away by only God.

If merely existing is a crime worthy of death, why let any person be born at all? And, if there is no free will, how can anybody actually deserve to die for any reason? They are doing nothing more than what God explicitly makes every one of them do. There can be no sin without free will.

There you go, I didn’t pull any punches, I hope you appreciate that.

I did. Now, you need to go seek mental help like yesterday. People who think like you do are a threat to society.

Only if your name is Planned Parenthood.

Unless Planned Parenthood is an organization run by omnipotent, omniscient gods, then this is false equivocation.

[Consilius]

First of all, Egypt had supposedly killed many more Hebrew boys than God killed Egyptians. He killed ALL males in Hebrew households, or at least most of them. He did this for a span of about 80 YEARS. It could have for been a single day, and the tally would STILL be higher. Actions are reciprocated back on the offender under God's 'eye for an eye' and 'tooth for a tooth' policy. This policy could be found in Confucianism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Greco-Roman and, yes, Egyptian literature. "The Teaching of Ankhsheshonqy".
Pharaoh caused all ten of the Plagues by refusing to let Israel go. He had firsthand knowledge of all the Plagues beforehand, and consented to their execution. Now we come upon the issue of 'God hardened his heart'.

I would not say that there were no guilty Egyptians in this scenario, but why not punish only those who were guilty of these atrocities? Why, instead, punish millions of people whose only crime was to be born in Egypt? Why punish so many people who did not commit that sin, while leaving alive every killer who had the good sense to not be their parents' firstborn child?

As I said, the death of a first-born child was a crippling punishment TO THE PARENTS, not the children. It also was a reciprocation of what the Egyptians had done before. They had not killed Israelites, they had killed their babies. What they did was much worse than killing the Israelites themselves, but rather they had cut off their bloodlines and killed their family names, and the continuity of your family name was extremely important.

God didn't harden Pharaoh's heart: the words of his servant, Moses, did.

Why not just punish Pharaoh, then?

Because the Egyptians are guilty, too.

So we can say that Pharaoh willingfully caused the Ten Plagues to ravage his people. But, apparently, the Egyptians weren't so innocent either. Exodus 10:1, 14:17, and 1 Samuel 6:6 state that the Egyptians were just as bad as their Pharaoh. So that removes the innocence of pretty much everyone, except the kids.

A biased source, for one thing. A blanket generalization, for another.

If Pharaoh is guilty for not preventing the Ten Plagues (as he had the power to do so), why is God not guilty when he allows atrocities to take place, when he has the power to do so?

Historical bias? I thought this was about God killing kids! You have found fault in this Bible story as it is, and I am explaining it. If we want to factor in historical bias, then you are condemning the validity of the source, and that's a debate on the historical validity of the Bible itself, and you could ask someone else about that. I am defending morals. We are not analyzing this Bible story as a historical event, but if you want to say that not EVERY Egyptian was guilty, who's to say that God didn't put blood in EVERY water source or send locusts to EVERY crop or kill EVERY Egyptian firstborn male? I can say so because I can dismiss those plagues as simply blanket generalizations.
God caused the Ten Plagues to punish Pharaoh and the Egyptians for what they had done. If you are referring to the slavery, through it, God tested the faith of his people and gave them a strong national identity. God never told anyone to enslave his people in the first place, so it isn't His fault that the Pharaoh found the opportunity to make slaves and used it immorally.

In ancient society, in Egypt as well as Babylonia and Israel, children were punished for the sins of their parents. This punishment has nothing to do with sin being 'transferred' to other people. The firstborn son of a parent was an essential family member. First-born males recieved inheritance, could protect aging parents, and could perpetuate the family name, like last names allow them to do today. The loss was a judgement on the parents, and not God getting revenge on kids.

1. Unless God was incapable of punishing the parents without killing their children, then it was absolutely taking revenge on children. It literally cannot be anything else.

2. Regardless, every parent in Egypt was a victim of this, regardless of whether or not they were responsible for whatever crimes God saw fit to charge the Pharaoh with.

3. Does it not strike you as odd that God's sense of justice is no different than any jumped-up warlord of that time period?

God did nothing more than what the Pharaoh had done himself, and that was to kill male children. As you have probably noticed, the penalty was actually less than the crime. Around 80 years of killing all males vs. 8 hours of killing firstborns. Like I said, the death of a male child was probably feared worse than death. People lived on in their heirs. Without these heirs, the family went extinct. The children died in peace while the parents lived in agony and fear.
In ancient times, children were killed for the crimes of their parents, and people received exactly whatever crime they had carried out. Pharaoh would have been familiar with this. He also would have also understood that it was in no way was the punishment meant for the kids. The punishment would be intended to hurt the parents. Pharaoh himself killed Israelite babies in order to suppress their Israelite parents. He had no reason to hate the infants.
The Egyptians never lifted a finger against their Pharaoh or against slavery. They are described as having the exact same condition as their Pharaoh: their hearts were hard, nothing more, nothing less. The Pharaoh simply voiced the Egyptian opinion, because they had all benefitted from slave labor.

Also, there is an age of accountability at around 7-9. So, if we have firstborn males of hardened hearts dying after that age, they would have been accountable for their sins. Anyone who died before it would have gone to heaven, or, as the Catholics like to call it, 'limbo'. So we are left with the kids who died before their 8th birthday.

1. God's punishment was for a specific offense. If God wanted to kill all those other people for their sins, why did he not do so?

2. Why was God's attitude regarding mass slaughter for sin inconsistent? The vast majority of sinners, then and now, do not meet such horribly violent ends. How is it justice without consistency?

As I have explained, God didn't use the Passover to kill people because they did bad things. Killing anybody would have been completely out of the question had not Pharaoh responded to population growth by killing innocent kids.
All sinners are punished according to their crimes in one way or another. God doesn't convey the punishment in the same way for everybody. God gave specific reasons that he punished the Egyptians in this way: not only did he prove to them that he wasn't to be messed with (notice how Pharaoh denied the Israelites freedom even when they invoked the name of God) or to prove his existence to Egypt, but he brought the people of Israel together and gave them the faith that is the centerpiece of the Jewish religion.

These particular kids were not punished, because that was not the intention. All that was needed from them was that their souls be absent from their bodies to produce the desired effect. Also, who's to say that their souls were not simply taken from their bodies during sleep? It was midnight, and I don't think that spiritual beings can walk around with bronze swords to hack the heads off about 69,000 kids in 8 hours.

Not that I believe in spiritual beings, but assuming they do exist, who is to say what they are capable of, especially when acting under the orders of a being capable of doing anything?

Regardless of how gentle their slaughter was, they were still slaughtered.

If God is able to do anything, this proves my point. In ancient times, killing children for their parents sins was inefficient because the kids still suffered in death. But if God can do anything, that means that he would punish everybody precisely how they deserved to be punished. The Egyptian boys weren't meant to be punished at all, so God punished them exactly as much as they needed: not at all. Therefore, who's to say their deaths were impossibly painless?
Yes, the Egyptian boys still died, and God killed them. The punishment was the fact that they were dead, and was experienced throughout the lives of their parents. The boys who died no longer lived in Egypt, but with God, which was infinitely better. That does not mean we should kill innocent people, because, as I stated, they will be being punished by the pain of their death, and we will always be punished for killing anybody.

Note that God isn't simply siding with the Israelites. The entire Book of Judges is about God letting in foreign nations to conquer his own people. But God is only partial in the sense that he sides with the oppressed and works with them against the powerful. God isn't getting back at people, but judging them for their offenses and punishing them justly, despite what he feels for either side. Luke 19:41-43.

In other words, he is playing both ends against the middle, and for what reason if not for enjoyment? What purpose could such senseless misery serve that could not be accomplished without senseless misery?

Did God ignite the conflict? The Egyptians were the offenders, and God, as a judge, made them pay the penalty. They had had no reason to do what they did to the Israelites than that it was done out of fear, and led to an immoral decision that caused much more misery than the Israelites could have possibly done, and, if you noticed, the Israelites never did anything to a single Egyptian for the 430 years they were there, except perhaps Moses' episode with the slave-driver. The Egyptians recieved no more misery than they had dished out themselves, because they had caused much more misery to the Israelites.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Sorry for being this blunt:

9/11 ???

Counterpoint: Cultural Revolution

[Ryantology]

Proving that personality cults are dangerous, regardless of whether the personality is fictitious or not.

[The Grand Nudger]

As I said, the death of a first-born child was a crippling punishment TO THE PARENTS, not the children.

-and yet, in the narrative, the kids are dead. End of.

It also was a reciprocation of what the Egyptians had done before. They had not killed Israelites, they had killed their babies.

Neither the children nor the children's parents were involved in the narrative. Its a revenge story that extracts a price from those un-involved.

What they did was much worse than killing the Israelites themselves, but rather they had cut off their bloodlines and killed their family names, and the continuity of your family name was extremely important.

Which is all very entertaining, but none of it ever occurred, of course - so again neither did the death of the first-born.

Why not just punish Pharaoh, then?

Because the Egyptians are guilty, too.

:Looks up:

The rest of the post is a long winded appeal, paint god as being "no worse" than some other despot or dunce all you like, I won't argue. Besides, it's a very astute observation even if the implications are lost. On the other hand, if you want to talk "morality" - you've been condemning your fairy with every defense. Think about that for a minute. God doing something because "pharoah did it" or it was "no worse than what the egyptians did" is pretty dismal. That's how my -kids- excuse their bad behavior........

Meh, in any case, it's not a problem for christendom, because we know that it never occurred. Wouldn't it be easier to say "fiction" than to fail at defending such horrid shit? Say it with me-

"My god is bigger than all those fairy tales"....................

:igh::

Therefore, I will judge an alleged prophet like this:

Rgr, you'll apply your preconceived notions of what god -should- say to whatever someone tells you god -did- say (and apparently you don't believe that god speaks to people any more than I do...)..and then determine the status.

Would it surprise you if "god" ever said something that you wouldn't...and is this even possible under such a scheme? If "god" or a prophet of "god" told you to drive out some group of people, kill all that you could, blot out their very memory as a group...it's likely that you wouldn't interpret that as anything a god might say, eh? So what was all this above about killing kids?

[Rev. Rye]

What’s your ultimate standard of justice?

Does it contribute to the betterment of society as a whole? That's the ultimate standard for me. Ethics, justice and codes of law come not from what a lightning bolt wrote on some tablets on Mount Sinai, but from the realisation that we need to live together in peace. Why is that so hard?

Under which circumstances, precisely, would you consider it acceptable to carry out the violent mass killing of every infant and child in a city?

Only if your name is Planned Parenthood.

Where did Planned Parenthood state that they planned to kill every infant, fetus, and child in a given city?

[Consilius]

As I said, the death of a first-born child was a crippling punishment TO THE PARENTS, not the children.

-and yet, in the narrative, the kids are dead. End of.

It also was a reciprocation of what the Egyptians had done before. They had not killed Israelites, they had killed their babies.

Neither the children nor the children's parents were involved in the narrative. Its a revenge story that extracts a price from those un-involved.

What they did was much worse than killing the Israelites themselves, but rather they had cut off their bloodlines and killed their family names, and the continuity of your family name was extremely important.

Which is all very entertaining, but none of it ever occurred, of course - so again neither did the death of the first-born.

Why not just punish Pharaoh, then?

Because the Egyptians are guilty, too.

:Looks up:

The rest of the post is a long winded appeal, paint god as being "no worse" than some other despot or dunce all you like, I won't argue. Besides, it's a very astute observation even if the implications are lost. On the other hand, if you want to talk "morality" - you've been condemning your fairy with every defense. Think about that for a minute. God doing something because "pharoah did it" or it was "no worse than what the egyptians did" is pretty dismal. That's how my -kids- excuse their bad behavior........

Meh, in any case, it's not a problem for christendom, because we know that it never occurred. Wouldn't it be easier to say "fiction" than to fail at defending such horrid shit? Say it with me-

"My god is bigger than all those fairy tales"....................

:igh::

If you check, Exodus 10:1, 14:17, and 1 Samuel 6:6 describe the Egyptians as having nothing less than the attribute ascribed to their Pharaoh, the exact mind state that caused the Plagues in the first place: they were hard of heart. Pharaoh was simply their spokesman, and no Egyptian ever appealed to let the Israelites go (as far as the story states). They had enslaved the Israelites together and killed their children together, because they all benefitted from slavery and national security. So why would they be punished any less than their Pharaoh was?
Is this God stooping to Pharaoh's level? For this to be God simply taking revenge on people, he would have had to be offended. He never was. He gave the Egyptians what they had given the refugees in their land: the death of their children. The only person who would punish a party with what they had done to another party without being offended would be a judge.

Therefore, I will judge an alleged prophet like this:

Rgr, you'll apply your preconceived notions of what god -should- say to whatever someone tells you god -did- say (and apparently you don't believe that god speaks to people any more than I do...)..and then determine the status.

Would it surprise you if "god" ever said something that you wouldn't...and is this even possible under such a scheme? If "god" or a prophet of "god" told you to drive out some group of people, kill all that you could, blot out their very memory as a group...it's likely that you wouldn't interpret that as anything a god might say, eh? So what was all this above about killing kids?
[/quote]
For this order to be a valid statement, all of these people would have had to have tried to kill us as a people without provocation and wipe out OUR memory as a group. This would hardly be noticed as a religious statement, because the fight would have been picked up as an act of self-defense under a political banner. And if they are not wiped out, they will rise up again and we may not be so lucky next time. You can't factor in Christians forgiveness and mercy simply because THERE ARE OTHER LIVES AT STAKE BESIDES YOUR OWN. That's what war is. God can't always be an anti-war hippy because people will need to be defended from their common threat because we all have the will to survive.

[Ryantology]

God can't always be an anti-war hippy because people will need to be defended from their common threat because we all have the will to survive.

For an all-capable superbeing, God sure has an awful lot of limits he has to work around.

I mean, he could snap his celestial finger and end all conflicts and threats in an instant. He chooses not to. He could have made humans not prone to conflict, not desire bad things. He chose, instead, to create a violent, envious species. You can cite 'free will' here, but that doesn't deflect responsibility, because not only does that imply that we developed sinful behavior all by ourselves, but he made all life forms behave this way. When your god is omni-capable, he is also omni-responsible for everything that happens, good and bad.

Ultimately, the plagues are God's fault because he had virtually infinite methods he could have solved the problem and opted not to choose a non-violent method.