Ask the Christian

[fr0d0]

WC = Welsh Cake Stimby

[5thHorseman]

or disabled toilet.

[Cyberman]

Ah; picau ar y maen, pice bach, cacen gri or teisen radell. Cheers for that, mate.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

or disabled toilet.

Your toilet is disabled? How very inconvenient. How are you coping?

[FutureAndAHope]

Lev. 20:23, "Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I shall drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them."

Been a while since I have been back to this post. So just did a bit of graze to see what was happening. I know you guys have a fairly distorted view of God, IMO. You mentioned that that verse above among others showed how horrible God was. Becasue it says God hates certain types of people. But what you have to be a ware of is the types of practices that God mentioned in the passages above that vesrse included child sacrifice, sacrificing children to fire, which he said he hates. He was saying he hated people who justified infant sacrifices as a part of religious pratice. The reason for this is that God says of him self his nature is love.

Obviously you have to question why did God kill the first born of Egypt if he hates child sacrifice. Well the answer probably lies in the fact that he wanted to make it known that he had power over all the gods of Egypt, who was the super power of the day. i.e. "Isis is also known as protector of the dead and goddess of children" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis But don't get too worried he would not have sent all those kids to hell or something, I believe he is a God of mercy.

But the point I am making is God may say I hate such and such, but even you as an athiest hate certain things too. As an example there are not to many people who would go around saying "I love child killers", or "child molesterers". It is natural to both love and hate.

[Epimethean]

Ah, yes, a just god, who kills off entire races which technically came from his craft, and a god who sacrifices his own son for having fucked things up in the first place. Gotcha.

[The Grand Nudger]

Rgr Rgr, god hates things, people hate things. God hates the same things "certain" people hate. Unsurprising. I don't worry about the first-born of Egypt though, whether they roast in some imagined hell, or sit in heaven removed from their pagan parents forever. Exodus is a fairy tale, not history. Your god isn't a god of anything, no more or less than any egyptian god (although entirely less creative than their pantheon, and a mark of laziness or bad craft on the part of the authors).

[ElDinero]

Obviously you have to question why did God kill the first born of Egypt if he hates child sacrifice. Well the answer probably lies in the fact that he wanted to make it known that he had power over all the gods of Egypt, who was the super power of the day. i.e. "Isis is also known as protector of the dead and goddess of children" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis But don't get too worried he would not have sent all those kids to hell or something, I believe he is a God of mercy.

Excuse me? Can you take yourself seriously and say that? Even if we were to concede the point and admit that this actually happened (which BELIEVE ME I don't), can you actually have a clear conscience when you're peddling such shit?

1. So it's ok to kill them because he was just showing off? There's no way an omniscient super-being could've possibly done that without massacring thousands of children? Is God that unimaginative?

2. What about all the other cases of children being killed in the Bible?

3. On what authority do you say he would not have sent those kids to hell? Says who? You? How do you know this? Are we so privileged that our very own forums are visited by someone with access to God's thoughts and actions? How lucky are we?

4. If he did send them to hell, would you condemn him for it?

---

Woah, that was a lot of question marks.

[CoxRox]

My Question for you is, if god is omniscient, and knew how the world would pan out, and knew that most of the human race would end up in hell, why did he create us? Would it not be more moral to not create us and spare most of us an eternity of punishment?

Even if you bring freewill into it, he knew before we existed, that we would not to believe. Why did he proceed, surely that's not the best plan he could come up with?? If you knew 100% that if you had 5 children, 4 of them would live in absolute misery for their whole life, would you have them anyway?

I'm looking for you to justify god's reasoning and to stand by it as moral and right, not just to say I don't know and can't know, because that is such a glaring hole in christianity, I don't know is not good enough.

That's a very good question and one that I have asked many times but never with a satisfactory answer.

I hope that you succeed where I have failed.

There are many Christians who do not believe in a literal hell. The Hebrew word we translate 'hell' is 'sheol' which had the meaning of 'hidden'. It depicts the 'grave'. The Greek words 'hades', 'Gehenna' and 'tartarus' are also translated 'hell' and have different meanings. I've studied this topic for quite a few years now. There is a wealth of info out there for Christians who do believe in a literal hell, to check out. As for God knowing beforehand how things would pan out, check out this video by a guy called Martin Zender. He's not very keen on 'Christians'. It's aimed at bible believers so stay with him for the first few minutes. I love his humour. He is advocating a belief that is growing and which was the dominant view in the first few centuries of Christianity, (so it is claimed!). Scroll down to report 14:

http://www.martinzender.com/crack_o_dawn...vation.htm

If you like this vid, check his other ones. He covers hell etc.

[Epimethean]

The god of the bible was a braggart after he won in his randori with all the other gods.

Of course, he lost in the myths of other cultures, but hey, mythology is malleable.