The Agnostic Religion

[Frank Ernest]

As nearly as I can tell, Granite doesn't take himself seriously enough to be an object of self-worship.

Then I won't take him seriously either. :thumb:

 

[Granite]

Real Christianity started with the 12 Apostles.

Who worshipped Jesus before and after he died and got up
and walked and talked with the hundreds of people.

1Cor 15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

6 After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once;

So would you say "real" Christianity was lost at some point between the apostles and the RCC?

 

[PureX]

I personally don't think "real Christianity" was ever fully grasped - not even by the apostles. Some people got it just as some people get it even today, but most do not. The moment a person turns Christ into a religion, they've missed the whole point.

I know all the religionists will chime in "Here, here!" but in truth they are the most religious, and the most lost.

 

[OMEGA]

Christian Churches were started by the Apostles and continued from there.

Down through History there have been other Church Groups who followed JESUS
and did not follow the Catholics.

Waldenses, Vaudois, Henricians, Catharists, Puritans, Bougres, Paulicans, Publicans, Lombardists, Albigenses - all following Christ and calling themselves the Church of God.

======================================

 

[Agape4Robin]

I personally don't think "real Christianity" was ever fully grasped - not even by the apostles. Some people got it just as some people get it even today, but most do not. The moment a person turns Christ into a religion, they've missed the whole point.

I know all the religionists will chime in "Here, here!" but in truth they are the most religious, and the most lost.

I disagree. Paul got it. John got it. Peter got it. They were apostles, were they not?:think:

However, I do agree with the difference between "religion" and Christianity. :thumb:

 

[angelfightfire]

Ah yes. The Old Testament. Replete with rape, the mutiliation of women, and genocide. Cute!

He does hold the strings on everyone's birth and life, and so, yes, sometimes has to pull them.

I am not a moral relativist. In the slaughter in Rwanda, the NY Times and many on the Left said, "There is no good side, they are all bad." The Clinton Administration helped the UN essentially pull out of the region. After the Rwandan Refugees chased the much larger force of the genocidists out of the country, even still the world continued to give much more aid to the genocidists then to the actual genocide victims.

Needless to say, there were retaliations.

Amnesty International stood up and condemned all retaliations, indeed, even their right to fight back -- equating all killing as equal, regardless of the motives.

Historically, we have seen that the world does believe that it has a right to murder Christians, Jews, and others... but that the victim does not have a right to fight back. They especially are angry when either Christians or Jews fight back.

This is not the same situation.

If someone came into your house, would you wound them? If someone killed your family, would you seek to kill them? If you saw the ocean parted, ten great plagues, heard the very voice of God and saw all of the miracles the Hebrew did, would you believe when you were commanded by this same God to go in and take the land and leave no thing breathing left alive?

But, you leave all of the miracles out of the equation. You pick and choose what from the Bible is true. You assume most of it is untrue. You then have to make guesses: were they really slaves at all? Did they really get freed? Did they really invade the land at all? Was Abraham and his family really living in the land in the first place? Did they ever really go to Egypt, become enslaved, and become a giant nation? Was there really a Joseph?

It goes on and on.

Speculation after speculation after speculation. Regardless, your accusations are unfair. You can not say, "God says it is okay for anybody to claim they are speaking for God and to go about and order wars". That is outrageously not in the context whatsoever. In context, nothing like this is ever said.

This is like if someone comes into you house, ties up your family, rapes and kills them... you come in, you grab your gun, and you kill that person in blind rage... and then the authorities remove the entire story, the entire circumstances, and jail you for life for murder with malicious intent.

They say, "Well, whatever evidence there may be that your family was really raped or killed by this fellow is inconsequential. We do not believe it, and so will throw it out. Therefore, the facts of the case are you shot a man in cold blood who you invited over to your house, and he was not armed with anything."

That is just one example of explaining why your accusations are way off base.

...

That said, a lot of men today are cowards. They never make tough decisions. They would not protect their family if their life depended on it. When they see crimes against other people, they turn their heads and walk away. They do not intervene, they do not report it.

They never fail to try to follow the crowd. They are mortified of something bad being said about them... so they approve of any and every crime willingly.

I do not know if this is where you are coming from, or what. But, this is where a lot of the critics of the Old Testament come from. I would guess not, actually, based on little evidence... but my point is this is the opposite place from where I stand.

So, no, I think Samson is incredible. A role model. I think David is great. Both men who fought a killed a lot of people. I will not shy away from that. I think all of the Prophets in the Old Testament are great. I love all of their stories and admire every single thing they ever did -- except where they sinned.

So, whatever, judge me as you will.

I am proud of it.

 

[Agape4Robin]

He does hold the strings on everyone's birth and life, and so, yes, sometimes has to pull them.

I am not a moral relativist. In the slaughter in Rwanda, the NY Times and many on the Left said, "There is no good side, they are all bad." The Clinton Administration helped the UN essentially pull out of the region. After the Rwandan Refugees chased the much larger force of the genocidists out of the country, even still the world continued to give much more aid to the genocidists then to the actual genocide victims.

Needless to say, there were retaliations.

Amnesty International stood up and condemned all retaliations, indeed, even their right to fight back -- equating all killing as equal, regardless of the motives.

Historically, we have seen that the world does believe that it has a right to murder Christians, Jews, and others... but that the victim does not have a right to fight back. They especially are angry when either Christians or Jews fight back.

This is not the same situation.

If someone came into your house, would you wound them? If someone killed your family, would you seek to kill them? If you saw the ocean parted, ten great plagues, heard the very voice of God and saw all of the miracles the Hebrew did, would you believe when you were commanded by this same God to go in and take the land and leave no thing breathing left alive?

But, you leave all of the miracles out of the equation. You pick and choose what from the Bible is true. You assume most of it is untrue. You then have to make guesses: were they really slaves at all? Did they really get freed? Did they really invade the land at all? Was Abraham and his family really living in the land in the first place? Did they ever really go to Egypt, become enslaved, and become a giant nation? Was there really a Joseph?

It goes on and on.

Speculation after speculation after speculation. Regardless, your accusations are unfair. You can not say, "God says it is okay for anybody to claim they are speaking for God and to go about and order wars". That is outrageously not in the context whatsoever. In context, nothing like this is ever said.

This is like if someone comes into you house, ties up your family, rapes and kills them... you come in, you grab your gun, and you kill that person in blind rage... and then the authorities remove the entire story, the entire circumstances, and jail you for life for murder with malicious intent.

They say, "Well, whatever evidence there may be that your family was really raped or killed by this fellow is inconsequential. We do not believe it, and so will throw it out. Therefore, the facts of the case are you shot a man in cold blood who you invited over to your house, and he was not armed with anything."

That is just one example of explaining why your accusations are way off base.

...

That said, a lot of men today are cowards. They never make tough decisions. They would not protect their family if their life depended on it. When they see crimes against other people, they turn their heads and walk away. They do not intervene, they do not report it.

They never fail to try to follow the crowd. They are mortified of something bad being said about them... so they approve of any and every crime willingly.

I do not know if this is where you are coming from, or what. But, this is where a lot of the critics of the Old Testament come from. I would guess not, actually, based on little evidence... but my point is this is the opposite place from where I stand.

So, no, I think Samson is incredible. A role model. I think David is great. Both men who fought a killed a lot of people. I will not shy away from that. I think all of the Prophets in the Old Testament are great. I love all of their stories and admire every single thing they ever did -- except where they sinned.

So, whatever, judge me as you will.

I am proud of it.

Braaaaaaaaaaaavo!!!!:BRAVO:

Well said!

 

[angelfightfire]

:darwinsm: Sure is more exciting than the prissy, wimpy little sandbox world you prefer.

Oddly, your little icon you used there is called "darwinism". That is amusing, I wonder how many of these guys that find the Old Testament so horrifying embrace the principles of darwinism? (All, likely.)

Natural selection.

Here are some points:

-> Under these guidelines of Darwinism, morality genuinely does not make sense -- if you are superior, your major goal should be to become dictator, have endless concubines and children... you might settle for multiple wives and many children

-> If you do not even have children - as most of these internet Darwinists don't, we can reason - then you are qualified as being a Darwinian reject... whatever the reason, you have failed, you are a worthless mutation

-> Might makes right under the Darwinian model, again, there is no morality

-> Good looking guys should all start stealing everyone else's women, at least, those who "know the truth about Darwinism". You don't want everyone in the ball game, or who knows, maybe society would collapse.

Darwinism is behind Nazism and Communism.

Without these principles, neither of these systems would have existed.

They have both fed into what is today, modern Islamism. What would Islamism be without the Nazi propaganda or without the support of the Left?

Christianity, on the otherhand, has a moral system which is reasonable - though those who disagree with it, of course, would argue that they fail to see the reasoning thereof - and our actions have good reasons behind them: there is nothing in the Scripture which ultimately can not be applied as being under the Golden Rule.

Someone could say, "But they killed bad people!". Okay. If God showed you miracles and spoke audibly to you, then asked you to kill bad people, would you? Conversely, if God created man, then who has the right to say God can not make him die? If you create something, does anyone complain when you destroy it? Do they have a right to? Of course not.

But, they are all hypocrites.

They have a standard for themselves, and a very different standard for everyone else.

 

[Agape4Robin]

It's absolutely sickening that some pick and choose what is palatable about the Bible. :think:

 

[Balder]

It's absolutely sickening that some pick and choose what is palatable about the Bible. :think:

I find it more disturbing that some people, in their insecurity and demand for something "fixed" and unquestionable in order to shore up their lack of faith, are willing to accept obviously immoral acts, such as genocide and other forms of mass murder, as having been commanded and sanctioned by a supposedly good and holy God.

 

[Balder]

Someone could say, "But they killed bad people!". Okay. If God showed you miracles and spoke audibly to you, then asked you to kill bad people, would you?

If you heard a voice which you believed was God, which told you to go into a rich neighborhood and find a specific house and enter it and slaughter everyone in it, down to the babies and pets, and then take it over for yourself, would you do it?

Conversely, if God created man, then who has the right to say God can not make him die? If you create something, does anyone complain when you destroy it? Do they have a right to? Of course not.

If you create an insentient, unfeeling material object, no one will complain or call you immoral if you destroy it. But if one day you are able to create a living, breathing, fully thinking and feeling human being in your laboratory, do you still think you it would not be morally problematic to torture her, to burn her alive, or to cut her into pieces?

 

[OMEGA]

God is Not Immoral.

That is your mistaken conclusion.

God has the Right to Kill and destroy people because He created them

and HE can easily bring them back to life at the Proper time.

Everything is Timing.

God does not want the same situation as NOAH had,
when the world was full of violence
to exist until the time is right.

God gives people time to Change from their Evil ways but if they won't then he removes them from the Earth for awhile so that the rest of the World
will see and behave themselves.

==============================

 

[angelfightfire]

If you heard a voice which you believed was God, which told you to go into a rich neighborhood and find a specific house and enter it and slaughter everyone in it, down to the babies and pets, and then take it over for yourself, would you do it?

Okay, so now you can't argue from a Scriptural basis, so you go to personal opinion. If Christian A says, "Yes, I would do whatever a voice I believed was God said" then that somehow proves that Scripture teaches this.

Nevermind that you could likely also find out that "Christians" use brain meters over on a Scientologist list. Or "Christians" believe blood transfusion is "cannibalism" on a Jehovah Witness list.

Slanderers don't want the truth. Slanderers want lies. They want distortions which embrace their lies. Mass slanderers are the worst type. Germany mass slandered the Jews before killing them. Tutsis mass slandered the Hutus before killing them. First, comes the hate propaganda, then the murder.

The media constantly thrives on this kind of thing for their bias. A guy calling himself "Christian" stands up and says something atrocious and for the next week all we are reading about is how "all" Christians are this way.

...

I wonder. If the poster truly heard a voice and believed it was God, what would he do?
What would anyone do? Of course, our standards of faith are extremely high. Communists murdered 100 million on the basis of the words of blatant liars. They didn't need God parting an ocean or causing the Ten Plagues of Egypt. They just need Marx and Lenin and Pol Pot and Stalin and Mao and Castro and all of those other idiots who have run their countries into the ground and murdered so many.

Who told the Left to pull out of Rwanda? I wonder. Or, who told them to ignore the two million Afghans slaughtered by the Soviets? Or, who told them to praise Pol Pot's atrocious Communist government? Or, who told them to praise the murderous, totalitarian regime of the Viet Cong -- which is failed, like every Marxist system before it... and taken millions of lives with it?

They say, "I believe nothing". A stone believes nothing. Everybody believes every manner of thing. Imagine a waiter bringing a tray with a piece of maggot infested steak on it: "Do you believe this steak is rotten, sir?"... "No, I do not believe anything!", they would say. But, would they eat it, too? No. No, because they believe it is rotten.

The damned do not believe because they are lacking grace. They have every right to figure out that He exists. That does not save them. But, figuring out God exists presents them with a host of problems -- like that their conscience actually matters.

If you create an insentient, unfeeling material object, no one will complain or call you immoral if you destroy it. But if one day you are able to create a living, breathing, fully thinking and feeling human being in your laboratory, do you still think you it would not be morally problematic to torture her, to burn her alive, or to cut her into pieces?[/

I would suggest filing a complaint, immediately. You might also point out that you had some problems in High School which were grossly unfair and that thing that happened to your dad never should have happened. Suggest to your Maker that he cancel your existance at once, it is completely unfair!

Tell you what. I will cut you a deal. I will do you a favor. Since you are such a brilliant genius to figure everything out, and I have close ties to the Almighty God, I will write a letter to him for you, right now!

" Dear Almighty, All-Knowing, All-Powerful God, Creator of Heaven and Earth,

This is Joe.

I have a lot of complaints to make here. You really did a horrible job in this whole creation thing of yours. There should not be any wars. We should all live forever. There should not be any sickness. No one should ever get mad at anyone else. We should all have palaces and be able to have everything we want all the time. Why not? You are God.

Why did you invent pain? What a horrible idea. Now, sex and money and television and movies and drugs and mansions and everything -- great ideas! We should be able to do whatever we want anytime we want without any consequences whatever!

If somebody doesn't like something, they don't have to have it!

We can all have endless servants waiting on us hand and foot. Making them robots, so nobody has to suffer.

We should have the greatest and softest furniture.

There should not be any of those types of people I dislike. No Christians. No Jews. No Republicans. None of those Irish guys with the bushy eyebrows. No Germans. I hate Greeks. What is that? No Greeks. Everybody should agree. This whole idea of people having disagreements is a bad idea.

There should be no conflict.

Everyone should have any type of superpowers they want.

Thanks,

Joe Schmo"

So, we end up with a bunch of people who are the most spoiled and worthless people on the planet.

Heroes? Never exist. Virtue? What virtue when there is no conflict, nothing bad to be virtuous against?

You wouldn't even have people like myself out here which you can come out here and preach against so you can feel a little better about your self while you serve your great and noble and wise campaign.

If you were smart, you would say, "It doesn't have to all be materialistic, you could make a spiritual paradise where everyone experiences the mind and heart of God for all of eternity, where we live as true Children of God". But you lack that faith or even imagination.

This is it for guys like you. There can't be anything superior. Can't be. Completely ruled out. Heard one Christian, heard them all. Is that right? We are all liars in you mind, all deluded. But, you, you tell the truth. You can be believed.

Right.

What a blind hypocrite.

 

[angelfightfire]

God is Not Immoral.

That is your mistaken conclusion.

God has the Right to Kill and destroy people because He created them

and HE can easily bring them back to life at the Proper time.

Everything is Timing.

God does not want the same situation as NOAH had,
when the world was full of violence
to exist until the time is right.

God gives people time to Change from their Evil ways but if they won't then he removes them from the Earth for awhile so that the rest of the World
will see and behave themselves.

==============================

You are right there.

I mean, God is saying, "Look people, you see bad things here, but I assure you, in the end everything comes out for the best -- better then you can believe. If you but trust me."

The problem is nobody can trust God because everybody is wicked and God is good.

He sets up a system whereby all you have to do is believe God, believe His words, and these people can not even consider His words. They can not even begin to believe them. Because the words of God are good and they are wicked.

They do all of these horribly wicked things, then they say of the wicked people who do them, "You did not do this, God did this! You can go free, we like you!"

Yet, God even tells these people, "You can not see it, but I am making a New Heaven and a New Earth, and everything here that is crooked will be made straight."

They can not fathom any of this.

They say, "Oh, there will you say there will be a New Heavens and a New Earth, and sure only the nations which were Christianized progressed so far and have such incredible freedoms and rights of all of the nations of the world... but I know for a fact that there won't be a New Heavens and a New Earth, that after death, there is nothing!"

They know this for a fact.

Trying to tell them that God is going around and showing people evidence otherwise does not persuade them -- even if God would show them the same evidence if they just tried to listen to what these people said and sought honestly on what they said!

No wonder they are condemned to an eternity of justice, where all of the true believers might look upon them and understand just how wrong sin is and just how Holy God is.

 

[angelfightfire]

I find it more disturbing that some people, in their insecurity and demand for something "fixed" and unquestionable in order to shore up their lack of faith, are willing to accept obviously immoral acts, such as genocide and other forms of mass murder, as having been commanded and sanctioned by a supposedly good and holy God.

Wow, so check out the accusations here: she is "insecure", she "demands something fixed and unquestionable", she has a "lack of faith", she is "willing to accept obviously immoral acts", she is a supporter of both 'genocide' and 'mass murder'... wow.

That is really some venom.

Reminds me of what the Nazis were saying about the Jews before they started killing them. They said, "The Jews eat babies and do mass murder, they are the most evil creatures on the planet, they are each of them guilty of mass murder, so we must condemn them to death".

Same false accusations murderers always hail against their victims, at least when the murder is politically or religiously motivated and wrong.

If you call someone enough names and shove enough accusations at them, you will persuade some people of the rightness of your argument -- and you do not even have to use reasoning or evidence or anything like that!

Amazing how so many people believe wicked things about others just on the basis of blind hatred and their own hypocrisy -- in fact if such people could but see that their monster they see in us is really the monster in their own heart, just think of how glorious and peaceful this world would be!

 

[Balder]

Okay, so now you can't argue from a Scriptural basis, so you go to personal opinion. If Christian A says, "Yes, I would do whatever a voice I believed was God said" then that somehow proves that Scripture teaches this.

Nevermind that you could likely also find out that "Christians" use brain meters over on a Scientologist list. Or "Christians" believe blood transfusion is "cannibalism" on a Jehovah Witness list.

Slanderers don't want the truth. Slanderers want lies. They want distortions which embrace their lies. Mass slanderers are the worst type. Germany mass slandered the Jews before killing them. Tutsis mass slandered the Hutus before killing them. First, comes the hate propaganda, then the murder.

The media constantly thrives on this kind of thing for their bias. A guy calling himself "Christian" stands up and says something atrocious and for the next week all we are reading about is how "all" Christians are this way.

...

I wonder. If the poster truly heard a voice and believed it was God, what would he do?
What would anyone do? Of course, our standards of faith are extremely high. Communists murdered 100 million on the basis of the words of blatant liars. They didn't need God parting an ocean or causing the Ten Plagues of Egypt. They just need Marx and Lenin and Pol Pot and Stalin and Mao and Castro and all of those other idiots who have run their countries into the ground and murdered so many.

Who told the Left to pull out of Rwanda? I wonder. Or, who told them to ignore the two million Afghans slaughtered by the Soviets? Or, who told them to praise Pol Pot's atrocious Communist government? Or, who told them to praise the murderous, totalitarian regime of the Viet Cong -- which is failed, like every Marxist system before it... and taken millions of lives with it?

They say, "I believe nothing". A stone believes nothing. Everybody believes every manner of thing. Imagine a waiter bringing a tray with a piece of maggot infested steak on it: "Do you believe this steak is rotten, sir?"... "No, I do not believe anything!", they would say. But, would they eat it, too? No. No, because they believe it is rotten.

The damned do not believe because they are lacking grace. They have every right to figure out that He exists. That does not save them. But, figuring out God exists presents them with a host of problems -- like that their conscience actually matters.

I would suggest filing a complaint, immediately. You might also point out that you had some problems in High School which were grossly unfair and that thing that happened to your dad never should have happened. Suggest to your Maker that he cancel your existance at once, it is completely unfair!

Tell you what. I will cut you a deal. I will do you a favor. Since you are such a brilliant genius to figure everything out, and I have close ties to the Almighty God, I will write a letter to him for you, right now!

" Dear Almighty, All-Knowing, All-Powerful God, Creator of Heaven and Earth,

This is Joe.

I have a lot of complaints to make here. You really did a horrible job in this whole creation thing of yours. There should not be any wars. We should all live forever. There should not be any sickness. No one should ever get mad at anyone else. We should all have palaces and be able to have everything we want all the time. Why not? You are God.

Why did you invent pain? What a horrible idea. Now, sex and money and television and movies and drugs and mansions and everything -- great ideas! We should be able to do whatever we want anytime we want without any consequences whatever!

If somebody doesn't like something, they don't have to have it!

We can all have endless servants waiting on us hand and foot. Making them robots, so nobody has to suffer.

We should have the greatest and softest furniture.

There should not be any of those types of people I dislike. No Christians. No Jews. No Republicans. None of those Irish guys with the bushy eyebrows. No Germans. I hate Greeks. What is that? No Greeks. Everybody should agree. This whole idea of people having disagreements is a bad idea.

There should be no conflict.

Everyone should have any type of superpowers they want.

Thanks,

Joe Schmo"

So, we end up with a bunch of people who are the most spoiled and worthless people on the planet.

Heroes? Never exist. Virtue? What virtue when there is no conflict, nothing bad to be virtuous against?

You wouldn't even have people like myself out here which you can come out here and preach against so you can feel a little better about your self while you serve your great and noble and wise campaign.

If you were smart, you would say, "It doesn't have to all be materialistic, you could make a spiritual paradise where everyone experiences the mind and heart of God for all of eternity, where we live as true Children of God". But you lack that faith or even imagination.

This is it for guys like you. There can't be anything superior. Can't be. Completely ruled out. Heard one Christian, heard them all. Is that right? We are all liars in you mind, all deluded. But, you, you tell the truth. You can be believed.

Right.

What a blind hypocrite.

You have made a lot of noise and protestation, and you have assailed some image of who you think I am, but you really haven't responded at all to my post. You wove a complex picture and went on all sorts of flights of fancy, but didn't address the simple questions I posed. Let's cut to the chase here. In your previous post, when someone observed that the OT records many brutal things, you asked what the original poster would do if "commanded," as those in the OT supposedly were, to utterly destroy a population and leave no thing breathing. It seemed to me that you were suggesting that if you had experienced miracles, then you would do what God said even if he told you to wipe out a whole city of people. When I asked you my return question, I wasn't saying that all Christians do this, or that true Christians should do this; I was trying to find out your opinion. In your long post, you didn't respond to this, but I would still like to know what you think. If you say "yes," I might challenge you about this, but that doesn't mean I think "all Christians are like this." I used to be one, and I know better.

 

[angelfightfire]

You have made a lot of noise and protestation, and you have assailed some image of who you think I am, but you really haven't responded at all to my post.

Your post:

If you heard a voice which you believed was God, which told you to go into a rich neighborhood and find a specific house and enter it and slaughter everyone in it, down to the babies and pets, and then take it over for yourself, would you do it?

This post of yours was a rhetorical question. I was pointing out how you can not pick and choose what you want to believe in the Law and then make accusations. If you regard Moses as a bad witness, then you do not put him on the witness stand to convict the guy you want convicted for murder.

You answered my post with a rhetorical question, I answered your rhetorical question with a bunch of rhetorical questions and situations. I went above and beyond what you asked for.

As you should well know, I therefore find your response here highly ironic and hypocritical.

As for "assailing some imaginary image of you", my post presented hypothetical people and hypothetical situations in order to explain minute variables of the Old Testament and the Law.

Okay, so, either you are stupid, or you are playing stupid here. As you played stupid with your first quote, I can pretty well come to the conclusion that you are still playing stupid.

Or, maybe you, who present rhetorical questions can not make sense out of rhetorical situations yourself? If you have a true difficulty making sense out of hypothetical situations, personifying them, then I could see where you could have some problems here.

You wove a complex picture and went on all sorts of flights of fancy, but didn't address the simple questions I posed.

I most surely did answer it. In many ways.

If you can not make sense out of hypothetical situations, you should not be responding to people with rhetorical questions.

Let's cut to the chase here. In your previous post, when someone observed that the OT records many brutal things, you asked what the original poster would do if "commanded," as those in the OT supposedly were, to utterly destroy a population and leave no thing breathing.

What I said was:

If someone came into your house, would you wound them? If someone killed your family, would you seek to kill them? If you saw the ocean parted, ten great plagues, heard the very voice of God and saw all of the miracles the Hebrew did, would you believe when you were commanded by this same God to go in and take the land and leave no thing breathing left alive?

But, you leave all of the miracles out of the equation. You pick and choose what from the Bible is true. You assume most of it is untrue. You then have to make guesses: were they really slaves at all? Did they really get freed? Did they really invade the land at all? Was Abraham and his family really living in the land in the first place? Did they ever really go to Egypt, become enslaved, and become a giant nation? Was there really a Joseph?

I did not merely say, "If you heard from God", the whole point of that - apparently very difficult to understand - first paragraph... is that these people had all of this evidence that God was really talking to them. If you are not going to believe that God really commanded them, then you can not believe the miracles, nor the killings.

It is just as if you put a witness on a stand to accuse someone of murder, and you find most of what they are saying is a lie. Such witnesses would be thrown out. Their testimony is invalid.

It seemed to me that you were suggesting that if you had experienced miracles, then you would do what God said even if he told you to wipe out a whole city of people.

What "miracles", what evidence 'that God was speaking to me'? That is the problem with these questions.

You continue to refuse to define the terms in anything but the vaguest measures.

You remove all of the variables of the equation, when I am specifically noting that all of those variables are essential to the solving of the equation.

If I merely answer "yes", assuming you will be honest and hold all of those complex variables in place, you very well might then remove them all and then say, "Ah ha! So if you heard voices or something that you interpreted as a miracle you would go about mass murdering people".

That would be highly annoying, but many people would get perverse pleasure out of just such perverse annoyance.

On the other hand, maybe you genuinely do not understand all of the necessary variables here.

I hear it a lot, it is a common accusation, it is not yours. People want to argue that Christians will do anything if they but hear a voice or imagine they hear a voice... or imagine they have witnessed some miracle. It is a common point of derision against Christians.

This is what my previous post was answering.

You are coming at me with a common derisive remark... which is entirely slanderous.

Muhommad suspected that the voices he heard were demons. He wrote what he heard or imagined on things such as leaves. Nobody else saw any evidence of miracles or a voice or anything of the kind. This is not how it was for Moses.

If you wish to rephrase your question honestly, go ahead. Use the same variables I used. Do not attempt to "cleverly" change them around.

When I asked you my return question, I wasn't saying that all Christians do this, or that true Christians should do this;

Do all Christians part the Red Sea or call down the Ten Plagues of Egypt? I am curious?

What would you do if you were with some 600,000 other people and you all heard a voice from the sky and trumpet blasts? What would you do if you saw the Red Sea parting with these people?

Your whole argumentation is biased and deceptive. You want to try to get a Christian to really say that they would kill people based on what blatantly could be delusionary... this is why you remove these great signs and wonders and put in their place "a voice" or "a miracle".

It is a dishonest and despicable rhetorical device which is often used in cruelly stereotyping large groups of people.

I have no doubt you do not use this kind of slanderous accusation against "all Christians", but no doubt a sizeable portion of them. It is a popular accusation of Christian haters.

If you were honest, you never would have intentionally mangled what I was saying.

As for your implications that Moses is not a true Christian, this too, is absurd and despicable. Why not just stop lying and spit out your true thoughts. If Moses is not a true Christian, then neither must be just about everyone else in the Old Testament.

Because just about everyone else in the Old Testament killed people... and a lot of them lkilled very many people. But they all did it through God.

[And, if you were to claim it was not through God, then you also are saying the killings never took place at all.]

Even Jesus has stated that all bad people are going to the fiery Hell.

Which is more severe, then, death, or an eternity of punishment for the great masses of humanity?

What is your definition of a "true Christian"? Some guy in Boise Idaho?

Your deceit is despicable.

Just spit out what you really think and believe... and stop pretending to think and
believe something else.

I don't know. It is possible that you seriously find the orders to kill a bunch of wicked people reprehensible -- thereby calling Moses and God wicked... but that you are okay with David, Samson, Elijah, Elisha, and so forth for their killings... and it is possible you are okay with Jesus and the Apostles for stating that the vast majority of the world's population is going to eternal condemnation in the afterlife...

It is possible. [Highly, highly improbable, but possible.]

In such a case, then, my other accusations were wrong, and I apologize for them.

Otherwise, you are lying in every single one of these posts... you have nothing to stand on in terms of evidence... So, you are forced to rely on idiotic and transparent trickery.

It is either one or the other.

Let anyone else think these things out, they will come to the same conclusions.

It is grossly evident now that I have pointed it out.

...

I think when you read this, you will notice you have been found out and will find
this impossible to respond to.

Let me then only note: you need to start forming opinions which are honest... opinions which are not shameful... opinions which you are willing to talk about openly and honestly -- without relying on idiotic rhetorical trickery which makes you look like a conceited child.

I was trying to find out your opinion. In your long post, you didn't respond to this,
.

That is either a lie or you are entirely stupid.

It could be you spend all of your mental efforts on deception, so that you have
nothing left over for honest reasoning.

but I would still like to know what you think.

Oh, a friend, how nice. He "just wants to know my opinion".

If you say "yes," I might challenge you about this, but that doesn't mean I think "all Christians are like this." I used to be one, and I know better.

Oh, you did! What a surprise. Like the majority of the rest of the population in all Western countries.

"All" Christians... nobody thinks "all" Christians are anything. There are Marxist "Christians", Nazi "Christians", drug addict Christians... even serial killing "Christians".

If you have an opinion, go ahead and spit it out.

Just be honest. Be a man. Speak your mind. Stop relying on deceptive practices which pump up your ego when they actually work because of their "clever" design.

If you are going to bother doing that you might as well start writing me letters about how you are some bank executive in Nigeria.

At least then you could try to get some money from me, instead of just trying to support your cardboard imaginings of what the Bible is about... and thereby earn yourself curses from God...

 

[Balder]

Angelfightfire,


You’re right that I find it a little difficult to respond to your post -- not because I think I’ve been found out, but because your post is so full of your projections and your own hatred of some “image” you have constructed of certain types of people. You said quite a lot about the hateful rhetoric and divisive language of Christian-haters; are you a non-Christian hater? Because your letter is just dripping with derision for me, insulting my intelligence, maligning my motivations and my honesty, misrepresenting my beliefs and opinions … all based on two rather short exchanges with you, containing two or three questions which you believe were merely rhetorical. Are you really certain you have enough information from my posts to have me all figured out and sized up, such that you have a reliable foundation for your three pages of accusations? To me, it seems probable that the image or windmill you are attacking here has probably been built through your encounters with real people in your past. But not with me.

Anyway, I’ll try to respond to your post.

This post of yours was a rhetorical question. I was pointing out how you can not pick and choose what you want to believe in the Law and then make accusations. If you regard Moses as a bad witness, then you do not put him on the witness stand to convict the guy you want convicted for murder.

Are you saying that only the person who believes the Bible entirely, and does not “pick and choose” which parts might be accurate and which parts might not be, has the right to make a judgment about the Bible? Do you know of any other object or situation in the real world where this set of conditions would obtain? Do you have to believe a person is flawless and without error before being capable of judging his behavior or his words?

As for "assailing some imaginary image of you", my post presented hypothetical people and hypothetical situations in order to explain minute variables of the Old Testament and the Law.

Are you sure you’re thinking of your post to me and not to someone else? Go back and look at it. I do not see a bunch of hypothetical situations and people that would “explain minute variables of the Old Testament and the Law.” I see a lot of objections that Christians are treated and accused unfairly, remarks about slanderers and communists, a sarcastic letter you composed on my behalf about how unfair life is (a projection on your part), another projection about what I think (“This is it for guys like you. There can't be anything superior. Can't be. Completely ruled out. Heard one Christian, heard them all. Is that right?”), and an insult thrown in for good measure (“blind hypocrite”).

Okay, so, either you are stupid, or you are playing stupid here. As you played stupid with your first quote, I can pretty well come to the conclusion that you are still playing stupid.

Or, maybe you, who present rhetorical questions can not make sense out of rhetorical situations yourself? If you have a true difficulty making sense out of hypothetical situations, personifying them, then I could see where you could have some problems here.

I really was interested in your answer to my question; I was not merely asking it rhetorically. You still have not directly answered it (what you would do, if you also believed you had experienced real miracles and been directed by God to kill people), but I no longer expect that you will.

I suspect that you also find killing off a whole population of people to be evil or at least morally problematic in most situations. Where we may differ is that you believe that there are some situations, however, where it would be morally acceptable and just, with the mass killings of Canaanites and others in the OT being some examples. I realize you do not consider yourself a moral relativist, but this does seem like an example of moral relativity: if the situation is just right, it is indeed okay to wipe out entire nations of people, down to their infants, elders, and livestock, even if in many other situations it would not be permissible.

Rather than going through and responding to all of your comments (my original plan when I started writing this morning), I think I will make things simpler and just state my own opinion about these things as clearly and directly as possible. Then you can see whether your accusations are appropriate or not.

I believe that all human beings pass through stages of moral and spiritual development. At different stages, our moral “compass” and our understanding of the nature of the divine, change accordingly. Morally, our “circle of concern” widens and we are able to embrace more in it than previously – moving from self-centered concern to wider and wider contexts. Spiritually, our understanding of God deepens, moving from rather mythical conceptions to more sophisticated, relational, and experientially grounded perspectives. I further believe that the Bible records some of this development in moral and spiritual understanding. At the time of the Hebrews, warfare was obviously very common, life was very hard and often brutal, and the “circle of concern” was largely identified with one’s particular tribe or culture, sometimes extending out to embrace a few outsiders, but certainly not all. In the “incubator” of Hebrew culture, I think certain more profound moral understandings were allowed to grow, though for a long time these moral attitudes and practices were confined to their limited context; outside of that context, the same moral considerations did not apply.

Thus, at their stage of moral and spiritual development, I believe the Hebrews acted appropriately – meaning, in accordance with their limited perspectives. I’m sure they believed they were doing right in killing off those populations, and that they were divinely guided in doing so. From a more developed perspective, what they did is no longer permissible or commendable. I believe the Bible is a “true representation” of a particular people’s way of thinking, and very possibly an accurate record of what they did, but I do not believe it is literally and historically true in all aspects. It is an interpretation of history, as all histories are interpretive exercises.

I think that when you take the Bible as the literal and inerrant word of God, it becomes difficult to appreciate this developmental perspective. You have to accept that God really did order genocide and that God really does plan to send the majority of humankind into a condition of eternal conscious torment, instead of understanding these things as being reflective of a particular people’s ongoing, unfolding dialogue with themselves and with ultimate reality. I personally consider mass-killing of populations and the sentence of eternal conscious torment as morally reprehensible things. I believe I can understand, to a degree, the contexts in which these ideas emerge, and I can appreciate the very real struggles that people have gone through as they have wrestled with human evil and violence, and with assimilating divine “inspiration” and spiritual realization into the fabric of human life. It is an ongoing struggle. But we sell ourselves, and God, short, when we take particular limited perspectives as absolute and unquestionable and look no further.

Best wishes,
Balder

 

[Agape4Robin]

Okay, so now you can't argue from a Scriptural basis, so you go to personal opinion. If Christian A says, "Yes, I would do whatever a voice I believed was God said" then that somehow proves that Scripture teaches this.

Nevermind that you could likely also find out that "Christians" use brain meters over on a Scientologist list. Or "Christians" believe blood transfusion is "cannibalism" on a Jehovah Witness list.

Slanderers don't want the truth. Slanderers want lies. They want distortions which embrace their lies. Mass slanderers are the worst type. Germany mass slandered the Jews before killing them. Tutsis mass slandered the Hutus before killing them. First, comes the hate propaganda, then the murder.

The media constantly thrives on this kind of thing for their bias. A guy calling himself "Christian" stands up and says something atrocious and for the next week all we are reading about is how "all" Christians are this way.

...

I wonder. If the poster truly heard a voice and believed it was God, what would he do?
What would anyone do? Of course, our standards of faith are extremely high. Communists murdered 100 million on the basis of the words of blatant liars. They didn't need God parting an ocean or causing the Ten Plagues of Egypt. They just need Marx and Lenin and Pol Pot and Stalin and Mao and Castro and all of those other idiots who have run their countries into the ground and murdered so many.

Who told the Left to pull out of Rwanda? I wonder. Or, who told them to ignore the two million Afghans slaughtered by the Soviets? Or, who told them to praise Pol Pot's atrocious Communist government? Or, who told them to praise the murderous, totalitarian regime of the Viet Cong -- which is failed, like every Marxist system before it... and taken millions of lives with it?

They say, "I believe nothing". A stone believes nothing. Everybody believes every manner of thing. Imagine a waiter bringing a tray with a piece of maggot infested steak on it: "Do you believe this steak is rotten, sir?"... "No, I do not believe anything!", they would say. But, would they eat it, too? No. No, because they believe it is rotten.

The damned do not believe because they are lacking grace. They have every right to figure out that He exists. That does not save them. But, figuring out God exists presents them with a host of problems -- like that their conscience actually matters.




I would suggest filing a complaint, immediately. You might also point out that you had some problems in High School which were grossly unfair and that thing that happened to your dad never should have happened. Suggest to your Maker that he cancel your existance at once, it is completely unfair!

Tell you what. I will cut you a deal. I will do you a favor. Since you are such a brilliant genius to figure everything out, and I have close ties to the Almighty God, I will write a letter to him for you, right now!

" Dear Almighty, All-Knowing, All-Powerful God, Creator of Heaven and Earth,

This is Joe.

I have a lot of complaints to make here. You really did a horrible job in this whole creation thing of yours. There should not be any wars. We should all live forever. There should not be any sickness. No one should ever get mad at anyone else. We should all have palaces and be able to have everything we want all the time. Why not? You are God.

Why did you invent pain? What a horrible idea. Now, sex and money and television and movies and drugs and mansions and everything -- great ideas! We should be able to do whatever we want anytime we want without any consequences whatever!

If somebody doesn't like something, they don't have to have it!

We can all have endless servants waiting on us hand and foot. Making them robots, so nobody has to suffer.

We should have the greatest and softest furniture.

There should not be any of those types of people I dislike. No Christians. No Jews. No Republicans. None of those Irish guys with the bushy eyebrows. No Germans. I hate Greeks. What is that? No Greeks. Everybody should agree. This whole idea of people having disagreements is a bad idea.

There should be no conflict.

Everyone should have any type of superpowers they want.

Thanks,

Joe Schmo"

So, we end up with a bunch of people who are the most spoiled and worthless people on the planet.

Heroes? Never exist. Virtue? What virtue when there is no conflict, nothing bad to be virtuous against?

You wouldn't even have people like myself out here which you can come out here and preach against so you can feel a little better about your self while you serve your great and noble and wise campaign.

If you were smart, you would say, "It doesn't have to all be materialistic, you could make a spiritual paradise where everyone experiences the mind and heart of God for all of eternity, where we live as true Children of God". But you lack that faith or even imagination.

This is it for guys like you. There can't be anything superior. Can't be. Completely ruled out. Heard one Christian, heard them all. Is that right? We are all liars in you mind, all deluded. But, you, you tell the truth. You can be believed.

Right.

What a blind hypocrite.

http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=8300&stc=1

 

[angelfightfire]

Angelfightfire,


You’re right that I find it a little difficult to respond to your post -- not because I think I’ve been found out, but because your post is so full of your projections and your own hatred of some “image” you have constructed of certain types of people. You said quite a lot about the hateful rhetoric and divisive language of Christian-haters; are you a non-Christian hater? Because your letter is just dripping with derision for me, insulting my intelligence, maligning my motivations and my honesty, misrepresenting my beliefs and opinions … all based on two rather short exchanges with you, containing two or three questions which you believe were merely rhetorical. Are you really certain you have enough information from my posts to have me all figured out and sized up, such that you have a reliable foundation for your three pages of accusations? To me, it seems probable that the image or windmill you are attacking here has probably been built through your encounters with real people in your past. But not with me.

Possibly. There are some outs from much of what I said, however. That is what happens when you accidentally use popular hateful stereotypical arguments like yours, "Christians would mass murder if they just believed God spoke to them or saw some miracle".

Your whole thesis is just dripping with conceit and hatred. It tries to project this image of Christians as mass murdering psychopaths listening to random voices and interpreting random invents as signs from God for which to start their murdering spree.

I honestly would never expect such argumentation from a true Buddhist... such people tend to be completely out of the faith, and if anything, they would not hold a judgemental stance like this on Christians -- of which I know and have known quite a few.

So, I am reacting to your statement. It is not quite as popular as, say, support for the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", but it is a very popular hateful epitaph and point of derision. And, of course, having done a lot of work with Jews, I have seen this very same type of argumentation laid against them many times. After all, you are talking about Moses here.

Really, I would like, if anything, for you to step away from this ludicrous "rhetorical question" and just forget about it.

You seem to be very insistent on trying to trap me into fitting this horrid view of Christians. I will not do it.

Anyway, I’ll try to respond to your post.

Are you saying that only the person who believes the Bible entirely, and does not “pick and choose” which parts might be accurate and which parts might not be, has the right to make a judgment about the Bible?

What I have said is very clear. You are attempting to use the testimony of Moses in order to condemn God and Moses of murder, for instance. (And thereby anyone who believes this testimony.) IN order for you to do this you must disbelieve the vast majority of what Moses wrote and only actually accept the killing.

I do believe this is entirely unfair and hypocritical, yes.

Do you know of any other object or situation in the real world where this set of conditions would obtain?

I already applied this case to many hypothetical situations, but you are slow to understand.

The best case here is directly to the case of a trial. You wish to convict someone of murder. Your only witness, however, is Moses. Yet, the only way you can convict the accused of murder is by discounting most of what your own witness has to say.

This is not acceptable in a court of law, it is not acceptable in science, and it is not acceptable by anybody who still has their reasoning faculities with them.

We actually do use these standards every day.

Do you have to believe a person is flawless and without error before being capable of judging his behavior or his words?

Everybody has error. But you are discounting the vast majority of the testimony of Moses and want to isolate on singular events which pale in signifigance in order to prove your case.

Do I believe a witness I believe has mostly lied about everything... even if his statements are something I want to believe? I do not. No.

I am sorry you would pick the best of Moses to leave out and only leave in only the worst -- but by doing so you make the entirety of his books questionable under your own standards, therefore you should not be trying to prove one thing nor the other conclusively. Your own standards disprove your own accusations.

Are you sure you’re thinking of your post to me and not to someone else? Go back and look at it. I do not see a bunch of hypothetical situations and people that would “explain minute variables of the Old Testament and the Law.” I see a lot of objections that Christians are treated and accused unfairly, remarks about slanderers and communists, a sarcastic letter you composed on my behalf about how unfair life is (a projection on your part), another projection about what I think (“This is it for guys like you. There can't be anything superior. Can't be. Completely ruled out. Heard one Christian, heard them all. Is that right?”), and an insult thrown in for good measure (“blind hypocrite”).

We have already been over this.

If you are incapable of understanding rhetorical answers, then you should not use rhetorical questions.

I really was interested in your answer to my question; I was not merely asking it rhetorically. You still have not directly answered it (what you would do, if you also believed you had experienced real miracles and been directed by God to kill people), but I no longer expect that you will.

You are still pretending to be stupid, still refusing to keep to the variables I spoke of, and still trying to trap me into saying, "Sure, I would mass murder if I but believed some voice or miracle happened to me".

I suspect that you also find killing off a whole population of people to be evil or at least morally problematic in most situations. Where we may differ is that you believe that there are some situations, however, where it would be morally acceptable and just, with the mass killings of Canaanites and others in the OT being some examples. I realize you do not consider yourself a moral relativist, but this does seem like an example of moral relativity: if the situation is just right, it is indeed okay to wipe out entire nations of people, down to their infants, elders, and livestock, even if in many other situations it would not be permissible.

Now, finally, you have moved away from the rhetorical and are moving towards the specific!

Moral relativism speaks of holding different standards for others then for the same standards for ourselves.

Here is an example of moral relativity, when the NY Times and Amnesty International stood against the victims of genocide in Rwanda claiming that "both sides are equally bad" and that it was wrong for the genocide victims to defend themselves. Had the Rwandan Patriotic Front listened to these people - who were part of the forces that completely abandoned Rwanda so that the genocide could take place - then the genocide would have complete and this very day Rwanda would be ruled by the genocidists.

This same kind of hypocritical standard is often claimed by those who would pretend to be on the side of justice. It is a despicable standard. They never apply it to themselves. It is impossible to stand behind realistically. Under such a model merely convicting the guilty and punishing them is a wicked thing to do. This, therefore, condones all criminality. And while condoning all criminality it further punishes all innocence.

Rather than going through and responding to all of your comments (my original plan when I started writing this morning), I think I will make things simpler and just state my own opinion about these things as clearly and directly as possible. Then you can see whether your accusations are appropriate or not.

I am not sure you have rightly figured out which accusations I actually levelled against you and which ones I did not. Regardless, I appreciate you moving away from the rhetorical and down to the specific. If we remain on the rhetorical it is impossible for me to speak of specifics.

I believe that all human beings pass through stages of moral and spiritual development. At different stages, our moral “compass” and our understanding of the nature of the divine, change accordingly. Morally, our “circle of concern” widens and we are able to embrace more in it than previously – moving from self-centered concern to wider and wider contexts. Spiritually, our understanding of God deepens, moving from rather mythical conceptions to more sophisticated, relational, and experientially grounded perspectives. I further believe that the Bible records some of this development in moral and spiritual understanding. At the time of the Hebrews, warfare was obviously very common, life was very hard and often brutal, and the “circle of concern” was largely identified with one’s particular tribe or culture, sometimes extending out to embrace a few outsiders, but certainly not all. In the “incubator” of Hebrew culture, I think certain more profound moral understandings were allowed to grow, though for a long time these moral attitudes and practices were confined to their limited context; outside of that context, the same moral considerations did not apply.

There you go!

Absolutely, God allowed some things within these contexts, which He would not expect from Christians today.

As Jesus said, to paraphrase, 'Moses let you divorce your wives because you heart's were hard, but I tell you that you can not divorce your wives except for the case of adultery'.

This same kind of principle applies elsewhere in the Law. Now to take that and say, "Well, God therefore advocated divorce", is wrong. It is misreading the text and throwing in hyperbole in order to accuse God.

As other Scripture states, "God hates divorce".

There are many of these kinds of situations within the Old Testament.

Within context, this is what is being said. If you take out the context, you could warp and make any words say anything anywhere.

The Law, as it is written, is on the surface. The kernel of the Law which is true for all is, "Do not do to others what you would not have done to you". This is stated positively as "do to others as you would have them do to you". This has not changed, nor has the Law changed.

The Law, however, was written to all, not just to those who are spiritually reborn.

There is no "evolution" about this matter. If we wish to argue that man has evolved, spiritually and mentally, I would take severe case with this. What happened with the Nazis and Communists was worse then what has ever happened before. Rwanda itself, of which I have spoken of many times was just a very few years ago.

Maybe our appearances have changed, maybe we have a more civil society on the surface, but these things we have done lately -- they were never done to this magnitude in the past.

Thus, at their stage of moral and spiritual development, I believe the Hebrews acted appropriately – meaning, in accordance with their limited perspectives. I’m sure they believed they were doing right in killing off those populations, and that they were divinely guided in doing so. From a more developed perspective, what they did is no longer permissible or commendable. I believe the Bible is a “true representation” of a particular people’s way of thinking, and very possibly an accurate record of what they did, but I do not believe it is literally and historically true in all aspects. It is an interpretation of history, as all histories are interpretive exercises.

I disagree with this, largely, but not completely.

From a spiritual, Christian perspective - one which has largely defined the moralities of the West - it is no longer acceptable to, for instance, take women as booty in war. Nor should it be acceptable for Christians to divorce their wives for whatever reason they wish. Nor should we have slaves. Nor should we have multiple wives. And so forth.

However, I would have to point out we have replaced this matters of vulgarity with other matters which are just as evil, but more subtle. So, while we might say the expression of good as progressed in the world, we also must confess that so too has the expression of evil in the world progressed today. And, I, for one, am not content in the least to say that the expression of good has properly caught up with today's expression of evil.

For instance, neither the Nazis nor the Communists took two wives (though their leaders surely had many mistresses), however they both locked up and murdered every manner of people for the most hypocritical and slanderous of reasons.

The Nazis did not do much raping of women in war, as their Germanic ancestors did... however, they did round up all of the Jews and Gypsies and other "undesirables" and systematically seek their destruction.

Under Pol Pot's regime, men were killed for being "wealthy" because they owned glasses.

These things said, Jesus was very explicit about how some of the things Moses said was permissable for people of the flesh... that he said so because their own hearts were so hard. However, the Bible was never written to people who do not know good from evil. It may have been legally permissable because people demanded it, to allow men to divorce their wives for whatever cause -- but that does not mean it was condoned.

Likewise, today, there are many things which are legally permissable in our various nations, but this does not mean all of things are condoned by God.

I think that when you take the Bible as the literal and inerrant word of God, it becomes difficult to appreciate this developmental perspective.

That is an extremely simplistic approach, a very popular one, and the way this operates is like this: a lot of people take the good words of the Scripture and mangle them to justify their own wickedness, meanwhile others say, "They did not mangle these words, but they honestly read the text as it states".

So, there are two guilty parties here: one, the guilty party that actually mangles the words of Scripture to justify their wickedness, and two, the guilty party that claims these people who mangled the words of Scripture did not mangle them.

Both guilty parties work hand in hand to acquit the guilty and convict the innocent.

It is wrong.

On the other hand, take Islam. There are many Muslims who say that jihad is not talking about jihad against infidels. If you read the actual text, however, it becomes very plain that they must be mangling the words to believe this. Worse, the guys who believe jihad means jihad against infidels actually have a Islamist scriptural basis to teach what they teach.

But, this is why you don't see a lot of moderate Muslims attacking non-moderate Muslims. In the Christian West, you often see Christians opposed to other Christians under these same guidelines.

This is not to say that I would argue the Muslims who water down their own Scripture are worse then those who actually believe it. Far from it. But, they are all guilty to some degree because they all continue to support these wicked Scriptures.

You have to accept that God really did order genocide and that God really does plan to send the majority of humankind into a condition of eternal conscious torment, instead of understanding these things as being reflective of a particular people’s ongoing, unfolding dialogue with themselves and with ultimate reality.

I think using the invasion of the land of Canaan is not the best example of this, because for people who do not believe in the miraculous, they have to discount everything but what they might argue was non-miraculous. Thereby the entire text becomes complete nonsense. It completely removes the context.

A better example is the Ten Plagues of Egypt used to free the slaves from Egypt. This example forces one to stay within the context of the text... if only hypothetically for those who can believe in miracles.

Might we state that this event, the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the showdown between Moses and Pharoah and so forth was wicked? No, I do not believe so. I surely could not condemn Moses on the basis of this.

Also, should we state that God might not give eternal condemnation to the great masses of mankind. Under the moral rules of mankind, that would not seem to make sense. But, when you start talking about the miraculous, and the others planes of existance, you get into difficult territory to understand.

Look at the simple bigger picture: God is God and He did create everything. He is all knowing, He is all powerful, He is everywhere. In fact, as Paul pointed out, "We all move and live and have our being within God".

This is a statement Paul used to persuade the Greeks, and it is a common belief through the entire world.

However, "How then can evil exist, if God is good".

You can say whatever you like, you can argue that bad things happen in the world because of chance and according to the natural laws of the world and so forth. The Scripture says as much, as well, for instance, in Ecclesiates. However, that does not mean God has given up control of the world -- it just means that the workings of God are more complex then what can be fit in a simple understanding.

I personally consider mass-killing of populations and the sentence of eternal conscious torment as morally reprehensible things.

Yet, you do not show you understand these things. God has created everyone. They make themselves into what they wish to be. Eternal conscious torment, what is that, if some choose it? Heaven would be torment for those who prefer Hell. And, that is more exactly what we are talking about here. That the Kingdom of Heaven is coming to earth.

As for mass killings of populations, I am generally opposed to this, as well. I think God is generally opposed to it as well -- yet we will all die. Death does not end us, according to Scripture.

Do I seriously think that mass destruction has never happened because of the corruption of a nation? No, I can not argue that. We see the falls of empires after their corruption. I might say, "It is sorry to see such an empire fall", but I also have to understand that the corruption itself was what really killed it.

Ultimately, therefore, you are not judging Scripture, but God... even if you disagree that Scripture was written by God through mere mortals.

I believe I can understand, to a degree, the contexts in which these ideas emerge, and I can appreciate the very real struggles that people have gone through as they have wrestled with human evil and violence, and with assimilating divine “inspiration” and spiritual realization into the fabric of human life. It is an ongoing struggle. But we sell ourselves, and God, short, when we take particular limited perspectives as absolute and unquestionable and look no further.

Best wishes,
Balder

But, here is the bigger picture. You are denying the miraculous. Now, if you are really a Buddhist, you are likely incapable of denying that miracles do, indeed, happen. Otherwise, why be a Buddhist, if, for instance, you do not believe Buddha really received any kind of great spiritual awakening which was, in fact, miraculous?

The Scripture does not say, "Take up your sword and go and kill people". Rather, the Scripture teaches that God has set up the authorities of the nations of this world. We are to respect those authorities, insofar that we can and should, according to those bounds by which the Lord set. And as those bounds including the first century AD system of Rome, we see, then, that those bounds were very liberal.

Where there is Law, we must obey it and operate under it. Where there is no law, we must operate as our conscience dictates.

By no means would God ever command anyone to do anything wicked.

Now, according to one, dim view of the world... this is how the West operates. In this outrageously illogical manner, unless it is not Christians operating it. But, regardless, we have seen we have no operated in this manner at all. Rather, we have a very great civilization, full of peace and prosperity and every manner of technical and moral advancement.

Because, while the Left can pick out certain Christians and state, "They represent all Christians", the truth remains such statements are patently absurd, for these nations of the West continue to have majority Christian populations.