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kmbboots: Oh, I didn't realize you were making that connection. The "we" probably threw me off even more, why "we" rather than the more obvious "people that have abortions"?
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Pfff. Those eight can't agree on anything.
Probably. But I still think the written opinions and reasoning would be incredibly fascinating.
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quote:Like I said above. What you think is Good doesn't quite matter when God is staring you in the face.
I don't mean to be crude, but how is this different from saying "What you think is Good doesn't quite matter when someone is holding a gun to your head."?
Not crude at all. Good question. When God is staring you in the face, you have absolutely no free will - it is akin to a gun to your head. That's why, I mentioned above, God made this world with opposing factors - things that make you forget, deceive yourself, and hide.
Thus, to not have God blatantly staring you in the face, but to act as if you DO have Him staring you in the face, is our struggle in this world. We happen to be focusing on the killing babies part - but 99.999 percent of the time, we (religious individuals) focus on feeling like God is staring us in the face so that we aren't tempted to cheat in business, so that we treat people with kindness and respect, that we give charity, etc.
That was always a huge part of my religious growth. I remember attending a really inspiring talk by a Rabbi/mentor of mine, and I walked out and was so excited that I had seen truth at such a young age. I was confident that I would NEVER sin again. But obviously, I did.
I was so puzzled - how could I have been in a state of such utter clarity and peace. But when my family starting pestering me about my plans for the future, when they said some hurtful things to me, i blew my lid and tried to hurt them back. It was as if I had become another person.
That's when I broadened my focus in personal growth from acquiring knowledge and truth, to obligating myself to the realities I had discovered. Knowing that God rules this world is very different than living that reality.
Since I recognize that is the struggle of the religious man - I do not think that "God wants us to make moral decision on our own." - I believe in the Jewish God, and Christians believe in Him too - He TOLD us what He wants. He gave us a lot of commandments and has already defined morality FOR us. It is up to us to humble ourselves and actually live in accordance with those moral principles.
I mean, I'm still flipping out over the commandment to honor mother and father. I keep trying and trying, but for some reason, if I get worked up enough, I just can't do it! But I'm not going to deceive myself and say that God wants me to be "normal" and family fights are normal, etc. I'm working on it. And who I was 5 years ago with my parents is totally different than who I am today. Hopefully, I'll get even better.
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quote:God has done a fairly poor job of perpetuating the existence of the family and friends of Jews, as far as I can tell.
The question of why God allows evil is a good one, but it's hard to say He's done a bad (or even good job) unless you can show what would've happened if He hadn't done what He did. Within the religions we're talking about the intervention He's believed to have made are so significant as to render any predictions meaningless speculation, and outside of those religions of course He hasn't done anything so ...
Judging God's actions isn't irrelevant nor unimportant for those who are not believers, but the context is so radically different from what we're used to it becomes difficult to do adequately. If I ever kill a man the only thing I can be sure about when it comes to consequences is that at the end, he will be dead because of me. As has been pointed out above that's not the case for an omniscient God. Nor are our typical goals His goals. He knows exactly what's coming after this life and is (within the confines of Christianity anyways) acting to maximize happiness (well most forms, the ones I'm familiar with I guess I can't speak for all Christian religions) not just in the short run but over a literal eternity. Any judgement of God's actions would have to include what would've happened without His intervention not just in this world but for the rest of forever.
More to the point, if you look at what it is claimed God has done in the Bible you have to include the whole set. Obviously those who don't believe the Bible don't believe God ordered the killing of anyone or did any killing Himself. If they then try to determine what kind of God He is based on what the Bible claims He's done everything has to be included, the fact that some may not believe that Christ suffered and died for all mankind's sins that we may live in joy forevermore is irrelevant as those people also don't believe God parted and then unparted the Red Sea.
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Well, not just those babies either (and I don't know how much fetuses count as babies) but the actual babies killed through starvation, war, neglect, violence.
And, of course, not just babies.
I think that when we come face to face with God, we will come face to face with our portion of the responsibility for all that we as human beings have gotten wrong - like killing anybody because we think God wants us to - and where we have fallen short.
I also believe that we will come face to face with God's infinite love and forgiveness.
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Sorry, I must be kinda slow today. How are you connecting that with the original criticism of God killing babies?
(And do you mean "we" in a sense that one has a marginal fractional responsibility that one has (as an example) when say a person buys a diamond thus contributing to the market for diamonds and thus making it more profitable to sell diamonds and thus marginally increasing the trade in blood diamonds and thus indirectly leading to a death ... or do you mean "we" in a different sense?)
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God didn't kill babies; people killed babies. Not just then. We (by which I mean humanity) kill babies (and children and grown ups) and justify it as something God wants all the time. Lots of babies killed during the crusades.
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swbarnes2 originally brought up all the first-born in Egypt that were killed (which by my impression included babies). Ron answered that the Pharaoh made God kill the babies, so it was his fault. TomD asked whether the same standards would apply to him ... and so forth.
I thought your babies comment was a response to this line of conversation. Is it or is it in response to something entirely different?
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Armoth, you and some others are apparently taking exception to what is said in Psalms 137:9 (speaking to Babylon): "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."
As is so often the case, context is everything. The historical fact is, dashing babies against stones is what soldiers of Babylon actually did to the Hebrews in Judah. So imagine if you can, the tearful, raging, indignant heart-cry of the Psalmist as he exclaims, "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Emphasis upon "thy."
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Ron, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. The Psalmist is saying that it's a happy thing to bash someone's babies on rocks. That needs to be explained.
Furthermore, there are other instances in the Bible where babies are commanded to be killed - like in the case of the Amalekites.
"2 Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. 3 Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." (1 Sam. 15:2-3)
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Mucus, it is misleading to say that Pharoah or anyone else made God do anything. God proclaimed in advance what would happen. All the first-born would be killed (and this would have included adults), unless they had blood from the sacrificed lamb smeared on their door frames. Note that this applied to the Hebrews, too. When judgment is decreed, and the execution of judgment goes forth, humans have a choice whether to get out of the way of the judgment by complying with the divine conditions, or by continuing in rebellion and defiance, in which case parents would be responsible for the unnecessary deaths of their first born.
This is similar to the final destruction of the wicked depicted in Revelation 20, where all the wicked who have ever lived (including Satan and his fellow fallen-angels) are destroyed by being burned up completely in "the lake of fire." This lake of fire is the entire surface of the earth being turned into molten lava. This has to happen as the first step in re-creating the Earth in Edenic perfection. The righteous are preserved from this molten remaking of the surface of the earth, by being in the holy City, the New Jerusalem, which might be seen as a great Ark floating upon the flames of fire. The wicked are destroyed simply because they get in the way. They have not availed themselves of the opportunity given to all humans to be among those preserved in safety in the Holy City. So they are left out there among the flames that purify and refashion the surface of the earth (and atmosphere).
It is spoken of as if the wicked are consumed by God's "wrath." But unlike human wrath, God's wrath merely consists in not supernaturally intervening to keep the wicked alive. He ceases to sustain their lives, and so they cease to live. With God, wrath is a natural consequence, not an emotion. God's wrath is relative.
With humans, anger is a synonym for mad, which is a synonym for insane. But God is not like us. He never gives way to insanity, to the mindless passion of the berserker. He does what is right and necessary. Those who refuse to avail themselves of the way of deliverance God has made available to everyone, have only themselves to blame.
God cannot go on sustaining the lives of sinners forever. Ultimately the time must come when the universe has been cleansed of sin and sinners.
This, by the way, is one of the strongest objections to the idea many have that God will punish the wicked in the fires of an ever-burning hell for all eternity. That would imply that for eternity, in some terrible corner of the universe, individuals are still sinning, cursing God, and suffering torment. God is not like that. He will make an utter end.
Those few passages in the Bible that speak of ever-burning flames, or smoke that goes up forever, are idiomatic expressions, which only mean that the fires are unquenchable until they have utterly consumed all there is to consume, that the smoke continually goes up until the fires go out.
The fires that consumed Sodom and Gommorah were said to be "eternal" (Jude 1:7). But they are not burning now. God promised the faithful: "For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch....And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts." (Malachi 4:3)
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Armoth, I raised this point earlier. There are communities, perhaps even whole select gene-pools, where the tendency to do violence to others is universal, and for the good of the entire planet, that entire community should be removed. God who is the Creator, and the moment-by-moment sustainer of every life, and who can foresee the future, has every right to determine that this group or that shall not be perpetuated. At one point, He decided that the entire human race, except for eight people, was to be destroyed in a global flood, because they had filled the earth with violence, and the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually:
quote:Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them." But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.--Genesis 6:5-8; NKJV
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Mucus, I thought you were talking about the command to killing the babies of Amelek or the dash babies on rocks or the Pharoah killing babies.
I was referring specifically to the incident with the Pharoah. So what *is* your take on that situation? Who killed the first-born (including babies)? Who is responsible? And how do you square that with "God didn't kill babies; people killed babies?"
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Prediction: kmb will disavow that part of the Bible as referring to a natural event, perhaps a plague that disproportionately struck the Egyptians, which the Hebrews explained as the intervention of their god.
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quote:Tom, that particular point is easily answerable. Worthing Saga.
It's worth noting that the Worthing Saga only answers this point because it assumes the "gods" are not powerful enough to eliminate suffering without stunting growth. If God were not that powerful, it raises the question: why the Garden of Eden? It's also worth noting that this take on the argument invalidates Ron's take, which is that suffering is (direct or indirect) punishment for disobedience.
quote:Mucus, it is misleading to say that Pharoah or anyone else made God do anything. God proclaimed in advance what would happen.
Ron, this is roughly akin to my saying to my children, "If you eat that candy, I will kill you." Am I really not to blame for this because I warned them first?
quote:But God is not like us. He never gives way to insanity, to the mindless passion of the berserker. He does what is right and necessary.
I refuse to believe that an omnipotent God had no alternative to the death of all but a couple of the men, women, and children in the world -- especially given that He presumably knew they'd all be sinning within a couple of years, anyway. This action is fairly difficult to justify as "right" or "necessary" except among the truly unimaginative. I cannot believe that anyone who reads science fiction can't come up with more merciful, righter, and more strictly necessary solutions to the same problem.
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Are you talking about when Pharaoh ordered all the male first born children of the Israelites to be killed or are you talking about the final plague?
KoM, And do you have a problem with that? Nice to know you at least read my posts, though. Could have been poison, could have been disease, could have been lots of things.
ETA: Interpreting is not the same as disavowing.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Mucus, I thought you were talking about the command to killing the babies of Amelek or the dash babies on rocks or the Pharoah killing babies.
I was referring specifically to the incident with the Pharoah. So what *is* your take on that situation? Who killed the first-born (including babies)? Who is responsible? And how do you square that with "God didn't kill babies; people killed babies?"
God kills so many innocent people in the Bible, it can be hard to keep track.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: KoM, And do you have a problem with that?
Not at all; to the extent that the events of Exodus have a historical basis at all - not a large extent - this is likely what happened. My objection is when you don't apply this method consistently, and 'interpret' also those parts that happen to agree with your moral intuition. This is not belief, it's just cultural signalling.
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I'd like to see an argument for why Yahweh deserves to be on trial more than most of the other ones. (I'm a bit too ignorant to come up with something myself.)
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Infanticide, killing all male children, killing all first born male children and so forth is a common enough theme in the Bible (and other writings) that it strikes me as a literary device rather than some actually meaning first born exactly. Especially as it mirrors the killing of the first born males of the Israelites earlier.
The plagues in general could very well have been that. Bugs, disease, bad water, illness, death of especially vulnerable children. condensed into a meaningful narrative.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: KoM, And do you have a problem with that?
Not at all; to the extent that the events of Exodus have a historical basis at all - not a large extent - this is likely what happened. My objection is when you don't apply this method consistently, and 'interpret' also those parts that happen to agree with your moral intuition. This is not belief, it's just cultural signalling.
It doesn't make sense to apply the same method of interpretation to all parts of the Bible*. It makes much more sense to apply moral intuition when dealing with concepts of God.
*Did you think that it was written all at the same time or by the same people or for the same purposes or in the same style using the same conventions?
quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Armoth, you and some others are apparently taking exception to what is said in Psalms 137:9 (speaking to Babylon): "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."
As is so often the case, context is everything. The historical fact is, dashing babies against stones is what soldiers of Babylon actually did to the Hebrews in Judah. So imagine if you can, the tearful, raging, indignant heart-cry of the Psalmist as he exclaims, "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Emphasis upon "thy."
I hate to agree with Ron, but what can I do? Kabel et ha-emet mimi she-omro. Anyway, I don't get all the lather about babies. Killing a baby is worse than killing an adult human being? How, exactly?
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Not to go back too far, but the whole "Yahweh on trial by a bunch of his fellow deities" would make a kickarse story.
No. What I object to is your habit of very consistently interpreting those parts which agree with your moral intuitions, and interpreting away the ones that don't. When the god of the Bible does something supernatural you agree with, that's your god intervening in history. When the supernatural act is disagreeable, then it is a natural event which later writers put their own gloss on. And then you proceed to quote the same book as evidence for the existence of a morally superior god! Until, that is, you are pushed into a corner, and then you'll state that the Bible isn't actually evidence for your god at all, in fact there is no evidence, you just 'choose to believe'.
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Not to go back too far, but the whole "Yahweh on trial by a bunch of his fellow deities" would make a kickarse story.
It'd be fun to write it, at least.
I'm guessing you've never read Heinlein's JOB.
I thought the same thing.
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I thought of JOB too, but it doesn't really fit. Sure, Satan judges his brother as a bit of an asshole, but this is hardly unexpected even within Christian mythology; and the Chairman only sits in judgement on the particular case of what is to be done with the protagonist, not Yahweh's actions and creation as a whole.
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Not to go back too far, but the whole "Yahweh on trial by a bunch of his fellow deities" would make a kickarse story.
It'd be fun to write it, at least.
I thought so, the politics, the arguments, and the role-playing of each of the deities.
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I'd like to see an argument for why Yahweh deserves to be on trial more than most of the other ones. (I'm a bit too ignorant to come up with something myself.)
Certainly an interesting point. That was something tumbling through my head. I was under the impression that a long time ago, there used to be this dynamic among leaders where leaders would be loathe to kill each other for things like war crimes because everyone was to some extent guilty. This is no longer the case. Indeed I wonder if it ever was? I dunno.
But there should a be a similar element at play here, some of the gods on that list are also somewhat guilty of mass murder. How eager would they be to set a precedent that one of their own should go down?
But from the point of a prosecutor, one doesn't always have to start with the most guilty of criminals, sometimes one plea-bargains, sometimes one starts with easier cases to get pressure against harder ones, etc.
(Indeed, one could work in the universe where Apophis and Baal have already been handled )
Lisa and kmb: I haven't. But I'll certainly put it on the list. I daresay there's room for more than one story given the large number of assumptions that have to be fixed for any particular story.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Armoth, you and some others are apparently taking exception to what is said in Psalms 137:9 (speaking to Babylon): "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."
As is so often the case, context is everything. The historical fact is, dashing babies against stones is what soldiers of Babylon actually did to the Hebrews in Judah. So imagine if you can, the tearful, raging, indignant heart-cry of the Psalmist as he exclaims, "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Emphasis upon "thy."
I hate to agree with Ron, but what can I do? Kabel et ha-emet mimi she-omro. Anyway, I don't get all the lather about babies. Killing a baby is worse than killing an adult human being? How, exactly?
Babies are a whole lot cuter. Destroying cuteness = BAD
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I think babies are used as short-hand for an indisputably innocent human being. With an adult, there are conceivable arguments that they did something to deserve something ... whatever it might be.
With a baby, it should be a lot harder to argue that they deserve death since they haven't really down anything (although I'm sure there are plenty of ways for people to justify it).
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Lisa, Ron, I don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you mind clarifying please?
Tom - I agree. My perspective is not that all pain is a punishment for wrongdoing - it is possible that much of pain is a punishment for wrongdoing, but there is much pain that is not.
That pain is Worthing Saga pain. Now if your problem with that is that God isn't "powerful" enough to find another way of doing things - it's a bit hard to argue with. Personal strength and triumph can only blossom in the face of pain. You want to argue that God can make it so that it cannot? That's not a realm I can really argue with. Maybe God sees a benefit to moral goodness coming at a cost. ::shrug::
Point is - I agree with KoM's problems with kmboots. Once you agree that God revealed Himself to you, and once you agree that He wrote the bible - you need to deal with thins that don't align with your own moral intuition.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ... The plagues in general could very well have been that. Bugs, disease, bad water, illness, death of especially vulnerable children. condensed into a meaningful narrative.
Really? So what was Moses' role in this? Just really really lucky that stuff happened when he wanted it to?
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Point is - I agree with KoM's problems with kmboots. Once you agree that God revealed Himself to you, and once you agree that He wrote the bible - you need to deal with thins that don't align with your own moral intuition.
But I haven't agreed that God wrote the Bible. I believe that inspired but failable men wrote the Bible. And decided what inspired writings actually got to be the Bible.
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quote:Personal strength and triumph can only blossom in the face of pain.
Because, presumably, God so wills it. Right?
Yup. But if you read the Worthing Saga as:
I'll pay you 5 pain units for 5 personal strength units.
It is a perspective that makes your point stronger.
If you read Worthing Saga as:
Pain and personal strength are essentially united and are inseparable.
That is the best answer I can offer.
Your question as to why God made the world that way exists in both perspectives. From my perspective, God is good, His system is good, and even if pain is experienced, I trust the system and trust God. The fact that we can imagine alternative ways does not undermine the reality of God and that this is how He chose to relate to us. It also does not undermine my conception of Him being Good, though I appreciate the complexity and the difficulty of this question.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ... The plagues in general could very well have been that. Bugs, disease, bad water, illness, death of especially vulnerable children. condensed into a meaningful narrative.
Really? So what was Moses' role in this? Just really really lucky that stuff happened when he wanted it to?
Try reading it like an epic poem rather than a history book. Or like the movie version or LOTR. Some things may have been condensed as they were passed down to make a more coherent story. Those events could have taken place over months or years rather than days.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ... The plagues in general could very well have been that. Bugs, disease, bad water, illness, death of especially vulnerable children. condensed into a meaningful narrative.
Really? So what was Moses' role in this? Just really really lucky that stuff happened when he wanted it to?
What makes you think Moses existed? Or look at it another way: There must have been any number of leaders among the conquered and slave populations of Egypt. No doubt many of them tried to work magic against their oppressors, calling on gods and spirits to aid them. So there would always be someone who had called down a curse in the last couple of weeks. Then when a plague happened to coincide with some particularly unbearable edict, BOOM.
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It seems that human beings (and perhaps angels and other extra-terrestrial intelligences) need to be convinced that evil is really evil--and especially convinced of how horribly and completely ruinous evil is. Because of evil, babies are killed, often because of the evil choices made by adults. Because of evil, the choices made by leaders result in the ruin of whole lands, with suffering and torment and death and mayhem. This is a demonstration of the working of the principles of evil.
There are times when God intervenes in individual cases, and there are times when He intervenes a lot, to raise up a community of people who will at least to some extent witness to His righteousness in the world. But evil (also called sin) has arisen in the universe, and is now confined to earth in a sort of spiritual hazard containment lab, and God is determined to deal with it in such a comprehensive manner, that it never will arise again. That means that God must allow its true nature to be fully demonstrated.
King of Men, this thread was said to be about theological inconsistences with Christianity. So discussion of hypothetical other deities, or of whether or not Moses existed, are not really germane here.
I see no problem with input from Orthodox (or other) Jews in this discussion, since Christians and Jews share most of the same books of the Bible, hence many of the same understandings of the divine character; and from the Christian perspective, Christianity is really a continuation onward of Biblical Judaism.
I will go on and add a little further stir to the stew: The God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old Testament. In fact, it was Jesus Christ who wrote the Ten Commandments on tables of stone at Mt. Sinai; it was Jesus Christ who spoke to Moses in the burning bush. It was Jesus Christ who killed Pharoah's charioteers in the Sea.
Jews, of course, will object to this; but I am speaking now to Christians who accept the New Testment. Let me show the basis for my reasoning:
1 John 4:12: "No man hath seen God at any time."
Exodus 24:9-11: "Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink."
The only way to reconcile these two statements for Christians is to conclude as I do that Jesus Christ is the sole divine being who has ever personally represented God on earth. It is God the Father who has never been seen by man.
There is a Personality in Scripture called "the Angel of the Lord." But he is also identified as God. (see Judges 13:21, 22). He also sometimes is called simply a Man, but then is described in terms that make it clear this is God, and He accepts worship (Joshua 5:13-16) It is Jesus who is thus identified in the Old Testament.
This does not mean that Jesus is one of the angels, who are created beings (Psalms 8:5; Hebrews 1:13, 14). An angel is also a messenger. Thus the promised Messiah is called the Messenger of the Covenant in Malachi 3:1. The highest of the angels of God presently is named Gabriel. The Angel of the Lord is someone higher than Gabriel, and not literally an angel. He is the Son of God.
What this means is that we cannot make a dichotomy between the God of the Old Testament, and the God of the New Testament. They are one and the same. If they seem hard to reconcile, it is because we are not understanding things well enough.
The God who wrote the Ten Commandments on stone for all mankind and all eternity, also is the same Person who declared: "...'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40) Careful analysis will show that the first four of the Ten Commandments outline our duty to God; and the latter six outline our duty to man. And in summarizing the Ten Commandments this way, Jesus was quoting from Scripture (see Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18).
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Yup. But if you read the Worthing Saga as:
I'll pay you 5 pain units for 5 personal strength units.
Okay, but that's not applicable to everything we're talking about. We aren't talking about pain and punishment, we're talking about death, death of people who, by modern standards, did nothing morally wrong.
In Exodus, it's more like "I decided to kill everyone who didn't carry out this ritual, even if they didn't know about it, or couldn't have possibly carried it out, and even if they had absolutely nothing at all to do with Israelite slavery".
But back to your analogy, would you say that it would have been right for Job to sign up his family to die, so he could gain personal strength?
Would you say that God has a right to kill so many women and children so that someone else can gain personal strength? Ron thinks that God can kill anyone just beucase he wants to.
quote:Your question as to why God made the world that way exists in both perspectives. From my perspective, God is good, His system is good, and even if pain is experienced, I trust the system and trust God.
Do you think that Job's first wives and children didn't trust God? How did the system work for them?
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swbarnes2, you are not being truthful in the way you represent my position. You make it sound like I believe God is arbitrary and kills people on a whim.
Most people who die do so as a direct or indirect result of sin (evil). Even with those people whom God kills (and I am not among those who claim that God never kills), it is more appropriate to say that God chooses to stop sustaining their sinful lives any further. It is they who chose to separate themselves from the Only Source of Life, so ultimately God is giving them what they have chosen. Or even what they have chosen for their children, or other people for whom they are responsible.
Incidentally, God did not kill Job's first children, Satan did. And Job's first wife advised Job to "Just curse God and die." She may have left him, though the Bible does not say this. Nor does it say that she died.
[ April 17, 2009, 06:40 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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posted
About Worthing, I don't think it supports your point, Armoth. Because consider what happens at the end: The psychics all kill themselves, and Jason Worthing states his considered opinion that this is crazy. Then the remaining female psychic at last breaks down and heals the little girl's arm, and presumably goes on to become a great healer and progenitor of a new race of psychics, who will use their gifts to heal without taking away the memory of pain and the possibility of mistakes. The point is, then, that there is a middle ground between no intervention and complete taking over of responsibility! Without pain, no Hoom, fine. But do you seriously need the grinding, soul-destroying pain that is completely routine on this Earth? Cancer for 2-year-old children? Consider it like BDSM: Plenty of people will volunteer for a spanking, even a rather severe whipping, but nobody deliberately goes for the sort of body-smashing tortures they used in the Middle Ages. Would you seriously like to argue that the amount of pain the human race has had through the ages is optimal? I read today of a cancer victim; she is 17, and unlikely to see her 18th birthday in June, and even with modern drugs her end will be dreadfully painful. Will you look her in the eye and say that this is good and necessary?
Edit: And a further point is that the Worthing psychics were not capable of changing human nature; but an omnipotent god could certainly create humans capable of growth even in the absence of pain.
[ April 17, 2009, 07:29 PM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: King of Men, this thread was said to be about theological inconsistences with Christianity. So discussion of hypothetical other deities, or of whether or not Moses existed, are not really germane here.
That's ok, I'm not talking to you anyway; you've consigned yourself to a subhuman level of existence and are not worth spending time on.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: swbarnes2, you are not being truthful in the way you represent my position. You make it sound like I believe God is arbitrary and kills people on a whim.
quote:Most people who die do so as a direct or indirect result of sin (evil).
By which you mean that many do not.
quote:Even with those people whom God kills (and I am not among those who claim that God never kills), it is more appropriate to say that God chooses to stop sustaining their sinful lives any further.
I don't see that this is much of a distinition. Babies can't sin, but the God of the Bible killed them left and right.
If you are going to say that everyone is sinful, and that it's therefore morally fine for God to end our lives at any point, for no particular transgression at all, than I don't see that I've missed your meaning.
quote:It is they who chose to separate themselves from the Only Source of Life, so ultimately God is giving them what they have chosen. Or even what they have chosen for their children, or other people for whom they are responsible.
So you claim that the prisoner chose to put responsibility for his life in Pharaoh's hands? You believe that this is even an available moral choice?
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ... Try reading it like an epic poem rather than a history book. Or like the movie version or LOTR. Some things may have been condensed as they were passed down to make a more coherent story. Those events could have taken place over months or years rather than days.
So in other words, there may or may not have been plagues (and they could have taken any number of natural forms) and there may or may not have been a Moses connected with these events (which may not be single events so much as ... possible events that took place over a greater period of time).
But, you are sure that God doesn't kill babies. Thus, most depictions of God killing (or ordering the killing of) babies in the Bible (including specifically this one) are wrong and must be fictional or misinterpreted.
Is that fair?
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: ... What makes you think Moses existed?
Not much.
But thats not the purpose of my questions. I'm fairly clear on what Ron believes (or at least what he says he believes) even if he and I disagree on how to characterize it.
I'm just not clear what kmbboots believes exactly and that makes me curious.
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quote:That's ok, I'm not talking to you anyway; you've consigned yourself to a subhuman level of existence and are not worth spending time on.
And once again King of Men illustrates how much less interested he is in real dialogue, compared to chest-thumping 'lookit how smart I am!' rhetoric.
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quote:Edit: And a further point is that the Worthing psychics were not capable of changing human nature; but an omnipotent god could certainly create humans capable of growth even in the absence of pain.
It seems to me that this is potentially a 'can God create a stone not even He can lift?' type of question.
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quote:That's ok, I'm not talking to you anyway; you've consigned yourself to a subhuman level of existence and are not worth spending time on.
And once again King of Men illustrates how much less interested he is in real dialogue, compared to chest-thumping 'lookit how smart I am!' rhetoric.
It's not just "chest-thumping," it's abusive and hateful and a violation of the TOS. Call a spade a spade.
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