Is God A Sadistic Monster?

[NotBlinded]

Jesus is the Son of God in a metaphorical sense, not literally. Jesus and God are the same entity, Jesus just describes the part of God that came to Earth as a human.

So God sent himself to die for us to appease himself? Silly God. Jesus and God are the same entity just like you and I are the same entity as God. No joke! Read what Jesus says.

 

The sole purpose of the universe is for people to make a choice about whether to follow God or not. The Bible says that God wishes that all would choose repentance, and that it gives him great happiness to give you eternal life.

Eternal life doesn't mean for ever and ever. It's a translation error. Read this:

 

Another pleasant change which more Bible translations of the future will make deals with the subject of the words "everlasting," "eternal," and "for ever and ever." These words have been used in times past to translate the Hebrew word "olam," and its Greek counterpart "aion," and its adjective, "aionios." These ancient words should NEVER have been translated this way. Many modern scholars are beginning to cut the grain of tradition and speak the truth which has been shackled by the chains of tradition long enough. It’s time for light. The body of Christ has had enough of living in the shadows. It’s time for pure light!

 

Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, a well-known Bible teacher, hailed as "the prince of expositors" wrote in his book "God’s Method’s With Men" on pages 185, 6, "Let me say to Bible students that we must be very careful how to use the word ‘eternity.’ We have fallen into great error in our constant use of that word. There is NO word in the whole Book of God corresponding with our ‘eternal,’ which as commonly used among us, means absolutely without end."

The End of Forever in the Bible

 

It isn’t lust for blood, it is desire for peace. God created you, gave you the ability to make your own choices, and has offered you eternal life. I fail to see how that is evil.

Oops...there is that little word "eternal" again. The only eternal life there is is what you are living right now. You are participating in "eternal" life this very moment and you are "missing the mark" by not realizing that.

 

Who is supposed to be getting this eternal life if knowledge and experience are finite?

[Zetetic]

If God is all-good, he wants only the best for us and cannot abide the existence of evil. Otherwise, he is not all-good.

Evil is not an object that was created, it is an action committed by someone, the result of sin. Because we have free-will, we are able to sin, which is why evil exists. The only way to eliminate evil would be to take away our free-will.

If that's true, then it shouldn't have created us and it's extraordinarily selfish that it would create so many people only to have the majority of them suffer.

 

Without Jesus your only option would be to suffer forever. I guess by definition you could call it an ultimatum, but that doesn’t mean it is bad. Yes, we are supposed to serve God or “burn”, but God always gives much, much more than he takes. The only reason you would have to reject God is because you love to sin and hurt others, and you cannot love both God and violence.

This is a despicable belief and the one that drives most fundamentalists to be willing to kill those who don't believe as they believe. It's what drove the Crusades, the Witch burnings and which drives the suicide bombers today. The reality is that I abhor violence far, far more than your evil god and I despise hurting others vastly more than it does. In fact, it's the basis of my entire moral nature. I can sum up my moral beliefs by quoting a saying attributed to the Tahitians: "The only sin is unkindness". The only way you could not see the hundreds, probably even thousands of verses in the bible (that many others have quoted) that say exactly the opposite about god is because you are as thoroughly brain-washed as I used to be and completely unable to see the truth.

 

 

If God doesn’t exist, then where did mankind come from? Big bang + Evolution? Show me proof of life ever coming from non-living material. There is no logical reason to believe that human life came to be without some kind of higher power. Not at least believing in some kind of God, and that he created everything, is just silly.

What you've just said is beyond silly, it's completely absurd! Where's your proof that god exists and created anything? If god DOES exist, where did IT come from? To not see that this a ridiculous circular argument that leads nowhere just proves that you are as brain-washed as I used to be. Actually, since we have absolutely no scientific information about the beginning of the universe (if there was a beginning), to make any statement of belief is ridiculous.

 

There are some misguided religious groups, but the Bible doesn’t encourage violence. The Old Testament does have a lot of killing it, but that is because there was no history to show God’s true hatred of sin. They were also very evil, as they worshiped idols and sacrificed their children to them, among other things. God told Abraham that he would spare the city of Sodom if there were 5 good people living there, but there weren't even that many. Two angels went and escorted the four members of Lot's family out of the city and it then it was destroyed. There's no evidence to suggest the people that God killed were anything less than very evil, even by our own standards today.

You haven't really read those verses. First of all, there's no proof that any of them were that evil, second of all, slaughtering children and taking virgins as possessions (etc., etc., etc) is despicable no matter how evil they were.

 

 

After Jesus died the old-law was abolished, and there are only 2 important commandments, love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. The Bible does give some specifics, but all are based upon those two commands. The most “violent” thing Christians are command to do is to lovingly rebuke those who turn from God, and if they refuse to return to God you should no longer socialize with them unless it is to encourage them to return to God. Jesus specially states that you should no longer hate your enemy, and that you should instead pray for them to turn to God. I am unaware of anything a Christian is commanded to do that is more "violent" than that.

I will grant that the New Testament sounds far more benign then the Old Testament, but let us not forget that the god of the New Testament is the same god as the god of the Old Testament. Did god suddenly get less evil? Or are you just going to resort to the argument that we should just trust god? Not! The whole concept of heaven and hell and "salvation" is evil. And despite the wonderful attempts of somebody around the time of Jesus to reform the old religion, it didn't seem to work all that well. If Christians actually followed Christs commandments, then I might look at it more favorably. If they didn't look upon unbelievers as the enemy, as they so often do, then I might be more tolerant. But don't give me this crap about how Christians love non-Christians. I used to be one of you. I know how you think. We're still outsiders and you don't really look at us with love and you still expect Jesus to return and destroy us all (unless we become one of you, of course).

 

Even so, it's not necessarily the Christians I object to, it's the god you believe in. Don't forget Revelations, where Jesus is going to return and destroy all the evil unbelievers (us!). And if Jesus can return to destroy us, is it such a stretch for Christians to think that it's ok to get the ball rolling? Apparently not; as witnessed by many events (that I'm sure you know about) in Christian history. And don't give me the old line about how the "true" Christians never did any of that and don't do it now. You're just defining the problem away. Kind of like throwing a bunch of dice on the ground, picking out the ones that roll six and saying only those are the "true" dice. Sort of like saying that we define black people as sub-human, therefore it's ok to enslave them because they're sub-human.

[Zetetic]

The only reason you would have to reject God is because you love to sin and hurt others, and you cannot love both God and violence.

I just have to repeat this one more time because it was such a rotten thing to say. If you knew me, you would know that it's so completely opposite of what I am, that if you really believed this and really knew me, it would probably shatter your beliefs.

[Guest Informant]

Light is not an object, either, yet it was created.

Light is an object, you can see it can’t you? Light is a photon of energy. Darkness, on the other hand, isn’t an object, it is merely the absence of light. Evil “exists” in the same way darkness does, it is the absence of obedience to God’s law.

Evil is something that exists because of the devil, in Christianity. The fact that God does not destroy evil tells me he's either not powerful enough to do it or not willing.

 

Satan was the first to rebel against God, and that was the first time evil happened. You can credit individual acts of evil to Satan, but evil as a whole does not exist because of him, it exists because God gives every being he creates with a soul the decision to choose or reject him.

 

Why are they impossible? If God cannot do them, then God isn't all-powerful. God, being all-powerful, isn't constrained by any limits.

There is no place in the Bible that says God isn’t constrained by certain limits. He can only create things lesser than himself and he can’t break his own laws. The Bible says that he has unlimited power, meaning he has an unlimited ability to cause change. Being able to create three-sided square has nothing to do with the amount of power you have, it’s just a play on words to create a contradiction. He can create a figure with three-sides easily and he can create a square easily, but a figure cannot be both at the same time. Any type of, “Can he create an object that requires attribute A, without giving it attribute A” creates an obviously silly argument.

 

I refer to the fact that evil exists yet a God with all the necessary attributes to eradicate evil is posited, which is in itself a contradiction. The fact that evil exists proves your God cannot possibly exist. Clearly, I'm not the silly one, here.

 

Ugh. I hate when Christians trot out that tired old line.

 

Free will can exist in a world free of evil. Evil is unnecessary for free will to exist at all. I can conceive of that - why can't your God? If your God is all-powerful and all-knowing, he could easily make a world in which all beings can be totally free yet there would be no evil to fall into. There's no need to mess around with all this hullabaloo of choosing God or accepting Jesus - God can simply make the world as he wants it to be.

 

The fact that he does not tell me that either he is unable to, or simply doesn't exist. It really boils down to that.

 

Free will, by definition, means that you have the freedom to make decisions without any constraints. If not following God was not a choice, then you obviously are limited in your choices, and thus do not have free will. Heaven will be a place without evil, and thus we will no longer have free will, but that doesn’t mean there won’t still be choices, just that none of the choices will be sinful. God allows evil to exist on Earth because it is necessary for you to have a choice, because his nature is to not force someone to make a certain decision. You may hate the idea that the only thing that matters is your decision to accept or reject God, but it is true. What else matters? All of your worldly possessions are given away to others once you die, and then to others once they die, so on and so on, so material possessions obviously have no eternal value.

 

Wow, making a lot of arrogant assumptions here, kiddo.

 

You are an asshole. Here's why: you assume that I want to commit "evil" (ie, sinful) acts and want to hurt others because I willingly reject Jesus. Now, you have no idea of who I am, the help I've given to others, and the help I will give when the need arises, so you are an asshole. Stop being an asshole because your religion encourages you to make bullshit claims about people's motives for rejecting your religion.

 

Now, I don't need Jesus for anything. There is no Hell to burn in, and if there were, your God is also an asshole for threatening me with eternal suffering for simply refusing to worship him. Worshipping any deity does not automatically confer moral aptitude or superiority on anyone. The Crusades, the Witch Trials, and the Inquisitions (for example) prove that.

Maybe I worded that badly, but I was not accusing anyone of wanting to be an evil person, I was merely saying that it makes no sense to do your best in loving others, but not accepting forgiveness from Christ. Loving others is the whole purpose for him coming to Earth. Salvation is a free gift given by God to all who seek forgiveness. It makes no sense to reject it if you already love others.

 

Jesus said it no longer matters where you worship(John 4:21), and that violating God’s law for the purpose of tradition is hypocritical(Matthew 15:3-7). God does want you to acknowledge what he does for you, but he also wants you to help others(Matthew 25:35-40). The Bible says that giving to others is more important than giving to God, since God does not need anything(Matthew 15:3-7), to think of others as better than yourself (Philippians 2:3), and that “If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.” (Galatians 6:3). The Bible mentions people being rewarded for help others(Matthew 25:35-40), but never mentions a reward for hurting others regardless of if they follow Christ or not.

 

Matthew 15:3-7

3 Jesus replied, “And why do you, by your traditions, violate the direct commandments of God? 4 For instance, God says, ‘Honor your father and mother,’[a] and ‘Anyone who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put to death.’ 5 But you say it is all right for people to say to their parents, ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. For I have vowed to give to God what I would have given to you.’ 6 In this way, you say they don’t need to honor their parents.[c] And so you cancel the word of God for the sake of your own tradition. 7 You hypocrites!

 

Matthew 25:35-40

35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

37 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

 

Again, your God has the power, according to your religion, to erase evil and thus the need to punish anyone. The fact that he doesn't do this - doesn't take responsibility for the universe he made and the evil he has permitted to ruin it - tells me he either doesn't care about evil or isn't as powerful as evil.

 

Or that he simply doesn't exist to begin with. Occam's Razor tells me this.

 

Free will, by definition, means that you have the freedom to make decisions without any constraints. If not following God was not a choice, then you obviously are limited in your choices, and thus do not have free will. Heaven will be a place without evil, and thus we will no longer have free will, but that doesn’t mean there won’t still be choices, just that none of the choices will be sinful. God allows evil to exist on Earth because it is necessary for you to have a choice, because his nature is to not force someone to make a certain decision.

 

First of all, God is supposed to be omnipresent - present in all places without exception. He is therefore present in places where sinful deeds are being done. That is a contradiction - and it proves God does not exist, since if he existed where evil was being done, the evil would be overpowered. But since we can observe evil actions on a regular basis, it tells us God simply isn't there, and therefore doesn't exist.

 

The word omnipresent isn’t used in the Bible, so to determine if he actually is omnipresent we would have to find scripture(s) that show he has characteristics that fit the definition of omnipresent, which is being everywhere at the same time. There are several places in the Bible that state God is in multiple places(too many to list), proving that he can be in multiple places, but does that mean is in all places at once? I think that saying God is everywhere just because he has the ability to is just as silly as saying he has done everything possible because he is all-powerful.

There are scriptures that say God’s dwelling place is in Heaving (1 Kings 8:39, 43, 49; 2 Chronicles 6:33, 39), there are also verses that say his spirit cannot be hidden or fled from and that his hands will always guide us(Psalms 139:7-10), and Deuteronomy 26:15 says “Look down from heaven, your holy dwelling place, and bless your people Israel and the land you have given us as you promised on oath to our forefathers, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Psalms 139:7-10

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

10 even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

 

From these scriptures I would have to say God is not omnipresent. He does interact with his creation and is always watching over it, but he doesn’t dwell in it like he does Heaven.

[Guest Informant]

God created the first humans without the ability to recognize evil, according to your religion. Furthermore, I can conceive of human beings without the ability to do wrong. Therefore, you God can do so, and he ought to make the world so, if he genuinely cares more about us than about which religion we follow.

 

The fact that he does not tells us one thing: he exists not.

God does not want us to be involved in evil, but it is necessary for evil to be allowed to exist if we are to have a choice other than good. If Adam and Eve did not have a choice then they could not truly love God, but rather were forced to love him. Can you think of something you have no understanding of? No, you can’t. This is why Adam and Eve didn’t know about sin. They had never see sin before and didn’t know what it was or what the consequences were. Once they did sin though, they knew what sin was like. God will create a world without sin after judgement, for those who have made the decision to follow him. The only thing you have to do is trust in him. You don’t have to be perfect or anywhere close to perfect. People like Hitler and Stalin could have been forgiven in they would have turned to Christ.

 

When you say he wouldn’t care what religion we follow, how are you defining religion? The definition I’m looking at says “a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects”. In this case, yes God does care what your set of beliefs are. If you don’t believe in him or what he says, then your not following him. The Bible says “whoever is not for me is against me”, and “This is the only thing God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent”(John 6:29). So yes, God does care what you believe.

 

You're right about one thing - there is importance in the decision to accept Christianity or reject it. And it's important to reject it because it is a foul cult which promotes a variety of sick and fallacious things.

 

You have yet to prove so, everything you said so far has been wrong.

 

Why does the Christian God have to exist in order for anything to have been created? You shut your mind out to all possibilities when you assume that your recently-invented God has to be at the center of everything.

 

Perhaps whatever God or Gods made the universe in the beginning of time perished in the process, and there are no Gods now, even though there were at one point. Why can't that be true? It certainly is more sensible than assuming your God made the earth in six days, 6000 years ago, when all of science contradicts this.

 

And that also begs the question - where did any Gods come from? They too have to have origins. And don't give me the tripe that God existed magically out of time and space, because unless you can demonstrate this, it's just another excuse, made-up to stand in the place of facts.

 

Facts Christians don't want to accept.

Day is a relative term, on Earth days are only 24 hours long, but on Venus they are approximately 5832 hours long. To suggest that Bible is saying the universe was created in 144 hours, 6 Earth days, seems unlikely to me. In my opinion, it is also unlikely that the universe is only 6,000 years old, or however long ago it was when Adam was created, rather that is the length of time in which Humans have been alive. The universe was created in 6 days just means that it was created in 6 different stages.

 

Though I am no expert, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the universe is pretty old, much older than 6000 years. The Bible specifically states that time has no meaning to God, and that time was created by God. The Bible also says the universe was created to declare God’s power and glory. I guess it is possible that God artificially aged the universe, but I would think that would be unlikely because that would give the impression that God is limited by time, or could possibly be interpreted as deception.

 

With Einstein’s theory of relativity, you can prove that time is part of space and matter. When gravity increases, time slows down. Also, the laws of thermodynamics prove that the universe did have a beginning. If the universe had existed forever, then all usable energy would have already been used up.

 

It’s very obvious that there is a creator, but I’m assuming you’re asking how we can know the creator wishes to interact with us or wants us to know who he is. Without referring to scripture or personal experience that can be a hard question to answer. The Bible does say that “those who ask will receive, those who seek will find, and those who knock will have the door opened to them”(Mathew 7:8). If you recognize the fact that there is a creator, that you have done wrong, and that there are things you can’t do on your own, then you can ask to be show the truth and he will show it to you.

 

The Bible encourages much violence. Don't lie to me. Here are some examples of violence being encouraged in the Bible:

 

Human Sacrifice

 

Rape

 

Murder

 

Assorted Examples of Cruelty and Violence encouraged in the Bible

 

Luke 12:47-49

47 The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. 48 But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given.

 

This verse is referring to knowledge of God and what he has asked you to do. We have been given the knowledge of God, thus we are responsible for out actions, but because we cannot fully understand the consequences of our actions we were given an opportunity to be forgiven. Angels, on the other hand, have been given much more. They have seen the full glory of God, and they have no forgiveness if they sin, because they are fully aware of all the consequences and they can’t accidentally sin. This is also what Jesus is referring to when he says blasphemy of the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, those who have seen undeniable proof of God and reject it cannot be forgiven. Satan and his demons can never be forgiven, not that they even want to because they fully knew what they were doing, because they saw the full glory of God and still decided to sin anyway.

 

Similarly, God was much more active in the Old Testament than he is nowadays. He spoke to them though prophets, occasionally directly, and gave them miracles along with prior predictions. They had tons of knowledge of God, and yet they still refused to do what he asked. Worship idols, which pretty much all of them did, it is of great offense to him. Not only is worshiping idols a complete waste of your own time, but the Bible states that God is jealous and takes great offense to it. It would be far, far better for you to ignore God completely than to give the credit of his deeds to some statue or figurine.

 

If you want answers for specific things on those you’ll have to ask, but most of those are people being punished for their actions, and none of them are commands to go out and hurt innocent people. Sin is harmful to other people, and it does have a punishment. Worshiping idols is something that was very common in the OT, and something God despises. After the Israel was brought out of Egypt they made a golden calf and gave it the credit for bringing them out of Egypt, this obviously made God angry. Moses went down and shouted for everyone who was for the Lord to come and join him, and those who didn’t not were killed. It may sound harsh, but disobeying God does have punishments. If there were no punishments, then how would people know what is right and what is wrong?

 

You also assume that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were evil because your God says they were. That's hearsay. There must've been little children and unborn babies there - every city has them. But your God is depicted as having incinerated them all. And for what? Not a single "crime" of the Sodomites is mentioned.

 

And there's no evidence to suggest Sodom or Gomorrah ever existed to begin with. Scholars highly doubt that any such place ever was.

 

You make a good little lapdog for your God, but try thinking for yourself. I did - and it feels much better this way.

 

It doesn’t go into a history of all their actions, but it does show some things they did in Genesis 19, how they tried to rape two angels visiting Lot to warn him which implies they do this kind of thing often. and one versus about them being very evil in Genesis 13. And that Wikipedia article says “The historical existence of Sodom and Gomorrah is still in dispute by archaeologists, with some believing they never existed, some believing they are now under the Dead Sea, and others claiming that they have been found (under other names) in the region to the southeast of the Dead Sea.”, it doesn’t say “highly doubt”, nor that there is no evidence. Also, babies and young children are not old enough to make a decision to follow God or not, so they are given a “free ticket” into heaven, and I can’t imagine they would be complaining about that to God.

 

God brought Lot and his family out of Sodom before it was destroyed because they were obedient to him. There is no evidence to suggest that God wouldn’t have helped others escape too if they would have also wanted to obey him. The Bible constantly says that it gives God great happiness it give you gifts, and especially eternal life(Luke 12:32), so there no reason to think that he wouldn’t save everyone who wanted to be forgiven (wanting to be forgiven and not wanting to be punished are two different things).

[Guest Informant]

Jesus also said that not one word of the Law would perish, so he didn't destroy the Law at all. Don't cherry-pick verses; granted, it's impossible not to cherry-pick, because the entire Bible contradicts itself, but still - it's fallacious.

 

Nothing in the Bible is based off the "Golden Rule." The Golden Rule, furthermore, is much older than the Abrahamic religions. Educate yourself. Especially the commands in the Torah to murder gays and stone disobedient children - how is that based on a law of love?

He said he didn’t come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. If you actually look at a literal translation of it, it says “I did not come to oppose the law, but to complete it”. complete/fulfill imply that the law will be ending once a certain thing happened. The law stated that there would be a time when God would send a sacrifice, himself as Jesus, to make us right with God. We are no longer required to sacrifice animals or to take it upon ourselves to punish others, but to believe in Christ and love each other.

 

Deuteronomy 29:1

"These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He made with them in Horeb."

 

John 6:29

Jesus told them, "This is the only thing God wants you to do: Believe in the one he has sent."

 

John 13:34

So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other.

 

We are not made right with because of what we do, but because of his grace and kindness. This verse isn’t saying literally saying it is the only thing he wants us to do, and that we can go sin as much as we want if we believe in Jesus, it is just putting emphasis the fact that believing in him is far, far more important than anything else. Ceremonial Laws (sacrificing animals, festivals, holy days) are no longer of any importance because belief in Jesus replaces it. The only thing that remains is to love God and love others, and most importantly, believe in Jesus, because we are now under grace and not the law.

 

Christians are instructed to convert the entire world, or slay those who would not accept Jesus. In Luke 19:27, we read "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." The plain text of the Bible reads just like that - murder all those who do not accept Christianity.

 

Don't try to tell me that that is part of a parable. It is found at the end of a parable and is clearly intended to explain the meaning of the parable. In other words, that verse is meant to be taken literally - and the earliest Christians took it literally, oppressing with violence any and all resistance to Christianity in Europe. Then, at sword-point, they forced Christianity on all Pagan peoples, in full conformity with the Bible.

 

That last verse is still in quotes of the character in the parable, and is very obviously part of the parable. That parable is referring to people who accept Christ, but then continue living their life as if they never had. The executing part represents the people who refused to follow Christ being thrown into hell in the parable, not to explain the meaning of the parable, and not to be taken literally.

 

The Bible states that God wishes everyone would come to repentance(2 Peter 3:9), that it gives him great happiness to give you eternal life(Luke 12:32), to love your enemy and pray for those who harm you(Matthew 5:44). There is simply nothing to suggest that God doesn’t want everyone to have as big of an opportunity as possible to receive eternal life. Those who show even the slightest hint of wanting to turn from their evil ways will receive attention from God, those who ask will receive, those who seek will find, and those who knock will have the door opened to them.

 

That is history - proven and unarguable. And it dovetails perfectly with Luke 19:27. Your Jesus encourages violence against unbelievers, as proven above. To argue otherwise is to willingly blind oneself to the facts of both Christianity and history.

The only thing you have proven is that you don’t have much knowledge of the Bible or God. You would see that Jesus never encouraged violence if you read the Bible. You will see that Jesus even said that he “didn’t come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45), and that he “didn’t come into the world to condemn it, but to save it” (John 3:17).

 

And if Jesus wants us to not hate anyone, perhaps he should set the example - by doing away with damnation and erasing sin and evil. Also, we read in Luke 14:26: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother...he cannot be my disciple." So, what does Jesus want?

 

The clear text of the Bible shows that Jesus in fact wants us to hate - hate everything that is not him. If he intended it to be understood differently, then as an all-powerful God, he should've not permitted the Bible to be translated this way. Either, he meant just that, or the Bible is the work of human minds and God does not exist.

 

In the Hebrew language there is nothing to indicate partial love/hate, such as like. You won’t find anything other than love or hate in the context of feelings toward another person, in a literal translation.

 

Luke 14:26

26`If any one doth come unto me, and doth not hate his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, and yet even his own life, he is not able to be my disciple;

 

A literal translation of Genesis 29:30-31

30And he goeth in also unto Rachel, and he also loveth Rachel more than Leah; and he serveth with him yet seven other years.

31And Jehovah seeth that Leah [is] the hated one, and He openeth her womb, and Rachel [is] barren;

 

Since the Bible is describing how Leah was given children because she was loved less than Abraham’s other wife, the only word available for use is hate. It is quite clear that she was his wife and that he loved her, but that she was loved less than the her sister, his other wife. Jesus is in the same situation here, he is telling people that he must be the biggest priority in their life, and in that time most people had their family as their biggest priority, so he is specifically addressing that he must be above even them. He is saying that you must love less your father, mother, brother, sister, and even your own life. The Bible says that obeying your parents pleases God (Colossians 3:20). The verse is just saying that you must love him the most. For Christian families this isn’t much of a problem because parents encourage their children to grow closer to God, but for other families who do not believe in God then you might have to make a choice between the two.

 

Your God is wicked, and your religion is pure evil. I want nothing to do with either, save to participate in their utter and eternal destruction.

 

Informant, I was a Christian for over 27 years. I spent much of that time learning the religion, studying the Bible, and examining apologetic arguments designed to spread the cult. Do you know the Bible half as well?

 

Ironic that Atheists know more about the Bible than Christians do.

 

Nothing you said above shows that you have any knowledge of the Bible. Someone could just do a text search for certain words, and make those same literal and out of context conclusions. Sites like the evilbible.com are completely unreliable sources for finding the meaning of the Bible. I just scanned through that list you linked and was surprised to see they even listed Jesus’ death as a cruel act by God. Saying that God punishing people is cruel, and then saying that God giving the people the opportunity to be forgiven and not be punished is also cruel, is just silly. Christianity is built upon the premise that Jesus is himself God, and that he sacrificed himself to take the punishment of our sins so we didn’t have to. So if they don’t even understand that, then how can they be a reliable source for interpreting the what the Bible means?

[NotBlinded]

Did somebody say something, or is that just a fly buzzing in my ear...annoying little thing!

[Antlerman]

God does not want us to be involved in evil, but it is necessary for evil to be allowed to exist if we are to have a choice other than good. If Adam and Eve did not have a choice then they could not truly love God, but rather were forced to love him. Can you think of something you have no understanding of? No, you can’t. This is why Adam and Eve didn’t know about sin. They had never see sin before and didn’t know what it was or what the consequences were. Once they did sin though, they knew what sin was like. God will create a world without sin after judgement, for those who have made the decision to follow him. The only thing you have to do is trust in him. You don’t have to be perfect or anywhere close to perfect. People like Hitler and Stalin could have been forgiven in they would have turned to Christ.

You know, I find it fascinating how people can take a mythology and try to make it logically cohesive. It’s not meant to be that. It’s not about fitting together a map of the universe. It’s about principles and ideas loosely hung together on a story of greatness, legends, and gods.

 

Think about it. Satan was the one who created evil, or brought evil into the universe – literally? Then God would have to exist within an already existing force of the universe outside himself where evil already was. If God is everything, trans-universal so to speak, that all that is everywhere in and out of this universe is within God, then so is evil. Logically, either God is a being that exists within a principle outside himself, or He contains evil within himself.

 

This is one example of thousands that can happen when you try to take a myth story and try to make it scientific. This is why people who reason and examine with legitimate questions end up rejecting this sort of logic framework for God. Why is it necessary for you to try to make it feel the natural world? Does it lack sufficient meaning to you to stand as something different for you than science? Would your faith crumble if you found out your explainations are faulted, in pretty much their entirety?

 

It’s very obvious that there is a creator, but I’m assuming you’re asking how we can know the creator wishes to interact with us or wants us to know who he is. Without referring to scripture or personal experience that can be a hard question to answer. The Bible does say that “those who ask will receive, those who seek will find, and those who knock will have the door opened to them”(Mathew 7:8). If you recognize the fact that there is a creator, that you have done wrong, and that there are things you can’t do on your own, then you can ask to be show the truth and he will show it to you.

Is it very obvious? You are aware of tricks of perception, aren’t you? The kinds of things that seem “obvious”? The kinds of things con-artists and magicians exploit?

 

The “obviousness” you speak of no doubt is akin to the classic watchmaker’s argument? If you find a watch in the jungle, obviously someone created it?

 

The simple answer to your statement of something being obvious, is that on a surface glance a whole host of assumptions are being made that project the human experience of making things onto something that humans have nothing to do with. Making tools with your hands, is not at all what happens in nature with biological organisms.

 

If you mix two chemicals in a jar and they react together to form some new compound, was the reaction caused by your will? No it wasn’t. All you did was put the chemicals in the jar, and the rules those chemicals follow just happened naturally. In the real world, forces of nature are the “mixer” so to speak, and everything is a natural process. We never have to put these things together and wait until after we pray about it and God comes in to “zap” it for something to happen. Same thing in nature.

 

You may also look at things seeming to have a "purpose" or a function, which to you seems to indicate a design, which would suggest a "designer". But in nature the "purpose" of things is not an intended purpose. Rather, it is an adaptive purpose. Something that presents itself in biological organisms becomes useful to it, and that feature is favored biologically because of the added benefit. It evolves and becomes more. So if it is "designed", it is done so by the forces that drive natural, biological evolution. These are not intended designs.

 

So in short, after moving beyond the assumptions and actually investigating “how” these things happen, what was once “obvious” at an uneducated glance now becomes clear that no magic whatsoever plays a part in any of it.

 

God is not obvious. God has to be taught, and is only understood emotionally, not scientifically. God is a belief.

[Fweethawt]

I'm so glad that I've lost the urge to even read threads like this anymore.

[Eponymic]

I'm so glad that I've lost the urge to even read threads like this anymore.

 

I feel ya there brother.

[Fweethawt]

I'm so glad that I've lost the urge to even read threads like this anymore.

I feel ya there brother.

He said, "brother".

 

*looks at his avatar* *looks at my avatar*

 

And once again, laughs at your use of the word brother.

[NotBlinded]

I'm so glad that I've lost the urge to even read threads like this anymore.

I feel ya there brother.

He said, "brother".

 

*looks at his avatar* *looks at my avatar*

 

And once again, laughs at your use of the word brother.

[Zetetic]

I'm so glad that I've lost the urge to even read threads like this anymore.

How did you manage to break the addiction? I quit smoking 12 years ago but this one is just too difficult! :o

[Guest Babylonian Dream]

God is both a sadist and a mythological creature