How do I freely go about giving my love to someone who tells me he will have me tortured if I don’t? I’d think, however lovable he is, “Love me or you’ll suffer” would undermine the “freely given” part.
I’d really like to know.
God will not have you tortured if you don’t love Him; Hell, according to the Roman Catholic Church, is the absence of God’s love, not some fiery pit.
Do by denying God’s love, you ‘torture’ yourself.
Why is it so difficult to understand that no one has a choice about what they believe? I think the Bible stories are fairy tales, and I cannot choose to believe otherwise. If I try, I feel like I’m lying to myself. Could you choose, right now, to agree with me? If so, then you really don’t believe the stories are true either; you’re just pretending. If not, then you can’t choose your beliefs.
If you really believe, sincerely believe something, you can’t choose to disbelieve it. You can only pretend. Belief arises spontaneously. It can arise from critical examination of evidence, which requires some intellectual courage. It can also arise from uncritical acceptance of hearsay reports. The only choice you have is whether to open your mind enough to consider all possibilities. Go ahead, try to believe that the moon is made of green cheese. (That’s the story I heard as a child.) Try to believe that Ganesh has the head of an elephant because Lord Shiva inadvertently decapitated him, and the only replacement head Shiva’s servants could get their hands on was that of an elephant. (That’s the Hindu story.) There, do you believe it? Really, literally believe it? I didn’t think so.
Sorry for that little rant; it’s a touchy issue for me. Choose what to believe, my ass.
Compared to the punishment that many Christians assure me that God has in store for me, I’d say a day or two of pain is a pretty mild inconvenience. And it was a pretty common inconvenience in Jesus’ day.
According to the Christian story, God set things up so that someone had to be tortured. He didn’t have to do this. Whether the victim of that torture is you, me, or his own son, it seems evil to me. If it isn’t evil, or if it’s a “necessary” evil, then he’s hiding his motives and reasons from us, his beloved children, who have knowledge of good and evil. He doesn’t have to do this. Deception on such a large scale, in such important matters, seems evil to me.
If the God of the Christian Bible were real, he would be evil. Thank God he doesn’t exist.[sub](Ha ha.)[/sub]
It certainly is a tragedy when the innocent die.
That last one <shudder>
I have a 3 and a 4 year old. Unless you have kids of your own, you simply can’t grasp the depth of the evil.
God, you did a great job with birds, trees, sunsets, love, laughter and so much more. However, if you really are responsible for such behavior, go screw yourself.
P.S. Even I know of one that’s not in the list. The last plague upon Egypt – Killing every firstborn child. No, not just the pharoh’s firstborn, everyone’s. Carpenters. Shopkeepers. Waiters. Tailors. You know, everyone who had a say in denying Moses’ request to “Let my people go.”
Some dear friends of mine got around to sending me some pictures of their son, he’s a couple months old now. He’s clearly in mid-squirm, tiny hands loosely clenched. Looking off to the side, eyes open, and mouth wide in this astonishing big toothless grin. From what I understand of early development, probably one of his first few true smiles. The pure wonder and delight in that child’s face was breathtaking.
And then, as you say, that last, and the shudder. And so, I have to take mild exception. Not being a parent, I may not grasp the full depth of the evil in it. But I can sure see how deep the pit goes.
I think that just maybe, the world would be a better place right here and right now if more people spent less time glorifying and justifying suffering–anyone’s suffering–and more time trying to reduce it.
I daresay that a certain long-haired fellow–a nice Jewish heretic, you might have heard of him–might well have agreed with that.
I’ve been thinking about how I was going to answer your question **RedFury ** and I hope this will be sufficient enough. At church tonite the message was about reverence for God. I was reminded how, though I give him all my love and devotion, I do not have the smallest amount of understanding of his mysteries or his ways. Yes I have a personal relationship with him and I regard him as my Lord, Savior and Father, but also I have an awe and respect for him that is more deeply rooted in my heart than I can explain.
During worship we sang a song which I would like to share with you because in it’s few words, it shows exactly what my relationship with God is.
*"If you would touch my eyes
and I could see beyond these walls
Into a land of paradise
where Heaven’s voices sing your praise
It would not make me love you more than I love you now
If I could take your hand and be caught away
by your great power
If mysteries I could understand
and I could know all things right now
It would not make me love you more than I love you now"*
I may not know “all things” and I am fully aware that I could be wrong in many things. But I do know I love him and though I have never seen him or touched him there is no mistaking what I feel in my heart.
Pencil Pusher, could you please tell me exactly where those scriptures are from? I’d like to look them up and read them in context.
Thanks.
Isaiah Ch. 45 vs. 7
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace and CREATE EVIL.
I the Lord do all these things.
So, “HE” is responsible for Evil at the very least!
Anyway, Pharaoh himself had no say in the matter, since god “hardened Pharaoh heart” to make sure he will deny Moses request. Then punished him and all his people for this. Anyway, making sure that people will err and then punishing them (and other more or less related people for good measure) for erring seems a recurrent theme. This god is a first-class pervert.
That’s why I’m actually angered by people who believe all this stuff is true and still state they love him, indeed, dreamer. Worshipping him out of fear who be human, but loving this pervert butcher???
Well…actually, I’m not really angered since it’s obvious that these people are plainly unable to notice the problem in worshipping a god who ordered genocides or intend to torture people forever for minor faults (or actually things that most humans wouldn’t consider as faults at all).
I assume that they’re actually decent people (or more probably nor more nor less decent than anybody else), but able to warp logic to an incredible extent to protect their belief in a loving god, and more surprinsingly their belief that the scriptures are the litteral truth…which seem less necessary for the human psyche than the concept of a supernatural, loving, protector…whether this is a result of brain-washing, self-delusion or because doubting the scriptures would threaten their whole system of belief, I don’t know.
So, actually, it would be more like pissed off than angered. Pissed off by people who insist on stating that two totally contradictory statements make perfect sense, and that I’m blind if I’m not able to get that someone ordering the slaughter/torture of childrens actually loves them.
Though of course people able to follow this kind of reasonning (god love us and I love him and he said that children should be slaughtered and that is just and good) are potential material for criminal acts. And that certainly anger me, since we’ve seen the results of this kind of belief all along the history and still now. Fanatics able to believe anything, regardless whether it makes sense or not are potentially dangerous, and religious fanatics are certainly not the less dangerous.
I think there are some differences of definition here. Good and Evil come from God. Everything else is cultural, generational/relative, and flawed. Asking if God is evil is like asking if truth is false. You could instead say you have based your own values on your own internalized personal subjective values and decided that God (relative to your decision of good/evil) is evil, but unless you base that on some standard of good/evil that others agree with all you’re saying is that you don’t accept values from God.
A middle ground would be that you accept God=good, but also accept that you won’t always (if ever) understand well God’s actions so what seems evil only appears so because you don’t fully understand the situation.
YMMV 
PC
Many or all of those quotes are properly attributed in my post above. It’s the fourth post in the thread. They’re all from the KJV, and I gave as much context as I felt was necessary for clarity. Notice, the book of Joshua is literally filled with passages exactly like that. The Hebrews cut a swath of destruction across the entire country explicitly at God’s command. This was basically to clear out the inhabitants so they could claim the land as their own.
Brings a new meaning to “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” and “Love your enemies.” doesn’t it?
There are many verses and passages in the Bible that are not discussed very often in mainstream churches.
Isaiah 45:5
"I am the Lord, and there is no other, apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me. So that from the rising of the sun to the place of it’s setting men may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other, I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster, I, the Lord, do all these things.
(Skipping to verse 9)
"Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. ***Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ ***
First of all I’d like to know what “disaster” means in the original language. Secondly I challenge you to read the whole of Chapter 45 and tell me how many times God repeats “I am the Lord”. It seems to me he’s trying to get the point accross that HE IS GOD and who are we to question HIM? Yeah, maybe he’s ranting a bit but he made us and we continue to ignore him and push him away, so IMO he’s got a right to be a little pissed.
Well, some of us don’t agree. Some of us are discussing God as a sort of literary figure, like Gandalf or Captain Ahab. Those who actually believe in God would be likely to agree with you, but that isn’t proven.
Shall we take a poll? Who thinks that infanticide and slavery are good? Who thinks that torturing the innocent, or even the marginally guilty, is good? Who thinks that it is moral to sacrifice the innocent to save the undeserving guilty? Who thinks eternal misery is a just punishment for being unable to believe what there is no evidence for? I don’t. If no one agrees with me, then I guess I’ll have to settle for saying that I don’t accept values from God.
I apologize for not being clear. I was just cherry picking from Genseric’s post.
Nor do I. And if God created everybody, why did he chose one people–the Jews–to wreak destruction and suffering on everyone in their way? Even if you have a favorite child, you don’t allow that child to torture their siblings.
Tell me, Christians, if you will: you are one of the inhabitants of the Promised Land and the Jews, God’s chosen people, show up. Your husband and children have just been murdered before your eyes and now some sweaty warrior is heaving away on top of you, raping you… do you turn your eyes to the sky and say, “God is good”?
Or your child is one of the 42 children who is killed by God for taunting a prophet… “God is love”?
Don’t think so.
As far as Jesus being the bestest man who ever lived, what about that poor fig tree? The figs haven’t come yet, because they aren’t in season, so he blasts the whole tree? Temper, temper (as my mother used to say).
Over and over I’ve been reading in this thread that God had to make someone suffer because of humanity’s sins–that he had to have justice. Why? Isn’t he the creator of everything, the all-knowing, the all-powerful? Doesn’t he make the rules? Or is he just one capo who has to answer to some godfather higher up the ranks?
Well, as an atheist I suppose I am in the absence of God’s love now, and if hell is like Earth, I can deal with it.
However I would like to point out this god of hell is the Christian, not the Jewish god. In all my years of Hebrew School and going to shul I never heard of hell once. We asked forgiveness, formally once a year, but that was to be kept alive. The alternative is death, not hell.
I suspect that if there is a god, and if he anything but evil, he would not want anything to do with anyone thinking he would torture someone not buying into an unevidenced myth.
So, God is good because he said so. Bertrand Russell noted that God defines good in one of two ways. First, because he says so, which means good and evil are arbitrary. Sure he made us, but I “created” my kids, and they can tell me if they think I’m doing wrong.
Second, good and evil are absolutes. Then, God is just echoing what good and evil are, and has nothing to do with it. This is unlikely, since, as has been noted, God has done things that would be evil in any other context. (Killing babies in the flood is my favorite example.)
Squish, I, like you, have trouble with a god that orders the massacre of children and the rape of women.
But, as I said before, I believe that those instances of great evil did not come from God, but were attributed to God by the Israelites to justify them.
Shoot, if Americans thought that the US was God’s Chosen Land, it would give them a pretty big stick to wave around and whack anyone they didn’t like, wouldn’t it?
IMHO, I think that the conquests of the OT have more of a historical or cultural signifigance than a theological one.
MrO & Squish, of course I don’t believe that those things are good. But remember, God didn’t choose to sacrifice some two-bit yay-hoo that was relatively good. He chose to sacrifice himself. I don’t think that “taking a bullet” has the same moral equivalency as sacrificing someone else.
If God is omniscient and omnipotent, he would have known what the Israelites were doing and could have stopped them. He didn’t.
As others have pointed out, it wasn’t really much of a sacrifice, was it? (In fact, as a literary device, it echoes far older Near Eastern myths–the sacrificial god who is reborn again–but that’s beside the point.) My question is, why was a sacrifice needed at all? Why couldn’t God simply say, “OK, you’re all absolved from sin. I forgive you”? Wouldn’t that be a better, more moral example of a just and loving God?