Jeremiah
“When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, And brings out the wind from His storehouses.”
Exodus
“All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain [surrounded by] smoke. When the people saw [it] they trembled and stood at a distance.”
Samuel
‘“Is it not the wheat harvest today? I will call to the LORD, that He may send thunder and rain Then you will know and see that your wickedness is great which you have done in the sight of the LORD by asking for yourselves a king.” So Samuel called to the LORD, and the LORD sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the LORD and Samuel.’
Job
‘"After it, a voice roars; He thunders with His majestic voice, And He does not restrain the lightnings when His voice is heard. "God thunders with His voice wondrously, Doing great things which we cannot comprehend.’
The Bible is fairly consistent. It is not just Psalms. God throws around lightning a lot.
He also has horns. It’s less remarked upon, but seems to be the case.
Human sacrifice as a moral good does not logically follow.
An organization that had that idea as its cornerstone would be immoral, but you’re mischaracterizing the Catholic view of the atonement. It seems to me that you are coming at the crucifixion from a Calvinist perspective, and not a Catholic one. Unfortunately I am not in a position to find documents supporting my view at the moment, but I will come back to it.
Yes, Christians believe that God is powerful. There are many ways to use language to describe something or someone that is awe-inspiring and powerful, poetry being one.
Thunderstorms are a pretty regular fact of life where I live. Are they directly caused by God? Are they indirectly caused by God through climate/weather patters/meteorological factors that he set in motion? Are they completely random? Interesting questions.
Why don’t you start by pointing out some of these false premises, so we can know whether you’re hallucinating them, or whether you’re merely ignorant of how mild hyperbole works?
The god of the OT is a murderous rage beast. The number of people he personally murders in the OT is, at a minimum, in the seven digits. Most of these murders are for the crime of offending him or otherwise pissing him off.
Presuming the OT is not non-canon or otherwise fictional, then you have a god that actually did these things. It’s not a matter of understanding his nature, it’s a matter of the fact the dude is a murderous rage beast. The bible is extremely clear and explicit about what he does and why.
If anyone is bold enough to claim that their god has never changed their morals, they must embrace one of the following scenarios:
Being a murderous rage beast has always been the moral approach, and modern christians are immoral for failing to murder people when they morally should.
Being an murderous rage beast was never moral, but God was like that due to temper issues. He then calmed down and stopped being the immoral demon he was.
Being an murderous rage beast was never moral, but God was like that due to temper issues - and he still is. Modern christians are apostates and will surely murder them at some point, along with everyone else.
The person making the bold claim is wrong, and morality changed between the barbaric OT and the less barbaric times nowadays where people don’t let barbaric religions dictate morality.
If God could have done it some other way, then that means that God did not by definition require Christ’s sacrifice, but that Christ’s death was just one of multiple options.
Why do you assume that Adam and Eve were not forgiven?
The very definition of “God” means that he must be the perfection of good. Therefore, the god you describe is a straw man.
Which was ever so much more convenient five hundred years ago when bibles numbers in the hundreds and most believers were lucky to even see one, much less any of its text.
It is interesting to see how much the Catholic Church has changed. Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia were children of Pope Alexander VI. Popes Martin V, Julius II and Leo X, presumably amongst others, pursued martial enterprises (prosecuted wars and advocated the massacre of heretics). The popes of that era were somewhat theological, but they were first and foremost politicians.
This is your Catholic Church. It is not altogether obvious that you can completely divorce what it is from its history. Then, of course, we have historian and philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, in the era of the amoral Vatican, writing that lies are a tool of statecraft.
The Pope, even now, is a statesman. How much can his truthfulness really be trusted? It is becoming more and more difficult to maintain respect for the reasonings of devout Catholics.
Thank you! This weird obsession with the minutiae of the Bible makes no sense, especially since the vast majority of Christians throughout history had never even read one until very modern history.
With all of the corruption, self destructive actions, and gross immorality throughout its history, it’s amazing to me that the Catholic Church has not completely obliterated itself into nothing but a historical footnote.
IF GOD had other options and CHOSE this one- he’s even worse.
Why do you assume they were? Before Christ’s sacrifice, there was no path to forgiveness.
OR - show where in the bible that Adam and Eve were specifically forgiven.
So, God can only be ‘perfect good’ - he can’t be also ‘bad’ ?? - how not very omnipotent of him.
Seems you’re making up the qualities of GOD as you go along - and if he can only be ‘perfect good’ and we both (seem to) agree that requiring (or choosing) human sacrifice is BAD - then the GOD of the catholic/christian church is a non-starter - or atleast a charlatan.
Classical philosophy. It generally starts with Aristotle and builds from there. God is that which there can be no greater. Since good is greater than evil, God must be the perfection of good. When I say “God”, that’s what I mean. I recognize that it may not be what you mean.
Then it cannot be the GOD of the bible to which you speak - and since this GOD of your crafting has allowed the Bible and all of its mess to corrupt its world -maybe its time for a flood - or fire - or something - to show us how loving he really is.
You keep saying “human sacrifice”, but that’s not what was going on in Christ’s death.
In pagan religions that practiced human sacrifice, the deity required the death of a human in order to appease him/her, or to assuage their anger or whatever.
It’s clear teaching from the OT (1 Samuel) that God does not require or even take pleasure in animal sacrifices and it does nothing for him. Human sacrifice is also clearly forbidden in OT tradition.
Jesus was not ceremonially executed on an altar by a priest in order to appease YHWH.
God is not foaming at the mouth demanding that sin be repaid like some pagan deity. He wants humans to have “clean hands and a pure heart”. Jesus, being God himself, lived a perfect life without any sin. People chose to arrest and execute him, and his death was a good death because he submitted to it willingly and humbly even though it was unjust and evil. He submitted to this fate because he loves humanity, and the epitome of love is self sacrifice.
Because God became man and displayed perfect love (which is self sacrifice), humanity was redeemed and we can have salvation. It has nothing to do with human sacrifice.
Is this from those fallacious arguments that tried to prove that God exists via logic alone?
There is not and never can be any way to associate those philosophically instantiated "God"s with any religion’s belief system. Sure, the philosophers in question tried to make such associations, but they did so via pure sophistry and overt fallacy. Philosophical “God” is just a label assigned to the ‘biggest’ thing that happens to exist in a given category. The other properties of the thing can’t be concluded. Best thing? Probably a bagel. A very good bagel. Most awesome thing? Probably a bagel. An awesome bagel. Most ‘ultimate’ thing? Probably a bagel. A very ultimate bagel.
By definition, any attempt to link the bagels from these arguments with any deity that anyone worships is guaranteed to be wrong. The arguments were designed to make such links, mind you, but that’s because philosophers desperate to assume their conclusions aren’t that bothered by lying.
The Catholic Church has always been a political entity. A state. There has been plenty of corruption and immorality in Germany, Spain, Japan, England, and many other countries that have persisted for centuries on end. The difference between the Vatican and any random country on Earth is vanishing.
It does so do something for him. God likes animal sacrifices (as opposed to, say, vegetable sacrifices) for a very simple reason: he likes a good barbecue.
And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour. Genesis 8:20-21
This suggests quite strongly that if God were to accept a human sacrifice, he’d have to be getting something out of that, too. Based on how Jesus was done in, the obvious conclusion would be that it played out that way to please a sadist of some kind.
Was that sadist God himself? Maybe, maybe not, but if it was somebody else, then that somebody had a power that God did not, thus requiring the bribe. I’ve read an explanation where Satan was the one being satisfied; God was buying the souls of the damned from him by giving him a good show and then handing Jesus over. (Jesus then broke out of hell three days later using his divine power, because God’s a cheater.)
Of course this sort of explanation grants Satan way more power and authority than many want to, but as explanations go it’s orders of magnitude better than most other explanations for one simple reason - the sacrifice actually does something, for a reason that actually makes some semblance of sense. Most strains of christianity don’t explain how killing one guy can possibly accomplish anything - who is it making happy? Who accepts the kind of coin the sacrifice is being paid in?