| Nov 22, 2008 @ 6:21 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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bevrice
Posts: 11,141
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Did God Commit Atrocities by Ordering the Killing of Entire Cities of People?
by Rich Deem
IntroductionThe God in the Old Testament seems to have many personalities; cruel, unjust, kind, loving, etc."1 There are, however, two major areas which we humans have a difficult time reconciling - God's love vs. God's righteousness. God is loving, but God's love requires God's justice. As I discipline my three children when they disobey, God disciplines us if we don't meet His requirements. The problem for us is that we cannot keep all of God's laws because of our selfishness and self-centeredness.2 God would have been completely just and loving in destroying all of us for our disobedience to Him. It is only through His extraordinary love and grace that we are allowed into His presence.
Atrocities by God?If you were to read atheist's websites, you will often find complaints that the God of the Bible arbitrarily ordered the destruction of entire cities, such as Jericho, just to allow the Jews to have a homeland in the Middle East. How could a loving God command the destruction of all those "innocent" people? The argument sounds good, but it is utterly false. The unstated assumption is that the people who God ordered destroyed were morally equivalent to the Jews, who replaced them. However, this is what the Bible says about the people who were destroyed:
"It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Deuteronomy 9:5)
Okay, how "wicked" could those people have been? How about killing their own sons and daughters by burning them in sacrifices to their gods:
"You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. (Deuteronomy 12:31)
The wickedness of these people is confirmed in other verses of the Bible.3 So we see that these people are not quite as innocent as the atheists would like you to believe. Then again, maybe those atheists believe that killing your children is not all bad. After all, killing viable pre-born babies is legal in this country (it's called a choice, a.k.a. abortion). For these reasons (and others4), God ordered the destruction of the peoples whom the Israelites dispossessed.
Did God kill any innocent people along with the evil ones? When God was about to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham asked God if He would destroy the cities if there were 50 righteous people in them.5 God said no. Then Abraham asked the same question if there were 45 righteous people. Every time he dropped the number and got the same answer. The fact is that God would not have destroyed those cities if there were any righteous people in them. The few righteous who were in those cities He warned ahead of time to get out.6 So, God does not destroy the righteous along with the evil.
God's judgment of people groups found in the Old Testament actually pales in comparison to the judgment He will render at the end of time. According to the New Testament Book of Revelation, God will judge and kill billions of people who reject Him when Jesus returns, including 200 million killed in a single battle.7 Such large armies have never existed in the history of mankind until the last 100 years, suggesting the this judgment could come at any time.
Conclusion In order to maintain His righteousness, God must judge sin - everything that goes against His character. If God let everyone into heaven, then He would have to allow in people such as Stalin and Hitler. Obviously, heaven would not be a good place to be with the likes of those people there. Therefore, God's righteousness requires the judgment of all sin. Only those people who agree with God and are willing to allow themselves to be changed into sinless beings can enter into heaven
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 6:32 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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bevrice
Posts: 11,141
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Here is the url from the preceding post. I don't know how I got two of them. It would not let me edit to add the url.
http://www.godandscience.org/
This whole site is excellent, from what I have read of it.
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 7:34 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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Tarzan
Posts: 499
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So what you are saying is that God IS ....
....a "jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloody thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully" to quote Richard Dawkins.
Simply said an evil bastard!
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 7:42 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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iam01
Posts: 6,281
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* Barbarians will create barbaric gods.
* Primitive people will create primitive gods.
* Most cultures copy older gods into new ones so gods evolve as civilizations evolve.
These are very simple concepts.
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 8:03 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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eyesofastranger
Posts: 928
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if you have children i hope you give them the freedom to find their own peace. religion can confuse and damage an intelligent child.
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 8:08 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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sail_dancer
Posts: 9,865
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Bev,
A god whose atrocities need constant justification by his followers is not a god to be worshiped but a god to be questioned. 
Enough said!
Peace
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 8:16 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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yashaenka
Posts: 8,267
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God is Evil, Evil is God
There is just no getting around the fact, What fact? If God created Good he Created Evil also. If God created all Good, he created all Bad also.
If he did not then he can not be Called the Sole Creator, can he? So if God is only good there must be a Bad God. That makes Christianity Dualistic, but wait Christianity has a Trinity and that makes it Polytheistic.
One body Three Heads which ones should we cut off to make Christianity a singular whole again. Choices Bev, Jankia or Seal 
God is Evil
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 8:26 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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iam01
Posts: 6,281
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People create the gods they want to believe in. People create their own demons. They create their own hells too. On a personal level such gods are usually imposed upon them by those who can impose them on others. The Great Impositions have always existed with many intermissions of Inquisitions.
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 8:53 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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yashaenka
Posts: 8,267
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# Evil
In Christianity, Satan is "the Evil One." But what is "Evil"?
"Evil" is a value judgment. It depends a lot on who and what you are. For example, cats are evil if you're a mouse, but not if you're a human with a pet cat. Therefore, "evil" cannot be the essence of who or what any entity fundamentally is. When Christians call Satan "the Evil One," this can mean only that Satan is "evil" from the point of view of Christianity.
What is "Evil" according to Christianity? That depends on which Christians you ask.
In Protestant fundamentalist Christianity, "Good" and "Evil" are defined solely in terms of one's attitude toward the Christian God. Humans are said to have been created for the purpose of glorifying God. Therefore, total subservience to the Christian God is "good," and anything else is "evil," no matter how beneficial to humans.
On the other hand, liberal Christians take a more humanistic view of morality. They tend to think of "good" and "evil" in terms of concrete benefit and harm, primarily to humans.
The fundamentalist Protestant idea of "Good" and "Evil" is almost completely divorced from any idea of concrete benefit or harm to humans. The most seemingly "good" (in a human-centered sense) forms of rebellion against God are considered to be no better than the most obviously evil forms. On the contrary, the most seemingly "good" (in a human-centered sense) types of "evil" (in the Christian God-centered sense) are considered to be the most insidious, the most likely to lead people astray. "For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14, NASV). "Narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew 7:14, KJV).
To Protestant fundamentalists, the essense of "Evil" is the very idea that we have any right whatsoever to think independently about morality, rather than submit totally to the Christian God. It is considered impossible to have morality without an "absolute standard." And only God can provide that purported "absolute standard."
I am less familiar with with Roman Catholic thought than with fundamentalist Protestant thought. Judging by what I've seen so far, Catholic thought is not as simplistic as fundamentalist Protestantism tends to be. Yet it appears to me that, at least in practice if not in theory, conservative Catholics too tend to think of "good" and "evil" in a God-centered sense rather than in terms of concrete benefit and harm to humans. An example is their irrationally strict attitude toward birth control.
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 9:08 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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bevrice
Posts: 11,141
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Sail, God needs no justification. I was trying to bring you into understanding, but like the Bible says, you guys can never see the truth, the god of this world, satan has blinded you to the truth. Sad.
Yash, you are wrong, every Christian knows that anyone can choose to be good, moral, or to be evil. Your actions in themselves can never satisfy God, for none is truly good but Him. No matter how good, how moral you think you are, you will still sin daily. If you are honest, you will admit that.
In your understanding of Christianity, you fall way short, yash.
Iam, knots, that is the nature of God, like it or not. You can choose Him, His Son, salvation, or your judgement will be even worse than those He destroyed.
God, this day and age still takes just retribution for His children. Vengeance is His. We have to be unvengeful so He can do what He is going to do. God says we forgive and He heaps coals on their heads and makes them ashamed.
God has not changed, He is still God. That is why He sent His Son to give us the chance to be reconciled with Him and not have to face that judgement.
Like Jesus said, "Choose life and blessings or death and cursings." Jesus is life, Satan is cursings. He didn't say you had any other choices, now did He?
As for us being afraid of judgement, no, of course not, we know HIS LOVE. We serve Him not from fear but out of love. YOU are the ones who have to fear. Sometimes it is not so bad to be afraid, you know. If someone pushes you out of a plane without a chute, you SHOULD be afraid. It is the same difference with God. If you go through life without Jesus, it is the same as jumping out of that plane way up in the air without a chute. You have a lot to be afraid of.
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 9:12 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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iam01
Posts: 6,281
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And that was posted by a psychopath...
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 9:28 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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yashaenka
Posts: 8,267
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Choose life and blessings or death and cursings Death is death, when your dead your dead, when alive your alive, never the twain shall meet. Except for the walking dead you have mystically made yourself into.
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 9:41 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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sail_dancer
Posts: 9,865
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Bev,
Sail, God needs no justification. I was trying to bring you into understanding What a laugh!
Then what exactly were you doing by posting that BS? 
What was the purpose of the author in writing it in the first place? 
Do you, the author or any christian deny that your god committed these atrocities? If you did, I must have missed that post. 
If you can't deny it, then all that is left is for you to justify your god's evil deeds.
I stand by my statement:A god whose atrocities need constant justification by his followers is not a god to be worshiped but a god to be questioned.
Peace
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 9:54 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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sail_dancer
Posts: 9,865
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Bev,
Like Jesus said, "Choose life and blessings or death and cursings." Jesus is life, Satan is cursings. He didn't say you had any other choices, now did He? How dare you place words in Jesus' mouth. Did Jesus say "Choose me and blessings or Satan and cursings." 
Who are you to completely change the meaning of Master Jesus' words (if they were even his words)? Please provide book, chapter and verse.
This is just another example of how christians think they have the right to change what was actually said or written.
Peace
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| Nov 22, 2008 @ 10:18 AM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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yashaenka
Posts: 8,267
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So the cosmos in which we live is a network of communications. You don't need to think of it in an authoritarian pattern, namely there is God the father, who makes it all work, because that doesn't really answer anything. That's just applying to the world an explanation derived from the political systems of the ancient Near East. You realize that? The great political systems of the Egyptians and the Chaldeans, where there was an enormous father figure in charge of everything, became the model for the idea of monotheism. And these great kings, like Hammurabi and Amenhotep IV, laid down legal systems so man thought of a prince, a king of kings, a lord of lords, in the words of the Book of Common Prayer. It's a political idea. And I often wonder how citizens of a republic, who have to curse and swear that they think that this is the best form of government, can put up with a monarchial conception of nature. Very funny. You know, a republic, and it says 'In God We Trust,' and most people by God mean a king of the universe. Very strange.
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| Nov 26, 2008 @ 5:34 PM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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Tarzan
Posts: 499
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Do will all conceed that good did commit atrocities?
I would say so 
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| Dec 22, 2008 @ 3:48 PM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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Thor1960303
Posts: 3,345
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Atrocities by God?If you were to read atheist's websites, you will often find complaints that the God of the Bible arbitrarily ordered the destruction of entire cities, such as Jericho, just to allow the Jews to have a homeland in the Middle East.
Sorry to reply to one of our resident mental case's posts so late, but I just watched a History Channel doc about Biblical warfare that shot the total crap out of this "moral quandary" that Christians and Biblical Apologists seem to be in. There are several moral caveats in these scenarios that ,like everything else when you start to question the veracity of the Bible and the moral character of this Yaweh fellow, once one domino falls, the chain reaction that crumbles this "logic" into complete oblivion becomes inevitable.
Let's look at Moses, Joshua and the Battle of Jerico, for example. Moses was promised the land of Cannan by God, so he sets out to lead his people. First off, he hears a disembodied voice and sees a "vision" of a burning bush. If such were to happen today, a person experiencing such would be hussled off to a psyche ward, put into a rubber room and given a nice regimen of Thorazine and Haldol, and righteously so, but we won't go into that. I mention it only to show, that if indeed Moses existed and the Exodus was a true story, the "chosen people" were being led by a mentally ill person, probably suffering from a form of schizophrenia, or some other such malady that would cause hallucinations. Anyway, next up in the story, the people are led to their promised land, but, oh snap! It's inhabited. No problem, it's the land a perfectly good hallucination promised the leader was theirs, good enough reason to go in and take it by force. Never mind the Canaanites were THERE FIRST, they were ungodly people who did ungodly things and deserved to be wiped out, that is, according to Bev's logic here (and the logic of the people who wrote the web article that she posted). Joshua's spies enlist the help of a prostitute (now there's a good moral example, the first place the spies visit on their recon mission is a brothel) to infiltrate the city. Then after an attack in which the Israelites are victorious in destroying the city's defenses (NOTE: This is an OFFENSIVE attack, with the objective being TOTAL ANNHILATION, Jerico has committed NO OFFENSE or otherwise any act of agression against the Israelites, so this a completely UNPROVOKED ATTACK, not unlike the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or the attack against the WTC buildings on 9/11, with one exception. The attacks in modern times against the USA can be debated about concerning America's "innocence".For all intents and purposes, the Israelites and Canaanites didn't know each other, unlike USA and it's enemies who had a history of bad blood between them) everyone and everything living is killed. Now, despite the moral issue of killing people and animals who are not part of the military agression(i.e. women, children, babies, old people, the infirmed), what sense did this make? Certainly nothing strategic, the animals, goods and such could've been taken over and used by the Israelites, the women and children could've been put to use for the next campaign, so what logic was there in wiping everyone out and burning a perfectly good city to the ground? The Israelites could've occupied it and set up a strategic post there, but no, a hallucination told their leader to wipe it off the map.
So in conclusion, the God of the Bible(if we are to believe that this was not a hallucination they were following) is not only immoral, but unecessarily wasteful, another "sin" in the whole laundry list of nasty things done by this idiot the mindless God zombies still worship to this day.
And they wonder why we don't want them in any positions of political authority.
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| Dec 22, 2008 @ 6:27 PM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is. |
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j_goose
Posts: 2,911
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If "nothing" equals "0" and nothing + nothing = nothing and (0+0=0) - is it possible to have something from "nothing"?..
Since nobody was present @ "creation"...we have "0" evidence, which is equal to "nothing", which is equal to "0".
We currently have no evidence of the existence of a "god" or "supreme being" and no evidence of the non-existence of a "god" or "supreme being". We have nothing in both instances, which "nothing + nothing = nothing", which "nothing" is equal to "0" and (0+0=0).
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| Dec 22, 2008 @ 11:15 PM |
Did God Commit Atrocities? Understanding Who God Is.
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Thor1960303
Posts: 3,345
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Good point.
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