evilbible.com

[charles cure]

Like Paul said: "When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it." Your logic might not apply to the circumstances by which you judge God, and what would your judgement mean then?

it won't matter. if there is a god, it has given me only my own logic and reasoning to use. if it doesn't apply or can't be applied, then god proves my assertion that he is cruel and unjust.

You're painting the worst case scenario. Not everyone lives or believes that way - in fact, Christian faith doesn't get along well with relativism. Something that only justifies itself has broken with its history and tradition - not kept it. What is relevant depends on what has happened, and why it's happened, and to find relevancy you have to examine and interpret history. There's no other way.

i think if you look at history, the church has gone back on itself many times. it has killed people for not believing certain things that it later admits were mistaken and unjustifiable premises that conflict with reality. how is that not breaking with history and tradition?
you're right though, the christian faith doesn't get along well with relativism. hence, each sect has their own rules and beliefs carved in stone and fails to acknowledge the beliefs of any others as valid until it becomes so obvious that they are wrong that clinging to them would mean the extinction of their entire way of life.

But you might be confusing explanation with justification. Many things are, and have been, condemned. Reasons are not excuses. The Bible isn't as vague as the people who wish to have it on their side, and Jesus was even less vague.

well, that's your opinion on it, but if it weren't vague, thousands of different personal interpretations, translations, and views on the relevance of certain aspects of scripture wouldn't exist. once again it comes down to you believing that there is a certain right way to see these issues, which people who share a religion in common with you cannot even agree with you on much of the time.

I challenge the assumption that everybody knows how God should be omnipresent, omnipotent and benevolent. The reality we live in is at least as complex as any of those concepts, and equally misrepresented by generalizations, simplifications and pat definitions.

what's to know? are you saying that omnipresence, omnipotence, and benevolence are concepts whose "true" definitions are unknown to man, because god means something else by them? ridiculous. to be omnipresent means simply to be everywhere at once. to be omnipotent means to have power over everything. to be benevolent (a highly subjective characterization by the way) means to be inherently good and produce goodness through action. for god to be these things simultaneously is at odds with reality.

I have some contact with such a religious community, and none of those questions are new, so we may be arguing past each other here. "These points" isn't precise enough to indicate what has or hasn't been addressed. And if you wish to argue that language and context isn't relevant to meaning, there's nothing I can say to you. Literally.

what i'm saying is that even secular bible scholars agree that the bible is important, and should be studied. they are not the type of people that make arguments to utterly negate its worth as a document. if you are to say that there is obviously no god because the concept itself is illogical, and there is no evidence that exists to support such a proposition, then you fully negate all that exists in the bible by stopping it at its root - god.

I agree, and it's a characteristic of fundamentalism. Evilbible looks like such an example.

if a five year old had never heard of god or religion and you presented him with the premise of christianity, he would likely come to the same ultimate conclusion as evilbible. people use logic and reason to define their world. the god concept is unreasonable and illogical. that has nothing to do with fundamentalism.

And ironically, that's why their faith will probably not last very long. I've been raised as a Christian, and I've been taught to examine every claim. I can't imagine how someone who doesn't know what or why he believes can have any kind of bearing on their faith. An unexamined faith is no better than wishful thinking, and no more reasonable than the next conspiracy theory.

but that's where you are mistaken, these people understand why they believe, and the reasoning is utterly simplistic and in their minds - unassailable, because to believe something else involves an acceptance of relativism. for example, why is murder bad? do you know? do i? not really. i know that it is bad because everyone agrees that it is bad. that however, is not a reason that cannot be dissolved under scrutiny. simply put, we all believe murder is bad because we are told its bad and because you can be punished for it, unless you take a morally relative view, which allows you to see murder as bad only in certain instances. as a society however, we must condemn it as ALWAYS wrong in order to protect ourselves. for many religious people, bad acts are bad because they were taught to believe they were bad by their families when they were younger. they believe that they can or will be punished for sins, and so they see these acts as negative and bad. the same way that i see murder as bad because its against the law. the only difference is that religious people follow two sets of laws, religious ones and secular ones. the reasons for their adherence to both sets of rules may be as simple as "because i was raised that way". this, to them, is the basis of ideas of right and wrong, and they may never waiver, because they never put themselves in a situation that would bring these definitions into question.

Loopholes? Maybe what throws you is that Christianity is supposed to be the reflection of relationships - the relationship between people and God, and between people among themselves. All the rules are geared towards securing those relationships, not putting them into little easily defined boxes. It's when people lose sight of this that they start veering into one direction or another, materialism, fundamentalism, superstition, egotism... Attempts to find security somewhere other than in those relationships. If it's true, it will be real, and nothing else could take its place; if it's not true, then no amount of mental gymnastics will make it real.

how do you have a relationship with someone you can't see, someone that doesn't ever speak or do anything? i thought those were called "imaginary friends". whatever christianity means to you, it is a reflection of what you think you know about god and nothing else. nothing concrete can be determined about god, so you must create him for yourself, sometimes sharing the same basic conception with others, and then you predicate your actions and behavior on the idea that you have made up. no one will ever agree that you are 100% right, and you will never have any proof that you are in fact following any kind of universal or absolute truth, because the truth is only something that you have made real for yourself (possibly with guidance from others) and nothing more.

 

[Jenyar]

a protestant has only to read the bible and decide what is relevant and what is not in order to form their own christianity. that, in my opinion, is its biggest flaw.

I happen to agree with you. And it's a flaw that breaks Christians and breaks churches. But at the same time it also separates the wheat from the chaff.

While many people think they've founded a new church or rediscovered the truth, they often simply practice what others already believe, within their own comfort zone, among people they get along with. I've been to many such churches, mainstream and "non-denominational", and none of them have really found anything new. Some pride themselves in practicing the "original" faith, but it usually means they put a lot of emphasis on one or the other law or ritual they somehow consider decisive. Nothing really to do with faith at all, unless it's in the sense that they put their faith in certain laws or rituals. Those who are fooled are, and those who aren't go on putting their faith into practice. There aren't many alternatives there.

People hate the feeling of having been controlled or brainwashed, so they tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater when they get become suspicious. I've seen this happen, and it's not pretty. People who have thus "stripped themselves of all indoctrination" tend to become extremely defensive about their new "pure" beliefs, and - sometimes fortunately, sometimes unfortunately - it's a conceit that people have to work through alone. Like my father says, people used to go through this process of shedding and rediscovering their faith within the church, now they prefer to do it by starting a "new" church. Or even a practically new religion.

It's very likely related to post-modern individualism. The emphasis on finding "your own" truth is so strong that it almost automatically precludes whatever other truth there might have been before. But many eventually find that throughout history, people have already come to these "new" conclusions the "old-fashioned" way, and settle into a faith with one foot in the church and the other outside. Maybe this was necessary to break the idea that the only proper churches have walls, but it has nevertheless left many people with only a shell - a faith based on relationships, but without the relationships, or with a bitterness or arrogance that actually makes them more difficult.

If you surround yourself with only people who share your beliefs to the last letter, you will never find out what you might have gotten wrong in your presumptions, and what you may have found that's important, won't have the opportunity to change anything for the better.

 

[Jenyar]

it won't matter. if there is a god, it has given me only my own logic and reasoning to use. if it doesn't apply or can't be applied, then god proves my assertion that he is cruel and unjust.

It certainly applies to you, and it's necessary for how we are to live. But you can also overstep your abilities. What makes God cruel if your area of judgement is limited? Remember, you're judging more than just "God", you are judging over ancient laws, customs, events - history itself. It was written from the perspective of people who had no doubt that God is just, so you have some discrepancy to account for already.

i think if you look at history, the church has gone back on itself many times. it has killed people for not believing certain things that it later admits were mistaken and unjustifiable premises that conflict with reality. how is that not breaking with history and tradition?

Depends on where you think its history and tradition started, doesn't it?

what's to know? are you saying that omnipresence, omnipotence, and benevolence are concepts whose "true" definitions are unknown to man, because god means something else by them? ridiculous. to be omnipresent means simply to be everywhere at once. to be omnipotent means to have power over everything. to be benevolent (a highly subjective characterization by the way) means to be inherently good and produce goodness through action. for god to be these things simultaneously is at odds with reality.

Only if you think reality accurately reflects God's nature, which it hasn't since Adam and Eve. That things aren't as they should be now hardly means it will never be that way. That's what hope means. That we don't see God's judgement/mercy universally hardly means he isn't bearing the suffering with us in order that some might still escape judgement on it - as Jesus demonstrated on the cross.

what i'm saying is that even secular bible scholars agree that the bible is important, and should be studied. they are not the type of people that make arguments to utterly negate its worth as a document. if you are to say that there is obviously no god because the concept itself is illogical, and there is no evidence that exists to support such a proposition, then you fully negate all that exists in the bible by stopping it at its root - god.

Sure. If you can prove God doesn't exist (rather than "can't", which is itself a statement of faith based on certain premises) then you will invalidate every argument that logically depends on His existence.

if a five year old had never heard of god or religion and you presented him with the premise of christianity, he would likely come to the same ultimate conclusion as evilbible. people use logic and reason to define their world. the god concept is unreasonable and illogical. that has nothing to do with fundamentalism.

Have you read the book "Mister God, This Is Anna" by Fynn? That's the closest I've come to seeing the words "believing like children" made meaningful.

Adult logic is often convoluted in a way we can't account for with our logic. Look at any children's story and tell me you don't think the way good and evil is portrayed seems unreasonable and illogical? Children are less prone to being distracted by what they think is impossible.

but that's where you are mistaken, these people understand why they believe, and the reasoning is utterly simplistic and in their minds - unassailable, because to believe something else involves an acceptance of relativism. for example, why is murder bad? do you know? do i? not really. i know that it is bad because everyone agrees that it is bad. that however, is not a reason that cannot be dissolved under scrutiny. simply put, we all believe murder is bad because we are told its bad and because you can be punished for it, unless you take a morally relative view, which allows you to see murder as bad only in certain instances. as a society however, we must condemn it as ALWAYS wrong in order to protect ourselves. for many religious people, bad acts are bad because they were taught to believe they were bad by their families when they were younger. they believe that they can or will be punished for sins, and so they see these acts as negative and bad. the same way that i see murder as bad because its against the law. the only difference is that religious people follow two sets of laws, religious ones and secular ones. the reasons for their adherence to both sets of rules may be as simple as "because i was raised that way". this, to them, is the basis of ideas of right and wrong, and they may never waiver, because they never put themselves in a situation that would bring these definitions into question.

I think you are making way too many assumptions about how "religious people" think. Doesn't it bother you that you rely so much on a certain stereotype? How many supreme judges aren't Christian? They don't get to that position by waivering their beliefs, not by practicing them. Where do you think mankind's moral history started, with what premises? If there is divergence, it is because secular laws also reflect what people want, rather than what is necessarily good for them. And that is where believers must also necessarily diverge - because we believe God holds us morally responsible regardless of what everybody say is right. We're subject to common law in addition to being subject to God, not in in spite of (Rom 13:1-3).

how do you have a relationship with someone you can't see, someone that doesn't ever speak or do anything? i thought those were called "imaginary friends". whatever christianity means to you, it is a reflection of what you think you know about god and nothing else. nothing concrete can be determined about god, so you must create him for yourself, sometimes sharing the same basic conception with others, and then you predicate your actions and behavior on the idea that you have made up. no one will ever agree that you are 100% right, and you will never have any proof that you are in fact following any kind of universal or absolute truth, because the truth is only something that you have made real for yourself (possibly with guidance from others) and nothing more.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world. -- Helen Keller​

You don't have to be 100% right to be aware of what may be known, or know absolute truth in order to seek it. What you say might just well describe solipsism. You're right that we rely on others for our perception of reality, but we also rely on reality - which we must assume to exist. You'll never be able to prove you're not the only conscious being in existence, especially if everything you think you are interacting with and sensing really is your own imagination. Mankind is very thinly diffused in time and space, but we're tempted to imagine ourselves according to our proximity to each other rather than our relation to the greater reality. A little more perspective might have a healthy effect on our egos.

Imaginary friends don't evoke the same reaction over periods of centuries. The Bible is so important to us, not so much for its own sake, but because it allows us to share in a conception of God that includes experiences, insight and understanding that we would never be able to gain in a single lifetime. This is even more significant if you realize that God must be present at every moment of time - from the beginning to the end - and no moment of even the greatest revelation would portray Him in his totality.

I don't follow this God because I'm convinced of my knowledge or my senses, nor because I distrust them. I don't trust or love my parents because "something concrete" can be proved about them, nor simply because I can see, hear or speak to them.

 

[charles cure]

It certainly applies to you, and it's necessary for how we are to live. But you can also overstep your abilities. What makes God cruel if your area of judgement is limited? Remember, you're judging more than just "God", you are judging over ancient laws, customs, events - history itself. It was written from the perspective of people who had no doubt that God is just, so you have some discrepancy to account for already.

that may be what you believe, but there is absolutely no reason or evidence to think that such is the case. my judgement is limited to my experiences and my knowledge. if god exists and created me, it is he who limited my abilities and my judgements and he who expects me to use those to evaluate my life and my relationship or lack thereof to him. ino ther words, its his own fault and a "just" deity could not punish you for his own failings.
i feel capable of judging the ancient laws, customs, events...etc considering that most of us in this day and age know more about the world we live in than people 200 years ago by the time we are 10, let alone people who lived 2,000 years ago. just because they are old doesnt mean they understood anything. for examples see the miasmatic theory of disease and the idea that the world was flat AND the center of the universe. so the fact that some people a long time ago believed in god and believed that he was just means pretty much less than nothing to me without some reasoning to back it up, which, conveniently cannot be located.

Depends on where you think its history and tradition started, doesn't it?

no. if it does, then by your logic, everything has a starting point, and anything that comes after that isn't as important as something older. tradition always starts out as a new idea, and at some point history was the present or the future even. i think if you were to evaluate the history of the church it is rife with examples of them going back on their previous pronouncements, or creating new ones to fit an agenda and then later repealing them.

Only if you think reality accurately reflects God's nature, which it hasn't since Adam and Eve. That things aren't as they should be now hardly means it will never be that way. That's what hope means. That we don't see God's judgement/mercy universally hardly means he isn't bearing the suffering with us in order that some might still escape judgement on it - as Jesus demonstrated on the cross.

once again, that's your evaluation of your belief, which i'm sure some christians would take issue with. you also have no proof whatsoever that god endures any suffering along with people, in fact there is no reason to believe that a perfect being would ever endure any suffering at all, whether his creation had to bear it or not.

Adult logic is often convuluted in a way we can't account for with our logic. Look at any children's story and tell me you don't think the way good and evil is portrayed seems unreasonable and illogical?

so because the bible is the same exact way, we should somehow accord it more authority than a children's book? please.

I think you are making way too many assumptions about how "religious people" think. Doesn't it bother you that you rely so much on a certain stereotype? How many supreme judges aren't Christian? They don't get to that position by waivering their beliefs, not by practicing them. Where do you think mankind's moral history started, with what premises? If there is divergence, it is because secular laws also reflect what people want, rather than what is necessarily good for them. And that is where believers must also necessarily diverge - because we believe God holds us morally responsible regardless of what everybody say is right.

i can tell you that mankind's moral history certainly didn't begin with christianity. it began when the need for order and safety arose in a big enough group of stationary people that required a division of labor and a sharing of resources. what is moral, at its most basic, is what allows society to perpetuate itself and protect the individuals who make it up from internal and external threats. religiously based morals largely reflect these considerations as they were in the times when the religious texts were written or when the religious belief was developed. hence, many dietary restrictions and other little moralisms in judeo-christian belief are obsolete now, and violating them does not cause us to have any moral crises. the divergence between secular law and religious law, at least in the U.S. is caused by the secular law's focus on equality and respect for humanity in general, regardless of any distinguishing factors such as race, sex, or creed. we have rightly realized the value of pre-empting one particular god's rules in order to preserve the lives and liberties of those with different beliefs and lifestyles when we choose to value secular law in our society and relegate religious rules to the private and personal realm.

 

[Jenyar]

that may be what you believe, but there is absolutely no reason or evidence to think that such is the case. my judgement is limited to my experiences and my knowledge. if god exists and created me, it is he who limited my abilities and my judgements and he who expects me to use those to evaluate my life and my relationship or lack thereof to him. ino ther words, its his own fault and a "just" deity could not punish you for his own failings.

Why do you think ignorance would be a problem? You already said you are able to know right from wrong as well as anyone else.

Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains. (John 9:41)​

But you're moving the focus. The issue here wasn't your fate, or your ability to judge your own actions, but your ability to judge God.

i feel capable of judging the ancient laws, customs, events...etc considering that most of us in this day and age know more about the world we live in than people 200 years ago by the time we are 10, let alone people who lived 2,000 years ago. just because they are old doesnt mean they understood anything. for examples see the miasmatic theory of disease and the idea that the world was flat AND the center of the universe. so the fact that some people a long time ago believed in god and believed that he was just means pretty much less than nothing to me without some reasoning to back it up, which, conveniently cannot be located.

And just because we know more doesn't mean we understand more. Science is an area of human knowledge that keeps growing, but it can't explain itself (Gödel). Once we know everything there is to know about the natural world (hypothetically speaking, if course) science would have served its purpose, but humanity would still have the same choices to make about itself. Every generation thinks it knows more than the ones before it, and yet the amount of good and evil they do stays the same.

no. if it does, then by your logic, everything has a starting point, and anything that comes after that isn't as important as something older. tradition always starts out as a new idea, and at some point history was the present or the future even. i think if you were to evaluate the history of the church it is rife with examples of them going back on their previous pronouncements, or creating new ones to fit an agenda and then later repealing them.

My point is that unless there is something to go back on, there's nothing to repeal. It's not a matter of the latter being more or less important than the former, but which is closer to God's will. As you well know, Christianity isn't an original idea. The apostles made certain the Jews realized that by referring to Jewish prophesies, and Paul similarly reminded the Greek philosophers of their own "timeless truths". Jesus placed himself squarely inbetween the way the world is, and the way (back or ahead) to paradise. Where tradition came in the way of this, He denounced it, and where it supported it, Jesus emphasized it. The church is perhaps the most visible example of the difference, and maybe it was intended that way. Jesus always seemed more interested in the people outside religion that within it.

once again, that's your evaluation of your belief, which i'm sure some christians would take issue with. you also have no proof whatsoever that god endures any suffering along with people, in fact there is no reason to believe that a perfect being would ever endure any suffering at all, whether his creation had to bear it or not.

Again, it's probably rather due to a failure of imagination than a failure of God. Christians who have an issue with it might have to examine their own faith, since I've just paraphrased the core message of the gospel (Col. 1:18-27, 2 Pet. 3:3-9, Heb. 7:23-28 and Rev. 2:7 if you want specific verses).

so because the bible is the same exact way, we should somehow accord it more authority than a children's book? please.

"You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better" -- Maxim Gorky.

If you can't understand something written for children, how will you understand things meant for adults?

i can tell you that mankind's moral history certainly didn't begin with christianity. it began when the need for order and safety arose in a big enough group of stationary people that required a division of labor and a sharing of resources. what is moral, at its most basic, is what allows society to perpetuate itself and protect the individuals who make it up from internal and external threats. religiously based morals largely reflect these considerations as they were in the times when the religious texts were written or when the religious belief was developed. hence, many dietary restrictions and other little moralisms in judeo-christian belief are obsolete now, and violating them does not cause us to have any moral crises. the divergence between secular law and religious law, at least in the U.S. is caused by the secular law's focus on equality and respect for humanity in general, regardless of any distinguishing factors such as race, sex, or creed. we have rightly realized the value of pre-empting one particular god's rules in order to preserve the lives and liberties of those with different beliefs and lifestyles when we choose to value secular law in our society and relegate religious rules to the private and personal realm.

It's wonderful that you recognize the context-specific place of religious laws. How appropriate they were for our moral development. Like I said, they served a purpose. You have to ask yourself what kind of morality we would be cherishing if secular and popular morality of the time survived for its own sake. Nineveh, Sodom, Babylon, Rome? Where does the morality come from that you judge morality by? It's only when we strive to something higher than ourselves that we attempt to reach beyond immediate gratification at all. And only if that higher power knows us objectively that we have the measure to find ourselves. But whenver we are coming to realize our worth we're tempted to let go of what led us there. Drifting off into whatever direction our noses lead us, full of ourselves and our knowledge of the world. Don't you think every generation may come to this conclusion? "We're fine now, we don't need God anymore". Regardless of our scientific advances, the need for security, order and safety remains the same. What has really changed? The confidence in our own knowledge? I doubt that.

Don't get me wrong. When religion violates people's freedom to choose it's no better than any other kind of oppression. But reducing religion to "dietery restrictions and little moralisms" hardly shows an understanding of the principles that are behind it - directed or misdirected.

 

[Jenyar]

first of all, let me address your little ex post facto editing job:

I thought you might But I only saw your post now, for some reason.

Argument 1: "What!? If something is perfect, nothing imperfect can come from it" - why not? Because we crave equilibrium?

to be perfect means to be without flaw. to exist as a perfect being necessarily implies that you cannot make a mistake. to be omniscient and omnipresent and eternal means to have knowledge of the future consequences of your every act. if you are to say that god created something imperfect on purpose, then he cannot also be benevolent considering that his omniscience would allow him to understand the suffering that would be perpetrated on his creation as a result of creating an imperfect world. get it now?

God's actions aren't limited by what we deem "perfect" or "correct" (to Christians, Jesus was living proof of this), and He is by nature not subject to our fleeting judgements.

Look at your new assumption. It's not our imperfections that caused the fall, it was rebellion against God's perfect will. That this would have consequences should be obvious. Assume Adam and Eve were perfect in every way, then there still would be no law that could physically prevent them from doing something perfectly evil, other than the law God gave them anyway. He makes us perfect, provides what we would lack without Him, "completes us", so we could only be imperfect without Him. It works that way in relationships.

God's benevolence consequently consists in being able to exercise benevolence in spite of the inevitable consequences of sin - to postpone judgement, to forgive, to keep the door open for the prodigal son.

Argument 2: "God could ... just as easily have made it a rule that only robots may experience happiness" - The "God could have made square circles, square circles don't exist, therefore God doesn't exist" argument;

well, god's existence violates all the rules of the universe that he supposedly created and ordered. don't you find that baffling?

Which rules did you have in mind?

Argument 3: "A perfectly compassionate being who creates beings which he knows are doomed to suffer is impossible" - A compassionate judge can also punish, or he would not be a judge, nor "compassionate", just permissive.

the human judge does not create the rules, only decides whether the rules have been applied fairly or whether they apply to the scenario at all. the christian god supposedly created the world and its rules. this makes him far more than a mere passive judge. your analogy fails.

Since you argue against morality's divine origins, who do you suppose creates the rules for the human judge? Your answer must be "people". And is it by their standards that you judge not only God's actions, but also His justice? Because that would say absolutely nothing about God being perfectly just by the standards He holds to. If His standards require sin against Him (which includes, but is not limited to, injustice according to our own standards) to have real consequences (not just empty threats), He is being everything but a passive judge. In fact, it's usually his active judgement of sin that offends people, since it is what expelled Adam and Eve from the blissful paradise we long for, and what makes the possibility of hell more than a scare tactic. It's also because consequences are real that the world we experience doesn't reflect God's justice on a grand scale: we experience the world in its fallen state. Here's the argument from a perspective of faith, rather than distrust:

1. If God is all-good, he will defeat evil.
2. If God is all-powerful, he can defeat evil.
3. Evil is not yet defeated.
4. Therefore, God can and will one day defeat evil.

The problem comes from your assumption that God has already finished what He is doing, which makes your judgement seem conclusive.

Argument 4: "Clearly, a limited offense does not warrant unlimited punishment" - Are offenses measured by time or by gravity? A murder may take only a second; are murders only punished for a second?

you appear to not understand the meaning of the word limited. humans measure an offence by how much damage would be caused to society if the act were permitted. since the right to murder at will would preclude the existence of human societies, it is punished as a very wieghty crime. in the bible though, people are damned for eating the wrong thing, or worshipping a statue of a cow because their real god doesn't care enough to show itself, and then becomes angry. that is an arbitrary system of rules and punishments that even we imperfect humans find repulsive. certainly it does not fit in with the concept of benevolence.

Gravity of the offense; Weight of the offense. We're talking about the same thing. The system of religious laws weren't arbitrary, each stood for a very specific principle that had to have practical effect. God as King of Israel occupied a very specific social place. His nature - in contrast to idols and other gods - was to be unseen except by his glory or "presence" (Shekinah), with the clear and purposeful effect of distinguishing Him from his own creation, and every god that men had had some hand in. He would be neither Sun, nor Moon, nor Golden Calf. Dietary laws emphasized the distinction between pure and impure, obedient and wild, holy or defective (and more recently, healthy and unhealthy). Whenever these things became idols themselves, God would again distance himself from the ritual. Such offenses weren't punished for their own sake, but because they were offenses against Him. They literally muddled His image. It trivialized God in the sense that you describe it above by making Him and his laws arbitrary things - mere tools in human hands.

If the damage that does to society and posterity is to rob some of their eternal peace and life, even though it might seem harmless in the short term, wouldn't you judge it seriously as well? And, PS, people aren't necessarily damned if they are punished with death.

Argument 5: "If we are to believe the Christians, all of these people will perish in the eternal fire for not believing in Jesus" - But if you believe Jesus, God knows who belongs to Him and who doesn't.

something tells me you can't make a convincing case for that little concept. the fact is that christians justify their cruel religion by lulling themselves into the illusion that people who are good, yet don't believe, will be recognized as good by god and saved nonetheless.

Paul makes the argument in Romans 2. You may think it's an illusion, but if we believe it's true, how do you manage to think leaving such judgements in God's hands would justify cruelty?

Argument 6: "The Bible is supposedly God's perfect Word" - maybe it's just His sufficient Word, perfectly tailored to its message and intention.

well, that depends on what version of christianity you subscribe to. which one is right and which one is wrong? who is fit to judge? not us puny humans, at least not by your logic.

If you have an inferiority complex because of religion, it might be because of this stereotypical idea of it you seem to be clinging to. There is nothing "puny" about being made in God's image, even if it requires a little humility to accept that we'll never be God. To be honest, and speaking from the perspective of a naturally inquisitive Christian, I have never seen these diametrically opposed "versions" you keep talking about (except in what every denomination recognizes as sects). I can count the main doctrinal differences between every church I've been to in my life on one hand, and none of those things change what our relationship with God or each other should look like in practice. If you're talking about opinions - even strong opinions - then of course you'll find almost as many as there are people in the world. I don't deny some people are rife with self-righteousness and petty intolerance, where everyone is convinced they found the keys to heaven in some law or ritual (much like the Isrealites or Pharisees did with legalism), but the contrary also exists.

You seem intelligent enough to recognize the fallacy of the argument of "who is to judge?" - as if merely asking that question extinguishes all hope of ever knowing the difference between ego and gospel. There's plenty of room for disagreement within the gospel, but none within ego.

Argument 7: "No two men will ever agree what this perfect word of God is supposed to mean" - millions already agree with the core meaning.

but they dont agree on how to apply that meaning, or on many of thousands of tiny specifics. in addition to that, there are millions of christians in constant dispute over what the core meaning is.

Maybe you've been misinformed about the objects of contention, or maybe you've just never been familiar with what the "gospel" actually refers to. If someone calls himself "Christian", he is already saying something about his relation to God and this gospel. What the particulars of that relation is, only he can tell. But what the boundaries of that relation is, is why the Bible was written, and why it's the logical place to start looking for how to apply it.

but that's the point that you fail to grasp. if god experiences these emotions and purposely creates a world, not out of longing, but simply because he wants to, then the suffering he created on purpose is at odds with his supposed benevolence. its quite simple.

I refer back to my answer to Argument 3. You stop the argument at yourself, but you obviously don't represent the culmination of history, even less of God's existence. This world had its origin in the separation from God's will, and if He has starts to reconcile it with himself again, it would be for the sake of everyone who can't justify evil by simply taking Him out of the equation - which cannot but be at the expense of everyone who might have wanted otherwise. This is my understanding of it.

Whatever you choose to believe, I hope you realize that without a moral absolute, an impartial Judge (however much the thought raises your heckles), every complaint you just made against God about the state this world is in must necessarily become completely unfounded. Mere arbitrary grievances for the sake of arguing with a theist. Without a central moral reference, the only universally underlying reference that remains is nature, which is morally neutral and oblivious to complaints against it. Relative to it, the ways of dealing among ourselves is a whimsical consideration, just another necessary adaptation invented for survival. And from a pragmatic perspective, no solution is intrinsically better than any other, whether it happens to be religion or science or anarchy, it's simply what we do at the time.

 

[ghost7584]

i notice a lot of atheists using this site to back up their claims. i went to it and think it is great, and i dont see how it could immediatley cause theists to realize how silly their religion is. I have never seen a theist reply to this site at all (maybe because they know they cant argue with the perfect logic) but i would like to hear some theists respond to this and stop evading the question. The site is big, and i wont even say anything about the stuff related to the bible because the theists use their ace in the hole--mistranslation! mosty i would like to hear theists' opinions on this part in particular.

http://www.evilbible.com/Impossible.htm

The editor of that website used to post alot to the religious forums, like alt.religion.christian.baptist, and alt. christnet. Then for some reason he stopped posting there. I thought maybe he died and went to hell.
Do you know if he is in hell yet?