Many users seem to be assuming I am interested in "proving God" or even convincing anybody on these forums. I'm not. I'm a Christian because I do see evidence for God, I believe it and that is how I choose to live my life. I enjoy discussing it and explaining things from MY perspective, and I enjoy debating perspectives different to mine.
I find that curious since your god said to go out and convert people. You differ with your god’s desires? also, if you want to debate, that means you are interested in proving your god. Debates are to come to a conclusion, by the review of the evidence. In that you say you aren’t interested in this, I’m guessing you only want a soapbox.
Who has 'better' arguments or who is actually 'right' means squat to me on these forums. I'm just having fun. If this sort of participation is frowned upon just let me know and I'll be off like a brides nighty.
And again, you seem totally uninterested in actually debating, since anyone else’s arguments mean “squat” to you. In that I do not own the forum or administer it, I cannot tell you what participation is frowned upon or not. If it were my forum, the willfully ignorant like you, who are not interested at all in an actual debate would be removed. In my opinion, you are simply wasting space.
So..to the points you raised. I think that God acted in certain ways in the OT times for a very specific purpose...it was all about His plan of salvation which involved a saviour from the Jewish people, and God stamped out any evil that was possibly corrupting the Israelites. God generally seems to have dealt with human sin much more immediately in biblical times. It's interesting that it's the physical deaths that seem to horrify most non-Christians, when really its the fact that they will probably all spend eternity in hell that is the really horrifying thought. But God is just.
Here we go, the invocation of the mysterious “plan”, that can excuse any action by god, by the theist claiming that they don’t understand but golly, their god must have had a reason. All predicated on the assumption that this god even exists. Consider the OT story, we have a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent being that starts off with being either too stupid to keep a “snake” out of the garden, or intentionally means it to be there. He exposes two humans who are utterly ignorant about everything to a very smart snake (or magical fallen angel) in a garden where everything is supposedly under this good god’s control. This god then throws a fit that they believe something that this god created. They have no idea of evil or deceit or anything. Then we go ahead a few millennia(well, we don’t know do we since Christians can’t figure out when their bible’s events supposedly happened), and find God being shocked, shocked, that humans aren’t worshipping him while he’s absent. His angels are even getting it on with humans per your storybook. He throws another fit and murders every living thing on the earth, except a drunkard’s family and supposedly two of *every* animal on the earth. (Just how did the koalas get there?) We have a just so story on why rainbows are. Noah promptly gets drunkn and curses, not his son who sees him naked (which also may mean had sex with Mrs. Noah), but the child of another son. Wow, how just and fair
Then we have Babel where God is surprised that humans are building a temple and promptly makes sure that they can’t talk to each other so they can’t keep building (forgetting that they already have different languages a chapter before the babel story). Then we have the giving of the laws in Exodus, Leviticus etc. All intentended to be how one can be in good with this god. Then, God, evidently surprised *again* by his plans failing one more time, decides that he has to have a version of himself, killed in a blood sacrifice, to make up for the sin he made the rules for in the first place. He could have said “hey, believe in me, I forgive you it’s all good.” But no, we had to have a torture fest, and at least in one gospel, this god needing the help of its supposed archenemy (who makes a lovely return as god’s pal in the nonsense of Revelation).
You want to claim that God, for some mysterious reason, actually personally handled sin in the OT. I find physical deaths to be quite horrific, nice to see that you don’t seem to. Since you have no evidence that your god exists at all, your claims of some magical “spiritual death” are meaningless. You may as well be a Hindu claiming that people are reincarnated into animals. It’s just as silly. And it seems your concept of hell is dependent on how “scary” you want to make it. Is it just being separate from this god? If so, pelase show me how this hell of yours is different from this world? I see no god doing anything. I only see Christians who make baseless claims about their religion that are just like the claims of any other religion. They sound good but evidence? Not one scrap.
As for being just and fair, repeating that your god is this is meaningless when its actions show exactly the opposite. How is it just and fair that this god intentionally allowed people to be killed for a bet with his supposed archenemy? To damn children for the actions of their parents (not just suffering from collateral damage but *damned*)? To kill all “bad people” in the world and then allow its archenemy back to corrupt the good people that are left? Your god is imaginary but if it did exist, I would not worship such a petty being any more than I would worship Zeus, or Odin or Tezcatlipoca.
