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Then the antichrist appears.
Christians get it.
Then Christians are taken up (rapture).
Then Jesus comes back (second coming) and everyone who's not a Christian gets it.
Then the Christians come back, and for seven years they bury the bones of the dead.
I think I got it. So to sum up.
Christians are currently persecuted. Then at some undisclosed time (which I assume may or may not be in our lifetime, but we are hoping it is), the Christians are murdered by the atheists over a three year period during which time people skin falls off. After 3 years all the remaining Christians are sucked up into the sky. Christ eventually comes along (hooray, not before time!) and Atheists (and others not believing in Christ - although by now they probably do) continue some kind of hellish encounter, then the Christians all have to come back to earth to serve a seven year stint as gravediggers and generally clear up the mess?
Is that it?
Sounds fabulous. I bet you can't wait.
Just out of interest, are all the Christians digging graves? What about kids and the elderly?
Won't a lot of people need counseling after all this?
I don't think you are being fair here. God orders the death of His enemies only as a LAST resort. In the story of Noah, man had grown so wicked that they were on the verge of destroying themselves and the planet.
Sure, and you actually believe that every last person on the planet was evil except, conveniently enough, eight people who all, conveniently enough, are members of the same family who, conveniently enough, live in the Middle East where (and ONLY where) God has influence.
Why would you believe something so incredibly ... contrived? I mean, it is smack-you-upside-the-head contrived and shouldn't require any deep thought to realize, "Hey, this sounds like a fable!" Because it is. Oh, and the Bible doesn't say they were about to destroy the planet.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
God orders the death of Israel's enemies to protect his people. What is so immoral about that?
It's immoral because God was ordering the Israelites to be at least as "evil" as the people they were supposed to kill. Besides, as I keep saying again and again, God is omnipotent which means he has unlimited options. To immediately opt for the genocide and extinction of entire civilizations is immoral. When you have the power to avoid that kind of barbarism, failure to refrain from barbarism is immoral. It's that simple. God had infinite choices to resolve the issue, but he chose - that's right, God chose - to engage in wanton murder, destruction, rape, kidnapping, infanticide, and slavery.
That's the problem with omnipotent gods - they have no excuse for the evil things they do (or the evil they order others to do). And yeah, speaking of that, why order the Israelites to do God's dirty work? Why force them to become baby-killers and genocidal maniacs when God could have simply smote his enemies dead where they stood? How nice for the Israelites - and they didn't have PTSD counseling back then. I'm quite certain the butchery and slaughter the Israelite soldiers had to engage in did wonders for their family lives when they came home from the campaign.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
These were people who burned babies alive in sacrifices.
Oh I see ... so to punish a city for sacrificing its babies, God orders the Israelites to kill the babies instead. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Not.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
Funny that you blast God for not removing the wicked anti-Christ immediately, but you blast him here for wanting to remove a wicked race from the earth.
There's nothing funny about it. The anti-Christ is ONE guy and he is proven to actually BE evil. This "wicked race" you're talking about is a heaping load of balderdash. Those people were not killed because they were evil - they were killed because the Israelites were engaging in a massive land-grab. What's funny is that the Israelites are STILL land-grabbing even today.
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Originally Posted by jeffbase40
And finally, God created our lives. He has full right as creator and owner to take it away. That's not murder if you are the Creator.
Yes, I'm already aware of the sick and twisted morality you hold in regards to your so-called "perfect" and "loving" God.
As I've said before, a point which thus far has been left unchallenged, is this: IF you believe that your God has the right to murder simply because he's the creator, then you have essentially admitted that your God can be immoral if he wants to. Thus, if your God can murder you if he wants, it stands to reason that your God could also lie to you if he wants.
And that means NOTHING God has EVER said can be trusted. All that you know could be one big fat lie. Why not? Which means your entire belief system hinges upon the word of an immoral God, one that has indulged in the worst kind of depravity and insanity. And yet you're willing to take him at his word. Heh.
I bet the Nigerian princes have a field day with you. They probably have your number on speed dial.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
God's concern is saving people spiritually. They will always be a wicked leader who hurts people. North Korea, for example.
Sure, there will always be wicked leaders. But they aren't supernatural like the anti-Christ supposedly is. Nor is a leader like Kim Il-Jung prophesied to do nasty things that we can't prevent. A person like Hitler or Mr. Kim can be brought down if they get too frisky, but the anti-Christ can't be defeated until Jesus arrives and saves the day. Well ... if Jesus is going to come anyway, why not come -immediately- instead of sitting there in his ring side seat watching the slaughter like some kind of sadist?
And yeah, I'm certain you don't like what I have to say - but I'm telling you straight up why I don't believe in any of this. Stories like these are what makes your religion so impossible to believe, and the depraved morality of your God stands at the pinnacle of why many atheists have given Christianity the old heave-ho.
I know, too, that a lot of atheists are actually TOO moral - myself included - because we cannot just ignore the barbarism in the Old Testament and then believe that this god is a nice, loving, father figure. We're just not capable of shutting our eyes to the immorality that a "might makes right" belief system brings.
I don't think you are being fair here. God orders the death of His enemies only as a LAST resort. In the story of Noah, man had grown so wicked that they were on the verge of destroying themselves and the planet.
God also ordered two bears to maul a bunch of children for mocking Elisha's baldness.
Jeff, like other fundavangelists, believes his god is above common morality. He makes the rules, he can break 'em.
We just get to grovel and tug our forelocks and be glad he seemed to get mass genocide out of his system in the OT.
And ppl like yourself will ignore 90% of the Bible's content, and just focus on three OT stories as the bedrock for your anti-Christian stance. Using your logic, if I designed a robot then I am a murderer if I decide to hit the off switch whenever my robot starts wrecking the place.
And ppl like yourself will ignore 90% of the Bible's content, and just focus on three OT stories as the bedrock for your anti-Christian stance.
Whereas most of your contemporaries among the 'true believers' will quote that 90% as 'utter truth', even when the context is entirely incorrect and the translations themselves are questionable.
It's easy to spew ad hominem attacks, but it's much harder to admit that there's more to faith than just blindly quoting a 2,000 year old book that was written by seven or eight different people over the course of two centuries.
And ppl like yourself will ignore 90% of the Bible's content, and just focus on three OT stories as the bedrock for your anti-Christian stance. Using your logic, if I designed a robot then I am a murderer if I decide to hit the off switch whenever my robot starts wrecking the place.
Actually, the entire story from Israel being enslaved in Egypt to their crossing the Jordan river into the "Promised Land" is a fairy tale, and likely much more of the story. Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, the Creation story, Jonah and the Great Fish, and the list goes on and on, not just 10% but the large majority of the Bible is unsubstantiated and likely fictional.
Actually, the entire story from Israel being enslaved in Egypt to their crossing the Jordan river into the "Promised Land" is a fairy tale, and likely much more of the story. Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, the Creation story, Jonah and the Great Fish, and the list goes on and on, not just 10% but the large majority of the Bible is unsubstantiated and likely fictional.
Fairy tales are not typically supported by archaeology and external sources. IF you are going to write off the OT as fiction then it is only fair to write off every ancient event as potential fiction. Alexander the Great? Never existed. Sound ridiculous? Then why do you accept other recorded history without question when it is legitimized by the same standards as the stories in the Bible?
Take the tower of Babel. It is quite possible that the tower is Etemenanki and you can still find some of the ruins in Iraq:
jeffbase40
Do you ever read what people has posted to you before about these same things you keep repeating?
It's one thing to disagree but you act like you've never even read them
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