Jesus and his sacrifice is Satan’s test of man’s morality.

Yes I am.And your moral equilibrator has a serious glitch in it.

This part of my post is not so much to Faith as to others possibly reading. I am truly at a loss for words here. These quotes from Faith are the embodiment of the evil, grinding slaughterhouse that is the Bible. Under the outstretched arms offering handshakes, underneath the pews, just on the other side of the pulpit lurks the insatiable craving for blood. In the cluttered and haunted basement of the Church lie ten thousand broken skeletons. The walls drip in the blood of the innocent. Even now, behind their satisfied smiles is the threat that if we don't join them in their putrid edifice, and join them in mindless worship of their bloodthirsty deity there is nothing but eternal, exquisite, crazed torture.Faith. You are supporting the smashing of babies against rocks until they die.
I despise the brutal and primitive religion that broke you.I hope you find help.

Aussie dear, you are having a massive failure of the ability to distinguish levels of discourse. In short you've lost your marbles. Attributing any particular emotional or moral attitude to me on any of this is already an egregious failure on your part. I am judging it all quite objectively. Yes it is Justice when the punishment fits the crime. That's the definition of justice. An eye for an eye. Jesus gave us a different standard as individuals in our dealings with individuals but that doesn't change the fact that justice is the punishment fitting the crime. We are talking about a time roughly 3500 years ago when justice was effected in a tribal context by primitive means. Yet the definition of justice does not change and has not changed.Were I to have to witness any of it I'd probably throw up or faint dead away or have a heart attack -- so much for your assessment of my emotional position in this. I AM a modern person with no experience of such things, but am nevertheless able to think rationally about circumstances other than my own. Which I suspect can't be said of you.Yes, I am quite capable of judging things objectively apart from my own feelings, cultural context and so on, and all the situations you have brought up as moral indictments of God and of me are your own subjectivity being self-righteously applied against a frame of reference you have no ability to judge properly. I am not "broken" and you are way way out of line to make such a personal judgment in a debate.There is no "craving for blood" in the pulpit or on God's part, it's all quite objectively determined by the nature of reality, -- The Bible reveals reality to us, nobody makes it up -- and is in fact not at all desired by God or man, quite the opposite, it is regretted and lamented, and you have no right to judge anyone personally. Some people ARE capable of objective assessment. Clearly you aren't.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

That's 'a' definition of justice. It is a particular definition that most decent folks recognize as repugnant. If you want justice, you apply punishment to the perpetrators and not on their innocent children.Most Christians have no problem identifying that things like massacres of babies and having bears maul children for making fun of beards are difficult and problematic. I've seen many possible explanations for why such things happened, but very few of them as sick as what I read here.

My intuitive favorite explanation suggests it was a teaching tale, like Aesop's Fables, and so popular the Editor put it in. Scary tales for kids... Every doctrine of inerrancy leads to the same chamber of horrors no matter where you start, Kansas evangelical or Afghan Taliban. Those were the days, justice was hard and clean; us and them were clear, there was blood without quibble. Now all humanity is degenerate drek, especially Afghanistan from Kansas, and vice versa.And once you accept those grim prospects, who wouldn't want the world to end? Isn't that the hardest and cleanest justice of all? So the human arc is to be from bloody horror to fervent Apocalypse...Personally, I'd like to think the world will get better, like things already have for communities of people who refuse to take bloody tribal myths as gospel.

Of course that is the truth. Despite Faith's protestations most Christians have not simply assumed that God was in those actions. We can learn from those stories as they are simply a demonstration of the evil that men can do, and how the name of their god can be used as an instrument of terror for power and control. Again though, it is Christianity, and we are to be followers of Jesus Christ who renounced that behaviour in no uncertain terms.Jesus lived in a country that was being brutally controlled by the Romans. He denounced the revolutionaries. He said that in dealing with the Romans that they were to respond with love, go the extra mile and bravely turn the other cheek.The point was that the enemy was not really the Romans, but evil itself, and if you respond to evil with more evil then evil will win every time. It takes courage and determination to respond to evil in a Christ-like manner, but that is what Christians are called to do.Fundamentalists are simply looking for easy pat answers by following a inerrant Bible instead of following Jesus. It is tragic that the life and message of Jesus Christ has been so distorted that it has been turned 180 degrees from the message He brought as the embodiment or incarnation of the Word of God.

God is not said to have been behind the dashing of babies against stones; it is said merely to be just retribution for what the Babylonians did to the Israelite babies.God IS said to have commanded the total annihilation of the Amalekites and it's a very strange excuse for a "Christian" who pretends He didn't say it.Since you all prefer your personal feelings to objective fact there's no point in continuing this discussion.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Faith should be reminded of her barbaric words in this thread every single time she goes on one of her rants about the Inquisition.

In your theology, aren't we all under god's judgment? You seem to make a distinction to justify the killing of babies.

What did the babies do that was so horrific Faith? Allowed to be born by your god?

Please refrain from making the discussion personal, for instance, with accusations that anyone here is evil or crazy. If you think a specific position is evil or crazy then it is only necessary to quote it and explain why.

As I've pointed out before, you misunderstand the principle of an eye for an eye:

quote:

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Exodus 21:23-25 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

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It says thou shalt give an eye for an eye, not take an eye for an eye.It goes on to clarify:

quote:

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Exodus 21: 26-27 And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake. And if he smite out his manservant's tooth, or his maidservant's tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake.

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It's about compensation, not retribution.And Jesus said:

quote:

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Matthew 5: 38-41 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

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So there is no basis in scripture for your claim.

Hi FaithBut I go again to the fact that the Bible says that Yahweh commanded the Israelites to their total annihilation. If Yahweh wanted them all destroyed why didn't He just do it Himself? Why have His people do it. In the first place it won't happen without some of His own people being killed. Secondly we know full well how much damage it would do to someone psychologically to go out and slaughter men, women and children including infants.Just answer this question. If Yahweh wanted them all dead why didn't He just do it Himself as in Sodom and Gomorrah. This would have saved His people the deaths they would have suffered, the psychological damage that they would have endured and the job would have been done more completely.Nobody here is talking with objective fact. Yes you can objectively quote the Bible but it is your personal feeling, or subjective view, about how the Bible is to be understood just as it is mine and everyone else here.

Funny the question why God didn't do it Himself was brought up on one of the Bible discussions I was just reading recently but I was looking for something else and now don't remember where I saw it.I think the answer was something along the lines of God's using His people as His instrument. In the days of Sodom He didn't yet have a "people." God's people were to be like His right arm.What I mean by objective fact is that what I'm referring to is in the Bible. The stuff that's being subjectively imposed on the issue is not in the Bible.

I answered you before ringo. You are wrong. Eye for an eye was intended as the standard of perfect justice, as I keep saying, not a literal exchange but a principle for deciding what the perfectly equitable legal decision should be, as HERE: It could be penal or compensatory. According to that article the Pharisees were turning that principle into a rule for personal vigilante justice, whereas in the OT it was clearly intended as a judicial principle to be applied by the judicial system.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.