Claims of God Being Omnipotent in the Bible

Hi,I don't really know why you felt it necessary to write down what bloodythirsty, sin and atonement meant - I think almost everybody reading your words understand them.The fact is, we think that when your god tells you to murder women and children, to kill all the manfolk, to burn, rape and pillage, that that happens to fulfill the exact meaning of bloodthirsty.It is disturbing that you think that life without god has no meaning, and that you give your great beard in the sky absolute leave to murder, rape, kill, burn, pillage lie and deceive - whichever way you swing it, when your god says it is okay to commit mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, pillage and rape, that is bloodthirsty and it is abhorrent.

firstly, Hi and thanks for the reply. I like your honesty. It scares me, I'd get a restraining order if we lived near each other, but I respect your honesty. Nethertheless, these words are well understood. ..except that he calls himself an angry, vengeful god at various times. He doesn't call himself bloodthirsty, but I and many others do - ordering your followers to commit mass murder, genocide, etc, etc sounds pretty bloodthirsty to me. In the words of the Godfather (haha, I made a funny), it's an offer we can't refuse, amirite?Dude, if you've told your followers to commit the above acts, you've given them the right AND responsibility.Must. not. Godwin. thread. must. not. reference. Hitler's. Final. Solution...grrrnnnggggghhh!Argh! I can't take it! Do you realise that in your next paragraph of unrequited bile, you've said that your god gives you leave to kill everyone you find to be "bad" for the good of the human race?Do you?Must I spell it out?...and they think that Darwin leads to eugenics! GAH! facepalm ...only, he says Woah...1a) yeah, your god. Proof your deity created everything is required. There are quite a few gods out there who'd like to step up and tell you how wrong you are - followers of Thor, Wotan, Zeus, FSM, Xenu, Krishna, Jupiter...The following quote from Stephen F. Roberts sums up the situation very nicely:

quote:

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"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

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1b) forgive me, but..jesus christ! You scare me. Judges 21. Need I say more? I could. So, you're attempting to change Pascal's Wager into the Godfather's Favour.If your god is real, he is a bloodthirsty, murderous, petty little creature that I reject utterly. If he is not real, you lot who feel so superior and smug as you hand down life and death judgements in the name of some santa-claus fairy story are some scary, misguided people.Excuse me, but I'll be over here, in the rational side of the universe, where consistency matters.

Of course it's possible. Ask any atheist if it's possible, they'll say yes. Ask if it's probable or likely, and you'll get a different answer.Some people have used this to say that atheism is not a rational position - those people would be wrong. It is possible, one could say, that there is a teapot orbiting Mars that is too small to see with even our most powerful telescopes. Now, you cannot prove there is not...but it is possible, yes? Soldiers scare me for the same reason that fanatics scare me - they think they have the permission, the right and the duty to do things that under "normal" conditions people would not. I don't run and hide (despite the facetious comment) but my sentiment stands. It is worrying that people can think murder is justified for such non-personal reasons (the abortion doctor who was murdered because of his work, for example - but that deserves another topic). The issue I have with religious fanatics is how far they take things over such as naming a teddy bear after a boy, who happens to share the name "muhammed" with a religious icon. Or the bombs and death-threats over ten silly cartoons (several of which were not critical of their prophet, one was rather positive). Or the author who had a religious fatwah handed down to him over his book, "the satanic verses", or the film-maker who was shot over his contraversial movie...Religious people get inclined to add "blasphemy" to your short list of reasons to kill, and blasphemy is an easy thing to commit, and then it matters that it's so easy to demand blood.*snip* the allegory* destroying toys to prove a point, and ordering destruction, murder and rape to prove a point are two rather extremely different acts. What's bloodthirsty isn't the fight or the war, but that innocent women and children were also ordered dead, and the virgins taken as war-spoil and trophies. I'm glad you agree. OK:Judges 21, 10: So the assembly sent twelve thousand fighting men with instructions to go to Jabesh Gilead and put to the sword those living there, including the women and children. 11 "This is what you are to do," they said. "Kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin." 12 They found among the people living in Jabesh Gilead four hundred young women who had never slept with a man, and they took them to the camp at Shiloh in Canaan.(ok, killing even women and children, and stealing the virgins, yes? ...skipping forwards a bit, it doesn't change the context)19 But look, there is the annual festival of the LORD in Shiloh, to the north of Bethel, and east of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem, and to the south of Lebonah."20 So they instructed the Benjamites, saying, "Go and hide in the vineyards 21 and watch. When the girls of Shiloh come out to join in the dancing, then rush from the vineyards and each of you seize a wife from the girls of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. 22 When their fathers or brothers complain to us, we will say to them, 'Do us a kindness by helping them, because we did not get wives for them during the war, and you are innocent, since you did not give your daughters to them.' "23 So that is what the Benjamites did. While the girls were dancing, each man caught one and carried her off to be his wife. Then they returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and settled in them.So they took the virgins.Of course, you could say, if you were an apologetic, that obviously the girls wanted husbands and it wasn't rape, right? right? and yeah, that still stands. way to go to prove a point. not. if your god is the one true god, he should already be extremely pissed at me for eating pork, shellfish and wearing cotton/polyester blond socks. Saying that I think he's an idiot for such arbitrary rules would only be icing on the cake. ...or he doesn't exist. Or isn't what you think he is. ..or see previous answer. good for you! I'll take it slow - IF he exists as the OT says he does, he's a nasty piece of work. If he doesn't exist, he's a fairy story similar to santa, the toothfairy or the easter bunny. Just because I call him a fairy story doesn't mean he can't be a bloodthirsty one. Read the original red riding hood... I've never said you're inconsistent. Unless you tell me that god is love, and god is peace...and that god demands the death of those who says he isn't.The Bible IS full of inconsistencies. If you didn't have your preconceptions that the bible is the word of god, you'd probably see that too.The big problem with the bible is that people HAVE been looking at it without preconceptions (namely, that's it's all literally true), they HAVE been looking at the evidence (galaxies are so far away, the world is older than implied by the bible if it were literally true, various methods of dating give us an earth older than 6000 years by several orders of magnitude, and so on).If you could say why the fall happened if god knows all that could happen (ie, why it was bad, if it was necessary), whether god couldn't find adam and eve when they hid (if he knows all, how can they hide?) and so on, without saying "god works in mysterious ways" and in a logical manner, you'd go a lot further than most theists.

just out of interest, what did you think about the passages in Judges 21 that I pointed out?Do you have something to say about adding blasphemy to capital crimes?...or do I win?

why soldiers (and fanatics, they both share the same mindset) both scare me:Amygdala...because things like that happen, even with "good" people.sorry the interject, I thought it important.

you can't get to an ought from an is. Just because you say god IS our creator, doesn't mean we OUGHT to do as he says.If this mindset were taken to it's logical conclusion, our children (no matter how old) would always have to obey us, and us our parents. You may retort "honour thy mother and father", but we know our parents exist...PS: you misunderstood my replies regarding what god is or isn't - I wasn't saying he was either non-existent or a tyrant, I was saying he was either non-existent or wasn't what you thought he was.PPS: as far as god not allowing rape, either the bible is the word of god or it is the word of man, and either god can influence what people may or may not do or he can't. If the bible is the word of man, and god can disapprove of rape but not manage to stop it (presuming he exists), he is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, and therefore not much of a god. If you can't trust your priests to tell you what your god would allow or disallow, you either have bad priests or a useless god.PPPS: inconsistencies and mistakes in the bible? There are hundreds. Thousands. It deserves several threads of it's own, and probably has them. From the failed prophecy of Tyre, to Egypt and it's lack of dragons, to the logistics of the ark, to the differing events during the resurrection, to the worrying cases of non-canon books being referenced from canonized volumes, to the failed prophecies of Jesus' return within the lifetime of his followers. It's far too big a subject to cover in a footnote, and there's the same weaselling of answers via context and goalpost-shifting as you've got over things like rape and incest. The biggest inconsistency of all is how many people get the same set of books to prove wildly different things depending on what they want it to say.Edited by greyseal, : No reason given.

Christianity is quite aptly summed up by explaining it as:The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.To that lot, adding that he sent himself down so he could absolve the sins of the evil that he himself caused is a cakewalk.

HI JRTjr, You failed to get the point - you got hung up on the word "you". I shall state the logical conundrum another way:One cannot get to an "ought" from an "is".Just because somebody says that god IS the creator of everything doesn't mean that somebody else OUGHT to do what he says.So god created everything, so what? You've obviously never heard of the gnostic heresy. yes, pretty much. That is the essence of what we're debating.People point to the bible and say "this is the word of god" - but then you tell me that "god does not allow rap" (rape is spelt with a "e" on the end) because god didn't tell those people to rape....but his priests did, and it is implied that he was fine and dandy with the idea.So, again, either the bible is written by man or the bible is the approved word of god - i.e. if the priests said "rape the villagers" (and they did) we should have some sentence telling us god was pretty cheesed off at the idea, if he was, or even approving if he wasn't.If it's not the approved or literal word of god, 1) stop telling us it is 2) accept that at the very least it's as likely to be flawed as any other treaty on human behaviour written as a fictional narrative.And when talking of consistencies, it was nice of you to cherry-pick and leave out the mass of inconsistencies pertaining to the four accounts of the ressurection, the prophecy of Tyre and the fact that Egypt is still not populated by dragons. If you're demanding I go show you those exact verses, you should ask. I can, but I'd assumed (just this once) that you'd know what I was talking about.

Dear JRTjr,A cursory google-search turns up one webpage which purports to have a nice long list of inconsistencies (and other biblical issues) collected into one place.there are undoubtedly more (it's a long collection of books) but you may wish to read this page before continuing:Just a moment...Now, link-spam isn't something one should indulge in, but rather than copy verbatim, I think we can all agree that a simple clickety-click and a read isn't the most difficult in the world, and the alternative wastes everyone's time and datastorage duplicating.It has in it the facts that the four accounts of the resurrection are different, even though they are supposed to be simultaneous accounts. It has in it the two accounts of the creation of the world (6 days plus 1, versus 1 day, with the order being different) and several others.Rather than ignore wholesale the people who say such inconsistencies exist, I believe the onus should be on you to respond.Cheers,Greyseal.

Thanks for that, Purpledawn, that's pretty useful and interesting information.It seems, from that, that god called himself "almighty" (at least a few humans apparently told whoever wrote it that he did) - but that it meant "the most powerful" - and very supernaturally powerful is, indeed, very powerful...but does it mean quite what it means today?I think (unless you're a revisionist YEC with a heartfelt desire to still believe both modern science AND a 1500-year-old collection of books) that the universe way back then was the earth (ground) and the sky and the waters, and that it was easy to believe a god as having created all of that.Now our knowledge has grown, and we can conceive of logical conundrums like a being creating a rock so heavy it can't lift it (yes, I went there) and suddenly this perfect god starts to look a little tatty - we were used to being told he was perfectly good, all-powerful and everywhere at once, but those words meant less, and all-powerful was only so-so powerful enough, and everywhere was a damn sight smaller, and there's a few people with their hands up saying "but wait...what about Africa and America - they never even HEARD of the bible until a couple hundred years ago..." causing trouble, and insisting that it all still make sense...I think it seems likely that the words meant less back then and that "very powerful" and "knows a hell of a lot that's going on" was enough for people then.Whichever way you spin it, he wasn't omniscient (all-knowing) because he genuinely seemed surprised that Adam and Eve ate the apple of knowledge, and genuinely worried (so much so he cast them out) that they might eat the tree of eternal life which, if death didn't exist "before the fall" wouldn't have been necessary for them to live forever.Maybe they wouldn't have known what death was, but then lots of animals don't know what death is, but that's a philosophical difference, not a physical one.

In the interests of the truth, I am indeed a brutha.Far be it from me to hold the declared creator of all to a demand for consistency in what is being trumpeted as the officially sanctioned account of his magnum opus - obviously such a great one as He is above petty demands for accuracy, consistency and accountability, even in works writ by his hand alone.Cthulhu fh'taghn and may you be touched by his noodly appendage, RAmen.

...far be it from me to disagree with you that your saying the above is completely different from saying that since god is the creator of everything we ought to do what he saysI must obviously stand corrected, they're obviously not the same logical assertion at all and are in no way equivocal...obviously.

or, you know, you could just click on this link:Just a moment...and tell everybody what you think. No need to keep it to yourself.

hi again, thanks for following the link - did you read ALL of it or stop at #2 (which is the weakest example, imho)?I think far stronger is the accounts of the resurrection - all four are different.I can try to tell you why atheists make these "blunders": it's because theists tell us that the bible is literally true.The bible is, they say, the word of god from cover to cover.So then, we argue, being literally minded it should be at least self-consistent if not historically accurate (at least about what it DOES talk about as historical fact). Being essentially written by god, it should be correct. Always. Especially the pieces that we are told were written by people like (for example) Moses (even the bits that say "and so he died").The book is no longer supposed to be subject to the vagaries of human thought - it is supposed to be inerrant, historically accurate and allegedly written by the people in it in places.What we see is (as you say) viewpoints changed so that parts have to be read "in context" because they do not literally agree.That may be fine (I'd actually give you a pass on the second account of Genesis for that reason, even though there are theists out there who would heartily disagree in your interpretation) but when you bring that up, then it changes from "the inerrant word of god" to "the inspired word of god" which is really a whole other ballgame.If it is merely inspired, then it is NOT literal. It becomes a tale told by humans, for humans (even if it's source is ultimately god), and as such can be wrong and inaccurate, mistranslated, added to, abridged, altered, recombined and generally mashed up according to the human hands it passes through (otherwise, it is THE word of god and we're back to square one).The point wouldn't be historical accuracy because it would no longer serve that purpose - the point would be the message.Now that's something I could find more agreeable - because then we'd be freed of the pieces of the bible that are no longer relevant for our lives 1500 years after it was written.We'd be able to say "even theists agree that both accounts of creation were attempts to explain how it all began to stone aged goatherders - all this fighting over the big bang and the age of the universe is pointless" and we could have evolution taught in schools without the right wing fundies getting their drawers in a twist because it disproves a literal creation by god - because it wouldn't matter.If that's where you sit, then you're my favourite type of creationist.Please understand, these two viewpoints are mutually exclusive - either it CAN be allegorical or it CAN'T.If it CAN, then we just disagree over which parts ARE, and without a truly independant measure, your insistence in it's accuracy and inerrancy where apparently not warrented (because it's NOT) is foolish.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot we're living in a world where differing memories of a single event can all be true at the same time despite being different. My mind won't doublethink like that, and though it may seem double plus ungood to you, I'm sorry.* There are four different stories of the same simultaneous event.
* The bible is accurate, always
* Therefore one of these two statements is untrue.You may send for minitrue now. I give up. Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania. does the rule say that if it's not consistent, then it's a parable or something?I'm not a bible scholar, obviously, but the four differing accounts of the resurrection (for example) aren't internally consistent, historically we cannot even be sure happened and are most certainly not in accordance with the established laws of nature.If the bible itself cannot be relied upon when talking about the accuracy of the bible, what use is it? I thought you said it was accurate and inerrant and literal?If you can't believe the holy spirit when talking about the bible, what sort of holy spirit is it? Some sort of cut-price bargain basement holy spirit?Now, believer's and the church's testimony I have no qualms with - obviously that means that you can be wrong and even members of the church can be wrong.Now, for "reliable" witnesses, we get "divinely commissioned messengers", whatever they are - and I have a distinct lack of those down the shops.So, what am I left with?You're telling me that I need divine messengers to tell me if the bible is accurate.Failing any showing up (do I put up a sign? does it have to be aramaic?), I'll have to demand that the first rule is bunk - if the bible is not self-consistent, then logically it follows that it is not literally always correct, and that it can be allegorical and poetic, at best.If you expect me to mean that a parable about people never named is literal for people who tell me that the bible IS always literal, then you're just being deliberately obtuse. Even those blockheads know a parable when they see one.It's the rest they don't believe in, and as you've told me, believers and the church get it wrong.