So if I murdered in your name does it change any intrinsic qualities of you?

You misunderstand, I meant deaths actually on god's name. Ones he supposedly (according to and all through the bible) committed himself.

Yeah, but OT God is inconsistent with NT God is my point.

God murders a grand total of zero people in the new testament.

I never understood the whole old testament, new testament thing. Does that mean that the new testament is like The Bible 2.0 or something?

I believe in God but I don't "fear" God, why should I be afraid of God?

I believe in God because it's comforting to me.

As far as religion goes I'd say I'm culturally Catholic but I don't formally pray or attend church, sometimes on the drive home from work I'll pretend to discuss things with God, just because.

Because you'll go to hell if you break any of his rules, like not believing, sinning, whatever.

Yeah true, see that's why religion is not sustainable, you can't hold people in line with fear it never works we're going to outgrow scripture unless we find some "new way to interpret it" or whatever.

There was a 1500-odd year gap in there. Wouldn't your personality change someone in a millenium and a half? :p
If you take in to account that Adam and Eve (and thus their future offspring) were immortal before they ate the forbidden fruit and were punished with mortality, you could say that God has has 100% of the deaths that ever happened on his hands. In any case, you really can't talk about death by God as if it's the same as murder.

Because your religion is really shit at translating. The phrase in Hebrew is closer to 'Feel awe about' than 'Fear'.

I don't know about that. Because he created us he can destroy us, I could understand that. But if you want to question how much god actually loves us I'd say that the number of people he 'killed' is pretty relevant. Or does him being omnipotent give him a free pass on his own commands?

If God is responsible for every death in the world then the number of miracles of life given by God is greater than that by six and a half billion. It's nonsensical to talk of God as a destroyer without factoring in his role of creator.

Idk... My father woke me up at 7am and claimed to have seen a ghost. He asked, "Is that you...?" And the response was a deep, incomprehensible hum... And if I know my dad like I do, he'd never make this shit up.

He believed the entity to be my dead mother. Anyone makes a joke out of this should fucking die. I believed him for once.

I didn't say that. I'm talking about purely the bible right now. OT or NT, I don't care but god killed quite a few people in his day. Flooding the planet, releasing plagues and all that sort of stuff. I want to know why he gives us rules to follow about not killing each other, while he goes around flooding the planet the second stuff doesn't suit him.

Because humans don't have his foresight and ability to absolutely know right from wrong. Also, several laws in the bible are centred around humans not getting too full of themselves and assuming the same rights and responsibilities as God himself.

Here's a joke for you Dix: You posted that in the wrong goddamned thread.

6.5 billion is a tiny number compared to all the people, animals, plants, single-celled organisms and other life forms on earth that he killed. And if he's omnipotent he could've prevented that. So either he's not omnipotent, which pretty much makes him a regular clump of conscious matter, he likes to kill people, which is against the current understanding of christianity and still shows he's not omnipotent since desires are limiting factors, or nonexistent.

Congratulations, that's the exact same arguments trolls on 4chan use.


Thou shalt not murder, not kill. Its often mistranslated into the latter though.

I had an ant farm once. It gave me extraordinary inside into questions about gods. I made a whole load of rules and laws for the ants to follow. They didn't. I mean, they're ants, there's no way that they could follow all my laws. I had hoped that, like other religions, breaking a law that my people could not help but repeatedly break would keep them in the faith by guilting them into seeking forgiveness. But the ants were above that sort of crap, so I visited an Apocalypse upon them. No more ants.

I spent the rest of my formicidan eternity alone, sans-ants. None of them ascended to my plane of existance, none were preserved in eternal torment. Boring, boring, boring. God, but I'm an idiot.

Fuck my life.

Or it shows that he doesn't regard death as a bad thing.

Think about the great works of art that have been inspired by the fear of death. Think of the great works of engineering, public service, philanthropy and every other field of human endeavour that have been created by someone who wanted their name to last longer than they did. Think of the efforts people have put in to raising and supporting children so that they would have an ongoing impact on the world.

Frankly, I agree with God on this one.

It's a hell of a stick, though.

When he flooded the world he did so as punishment because man was becoming self centered, evil and all that stuff. So in that instance death is punishment, which would hardly make it a good thing. And as far as I can recall anything I read of the bible there are very few instances where god kills someone as a reward.

I never said that death was a good thing, merely that it was a natural part of life. Death would certainly be punishment from an individual human perspective, but I was talking about a wider, anthropological perspective.

Oh yea?? Then what about this? >: )

It seems like according to christianity it is NOT a natural part of life, but a punishment given to Adam and Eve by god. Seems like god regards it as a bad thing, and humans suffer because of it, yet if he was omnipotent he could've prevented sin without punishing everyone. I know many christians say suffering is necessary for something "good", but hey, god is supposed to be outside logic, so he can get around that.

Uuuh

Death is sacred to christians, they regard it as the beginning of your eternal reward?

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3AEkLXkDgWI/0.jpg

YOUR ETERRRNAL REWAAARD

Which is weird, since the entire concept of death wasn't even part of god's original plan. Like Bart said, mortality was a punishment given by god to Adam and Eve. So where down the line did death become a reward?

When Heaven was invented.

When Jesus died, went to Hell, spent a day there and then opened all the doors so that everyone who had ever gone to Hell was free and nobody need ever go to Hell again. Jesus's sacrifice mitigates original sin.

I'm pretty sure the bible talks about it being invented at the same time as the earth. It's supposed to be a reward for people who do what god wants them to do, and everyone else is supposed to go to hell for all eternity. For one small action. No matter what it was, still smaller than infinity. And hell is supposed to be eternal torture, so no getting used to it, it'll just keep getting worse, btw this heaven place sounds a bit...lame? Sitting there worshipping all day and shtuff like that. I know it might be fun if I got there seeing as it's supposed to be eternal bliss, but wouldn't my entire personality have to be deleted for that to happen? Basically it's just god surrounded by a bunch of robots that all function the same way forever. I doubt god would want that, otherwise he wouldn't make different people that are able to go against his opinion.

Do you actually know what you're talking about or are you just hanging with the atheist crowd to look smart?

Also paragraphs are your friend.