How to respond to those who call God a mass murderer?

[KevinK]

You can’t go wrong with the Church.

I think the victims of the Inquisition and other forced converts would disagree.

 

[goout]

Textbook example of cherry-picked text proofing. It’s the sure sign of an empty well, and the favorite tactic of fundamentalists of all stripes.
Can you comment on the post as a whole with something thoughtful?
The post was never intended to exonerate evils committed by Christians.
?

 

[Russell_SA]

Again, I repeat, someone can love another person. But for that relationship to be loving, both people have to agree on how they are being treated and respected aka ‘loved’ as they understand it. You can’t love someone correctly if they don’t tell you how they want to be loved and understand love to be expressed properly. Abusive people love the people they abuse as well. This is soo basic to understand about relationships, I am concerned as to why I have to keep pointing this out. Your relationship with your deity is just like any other relationship with anyone else. Your deity does not get a pass for it’s bad actions regardless of how much you claim it’s a loving deity. This is exactly one reason why I can not become religious. The abused are still giving platitudes and excuses for their abuser.

 

[Russell_SA]

Here is a blatant problem / difference between the religious and people like me. Becoming a parent does not obligate your children to love you just by the mere fact you are providing for them. You brought them into this relationship and you expect love just because you pay the bills and keep them alive? No, sorry, if that what you think it takes to be a parent, then you might as well just donate to child charity and claim that all those kids whom you’ve never met love you too. To earn love from someone, you have to get to know who they are, what they value as expressions of love to them. You have to have a relationship with them. Buying their food, clothes, education, medicines, etc is not having a relationship with them. That is just providing for them. If you don’t know the difference, that is probably why you think you can “buy love” from someone. You earn love from someone by being apart of their lives. But your deity is playing the best game of hide and go seek ever, so it’s impossible to have an actual relationship with it. Try having a loving relationship with a parent that is never around and comes across as abandoning you and your other parent to deal with the world alone. It abandoned you since it could be more in your life as much as an actual parent is, but it is choosing not to. That is one big reason why religions are messed up. Let’s all love the parent that has abandoned us and could actually be around and has no justified reason to us for not being around as much as our actual friends and family.

We all know what the “or else” is from this deity and that it’s pronouncements take this tone of voice to us. Sorry but I will not be spoke to in that tone of voice. Love me or else. That’s abuse.

 

[Gorgias]

Becoming a parent does not obligate your children to love you just by the mere fact you are providing for them. You brought them into this relationship and you expect love just because you pay the bills and keep them alive? No, sorry, if that what you think it takes to be a parent

Nope. I’m not making a claim about parenting skills or attempts thereof.

Rather, I’m asking a simple question: without your parents’ action, you would never have come into existence. Do you owe them anything – love, gratitude, anything – for the act of creating you?

 

[Gorgias]

We all know what the “or else” is from this deity and that it’s pronouncements take this tone of voice to us. Sorry but I will not be spoke to in that tone of voice. Love me or else. That’s abuse.

Sure we do: the “or else” is “or else, if you choose not to be with me, then I’m not gonna force you to spend eternity with me.” How’s that abuse, again?

 

[Russell_SA]

You do not owe people for their responsibilities and obligations for the project they took on. You can respect them for continuing to take care of their obligations because we acknowledge hard work. However, the effort of creation by a deity took no more effort than a blink of the eye. You seem to be in love with power, not hard work, investment, or honestly looking at how to develop a relationship with the people you are obligated to care for. They should just love you because they owe you there existence. That is an extremely messed up way of thinking.

Love comes from the relationship you have developed with each other. Otherwise a parent that just pays the bills and doesn’t ever interact with their child deserves love to you. I fundamentally disagree with this.

 

[Reuben_J]

You can’t love someone correctly if they don’t tell you how they want to be loved and understand love to be expressed properly.

Huh? This is not what love is all about. It is all wrong. Perhaps that is why you cannot answer whether you have experienced being loved or whether you knew your father loved you.

 

[Gorgias]

You do not owe people for their responsibilities and obligations for the project they took on.

Not the question that I asked. However, I realize that, as inconvenient as the question is to your fiercely held beliefs, you might not want to ask it. However, in the interest of being willing to take you seriously, I’ll try one last time before concluding that you aren’t being serious: does a child have any sort of obligation to his parent for the gift of life that his parent freely gives him?

 

[Russell_SA]

I believe we were talking about an owed ‘Love’ for being created to the creator. So to that point that we were addressing, I repeat, no. No you do not owe anyone love just for creating you. Love is earned over establishing a relationship with each other where each person earned the love from the other person. The religious don’t seem to have grasped this concept.
As to owing someone anything for creating them. No, I repeat, no you do not. Respect, love, honor, etc are earned after assessing the character of the person and the relationship you have with them. Why can’t the religious grasp this basic concept? Here’s an analogy that may get through what I am talking about. The king has 100 wives and 200 children. He knows all their names and pays for everything for their life style in the palace. His ability to provide for their needs is nothing that he has to sacrifice for or an imposition to him at all. He also never acts like an actual father to these children. He never walks with his children, talks with them about who they are and the troubles they are going through to become adults, etc. Do these children owe him anything of respect, love, adoration, worship, etc? No, get this through your messed up religious endoctrination, no they do not. Your deity is the king here. He has no idea what it takes to have a meaningful relationship with the human race because people like you love him just for your existence that took him a blink of the eye to do.

 

[Russell_SA]

I’ve presented what I understand about how people gain love, respect, honor, etc. Its earned from someone else by building a meaningful relationship with them. But you can’t seem to grasp this concept and presented a case that love, honor, worship, respect, etc., are expected to be granted to the people that created you regardless of the relationship you have with them.
Since you are changing the topic to me instead of these points. I’ll take that as you have nothing to defend anymore, concede my points as superior to your absurd position, and just want to attack me personally. Sorry but you’re not that important for me to waste my time on. This conversation was for the readers and I ‘ll leave it up the fair minded readers to read what was said. Enjoy your abusive relationship with your deity, I’d rather take my chances with people that have more moral character.

 

[theMadJW]

I have seen videos of Bill Maher where he essentially says the God of the Old Testament is a psychopathic mass murdered who enjoys killing people. I don’t know how to respond to people like this. There is a lot of killing in the Old Testament, much of it commanded by God.

It’s ironic that his and all governments “mass murder” all the time with THEIR wars- and it’s not called “Mass murder”. Did the allied forces commit “mass murder”, as they killed endless Nazi, and innocents?

Certainly the One who MADE us has a right to execute those He KNOWS are evil.

Unbelievers just use Word Games…

 

[Writer_for_God]

Since you are changing the topic to me instead of these points. I’ll take that as you have nothing to defend anymore, concede my points as superior to your absurd position, and just want to attack me personally. Sorry but you’re not that important for me to waste my time on. This conversation was for the readers and I ‘ll leave it up the fair minded readers to read what was said. Enjoy your abusive relationship with your deity, I’d rather take my chances with people that have more moral character.

I am sorry that you believe the God of Jesus Christ is abusive. I am also sorry that you feel your arguments are not being understood and you feel you are being personally attacked. This is not the kind of thing I wanted to initiate with this post. I posted this because I felt certain people such as Bill Maher were doing the same thing with people like me, and calling us stupid and followers of a mass murderer. So please understand that the way you are feeling is the same way people like myself feel when we are called all kinds of things by those who disagree. I do not want this kind of character assassination and ad hominem to be occurring.

As far as love goes, God does not need our love. God is a perfect community of Persons. I believe He created us just out of His wish to increase love as much as possible. I don’t necessarily agree with the argument that we owe God our love. True love is not earned. It is a gift. I believe God loves us. I believe “God is love”. All love comes from God. God doesn’t have to force Himself on us. It is not that He just wants us to worship us. The fact is, as His creations, we need Him. If you are thirsty, you need water. If you are hungry, you need food. If you want to be happy and want to love and be loved, you need God, because God is the source of all love. God would be perfectly happy as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without ever having created anything. Without having created any of us. But He did, because His favorite thing to do is to love. You don’t have to love Him. But it is just a fact that in order to love and be loved, to be happy, you can’t cut yourself off from the source of all knowledge, all love and all happiness. It really has nothing to do with earning love or punishing anyone. Whatever God does, it is to try to get us to understand that we need Him. He cannot make us self-sufficient. As the source of all that is and all that is true, our nature as created beings makes us dependent on the uncreated Creator of all.

I am sorry that you feel attacked. If I were you I would possibly feel the same. But please keep in mind the kind of rhetoric and insulting remarks made by the hostile atheists who inspired the question I posed in this thread.

 

[Reuben_J]

No, you did not defend your point, which is, love is how you want to be loved, you have to be agreeing in how you be loved for that love to be called love.

So I ask you whether you have experienced your father’s love for you. Does your father’s love depend on how you want him to love you, for example, you want him to give you a multi-million dollars yacht. After all according to your logic, it does not hurt him to give that amount of money to you since he has many thousands of million of dollars in the bank.

So according to your argument, your father does not earn your love because he did not want to give what you ask.

I let the audience to decide for themselves on your logic. You don’t want to answer that, that’s your privilege.

 

[Reuben_J]

Why you are getting angry over this is beyond me. All I did was to ask you questions which are to elaborate on your point statement. I don’t see any insult or demeaning.

I think your definition of love is false as someone can love regardless of what you want from him. The father’s love is an appropriate example. He loves you and do the things for you which is for your own good.

Your attitude is one of being a spoilt child to the father when you think he does not love you and thus not getting your respect just because he did not give what you asked. So you cannot love him and run away from home and be on your own. You did not realize that your father wants you to study first and as you get older will inherit all the riches he has prepared for you, but instead you spurn all of that just because you do not get what you want from him.

 

[Wolfie]

I disagree with everyone that posted evasion tactics. A good apologist should be able to answer hard questions like this. Bill Maher may be a comedian and an atheist, but the question can be legitimate. I have wondered why God seemed violent and angry in the Old Testament, but Jesus was totally different.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Here’s an analogy that may get through what I am talking about. The king has 100 wives and 200 children. He knows all their names and pays for everything for their life style in the palace. His ability to provide for their needs is nothing that he has to sacrifice for or an imposition to him at all. He also never acts like an actual father to these children.

And the king says, I have provided everything for you, I would just ask that you love each other as you love yourselves. If you are kind to each other, that will make me happy.

We show our love for God, by the way we love each other. We show our lack of love for God in the ways we are unkind to our neighbours.

 

[Gorgias]

I believe we were talking about an owed ‘Love’ for being created to the creator. So to that point that we were addressing, I repeat, no. No you do not owe anyone love just for creating you.

I’m asking a simple question. Is there anything owed – love, gratitude, anything – for an act that is a positive act, fully gratuitous, which gives you existence?

I find it hard to believe that your answer is really ‘no’. (Oh, I totally get it – in this context, since it affects the validity of your argument in this thread, you can’t admit it! But still, I was hoping for honesty.)

I mean, if the question was “if someone opens the door for you, do you offer an expression of gratitude?” or “if someone helps you across the street, do you offer an expression of gratitude?”, I find it extremely difficult to believe that your response would be, “nope! i just scowl at them and storm off!”

With that in mind, I find it quite disingenuous to suggest that the gratuitous gift of life itself is not something that deserves a positive response. So much for the meme “atheists are morally good actors, too!”, eh?

 

[HarryStotle]

Your deity does not love us, it demands we love it. I am not going to take your example seriously since it does not come across as taking this conversation seriously. Your deity says I command you to love me or else. Your deity says love me above all things in your life or else. Your deity says because I give you things that are no bother to me at all to give, you owe me your love or else. I demand you love me. I created you for the purpose to love me. Sorry, but your deity does not know what it is to earn love and respect if it demands this upon pain of consequence or to demand this at all. Love is not demanded or expected. It is earned and offered. Again, your response just reinforces exactly how the religious give platitudes to this abusive relationship they are in.

I see.

Let’s do a little thought experiment, shall we?

Do you love the ants in your life? I mean that both figuratively and literally. Do you?

Would you become one of them if you could, and by doing so, raise their lot in life, so to speak?

Certainly, you can’t really do much about changing their lot or transforming them into some higher form of life, but you could treat them far better than you do, no?

You probably think nothing of them as you go about your business each day. Speaking of uncaring!

What about God?

The distance between you and an ant is a finite separation, but the distance between God and a human is infinite.

Yet, God chose to become one of us, walk among us and suffer “the extreme penalty” that we may share in his eternal life.

I don’t see you ready to sacrifice yourself proportionately on behalf of ants.

I guess, morally speaking, God deserves at least a little acknowledgement and respect, if not downright worship, for his thoughtfulness vis a vis humanity.

All in all, it seems just a tad unnerving and hypocritical of you to criticize God for what he is willing to do, while you, yourself, are unwilling to raise a little finger or put yourself out at all for your little brothers and sisters, the ants.

 

[Russell_SA]

No I do not love the ants in my life since to earn my love, they need to have a different relationship with me than the ants do. This only means that I am indifferent to the life of the ant and does not mean that I would go out of my way to make their lives harder. If I had the power to turn into an ant but not back into a human, then I would not choose to become an ant. If I had the power to turn back into a human, then I would choose to see what the life of an ant was. But I would only be a human in ant form. This does not mean that I would come to love the ants around me as we could not have a relationship that would develop love for me. The same way I could not develop love for a vegetable or tuna fish. There are relationship qualities that I look for that help develop a loving relationship with the entities involved. I can develop a loving relationship with my dog for example but not an earthworm.
As to your deity and humans, your deity has the power to have a meaningful relationship with us on a level we can understand and develop into a loving relationship. However, you directly imply that it does not have the mental capability to figure this out and so we must love it since it is incapable of understanding what it means for us to feel love by it.
Your demigod, jesus. It just had a bad weekend as a human. It still survived on after the “suffering” and also, had the power to end it’s suffering on it’s own terms when ever it wanted to. Lets compare this to soldiers in battle. They do not know what will happen to them after they pass on, your demigod does. They can not regenerate limbs, sight, or mental repair after experiencing the hell of war. Your demigod can. Your demigod choose to look like it suffered to us, but to it, I do not believe that was any sacrifice at all for it. To sacrifice something means to loose it permanently. Your deity and demigod are still hanging out according to you and can still come back down when ever it chooses to. Your deity never sacrificed anything. All it did was the moral equivalent of giving a homeless person some cash from the deity’s unlimited bank account. Your deity should have stopped the person from becoming homeless to begin with instead of sitting back watching these events unfold and then coming in to save the day. Parents don’t do that to their children. At least not ones that we allow to continue to be parents.
No, no I would not sacrifice my self on behalf of ants. However, I will pass legislation that outlaws the industrial pollutants that are killing off the ants, bees, fish, etc. I will still eat fish, but I will not endanger their very existence.