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Bezant
Guest
Everyone here (theist and atheist) just be nice.
Mother Mercy…
Mother Mercy…
Why do believers use one set of rules for Humanity and another set of rules for God?
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tonyrey
Guest
“Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” implies that there is some correlation between God’s love and ours.
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Bezant
Guest
OK, this in answer to my last (and other poster’s) questions…
If [insert authority figure] demands that I wash my hands to keep healthy, and he/she refuses to do so, isn’t it still a good idea to wash my hands to keep healthy?
Well, children don’t have the responsibility to be adults, but they are responsible to working toward ‘living up to’ adult behaviour.
So?
If [insert authority figure] demands that I wash my hands to keep healthy, and he/she refuses to do so, isn’t it still a good idea to wash my hands to keep healthy?
But what should you do otherwise? Be a deadbeat dad, and command your followers to be a deadbeat parent? Isn’t that more wicked than telling you to be a good father?
??
Well, children don’t have the responsibility to be adults, but they are responsible to working toward ‘living up to’ adult behaviour.
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StarFireKK
Guest
I’ve always been curious about this. How can you know God doesn’t exist? I mean I can understand why you say “I don’t know if God exist” or “I have not seen proof of God’s existence.” But how can you actually say “God does not exist.”
Even if Catholics are all wrong and God just created the universe and walked away, he still existed. You can’t prove one way or another if that happened and science can’t tell us what created matter in the beginning. Isn’t the best answer really “I don’t know”?
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Moontown_Rabbit
Guest
Whenever I see a list of complaints or errors, I always assume that the guy who made the list put his most powerful objection first (why put the stupidest one first?). Your first objection appears to be that God does not really answer prayers. You tighten it up by quoting Matthew, so it is fair for us to look at that verse to clearly understand why you think God is a liar. The verse actually goes farther than your complaint. Not only does Christ promise to answer prayers for (x), He promises that if we seek
we shall find it, and if we knock on (z) it shall be opened to us and we can enter. The key is in properly defining x, y, and z. Obviously if x is “the death of an innocent man” it will not be answered, for one of the central axioms of faith is that God is good and does not will evil. So there are reasonable conditions on x. Similarly y cannot refer to anything at all, such as the (probably) non-existent city of Atlantis. Because it is Christ speaking, z too has some conditions. He will not open the door of a brothel for you, or the door of a gang banger clubhouse. These doors are opened by bouncers. In all three cases, Christ is speaking of something very specific, namely that which is good. As you expand the conditions, you are left with only good things for He elsewhere says that God would not give you a stone if you asked for bread (I imagine that if you asked for a needless stone He would still give you bread!). So what do x, y, and z actually refer to? They must be good, holy, and satisfying. As the limit of these qualities approaches infinity x, y, and z must be perfect and infinitely good therefore in the limit x = y = z = God = Trinity = Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So as far as I can tell what Christ is saying is that in all three cases he gives you Himself. This is no lie, as those who have tasted His joy can attest.
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Birdpreacher
Guest
God gets to kill all the innocent first born babies he wants. But abortion is bad.
Sometimes the OT can appear to be a little screwy.
Sometimes the OT can appear to be a little screwy.
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Bohm_Bawerk
Guest
But if you mention that, you’ll be “stupid”, “illogical” or a “crazy atheist” lol
. I try not to get bogged down to much in the colourful responses I receive. Just confirms what I already knew about certain users.At the end of the day, the statements we read are the statements we read. If the Bible says (using your example) that God kills innocent first babies (in light of contradictory verses like Ezekiel 18:20) then it is for a rational person to question why that can be permitted. Ultimately, you don’t really find an explanation other than “God is allowed to”. Yet these are the same people who are unwilling to listen to Muslims on their explanation of seemingly brutal verses in the Quran. It’s a case of “one rule for us, and another rule for others”.
Anyway, you brought up an excellent point (I am actually quite knowledgeable on the OT more than the NT). I never thought of things that way, so thumbs up for bringing that point across
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Moontown_Rabbit
Guest
Perhaps you are not as knowledgeable about the Old Testament as you presume. God did not kill only babies in Egypt. The final plague was the death of first born sons, which would have been mostly non-infant males. You would think that after a bunch of predicted plagues that all came true a “rational person” would not have resisted God on the final one. God gave the Pharaoh choices, and in the final extremity the Pharaoh (against all sane reasoning) again made the wrong one. In addition God provided a means of escape in the form of ram’s blood which (as far as we know) only the Israelites took advantage of. If I make a decision that God has told me will result in my people’s death I must bear much if not all of the blame.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
How is that reconciled against the verses that “God hardened Pharaoh’s Heart”?
Pharaoh’s heart became hard (Ex 7:13, 23)
Pharaoh hardened his heart (Ex 8:15, 32)
God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex 9:7, 10:20)
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Incomplete
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Bohm_Bawerk
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Birdpreacher
Guest
Did you just call God pro-choice
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Bohm_Bawerk
Guest
During my time as a Catholic, one explanation that sufficed for me was that if Pharaoh was going to make the incorrect decision anyway, God hardened his heart to make him an example of: “But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Exodus 9:16). So I personally believed God rendered Pharaoh as a “living hyperbole” so that the Jews would remember how God saved them with greater clarity, and the tougher time they had to face during their time in Egypt. That is why the 10 plagues and the captivity in Egypt is one of the most central events recorded in the Bible, if not the most, and it is reiterated in later stages of the Bible generally under the form of “do not forget what your forefathers went through in Egypt”.
To me, where the 10 plagues and the captivity allude to the non-existence of God is that God seems incredibly active in the whole narrative. We don’t find that happen today. As a child, this was a question that bothered me all the time (I read the Bible a lot when I was younger). It’s not uncommon to hear some people ask why doesn’t God perform the same miracles as he did in those times. In fact, a minor prophet called Habakkuk prayed that God did the same miracles of old: LORD, I have heard of your fame;
"I stand in awe of your deeds, LORD.
Repeat them in our day,
in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy" (Habakkuk 3:2).
The problem with the 10 plagues and the captivity is that it shows that God is actively involved in human history. You would expect the same to happen today. But when you question Christians about this, all you get are excuses pretty much. That’s the underlying theme of this thread - why Christians are willing to make bold claims and assertions about the magnificence of their God, but then when evidence proves quite to the contrary - the non-existence of their God - all we get are excuses, commands to see the “smallprint”, brimstone preaching and “I trust the Church’s teaching because I trust the Church”.
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Moontown_Rabbit
Guest
I apologize for attributing the distortion to you. Regardless, I think comparing the final plague to abortion is very problematic.
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Birdpreacher
Guest
Both kill innocent babies
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Moontown_Rabbit
Guest
Good point, I suppose it mitigates the Pharaoh’s guilt. At the same time nobody likes a leader who always goes with his gut. Did God also put the brakes on the Pharaoh’s ability to employ simple logic?
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Moontown_Rabbit
Guest
Innocent babies die every day for hundreds of different reasons. Are you really going to call them all abortions?
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StarFireKK
Guest
There is a difference between us taking a life and God taking a life.
Besides if God takes the life of an innocent baby more and likely the baby will wind up in heaven and the baby will be happy. It is the family that is left behind that suffers not the baby.
Which brings us back to the OP’s question. Why different rules? Because we are not the same as God.
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Birdpreacher
Guest
Yeah but how many die cause God whips out His Angel of Death to slaughter them.
You gotta look at this through perspective of the Baby:
If you are a fetus: you are innocent, you are being killed because of a decision the pregnant mother is making.
If you are a firstborn infant in Egypt: you are innocent, you are being killed because of a decision Pharaoh made.
You gotta look at this through perspective of the Baby:
If you are a fetus: you are innocent, you are being killed because of a decision the pregnant mother is making.
If you are a firstborn infant in Egypt: you are innocent, you are being killed because of a decision Pharaoh made.
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Birdpreacher
Guest
Why do we make a loud noise about abortion if the baby is just gonna be in heaven anyways?
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