How to fix the family
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Okay... but its not the same. What don't you understand that evil must exist as a part of balance in nature? God can supercede it, but that kind of defeats the original purpose of putting people here to learn to love. You can't appreciate what you have until you have lost, you can't recognize good until you see bad, and you won't strive for better if you don't experience struggle.
God is simply hope that something better exists outside of the earthly realm. If you don't want or need that hope, then that's fine. But don't pass judgment on my God or my faith in Him, just because you don't feel like He has done enough.
^and it is that belief in something outside this earthly realm that leads people to believe that parables like Job and the murdering of people of all ages is ok as long as it is divinely inspired. It's not. And your Ying and Yang philosophy sounds great about a divine entity creating evil and letting evil happen for the sake of people coming to appreciate not having their children murdered...until you realize that god is supposed to be all powerful and could have just instantly made all humans appreciative without war, famine, blood sacrifice and murdering little Egyptian babies.
God gave us a choice. He didn't want us to just instantly love Him. He wanted us to choose Him, out of love. If God wanted everyone to do exactly as He willed them to do, He wouldn't have put us on earth in the first place.
As far as murdering Egyptian babies and what not... stay tuned for my subsequent post. I need some time to put that together for you.
But is it really a choice when the punishment for not choosing "correctly" is eternal punishment?0 -
Okay... but its not the same. What don't you understand that evil must exist as a part of balance in nature? God can supercede it, but that kind of defeats the original purpose of putting people here to learn to love. You can't appreciate what you have until you have lost, you can't recognize good until you see bad, and you won't strive for better if you don't experience struggle.
God is simply hope that something better exists outside of the earthly realm. If you don't want or need that hope, then that's fine. But don't pass judgment on my God or my faith in Him, just because you don't feel like He has done enough.
^and it is that belief in something outside this earthly realm that leads people to believe that parables like Job and the murdering of people of all ages is ok as long as it is divinely inspired. It's not. And your Ying and Yang philosophy sounds great about a divine entity creating evil and letting evil happen for the sake of people coming to appreciate not having their children murdered...until you realize that god is supposed to be all powerful and could have just instantly made all humans appreciative without war, famine, blood sacrifice and murdering little Egyptian babies.
God gave us a choice. He didn't want us to just instantly love Him. He wanted us to choose Him, out of love. If God wanted everyone to do exactly as He willed them to do, He wouldn't have put us on earth in the first place.
As far as murdering Egyptian babies and what not... stay tuned for my subsequent post. I need some time to put that together for you.
But is it really a choice when the punishment for not choosing "correctly" is eternal punishment?
Is it really a choice not to commit murder when the punishment is life imprisonment? Yes... it's still a choice.0 -
Okay... but its not the same. What don't you understand that evil must exist as a part of balance in nature? God can supercede it, but that kind of defeats the original purpose of putting people here to learn to love. You can't appreciate what you have until you have lost, you can't recognize good until you see bad, and you won't strive for better if you don't experience struggle.
God is simply hope that something better exists outside of the earthly realm. If you don't want or need that hope, then that's fine. But don't pass judgment on my God or my faith in Him, just because you don't feel like He has done enough.
^and it is that belief in something outside this earthly realm that leads people to believe that parables like Job and the murdering of people of all ages is ok as long as it is divinely inspired. It's not. And your Ying and Yang philosophy sounds great about a divine entity creating evil and letting evil happen for the sake of people coming to appreciate not having their children murdered...until you realize that god is supposed to be all powerful and could have just instantly made all humans appreciative without war, famine, blood sacrifice and murdering little Egyptian babies.
God gave us a choice. He didn't want us to just instantly love Him. He wanted us to choose Him, out of love. If God wanted everyone to do exactly as He willed them to do, He wouldn't have put us on earth in the first place.
As far as murdering Egyptian babies and what not... stay tuned for my subsequent post. I need some time to put that together for you.
I can't wait. But I might not be back until tomorrow. This should give you plenty of time to explain to me how mass punishment of infants is justifiable.0 -
Okay... but its not the same. What don't you understand that evil must exist as a part of balance in nature? God can supercede it, but that kind of defeats the original purpose of putting people here to learn to love. You can't appreciate what you have until you have lost, you can't recognize good until you see bad, and you won't strive for better if you don't experience struggle.
God is simply hope that something better exists outside of the earthly realm. If you don't want or need that hope, then that's fine. But don't pass judgment on my God or my faith in Him, just because you don't feel like He has done enough.
^and it is that belief in something outside this earthly realm that leads people to believe that parables like Job and the murdering of people of all ages is ok as long as it is divinely inspired. It's not. And your Ying and Yang philosophy sounds great about a divine entity creating evil and letting evil happen for the sake of people coming to appreciate not having their children murdered...until you realize that god is supposed to be all powerful and could have just instantly made all humans appreciative without war, famine, blood sacrifice and murdering little Egyptian babies.
God gave us a choice. He didn't want us to just instantly love Him. He wanted us to choose Him, out of love. If God wanted everyone to do exactly as He willed them to do, He wouldn't have put us on earth in the first place.
As far as murdering Egyptian babies and what not... stay tuned for my subsequent post. I need some time to put that together for you.
But is it really a choice when the punishment for not choosing "correctly" is eternal punishment?
Is it really a choice not to commit murder when the punishment is life imprisonment? Yes... it's still a choice.
So you see choosing not to believe in a God who indiscriminately takes lives as the same level of crime as the taking of a life?0 -
You keep skipping past the point that it was not that God did not prevent these people in the bible from dying, his direct actions or orders led to their death. I do not believe that anyone here is saying that no one should ever die. We just ask that our God not kill us out of sport.
I actually did reply to this earlier. You sort of missed it because I had replied to Lucky and it moved the thread to another page. Anyway, I'm going to break this down.Also, he wasn't just smiting the wicked. All those Egyptian first born were not wicked.
The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt.Not everyone in Sodom or Gomorrah were wicked.
Lot was the only righteous person in Sodom. It clearly states in Genesis that "all the men, young and old" surrounded Lot's house because they wanted to have sex with the two visitors. In Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the bible outlines how "uncleanness" corrupts the entire community. The customs of the societies of Sodom and Gomorrah were sinful and socially accepted. Children were being raised to follow those same customs. Lot's entire family was saved, but his wife turned back, leaving only Lot and his daughters. When Lot and his daughters were hiding in the cave, they got Lot drunk and seduced them so they could become pregnant with his children. They had been exposed to the sinful customs of Sodom and Gomorrah and adopted those customs. So yes, the entirety community was punished, including children, because those children would grow up to continue the sinful ways of their parents.Job's family was not wicked.
The very first chapter of Job talks about how Job's sons would make feasts and have celebrations and Job's daughters would join them, and then Job would have to purify his children. Now, it's not directly stated, but it's pretty easy to deduce that Job's children were having sex with each other which was sinful. So yes, Job's children were wicked, and God punished them for their wickedness, and in the process to test Job's faith. Part of the reason why it is not directly stated that Job's children were sinning and being punished for their sins is because the whole purpose of the book of Job is to demonstrate how God rewards the faithful and not how God punishes the wicked. God knew that losing his children would hurt Job, and He didn't wish to hurt Job. But his children were wicked and were not going to change. So as long as Job proved he had more faith, love, and obedience than his wicked children, then Job was blessed with more children so that he could start over.Not everyone on the planet who died in the Biblical floods were wicked.
Alright... I'm going to quote my bible directly here.
Gen 6:5-6 "The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they though or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart."
You ever start a project and then somewhere in the process realized that something went terribly wrong and the whole thing was ruined. That's what happened here. Just as with Sodom and Gomorrah, the children were just as corrupted as the parents. I'm sure you are familiar with the expression "a few bad apples ruins the whole bunch."Not every inhabitant of Canaan which were slaughtered in the Israelite invasion/conquest were wicked.
Just like in the previous arguments, it is often mentioned throughout Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy that the Canaanites were sinful, and just as I stated in previous arguments, the children were corrupted as well.
God doesn't like to destroy His creation. It clearly states that way back in Genesis, but just as you proclaim that evil should never be tolerated, God does not tolerate it. For each of those communities, the sinful ways became so commonplace that there wasn't anyway to save anyone from it. That is until Christ. And because it pains God to have to destroy His creation for the sake of evil, that is why He gave His son to die for all the evils of the world so that He would not have to destroy people for the sake of evil ever again.0 -
But is it really a choice when the punishment for not choosing "correctly" is eternal punishment?
Is it really a choice not to commit murder when the punishment is life imprisonment? Yes... it's still a choice.
So you see choosing not to believe in a God who indiscriminately takes lives as the same level of crime as the taking of a life?
Wow! You took waaaaaay too much out of that. Read my last post.
Punishment isn't always murder, but evil deserves punishment. Just as Adrian_Indy said, evil should never be tolerated, and God does not tolerate it. Even when people escape worldly justice, they will inevitably face some form of punishment from God.0 -
The point isn't that it's the actions of "two" people that condemned every person. The point is that disobedience became an innate trait amongst people starting with the two. The point was to bring about a point of redemption and to bring us back to a point of obedience. The point is God could have very well forced His hand and gave no other option but to be obedient, but He didn't. He ultimately wanted us to make that choice, if not than why create us to worship in the first place. It would have been disingenuous, The serpent was a vision of our own arrogance. Our arrogance that we know better than God.0
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History is written by the winners and the loser are genreally considered sinful or wrong. THe bible is a bunch of writtingswritten by the the winners. Sorry can'trust a book written by mad and edited by polaticians. Especially one whichwould subjugate me to a cheating exhusband and have me having 15 gazzillion children0
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I wonder if I could use the word point more often? ;-)0
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The point isn't that it's the actions of "two" people that condemned every person. The point is that disobedience became an innate trait amongst people starting with the two. The point was to bring about a point of redemption and to bring us back to a point of obedience. The point is God could have very well forced His hand and gave no other option but to be obedient, but He didn't. He ultimately wanted us to make that choice, if not than why create us to worship in the first place. It would have been disingenuous, The serpent was a vision of our own arrogance. Our arrogance that we know better than God.
I think that the point is that we have some very bad story telling. No debate can get us past the point that if something is truly all powerful, this Middle Eastern soap opera is completely unnecessary. He could skip the sin, the fall, and the redemption and just go straight to perfection without any of the drama, violence or death. And it's not an argument that we wouldn't appreciate it because with a snap of his fingers, we would appreciate it. And it wouldn't be forced because if he would have done this all from the beginning we wouldn't know the difference. And yes, why create anyone to worship in the first place. Seems odd that an all powerful, perfect being so desperately needs to be validated by beings he purposely made or allowed to be made imperfect. And the serpent as a vision of our own arrogance? I never heard this one. I thought are imperfection game from eating the fruit and disobeying. If some outside source is giving us visions...that's entrapment. Lol. That's the problem with debating this. These stories are fables, they are made up, and when people start realizing they don't make sense...they just make more stuff up.0 -
The point isn't that it's the actions of "two" people that condemned every person. The point is that disobedience became an innate trait amongst people starting with the two. The point was to bring about a point of redemption and to bring us back to a point of obedience. The point is God could have very well forced His hand and gave no other option but to be obedient, but He didn't. He ultimately wanted us to make that choice, if not than why create us to worship in the first place. It would have been disingenuous, The serpent was a vision of our own arrogance. Our arrogance that we know better than God.
I think that the point is that we have some very bad story telling. No debate can get us past the point that if something is truly all powerful, this Middle Eastern soap opera is completely unnecessary. He could skip the sin, the fall, and the redemption and just go straight to perfection without any of the drama, violence or death. And it's not an argument that we wouldn't appreciate it because with a snap of his fingers, we would appreciate it. And it wouldn't be forced because if he would have done this all from the beginning we wouldn't know the difference. And yes, why create anyone to worship in the first place. Seems odd that an all powerful, perfect being so desperately needs to be validated by beings he purposely made or allowed to be made imperfect. And the serpent as a vision of our own arrogance? I never heard this one. I thought are imperfection game from eating the fruit and disobeying. If some outside source is giving us visions...that's entrapment. Lol. That's the problem with debating this. These stories are fables, they are made up, and when people start realizing they don't make sense...they just make more stuff up.
God didn't want mindless drones to worship Him. He created life for the sake of love. He gave us choice to learn how to love. Love does not exist without choice. Love is derived from the individual's choice to care for something or someone more than themselves. Without choice, we would not act out of love.0 -
The point isn't that it's the actions of "two" people that condemned every person. The point is that disobedience became an innate trait amongst people starting with the two. The point was to bring about a point of redemption and to bring us back to a point of obedience. The point is God could have very well forced His hand and gave no other option but to be obedient, but He didn't. He ultimately wanted us to make that choice, if not than why create us to worship in the first place. It would have been disingenuous, The serpent was a vision of our own arrogance. Our arrogance that we know better than God.
I think that the point is that we have some very bad story telling. No debate can get us past the point that if something is truly all powerful, this Middle Eastern soap opera is completely unnecessary. He could skip the sin, the fall, and the redemption and just go straight to perfection without any of the drama, violence or death. And it's not an argument that we wouldn't appreciate it because with a snap of his fingers, we would appreciate it. And it wouldn't be forced because if he would have done this all from the beginning we wouldn't know the difference. And yes, why create anyone to worship in the first place. Seems odd that an all powerful, perfect being so desperately needs to be validated by beings he purposely made or allowed to be made imperfect. And the serpent as a vision of our own arrogance? I never heard this one. I thought are imperfection game from eating the fruit and disobeying. If some outside source is giving us visions...that's entrapment. Lol. That's the problem with debating this. These stories are fables, they are made up, and when people start realizing they don't make sense...they just make more stuff up.
God didn't want mindless drones to worship Him. He created life for the sake of love. He gave us choice to learn how to love. Love does not exist without choice. Love is derived from the individual's choice to care for something or someone more than themselves. Without choice, we would not act out of love.
And everything you just said here makes sense if we are talking about a being who is limited. But unlimited power means that all of these rules you just set forth are needless unless god is lonely or a sadist. God didn't want mindless drones to follow him? He asked a guy to butcher his own son with a rusty knife. I don't think you can be more of a drone than that.0 -
This is all I have time to reply to.
""""""""""""The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt. """""""""""""""
The Egyptians as a whole were oppressing the Israelites. Wrong. The ruling class of the Egyptians weren't likely to be just oppressing the Hebrews. Lower class Egyptians were as likely to be slaves as anyone else and lets not forget about prisoners of war. In what empire during our entire written history did the poor of a nation get to own slaves? But now that more and more history of ancient Egypt is being unearthed, it is looking more and more that the pyramids weren't built by slaves at all, but free Egyptian workers.
Next, if there was slaves in Egypt including the Hebrews as said in the bible, they would not have been the only ones as I mentioned previously. That means that every plague affect other slaves, peasant Egyptians, and small children including infants. And the reason that the Hebrew god does this is because he is showing the all to familiar human trait...racism. The Hebrew are his chosen people and he continually slaughters or orders his chosen to slaughter others....and at no point do jews or apologists ever stop to think that ancient greeks thought they were chosen, as did the Hindus, as did the Japanese, as did the Incans. It's just sort of weird that every cultures god created them first and choses them, but we have here the one "true" god prancing around the middle east as a burning bush only giving his laws to one small tribe out of an entire world (and that's after letting us have no direction for the first 70,000 to 200,000 years of our existence depending on what evolutionary scale you want to believe). Not very believable.
And after all that, if I were wrong on every level, I still think that besides every piece of biblical rhetoric we have heard here, every apology, every justification, that any being willing to kill infants in their cribs to punish the political choices of a pharaoh and his powerful advisors must either be limited and choosing the lesser of evils or limitless and evil enough to perform genocides on a whim.0 -
This is all I have time to reply to.
""""""""""""The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt. """""""""""""""
The Egyptians as a whole were oppressing the Israelites. Wrong. The ruling class of the Egyptians weren't likely to be just oppressing the Hebrews. Lower class Egyptians were as likely to be slaves as anyone else and lets not forget about prisoners of war. In what empire during our entire written history did the poor of a nation get to own slaves? But now that more and more history of ancient Egypt is being unearthed, it is looking more and more that the pyramids weren't built by slaves at all, but free Egyptian workers.
Next, if there was slaves in Egypt including the Hebrews as said in the bible, they would not have been the only ones as I mentioned previously. That means that every plague affect other slaves, peasant Egyptians, and small children including infants. And the reason that the Hebrew god does this is because he is showing the all to familiar human trait...racism. The Hebrew are his chosen people and he continually slaughters or orders his chosen to slaughter others....and at no point do jews or apologists ever stop to think that ancient greeks thought they were chosen, as did the Hindus, as did the Japanese, as did the Incans. It's just sort of weird that every cultures god created them first and choses them, but we have here the one "true" god prancing around the middle east as a burning bush only giving his laws to one small tribe out of an entire world (and that's after letting us have no direction for the first 70,000 to 200,000 years of our existence depending on what evolutionary scale you want to believe). Not very believable.
And after all that, if I were wrong on every level, I still think that besides every piece of biblical rhetoric we have heard here, every apology, every justification, that any being willing to kill infants in their cribs to punish the political choices of a pharaoh and his powerful advisors must either be limited and choosing the lesser of evils or limitless and evil enough to perform genocides on a whim.
Answering from my phone so I'll be brief:
Even the poorest of whites treated black slaves and free blacks with contempt. Oppression is not about slavery. The Jews were oppressed in the Holocaust, but they were not slaves. Blacks continued to be oppressed even after slavery was abolished. And don't even let me talk about how women have been oppressed.
As I stated earlier, God is limited to act within the laws of nature in this realm. Cause always has an effect on this earthly plane. God has the power to supersede cause and effect. It seems to me that you have an expectation that if God loves us, then He would make heaven on earth. But sin can't exist for everything to be perfect. And as long as people sin freely and at will, they wouldn't be worthy of this utopian society at any rate. All God wants is for people to prove they are worthy of the perfection of heaven that awaits you when your soul escapes its earthly vessel.
You know, I think a big part of the communication barrier here is the way you perceive death. To you, death is a horrible event. I see death as a release from the evil that exists on earth.0 -
This is all I have time to reply to.
""""""""""""The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt. """""""""""""""
The Egyptians as a whole were oppressing the Israelites. Wrong. The ruling class of the Egyptians weren't likely to be just oppressing the Hebrews. Lower class Egyptians were as likely to be slaves as anyone else and lets not forget about prisoners of war. In what empire during our entire written history did the poor of a nation get to own slaves? But now that more and more history of ancient Egypt is being unearthed, it is looking more and more that the pyramids weren't built by slaves at all, but free Egyptian workers.
Next, if there was slaves in Egypt including the Hebrews as said in the bible, they would not have been the only ones as I mentioned previously. That means that every plague affect other slaves, peasant Egyptians, and small children including infants. And the reason that the Hebrew god does this is because he is showing the all to familiar human trait...racism. The Hebrew are his chosen people and he continually slaughters or orders his chosen to slaughter others....and at no point do jews or apologists ever stop to think that ancient greeks thought they were chosen, as did the Hindus, as did the Japanese, as did the Incans. It's just sort of weird that every cultures god created them first and choses them, but we have here the one "true" god prancing around the middle east as a burning bush only giving his laws to one small tribe out of an entire world (and that's after letting us have no direction for the first 70,000 to 200,000 years of our existence depending on what evolutionary scale you want to believe). Not very believable.
And after all that, if I were wrong on every level, I still think that besides every piece of biblical rhetoric we have heard here, every apology, every justification, that any being willing to kill infants in their cribs to punish the political choices of a pharaoh and his powerful advisors must either be limited and choosing the lesser of evils or limitless and evil enough to perform genocides on a whim.
Answering from my phone so I'll be brief:
Even the poorest of whites treated black slaves and free blacks with contempt. Oppression is not about slavery. The Jews were oppressed in the Holocaust, but they were not slaves. Blacks continued to be oppressed even after slavery was abolished. And don't even let me talk about how women have been oppressed.
As I stated earlier, God is limited to act within the laws of nature in this realm. Cause always has an effect on this earthly plane. God has the power to supersede cause and effect. It seems to me that you have an expectation that if God loves us, then He would make heaven on earth. But sin can't exist for everything to be perfect. And as long as people sin freely and at will, they wouldn't be worthy of this utopian society at any rate. All God wants is for people to prove they are worthy of the perfection of heaven that awaits you when your soul escapes its earthly vessel.
You know, I think a big part of the communication barrier here is the way you perceive death. To you, death is a horrible event. I see death as a release from the evil that exists on earth.
I understand oppression...but saying that EVERY poor white treated blacks bad....or the over generalization of any other is statistically an impossibility. Besides, many poor whites actively tried to fee the slaves, so it only stands to reason that there were many good Egyptians out there, even if they were a minority, that were kind to the Hebrews. And they were punished like everyone else.
And when did these rules and regulations about god having to obey the natural order of things in this realm come about? Sounds to me like people once again under the guise of philosophy or intellectualism couldn't make sense of things in the bible so they just started making things up. Because turning rivers to blood, raining frogs from the sky, talking, burning bushes, angel visitations and pillars of fire don't seem very natural to me. Neither do virgin births.
So your argument is go obeys natural laws on earth except when he doesn't. Well, I think those bases are covered.0 -
You edited while I was replying.
You said,
"You know, I think a big part of the communication barrier here is the way you perceive death. To you, death is a horrible event. I see death as a release from the evil that exists on earth."
Yes, I do think death is horrible for the most part except for extenuating circumstances like someone who is so sick and in pain that it is just torture to be alive.
But I think that part of the miscommunication barrier is how we view life. You seem to have a more nonchalant attitude about it, especially when god is involved in the killings, because "everyone has to die" and you believe in an afterlife.
On the other hand people who don't believe in nirvanas, Olympus and heaven get very annoyed at those concepts because we believe this life is all we are ever going to get, making it pretty special.
Humans have a history of letting bad things happen because we thing we are going to get that better deal when we expire. Besides, to quote one of my favorite comedians,
"If you welcome death so much then why do you where a seatbelt?" lol0 -
This is all I have time to reply to.
""""""""""""The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt. """""""""""""""
The Egyptians as a whole were oppressing the Israelites. Wrong. The ruling class of the Egyptians weren't likely to be just oppressing the Hebrews. Lower class Egyptians were as likely to be slaves as anyone else and lets not forget about prisoners of war. In what empire during our entire written history did the poor of a nation get to own slaves? But now that more and more history of ancient Egypt is being unearthed, it is looking more and more that the pyramids weren't built by slaves at all, but free Egyptian workers.
Next, if there was slaves in Egypt including the Hebrews as said in the bible, they would not have been the only ones as I mentioned previously. That means that every plague affect other slaves, peasant Egyptians, and small children including infants. And the reason that the Hebrew god does this is because he is showing the all to familiar human trait...racism. The Hebrew are his chosen people and he continually slaughters or orders his chosen to slaughter others....and at no point do jews or apologists ever stop to think that ancient greeks thought they were chosen, as did the Hindus, as did the Japanese, as did the Incans. It's just sort of weird that every cultures god created them first and choses them, but we have here the one "true" god prancing around the middle east as a burning bush only giving his laws to one small tribe out of an entire world (and that's after letting us have no direction for the first 70,000 to 200,000 years of our existence depending on what evolutionary scale you want to believe). Not very believable.
And after all that, if I were wrong on every level, I still think that besides every piece of biblical rhetoric we have heard here, every apology, every justification, that any being willing to kill infants in their cribs to punish the political choices of a pharaoh and his powerful advisors must either be limited and choosing the lesser of evils or limitless and evil enough to perform genocides on a whim.
Answering from my phone so I'll be brief:
Even the poorest of whites treated black slaves and free blacks with contempt. Oppression is not about slavery. The Jews were oppressed in the Holocaust, but they were not slaves. Blacks continued to be oppressed even after slavery was abolished. And don't even let me talk about how women have been oppressed.
As I stated earlier, God is limited to act within the laws of nature in this realm. Cause always has an effect on this earthly plane. God has the power to supersede cause and effect. It seems to me that you have an expectation that if God loves us, then He would make heaven on earth. But sin can't exist for everything to be perfect. And as long as people sin freely and at will, they wouldn't be worthy of this utopian society at any rate. All God wants is for people to prove they are worthy of the perfection of heaven that awaits you when your soul escapes its earthly vessel.
You know, I think a big part of the communication barrier here is the way you perceive death. To you, death is a horrible event. I see death as a release from the evil that exists on earth.
So death to you is a release to worship at the feet of a cosmic despot while those who used their free will and chose not to bend the knee are punished for eternity.
My question for you is, do you think that these Egyptian children slain in their crib saw it as a release from evil or was it the beginning of their eternal suffering for being born in the wrong realm?
The god of the Old Testament is a vengeful, jealous despot because he was created and written about by people living in a despotic governmental system.0 -
This is all I have time to reply to.
""""""""""""The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt. """""""""""""""
The Egyptians as a whole were oppressing the Israelites. Wrong. The ruling class of the Egyptians weren't likely to be just oppressing the Hebrews. Lower class Egyptians were as likely to be slaves as anyone else and lets not forget about prisoners of war. In what empire during our entire written history did the poor of a nation get to own slaves? But now that more and more history of ancient Egypt is being unearthed, it is looking more and more that the pyramids weren't built by slaves at all, but free Egyptian workers.
Next, if there was slaves in Egypt including the Hebrews as said in the bible, they would not have been the only ones as I mentioned previously. That means that every plague affect other slaves, peasant Egyptians, and small children including infants. And the reason that the Hebrew god does this is because he is showing the all to familiar human trait...racism. The Hebrew are his chosen people and he continually slaughters or orders his chosen to slaughter others....and at no point do jews or apologists ever stop to think that ancient greeks thought they were chosen, as did the Hindus, as did the Japanese, as did the Incans. It's just sort of weird that every cultures god created them first and choses them, but we have here the one "true" god prancing around the middle east as a burning bush only giving his laws to one small tribe out of an entire world (and that's after letting us have no direction for the first 70,000 to 200,000 years of our existence depending on what evolutionary scale you want to believe). Not very believable.
And after all that, if I were wrong on every level, I still think that besides every piece of biblical rhetoric we have heard here, every apology, every justification, that any being willing to kill infants in their cribs to punish the political choices of a pharaoh and his powerful advisors must either be limited and choosing the lesser of evils or limitless and evil enough to perform genocides on a whim.
Answering from my phone so I'll be brief:
Even the poorest of whites treated black slaves and free blacks with contempt. Oppression is not about slavery. The Jews were oppressed in the Holocaust, but they were not slaves. Blacks continued to be oppressed even after slavery was abolished. And don't even let me talk about how women have been oppressed.
As I stated earlier, God is limited to act within the laws of nature in this realm. Cause always has an effect on this earthly plane. God has the power to supersede cause and effect. It seems to me that you have an expectation that if God loves us, then He would make heaven on earth. But sin can't exist for everything to be perfect. And as long as people sin freely and at will, they wouldn't be worthy of this utopian society at any rate. All God wants is for people to prove they are worthy of the perfection of heaven that awaits you when your soul escapes its earthly vessel.
You know, I think a big part of the communication barrier here is the way you perceive death. To you, death is a horrible event. I see death as a release from the evil that exists on earth.
I understand oppression...but saying that EVERY poor white treated blacks bad....or the over generalization of any other is statistically an impossibility. Besides, many poor whites actively tried to fee the slaves, so it only stands to reason that there were many good Egyptians out there, even if they were a minority, that were kind to the Hebrews. And they were punished like everyone else.
And when did these rules and regulations about god having to obey the natural order of things in this realm come about? Sounds to me like people once again under the guise of philosophy or intellectualism couldn't make sense of things in the bible so they just started making things up. Because turning rivers to blood, raining frogs from the sky, talking, burning bushes, angel visitations and pillars of fire don't seem very natural to me. Neither do virgin births.
So your argument is go obeys natural laws on earth except when he doesn't. Well, I think those bases are covered.
Alright, this is my last post tonight because I just can't do this from my phone. But, I know that this has been said to you before. All of your references that you believe proves the falsehood of God are from the Old Testament. Things changed after Christ died. Groups of people weren't punished for sin anymore. The individual became accountable for their own actions. Over-dramatic miracles were no longer necessary to prove God's existence because the Holy Spirit now exists to touch every individual that welcomes it.
You have a choice. I and many other Christians respect that choice because that's what Christ taught. But Christians aren't perfect and there are lots of hypocrites in this world that claim Christ but are not tolerant of others like Christ has taught them to be. I'm sorry that you have had to deal with people like them, but just like you believe that it wasn't fair to condemn the actions of many for the sake of a few (and honestly I believe it was probably more like most), don't condemn all Christians because of a few hypocrites.0 -
You keep skipping past the point that it was not that God did not prevent these people in the bible from dying, his direct actions or orders led to their death. I do not believe that anyone here is saying that no one should ever die. We just ask that our God not kill us out of sport.
I actually did reply to this earlier. You sort of missed it because I had replied to Lucky and it moved the thread to another page. Anyway, I'm going to break this down.Also, he wasn't just smiting the wicked. All those Egyptian first born were not wicked.
The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt.Not everyone in Sodom or Gomorrah were wicked.
Lot was the only righteous person in Sodom. It clearly states in Genesis that "all the men, young and old" surrounded Lot's house because they wanted to have sex with the two visitors. In Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, the bible outlines how "uncleanness" corrupts the entire community. The customs of the societies of Sodom and Gomorrah were sinful and socially accepted. Children were being raised to follow those same customs. Lot's entire family was saved, but his wife turned back, leaving only Lot and his daughters. When Lot and his daughters were hiding in the cave, they got Lot drunk and seduced them so they could become pregnant with his children. They had been exposed to the sinful customs of Sodom and Gomorrah and adopted those customs. So yes, the entirety community was punished, including children, because those children would grow up to continue the sinful ways of their parents.Job's family was not wicked.
The very first chapter of Job talks about how Job's sons would make feasts and have celebrations and Job's daughters would join them, and then Job would have to purify his children. Now, it's not directly stated, but it's pretty easy to deduce that Job's children were having sex with each other which was sinful. So yes, Job's children were wicked, and God punished them for their wickedness, and in the process to test Job's faith. Part of the reason why it is not directly stated that Job's children were sinning and being punished for their sins is because the whole purpose of the book of Job is to demonstrate how God rewards the faithful and not how God punishes the wicked. God knew that losing his children would hurt Job, and He didn't wish to hurt Job. But his children were wicked and were not going to change. So as long as Job proved he had more faith, love, and obedience than his wicked children, then Job was blessed with more children so that he could start over.Not everyone on the planet who died in the Biblical floods were wicked.
Alright... I'm going to quote my bible directly here.
Gen 6:5-6 "The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they though or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart."
You ever start a project and then somewhere in the process realized that something went terribly wrong and the whole thing was ruined. That's what happened here. Just as with Sodom and Gomorrah, the children were just as corrupted as the parents. I'm sure you are familiar with the expression "a few bad apples ruins the whole bunch."Not every inhabitant of Canaan which were slaughtered in the Israelite invasion/conquest were wicked.
Just like in the previous arguments, it is often mentioned throughout Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy that the Canaanites were sinful, and just as I stated in previous arguments, the children were corrupted as well.
God doesn't like to destroy His creation. It clearly states that way back in Genesis, but just as you proclaim that evil should never be tolerated, God does not tolerate it. For each of those communities, the sinful ways became so commonplace that there wasn't anyway to save anyone from it. That is until Christ. And because it pains God to have to destroy His creation for the sake of evil, that is why He gave His son to die for all the evils of the world so that He would not have to destroy people for the sake of evil ever again.
Okay, first, you are justifying genocide because of differences in customs.
Secondly, the sin in Sodom and Gamorah is actually not sexual in nature. They were breaking the rules of hospitality. That being said, they were wicked and sinful because they did not bow to God. They had gods and beliefs of their own so God gave them a death sentence.
Actually, as jenbit stated, history is written by the victors and the sinfulness of the conquered becomes codified. This pretty much covers all of your points except for the oddness of the Job family argument. This is an angle I have never heard. Job's only sin was that he questioned why God was punishing him. Other than that he was faultless. The true message in the Book of Job (not meant to be a historical account) is that no matter what suffering you receive in life, it is for reasons that may not be readily known to you until God reveals them to you. To try to claim that Job's family were wicked or sinful is just blind justification. If they truly were sinful, would the devil have not just pointed out to God that his household is full of sinners? It destroys the entire narrative.0 -
This is all I have time to reply to.
""""""""""""The Egyptians, as a whole, were oppressing the Israelites. God hates oppression in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, he gives the Hebrews instructions on how to treat slaves. They are only allowed to keep them for a limited amount of time, and then the slave can stay if he chooses to after that time frame has ended. When the Hebrews came to Egypt, they were welcomed as favor to Joseph for saving them from famine, but once Joseph was gone, the subsequent generations forgot that favor. The Pharoah was asked many times to allow the Israelites to leave, but he, and his people, were greedy and wanted to keep the Hebrews and continue to relish in the wealth the Hebrews were creating for them while keeping them in poor conditions and treating them abysmally. The Pharoah refused to let the Israelites leave over and over in spite of whatever his kingdom was subjected to. He was not moved when the water turned to blood. He was not moved when the frogs, gnats, and flies overwhelmed their homes. He was not moved when the livestock got sick or when the people were covered in painful boils. He was not moved when hail destroyed their homes or when locusts came and destroyed all of the crops. After all that, he just continued to oppress the Hebrews.
Have you ever known an addict or an alcoholic? Addicts and alcoholics will continue to do wrong no matter how badly it affects others... over and over and over. When do they finally stop? When they lose something far too precious to make the sacrifice seem worth it. So... that is what God had to do to Pharoah and the Egyptians (because the Egyptians begged Pharoah not to let the Hebrews leave). He had to take the firstborn of Egypt so that they would comply (this also an example of how the relationship between God and humans is like parent and child).
I'd also like to add that in Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, God often reiterates a command to treat foreigners with love and respect because the Hebrews were also once foreigners in Egypt. """""""""""""""
The Egyptians as a whole were oppressing the Israelites. Wrong. The ruling class of the Egyptians weren't likely to be just oppressing the Hebrews. Lower class Egyptians were as likely to be slaves as anyone else and lets not forget about prisoners of war. In what empire during our entire written history did the poor of a nation get to own slaves? But now that more and more history of ancient Egypt is being unearthed, it is looking more and more that the pyramids weren't built by slaves at all, but free Egyptian workers.
Next, if there was slaves in Egypt including the Hebrews as said in the bible, they would not have been the only ones as I mentioned previously. That means that every plague affect other slaves, peasant Egyptians, and small children including infants. And the reason that the Hebrew god does this is because he is showing the all to familiar human trait...racism. The Hebrew are his chosen people and he continually slaughters or orders his chosen to slaughter others....and at no point do jews or apologists ever stop to think that ancient greeks thought they were chosen, as did the Hindus, as did the Japanese, as did the Incans. It's just sort of weird that every cultures god created them first and choses them, but we have here the one "true" god prancing around the middle east as a burning bush only giving his laws to one small tribe out of an entire world (and that's after letting us have no direction for the first 70,000 to 200,000 years of our existence depending on what evolutionary scale you want to believe). Not very believable.
And after all that, if I were wrong on every level, I still think that besides every piece of biblical rhetoric we have heard here, every apology, every justification, that any being willing to kill infants in their cribs to punish the political choices of a pharaoh and his powerful advisors must either be limited and choosing the lesser of evils or limitless and evil enough to perform genocides on a whim.
Answering from my phone so I'll be brief:
Even the poorest of whites treated black slaves and free blacks with contempt. Oppression is not about slavery. The Jews were oppressed in the Holocaust, but they were not slaves. Blacks continued to be oppressed even after slavery was abolished. And don't even let me talk about how women have been oppressed.
As I stated earlier, God is limited to act within the laws of nature in this realm. Cause always has an effect on this earthly plane. God has the power to supersede cause and effect. It seems to me that you have an expectation that if God loves us, then He would make heaven on earth. But sin can't exist for everything to be perfect. And as long as people sin freely and at will, they wouldn't be worthy of this utopian society at any rate. All God wants is for people to prove they are worthy of the perfection of heaven that awaits you when your soul escapes its earthly vessel.
You know, I think a big part of the communication barrier here is the way you perceive death. To you, death is a horrible event. I see death as a release from the evil that exists on earth.
I understand oppression...but saying that EVERY poor white treated blacks bad....or the over generalization of any other is statistically an impossibility. Besides, many poor whites actively tried to fee the slaves, so it only stands to reason that there were many good Egyptians out there, even if they were a minority, that were kind to the Hebrews. And they were punished like everyone else.
And when did these rules and regulations about god having to obey the natural order of things in this realm come about? Sounds to me like people once again under the guise of philosophy or intellectualism couldn't make sense of things in the bible so they just started making things up. Because turning rivers to blood, raining frogs from the sky, talking, burning bushes, angel visitations and pillars of fire don't seem very natural to me. Neither do virgin births.
So your argument is go obeys natural laws on earth except when he doesn't. Well, I think those bases are covered.
Alright, this is my last post tonight because I just can't do this from my phone. But, I know that this has been said to you before. All of your references that you believe proves the falsehood of God are from the Old Testament. Things changed after Christ died. Groups of people weren't punished for sin anymore. The individual became accountable for their own actions. Over-dramatic miracles were no longer necessary to prove God's existence because the Holy Spirit now exists to touch every individual that welcomes it.
You have a choice. I and many other Christians respect that choice because that's what Christ taught. But Christians aren't perfect and there are lots of hypocrites in this world that claim Christ but are not tolerant of others like Christ has taught them to be. I'm sorry that you have had to deal with people like them, but just like you believe that it wasn't fair to condemn the actions of many for the sake of a few (and honestly I believe it was probably more like most), don't condemn all Christians because of a few hypocrites.
We can come back to it tomorrow then. And I am not making rash judgments about all Christians morality or yours in every aspect of your lives. I am trying to debate the morality of the topics we have dived into. Trust me, I know of no group that has a monopoly on goodness, atheists included.0
