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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

God told Abraham that He was going to find out how sinful the Sodomites were, and if He found at least 10 good Sodomites, He would spare the city for their sakes. He sent two angels to Lot's house, Abraham's brother, and disguised them as men. The bible states, as I cited earlier, that ALL the men of Sodom came to Lot's house and demanded that he send the visitors out so that they could have sex with them. How is demanding Lot to allow them to gang-rape the visitors NOT a sexual sin?

Okay... but the word "sex" has always meant just that. And again... gang-rape... pretty sure that's an evil that would be considered sin.

Okay... but the word "sex" has always meant just that. And again... gang-rape... pretty sure that's an evil that would be considered sin.

Query - why was it evil to gang rape men but not women?

No one said it wasn't. But gang-rape of women isn't mentioned to the best of my knowledge. There were punishments if a man raped a woman and did not take care of her, i.e. marrying her and supporting her.

Okay... but the word "sex" has always meant just that. And again... gang-rape... pretty sure that's an evil that would be considered sin.

Query - why was it evil to gang rape men but not women?

No one said it wasn't. But gang-rape of women isn't mentioned to the best of my knowledge. There were punishments if a man raped a woman and did not take care of her, i.e. marrying her and supporting her.

Genesis 19:8 - "Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof"

Okay... but the word "sex" has always meant just that. And again... gang-rape... pretty sure that's an evil that would be considered sin.

Query - why was it evil to gang rape men but not women?

No one said it wasn't. But gang-rape of women isn't mentioned to the best of my knowledge. There were punishments if a man raped a woman and did not take care of her, i.e. marrying her and supporting her.

Genesis 19:8 - "Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof"

And those same two daughters intoxicated and seduced their father a few chapters later because they feared they would never lose their virginity and have children. What makes you think those two daughters weren't willing, but couldn't find any men that would have sex with them in a city named Sodom, a name that eventually evolved into the word "sodomy"?