John A. Broussard

So god makes the unborn, toddlers and other innocents suffer in order to develop in them "a hunger to not be separated from God." Your god then seems to be incapable of sparing them--or enjoys inflicting suffering on them.

Does he find it impossible to inculcate a hunger for god without inflicting agony on the potential convert first?

Which is it? Inability or lack of concern?

Thanks.

bfniii

just to make sure we're clear, you haven't responded to the two issues i raised in my last post.

i'm not pretending there was another set of walls jack. i'm saying that the word is general, therefore he is not referring to any one specific set of walls. if he were as you claim, he would have specified using something akin to the examples i provided.

i don't know what else to say except that you are incorrect. let's review:

26:4 - I will scrape the soil from her and turn her into a bare rock.
26:13 - I will put an end to the noise of your songs, and the sound of your lyres will no longer be heard. 14 I will turn you into a bare rock, and you will be a place to spread nets.
26:19-21 - When I make you a ruined city like [other] deserted cities, when I raise up the deep against you so that the mighty waters cover you, 20 then I will bring you down [to be] with those who descend to the Pit, to the people of antiquity. I will make you dwell in the underworld like the ancient ruins, with those who descend to the Pit, so that you will no longer be inhabited or display [your] splendor in the land of the living. 21 I will make you an object of horror, and you will no longer exist.

these are examples of "I will" being a specific means of destruction.

let me clarify what i am trying to say. verse numbers didn't come along until well after the original manuscripts were written. i don't think it's a case of switching subjects in mid verse. verse 14 completes an idea and verse 15 starts a new idea. the last "you" of 7-14 sums up what has come before. the first two "you" in 14, like the ones from 7-14, were specifically fulfilled. that's what i was referring to in regards to the mainland. the last "you" was fulfilled in general when the city-state of tyre was no longer controlled by it's own will. the subject of each "you" remains the same; tyre (the place, the people, the establishment). the fulfillment of each "you" is not restricted as you are trying to make it out to be.

if you accept that altruism and selfishness conflict, then there is no good or evil. all things are acceptable and permissable because evolution has left us devoid of any standard to follow. it's every man for himself. if a person chooses to be altruistic, then they do so at their own peril. even if there is some biological explanation for either or both (people are X because of genetic disposition), the conflict and lack of a standard has not been resolved because evolution is still responsible.

because they are doing what is right for them. how can you deny them this? you have no grounds to deny the nazis the right to ethnically cleanse.

this rhetoric answers nothing. you have admitted that if evolution is to be credited, then it is credited with nothing but conflict. you haven't answered WHY atrocities are not acceptable. if a society is doing what is right for them and that action harms other societies, then they are not in the wrong because they are following your nebulous "social instinct".

this is an absolutely absurd proposition. the divine rape you refer to merely obviates whatever choices we might have made. God would have compelled us to not make choices that lead to disobedience and therefore suffering.

how could God impart the idea of pain without us experiencing it? without the sensation, it would be meaningless. you are trying to illogically argue that we could be afforded "suffering-as-education" without the suffering. it's semantics anyway. the idea of pain IS pain. without the sensation of pain, the converse sensation of bliss is meaningless. it's the same old tired argument that we be allowed to have freewill, but not suffer the consequences.

nope. our suffering does not make God evil. to remove suffering would be to eliminate a valuable experience from the human condition thus making God less than benevolent.

a flawed argument full of excluded middle.

this is the same old "we don't deserve THIS punishment".

respectfully jack, you have no standards. you attribute everything to cold, impersonal evolution. standards have no meaning to such a person. they're illusory and vagarious.

thank goodness. the deity who you think is God is awful. fortunately, not everyone shares the same confusion.

is it that way merely because you claim it is, or do you have some reason for making these statements?

so you have no response to my latest post?

the entire book! God is portrayed as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

so you have no quote. can you at least cut and paste where someone else provided such a quote?

so you have no quote. that's all you had to say.

i have read back through this line and you indeed have not provided such a response to the charge i level. it is a blatant appeal to numbers which is futhered by the fact that there are people who are aware of jewish rejections of Jesus but remain christian despite them.

here is one such response: now just prove that "seed" cannot mean "followers" and that "prolong" cannot mean "legacy".

here is a response i provided: some do. they're called messianic jews.

they can believe whatever they like. that certainly doesn't make it right. i imagine it's difficult to admit you missed one of the most important markers in your religion's history. besides, there are people who read their beliefs and remain christian. explain that.

on the question of why they have remained that way for such a long time; maybe they're persistent. people can be persistently wrong.

so you are still maintaining that christians are ignorant of objections to their religion (including messianic jews).

you continue to try to deflect onto me the fact that you were the one who initially appealed to jews. you have yet, after much evasion and many posts, to acknowledge that your appeal must include those who do convert to christianity (including first century jews) and those who are christian who are aware of jewish messianic rejection but remain christian.

i guess you will be still waiting until you provide responses to these requests.

your so-called evidence is not supported by everyone and remains unproven in this thread.

so that's supposed to make your case? these neutral scholars (whatever that means) are free from bias? who are these neutral scholars? what are they scholars of? what is their authority?

according to you. i think deep down, you realize it's up to the tacit readers to make their own judgment, not you or your irresponsible statements. making such statements seems to indicate a form of denial regarding the state of the discussion.

oh i can continue. but it's a question of productivity. getting you to respond to the points raised in my posts is most difficult.

that's right. it's the same issue as the egyptian miracles. there are books out there on the subject of flood dating. discussing it with you has yet to motivate you to read them.

bfniii

you say this why?

what gives you this idea?

are other methods necessary? what other kinds of ameliorations do you opine?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to bfniii: I noticed that you were discussing the Tyre prophecy. Do you have any scholarly references that accurately date the prophecy? If not, then you do not have any intelligent arguments to make whatsoever. Ezekiel 26 says that Nebuchadnezzar would go down "all" of the streets of the mainland settlement, tear down its towers, etc., but the Britannica 2002 Deluxe edition says "For much of the 8th and 7th centuries BC the town was subject to Assyria, and in 585–573 it successfully withstood a prolonged siege by the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II."

Ezekiel 26:6 says "And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the Lord." Obviously, not enough of the daughters in the field were killed for Nebuchadnezzar to defeat the mainland settlement. There is no evidence that the residents of Tyre attributed Nebuchadnezzar's attacks to God. Even if they did, the residents would have concluded that not even God plus the most powerful army in that part of the world could defeat them.

John A. Broussard

Thanks for your non-answers to the question of why god makes innocent people suffer.

How about an answer this time. Is it that god doesn't care? Is it that god can't prevent suffering?


Thanks, again, for trying.

bfniii

good grief. that's what most of this thread of 300+ posts has been about.

if you say so. your timing is impeccable.

you seem to misrepresent the article. you imply specificity regarding the mainland where the article does not. it is generally accepted that the island is what indeed withstood the siege of nebuchadnezzar but not the mainland.

addressed above.

this doesn't seem relevant to the issue of the fulfillment of the prophecy.

bfniii

i am trying to address your assumptions and why you have them because they are relevant to the issue. please provide for me why you assume that our suffering implies that God is negligent and unjust.

in regards to toddlers, infants, etc., you claim God seems incapable of sparing them. what gives you this idea?

where do you get the idea that God enjoys our suffering?

you asked if God was incapable of drawing us to Him. are other ways necessary? what other ways can exist?

who are these innocent people that are continually referred to?

Jack the Bodiless

On the miracles of the Egyptian priests:
I note that you don't quote these "issues" in your reply. You are apparently attempting to deflect the attention of the casual reader away from your ongoing failure to explain how the Egyptian priests could be so amazingly prepared to reproduce on demand, without foreknowledge, various miracles specified by Moses.

If evasion fails, try deflection. Unfortunately deflection won't work either. So now what?

On Tyre's walls:
How could he NOT be referring to the only set of Tyrian defensive walls known, the 150-feet-high walls of the island fortress, the only set mentioned by ANY source at all... UNLESS you are pretending that another set existed?

IF another set DID exist, THEN it would be necessary to explain WHICH set was being referred to, and Ezekiel did not. As the actual walls of Tyre held back Nebby for more than a decade, and he utterly failed to breach them: they played a pivotal role in how events unfolded.

On Tyre's "means of destruction":
"I will" is NOT a specific means of destruction. To qualify as such, it would have to describe the method of destruction. Human armies are the only clearly-described method: the passages you cite could be allegorical, but if they are NOT interpreted as such, they refer to events which ALSO did not happen. Tyre was never swallowed up by the sea, nor sucked into a giant pit.

On your subject-switching:
You are contradicting yourself again. Is "you" the place, or the people, or the establishment? You change the context on a whim, with no justification whatsoever, and then deny that you are doing so!

The failure of the Tyre "prophecy" is obvious to any reasonable person. I see no point in debating this further with those who have abandoned reason.

On evolution and morality:
Why are you so incapable of reading what I type?

You are STILL pretending that evolution is ONLY responsible for SELFISHNESS.

You are repeatedly IGNORING my claim that evolution is also responsible for ALTRUISM.

Some people help others, and evolution explains this. You don't like this idea, so you will continue to pretend that altruism would not exist in a purely naturalistic Universe.
Nonsense. How does the existence of conflict imply that evolution is responsible for NOTHING BUT conflict?

Are you prepared to use the same standard when discussing Christianity: that wars between rival denominations mean that it's responsible for nothing but conflict? Of course not!

It is quite obvious that you have no desire to actually discuss this issue.
Evolution readily explains tribalism. We have a "social instinct" which varies according to the degree of perceived "closeness" to our own family structures. But I sense a deeper confusion here. Evolution simply IS: it is not a moral philosophy, it's just a fact of life (which happens to explain why humans generally HAVE moral philosophies). Evolution doesn't become "wrong" if it also explains why we have less "noble" traits, and non-religious moral systems are no more synonumous with "evolutionism" than they are with any other basic fact of the Universe, such as "flat-Earthism".

On God-implanted knowledge:
So you are AGAIN denying free-will. You've flipped back to a position that it would be impossible to "choose wrongly" except by acting on imperfect information!
Again, this is simply nonsense. Nothing in my hypothetical "God-implanted knowledge" scenario prevents us choosing a painful option, choosing to experience pain if we want to. But we'd know in advance that pain will result, and we'd know exactly what that pain will feel like, just as surely as if we'd "learned the hard way": God would have implanted that knowledge.

On the sacrifice of virgins:
This was "punishment"? Only 32 Midianite virgins (precisely one-thousandth of the number captured, and consistent with the rest of the thousandth-part sacrifice) "deserved THIS punishment"?

I am still sometimes surprised by your lack of understanding of the Bible.
YOU certainly do. This is another "break-out" from the "bfniii principle". Remember, YOU said earlier that you don't have a problem with this human sacrifice.

On your "adult human volunteers" fantasy, and the lack of Biblical support for this, and your quoting of a source that does not support your position:
You could try reading what you type sometime.

If you think that "imported not that the person was to be sacrificed or doomed to a violent death" is synonymous with "imported that the person WAS to be sacrificed or doomed to a violent death", then your comprehension difficulties are very, VERY profound.

You have, again, been defeated on this issue. I note that your response to total defeat is to ask aimless questions. Why is that?
More of the same. I'm still struggling with your idiosyncratic habits, but I'll just have to assume this is some sort of "help, I'm in a dead end, where's the way out?" admission.

On Genesis and the "omnimax God":
I note that you provided no reference, I assume that you cannot. Therefore my point stands.

On the reason for the expulsion from Eden: this has been extensively answered, by various posters, with supporting Biblical quotes. I will again assume that your "no quote?" bleating is a response to being stuck in a dead-end, and deserves no further comment from me.

On Jewish rejection of Jesus:
Not so. This is more evasion/deflection.
You were asked to DEMONSTRATE that the Jews have "misinterpreted" Isaiah. You have not done so. You have not DEMONSTRATED that "seed" can mean "followers" or that "prolong" can mean "legacy".

Instead, you have sought to invent a new language, "bfniii Hebrew". Are you ready to start teaching it to actual Hebrew speakers?
Scholars who are neither Jewish nor Christian have no vested interest in whether or not Jesus fulfilled the messianic requirements.

Another attempt to deflect the casual reader. I created a thread on this: I discussed this topic: YOU did not.

In summary:
I think my case was proved to any reasonable person long, long ago. That isn't why this has dragged on for so long. The person who needs to "see the light" is YOU.

I do not know if you ever will, and I can't say that I care a great deal. But maybe you will eventually reflect on your incoherent performance here, and learn wisdom.

Johnny Skeptic

I haven't spent a lot time in this thread, so will you please quote your widely respected historical sources that accurately date the Tyre prophecy?

That is not true. It is well-known, but obviously not to you, that Nebuchadnezzar did not have a navy, and therefore did not attack the island. You don't by any chance have any historical evidence that Nebuchadnezzar defeated the mainland settlement do you?

It was not addressed above. "In the field" most certainly addresses land, not water. One of the verses that I quoted in Ezekiel 26 said that the people of Tyre would know that the Lord was their adversary, but there is no evidence that such was the case. Even if it was the case, the mainland settlement and the island settlement most certainly were not at all impressed with God's power and sent God's proxy Nebuchanezzar home after his failure to defeat either the mainland settlement or the island settlement.

[/quote=Johnny Skeptic] There is no evidence that the residents of Tyre attributed Nebuchadnezzar's attacks to God. Even if they did, the residents would have concluded that not even God plus the most powerful army in that part of the world could defeat them.[/quote]

It shows that God and the most powerful army in the Middle East were unable to defeat a group of puny humans. There is nothing at all about the Tyre prophecy that indicates divine inspiration even if the prophecy was made before Nebuchadnezzar attacked Tyre.

John A. Broussard

Aren't toddlers (and the unborn) innocent people? If you are pro-abortion and don't believe the unborn are people, just drop them from my question.

God definitely enjoys suffering if he is all-powerful, otherwise there would be no suffering since he could easily prevent it happening with no adverse effects.

The best evidence that god is incapable of sparing the innocent is the fact that he doesn't spare them. Ergo, he seems to like watching them suffer.

I don't remember asking anything about god drawing anyone to him/her or it.

You keep asking me questions about god's needs, wants, motives, drives, etc.
However, I don't happen to believe that a god exists. You do. I'm hardly in a position to tell you what your god is like, though I can point out to contradictions in the god you seem to believe in.

E.g., your god is all powerful, yet cannot prevent the grossest kind of evil happening to mankind--floods, plagues, famine, eathquakes, etc. If you believe in the bible, I'm sure you can find many instances where your god has not only condoned but actually encouraged genocide, requiring the Israelites to kill all of the neighboring people (except for saving the virgin girls for purposes of rape).

Nope. I can't describe your god in any way except to speculate about what your beliefs seem to imply.

Thanks for considering my posts. I look forward to your further answers.