TomboyMom

You realize that there is nothing in the OT to support your claim that the innocent victims of these repeated massacres and genocides were either violent of barbaric? The usual OT text formula goes:
I gave you this land. Now go kill everyone in it.
That's it.
Please explain how killing people, especially nursing babies, causes them to become more loving and empathic.

TomboyMom

Does that apply to all the Gods who command their followers to slaughter their neighbors indiscriminately, or only Yahweh? Just asking.
Let me follow this. The reason that God commands his followers to kill everyone of their neighbors except the virgin women, which they should take for themselves, is to transform their ethics to empathy and love? Anyway, does that really make sense to you? Because, frankly, as a non-believer, it sounds...insane, and in a bad way.
Be even gladder you weren't a poor Thisite or Thatite on the receiving end, cuz you'd be murdered. Are you honestly trying to say with a straight face that Jesus is the only person in the world who has ever preached loving your neighbors? Do I really have to demonstrate how false this is? Virtually every major religion teaches this. I would say that Christianity is like that play someone reviewed, both good and original, but "what is original is not good, and what is good is not original."

RUmike

Gamera,

You said above that you would not want to live in a world where no one dies. Will you be refusing entry to heaven once accepted? Or do you not believe that heaven exists? Or perhaps it does exist, but people can die there?

And do people have free will in heaven? If so, why don't murders and other atrocities happen there? If you say because people completely repent and beome righteous in the face of God himself in heaven (or some similar reasoning), then why couldn't that just be done on Earth in the first place?

ChandraRama

Sorry,this exists in Hinduism. Since God exists in everyone from neighbor to enemy, the love should permeat all according to Advaitin philosophy of Hinduism.

spin

Although I agree with you, it doesn't sit well with rugged american individualism and the corollary that you don't need to help the poor because they have free will and could get out of their misery if they wanted.


spin

Quetzalcoatl

Gamera must be really dreading heaven. After all he is disgusted by the idea of losing his humanness, which necessarily involves suffering. So when Yahweh tells him to enter heaven I guess he will refuse and join the people in Hell. After all that is where the suffering will be. What better chance for personal growth and to revel in ones humanness.

It is utterly frightening to me how people can justify the slaughter of babies because their god is choice commanded it.

RUmike

LOL. Thank you, this is what I have been saying all along. I look forward to what he says in reply.

Sven

"Tend" is hte right word. There are loads of examples of rich (or at least wealthy) people being creative: Cavendish. Goethe. Lavoisier.

Regarding your argument that evil exists because of free will (cotrect me if this paraphrase is too simple):
There are lots of animal species with close to no "free will", which nevertheless can suffer. How does this fit into your explanation?

Gamera

You state this as if it were not in dispute. The issue of animal consciousness and hence ability to suffer is not something that you can resolve by just saying it's resolved.

But I guess I don't really understand your question. Animals aren't free moral agents -- they don't make moral choices, which is what I mean by free will. So the suffering they inflict on other animals (assuming it is suffering) isn't the result moral choice, but more like what I call Type 2 suffering -- i.e., natural causes due to physical limitations of this universe.

Gamera

Show us where, and show us the date of the text. I suspect it is a backformation. Indeed, I have examined this issue carefully and cannot find in any earlier text in any religion the expression found in Matthew 5 relating to loving one's enemy.