Totalitarianist

Murdering, killing, whatever. I prefer the word killing.

doodad

I appreciate your concern about religion evolving beyond religion, but to state that you are agnostic and then to critize God's behavior makes me wonder just what you do believe or not believe. Another point. What's the relative number of atheists in the world got to do with what you are saying?

Your last paragraph does a little better, and has merit. Religion is a mind game that is intended to promote acceptable behavior, and there are
those who abuse its intended pupose. Can we really blame God for that?

doodad

If you think you are nothing more than a piece of meant then you must have a problem with self worth.

I think that most Christians do not believe that they will live together as a mortal being?

Churches have built and operated some very nice hospitals down thru the years. In more recent times the high costs of health care equipment has driven churches out of the field for lack of capital.

Totalitarianist

He was assuming that He does exist based on the notions of particular religions to logically and morally question adherents to that particular faith and the ludicrous illogic found in specific holy texts.

doodad

Thank you. Stated otherwise, for the sake of discussion and in order to make his point, he assumed that God existed.

Much of the biblical text seems to be more symbolic in nature than factual. For example, the account of the great flood serves to say that those who were evil would be lost and those who were not would be saved.

The Other Michael

I believe I've seen recent reports (last year or two) that the Catholic hospital system is growing, and taking over more 'secular' hospitals.

This of course brings up problems when staff/patients are seeking to deliver/receive services that the Catholic hierarchy frowns on.

cheers,
Michael

doodad

That could be that the Catholic hospital system is growing, but what I see is the Protest based hospitals selling out to large health care corporations. As far as the hierarchy frowning on certain services I agree that could pose a problem for some patients.

David M. Payne

I would call myself a strong agnostic/weak atheist. On the agnostic side, I can see situations described in my short story, “The Wailing Pool” as being possible. On the atheist side, I see zero chance of their being a God as portrayed in the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I believe that, because I see no evidence of this God’s existence ever being demonstrability proven by anyone.
Humanity needs to move away from superstition and towards a more logical interaction with the world as it is.

As for your question, “can we really blame God for that?” No strictly speaking, but that is of course because he is a myth, a non-existent being. This is an argument that is unavailable to you theists for obvious reasons. That said, when we look into the behavior of God as portrayed in the Torah, bible and the Qur’an, we find some disturbing behavior on his part. Genocide, and other acts of barbarity pointed out in this thread and many others here. So while we can’t strictly blame a non-existent God for acts that are done in his name, we can recognize that for those who have evil in their hearts, the belief in God and religion allows them to use these religious constructs to wreak havoc on the world. 9/11 is just the wakeup call.
As for this quote of yours, I agree with you, sort of.
“Religion is a mind game that is intended to promote acceptable behavior, and there are those who abuse its intended purpose.”
Though I would say that it’s intended purpose isn’t a morally positive as it adherents would like to see it portrayed as. We also don’t need religion to promote acceptable behavior anymore, we have secular laws and governing bodies to perform that function.

[ May 25, 2002: Message edited by: David Payne ]</p>

HRG

IOW you appeal to your personal interpretation - without realizing it, however.

What the "Scriptures themselves" say is undefined. All we have are personal interpretations: yours, John Paul's, Luther's, Torquemada's ....
By which objective procedure can we tell that Torquemada - and not you - is misinterpreting the Bible ?

HRG.

DaveJes1979

Tristan Scott
Dave: God does indeed "create" evil, but that does not mean that he engages in evil Himself. God "creates" evil in the sense that He foreordains or predestines it to happen (since evil is not an ontological substance that is "created" like matter - it is a distortion of creation).

Just as a note - you atheists might not want to always celebrate "victory" so early when you throw out a particular verse or argument you assume us Christians have no knowledge of. Trust me, Tristan - I HAVE read Isaiah.

---------------------------------------

Concerning Wordsmyth's post:
The same goes for Wordsmyth's post and the verses he brought up. Foreordaining evil is not DOING evil. I would also point out that "evil" does not mean the same thing in each of those contexts. The word "evil" does not always refer to moral evil - sometimes it refers to calamity ("evil" in the city) and sometimes it refers to general ill-will or negativity.

You are going to have to be more sensitive to lexical and semantic issues before you, in cavalier fashion, throw out verses left or right for your polemic purposes, while having little substantial knowledge of what you are quoting.

The more you ignore those considerations, the more it confirms my impression that atheists, on the whole, simply are not sober thinkers.


wordsmyth
Dave: once again, you are failing to differentiate between knowing good and evil (which we both do) and acknowledging it as such (which man does not do as God).


Dave: easy.

Romans 1
28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Notice the end of this passage supports the very thing I noted - that there is a distinction between what man KNOWS and what he acknowleges. Man "knows God's righteous decree", but instead he "approve[s]" of evil.

Dave: this is overly-simplistic and thus fallacious. Yes - there was a time when God ordered Israel to exact God's wrath on children. But you are wrong in saying that we "xians, like [my]self support killing children." The Christian church has no such mandate to exact God's wrath on humanity. Thus, it is immoral to do so.

You are going to have to be a little bit more thoughtful than this if you want to have an argument against the Christian faith.

Once again I have to ask (which you did not answer) - why is it wrong for God to kill children? The Bible tells us that it would be just for God to wipe out ALL of humanity because of our sin. The atheist worldview does not take that into account, nor does it have a cogent foundation for valuing life to begin with.

Dave: children do not necessarily commit acts of sin, but that does not mean that they are not, by nature, sinful. Acts of sin procede from sinful natures. Not the other way around.

Dave: is that supposed to be a rational argument or rebutal to what I said?

Dave: you are joking, right? You're using a THESAURUS to pour philisophical, epistemic, and theological meaning into terms we are using in our discussion?

Once again - I would refer you to the context of the Scripture you brought up. It is context that defines the meaning of a given word.

Dave Gadbois