GeoTheo

The only people who believe in a sadistic God are atheists. No one worships God because they think he is a sadist. The idea of the substitutionary atonement was to get rid of guilt.
The incarnation is meant to show that God empathizes with us to such a high degree that he will take our punishment for us.

Bible Humper

Bzzzt! Do we have to dig out the parts of the OT which describe how to sacrifice animals, and burn them nicely so that there is a "savoury" aroma to float up to the deity's cloud castle?

And I already know that he considers this "debt" we owed him to be paid in full since he sacrificed his avatar to himself, but the fact that he demanded sacrifices before he bribed himself proves that he likes it, but just doesn't require it anymore.

GeoTheo

Dig 'em out. You obviously are missing somthing.
The savor is not from God getting his jollies from
them killing the animals. These were frickin' farmers. They killed animals all the time. Don't you know any farmers? You have to look at in the context of the people writing it. Killing livestock is not sadistic to a farmer.
They believed God was pleased because it was offered as a gift.

Bible Humper

Ok, if you honestly don't know what I'm talking about then I'll track them down tomorrow.


Right, it was from the smell of the priests burning the carcasses.

Not ritualistically. The animal sacrifices to Yahweh were like any other sacrifices in other religions.

By this logic, human sacrifice wasn't really a "ritual sacrifice" because the autocrats in charge of those pagan societies were warlords who "killed men all the time" so it seemed natural to them too.

For food, or for ritual?

All sacrifices are gifts to the gods, those delivered to Yahweh were no different. This ritual to Yahweh also has the same genesis as the others, it is natural after people have supposed that there are supernatural entities responsible for everything unknown or misunderstood to try and gain the favor of said entities. Giving something that they themselves value is a natural expression of this, as shown by the practice of sacrifice being found in many religions throughout the world.

Even though you disagree regarding your own deity, think of the other deities only and then remember that it has to look the same for yours so that we can have free will to believe in him or not.

Sapient

Gary, our minds work similarly apparently. I've always said "God is like a snowflake, no two gods are alike." In fact, I'm even going to be conducting a survey on it in my hometown (big city) and the results will be part of a show on the Atheist Radio Network (show yet to be determined). I'm going to compile a list of 10 questions about "What is God?" and take it to the streets, ask everybody I can, and see what we come up with. After 10 questions each, I think I can be sure that we will see that EVERYBODY has a different delusion of what God is.

Nice to meet you.

Sapient

Watch what you say there..... God is an atheist, you wouldn't want to blaspheme him.

Llyricist

This is just silly, atheists don't believe in ANY sort of god. They are just clear headed enough to recognize that the god described in the bible is in his character, sadistic (and demented, twisted and incredibly arbitrary).

Tell that to anyone who believes based on Pascal's wager.

But those you refer to often seem to just give god an excuse to behave that way because "he must have had a good reason" or some other such excuse. Atheists just hold the god described in the bible to the same moral standards they would apply to humans, and find he comes up short.

Tell that to the Catholics!

Like a Father grounding himself for 2 weeks because his son was caught smoking in school??? What a guy!!!

But seriously, this seems to be a masochistic aspect of a sado-masochistic mindset. So god is kinky too??

(On Edit): There is also the fact that god set us up for "the Fall" to begin with, creating Adam and Eve with no concept of good or evil, then giving them a command that they had no way of knowing was wrong to disobey, then punishing them for all eternity for not obeying. This is pretty close to the definition of sadistic. As a hypothetical parellel situation, you get a puppy, the puppy doesn't know it's wrong to piddle on the floor until you somehow train it to understand. Yes this most often involves punishment, but a finite punishment, and also a finite reward for obeying. If you were to subject the puppy to unending punishment the first time he piddled on the floor, I think that qualifies a sadistic. But then if you changed your mind, and castrated yourself to atone for the dog's piddling on the floor (which the dog never stopped doing because the punishment has become it's natural condition and can no longer recognize what the punishment was for, or even THAT it is a punishment), I think they'd cart you away to the funny house.

[ November 18, 2002: Message edited by: Llyricist ]</p>

Jobar

Amos, you're wrong. Eckhart was executed for statements like "God must be very I, and I very God." And it's still considered a heresy, though I don't know if it has a specific name; it is simply pantheism. And that was well before the Reformation. You can look it up. (I also suggest you look up Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), for an unpleasant example of what your Church had become before the Reformation.)

As to being foolish enough to try to talk about it- Lao Tzu said "Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know." I notice that the old boy was speaking when he said that, though. Our attempts to talk about it may always be, in the words of the Rubbiyat, "about it and about"- but I think you and I are both talking about the same thing, as closely as words can approximate.

Amos

OK, no objection. I have heard of Eckhart but do not know him. If that is the case it certainly is wrong to use such language because that would scatter the flock because in the end religion is just a mind-game we play to get to a desired end. That is to say, if salvation takes place in your onw mind religion must be the beginning and the end of the mind game we play.

In other words, if the unfolding of the mystery of faith must land us in heaven it would be wrong for those in heaven to disclose the mystery of faith. THAT is why they don't say. It would also BE wrong to 'say' because if you remove the mystery from the religion you may as well shut the doors . . . which is why sola scriptura can't work and is why I suggest that they burn their own bibles and shut the doors for their own good.

[ November 18, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Biff the unclean

The only people who believe in a sadistic God are atheists.
That's because Christians turn a blind eye to sadism when they see it in the bible. They embrace it, but they can't see it as sadism. On another thread (Acts of Violence) about Acts a Xian tells how a husband a wife being murdered for over not turning over every last cent of their life savings to St Peter is a good thing, and if they could speak they would say so themselves.
Even the best, the nicest part of the bible, the "Golden Rule"
(Matt7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.) is followed in the very next line by extreme sadism (7:13 Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 7:14 Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.) where Jesus condemns most of the people on Earth to an eternity in hell.
Eternal suffering in the pit of hell for the majority of mankind is the quintessence of sadistic concepts.