Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Nutso »

Sonic Glitch wrote:
Sionnach Glic wrote:So God can do nothing immoral?
Or: Whatever God does is moral?
Who's going to tell Him that He's wrong? Besides Lucifer?
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Sonic Glitch »

Nutso wrote:
Sonic Glitch wrote:
Sionnach Glic wrote:So God can do nothing immoral?
Or: Whatever God does is moral?
Who's going to tell Him that He's wrong? Besides Lucifer?
Just because no-ones going to tell Him he's wrong doesn't make Him right.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Aaron »

Nutso wrote: Who's going to tell Him that He's wrong? Besides Lucifer?
One would think that the feelings of his believers would be important to him. Or potential believers.
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Re: Medical Help Vs. Religious Beliefs

Post by Captain Seafort »

stitch626 wrote:1) You can't bring peace without removing the non-peaceable. Thats like trying to get rid of an infection without removing the bacteria.

2) If you have gangrene, do you let it sit, or do you remove the problem? In the process of removing the gangrene, do you remove every spec of bacteria in your body?
Quite apart from the points others have already raised about equating humans to bacteria, if you have a slightly infected scratch on your foot, to you treat it with antibiotics, amputate at the hip, or amputate at the neck? By the standards of the Old Testament, option three is the course to be followed.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Nickswitz »

Cpl Kendall wrote:
Nutso wrote: Who's going to tell Him that He's wrong? Besides Lucifer?
One would think that the feelings of his believers would be important to him. Or potential believers.

Yeah, but think about this... The Isrealites were his believers... He killed off a couple nations for them. Noah was a believer, he eliminated an entire population for him and his family.

So it seems that he cares exactly about that, what his believers feel.

And also I think Mikey's summation pretty much sums up my thoughts as well.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Aaron »

Yeah, thousands of years ago. Theres no reason why he couldn't "inspire" a rewrite of the bible to update things. "Hey guys, that stuff worked back then cause ancient armies would have slaughtered all the kids and men anyways but these days lets try something a little different."
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Re: Medical Help Vs. Religious Beliefs

Post by stitch626 »

Captain Seafort wrote:
stitch626 wrote:1) You can't bring peace without removing the non-peaceable. Thats like trying to get rid of an infection without removing the bacteria.

2) If you have gangrene, do you let it sit, or do you remove the problem? In the process of removing the gangrene, do you remove every spec of bacteria in your body?
Quite apart from the points others have already raised about equating humans to bacteria, if you have a slightly infected scratch on your foot, to you treat it with antibiotics, amputate at the hip, or amputate at the neck? By the standards of the Old Testament, option three is the course to be followed.
Oh really. I don't remember reading about him wiping out the entire populations of Asia, Africa and the America's.

He limited the death to those who would directly effect and hinder his chosen people. He even spared some non-chosen nations, such as Moab and Edom.


The reason I compare humans to bacteria is because we are very similar. We inhabit a large body (the Earth, along with its host of creatures) and can either help it, do nothing, or infect it.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Aaron »

Egyptian infants would directly interfere and hinder the Jews?

See I don't have a problem with killing the Army, Pharoh, his staff, his family or his hairdresser. I have a problem with the killing of folks who are totally innocent, and I think you'll find thats the point for folks who aren't Christian posting in this thread.

But hey, if you don't have a problem with it, I'm not gonna come break down your door and force you to err...disbelieve.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Lighthawk »

The whole thing is made somewhat worse by god playing everything out like a GM railroading his players. What is the phrase that comes out during the plague thing "and god hardened pharoh's heart". He seemed to do that every time pharoh started to consider that maybe things were getting out of hand and he should just let the jews go.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Sionnach Glic »

You know, I had a damn good reply to this written up an hour ago, then my bloody computer crashes. Fucking typical.

Well, you're just going to have to stick with the abreviated version and like it. :P
Mikey wrote:We in general would consider making love to someone, and then killing them and eating their body, to be immoral. However, we'd be considered lunatics if we proclaimed mantises and black widow spiders to be sinners for doing that very same thing. What those animals do isn't immoral, because they can't be judged by a human moral compass. Flip it and go higher up the chain rather than lower, and it's sort of what I'm saying about G-d.
Mantises aren't judged by human standards because they're not sapient. They have no real awareness of self or the ability to look at their actions from an abstract point of view and think about whether devouring their mate's head is a moraly justifiable action.
Were we to run into a race of alien mantises which were as smart as us and yet still practiced cabibalising their mates, we'd have few qualms about considering them immoral and barbaric.

Similarly, God is more than capable of understanding his actions. He's undoubtedly well aware of what his actions meant, and of considering other possible paths to getting to the solution that he desires. He's undoubtedly able to differentiate between good acts and evil acts (or at least he should be, as he certainly has enough to say on the matter if the Bible is to be believed).

Yet he still commits evil acts which are completely unnecessary and which he must surely know leads to the suffering of innocents. I have a hard time calling any being that would do such a thing anything other than evil. Particularly when it's God's own actions that led to the very problem he's killing people to "solve" ("I shall harden his heart", or whatever the quote was).

I also don't consider "he's God" to be much of an excuse. I'm sure people here have no trouble calling Q a jackass for screwing around with civilisations for his own amusement, and the powers he's demonstrated certainly come close to god-like. Yet you could make these exact same arguments in Q's defence. So why condemn Q, but when it comes to God shrug and claim we can't apply our morals to him? Is it because Q is a fictional character and God is (to the believers here) real?
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Aaron »

God has tenure, thats why Christians, Muslims etc can point and laugh at Scientology but are oblivious to the same sillyness present in their religion. It's basically why all established religions are given a pass in society today. They've been around long enough to be cemented in the culture.
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Re: Medical Help Vs. Religious Beliefs

Post by Captain Seafort »

stitch626 wrote:Oh really. I don't remember reading about him wiping out the entire populations of Asia, Africa and the America's.
Genesis 6:20-23
The reason I compare humans to bacteria is because we are very similar. We inhabit a large body (the Earth, along with its host of creatures) and can either help it, do nothing, or infect it.
The Earth is not a living organism - it's a lump of rock. Moreover bacteria aren't even sentient, so you can't compare their destruction to the murder of sentient, sapient creatures (i.e. people).
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by stitch626 »

Genesis 6:20-23
If your refering to the flood, ther is no evidence that peoples existed that far out.

As it is, its also written that the entire Earth was filled with badness, so that God regretted making man, or something along those lines. The entire Earth, not just the bit that Noah lived in.

The Earth is not a living organism - it's a lump of rock. Moreover bacteria aren't even sentient, so you can't compare their destruction to the murder of sentient, sapient creatures (i.e. people).
The Earth itself is not a living organism, no. But it is like a living organism in that it has many of components (like cells) that form one huge web of life.

We are to bacteria as God is to us. We cannot begin to understand the difference in viewpoint, that would be like an ant trying to understand why we humans kill them.

Considering humans are often caled a disease, an affliction on this planet, I have no problem making such a comparison. After seeing the effects of slash and burn loggers, I will gladly compare that to the effects of gangrene.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by Reliant121 »

There is a distinct difference in that gangrene cannot comprehend that its affects on that which it consumes are bad. It has no sentience and/or sapience, it cannot comprehend what its doing let alone whether its right or wrong. It has no sense of morals.

Humans on the other hand have. We can see whats right and wrong, and can determine whether our actions are positive or negative. We comprehend what we do, and who we are. There is an immense difference between killing a mindless load of cells, and killing a sapient, conscience-driven person, especially en masse.
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Re: Justification Of God's Dubiously Just Acts

Post by stitch626 »

conscience-driven person
Here being the key, 90% of people are not conscience driven. They don't care as long as they get what they want.
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