Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Oh humans are the problem for sure, but religions and ideologies given humans a clear path to commit atrocities. When you believe and "trust" that god is on your side and that your beliefs are right....you pretty much can come up with a reason to do anything and call it good. Take your example of defending Abraham. You are defending someone who was going to murder their child. In any other circumstance outside of religion, you would be horrified. But your religious conviction demands that you see this as good. That was my point before is that religion makes ordinarily moral people and compel them to say and do terrible things. So you proved my point.
That way the part you want to quote ends up in a box in your post.[/QUOTE]
That's not an answer to the challenge and you don't actually know if "God knows what he is doing", or even if god is a "He" or even if it exists at all. So dismissing an evil action done by a god, just because you presume this god is good, is simply you ignoring evil in favor of a being more powerful that you.
Which proves my point that because you start out with the presumption that god is good, you are willing to look past human suffering and atrocity, so long as it is committed by this same god. That's frightening to say the least, because it also means that if this same god ordered you to do something you know is evil, you'd do it, because as you put it, "God must have a good reason for killing children". It always amazes me that people can justify the killing of innocents and children, just to support their religion. You lost your humanity in all of this.
Which it failed to do and immediately so. I mean, right after the flood your "god" acknowledges the failure of his plan. Genesis says what the plan was, to get rid of the evil in men's hearts, by saving the only righteous family on earth. Yet immediately after says that god learned that he couldn't get rid of the evil in men's hearts and would never again curse the ground of the earth by wiping out mankind. This is an acknowledgement of failure. Your god failed at wiping out the evil in men's hearts, which is why he promised to never commit mass genocide again.
According to whom? I think the people who were just killed or lost their homes in Louisiana just a few days ago due to Hurricane Ida would disagree. I think the parents of children with cancer, or other diseases would disagree. You say that god doesn't cause all children to get cancer? Well god could also cure all those kids, especially the ones of faithful parents who are praying ever day and the prayers will go unanswered. Besides which, did god invent cancer? Or is he completely not in control of the diseases, viruses, bacteria and natural disasters of this world? For a god...he doesn't seem to have much power, or willingness to act. There's an old quote by Epicurus that is still highly relevant today and is logically sound:
Of course it is tough, because there's simply no explanation. The bible clearly states that if you have faith, your prayers will be answered. So when a prayer is not answered, you get all these excuses that are non-biblical such as "God sometimes says no" or "God must have had a good reason" or "Maybe you didn't pray hard enough" or "Maybe your faith wasn't strong enough". The bible says explicitly in Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6, that even if you have a small amount of faith or the "faith of a mustard seed", then nothing will be impossible for you, that you can pray to move a mountain and it will move, or if you pray for a Mulberry tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea, it will obey you. Clearly this isn't true and that's why you have all of these excuses christians give as to why prayer does not work. So, either the bible is wrong, or christians are wrong, or both. Keeping believing won't change anything with regards to the outcome of the prayer. In science, if an experiment fails, the scientist does not say "Oh well, even though this cure didn't work, I'm going to keep believing that it did and just try it again". No, they toss the experiment, declare it a failure and move on to another experiment. Prayer is a failed experiment that people keep trying anyways hoping for a different result, but always get the same outcome. As far as miracles....there isn't one proven miracle in the history of mankind. Every single "miracle" boils down to bold claims with insufficient evidence to back them and almost always a logical fallacy such as "this is unexplainable by science, it must be god". I've taken on every single "miracle" referenced to me by a believer and they are always found wanting. Not because I'm biased, but because I base my beliefs upon evidence and not emotion.
You left some wiggle room that you "doubt" you would sacrifice your son. Right there is the horror of religion, that you could even consider it an option. I would not hesitate in telling that god to go F himself. My son is my world and I would never sacrifice him to some insecure being to prove my loyalty to them. Nothing Abraham did was good, because he was willing to kill his son for a god, just to prove loyalty. That's sick and sadistic and shows no regard for human life. Jepthah made a deal with god. The deal was, "God, help me win this battle and I'll sacrifice the first thing that comes through my door." God accepted the deal, Jepthah won his war and the first thing to go through his door was his daughter. God knew it would be his daughter, because it's god right? God knows everything. It makes no difference that Jepthah did it, because Abraham was also going to kill his son, but god stopped it. But god did not send an angel to stop Jepthah and there was time! It even says god gave him a few more days with his daughter and then allowed Jepthah to push a sword through his daughters heart, fulfilling the deal. In any other context, people would look at this and say "This must have been a deal with the devil since it involved war and sacrificing a child!!!" Yet it was not! It was your god, who is supposedly the good one, but killed millions upon millions in the OT, took sides in wars, killed children, women, babies, and released plagues upon people. You can literally do a body count of the people killed directly by god or directed to be killed by god through others and it totals over 2 million people and that's in actual numbers referenced in the bible. If you estimate with other events where specific numbers weren't listed, not to mention the global flood, that number goes up significantly! Know how many people Satan killed in the bible? About a dozen and the majority were in his bet over Job where god allowed Satan to kill his family. It amazes me that people could read the bible and say that god is the good one in this story.
