| Killing Event |
Reference |
Bible's Number |
Estimate |
| 1 |
The Flood of Noah |
Gen 7:23 |
|
20,000,000 |
| 2 |
Abraham's war to rescue Lot |
Gen 14:17-19 |
|
1,000 |
| 3 |
Sodom and Gomorrah |
Gen 19:24 |
|
2,000 |
| 4 |
Lot's wife |
Gen 19:26 |
1 |
1 |
| 5 |
While they were sore, Dinah's brethren slew all the males |
Gen 34:1-31, Judith 9:2-3 |
2 |
1,000 |
| 6 |
Er for being wicked in the sight of the Lord |
Gen 38:7 |
1 |
1 |
| 7 |
Onan for spilling his seed |
Gen 38:10 |
1 |
1 |
| 8 |
A seven year worldwide famine |
Gen 41:25-54 |
|
70,000 |
| 9 |
There will be blood: The first plague of Egypt |
Ex 7:15-27 , Wis 11:7-8 |
|
10,000 |
| 10 |
The seventh plague: hail |
Ex 9:25 |
|
300,000 |
| 11 |
Firstborn Egyptian children |
Ex 12:29-30 |
|
500,000 |
| 12 |
The Lord took off their chariot wheels |
Ex 14:8-26 |
600 |
5,000 |
| 13 |
Amalekites |
Ex 17:13 |
|
1,000 |
| 14 |
Who is on the Lord's side?: Forcing friends and family to kill each other |
Ex 32:27-28 |
3,000 |
3,000 |
| 15 |
Aaron's golden calf |
Ex 32:35 |
|
1,000 |
| 16 |
God burns Aaron's sons to death for offering "strange fire" |
Lev 10:1-3 |
2 |
2 |
| 17 |
A blasphemer is stoned to death |
Lev 24:10-23 |
1 |
1 |
| 18 |
When the people complained, God burned them to death |
Num 11:1 |
|
100 |
| 19 |
While the flesh was still between their teeth, the Lord smote them will a very great plague |
Num 11:33 |
|
10,000 |
| 20 |
Ten scouts are killed for their honest report |
Num 14:35-45 |
10 |
110 |
| 21 |
A man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day is stoned to death |
Num 15:32-35 |
1 |
1 |
| 22 |
Korah, his companions, and their families are buried alive |
Num 16:27 |
3 |
9 |
| 23 |
God burns 250 people to death for burning incense |
Num 16:35 |
250 |
250 |
| 24 |
God kills 14,700 for complaining about God's killings |
Num 16:49 |
14,700 |
14,700 |
| 25 |
The massacre of the Aradies |
Num 21:1-2 |
|
3,000 |
| 26 |
God sent serpents to bite people for complaining about the lack of food and water |
Num 21:6 |
|
100 |
| 27 |
Phineas's double murder: A killing to end God's killing |
Num 25:1-11 |
24,002 |
24,002 |
| 28 |
The Midianite massacre: Have ye saved all the women alive? |
Num 31:1-35 |
6 |
200,000 |
| 29 |
God slowly killed the Israelite army |
Dt 2:14-16 |
|
500,000 |
| 30 |
God the giant killer |
Dt 2:21-22 |
|
5,000 |
| 31 |
God hardens King Sihon's heart so all his people can be killed |
Dt 2:33-34 |
1 |
5,000 |
| 32 |
Og and all the men women, and children in 60 cities |
Dt 3:6 |
1 |
60,000 |
| 33 |
The Jericho massacre |
Jos 6:21 |
|
1,000 |
| 34 |
Achan and his family |
Jos 7:10-26 |
1 |
5 |
| 35 |
The Ai massacre |
Jos 8:1-25 |
12,000 |
12,000 |
| 36 |
God stops the sun so Joshua can get his killing done in the daylight |
Jos 10:10-11 |
|
5,000 |
| 37 |
Five kings killed and hung on trees |
Jos 10:26 |
5 |
10,000 |
| 38 |
Joshua utterly destroyed all that breathed as the Lord commanded |
Jos 10:28-42 |
7 |
7,000 |
| 39 |
The genocide of twenty cities: There was not any left to breathe |
Jos 11:8-12 |
2 |
20,000 |
| 40 |
The Anakim: some more giant killing |
Jos 11:20-21 |
|
5,000 |
| 41 |
The Lord delivered the Canaanites and Perizzites |
Jg 1:4 |
10,000 |
10,000 |
| 42 |
The Jerusalem massacre |
Jg 1:8 |
|
1,000 |
| 43 |
Five massacres, a wedding, and God-proof iron chariots |
Jg 1:9-25 |
|
5,000 |
| 44 |
The Lord delivered Chushanrishathaim |
Jg 3:7-10 |
1 |
1,000 |
| 45 |
Ehud delivers a message from God |
Jg 3:15-22 |
1 |
1 |
| 46 |
God delivers 10,000 lusty Moabites |
Jg 3:28-29 |
10,000 |
10,000 |
| 47 |
Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad |
Jg 3:31 |
600 |
600 |
| 48 |
Barak and God massacre the Canaanites |
Jg 4:15-16 |
|
1,000 |
| 49 |
Jael pounds a tent stake through a sleeping man's skull |
Jg 4:18-22 |
1 |
1 |
| 50 |
Gideon's story: The Lord set every man's sword against his fellow |
Jg 7:22 |
120,000 |
120,000 |
| 51 |
A city is massacred and 1000 burn to death because of God's evil spirit |
Jg 9:23-27 |
1,001 |
2,000 |
| 52 |
The Ammonite massacre |
Jg 11:32-33 |
|
20,000 |
| 53 |
Jephthah's daughter |
Jg 11:39 |
1 |
1 |
| 54 |
42,000 die for failing the "shibboleth" test |
Jg 12:4-7 |
42,000 |
42,000 |
| 55 |
Samson murdered 30 men for their clothes |
Jg 14:19 |
30 |
30 |
| 56 |
Samson killed 1000 men with the jawbone of an ass |
Jg 15:14-15 |
1,000 |
1,000 |
| 57 |
Samson killed 3000 in a suicide terrorist attack |
Jg 16:27-30 |
3,000 |
3,000 |
| 58 |
A holy civil war (it had something to do with rotting concubine body part messages) |
Jg 20:35-37 |
65,100 |
65,100 |
| 59 |
The end of Judges: two genocides and 200 stolen virgins |
Jg 21:10-14 |
|
4,000 |
| 60 |
God killed Eli's sons and 34,000 Israelite soldiers |
1 Sam 2:25, 4:11 |
34,002 |
34,002 |
| 61 |
God smote them with hemorrhoids in their secret parts |
1 Sam 5:1-12 |
|
3,000 |
| 62 |
50,070 killed for looking into the ark of the Lord |
1 Sam 6:19 |
50,070 |
50,070 |
| 63 |
The Lord thundered a great thunder upon the Philistines |
1 Sam 7:10-11 |
|
1,000 |
| 64 |
Another Ammonite massacre (and another God-inspired body part message) |
1 Sam 11:6-13 |
|
1,000 |
| 65 |
Jonathan's first slaughter |
1 Sam 14:12-14 |
20 |
20 |
| 66 |
God forces the Philistines to kill each other |
1 Sam 14:20 |
|
1,000 |
| 67 |
The Amalekite genocide |
1 Sam 15:2-3 |
|
10,000 |
| 68 |
Samuel hacks Agag to death before the Lord |
1 Sam 15:32-33 |
1 |
1 |
| 69 |
In the valley of Elah: Goliath |
1 Sam 17:51, 2 Sam 21:19 |
1 |
1 |
| 70 |
David buys a wife with 200 Philistine foreskins |
1 Sam 18:27 |
200 |
200 |
| 71 |
The Lord said to David, Go and smite the Philistines |
1 Sam 23:2-5 |
|
10,000 |
| 72 |
God killed Nabal (and David got his wife and other stuff) |
1 Sam 25:38 |
1 |
1 |
| 73 |
David commits random acts of genocide for the Philistines |
1 Sam 27:8-11 |
|
60,000 |
| 74 |
David spends the day killing Amalekites |
1 Sam 30:17 |
|
1,000 |
| 75 |
God kills Saul, his sons, and his soldiers (because Saul didn't kill all the Amalekites) |
1 Sam 31:2, 2 Chr 10:6 |
4 |
100 |
| 76 |
David kills the messenger |
2 Sam 1:15 |
1 |
1 |
| 77 |
David killed, mutilated, and hung Rechab and Baanah |
2 Sam 4:12 |
2 |
2 |
| 78 |
God helps David smite the Philistines from the front and the rear |
2 Sam 5:19-25 |
|
2,000 |
| 79 |
God killed Uzzah for trying to keep the ark from falling |
2 Sam 6:6-7, 1 Chr 13:9-10 |
1 |
1 |
| 80 |
David killed two-thirds of the Moabite POWs and enslaved the rest |
2 Sam 8:2 |
|
667 |
| 81 |
And the Lord gave David victory wherever he went |
2 Sam 8 - 10 |
65,850 |
66,850 |
| 82 |
David killed every male in Edom |
2 Sam 8:13-14, 1 Kg 11:15-16, 1 Chr 18:12, Ps 60:1 |
15,000 |
25,000 |
| 83 |
Thus did David do to all the children of Ammon |
2 Sam 11:1, 1 Chr 20:1 |
|
1,000 |
| 84 |
God slowly kills a baby |
2 Sam 12:14-18 |
1 |
1 |
| 85 |
Seven sons of Saul are hung up before the Lord |
2 Sam 21:1-9 |
7 |
3,000 |
| 86 |
David's mighty men and their amazing killings |
2 Sam 23, 1 Chr 11 |
1,403 |
3,400 |
| 87 |
God killed 70,000 because of David had a census that God (or Satan) told him to do |
2 Sam 24:15, 1 Chr 21:14 |
70,000 |
200,000 |
| 88 |
Solomon murdered Job and Shimei (per David's deathbed wish) |
1 Kg 2:29-46 |
2 |
2 |
| 89 |
A tale of two prophets |
1 Kg 13:11-24 |
1 |
1 |
| 90 |
Jeroboam's son: God kills another child |
1 Kg 14:17 |
1 |
1 |
| 91 |
Jeroboam's family |
1 Kg 15:29 |
|
10 |
| 92 |
Baasha's family and friends |
1 Kg 16:11-12 |
|
20 |
| 93 |
Zimri burns to death |
1 Kg 16:18-19 |
1 |
1 |
| 94 |
The drought of Elijah |
1 Kg 17:1, Luke 4:25, James 5:17-18 |
|
3,000 |
| 95 |
Elijah kills 450 religious leaders in a prayer contest |
1 Kg 18:22-40 |
450 |
450 |
| 96 |
The first God-assisted slaughter of the Syrians |
1 Kg 20:20-21 |
|
10,000 |
| 97 |
God killed 100,000 Syrians for calling him a god of the hills |
1 Kg 20:28-29 |
100,000 |
100,000 |
| 98 |
God killed 27,000 Syrians by making a wall fall on them |
1 Kg 20:30 |
27,000 |
27,000 |
| 99 |
God sent a lion to kill a man for not smiting a prophet |
1 Kg 20:35-36 |
1 |
1 |
| 100 |
God killed Ahab for not killing a captured king |
1 Kg 20:42, 22:35 |
1 |
1 |
| 101 |
God burned 102 men to death for asking Elijah to come down from his hill |
2 Kg 1:10-12 |
102 |
102 |
| 102 |
God killed Ahaziah for asking the wrong God |
2 Kg 1:16-17, 2 Chr 22:7-9 |
1 |
1 |
| 103 |
God sent bears to kill 42 boys for making fun of a prophet's bald head |
2 Kg 2:23-24 |
42 |
42 |
| 104 |
The Lord delivered the Moabites |
2 Kg 3:18-25 |
|
5,000 |
| 105 |
A skeptic is trampled to death |
2 Kg 7:2-20 |
1 |
1 |
| 106 |
God's seven year famine |
2 Kg 8:1 |
|
7,000 |
| 107 |
Jehoram of Israel |
2 Kg 9:24 |
1 |
1 |
| 108 |
Jezebel |
2 Kg 9:33-37 |
1 |
1 |
| 109 |
Ahab's sons: 70 heads in two baskets |
2 Kg 10:6-10 |
70 |
70 |
| 110 |
Ahab's hometown family, friends, and priests |
2 Kg 10:11 |
|
20 |
| 111 |
Jehu killed Ahaziah's family |
2 Kg 10:12-13, 2 Chr 22:7-9 |
42 |
42 |
| 112 |
Jehu and his partner kill the rest of Ahab's family |
2 Kg 10:17 |
|
20 |
| 113 |
Jehu assembled the followers of Baal and then slaughtered them all |
2 Kg 10:18-25 |
|
1,000 |
| 114 |
Mattan the priest of Baal and Queen Athaliah |
2 Kg 11:17-20 |
2 |
2 |
| 115 |
God sent lions to eat those who didn't fear him enough |
2 Kg 17:25-26 |
|
10 |
| 116 |
An angel killed 185,000 sleeping soldiers |
2 Kg 19:34, 37:36 |
185,000 |
185,000 |
| 117 |
God caused King Sennacherib to be killed by his sons |
2 Kg 19:37, Tobit 1:21 |
1 |
1 |
| 118 |
Josiah killed all the priests of the high places |
2 Kg 23:20 |
|
100 |
| 119 |
Just another holy war |
1 Chr 5:18-22 |
|
50,000 |
| 120 |
God killed a half million Israelite soldiers |
2 Chr 13:17-18 |
500,000 |
500,000 |
| 121 |
Jeroboam |
2 Chr 13:20 |
1 |
1 |
| 122 |
God killed a million Ethiopians |
2 Chr 14:9-14 |
1,000,000 |
1,000,000 |
| 123 |
Friendly fire: God forced "a great multitude" to kill each other |
2 Chr 20:22-25 |
|
30,000 |
| 124 |
God made Jehoram's bowels fall out |
2 Chr 21:14-19 |
1 |
1 |
| 125 |
God killed Jehoram's sons |
2 Chr 22:1 |
|
3 |
| 126 |
Ahaziah of Judah |
2 Chr 22:7-8 |
1 |
1 |
| 127 |
Joash, the princes, and army of Judah |
2 Chr 24:20-25 |
1 |
10,000 |
| 128 |
God destroyed Amaziah |
2 Chr 25:15-27 |
1 |
1,000 |
| 129 |
God smote Ahaz with the king of Syria |
2 Chr 28:1-5 |
1 |
10,000 |
| 130 |
God killed 120,000 valiant men for forsaking him |
2 Chr 28:6 |
120,000 |
120,000 |
| 131 |
The fall of Jerusalem |
2 Chr 36:16-17 |
|
10,000 |
| 132 |
The Purim killings: God hath done these things |
Esther 2 - 9, 10:4 |
75,813 |
75,813 |
| 133 |
God and Satan kill Job's children and slaves |
Job 1:18-19 |
10 |
60 |
| 134 |
Hananiah |
Jer 28:15-16 |
1 |
1 |
| 135 |
Ezekiel's wife |
Ezek 24:15-18 |
1 |
1 |
| 136 |
Oh! Susanna |
Dan 13:6-62 |
2 |
2 |
| 137 |
Judith is blessed above all women (for cutting off a sleeping man's head) |
Judith 13:6-10 |
1 |
1 |
| 138 |
The Judith massacre: hang ye up this head upon our walls |
Judith 15:1-6 |
|
1,000 |
| 139 |
Mathathias's double murder |
1 Mac 2:24-25 |
2 |
2 |
| 140 |
Mathathias and his friends slay the wicked sinners |
1 Mac 2:44 |
|
100 |
| 141 |
God killed Andronicus, the sacrilegious wretch |
2 Mac 4:38 |
1 |
1 |
| 142 |
A Jewish mob killed Lysimachus, the sacrilegious fellow |
2 Mac 4:42 |
1 |
1 |
| 143 |
God helped Judas Machabeus destroy the wicked |
1 Mac 3:1-26, 2 Mac 8:5-6 |
800 |
4,900 |
| 144 |
Judas and his unarmed men kill 3000 of Gorgias's soldiers |
1 Mac 3:44-4:24 |
3,000 |
3,000 |
| 145 |
The Hanukkah killings |
1 Mac 4:34-5:7 |
5,000 |
17,000 |
| 146 |
The Machabees brothers slaughter the heathens |
1 Mac 5:21-51 |
11,000 |
37,000 |
| 147 |
Nicanor's army: The Almighty being their helper, they slew above nine thousand men |
1 Mac 7:32-47, 2 Mac 8:24, 15:27 |
147,002 |
147,002 |
| 148 |
Jonathan and Simon destroy the wicked out
of Israel |
1 Mac 9:46-49, 2 Mac 8:30-33, 10:61 |
1,000 |
1,200 |
| 149 |
Five heavenly horsemen cast darts and
fireballs at the enemy |
2 Mac 8:32-10:38 |
21,103 |
21,400 |
| 150 |
God killed Antiochus with an incurable bowel disease |
2 Mac 9:5-28 |
1 |
1 |
| 151 |
Idumeans, traitors, and Jews in two towers |
2 Mac 10:16-17 |
40,000 |
40,100 |
| 152 |
Nicanor's head: A manifest sign of the help
of God |
1 Mac 7:33-48, 2 Mac 15:1-35 |
35,000 |
35,000 |
| 153 |
Aliens at Cades |
1 Mac 11:74 |
3,000 |
3,000 |
| 154 |
John burns to death 2000 in the tower of
Azotus |
1 Mac 16:10 |
2,000 |
2,000 |
| 155 |
God sent wasps to slowly destroy people |
Wisdom 12:8-9 |
|
1,000 |
| 156 |
Ananias and Sapphira |
Acts 5:5-10 |
2 |
2 |
| 157 |
Herod Aggripa |
Acts 12:23 |
1 |
1 |
| 158 |
Jesus |
Rom 8:32, 1 Pet 1:1820 |
1 |
1 |
|
Totals |
2,821,364 |
24,994,828 |
664 comments:
1 – 200 of 664 Newer› Newest»This is quite impressive and I cannot thank you enough for going through in continuing to modify this table.
May I make a suggestion though? When I often debate people on God's morality and use examples of unjustified murder in the bible, the ones that have the best chance at getting through to them are obviously those which are the MOST clearly unjustified - which include the killing of children and innocent people/civilians.
Such examples are bears mauling 42 children, Jephthah sacrificing his daughter, God killing King David's child to punish David, God inflicting thousands if not millions of civilians with tumors, Moses' army killing women and children, etc.
Would you be willing to make a smaller chart or color code particular killings on this one which show God's most clearly unjust killings - which apologists should have the hardest time finding excuses for? It would be a big time saver for people like me looking for the best examples to depict his barbaric character.
Thanks!
Great stuff Steve - you've created a wonderful resource for logic.
Now your task is documenting the animal death and suffering caused by this monster. Or are you gonna do the Koran next ?
Come on - work to do - no rest for the wicked....!
Steve, I don't recall, but have I ever told you that among many evangelicals, the belief is that the population of the world at the time of Noah was in the billions? This is usually figured due to the idea that the extremely long ages of the antedeluvian forefathers should indicate extreme health, including excellent fertility. Imagine a world where people have lifespans averaging somewhere around 700 years, and they're mutliplying like rabbits. In short, your estimate for the flood may be way too small for literalists.
skanksta, as I'm certain I've said before, the work of estimating animal deaths is essentially insurmountable. You've got to consider the enormity and complexity of the Israelite sacrificial system, and realize there's just no way to figure it out. It's easily in the billions if not trillions. (Not to mention trying to estimate animals killed in the flood; see above.)
psybermonkey, thanks for the suggestion. I'm working on it. I hope to have a post with God's killings ranked with a five star scale of nastiness later today.
skanksta, I'd like to make a list of God's animal killings and I may do that someday. But it's going to be kind of boring. All the sheep, and goat, and bull slaughters! Still, it would be an impressive list.
Of course, I'd also like to get to the Quran and Book of Mormon. I feel kind of guilty about neglecting them.
Brucker, I'd never heard that before. The human population at the time of the flood was in the billions? Do you have a link where that idea is expressed? I'd like to add a note about it on the flood post.
This guy gives some discussion, but on a quick scan, I can't figure out his conclusion:
http://ldolphin.org/popul.html
That is too funny! So God drowned 9 billion people in the flood? (And the author says he's being conservative.)
I guess I should revise my numbers.
There's no way in hell that nine million people were alive at the time these half-crazed theologians spectulate... mostly because at no point in history, until now, has the population of Earth ever exceeded a billion.
Wanna know what actually caused so many people on Earth, today? Centuries of inbreeding. That's right, the Hapsburgs had it right; however, it was not through brother-sister relationships, but more of distant-cousin-in-the-same-village/tribe/township relationships, that humanity "divided and prospered".
Archeological facts don't fit with the sacred texts of these hare-brained schemers, however, so they have to rejigger the facts to their satisfaction... oftentimes, with the blatantly amusing results documented above.
Voted at Flood post. Seems to work.
> And the author says he's being conservative
or "Conservative"
Incredible. Thanks so much for supplying such a massive amount of ammo. Although I'm long past trying to "win" an argument with a true believer, I can't help imgining that this list would shake the foundational beliefs of the best (worst) of them.
Them: "God loves us!"
Us: "What about (hyperlink to site)?"
Them: "They weren't US!"
Not only did you leave a good moral deal breaker for Christianity, but you dealt another blow by pointing out the iron Chariots. So much for omnipotence. If Satan just learns to drive a tank, then it looks like the Cristian myth will be a ton brighter.
Steve, The Book of Mormon (though fraudulent, probably like 99 percent of the bible)is full of battles and killing - my partner is a Jack-Mormon. The Koran too is just riddled with devouring flesh eating the swords.
I just found your site today--FABULOUS! As an Atheist working in an ofc of "believers," I am sick and tired of having their hogwash shoved in my face. I've known for a very long time that the Bible is 99% hateful, racist BS. Now, thanks to your AMAZING efforts, I can pinpoint specific examples of it. THANK YOU!!! Please keep up the GREAT work!
Yahweh is a God of war as it is clearly stated in Exodus 15:3.
But his concept in the bible shows clear patter of evolution:
http://www.godweb.org/fosdickguide.htm
Just a quick post from an Evangelical.
Interesting stats. I'm going to use them during a teaching time at our church tomorrow. I'll be interested to see how believers synthesize these truths.
I'm not quite sure why you take the time to work through statistics concerning a God you don't believe, and from a source you do not give credence to, the Bible.
For those who might believe it, Genesis 6 shares these words from God in light of his creation of man: "The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that EVERY inclination of the thoughts of his heart was ONLY evil ALL the time (emphasis mine). The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, 'I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth — men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air — for I am grieved that I have made them.'" ... Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said 'I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.'"
I share this in light of common secular research that claims that over 100 billion people have lived on earth. That would mean God has specifically killed .0024% of the population (though I would say that 100% of our race dies under the sovereign hand of God). To me, this stokes my understanding of God as graceful, given his anger, disappointment and pain with the human race.
I hope that you also give some thought to the main theme of the Biblical story - about a God who creates a rebellious world, and goes to great lengths to save it, not leave it to its own self-destruction. We are all on death row, unless someone intervenes. I believe God has done so.
All the best,
Bill, Mesa AZ
"a God who creates a rebellious world, and goes to great lengths to save it, not leave it to its own self-destruction"
Assuming you ever come back to check for replies...
See, this is the bit that some of us have trouble with, when you folks start trying to use this as a guide to morality. He created the rebellious world, knowing it would be rebellious, tried to save it from destruction (by who? they had stone-age nukes?), then destroyed it himself, killing, one would assume, a large number of sinless children and unborn babies.
If you can't see the irony in this, and the idiocy of using it as a model to teach moral behaviour, you are truly lost.
bill, your last paragraph sums it all up very well for me; which is to say that none of what you said made any sense whatsoever to me. also, asking the question why a non believer would go to the lengths to put up this information doesn't compute. it makes perfect sense to me. it is to show the absolute hypocrisy in "religious" texts. theologians study these texts but that doesn't mean they take them as facts.
lots of religious people, or devout people do wonderful things in small communities. i really think that is wonderful. however, i don't have to put up any proof here to back up what i am about to say: more violent acts are done in the name of religion than in the name of any other thing. and that goes for ALL religions, especially christianity.
put that in your pipe and smoke it....
@ Bill Hartley
Regardless of anything these other commentators say, they still are not disproving the existence of God.
I found this chart mildly amusing. and rather enjoyed it. Really puts in a new kick in regards to fearing our Lord.
One problem I noticed, is that this chart does not take into consideration the fact that God ends all of our lives. Taking us Home or letting us wander for eternity is His choice alone.
Cheers.
@Maeryn
The existence of God does not need to be disproved. I would suggest you read up on a concept called 'burden of proof'.
Even then, evolution and the big bang provide a way to scientifically and empirically explain the creation and development of the universe.
Humanity no longer needs to invoke God as the supreme creator as we did in the days before science.
All this chart shows is that were God to exist (an assumption for which there is no proof, no need and little basis), he is a cruel, temperamental and vindictive character who is hardly worthy of our worship.
Peace
wow this is great!
As far as I understand, God has killed every single individual (animals too) that has ever lived.
Not arguing with your estimates, but how did you arrive at these numbers? I was raised a Baptist preacher's daughter, and I PROMISE that is the first question anyone in my family would ask.... and they'll probably deride the answer as "the work of Satan" anyway, but I'd like to have one! Interesting table - thanks for the info!
Annette,
As you probably noticed, there are two set of numbers: one that I call the "Biblical number" and the other that is an "estimate". The Biblical number includes only those numbers that are given in the Bible, leaving out things like the victims in Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. The estimate column includes estimates for these killings (20 million flood victims, 2000 inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.).
Roughly equivalent to Stalin.
OK I have been reading your comments and most are intelligently based. Though, I would like to throw out another hypothesis (the bible being one of course). Our universe is about 13 billion years old and if the big bang occurred one second later we wouldn't exist as we are today on planet Earth. To have a bang there must be space, the space that was there at the time of the big bang became empty because of the massive reduction of matter and anti matter. Therefore, there have been uncountable numbers of big bangs and each creating its own universe. Now come the interesting part: because of evolution we are what we are today which has only taken less than a million years which is a blink to fast to see; so, let's apply that evolutionary process to the energy our minds create which is neither matter or anti-matter, now multiply that process of creating energy (call it what you wish, soul, etc)a trillion, trillion, trillion, times and think, just think, and contemplate this as a possible result, that there is a dynamic force in the universe that is totally at war with itself because of the ying and yang theory and positive and negative, etc. So, when we die what may exist is the energy we leave behind which becomes part of the Universal collective. We have no idea whatsoever of the force, that through the universal evolutionary process, has harnessed and has become an intelligence we can't even begin to imagine. Another interesting thought is that there may be parallel Universes that were formed because of the splitting during the big bang of other universes that didn't coalesce. Or, during the contraction process of the Universe it split into two or more contraction entities and they each create their own universe.
By making this list the author and those commenting seem to acknowledge that God exists, which is a step in the right direction. In light of that, I would like to point out a little fact. While God does take some lives without apparent reason or a reason that you may not deem reason enough, you forget that God is also the creator of all life and He is at worst ending something He began. In short, God takes life, but he also created all life.
One final point. None of us here on earth are omniscient, and it is unwise in our uninformed state to question the actions of a being who is all knowing.
I hope this gets some people thinking in a productive manner.
Ezekiel 18:30 and following:
"Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, declares the Lord God. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, LEST INIQUITY BE YOUR RUIN. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! WHY WILL YOU DIE, O house of Israel? For I HAVE NO PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF ANYONE, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live."
Ephesians 4:14 and following:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named... so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."
There are many things I don't understand about God. But I have experienced His love, and I cannot argue with it any longer. He says His ways are higher than our ways. How can we expect to figure out the Creator of the universe? We can't even figure out what He created (see Job 38-41).
I have nothing to prove. God can stick up for Himself. When He shows up for you, you'll know what I mean. I pray it's soon.
And that's just biblical quotes. Just look at how much war and genocide has been committed in the name of G-d. To name a few: The inquisition nearly decimated the entire female population of Europe. The crusades killed G-d followers on both sides. The English reformation killed Catholics because they didn't worship G-d the right, protestant way. The KKK believed they were following G-d's orders by slaughtering blacks. And pretty much every monarchical leader felt their every act was ordained by G-d, including war and executions. And that's just the surface.
What of the human person Jesus of Nazareth. Any record of him killing anyone? Not that I recall. I rather remember him doing the opposite - healing everyone who came to him and raising more than one person from the dead. Perhaps one should try to make a chart of all the healings Jesus did in his time on earth. Not to mention his giving up his own life to provide life for others. Could it be that this more clearly demonstrates the character of God? I don't think you will find God commanding to kill anywhere in the New Testament. Therefore I don't believe any of the post-biblical "God-willed" massacres as mentioned by Princess D were truly the will of God but rather a result of the corruption of human power.
The Bible is the mythical history & culture of the Hebrews & the Tribes of Israel. The murderous spirit that is shown in the Bible, is shown in Israel today.
The "John Boy Walton" beliefs of Evangelical Christians ignores the Blood & Gore that streams through the Bible & they pretend that this is the work of a Holy God. If one could print photos of human carnage along side the parts of the Bible that depicts bloody carnage, then these hypocrites would have a hard time explaining.
God sent two bears to rip apart boys for making fun of a prophet's bald head: -42peoples
Being burned to death for burning incense: -250peoples
God stops the sun so Joshua can kill in the daylight: -
5000peoples
Some God-proof iron chariots: another -5000peoples
Knowing that there are idiots that will believe this shit and will have meaningless lives because they worship it: priceless
There are some things you shouldn't believe because they are utterly ridiculous. For everything else, there's MASTERGOD!
can you post the people satan killed in the bible because i would find it hilarious to point out the difference . although neither are real i think it would make a christian turn blue in the face
In the "God's Killings in Genesis" list, the number for Noah's Flood is 30 million while in this list it is 20 million.
Other estimates I have seen have guessed it was 3 million.
Thanks, wikkid. I've changed the Genesis list to 20 million. I used McEvedy and Johes' Atlas of World Population History for the estimate (which is the most conservative estimate that I've seen from a serious historian). There certainly would have been more than 3 million people living in 2400 BCE.
Who said God loves us?
Jesus did. And not just with words.
To answer the comment about why don't we believe that the good things happen by human power... Humans are very capable of taking life, killing each other, and destroying things. Not to say that God doesn't do that ever. But when it comes to instantaneously healing people from long-suffering diseases and raising people from the dead - after 4 days, I find it hard to write that off as "human power".
Me neither I would attribute it to "human imagination".
Btw the whole giving up his live thing? He knew he would come back, he knew he would spend eternity in heaven and he died quite quick compared to some humans who died on the cross. Oh and he died to enable god to save us from god and with the whole trinity thing that is similar to saying that a hostage-taker who killed a few hostages saved the surviving hostages because he surrendered to the police instead of killing them as well.
(It shouldn't be necessary to say this but sadly some christians are quick to claim that someone just admitted that he believes in god: I talk like jesus really sacrificed himself and came back from the death and as if heaven existed. That doesn't mean I believe it, it's just inconvenient to write things like "If the story described in the NT were true, then". Or do you add such disclaimers when you talk about Harry Potter oder Darth Vader?)
Pop Quiz...
If there are six billion people on earth at the beginning of the Apocalyse, how many people will be left after the angel casts Satan into the pit and bound him for a thousand years?
How many kill offs are there in Revelation?
The bible has been corrupted. That is obvious. Do not attribute strange things that is in the bible to God. You need to step back and ask yoursleves is He who created your eyes and everything wonderful you see capable of injustice. It is impossible that God would do anything evil. I challenge you to reflect and have a conversation with God and ask Him to guide you. You should read the Quran and open your mind
A great article and a lot of good work.I have done some work on this subject myself and you might like some of my posts too.
Abrahamic monotheism is just original fascism.
Its a DEATH CULT that has spread ignorance disease and excused genocide ,theft and book burning!
Its symbols are the star(jewish)the moon(islam) which are symbols of the night, and the cross(christian) which is a death and torture device!
Judaism was originally invented by Cyrus the Great! Its Egyptian SET worship converted to zoroastrianism!
Read more; http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/the-invention-of-judaism/
christianity was invented by Emperor Constintine ,he was trying to unite his west and east Roman empires.It was Druidic/Egyptian/Eastern sun worship.His book was the New Testamonies his city Constantinople. The BI-BLE(2 books)and "messianic judaism",was a later Byzantine invention
http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/the-invention-of-christianity/
Islam was Quyrsh moon worship converted to messianic judaism by "heretic" monks that lost a constantinople power struggle.
http://cuthulan.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/the-invention-of-islam/
To a earlier comment, I believe the Koran has the same GOd... so in effect god would be killing even more people....
Nice, I was looking for something that would give me the list of the people in quotes in the verse below. 25 million more to be given life in the 1,000 year reign. God is probably quite proud of you at the moment. lol
Re:20:4:
And I saw thrones,
and they sat upon them,
and judgment was given unto them:
and I saw "the souls of them that were beheaded" for the witness of Jesus,
"and for the word of God, "
and which had not worshipped
the beast,
neither his image,
neither had received his mark upon their foreheads,
or in their hands;
and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
lol
and that is only one god you are talking about...how about the other gods? were they as nice? just wondering, i dont really care, but does anyone know?
Nice... but a distinction is important here. The Old testament is essential Hebrew history. The god to which all this is attributable is the god of the Jews (or Lucifer, as he is fondly called by Zionists) and perhaps through this we see the origins of the blood lust that is Israel's campaign today in Palestine.
This belief in a god of vengeance and war underlines Zionist attitudes and that diminishing respect for human life.
The God of the Christians is a loving God. A God, which according to narratives, so loved us (sinners) that He gave His only Begotten son that we may live... and which His son urged that we should turn the other cheek.
We are all God's children, like it, know it or not. Clearly, there is a distinction between the god of the Jews and the God that Jesus spoke to us about. You have defined a killer god not a loving God.
I think as human beings, we are curious and need to believe in some kind of god, i dont but thats me, i kind of wish i did, would make life a lot easier and death a lot less scary, but come on i think we all know deep down , there is no such thing as god....it is a scary thought at first, but once you begin to understand the universe and our place in it, it becomes fascinating, and if anything religion becomes very dull. i find peace in the fact that when i die i will become eventually part of a new star, gosh even a different life form.
it's science all the way for me, it makes sense, and is a credit to us
You forgot the book or revelation where 2/3 of the worlds population will be killed which is ordained by god, including the gog/magog wars where the blood will reach up to the bridles. Talk about violent exclusivism. and then we're supposed to believe that not only does "god" kill people, but then he tortures them for eternity. To borrow the saying from the great christopher hitchens- "no thinking person can believe this"
"We are all God's children, like it, know it or not. Clearly, there is a distinction between the god of the Jews and the God that Jesus spoke to us about. You have defined a killer god not a loving God. "
What are you talking about? Nowhere in the Nice Testament does anyone say that this is about a different God. And the God of the Nice Testament is not so nice, either. He just made a new rule, and people who don't follow that rule go to Hell.
@ Robken: OK I have been reading your comment and it is difficult to view it as intelligently based.
- What is your point in this context (of a murderous insane god)?
- Your ideas doesn't portray standard cosmology or evolution.
* The universe is ~ 14 Gy.
* The inflationary cosmology doesn't depend on a big bang moment but gives an initial condition (inflation) to the big bang cosmology (expansion). In any case it doesn't make sense to say "later" relative spacetime if spacetime isn't there. Nor would it affect the later process.
* Spacetime as regards inflation and pre-inflation is iffy. There was semiclassical worldlines, but if there was spacetime is uncertain. In any case spacetime is constituted latest after the end of inflation.
* Recombination after reheating didn't empty spacetime but converted particles to radiation. Any energy density decrease was due to big bang expansion.
* End of inflation makes multiverses in _some_ theories, but not by splitting but different destinies for different worldlines.
* Evolution on Earth has taken all extant species to today in ~ 4 Gy.
* Biological evolution applies only to biological systems of course.
- And dualism is plain nuts when it isn't observed, which brings us back to the murderous myth described in the post.
first of all, @ Egoigwe: same God in the Old and New Testaments. That's important. The Old Testament God is not Lucifer - that is another name for the devil brought out of the King James Version translation of Isaiah 14.
I don't claim to understand why God does the things He does, but i don't believe I have to. There are a few things I have come to understand about Him though:
1. He has always promised to be found by those who seek Him (ex. Jeremiah 29:11-14 and Matthew 7:7-11 are examples)
2. He will never destroy without warning, as seen throughout all the prophets and Revelation. He will first warn and call out for the evil to stop.
3. When His message is responded to and the people return to justice and worship God, He relents or provides a way of escape. (Old Testament examples include Josiah, the city of Nineveh, Hezekiah, Lot, and even the evil King Ahab of Israel). As the Old Testament is a story of the Hebrew people, we see few examples of how God rescued people from other nations from His destruction. (There are some key ones: Rahab, Ruth, Tamar.)
God's message to the people of Judah through Ezekiel: "As I live, declares the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, TURN BACK from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" (Ez 33:11)
@ Anton: there's a lot of mystery about what will happen at the end. I expect it could be very terrible. I will want to be on the right side because God will provide strength to those who trust in Him and will bring us to a glorious end.
All humans stand hopeless before the Almighty, All-Holy God. We all deserve to be consumed by the fire of His wrath for any less-than-perfect thing we have done. Problem is, He doesn't actually want anyone to die, so He does all He can to save us short of taking away our free will. Scripture indicates that everything/anyone who rebels against their Creator by refusing to worship Him will meet a fiery end - that is a matter of choice for us. I challenge you to try and get to know Him though - you'll be surprised by His mercy and grace. I mean, how is it that a nation about to be destroyed calls out to God after pages and pages of oracles about His coming wrath and asks for compassion based on His character (Jeremiah 21:2)? Somehow, the God they knew had a reputation of great love and compassion amidst all the destruction.
Dee said...
I challenge you to try and get to know Him though - you'll be surprised by His mercy and grace.
Sun May 01, 02:54:00 PM 2011
Oh, my sweet beejeebers... I almost couldn't breathe for a good couple minutes after reading this. Thanks for the belly laugh!
Steve Weeks
You do not know who you are talking about. He is the High and Holy one that inhabits eternity...he is the Sovereign One, the Great One, Our Wonderful, Counselor, The Way the Truth and the Life...no man comes to the Father but through Jesus....and because you do not know him, your infinite mind cannot grasp the truth. God does not need to answer to you or anyone else. He established his will before the foundations of the world and infinite man cannot go up against a finite God who is majestic in all his ways. Wow do I love him for not thinking or behaving like man...thank you Lord for being IN control. He is the only one to whom we can trust our lives. Our God is a Consuming Fire....
Dee said...
What of the human person Jesus of Nazareth. Any record of him killing anyone? Not that I recall.
Dee, I recommend you read the book of Thomas the Saint. The book of Thomas was removed from the published bible in order to keep the myth of a perfect Jesus intact. In the book of Thomas it states clearly that Jesus, while exceptionally smart and gifted with crazy powers, was just like any other child... mean spirited, arrogant and completely out of control at more than one point. And yes, he did strike a few people down.
Religion of peace strikes again!
our life our death r in hand of God. so everyone being born and died is just returning to him! we all r 1 being!
Nice efforts man! Made a great list. Good work, keep it up!
For an argument to be effective, it needs to be in terms that the listener can relate to. Seeing that a lot of the arguments for God are in terms relative to faith rather than facts or just common sense is rather embarrassing. So here's my food for thought:
1) All historical accounts should be taken with a grain of salt, holy book or not. Seeing as the Bible is not absolute - since it was written BY humans and EDITED by humans - it certainly makes little sense to take everything absolutely literally. If anything, it is a guide, a reference, just like any other historical document. The difference is the message and original intent of the piece, the aspect that makes it "God-inspired," that is what makes it holy, not the literal words. All that being said, the numbers being presented seem to line up with the Bible's take on history. Way to do your homework Steve.
2) My only argument that seems to be consistent in the proof of God's existence is the Earth itself. I'm okay with the Big Bang Theory, the Evolutionary Theory, or even String Theory. Why? Because these are not laws of nature or facts; these are ideas for how the world works, and for the most part they do a decent job of explaining many a process. The only issue I have is that they do not explain how any of these processes started and do not effectively convey why our planet has managed to exist without being in total chaos from the start. Case in point: If I were to walk up to any structure - Eiffel Tower, Sistine Chapel, Statue of Liberty - it would be preposterous for me to say that, because I did not see its creation, it appeared here randomly or of its own volition. Nothing in life has demonstrated that things occur consistently or just "come together" by sheer odds or extended periods of time. If I leave a pile of concrete blocks, steel beams and some bolts all on top of a concrete slab for a thousand years, time will not just lead to the creation of a building. The pieces will simply stay right where they are, or wither away.
Everything in nature has a source for its existence and we can nearly always prove how. The only thing we cannot prove with science is that which we cannot reproduce ourselves. We can provide evidence in the forms of theories, but without witnessing the phenomena ourselves, we will be unable to conclude it as fact. Fortunately, with our level of intelligence, we are capable of achieving so much simply on theories (I'm looking at you quantum mechanics).
Please respond full force, I love debates haha
Dear God, please provideth a dictionary for kathy so that she may look up the difference between infinite and finite. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
PS- make her less crazy.
The Bible yet speaks about a time of coming judgement. You have a choice now to heed or ignore.
If you ignore - how could you possibly blame God for executing the judgement He has clearly warned you about?
@Paulie09
"The Bible yet speaks about a time of coming judgement. You have a choice now to heed or ignore."
That's like a mobster holding a shotgun to your kneecap and giving you the "choice" to either pay protection money (in this case; unwarrented faith) or get your leg blown off (judgement).
Difference is, I actually have reasonable grounds for assuming the mobster is real, as opposed to a supposedly unobservable "god".
1- One can't distinguish between the unobservable and the non-existant.
2- Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence.
3- What can be assumed without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
"If you ignore - how could you possibly blame God for executing the judgement He has clearly warned you about?"
What an utterly vile and disgusting thing to say.
You are the textbook example of someone who's morals have been utterly corrupted by his religion.
Your mother would be so proud...
i suppose people will just rip me up for writing this but...
ok I don't condone killing. murder is a sin. that is very clear in the Bible.
But yes also God has killed according to the Bible. Directly, indirectly. the numbers don't really matter i think.
However, a reason why Christians still proclaim our God is good despite this is because God is not a man. He is the Creator of men. As the Creator, he has the right to destroy.
A common rebuttal to that statement is that many he killed were innocent. You are forgetting then that according to the Bible, no one is innocent. Through the original sin of Adam and Eve, not a single one of us is clean. And it is only through grace and mercy that we live at all. And through greater grace and mercy that we are allowed salvation.
I know what I said wont convince most people. But I feel like those are points that are not commonly said. It's impossible to logic your way into the Christian faith, even when logic points to the faith. It says so in the Bible itself. But at least I can show some of the reasoning.
-"ok I don't condone killing. murder is a sin. that is very clear in the Bible."-
So we agree on that.
-"But yes also God has killed according to the Bible. Directly, indirectly. the numbers don't really matter i think."-
Again, agreed.
A single life taken absent cause is already too much.
-"However, a reason why Christians still proclaim our God is good despite this is because God is not a man. He is the Creator of men. As the Creator, he has the right to destroy."-
Any being that calls itself our god is subject to atleast the same standards of critique as we are, if not MUCH higher standards.
To excuse or even condone incompetence and cruelty (especially from a god) is something I will not do.
Besides, only a sick individual (probably glutton for punishment/masochist aswell) would think of or even accept something like "As the Creator, he has the right to destroy".
Generally this line of thought reveals a state of mind corrupted by religion, I'd call it a classic case of stockholm syndrome, except ofcourse that this supposed angry god is just imaginary.
-"A common rebuttal to that statement is that many he killed were innocent. You are forgetting then that according to the Bible, no one is innocent."-
Now that is one of my main problems with biblical scripture (and one of the main reasons why it is a corrupting force in this world), it teaches you you're "dirty", "you're sinful and you deserve WHATEVER you get" all for being how GOD MADE YOU, and instead of dealing with his own incompetence he takes it out on YOU and ME.
(I'll just assume that you're putting these points up for argument's sake, and don't actually believe this yourself.
Because if you do actually believe any of this you've automatically disqualified yourself from any intelligent discussion or debate.)
-"Through the original sin of Adam and Eve, not a single one of us is clean."-
Adam and eve got punished for god's incompetence, he put the fucking tree there knowing beforehand they were gonna eat from it (omniscient), ergo; he shouldn't have put the fucking tree there.
Besides, it's not much of a choice for adam and eve since the very framework they needed to actually REALIZE eating the apple is bad (instead of just hearing the word "bad" but not understanding the implications).
To make any kind of judgement call regarding eating the apple they would have needed knowledge of good and evil beforehand, so they could actually UNDERSTAND that eating the apple was bad, and WHY.
They didn't, so they didn't really know that eating the apple and going against god's wishes was "bad", and thus were so easily influenced by the talking snake.
But let's leave that aside for the moment, what's even worse about this is that the very concept of original sin is that WE'RE actually paying for the wrongdoings of long gone and non-existant ancestors.
Adam and Eve supposedly ate the apple, not us, yet god supposedly lets us suffer and even adds to that suffering instead of just *poof*-ing sin away, completely.
Because, after all, WE weren't the ones that ate from the apple.
-"And it is only through grace and mercy that we live at all. And through greater grace and mercy that we are allowed salvation."-
Don't even get me started on the biblican loophole concerning sin (jesus sacrifice), that may actually be the most immoral part in the entire bible (redemption through proxy, and making one person pay for another's sins).
The whole mob-boss analogy (while very accurate) is just icing on the cake in this case.
-"I know what I said wont convince most people. But I feel like those are points that are not commonly said."-
Not anymore, no.
Because MOST people (even the religious) realize exactly how big a pile of bullshit those "points" are.
And everyone seriously using them basically disqualify themselves from any kind of (intelligent) discussion or debate (as I said before) in addition to revealing themselves as morally inferior.
-"It's impossible to logic your way into the Christian faith, even when logic points to the faith."-
Logic actually points AWAY from religion.
Faith is unwarranted absolute belief in something without any proof or even just cause to make an assumption.
And to have "faith" is in and of itself, illogical.
Religion starts where you assume without reason or cause, and assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
PS: Something to think about; how does supposedly perfect god create an IMPERFECT creation? a perfect being does not make mistakes yet according to scripture MANY mistakes have been made by god.
@Seymour13:
Here's one way to look at it: Humans are not imperfect because of their design. We are imperfect because we do not automatically default to making one choice - i.e. the "right" choice - in every situation. The amazing thing about our species is the depth of our choice palette; the very fact that so many people on this single post alone have varying views on a single topic demonstrates that. It allows us to experience life uniquely by our own volition, and part of that experience is deciding whether or not you put your faith in that which cannot be readily seen.
But like I had mentioned in my previous post, one of the main issues seems to be the literal acceptance of what the words in any given translation of the Bible say. So even if you say "MANY mistakes have been made by god," you cannot definitively say that because 1) you, nor I, nor anyone else can truly attest to that fact and 2) the definition of a mistake is too fluid.
I would address your other points against YS but I want to hear your thoughts first.
"Humans are not imperfect because of their design. We are imperfect because we do not automatically default to making one choice - i.e. the "right" choice"
If you assume that we were designed, then it's still a design flaw because in that case we are how we were made, and we weren't made to default to making the "right" choice.
But we are more or less wired as far as choices are concerned, our actions and choices are "predetermined", we act- and react to things the way we do because we are who we are (influenced by both the circumstances of the situation and things we've seen, done, went through, and otherwise experienced).
If we made different decisions we wouldn't be ourselves, but someone else entirely.
"But like I had mentioned in my previous post, one of the main issues seems to be the literal acceptance of what the words in any given translation of the Bible say. So even if you say "MANY mistakes have been made by god," you cannot definitively say that because 1) you, nor I, nor anyone else can truly attest to that fact"
True, the bible is a book that has been re-translated and re-written far too often and no-one can say that what the bible says is how things actually happened, or even assume that it is inspired by god (I find it hard to believe that a god's best attempt at communication is a corrupted book).
I was just addressing what the book itself says, as there are (illogical (and even immoral) parts in there.
And while there are some people who are a bit more open minded, alot of people take the bible (at least partially) literally.
"and 2) the definition of a mistake is too fluid."
That depends, when I say "god's mistakes" in biblical context I'm generally leaning toward things like an omniscient/omnipotent being putting a certain tree in the garden of eden, giving the talking snake a chance to dupe adam and eve, and so on and so forth, and ultimately failing to solve the problem he created (sin) with the inadequate jesus loophole.
Then there's biblical law, there are truly unreasonable and even immoral laws in the bible.
Some of which involving sacrifice, murder, thought crime, (self-)mutilation, discrimination, rape and slavery.
Yet this is the same book that is claimed to have been inspired by god, I don't buy it, those laws could not have come from a god.
No ammount of good excuses the ammount of bad that is in there, and the hand of man is far too evident in this book to take it as anything short of a mockery.
These things just don't make sense unless the biblical god lacks the qualities (by admission of the very same bible) it claims god has, in which case we're not talking about a god, but a fraud.
@Seymour13:
I numbered my responses according to the quotes you responded to.
1) Do you consider your ability to choose how to live your life as a "design flaw"? I would think that the single most important aspect of our lives is the fact that we can shape them as we will, regardless of how anyone else - ethereal or otherwise - wants us to live.
As for your "predetermined" argument, you are for the most part correct. People do indeed live according to their experience and their inherent qualities they are born with. But again, no person is a slave to their circumstance. Even if two people are subjected to the same hardships, those two people are still capable of choosing for themselves how they wish to live. THAT, in my opinion, is what identifies us uniquely: not our experiences, but our choices because - or in spite - of them.
2) In my opinion, the Bible was never meant to be God's "best attempt at communication," whether you believe in Him or not. While you are right that Bible thumpers and the like may take it literally, I honestly think that the purpose of the Bible is a literary piece like Shakespeare and other great writers and historians: a book filled with stories and historical pieces that differentiates itself because it's "God-inspired." And just because people have put their own spin or flavor on the translation doesn't mean the original intent of the piece is totally lost. However you wish to take it is obviously up to you.
One thing I can't understand though is how you determine morality. To claim that certain acts of God are immoral makes me wonder what your basis for that claim is. I'd like to hear your take on that.
3) Once again, I'm curious where your standard for the proper behavior of an omnipotent, omniscient being comes from, considering you are a finite, limited being like the rest of us. If an all-knowing, ever-present being exists, then how would you comprehend it? We can hardly comprehend the distance from the Earth to the Sun - and that's a limited distance. If there is anything remotely close to infinite in this universe, can we truly quantify or understand it?
I have never seen anything outside of the Milky Way personally, and I'm assuming you haven't either. But scientists that do research and look out into the cosmos present beautiful and amazing pieces from the stars in photographs for the rest of us to appreciate; if you did not witness it yourself, does that mean you immediately discount it? You may surely doubt it, as would I. But simply not witnessing something for yourself does not discredit it. In regards to God, even if you don't buy any of the fluff or facts pushed in front of you, "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence," as they say right?
If there is a God that is anywhere remotely close to how He is described in a "corrupted book," then we still have no argument. Because ultimately, our life spans are limited to about 80 years or so, and we have no idea who originally wrote anything outside of our immediate scopes or lifetimes. And we are - as you say - limited by our experiences. Many things we do are based on the faith we put in others.
"Do you consider your ability to choose how to live your life as a "design flaw"?"
No, because I don't believe we were designed.
Ehm, I'll just assume you missed the point of that bit entirely...
"those two people are still capable of choosing for themselves how they wish to live."
What's more a part of who you are than how you wish to live?
I believe I had that covered with "because you are who you are".
"One thing I can't understand though is how you determine morality. To claim that certain acts of God are immoral makes me wonder what your basis for that claim is. I'd like to hear your take on that."
Excuse me, but are we not on a blog that lists god's supposed killings?
Add to that biblical law of which I previously gave examples and you've already got (the first part of) your answer.
Everyone who reads the bible can clearly read the atrocities supposedly ordered and condoned by god, also including disgusting mind games such as abraham being told to sacrifice his son as a "test of faith".
Ofcourse we know none of this actually happened, but as always I'm addressing the biblical god (as is the point of this blog itself) and the biblical account of history.
"Once again, I'm curious where your standard for the proper behavior of an omnipotent, omniscient being comes from, considering you are a finite, limited being like the rest of us. If an all-knowing, ever-present being exists, then how would you comprehend it? We can hardly comprehend the distance from the Earth to the Sun - and that's a limited distance. If there is anything remotely close to infinite in this universe, can we truly quantify or understand it?"
The standard is MY moral standard, I compare the biblical god to myself and find him utterly inferior to both myself, and to people in general.
I also spotted an argument from ignorance (logical fallacy).
(Steve, I only saw half my post come up, and since I've sometimes seen this happen on other sites due to bugs I'm reposting the 2nd part, feel free to disregard this if the original part 2 was posted)
"I have never seen anything outside of the Milky Way personally, and I'm assuming you haven't either. But scientists that do research and look out into the cosmos present beautiful and amazing pieces from the stars in photographs for the rest of us to appreciate; if you did not witness it yourself, does that mean you immediately discount it?"
It depends, I have reasonable trust in scientists because it is their job to figure out how things work and results can actually be tested, repeated, and affirmed.
And in case of the picture I would actually be able (consider I'd have access to the equipment needed) see it for myself.
"But simply not witnessing something for yourself does not discredit it. In regards to God, even if you don't buy any of the fluff or facts pushed in front of you, "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence," as they say right?"
Partially true, however it does not help it's credibility along either, and the greater the claim the greater the need for evidence to substantiate that claim is.
But as they also say: "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" and "extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence".
"If there is a God that is anywhere remotely close to how He is described in a "corrupted book," then we still have no argument. Because ultimately, our life spans are limited to about 80 years or so, and we have no idea who originally wrote anything outside of our immediate scopes or lifetimes. And we are - as you say - limited by our experiences."
Not quite sure what your point is with this bit.
But I do see yet another argument from ignorance.
"Many things we do are based on the faith we put in others."
Srry, I don't do faith.
Faith is absolute belief in something regardless of (and often even in spite of) reason and evidence.
Have you ever considered WHY these people died because God made it so? Yeah... please read the WHOLE stories in the bible before u pass judgement on our righteous and Almighty God.
@Misael1973
What makes you think he hasn't read the whole stories?
See Steve's other site: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
in what context is slavery ok? or killing homosexuals?
@wynd.and.fury
As nobody seems to have addressed your argument from design I thought I'd have a go. While I think you're correct in describing the way we instinctively seem to be able to identify things which are designed, it would be a mistake the conclude that we are doing anything other than comparing what we see with what we've already seen. Buildings, watches, airplanes, paintings - these are all things for which we have widely held explanations and clearly defined creators. If you find a watch in the desert, or even some machine of unknown origin, you assume design because man-made things all have a signature that is unmistakable. Common components will recur if the device makes use of electronics, plastic is easily identified, etc. We're not assessing the relative complexity of each hypothetical artifact we come across - we're just checking our memory for enough close matches to conclude someone designed it.
Note that there are all kinds of incredibly complex things that occur without our intervention - at every order of magnitude in size examples are everywhere. Snowflakes, crystals forming in mineral rich lakes. At a lower level there's water, which minus external energy will freeze, going from a state of high entropy to a lower one, both putting to rest the simplistic notion that disorder is the only thing that happens without divine or human intervention and providing yet another example of something which is surely complex enough that someone might confuse it for having been designed.
But we don't. Not because these things aren't complex, but because we have plenty of experience to fall back on. We know what stuff we design looks like.
We've only ever seen this one universe, this one planet. What would a non-designed universe look like, next to a designed one? Here our complete lack of experience makes it impossible to take anything more than a wait and see attitude towards whether or not the thing that contains us and our planet was designed or came about some other way. Luckily science does its best not to jump to conclusions that are unwarranted, no matter how much people might want those conclusions to be true. If there's one thing I think I can state unequivocally about Christians without risk of contradiction, it's that the way they think the universe works is also the way they hope it works.
Not true for the rest of us. A benevolent creator and a cushy afterlife would be awesome. I'm not so keen on the god that's currently top of the charts, or the snoozefest/eternal punishment binary option currently on offer, but at least the idea of a nice god who takes a personal interest in me is something I can understand might be nice.
Sadly, the evidence doesn't point towards that. So it's integrity that keeps me on the side of reason, science, and logically consistent morality. To revert to what I see as a more primitive state, cringing whenever loud noises come from on high and walking around on eggshells trying to follow rules that nobody understands, let alone agrees upon - to do that would mean jettisoning the bits of me that religious types would describe as "god given."
@Matt:
Well spoken, Matt. You do bring up a good point that we do tend to base our understanding of the world upon that which we can compare. And to be honest, I can't really see us functioning any other way. Even now, we are forced to rely on the experiences of others around us for knowledge we have yet or may never attain without outside help. I don't see anything wrong with that; the various sciences are designed to be built upon the previous works of generations past, while continuously being questioned and refined for holes in understanding.
As for your comment, "Luckily science does its best not to jump to conclusions that are unwarranted," I would say that inherently, you are correct. The nature of how science works is that it is an art of observation. However, just like anything else, data can be skewed or presented for whatever agenda one is trying to present. So when it comes to theories like evolution or even creationism, whether you stand for or against them, you can present the data however you wish to give the impression and/or conclusion that you seek. So when you say "the way [Christians] think the universe works is also the way they hope it works," you can say that about nearly anybody. And just as there are a variety of scientists with a variety of viewpoints, so are there a variety of believers in any faith who will have different stances on different issues. Exhibit A: The outrageous number of denominations under the Christian banner.
As for scientific evidence of the nature of God, that idea is ludicrous. Science cannot observe that which cannot be observed empirically, so anyone suggesting that idea cannot stand behind it. The nature of God can be explored through historical texts and the like, but in reality, this isn't "data." One could - in my opinion - treat the Bible like any other holy text or classic literature that people hold in high regard; it is a source of knowledge based on the inspirations of ancient authors. There is information that lines up with events in history, and prophecies that line up with documents outside of the Text, but other than that, it's merely a Book. That alone is not enough.
I ask this of people often when it comes to this, what is the nature or purpose of science? Is it to explain the "why" or the "how"?
I'd also like to hear your stance on "logically-consistent morality." In your mind, is morality determined on an individual level, based on how one views it?
If you could create people or restore them why would it matter if you killed them after they decided to try it their way?
You forgot the billions that will be killed in Revelations as only 144,000 will go to heaven. And since most of us are not Jewish we will all go to hell. Oh dear. Might as well we sin.
Revelation 7:3-8 (ESV)
saying: "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until after we have sealed the servants of God on their foreheads." And I heard the number of the sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:
12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed,
12,000 from the tribe of Reuben,
12,000 from the tribe of Gad,
12,000 from the tribe of Asher,
12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali,
12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh,
12,000 from the tribe of Simeon,
12,000 from the tribe of Levi,
12,000 from the tribe of Issachar,
12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun,
12,000 from the tribe of Joseph,
12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.
25 million huh? Not bad. So in 6,000 years, God only killed a quarter of what atheists killed (100 million) in the last 100 years.
Best Value,
How does your comment at all encourage discussion? You're practically dangling raw meat before a pack of wolves, expecting not to be bitten.
Best value misses a point. If any atheists killed anyone, and God actually existed, then God has instigated or allowed these killings. God is guilty by actively or passively having people killed.
Furthermore, Steve has only mentioned biblical killings. That does not include the millions that have died through crusades, jihads and various and numerous religiously inspired wars and conquests.
Steve, I think you missed that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and as a result of this act mankind would not live an eternal life. In other words the entire human race - billions of us - would die because these two people ate some fruit. Seems a pathetically vile god to me.
Some live as parasites, and with assumptions they cut the cord on life at the moment of the passing body unlike God who blesses more than one lifetime in the hope people learn from their mistakes..
Save the judgement for yourself, bad interpretations and one sided views without overall conclusions lack factual framework ,you can come back at this with a smart answer but in the end the justification for these deaths will be revealed and you my dear friend will look as foolish as your scribblings ,for somebody who apparently does not exist you sure have a hard on for God..x
Shelb, I guess that you not only believe in an unprovable God, but that you also believe in unprovable angels and Satan as well as an unprovable heaven and hell. You certainly seem to also believe in an unprovable after life that your ilk aspires to go to after an unspecified time. Some of you think that this will happen pretty much after you die, whilst others of you think it will happen on the Day of Judgement.
Your tone would suggest that you will be very happy for a person like me to go to the unprovable hell, as nasty as it might be, simply because the god that you espouse can't prove itself to me.
So you think that I should suffer because of its incompetence.
Nice one.
@Moral movement....I dont hope nor pray for you to go to the Hell you insist cant be proven; on the contrary....I pray that you get a revelation of the God who is revealing himself to me....he's awesome....even more so than the one I tried to create in my own mind before he was ready for me to know Him. ...absolutely unfathomable....as far as the main-body of this article....Arent we glad that all those things happened when mankind was at enmity with God and not today....it'd be a pretty nasty world to have to navigate with a God like Him at war with us....FORTUNATELY, the war was over at the point of atonement when Jesus said "It is finished" and now we have a covenant that covers ALL of mankind (Those who choose to enter it) and not just one nation. And this new one requires NO blood sacrifice beyond the one that has already been made and this covenant includes PROSPERITY in exchange for belief and wholeness & wellness in exchange for faith....and ETERNAL LIFE in exchange for believing in a Messiah who gave His perfect self in exchange for those of us who were doomed....and EVERY BIT OF IT IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR AND FREE FOR THE TAKING....and it requires NO PERFORMANCE STANDARDS....as a matter of fact you cant buy it with behavior and performance if you TRIED....Nope....it's GRACE and it's FREE through FAITH!!!! Find me and "In-box" me at facebook if you'd like to learn how to get in on it-- Keith Burrow, Scroggins Texas....Im the one wearing the red ball-cap.
One more thing for Moral Movement: The "Pathetically vile" comment....let me help you to understand where you are missing the mechanics here....Adam was given DOMINION over the creation BEFORE Satan deceived Eve...when Adam agreed to indulge her sin and sin along with her he CEDED Dominion to Satan....that DOMINION was a sovereign dominion and it was given to Adam via the WORD of god....since the WORD of god actually holds together everything that forms the universe (Everything created was created through the Word of God) if he violated His word in any way at any time the entire universe would disintegrate and the entire creation would be lost so he couldn't just "intervene" and violate his word by taking dominion back from Satan....so he had to create a plan to rescue us that included blood atonement and since the blood of men and animals is tainted by the fall of the creation, he had to organize and conduct a 4000 year plan to use WORD to get HIS OWN BLOOD worked into the human race via a virgin birth so he could sacrifice that perfect blood and free us from the curse of the fall....its very very complicated, yes....but it's NOT a sci-fi and it's not just a fairy tale....there are answers for EVERY question....they just have to be ferreted out
Oh ....and one last note for Moral Movement: Dont let the truth make you reluctant....sometimes when folks start to come to terms with the truth that there really is a God who loves them, they dig their heels in because there is a part of their mind that says "If Im going to admit that this God really does exist, Im gonna have to become one of THEM" eewwwwww!!! .....well those people who have turned you off, because of the goofy crap they spew that doesn't add up and is so condemning and condescending??? ....Those people are as lost as a goose in a snowstorm and I have to pray for them more than anyone, because when someone THINKS they know something they dont know....it's really hard to get to them and get them to open their minds and think. So when you start to ask God that question most TRUE believers have asked (The one that goes: "alright God....I dont think you're real, but if you are I WANT TO KNOW YOU...because if you really are REAL and my mind simply doesn't comprehend you yet, then I REALLY NEED to know you)remember that those of us who are TRUE believers....dont care anything at all about being better than anyone else and we dont want to CHANGE anyone else and we dont care to condemn anyone else.....we simply want people to open their minds to the real truth and then decide whether or not they care to pursue the REAL God.
The point in probability where "Possibility" ceases to exist is somewhere around 10 to the 10th power to one ......mathematics, as far as anyone has sought to reckon, sets the odds of "evolution" or "spontaneous generation" generating the Known universe in it's current known state at UPWARDS OF (10 to the TRILLIONTH power) to (one) ....wouldn't anyone in their right mind stop at about ....oh...lets say (10 to the 11,473,311th power)to (one) and say...."FELLAS, it looks like this place had some help getting here!"
Keith Burrow, it is interesting that you get onto a website like this, that allows you to babble on, yet a religious website would bar someone like me.
Regarding Adam and Eve. If Eve came from the rib of Adam, the cloned person would be a male, so Adam and Steve rather than Adam and Eve.
Why would you believe primitive stories that are 2,000 3,000 years old. Why would you believe primitive stories about gods, angels, ghosts, devils, heaven, hell and an after-life, none of which has any proof?
You speak out against blood sacrifices, and indeed it is stated that your make-believe god thought that this was a bad idea. Yet, guess what your god did? We are led to believe that he sacrificed his only son. And guess why he did this? Because he was so incompetent with his human creation that his human creation would not grovel to him as much as he desired. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Perhaps you might read "The Man Who Created God." by Stephen Marton. It tells exactly how your God was created.
Hello. I would like to see a list of whom the "Christians" have murdered.
(A real Christian would ache till their death showing LOVE instead of violence (Something we only see the Amish do) - Sadly all the other "CHRISTian$" seem to be way over on the other side - choosing the powerful (Murderers) side instead of the cooperative, loving ones (real Christians).
Aside from the young boys molested - I would like to see a list of whom and how many the "Christian$" have killed in our history of having Christians (or "Christians") on the planet.
Please remember to include the murders of the North American Indians (whom were read their new laws in Spanish & Latin by Christians- and if they did not bow down to this new religion (and taking of their land & possessions & sometimes wives & children - they would be murdered.)
Custer fancied himself a good Christian. So did Andrew "The only good Indian, is a DEAD Indian" Jackson (yeah that guy on the 20.$ bill!) - So do most of the hicks wearing the shirt, "KILL 'em all, let GOD sort 'em out!"
- - - We realize that a bad apple simply calling themselves a Christian (or whatever) does NOT make them so - but we are talking about mass murder/extinction from the planet with the okay from the church! (Think of the ties from the Popes to the one$ in power/politics from many countries that wanted more power. "Well, as long as you're spreading Christianity... ok rape and murder as you see fit."
en la manera como describes a Dios parece ser que es malvado para ti o para muchos que pueden estar de acuerdo contigo, sin embargo yo quiero hacer varias preguntas:
1. los que colonizaron EEUU cuanta gente asesinaron para obtener sus tierras?
2. en la independencia EEUU cuanta gente fue asesinada para libertar su paÃs?
3. en la guerra primera y segunda guerra mundial cuanta gente mato para defender su paÃs?
4. En la guerra civil de EEUU cuanta gente asesinó el gobierno para defender su paÃs de sus mismos habitantes?
5. cuanta gente asesino EEUU en la guerra contra el medio oriente para defender su tierra de los talibanes?
Y la cantidad de muertos supera mas de 24.000.000 de asesinatos pero el gobierno de los estados Unidos de America dice que lo hacen para mantener la libertad de su pueblo y nación, calificando a las demas naciones como agresoras de esta ¿y quién dice que no es asÃ?
si un paÃs como Estados Unidos que su gobierno es finito, puede asesinar justificando su causa en defender la libertad de una nación, ¿quien cuestiona a Dios todo poderoso Dador de Vida, tomar de lo que le pertenece y quitarle la vida a las naciones que atentan contra su pueblo escogido o de reprender a los civiles de se rebelan sin causa contra su propio pueblo para hacer daño?
no es muy diferente de lo que en algunos estados en Estados Unidos, por conservar la paz y la armonÃa de la sociedad, dan pena de muerte.
Se juzga a Dios por defender su pueblo escogido, solo para justificar un corazón alejado de Él y que necesita de Él. Dios es Dios de Amor y de toda consolación, no hay que buscar lo malo de Dios por que en el no hay nada malo, es lo que harÃa un padre por un hijo al que ama... y creo que no haces parte de una nación del antiguo testamento asolada por Dios. tienes la oportunidad de acercarte a Dios confiadamente al trono de la gracia . Dios no va hacer contigo lo que los malvados han hecho en el transcurso de la historia por lo que Dios los ha reprendido. Cristo a ti te ama y te quiere salvar. y tienen que alejarte de Dios para justificarte sabiendo que tienes un vacÃo en tu corazón que solo Jesucristo te puede llenar... Dios es un padre amoroso que esta esperando a que tu te arrepientas para sanar las heridas de tu corazón.
Jeirlen Padilla Molina
amigoyey@hotmail.com
Colombia
en la manera como describes a Dios parece ser que es malvado para ti o para muchos que pueden estar de acuerdo contigo, sin embargo yo quiero hacer varias preguntas:
1. los que colonizaron EEUU cuanta gente asesinaron para obtener sus tierras?
2. en la independencia EEUU cuanta gente fue asesinada para libertar su paÃs?
3. en la guerra primera y segunda guerra mundial cuanta gente mato para defender su paÃs?
4. En la guerra civil de EEUU cuanta gente asesinó el gobierno para defender su paÃs de sus mismos habitantes?
5. cuanta gente asesino EEUU en la guerra contra el medio oriente para defender su tierra de los talibanes?
Y la cantidad de muertos supera mas de 24.000.000 de asesinatos pero el gobierno de los estados Unidos de America dice que lo hacen para mantener la libertad de su pueblo y nación, calificando a las demas naciones como agresoras de esta ¿y quién dice que no es asÃ?
si un paÃs como Estados Unidos que su gobierno es finito, puede asesinar justificando su causa en defender la libertad de una nación, ¿quien cuestiona a Dios todo poderoso Dador de Vida, tomar de lo que le pertenece y quitarle la vida a las naciones que atentan contra su pueblo escogido o de reprender a los civiles de se rebelan sin causa contra su propio pueblo para hacer daño?
no es muy diferente de lo que en algunos estados en Estados Unidos, por conservar la paz y la armonÃa de la sociedad, dan pena de muerte.
Se juzga a Dios por defender su pueblo escogido, solo para justificar un corazón alejado de Él y que necesita de Él. Dios es Dios de Amor y de toda consolación, no hay que buscar lo malo de Dios por que en el no hay nada malo, es lo que harÃa un padre por un hijo al que ama... y creo que no haces parte de una nación del antiguo testamento asolada por Dios. tienes la oportunidad de acercarte a Dios confiadamente al trono de la gracia . Dios no va hacer contigo lo que los malvados han hecho en el transcurso de la historia por lo que Dios los ha reprendido. Cristo a ti te ama y te quiere salvar. y tienen que alejarte de Dios para justificarte sabiendo que tienes un vacÃo en tu corazón que solo Jesucristo te puede llenar... Dios es un padre amoroso que esta esperando a que tu te arrepientas para sanar las heridas de tu corazón.
Jeirlen Padilla Molina
amigoyey@hotmail.com
Colombia
I hope God doesn't get offended by your chart and smite you!
Wow - interesting debate. I'm sorry I missed it. I'm a Goddess worshiper so I usually straddle the two sides - I demand that religion agree with science but I also have experienced perfectly natural phenomena that most people would define as "supernatural."
I do a lot of fact-checking on the Abrahamic death cults - Judaism, Catholicism, Greek orthodoxy, Protestantism, Islam and Mormonism - because I think Yahweh is the worst thing ever conceived by the minds of men. We've had 6,000 years of an unnatural social order because of these moldy old scrolls, and it's time we put an end to "his" reign of terror.
Thanks so much for all your work! I'm so glad you've created this blog as well as your annotated Skeptic's texts. Happy Spring!
Your argument is basically nonsense. Here is why. God is the creator of everything in existence. Therefore, human beings are subject to His will and His judgement. God is just in every action He takes. The penalty for sin is death. Therefore, all of the people that you think were innocent that God killed were not innocent at all. They were guilty of sin and therefore, the just punishment is death. Also, killing a criminal is not murder. Killing a criminal is just punishment.
to Salt of the Earth.. so your argument is that sinners are killed because it is just action by God? In that aspect, shouldn't God kill you for your sins?
In answer to that, yes He should. I am completely at His mercy. See, of God was ONLY just, all of us would be goners. But He is also (and dare I say, more predominately) love. He has an obligation to obliterate sin. Sadly, all of his beloved race of humans have chosen to embrace it and thus attach themselves to the problem. Easiest solution: wipe us all out (see Genesis 6). But no, He had mercy enough to let one sinner and his family live, and the problem persists. His eternal solution: let His Son take the sin away. Now, through Jesus, God has invented a way to separate sin and sinner so that sin can be aptly obliterated and love can prevail. But since all of us have free choice, we can still choose to love sin and that's what breaks God's heart
Although this doesn't seem like much when you look at Satan's whopping killstreak of... 10. (All of Job's children)
Can someone make a count of how many deaths and how much misery, blood, guts and suffering has been caused by evolution (survival of the fittest) over millions of years?
How many people did the leaders of athiestic 'survival of the fittest' regimes (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc) torture and murder? Actually, more than anyone else in the rest of history.
These men were great admirers of Darwin.
Human life had no more worth to them than that of cattle, which made sense from their perspective since we are just rearanged pond scum, as per evolutionary teaching.
But far from being insane they thought they were doing good by taking evolution to its logical conclusion and getting rid of all the physically and phychologically damaged, and 'racially inferior' human 'parasites', and thereby creating a better humanity.
So the real question is, which is more cruel, God or evolution?
Bob-
First, They did not kill in the name of atheism, however, many religious zealots did their killing in the name of the lord. That is no small thing there. They killed because of religion, because of God.
Second, Hitler was a self-professed Christian.
Third you ascribe philosophies and motivations on people that you have no way of knowing.
Bob-
First, They did not kill in the name of atheism, however, many religious zealots did their killing in the name of the lord. That is no small thing there. They killed because of religion, because of God.
Second, Hitler was a self-professed Christian.
Third you ascribe philosophies and motivations on people that you have no way of knowing.
I have never understood the passion of those who believe we are all just a cosmic accident. As though things matter like truth and justice. Where do these concepts come from? So a fairytale book says a fairytale creator killed some fairytale people. If there is no meaning and purpose behind our creation and therefore no meaning in our existence, why do you care enough to argue with passion against what is not real? Death occurs by the millions everyday in our world. People die, plants die, bugs die. WHO CARES!!! This is meaningless chaos. Unless it is not. Maybe there is intention and meaning behind our creation. What caused the big bang? What was before the big bang? When you reach the end you are left with SOMETHING or SOMEONE that is SELF EXISTENT. The science you so rely on proves that something cannot be created by nothing - cause and effect. We can observe the effect (creation) this PROVES a self existant cause because it has to begin somewhere. The only thing that can begin it would have to be beyond our natural world that we can measure with science because it breaks the law of cause and effect. It causes out of nothing just as the Bible teaches. The Bible also proves itself through hundreds and hundreds of predictions that have come to pass which would be mathematically impossible to predict. Thank God for science.
Jferrin-
First, they killed in the name of evolution as the ideology displayed in their public speeches records.
Second, self professed Christian does not mean genuine Christian as Hitler and countless others throughout history have demonstrated.
A crimminal will say anything to get his foot in the door.
Third, "For a tree is known by its fruit." Mat 12:33.
Philosophies and motivations are known by the fruit they end up bearing.
In Hitlers case alone, about 50 million killed as a result of the war that he instigated in the name of his Darwinian, survival of the fittest ideology.
For further proof, listen to some of his speeches or read his book, 'Mien Kampf' (My Struggle)and his philosophy soon becomes apparent.
Mat 12:33 is the way to differentiate between true Christian's and false Christian's, that is, by their fruit.
I believe there are some things we can't possibly understand, and unlike those who believe in a man who lives in the sky, I will admit that I do not know. But I will never believe a person who tells me that they know for sure that there is a God.
Fred Good-
True, there are some things we cannot understand. But we can easily understand that God exists.
To prove that there is a God can be done simply by disproving the validity of the only other option for the existence of life. That is, that everything brought itself into existence through evolution (the naturalistic origin of life and its diversity).
The following questions demonstrate that evolution is simply not possible.
How did life originate?
Evolutionist Proffessor Paul Davies admitted, "Nobody knows how a mixture of lifeless chemicals spontaneously organized themselves into the first living cell." Andrew Knoll, professor of biology, Harvard, said "We don't really know how life originated on this planet." A minimal cell needs several hundred proteins. Even if every atom in the universe were an experiment with all the correct amino acids for every possible molecular vibration in the supposed evolutionary age of the universe, not even one average-sized functional protein would form. So how did life with hundreds of proteins originate just by chemistry without intelligent design?
How did the DNA code originate?
The code is a sophisticated language system with letters and words where the meaning of the words is unrelated to the chemical properties of the letters - just as the information on this page is not a product of the chemical properties of the ink (or pixels on a screen). What other coding system has existed without intelligent design? How did the DNA coding system arise without it being created?
[The DNA molecule is the most compact and efficient information storage system in the known universe. For example, the amount of information that could be stored in a single pinhead of DNA would be equivalent to a pile of paperback novels 240 times as high as the distance from the earth to the moon, or 100 million times more information than a 40 gigabyte hard drive could hold on your computer. Even if we could explain the creation of complex coded information by chance, there would be another problem. We would need at the same time to create a mechanism capable of reading and using this coded information; otherwise, the information alone is useless.
A fully functional system for writing, reading, and using information is required. This is an example of "irreducible complexity." That is, to be fully functional, the writing mechanism, the reading mechanism, and the mechanism for using the information must all be present at the very first instance it appears. If one of these components is missing, the system won't work. Since life is built on a hierachy of such "irreducibly complex" machines, the idea that natural processes could have made mere chemicals into living systems is untenable]
Why are the (expected) counless millions of transitional fossils missing?
Darwin noted the problem and it still remains. he evolutionary family trees in textbooks are based on imagination, not fossil evidence. Famous Harvard paleontologist (and evolutionist), Stephen Jay Gould, wrote, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." Other evolutionist fossil experts also admit the problem.
@Kristen Helton:
"I have never understood the passion of those who believe we are all just a cosmic accident"
Well, actually most of us who choose to NOT believe in something (e.g. Christianity) aren't really passionate about that at all. Are you passionate about NOT collecting stamps? We actually have lives to get on with here. I have a beautiful wife and a delightful child and two Burmese cats and two energetic Ridgebacks running around in my garden that I love to plant trees in... And so on..
We only get passionate about things like Christianity because it refuses to go away, it wants to indoctrinate our children, deny rights to gays, teach fairy tales instead of evolution in science classes, keep women as second-class citizens, and... so much more. If Christianity goes away, or at least learns to keep to itself, we can stop all the "passion" you object to.
Besides, you paint this incredibly bleak picture of the "meaningless chaos" in which we live. Yes, bad stuff happens. But good stuff happens all the time, too. It is a miracle to be alive, haven't you noticed? What a beautiful world we live in. At least when bad stuff happens, I know there's nothing "behind" it - shit just happens. But when bad stuff happens and you're a Christian, well, YOU are the one with a lot of explaining to do...
I don't know if someone has already asked this, so sorry if it is a repetition. I've noticed that the estimate of populations often differ from the bible versus scientific data. Have you considered having two separate estimates for the cases where the exact number of people killed isn't clearly stated in the bible? One based on scientific data of populations and one based on what the bible says?
Great blog by the way. Very concise, informative and often times amusing.
SamEdge,
I try to give the biblical number of victims when numbers are given in the text, and estimates when no numbers are provided. Of course, it's hard to give reasonable estimates to imaginary events, but I do what I can.
En primer lugar, mataron en nombre de la evolución como la ideologÃa aparece en sus registros de discursos públicos???
I apologize for not reading all of the comments, and if the following points have previously been raised, I apologize.
God created a perfect world, with but one restriction, and gave us the opportunity to live in it. We abused that privilege. Hence, for defying the Creator, we all deserve death and damnation. The fact that God has only directly killed this few is a measure of His mercy and forgiveness. Furthermore, so as not to go against His perfect justice, He provided His Son as a payment for the debt our sins require.
@ JJ but blood is not required for forgivness from God....like in the book of Jonah
you know, if you think about it, God actually is responsible for all deaths that have ever taken place. I mean, He did introduce 'death' when He banished Adam from the Garden of Eden, so without that, death wouldn't exist. So there you have it: God is responsible for 100% of the deaths in the world.
I was impressed with the death per minute ratio in Scarface, 1 death for every 4 minutes of film for a total of 42, but that’s peanuts compared to the bible. At 2000 pages, we’re talking over 1276 confirmed kills per page. Now that’s impressive.
@Bob
There is one very important thing you need to understand. Just because you say Hitler wasn't a real Christian doesn't make it so. With 38000 denominations of Christians one has to wonder who in this day and age is a real Christian?
And i can do you one better. A false Christian as you described Hitler doesn't make him an atheist. In fact let me spell yhis out for you since you don't really seem to get it.
1. christian killing someone who is of a different religion because of his religion is religious on nature;
2. christian killing one or a bunch of people for not being christian is religious in nature;
3. christian killing one or a bunch of people for power or interest or money, etc all except their religion is non religious murder.
1. atheist killing a christian for being a christian is a religious murder;
2. atheist killing one or more people for their varied religious views and not being atheists are religious murders;
3. atheist killing one or more people for power, money, influence, etc is a non religious murder.
Now if you take into context all religious wars(crusades, inquisition, jihads, etc) all of them fit into the first tho Christian examples. i know they are not all Christians, but you can just change the word Christian with Muslim or any other religion and it will be the same.
All of your atheistic examples, and MOST examples existing in the world today go into the third atheist example. Stalin was an atheist but he didn't kill for atheism. He killed to gain power and maintain his dictatorship. Hitler on the other hand conducted the Jew extermination on both political and religious reasons no matter how misguided they were.
It doesn't really matter if someone does murder in the name of religion but he is not a true believer, or he interpreted the religion wrong. He still did the murder and if religion was not there to guide him he may not have done it in the first place. Also, please keep in mind that all religious people believe they have it right. So even though you may call him a loon his convictions are strong.
If God does not kill then there is no justice for the good.
Looking forward to the new edition of "Drunk with Blood", Steve!
Thanks for re-posting this thread. I've scanned over it and, once again, am amazed at the number of folks who aren't taking their medications.
Blogger josue jumalon said...
"If God does not kill then there is no justice for the good."
That's right! I don't feel justice has been served unless I see others getting killed. (/sarcasm)
Only a moron would say such a thing. BTW, have you noticed that whenever god is responsible for killing, it's almost always people who *do* the killing. Just saying.
Public Service Announcement: Guys, take your meds. :-)
Steve Weeks
Hi everyone... yes, God has killed a lot of people... I would say that God has actually killed everyone there ever was, except for the people still around today...
Blessings to all of you... I just want to preach a bit here, if you'll bear with me... lol
God loves you all... give him a chance today ;)
Blessings :)
markch9v23 said...
I just want to preach a bit here, if you'll bear with me... lol
Let me see if I have this right. God kills everyone, probably including me someday. But *you* are blessing me. Does this keep me from getting killed? No, probably not. But god loves me. What should I give him a chance to do? Kill me?
Tell you what... don't quit your day job to be a preacher. Unless you *are* a preacher, in which case you need a new job. :-)
Steve Weeks
Stephen, I appreciate your work.
I returned after 19-months of combat (1971)
a broken man, who hated what I saw, did,
and experienced in Vietnam.
I hated my government for for being the
''greatest purveyor of violence in the world'' (MLK)
(and still do).
Everything I experienced in war reminded me of
the old testament god & the book of revelation.
And yes, the majority of soldiers and military
chaplains were convinced that god was on our side,
i.e. kill a commie for christ.
And the vast majority of ''christians'' have no
idea what it means to
''love your enemy and turn the other cheek.''
When I see the beauty in our planet and universe
(Hubble pics), I know that it is entirely possible
for some creative entity to be behind it all . . .
When I see the evil that we humans do to each other,
and the destruction we inflict on our planet,
I figure the sooner our species eliminates itself,
the better for what's left on the planet.
If all humans did their best to
Act justly,
Love others with mercy and kindness,
Walk Humbly with their god,
feed the hungry
shelter the homeless
care for the sick
visit those in prison
then I think we humans
would merit the title of good.
But alas, our 50,000 year old genetic
structure will not allow for
a religion of love.
Am I the only one that thinks the 2000 pigs should be included. That was a horrific killing (Mark 5: 1-17):
Jesus Heals a Demon-Possessed Man
So they arrived at the other side of the lake, in the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus climbed out of the boat, a man possessed by an evilb spirit came out from a cemetery to meet him. This man lived among the burial caves and could no longer be restrained, even with a chain. Whenever he was put into chains and shackles—as he often was—he snapped the chains from his wrists and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Day and night he wandered among the burial caves and in the hills, howling and cutting himself with sharp stones.
When Jesus was still some distance away, the man saw him, ran to meet him, and bowed low before him. With a shriek, he screamed, “Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In the name of God, I beg you, don’t torture me!” For Jesus had already said to the spirit, “Come out of the man, you evil spirit.”
Then Jesus demanded, “What is your name?”
And he replied, “My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man.” Then the evil spirits begged him again and again not to send them to some distant place.
There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby. “Send us into those pigs,” the spirits begged. “Let us enter them.”
So Jesus gave them permission. The evil spirits came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the entire herd of about 2,000 pigs plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned in the water.
The herdsmen fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, spreading the news as they ran. People rushed out to see what had happened. A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons. He was sitting there fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid. Then those who had seen what happened told the others about the demon-possessed man and the pigs. And the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them alone.
********
I also think the fig tree should get a spot on the list but I understand that was the least vicious out of God's 100s of times of depriving living things of life.
Leviticus 24:17,18 “Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death. Whoever takes an animal’s life shall make it good, life for life…”
That reminds me, maybe an animal and plant section could be added (small blog post about it in the book?). Recalling some of the livestock plagues in Exodus (and I'm sure you know of plenty of more examples).
Animal, plant, and human-killing God. If only people were aware of this Atrocious Figurine.
Shit, I'd even add a section for all the mass extinction events despite no mention in the bible because they were so scientifically and historically illiterate. They literally lived in the darkness considering electricity is a modern day discovery.
Sorry for long post/ramble, just having fun with it. The other day I was thinking the calendar should be BN/AN (Before Newton / After Newton). But even he was severely flawed in certain areas (age of earth and alchemy). Maybe it should be BD/AD (Before Darwin / After Darwin). Hopefully when religion is completely extinguished from 1st world countries (oh, about 100-150 years from now) it will be BR/AR (Before Religion/After Religion).
what about when Peter prays to jesus so that Simon magus falls from the sky and simon falls and breaks his legs and peter and the other christians stone poor Simon to death, Acts of Peter
Elkojohn,
I thank you sincerely for your service, and sympathize (grieve, actually) for what it did to you.
You can probably see that others might look out on the known universe and come to the exact opposite conclusion about the need for a creative entity, and why, even if there were one, it would be so interested in us out of all that splendor..
Take "... with their god.." out of the third paragraph from the end of your post, and you have something we can agree on as a target for our society, or our world. There's no need for a religion, of love, peace, or whatever.
And the good news is that some people think we are headed (albeit slowly) in the right direction. World-wide violence is on the decrease according to Steven Pinker, among others. Imagine how good things would be if different religions would become completely tolerant of all other religions, including those with no religion. That would be a true miracle.
I don't believe our future behavior as a species is completely controlled by our genes. Call me an optimist!
Steve Weeks
24 million killed. Stalinesque statistics indeed.
And according to the story, all of this savage death at the hands of this super cctv camera god in the ether was necessary and merely a teaser/trailer to the eternal marathon of sadistic suffering and despondency that surely awaits each one of them in Christian hell.
Thankfully there's no reason to believe such a vile, repugnant entity exists.
The god of NATURE kills every living thing. Is nature not the god of your world? Maybe there is a better universe within the multiverse? What if death is a doorway to another Universe? Of course the old barbaric stories are barbaric, but surely there is wisdom to be found. George Washington would be a forgotten enemy if the British would have won The Revolutionary War.
now let me say this here is not how many god has killed that matters, God is a good God, a perfect God and wants as all to be close to Him and be like Him, legally. God is not a magician or does magic. God is not in the business of manipulation. a programmer thinks, has a dream and begin to manipulate codes and figures just to get his dream output. now do you know how many codes he typed to get his software running and yet after 6 months writes a new program and says its an upgrade? you see my dear friends, God made man for Himself, man is God's product, man should obey what the programmer wants, but God says ok, if you guys dont want to serve or worship me then its fine, i will carve out just asimple people for myself that will worship me. and God trying to get a pure people, took noah and destoryed the defected ones. after a while as men multiplied. yet people looked for ways or excuses not to server their maker. and what does he do to preserve his few?
He creates a virus to protect His own and says even my own that is found defected, kill. let me ask a simple question here, is it not good for you to go and buy honey from the store and put on your bread and when you apply it and have a taste of it you are satisfied? will you be go to a store twice to buy honey and find out that it was poison you were given instead of the honey you taught you took?
you see my friends since the day man choose do disobey God's first commandment. " thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. the day thou eat of it thou shalt surely die", death has become inevitable and even Jesus had to die first and raise up from the grave bodily, so that He could prove to you that if you come back to God the great programmer, you will not perish. you may die in your body as a man, but you will live and have a better life and exist just like He is existing in glory. dying is not a problem, but where you will go after your body is wasted. lets take pity for those that God has killed, but will you say to yourself someday that, " this ground i am walking on is carrying too much load, i got a house on this land, a car, my family, maybe a farm, let me ease this land the burden and do something about it". what will you do then? my friends whether God kills or whatever kills, it wont stop until the earth is destoryed, be wise and go to the programmer that has a better space for you in His new Jerusalem. thanks
Robert said...
"The god of NATURE kills every living thing. Is nature not the god of your world? Maybe there is a better universe within the multiverse? What if death is a doorway to another Universe?"
OK, Robert. Why does such an entity require my worship? What if death *is* a doorway to another universe, and what does that have to do with a god? Is it the gate-keeper? How do you know you have the right god?
@ True Identity: I normally don't pray, but in your case I will make an exception. I pray you start taking your meds again.
Steve Weeks
I would like to add my blog to the list and would love to make any changes that Heather and company may suggest. Because we are all One here is welcome nay suggestions to add my blog to the cause."dog trainer courses"
I agree, having an extension on actual page links is more intuitivefor the user to realize that the link goes to an actual page, and nota directory. On the other side though, if you ever change page extensions, you’ll have your hands full with broken inbound links.Just have to weigh the ups and downs."dog trainer school"
My point is that obviously none of us KNOW. In my opinion those who KNOW about God are the biggest fools of all, but I need to HOPE that there is something better than this world. I am sure that you will consider that a weakness but that does not bother me.
The universe doesn't owe you anything, robbie. And surely you can find a better book of wisdom than one that says things like women should be forced to marry someone that raped them.
Steve,
Apart from God you have no basis for considering human life as precious. If you're going to criticize God's actions as if you believe the Bible you also need to consider what the Bible says about Him and about our lives in regard to your 'unjust murder table'- God is the only just judge; no one judges God, no one is even capable of doing so. Second, He actually values humans so much that in eternity they continue their existence- either with Him (which all are invited through Jesus!) or in Hell. God does not destroy souls. He values us all so much, He sacrificed His own son in order to forgive us. Do you have a son? I do.
Things to think on.
Heidi
good work man, I keep referring Christians to this table when they say god is moral, just, loving blah blah blah... and every time they say nothing! at the end of the day without god this world is more beautiful because this so our only life (to our knowledge) so live it to your fullest.
Soooo, you don't believe in God but have a problem with Him killing people. How does that even make any sense? If He doesn't exist, then Who are you taking issue with? If He does exist, and I'm talking the God of the Bible, then who are you to question what He does with His creation? He made it, He can do what He wants with it. Bottom line, your site doesn't make any sense, it's silly. Do yourself a favor and stop running from the God you know exist. You're only fooling yourself and the clock is ticking.
Createdforlove,
Let me get this straight? God values us so very much that he created hell to banish his own valued creation there to be tortured for all eternity because he can't fathom destroying souls? I know for one, I would rather be taken out quickly instead of having to endure everlasting torment. Doesn't this strike you as a bit gratuitous, even egomaniacal?
Well you helped me with a little article I wrote. If I would have to find all the numbers by myself my Bible would have worn out by now. Thank you.
Why are you assuming "all" deaths are wicked or evil of God to perform?
When people just kill others is there not some justice that should be considered? Who should administer this justice?
If killing is always "evil" what do we say about the 56,941,825 abortions done by the USA people since 1973?
Seems it is easy to just "judge" God as evil while we are good. Hmmmm
Pastor Alan,
Why not pick a killing, any killing, and show us why it was justified?
You believe that all of God's killings were justified, right? If so, it should be easy to show why it was a good thing for God to do. You can even do a guest post at my blog if you like.
So far no believer has been willing to defend God. Are you too embarrassed to give it a try?
Hi, I just randomly came upon this site. I think Steve Wells is a very intelligent scholar-writer.
Same as Steve Wells, I have questions and my doubts about the Bible God...
1) How come the Almighty and Omnipotent God cannot prevent good Christians and young innocent good Christian kids from dying young, including from accidents and crimes, if He were so omnipotent, almighty, and powerful? (Newtown shooting, CT, US, Sandy Hook Elementary, 12/24/2012). How can I trust the Almighty and Omnipotent God to protect my young innocent children, my family, and my loved ones? Jesus and the Holy Spirit did not (decide to) stop or thwart the shooting deaths neither. Or maybe they are just not omnipotent, almighty, and all-powerful after-all, or maybe they just don't really care that much. They don't really care if your kids just die.
2) How come God just sits in heaven and enjoys paradise while all of us humans have to suffer the unjust and unfortunate miseries and sufferings of life? These sufferings are very real to us. A lot of good Christians die young in accidents and robberies. This God appears nonchalant, arrogant, and unjust. Was He bored or lonely? He created humans and doomed like half of them to hell. (The word "half" here is used figuratively speaking - a figure of speech - it is not used to refer to an exact quantity value but refer to the non-Christians).
3) Why do we have to pay for the sins of Adam and Eve; I didn't eat that apple? Where is the logic and fairness from God?
4) Why does God create people and then predestined some of them to hell to burn for eternity? Why did God create us in the first place? Well, He created us and let half of us doomed to hell by His predestination. When He created us, He already know we won't choose Him and will burn in Hell for eternity. What fun logic...? What a nice father... He created non-Christians just so He can watch creations be burnt in hell for eternity.
5) How come a law-abiding atheist or homosexual who lives a secular philanthropic and humanitarian life is condemned to hell if s/he does not accept Christ, while a prison inmate who had committed murders, killed cops, and raped many children (with lifelong PTS on the children) can still go to heaven by mere repentance at death-chair, however sincere the repentance was?
6) If God were so powerful, why does He allow all the natural disasters like the plagues (like the black death in the medieval times), earthquakes, tsunami's, Newtown shooting, etc., to occur, and so many innocent children died? How can I trust the Almighty and Omnipotent God to protect my children, my family, and my loved ones?
7) If God were perfect, why did he fail to create a better but defective angel Satan (the Devil) who has caused a lot of problems?
8) God cannot be said to be omnipotent if He cannot dictate humans' choices. If He can by predestination and divine force, how is that humans have free will? There is no logical answer to this Christian beliefs of free will and predestination that can make any logical sense. And why is God not intervening to save innocent children's deaths everyday around the world and in the third-world countries? If he intervenes where is the free will? If God is truly compassionate, why did He need to test men?
9) If God is truly compassionate, why did He need to test men? If I were God, I would do everything to prevent men from falling into hell, whether they worship me or not. But no, God needs to be validated by His creation to fill his ego, his vanity, his void, his need. God needs to be worshipped, and Jesus needs to be validated as a "Saviour" or else He won't save you. What EGOS are these... How needy are these beings... So limited and conditional a religion. Isn't that kinda needy for a "God" and very demanding for a "Saviour" to ask of puny men? How is this God unconditional at all...? What about the phrase "unconditional love" that even ordinary humans can understand and do...?
10) Please don't give me the analogy of "God is the Father hence He knows better." Andrea Yates, Case Anthony, and many other "parents" made no sense and murdered their own children. What makes you think God is any better other than the indoctrination you lazily accept from church that God is the "perfect" parent, Creator. Who can prove that? Look at the mess on Earth. (Some says humans made the mess; oh well, God made the humans...)
11) It is shallow that a lot of Christians know nothing about other religions but label them as "Satanic" or false idol-worship. How can you review a novel if you have not read the novel. Similarly, how can a Christian judge other religions when s/he knows nothing in-depth about other religions? It is a sign of lack of education and of blind ignorance. These Christians are most annoying - not to mention I see statues of idols of Jesus and Mary everywhere. Isn't that idol-worshipping!?
12) Where did all the people before Christ go? Hell? The ancient civilizations of the Chinese, Aztecs, Indians, Native Americans, etc., for the history of mankind, all these and a lot of cultures and civilizations had not encountered Christ and millions and millions of them died. Are they in hell now since they did not proclaim Christ as the ONLY Savior?
13) Why did God create humans? Was He lonely? Half of His creation are damned to Hell to suffer real pain. He is not good with creating stuff. Just look at the mess on Earth; everyday massive people suffers agonies because God wants us to.
14) God created men in His image. Men are imperfect. God must also be imperfect. Also, if God is so perfect, why didn't he have the ability or wisdom to create more perfect or better men. The thought of a God creating men and then with no good sound fair reason make half of them to suffer hell-fire for eternity (God shouldn't have create in the first place) - the thought of such God watching half of his creation (-children-) suffering is just appalling. Also, Kids are born in third-world countries everyday and die from hunger everyday, and I don't see God do a thing about it. This God is supposedly merciful and compassionate; you must be kidding me?
Most Christians live in the lazy fallacious mind-set that "I am still alive hence God is good." Well, the good but dead Christians have no voice anymore to ask, "God I had been pure (I am a kid) why am I dead?"
15). How come God allowed Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting to happen on 12/24/2012 (Newtown, CT, USA)? If God were omnipotent, why did He not prevent it? If God is really almighty and all-powerful (omnipotent), why did He not stop the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that took 20 children's lives (and 6 adult teaching staff)... He could easily prevented it if He were all-powerful, but He did not stop it. The children were young and innocent Christians from a Christian town of Christian families. God did not stop it. How can I or anyone trust God to protect our loved ones or my children.
In Bible, God killed so many children and infants.
In current times, God didn't care to stop but let Sandy Hook innocent children die. He is omnipotent yet He thinks those kids should just die.
What kind of a God is this?
Why is it that there are so much confusion and contradictions in the Bible to make me have doubts? I think God wants me to burn in hell for eternity. God likes to watch people burn and die and not do a thing.
I heard somewhere saying that God is like a kid with an ant farm. He lights matches and burns ants for pure fun fancy.
I think I am one of them that when God created me, He already decided that I am going to burn in hell anyways when he made me. He wanted to watch me be an atheist and damned by Christians. Predestination and fate.
After all, God's probably bored in heaven watch people sing and dance, I mean, I would too. It's fun for Him to make some children to burn in hell, to watch people burn in hell, and not do a thing about it. God likes to watch his creation, his children burn. It is the ultimate show of "omnipotence" to see your own creation/children burn. This is called real power. Almost no one in this Earth has that kind of power.
Hold on... wait a minute, God sounds kinda like the Devil to me now...
Oh No! This is confusing. Bible, the Devil-Sadistic God.
A lot of Christian scholars, pastors, and ministers write stuff to defend Christianity just so to keep their jobs so to keep the money keep coming in for themselves and their families and kids and don't really care about the truth, i.e., whether Christianity is really true or not.
They are already "sucked in" and stuck, can't find other jobs to making a living, and don't have time or too lazy to consider the other side's point.
They simply dismiss all opposition as "Satan's work."
And they never explained to me where was Jesus during his Lost Years? Supposedly, some source told me he travelled to India or countries in the East, met Buddhism, and adapt it to teach what he felt was best for the Jews that the Jews at that time can accept. In that sense, Jesus was actually a Buddhist.
Quoted from another person:
"Probably the most convincing argument (wrt the fallacy of Christianity) is the amount of complete and utter nonsense in the Bible. If you mean any form of Christianity that argues that the Bible is the word of god, then why is the Bible filled with such complete nonsense and garbage?
And you can tell most Americans know this argument is devastating. After all, you can find people who believe that the Bible is the revealed word of a loving, all-powerful god, perfect in any way, and oh yeah, they haven't actually *read* it.
"Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty."
Seriously, we are really supposed to believe that's the revealed word of a perfect god? And why does he mention slavery so many times without *once* mentioning that it's *wrong*? The worst evil in the history of humankind could have been avoided had god bothered to just once mention that it's bad."
It is good that Steve Wells make this chart.
Even if he doesn't believe in the Bible god, we always need good vigilante, including religion vigilante, to tell us the TRUTH, and keep us informed with accurate information.
Just because he may not believe in the Bible god doesn't mean he cannot give scientific information to us, the atheists, agnostics, academic scholars, scientists, philosophers, and spiritual seekers.
good job
We know of IQ, EQ (emotion quotient), AQ (adversity quotient), and now I am coining SQ and RQ (spiritual and religion quotient).
With the amount of talents and minds in our country, I am shocked of our collective SQ and RQ. We are low in SQ and RQ.
After all, our forefathers told us to have separation of church and state, so our country don't turn into like a Christian nation, jeopardizing basic human rights and personal choices, technological advancement, and academic research, jeopardizing *free will*. Why the heck did we, our forefathers, fight for independence?
Let's cut to the point.
God decided the single most important decisive factor is -faith-.
We are talking about faith to God, to Christ, to Holy Spirit - one or a combination of the three. And for arguments' sake,
even faith to just one is enough.
We are smart Americans.
I will cut to the chase to talk about this Jew - Jesus.
If God has decided the decisive factor to heaven over hell is *goodness* or *kindness* or *self-sacrifice* - something like that...
I assure you, Christianity will spread all over the globe in less than a month, and will replace all other religions in no time to Asia and Middle East.
Well, for most Christians, we have an underlying deep fear of ending up in hell for not believing in God and Christ. I have that too, for my afterlife.
But I researched extensively of all religions and all philosophies of East and West and Middle.
Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc., gave me alternatives for afterlife.
For one. Buddha's requirement is not faith in him, but goodness.
Hinduism requirement is: devotion to virtues.
Taoism decisive factor: devotion to good character.
They have their fallacies, but extremely minuscule compared to Christianity.
In our Christian religious context, we are justified in a lot of things, in the name of saving souls, to preserve our religion, to preserve Christianity: violence, justified, slavery, justified, killings, justified, rape, justified, incest, justified, war, justified, screwing around in politics, justified.
But we missed out some key points.
The Bible written by men - the premise could be wrong.
The Jew could be wrong.
The Buddha, Krishna, Taoist Jade Emperor, all offer good eternal afterlives, comparable if not better than heaven.
Why should I pick a Jew over an Indian, or a Chinese? when the Indian and Chinese clicks with my forefathers' hidden ambitions for our country, and the betterment of the world!?
I know this is difficult to swallow. Trust me, I know how hard it is, of early childhood programming........
Ok, this may have been discussed already, but this post was too long to read everything here....
I'm going to go through an exercise in "reasoning"... and hopefully ALL will understand:
1. If you don't believe in ANY God, then what is the point in continuing this argument? If you want to dissuade people from trying to do "good", then why would you want to undermine their faith in something? Do you REALLY think that with all the variations in people's opinions, (let alone their religious beliefs) that you are going to convince everyone in the world to believe exactly what you believe? Even if that were possible, our personality differences would undoubtedly create different points of view amongst those "believers"
2. IF God is real, and He is the end all-be all of everything, then we would have to measure up to HIS standards and not our own. I mean, even if you don't believe in any God, but let's say there WAS a real God (I don't care which religion you pick), but you were UN aware of Him, and that God was the creator and destroyer of everything, then who are you to question it? I'm just curious, because I don't know of any human who has supernatural power to make me do something I don't want to do. So if you were God and you decided to make laws that you could not break, would you, or wouldn't you follow those rules?
3. If God is real, then He would preserve the words in His bible so that it didn't get corrupted by men...
4. If God is real, and He says that our punishment for breaking one of His rules is death, then who are we to question Him? I mean, yeah you may think it's unfair, but if you are sitting in a court of law for breaking a law and committing a crime, then the judge sentences you for that crime, because you were found guilty of violating that law, who are you as the criminal to question your sentence by the judge?
5. God has said all have sinned and fall short of His glory (perfection) and that punishment is death.... how do you attack up on the most basic laws, the ten commandments?
-I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other Gods before me
-you shall not make for yourself any idols
-do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain
-remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy
-honour your father and you mother
-do not murder
-do not commit adultery
-do not steal
-do not lie
-do not covet
I don't know ANYONE who has ALWAYS been perfect towards their parents, and yet God says if you have been disobedient in ANY if these areas, then you have contacted the disease called "SIN".
So, if you have been found guilty of this "law" and the punishment is death, then who are you to question the judge?
Fortunately God DID GIVE US an option of believing in Him to be pardoned from this punishment by believing that Jesus Christ His only Son. That He died and paid for this punishment so WE WOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY IT OR SPEND ETERNITY DAMNED TO HELL.
If you don't believe, then that's your choice... but if you don't, then why spend all this time on something you don't believe in? Why not go do something great with your life instead of trying to convince other people of your thoughts? I mean, seriously, you look down on people who like to feed the hungry, or care for orphans just because they believe in a God that you don't? If you are all for humans loving other humans, then what does it matter under which "title"they do it under?
AMEN, BROTHER WELLS!! ITS ABOUT TIME SOMEONE SPEAK THE TRUTH!!! GOD IS A MURDERER, AND THE WORST ONE AT THAT.
YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING GREAT WITH YOUR LIFE YOU ARE SPEAKING TRUTH, EVEN A TRUTH SO VILE THAT CHRISTIANS WANT TO TURN THE OTHER WAY RATHER THAN TO BELIEVE. I RESPECT YOU, STEVE. WE HAVE A SIMILAR LIFE MISSION HERE. I WAS RAISED IN HYPOCRISY, IN A CHRISTIAN CULT AND NOW I AM SPEAKING OUT. I HAVE A BOOK ON AMAZON KINDLE TITLED "99 THINGS SERIOUSLY WRONG WITH THE BIBLE", BY KATIE MYERS. ITS ONLY 99 CENTS, CUZ PEOPLE NEED THE TRUTH. CHECK IT OUT!! ITS REVEALING AND HILARIOUS.
AS FOR ALL YOU BIBLE THUMPERS, YOU BETTER BE ABSOLUTELY 100% SURE THAT GOD IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS BEFORE YOU PLACE YOUR SALVATION IN HIM. THATS PRETTY SCARY. I HOPE THAT HEAVEN IS NOTHING LIKE ALL THE WARS, MURDERS, RAPE AND KILLING THATS IN THE BIBLE!! I KNOW I SURE AS HELL DONT WANNA GO THERE!
AS FOR THIS LAST COMMENT, STEVE DOES NOT LOOK DOWN ON THOSE WHO HELP OTHERS, HE LOOKS DOWN ON THOSE WHO ARE TRYING TO SHOVE A MURDERER GOD DOWN EVERYBODY ELSE'S THROATS!
AND I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU? WHO DO YOU THINK MADE THIS WORLD AND IS ALLOWING ALL THESE KIDS TO BE ORPHANS IN THE FIRST PLACE? THATS RIGHT, GOD IS.
YOU SERVE THE VERY GOD WHO IS ALLOWING SIN AND AND THINGS TO CONTINUE. THAT MUST BE A TOUGH PILL TO SWALLOW.
CHRISTIANS, YOUR GOD WILL NOT GO UNCHALLENGED. YOU WANNA DOOM ME TO HELL? BRING IT ON!!! I WILL GLADLY GO AND YOU MAY WANNA MAKE SURE THAT I DONT BECAUSE WHEN I DO, HEAVEN'S IN DEEP TROUBLE!!
I STAND WITH STEVE!!
TRUTH REIGNS SUPREME
Firstly, in the Old Testament, God DID NOT write it, Moses wrote the first FIVE books in the Old testament.. GOD DID NOT WRITE THE BIBLE People who felt that God spoke to them felt the need to write the parts of the Bible.. IF I SAID TO YOU GOD HAS JUST SPOKEN TO ME ABOUT WRITING A GOSPEL OR A BOOK FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO ME??? I AM SICK OF PEOPLE BLAMING GOD FOR WAR GENOCIDE .. IT IS MAN WHO HAS USED GOD AND RELIGION TO FUEL WAR ETC..IT IS MAN WHO WENT TO BATTLE LEADING THE ARMY BY A BANNER OF THE CROSS..MANKIND HAS ABUSED THE BIBLE IN ITS OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT.. QUIT BLAMING GOD YOU STUPID IGNORANT MAN.. MAYBE GO FIND ALL THE GOSPELS THAT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BUT NEVER WILL BE PART OF THE BIBLE, IT DOESNT MEAN THEY ARE ANY LESS IMPORTANT.. EDUCATE UR ASS INSTEAD OF BLAMING GOD FOR EVERYTHING..WHAT A COP OUT!
Hmmmm.... I'm a Christian and I believe in God. I think theat number is quite low actually. I'll explain:
It's estimated that there has been a total of 105 billion people that have EVER lived on the earth. Most of them have already died. Did you forget that YOU are going to die? And so am I? And everyone you know? AND... EVERYONE that lives on the earth! I guess that would make Him responsible for the death of at least 97 billion and counting!
Consider this though...If God does exist... and He is the Creator, the one in whom you "live and move and have your being"... if my heart beats at His very command... IF this is true... what makes me think that he is required to prolong my life even one more second longer than anyone else? Is it not His prerogative to give and take physical life when and as He chooses?
And if you judge this God's actions as moral or immoral - by what "objective" moral standard are you making this judgment? What objective standard are you appealing to? If He is God - wouldn't that make HIM the true judge... by default? It may not make you or I comfortable... but wouldn't this be an inescapable fact... if it were true?
If it's not true... then it's all fabricated anyway. Then there is nothing to worry about. However, if it is true... you and I and all of us will give account of our life to this God - whether we like it or not, whether we believe it or not, whether we agree with it or not.
If you don't believe... better make sure you are right. The stakes are high.
You judge from your limited observation. God's killings are actually acts of grace. If He had not killed all living creatures except Noah, the earth would have been hell, because of the hybrid- people - half fallen angel- half human being that satan had poluted and filled the earth with. KILLING THEM saved God's plan and the uncontaminated human race by one man: Noah. For only Noah was perfect in his generations - UNCONTAMINATED BY SATAN'S SEED!
And as Jesus foretold that the last days were going to be as the days of Noah - meaning: the human race would again be polluted - they are experimenting now with animal DNA in human bodies etc.
God had a choice: Either destroy the whole earth and everone, because satan had corrupted all living matter, including Noah and the animals God led to the Ark. Simply to start all over. He had done that once already: Because the earth was not made void when God created the heaven and the earth. NO IT BECAME VOID, when satan and 1/3 of the angels who followed the archangel Lucifer in his rebellion battled God's angels. The creation account from Genesis 1: 2c is actually a SECOND CREATION!
God - in His incredible grace did not want to kill the only perfect seed left (Gen. 6:9) - so He spared the earth and a sample of all animals for the sake of one man!
THIS IS GRACE! But you look at all the hybrid humans God killed. This killing does not make God cruel at all. But rather the very opposite of a cruel genocidal murdered. The bad guy was satan who contaminated all human seed.
The reason for satan doing this was the curse over him, the prophecy God had given Eve after sinning: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." (Genesis 3:15)
Satan figured that the only way he could prevent this - his total destruction and defeat - from ever coming true was to prevent the developping of that seed! This is what he did by contaminated the human seed with his seed. God could never fulfill His plan of salvation, which this verse speaks of and is God's promise right after the all of men. That seed God promised in Genesis 3:15 is Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God!
So, you see God's grace in the absolute necessaity of killing all flesh with the exception of Noah!
As for the other killings by God, similar explanations can be given. God kills to redeem! God ALWAYS LOOKS AT THE BIGGER PICTURE, THE GREATER PURPOSE.
Satan murders out of hatred, as we were created in the image of God. Satan hates God and therefore satan hates us. He knows God loves us, so that murdering people is the way to hurt God.
I stand in awe of God, when I consider this! His infinite wisdom!
Knowing this, I consider all these accusations of people of God for His killings such folly. They have no idea. But they have such a big mouth...these created beings against their Maker!
In addition: God's grace is also visible in the fact that sin resulted in death! Sin brought death into the earth!
Death is an act of grace by God for if God had allowed men to live for ever, this earth would have been hell! It would have meant sin would be perpetual.
Thank God all men die since sin came into the world by Adam and Eve.
God's plan from the beginning was to create men to be with Him for ever! But since men chose to disobey Him, and sin - go their own way, do their own thing - God had to make the penalty of sin: DEATH! For He can not allow sin to exist for ever!
This proves God's unlimited wisdom, and also His LOVE!
On top of this: He provided the sacrifice in His very own only begotten Son of God to die for us, paying the penalty for our sin, so by His resurrection from the dead, He overcame death and opened the way for us to be reconciled with God, to be forgiven and to be free from the penalty of sin, the second death (Rev. 21:8) and live with Him for ever, as He had intended from the beginning! All we have to do now I call upon Him, repent of our sins, our unbelief, our rejection of Him, our going our own way, and ask His forgiveness and that He makes us His child, lets us be born -again, and destroys the plan of satan with our lives and releases His plan for our lives, and teaches us to walk with Him, commune with Him - for He is not dead, but He is alive and wants to have fellowship with us. For ever! John 1:12,13; John 3. John 14:6. Acts 2:38; Acts 4:12. 2 Corinthians 5: 17; Galations 6:15; etc.
@dutchlion**** Hybrid Humans??? Are we talking Neanderthals who lived 40,000 to 350,000 years ago?
What is a begotten son? Is it more special than a created son? A created son that can produce a female from a rib?
I believe Jesus was indeed special. Maybe enlighted enough to try to put some form of compassion to an Old Testament religion that promoted atrocities of all kinds including mass genocide. Of course some of these Canaanites were sacrificing children to "false" Gods. But the Hebrews were of course okay to put all to the sword including these same toddlers and babies. In some cases where they forgot/disobeyed and brought back the woman and childrens alive, god scolded them but relented and let them keep the female virgins. However making sure all the females who had sexual relations (how did they determine?) and male babies were of course liquidated. GENOCIDE!!!
What does it mean that God sacrificed Jesus if Jesus is now in heaven and sits at the right hand of God? Would it be more correct to say that God sacrificed Judas as Judas evidently was needed in God's plan also. He of course turned Jesus in to the Roman authorities and then showed such guilt and remorse that he hanged himself. He most certainly died in mental anguish and supposedly sacrificed to spend eternity in hell.
It is all a great mystery but what you have put forth makes no sense.
are jesus and mohammed still going up? how far are they now? were they going toward the milky way or away from it? there were a lot of other gods that went up, too. I wonder how far they got or who is in the lead?
How exactly did you come up with all those estimates and how do you know if they are all even plausible or not? This goes for the Biblical statistics also. I suspect some interesting guessing is going on here among the writers.
how many is this monster that claims it is god gonna burn alive eternally
@zon etc.: If God was a monster, you would be dead by now!
No matter what ... you guys hold on to your false impression of God because YOU CHOOSE to! Because you know that believing otherwise, you have no excuse to reject Him! And you reject anyone over you, becaused of your sin you choose not to repent of. Your problem is a moral problem, not any other! Because choosing God to be good and being motivated by His love in killing those He had to kill, and also in allowing those who refuse to believe in Him and do not choose Him, to spend eternity with your father, the devil, in hell and the Lake of Fire and Brimstone - because you would incinerate immediately in His holy Presence! You RUN from His presence! For those who want to know more about God, start with my playlist: The LIE OF EVOLUTION is the reason for the PUBLIC SCHOOL! - IT IS WAR https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB22DD7D1798B72D7
Nice compilation, albeit clearly aimed at the scriptural illiterate. I call these readers “de-facto athiests,” and includes pretty much every so called believer. On the other hand, I admire "de-jure athiests" for their intellectual honesty.
In this case, we have an honest portrayal of Jehovah's action, and thus a rarely discussed insight into his true character. However, I feel the commentary, and certainly the conclusions, on both sides are wanting, not only here but in society as well.
A poignant point by Lojiko, that the atheist state under Marxism has murdered more in ONE GENERATION than Jehovah of the bible has righteously executed in OVER 1500 YEARS, belies the author’s appeal resting primarily on character assassination which stands in turn on the reader's man-centric presuppositions of a utopian, elitist notion of justice, which stands in turn on a willing ignorance of scripture, law, history, ethics, philosophy and logic.
It is great that this compilation stirs commentary and I think it’s power is in it’s factual truth. As I disagree with the conclusions, I will continue searching for the atheist Tsar Bomba--as if [such an apology exists].
Holy God, reading some of these comments makes me want to pluck my eye out with a rusted bent nail.
It's literally the top sickest responses I have ever read regarding the murders and genocide God dictated in the bible.
Could they be any more insane? Any more irrational? Any more disgusting? Their answers disgust me. Their irrationality disgusts me.
It really freaks me the fuck out that the mauling of 42 children by a bear can be defended by saying God was being "Just" and "Merciful".
You sick , twisted Christian minds don't realize this is exactly what devout followers of Hitler, Stalin and Kim Jong-un and the likes do.
Because they think their supreme leader is a God, or has supernatural powers or is in touch with a God. Therefore, all their mass genocide and slavery and torture is "Just" because "Might is Right"
It's fucking insanity and irrational and this is why we care so much even though we don't believe your God actually exists.
We care, because we care for the truth, something you can't understand. We care, because we read your sick and twisted and demented comments and want the world to be a better place with reasoned and intelligent comments.
Atheists still have a lot of work to do to make this world a better place. The best thing has ever happened to this planet is the ascension of secularism and enlightenment. And the internet. Because other Christians reading these Christian responses will also be shocked at how skin-crawling they make some feel.
One day, God decided to send a saviour down to save mankind.
God thought to himself, "I should send a saviour, and have the saviour proclaimed that to come to my kingdom of heaven, mankind need to love each other, be kind to each other, do good deeds, and embrace virtues."
Then He changed his mind. "I created humans. To me they are nothing but just ants. Let me send a saviour to proclaim that the criterion to come to my heaven is through blind faith to this saviour I send, regardless of whether these human creatures do good or evil." God is satisfied. Now He can get a kick out of watching humans in confusion and agony over his irrationality. Good people go to hell. Criminals go to heaven. His narcissistic ego and vanity are fulfilled. His sadistic and psychopathic mind is finally fulfilled when he further created an eternal hell for those who destined to pick the other path by his divine destiny.
He smiles, "Now even good and virtuous people can be burnt in hell. That is the true show of my divine power. I am God. I don't need to make sense. Hahaha. Humans - ants."
Now He sits in heaven, and watch his anty humans in confusion and agony over the proclamations of the saviour He sent, and relishing His own true power and Omnipotence.
"I can create a better saviour with a different criterion for entering my kingdom. But that's boring to me."
"If I cannot create better saviour proclaiming goodness as criterion for heaven, I wouldn't be omnipotent. I just choose not to."
God feels fulfilled in his supra-human IQ.
I don't get it, why are some estimates higher than the numbers given in the Bible? For example, #20 "Ten scouts are killed for their honest report." Why is the estimate 110? It clearly says 10 were killed not 110. Maybe I'm missing something?
God sent his son to be killed for the sake of billions!
To say about history to be taken with a grain of salt? That only means your condemned to repeat it. Religion was invented by man to control man period. It serves to make people hate other people. Be fruitful and multiply serves governments to keep failing programs and a system more ancient than the Roman empire to exist. It keeps the rich wealthy and you idiots in line. Lamb of God hear the holy word. That is what your God thinks of you as sheep, members of his flock, since when is a group of people a flock? People have this amazing need to be led like lambs to the slaughter, they need to justify their existence to a religion that is basically the evolved form of sun worship. For those who believe in God, well you need to believe in something, for you have no believe in yourself, you just think you do. While the greed of man is on a path of self destruction, when populations are out of control, and there is not food to feed the people, when the next world war comes and it will come, for history cannot be argued with. You will see the mushroom clouds in the sky, you will see billions wiped off the face of the planet while the few chosen live in underground bunkers for ten thousand years. Then you will realize the truth, you are not in the formula for an evolved civilization. On your ashes man again will flourish, based on science, education, based on a purpose to evolve and better themselves, and religion will not play a part in man again. It is sad that people only care about themselves, for man has not evolved much more than when we lived in ancient times. Sit there and believe in God while the world crumbles, hey you won't be around but you sure are gonna leave one living hell for your children and their children. The truth is out there it has been documented for thousands of years, if you need to read every historical document written to make you little brain understand then do so, if you still think that there is a God and created man in his image for he was lonely and needed some extra companionship, then there is really very little hope for you. And on a last note, stop having children, your genetics is just going to produce more or your kind, you know the kind, they are called idiots. But if you really believe in God why don't you do the world a favor and go meet him.
I realize that with every experiment there are failures, but this is ridiculous!
I admire the amount of effort that has gone into this, but it would be better if it were more intellectually honest and took the text more seriously, as it's difficult to have a proper debate on this subject if you're not committed to truth.
Take row 4 of the table as an example. Putting the figure "2" in the "Bible's number" gives a false impression. It implies that the Bible under-records the amount of people killed, whereas the biblical text is upfront that every male in the city was killed. The text specifically mentions Schechem and Hamor by name because Schechem has been introduced as the main character in the story who had sex with Dinah and Hamor is his father who tried to get Dinah as a wife for his son. So to say that the Bible's number is "2" is misleading.
As Steve retells the story with the extracts and comments, he gives the impression that both God and Jacob's sons really wanted Hamor's men to be circumcised, whereas the text is clear from the outset that Jacob's sons didn't care about this at all - they just wanted to kill Hamor and his men because Hamor had slept with their sister outside of marriage making it almost impossible for her to find a husband and start a family among their own people.
• Not everything that is in the Bible is condoned by the Bible; but is necessarily included in order to be able to relate the story. There is no story about life and history that would even be realistic or valid that does not have the good, the bad and the ugly included in it.
• The events concerning Noah’s flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, the Canaanites and other events described in the Bible prompt many to accuse God of being a murderer and a hypocrite. But there is a vast difference between the murder of an innocent and the execution of a criminal.
The events relate to a Righteous and Holy Judge executing judgement on criminals for often extreme criminal behaviour and after much warning.
E.g. in relation to the Flood:
Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Genesis 6:5 (to do evil, one must have it in mind first. And since they were thinking only evil, then they could do only evil, some of which, as we see from the Scriptures, resembled a horror movie)
And in relation to Sodom, Genesis 13:13 says:
“Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the Lord.”
And further along in Genesis God declares:
“Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave…" Genesis 18:20
All the infants and young children that were killed were spared the inevitable involvement in their parent’s sins and consequent eternal ruin. In this respect God’s judgment was also merciful. The inherited sin that all children are born with (no one has to teach children to lie and steal; it comes naturally to them) being covered by Christ’s work on the cross, which covers all of human history.
…of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:8.
Another point that can be made for the reason for God’s judgement was to prevent more children being born into a society and a life that would end up destroying them. For example, a God who did not judge Canaanite evil would not be a God of mercy, love and compassion (the Canaanites’ bag of sins/crimes being full, with, among many other things, frequent child sacrifice – idolatry at its worst. [They were an incredibly sinful people who practiced extreme cruelty, incest, idolatry, bestiality, cultic prostitution, and child sacrifice by throwing their own children into altars of fire]).
And God also warned Israel to not follow Canaan’s ways:
“When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire… and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out before you.” Deuteronomy 18:9-12
They were judged by God, a Righteous, Holy Judge, on account of their great crimes/sins. But again, after much warning.
Obviously these kinds of people and their behaviour would never be tolerated in today’s society. The problem with today’s Bible critics and skeptics is that they falsely assume that these past societies were generally the same as us in their overall attitude and behaviour. But, as we can plainly see recorded in the Scriptures, they most certainly were not.
Many of these Bible critics/skeptics would be the first to jump up and down in protest (even more so if it were to directly affect them and their immediate family) if the judge failed to pass sentence on anyone who committed only a fraction of the awful things that were perpetrated by whole societies (“the detestable things of those nations”) in the Old Testament. And yet they criticise God for passing sentence on these evil societies.
But pass sentence He does, in various ways, either directly Himself through a supernatural act, or through man, or by one or more of many other means at His disposal.
“Behold, I [God], even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish." Genesis 6:17
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven, and He overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. Genesis 19:24-25
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favour to them” Deuteronomy 7:1-2,
“Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you” Deuteronomy 20:16-17
They [Israel] utterly destroyed everything in the city [Jericho], both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword. Joshua 6:21
“Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." 1 Samuel 15:3
The view of some that the Bible or parts thereof are evil is caused by removing and isolating verses from the surrounding scripture and comparing and criticising them out of their context.
This is done out of either:
(a) Ignorance, in which case the underdeveloped reasoning and logic of a child is being used to try to understand scripture.
(b) It is being done willfully, which is the same deceitful editing technique that is used by the media in order to make a better story and/or to discredit someone.
Dustin S, you say,
"You sick , twisted Christian minds don't realize this is exactly what devout followers of Hitler, Stalin and Kim Jong-un and the likes do.
Because they think their supreme leader is a God, or has supernatural powers or is in touch with a God. Therefore, all their mass genocide and slavery and torture is "Just" because "Might is Right"
You might want to have a look at 'Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian World View' by Jerry Bergman to clear up your misconceptions about Hitler (who had the same Atheistic world view as Stalin, Pol Pot, Mau, Kim Jong etc.) and his ‘belief in God’, which was just an intentional deception on his part.
The gross and often intentional misrepresentation of the God of the Bible by Atheists would not be helping you in getting to the truth either.
It is all myth. God cannot punish anyone. We are reading about torments which is unbelievable. God is all about love. Killing each other is the act of people not the act of God.
Church Supply Store
Brano Willis,
True, God is a God of love and mercy, but to say "God cannot punish anyone" is to say that He is not a God of justice, which is false. Logically, since God is good, then He must also administer justice. It cannot be any other way.
Thank you that's a fascinating list. You missed quite a few though. Firstly, Adam. God pronounced the penalty for Adam's sin before he succumbed to temptation following his wife who was deceived first. He then, in due course, sovereignly killed Adam.
If you follow the logic of the bible's teaching that God is sovereign over all his creation, and no sparrow falls to the ground, without him ordaining it, then each death, including your great great grandparents, the children who endure slow painful deaths from leukaemia, those dying at the hands of the Islamic Republic troops in Syria and Iraq, and eventually my death and your death are a consequence of that which God ordains.
If you think about it, there is coming a day when he will kill you, and kill me. And if you don't like that don't take it up with me, I'm just the messenger, take it up with Him. Oh but, hang on you don't believe he exists, so you have a problem. Ho hum. Heres a an idea:
Consider uniformity in nature, the inductive process, consider the unchanging, universal, immaterial, moral standards you are applying to take a stand in judgement over God, recognise the inconsistency of the unbeliever's position and repent.
You see the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs 1:7, and Proverbs 3:5 says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. If you want to understand the character and nature of God you must approach him with a contrite spirit' Psalm 51:17, for he is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble, that's James 4:6.
there is no uniformity with god,you are just constantly begging the question all of your proofs for god are just excellent examples of circula rreasoning
Wakawakawaka, you say,
“there is no uniformity with god...”
As can easily be seen from the Scriptures, it is actually a case of there being no uniformity with the people that God has to deal with. What you see as God’s different or strange ways is simply a reflection of His dealings with the irrational and sometimes very bizarre of behaviour of mankind itself. And God would not have had to institute strange prohibitions and rulings unless people were not already committing, or were about to commit something offensive that calls for such rulings.
All the crazy goings-on that we see in the Bible reflect man’s corrupted sinful/criminal behaviour, and are no indictment against God Himself.
The problem that Bible skeptics have in making sense of the scriptures and God’s character is that they have falsely assumed that God is guilty and evil, and that man is innocent. This is the position from which they try to interpret the scriptures. But as the Bible plainly points out, it is mankind that is guilty, and God that is holy and just.
For all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice. Deuteronomy 32:4
“…that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgement, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord. Jeremiah 9:24
You also say,
“…you are just constantly begging the question all of your proofs for god are just excellent examples of circula reasoning”
The nonsensical idea that everything made itself from nothing (aka 'evolution', the only option outside of a living and enormously intelligent and powerful first cause to, at the very minimum, get everything up and running), is itself really the one idea that cannot be kept alive without a lot of question begging and circular reasoning.
one strawman of evolution after another and second of all god morality is just an empty tautology, so statements bout god being holy and just are meaningless, and second of all he caused all this problems with humans being sinful in the first place
Wakawakawaka, you said,
"one strawman of evolution after another"
What 'strawmen' are you referring to? All the strongest evidence’s for evolution have actually turned out to be its greatest weaknesses. In other words it has always relied heavily on a lot of imaginative story-telling/lies to make it ‘work’.
You said,
"...and second of all god morality is just an empty tautology so statements bout god being holy and just are meaningless...""
How so? If he has created everything from nothing then He owns it and He also makes the rules.
And you say,
"…and second of all he caused all this problems with humans being sinful in the first place"
If God, who is good, made everything "very good" (Genesis 1:31) in the first place, and also specifically warned humans against sinning (Genesis 2:17), then how could He be the cause of the problems of humans being sinful? The fault lies with humans. It is humans that need saving (John 3:16), not God.
We are His Creation, we cannot compete with Him, only through AIDS/HIV we can kill maximum, (75 million people have been infected with the HIV virus and about 36 million people have died of HIV). http://www.who.int/gho/hiv/en/
Why do we always blame others, but cannot control our senses? You are welcome to add these numbers to your list, as our God has changed His way of killing the unjust. One of the commandment is 'Thou shall not covert others... wife"
Flood /fire are very old, our God has keep up with our speed, so AIDS,HIV... are his new weapons. Still not able to find a cure medicine to counter HIV? DON'T worry by the time you find medicine to counter, I will ask my team to find new way to commit suicide!
I haven't read all the comments on this and so I may be repeating what has already been said. If that is so, I apologise.
A major aspect of everything you have written and spoken about is what is written in The Bible but this should not be confused with God at all. The Bible is a book of Jewish pseudo-history and propaganda - not, as Jews and Christians (and Muslims, in the case of the Old Testament) propound, the inspired word of God.
You proclaim yourself as an atheist and that is your prerogative. I proclaim myself as a Deist (in the true sense of the word as opposed to being a member of an organisation that uses that term to define itself) and that is my prerogative. but my belief is just that - a personal belief based on the evidence I see every day. That evidence is not, strictly speaking, empirical although I do attempt to justify it in my book "Faith or Gullibility?"
My point in writing this comment though, is that I agree with you in that a true loving Creator would not commit all the destructive and vindictive acts that you have painstakingly listed from the Bible and not believing in such a god is not at all unreasonable.
Unfortunately, most Bible believers are very accurately described in the very book the hold so dear - as sheep! They don't stop to seriously consider the irrationality of what they so adamantly claim to believe. They hear what their preachers want them to hear, believe it implicitly and keep right on filling the collection plates!
Yes, I believe in a supreme Creator simply because of what I see around me but I have no idea what his (or her or its) name is and accept that I don;t NEED to know. I only believe as I do because the idea of a random coincidental occurrence of Planet earth with its amazing symbiosis requires more faith than the idea of a planned design and creation.
He created death, so by default he is responsible for 100% of all deaths. It's simple, the creation of death and man causes it to exist, therefore had he not created death or man we wouldn't be here discussing it..
I just want to say that as a Christian believer I really like this list because it makes you think. Did God kill all those people or did people and stories say they died because it was Gods will. I believe in Gods love. He made the worlds (universe) and science and evolution and natural cycles and permitted the evolution of our brains as well as the evolution of diseases, etc. I think the bible is one of the most important books because it really shows us our flaws in history in a very big picture and in a personal level. Solutions are found in it at least a start of solutions when it comes to personal matters but as a list of societal solutions it really suck because it was written so long ago. In the personal dilemma of what love is, how to really love, how to be a neighbor the new testament and some old testament are uniquely qualified in political, economical and military examples is not up to our standards in our revelation today. I think today we want peace and we can recognize war for what it is and discrimination against gays and lesbians for what it is. I am a christian believer that struggles with being in a church that holds old teaching (like most) as Gods will. I think God is infinite and for that more insightful than the bible and our capability to understand.
What most unbelievers and the creator of this list fail to realize is...GOD IS. God watches as you figure this and point out that, but it makes no difference because our reasoning can't even begin to grasp the slightest reasoning of the Lord. I suspect it greatly infuriates the control-freak types out there, but the fact is God is Lord, He is the boss, He made the rules, He is the judge, jury and executioner. If you don't like it, don't believe it, don't understand it, don't want to align with it, don't want to know about it...anything you don't agree with about God, you owe to your own minuscule understanding. There are some things we are not meant to know at this time. There are some things we will never have the ability to understand, because of our basic plebe status in relation to the Lord of Lords, The Alpha and the Omega. Ants look at you and are appalled by the hundreds of millions of insects and germs and bugs you've killed over time. What ants think means NOTHING to you, and furthermore ants have no ability to even GRASP the reason behind your mass slaughter of their kind. And guess what? You're going to kill them as well if ants don't get their little ant butts in line and march. Can you get the analogy, realize what I'm illustrating here? Be smart and quit agonizing, hating, and self-righteously defying and denouncing the things about which you have ZERO control, ZERO influence, and especially ZERO UNDERSTANDING. The rules are in effect, like it or not. God knows what He is doing, why He does it, and He knows who will win and reign in the end. Choose your side, and choose well. Accept Jesus Christ and be accepted by his blood unto eternal life, or don't and pay eternity in hell for all the thoughts you always thought were so important, pertinent and poignant...God knew your thoughts before you thought them, and He shook His head...
I WILL NOT acknowledge the existence of a entity that condones this much killing. Anesthetists have more compassion for humanity than god-fearing people. Based on arrest reports "Christians" are actually responsible for a higher percentage of sins than the non-believing human. Sin is eternal...that's what humans do. The belief in god does not lessen or eliminate the infinite number of horrible acts people do to each other, in fact the number of heinous acts grows each year, many in the name of god. Teaching compassion toward other humans has nothing to do with god, it's just the right thing to do. But, maybe the human race is not meant to survive. Maybe extremists will continue to exterminate humans they don't like thus reducing the world's population. Maybe that's the way it's suppose to go. Will god stop it? No. The human race is like any other species, if we are foolish and unable to adapt, we will die.
Thank you for the list Steve - impressive when you see it this way.
I would like to comment on the useage of god's names throughout the bible. Let's go right back to the beginning and use the origional names of the gods.... Enki and his brother Enlil (plus 10 others who make up the Panthion of gods -12 in total). These gods were around for 443,000 years (so we are informed by them) untill Moses came along and introduced us to monothesism the belief in a single God.
When you look at chapters in the bible you notice god's name changes according to the story and/or the characters involved, or their decendents. however, if you take the trouble to count them you should find 12 names of god and some of them include the location. To give examples, God is not the same 'god' as LORD. God in heaven is not the same 'god' as LORD above. You may be able to distinguish behaveral patterns in the different gods with regards to their killings. These 'gods' were at war with each other and mankind was just an expendable plaything to them.
Thank you for this list. I was doing research on this subject and was afraid I would have to do all the work, myself!
I love how some previous commenters read this and simply brushed it off as "God's plan," or a big reminder that we should "fear God." If you're submitting to somebody's will under the threat of death, paying them money and possessions just so they won't think about killing you, that's called EXTORTION.
Nowadays, they claim that it's a religion of peace, and people eat it up, while Islam is criticized for their violent history and current behavior. They're the same thing! Christians, Jews, Muslims, and any other offshoot cults worship the same evil, murdering, merciless, savage war-God. Once his followers have abandoned him, his killing spree will end and he'll fade into history just like Apollo, Mithra, and Osiris.
We start in Genesis when god brings all the animals before Adam but no help mate could be found, really? It's like the befuddled creator didn't know none of the animals would do it for Adam. Throughout the old testament we have a god that is all powerful but mostly kills including innocent children and in the millions I might add. We have a god that loves the smell of burning animal flesh & blood. We have a god that kills everything except 7 or 8 people in the great flood. We have the portrait of a monster. I'm also wondering if heaven is so great why did a third of heaven leave with Satan? I mean they must know something we don't.
Here is a simple yet effective test of faith. Let's bring the various deaths into the 21st century and make it personal.
You are a Christian who believes every word of the Bible is the perfect words of God, and has no questions or sections that you do not take as literal truth. You and your daughter are kidnapped by a man. You are tied to a chair while the man tortures and then kills your daughter in front of your eyes. The man reveals he is acting solely on the command of God, who has personally directed him to commit this act, and that it is part of God's greater plan. The man reveals his true identity, and leaves. Later the police arrive to find you and your dead daughter.
You have two choices. You tell the police everything that has happened, and identify the killer, thereby proving you do not blindly believe in everything written in the Bible, OR you refuse to tell the police that someone else killed your daughter, and you are sentenced to death, holding your biblical beliefs true.
What would be your choice? Deny the perfect truth of the Bible as written, or go to the grave to validate your faith while letting the real killer go free?
One word. Gnosticism.
@ worker11811 YOU'RE A FOOL! But since you love stories: "A busdriver whose bus was running down a small mountain road discovered that his breaks did not work. All of a sudden when the bus came round there was a man in the middle of the road. The busdriver had two choices: Run off the road which would mean the death of possibly all in the bus, or run over the man and kill him. As he ran over the man the passengers started accusing him of murder, of having no heart, and everything bad they could think of. Then the busdriver tearfully, slowly, responded: The man I just killed to save you all is my son! That is what the Father did with His Son Jesus Christ: To save us from the penalty of our sin: death, He allowed His only begotten Son to be killed to pay this penalty for us, so we could be saved. All; ew need to do is believe, repent to Him, ask His forgivennes for our sins and ask Him to reconcile us by the bloof of Jesus Christ and make us a child of God - so we will be born again and live for Christ from now on.
Seek salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ, Gods only begotten Son, Savior & Lord, with ALL your heart! UNLESS you are born of God, you are not a child of God and can not enter the Kingdom of God! (John 1:12; 13; John 3; 4:16; Acts 2:38; 4:12; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15)
Jesus Christ says in John 3:36: "Whosoever believes in the Son of God has eternal life; whosoever does not obey the Son of God shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him."
God warns Christians: Matth.5:13; 7:21-23; James 4:4; 1 John 2: 15-17; Rev. 3:16; 21:8.
Dó watch the recently uploaded video's of my playlist "Easy Keys to REVIVAL by Lawrence Roy who was taught by God Himself!" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwRRzJo9TolSTod24XPQnFZSEjOpBPqif. Start with: "KEY to REVIVAL: REPENT FROM false beliefs about THE JEWS as 'CHOSEN PEOPLE OF GOD' " https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEHVjksFVfA&list=PLwRRzJo9TolSTod24XPQnFZSEjOpBPqif&index=1
http://www.divinerevelations.info/ DIVINE REVELATIONS: A site documenting Testimonies of people who had Face to Face encounters & visitations with Jesus Christ and / or went to hell and/or heaven!
@ fluffypeanutcat: What is a fluffy peanut cat? A cat who eats peanuts and then farts so hard it's hair is made fluffy by the gases it farts?
Begotten means fysically born from a man's seed or in this case from God's 'divine' seed (in this case God did not need seed to make virgin Mary pregnant. God being Spirit could not and did not fysically have intercourse with Mary - only muslims think in such perverted ways - but He caused a physical response in Mary's egg: she became pregnant from God's child! )
This in contrast to the many spiritual children God has by their faith and being born of God by the Spirit of God.
This is why the NBV Dutch New Bible Version is such a perversion in John 3: 16 already. For it talks about "God so loved the world He gave His only Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not persh but have everlasting life." This perverted translation robs the Word of God and the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ from the power and truth of the Gospel. For God does not have one Son but millions. However He only begot One Son fysically. He HAD to: for God being Spirit, can not die. And a PERFECT LAMB (and only God is perfect and without sin) had to be slain to pay for the sins of the whole world. This is God's plan of salavation. God has only ONE begotten Son!
dutchlionfrans53 - Thank you for taking time to post your opinion.
Your response was over 300 words long, however, you did not provide the answer as to what your choice would be to the situation as described.
Can you provide your choice? Thanks again!
On the list above it is easy to see that a change took place with the coming of the newest writings or New Testament. It was the establishing of a new covenant with God from which all of mankind is now being offered God's grace and mercy.
What I see today as the biggest Holocaust is the killing of unborn children, mostly by those who do not believe in God or who have chosen to turn from Him. That number is certainly, by now, in the millions.
Seeing as how god(s) only exist in the mind, I don't see how any god can take the blame for even one death.
But then again, I suppose it IS apocryphal.
"What I see today as the biggest Holocaust is the killing of unborn children, mostly by those who do not believe in God or who have chosen to turn from Him. That number is certainly, by now, in the millions."
Agreed. Abortion is a terrible thing for mankind to do. Hopefully this, and other things like war, will be soon eliminated. It is up to mankind to make it happen.
Unfortunately, as bad as abortion is on the part of mankind, God choses to send them all to hell. Why? Because they did not get to know and accept Jesus. Acts 4:12, John 14:6. No exceptions. Seems fair, doesn't it?
The isms are alive and doing a great job of genocide with out the help of a higher power. Christ, in the new covenant ask all mankind to live in peace. Men have chosen to twist and pervert what He requested and call
it religion or ideology. Each person is responsible for their decision on how to treat others each day.
A seven year famine only killed 70,000? That's...not much.
I'm glad you posted this, because I was not looking forward to doing the research myself. I hold to the inerrancy of Scripture ("in its original autograph...") but I admit the numbers I've seen lately (which led me here) have raised my eyebrows. I'd like to think that if 185,000 Assyrians died in one night by mysterious means, SOMEbody would chisel that into a rock somewhere. Maybe they did, and it's still under sand. Anyway, I'm going to ask a knowledgeable Theologian how he reconciles this. Regardless of the answer, I will continue to believe the Bible in all its particulars. It all makes perfect sense, not just to me, but on its face. The issue with unbelievers is that they specifically lack the receptor (a regenerated soul) required to 'hear' and comprehend it. It's not a book for unbelievers, and makes no sense to them. Whether the numbers are plausible or not, the concept remains that we are all under a death sentence for possessing a nature derived from our federal head (Adam), for our own individual sinful lives, and we all deserve to die. That He saves some at all is graciousness unwarranted by the facts of our personal evil, individual or corporate, but I'll take it! Who wouldn't?! What baffles me is that He spared 8 from the flood. Should have been a clean sweep. How do you make sourdough? A starter from the original batch. We are what we were at our worst.
I have been seeking the truth. I am as confused as most of you. there seems to be two GOD's in bible. one a loving, all powerful GOD. the other a mutative, less powerful GOD! Something is getting ready to happen. I can't tell you what, but I can tell you what GOD told me when he saved me from cancer. "what you think is happening is not whats happening"
GOD Bless you and remember things are not as they seem...
How do you think those deaths compare to those by the likes of Stalin, Lenin, MAO, Pol Pot, Hitler, and Kim Il Sung, whose combined death count reaches between 220 and 300 Million?
All non-religion, other than the religion of Socialism.
1. Adolf Hitler – 11 million
2. Joseph Stalin – 20 to 100 million
3. Lenin – 26 million
4. Mao Zedong – 50 to 70 million
5. Mussolini – 500,000
6. Idi Amin – 300,000
7. Jean Kambanda – 500,000
8. Kim Il Sung – 600,000
9. Pol Pot – around 1 million
He is only a bad God if you see death as a bad thing. Is it evil when evil people die? The people in the OT that were killed were evil except for the children. So, is it better for a child to die young and receive eternity with God or grow to partake in the sins of the parents and culture and lose eternity? I am not talking about mild sin but perpetual sin of the worst types. If my two year old dies today is that bad? My human mind would say: it is AWFUL! But, what if God in his grace and mercy had a purpose in that. What if today, he receives eternity but if he grows up, he becomes a terrorist and kills 1000 people. Our thinking is so limited that is why we think the deaths are bad. Read Genesis and the seduction of Eve as a literal sexual seduction that brought evil seed into the human race. Look at the murder of Abel and how Satan is called a murderer from the beginning. Read the Gospels and see the context of Jesus telling people their father was Satan. Read about seeds and good and bad seeds in the Bible. The proof is right there, all over the Bible, however, the American church will say: NO, NO, etc. I can see why no one would like the God the American church portrays. The talk in such double speak saying He is in control of everything and he could have stopped a disaster that killed 250k but He chose not to. Well, if the OT is accurate then He didn't NOT stop it, He did it! That is a God I can understand bc if He did it, He has a just reason to do it, but if He just didn't stop it, then WHAT??? Read the OT, the gospels and Revelation and see if you can see a BIG picture that makes sense regardless of attempts of the American church to confuse and turn us all away from the TRUE God.
It's interesting off topic but Jewish people do not believe in hell or heaven.
sean
@SJ - your post invokes God's plan and how we should not question it. Here's a question for you: what is God's plan? What is your biblical support for God's plan. A word search reveals that the words "plan" and "plans" do not appear in the KJV of the bible. It would appear that 'God's plan' is a convenient way to explain things by referencing something that can not be verified.
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