Is God Entitled to Take Lives?

BigV said:

Which one?



Come on, @2PhiloVoid, please tell us which people who claimed to be atheists hurt you?

Click to expand...

Which one have we been discussing? The only God that actually exists.

BNR32FAN said:

Which one have we been discussing? The only God that actually exists.

Click to expand...

To me, a Christian God exists only in the minds of his followers, same as any other God. Without people, God dies. There is absolutely nothing for this God to do on the Moon, or on Mars. But if/when there will be people there, voila, God will have something to do.

BigV said:

To me, a Christian God exists only in the minds of his followers, same as any other God. Without people, God dies. There is absolutely nothing for this God to do on the Moon, or on Mars. But if/when there will be people there, voila, God will have something to do.

Click to expand...

Oh, do you spend as much time refuting the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy?

He created us---He is the only one that can destroy what He has made.

BigV said:

I think many believers have a compartmentalizing in their mind when it comes to God. Is a God loving or not? If he is not loving, then anything Goes. He does whatever his might may allow. But if he is a loving being, well then, there would have to be a difference then, wouldn't there?

Click to expand...

Well, I'm not sure I'd say that it's compartmentalizing, but there are two tendencies in theology: 1) to put the focus on God's sovereignty, and 2) to put the focus on God's goodness. I strongly prefer the second, but I think both approaches can run into problems with anthropomorphism, since we tend to view both power and goodness in ways that make the two irreconcilable.

BigV said:

I think many believers have a compartmentalizing in their mind when it comes to God. Is a God loving or not? If he is not loving, then anything Goes. He does whatever his might may allow. But if he is a loving being, well then, there would have to be a difference then, wouldn't there?

Click to expand...

Always a good question to ask oneself....

Consider: would a God that actually loves his children....care when they are hurting each other?

Does a good parent do nothing in the end when some of the children are doing especially bad harms to other children?

Or...is a good parent something doing something more like this? --

1) Teaching
2) Making a list of rules
3) Giving a list of consequences
4) Sometimes letting children work it out for a little while (before consequences), but at times doing an intervention to enforce an end to some egregious wrongdoing (*)

--------
* -- e.g., egregious such as sacrificing children in fire to idols for instance in the old testament, which led repeatedly to divine destruction of those cities and nations doing so, including Israel also.

Deuteronomy 12:31 You must not worship the LORD your God in this way, because they practice for their gods every abomination which the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.

----------

So, which 'god' would be a loving one? -- One that does nothing about evil in the end?

Or one that instructs, intervenes to end evil at times, and who even creates a way to avoid the ultimate consequences for our wrongdoing if we will just truly repent?

One that even is willing to suffer for our sake, even, to change us for the better?

mmksparbud said:

Come on, @2PhiloVoid, please tell us which people who claimed to be atheists hurt you?

Click to expand...

Is a Christian being on a Christian Forum somehow a valid basis for this enquiry?

BigV said:

Come on, @2PhiloVoid, please tell us which people who claimed to be atheists hurt you?

Click to expand...

BigV said:

Right, and murdering someone makes those who kill - murderers.

Click to expand...

Unless like a storm, or an asteroid, the killer is not a human being.

BNR32FAN said:

Oh, do you spend as much time refuting the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy?

Click to expand...

you believe in those also? Is there anything you don't believe in?

Halbhh said:

So, which 'god' would be a loving one? -- One that does nothing about it in the end. Or one that instructs, intervenes at times, and even creates a way to avoid the ultimate fair consequences for our wrongdoing if we will just truly repent? One that even is willing to suffer for our sake?.....

Click to expand...

Yes, there is a did not read all of the story aspect to the objections.

Halbhh said:

Always a good question to ask oneself....

Consider: would a God that actually loves his children....care when they are hurting each other?

Does a good parent do nothing in the end when some of the children are doing especially bad harms to other children?

Or...is a good parent something doing something more like this? --

1) Teaching
2) Making a list of rules
3) Giving a list of consequences
4) Sometimes letting children work it out for a little while (before consequences), but at times doing an intervention to enforce an end to some egregious wrongdoing (*)

Click to expand...

I like how you are thinking. Now, does a good parent kill their child for disobedience? Like, if you told your son not to do any work on a Saturday, and your son ends up picking up sticks, do you kill him for it?

If I had the powers of God (that are alleged on his behalf), then I would figure something out that will be exponentially better vs what we have now. I can pretty much do the opposite of what the Bible God (allegedly) did and does and still be a champ compared to what we have now.

MrsFoundit said:

Yes, there is a did not read all of the story aspect to the objections.

Click to expand...

Often, you will see people that are repeating ideas, or ideology (a set of ideas), who don't know in depth really much details (full situations) in the Old Testament.

In a way, you cannot blame them. REally, we cannot.

They are like someone (if I could risk a talk show metaphor that is a very good analogy here) that never heard Obama talk for more than 1 minute, but only heard Rush Limbaugh talk about Obama, and then that's all they really heard well. They end up thinking they know the real score about Obama, from Rush L., where Rush selected out a few choice partial quotes and re-painted them to look different than they were in actual situations/meanings, or just recast situations, leaving key things out.

So, it's not that they reject God, but instead they are rejecting a fake version of God!

See?

They don't know that they don't know the real accounts/stories/parables/rules so well, because the person(s) they have trusted about those assured them (falsely) that it was the real deal, the expert view....

It's good to remember that. And some will even tell you they know the bible well, though they do not, I found, over and over. They think they do, but don't know it nearly as well as they imagine. (I was like that once also, even after having read it once, but not as extreme as some of the anti-Christian ranters though). So, in that particular way, they are....partly innocent, or maybe the best word is 'mistaken', at least about that understanding of scripture, because they trusted in some anti-Christian rant or website, without realizing it was distorting things. They trusted some people too much, basically. So, instead of an opponent, some will be more like someone having a rightful type of anger against what is actually a straw man target set up for them. And then also some will have a just anger about real offenses against themselves personally, also. So, you get quite a mix of attitudes.

Halbhh said:

So, it's not that they reject God, but instead they are rejecting a fake version of God!

Click to expand...

Well, whose fault is it that we have a fake version of God's word?

BigV said:

I like how you are thinking. Now, does a good parent kill their child for disobedience? Like, if you told your son not to do any work on a Saturday, and your son ends up picking up sticks, do you kill him for it?

If I had the powers of God (that are alleged on his behalf), then I would figure something out that will be exponentially better vs what we have now. I can pretty much do the opposite of what the Bible God (allegedly) did and does and still be a champ compared to what we have now.

Click to expand...

Luke 8:52 Meanwhile everyone was weeping and mourning for her. But Jesus said, "Stop weeping; she is not dead but asleep."
Luke 8:53 And they laughed at Him, knowing that she was dead.

Interpreting events in scripture (old testament often) is trickier than it may seem at first for a non believer (no matter how bright or perceptive even!) -- it's inevitable to assume death of this body is a final real death if you are a non believer.

But the entire scripture is predicated on exactly the opposite: death of this body is only a transition, because there is something more than we can see -- Someone behind it all. And something next, after this life.

So, it's easy to use accidentally (and everyone does practically) that logical assumption there that death-is-final and it slips in unconsciously (naturally) into the reasoning one does about something in the bible.

But...it's using the opposite of what the scripture says to then argue about something in the scripture. Pretty much all make this natural assumption and it always leads to then not quite understanding the situations in scripture.

If death is final, then of course God would be murderous, of course!...if he existed. But of course the idea/assumption/belief that death is final is believing/assuming the God of the bible doesn't exist.

So, that circular reasoning that happens often is practically unavoidable. Everyone has done it at some point, when a non believer.

BigV said:

I like how you are thinking. Now, does a good parent kill their child for disobedience? Like, if you told your son not to do any work on a Saturday, and your son ends up picking up sticks, do you kill him for it?

If I had the powers of God (that are alleged on his behalf), then I would figure something out that will be exponentially better vs what we have now. I can pretty much do the opposite of what the Bible God (allegedly) did and does and still be a champ compared to what we have now.

Click to expand...

I already addressed this in post 47.

Is God Entitled to Take Lives?

BigV said:

If I had the powers of God (that are alleged on his behalf), then I would figure something out that will be exponentially better vs what we have now. I can pretty much do the opposite of what the Bible God (allegedly) did and does and still be a champ compared to what we have now.

Click to expand...

Says the human with his limited knowledge. Or perhaps if you had the powers of God you would understand why He does what He does and it would all make perfect sense.

HTacianas said:

The bailiff only carries out the orders of the judge.

God is sovereign. No one tells God to kill anyone. God kills to carry out His divine plan. If you read the old testament you'll see that God killed everyone mentioned in it in one way or another. The worst forms of killing, in my opinion, were carried out by the instruments of God in accordance with the rules actually created by the ones who were killed.

Click to expand...

Does that include children who had their skulls dashed in?

MrsFoundit said:

Crocodiles, storms, diseases all kill people. We do not take storms to court for murder.

Click to expand...

Neither are they held up as a loving god.

I’m unsure why you brought them into the conversation.

Are you going to tell me why God gets the right to kill people or not?

Larnievc said:

Does that include children who had their skulls dashed in?

Click to expand...

What would those children had done if they were left to grow to adulthood? We don’t know, but God does. Were they even held accountable for their sin having been killed at such a young age?