Why did God kill children?

by brotherdan 185 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  leavingwt

  brotherdan: Building upon something Mark said above, I do agree with what John Loftus said, and I'm going to paraphrase it. You may agree.

  "Any fear of Hell (however defined) will make it difficult for a believer to indulge his doubts and examine the evidence."

  I experienced this. Do you know how I dealt with it? I told myself that I could get reinstated or I can return to God, should I discover that I've made a huge mistake. I gave myself the mental freedom to indulge my doubts, listen to my detractors and meditate on what I was learning.
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  brotherdan

  Well I think you know me enough to know that I'm not afraid of information. I'd like to think that I honestly consider what you guys say, and I know that you do the same with me. I obviously have my opinions and beliefs, but I don't allow that to stop me from doing honest evaluation. I know it may SEEM like I don't consider it while I'm arguing my case. But I do consider it all.
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  OnTheWayOut

  He (Dawkins) makes a good point. However, what if I and all other God believing people (regardless of religion) are wrong? What have we lost?

  Oh, I didn't read past this so forgive me if these points have been made. The followers of the Bible define "sin" for others. They decide if blood transfusions or sex w/o marriage deserves eternal punishment. They beat up homosexuals (at least figuratively if not more). If it weren't for the progress of free thinkers, man would still be oppressed by the church to accept beliefs of the dark ages concerning life and earth and everything. Atheists cannot even get elected to offices in most of America, so pseudo-religious views carry the day in the law. Regardless of whether we should or should not pursue stem cell research or allow abortions or gay marriages or etc. etc. etc., it's Christians that make those decisions based on their Christian upbringing.

  So, if a few people want to believe that the God of the Bible is right no matter what, and those few people don't have any real power and don't go around gay-bashing or hindering science or teaching others to abide by the morality rules that they abide by, it might not be a big deal.
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  3Mozzies
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  cyberjesus

  bd: your wife refuses to consider any information contrary to what she wants to believe because she can not consider it. you refuse to consider any information that goes against what u want to believe, because...? you JWs cant reason, can you? dont forget that must of us here were like u at some point. we were theist and we were also jws but evidence, reason and an honest review of evidence led us to stop believing just because. if something smell rotten, it might be rotten. you can find a thousand reasons why god kill those babies. but if you were a omnisapient loving god what would you have done? could it be possible that that passage never happened? how do you know the story is real? cuz your wife believes it? cuz the elders? the bible? keep asking questions but be ready to face the answers. you know we care.
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  caliber

  Now before attempting to say something by way of answer to this difficult question, we should do well first to pause and ask ourselves what is at stake here. Suppose we agree that if God (who is perfectly good) exists, He could not have issued such a command. What follows? That Jesus didn’t rise from the dead? That God does not exist? Hardly! So what is the problem supposed to be?

  I’ve often heard popularizers raise this issue as a refutation of the moral argument for God’s existence. But that’s plainly incorrect. The claim that God could not have issued such a command doesn’t falsify or undercut either of the two premises in the moral argument as I have defended it:

  1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

  2. Objective moral values do exist.

  3. Therefore, God exists.

  In fact, insofar as the atheist thinks that God did something morally wrong in commanding the extermination of the Canaanites, he affirms premise (2). So what is the problem supposed to be?

  The problem, it seems to me, is that if God could not have issued such a command, then the biblical stories must be false. Either the incidents never really happened but are just Israeli folklore; or else, if they did, then Israel, carried away in a fit of nationalistic fervor, thinking that God was on their side, claimed that God had commanded them to commit these atrocities, when in fact He had not. In other words, this problem is really an objection to biblical inerrancy.

  In fact, ironically, many Old Testament critics are sceptical that the events of the conquest of Canaan ever occurred. They take these stories to be part of the legends of the founding of Israel, akin to the myths of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome. For such critics the problem of God’s issuing such a command evaporates.

  http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5767

  There is much more to this topic here.. it gets into the morality of God issue
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  tec

  Did some of the three-year-olds slaughtered in the Bible go to Hell, because God knew that they'd grow up to be bad people?

  Of course not... because there is no such place (not in the way I think you're thinking it to be, anyway)

  Stephen - good scripture on page 2.

  I am curious as to what people think God should do with all the people who are slaughtering, abusing, beating, raping, torturing innocents? Should he just zap them? Then he would have to take away free will - because tell me what would then stop people from returning to the same sort of thing?

  Tammy
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  cyberjesus

  Lets imagine you tell your wife about the child molestation cases and how that makes you doubt the GB is inspired by God. But she refuses to hear you because she believes that the GB is indeed apointed by God and plainly the JWs are the appropiate way of worshipping God. Wouldnt you ask her to at least consider the evidence and then decide what to think instead of just not even considering the evidence?

  Well thats the point precisely. Dont do what she does, she has an excuse, but do you?
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  Mad Sweeney

  wannabefree said on the first page of the thread:

  relax brotherdan, you are still in a traumatic state

  I agree. You gotta chill out, bro. You're stressed out over this stuff when it's really not that important. Jesus summed up the law pretty succinctly and it all boils down to: just be nice.

  I think all of us can do that and for the most part do. It really doesn't matter what each of us thinks about a really old book, or whether we think there's a personal god who cares about us and worries and oversees everything we do, or an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that we're alive or an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. It doesn't matter if we can only be kind to one another.*

  You're hanging on to stuff like it's life or death; you're trying to prove one belief or another. Beliefs don't matter. The universe doesn't care what we believe; we can only change the world by what we do.

  (*note: credit some of those phrases to Neil Gaiman)
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  Pig

  brother dan 'I guess what it comes down to is that the Bible says that God ordered the killing of some children...so I believe that it was the most right thing for God to do, whether I understand his reasons or not.'

  I dont know why allah said we must kill non believers. Or why he instructed us on how to beat our wife. Or why he would use eternal burning as a punishment for christian/ jewish kids.

  ..but hey, he's god. I'm just a stupid human so i cant be expected to understand his holy ways. Who am i to question allah, the one true god (he says so in his book)