How could you justify that God killed all firstborn children in Egypt? (page 3)

inbetween

"This seems to be a recurring theme here. I just keep wondering why (mostly atheists) keep thinking that believers need to justify anything that God does. Counting myself as a believer in God, and in the scriptures, I never even ask myself these questions. And certainly God doesn’t need to justify His actions to us anymore than our earthly fathers need to justify themselves to their young children in paying their taxes or making them eat broccoli instead of cake. The only difference is that God gives us more free agency than our earthly parents. Which brings us to Pharaoh.

Pharaoh had the free agency and the obligation to free the Israelites. God could have forced him to, but He didn’t. And if he and his court refused to release the Israelites from their forced labor, then the Lord chose to turn up the proverbial heat."

cold steel, I respect your belief, and wish not to insult you in any way. However, your argument is what most JW also use, just do not question the actions of God, they are always just by default.

There is one serious problem with this, the bible encourages to learn from things past (Romans 15:4) to imitate God (Ephesians 5:1). In order to do this, one must eveluate his actions and discern how to apply the idea and attitude behind them.

Even if we are not anymore encouraged to take up a weapon and kill, we should certainly hate what God hates. In this example, God must have hated the innocent children of the Egyptians, otherwise why would he have killed them? So we also must hate children of opposers?

What is the moral lesson for us in this then?

And the argument, that God can fix everything, like their spirits are with im, or as JW would say, the resurrection, would mean, that he can act however he pleases, and again no moral lesson for us in there. Reminds me of the slogan of the crusaders: kill everyone, God will know his own anyway.

Quite dangerous actually.

"

Yes, quite so. But I believe that is in error. The Bible didn't come to us in perfect form and there are numerous errrors. Jesus prayed to the Father that He would not lead us into temptation, but later the scriptures state: "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." (James 1:13) So why did the Lord allegedly say, "...lead us not into temptation"?

God would not be JUST if He hardened someone else's heart and caused them to do evil, for it is not in His nature to tempt men to do such."

Another big problem with this, if the bible has in fact errors, ow can we trust anything written in there ? Who decides what is an error and what not?

designs

God's war playbook- Always use overwhelming force...

bohm

CS: "I just keep wondering why (mostly atheists) keep thinking that believers need to justify anything that God does. Counting myself as a believer in God, and in the scriptures, I never even ask myself these questions"

Yes, not examining ones beliefs and believing in god does seem to go hand in hand.

CS: And certainly God doesn’t need to justify His actions to us anymore than our earthly fathers need to justify themselves to their young children in paying their taxes or making them eat broccoli instead of cake

However for the most part parents do need to justify themselves when bodily harm is involved. For instance when they subject their children to something harmfull. It really puzzles me why believers have such a hard time not conflating eating brocoli with starvation or giving a child a vaccine with killing a child. Now is killing a child something that you would normally believe required justification?

Finkelstein

Yahweh just rolls that way.

Did you know that he's going to kill all people on earth who isn't one of his sales representatives for

his publishing house, the Watchtower Corporation here on earth ! ....... soon

Yes

.

Heaven

All these stories have one agenda... you must believe our way or you will be judged and punished accordingly. Convert now or die!

RubaDub

Everyone has their bad days.

Rub a Dub

Theredeemer

It sfunny because this Thanksgiving the trailer for Exodus: Gods and Kings came on and directly after that the new Hobbit movie trailer played. It felt like the same movie. I made the comment " Can you believe that one of these movies is actually thought to be a real story?".

Heaven

"These guys will deny and deny. They are belligerent, they are arrogant, they treat victims as adversaries," Zalkin told UT San Diego. "This is not an organization that is ready to accept the reality of what they have been doing."

Can hardly wait for the Hobbit!

Terry

Bible story"morality" is a study in our own character.

What we are willing to allow and accept and believe says a lot more about our own heart, mind, and justice.

Do we go along and approve because we are told some high authority (in this case, the God of Israel) approved?

If so, we've taken the first step down a horror of a holocaust.

What next?

Next, we will approve the murder of innocents by those CLAIMING TO REPRESENT GOD.

Finally, we will be the ones submitting ourselves as instruments of God's"righteous judgment."

These are the witch-hunters, torture chamber minions, hooded miscreants in the 'service of the church.'

History is crammed full of excuses for bestial brutality flying the flag of a righteous crusade.

_______________________

By refusing to accept Old Testament 'morality,' we take the first step toward a better world where love and compassion

replace storybook displays of Theocratic testosterone.

__________________

We teach tiny children how pretty the rainbow is and how it represents the wonderful promise of Jehovah to

NOT DROWN LITTLE CHILDREN, THEIR FAMILIES, AND ANY UNBORN SIBLINGS anymore. Just don't piss Him off.

AndDontCallMeShirley

If God exists, then He is merciful, kind, just, all knowing, all powerful.

Counting myself as a believer in God, and in the scriptures, I never even ask myself these questions. And certainly God doesn’t need to justify His actions

So, you are able to determine that god is "kind" and "just" by use of your own faculties, yet when it comes to looking at god's actions critically suddenly those same faculties are not enough to call a spade a spade when god acts unjustly?

If your reasoning is not sufficient enough to condemn god's actions as unjust, how is that same reasoning able to praise god ? If it's too flawed to judge him, then it's too flawed to praise him too.

And don’t buy into that JW nonsense

Mormon nonsense is better?

How could you justify that God killed all firstborn children in Egypt?

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