prophecy....

[ideologyhunter]

Fair point. I think God actually referred to those damned tribes as "shithole people", didn't he?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Fair point. I think God actually referred to those damned tribes as "shithole people", didn't he?

At least he didn't try to say that there were 'good people' on both sides of the saved/damned split.

 

[Lion IRC]

Personally, I'd like to return to the subject of how often Biblegod resorts to murder to assert his holiness…

Why do you say He is trying to assert His 'holiness'?

This is about His authority.

 

[bilby]

Personally, I'd like to return to the subject of how often Biblegod resorts to murder to assert his holiness…

Why do you say He is trying to assert His 'holiness'?

This is about His authority.

Indeed.

The major difference between god and Joe Stalin is simply that Stalin actually existed.

Both had vast apparatuses of enforcers killing millions to assert their authority. Both established a hugely complex set of contradictory laws, intended to ensure that any person who they chose to make an example of was guilty of something terrible. (None are without sin).

Neither regime is compatible with moral or ethical behaviours. Both push otherwise good people into doing terrible and vile things.

Authority is the ultimate excuse for any dictator - morality becomes irrelevant; The powerful do what they have the authority to do, and whether that action is ethical or moral is of no concern to them whatsoever.

That's your gods and dictators for you.

A dictator is a man who puts himself in the place of a god.

A pope is a man who puts himself in the place of a dictator, and invents a god to justify his authoritarianism.

 

[ideologyhunter]

My faux pas. Murder doesn't make God holy, it makes him authoritative. Got it. Here's more evidence of his authority, then:
God kills 2 young men because their worship of him wasn't authorized (see, you're right!) LEV 10
God orders a man who gathered firewood on the Sabbath to be executed NUM 15
God tells us to kill anyone who preaches a different religion DEUT 13
God kill thousands of Egyptian kids (after purposefully mind-melding Pharaoh into a confrontation) EX 12
God kills 42 sassy children (because, you know...well, because...) 2 K 2
God orders slaying of infants I Sam 15
Etc, etc, etc, many more can be found in the good book.

Again, what a pathetic deity. Murder and genocide are only the answer if you're expressing racial or cultural animus. There is no such thing as justified genocide -- how is that not so glaring a statement of truth that it shouldn't have to be put into words?