There's nothing in there about having premarital sex either.

However, you can't very well reduce the entire Bible to the ten commandments and toss out the rest of it as being irrelevant.

It's a complete mythology. Either the whole book is the word of God or there's no reason to believe that any part of it is the word of God.

Picking and choosing what you like and discarding what you don't like makes no sense at all.

Nope. That would be the Catholic Church.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/church-excommunicates-mother-of-9yearold-rape-victim-ndash-but-not-accused-rapist-14218389.html

According to the church, raping the child is ok. Performing the abortion that basically saves that child's life is the bigger sin..

I guess I missed that part. I wasn't aware that Christians believed this.

Jesus also said that we are Gods. But they don't like that line either.

Finally, let me also point out that other religions don't toss the baby out with the bath water. Almost all Eastern Mystic religions believe in karma and that we will indeed have to 'pay' for our actions.

They just have no need for a judgmental God becasue they see this as having been built into the system automatically. There's no need for any external judgemental deity. It's all done through karma.

So in that sense, the concept of paying for our actions has been taken care of without any need for a judgemental Godhead.

Well, there you go. We all decide what we think is worthy of a ticket to hell.

Religion is nothing more than one person trying to tell another person what God requires from them.

On a personal level I have no problem with a judgmental God because I have faith that if any such God exists it's not the dastardly demon that Christains claim.

Also, if you want to talk about remorse etc. Where is there any remose in believing that Jesus was the Son of the God of Abraham?

In what way does it imply that a person is not remorseful just because they see an ancient mythology as being totally absurd?

I take everything I know about all of history and look at the bibilcal story and see Jesus as someone who actually denounced the hateful bigotries that were contained in an ancient mythology and he was crucficied for his efforts and his dead carcass used to exploit the very mythology that he denounced.

Now in what way would that make me unwilling to be remorseful for things I feel I may have personally done?

Clearly the whole idea of remorse does not require any concept of Jesus or any savior.

In fact, I've often argued that Christianity is a religion that became a trainwreck. It started out being about good behavior, and ended up being about a BELIEF in a particular dogma.

There's no reason why a person should feel remorse for nothing beliveing in a dogma. Especially if they see it as being disgusting.

If anything God would need to apologize to them for having created such a horribly confusing dogma. I don't see how he could blame anyone for rejecting it as being utterly conflicing, inconsistent, and in many places downright stupid.

If you believe this then why believe it just one-way?

If you believe that we remain 'alive' in spirit after death, then why not accept that we were probably also 'alive' before birth?

Why give physical form credit for (or even necessary for) the creation of spirit?

If our true nature is spiritual, then it's probably always been true. Long before we ever came into this physical world.

Why would a physcial sperm and egg be be required to give rise to spirit that can obviously exist without any physical form at all?

I'm not married but if I came home to find someone raping my wife, I am not going to sit around waiting for God to punish them. I am going to put a bullet or two ... or three into the rapist and do what I can to help my wife.

Well this opens up a whole can of worms.

First off, Christianity as a religion does not claim that God punishes evil people who have no remorse. Christianity (specifically Protestanism) claims that God is mean to anyone who doesn't believe that Jesus was God.

Or even Gay LOVERS! Where's the evil in LOVE?

Why should people who love each other have REMORSE for that?

Secondly as you've pointed out remorse makes it all OK!

You're original thread title asks, should evil acts be unpunished?

Well, clearly if there is remorse, then they do go unpunished.

Thirdly, what would be the point in punishing someone for eternity?

What would be the point to that?

If punishment is a means of TEACHING, then it would be senseless to punish someone eternally with no hope of forgiveness after they haved died and gone to hell.

If you open up the possibility that people can get out of Hell, that blows a huge HOLE in the religion, because the very premise of the religion is that we only get ONE CHANCE! After we die, all bets are OFF!

This is clearly a man-made threat to scare people into being good.

How would God benefit from casting people into a state of eternal damnation? It wouldn't do God any good. It wouldn't do the person who is being damned any good. It woudln't to the victims of the crimes any good.

It would serve NO GOOD PURPOSE!

Other than,.... a scare tactic to keep people in line on Earth!

That's what this religion is. It's a scare tactic made up to keep people in line.

What we've come to recognize today is that it's not needed for many people. We have seen many examples of very good people who have been atheists.

Does anyone truly believe that Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan and a host of other brilliant and wonderful people are all rotting in eternal damnation just because they rejected the Biblical picture of God?

And why would God hate same-gender lovers?

Love is LOVE. What up with a God who hates people who LOVE?

Gimmie a break.

Also if God is infinite in power, wisdom, patience and mercy, then why are we obscessed with rejecting the idea of reincarnation?

If time is a meaningless concept to God, why would God bother judging people on a single short lifetime? Such a God would have no problem at all giving people all the time they need to finally come around and repent.

In fact, there are religious philosophies that propose this idea. They suggest that based on what we do in this life will determine what kind of a life we will move on to.

Nasty people who refuse to have remorse end up going on to more difficult trials and tribulations, people who are trying to do the best they can move on to an easier life.

Why do we think in terms of just this one lifetime, and then after that we either get eternal damanation, or eternal bliss.

Isn't that kind of simplistic thinking?

Everyone dies, I don't see as much of a punishment.

what if G-d had other plans for the rapist?