Well if i'm gonna cart off somebody to go murder them i'm not exactly gonna say "so long, folks, i'm off to hack off this kid's head but I'll be back later though "

And the point that you are making is exactly the point i made as well... god was testing abraham's obedience.
According to the bible (which by the way i believe was written by flawed bloodthirsty ignorant men, and is an insult to god if he does exist) god wanted to make sure that his follower is willing to go murder someone should he tell him to. I'm sure, going by what you believe, you think the god of the bible is sitting up there smugly reveling in how nice it is that he's got people willing to murder innocent people. Forget that in the end he stopped him from going through with it, as i am aware he did, the point is this god is quite happy to know he was WILLING to do it.

If i told you right now i'm willing to go murder my mother without actually going through with it, you would think me to be a sadistic psychopath, would you not?

If i were to tell you my father expects obedience from me and tells me that this obedience extends to killing my mother should he ask me to. You would think my father was a sadistic sociopath as well. I know i would.

I would hope that my father under no circumstances would ever want me to kill an innocent human being. I would hope that my father would say if he ever told me to kill somebody to disregard it.

Being willing to kill is NOT a good thing. If the pope, the queen or god himself told me to kill someone the morally right thing to do would be to suffer the consequences of not doing it.

Which brings us back to the OP... If God tells you to murder someone, would you be proud to say you would do it?

btw Merry Christmas everybody

If Ted Bundy had complete faith that every innocent person he was killing would be resurrected by God, would that make what he was doing ok?

and again you base your conclusion on things written well after the facts not words from Abrahams mouth or his peers or even Isaac himself. No spidey it's not hard to believe if thats what you want to do. be my guest.

Are we talking about faith that is psychotic in nature or actual faith based upon a promise from God?

Abraham didn't kill Issac, did he? No, Issac was saved by Malech Yahweh (Jesus).

And it wasn't the fact that Abraham had faith in God that made his attempted slaughter of Issac a good thing, it was the fact that Abraham had been commanded by God to carry out that action. If Abraham hadn't had faith, he wouldn't have attempted to kill his own son. If Abraham had faith, but wasn't commanded by God to kill his son, then that would be tempting the Lord, which the Lord reacts poorly to. As Jesus told Satan "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God!". So the conditions were very specific, not the general scenario that you gave. Abraham didn't just have faith, but he had a promise and a commandment directly from God.

The account of Abraham and Issac was written LONG after they were both dead. They were written through inspiration from God. Therefore they are both equally valid.

If you are going to reject Hebrews 11:17-19, then you need to reject Genesis 22:14 and say it never happened. Otherwise you are being arbitrary and cherrypicking scriptures to make Christianity look bad.

I don't care how you feel about Christianity, you can hate it or love it, but how do you feel about sinning against yourself by being dishonest and rejecting some scripture based on criteria (it was written after Abraham's death), but accepting other scriptures that also fit that criteria?

It's not really all that important, but I should point out one thing. Abraham was over 100 years old and very near the end of his life when he attempted to slaughter his 37 year old son Jacob. Jacob's faith in his father and in God was also tested, because Jacob could have overpowered his father at any time.

As a Christian, does god not speak to you?

When you pray or meditate or whatever, do you not believe that god speaks to you? or is this only reserved for the era in which the bible was made up. If so, it would suggest to me that all these actions and commandments and decrees made by god stopped when the story tellers died... how convenient.

As an example, had Ted Bundy believed that he was spoken to by god, and slaughtered all those women, believing they would be resurrected, would it be right?

In my eyes, a serial killer telling me he was commanded by god has about as much credibility and evidenciary support as anything written in the bible.

I'm sure that there are prophets, although I doubt I have ever met one. We don't need any more commandments. Jesus fulfilled the commandments, we are to live as Jesus asked us to and that's it.



I have already answered this question. If my answer wasn't satisfactory, then people ask for clarification on the points you question. Just repeating the same question doesn't move the dialog forward at all.



Okay. That is a very naive opinion, but you are entitled to hold it.

From my point of view the story of Job is a story that blatantly reveals that the Bible was written by men and not by any divine supreme God.




Here you have several problems already.

1. Satan goes to God to God for permission to do his evil deeds?

If Satan is so respectful and obedient of God then he's not an evil demon at all. He's just God's number one hit man.

2. Satan makes a bet with God, and God takes him up on it?

This implies that God has something to prove to a stupid fallen angel.

Again, this is utterly absurd.

3. Job was a loyal servant of God yet God proved himself to be untrustworthy of God.

This just suggests that no matter how faithful you are, you can't trust God.

Sure, you say that in the end God made it up to Job. But that would be like an abusive wife beater beating his wife, and then saying he's sorry later.

If God screwed over Job once by taking up a bet with the Devil how can he be trusted not to do it again?

Clearly this God like's to take bets with the Devil. So what happens now if Satan comes back and says to God, "Hey, I'll bet Job can't take a second round of that crap!"

What's God going to do then?

Clearly God has already displayed his betting addictions. Can God resist his addiction to take up bets with Satan?

The very idea that God would be out to prove something to Satan in the first place is absurd and ludicuous.

It's an insult to any God to suggest that God would take up a bet with an evil demon.

Job has to be one of the stupidest stories in the Bible. It only suggests that God can't be trusted to be loyal to those who are loyal to him, and that God has something to prove to Satan.

It's the stupidest story ever written about a God.

If God is really as weak and ignorant as the story of Job suggests then it isn't much of a God. A God that takes up bets with evil demons is no God at all.

It would be a true disappointment to discover that our creator is as lame as the Bible claims. The biblical picuture of God is an extremely lame picture of a God.

There's no getting around it.

We can only pray to the powers that be that the Bible has nothing to do with the forces or deities that created us.

It's the sickest story ever made up by mankind.

spidey, "both" no - "all" were written afterwords and passed down - "none of us know", we, as people, can either accept all of it or none of it. Whichever you choose it is still just hearsay at most. Again - if your choice it to accept all of it - be my guest - mine is not to.

Okay Tribo.

But anyone following the conversation has noticed something strange.

First you questioned how anyone could know what Abraham was thinking.

When I showed you a scripture explaining what he was thinking, you immediately attacked that scripture as being from after Abraham's lifetime.

When I pointed out that the scriptures describing Abraham's life were written long after Abraham's life you said "if your choice it to accept all of it - be my guest".

What this shows is that you weren't interested in debating the Bible, you were seeking to punch holes in the Bible. When you found that it was your reasoning that was flawed, you changed the subject to "I don't believe it, but you can if you want". If you don't want to fairly discuss the Bible, then why discuss it at all? Why not just leave it to those of us who believe instead of coming in and trying to punch holes into a belief that you don't accept and try to act as if you have no interest in?

your correct spidey, i should have stayed with the original post i responded to, i have no quarrel with you - as i say believe what you want.

Spidey dear you did not answer the question.
You responded to it the first time by stating that there is a difference between having faith in god and killing someone expecting them to be resurrected, which would be tempting god, and being commanded by god to kill someone and having faith that they would be resurected.

I re-iterated the question by asking if a serial killer today said that he was commanded by god to kill all those women. My understanding is you would have no choice to believe it because that would be the same level of credibility and evidenciary support that the bible holds

... after all, you must have complete and utter faith...

the only difference between faith in the bible and faith in what a serial killer says would be that one you were programmed to believe from when you were too young to know better, and the other would be told to you when you were a rational discerning adult requiring evidence and substantiation.

Question yet again re-worded: If a serial killer claimed to have been commanded by god to carry out his acts... would it be wrong?

Let me not pick on poor Spidey, because judging from his last reply to me i sense he is getting exasperated with having to think about it too much. I throw out the question to anyone.

Really? Okay, I'll bite, what are they?



Nothing has a choice but to respect God. You are talking about the only omnipotent being in existence. Of course Satan has to respect God.



False Dilemma fallacy. So if God accepted Satan's bet, there could only be one reason: God has something to prove to Satan? So the Jews and Christians and the Bible are all wrong is implying that God was allowing Satan to test Job? No, I think that it's obvious that you are wrong. God is clearly using Satan to test Job's faith. That's the whole point of the book, that God allows bad things to happen to us to make us better people and to test our faith.



Job had a privileged life, without hardships of any significant sort. Satan petitioned God so that he could torment Job and God allowed it so that Job's faith could be tested. The end goal of our life is to test our faith in God and as such, Job's faith needed to be tested. But since the end goal isn't for us to have great lives, it make far more sense for God to test Job's faith than it would for God to just continue to bless Job without once testing him.

In the end, Job's faith turned out to be true and he was more greatly blessed than he had been before his testing. His faith was stronger and he was a better person for it (and Job was already a very good person).

The Book of Job is all about how God knows things and thinks things that are beyond our comprehension, so we have right to question God's behavior. It is also an example of how God tests those he loves, so that he can know if their faith is true.

The book of Job clearly shows that God limits the pain that Satan can cause us and that God allows us to suffer because God's goals are far greater than our goals. God is concerned with the eternal, while we obsess about the finite.

Why should people stand silently by whilst proselytizers try to justify an unjustifiable mythology?

The proselytizers would just love that. They can't stand competition because they know the biblical stories don't hold water.

The very idea of a supposedly all-knowing God testing to see whether or not people will do evil things in his name is truly sick.

Such a God would have a dispicable character. A God who tests the loyalty of his devoted followers is a sick demented puppy who is totally insecure and unable to trust anyone.

Clearly these stories were written by men who actually THINK that way.

No genuine supreme deity would even think like that in the first place.

The bible is clearly the work of men.

If God is like the Bible claims then we should all hang our heads in disgust because the God described in the Bible is truly a pathetic being.

Personally I'd rather atheism turned out to be true than the Biblical picture of a sick demented judgmental God.

Why people are so anxious to believe in this picture and even try to push it onto others is beyond me.

There are much better pictures of spirituality to be had.

In fact, doesn't it make sense that if we believe that God is the most high and most divine of all possible entities that God would indeed be even better than the best possible picture we can come up with?

We'll if that's true, then why not choose the very best picture of God that you can possibly find and know that God must be even better than that picture?

Why put our faith in a picture of such a lame sick God that lusts for blood sacrifices and solves all his problems using violent means?

A supposed "Fatherly image" that hasn't shown one iota of wisdom or mentoring ability?

Why would anyone want to believe that God is this lame?

The biblical story is an insult to any truly divine beings.

abra i am such a fan of yours after reading your posts in these threads. i wanna be you when i grow up

To answer your question again: It depends.

If God really did command him to kill people, then it wouldn't be wrong. If he only thought he had been commanded, then it's wrong, but he has limited culpability because he's insane. If he simply claimed that God had commanded him to kill people then he is not only guilty of murder but also blasphemy.

As far as the authenticity of the Bible, that's a very hard thing to argue against. You can argue that there is no God, but the dates and places and people of the Bible have been very well documented by archeology. You would also have to look at the Bible as a prophetic document. The Bible says that Russia and Iran will attack Israel. Until 1948, that prophecy wasn't even possible, but now we see Russia and Iran as allies and Iran threatening Israel. Pretty accurate for a prophecy that is 3000 years old. There are other prophecies, like one that mentions "wall-less" cities. Now I don't know what you know about the ancient middle east, but it wasn't uncommon to be killed by a bear, lion, wild pig, wild dog or other predator. All of their cities and even small towns had to have walls to keep the predators out. You can also look at the Old Testament as a puzzle with missing peices and then the New Testament fills in those missing peices. Not to offend any Jews, but many accepted Jewish interpretations of scripture have been changed due to the fact that the original interpretation gave great credibility to the New Testament. There is a scripture that describes the Messiah as being rejected by the Jews and "pierced" and killed. This scripture has been changed completely in the Tenach, as it is clearly talking about Jesus. For me, the credibility of the Bible isn't in question as a historical document or as a truthful record of God's actions here on earth.

I believe fairness should trump personal bias. If I don't like something, then I will honestly and fairly argue against it, if I can't be honest or fair, then I am sinning against myself due to my own pride and stubbornness.

This might work for you Spider, but it doesn't hold water for me.

A God who uses Satan to test people is just as evil as the Satan he uses.

For God to even allow Satan to do evil things is no differnet from God doing them himself.

This would just be an excuse to try to claim that God doesn't do evil things. But it's absurd.

Also, a God who feels a need to test those who are loyal to him is an insecure God who doesn't even have the ability to trust.

This is just a picture of a paranoid God.

How many times would he have to test someone?

When you get into the business of testsing people's devotion to you, there's no end to it becasue you can NEVER KNOW, whether they were almost ready to break and turn against you.

A God who has to test people's loyalty and faith is a truly SICK picture of a God.

Maybe you don't think so.

But for me, this is a given.

You can keep you insecure God who needs to test people's faith in him.

From my point of view that a very weak and untrustworthy God.

If our real creator is that lame I am truly dissapointed in God, and I truly feel sorry for him because such a God would truly be pathetic.

He would be so insecure and unsure of who truly has faith in him and who might just be pretending!

This implies that God doesn't even KNOW what's in the hearts of men!

This is what I mean.

When Satan came to God and made his bet, God should have just told Satan to get lost because God KNOWS what's in Job's heart!

To take the bet up with Satan and test Job implies that God has NO CLUE what's in Job's heart.

There's NO JUSTIFICATION for this story IMHO.

This is a picture of a lame inept insecure God.

I totally agree with you on this Spider.

The book of Job was written by men who had an agenda. That's crystal clear.

The idea of a truly divine being behaving the way this story describe is ludicuous.

That's an honest and fair argument.

I would truly feel sorry for a God who is as pathetic as this story claims.

Why would I want to believe that our true creator is this lame?