I can't believe that though, if some events are out of our hands are we not playing out a script? Our life or death down here comes from the choices we make, moreso then God. Every action has a reaction.

And if God knows something before, then He already knows whether we end up with Him or not, which means we really aren't choosing at all.

Kleisto, after you think your thoughts, you choose whether or not to vocalize them or to attempt to act upon them. That is your will.
You have choices. Just because He already knows does not mean that you are robotic.

I always find it humourous when a religious person states this, especially those of the Christian faith.

How can death be an easy out when, by using Christian logic, they'll be tortured in Hell for all eternity for their evil ways?!

Or does it actually bother a Christian that due to whatever mystical ideas, the guy who has been raping, torturing, and killing random innocent people might end up in Heaven?

I mean technically, if one is taking out appendages, instead of just killing the person, what makes that person any better then the bad guy they are punishing? I would consider that just as evil, if not moreso, because one knowingly started blowing off hands, legs, etc., while claiming to be a good God-Fearing person.

I'm not going to participate in any ongoing arguments. Sorry!

I find this question to be both thought provoking and interesting.

I'm always fascinated by tales from the wild west.

I used to watch wild west tech when it was still on the air. I think I have seen every episode!

Usually when a group of people came into a town the sheriff would bring them in or form a posse like the one at OK corral and give them a chance to surrender.

You see in the old west guns were illegal. Nobody just walked into town with their gun hanging out where everyone could see it and start parading around like a **** on a walk.

Ive seen tales like this on wild west tech (The show I just LOVE) and the sheriff takes the gun away. (By asking for it)

Now lets go to your senerio. There is no law or order in this town? Well then it can't be hard to get a gun!

Here's what I would do.

Form my own posse and invite anyone who wants to join. The town could then rebel against these men and if need be, kill them.

Now I know the ten commandments say: "Thou shalt not kill" Why do YOU have to do the killing? I have a whole stinking posse! A unbeliever could kill them! I may not find out till later!

Now what if these men where found around town? People could stick a gun in their face and thrown them into a home made prison or hang them. OR we could always go to a neighboring town and get a sheriff there!

In the end either my posse would take care of them -OR- Me and my family would leave. (Preferably under cover of darkness) I hope this thread continues and maybe someone responds to my answer as I find this thread really interesting.

Now see, I took it to mean that death would be too easy for the murderer and that ripping off appendages would be more painful and more punitive. Which, if that's the case, I agree with PeterPan.

Truly.

It's one thing to believe in a "supernatural" creator that is supposedly capable of anything. It's a totally different thing to believe in the Hebrew folklore that portrays a creator that is extremely unwise and limited in what he can do.

I don't renounce the idea of a potential spiritual essence to reality. All I do is point out why some religious mythologies make no sense. Especially those that spread hatred toward non-believers in their mythologies. That's clearly an ungodly act, IMHO, and thus proves that those religions cannot be from God.

As far as I'm concerned it's the Hebrew religious stories that make God out to be a babbling buffoon. It's those stories I dismiss as being absurd. Not the idea of an all-powerful spirit.

In fact, how many times do I need to say that Eastern Mysticism has a far better picture of a truly all-wise and all-powerful God.

The reason I renounce the Bible is because it's extremely far from representing wisdom and omnipotence. It does just the opposite, IMHO. It limits God tremendously and has God himself supposedly doing very nasty things to people, like hardening the heart of a pharaoh, or supposedly blinding people from the truth of his own word. What sense does that even make? If God is blinding people from the truth, then he's raping their Free Will, by now allowing them to base their decisions on TRUTH.

You simply can't have a righteous God who goes around blinding people to the truth of his word and then blaming them for not believing it. That's precisely the kind of stupidity that these fables put onto the concept of God.

Like keeping them in a cage? And how useful and humane is that exactly? Personally I feel that people like this if they are to be kept alive can only serve one and only one purpose, Medical Experimentation. Might as well make GOOD use of them if they serve no other purpose. We SHOULD be doing that to anyone who gets a life sentence in prison anyways. Keeping human debris alive like that takes up food money and resources we should not be wasting on useless people!

That's right, Draconian here!

I would make an oil or kerosine ring around them and torch it! If any managed to get out they would be in bad shape at which point I would capture them, cut between their ribs and pull their lungs through then let Oden and Thor deal with them. All hail the mightiest of gods

"And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."
Jer_29:13,


"Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see."
Isa_42:18,

Back in the days of the "wild" west, keeping people incarcerated for life to protect the public was impractical.

However, today it's not impractical. Money and resources are truly not a problem. That's the delusion of a competitive capitalistic society. Of course, as long as we continue to live under that delusion we basically make it become our truth, unfortunately.

My own personal perspective on this would be to simply as the mentally ill person what they desire? Do they desire treatment for their mental illness, or to be incarcerated until such treatment may become available? Or do they prefer to die?

Let them choose.

Clearly we don't yet know how to treat all forms of mental illnesses, especially in terms of "curing" them. In fact, this may not even be possible in many cases. Who knows? We simply don't understand how the human mind works well enough to know.

In fact, we often spend vast amount of time having arguments on these forums that basically reduce to the very simple question, "Are we our brains? Or are we something else?"

The secular atheists take the view that we are our brains. Therefore if we are 'evil' or 'mentally ill', it can only be because our brains aren't wired correctly, or there is some other physical malfunction going on. All behavior can be reduced to physics.

If, on the other hand, we are something other than our brains (i.e. we are spirit), then this present a very complex situation, because we already know that the physics of a brain can indeed affect how a person thinks and behaves, so the problem in that case become two-fold.

How much of the behavior would be due to the physical brain? And how much of it would be due to the 'spirit' that is using that physical brain?

These are heavy questions. This is why all ideas of spirituality become extremely complex, whilst the secular atheistic view is more simple and straight-forward, although not without their own problems. Physics is everything in the secular atheistic view. If you're doing something wrong or having bad thoughts, it's because of the physics of your brain. You really have very little free will at all actually.

These are interesting topics and topics that biologists and scientists who study the brain wrestle with every day.

At what point should a malfunctioning brain be terminated?

And from a secular atheistic view, how can anyone be viewed as being responsible for anything at all? Whether they are stupid, or angry, or outright hostile, it can only be because their brain isn't working "properly" (where the very concept of "properly" is the subjective view of people who feel that their brains are working "properly")

These ideas are problematic for even secular atheists actually.

See what?

That your religion hates non-believers?

I don't believe in a hateful God Cerise, I'm sorry to here that you support and proselytize religious fables that spew such evil thoughts.

Spreading hate for Jesus' sake, such an oxymoron.

Your ranting and raving sounds like a broken record...

You hate that anyone else would look to God and trust Him...

Why?...

never mind

No one is spreading hate here but you abra.

God allows us to see the truth through his word as well as healing's and miracles that go on every day.

It's not our fault that you can't see these things for yourself.

Also God is not a hateful being. He does things for a reason.

He hardened pharaohs heart so that pharaoh would see the miracles that God put out there.

God does not hate. But he is a father figure. And as such a disciplinarian. If you do something wrong you get punished. It's really that simple. Has nothing to do with hate.

I would like to know the answer to "Why" myself!

Back to the original topic!!!

That's your misunderstanding, and far from the truth. Everyone who truly knows me knows that I support trusting in God 100%.

Ask any atheist on these forums who knows me.

What you are asking me to do is to NOT trust God but rather to give my support to a man-made religion that spread bigotry in the name of God.

Instead of placing my faith in God, you want me to place my faith in the ancient writings of a bunch of male-chauvinistic Hebrews who clearly exhibit extreme hatred toward everyone and anyone who refuses to accept their writings as the "Word of God".

You're confusing religion with God.

Besides, the doctrine you support makes no sense and is highly contradicting.

Not long ago you posted the accusation that God is blinding me to the truth of his word?

Well DUH?

If you claim that God intentionally blinds people to the truth of his word then what sense does it make to post Isaiah?

"Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see."

How are we supposed to see if your God is purposefully blinding us to the truth.

Clearly the fables that you support as the "Word of God" are nothing more than a convoluted set of lies that are attempting to create religious bigotry in the name of God.

If those myths were written by anyone they must have been written by Satan himself to be depicting such a hateful demonic view of God.

No, Cerise, I don't disapprove of trusting in God. On the contrary, I say, "Get your head out of that ancient book of hate Hebrew lies, and trust to God for real"

I trust in God far more than you can apparently even grasp.

I TRUST that God is genuinely divine and truly righteous in spite of what the ancient Hebrews have to say.

Now, are you going to tell me that my TRUST in God is misplaced?

If so, then you must be suggesting that God is not truly divine and righteous, because this is what I TRUST God to be.

I view God through the eyes of the Eastern Mystics because they see a truly wonderful and righteous God that is worthy of TRUST.

That God of the ancient Hebrews is untrustworthy. Even you recognize that the bible says that God will blind people to the truth of his word.

How can I trust a God who would blind me from TRUTH?

That is hideous and clearly unrighteous, IMHO.

You're the one who's portraying God to be untrustworthy, IMHO.

This has been your theme now for over a week. I've already adressed this issue a few times before and you still continue with this obvious fallacy. I've shown you 3 times that this is NOT true. (that God hates non-believers or "heathens".)

With overwhelming evidence to the contrary, any sane person has no choice but to acknowledge that your quoted words above are nothing but lies and hatred...

How am I spreading hate?

Have I ever told you that God will condemn you if you don't believe in a particular religion?

No I haven't.

Have I ever suggested that you are rejecting God?

No I haven't.

So how am I spreading hate?

I personally feel that it's extremely hateful to be constantly telling other people that if they refuse to accept your religion God will abandon them and allow them to spiritual die. Or worse yet potentially punish them in some way.

I personally feel that it's extremely hateful to be constantly telling other people that if they refuse to believe in your religion God has chosen to blind them because they are clearly unworthy of God's truth. That, my friend, is an extremely hateful thing to accuse someone of, IMHO.

These things come directly from the Bible, therefore it is the rhetoric within the bible that is hateful, the followers of the Bible are only supporting that hatred in the name of God.

How am I spreading hatred?

I personally don't believe that God would hold it against you for believing in the bible for yourself.

I have never even remotely suggested such a thing.

I would never attempt to even claim to know what relationship you might have with God. That's between you and God.

So how am I spreading "hate".

Just because I explain to Christian proselytizers and evangelists WHY I don't believe that the doctrine they support is the word of any God.

How in the world could that be considered to be "hateful".

If you don't want to hear why people don't believe in the Hebrew picture of God, then quite trying to sell it to people who don't believe it.

It's THAT SIMPLE.

And especially quite implying that they are rejecting God, or being blinded by God, if they refuse to believe it!

You throw stones at other people by accusing them of rejecting God, and then claim that they are being hateful toward you by simply deflecting the stones that you are throwing at them.

That makes no sense.

There are 2 problems with your response.

1. You assume to know the "logic" of any other human...

2. You assume that I believe in hell...


"Evil" would be killing their horses just for fun.

You believe in the eastern mystic view of God? Then I'm going to guess that you view God as "Everything" This computer is God and you are God and I am God.

In this view God is the universe.

This is fine.

But in other threads you support evolution...This is anti-God...Surely you don't think that God made the heavens and the earth through evolution! Do you?

You also state that the hebrew view is hating of unbelievers?

Then why bother trying to show them the right path to heaven? Why not just let them go their merry way and end up in hell? Clearly your view of "God" makes no sense.

You go on to say that Satan could have written it? Then Satan must be self hating and self destructive! It says that Satan ends up in the bottomless pit. What is this pit? A vacation spot? It also calls him a liar and a murderer among other things. If he wrote the book then he must either be very deeply depressed or insane.

Finally you state that you TRUST God. To do what exactly? I mean you don't seem to like the guy at all. You show that by what you type.