In his essay A Few Reasons for Doubting the Inspiration of the Bible Robert Ingersoll wrote: We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him. That quotation, of course, doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the many atrocities, scientific improbabilities, logical contradictions, philosophical weaknesses, and historical implausibilities depicted in the Bible. Have you ever supposed that the Bible is a test of your honesty? Except in the matter of God worship we as humans don't elevate loyalty above integrity and compassion. We don't, for example, accept a Baathist crony as virtuous simply for his loyalty to Saddam. When we learned that Saddam killed 30,000 of his own people in ghastly manner we had no tolerance for his excuses. But many of us readily buy the excuse of ancient Hebrews that they massacred the Amalekites according to God's wishes. Ironically, hardly any of us would afford the same exemption to the Israelis if they conducted such a purge today under a similar God excuse. Is it enough to reconcile your misgivings away under the ready aphoristic justification that God is ineffable and inscrutable? "God has killed in ghastly manner because he is perfectly just, and we'd have to be God himself to understand his motives, and these words are his" is internally contradictory and logically circular, but it is precisely the notion to which many of us subscribe. And if there is a divine Creator then you have to suspend his gift of logic in order to maintain that subscription. Saddam is fallible. Saddam is mortal. Saddam needed unquestioning loyalty to retain power. Does your omnipotent God need such loyalty? And if He doesn't need it, couldn't he tolerate a doubt within you that the atrocities attributed to him are not compatible with his true nature? And, more importantly, will he tolerate your loyalty to human-generated accounts of savagery ascribed to Him?
Wow. A post that manages to combine an anti-war rant with an atheistic rant...and tie it all together. My hat's off, Rex...that takes some real talent.
I like your sig and response on this thread. Just maybe we've gone on to greater things while Rex is still practicing his writing! :hihi: :rofl:
rex, if the bible said it, it is true. even if it contradicts itself. god is just that amazing, he has the power of being a self contradictory murdering *******. praise jesus.
