The Theology Thread

dog my friend,

How have you been?

I admit that I'm jumping in here without catching on the debate but I do have a question...

.Murder is murder, rape is rape, stealing is stealing ... period.  It is rather amusing actually that so many people of faith claim that atheists and agnostics have no moral foundation when they seem to have a more stable moral foundation that the very people of faith pointing fingers at them.How do they seem to have a more stable foundation?

Also, as a Christian, I look at stealing and murder on the same level as wrong.

Would you look at them in the same light or is one worst then the other?

For the record I don't feel that atheist/agnostics have no morals.

dog

These are called miscarriages.  There is a huge difference between wilfully taking the life of the innocent unborn, and something occurring to the woman that is beyond her control.  Why does God permit the unborn child to miscarry?  The same reason that evil exists in the World until His return.  He permits it for a time, so that ultimately, all will have a chance to repent and believe.  The unborn are innocent and return to the Father's care and keeping.  He is God, we are not.  It may be, if that child were born he/she may have been a mass murderer, caused untold pain and anguish, or maybe they would have been perfectly fine.  We don't know.  We trust in God to be true to His nature and do the right thing. 

Second, I have to ask what your stance is on fertility clinics.  Given that the claim is that life begins at conception, and it takes literally hundreds of fertilized eggs to establish which will be implanted, fertility clinics far surpass the number of abortions annually.

My informed opinion is that they should be made available to infertile couples to adopt by allowing implantation and birth.

These are your opinions, and based on this, you presume to sit in judgment of God?

The use of the terms murder and genocide are pejorative. 

This phraseology isn't intended to be objective and rational, but provacative.  I will give you an alternative, more rational rendering.  There are times when God orders things to be done that were men to do them would be error.  God can exact justice upon people who sin individually, and as a nation.  No earthly judge has that right. 

The incident of turning the daughter over to the mob was to prevent the rape of angels, which would have provoked the wrath of God and the destruction of the city- a better outcome?

The incest was not order, nor condoned by God, but once done, was not allowed to prevent the continued relationship between God and His people.  If you are referring to the case in which the two daughters got their father drunk and seduced him in his sleep.

The others, I have no idea what you are referring to. 

Genocide against the Canaanites was because of their own sins prior to the entry of Israel into the land.  That was a judgment of God against the heinous and corrupt idolatry and evil that they encouraged and perpetuated in their culture- human sacrifice and temple prostitution, to name two.

God is God, we are not. 

Wildjj....

So what are you saying?  You wouldn't blame him, but God would?  That would seem to entail that you are not following the example of God on this matter...or that you don't agree with his ethics concerning this scenario.

You don't blame him, but he is responsible for his actions towards the God that let it happen?

This is like saying if I were raped and went out to kill the person who raped me, then not many people would blame me, but I would still be held responsible for my actions in the eyes of the law.  I think this is fallous, because I would have never went out to kill anybody if I wasn't raped in the first place.  Yes, there is a level of accountability on my part, but the majority lies with the transgressor....and if I didn't kill him then it shouldn't matter what he does after the fact, he is still guily of his transgressions and deserves punishment.

Any God that would let the rapist in heaven while closing the gate on the victim is not morally just.

Gators,

Thanks for the sentiment!

I don't actually believe the scripture that I was reading was inspired by God so it's not that big of a deal to me what John thought.  However I am interested in what people think today because it affects my life.  The idea of Hell, anti-christs, and Infidels have an extremely negative stigma associated with them and this is unecessarily IMO due to hard to beleive ancient texts written by folks who were less equipped to analyze reality.  I doubt most of these books would have ever been written (as non-fiction) if we knew then what we know today through science and technology.  The human need to explain everything led ancient people to speculate beyond their technological capacity.  2,000 years later it is still engrained so deeply that it is extremely hard to let go in spite of now existing evidence to explain some of the unanswerable questions of that time.  Not everything mind you has been answerd but enough that we should be able to break the ties from old ideas and start from scratch under new premises.

So let me get it started...

In the beginning of this particular universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago there was a massive and rapid expansion which we now refer to as the Big Bang.  We now know on at least one planet within that universe life began and has evolved over a few billion years.  It is not yet demonstrable how the expansion or life got started but it may be some day.  It is possible that there is an eternal entity known as God responsible for one or both but not necessarily either.  It is also possible that the universe itself is eternal in some form and life got it's start naturally.  Neither idea can be demonstrated with an accuracy at this time but we will leave this open to be ammended with future discoveries.  Either way it is impossible to prove that God does not exist so you will always be entitled to that belief.