3 ms·

Its a fair question :) My understanding is that the vengeful angry God described in parts of the Old Testament reflects the only partial understanding of God by

by nickd2001 4y ago

Its a fair question :) My understanding is that the vengeful angry God described in parts of the Old Testament reflects the only partial understanding of God by humans at the time that was written. When bad things happened like plagues etc, people assumed that was God punishing people. Later, Jesus spent much time clarifying this and trying to put things straight in people's minds, that in fact God is not vengeful at all but loving and merciful. And by allowing himself to be crucified, Jesus demonstrated that by a powerful action. It is sometimes said that "The Bible is a dangerous book". ;). If you go straight to the Old Testament you may indeed get a terrible impression of God and be turned off christianity for life. Also, some churches build their whole faith on this and go around judging and berating people. One good thing about the Catholic church is it has traditions based on 2000 yrs of theologians studying the bible and trying to make sense of it, so , theoretically , a better understanding should be able to be found by looking at some Catholic teaching than by going straight to the bible. On the other hand, humans are fallible, so there are certainly plenty of Catholics who misunderstand the what the church believe, there is stuff that is still debated within the church or even incoherent still, there are people in the church for the wrong reasons, e:g either using it as a gay dating agency having made a solemn promise to be celibate, or trying to use it to target gays that they hate. (to return to the original subject of this debate :) ) Cos people can sometimes be... well, assholes is a strong word... perhaps, not as kind as they should be would be a better way of putting it.

Eisenstein 4y ago
Does that mean we nullify the Ten Commandments, or are those still 'the word of God'? Have you read them and thought about them? They are basically three major things: 1. Pay attention to God, a lot, and don't make him jealous 2. Uphold patriarchy 3. Don't murder/steal/lie* None of those things are 'loving', and the only true absolutes (the ones God doesn't revoke when he gets a bit pissed and commands followers to smite whole people's for offending him somehow) are the 'worship God' and 'uphold patriarchy' parts. Jesus was a Great PR guy, but for everything he did to make the big guy look good, he still ended up getting tortured to death for lulz and never got Daddy's love (why hast thou forsaken me?). Honestly a true reading of God is a sadistic narcissist and it makes the most sense. If an omnipotent being actually cared about us he wouldn't give a bunch of conflicting information all the time and watch us hurt each other and let babies die of AIDS...and he damn sure wouldn't have tortured his own kid to death. * Unless God tells you to...
- nickd2001 4y ago
  Ok this is going off-topic and getting complicated, but I'll try to give a helpful response. :) First of all, if you're looking at the bible and trying to understand where Christians are coming from, (or make sense of our apparently nonsensical religion, if you want to look at it like that ;) ), if I were you I'd forget about the Old Testament for now and look at the New Testament first. Going direct to the Old Testament, without the benefit of anyone knowledgeable to explain it, whether a sensible person from within a church or by reading some decent theology books, is likely to give you all sorts of inaccurate notions about God. The idea that he smites people down and calls others to do so, is an example. It seems to say that in the Old Testament, because, as I said, the authors lacked full understanding, but later Jesus cleared this up. Of course its a problem that there are some Christians today who believe precisely that, because they too have a messed up understanding IMHO. Which is why the Catholic church despite its many faults has something better - 2000 yrs of attempting to think about this. As for God letting us do bad stuff to each other and babies dying of AIDS etc, these are valid Qs and extremely difficult to answer. Many Christians wrestle with these till their dying day. The failure to be able to answer them easily doesn't in itself invalidate the religion though IMHO. If you have no religion, you are left with other. "worse", unanswered Qs e:g what's even the point of our existence. The church teaches that God gives us free will, and that if we follow Jesus' teachings to look after each other everything will be OK. Dealing with cancer, disabilities etc in a world where people look after and devote resources to caring for people in that situation is different from a world where people don't give a ** about others' suffering. Also we are taught that God feels our suffering too, he suffers with us. As for God torturing his own kid to death, Catholics believe in the trinity, that Jesus was God in human form, therefore he suffered himself. It wasn't God that did the torturing, it was humans that did that. He allowed people to do that, in order to "take the hit" , basically accept punishment himself for our failings so that we get to be forgiven. Which is an amazing act of self-sacrifice and a demonstration of how much God actually cares about us. Well, that's what I believe anyway. :). You're welcome to tell me you're sure its complete nonsense. All I would suggest in return is to keep an open mind. :)
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    Oh, I went to Church every Sunday and I went to Catholic school. I know all this stuff. I am telling you what actually makes sense to me. None of the stuff that Church tradition passes down makes any sense at all unless you look at it from the perspective of Paul. He took a pauper's religion with a dead leader and went around spreading it, completely forming it in his own way in order to cater to spread and politics (no circumcision needed! eat pork, it's fine...). Basically, The Church == Paul, and Paul never met Jesus. If you want to say that 'The Old Testament' is 'people's misunderstanding of things back in the day', then you can also say that 'The New Testament' is a do-over with Paul incorporating as much stuff as possible to appeal to the people of his time. Jesus never wrote a word of it. If anything could be 'from the mouth of God' it is the Old Testament, and it is the only thing that actually seems to have any logic to it. The NT stuff is just nonsense because it all comes down to if God is all powerful then he is CHOOSING not to act in certain ways which make him IMMORAL and therefore God cannot be the basis of a good morality. Take that for what you want, but if you read it with any rationality it has to be that way. Now, if you want to be Christian for all the good things it espouses -- great! But don't try to convince me that it isn't nonsense.

Eisenstein 4y ago

Does that mean we nullify the Ten Commandments, or are those still 'the word of God'? Have you read them and thought about them? They are basically three major things: 1. Pay attention to God, a lot, and don't make him jealous 2. Uphold patriarchy 3. Don't murder/steal/lie* None of those things are 'loving', and the only true absolutes (the ones God doesn't revoke when he gets a bit pissed and commands followers to smite whole people's for offending him somehow) are the 'worship God' and 'uphold patriarchy' parts. Jesus was a Great PR guy, but for everything he did to make the big guy look good, he still ended up getting tortured to death for lulz and never got Daddy's love (why hast thou forsaken me?). Honestly a true reading of God is a sadistic narcissist and it makes the most sense. If an omnipotent being actually cared about us he wouldn't give a bunch of conflicting information all the time and watch us hurt each other and let babies die of AIDS...and he damn sure wouldn't have tortured his own kid to death. * Unless God tells you to...

nickd2001 4y ago
Ok this is going off-topic and getting complicated, but I'll try to give a helpful response. :) First of all, if you're looking at the bible and trying to understand where Christians are coming from, (or make sense of our apparently nonsensical religion, if you want to look at it like that ;) ), if I were you I'd forget about the Old Testament for now and look at the New Testament first. Going direct to the Old Testament, without the benefit of anyone knowledgeable to explain it, whether a sensible person from within a church or by reading some decent theology books, is likely to give you all sorts of inaccurate notions about God. The idea that he smites people down and calls others to do so, is an example. It seems to say that in the Old Testament, because, as I said, the authors lacked full understanding, but later Jesus cleared this up. Of course its a problem that there are some Christians today who believe precisely that, because they too have a messed up understanding IMHO. Which is why the Catholic church despite its many faults has something better - 2000 yrs of attempting to think about this. As for God letting us do bad stuff to each other and babies dying of AIDS etc, these are valid Qs and extremely difficult to answer. Many Christians wrestle with these till their dying day. The failure to be able to answer them easily doesn't in itself invalidate the religion though IMHO. If you have no religion, you are left with other. "worse", unanswered Qs e:g what's even the point of our existence. The church teaches that God gives us free will, and that if we follow Jesus' teachings to look after each other everything will be OK. Dealing with cancer, disabilities etc in a world where people look after and devote resources to caring for people in that situation is different from a world where people don't give a ** about others' suffering. Also we are taught that God feels our suffering too, he suffers with us. As for God torturing his own kid to death, Catholics believe in the trinity, that Jesus was God in human form, therefore he suffered himself. It wasn't God that did the torturing, it was humans that did that. He allowed people to do that, in order to "take the hit" , basically accept punishment himself for our failings so that we get to be forgiven. Which is an amazing act of self-sacrifice and a demonstration of how much God actually cares about us. Well, that's what I believe anyway. :). You're welcome to tell me you're sure its complete nonsense. All I would suggest in return is to keep an open mind. :)
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  Oh, I went to Church every Sunday and I went to Catholic school. I know all this stuff. I am telling you what actually makes sense to me. None of the stuff that Church tradition passes down makes any sense at all unless you look at it from the perspective of Paul. He took a pauper's religion with a dead leader and went around spreading it, completely forming it in his own way in order to cater to spread and politics (no circumcision needed! eat pork, it's fine...). Basically, The Church == Paul, and Paul never met Jesus. If you want to say that 'The Old Testament' is 'people's misunderstanding of things back in the day', then you can also say that 'The New Testament' is a do-over with Paul incorporating as much stuff as possible to appeal to the people of his time. Jesus never wrote a word of it. If anything could be 'from the mouth of God' it is the Old Testament, and it is the only thing that actually seems to have any logic to it. The NT stuff is just nonsense because it all comes down to if God is all powerful then he is CHOOSING not to act in certain ways which make him IMMORAL and therefore God cannot be the basis of a good morality. Take that for what you want, but if you read it with any rationality it has to be that way. Now, if you want to be Christian for all the good things it espouses -- great! But don't try to convince me that it isn't nonsense.