Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> Then you have to ask yourself "is genocide really OK, ever?  Would I 
>>>> actually participate in dashing the brains of infants against rocks if my 
>>>> God told me to, and said 'you don't understand why, but do it anyway.'"
>>>   Ah, that verse in that psalm is the favorite of atheists attacking the
>>> bible, isn't it? Most people, including most christians, just don't
>>> understand it. About the only people who understand it are the people who
>>> wrote it, ie. the people in the semitic cultures.
> 
>> So you're saying that God's commandment to wipe out a neighboring country, 
>> killing everyone but the young virgins, who are to be taken back to camp and 
>> raped, that was just a really strong *insult*?
> 
>   Which part of "that verse in that psalm" did you not understand?

The part where I point out maybe half a dozen places (out of dozens) where 
God does seemingly bad things, and you avoiding answering the question about 
it by pointing out *one* of the verses isn't saying what it looks like it 
might be saying.

Plus, you don't seem to be reading what *I* am saying well. I didn't ask if 
the verse said God told people to dash out the brains of infants against 
rocks. I asked if you, the hypothetical Christian who interprets the bible 
the way you argue here it should be interpreted, would feel that it's 
morally good to dash out infant brains against rocks if God so commanded.

I'm talking about whether a good Christian would do things that Christian 
now thinks are evil and contemptible if that Christian's God told him to do 
it for reasons he couldn't understand. The question really has nothing to do 
with the psalm except that I used the same wording. You're saying "it was 
just an insult". I'm saying "what would you think and/or do if God actually 
commanded it?"



I'm also asking about the *other* verses I mentioned.

When I say "The bible says A, B, C, and D, what do you think?"  And you 
answer "C isn't what you say it is", what am I supposed to concludes about 
A, B, and D, other than that you're dodging the question? OK, maybe not 
dodging, but you failed to answer it, and when I ask it again, you can't 
reasonably accuse me of reading incomprehension. :-)

>   Ok, I got tired of you seemingly having a reading comprehension problem.

Oh, I have a full reading comprehension. I fully understood your answer. It 
just wasn't answering the question I'd actually asked.

> You are constantly sidetracking rather than reading what I write and
> aknowledging that you understand it.

OK. Sorry. Perhaps I was unclear there. I said elsewhere that yes, I 
understood your point, but I didn't say that in this post specifically. I 
see I posted it a bit later, so maybe you didn't read it before this one.

I understand your point about that particular verse being an insult. 
However, I asked you about a whole bunch of verses, and how you think 
someone who believed in God and the bible as you *seem* to be arguing would 
address these other instances of God apparently promoting and engaging in 
violence against apparent innocents.

It still seems to me that my earlier list of four possibilities hasn't been 
addressed. Either God has ordered people to do what seems to me to be 
unspeakably horrible things yet in reality are actually good for reasons we 
can't comprehend, or God has ordered people to do what seems to me to be 
unspeakably horrible things that really are evil. (Or God is fictional, of 
course.) I'm just trying to figure out if your ideal Christian would go with 
#1 there or #2. If your ideal Christian goes with #1, it seems to be 
implying a universal morality, namely that which God says is good. If your 
ideal Christian goes with #2, it would seem to be implying that God isn't 
100% good and nice and loving and kind and such.

Of course, many argue that God isn't necessarily loving and kind, but simply 
a power that must be obeyed even if he says to do something bad. But that 
doesn't get a whole lot of traction amongst the only-slightly-faithful.

>   It seems that all atheists have reading comprehension problems when it
> suits them.

We're both having a bit of trouble keeping on track, methinks. :-) For one 
thing, we're each pulling the conversation in different directions.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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