I think that you will find a number of instances where God ordered the Israelites to "smite" the "infidels", and to keep their gold, and their virgin daughters - what a nice God. tampa ____________________________________ I think my statement still stands. Check the history surrounding those events and then the actions taken. Only looking at 1/2 of equation usually yields faulty results. I don't recognize the "virgin daughters" as a command but I do remember the order to kill everyone and even all of their animals.
So God the Father's orders for death and destruction, plus keeping the plunder, and the virgin daughters is cool - but similar orders from Allah are uncool. How can one begin to reason with such thinking? I have nothing but destain for fundamentalist Moslems, and the same destain for fundamentalist Christians. I pity those who look past the roots of there beliefs and call themselves "believers".
It is amazing how a lot of atheists point fingers at theists for believing in a God and then laughing at them for trying to prove God exists -- all the while, many atheists are just as "sure" that god doesn't exist without sufficient proof for THEIR case. Truth is, nobody on Earth knows the real truth. The only people who know what is going on are all DEAD. Since it is difficult to interview DEAD people, we just have insufficient information about what happens after death and whether or not this is all just a fluke show-and-tell show or if there is some deeper meaning to everything. I am a theist. I believe in some creator to the universe but I doubt any specific religion encompasses the total truth. I do think that if you take bits and pieces from various religions, that you will get close to a truth, but the entire truth will always elude us until such a time that god himself chooses to pay us a visit. That being said, I don't think we can blame god for anything in our lives or for the events that take place on Earth. I've had a lot of tough things happen in my life and I got very angry with god but then I realized it was a stupid thing to do on my part. God, if one does exist, most likely gave us free-will. How we choose to exercise that free-will is totally up to us. The only way God could have prevented 9/11 from occurring was to affect the free-will of those couple dozen of muslim extremists. That apparently is not how god chooses to operate. A couple of dozen of extremists crashed planes into our buildings and now approximately 3,000 people are dead. If you look at the situation, it could have been FAR FAR worse. We're lucky it is ONLY 3,000. Who are we to say that God didn't slightly adjust physics on that day to keep those towers from crashing down in a far more catastrophic way? We simply cannot say one way or another, but what we can say is that the free-will of those extremists was allowed to take its course. Imagine if the planes had hit an hour later? What if the buildings toppled over and took out a few square blocks of other buildings and set off a huge fire that just incinerated the financial district? Likewise, the worst part of the story about 3,000 people dying is not the fact that they are now dead, but the fact that some of them had to suffer. Thankfully, many of them were probably killed instantly. Some jumped to their death, but since they were so high up, once they hit the ground they probably were killed instantly as well. We should thank god for giving us all the opportunity to process information, experience sensory input and grow as individuals. We shouldn't get angry with him due to others exercising one of the most baffling things in the universe -- free will. Everyone has within them the opportunity to do whatever they so desire. Some of us are inclined to do things because of genetic biases, upbringing, etc -- but I am a firm believer that anyone can break through whatever limitations are imposed on them through those things and create their own path.
These oversimplified views that if you as an individual or we, as a nation will be rewarded for "being good" bother me. Typically the biggest revivals have been followed within a decade by a disaster!! Having a good relationship with God is just not automatically about comfort or prosperity, it can be, but typically it isn't.
IMHO I think religions were designed to explain birth and death. To explain what can't really be explained. To make man feel secure in an insecure world. To make him feel he belongs to a group when in fact he is truly singular. To think we all live on a thin crust on a molten ball of lava hurtling through space. One false move and we could all be toast. Everyone on this planet will die eventually. That is the reality of our situation. It is not very comforting. Heaven and all that drivel sounds better to the average man. Gives reason to the chaos we call living. Let's us sleep at night. I am very deeply anti religion. It makes a free and peaceful society all but impossible by it's rules and instructions that bind the faithful to each other, but exclude all other thoughts on the matter as sacrilegious. Just seeing what crimes have been committed in the name of god makes me cringe. If that is what believing in god does, I am proud to be an atheist. It is not god's will, it is an excuse for murder.
God is inside us. God is love for humanity. God is equality. Learn to see god in everything. Look around you. Look at people with humility. Serve others, only then you will realize god.
I do not believe in your god, but have no problem with your believing in him. My problem with believers comes when they want me to accept their God. When they want me to follow His dictates. And when my intelligence is insulted with claims of anything good as being from God, but anything bad is not. The believer is threatened by the non-believer because the believer needs constant reinforcement of his beliefs. Hence, weekly "services" where the same message is repeated over and over again. supposedly attendance pleases God, as do songs, the smell of perfume, or the mindless recitation of "prayers. God is also fond of Stained glass windows, robes, funny hats, and such. I do not kill, rob, plunder or deliberately lie. Not because God tells me not to, but because I inherently know that it is wrong to hurt others. That is one of the things that troubles me with the believers. They tell me that they would not know that these things were wrong if God didn't tell them so. But what troubles me most, is that the believer accepts that he or she can do the most awful things, and then simply ask God for forgiveness, and the loving God will wash their souls clean. But the strange thing is that this loving god never seems to get around to restoring the one sinned against. And no one ever seems to notice. I'll make a deal with you. Don't flaunt your beliefs in my face, and I won't debunk them. But it's a deal that you won't be able to keep. Do you know why? It's because you don't really believe in God so much as you are afraid not to.