Good or evil - How do you know?

The bible tells us that god did these things:

killed everyone in a flood
turned Lot's wife into a pillar of stone
Let Lot escape the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because he was a good man - a good man that had sex with his daughters.
God killed all of the firstborn of Egypt.
He played a terrible mind game on Abraham, making him think that he had to sacrifice his son.

Miracles:
Jesus healed the sick
walked on water
brought people back from the dead
cast demons into pigs and commanded them to jump off a cliff
rose from the dead after rotting for three days in a tomb

Question: With such awesome displays of miraculous power by Jesus, and with such heinous atrocities committed by god, how would anyone know whether a thing was done by Satan or God? Maybe it only looks evil to us. Maybe it's really a good thing. How would any mere mortal know the difference?

reply to post by jiggerj


Which feels right within your heart?

OT God was a nut...

Jesus was "The Man"... who had a different message then said previous maniacal terrorist...

You know the difference between what has been deemed "Good and Evil"

We all do

Originally posted by Akragon
reply to post by jiggerj

 

Which feels right within your heart?

OT God was a nut...

Jesus was "The Man"... who had a different message then said previous maniacal terrorist...

You know the difference between what has been deemed "Good and Evil"

We all do

I completely agree. OT God is different from NT God.
Evil is constricted and takes life from others, good is open and shares life. Evil can only steal, good can create.

Even moreso, according to morgan freemans version of god, he can take a break and give his powers to a mere mortal.

That's probably why there is so much conflict.

Jim carrey didn't get it right the first time.

(speaking of re-writing the story, Old Testament, New Testament, Bruce Almighty, etc)

reply to post by jiggerj

a good man that had sex with his daughters.

Not to be a stickler because I see your point, but isn't it Lots daughters who got Lot drunk and waited until he passed out and then raped him?
So yea I guess he did have sex with them but it wasn't voluntarily.

Well, I think each believer has their own way of recognizing such based on their own fundamental understanding of the text they believe.

This is the same with all religions not just judeo christian world views.

Depending on the depth at which you know the text, which many who ask these type of question have a cursory understanding of them, Ill try to answer it as simply as I can.

The Old Testament is a story of Jewish history, taken from the Torah (which the Jewish books have far more than just whats in the OT that the Jewish faith considers canonical) Also you have to start at Mosses and the Exile for the "Starting point" for basis, EVERYTHING before that point is Moses retelling things that god supposedly told him.

So there is that for arguments sake, starting from that point and going on from there you can pretty much see an Attitude in the OT of God as being "DO these things and you will prosper" Anything outside of doing those things gets severally punished.

Things like the Egyptian worship of multiple gods, or the slaughter of all the babies that predated Gods plague on the Egyptians of the first born.

Sodoms crimes as well are not detailed to great extent, but what you do see is that is that "New" people show up, and the crowds first response is to try rape and murder on the new people. The only reason Lot is said to be saved is he was the only good one left in the town.

Many times you see people in the OT spared or cursed for the actions of others, things like the king screws up and the whole nation suffers, which take alot more knowledge of the text than a cursory one to explain.

Many times a "Christians" View of the duality of the OT and NEW, comes down to OT being Gods view of SIN, and the NEW being his view of the Sinner.

The thing the bible is clear on is God did not change, hes still views those sins or crimes accordingly, just that Gods Mercy outshines his Wrath.

But again, concepts that would require much more knowledge of the text to substantiate and back up.

reply to post by TheLieWeLive

Not to be a stickler because I see your point, but isn't it Lots daughters who got Lot drunk and waited until he passed out and then raped him?

Riiiight. How likely does that story sound?

It's always easier to blame the girl while in a patriarchal system.

Originally posted by Akragon
reply to post by jiggerj

 

Which feels right within your heart?

OT God was a nut...

Jesus was "The Man"... who had a different message then said previous maniacal terrorist...

You know the difference between what has been deemed "Good and Evil"

We all do

Yes we all do! Evil is setting two people up to fail, like planting a forbidden tree in a garden with two humans bestowed with curiosity. Evil is murdering not only all the people in a flood, but all the animals too. Evil is punishing an old lady for laughing at the prospect of bearing a child to Abraham. Evil is allowing a man to still rule after killing the husband of the woman he was infatuated with.

Yes, yes! We all know evil, but just wait a sec because I'm sure someone will be along to dispute this.

Originally posted by TheLieWeLive
reply to post by jiggerj

 

a good man that had sex with his daughters.

Not to be a stickler because I see your point, but isn't it Lots daughters who got Lot drunk and waited until he passed out and then raped him?
So yea I guess he did have sex with them but it wasn't voluntarily.

Remember, this story was written within a male dominated society. A man gets so drunk he can't distinguish his own daughters from anyone else when they were supposedly the only ones around. Sure.

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by Akragon
reply to post by jiggerj

 

Which feels right within your heart?

OT God was a nut...

Jesus was "The Man"... who had a different message then said previous maniacal terrorist...

You know the difference between what has been deemed "Good and Evil"

We all do

Yes we all do! Evil is setting two people up to fail, like planting a forbidden tree in a garden with two humans bestowed with curiosity. Evil is murdering not only all the people in a flood, but all the animals too. Evil is punishing an old lady for laughing at the prospect of bearing a child to Abraham. Evil is allowing a man to still rule after killing the husband of the woman he was infatuated with.

Yes, yes! We all know evil, but just wait a sec because I'm sure someone will be along to dispute this.

Doesn't sound like anything Jesus taught does it?

Yet many if not most believe this character to be His Father... which is laughable...

reply to post by benrl

But again, concepts that would require much more knowledge of the text to substantiate and back up.

Sorry, but if concepts, excuses, and apologies are needed to understand and justify the stories in the bible, then it all comes down to rubbish. If we wanted we could raise a fire hydrant to the status of a god if we over analyzed the hell out of it. Either the bible is inspired by a god to COMMUNICATE with his people, or it's fiction, pure and simple.

Originally posted by pthena
reply to post by TheLieWeLive

Not to be a stickler because I see your point, but isn't it Lots daughters who got Lot drunk and waited until he passed out and then raped him?

Riiiight. How likely does that story sound?

It's always easier to blame the girl while in a patriarchal system.

All we have to do is look to the Middle East NOW to see that this is true.

Well, I don't think that those things in the Old Testament were done by god particularly. They said god did them but I am not so sure that is the case. There was a lotta death in the Old Testement.

I don't see anything that wrong with the writings in the New Testament myself. Jesus almost seems like a really nice guy. Some even called him Amen, for Amun Ra the god of the needy. His ways were far from the ways of the Jewish church of the time. It was like a completely new religion. I think the ten commandments were good though, Maybe that is why they got smashed, they didn't fit into the rest of the book.

Originally posted by jiggerj
reply to post by benrl

 

But again, concepts that would require much more knowledge of the text to substantiate and back up.

Sorry, but if concepts, excuses, and apologies are needed to understand and justify the stories in the bible, then it all comes down to rubbish. If we wanted we could raise a fire hydrant to the status of a god if we over analyzed the hell out of it. Either the bible is inspired by a god to COMMUNICATE with his people, or it's fiction, pure and simple.

So I suppose the OP you posted had nothing to do with answering the question posed, but simply for you to post that canned response.

If you would like I could go in to great detail on the theology of the religion in question (as I could with most world religions, BA in theology) if you truly have theological questions based on the text I will by all means answer them to the best of my Ability.

IF not however I bid you good day.

"Doesn't sound like anything Jesus taught does it?

Yet many if not most believe this character to be His Father... which is laughable...





Kids rarely do what their parents want, aren't you a parent?

Boy did I mess this response up trying to delete part of it :shk:

reply to post by rickymouse

Kids rarely do what their parents want, aren't you a parent?

I assume that was for me...

No... im not a parent...

Do you believe that a parent would torture and burn his children if they don't listen?

Or perhaps tell them to kill one another?

reply to post by Akragon


Jesus didn't follow in God's footsteps and kill people........Yet later a lot of people were killed in Jesus's name.

reply to post by jiggerj


Morality doesn't exist. It is made up.

People can hold "love" as the perfect morality, "freedom" as the perfect morality, "pleasure" as the perfect morality. Morality is just another word for what you value over all other things.

Even if the entity in the bible calling himself "God" is real, morality doesn't exist. It is just his own preferences.

I choose freedom to be morality because all are born free until they are controlled by another. Freedom for all to express themselves as individuals as they choose.

reply to post by benrl

So I suppose the OP you posted had nothing to do with answering the question posed, but simply for you to post that canned response. If you would like I could go in to great detail on the theology of the religion in question (as I could with most world religions, BA in theology) if you truly have theological questions based on the text I will by all means answer them to the best of my Ability. IF not however I bid you good day.

Sorry, Benrl, but no, I don't want to over analyze it. The bible wasn't written for theologians to glean hidden meanings from simple to read texts. It's for the common man, and it's very simple. Was the flood an evil thing? It's a yes or no choice. People aren't that stupid. Like AK said, we KNOW evil. Those that would deny it are the ones desperate to analyze it into obscurity.

Originally posted by rickymouse
reply to post by Akragon

 

Jesus didn't follow in God's footsteps and kill people........Yet later a lot of people were killed in Jesus's name.

And yet he said numerous times "he does the will of his Father"... meaning that killing and torturing people like the OT God did wasn't his Fathers will...

Pretty straight forward if you ask me... OT God is not his Father

And he said "people will be persecuted in my name"...