I agree. When the human race put the God of the OT on trial they found Him guilty of claiming to be the God of the OT and crucified Him. ... ad infinitum. You're judgment appears to be against the same Person.

Doug,

The god in the OT killed and order killed thousands and possibly millions of people. This god passed down laws that included the death penalty for even the most minor infractions. This god apparently never overcame jealousy, which indicates that this god has an ego and covets. This god played with humans, ordering one to sacrifice his son, allowing another to suffer not because he had done anything wrong, but because he made a wager. This god promoted slavery, treated women as property, and ordered rape and genocide.

This god is hardly deserving of our respect or worship. The only thing this god does is to make people fear.

I wholeheartedly agree with you,cardw. The god that you've described is undeserving of our worship or respect.It is only the God who is ...that deserves respect. One whose .... One who declares ... One who ... One who ... One who is ... Don't you think that a God like that deserves some sort of positive affirmation?

Doug,

The god you are describing, according to the Bible, is the same one described in the OT. There is no amount of rationalizing that I can come up with to make that god good or worthy of my worship.

And a god who thinks that the solution to the worlds problems is to sacrifice his own son, as if that changes anything, is not worthy of my admiration.

Like I posted before, this is like god saying, "I am sacrificing myself to myself, because of laws I made myself, so that I can prevent myself from killing every person born on the planet."

It makes no sense at all and doesn't impress me as loving at all. It just seems like a very self centered god.

cardw,are you implying that no God exists or are you saying that the God of the Bible is really a BIG, self-centered jerk (or worse), or are you thinking that the God revealed in the Bible does not exist but there must be Someone better suited to be God in existence somewhere?Or D)none of the above?

Doug,

I am an agnostic.

This means that I don't believe it is possible to know whether any god exists or not.

I am reasonably sure that the god of the Bible doesn't exist, just as you don't believe that Zeus doesn't exist. The Bible describes an iron age ethical system expressed in a god that needs to be sacrificed to.

The Bible may have some advanced ethical philosophy contained in some of the teachings of Jesus, but it is quite obvious to me that Jesus was hijacked by the orthodox version of Christianity to fit into this iron age and neo-platonic ethical system.

I have not seen the order for rape. As for the rest you are in danger of mixing the text with tradition.

First, the Canaanites had become so dangerous it was as bad if not worst than our gettos where the police are afraid to enter. Second, you had strong city states and their daughters (the unwalled area where the common people lived.) The city states tended to be oppressive of the daughters. The battles of Joshua were (and while Jeremiah, or whoever edited the Deuteronomic history, emphessised the distruction since Judah was facing distruction from Babylon, but there are Bible texts that are included but not emphessised that give a fuller story) conquring the oppressive city states and liberating and converting the daughters. There was more evangelisism going on than killing.

And we even have in the city states this one woman who was so evil that the wicked Canaanites saw her as a wicked woman. No matter how bad a Canaanite was they could look at this woman and say that at least they were not as evil and wicked as she was. She was the worst of the lot. The one woman who even the Canaanites would have agreed would have deserved any curse from God. The Canaanites gave her a name equvalant to calling someone the devil or Satan. They named her after their understanding of the devil. Her name was Rahab. God was able to save the very worst of the lot. The message is there that since God was able to save the very worst Canaanite, God would have gladly have saved the others if only they would let Him.

There was also one federation of city states, the Gibionites, yes there was the deception and not praying before, but even with deception God accpeted them. If only they came just as they were without one plea, open about their unworthyness but trusting in Yahweh's mercy they would have been accepted in full fellowship. For their changing of worshiping Baal the storm god to worshiping Yahweh, armies of other city states came to punish them. Joshua came to fight, and another came to fight. I usually write this from a middle of the road approach, but in this post I am going to come right out and upset the tradition. The sun did not stop in the sky shining all day. Joshua had first the advantage of attacking while dark , then in the rising sun where the sun was in the enemy's eye, however as the sun was climing into the sky it was making the battle field equal and if the sun were to get further west it would have been in the Hebrew's eyes giving the enemy an advantage, so Joshua asked for the sun to keep still (or be quiet) and the the sun suddenly stopped shining as it was blocked out by huge thick hail clouds and everything became dark by the hail storm. The storm god Baal shows up out of no where blocking out the sun so that the advantage of the darkness returns, and the storm sends incredibly thick hailstones down on the enemy. Here both the Gibionites and the city states attacking Gibion to punish them for changing from the worship of Baal to Yahweh instead of finding Baal coming to punish them, Baal congratulated them to worship the God who is greater than he is. Baal is pictured as the servant of Yahweh and telling the Gibionites that they were right to stop worshiping him and to turn their woship over to Yahweh, and to tell the other's "Hey, don't defend me, they are right in their change in worship, so you should stop worshiping me and worship Yahweh as well"

So the genicide was not exactly genecide, but more like if a group were to go into the gettos to distroy the oppressive gangs, including their familie members to free the common people in the gettos and to help them have a better life.

Now the slavery that we had in our early US history the Bible condems. Biblical slavery was more of an (I"m mispelling the word) but endenchered servant. This was for mostly the new converts where they were limited but learning about their new religion and leading to their or their decendent's freedom as full fledged Hebrews considered to be a decendent of Abraham as if they biologically were.

God worked with people were they were. There was a time where people would not have worshiped a god who would not have human sacrifice. God worked where they were and brought them up. In fact slaves from other countries could run to these people and automatically get their freedom. Women were treated with much more freedom than they were in other countries. God was again working where people were and bringing them up. You are reading these passages from the advantage of where God has lead us, instead of reading them in light of where we were at that time. Once again, if we were to liberate the gettos there would first have to kill off some very nasty people and for those left there would have to be some very strong rules in place and based on getto culture and use that as a starting point in giving them back their freedom and dignity.

Kevin,

That's a rather creative stretch of the imagination to call what the Israelites were doing good. The rape comes from god ordering them to kill everything living except the virgins which they could take as their "wives." Think about it. These virgins watched as the Israelites killed their families and then were taken and forced to "marry" the killers of their family. This is way beyond rape.

Plus you didn't address the laws to kill anyone for even the most minor infraction, Abraham being ordered to offer his son as a sacrifice, Job, and the whole jealous god routine. And the blatant classification of women in Jewish law as property.

It's just too much to account for. There are so many problems with this god, that the only way to see this god as good is with a large dose of denial.

We can look closer at these later, but as for creative streach of the imagination: this is the evidence presented by archaeologiests, theologians and linguists.

Kevin,

We can line up experts on all kinds of views of this time period. The fact is that we don't know exactly what happened.

What we do know is that ancient man made up a LOT of stories on how we got here, why we are here, what our purpose is, etc, etc. And most of these stories we don't believe for exactly the same reasons we shouldn't believe that the Bible is any different.

There is nothing in the Bible itself that would indicate that it was put together by some superior being and that the Bible is magically the word of the one true god. The Bible is not clear, poorly written, poorly organized, full of iron age ethics, contradictions, etc. etc.

The only reason that I can determine that the Bible has any special significance is simply because the most powerful nations on earth placed it there through the application of violence. And after a thousand years or so most people forgot where the books came from and who wrote them and why. So we are stuck with this tradition that is so embedded in our assumptions that, until relatively recently, most people didn't even realize they could actually question the validity of the Bible, because in the past anyone who questioned the validity of the Bible was soon put to death.

Even though we have secular protection, the religious of every age wants to take back the power to use force, because force has been Christianity's greatest evangelizing tool.