Is Jesus really the Sun god?

[Bravus]

On the evolution and flood thing, though, your argument is not at all consistent: it's fine for God to kill everyone and everything on earth one time, in the flood, but not to allow things to die naturally at other times during the process of evolution? Either death is bad or death is OK if God does it. Theistic evolution assumes God does it... so why is it not OK?

[John317]

...I believe that the Bible says God both kills people - men, women and children - directly himself, in the Flood and in Sodom and Gomorrah and the cases of Korah, Dathan and Abiram and the golden calf and so on, and that he also orders human beings to kill on his behalf.

Believing that the Bible says it is not, to me, the same as believing that God actually did it... and that's a bigger discussion that no doubt we will have.

You seem to be saying although the Bible clearly says God did those things, you believe God didn't actually do them.

That's similar to saying that, yes, the Bible teaches God created life on earth in six days, but God didn't actually do it.

What it comes down to is whether the Bible is really inspired by God and whether it is trustworthy and means exactly what it says.

There are many who think the Bible doesn't mean that Christ will actually come the second time to raise the dead and take the saved home with Him.

[John317]

On the evolution and flood thing, though, your argument is not at all consistent: it's fine for God to kill everyone and everything on earth one time, in the flood, but not to allow things to die naturally at other times during the process of evolution? Either death is bad or death is OK if God does it. Theistic evolution assumes God does it... so why is it not OK?

Are you saying you actually see no difference between God's creating the world through millions of years of evolution and the destruction of the wicked in the Flood?

There's a big difference there, Bravus.

For one thing, the people who were destroyed in the Flood were free to decide whether to disobey God or rebel against Him.

In the evolutionary model, humans had no choice whether to suffer and die. God made it happen.

For another thing, God gave the people before the Flood plenty of time and opportunity to change. They refused.

In the evolutionary model, humans and all the animals had to suffer and die through no fault of their own. It happened because that was God's plan. God planned for them to suffer and die, according to theistic evolutionary theory. There was no other way for life to evolve.

These are just a few of the differences.

[John317]

Sucks to have a hymen that doesn't bleed through no fault of your own: that little anatomical accident can get you stoned to death. Not everyone's does...

That is nothing compared to what happened to billions of creatures, including humans, if God planned for life to evolve over many millions of years.

[Bravus]

Alternatively: there is a difference in law between a natural death and a killing. In evolution, while there were predator-prey interactions, there were also vast numbers of deaths from old age and so on. All the deaths in the Flood were intentional killings.

Your framework is hermetically sealed: nothing God does (or is said to have done) can be wrong, a priori. Given that, discussing the morality of God's actions is pointless, because only one conclusion is admissible.

To me, the notion of a supernatural guarantor of all human morality who does not in himself embody the characteristics of morality is incoherent. And the notion of spending an eternity with such an amoral God terrifying.

You seem incapable of making these connections into a consistent argument. I say that as no insult or attack, nor as a judgement of your intellectual abilities, but as an attempt to describe what your particular framework, and your extreme commitment to that framework, do to your moral reasoning abilities.

[John317]

I don't believe Jesus is the sun god.

Who do you believe Jesus Christ to be?

Originally Posted By: Bravus

I do believe that the Bible contains some barbaric pronouncements and that the usual explanations explain nothing.

What are your thoughts about the following explanation given by the Spirit of prophecy?

Quote:

The men who promptly and speedily executed the divine judgments upon those heathen nations have been pronounced harsh and unmerciful in destroying so many human lives. But all who reason thus, fail to understand the character and dealings of God. In his infinite mercy, the Lord had long spared those idolatrous nations, giving them evidence upon evidence that he, the mighty Jehovah, was the God whom they should serve. He had commanded Moses not to make war upon Moab or Midian, for their cup of iniquity was not yet full. Additional evidence was to be given...

....When, at the suggestion of Balaam, the snare was laid for Israel, which resulted in the destruction of many thousands, then it was that the Midianites filled up the measure of their iniquities. Then their day of probation ended, the door of mercy was to them closed, and the mandate went forth from Him who can create and can destroy, ...

.... leave the Lord to deal with the work of his hands according to his own wise purposes.

.... God's method of dealing with sin is not in harmony with the views cherished by a large class who occupy a prominent position among the professed followers of Christ. Many of these men cherish sin, and laud the benevolence and long-suffering of God, and dwell upon the loving character of Jesus,--all mercy, all tenderness,--while they pass over the threatenings of God's wrath against sin and sinners, and our Saviour's scathing denunciations of hypocrisy and self-deception. It is those who have not a keen sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin that are ready to question the justice of God in punishing with such severity the sins of the Amalekites, Canaanites, and Midianites. Those who love sin are unable to comprehend God's dealings with his subjects.

... God is merciful and compassionate, but he is also just. Let the cross of Calvary forever settle this matter. As surely as Christ, the guiltless, suffered for the guilty, so surely will the wrath of God fall upon the heads of those who persist in their transgression of his law. {ST, January 6, 1881}

-

[Bravus]

You seem to be saying although the Bible clearly says God did those things, you believe God didn't actually do them.

That's similar to saying that, yes, the Bible teaches God created life on earth in six days, but God didn't actually do it.

What it comes down to is whether the Bible is really inspired by God and whether it is trustworthy and means exactly what it says.

There are many who think the Bible doesn't mean that Christ will actually come the second time to raise the dead and take the saved home with Him.

Not quite. I was saying that I don't *necessarily and automatically* believe that it means God did them. That is part of the question at the heart of the discussion.

There are (at least) three possibilities:

1. The Bible says God did them, and he did.

2. The Bible says God did them, but he didn't.

3. The Bible doesn't say God did them.

My problem is simple: I cannot worship a God who did those things. If that damns me - that's OK, because I also cannot worship a God who damns me because I cannot worship a God who did those things.

If God did them, then farewell to God. Or at least, to *that* God. That God is only one among many representations of God.

If God did not do them, but the Bible says he did, then the Bible remains useful and true for many purposes. It's a collection of 66 books written by almost as many authors over hundreds of years, and collected hundreds of years later.

I do *not* have to accept or reject it holus bolus. I can recognise it as a human attempt at describing God, coloured by the prejudices and fears of its human authors, and seek to perceive the real God underlying the imperfect account.

[John317]

Do you see any light in the following paragraphs by Ellen White on the question of the destruction of the wicked in the Flood?

Quote:

As they reasoned in Noah's day they reason today, when the warning message is proclaimed to fear God and keep His commandments. The wrath of God is soon to fall on all the sinful and disobedient, and they will perish in the general conflagration. Professed servants of Christ who are unfaithful, who do not reverence God and with fear prepare for the terrible future event, will lull themselves to carnal security with their fallacious reasoning, as they did in Noah's day. "God is too good and too merciful [they reason] to save just a few who keep the Sabbath and believe the message of warning. The great men and the good men, the philosophers and men of wisdom would see the Sabbath and the shortness of time, if it were true." They do not believe a merciful God who made men will consume them with fire because they do not believe the warnings given. This, they reason, is not in accordance with God. . . . {12MR 207.1}

God's love is represented in our day as being of such a character as would forbid His destroying the sinner. Men reason from their own low standard of right and justice. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (Psalm 50:21). They measure God by themselves. They reason as to how they would act under the circumstances and decide God would do as they imagine they would do.

God's goodness and long forbearance, His patience and mercy exercised to His subjects, will not hinder Him from punishing the sinner who refused to be obedient to His requirements. It is not for a man--a criminal against God's holy law, pardoned only through the great sacrifice He made in giving His Son to die for the guilty because His law was changeless--to dictate to God. After all this effort on the part of God to preserve the sacred and exalted character of His law, if men, through the sophistry of the devil, turn the mercy and condescension of God into a curse, they must suffer the penalty. Because Christ died they consider they have liberty to transgress God's holy law that condemns the transgressor, and would complain of its strictness and its penalty as severe and unlike God. They are uttering the words Satan utters to millions, to quiet their conscience in rebellion against God.

In no kingdom or government is it left to the lawbreakers to say what punishment is to be executed against those who have broken the law. All we have, all the bounties of His grace which we possess, we owe to God. The aggravating character of sin against such a God cannot be estimated any more than the heavens can be measured with a span. God is a moral governor as well as a Father. He is the Lawgiver. He makes and executes His laws. Law that has no penalty is of no force.

The plea may be made that a loving Father would not see His children suffering the punishment of God by fire while He had the power to relieve them. But God would, for the good of His subjects and for their safety, punish the transgressor. God does not work on the plan of man. He can do infinite justice that man has no right to do before his fellow man. Noah would have displeased God to have drowned one of the scoffers and mockers that harassed him, but God drowned the vast world. Lot would have had no right to inflict punishment on his sons-in-law, but God would do it in strict justice.--Ms 5, 1876, pp. 1-3.{12MR 207-209}

[Bravus]

Piling more immorality on other immorality doesn't make it moral. A mass-murdering God is still a mass-murdering God even if Ellen White says that's his nature. That it is his nature doesn't actually make it *better*.

[Bravus]

(substitute 'killing' for 'murdering' if you want to maintain that distinction about law not applying to God)

[John317]

Alternatively: there is a difference in law between a natural death and a killing. In evolution, while there were predator-prey interactions, there were also vast numbers of deaths from old age and so on. All the deaths in the Flood were intentional killings.

Yes, of course all the deaths in the Flood were intentional killings. But one needs to put these things in their context, which means they were people who intentionally rebelled against God and had no intention of repenting. God was right in destroying them. He would rather that all those people had turned to Him in repentence. It was their choice to continue their rebelliousness.

On the other hand, in the theistic evolutionary model, all the deaths of both animal and man were planned by God, and therfore intentional, in order to create life. God could have created life by speaking it into existence or by forming it as the Bible teaches, but instead, according to evolutionary theory, God chose to use the evolutionary processes, survival of the fittest, the struggle for survival, etc. This was done by God's deliberate design.

Bertrand Russell once made this same argument.

[John317]

(substitute 'killing' for 'murdering' if you want to maintain that distinction about law not applying to God)

Bravus, is it your contention that if or when God takes a human life, God is murdering someone? Do you view God as evil for the taking of any human life? How about if or when God destroys the Devil? Do you believe God would be wrong to do it?

[John317]

I do *not* have to accept or reject it holus bolus. I can recognise it as a human attempt at describing God, coloured by the prejudices and fears of its human authors, and seek to perceive the real God underlying the imperfect account.

How do you distinguish what is truth and what is error in the Bible? Do you pick out what you like and jettison what you dislike?

It seems to me you would then be making a God after your own ideas rather than accepting God as He's revealed Himself in the Scriptures.

[John317]

Piling more immorality on other immorality doesn't make it moral.

Where do you see this being done, in the EGW quote?

Originally Posted By: Bravus

A mass-murdering God is still a mass-murdering God even if Ellen White says that's his nature. That it is his nature doesn't actually make it *better*.

Justice and the punishment of evil is in God's nature. But God is agape/love. The destruction of Satan and all who follow Satan is part of God's love. It wouldn't be a loving God who would allow Satan to continue indefinitely doing evil.

That would be like a mother allowing her children to be killed by dogs indefinitely. At some point, she will put a stop to it if she is loving.

What do you think of Ellen White's arguments as to why God destroys the wicked?

For instance:

Quote:

It is not for a man--a criminal against God's holy law, pardoned only through the great sacrifice He made in giving His Son to die for the guilty because His law was changeless--to dictate to God. ... In no kingdom or government is it left to the lawbreakers to say what punishment is to be executed against those who have broken the law. All we have, all the bounties of His grace which we possess, we owe to God. The aggravating character of sin against such a God cannot be estimated any more than the heavens can be measured with a span. God is a moral governor as well as a Father. He is the Lawgiver. He makes and executes His laws. Law that has no penalty is of no force.

The plea may be made that a loving Father would not see His children suffering the punishment of God by fire while He had the power to relieve them. But God would, for the good of His subjects and for their safety, punish the transgressor. God does not work on the plan of man. He can do infinite justice that man has no right to do before his fellow man. Noah would have displeased God to have drowned one of the scoffers and mockers that harassed him, but God drowned the vast world. Lot would have had no right to inflict punishment on his sons-in-law, but God would do it in strict justice.

[Bravus]

When God kills, God kills. The morality of the taking of life is a very difficult, vexed issue. Would it be right to kill Hitler? That is not a simple decision, especially without certain knowledge of the future.

Was it right to kill everyone in the world? In the sense that their death would serve some positive good? Again, not simple. But as I said above, the fact that it was God (represented as) doing it does not *automatically* make it morally good to do.

Killing people simply because they will not obey seems like an odd position for a God who is willing to let the suffering on earth go on and on and on to prove that he allows free will...

[Bravus]

On the 'picking and choosing' from Scripture thing, it is about recognising the characteristics of God that shine through the easily identified racial and tribal prejudices and so on that tend to obscure it in the Bible.

It *doesn't* come down to 'picking what I like': a God who does not challenge me to change is no God at all.

But it does come down to a God whose character and nature are something *better* than I have now, not something worse. A God whose morality is inferior to my own is not one worthy of worship.

You yourself said, in regard to the rape story 'God comes to us where we are', in other words, that rule was not the expression of God's ideal but an accommodation to that culture in that time.

How then do *you* discern the truth of God's will and character through these cultural matters?

And why can you explain away that belief as cultural and historical but not the Bible's homophobia, which you consider to be universal and eternal?

If I choose parts of the Bible, I do so to no less extent than you. Just on different grounds.

[John317]

There are (at least) three possibilities:

1. The Bible says God did them, and he did.

2. The Bible says God did them, but he didn't.

3. The Bible doesn't say God did them.

The only way #2 is true is if the Bible can't be trusted. It would mean the Bible says many things that aren't true but which the writers intended his readers to believe is true.

#3 cannot be right, because the Bible says over and over again that God did them. Perhaps we can get around it by saying Moses didn't know what he was saying-- or that people put words in Moses mouth or in God's mouth that they never said.

There's a fourth possibility, Bravus. The Bible says God did them, and He did them, and we don't understand everything about it. We obviously can't see those things from God's perspective. It's impossible to judge God if we can't understand what God sees and knows.

This is one of the main themes of the book of Job.

Originally Posted By: Bravus

My problem is simple: I cannot worship a God who did those things. If that damns me - that's OK, because I also cannot worship a God who damns me because I cannot worship a God who did those things.

If God did them, then farewell to God.

How about putting those questions in the Lord's hands and saying that you will simply trust Him, because you know that He knows best?

[John317]

...Killing people simply because they will not obey seems like an odd position for a God who is willing to let the suffering on earth go on and on and on to prove that he allows free will...

The Bible doesn't portray God as having killed people simply because they wouldn't obey.

That is not why He commanded Israel to kill the people who had inhabited Palestine.

Why do you believe God did it? What does the Bible and SoP say about this?

[Pockey]

The Bible says God did them, and He did them, and we don't understand everything about it. We obviously can't see those things from God's perspective. It's impossible to judge God if we can't understand what God sees and knows.

This is one of the main themes of the book of Job.

How about putting those questions in the Lord's hands and saying that you will simply trust Him, because you know that He knows best?

Amen John.

I was just going to add that Isaiah calls God's destruction of the wicked his "strange act." I personally believe that those that were destroyed had passed the point of no return via committing the unpardonable sin and thus to further contain their influence, had to be destroyed to protect others. I don't doubt God had tears in His eyes when He had to commit His strange act. He may always have tears from this, He remembers everything.

[John317]

I completely agree. God knows the heart and the intentions and He knows what people would do if given the opportunity. God takes all these things into consideration. We can trust that God will do the right thing because He showed in Christ that He loves people with an infinite love.

We have to understand that when the Fall occurred, God never promised anyone that life would be fair or all good. On the contrary.

The fallen world-- where Satan, sin and death reign-- is an extremely dangerous place. He warned Adam and Eve that this would be the result of rebelling against Him.

God would have been right to allow all humanity to reap the eternal consequences of the Fall. But instead, because of His love and pity, He gave Christ to come and show us a better way and to die so that we can have eternal life.

[John317]

...Would it be right to kill Hitler? That is not a simple decision, especially without certain knowledge of the future.

By what logic does someone who believes in the evolutionary theory arrive at the conclusion that it would be immoral to kill someone who is responsible for millions of deaths and who will continue to kill millions unless he's stopped?

[Bravus]

Evolutionary theory has nothing to say about morality and murder... this is a misconception on your part.

[Bravus]

How about putting those questions in the Lord's hands and saying that you will simply trust Him, because you know that He knows best?

How do I know that? On the basis of what evidence? Taking the sum total of all the evidence available to me, I cannot arrive at that conclusion. Arriving at that conclusion in the face of all the evidence available to me is irrational.

[John317]

Evolutionary theory has nothing to say about morality and murder... this is a misconception on your part.

I didn't say evolutionary theory does. I'm referring to the belief in the evolutionary theory. If you're an evolutionary theist, you have certain beliefs about what took place during the first many millions of years on this planet. You also believe that these things were according to God's plan. So if those things occurred the way evolutionary theory says they occurred, they do reflect upon God.

[John317]

How about putting those questions in the Lord's hands and saying that you will simply trust Him, because you know that He knows best?

Originally Posted By: Bravus

How do I know that? On the basis of what evidence? Taking the sum total of all the evidence available to me, I cannot arrive at that conclusion. Arriving at that conclusion in the face of all the evidence available to me is irrational.

How do you know you can trust God?