Theists, are you ready for some provocative questions?

Question

So, I want you to defend your faith. Here are my questions:

1) Lot offers his two virgin daughters to supplant the two male guests in his house. What lesson should I learn from this? That women are worthless?

2) There were cave paintings found in Syria only a few weeks ago that date back eleven thousand years ago. That completely contradicts the notion that God created this universe in 7 days. Furthermore, if you should tell me that it is not to be taken literally - then I will tell you that everything else in the bible should be taken literally as well. You can't have it both ways!

3) How did you all come up with characteristics for God - that he is omnipotent, omniscient, etc? Last I checked, there was no record that indicated such a thing. Is it because he split the sea into two? Oh, but I'm not sure whether I should take that literally?

4) How do you know he is all powerful? Is any being who creates a universe "all powerful?" Maybe creating a universe isn't so hard.

Now of course, some fundies will come along as say "oh, can you create a universe? No, so shut up." That is a very embarrassingly unintelligent answer. We, humans, posses little knowledge in relation to how much knowledge exists. Perhaps, in reality, creating a universe isn't so hard. And perhaps other Gods have done it, or are doing it!

4) Why does God send in the book of Kings, two bears to kill children who made fun of the prophet Elisha? Is that agreeable with your notion of justice?

What about when God takes away Job's family, and replaces them with new ones. Is that a fair compensation? I think not.

5) Why did God have to kill the first born of Egypt? What did they do?

6) Why did he envoke a storm that annihilated every single person on the planet? Surely, there was at least ONE person who didn't deserve to die, who wasn't unjust.

STAR IF YOU LIKE MY QUESTIONS

OKAY, SORRY. I REPOSTED THE QUESTION ADDRESSING IT TO CHRISTIANS

Answer 1

1. Lot offered his virgin daughters to save the prophets of God from harm. It was the lesser of two evils. Better to have a woman to have sex with the men of the town than to have the visitors sodomized.

2. The dating process that we have now is flawed. They can't date it accurately because it doesn't take into account various weather issues or environmental issues that happened in the past. This is a guess and not a solid way of dating materials. The story of Creation is literal.

3. I don't use those terms for describing God. They have never been used in the Bible that I am aware of. Yes, the parting of the red sea was literal.

4. There is no way to KNOW that he is all powerful, it takes faith. Having seen what he created in the world, it is easy to assume He is all powerful. I also don't believe there are other gods who have created a universe. I believe YHWH created all the universes.

The second #4: It agrees with my notion of Justice from an almighty God. They knew he was a prophet of God. Maybe mummy and daddy should have watched them better. Death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.

5. The children as well as the parents did not believe in the real God. The people of Egypt, even after many warnings still continued to use the Israelites as slaves. After the first few warnings, they Egyptians should have argued with the king to let the Israelites go... but they did not. God needed to send a message not to mess with HIS children because He gives children and is able to take them away as well.

6. He did not kill every last person on the planet. Noah and his entire family was spared because they listened to God. The others that were not on the boat were there because they had NOT listened to God and His instructions.

Answer 2

1) I think the message is meant to be that these are guests in his home. You are to treat guests with the uttmost respect. If these were just 2 man standing in the middle of nowhere suddenly attacked, the daughters would most likley not have been offered

2) oh, don't be so black and white about everything, although I will admit that anyone who tells you the bible is a book of science is full of something brown and smelly. It is largley a book of faith with some historical background that occasionaly does remotley touch upon some scientific truth. You must also considere at the time that the people at the time of the bible being written probably wouldn't have believed any of what was the scientific truth, so writing about it would have been like having a pre-schooler write a book on calculus by your incomplete dictation.

3)omnipotent? He did make everything according to biblical belief. Omniscient? People pray in the bible and real life and prayers appear to be answered. I guess you can say some things are implied. Like the presidential cabinet in relation to the u.s constitution...not the best example, but I hope you get my point

4) Your right, God could be pretty damn weak. The point is that there is nothing humans can imagine that is greater than what God has been credited with doing, and this is not viewed as being the fullest extent of his powers. Understanding that, the concept of God being all powerfull isn't so farfetched.

now to your additionals

4b) Making fun of a prophet is like making fun of God. You might notice that early in the history of the worship of God, his main goal was showing humanity that he meant buissness. Using extreme meassures to show this. As time goes on the need for such displays becomes less important untill he has firmly cemented himself in position.

as for Job, if the family all ends up in heaven, I don't rightly think there is a problem.

5) It was just meant to be a final crushing blow upon Egypt for not following what God commanded. Remember that this happened back in Gods vengeful phase, If there was insolence there must be punishment! What did they do? They didn't help free the people of Moses

6) You don't know that the whole world wasn't unjust, you also don't really know that the whole world was truly flooded. Also of note is that such stories of huge floods are all over the world. One possibility being that there were other good people in other locations, we just read about the ones in that particular geographic area

I hope you find these answers interesting.

Answer 3

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ....... ROFLMAO! Most of them don't know the difference between an Agnostic, an Atheist, an Anti-theist, or an Evolutionist. Let's face it, they also do not know the difference between the 28,000 Christian sects. Christians make up 33% of the worlds population, But when you actually look at that statistic, at any given point in time 5% of the christians are calling the other 28% of the christians a cult. The Catholics are a cult, The Mormons are a cult. The Baptists are a cult. The pentecostals are a cult. The evangelics are a cult. The JW are a cult. And it never stops. Every religion but the one you belong to is a cult. They don't even know what they mean when they use the word Christian Most Christians today neither follow or believe the bible. You bring up bible versed and they reply, "I don't believe that." Did God himself not warn them about being "Luke Warm." Cherry picking ones way through the bible and pretending that there is some sort of consistency to the idea of being a Christian is all a part of the "faith" and "belief" brainwashing that goes on in Church. It should be a sin to be a Christian.

Answer 4

1) this was quite a few years ago so human culture was a lot different back then. just go to another country and you'll see different cultures can be.

2) how do you know that their dating system is accurate? the earth's magnetic force is getting weaker and weaker all the time. so before it mist have been stronger right? for carbon dating to work, it requires the use and knowledge of the earth's magnet. and since it used to be stonger, carbon dating is not accurate. once they found a mammoth skin that was over 1000 yrs older than a mammoth bone, and it was from the SAME mammoth.

3) it says in the Bible. it says that He is all powerful and the Creator of the Universe.

4) ok creating the universe is pretty hard.
lets take this small. a leaf. one leaf has millions and millions of cells right? ONE plant cell is more complex than new york city. millions of cells on one leaf. thousands of leaves on one tree. thousands of trees in a forest. hundreds of forests in one country. hundreds of countries all over the world. and that's just a leaf. what about water, atoms, minerals, animals, eyes, etc. ?

5)He killed the first-born because Pharoh was refusing to release the Israelites.

6) God made a flood because everyone on earth was being, well, bad. and yes there was one person that God saw favor in, Noah. and Noah made the ark for his family and the animals. God made people anyways, so He can do whatever He wants to do. like if you have an ant farm, you can kill all the ants or dump them out if you wanted right?
God is being extrememly fair to us. He has to put up with all of our sins every minute. we all deserve to go to hell. but He took our place so we wouldnt have to, as long sa we believe in Him. that's a pretty simple deal, and He couldve made it a lot harder.

Answer 5

Too bad you're so angry - you have some good points.

Like the idea of Job being spared death at Sodom and Gammorah because he offered to let his two virgin daughters be gang raped. What a guy, huh?!

Why don't you try posing the questions in a less confrontational way? Then people might take you seriously and really think about what you have to say.

Answer 6

I'll do my best... :)

1. Lot did this because the two "males" were actually angels. Lot also knew that the sin of rape is even less grevious in the eyes of God than the sin of sodomy. Sodomy is one of the seven deadly sins that cry to heaven for vengence. Lot also felt that these men were his guests and he had to look out for them. He certainly did not want to have his daughters raped, but he was trying for the lesser of the evils.

2. Haha! Carbon dating has been proven to be absolutely unfounded. The world is only a little over 8000 years old. We have records dating to the beginning. Are you going to listen to the people that were there, or some "scientists" that come up with some bogus method.

3. He is God. It's not that hard to conceive. In fact, you were born with the knowledge. :)

4. yeah. You try creating a universe sometime. :)

Answer 7

Not all Theists are MONOtheists. Please specify WHICH monotheistic religion you are speaking about....

As for my POLYtheistic religion --

1) Lot and his daughters do not figure in my religion which has examples of independent females in the figures of the Goddesses Hestia, Athena and Artemis (who were ALL highly regarded)

2) My religion does not state the universe was created in 7 days OR that it is only about 6,000 years old. In point of fact, an adherant of Hellenic Polytheism by the name of Archimedes stated that the world was ROUND about 2500 years ago.

3) As a polytheist, MY Gods each have different sets of characteristics, but NOT ONE of them is omni-anything....

4) I cannot know everything there is to know about my Gods, but I don't try.


PLEASE DO NOT CONFUSE "CHRISTIAN" WITH THEIST IN THE FUTURE..... You only show your ignorance that way

Answer 8

Reminds me of all those creepy movies where the world is a big videogame to some superbeing who just sits and bangs his head against the wall at the stupidity of the little carbon based life forms he made. Kinda like sims. Teeny, weeny bit more complex though.

Answer 9

Dude--I'd be happy to answer your questions if you'd be so kind as to post them one at a time. I'm too tired to answer all of them tonight. Maybe we could meet back here tomorrow night, say 8:00 CST?

Answer 10

Whenever I hear someone talking about god creating the universe I think of that Men in Black movie where that cat holds an entire universe on his collar.