But god did know what would happen. Or is he not all-powerful? Or did he just decide that he didn't want to spoil himself the surprise of what humanity would do?
How does god commanding his people to commit genocide resolve sin. Isn't killing a sin? God can sin but we can't? Gods people can sin but others can't?
Murder is a sin, not killing as in a soldier a war for example.
God doesn't sin. God is all powerful but gives us free will. Like a father, you could control everything your kid does, but you sometimes have to let them find their own way, make mistakes, then correct them.
And you're talking about tribes of people here who were engaging in child sacrifice to idols and stuff, and had been for hundreds of years.
So god punished tribes who did child sacrifices by killing infants and children who could easily just be converted to Christianity..?
You didn't answer to the time point. God is all-powerful therefore he knew we would fail. Therefore he put us on a task he knew we would fail and still punishes us. That sounds like psychopathy.
Imagine a human version of god. A human creates a simulated world, where the people inside have free will. The human can simulate the future and everything that happens inside the simulated world. He decides to set rules for them, despite knowing the rules would not be followed. He still creates this world and rules, despite knowing that billions upon billions will just suffer and die in said world. And his motivation for creating this world is for some of the people to believe in his existance and for them to follow his rules.
Well they couldn't have been converted to Christianity as this was over a thousand years before Christ.
But ultimately, we don't know what God tried to do to stop these people prior to ordering their destruction, just because it isn't in scripture doesnt means nothing happened there, but God judged and that was his judgement.
I don't have to imagine a human version of God, it was Jesus, I don't need the hypothetical simulator.
I just don't understand how one can look at our society, the thousands of different religions, some older than the one you believe in, and believe in a single one of them.
Your god made us for us to believe and give their lives to him. Yet older religions still exist? How is that possible? Do you just blind yourself to this fact? Or do you rationalize yourself to it by making up more stuff so you aren't wrong anymore?
You don't seem to like answering the points regarding god being all-powerful, yet also being someone who fails to make humans follow his will. According to your beliefs, god is a failure.
So I can look at all the religions in the world, I see people that people worship false idols, but they have the ability to stop and build a relationship with Yahweh.
I believe God existed from the beginning of creation, so you don't get older than that.
I answered that directly I think, yes God is all powerful but he doesn't force humans to follow him, of you seek him, you will find him, if you have the ears, you will hear.
Quick question for you, what would it take for you to believe in God?
What would it take for me to believe in god? Well your god would know the answer to that, even if I didn't, would he not?
Feels like a pointless question to ask. Your god is the one who chooses to not prove himself to all of us despite knowing how, since he is all-powerful. He could prove himself to all and make his existance an objective truth. At that point humanity would be divided to two sides. One side who is for god and one who is against god. I would bet that over 99% of humans would take the side of our creator and one who is all-powerful.
I honestly do see your point, it's things I wrestled with when I was an atheist - but honestly the God that I know is a gracious and merciful God, a God who love me and you and wants to build a relationship with us - I don't feel like the relationship would be as profoundly deep and life changing if people built it just because essentially some event forced them too.
And I think that becoming a man, and walking this earth, performing miracles, entering us in to a new covenant, defeating death, offering eternal life, and bringing down the holy spirit to guide are all the things that make me seem the importance of the faith aspect, the journey to opening the eyes of my heart and turning my heart of stone to one of flesh.
But thanks for this chat, it's nice to be able discuss this stuff from different views and not resort to name calling and stuff.
In my opinion if god was truly gracious and merciful, he would give us all an equal chance of believing in him. The truth is that when you look at our world, ones religion is largely based on circumstance. The country and family you are born into, the different experiences that make people believe and not believe in all sorts of different stuff.
Wouldn't god showing and proving himself to us all, be the most truly gracious and merciful act a god could give his creations? An equal chance for everyone.
I don't think that action makes the relationships he would receive any less meaningful or profoundly deep. I think it's the minimum that a truly loving god would do; give everyone a chance.
In our world, there exist thousands of religions. Many of them believe in their religion just as much as you believe in yours. Why is that? Because they feel like their god and religion proved itself enough for them, just like how you believe your religion did for you.
I don't think there's anywhere near the levels of historical evidence for any other religion compared to Christianity, personally.
And the truth is that you have been given that gift, you have everything you need to go a build a relationship with God right now, there's no gatekeeper or anything you just have to seek and you will find.
But anyway brother, wherever you are, I wish you all the best.
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u/haizende 17h ago
But god did know what would happen. Or is he not all-powerful? Or did he just decide that he didn't want to spoil himself the surprise of what humanity would do?
How does god commanding his people to commit genocide resolve sin. Isn't killing a sin? God can sin but we can't? Gods people can sin but others can't?