Let's start here mate.

You are referring to the Old Testament, which is only the first half of the Bible (and the lesser important half).
Well, you've based your assertion that God is blood thirsty only on the first half of the Bible, without any reference at all to the latter half where the nature and relationship between God and humanity changes fundamentally.

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I sometimes post on OzChess as well, but mostly here

(1) So the unchanging god changed between the two books? This strongly suggests that it's a social construct. (2) If what you say is true, why do the Ten Commandments still stand? Jesus only mentioned six of them.

Face facts: the Bible is as bad as the Koran. The only difference is that increasing secularism in culturally Christian areas means that the Bible has less opportunities to do damage.

No, the relationship changed.
More information is needed here.
Actually Jesus instructed that his disciples should follow the commands Moses gave (all 10 of them) and also gave a new commandment, to love your neighbour as yourself.
I am not prepared to say either book is bad. Even if you take the Bible and remove the religious aspect from it, it is still an excellent book in terms of practical living.

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I sometimes post on OzChess as well, but mostly here

The bible is given a bad rap because people take things out of context or don’t go back to the original language of the bible. For example much of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, within the Hebrew language there is a little thing called a permissive verb. So, much of the cruelty that can be found in the Old Testament is not in the causative sense, but in the permissive sense.

Someone then might argue if God is a good God then why did He allow such cruelty? Well the answer is this; When God created the earth he gave authority over it to man, He established man as the god of this world. He gave it to man and the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. That is He will not take them back, even if we screw up what He has given us. So, man as the god of this world began taking dominion over it, naming the animals etc; but then man rebelled against God’s rule over them by listening and heading the word of God’s enemy Lucifer, Satan, that old serpent called the devil. When he obeyed satan’s voice over God’s voice, man became satan’s servant. “To whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey”. (Rom 6) So, now man became satan’s servant and all of man’s authority was now in the hands of an outlaw, a malevolent, cursed being filled with nothing but hate. This is how death and decay entered into the earth. Every evil thing that has since come into the earth is because of satan’s rule through his servant man.

So, God allows certain things to happen because He’s not in control, man his under ruler is and when that man is guided by an evil being then evil is brought about in the earth.

So, don’t accuse God of the bad things that are happening, but look to evil men who wax worse and worse.

But take heart, God did not give this planet to man on a permanent basis, but on lease and will one day return to restore order and to rule all nations. And of His government they shall be no end.

Do you have any proof whatsoever for any of your assertions?

One doesn't need proof, it is self evident.

I agree with almost everything this young lad has had to say, except for the part about God not being in control. Just because He allows us to make our own mistakes doesn't mean He isn't in control.

But on the whole, Hafke, you'd do well to reflect upon that post, in my humble view.

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I sometimes post on OzChess as well, but mostly here

No, really, do you have any proof for the (1) existence of a god, (2) your assertions about its nature (3) that it is uses the Bible as its word and (4)sacrificed itself to itself to save us from itself?

It's wonderful that your faith gives your life meaning, but to assert that everyone else doesn't need proof because it's "self evident" is silly.

Yes, the sun came up this morning (at least in Australia).

Once again, look at the Sun. What explanation apart from a higher consciousness designing the universe can there be for the existence of the Universe? It is simply far too complex for all this to have happened on its own randomly. So the answer is that a higher consciousness (God) designed it all and created it all. The theory is simply the most probable based on the evidence of our existence and the existence of the environment we live in.

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I sometimes post on OzChess as well, but mostly here

As we have seen in the past, if there's a reason to run around like maniacs, burning flags, beating up stuffed dummies, & trashing their neighborhoods, they will do just that. I guess it's their way of showing the world how peaceful Islam "really" is, ha.ha.

That can be more easily explained by science than by religion.

Actually, virtually all of it can be explained scientifically and in excruciating detail.

Of course there are some things we don't understand yet, but you need to take into consideration that we've only been working on a problem of universal proportions for a meager few hunderd years, and for most of that time brain power, elbow grease, and poorly constructed optical telescopes were the only tools available.

The formation of the universe is in no way "simply far too complex for all this to have happened on its own randomly".

The explanations may be far to complex for you to understand. But I doubt that.

More likely you've never even bothered to consider any explanation other than God. Or you have and then dismissed them because the idea that humans are nothing more or less than random dust formations scares you.

But you tell me what's more dificult to believe:

That time, space, and matter, over billions of years, and under the influence of some very simple physical processes ultimately led to what we see around us and will ultimate transform and evolve into something completly different.

or

That an imaginary fella living on a cloud used his super hero like powers to not only create the universe, but also to medle in the affairs of humanity.

Religion is crazy. It's a pathology. And it's on its way out the door.

A few thousand more years and God, Jesus, Allah, et al. will have no more hold over humanity than Marduk, Zeus, or Bacchus do today.

And good ridance to all that bullshit.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

The mind boggles.

If you are going to throw together a trash collection like this, at least take the time to explain how the two testaments describe two different covenanats, and that the OT is largely a description of centuries of history, including war and rebellion.

There is no comparison whatever between the tenets of Christianity and the requirements of Islam.

The death of religious faith was proclaimed at the end of the nineteenth century. There is nothing left of that claim.

As for your comments - a small amount of reason and tolerance go a long way. Why are you so hostile to spirituality? Why are you so contemptuous of religious faith? Where does all that malice come from?

I fully accept and appreciate the vital importance of scientific inquiry and methodology. I do not expect my faith to answer questions of science. But neither do I expect science to address questions of meaning and purpose. That is moving away from the open mind of science and into materialism as a strict ideology.

Why not consider a more tolerant and inclusive viewpoint?

True. The real issue here is fear. That issue will not go away. From now on, Europeans will have to worry about offending Muslims for fear of potential violent reprisal. Desperate attempts to placate radical Islam will be the pattern of the future. Will they succeed? The attempt to downplay the role of violence in Islam is foolish and absurd; the only other option is facing reality - and that is too painful.

Many posts on this thread make comprisons between Islam and other religions or other ideologies in a desperate attempt to reassure themselves. Those comparisons are false, but they are expressions of fear: the reality is too frightening to contemplate.

As far as the Netherlands (all of Europe really) are concerned, y'all deserve your Muslim crisis.

You got tollerance confused with inclusiveness and stuck decades worth of immigrants into virtual ghettos, allowing them into your country because of the benefit they would provide to your economy but turning up your nose where true equality is concerned.

Typical post-colonial arrogance.

You also failed, for decades, to impose Dutch (European really) standards of civil rights and the universal rule of law. No nation can long endure a subculture that scoffs the very standards which hold a nation together.

Gedoogcultuur collided with fundamentalist Islam. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost - in Europe just like in America (although for different reasons and in different ways).

As far as Theo Van Gogh is concerned, the man was a degenerate scumbag. He took advantage of a society where caustic insults and base irreverence simply for irreverence sake are prized as hallmarks of enlightenment and freedom. Van Gogh took advantage of this environment of permissiveness to an extreme and built a career on his ability to be more crass, more insulting, more polemic, and more contemptuous of common human decency and consideration than the next guy. And he did it quite successfully until he ran head-long into the subculture that y'all allowed which wasn't as forgiving of insult and derision as his own.

Ayaan Hirschi Magan (Ali) was asked to leave the Netherlands because she was only there in the first place because of false and illegal claims to political assylum. She should have been charged with a crime and sent back to Somolia. America doesn't need her any more than the Netherlands. On top of all that she wasn't any good at what she was trying to do anyway. She was just as fundamentalist and just as intollerant as the most militant Imam. She just wore her intollerance shoe on the other foot. She probably alienated more young Muslim girls than she got through to.

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...Old Europe, a once-dominant region now reduced to sucking at the geopolitical teat of America... they spent the better part of the last millennium conquering the world and taking the good stuff home with them... And what do they get for their troubles? Ungrateful colonies demanding their independence. And after you taught them how to play cricket!...

-Jon Stewart

IF you're referring to Nietzsche's statement of "Gott ist tot" then you've simply not understood it. Nietzsche's statement meant that he made the observation that the Church, the Holy Roman Church, in Europe no longer had an unequivocal and complete control over society. And he was perfectly right to make the observation. And that observation is only extended and fortified in the next century. As of today, the influence of organized religion is marginal at best in most of the region Nietzsche had in mind.

To elaborate, it was that observation that lead him to investigate the kind of morality that would emerge in the absence of the absolutist perspective of an all-encompassing religion. Hence the notion of "Jenseits von Gut und Böse".

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As for the thread title, I'm still waiting for the announced explosion. Must be a real bummer for the anti-Muslim crowd.

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"Say not, 'When I have free time I shall study'; for you may perhaps never have any free time"
Hillel the Elder