God kills 70000 Israelites!!!

[alexxcJRO]

According to the perfect inerrant word of God(Bible) the omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent Yahweh kills 70,000 Israelites including countless of innocent(of any wrong-doing, sin) small children, infants for the sin of one man(David) after he or Satan incites him to sin:

2 Samuel 24

David Enrolls the Fighting Men
24 Again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.
2 So the king said to Joab and the army commanders[a] with him, Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.
3 But Joab replied to the king, May the LORD your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?
4 The kings word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders; so they left the presence of the king to enroll the fighting men of Israel.
5 After crossing the Jordan, they camped near Aroer, south of the town in the gorge, and then went through Gad and on to Jazer. 6 They went to Gilead and the region of Tahtim Hodshi, and on to Dan Jaan and around toward Sidon. 7 Then they went toward the fortress of Tyre and all the towns of the Hivites and Canaanites. Finally, they went on to Beershebain the Negev of Judah.
8 After they had gone through the entire land, they came back to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days.
9 Joab reported the number of the fighting men to the king: In Israel there were eight hundred thousand able-bodied men who could handle a sword, and in Judah five hundred thousand.
10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the LORD, I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, LORD, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.
11 Before David got up the next morning, the word of the LORD had come to Gad the prophet, Davids seer: 12 Go and tell David, This is what the LORD says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.
13 So Gad went to David and said to him, Shall there come on you three years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land? Now then, think it over and decide how I should answer the one who sent me.
14 David said to Gad, I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.
15 So the LORD sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. 16 When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the LORD relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, Enough! Withdraw your hand. The angel of the LORD was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.
17 When David saw the angel who was striking down the people, he said to the LORD, I have sinned; I, the shepherd,[c] have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? Let your hand fall on me and my family.

Observation: The account in 1 Chronicles is different then the account in 2 Samuel. (So much for the perfect, inerrant word of God)

Someone would wonder what abominable sin David committed that angered God so much to make him act in such horrendous way: killing tens of thousands of men, woman and children.

Hold on your straps people, here it comes: He did a census!!!

Imagine that. The poor guy did a census and Yahweh in his perfect wisdom, justice, benevolence decided that the punishment suited for this was not to punish in some way the person guilty of the wrong-doing, sin but instead kill 70 000 people innocent of this wrong-doing, sin; kill thousands of small children, infants who are innocent of any wrong-doing, sin.

David even asks a very wise question to God. Why punish others when he was the one guilty:

I have sinned; I, the shepherd,[c] have done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done?

Off course the perfect God of the Bible does not answer the question. How would he?!!!

Q: How can anyone be so oblivious to such a huge discrepancy, contradiction between the supposed attributes of God (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, perfect wisdom, justice, mercy) and the actions of this being portrait in the Bible?

Q: How can anyone praise, worship a being that inflicts so easily, so much suffering and death to thousands of innocent children? How can one call this being benevolent or wise or loving?

Q: How can anyone in their right mind, with their rational faculties intact defend such actions and not smell the foul stench of nonsense rotting their brain?

[Monta]

[Replying to post 58 by alexxcJRO]


"I assumed an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent-perfectly good God exists.

Analyzing this concept of God against some stories in the Bible lead to a major contradictions.
Analyzing this concept of God against some scientific facts lead to a major contradictions.
Analyzing some scientific facts against the stories from the bible lead to some major contradictions.

C: One is therefore forced to reject such illogical concepts, dogmas."

Earthly and heavenly/spiritual realities have nothing in common; they
communicate by correspondences - ancient science.
Contradictions are because it is not understood.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 61 by Monta]

Earthly and heavenly/spiritual realities have nothing in common; they
communicate by correspondences - ancient science.
Contradictions are because it is not understood.

Absolutely they don't, the key is the word realities.
These realities have no basis to be realities, except of course that ancient people who knew nothing about the real world called on their default thought processes to explain reality.

About like you and I writing about life on other planets. We can do it, but we are almost certainly likely to be wrong.

Those goat-herders who wrote the Bible I am sure did their best to explain, well nothing really, but without telescopes or microscopes or anything other that a Freudian need to be loved by daddy, they did their level best to write about reality.

Imagine the arrogance, of your goat-herders though, they ignored the Egyptian's impressive knowledge of medicine and architecture, they ignored the Babylonian's impressive knowledge of science and astronomy, and replaced it with intuitive imagination, other people's fables and children's stories.
Then told people they were true.
and you have believed them for thousands of years.

That you take the unsubstantiated word of 2300 year old goat-herders who got so much wrong, over modern observation is a little amazing.

Perhaps you can explain it?

[alexxcJRO]

I said that Adam and eve were created perfect.

Adam and Eve are a race of celestial people created perfect and lived as such.
The story in the Garden of Eden is their fall from the celestial

Not really.

You said this also:

What have we done to corrupt our perfect creation and
what are we continuosly doing to make it ever worse.

The problem is that the universe after the appearance of the first Homo Sapiens Sapiens did not change was still the same as imperfect as before.

We had natural(non-moral)evils before and we had natural(non-moral) evils after.

We had decay, death, predators, carnivors, diseases-cancer, earthquakes, dying stars, black holes, birth difficulties before and we had them after.

There was no corruption of the universe.

[alexxcJRO]

Earthly and heavenly/spiritual realities have nothing in common; they
communicate by correspondences - ancient science.
Contradictions are because it is not understood.

It is irrelevant where God resides.

Its logically impossible for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent-perfectly being to inflict countless suffering and death to countless non-moral agents.

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 55 by alexxcJRO]

Therefore God is ultimately responsible for all the natural evils in the universe. "

There is no original sin. We are responsible for what we alone do.

The quoting seems garbled - I don't know who to attribute this quote to, sigh...

BUT, the fact that 'natural evils' preceded Adam (if any did) does not mean they are not a result of a fall prior to Adam's fall, either the orthodox Satanic fall after the physical creation (the serpent did arrive in the garden sinful with sinful intent after all) or the fall of all sinners before the physical universe was created as suggested by PCE.

It only mitigates the sufferings of humans as being Adam's fault and therefore GOD's fault for making us as sinners in his sin which many deny anyway.

[bluethread]

Yes, but the argument is really, why doesn't Adonai do things according to the moral standards that apply to humans? Dogs probably wonder why humans don't hold themselves to their standards either. I know cats do.

HE does, but sinful humans refuse to accept HIS word on that...Suffering and death do not prove evil.

In general, I disagree. I do think that when Yeshua was on earth, He abode by the standards for humans. However, I do not think Adonai is subject to the same standards that humans are subject to.

[bluethread]

Moral agency is an individual's ability to make moral judgments based on some notion of right and wrong and to be held accountable for these actions. A moral agent is "a being who is capable of acting with reference to right and wrong."

Its illogical(either for humans and gods) to punish non-moral agents(infants, mentally impaired people, animals) for they do not have the rational faculties to understand concepts like right, wrong, law.

Q: Surely an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent-perfectly good God would not do something so illogical, no?

There are a couple of presumptions here. First, one can make a judgement and act upon something regardless of whether there are rational facilities or not. One can choose to use reason, if one wishes, but that is not an imperative to anyone but the rational pacifist. Even I that case, there are risks and costs involved in delay. Therefore, whether one wishes to extend the benefit of rational discussion to another is always a value judgement. Second, as I have stated elsewhere, I do not believe that Adonai is omnibenevolent. Therefore, there is no absolute obligation to extend that benefit to any other life form.

When i wrote morally perfect i meant perfectly good.

Lets look at the definitions and the bible:

omnibenevolence
NOUN
mass noun
(with reference to a deity) perfect or unlimited goodness.
they believe that God has certain attributes such as omnipotence and omnibenevolence
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... enevolence
omnibenevolent
Adjective
(not comparable)
1. All-loving, or infinitely good, usually in reference to a deity or supernatural being, for example, 'God'. Its use is often with regards to the divine triad, whereby a deity is described to be simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. This triad is used especially with the Christian god, Yahweh.

Thank you, but I understand what you mean by omnibenevolent. However, I do not derive my doctrine from the oxford dictionary, yourdictionary.com, or a common usage, even if such dictionaries are accurate regarding such common usage. So, let's look at the passages that you appear to believe support the view that Adonai is omnibenevolent.

Psalm 18:30
As for God, his way is perfect: The LORD's word is flawless;

Let's look at what the psalmist is talking about here.

"29 For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall. 30 As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him."

He is speaking of his experience. The Psalmist is referring to Adonai's ways in a couplet. Adonai's ways are perfect in that they are sound(tamiym), because they have been tried(tsaraph), not because they meet a rationalist's test. The test is that of battle. In the running through of a troop and leaping of a wall, Adonai has protected his loins as a buckler. This hardly speaks to egalitarianism, but the preference for one over another. The benefit is to the Psalmist, not the the troops that have been run through.

Deuteronomy 32:4
4 He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
upright and just is he.

Though this is in Moshe's farewell address, it also is poetry. It is from the song of Moshe'. It is not a justification of Adonai's ways, but a declarative regarding them. Unlike the passage in Psalms, Moshe' is not making an argument for why Adonai's ways are sound(tamiym) and just(mishpat). He is declaring them to be so. He is not evaluating Adonai based on a standard, but stating that He is the standard.

Psalm 145:9

The LORD is good to all, And His mercies are over all His works.

Now we are back to the prospective of the Psalmist. It must be noted here, that the term translated as good(tov) is not the touchy feely "good" of modern culture, nor is the term mercies(racham) the soft touch, but the visceral concern. This also is a couplet, where the two phrases modify one another. The first phrase harkens back to creation, with the term works(ma'aseh) in the second half.

Psalm 106
1 Praise the LORD.[a]
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

This is an often quoted verse and again we see the word tov. This time is used to refer to Adonai Himself. The point being that it is from Him that we derive the concept of how things ought to be. In the second half of this couplet, we see the term love(chesed). This term speaks to a love the endures. However, that love is not stated to be equally extended to all. In verse three, we are told, "Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times." Also, in verse five, it refers to Adonai's "chosen" and His "nation". Therefore, this does not refer to Omni-benevolence, but an enduring love for some, but not all. So, your list below seems a bit incorrect.

From the Bible:

1. God is benevolent towards all humans.
2. God is perfect in every way, his word is flawless.
3. All God's way are just.
4. God is all merciful.
5. God does no wrong.
6. God's loves endures forever.

C. God is omnibenevolent-perfectly good.

Punishing non-moral agents(infants, mentally impaired people) with countless suffering and death goes in contradiction with an omnibenevolent-perfectly good God.

1. Unproven
2. Not quite the concept presented in the passages, but close
3. I concur on this one, but not necessarily from everyone's point of view.
4. Unproven
5. Kind of a truism, so it is really difficult to argue
6. I concur on this one also, however His chesed is for His creation and those who preserve it according to His ways. This is not everyone.

So, though your final statement may seem clear to you, I contend that Adonai is not omnibenevolent and moral agency is not the only consideration when meeting out judgement.

[alexxcJRO]

I do not believe that Adonai is omnibenevolent. Therefore, there is no absolute obligation to extend that benefit to any other life form.
....
1. Unproven
4. Unproven
6. I concur on this one also, however His chesed is for His creation and those who preserve it according to His ways. This is not everyone.
...
I contend that Adonai is not omnibenevolent

So you are saying God is not omnibenevolent; meaning not benevolent towards all humans. Therefore malevolent.
So you are saying God is no all loving; meaning does no love all humans. Therefore malevolent.

Q: So you are saying he inflicted countless suffering and death to countless infants(Israelites), non-moral agents because they were not on the list of humans whom God shows benevolence?

Q: How does one human get on the list? Is it random?

Q: What if you are not on the list? (imagine the irony)

Q: How can one worship a malevolent being?

[Monta]

[Replying to post 68 by alexxcJRO]


"Q: How does one human get on the list? Is it random? Eh?"

You made up 'the list'.

The bible talks about The Book of Life and we are its creators
where everything we think or do does not disappear but is recorded.

As it is in the spiritual dimension and in its light, everything in it will be seen in that light.
That is our judgment.

[ttruscott]

So you are saying God is not omnibenevolent; meaning not benevolent towards all humans. Therefore malevolent.
So you are saying God is no all loving; meaning does no love all humans. Therefore malevolent.

False logic.

To not love someone is not to be hostile or malevolent to them if one is merely indifferent.