Does God Set A Good Example

[nailit]

Religionists, (of whatever persuasion) does your God set a good example to live by...according to your own scriptures?

I have to admit that I havn't read all of the Koran so will have to leave that to others. However, I have read the entire Bible and the saying "Do as I say. Not as I do" seems appropriate.
Just curious here, but why is it ok for God to slaughter, maim, kill, murder, be jealous, homophobic, genocidal, sexist, vain, vindictive etc and yet we mere mortals have to ask HIM for forgiveness of sins?

Just asking.

[nailit]

And a talking snake....does anyone actually believe in talking snakes nowadays?

[nailit]

That would be a NO then?...
Any believers in talking snakes and magical trees that can give give immortal life?

[naomi24]

Keyplus, //And also read again what you have and then compare with open mind.//

Which books do you suggest we compare? You don’t know what an open mind is. You’ve been indoctrinated from birth.

No, God doesn’t set a good example. If we emulated him we’d be judged not of sound mind and incarcerated for life.

[Old_Geezer]

God stays out of it and let's you get on with it. Could be considered a good example I suppose.

[Khandro]

ukbod;//I tend to look at it that he built the place and then left us to screw it up.//
To paraphrase Nietzsche; We left, to screw ourselves up.

[Old_Geezer]

We're not powerful enough to have left anything. Heck, we don't even have a Martian colony yet. Or even one on our moon. And these are local places in this temporal realm.

[Khandro]

//We're not powerful enough to have left anything//

OK I'll rephrase my paraphrase; We left God and screwed ourselves up.
(I allude to Nietzsche's 'staring into the abyss')

[naomi24]

Khandro, //We left God and screwed ourselves up.//

Nonsense! God is absolutely central to the most immediate danger that this world is currently facing.

[Khandro]

n. God, despite what it may say in the man-made bible, never hurt anything, humanity can do that well enough.

[naomi24]

Khandro, you seem to be talking at cross purposes to the rest of us.

[Khandro]

^ Really? please explain.

[Marshwarble]

Everyone else is talking about a vengeful God, the one who killed most people in the flood and brought seven plagues onto the people on Egypt.

[naomi24]

Khandro, //God, despite what it may say in the man-made bible, never hurt anything,//

You mention the bible and ask why I question your concept of that God so I’ll tell you. Your defence of this entity confirms that you believe it to be the creator, yet since the more unsavoury aspects of its record don’t concur with your own idealistic notions of what God ought to be, you reject them. I can only conclude that the God you champion is not the God of scripture, but something that exists within your head alone. You seem very confused.

[Old_Geezer]

Scripture changes from book to book. Loving & caring in one, wrathful vengeful in another. Surely it's not unexpected to support those writers/books that confirm one's own opinions ? Not everything should be taken as gospel, it's written by fallible individuals.

[Khandro]

naomi; I didn't see your post of yesterday however, OG has, to some extent answered for me. I think earlier on I quoted Gershwin's "It ain't necessarily so". I see the bible, particularly the old testament as something written by teachers of another age in another world, but even so it is full of metaphors, some of which may still be valid today. After all something which has been of such significance and meant so much to so many people over such a long period of history can't be all bad.

Behind the main door of Gloucester Cathedral is a small, crude, stone cross made at risk to their lives by men of the Gloucestershire regiment [The Glorious Glosters]. Held in appalling conditions, starved and worked to near death in Changi jail, they managed to hold services and read from a secretly held bible, and this enabled to endure the unendurable.

They're all gone now I think, but if any were still alive they wouldn't accept some canting modern day smart ass telling them that what that bible and those services meant to them, was simply an "idealistic notion of what God ought to be".

[redvanman]

To many god's fighting each other

[naomi24]

Khandro, this modern day smart ass has every respect for the men you’re talking about and wouldn’t dream of telling them anything - but you weren’t one of them, so you have no excuse for using their appalling experiences to prop up your argument. By your own admission the bible is contrary and therefore since you have no idea which bits are accurate and which are not you cannot possibly claim to know ‘God’ – you know, the one who, despite his religiously accepted record of mass slaughter you contend never hurt anything.

[Mosaic]

I find Odin a pretty fair kinda dude.

[Khandro]

//you have no excuse for using their appalling experiences to prop up your argument//

It isn't my argument I don't have an argument it's a statement of fact and a non-scientific one, I'm pointing out that there is, whether you like it or not, or whether you feel it or not, a human need for religion, which flabby humanism has singularly failed to replace.

[naomi24]

Oh no Khandro. Moving the goalposts won’t wash. You declared that God never hurt anything. That was your argument and one that you have, quite unsurprisingly, failed to support.