When Saddam kills his people for not obeying him, or having the wrong religion, or to achieve a political or religious goals, you say he is a terrorist monster and he should be killed.

When God kills millions of people for not obeying him, not having the right religion, or just to achieve a political or religious goals… you worship him.

How do you rationalize that?

Your love for God shows that you obviously have no problems with a being that is guilty of:

• Global genocide.
• The slaughtering of innocent men, women, children, and babies.
• Using the threat of torture for eternity to intimidate people into obedience.

Yet despite these despicable actions, you worship the being that committed them and therefore by proxy, his actions.

So if you believe the bible as literal truth, then God is the most horrific terrorist of all time, with the blood of billions on his supposedly kind and loving hands. So why is Saddam evil, for doing on a much smaller scale, the same things that the being you worship as true, just, and loving has done on a global scale for thousands of years?

If it is in fact these actions that make Saddam an evil man, then it logically would follow that those same actions and indeed far worse actions on the part of your God would make him an evil God.

Responses:

-Please define "God kills millions of people"

Umm, I don't think I can make it simpler than that, but I'll try.

God, the being you worship...
Kills, discontinues the process of biological function...
Millions, as in what comes after hundreds of thousands...
People, homo sapiens.

What part don't you understand?  You worship a being the has killed, personally killed, millions of people by flooding the earth, raining down fire, striking dead the first born and so on. 

-Saddam Hussien is NOT a God. And he does kill his own people.

And God has killed many millions more of his own people than Saddam ever has, do you deny this?  I'm not claiming that Saddam actions make him a God.  I'm claiming that if your standards for evil are held true, and that Saddam is evil because of his actions, then a being that has committed those same actions on a larger scale is not only also evil, but evil on an even grater scale.

-I am Christian. Jesus Christ never preached about killing your fellow Man....for ANY reason.

Wow, so you're calling Pretzeldent Bush a liar?  I could have sworn that Bush just said the other day that God put him in office to make war on Iraq and that Jesus is all for the war.

Also, as another Christian says above, you folks believe that Jesus is God, and as such the bible does clearly state numerous times in the old testament that God did kill people and ordered his followers to kill their fellow man.  I have quoted two such verses on this page already. 

My question wasn’t why haven’t you stopped God. My question was… is God evil?

Third, we are not talking about theism verses atheism, we are talking about good verses evil. I think we both agree that the Saddam regime is evil, unless you are blind to all of the reports and testimonials from Iraqi citizens.

Ok so you agree that Saddam’s actions make him evil, therefore a being committing those same acts on an even larger scale would also be evil.

So your worship of God means you worship a being that is, by your own standards, evil. 

(BTW I deleted the parts of this e-mail that had nothing to do with the question I asked… feel free to resubmit them, if at some point I ask a question about partial birth abortion.)

The Liberal Media,
I read your open letter to Christians. I think there are several points that were over simplified. As a Christian I believe that God created you and me in his image...perfect. God has also given man free will in order to think for himself. Satan took advantage of man's ability to think freely and tempted man in the Garden of Eden and man gave into that temptation, thus taking God's perfect creation and making it imperfect by disobeying God.

        God is perfect.
        Man was perfect when God created him.
        Satan corrupted Adam.
        Disobeying God's rules made Adam sinful.

Well my first question would be, how could Adam have been perfect if he was corruptible?  Seems to me that being perfect would implicitly include incorruptibility. 

If not, then that brings up my second question, is God also corruptible?  If God made man in his image, perfect, and yet man was corruptible because of free will, which of course I assume God must have as well, then can God be corrupted?

Can God choose to do evil things?

I believe that every person has inherited original sin from Adam and Eve at birth. We are born into sin and it is up to each man to fight the temptations of sin and Satan. God knows that the fight was too much for man and so he sent Jesus Christ, His only Son, to come to earth to suffer and die for the sins of the world. I believe that Jesus Christ paid for all of mankind's sins with his suffering and death.

Yes, I am familiar with the story.

How do I rationalize that God has killed billions of people? The killing and suffering are carried out by those who do not follow God's commandments, not by God.

What?  Are you saying God did not carry out any killing himself?  Have you read the bible?  That is simply a ridiculous claim.  Are you contending someone other than God flooded the planet killing all but 6 people?  Just think of the scope of that for a second, and it is far from the only example of God's murderous behavior, but think about the fact that you worship a being that killed every man woman and child on the planet, but 6 people. 

God also orders people to murder all through the old testament.  And you just said that disobeying God is a big no-no.  In the following verse, God commands the slaughtering of children.  Yeah, the being you worship commands the murder of men, women, and children because they were not sufficiently vocal in opposition to such heinous sins as saying "'The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see.'"  For this transgression, God orders the brutal murder of hundreds, if not thousands of people.

Ezekiel 9:

And the LORD said to him, "Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it." 5 And to the others he said in my hearing, "Pass through the city after him, and smite; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity; 6 slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one upon whom is the mark. And begin at my sanctuary." So they began with the elders who were before the house. 7 Then he said to them, "Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go forth." So they went forth, and smote in the city. 8 And while they were smiting, and I was left alone, I fell upon my face, and cried, "Ah Lord GOD! wilt thou destroy all that remains of Israel in the outpouring of thy wrath upon Jerusalem?" 9 Then he said to me, "The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great; the land is full of blood, and the city full of injustice; for they say, 'The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see.' 10 As for me, my eye will not spare, nor will I have pity, but I will requite their deeds upon their heads." 11 And lo, the man clothed in linen, with the writing case at his side, brought back word, saying, "I have done as thou didst command me."
 

Again more God sponsored slaughtering of innocent women and children, and in this verse, even fetuses, which republi-christians do claim to care so much about... until they're born anyway.  And then there's a reference to God's slaughter of homosexuals in Sodom and Gomor'rah... another act of despicable hatred and violence from a supposedly kind and loving God.

Isaiah 13

15 Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. 16 Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished. 17 Behold, I am stirring up the Medes against them, who have no regard for silver and do not delight in gold. 18 Their bows will slaughter the young men; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children. 19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pride of the Chalde'ans, will be like Sodom and Gomor'rah when God overthrew them.

God as a Father gave us rules to live by as any parent does.

And a parent that would murder his child for disobedience is a sick criminal deserving of a lot of things... and none of them are worship.  If drowning your kids is God's idea of parenting, I'm sorely disappointed in God.  I would expect a perfect supreme being's parenting skills to rank a little higher than Susan Smith's. 

God is not repsonsible for man's actions when people die or suffer as a result of breaking the commandments. The ten commandments are not unreasonable...Don't kill, don't steal, honor your parents, don't commit adultery, don't lie, etc. God gave us the commandments to live in harmony with each other.

God is not responsible for the actions he ORDERS people to take?  As I quoted above, God orders people to violate the commandments and murder children... so either they disobey God and refuse to kill or they disobey God's commandment not to kill.  Damned if you do... damned in you don't. 

God himself violates his own commandments by killing all the time.  Wouldn't that make God a liar, or at least a hypocrite?  Again I feel I need to point out that so far NOTHING about this being's actions indicates anything to me other than he's a monster of untold proportions. 

Honestly, if you had to guess, how many babies do you think drowned when God flooded the earth? Then tell me exactly what a baby can do to deserve to be drowned?

Ya think that would inspire much worship, if on the alter instead of God's crucified kid, they had a nice depiction of God drowning babies because their parents we not worshiping and obeying God to God's satisfaction.

When Saddam kills someone for not obeying him, you believe that makes him a monster... so why isn't God also a monster?

It is Satan's plan to cause misdirection and lies so that humans question God's supreme authority, rebel against Him and break the commandments giving into temptation and believing the empty promises of Satan. Jesus Himself was tempted by Satan. Satan offered all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus if he would only bow down and worship him. The problem there was that the kingdoms of the world were not Satan's to offer. Our punishment for not obeying God's commandments is to live in an imperfect world where people like Saddam Hussein disregard God's commandments and kill and lie for their own good. Even Islam believes in rules set out by Allah.

Jesus died for my sins, your sins and Saddam Hussein's sins. If you believe that then the slate is wiped clean, not by anything that we will do, or have done, but by God's selfless gift of His Son. We are victims of our own doing and our own weakness. God has graciously given us a plan B to fall back on because of our own shortcomings. That is what I bleieve. Thank you for your time.

You've not negated my point that the only real difference between the murders ordered or committed by God and the murders ordered or committed by Saddam is that God has killed way more people.  All you've done is argue that when God tells us not to kill, then orders us to murder kids, we better not question God's supreme authority or he'll send us to hell to be tortured for disobeying him... something Saddam does as well.

And yet, you maintain God is perfect and the Supreme authority... basically a dictator, again just like Saddam.  If these actions make Saddam a terrorist and a monster that deserves to be killed... then what of a being that commits these acts a million times over?  How can such a being deserve to be worshiped?

Frankly the very fact God must force worship and obedience with the threat of murder and torture, causes me to have nothing but contempt for him and those who worship those actions.  How would you feel about someone who worshiped Saddam?

Let God get some worshipers without the threat of hellfire and damnation, and maybe I'll find him a little more respectable.