What you're talking about is being a coward.

'I 'love' god because if I didn't he might do nasty things to me'.

Pity he didn't do the odd nasty thing to murderers and child abusers – a little heart attack here, a stroke there. Nobody'd need to knowyour[/i logic, your god created that. He sat down in his big design studio and decided that, on X day in X place, that child would be raped.

That, by your own terms, is the realityyou[/i worship in such cowardly fashion is himself, by your own words and logic, a bully, a murderer, a rapist, a child abuser, a genocidal maniac, a warmonger, a coward – and much, much more.

That's the god that you choose to worship – although according to your own logic, you didn't choose that at all: he chose it when he created the world. It didn't matter what you did – you didn't have any choice in the matter. He'd already decided the year, the day, the hour, the minute at which you'd 'decide' to worship him. He chose that you'd worship him – and that a 16-year-old girl would be murdered on a bus in Birmingham by a mentally ill individual.

He decided every one of the sins you'd commit before you made your 'choice' to worship him' – and every one of the sins you'd commit after. He'd decided exactly what degree of guilt you'd feel. He'd decided the entire content of this thread – right down to every crossed t and dotted i.

And that's by your logic.

And still you claim, with the logic of your own belief system, that you – and everybody else – has a choice.

He's never 'too busy'. He controls everything and obviously had no interest in stopping the girl's death because she deserved it. We all do, we all deserve to die.



Murder can only be committed by human beings. Therefore, God, who is all good and righteous, cannot commit a human sin.



No, I worship a God who righteously punishes evil and who loves me so much he made it possible for me to escape his judgement.



God has planned everyone's demise. Why single out this girl's?



You simply cannot accept that God HAS to punish sin, including yours. You are trying to escape judgement. This is not possible.



No, we all meet his wrath. Me might not all be stabbed on a bus but we get what is coming - death.



There's nothing random about it, God planned it before the beginning of time.

Death is cruel.



Every sinner will truly get what is coming to them in Hell, according to their works.

That's it. You've gone too far.

Almost every thread that you start or get involved with degenerates into this.

I or one of the mods will either have to clean up after this explosion of shît or let it go. Because what you've said is pretty much beyond the pale. There's little between you and the Taliban and their ilk.

And I am not having the victim of an appalling case such as this abused by you, whether you're mentally ill yourself or whether you're just trolling.

You're on a week's ban from this place. Try and learn something from it.

The rest of you – stick to the case itself, please. This part of the conversation is over.

Interesting that the OP hasn't been seen for an age but is posting on his central heating comfort zone thread

Biblical literalists are very similar to Islamists. There is a really interesting book called A Fury For God, written post 9/11 which highlights just how similar the two extremes are in their approach to religious belief and the way in which they express it (although the book is written more for an American context and there are a lot of Biblical literalists in the States of course). However, not all Christians are Biblical literalists just as not all Muslims are the Taliban.

Indeed. Unfortunately, those that are tend to shout the loudest.

I just can't. You are the worst kind of person and I wish Hell was a real place because any sort of higher being with an ounce of common sense would see you as true evil and not any of these promiscuous individuals/homosexuals/voodoo practisers/tattooees/people wearing mixed fabrics/shellfish eaters and all the others deemed to be sinners in the jazzed up storybook

~polite cough~

I did say that that was the end of the discussion on this level.

I entirely understand.

The man who was sectioned is going to be charged with murder.

The law really needs to start coming down like a ton of bricks on people found to be carrying knives in public. There is no excuse for it at all.

There are plenty of reasons to carry knives in public – you buy one in a shop and you have to carry it home, for instance. Chefs carry their own knives around.

People might have penknives for all sorts of things – fishing, for instance.

There are plenty of entirely legitimate reasons that someone might be carrying a knife in public. We've already gone bonkers to the point of having the sort of bans in place that penalise carrying a fold-up fruit knife.

I bought one in France the other year – an Opinel. Used it on holiday, Brought it home and, the following year, out it in my bag, with my picnic for the journey, to take back.

I got stopped at St Pancras and it was confiscated. Bonkers.

Indeed. And of course such measures which entirely frustrate and pis5 off so many honest citizens do absolutely nothing, at all, to deter prevent or reduce knife crime.

I had a corkscrew confiscated at Manchester airport.
It had a tiny, tiny blade at one end for cutting through the capsule seal on a wine bottle ... that counted as a blade said the guy, size wasn't important.

Indeed.