Not out of context at all, as you've very helpfully illustrated.

And yes, it is a book to make people think

What we're back to here is a number of things: 1) that being a decent human being is less important in terms of Jesus/God than worshipping God. We see this in the commandments too. Which to most people would seem ethically perverse.

2) Since God created everything and knows everything (according to Judeo-Christian tradition), we're back to the point that there is no choice. So the rich man doesn't choose any path; it has already been ordained him by God at the moment of creation.

3) Ultimately, whether you get into heaven or not is down to whether God is having a good day or not when you die.

I wish we had a few more Hindus, Sikhs, Taoists and what have you on here, I'm getting a bit bored of Jesus and his sycophantic mates.

I've just started reading rlthisrl as an antidote to exactly what you mention.

I'd be interested to know how you get on, I've nearly read that a couple of times but the feeling that "well, that's all going to be a bit negative" has put me off.

I'll let you know.

I'd heard that she was a bit dodgy.

It was first published in something like 1995 and what it seems to be, thus far, is a very calm look at her, at her public image, at the reality etc. Nobody has ever really been able to refute Hitchens's assertions.

Only a week or so ago research was published in Canada which, in essence, supports the research done by Hitchens. rlStoryrl

It's quite interesting. Part of her 'idea' was that these poor people who she picked up should die in a manner that reflected the pain suffered by Christ. So, for instance, although she raised millions and millions of pounds, she'd let cancer sufferers die in pain. Of course it was different when she was ill – then she'd be taken to some of the world's finest hospitals.

I do like Hitchens's description of her (not in the book) as "a thieving fanatical Albanian dwarf".

The new edition that I'm reading was published after access to her private letters was allowed – and after Hitchens's own death. Extraordinarily, the letters appear to reveal her own huge doubts about her faith – yet she continued that approach of, in effect, facilitating the suffering of the poor.

I didn't realise she was a real person, I always thought she was some sort of animatronic prune.

That would suggest you don't know how to read for context.

This would suggest that you're continuing with your usual patronising attitude over religion.



Thank you. You have now revealed your own total ignorance of the [iBible[/i.

Lot. Bloke living in Sodom. Or Gomorrah. One or the other.

God thought him a good geezer. In fact, better than good – the only one from the two towns who was worth saving, since God had decided to kill off everyone else because they were doing what he'd designed and created them to do.

Two 'visitors' arrive in Lot's community. Might have been angels. Local blokes took one look and thought

Actually, he's an Arminianist, on the basis that he both argues that God knows and has pre-decided everything – but that choice still exists.

You can't resist, can you, love? What was it last time – lecturing me on the nature of evangelicalism?



No. I've just described both Arminianism and, most particularly, Calvanism. In other words, it doesn't matter a flying you-know-what what you do – God has already decided what will happen to you, regardless. So you'd better hope he's not all menstrual.

It's a weakness of mine. A weakness of yours is to assume the worst about people.


I'm not perfect like you hon.

I do know the story you refer to but I didn't recognise it from your original description. Which doesn't surprise me really as the story is not about gang rape.


You will have read more of his/her posts than I have but based upon what I have read of his/her posts, I would place them under the Calvanist banner.


If you say so.

So, do we reckon we will have a revolution ?

Kirkstaller mentioned Godwin's Law recently, I reckon we need an extension of that law, whereby as soon as thread changes from its original topic to the same-old-same-old "God exists, no he doesn't" argument, the thread is over.
But with the caveat that you can't deliberately end a thread by tossing-in a religious bit.

No. It's not "about" gang rape. But that does not mean that the offer of two young women, to be used sexually, without their consent, is not a major part of the story. And that their being offered to strangers to be used sexually does not stop God regarding their father as the only person (man) in the two towns who is worth saving.

Ergo, God does not regard offering young women to be gang raped as a bad thing.

In other words, the story provides an illustration of the nature of the Judeo-Christian god.

Similarly with the story of Job, the story is 'about' faith. But in the process of being 'about' faith, it also reveals another illustration of the nature of the Judeo-Christian god – in that case, as a god who is prepared to see people killed or allow them to suffer in order to satisfy a bet. Job's family and slaves become the 'collateral damage' in God's gamble with Lucifer (who was, of course, created by God).

And there are many more such illustrations of the nature of the God of the [iBible[/i.



Collin Burrow (a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford) recently wrote, in an rlarticle about Milton for the [iLRB[/irl views on salvation were more or less Arminian. Where Calvin believed that God predestined the damned and the saved to hell or to heaven from the beginning of time through no merit of their own, Arminius held that God offered the opportunity of faith in him to all, and foreknew who would accept and who would reject that offer ..."

Kirkstaller's approach fits with the latter.

I wouldn't argue with that as a philosophy ...



... but therein lies the problem.

Hmm.

What about a person who adopts the Christian faith, but finds that they are one of those people who God has already predetermined for rejection and eternal hellfire, whatever they do? How 'releasing' would they find that?

Or is there no way of an individual actually finding out in advance? (Audiences with Jesus and a rabbit excepted, of course - I imagine those are not the norm)