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Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Frumple]

... we can blame God for the evils it did commit (or were claimed to have committed, anyway), though, right?

It's usually more fun to mostly-ignore the parts (like the plagues in exodus) that makes YWHW an entirely irredeemable monster, but putting them aside for the purpose of an interesting conversation or talking about the less incredibly horrific parts of biblical texts doesn't make them go away.

[Phmcw]

 

Okay, now that there's no danger of flames, let me touch on this.
>He then randomly selected a tribe of herders and made them his chosen people, commanding them, among other things, to commit genocide, rape, and to take slaves.

Okay, I don't remember seeing God commanding anyone to rape anyone in the Bible; if there is, post the verse, I'd love to know it.

Now, to start off, if you're going to take stuff out of the Bible to prove how horrible Christianity is, then for the sake of this debate, I'm going to assume the Bible as Gospel as being unquestionably true, because if it wasn't, you'd have to come with other arguments.

>[He commanded them to] commit genocide
I don't think it was genocide so much as regiocide (killing all people in an area), but just saying this doesn't seem to help my case much. Here's my argument.

Remember when I said that we're taking everything in the Bible as true? Let's examine the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the story of Lot fleeing Sodom, God just says "Screw it" and blasts the cities off of the face of the earth. In the story, two angels come to visit Lot and warn him about the coming conflagration. He sees these two foreigners in the street, and invites them to stay the night with him. That night, people from all over the city come and circle around the house, planning on raping the two. Lot offers them his two daughters instead (hospitality was one of the most sacred virtues then, so letting your guests come to harm was one of the blackest sins), but they try to break into the house. The angels blind the gang, and tell Lot and co. to flee the city ASAP.
This is how bad it gets before God just gives up and (I imagine) hits the Big Red Button marked "Brimstone". (a lot of the buttons on God's keyboard are Big Red ones.) So, you can imagine that the state of a place where God tells an army to go through and kill 'em all would still be pretty bad. In short, compare them to their neighbors, and at their worst, the Israelites are still looking pretty good.
>[Jesus] get tortured to death, taking on himself the original sin
In the Old Testament, the way to get rid of sin was to make a sacrifice to God. It was saying "this innocent baby animal is taking on your sin for you." Jesus died to be the ultimate sacrifice; he's the sacrifice for everyone's sins, ever; all people have to do now is beg  forgiveness.

I did not address all your points for the sake of something approaching brevity. Some of those points I won't touch with a 26.6666667 cubit pole, because Only You Can Prevent Forum Fires. If there's something else (that isn't meant to be flamey) that you'd like to bring up, feel free to.

EDIT: 9 ninjas

Deuteronomy 20.14 for the rape, and the whole 2,3,7 and 20 for the genocide? He mention that they must and did exterminate the whole kingdoms, so that's genocide.

As for the "rightgeous" extermination, it's funny to see that God is less efficient than women's right activists.

In the Old Testament, the way to get rid of sin was to make a sacrifice to God.

So he sacrificed a part of himself to himself in order to appease himself of the anger that his obvious design flaw inspired him?

I rest my case of evil and insane.

Edit: Btw old testament god is not unbeatble can and has been defeated in the bible. With enough help maybe Satan could win? Or has won?

[Orange Wizard]

What I don't get, though, is the apparent assumption that my rejection of God would be better for humanity.

I get this might be flamey, but can you please answer this, Phmcw?

[Phmcw]

What I don't get, though, is the apparent assumption that my rejection of God would be better for humanity.

I get this might be flamey, but can you please answer this, Phmcw?

Btw old testament god is not unbeatble can and has been defeated in the bible. With enough help maybe Satan could win? Or has won? After all, the difference between the new and the old testament is quite drastic. And our current civilisation is rather fond of knowlege, not so much of god, and the apocalypse didn't come after the 1000 years as expected.

[Orange Wizard]

old testament god is not unbeatble can and has been defeated in the bible

Reference, please. Unless you mean to say that God changed between the Old and New Testaments? Which is a different argument entirely.

Our current civilisation isn't fond of God? Well, I must confess that I did realise that. It doesn't really change my position, though.

And... the apocalypse? IIRC it was never stated to be one thousand years at any point in the Bible.
Except possibly in Psalms (or one of the other poetic books), where "one thousand" is often used to represent "a great multitude".

[Il Palazzo]

old testament god is not unbeatble can and has been defeated in the bible

Reference, please.

It's that bit about chariots of iron. YHWH has got an allergy, apparently.

[tahujdt]

Out of curiosity, I looked it up:

They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera's spoil, an ornate shawl or two for me in the spoil.   (Judges 5:30 NAB)

 Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man.  Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.  (Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)

Okay, first one, there's no-one commanding anyone to rape, that's just part of a song, and it doesn't actually say rape. Not proof that it wasn't implied, but the Bible usually at least says if people did the dirty deed, whether or not it was voluntary. The Bible is not really shy about that sort of topic: I refer you to one of my favorite verses, Ezekiel 23:20.

Spoiler: Ezekiel 23:20, NIV (click to show/hide)

There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.

For context, the woman spoken of is a metaphor for Israel. Not one of those "people are interpreting it as a metaphor" things, but he's actually saying "you guys are like this". In the allegory, this woman prostitutes herself in Egypt as a young girl. She grows up, and remembers those days, and starts acting more promiscuous. She's remembering those clients, who were (apparently) very well endowed and very messy. That's cutting out a good bit of the allegory, but it's enough to get the gist.

It's a pretty odd thing to put in it, but among the things that God told Ezekiel to do, it hardly stands out. This was a guy who burnt some of his beard shavings to represent the people of Israel being killed.

The second one, well, again it doesn't say it was rape, but I can understand doubt about that. It might have been for slaves, the reason the non-virgins would have been killed was because they would have been seen as tainted by association.

On the topic of slavery, Israelite slavery was pretty decent for the time. You weren't allowed to hold someone a slave for longer than seven years; after that, you had to let them free, if they wanted to be. If they didn't (if, for example, you took good care of them, and they didn't think they could make it on their own), you went and pierced their ears, to show that they didn't want to be free. After that, then they were a slave for life.

4 Ninjas. I think I saw 12 a bit back, is someone keeping score?

and another one.

[Phmcw]

old testament god is not unbeatble can and has been defeated in the bible

Reference, please. Unless you mean to say that God changed between the Old and New Testaments? Which is a different argument entirely.

Our current civilisation isn't fond of God? Well, I must confess that I did realise that. It doesn't really change my position, though.

And... the apocalypse? IIRC it was never stated to be one thousand years at any point in the Bible.
Except possibly in Psalms (or one of the other poetic books), where "one thousand" is often used to represent "a great multitude".

That's a lot of reading of the bible, and I cannot actually find that one. A man who fight a stanger in the night, win ,and it's revealed that the stranger is actually God. Does that ring a bell?

Found it it's Jacob. Israel apparently mean "he who fight God".

[TheDarkStar]

old testament god is not unbeatble can and has been defeated in the bible

Reference, please. Unless you mean to say that God changed between the Old and New Testaments? Which is a different argument entirely.

Our current civilisation isn't fond of God? Well, I must confess that I did realise that. It doesn't really change my position, though.

And... the apocalypse? IIRC it was never stated to be one thousand years at any point in the Bible.
Except possibly in Psalms (or one of the other poetic books), where "one thousand" is often used to represent "a great multitude".

That's a lot of reading of the bible, and I cannot actually find that one. A man who fight a stanger in the night, win ,and it's revealed that the stranger is actually God. Does that ring a bell?

From what I remember, isn't that Jacob? However, I also seem to remember it as a metaphor for prayer or something like that.

[Orange Wizard]

old testament god is not unbeatble can and has been defeated in the bible

Reference, please.

It's that bit about chariots of iron. YHWH has got an allergy, apparently.

To me, that just sounds like the Israelites were defeated because their enemies were better-equipped. Honestly, I'm not sure how to interpret it. But my first guess certainly wouldn't be "God is allergic to iron".

Edit: NINJAS

A man who fight a stanger in the night, win ,and it's revealed that the stranger is actually God. Does that ring a bell?

Yeah, I remember that verse. No idea where it's from. It sounds very much like a metaphor, as DarkStar said.

Edit2: Found the passage. It starts at Genesis 32:22.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Also, if god didn't want them to eat it, he should have put a giant serpent there to guard it or not even put it there at all. And yes I know people will go 'but he put it there as a test'.

The point of having the tree there in the first place was so we had free will on wheather or not we wanted to have that knowledge. He didn't want us to be mindless robots that have no choice in what we do like the angels were

[TheDarkStar]

Israel apparently mean "he who fights with God" [as in, God is on his side or his ally].

FTFY

[Graknorke]

Also, if god didn't want them to eat it, he should have put a giant serpent there to guard it or not even put it there at all. And yes I know people will go 'but he put it there as a test'.

The point of having the tree there in the first place was so we had free will on wheather or not we wanted to have that knowledge. He didn't want us to be mindless robots that have no choice in what we do like the angels were

I think what smjjames is getting at is that the 'free will' to eat it is useless since they couldn't be fully informed on it being a bad idea, not having knowledge of what is good and evil.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Well having been told not to do it by God, the person that the walked the gardens with and had intelligent conversations with. You would think that's enough to know something bad is going to happen for eating it

[Frumple]

... if you don't have the capability to discern good from evil, nothing is enough to know something bad is going to happen from doing something. You literally can't tell good from bad, or even identify either as something unusual or noteworthy. Understanding of consequence period is likely to be impossible. We're talking entities that, were they capable of being burned, would probably not be able to connect the dots between sticking their hand in a fire and pain. "Fire bad" wouldn't be a thought they could think.

Humans in their situation would be considered to have pretty serious brain damage, or be very, very young.