[ATLian]

Reggie,

every time there's a verse in the Bible that paints god in a positive light, it is taken literally. e.g. "God loves children" is always going to mean exactly that - God loves children! You'll never hear anyone saying that "no, he doesn't really love children, what he meant was....." But every time there's a controversial verse that paints god in a negative light, then all the apologists come out and try to re-explain to us what it means.

This verse is as straightforward as they come. We are quoting god verbatim here for heaven's sake. Do you think he'd stumble on his own words? He would have known from Day One what ambiguity would exist if he said the words as he said them, so an all-wise god would have removed the ambiguity. But he didn't, which implies that he meant what he wrote. In fact these apologists are committing blasphemy by trying to spice up the words that came from god's own mouth, and by telling us that god didn't mean what he said.

If you still argue that god was misquoted, then you can't argue with the fact that god created Satan, the source of all evil. Billions of years before he made Satan, god knew what havoc Satan was going to bring about. But he still created him. Doesn't that make him the number one culprit?

If you say god didn't create evil, then you are saying that there exists something which god not create. This opens other doors, like what else apart from evil didn't god create? And this really drops a bomb on the Christian notion of creation where they say god created EVERYTHING both tangible and intangible.

Finally, in all those verses I have been quoting where god commanded the Israelites to kill the infants... If they were not commanded to do so by god, the Israelites would NOT have killed the infants, since that's not how man fights his wars. But god made them do that evil deed, meaning he created that evil in them. Using this line of thought, you can come up with a million other such examples