WrongPlanet.net an anti-christian site?

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It seems to me what most people miss about the sacrifice of Isaac is that God had already made a covenant with Abraham that his lineage would continue through Isaac.

Sure, it's a test of faith and obedience. But the test calls for a person to trust completely in God, assuring the person being tested that God WILL keep His promise. Abraham might not have understood HOW. The sacrifice of Isaac demonstrates Abraham's trust in God that He would bring about one of two outcomes: If Isaac was to be killed by Abraham's hand at the instruction of God, God would bring Isaac back to life to fulfill the promise; God would provide a suitable substitutionary sacrifice. Regardless of the outcome, Isaac has become dedicated by his father to take a significant role in building a nation that would have a special relationship with God.

Wait, not only did God tell Abraham to make his son a burnt offering, but says that there's a specific mountain he wants it done on. Is that a typo? Is that one of those things that we're just supposed to ignore the way it's said?
If the Semites sacrificed their children to God, what on earth gave them the idea that God should want them do that? IF they so grossly misinterpreted the demands of God, how can you give credit to anything else they had interpreted as an expectation of God?

I certainly know that argument and used to believe it accurate, but all of that now reminds me of a commercial I have seen where someone offers something to a child ... and then (as might have seemed to be happening in Abraham's case) snatches it back.

Even if the intent was to eventually really not take something away, that is still just simply cruel, psychological abuse.

(Hey Rho, long time no see )
If this is a test, that just substantiates my assertion that God might ask you to sacrifice your child. To be honest, this whole argument just backs my interpretation of the OT God being slightly schizophrenic and that maybe he needed to find a hobby other than screwing with the minds of the little earthlings.

I've mentioned elsewhere (different topic, different thread) that God is all-knowing (omniscient). This is a safe assumption to make--after all, Yahweh created the universe, it's ok to say that He knew what He was doing and that He is aware of all of its goings-on at all times, transcending even time itself. I'm sure you'd agree that God knows all things.

So the question comes up from time to time why is it God asks questions or "tests" us if He already knows everything? Logically, it doesn't make sense that God has anything to gain--He already knows. Human beings, however, do NOT know everything or all possible/optimal outcomes. The test is not for God's benefit. It is for our own. God knows what we would do in a given situation. Do WE know, though? Are we willing to give up to God what is most precious to us and trust that God will provide? It's not just a test. It's a teachable moment. Any good test is.

It reminds me of my grad school days. We all had to take an "entrance exam," which amounted to little more than a barrier exam to prevent people who obviously learned nothing from getting their master's degree. I expected to fail the history/listening exam because I never considered music history to be one of my strengths. I was their to be a composer, after all, and I considered history quite irrelevant to much of my studies. I was there to COMPOSE and study the relevant music theory I needed to properly justify what I was doing.

The irony for me was that I passed the history test and failed the theory test, and I know why: I missed ONE NOTE in a Debussy passage that would have identified the scale he used in composing that piece, and my voice-leading skills are weak.

I was stunned. I got accepted to a composition program and I couldn't even pass the THEORY EXAM???? You get three shots at it and they put you out of the school.

No big. I just "oops, forgot" to retake it until my fourth semester, which gave me time to learn as much as I could from my professors. Meanwhile, I have my own private study carrel in the library, and I hoarded every textbook on voice-leading that I could find. I printed up some staff paper, sharpened a few dozen pencils, and started copying. I'd try each exercise about three times since there's not really a "right" answer just as long as proper voice-leading is followed. Another comp professor asked me if I'd lost my mind by refusing to take the exam since my thesis defense was only weeks away. I just said, "hey, I get one more shot at the test after this one. If I have to come back for my defense after taking it the third time, fine. If I fail it the third time, I can still say I learned all I could while I was here. That's just as good as the degree itself as far as I'm concerned."

So on my second attempt, after having taken almost 4 semesters of graduate courses, I BREEZED through the exam. Yeah, I passed it. My failure the first time revealed my weaknesses. My later success showed that I had grown. I had "arrived," so to speak, and I went on to ace my thesis defense and graduate.

If God is schizophrenic and just playing with our minds, jerking us around as it were, and if that is a problem, then you should eliminate all forms of examination from high school diploma programs and college degrees. Get rid of all driving tests and just give licenses to anyone who applies for them. People who administer road tests are just a bunch of loony schizophrenics, right? They just want to make you nervous, watch you squirm, and on a whim pass/fail you. And, heck, even those who fake their way through a driving test aren't guaranteed to always be safe drivers anyway, right? Do YOU strictly observe the speed limit? At all times?

So, no, the test is not schizophrenic at all. It allowed Abraham to experience "going the distance" with God firsthand. Think of any great accomplishment you've ever done and how proud you were that you made it. Abraham was totally devoted to obedience to God. For him to sacrifice Isaac to God's glory was the greatest honor next to having been chosen by God to do it. And rather than God taking Abraham's only "legit" heir, God provides a substitute and honors the promise that Isaac will be the next father of the Hebrew people. It's going the distance.

I think your response ignores what Abraham had already been told and denies that Abraham's total "sold-out" devotion to God qualifies him and his progeny to be God's inheritance on earth.

Yes, I speed... Logic says that if it is a "passing" or "fast" lane, I should be passing or going faster than the cars in the other lane!

Ok.. You apply God's "all-knowing" logic to humanity. If God were giving driving licenses, there should be no need for a test because God should know your worth as a driver. Humans are not all-knowing, therefore humans need to test humans. God should not have to test humans simply so that humans will know the extent of their faith in God. I find that notion silly.

That said, going with the God Test Theory, and going back to the origin of this debate, who is to say that people who feel they are homosexual by birth (simply acknowledging that some disagree with this assertion) are not just living a test a of faith? If God can directly command you to offer your child as a burnt sacrifice, why can he not wire a man to want to lay with another man? Murder is forbidden too..... I don't understand why some find no fault with one line of reasoning, yet stringently abhor and deny the possibility of the other.

But it is inconsistent. And no I do not have a protestant background at all. I was Catholic. In fact I am still at least cultural Catholic. And sure, we can claim "historical tradition" but you know what? The Catholic teachings are not very consistent either, because they do include the bible as a study material. I would have loved them to come and make a revised bible that removed the parts they do not agree with , but they didn't. They still themselves claim that their ideas come from the bible, even though they really do not.

So??? A professor assigns a book as a required course material, does that mean it is inerrant? Even further, why ought they edit the historical document in some gross manner when the better solution from their end is just some set of interpretive principles.

Do all of their ideas have to come directly from the Bible? No. Should they try to avoid completely making crap up and saying it is in the Bible, sure.(but literalists make crap up as well, so it stands for everyone) However, can they use extra-biblical sources? Why not? Can they even claim that the Bible is a "living document" thus open to reinterpretations of the concepts and symbols? Why not? The potential big failing I could see would be a failure to distinguish between the English words and the Greek meanings, but symbols can change their meaning and importance.

When a professor assigns you a book to read and he doesn't agree with parts of it, he brings them to debate. My experience with the Church is that they just pretend to ignore the parts they no longer agree with. It would be cooler by me, if they accepted so and put a list of things that are for reference only and that we should not take seriously anymore, but they don't.

Other religions in the region did practice child sacrifices, perhaps God wanted to prove forcefully, that he did not condone sacrificing children.

If we're just going by what's "on the books," going faster than 55 mph in a 55 zone is breaking the law, period. The speed limit is the UPPER limit of what you're allowed to do (legally--"getting away" with something is different). Moreover it is considered the fastest speed you can safely go in optimal conditions. It doesn't matter if you're in the passing or fast lane. If you have to exceed the speed limit in order to pass someone, you shouldn't pass them.

No one makes a big deal about it--I speed, too, because my speeding is not so far in excess of the limit that I ever get noticed. I haven't been caught speeding in YEARS, but I've been pulled over for other reasons. The minor unnoticed infractions I've otherwise incurred due to velocity is nonetheless a disregard for the law, no matter how "harmless." Getting tested for a driver's license has never been a guarantee that I observe ALL traffic laws at all times, nor can it for anyone.


There is no need for a test to prove to God your worth as a driver. Let's say God is the one giving out driver's licenses. You know you can drive. God knows you can drive. But would your knowing and God's knowing be enough? How is anyone else on the road to be sure of your driving credentials? What's the difference between your assertion that God approved you to drive and the next guy? One or both of you could be lying. Without some evidence that you are approved before God to drive, such as a physical driver's license or some kind of public demonstration that you are qualified by God to drive, there's no reason for any earthly authority to believe you.

Getting back to Abraham, the deal here is "God said so" isn't enough. There has to be some kind of test, some kind of initiation ritual through which you can honestly say "I've BEEN there." You don't just climb the mountain, get tired about halfway up, and then come back down. No, you go all the way to the top and back. You get the full experience of what it means to have done that. Abraham needed to reach a "point of no return," at which point he demonstrated to himself and anyone else with him that he was the real deal and thus establish a pattern of worship and reverence of God for future generations to follow.


This is not the same thing as the sacrifice of Isaac, though. Abraham ALREADY KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN. He might not have known HOW God was going to show up, but he knew God WOULD. You can't possibly equate one with the other.

Let's assume someone IS homosexual by birth, for the sake of argument. We know that homosexuality is contrary to God's ideal. Being born gay is NOT a test of God, at least not in the same sense. Being born gay is one small part of the greater sinful human condition. Being born any certain way does not excuse a person from the decisions they ultimately make. The test is whether a person will place faith in God to remove whatever the object of sinful desire is. If God is all-powerful, there is no reason to doubt that He is powerful enough to remove those kinds of things, to "cure" homosexuality, so-to-speak. Now, sure, there are those who say it can't be "cured." Fine. But believing that it can't be cured denies God's power and authority to bring about those things He wants. If you're "born gay," but you trust that God can bring about the impossible (i.e. homosexuality CANNOT be cured), then there is no reason whatsoever that God cannot bring about a change in your life such that you abandon homosexuality.

Further, it's a mistaken assumption that God "wires" anyone for any kind of specific behavior. This would make God unjust, so "wiring" anyone for a particular type of sinful behavior is contrary to God's very nature. God doesn't set us up to fail--we do that ourselves. God certainly would not have asked Abraham to actually go through with the sacrifice. Perhaps God is just telling Abraham what Abraham needs to know to bring about a certain result to effect the test, "offer Isaac as a burnt offering." That gets Abraham there, though he might be understandably confused. Preparing to kill Isaac is the offering, the dedication of one's offspring to God's service. The intervention is the act of mercy on God's part. The substitutionary sacrifice is Isaac's redemption. There still had to be a sacrifice. Isaac still belonged to God. But his life is spared by a substitutionary atonement offering that God Himself provided.

It's a picture of humanity vs. God. We are sinful by nature. We deserve death for our sins. God provides the means through which we may escape the eternal consequences of our sinful behavior.

Well, one... If God were handing out driver's licenses... I think the doubt of whether God existed would be null and void, so at that point... who would question God's wisdom on the issue?... Two... the fact that I took a driver's test doesn't make my license any more valid to the naked eye than a really good fake... so I fail to see your point. Just by stating a scenario in which God grants driver's licenses, I wouldn't assume that said document now takes on a non-physical form... and IF God were granting driver's licenses, he would then have an earthly authority....


Then where is the test? If that is the case... Then "all-knowing" God sent Abraham on a mission that Abraham knew was not "a real" mission, but God would have known that Abraham knew that He didn't really mean it... so what is this proving? This doesn't prove that Abraham had faith because, by that logic, Abraham never intended to go through with it.



Perhaps the test is to live with the stigma of others calling you wrong and a sinner while placing your faith in the fact that God-himself made you this way and therefore must want you this way. If this outcome was the desired result, there is nothing to "cure". Do you feel that God intended for there to be ASD? Or do you feel that it's an "oops" that needs to be "cured"? Does God get the formula "wrong" when creating individuals, or are those "glitches" the intended things that make us unique from one another?



I'm sorry.... the only thing I can say to that is that this whole line of thought makes me want to vomit and is one of the key reasons I couldn't stomach Christianity (aside from the whole immaculate birth and dead-now-alive thing). God created humans with the ability to sin. HE gave us temptation. And yes, humans die, because that is how life works.. you can say he didn't intend that... but your version of God is infallible and all-knowing.. so he HAD to have intended that. He had to have known exactly how it would end up before he even gave Adam the breath of life.... so HOW could a just God punish his creations for being EXACTLY AS HE INTENDED????

I have always heard that is okay, but it seems at least one state says it actually is ...

OK... But what if God knew your worth as a driver, because He's omniscient, and knew you could not be trusted behind the wheel? What then? God just gives you a license anyway? Suppose there was good reason why your license should be taken away--God could just give you another license? Suppose someone desires a license in order to use it for malicious means--like driving the get-away car in a liquor store robbery? God would know that and not issue the license. So...

That brings me to the next point. Licenses CAN be faked to varying degrees. Evidence that someone is not only capable of driving a car and possessing a license for any legal purpose is necessary, hence a test to show that capability and demonstrate good standing not JUST before God, but before other drivers as well.

In a metaphorical sense, you see unlicensed drivers all the time. No matter how much they swear God sent them, the evidence of their lives (how they drive, in other words) shows otherwise. Repeat DUI offenders might be lucky if they're allowed to take the road with two wheels, pedals, and a chain.


Abraham actually demonstrating his preparedness to obey God and maintain faith that one way or another God would provide the sacrifice. Abraham had nothing to fear, and he knew it. More often in scripture you see examples of leaders and even exemplary characters who lapse in their faith. Moses had the highest position of authority over the Israelites as God's highest representative among them. Even MOSES failed to carry out God's instruction at times, and he paid the penalty when he was denied entry into Canaan. Jesus is always poking fun at those of His followers who still can't wrap their brains around God's ideal for faith.


But contradicting God's nature. By instructing us as to specific things that God does not approve, God cannot contradict Himself and somehow all of a sudden make something He already said was sin all good and right now. Note here I'm not talking about kashrut laws that served to distinguish the Israelites "from the nations." I'm talking about moral rules that apply both to Jew and Gentile.


IF this outcome was the desired result. There is no indication that is ever WAS the desired result.


What, the concept of sin? That we are imperfect beings and are capable of doing wrong? That we can even take that a step further and deliberately wrong people? Or would you rather think we are all inherently good and perfect the way we are, that you can approve of murderers continuing to murder with no fear of consequences? We are moral beings. That we do wrong is just a part of what we are. The beauty of Christianity is that no matter what you've done, you can be forgiven for what you've done, for what you do, and for anything you will ever do. There may be temporal consequences, sure. But even a death-row inmate can come to Christ and be forgiven, even if we find ourselves unable to do so.


No. God created human beings with His own creative capacity as well as the capacity to choose what we want. Yes, in that sense, God is responsible. But that is not what God WANTED. We humans were created as God's counterpart, being able to intelligently act, create, and shape our world the way WE want it. It's not MY fault or YOUR fault that our ancestors made the wrong choice. But it is an unfortunate consequence that we must live with that choice. God provided a way for us to escape the consequence of choices we didn't make, that we would be born into sin and need His saving grace. If you're looking for someone to blame, blame Adam and Eve. Don't blame God.


Blame a rebellious angel for that. God gave us a choice. God wants us to WILLINGLY give ourselves to Him. How can Adam and Eve willingly choose God if they are unable to make any other choice?


You are right, and it is true.


Yes. And no, He didn't. It isn't necessary that he HAD to. God intended for us to choose Him. But we can't choose if we have no choice.


Because His creations were not being "exactly as he intended." They chose to be something else.

The choice is a GOOD thing, though, even if it makes earth "hell" for everyone else. But at least our state of being in the physical world is only temporary. If it were me, and I'm a bit of a rebellious spirit myself in a sense, I would be utterly miserable if I ended up in heaven and I didn't actually want to be there, if that's not something I chose. I wouldn't be happy in hell, either, but as it is I don't see how anything AFTER this life would make me happy, anyway. Now, if I WANT to be with God, that's a different situation entirely. I've gotten what I want, to be with my heavenly Father for all eternity, and there's nothing to be unhappy or discontent about. It's a choice I have to make, to spend eternity happy or miserable. Enduring temporary injustice, poverty, and so forth for, say, 80 years if I'm really lucky is a small price to pay.

Actually, now that you mention it, I believe I heard that Oregon has a similar law.. However, to be honest, I was specifically thinking of like a 4 lane highway (2 in each direction) and driving on the inside lane... Somehow I got it into my head that this is the "fast" lane and should therefore be moving faster than the "slow" lane. I am quite aware that this is flawed thinking on my part..... However, old habits die hard, right?

My, how times have changed in the last 16 years! lol

Personally, I think 55 is an unreasonable limit even on a 2-lane. Just my opinion, though! The last time I got busted for speeding was doing 42 in a 20, and I felt that the zone was unreasonable. A little curvy yes, but not 20mph curvy. There's also the pressure from other motorists who drive even faster than I do, and often speeding is to avoid being the cause of a wreck for being a slow driver.

These days I don't really have that many places to go. I'll drive 50 mph all the way home on a 4-lane. That's a hard concept to grasp unless you live somewhere like the Mississippi Delta. For the longest time I'd push it as far as I thought I could get away with it, and then the speedometer in my wife's car stopped functioning. So we just guessed how fast we were going, typically just following another slow driver. When I'd drive my own car, I'd get out of the habit of checking my speed, which happened to slow down even further when my cruise control went out. So, just out of habit, trying to be careful, and just not even paying attention, I became one of THOSE grandma-type drivers. I've also noticed that I take more time to think about things, that I listen less to the radio, that I'm more "tuned in" to nature, my family, my music, and so forth than I was when I set the cruise at EXACTLY 60mph and tailgating was just a way of life. Sometimes, I'll even pull over so the 30 or 40 cars behind me can pass just so I'll have another minute or two to myself!! ! I've also come to appreciate the country back-roads to my house, which make for fewer stop signs/busy intersections and a better sense of "openness." Seriously, taking life slow, even while driving, is just the best way to be.