God tells you to kill your son

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Wolverine, Sep 6, 2011.

?

Do you do it?

  1. Yes

    4 vote(s)
    17.4%
  2. No

    7 vote(s)
    30.4%
  3. Atheist/Agnostic/My Holy book has never required such an act

    12 vote(s)
    52.2%
  1. Wolverine

    Wolverine New Member Past Donor

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    You hear the voice of god, you are certain it is indeed the voice of god, he tell you to kill your son (or any member of your family for arguments sake), do you do it?
     
  2. Incorporeal

    Incorporeal Well-Known Member

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    You and your daughter are on a cruise ship and are deep out at sea. An event occurs which tosses your daughter overboard (she is not a skilled swimmer). Ironically, there is a school of hungry sharks swimming all around her. Do you jump in the water for the purpose of saving her life?
     
  3. Wolverine

    Wolverine New Member Past Donor

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    What does that have to do with my example? That is a far cry from a god asking you to kill/sacrifice your family member.
     
  4. Incorporeal

    Incorporeal Well-Known Member

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    Simple: You present a hypothetical situation and expect someone to give an absolute answer. Ridiculous. No-one knows the future, and until such time as the actual event occurs, you cannot say 'absolutely' what you will do. You can only speculate... guess... (which would not be a problem with the scientific community, because they are accustomed to 'guess-work')
     
  5. BleedingHeadKen

    BleedingHeadKen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No, I would not.
     
  6. Wolverine

    Wolverine New Member Past Donor

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    In all of you speculation you have failed to answer the question.
     
  7. Blackrook

    Blackrook Banned

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    The answer is I would not kill my son. I would assume any voice in my head telling me to kill my son was the product of mental illness and not the voice of God. I would take pills to make the voice go away.
     
  8. BleedingHeadKen

    BleedingHeadKen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If only dealing with mental illness were that easy.
     
  9. Incorporeal

    Incorporeal Well-Known Member

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    Why should anyone answer such a silly hypothetical question? For anyone to answer either 'yes' or 'no' or even 'maybe' revolves around that person KNOWING the future and what they DID DO in that futuristic yet imaginary situation. Your OP question is ridiculous in that it requires a person to answer absolutely to something which has not transpired within their existence. You are requiring those persons to be PRESUMPTUOUS in their answer.
     
  10. ptif219

    ptif219 Well-Known Member

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    This is more atheists BS trying to trap Christians it makes no sense.

    Why would God ask that?
     
  11. Blackrook

    Blackrook Banned

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    The hypothetical is based on the story in Genesis in which God tells Abraham to take his son Isaac up on a mountain top and kill him as a human sacrifice.

    Abraham showed his obedience to God and almost killed his son. An angel intervened and stayed Abraham's hand.

    God rewarded Abraham for his faithfulness by making a covenant with him that his children would be as numerous as the stars.

    The story makes no sense to modern people to whom human sacrifice is barbaric and abhorrent.

    But the story would make sense at the time it was written, to an audience of Israelites surrounded by nations where people quite regularly sacrificed their children to pagan gods. It was not so unthinkable then as it is now.

    Judging Biblical stories by modern standards will almost always get you the wrong answer. You have to judge Biblical stories by the standards of the people for whom they were written.
     
  12. Neutral

    Neutral New Member Past Donor

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    Lets back up and fill in the back ground to Abraham's story.

    Suppose God gave you everything you could ever ask for. Suppose he gave you political power, wealth, a family, protected you from your enemies, the whole time, even when faced with great peril, and he ALWAYS delivered you through it. Always.

    Now, AFTER all that, when God has shown you time and time and time and time and time again that you can trust him in even the worst situation, he bade you to slay your son? (As he woud later do with his OWN Son mind you, in a ritual way of the OT to cleanse sin).

    And, just as before, the command comes before the knife strikes and you do not kill your son. God was true to his word, and, in the mean while, it is subsequently revealed that true faith in God in not corruptable by the devil - a stinging rebuke to Satan has been delivered by your faithfulness in God.

    Funny that atheists, even AFTER they have been instructed on the fuller story, just leave things out.

    Well, a better question, what this OP is about is called a lie of omission, leaving out context, narrative, and relevant facts in order, as usual, to present something so skewed and off kilter that it has no bearing on the original story in the Bible.

    The question: would you lie in the name of atheism?

    The answer: all to easily, yes.
     
  13. Pasithea

    Pasithea Banned at Members Request Past Donor

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    So the Bible was written by and for pagans?
     
  14. Makedde

    Makedde New Member Past Donor

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    But a person suffering from schizophrenia probably would. They believe bad things will happen if they don't. So I guess it depends on whether the person is already mentally ill.
     
  15. Makedde

    Makedde New Member Past Donor

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    I might get roasted for this...but no. I wouldn't. Why have two people die instead of one? Besides, I'd be more help to my child if I remained on the boat!

    I remember a story about a woman who bashed her childrens heads in with a rock because she had a voice in her head that was God telling her to do it. I can't recall what happened to her, but I guess it happens. It might depend on how mental illness manifests itself.
     
  16. Felicity

    Felicity Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Both of Blackroot's answers closed the question. Well done.:sun:
     
  17. Anobsitar

    Anobsitar Banned

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    Then let me also fail to answer your question: The murderer of Theo van Gogh slaughtered him like a preabrahamatic sacrifice. The murderer was a young Muslim who had lived in the third or forth generation in the Netherlands. Since this days I doubt about wether the Islam is really an abrahamatic religion. And I doubt about that the endless brainwashing propagation of "tolerance" and "political correctness" makes really sense.

    Tell me why it's important for you to attack Christians. Why are you doing this? Do you like to do suicide in a hundred years in this way?

    http://youtu.be/vyqD_lwN7JI
     
  18. FreeWare

    FreeWare Active Member Past Donor

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    Christians are such wussies. They've been told to kill their children when they are cursed by them. Not if but when. Yet most refuse to do so.
     
  19. elijah

    elijah New Member

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    Have you ever noticed wolverine will never answer questions?
     
  20. Shiva_TD

    Shiva_TD Progressive Libertarian Past Donor

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    I believe this issue is addressed by the following although I'm unsure of the original author:

     
  21. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    No, too Old Testament for me. The God I worship would never ask me to kill my son, unless my son was engaged in murdering others. Then I would do it.

    Also, Abraham never killed his son. He was willing to, but was stopped before he could do it.
     
  22. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    More or less. It was written by a people who were barely out of the nomad stage.
     
  23. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    Not my daughter. Don't have daughters, but if I did, she would be a skilled swimmer like my boys. That said, I would jump in, along with the nearest life ring. Much easier for the rescue boat to rescue two people with a lifering, than one without. Also easier for two to defend against sharks than one.
     
  24. Wolverine

    Wolverine New Member Past Donor

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    I have no idea.

    1 Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.

    “Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”

    2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”

    3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”

    6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?”

    “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

    “We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

    8 “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.

    9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

    “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”

    12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”

    13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

    15 Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven. 16 “This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that 17 I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants[a] beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. 18 And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.”

    19 Then they returned to the servants and traveled back to Beersheba, where Abraham continued to live.
     
  25. Wolverine

    Wolverine New Member Past Donor

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    I realize that Abraham didn't kill Isac, however it is consistent with my question. There seems to be objection with my question, even though it is essentially ripped from the bible itself.
     

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