Should God Punish Evil People?

Many times the motives may be different (economic, political, power-hunger) but the justification is religious, or the religious factor is more than mere justification but is secondary. Many have claimed that Bible passages justify their behavior. The genocide of Native Americans was always justified by the Europeans' "God-given" right to the hemisphere.


Bin Laden may be a "delusional fool", but I am questioning whether or not Prager is as well. He is a very religious person, and does not believe in the concept of infidels, but said he would cease to be religious if God did not punish evil people. Things might not be so bad if Prager was deciding who is evil or not, but I don't think Bin Laden would be the person I would want deciding. And this is the point: a person claiming to be deciding such things by authority of God is a frightening thing to me.


"I've never read any passage in the bible that tells you to kill people in the name of God." I'm by no means a bible expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't God kill all the first born of the Egyptian people in punishment for their treatment for the Jews? He passed over the Jews, which is why Passover is celebrated. Was Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt for the crime of looking back when God told her not to? Are there not plenty of examples in the bible of innocents being killed for disobeying God?

Andy,


I think Prager believes that we should punish evil but he hopes evil people will also be punished in the afterlife. Regarding the death penalty man is punishing man. Whether God approves or not is unclear to me; however, Prager would argue that the dealth penalty is approved in scripture.


Regards,


Rick

Michael,


That humans have free will is self-evident to me. Ferrets and dogs and animals primarily depend on instinct. Animals do not have the human qualities of conscience. For example, I'm sure Hitler's dog loved him (in the manner dogs are loyal in a loving way) and and any trained dog would have - but only Eva Braun and perhaps a few others chose to love Hitler in the human sense. And only humans are aware of their mortality.


Regards,


Rick

. . . is to worship like crazy. A simple assumptions/outcomes matrix will tell us that you can't lose!

In other words, I assume you're saying, if there is no God, or a God who doesn't care whether or not you worship him, you've lost nothing. But if there is a God judging us on whether or not you worship him, you've bought some insurance.


So far, so good. The problem comes in where people who worship him expect others to do the same. This has often been the case in history and led to many horrors. So since the cases of worshippers accompanying their worshipping with loathing for those who don't worship are numerous, perhaps the simple cost-benefit analysis in my first paragraph is not so simple.

But you could waste time, and God might judge you a fool.

It is the blind faith in scripture as being the literal word of God that I find quite disturbing. I don't know what Prager believes and I never heard of him until these posts. If he has blind faith in scripure as containing the literal word and intent of God, then I suggest he is probably way off base on some other things as well.


If he is arguing about scripture for the sake of debate or discussion, that is one thing. If on the other hand he believes that scripture taken literally is completely correct, then we have a serious problem with regards to the critical thinking skills of this person, or at the very least his religious inclination is overwhelming his rational analysis. Not even to mention that even if one believed that the scriptures were originally completely correct and conveyed the exact intent of God, that one would also have to be convinced that they were not at all altered through the ages or through translations. It is very easy for translations into other languages to subtly shift meaning, and slight changes in nuance or interpretation can have profound effects when discussing major ideas.


Those who decline to think for themselves look for answers to be given to them. Blind faith in scriptures is precisely this.

M,


I'd rather not try to speak for Prager after this post since what you wrote above is not representative of Prager's thinking. My brief reference to scripture in the post above yours I perhaps used the wrong term. Prager would argue that there is no commandment saying that "thou shall not kill"; rather it is "thou shall not murder".


For more on Prager you can find his site on google and reviews of his books on amazon).


Regards,


Rick

Pascal's Wager.

Paraphrased as, "I will bet away part of my life in devout prayer even though I'm an atheist. If my atheism is the universal truth, then I'll have lost nothing save the time given to prayer. If my atheism is incorrect, then perhaps those prayers will benefit me afterall."