[vhawk01]

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The OP pretty much summed up most of my thoughts. The god of the old testament is getting worse and worse. When I read the "hitleroonism" thread I thought it was a little far-fetched in some parts, but now I have little choice but to think that the OT God was an evil sadistic being.

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M^2,
So it just summed up what you already thought? Don't we have a name for that? When you're reading these stories do any alarm bells go off that maybe there's some type of "moral to the story," other than summing up your preconceived notions?

I mean at one point we have the children of Israel who are slaves in Egypt. Then God performed a series of dazzling miracles and gets them out. Now they have their freedom and are heading for the Promised Land.
(Warning! Plot Spoiler) But they never got there. Why not?

Well, they griped about the food - they had just been delivered from slavery and they are complaining about the food?!
They whined and cried and griped about the water. In the desert they HAD water to drink, but... it didn't taste that good?!
They whined and complained about the leadership... that had just delivered them from slavery?!
They complained that it was too hot, too cold, too far, too difficult, too rocky.
They whined and cried for years - forty to be exact.
Finally, God said, "that's it - I've had it - Trip Cancelled!"

Can you find any moral to this story at all?

I know this sounds facetious, but I'm really not trying to be. This is just boggling my mind.

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Jews are whiny? We should be thankful to God for the good things he does for us and completely ignore all of the horrible things he does TO us?

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Which reminds me of something I thought about in class today. Why is no one worried that prayer might be CAUSING cancer? Surely its possible. God likes to punish whiny, needy people. Help yourselves, he always said. So how come we don't worry about prayer causing cancer?

If you are worried about the mechanism, surely it could use some fashion of the 'cancer-curing' pathway thats already been well-established. Of course I can't prove prayer causes cancer, but you can't prove it doesn't. Shouldn't priests take this into consideration when they pray for sick people, and ask the sick people and their families to pray as well?