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Once again, you are full of bullshit and taking things into your own context and not the context presented. And for some reason, you seem to think you know what I believe in or think without me ever saying anything about it.

So genocide is justified, down to the last infant, if a tribe denies Yahweh, lures Israelites with sex (accountability -- what's that?) which somehow causes a plague to come upon his chosen people. Now, is it more likely that this is the view of an omnipotent, eternal, compassionate, perfect, and loving God, or the bloodlust revenge of some tribe? How can you possibly continue to defend statements like those on moral grounds?

No, genocide is not justified at all. What you are reading is only saying that it happened because Moses made it happen. It doesn't say god made it happen or that it should happen every day. God told Moses to take vengeance on the Midianites, not to kill all the children or women or anything. Moses came up with that on his own. And to that effect, it is read as a history lessen that it happened, not that it's allowed to happen or that it should happen again.

Anything about justification or compassion or loving or whatever is nothing more then your ignorance reading into it and taking things completely out of context. IF you would have read the entire chapter instead of what your parroting from some website, and have the slightest ability to comprehend what you read, you would have seen this because it's obvious from the start. Numbers 31:1-2 simple says The LORD said to Moses, 2 "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people." Moses ordered the how and what came after, not God. He did so by using the curse God placed on the Israelites as the justification not because God told him to. Hell, you even quoted his personal justification for his orders. If god would have told him to, he would have said God commanded something to be done.

I've already read this: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/midian.html Which, while not mirroring the shallow depth of your responses, is also both hilarious and sad.

I'm not even going to bother with that page. While it does bring out some technical aspects that have some merit, it presupposes the mistaking of context in which you have already made. And yes, this is obvious by the quotes mentioned for the reasoning of his undertaking in creating the site. As I said before, all that God ordered Moses to do was to take vengeance. Moses did that under his own command and thought process and it should be viewed as nothing more then a historical "this happened" type of verse. It definitely does not say it was ok, nor does it say that God ordered it to happen or anything that you attempted to claim.

So you see, the reason I cannot be a Christian is because I can not and will not defend the murder of children, pregnant women, or the forced marriage and rape of virgins.

I'm not sure anyone has asked you to be a christian, I certainly have not. However, it seems that your reasons are your own ignorance and inability to understand context and the written words in front of you. Perhaps you should take my advice and read the bible before making the same mistakes over and over again. Perhaps you should found your beliefs about the religion on something that is real and within reality. You know, reality is that thing that doesn't cease to exist when you do.

You have decided that as long as God commands genocide and the horrors that follow, you have no moral qualms. I think it's safe to say that you and I cannot have resolution on this issue.

You do not know what I have or haven't done or what moral qualms I do or do not have. Quit pretending that you do. As I already stated, I do not believe the chapter says

If you'd read even a small portion of the Bible, you wouldn't be defending it so carelessly.

They fought against Midian, as the LORD commanded Moses, and killed every man... The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho. ... Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

“Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. ”They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

So genocide is justified, down to the last infant, if a tribe denies Yahweh, lures Israelites with sex (accountability -- what's that?) which somehow causes a plague to come upon his chosen people. Now, is it more likely that this is the view of an omnipotent, eternal, compassionate, perfect, and loving God, or the bloodlust revenge of some tribe? How can you possibly continue to defend statements like those on moral grounds?

I've already read this: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/midian.html Which, while not mirroring the shallow depth of your responses, is also both hilarious and sad. So you see, the reason I cannot be a Christian is because I can not and will not defend the murder of children, pregnant women, or the forced marriage and rape of virgins. You have decided that as long as God commands genocide and the horrors that follow, you have no moral qualms. I think it's safe to say that you and I cannot have resolution on this issue.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon that the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel. --Thomas Paine

Should probably emphasize gp's point that it's a defense based on reasonable (solid) premises. If you're looking for air-tight proof that cannot possibly be denied, you won't find it I don't think. I haven't, at least.

It's also the guy who commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, just to see if he'd actually do it. Then it turns out it was just one hell of a practical joke.

The God of Abraham didn't tell Abraham to sacrifice his son just to see if he's actually do it, as if it were some big joke. The event was [at a higher conceptual level] an alliteration to the atoning death of the one he would send in the future (i.e. the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth).

(PS: here's some info on the genocide issue you raised

It is well established that Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. What is up to debate is whether or not he was the only begotten son of God.

You sound like a rather angry person when it comes to Christianity so I am sure this will mean nothing to you closed minded people.

What about God's cruelty against the Midianites?

Shouldn't the butchering of the Amalekite children be considered war crimes?

What about God's cruelty against the Midianites?

Shouldn't the butchering of the Amalekite children be considered war crimes?

What about God's cruelty against the Midianites?

Shouldn't the butchering of the Amalekite children be considered war crimes?

The new law has one commandment to Christians - to love one another as Christ has loved you. The _old_ law hung off the two commandments you mention. And I fail to see the problem: love God and do as you please (in that order) is the whole of the new law.

A good explanation of the relationship between the Torah and the Law to Christians can be found here.

The ONLY outside reference to jesus that's roughly contemporaneous with his supposed lifespan is the account of Josephus, a jew. However his description seems to be largely copied from the gospel of luke, and edited by a later author. It cannot be seen as a primary source.

• Thallus (c AD 50-75)
  
• Pliny the Younger (Letter to Trajan, c 110)
  
• Tacitus (Annals, c 115-120)
  
• Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, c 125)
  
• Lucian (mid-2nd century)
  
• Galen (De pulsuum differentiis 2.4; 3.3, c 150)
  
• Celsus (True Discourse, c 170)
  
• Mara Bar Serapion (< 200)
  
• Babylonian Talmud

And while you're being objective, you can go here for another long but good read...

No it doesn't. That's vengenece, not justice.

By Jesus's own words, "We forgive those who trespass against us".

Yes he did. In addition to being perfectly just, he is also perfectly loving and merciful. Think for a minute, given the example above, how you can reconcile these two traits? They are, in a sense, contradictory.

So how do we resolve this 'divine' paradox? God cannot fail to punish sin, but the punishment will destroy those that he loves. And so, we have Jesus , the son of God, who takes our place and our punishment.

If Jesus is still alive, then he wasn't sacrificed, by definition. To offer something and then yank it back is cheating.

I think if you really want a good explanation for this, you should check out this web page.

• Every single piece of evidence of Christ's existence has to be re-interpreted in some other way - and consistently.
  
• Every single piece of verifiable history which is mentioned by the NT authors has to be somehow seperated from their eyewitness testimonies of Jesus. See here
  for how difficult a task this is.
  

• Jesus existed around 30AD as attested to by Jewish historians, Roman historians and the thousands of ancient copies of the New Testament documents that survive - most of them far older than other ancient documents that most people seem to take for granted (like Caesar's Gallic Wars)
  
• Archaeologists continue to show that the reliability of these documents when talking about historical events is unparalleled. 100-odd years ago there were all sorts of problems with the bible that have now been confirmed by modern archaeology - writers make reference to ancient towns that have now been discovered, Luke calls the Ephesian leaders by a strange name which has now been cross-referenced, and so on.
  

• His tomb never became a shrine - a very natural thing to happen if he was still in it.
  
• No-one could produce the body. The Romans couldn't, the Jewish leaders couldn't, despite the fact that they could have at any time when the disciples suddenly turned up six weeks later and preached that he was alive. What was the problem? His tomb was walking distance from where these once frightened men were now claiming him to be alive. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. Not to mention:
  
• His followers were transformed - from frightened idiots to fearless evangelists. Nearly all of them were eventually executed for their beliefs. The church today - for all it's faults - still exists in the world based on their teaching.
  

• Jesus existed around 30AD as attested to by Jewish historians, Roman historians and the thousands of ancient copies of the New Testament documents that survive - most of them far older than other ancient documents that most people seem to take for granted (like Caesar's Gallic Wars)
  
• Archaeologists continue to show that the reliability of these documents when talking about historical events is unparalleled. 100-odd years ago there were all sorts of problems with the bible that have now been confirmed by modern archaeology - writers make reference to ancient towns that have now been discovered, Luke calls the Ephesian leaders by a strange name which has now been cross-referenced, and so on.
  

• His tomb never became a shrine - a very natural thing to happen if he was still in it.
  
• No-one could produce the body. The Romans couldn't, the Jewish leaders couldn't, despite the fact that they could have at any time when the disciples suddenly turned up six weeks later and preached that he was alive. What was the problem? His tomb was walking distance from where these once frightened men were now claiming him to be alive. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. Not to mention:
  
• His followers were transformed - from frightened idiots to fearless evangelists. Nearly all of them were eventually executed for their beliefs. The church today - for all it's faults - still exists in the world based on their teaching.
  

"However, even if the New Testament happens to have all its historical facts straight, that doesn't give the slightest suggestion that any of the supernatural claims it makes are true. (Perhaps you've heard of historical novels?)"

The closest thing to a historical novel at the time were the "historical romances." These tended to cover love, adventure, quests, and miracles that are more "theatrical" than those of the Gospels The Gospels fit far better in the genre of ancient biography, and in comparison with the historical romances are less flowery. Some of the flourishes of historical romance show up in apocryphical gospels. An example of the difference in tone between the apocryphals and the canonical gospels is here.

"Some of the peripheral claims are testable and fail, e.g. the ability of believers to drink poison without coming to harm."

Um, that claim comes from an ending of Mark that is not in the earliest manuscripts of Mark and is nowadays known to be spurious. In fact, the earliest known manuscripts of Mark end in a conjunction, which is extremely unusual, like ending a book in mid-sentence. The likelihood is that the original ending has been lost; maybe the last page fell out of the codex. There are two "endings" of Mark found in manuscripts, one a very short ending, and the longer one with which you are familiar. See here.

This deals with the "kingdom" issues. Make of it what you will.

Though the determination to omit the Gospel of Thomas is not entirely without basis.