Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!gummo!whuxlb!pyuxll!eisx!npoiv!npois!hogpc!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!mcnc!unc!tim From: tim@unc.UUCP Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Even if I DID believe... Message-ID: <5681@unc.UUCP> Date: Tue, 9-Aug-83 09:13:57 EDT Article-I.D.: unc.5681 Posted: Tue Aug 9 09:13:57 1983 Date-Received: Wed, 10-Aug-83 18:57:26 EDT References: tekmdp.2117 Lines: 723 This is a response to John Rutis's lengthy criticism of my recent article entitled "Even If I DID Believe...", detailing my moral objections to Judaism and Christianity. John betrayed a rather extreme lack of knowledge of the Bible. I will use Bible quotes to show this. One disclaimer: The thesis of my earlier article was that even if a God as described in the Bible did exist, he was not fit for worship due to his low moral standards. Consequently, I speak throughout as if I did believe the Bible, when in fact I do not. Another disclaimer: I have used John's text unmodified; consequently, any misspellings and such in his stuff are his. Are we reading the same book?!! I find in my Bible that Yahweh IS Jesus; read the first chapter of John. Christ revealed the Father, who was unknown until then. Apparently not. The book I'm reading is called the Bible -- I don't know which one you are using. For instance, check out Matthew 2:15 -- "... This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: 'I called my son out of Egypt'." (This is of course in reference to the flight of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph into Egypt.) Yahweh said that to Hosea in Hosea 11:1. If Yahweh and Jesus are the same, then the prophecy was not fulfilled and Matthew is in error. If Jesus is the son of Yahweh, then Matthew is correct. Your Bible does include Matthew, doesn't it? A similar point holds with reference to Matthew 12:18, in which the prophecy of Isaiah (in Is. 42:1-4) is said to be fulfilled in Jesus. "Here is my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, the favorite of my soul. I will endow him with my spirit, and he will proclaim the true faith to the nations." Again, Jesus is fulfilling a statement of Yahweh in which Yahweh speaks in the third person. This means that either they are not the same, or Matthew is wrong. I find a God of infinite compassion and mercy in both the Old and New Testaments. Tell it to the Midianites. Numbers 31 is a classic example of wholesale slaughter and rape under the direction of Yahweh. A sample of this delightful tale: "They waged the campaign against Midian, as Yahweh had ordered Moses, and they put every male to death.... The sons of Israel took the Midianite women captive with their young children, and plundered all their cattle, all their flocks and all their goods. They set fire to the towns where they lived and all their encampments.... Moses was enraged with the commanders of the army ... who had come back from this military expedition. He said, 'Why have you spared the life of all the women? ... So kill all the male children. Kill also all the women who have slept with a man. Spare the lives only of the young girls who have not slept with a man, and take them for yourselves.'" Yes, friends, this is infinite mercy and compassion for you. I particularly like the way that Moses got upset with them for sparing women and male children, but allowed the young girls to be kept to rape later. I could go on for quite a while in this vein. I don't think the firstborn in Egypt during the captivity would have agreed with your verdict of compassion and mercy (Ex. 11:5,12:29). Then there are the charming instructions about women taken in war, from Deut. 21:10-14. And there is Deuteronomy 28:20-46, a long stream of invectives and curses straight from the prophet's mouth, all about the nasty things Yahweh will do if you upset him a tad. The entire book of Joshua is a long sequence of atrocities. I have not given all these quotes for space reasons -- I urge you to look them up for yourself. You have to understand God's reason for man's existence and God's plan for man before you can understand why God has done some of the things He has. God's created man as the first step in reproducing Himself! That's what I said, we are to become God as God is God! In order to become God's very Sons, we must develop righteous Godly character. Character is something God CANNOT creat by divine fiat; it must be developed with the willing participation of the one developing it. The vast majority of the human race will eventually become the Sons of God; only a few will reject eternal life in God's family. First, you have contradicted the omnipotence of God, which I doubt you meant to do. Second, this entire paragraph is fabrication. It is not supported by the Bible. It is not ruled out by the Bible, but where do you get off stating it as definite fact? There are any number of other models possible. God gave Adam and Eve a choice: eat of the tree of life and receive God's Spirit, eternal life, and rulership of all subsequent Sons of God, or eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and receive the rewards of sin. Well, I don't see anything about such a choice in Genesis. According to Gen. 2:16-17, "Then Yahweh God gave the man this admonition, 'You may eat indeed of all the trees in the garden. Nevertheless of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.'" No choice there, just a taboo. The tree of life is not mentioned until Gen. 3:22, "Then Yahweh God said, 'See, the man has become like one of us, with his knowledge of good and evil. He must not be allowed to stretch his hand out next and pick from the tree of life also, and eat some and live for ever.'" This flatly contradicts your version -- no choice was proffered. In addition, note that eating of the tree of KoGaE made us like Yahweh, and he was most upset -- yet more contradiction of your model. (The tree of the knowledge of good and evil does not represent the knowing of what real good and evil are, God taught them that; it represents taking upon themselves the deciding of what is good and evil, which is a prerogative of God. God tells us what is good and what is evil, our only choice is whether or not to obey.) You know what happened. As soon as God was out of sight, Satan stepped in and Adam and Eve rejected what God told them and followed Satan. This is also flatly contradicted by Genesis. It says "the serpent". It does not say "The serpent acting under Satanic influence". The fact that this really means a serpent and not Satan is proven in Gen. 3:14-15, in which the race of serpents is held accountable for the action. Hardly reasonable if the serpent is possessed by Satan. Also, see Gen. 3:1, in which it says that "The serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that Yahweh God had made. It asked the woman..." Either you or Genesis is wrong. Read on to find out why God allowed Satan to step in. God had made Satan ruler of the Earth before iniquity was found in him. Even though Satan disqualified himself as ruler of the Earth by attempting to overthrow God, God did not remove him from his throne because no one was yet qualified to rule in his place (Satan was the greatest being God had ever created). Well, I read on and didn't see even a single statement supporting your assertion here. Nothing about Satan, nothing about rulers of the world, nothing of the sort at all. Either you made it up or your Bible is very different from mine. Adam (with his wife Eve as his partner) was given the opportunity to replace Satan as ruler of the Earth. They blew it. Therefore, another had to be found to replace Satan. That was Christ, the one who was the Word, the Spokesman, before he emptied Himself to become a man. Christ has still not taken Satan's throne, but He will soon. All those who are called to do God's work must (with God's help of course) overcome Satan. For this they will be made rulers with Christ for all eternity. (With God, the greater the ruler the greater the service, the Father is the greatest Servant in the universe.) We will become rulers? Rulers of whom, if only rulers remain? Animals? We already rule them. What ARE you talking about here? In addition, if I had a servant who smote me with plagues for failing to worship him, there'd be one more ad in the "Help Wanted" column the next day... All those down through history who were never called and so had no chance to know God's plan will be resurrected in the great general resurrection. They will be taught God's truth without Satan to influence them. They will have 100 years to build character and accept or reject membership in God's family. Those who reject it will be burned up in the lake of fire; they will NOT exist in suffering and misery for all eternity. A nice story. I find it interesting that Jesus never bothered to tell us any of it. In fact, he flatly contradicts your statement that there is no eternal damnation, but I'll get to that later. Please think carefully about the implications of creating beings that are to develop Godly character. They must have free moral agency; be able to do anything, right or wrong. If they did not have free moral agency, they would be robots; not able to do what they want. There are only two ways God can make a world with no suffering, pain, sorrow, etc. 1) Force everyone to conform to the right way, whether they like it or not, and 2) Develop character in people so that they will always want to choose the right and then get rid of those who WILL NOT develop that character. God doesn't want robots in His family [ seems rather prejudiced -- tim ], so He has chosen the second way. We cannot always DO right because of weekness and foolishness, but we can develop the character to always WANT to choose the right. Whoa there. Your "because" does not seem at all explanatory. That's like saying that something is red because it stimulates the red receptors in our eyes. Weakness and foolishness are the turning away, not the cause. When God changes us from mortal physical beings to immortal spirit beings, we will then have the POWER to do the good we could only will to do before. Which is what? Do you mean create our own race of flawed beings to torture? Whee! Why, then, has God hidden Himself from the vast majority of mankind down through the ages? Why has He not been zealously teaching man the way he should go so that mans troubles will be minimized? If you will look carefully through the Bible, you will find that man has always hidden from God, not the other way around. The first thing Adam and Eve did after they ate of the wrong tree was hide from God. One of the major themes of the Bible is man's rejection of God and His way. Man says, in effect, "Bless me from afar God, but stay out of my life!". Funny, I've never said that. However, you are not answering the question. Why does God hide? Don't say he doesn't -- if I have to swear my soul to a being before I can see him, that being is hiding. Because of this attitude, God has kept hands off. He is allowing man 6000 years to try every form of government possible. This to prove that man CANNOT rule himself. Then God will rule the Earth for 1000 years to prove that following Gods way will lead to everything man has always wanted. Man's free moral agency will not be taken away. Satan will be taken away and men will not be allowed to do things that will harm others. They will still be able to harm themselves by disobedience. Your figures are fascinating, and I think it's really great that God told them to you, because they are not anywhere in the Bible. Where are you getting all this stuff? The whole message of the Gospel can be summed up by saying GOD'S GOVERNMENT IS RETURNING TO THE EARTH! As Bob Langdon admits, that God does what he wants, when he wants, without even an attempt at self- justification, and all for what reason? According to Bob, all for his own greater glory. Oh, how charming. Do you thing Bob has a monopoly on the knowledge of God's reasons? But WHAT is God's glory? It is to create billions of sons, each with all the power and glory of the Father and Christ. (But forever ruled by the Father and Christ.) Actually, Bob got it from Paul -- you know, the guy who wrote all those letters? You are contradicting Paul, and thus putting yourself above him. Why should I take your word over Paul's? For his own glory he condemns billions to eternal torment, Do you think, because the benighted clerics of the middle ages created a myth that is still believed by millions today, that God is bound to it? If your statement above were true, I would revile such a god too. It's NOT true! Only a handfull will ultimately reject God's way. They will be destroyed in mercy. They will NOT burn forever in "hell-fire". The vast majority will become God's Sons; God as God is God! Well, get ready to start reviling then. The myth of Hell was NOT created in the Middle Ages. It is explicitly stated in a set of books called the Synoptic Gospels, you know, the ones by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Since you don't seem to be very familiar with these books, usually considered the cornerstone of Christianity, I'll fill you in. Matthew 18:8-9 has Jesus saying, "If your hand or your foot should cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away: it is better for you to enter into life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire." A little while later, in 18:34-35 to be exact, Jesus finishes up a parable about an unforgiving debtor with: "And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart." Not clean killing -- you will be handed over to the torturers. In the parable of the wedding feast, Matthew 22:1- 14, Jesus concludes with "Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.'" The king didn't say, "Execute him", but bind him and throw him into a painful place. This is echoed in Mat. 24:51, in almost the same words, and again in Mat. 25:30, again with similar words. Finally (for Matthew), we have Mat. 25:41-46, on the Last Judgment. "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life.'" My point is proven, so I won't bore you with the quotes from Mark and Luke; however, check out Mark 9:43, Mark 9:48-49, Luke 13:27-28, and Luke 16:23-26. The only gospel which does not mention eternal punishment is John. Do you accept that one, and reject the synoptic gospels? On what grounds? Why will God destroy even those few? Revenge? Glory? No, He will destroy them to be mercifull to them. Because they will reject God's way, they would be miserable and unhappy for all eternity if they were given eternal life. They would make all those around them miserable and unhappy. Therefore, it is a mercy to them and everyone else to destroy them. Breaking God's laws brings automatic misery, sorrow, pain, starvation, war, etc. just as jumping off a tall building automatically brings injury and death. God hasn't made a bunch of difficult arbitrary laws so He can gleefully zap us when we break them. All His laws are for our good. They are in perfect harmony, just as the physical laws which God also created are. What would happen if you went around continually attempting to break the physical laws? drowns millions of innocent beasts and thousands of children, The world had become so corrupt in Noah's time (even the animals) that it was a great mercy to cleanse the earth. All the people (including the children) will rise in the resurrection to a clean, peaceful, prosperous Earth and be given a full happy life. That will be their next conscious moment. orders the slaughter of entire cities down to the last man, woman, and child, Those cities also had become so corrupt that it was a great mercy to destroy even the children. Don't forget, their next waking moment will be in a fabulous world without corruption, disease, war, crime, and all the other evils! They shoot horses, don't they? However, people are not animals to be destroyed against their will in the name of mercy. If I don't claim to be suffering, and don't ask to die, neither you nor any god has the right to decide that you know better. If you tried to do this to me, I would shoot you; if god tried, well, the only weapon I have is withholding my worship. What is particularly disturbing about this passage, though, is that you make murder less than a crime. After all, you're just sending the victim to a better place. The rationale applies no less to humans than to god. Does any being have the right to send us there against our will? The answer is obviously no. That is why murder is considered wrong, whether the weapon was wielded by man or god. I do not worship murderers, no matter how good their intentions. creates a race that he knows is flawed and will hurt itself (so that in their pain they can worship him better), Adam and Eve were created perfect. They were, however, incomplete; they did not have righteous character - that had to be developed. Now you're just contradicting yourself. They could be either perfect or incomplete, not both. How can you not see this contradiction? God gave them free moral agency. They were neutral. They were perfectly free to choose between God and Satan. They chose wrong. They were equally likely to have chosen right. Would you have had God do it any other way? Should He have restricted their ability to choose? Should He have biased them toward choosing right? No, but on the other hand there was no call to leave dangerous toys lying around either. (Man doesn't worship God better through pain, that's a pagan idea, you won't find it in the Bible.) This is contradicted by the gospels, but I'm sick of digging through them right now. Since you contradict this yourself a little later, I don't see the need. I'll point this out when it happens. refuses to deal with any other god on a friendly basis, There is no other god that God can be on a friendly basis with. Satan is the god of this world, but he is a being God created. Satan rebelled against God, was thrown down, and has been trying to ruin God's plan ever since. The only other "gods" are non-living idols. This idea is a fairly modern invention, that not only is he the best god, but the only one. Yahweh is repeatedly referred to as "our God" in the Pentateuch, and there is no implication that he is the only real one. Also, try Deut. 5:7-9. It is psychotic to be jealous of nonexistent beings. The statement "You shall have no gods except me" clearly implies that the contrary is possible. restricts the normal expression of the sexual function, Not at all! God made sex, and proclaimed it "very good". God does restrict sex to marriage, but that is for man's good, not to chain him for no reason. For example, one of God's laws is: If a man marries, he is not to be conscripted fo military service or civil labor for one year; he is to spend that year to "cheer up" his wife. How do you think he is supposed to cheer her up; by telling her jokes from net.jokes? Again you beg the question; I am getting sick of this. You say that God has his reasons and then fail to tell us any. Am I really supposed to buy that? Changing the subject does not help you; it just shows how weak your position is here. Let's hear it! What are the reasons of which you speak so knowingly? rains doom on those who dare to try to be as knowledgable as he is, and so on. No one can even conceive of how knowledgable God is, but He does NOT restrict us - He encourages us to learn all we can. Tell it to the workers at the Tower of Babel. In case your memory fails you here, Gen. 11:6-7 says, "'So they are all a single people with a single language!' said Yahweh. 'This is but the start of their undertakings! There will be nothing too hard for them to do. [ Horrors! -- tim ] Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.'" Yahweh deliberately acts to restrict man's capability for understanding. Again, either you or the Bible is wrong. Jesus preaching love in no way atones for these many hideous crimes; lest we forget, it was at this time that he created Hell. Please don't embarrass yourself by claiming otherwise; it is at no time mentioned in the Old Testament, and the wrathful and threatening god of the Old Testament would hardly omit any chance to terrify his worshippers. I'm not embarrassed to proclaim that there is no everburning hell as many "christians" picture. No such thing is mentioned in the New Testament either. The "gehenna" fire doesn't cause eternal torment, it burns up. Those burned in it will be dead! (Again, Christ IS the God of the Old Testament!) Again you make these claims, and again you show that you have not read the synoptic gospels. See the many quotes above that directly contradict you. The simple fact is that most of us, given omnipotence, would be able to do a far better job. What would you do if given omnipotence? If your answer is anything other than "abolish world hunger", there's something a little skewed in your perception of mankind. There is no question that this is the greatest evil in the world today. The second thing would be to abolish disease, right? This doesn't take "infinite mercy", just normal compassion. God's supposedly infinite mercy is apparently the same thing as no mercy at all. I hope I would be wise enough to do the same thing God is doing. The temptation would be great to relieve the suffering. However, what if, in relieving the temporary physical suffering, a million more potential Sons of God had to be burned up in the lake of fire and not exist for all eternity? God's purpose is to maximize the size of His future family while minimizing the number who have to be destroyed, even if it requires some temporary physical suffering, even for innocent children. First of all, if relieving someone's suffering is a "temptation" to you, your moral values are EXTREMELY skewed, and you have clearly not read Matthew 26:35, in which it is stated that the blessed feed the hungry, and that the damned do not. Second, you contradict your earlier statement that "Man doesn't worship God better through pain". You say that the pain may in some unspecified fashion lead to salvation. How many of these contradictions can you contain, anyway? Suppose you were a god and there were other gods. What would you do? What I would try to do is the same thing I do as a person among other people -- try to make friends or at least truce with as many of them as possible. The Judeo-Christian god does rather the opposite. There are NO other gods the equivalent of God, so the rest of the statements are irrelevant. Suppose that you are the absolute best at something, and that no one else is equivalent to you at it. Does that give you license to persecute the friends of the other beings who do the same thing? I think not. Or suppose you were a god and there were no others. What would you do? Perform a continual sequence of verifiable miracles to keep people from delusion. No such luck in the case of Jehovah. He demands absolute fidelity without any demonstration of his existence beyond, perhaps, some manifestations of the sort that you can get from any religion. A continuous sequence of miracles would become commonplace and make scientific discovery almost impossible. If you think God does not want us to make scientific progress, you're wrong. Again, it is marvelous that you know this thing, since it is not anywhere stated or implied in the Bible. Never does God encourage scientific progress. At the Tower of Babel, he deliberately thwarts it. Nor do I see any reason he should encourage it in your model. In any case, I utterly fail to see how a continual sequence of verifiable miracles would make scientific discovery impossible, unless God deliberately messed up scientific observations. You can't just say things without supporting them and expect me to agree with you. Finally, the worshippers of other gods are damning themselves, according to your model. Is this not a greater evil than any amount of hypothetical scientific setback? One thing in particular would keep me from worshipping this god. That is the fact that he desires worship. The only reason why this would be is that he gets something out of worship, perhaps power, perhaps just pleasure. In the former case, it would be totally unjustifiable for me to increase the power of this hugely arrogant and malefic being. In the latter, well, I don't LIKE this deity, and I don't think it deserves such a reward for its heinous career. Do you know what worship is? It's NOT a bunch of ritual mumbo-jumbo. It's simply love and respect. It does nothing for God in itself beyond what someone elses love and respect does for you. It is good for the worshipper. In that case, it gives pleasure to the god, just as I said. I have already detailed why I don't like this god, and I refuse to give him pleasure. By the way, if you think that Yahweh doesn't encourage ritual mumbo-jumbo, you obviously haven't read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Why is it that I, neither Jew nor Christian, have read these books, and you, a Christian, has not? I can see the responses to this now. "You can't judge God by the same standards as man." In that case, why is it that I keep getting told that God is good? I would never say that. God doesn't require of us anything He was not willing to come down to Earth as a man and do or endure Himself! This is scarcely a response to what I said. Are there two meanings of the word "good", one of which forbids murder, deliberate starvation, infecting people with disease, and so on, and another which allows these things? I suggest that there is already a word for the second meaning. That word is "evil". If you think that it's OK to worship an evil god, that's your business, but you can't expect me to do the same. Starvation and disease and all the other evils of the world come from breaking God's laws. Now if you would only acquire a bit of that scientific knowledge you spoke of! Starvation comes from not having enough food. Disease comes from exposure to various nasty micro-organisms. If you can show me how these two things come from breaking god's laws, I will be greatly surprised. Perhaps at the root they are caused by Adam and Eve falling from grace, but you can't hold some starving infant in Namibia responsible for the actions of two long- dead people, any more than you can hold me responsible for the acts of Jack the Ripper. There just isn't sufficient connection to establish guilt. The charge about infecting us with disease is particularly strong. God made these micro-organisms, and made us subject to them. If I made a bunch of plague germs and set them loose, you would hold me accountable. Since (according to Genesis) all disease comes from Yahweh, I hold him similarly responsible. I do not recognize any moral double standard as being valid. "Everything God does is really good, even though we can't always see that it is." Well, you'd have to do an awful lot of good to counterbalance the perpetual starvation of the human race. I think bringing most of mankind into His family is an awful lot of good. When I see delivery on your promise, I will agree with you. Until that time, I think you are making it all up. Maybe we Americans have it so good that we can't see this, but most of the people in the world are starving. Children are dying by the truckload, not for any sin, but just because there isn't enough food for them. If you could see these children, and you had food, you would give food to them. (Either that, or you are an unfeeling monster.) Not so with the god you worship. He sees their bellies bloat, sees them run out of nutrients and rot alive, sees their brains dying, and doesn't do a single thing, despite the fact that he has an unlimited supply of food to give. Another example of his mercy. Children are dying by the truckload precisely BECAUSE of sin! Not their own, of course, but someones. Can you imangine what this world would be like if God had provided unlimited food for everyone throughout history? Probably something an awful lot closer to paradise than it is now. What are you afraid of? Mass obesity? You yourself said that we don't worship him better through pain. And what right have you to hold someone responsible for the sin of another? I can't express in words how the plight of these children makes me feel; God must feel it to an infinitely greater degree. But I can thank God that when these poor children do die, their next waking moment will be in the resurrection in a world of peace, prosperity, and happiness, where they will be healed of all mental and physical disease and live a full life with no threat of war, hunger, brutality, disease or any other evil! In that case, we should kill them now, right? If not, why not? You said it was a good thing when Yahweh did it... Try thinking through your implications some time; you may find it a valuable experience. God's mercy will be apparent in the very near future, when Christ returns. (Before 2000 AD, I think - probably before 1990.) Christians have been saying this for about two thousand years now. It is clear from the gospels that Jesus thought that it was about to happen shortly after his death. Before the Christians, the Zoroastrians were saying it. Yet the world still turns, and there is still no reason to think of these claims as other than pipe-dreams to mollify the masses. I do not believe in the reality of Jehovah, except as a psychological phenomenon, but if I did believe I would not worship that horror. It could send me to the Hell it's made for those it dislikes, and I would walk in proudly, knowing that I was no slave to be broken down by force. This is exactly the attitude that has caused God to choose to keep hands off for 6000 years. As soon as man took to himself the choosing of what is good and what is evil, and ignored God's definition of good and evil, he told God "keep out of my life." Soon Christ will return and FORCE man to live in peace, prosperity, happiness, abundance. This will probably make some people furious, but the vast majority will be very happy. He will "FORCE man to live in peace"?!?! That is a prima facie contradiction. However, let's see how your god stands up to his own standards. In Matthew 26:41-46, we hear the King, "Next he will say to those on his left hand, 'Go away from me, with your curse upon you, to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you never gave me food; I was thirsty and you never gave me anything to drink; I was a stranger and you never made me welcome, naked and you never clothed me, sick and in prison and you never visited me.' ... And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the virtuous to eternal life." In the light of this, your god himself is the worst of sinners; if there is no double standard, he will be at the head of that line into eternal punishment. At last we reach the end of this, my longest article to date. One chilling note before we go. John says that there are only three possibilities at this point: 1) Man will destroy the face of the Earth and himself with it. (no God) 2) The traditional "christian" teachings are right and things will go on as they have been, manufacturing souls to be sent to Heaven or Hell. (no god worthy of worship) 3) My statements above are true and Christ will return soon and restore His government. (a God worthy of worship) I know #3 is true; we will see soon. I always find these pronouncements scary, whether from John Rutis or Jerry Falwell. People say that there is no hope for mankind without god. Suppose that they are wrong, as I believe them to be. Then these people are standing by, gleefully watching a preventable fall, refusing to raise a finger to help. Wonderful. Predicting the fall of man is rather self-fulfilling, and if there is no divine safety net you will wind up with a lot worse than egg on your faces. In closing, I would like to repaet my statement that it is bizarre that I have read more of the Bible than John Rutis, who is ostensibly a Christian. How many Christians is this true of? ___________ Tim Maroney duke!unc!tim (USENET) tim.unc@udel-relay (ARPA) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill