If god truly loves all people why did he slaughter so many of them throughout the Earth's history?

The answer to this question is the same for all violence, including the accelerated violence that gave us the 20th century. Good and Evil cannot coexist. Abraham Lincoln, during the American civil war, said that both the North and the South invoked God, felt that God was on their respective side, and both sides viewed their God as righteous in their respective causes. Lincoln said that one side or both sides could be wrong, but that God could not, by his very nature, be both for and against something at the same time.

There will be slaughter until God's son redeems this world in apocolyptic final salvation. Don't blame God for the slaughter in history. The blame lies solely with the father of lies and deception, satan. God and satan oppose one another. The reason God did not destroy satan when he rebelled reflects on His eternal goodness. God could have destroyed the devil immediately when he rebelled against the Holy Father of creation, but he didn't. Do not call evil good and good evil which is what you assume in the above forementioned question. God is, by his nature, merciful. He wants to bring his creation to himself in worship because his creation CHOOSES freely to worship him. The very fact that evil still exists is a testimony to the charity and mercy of our Eternal Father in heaven. God is longsuffering, and tolerant, and wishes that everthing in his creation would repent choosing life over destruction.

Unfortunately, mankind chooses, all too often, to follow the path of the devil and that path is the way of destruction. Don't blame God.

Are these the actions of a loving god?

Again, do not call evil good and good evil as aforementioned above. God cannot be against Himself. This was the same deception that Jesus faced with the Pharasaical Jews of his day. The Pharisees were self-righteous. They were the “letter of the law” crowd that were so proud of their own righteousness that they became blind to the truth. They accused Jesus, the holy Son of God, of casting out demons by the power of satan after He healed a demon-possessed man on the sabbath. Healing or doing anything on the sabbath was a sin to the self-righteous hypocritical Pharisees. Here is how the Lord handled the situtation.

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.
And if satan cast out satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand?
And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges.
But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.
Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? And then he will spoil his house.
He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.”

Be very careful which god, Glenn, you are worshiping and calling good. Be very careful! You may find yourself on the wrong side.

Why does the bible not denounce slavery if an ALL KNOWING god inspired the writers and similiarly, why did jesus not make any attempt to stop slavery?

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

You are mis-quoting scripture. The King James version of the bible translates Ephesians 6:5 as:

“SERVANTS, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”

We are, indeed to be servants, just as Jesus Christ came as a meek and lowly servant to mankind. Christ was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Servants do have masters as anyone who has worked a job knows. On the job there are masters (bosses) and there are servants (workers).

Again, you misrepresent God's inspired word and twist the scripture to your own destruction. I warn you again. Be very careful as to how you represent God!

If god is omnipotent, how does the devil have any power at all? Omnipotent after all means ALL POWERFUL. Nothing could have any power in the presence of a god who is ALL POWERFUL. The answer is this; there is no god, particularly not an ALL POWERFUL god.

The devil only has power that God has granted unto him as a created being. The devil can be resisted in the name of the Lord Jesus. James 4:7 states:

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.”

You are representing God as a harsh task master. God is not one to bring people into bondage. Satan does that. Satan is a harsh taskmaster that subjects us to the bondage and slavery to sin, not God.

God IS all powerful and his Son proved it when he miraculously rose from the dead. He will use his power to finally put down sin and rebellion for eternity future. Death will have no power over creation once this power is demonstrated. However, in the mean time, God is tarrying and allowing us to choose eternal life through the holy and precious blood of his only begotten son. Don't disrespect God.

Shouldn't the son of an ALL KNOWING god understand such things?

Unlike medical science, God is not limited in the scope of what is possible. With man things like medical science are limited. Not so, with God. With God anything is possible.

Jesus showed us, in fact, by healing the disabled that God's desire for us is health and eternal life. Mankind suffers these things because, through Adam, sin and death came into the world. Rebellion is sin. It persists due to the hardness of the human heart. God is perfectly credible by the witness of faith. For faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Without faith, a person cannot please God. Unlike you, God is perfectly merciful, but we make choices. I pray that you will choose the path that leads to truth and life, which comes by way of Jesus Christ.

The ALL KNOWING supreme being that inspired the writers of the bible is running low on credibility.

Do not be proud of medical science and human accomplishment. If you place your trust in man's limited abilities, you will be disappointed. God created the truth and we need to be thankful that he has chosen to reveal his truth through medical science by grace. Thank God for his revelation. I am not ashamed of him.

"If the Christian belief system is false or based on fabricated source documents - how exactly under your current set of suppositions with the Bible as the only authoritative admissible evidence, would you ever be able to detect the falsity of that belief system?"

The way to approach this question is to first state the duality of man. There is a natural man and there is a spiritual man. The natural man cannot receive the things of the spirit for the things of the Spirit of God are foolishness to the natural man for they are spiritually discerned. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. The natural body is sown in corruption and is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. You, my friend, are the one who cannot discern and therefore, detect the falsity of you belief system because you cannot discern spiritual things. As long as you worship created objects like science tries to do, you will never see the spirutal truth because spiritual truth is spiritually discerned. So it would be impossible to be on the same page about this question. May God grant you faith.

Why is it that christians are unaware that the bible's ideas are simply plagiurized from other sources? The ten commandments were mostly adapted from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The virgin birth, the 12 disciples, the death and resurrection. It all comes from other religions. Christmas and Easter were pagan holidays until christianity 'borrowed' them.

At last we have something we can agree upon. Christmas is the pagan holiday of Saturnalia and Easter is the celebration to the Indo-European dawn goddess. In this country, these pagan holidays used to be illegal. Yes, my friend, there were laws on the books as recently as the nineteenth century forbidding these pagan celebrations. You are absolutely correct about these facts

I wonder why he couldn't just read The God Delusion on its own.

I think not. You need to be very careful at accusations. I would be glad to read “The God Delusion” and yes, I am sure I would refute all it's arguments based on the Holy Bible truths. You see the Holy Bible is 100% accurate. It is infallible. I would like to ask you this. Have you really read the King James Bible? I mean have you ever gotten a concordance and really studied out a particular topic in depth? Have you even read the synoptic gospels? Have you even read the book of Matthew? I would guess that you probably haven't. So, how can you criticize something you most probably haven't even read? And how can you know that you disagree with something when you don't even know what it says? Please, think about these questions in sincerity and faith.

Why was the time that religion ruled the world called "The Dark Ages?"

My friend, again, we have some common ground. “Religion” is hardly even mentioned in the bible. “Religion” and faith are two different things. We need to make sure what we are talking about. Religion is a man-made device, According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “religion” is:

a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

It is nothing more or nothing less that this. Wicca, Mormonism, Confusianism, Hinduism and all the other -isms are all “religions”. If any man amoung you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is in vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widow's in their afflictions, and to keep himself uspotted from the world.

The reformation of the church beginning with Martin Luther ushered out the “dark ages” and actually led to bible-believing christianity and the enlightenment of the Renessiance. So be careful again of stereotyping.

I suggest you get out the Jesus Riding Dinosaurs Colouring Book, prepare your rapturous red and leviathan green crayons and continue to ignore the doubts that cast a shadow on the credibility of your beliefs (see next post).

I would beg you to be gracious. The Lord Jesus Christ died for you. God the Father in heaven, in his undivided grace and charity, spared not his only begotten son that mankind would have a chance at God's original intention for us to have eternal life with him. I have that charity. Do you?

I will leave you with one other point of aggreement. You mention rather sarcastically that I get out the “Jesus Riding Dinosaurs Colouring Book” and crayons. This brings up my last point. You are correct that in order to be a Christian, one must submit to God in child-like faith. This doesn't mean to be childish. Be careful. In Matthew chapter 18, the bible begins with the diciples of Jesus contending with the Lord and asking which of them would be greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them. And said, “Verily I say unto you. Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” So, let us end in agreement. My friend, the Lord Jesus Christ went through the indescribable torture of death and shame, crucified alive for you and I. Don't cast “pearls before swine” and degrade the precious Lord Jesus. Life is like a vapour. The bible says that it appears for a short time and is gone. Please, if you must err, err on the side of caution. If you believe in Jesus and he doesn't exist or if there is no God, then nothing is lost in eternity future. However, if Jesus truly is who he says he is and there is, in fact, a holy and just God, do you really want to experience a future suffering eternally, knowing you had a chance to believe, but didn't? Which is the greater loss? I will pray that you make the right choice. God bless you and keep you. May the light of Jesus shine in you forever.

Ken Johnson