What makes it terrible? Not trolling...just curious to hear your answer. I really want to believe in God.
Most of them are misrepresentations of biblical stories, distortions about Leviticus and the ritual laws given through Moses. Most of the pathetic verses they post about stoning prostitutes or owning slaves are from the Torah, or Moses' books in the Old Testament when that was a huge cultural aspect of life, and they were working out rules to govern it.
The followers of God were supposed to follow those laws from the time they were given up until the time of the New Covenant, or Jesus' death. This is a basic summary of the general concept:
Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas explained that there are three types of biblical precepts: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. He holds that moral precepts are permanent, having held even before the Law was given, since they are part of the law of nature;[9] ceremonial precepts, which deal with forms of worshipping God and ritual cleanness; and judicial precepts (such as those in Exodus 21[10]) came into existence only with the Law of Moses,[11] and were only temporary. The ceremonial commands were "ordained to the Divine worship for that particular time and to the foreshadowing of Christ"
The reason it's called the Old Testament is because God made two covenants. The second one is an upgrade, if you will, contained in the New Testament.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
The minute the Old Covenant was changed was when the curtain was torn in the tabernacle. So atheists will post verses about selling slaves or cattle or something and pretend as if Christians are supposed to follow it. They're either ignorant of correct theology or just dishonestly don't care.
Other pitiful misrepresentations are when they say, "If God is love, why does he punish?" Well, if you loved your child, would you allow them to do whatever they wanted? Or would you punish them when they did something wrong in order to teach them to stay away from those actions? The parallel is not ideal, but the principle is similar.
This is basically the ignorant response that was posted to my initial comment. Like I said, atheists
never change their talking points. They're just as ignorant as when I heard them 10 years ago.
The Bible is constantly speaking against sacrificing your future for the present, or just "living for the moment" without keeping the endgoal in mind:
"But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented." -
Luke 16:25
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" -
Mark 8:36
In other words, it's all about abstaining from present pleasures in order to enjoy future joy. It's difficult to do. It's the precise opposite of what is being discussed in this thread; the principle of a wonder drug that will make them godlike at the expense of probably causing brain damage down the road.
But an ignorant atheist chimes in with a silly comment equating the faith to this thread's type of thinking because they live in a bubble, and they don't really understand the theology they're criticizing. It's the same way that they can't conceptualize a God who both loves and hates.
"Hate that which is evil; love to that which is good." -
Romans 12:9
"Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate" -
Amos 5:15
"Ye that love the Lord, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked." -
Psalm 97:10
"Hey man, if he's such a loving God, why is there Hell?" Those are the kinds of gems that atheists vomit up on a regular basis.
Keep in mind that my original comment was simply that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And that is not very different from the philosophy that you will see in MANY great pinned threads here, which say the same thing, except about those seeking easy riches.
The common theme running through all of those threads is that the only way to succeed is sheer hard work. Not too different from my original statement, eh?