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I've been considering the judgement that the bible records Israel delivered to the cities of Canaan in the O.T. And since my considerations are along the lines of this thread I thought I'd just throw them at the fan and see what if anything comes of them. This view of those cities I find to be HIGHLY IRONIC considering most of us have TWI pasts.... I think it is likely that these walled cities ended up being some kind of tightly controlled sexually abusive mind control religious cults with a highly rigid command structure; a tyrant on top that was most brutal of all to all his little mini-tyrants in order to keep his underlings/co-conspirators in control. (Edited for the sake of clarification)

I still have lots of questions. Here a few of them... Why was Irael set apart? Didn't God create all men? And when the first humans didn't behave the way he wanted them to he wiped them out with a flood. But there was still lots of punishment in store. Any chance you could point me to a chapter or verse? I'm not sure what section you're referring to here. What was that purpose? Did He forget about that purpose during the holocaust in WWII? Or did he just forget about his chosen people? And what about nowadays? The Jews are continually subjected to violence and hate from the Palestinians. Who are God's chosen people today? I don't see any evidence of that. Just reading all the heart-wrenching prayers posted in this forum that don't get answered (posted by individuals with more faith than me) makes me question the power of prayer. He did? Nobody told the Israelites to run for their lives when Moses and the Levites came with their swords to kill 3,000 brothers, friends and neighbors. And as if that wasn't enough He then caused a plague -- with no warning. Doesn't seem fair to me. Geisha, I'm not saying all this to argue with you. You may be right about everything. At any rate, I don't expect you to answer my questions, or even reposnd to my post (unless you want to), I'm just letting you know some of the things I wonder about as I read the bible.

How did we get on pantheism? Not that I would avoid a discussion with you about it, but I didn't see where it fit in. If I understand it correctly, karma, if that is what we're talking about, isn't limited to one lifetime, "bad" karma in one lifetime results in a "lower" status in the next life (remember, we're talking about a culture with an extremely rigid caste structure) and bad stuff happening to you to "balance" the bad stuff that you did. There are various ways that believers in karma explain the mechanism by which it works, some attribute it to a property of the universe itself, some say one or another deity controls it. Yeah, I agree, but no harder than putting faith in the biblical god who seems to me just as fickle and just as unjust. My opinion (at least the one I hold right this minute) is that cosmic justice is a human conception invented to make sense of a world that doesn't seem very just. Bad things happen, seemingly without rhyme or reason and our minds flail about trying to make sense of it, or at least trying to make ourselves feel better about getting screwed out of that job, or getting cancer, or getting hit with an earthquake or a tsunami. We just can't cope with the randomness of it all.