Cant we just pop a cap in his butt?

Consider the alternative, no punishment for the wicked, no hell and everyone goes to heaven. Then consider the millions of people who have been wronged and deserve justice. Consider the riddle of Epicurus, brought up as an argument against religion. Consider Nazi's and jews having to share heaven.

After these considerations, my question to you is:
Do you find any form of punishment renders God malevolent, or do you just think that certain specific cases of punishment were to sever? you mentioned sodomy, did you know that in the town of Sodom, next to sodomy there was also large scale, organized rape pedophilia and incest? Can we really claim to have sufficient insight in the case to judge wheter or not the punishment was apt or to severe?

Well you said it yourself; you assume so...
Truth is we simply don't know to what degree there would be poverty or not. Maybe global war would decrease the population significantly leaving us with abundance. It's pure speculation. Either way there's a difference between going to sleep hungry for the sake of keeping your faith, and dying of starvation.

We dont know that. We know that, if we are to beleive the Bible and Quran, that Sodom was guiltry of:

Seeking sex with angels, fornication, and going after "strange flesh"

Genesis 19:4-5
The men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

Jude 7
Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

Pride, wealth, lazyness, and ignoring the needs of the poor

Ezekiel 16:49
This was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness ... neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

Adultery, lies, and general immorality

Jeremiah 23:14
I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.

That dosnt say anything about rape or Incest. Peadeophillia was an accepted social norm in early middle eastern culture, so I imagine this would be true for Sodom.

OK, lets just take it as read that everyone in there, was a sinner. The rape victims, the babies, the farmers and traders. The whole blinking lot of em, all circa 30000.No demonstration of power, no selective punishment for the lesser sins. The Guy on number 145 Gommorah Road had been pretty pious. He had double parked his Camel a few times, sworn when he bashed his thumb with a hammer and he fancied his next door neighbours daughter, but was too shy to approach her.
Mr Hussain next door worked hard down the brothel and did embezzlement in his free time. He would relax on an evening screaming blasphemys whilst worshipping his idols.
Guess what happens to them both?


All we are told apart from Lut/Lot. And strangely his family too. A single family out of a whole city, who needed evenly smiting with death.
So out they plod and the city dies. Lots wife looks back and God kills her too. For looking back!

I don't think the order of event is correct.. fact is even the best of Muslim scholars can extrapolate but not given any definitive answer..
I found this to be one of the better pieces of the end of the world.. the others are all written by sheikh a'sh3rawi and it is 'khwatir al' Quran' but of course is in Arabic and of no use for our curious friends..

Enjoy

The Day Of Wrath
cheers

Coincidently, the guy on number 145 Gommorah Road was visiting his mother in law who lived a few miles south, imagine his surprise when he came back. His younger brother, who followed him in piousness, sadly was in town though. However this early death he met saved him from the long excruciating pain he would have endured would he have lived a bit longer for his tumor to develop.

No, all jokes aside, like I said, we really can't know.


Not according to the Qur'an, don't forget that the bible isn't accurate on details as even admitted by most Christians.
But We saved him and his family, except his wife; her We destined to be of those who lagged behind. (27:57)
So she was destined for a cause, she didn't die just because she looked back.

And when Our Messengers came to Lut, he was grieved on their account, and felt himself powerless (to protect) them: but they said: "Fear thou not, nor grieve: we are (here) to save thee and thy following, except thy wife: she is of those who lag behind. (29:33)
The part in bold is found in other translations as "household". I don't know arabic so I can't say which translation is closests. I checked a tefsir to see if perhaps it's stated wheter it was only his family or also some people who "followed" him (he had been preaching before the town was destroyed).

I randomly clicked on a bit of that, "What has changed", and it started going on about some sort of Zionist plan. Definatly worth it for the laugh.

Here is how John Doe justifies his murders in the movie "seven":

Mills: You only killed a bunch of innocent people so you could get your rocks off. That’s all.

Doe: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? Look at the people I killed. An obese man, a disgusting man who could barely stand up… who if you saw him on the street you’d point so your friends could mock him along with you. Who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn’t be able to finish your meal. After him I picked the lawyer. And, you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This was a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath he could muster… to keeping rapists and murderers on the streets. A woman… so ugly on the inside that she couldn’t bare to go on living if she couldn’t be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer… a drug dealing pederast, actually. And, don’t forget the disease spreading *****. Only in a world this ****ty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. That’s the point. You see a deadly sin on almost every street corner, and in every home, literally. And we tolerate it. Because it’s common, it seems trivial, and we tolerate, all day long, morning, noon and night. Not anymore. I’m setting the example, and it’s going to be puzzled over and studied and followed, from now on.

Let me restate my point here: I support religion, well the original intention. As a divine guidance, probably because we humans are too **** stupid to function as proper beings alone, and eventually fall into despair because our thoughts are always somehow mingled with our inevitable mortality. (According to anthropologists, this is how primitive pagan religions surfaced - out of our collective paranoia). Needless to say, religion, like their accompanying holy scriptures, has fallen into the intended dirty hands of Man, who has crafted it to benefit his own needs over time. Dominance, through any means possible; politics, wealth and even warfare.

You think scripture was sent by God and changed by man??

I watched this animation from MapsofWar.com which depicts the rise and expansion of all modern faiths. After viewing it, I realized that the ancient world remained in relative tranquility, even with a handful of different faiths. Only in the last two millennia did religious conflicts arise, which I imagine must have lead to a lot of human suffering. Human Suffering. Just two words to most of us. Its hard to grasp a full understanding of this concept unless you are starving for three days because of some religious war or just had both your parents beheaded right in front of you by a heartless crusader. If you do understand it, you would share my contempt too. All in the name of God, right?

Yeah, seen a bit of that.

The idea that humans could unite under one religion is a bit pipedreamy IMO.
If the world was fought down to everyone following the Church of Latter Day Saints, then the various splinter groups of that would be at each others throats till the last two humans on earth fought it out over interpreting a few lines on a 160 year old book.

Allah only destroys a people who have been warned by a Messenger, these people continue to persist in evil sins - whatever they may be - and the Messenger warns and give glad tidings for the good-doers, if these people remain ungrateful to Allah and persist in their sins - they want to get rid of the source who is forbidding them from this evil, even if the believer is giving them good advice. So they attempt to imprison the believer who enjoins good and forbids wrong, or they attempt to torture and kill them so that they can continue in the evil that they are doing.


What these people have been given is a favour from Allah, something which they are accountable for and will be questioned about on the Day of Ressurection. If they are ungrateful to Allah - He can remove this from them whenever He wills, however - He is the Most Just - so He is patient, and informs the believers to be patient.

When the evildoers are excessive in their disbelief, and in the peak of their evil acts - then Allah removes them from the face of the earth and gives what is good to the believers for striving in His cause. This is because He is the Most Just, He is Grateful and He is the Powerful.



Is it fair for a people to reject the favours of Allah, and torture the believers while killing others? Yet Allah still allows them to escape from His Punishment? He is the Just, and He has promised to give the believers inheritance and power in the earth as He gave it to those before them, they will establish His law and enjoin good for mankind so that they can prosper and be successful.

Their is a big difference between god passing judgment and a human passing judgment to his peers:
* We don't have the right (permission)
* We don't have the responsibility (it is not our job, nor is it expected from us)
* We don't have the power (to enforce judgment of a person in a correct manner, a judgment without enforcing is meaningless)
* We don't have the ability (to judge a person by pure standards, to weigh of the total of good and bad acts a person has done)
* We don't have the insight (we can't be certain about what the intention, background of a person was)

Are you making a point or simply explaining your views? Because for the latter, I have no objections to you having your views, but for the former I would have to reply that your "point" is flawed by circularity since it is based on the assumption that religion is man-made. Obviously such an argument based on such an assumption is flawed and cannot be used against religious view.

Some important things to consider, the rise in population might also be a decisive factor, the larger a population, the more confrontation, and thus the more frustration/aggression and so on. I imagine many more factors can be brought up to explain the phenomena.
More importantly, you cannot judge a theory by it's followers. Just like you cannot judge evolution by Hitlers social Darwinism or you cannot judge love by the actions of a stalker.