Benevolent God?

The overwhelmingly large majority of people I know would never torture another human being under any conditions. Yet I know of many people who believe in a God who not only tortures, but tortures for all eternity. In my opinion, this constitutes nothing less than bitter vengeance.

Hateful Prayers

Those of you who know me will know that on the whole, I don't do things I don't understand. We get al-Manar at home and everyday at about 2300 it plays a beautiful rendition of Dua Ahl Thagur ("supplication for the people of the frontiers"). I thought I would take the time and effort to understand what the Arabic meant and this is what I found:
O God ...
- separate them from their weapons
- turn them astray from their direction
- cut off reinforcements from them
- chop them down in numbers
- fill their hearts with terror

Okey so that's just a normal war chant I guess. Whilst being evil in nature, I can understand why it might be said. Iff that was all it said, I wouldn't have (that much of) a problem. But it gets much more brutal in the next paragraph:
O God; make the wombs of their women barren; dry up the loins of their men; cut off the breeding of their mounts and their cattle; and permit not their sky to rain
or their earth to grow!

This hostility towards the enemy continues throughout most of the supplication and having read the English translation, I'm left wishing I didn't as I will now never be able to listen to it in the same innocent manner.

I wanted to see if this was unique to Islam and it wasn't long before I found that it was not.
Psalm 109:
[9] Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
[10] Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
[11] Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.
[12] Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
[13] Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
[14] Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the Lord; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
[15] Let them be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Now I admit I haven't read about the context of the extract from Psalms - but I don't think any context would grant sufficient warrant to wish that upon a person.

Not the most friendly side of religion...

Crime Scene

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Did you hear?

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Benefit fraud. We're closing in...

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Packages

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WILT

What I Learnt Today was that the "Bardo Thodol", known to most westerns simply as the "Tibetan Book of the Dead", is the most famous piece of Tibetan literature published to date. Much like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, its purpose is to act as a guide to the deceased. In it, it describes how to maneuver succesfully through the afterlife.