The 100 Tough Questions are all now answered by my Dad as he sees the Ancient of Days face-to-face. www.tributes.com/nabihammari

Thank you to each of you who interacted with my Dad over the years. He loved the intellectual debates and the rigor of writing and interacting with you. The conversations birthed in our home from these entries and your responses were stirring as I am sure you can imagine.

Perhaps someday, I or another relative will continue to stir the pot of food & politics.

Until then, may the God with whom Sodium wrestled bless you from on High.

Sincerely,
Chloride
son of Sodium 

Quoting The Whole Answer To Question (26) Of The " 100 Tough Questions about God And The Bible " By Stephen M. Miller.

By Sodium

( Note: Since the answer given to Question (26) is relatively short, it seems that it is more beneficial to the readers than just selecting a few quotations from it to provide an idea about the answer to the readers of this website. )

Re-citing Question (26):
==========================
" Why do Christian say hell is a fiery place of eternal torture ?  Bible scholars say hell is just an English word invented to translate Hinnom ( Hebrew ) or Gehenna ( Greek ), the name of a valley on Jerusalem's south side.

Below Is The Whole Answer, As Written By Stephen M. Miller:
=======================================================
" Hinnom became more than a valley to the Jews. Much like September 11, 2001, became more than a day on the calendar to Americans.

Hinnom Valley, like September 11, came to represent a firey terror.

Many Jews believed they lost their country because of what happened in that valley.It was there thaqt two of their kings--Ahaz and his grandson, Manasch--actually sacrificed their sons to idols

" He [ Ahaz ] offered sacrifices in the vally of Ben Hinnom, even sacrificing his own sons in the fire " ( 2 Chronicles 28:3 NLT ) "

Some Jews saw this as the worst of Israel many sins, and one of the reasons God unleashed judgment day in 586 BC Babylonian invaders from what is now Iraq decimated the Jewish homeland, leveled Jerusalem, and deported many survivors.

After that, Jews linked the name of Hinnom Valley to Judgment day.

In fact, all twelve times the valley is mentioned in the New Testament (of the Bible )--usually by Jesus--it's a metaphor describing a place of fiery punishment.

Jesus: " If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better to enter eternal life with only one hand than to go into the unquemchable fires of hell ( Gehenna ) with two hands " ( Mark 9:43 NLT ) "

Bible translators try to capture that idea of a place of fiery punishment--Gehenna--by using the English word hell instead of the name of the valley.

Final Words:
=========================
It seems to me that the statement " Some Jews saw this as the worst of Israel many sins " is truly ironic to read in the Twenty First Century, as one take into the current sins of Israel in its brutalization of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine.

END.            

Some Quotations From The Answer To Question (25) Of The " 100 Tough Questions about God And The Bible " By Stephen M. Miller.

By Sodium

Re-citing Question (25):
============================
" When bacholar Paul told women to be quite in church and always do what their husbands say, was he really speaking for God--and to women throughout all time ? "

Quotation One:
===========================
" Hear the word of the Lord, from Paul " in the quotations given below:

Quotation Two:
===========================
" Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak.... And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is shameful for women to speak in church.... The things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord. "
 
                                                                 " 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, 37 NKJV "

Quotation Three:
==========================
" Let a woman learn in silence with all submission, And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over  man, but to be in silence. "

                                                                " 1 Timothy 2:11-12 NKJV "

Quotation Four:
==========================
" Those words that Paul wrote in two letters are why many churches refuse to ordain women ministers--churches like the Southern Baptists, America's largest Protestant group. "

Quotation Five:
=========================
" Christians who say Paul was talking about all women in all churches for all time generally insist that men and women are equal in God's sight, but that they have different roles to fill in the church: Men do the talking in public, and women hold down the home front and help at church in supporting roles. But women don't preach. And they do not teach men in Sunday school classes.

Quotation Six:
========================
" Scholars call this the complementary view because men and women complement each other to get the job done."

Quotation Seven:
========================
" Some women today don't seem to feel the complement. "

Quotation Eight:
========================
" " Even though many churches today say they welcom the idea of women ministers, few hire them. A male minister leads nine out of every ten churches in the United States. "

Final Words:
=======================
I do recall once I attended a Sunday mas of a church in Amman, Jordan. And while the head-priest was reading from a Bible which was rested on clothed stand, while some women were talking to each other in the rear section of the hall of the church. Apparently, the head-priest could no longer take it,  he shouted across the hall and in Arabic: " Khaleena ensali, ya niswan " meaning: " let us pray, O' you women. " I felt bursting in laughter, but some how managed suppressing the urge to laugh aloud.

It seems to me now, and after reading Paul's writings about women talking in churches, the Jordanian head-priest was only emulating what Paul had written centuries ago. Amazing.

END.


                                             

Interesting Quotations From The Answer To Question (24) Of The " 100 Tough Questions about God And The Bible " By Stephen M. Miller.

By Sodium

Re--citing Question (2):
===========================
" How killing a goat get rid of a person's sin ? "

Quotation One:
===========================
" Sin is a capital offence as far as God is concerned, Bible writers say. ""

Quotation Two:
===========================
" God made that clear enough in the beginning when he gave the first couple just one rule to obey: " You must never eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evilbecause when you eat from it you will certainly die "  ( Genesis 2:17 ). "

Quotation Three:
==========================
" It's as though sin and holiness can't be in the same vicinity. That might explain why God gave Adam and Eve the divine boot out of Eden after they sinned. "

Quotation Four:
==========================
" Abel, Son of Adam and Eve, was on record in the Bible to sacrifice an animal to God: " Abel also brought some choice parts of the firstborn animals from his flock " The Lord approved of Abel and his offering, "  ( Genesis 4:4 ).

Quotation Five:
=========================
" People throughout the ancient Middle East sacrificed animals to their gods. It was a familiar ritual long before Moses came along and declared it God's official law for the Jews. "

Quotation Six:
=========================
" As the Bible puts it, God told Moses to explain the sacrificial system this way: " The life of each creature is in its blood. So I have given the blood of animals to pay for your sin on the alter. Blood is life. That is why blood pays for your sin "  ( Leviticus 17:11 NIRV ). "

Quotation Seven:
=========================
" Human sin. They deserve to die for it, Bible writers teach. But God allows guilty humans to pay for their sins by killing animal as substitutes. "

Quotation Eight:
=========================
" Jews had sacrificed animals to God for several centuries before Moses. "

Quotation Nine:
=========================
" Abraham, the father of the Jews ( and the Arabs ), is famous for almost sacrificing his son. But God gave Abraham a last--second substitute: " When Abraham looked around him, he saw a ram behind him caught by its horn in a bush. So Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son "  ( Genesis 22:13 ). "

Quotation Ten:
========================
 Jews continued offering sacrifices for some 2,000 years --until the Romans leveled the Jerusalem temple while crushing a Jewish revolt in AD 70.

Quotation Eleven:
========================
" Jews no longer sacrifice animal. Instead, they ask God's forgiveness through prayer. "

Quotation Twelve:
========================
" But as the Bible tells it, Jews have been doing all that all along, in addition to offering sacrifices: " Let my prayer be accepted as sweet smelling incense in your presence. Let the lifting up of my hands in prayer be accepted as an evening sacrifice "   ( Psalm 11:2 ). "

Quotation Thirteen:
========================
" New Testament writers describe Jesus as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices:" He offered a sacrifice once for all, when he gave himself " ( Hebrew 7:27 CEV ). "

Final Words:
========================
There is some discrepancy in the quotations as quoted in the foregoing I will not go in detailing all of them--just referring to one is sufficient:

Since God's initial warning to Adam and Eve was that they would die if they ate from the tree of knowledge, why he did not kill them after they ate from it ?  Instead of killing them, He just kicked them out of Eden. The question is: Why ??

Perhaps to make them and their decedents, ( the human race ),suffer in endless violence, blood shed and endless wars. If He killed them, there would not have been a human race, unless He created another couple, Adam--2 and Eve--2, who would abide by God's instructions to the fullest and stay away from the tree of knowledge, Of course, this is a tall assumption which has stemmed from the fact as presented in Quotation Two, as quoted above.

END. 

Quotations From The Answer To Question (23) Of The " 100 Tough Questions about God And The Bible " By Stephen M. Miller.

By Sodium

Re-citing Question (23):
===========================
" How could Moses have spent forty years in the desolate badlands on the border between what is now Israel and Egypt, with 2 to 3 million refugees ?  That's a bit like Chicago in Death Valley.

Stephen Miller starts his answer, to the question quoted above, by asking an additional question: " What to believe, Math, ( Mathematics ), or miracles  " Then, he offers the following selected quotations as part of his integrated answer:

Quotation One:
===========================
" Here the Bible math: "There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, plus all the women and children "  ( Exodus 12:37 ) "

Quotation Two:
===========================
" To be exact: " The grand total of men who were at least 20 years old and eligible for military duty was 603,5550 " ( Numbers 1:45--46 ). "

Quotation Three:
===========================
" Let say  that on average there was one woman for every man and two kids for every couple--in a day when couples often had many more kids than that. Total about 2.5 million soul. That's roughly the population of Chicago, the third most populated city in the United States, after New York City and Los Angeles. "

Quotation Four:
===========================
" Let's say they crossed through the path God made for them in the sea and they walked nearly shoulder to shoulder in lines 100 yards wide. The back line would have been about 20 miles behind the front line.. "

Quotation Five:
===========================
" After the crossing, the Bible says these refugees spent forty years in the barren Sinai badland--- a Mars-like deathtrap with little water and not much green to sink their teeth into. "

Although Miller included, in his integrated answer, what some Bible experts and scholars attempted to find some sensible and rational explanations to what the Bible said, they, at the end, admitted they really had no idea how God could have pulled it out with such huge numbers of people lost in the bad land lands of Sinai.

Final Words:
===========================
Anyone who adheres firmly to what is written in the Bible, Stephen Miller's analysis, as presented in the above quotations, is not for him.or her. He or she should search some places else for a rational answer that might have been compatible with their belief

END.  

Quotations From The Answer to question (22) of the " 100 Tough Questions about God And The Bible " By Stephen M. Miller.

By Sodium

Re-citing Question (22):
==============================
" Fire and brimstone destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah--and Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt ?  Eidence ?

Quotation One:
==============================
" Twin sin cities Sodom and Gomorrah got themselves scorched off the planet, as the Bible tells it."

Quotation Two:
==============================
" The Lord made burning sulfur and fire rain out of heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah. He destroyed those cities, the whole plain, all who lived in the cities.... Lot's wife looked back and turned into a column of salt "  ( Genesis 19:24--26 ). "

Quotation Three:
==============================
At this point, Stephen Miller raised the question: " What kind of rain could do that ? "
And he answered his own question: " Not acid rain. " And he goes on to add that " no one would describe acid rain as " sulfur and fire. "  And acid rain doesn't wipe out entire cities. At least not yet. "

Stephen Miller discusses the following theories
(A) Snap, crackle and pop theory.
(B) Surfing turf theory.
(C) Fire and flood theory.
(D) It was a miracle Theory.

The following quotations are taken from the theories listed above, in the order they are listed.

Quotation Four, From Theory (A)
==============================
" An earthquake snapped open pockets of natural gas, according to this theory, Add flames from crackling campfires or village lamps and you get a big pop.

Quotation Five, From Theory (B):
==============================
" Ditto the snap, apcrackle, pop--but add a slide into the sea.
If the villages were built on sand beside the sea, an earthquake could have loosened the ground just long enough for gravity to pull the villages down the beachside slop and into the water.
That's a theory suggested by geologist Graham H. Harris and reported in the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, November 199. "

Quotation Six, From Theory (C):
==============================
" Again ditto snap, crackle, pop. But add a flash flood afterward, erasing the villages.
This theory puts the villages on a plain inside what is now the southern Dead Sea shallows. As this theory goes, the earthquake dropped the populated plain enough to allow the Dead Sea water to rush in from the north--almost doubling the size of the sea.

Quotation Seven, From Theory (D);
==============================
" Many Christians have never heard of any of these theory.
And some would not like them if they heard them.
For many believers, if not most, God did  a supernatural miracle when he seared Sodom and Gomorrah off his planet. No natural explanation would do."

Final Words:
==============================
No Comments.

 

A salute to Ms. Margot Wellstrom, Foreign Minister of Sweden.

By Sodium

The writer of this blog wishes to publicly salute Margot Wallstrom, the current Foreign Minister of Sweden, for what she has stated lately about the roots of the problems in the Middle East. She has hit the real score when she has said recently that the real cause of the violence and bloodshed in the Middle East has been the failure of finding a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I certainly could not agree with her more on what she has advocated. Reasons:

(1) Since the arrival of the destructive and fascist ideology of Zionism to the shores of Palestine from Eastern Europe and Russia initially, in late 19th century and early 20th century, the Middle East has been geared into the current violence and wars, ever since. Using the the seven words, " destructive and fascist ideology of Zionism " has not come from void, but from a life time knowledge of what has been taken place in Palestine. A bunch of hard core adherents to Zionism arrived to the shores of Palestine with determination to force the vast majority of Palestinians to leave their homes, lands and businesses into permanent exiles in the neighboring countries and across the globe. The writings of some Zionist founders and knowledgeable historians of Israel attest to this undeniable facts

(2) Balfour Declaration has committed Great Britain, whose military power of its navy in 1916 ruled the world then, to the establishment of what the world knows now as Israel. For deeper knowledge about what actually had taken place to extract this declaration from Great Britain in 1916, please review an essay that was titled ," Thoughts On Edward Said and T. E. Lawrence, " published on March 19, 2010, on this website.

(3) Sykes--Picot Accord has been the fundamental factor in keeping the Arab World and its people divided and weak and unable to find a solution for their manufactured disunity.For more depth on this accord, which was established secretly between Great Britain and France, in 1916--1917, could be found in an essay entitled, " Balfour Declaration And Sykes--Picot Accord are Roots Of Violence / Wars In Middle East, " published on July 13, 2014, on this website.

There are other reasons, which have to do with Arab political leaders who have failed to overcome their differences and, which, in turn, have made their Arab League ineffective and almost useless organization. But the main reasons remain those that have been cited above.

At any rate, Ms. Margot Wellstrom and the Swedish government, which she represents as its Foreign Minister, do deserve the admiration of every self--respecting human being, who strives for justice for the Palestinians. Wellstrom and her Swedish government have a profound understanding of the root causes that hocked the Middle East to such endless violence and endless wars. The Palestinians leaders and the leaders of the Arab world must reciprocate in kind. One way to do so is to provide Sweden preferences in trade, like importing Swedish products for their needs. For example, Swedish manufactured cars, such as Saab Models are reliable and of high quality and performance. So are the Volvo Models and Scania Models.I am not trying to advertise for these models of Swedish cars, but felt that the least I could do was to suggest something constructive to express my profound appreciation for the Swedish diplomatic honesty, courage and straightforwardness. And I am not a Palestinian.

Final Words:
========================
As the United States of America has emerged as the super power which has replaced Britain and France were in the 20th century, Zionism has moved its main public relations and political activities from Britain to the U.S.A. and gradually has succeeded in controlling what policy and eventually what legislation the American Congress should adopt towards the Middle East. With very few honest and independent congress persons, the vast majority of members of U.S.Congress has become subservient to what the Israel's Lobby, ( meaning Israel's political pressure groups ), dictates, to the self--serving congress men and women, what actions they must do when any issue concerning the Middle East comes up, for discussion, in the halls of congress.

When one witnesses how the members of Congress gave more standing ovations to the speeches addressed to them by the Prime Ministers of Israel than the numbers of standing ovations they had given to speeches,addressed to them by their own Presidents, one may not avoid not getting sad. In fact very sad, indeed. The difference between the honesty of the Swedish political leaders and their self-serving American counter-parts is like the difference between enlightenment and darkness, honesty and crookedness, courage and cowardice.

Humanity needs more Swedish honesty, Swedish courage and Swedish straightforwardness of the Wellstomish type in order to put an end to all violence and wars, not only in the Middle East, but across the globe.

END.