Quote Originally Posted by DuncanONeil View Post
Venial - venal, I never claim to be a typist. And being human I can make mistakes. But venial is most correct.
It wasn't my intention to correct your spelling or typing. I'm just trying to understand your meaning. By my dictionary, venial means, "Easily excused or forgiven; pardonable", which did not appear to apply to what I thought your were saying. Venal, meaning, "characterized by corruption" seemed more accurate. I'm sorry if I was wrong.

As for the reference. I read it. I have never been one to be very comfortable reading and using small parts of anything that is parsed as many verse quotes in the Bible.
I don't much care for it either, but this tactic is frequently used by those who wish to use the Bible to support their own positions.

Anyway I also am not one that claims the Bible is word for word the only criteria, nor that God concerned himself with day to day operations of humanity. Kind goes against the concept of free will! I did have a number of concerns with the reference, too short, and divorced from the situation at hand. Reading more of Samuel raised additional concerns.
Everything I was ever taught about the biblical God raised concerns for me. A God who is all good and all loving should not allow evil to exist, or allow innocents to be punished along with the guilty. A God who is all knowing contradicts the concept of free will, too. And if He knows something will happen, how can He become angry when it does?

No, everything I have learned tells me that, IF a god or gods created the universe, they did it for reasons we poor mortals cannot possibly comprehend, and believing that they did it just for us is a level of pride which would make one worthy of the biblical hell. As near as we can tell, our existence in this universe is the result of a nearly infinite series of cosmic accidents and random occurrences. One tiny change in that sequence eliminates humanity, as we know it, from the universe. And believe me, the universe would not miss us.