Holy cow... You two are going to make me cry, i swear.
The first issue, Kas is right. Swearing by gods name is saying that you wont break this oath. Hence, dont use the lord's name in vane.
Secondly...
The bible is not freaking ment to be taken freaking literally!
Only the fundies do that, and the fundies are going to be the death of christianity if everyone thinks that they are all that there is!
Tell me, do you really belive that God would kill ANYONE? I mean, think about this! We're talking about God here! Do you truely belive that when somebody touched the arc, the laws of nature were reversed and he just died on the spot?
DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENCE AT ALL? No!
Now, I don't believe in him for personal reasons, but if he did exist, I would not worship him and spend most of my time trying to find how to scientifically copy gods' genetic makeup (assuming he's organic, since we were apparently made in his image) and copy his powers to create an alternate divine fate for humans where death does not result in some arbitrary judgement based on oft silly laws.
What? WHAT?? WHAT?!?!?!?!?
Where in heck did you get that from? If you think that "Created in his image" means created with the same genetic makeup... then you are beyond help. I mean, seriously...
Now, on a calmer-milkshake note:
Basically, dolash, i agree with what you belive moralistically. Almost. The thing is you have got the entire religion thing all screwed up in your head. You have, apparently, read the bible like a book with this in your head: "Well, if its true, its gotta be absolutely literal. So, if its true, the world was created magically out of thin air with a couple of people and a gardin of paradise, and whenever anybody touches the arc of covenent they die. Wait, they die? What? Whats this here? God flooded the world? How many people would that have killed? DANG!!! God is freaking violent, I hate this guy!"
Has it occured to you that it is scientifically impossible for the world to be created like that. The story is merely there to show gods deep omnipresence and oomnipotence which i can accept that i don't even begin to understand.
The entire bible is like that! I mean, the old testimant. The new testimant is a completely different story. It can be taken MMMMMUUUUUCCCCCHHHHH more literally. And tell me, did Jesus ever kill anyone? NO!!!!!! And he could have, too! killing the roman gaurds at the garden of jesime (sp) would have saved his skin! But he didn't!
Yes, so as i was saying, the whole old testamant is like that. Every little bit of it can be proven scientifically wrong even if just in some little way. But it all has its moralistic meaning anyway! And that is WAAAAAAY more important than what happened in 2400 B.C. Its more like... a story.
Bananas