Its hilarious when one points out the immoral traditions in the bible and Christians evade the truth by claiming everything changed under the New Testament. That’s BS! Not only is there immoral crap in the New Testament, Christ admits he did not come to abolish anything.
They need to read ESV Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
When it comes to “cherry picking” Christians love to ignore this verse. Christian intentional ignorance never ceases to amaze me.
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Matthew 10:34
34"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35"For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; 36and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.
So when a Taliban rapes your wife, give him a bed to sleep right next to your bed room.
That would surly bring division in the family, like Jesus wants.
I bet your christian wife will have no objection and give the other cheek.
I LOVE mathew, he is so clear lol
Why ridicule? You have simply no understanding of the bigger picture in the bible. You act like you know the book and can.speak on theological issues, but you know nothing. You cherry pick you own verses and take them out of context to suit your own arguments. I dont understand all the animosity toward believers and the source of our beliefs the bible. If atheists feel so superior and more intelligent, then be the bigger person and drop the issue when you think would be Christians are wrong or crossing the line.
And know also that you dont know every single believer and cant just lunk us all into the same category just because youve had bad experiences with one or two. Ive met atheists who are rude, arrogant, combative, and downright obnoxious, but i dont allow those experiences to color my view of all who identify themselves that way. We must reason together, not bark like mad dogs. One of us is right, and knowing the truth can be absolutely life changing.
Dude you came out all guns blazing here! Did this one hit a nerve or do you always speak like this?
I like to encourage Christians to defend the sections of the Bible they prefer to avoid. Do you think ownership of humans by humans as property immoral?
I like to encourage Christians to defend the sections of the Bible they prefer to avoid. Do you think ownership of humans by humans as property immoral?
Sorry I was talking to jimmy here.
Yes I do think slavery is immoral. Pretty sure we've had this conversation ImFree!
The following passage shows that slaves are clearly property to be bought and sold like livestock.
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)
The following passage describes how the Hebrew slaves are to be treated.
If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)
Notice how they can get a male Hebrew slave to become a permanent slave by keeping his wife and children hostage until he says he wants to become a permanent slave. What kind of family values are these?
The following passage describes the sickening practice of sex slavery. How can anyone think it is moral to sell your own daughter as a sex slave?
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
So these are the Bible family values! A man can buy as many sex slaves as he wants as long as he feeds them, clothes them, and screws them!
What does the Bible say about beating slaves? It says you can beat both male and female slaves with a rod so hard that as long as they don't die right away you are cleared of any wrong doing.
When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)
You would think that Jesus and the New Testament would have a different view of slavery, but slavery is still approved of in the New Testament, as the following passages show.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)
Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)
In the following parable, Jesus clearly approves of beating slaves even if they didn't know they were doing anything wrong.
The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. "But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)
My question to beneames: is the god in the bible immoral?
This is obviously an important one to you because you keep bringing it up. Is there any particular reason that slavery is a bugbear of yours?
Christians haven't kept slaves for the last couple hundred years - you're a little late on that conversation. Here are some of the points that were made during that discussion....
- The Bible is not a rule book but a record of a nation's developing understanding of who God is and how he wants us to live in relation to God, other people and the world. The early verses you quoted are from the very beginning of the story, over 4000 years ago. There was a lot of development in maturity and understanding since then. There are a lot of things they got completely wrong back then, and then as they grew in understanding they adapted their ways to suit.
- Slavery is one that took a long time to mature. Even in our "civilised" world today there are still something like 20million slaves - despite the fact that the vast majority of people believe it's wrong.
- God doesn't reveal everything at once. The Bible is like a gradual revealing (revelation). There will be things we are learning in 500 years that we just couldn't comprehend right now (if we're still around). I think God respects human discovery in this respect.
- Slavery was an unfortunate part of how the empire worked in the time of the early church, like petrol-driven cars are s part of our own culture. We know we are killing the environment but you can't just say "Ok, everybody stop using petrol vehicles starting from today." So you teach people how to operate within a faulty culture instead, until the time when you can actually do something about it (Wilberforce). You have to change people's worldviews first. This is what the New Testament passages you quoted are doing. If you are a slave, be respectful of your master, and do a good job (this is basic human dignity). The reports of the early church show that they did this, UNLESS the master was being abusive. Same principle applies to government. Paul encouraged churches to respect the government and their leadership, but to do what they can to right any wrongs when necessary.
- It looks bad in hindsight, but I imagine people 200 years from now will look back at us too in horror, thinking "I can't believe they were still doing that...."
- That parable is a parable and if you think Jesus is using it to say people can beat slaves, you've got no idea about either Jesus or how parables work.
I'll rest my case: the god of the Judea/Christian bible is immoral.
Wow. That response makes me wonder if I could have said "My nose is a red bus" and you would have heard the same thing.
You are defending the Bible out of the perspective that it is to be loosely interpreted, to give us hints and guidance.
For lack of a better term I would say you are an "Evolved Christian" (that is a compliment :).
Unfortunately, many millions of Christians think the Bible IS a rule book, and claim that without it we humans have no morals.
Because of this,
they believe in a literal sense and quote just as much from the OT as the NT.
they justify their repression of race, gender, age, handicap, and sexual preferences.
they think that the Bible and the Church are beyond questioning, and are therefore against any scientific progress or changes of the Biblical rules.
they look forward to the rapture, convinced that they are righteous (justifying their own shortcomings with cherry picking).
From this perspective the Bible and Christianity is not only a problem, but a threat to the future of humankind and our environment. The major problem with "Evolved Christians" is that they are not doing anything to stop the fanatics and their insane agendas. And that is all the help the fanatics need to flourish.
(This is ofcourse true for Islam and Judaism as well.)
Now gods morality is progressively relative? Wow, so much for the "moral argument".
No, but people's understanding of God's morality is progressively maturing. I think there are ideals that God wants for the world, like peace, freedom, equality and fairness, ending poverty, bringing beauty and order to the world, healing for brokenness.... Jesus talked about a future kingdom of heaven - a world where these ideals are finally realised. In the New Testament there's a distinct move away from rules and towards virtues. The idea is for people to figure out for themselves what is right and wrong, based on virtues like compassion, justice, peace etc. This kind of thing requires not just individuals but whole societies to mature over time. My understanding of God is that he encourages people to move forward in mature and just directions, and is willing to help if we want him to, but the earth is a gift to us and we are free to grow it or destroy it however we see fit. This is why we all need to keeping working towards a better world (like eliminating slavey and extreme poverty, providing education and bringing justice to the powerless).
LOL beneames, your logic as always is based on bias that it requires a god for such a thing.
Replace your "god" in your own sentences with "a very wise person" and suddenly you god is just a human.
There is simply no need for your theistic idea of god to exist, even from your own sentences.
The problem here is that if morality is absolute, in which case slavery was always wrong, then god was telling the Jews to do immoral things. We can hem and haw all day about "progressive revelation" but that is simply another way of saying that gods commands were moral at the time, which is moral relativism, putting god in no better position morally than any human.
Yea but here beneames if mixing what the people do with what god did order.
Basically he is saying that we should take every evil immoral thing we find in the bible as something added by the people at the time or that god had to restrict himself to get down to the morality of the people of the time for their own good in some 2000 years later.
This is BS, if god was anything close to be a good moral person he would give the example and not follow the evil immoral humans and give specific orders to do evil things.
Even worse, let his own revealed book be so vague that the most horrible people could use it to promote even more evil in his name.
beneames is just displaying how biased he is in his religion and clearly showing that he cannot be objective even when shown direct evidence and proof that the bible is evil in practically all it's concepts.
Thus he is trying to shift it's blame from his idea of god.
This happens when someone starts his research for the truth from the answer.
That is actually a huge problem, though. If I assume that all of the immoral things in the bible are the ramblings of madmen, then I can just as easily assume that the moral things are too, as I would have no reason to believe that any divine inspiration went into it at all. If I assume that this god was merely working with what he had, then its moral pronouncements are relative, and no more binding or true than the morals of a society. In either case, it is a HUGE blow to the biblical god, as it strips away any veneer of authority or benevolence.
It also strips away the tri-omni stuff. I'm hearing that their god gave them rules by which to live. Then that god sat back and let the rules 'cook' for centuries so that they could become a different, more mature set of rules.
If their god considers slavery (rape, incest, etc.) wrong today, why the hell would that god not give them the rule then that it is wrong? Perhaps their god just changed its mind? Their god gave them plenty of rules, why not include these newer ones?
No doubt the human race is maturing. It will continue to do so. It appears to me, however, that this maturation has taken place despite a god instead of because of one.
Yeh, it's really funny to know that there are part of the bible where Christians used to ignore but there are part that they keep on reading and explaining about.
That may be the case with many who call themselves Christians, but such is not my case. I ignore no part of the Bible and would be more then willing to answer any issue.
Everything you sprouted on this topic is ignoring the points and making unsupported claims.
Your entire reply do not explain those parts i quoted from your bible.
it is just you renting about something I did not say.
I never said that I judge you because you are a christian.
I judge you because of your actions and your actions show that you ignore the bad parts I quoted and constantly change subject.
“Why ridicule?”
Thanks so much for getting me started. : ) I love conveying to the public the reality of the Bible. I’m tired of preachers and their believer sheep ignoring the cruel criminal barbarism that the Bible advocates. Your fictional psychopath of a God, is responsible for rape, mass-murders, theft, plunder, slavery, child abuse and even the killing of unborn children. If you consider the bible as an inspiration how to live, you need to read outside your cherry-picked verses, which I’m more than happy to provide.
“You have simply no understanding of the bigger picture in the bible. You act like you know the book and can.speak on theological issues, but you know nothing.”
I damn sure do and you’re the one making blind assertions. For your information, I was indoctrinated at a private Church of Christ school first through the eighth grade. Bible study was forced as was daily chapel attendance and participation in the chapel service once a week. Two weeks of the year I was forced to attend three hours of lectureship in the morning and evening. Fortunately, my parents allowed me to go to public school after the eighth grade. The fact you made that blind assertion shows you’re the one that knows nothing. Like most theists you believe what you want to believe regardless of evidence to the contrary. “You just have to have faith.” Sound familiar?
“You cherry pick you own verses and take them out of context to suit your own arguments.”
Ahhhh….the old “out of context” dodge to avoid answering the inconvenient portions of your bible. Here is a great cartoon of that desperate defense: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK7P7uZFf5o You probably use that often out of necessity since the bible is full of immoral acts.
“I dont understand all the animosity toward believers and the source of our beliefs the bible. If atheists feel so superior and more intelligent, then be the bigger person and drop the issue when you think would be Christians are wrong or crossing the line.”
Well….that’s because you are not subjected to and have not experienced the animosity atheists are targeted with. How would you feel if you worked for a company that called everybody to prayer five times a day (be sure and remove your shoes) and by not participating you would be targeted for harassment and eventual termination? That’s what Christians do by targeting captive audiences at work for prayer sessions to see who doesn’t bow their head. Once identified, they can later be targeted for proselytization, harassment and eventual termination if resisted. I love the hypocrisy shown by Christians in this incident where their captive audience strategy backfired and they were subjected to the same: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/09/27/scalia-law-backfires-pagan-praye...
Dropping the issue when atheists are currently in the minority when Christians are wrong can have costs. Being the “bigger person” as you phrased it just means a bigger target.
“And know also that you dont know every single believer and cant just lunk us all into the same category just because youve had bad experiences with one or two. Ive met atheists who are rude, arrogant, combative, and downright obnoxious, but i dont allow those experiences to color my view of all who identify themselves that way. We must reason together, not bark like mad dogs. One of us is right, and knowing the truth can be absolutely life changing.”
It makes little difference whether you “lunk” theists together in the same category when your in the atheist minority. Sure some may be act civil, but they have plenty of the rabid type that will try to attack you one way or another. They have their churches and social grapevines that will relay atheist”s identities for property vandilization and job harassment. Such harassment “can be absolutely life changing.” I don’t trust theists…period.
Once again you beat me to the punch, Jeff. Anyways, I never understood how/why theist suggest a misunderstanding/out of context argument. How can you argue for an ideal, such as Christianity, that has no unified doctrine? There are over 33,000 denominations of Christianity alone. I mean come on, someone has to be wrong somewhere, if not all. Just doesn't make sense.
33,000...? Where in the world did you get that information?
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/a106.htm
I thought that figure was a bit exaggerated but yes, if you count in all the christian variations, protestants and independent, it seems he is correct on the figure.
Appreciate the back up, Jeff. Does anyone from either side have an answer to this notion? My point being, one can not defend perception. Especially when the doctrines they study were preceived and cherry pick,accordingly to the translators, before they even got ahold of it. Issues such as the trinity and Jesus being the devine son of god were all voted on by the Council of Nicea. For all those who don't know about the council, it was a meeting of all the Bishops of Rome conducted by Emperor Flavian Constitine after he sacked Rome in the name of the Christian God in an attempt to unify a cannon. Aka, designing Christianity. Before then, the doctrines were even more radically diverse than they are now. Here are some subjects that were voted upon at the council, Christmas Day, Easter, the Cross, Jesus's divinity, Jesus being the son of God, and most importantly, which books went into and which ones should be left out of the Bible. So yea, tell me again how your perception is correct.
Hmm
Constantine was most likely a pagan(from new evidence)
However he might have christian lineage of the flavian bloodline.
The arch of Constantine shows that Constantine was pagan, which means the church painted him in a christian light throughout history.
He surly did support Christianity but his christian support was overblown by later christian sources payed by the church propaganda.
This include Constantine vision.
Constantine most likely thought of himself as superior to any other gods just like most emperors of that time.
Even in his tomb he puts 6 apposes on each side.
The Church says that he was the 13'th apostle but from what he did, it seems that he is taking the place of Jesus in the middle.
Enjoy this unbiased non christian documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgvRF8xRcyE
They have a nice and long logical convulsion that explains away the 603 Mitzvot that they don't follow.
From what I've read about him, it defiantly seems as if he used Christianity as a tool of war. He didn't fight under a Christian banner when the wars first began. He adopted Christianity during the war under advice from a Bishop. Can't very well claim a devine backing when both sides claim the same god, now can we? He won a few battles then hollered God was on his side and that create moral and fear. This is the guy that made Christianity mainstream, makes you wonder what's really going on. Not to mention his ties to the Flavian's.
Foolishness and conjecture seem to run amuck when atheists are left unchecked.
"This is the guy that made christianity mainstream"
Really??? Really????? No. That man was Jesus Christ.
"Christianity has NO unified doctrine"
So i guess that the belief in an all powerful God who created everything and then came as a man who died for our sins so that we can have salvation and eternal life does not count then.
Its funny but if you notice, atheists are not exactly unified either. The only thing they can agree on is that they think theres no God.
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