Killconey

I think that what this debate could use is for everyone to get together and eat some pizza while watching Dogma and Life of Brian. Then we could all laugh at sacrilige happily. I think that this whole "God on Trial" concept would make a wonderful dark comedy.

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Look out for numbers two and up and they'll look out for you.

Lebell

Killconey,

Two of my favorite movies.

Comon over, I've got em both on dvd and we'll pop some popcorn and make a nite of it.

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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papermachesatan

Lebell, Cheerios, chavos:
What you're saying is that the standards of the people for which the Bible was written and ONLY the standards of the people for which it was written in order to determine Biblical morality. That means:

-Goebels advocation of the Holocaust during WWII was morally correct.
-Southern slave holders were correct in their actions, because their society accepted slavery.
-Spaniards were morally correct in their slaughter of Native Americans because that was morally acceptable to Spaniards at the time.

Your moral reasoning is basically flawed, because it absolves people of their overriding responsibilities to mankind in general.

During the Old Testament, God ordered Moses to kill 3,000 people because they attempted to worship an idol. The Book of Esther decries the inherent evil of a woman who refuses to display herself for her husband's dinner guests. How are these to be taken allegorically?

The only way to determine Biblical morality is to examine the Bible, and not the actions of Christians in general. According to you, I have NO responsibility to people of the future and people are essentially absolved of their responsibilities towards other people.

Sorry for lateness in my reply. I've been kind of busy so my reponses may be somewhat delayed.

cheerios

satan: there is no black and white right or wrong answer to this. when you look at Goebels advocation of the holocaust (I haven't had the dubious pleasure of reading that one, just grabbing one where I'm pretty sure of hte content), you see it through the filter of your own morality and experiences. The nazi's who read it saw it through a very different filter. To them, it was right. to us, itwas wrong. but are we Correct? who knows. there are many today who would say "no." I'm not advocating racism or genocide here, don't get me wrong. but I'm standing by my point tath you can't seperate a text from it's cultural context. because the author has a filter on his eyes, too, and that effects what he writes. and even the bible was written by someone, and that someone was not god, so there is cultural flavoring there. If you refuse to see that flavoring, instead judging a text purely "objectively" which just means by YOUR personal morality, then taht's fine. and in taht case, to you, you are right. but I cannot see through your eyes, and i cannot agree with your morality.

God ordered Moses to kill people for worshipping false idols. in the old testamate. (damn that's spelled wrong. apologies, scholars). now, as far as i understand it, the old testamate is god slapping down the rules, and the new testamate is jesus telling us how to follow them. so, before jesus came, would it not be fair to assume we were having a hard time w/ this whole rule-following thing? and then, maybe, God may have gotten a bit pissed about this? just like any other caring parent? have you ever been spanked? kinda the same thing. Or so I understand things, and someone w/ more biblical knowledge may come through and bitchslap me down, and that's okay, 'cuz it's not my forte, by any means. BUT, without knowing that the new testimate is the one there to guide OUR actions, today, because that's the whole damn reason Jesus was here in the first place, isn't reading the old testamate kinda silly? 'cuz all you see is this big bad man in the clouds smiting people and shit when they don't do what he says. and what kind of scary religion is that. you can't judge a religion, or it's morality, based on only one part of the picture. gotta take it all in, man.

how is this so? I'm not saying that you should have NO morality, only that if you take it from the bible, then it needs to be taken from the teachings of Jesus, because that's what he came for, and if you are a dedicated christian, you will know that.

now, after all this discussion would you believe I'm not christian?

papermachesatan

my apologies for the delay in response:
So the Slave holders weren't in the wrong because, through their filter, they viewed slavery as acceptable? So the spandiards weren't wrong in killing native americans because they did not view it as wrong.

I was operating that under the assumption that you were in agreement that murder, etc. is wrong. Under such assumptions, we would have been in common agreement over the immorality of certain actions(i.e. religious intollerance, racism, murder, etc.). If those were true, we could view a statement and assess it's morality.





Not even close to being the same thing. If God were a parent, child services would be paying him a visit.

As I said before, if you disregard the old testament, my statements regarding chrisitanity in this thread do not apply to you.

[/quote] 'cuz all you see is this big bad man in the clouds smiting people and shit when they don't do what he says. and what kind of scary religion is that.[/quote]
It's the sort of religion that a good portion of christians(i.e. fundamentalists) follow.

One half of the Bible. A significant portion and unless it's disregarded, it does affect your religion.


how is this so? I'm not saying that you should have NO morality, only that if you take it from the bible, then it needs to be taken from the teachings of Jesus, because that's what he came for, and if you are a dedicated christian, you will know that.[/quote]
If you disregard the most repulsive half the of the Bible(Old Testament), you're already better off.

chavos

Nope. The OT isn't intrinsicially smite laden than the New Testament. There are passages of violence and death in both, and passages of mercy and love in both. It's a pretty common misconception, but one that is quickly disproved by reading the text.

I also think that Christians ought to deal with these passages instead of "disregarding" them. Much better to retain them as a negative example, than to forget the mistakes of the past.

papermachesatan

Oh because the OT has some examples of mercy/love, it's alright in Deuteronomy 6.15 when God kills you because you worshipped the wrong God?

The injustices told by the Bible aren't cancelled out because some examples of mercy and love are present.

So regard them as mistakes and don't follow them. Disregard them as rules to follow, as I said.

chavos

Look, i obviously stated that this material should be regarded as a negative example...things not to do or follow. Thanks for reading.

papermachesatan

You said: The OT isn't intrinsicially smite laden than the New Testament.

The Bible espouses the injustices along with the mercy and the love equally. If you can sort out the good stuff from the bad and determine what is and isn't the negative example, then you already don't need the Bible, do you?

chavos

Need the bible for what? If you wanted to use it as an easy answer manual, yeah, you'd have to edit it a ton, and probably throw a lot of it out. But that's not the point of it. There is a ancient midrash that in the debate of who the most rightious man of the Old Testament was, several rabbis came down to Noah and Abraham. They chose Abraham since he had bargained and arguerd with God to try to save mankind from God's wrath. The point of believing in God is relationship, not passive acceptance of a litany of rules and maxims. The point of the Bible is engagement, not simple responses or ease of understanding. To sort out what the texts mean, i choose to take my part in the tradition of interpretation and exegesis that seeks to honor God, much the same as the human authors of our texts sought to honor God.

Just seems to me that you're taking a very apocolpytical world view, a legacy from the time of Christ. Most of the mediteranean world believed in the degredation of the world, and that things were not the way they used to be. From this came the notion that prophets had ceased to come, and that the revelations of God were drawing to a close. This shows up in a lot of Paul's writings, specifically 1 Corinthians. Anyhoo, the point is that the whole idea of the Bible as a fixed and immutable thing is human idol, and not reflective of its true gift.

You can tell me that the whole of it ought to be one nice moral fairy tale, but it isn't. It is a complicated, contradictory and difficult book. And that isn't bad. If you want to read it as the word of God, dictated from Heaven, that might be a little tough, but the point is that there were human authors. This is not a stone tablet, this an evolving tradition. And you can say that it's evolving soley by human minds, and not by the power of God. But that assumes that God has ceased to operate, and that we can learn nothing more of God through experience. I'd say that's a pretty gaping assumption.

Raisins31

Whoever or whatever God is, God is 100x smarter than any human will ever be. He sees what you cannot see, He knows what you cannot know. The whole argument is religiously ridiculous.

Besides if one were going to charge God why not then charge him for the entire history and current state of humanity claiming He should have used his abilities to end world hunger and war?

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~NR

LDeer

Why not?

archer2371

You talk of bringing God up on charges? What about Satan? If you're going to start charging deities why not lump them all into one trial here? I mean this is ridiculous. This is a classic example of taking things waaaaayyyyy out of context. You talk about when Noah built the Ark and when God flooded the Earth as Genocide. However, was not a way out given to those people that drowned? Did they not have the ability to say, hmmm, I'm gonna get on this boat so I don't drown and die! Soddom and Gommorah, they were given a chance to repent, they could have, but they didn't. If you actually read what was going on you'll see that these instances of what you say is murder and genocide is punishment because they wouldn't repent. Come on now, be reasonable, start looking for the good in the Bible instead of trying to point out every little misnomer that you think can discredit a supreme being who is all powerful.

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"This ain't no Ice Cream Social!"

"Hey Grif, Chupathingy...how bout that? I like it...got a ring to it."

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