The bible

Let me just point out that anyone from the time those things were written would find it crazy that we DON'T force rapists to marry their victims.

 

That would be nice, but unfourtunatley the Bible cleary states in
John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.".
Therefore we should be able to conclude that if the religion of Christianity is true then surley all who don't repent shall burn.

Well I do recall quite alot of wars.

Deuteronomy 13:13-19
Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."

1 Samuel 15:2-3
This is what the Lord of hosts has to say: 'I will punish what Amalek did to Israel when he barred his way as he was coming up from Egypt. Go, now, attack Amalek, and deal with him and all that he has under the ban. Do not spare him, but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.

Jeremiah 50:21-22
Go up, my warriors, against the land of Merathaim and against the people of Pekod. Yes, march against Babylon, the land of rebels, a land that I will judge! Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you," says the LORD. "Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction"

Ezekiel 9:5-7
Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple." So they began by killing the seventy leaders. "Defile the Temple!" the LORD commanded. "Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!" So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.

That's like saying I can't judge Mein Kampf today or the Koran, because back then people didn't know better. All societys must be judged by todays standards in order to understand what moral is.

According to Jesus all rules of the bible must be followed.
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.

2 Peter 1:20-21
20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

It doesn't? Then would you mind explaining this for me?
Deuteronomy 13:7-12
If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of this, shall fear and never do such evil as this in your midst.
[/QUOTE]

 

He's talking about the Law of God. He's telling them that he isn't there to rip down religion and all it stands for, but to prove that he is going to show them what the both the Law of God and the prophercies mean. Jesus pratically yells at the people trading in the temple- he turns over a table in anger (he was a pacifist) because they have broken one of the laws God made, whereas the laws of the people had no problem with people making the temple a market.

This extract is about prophecies and prophets coming from God. Not rules, what have rules got to to do with prophercies?

Oh right, I was refering to one of Paul's letters to the Romans...
Well once again these instructions are targeted to a society where a lot of different gods were worshiped. In that society, killing your brother over religion was justifiable. Did these people ever expect for these rules to no longer apply? Of course not, just as much as you can not picture a world in the future where serial killing is legal. That's why they can be so blunt with their wording. Ask any historian who knows about this society and they will see nothing controversial, it's how the society operated. The reason the priest didn't bring this up is because it is not relevant to todays teachings as our society does not follow the ideas behind it.
Faith, on the other hand is timeless with regards to some of the Bible. That is the importance of it. Not the fact that some ruler said it was okay to kill your brother if he worshipped Posedion.

 

First of all I'd like to remind you that the person who made the commandments of killing billions of people is God. That is what your religion says. Your god is the one who told the isrealites to rape women , and smash babies heads against rocks. It was your God who told people to kill their brothers for worshiping other Gods, and to kill the adultrous, and the homosexuals.
Why do you feel the need to defend a book if you don't even agree with on 90% of teachings? I mean what are you trying to accomplish here?

 

I laugh at the hypocrisy you display. You talk about not agreeing with 90% of a text, and yet you only discuss parts of an argument that you think you can do the best at bringing down.
I said before that the Bible contains rules from the society made by the people. They may have heard from God or they may have just claimed to in order to get some leverage. People lie about God to get their way. It is all through history. The best example I can think of at the moment is King Henry VI of England. He made his own church and rules in it for his needs - there is little evidence that he honestly did it in divine inspiration. When I first mentioned that the Bible was written by man you argued that Jesus states he supports the law. When I explained it you simply turned a blind eye to it.

If it helps think of the Bible like a library - you've got your history sections, your fables, your songs etc. By quoting parts of the Bible which tell us some rules your reading in the history section and not the D.I.Y. section. But yet you are stating that this acient history is instructions on how to make a stable family in today's lifestyle? Or how we should respond to someone not being of our faith?

You can pick on the bad points of a book till the cows come home. But I've never heard someone complain about the parts that change people's lives for the better. The Bible changed my life because I knew and understood that the history section was something to take into account, so I know what the origins of my faith are. But the parts that have more bearing on my life are the 10% that does apply in todays society. That's why I defend the Bible.
I guess you are going to try and make an argument about the 90% of the points I'm making again. So instead of looking at the bad points, take a look of the 10% of good for a change?

 

Maybe so, but then that law isn't perfect; it's outdated at best, and can't be applied to our current social reality.

Personally I find that many passages of the Bible contain content that is at the very least questionable. The Bible also contains a number of very nice and admirable moral guidelines, but that doesn't mean we can completely ignore the undesirable passages.

It all comes down to whether you think that God is truly as perfect and loving as he claims he is, and that as such any moral choice he makes will always be better than yours. It's faith, just like any other aspect of the religion.

Also by making claims like "well at the time the rules made sense", "you have to consider the historical context", "people have edited/twisted the bible to fit their own ends" etc, you are basically admitting that while the book may have nice rules and ideas, it is not a "perfect" book like many christians say it is, at least not any more.

 

Yes, a blood sacrifice. God = Jesus. God sent this aspect of himself to earth to live, to do great deeds and then the end purpose was to -die-. Jesus's death was absolutely required to save people because God pretty much realized that no one could follow every rule he had given and that apparently people were so damned. Jesus was God. God was Jesus. He came to earth to say that if you believe in Jesus, his blood sacrifice makes it possible that even if you have sinned, you may come to Heaven. Of course, we have to wonder why Jesus then the night before prays and asks God does he really have to do this.. we can almost equate that in a way that Jesus was an aspect of God and that of course, God still had to do stuff so he wasn't going to be all there on earth. I think you get what I mean though. I did snerk at your Nobody comment. xD Kinda true.

It still doesn't dismiss the fact that Jesus did tell people that they should love him above all else and that he was to get between families etc. Yes, some of Jesus's messages were not bad and for -his time- he was a pacifist. However, the slave thing gets to me and so does the thing about telling women they should not speak out in public on important matters, but only to their husbands at home. It showed that still, women and slaves are just that. All slaves. I agree that today is a different time, but that doesn't excuse everything for me, as God should see into the future, as he is omniscient. Surely, he should have known all of the blood that would be shed from the things in the Bible and Jesus himself did say that the rules of the Old Testament hold true. He just came to give people a break. In the end, everyone is apparently accountable, to include God/Jesus, or the sacrifice wouldn't have been needed in the first place. What I don't get is why any sacrifice was needed at all if God is all powerful. Why didn't he just say 'these rules are obviously too much so I'll tone down some and if you just believe in me, you can come up to Heaven'. Wouldn't that have been easier...and less messy? People for years condemned Jews for killing Jesus, let alone all the other things done, all because of this sacrifice.

Unfortunately you are a more passive Christian. There are plenty of Christians who are growing more aggressive and insisting that this is not the case. Even with the Catholic Church toning down its views and the former Pope accepted Evolution etc, we have a rise of more violent Christians such as some Southern Baptists and the Evangelicals, which condemn nearly everything anymore. We seem to be digressing, rather than improving. I hope you'll keep that attitude.

In the end, the Bible is very violent. Most people never even read the whole thing and they really should. It has its gems in there too but it is a very rough book. That is the problem with the Bible. It was written by various people and it is not consistent. There are areas that really do disagree with others. In the end, people must take what they want from the book and the rest, they have to just gloss over. I just wish there wasn't so much violence in there so that the religious extremists would stop using that as their cornerstone.

 

You can laugh at the so call hypocrisy all you want, but the fact of the matter is statisticly if I grabbed a law from the bible in a bag where 90% of them are negative chances are I am going to remark on the negative part first since those are the ones that concern me the most.

But if you insist lets count them off by starting with the Ten Commandments:

I Thall shall have no other Gods before me, for I your God am a jelous God.
II Thall shall not make/worship idols.
I do not agree with these two commandments at all. Since the god of abraham(G.O.A) is not the only god that threatens nobelievers with a form of punisment. I think being multi-religious would be ludicrous, but if you really want to seal your chances of reward I say go for it. Unless the G.O.A is going to show diffinitive proof of his existance other than a religious doctrine, which I remind you there is one for almost all religions, then it must be placed on an equal ground with all other religions.
III Do not use my name in vain.
IV Take a day off and use it to worship me.
This commandment was also backed up with the idea of stoning people if they worked on the sabbath. Work has to be done. I understand that on sundays/sauturdays you need to hang with your bud, but somtimes you got to end session early.

V Honor your parents
VI Don't kill.
I would add to this one "Don't kill any form of life for selfish reasons, for example, fauna, insects, and mushrooms. Mutulation of any creature is a sin. All of life is related to you biologicly, treat them with the utmost respect.
If you are in need of substanance only take what you need, and never take the life of any specie if it is endangered. Be kind to your livestock by giving them wide open fields to enjoy themselves. When the time comes to collect the harvest make their death quick.
VII Don't commit adultrey.
Do not cheat on your spouse/ girlfriend.
Make sure to use protection
VIII Don't steal
IX Don't lie
Unless it's neccesary.
X Don't covet.
Coveting is human nature; however the real meaning behind this commandment is not to take action upon your covet. To covet is to want somthing/someone. If you covet a women and act upon your covet by raping her then you must be punished. If you covet an item and then forcefully take take it you shall be punished.

Didn't mean to rant there about the ten commandments. I like the one quote that Jesus made " It is easier to see the splinter in your neighbor's eyes than the log in your own". I cannot think of anything else at the top of my mind.

How can you tell divine inspiration from insanity, or insanity from bull crap?
The awnser is simple: A gut decision, or as I would like to call it a hypothesis.
Once again I must ask why God commanded these men to rape, pillage and plunder. If you think God did not do it then you are not reading the bible right. If 90% of the bible is corrupt, or just complete made up **** (for example Jonha and the big fish, or Balaam's talking donkey) then why should anyone believe the other 10% is?
I would understand if you were talking in the terms of a fictional story where there is a moral but it is all a fictional story. But at this I am aloss.

Ah, I see. My bad.

God made it clear in black and white that is how you must run a faimly. You This leads me to the conclusion that God is a jerk. Even the ideal of hell makes him look like a jerk. If he didn't want me in hell then surley he could save all the souls from the lake fire easily without having his son crucified.
On top of all that he offers us his gift of forgivness without ever showing his face, and somehow we are supposed to shuffle through all the religions of the world and randomly perclaim that Jesus is the way.
We are talking about the person who created over 50 sextillion stars in the universe, with all the planets and comets orbiting them in one day. Surley such a powerful being could conclude that pillaging a village because they don't believe in you is not right. Surley such a being could conclude that evidence is better than blind faith???

 

Yeah.

Punishing people eternally for not returning your love is...well, questionable at best. Don't we usually frown on that kind of behavior, and have laws to prevent it?

What exactly is the point of hell anyway? You're not going to be able to apply anything you learn there elsewhere, you have no reason to want to learn anything, because you're going to be there forever anyway, with no chance for redemption. It's punishing for the sake of punishing.

 

Also, the actual Commandment is 'Thou shalt not -murder-', rather than 'kill'. To kill because God allows it and it is permitted by the laws ordained is just fine. However, to kill someone when it is not 'the will of God' is to murder and that is a heinous sin. This is important to note as the Ten Commandments are often misinterpreted and it also expresses why people feel they can kill in the name of their God but otherwise it should be frowned upon heavily.

And yes, Hell is a rather silly concept if you think on it but many religions have their versions. There's Hel for the Norse Mythos, Hades for the Greeks/Romans, etc. It made more sense in those religions and in Egyptian culture as well. The individual gods weren't all made out to be all knowing, all powerful and all loving and all jealous at the same time. Even then though, souls went to the bad places because in their lives they were seen as more bad than good. Some souls in stories could even be redeemed to leave the bad place. In Christian Hell though, there's no redemption once you are in Hell. You will suffer for all eternity. It really does make no sense to me at all and is just the ultimate scare tactic, which to me is vastly unneeded. Considering 90 some percent of criminals in prison in the U.S. are Christian... the message fails hard, doesn't it?