If They Can Quote Bible Verses, So Can We

Hemant, I disagree with most of your posts but this is one of those that float by from time to time which I agree with. If the Christians had a better understanding of the Bible they’d probably realise that bit they quoted was not meant for such use. And yes, if they can write down scripture, so can the Atheists and Jews.

“that bit they quoted was not meant for such use” who decides what bits can be used for what?

I tried posting a link to this story with the comment “Tell the full story WBOC, not just the ‘safe’ one,” on their Facebook wall, but they deleted it within minutes.

Servass, I find it frustrating when Christians critical of non-believers and apologists fail to adequately explain what they mean. What don’t these Christians understand about the bible? And if you disagree with most of Hemant’s posts I hope you can explain it more clearly so we can understand where you are coming from. But if you are coming from a belief in a sky god, be ready to provide some convincing evidence or you will be wasting your time here.

Whether the Christians in this situation have the right understanding or not (whatever that means to you) isn’t really relevant to the issue, is it? It’s enough to say that those who exercised their equal rights were wrongly (if unofficially) punished for doing so.

By the way, the Christian group misquoted the verse anyway. It does not say “Only fools say” it says “The fool has said.” 

The Old Testament reads like a really good porno at some points. My favorite defense against OT quotes “Christians recognize the Old Testament as history, not as a way to live” – One counters with the 10 commandments and it’s always about Jesus’ 2 commandments. Love God, love each other.  I guess ignorant masses need simplicity? In the end, I guess freedom of speech only applies as long as it conforms to what is deemed socially acceptable- I think that tide is changing quickly though. As to news spin…Surprise, right?

I’m pretty impressed with the dean in this case. I was expecting things to go poorly and the story turned towards the good. The media coverage though? Not so much.

Yes, but they are staying  true to form…christians are always twisting the words  in the bible around to fit their agenda.

I remember being 14 and hearing the story of Lot’s daughters being offered to the crowd of horny men, and I wondered if my mother would do that to me if she thought god wanted it. Anyone who says my fear wasn’t real or well founded needs to learn to READ. The hole babble is chock full of horrifying events, and the cherry-picking xians can apologise all they want but it will never be enough.

Explain WHY please.

Ooh ooh may I write a grammar complaint for this one, too? 

No, there is nothing ignorant about her comment. It is 100% true that the Bible says that God tells his people to rape, kidnap, murder, and enslave. 

Interesting story. But please spell all right correctly. All right is proper; alright is slang. Thanks! 

You’re clearly ignoring the context in which rape, kidnap, murder and slavery are the morally correct thing to do

Gordon’s comment also reminds me of a great Mark Twain quote. “It’s not the parts of The Bible that I don’t understand that scare me, it’s the parts that I DO understand.”.

Rape is used in a different context than what we use it today. The passage describes what happens when a man has sex out of wedlock with a woman whose family practices arranged marriages. Old testament Hebrews practiced arranged marriages for economic reasons. That is why the man who has had sex with the woman has to pay the father. I know it doesn’t sound fair by today’s standards. But it does not in anyway condone rape as we know it.

*facepalm*

Even if that were true, there are plenty of other instances in which god commands and condones the rape of women in warfare (or the complete slaughter of entire tribes for that matter). Which was a very common practice for many centuries, but just because something is common doesn’t make it right. Or the countless other immoral commands such as executions for trivial offenses

But the point is that god is supposedly all-knowing and benevolent. And that many Protestants believe that the Bible is error-free. Why did he allow these practices in his great book back then and then changed his mind? Why didn’t he tell his people of the moral standards we have today? Or maybe it is because there is no god and humans themselves have grown up a bit and realized that certain behavior isn’t ok.

Do you realize just how disingenuous that is?

Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ, do you people stay up at night trying to figure out how to spin the bad shit in this musty old book to suit your needs?

Rape back then is different than today because….do you even hear yourself and the absurdity here? Cognitive Dissonance at its finest.

That has got to be some powerful Kool-Aid they serve down at the church.

My point is that eventhough the students have freedom of speech, they took the passage and twisted it.

What he means is, rape back then was different than rape today because God approved of rape back then.  It’s simple!

No, they didn’t. It’s immoral and disgusting either way, but what people read into it is entirely up to them. If someone reacts outraged to it, it’s because they have a moral compass and know that it’s wrong. It’s only when people try to reconcile their morality with the warped teachings of their churches, that the mental gymnastics and the rationalizations begin.

The students chalked VERBATIM. How is this twisting anything?

For example:

My point is that eventhough the students have freedom of speech, they took the passage and twisted it. 

                                                                – Jake 12:04 – 2012

Did I just twist your words in anyway? No. So then when the students take words VERBATIM out of a book and print them, how are they twisting them?

The message of the story is pretty clear that Lot is to be considered to be the “only righteous” man in the entire city.  Just like how Abraham is supposed to be righteous for being willing to kill his son just to prove his loyalty to God.

I like your friend’s idea. What better way to make them see truth than using scripture! Many of them haven’t read those versess, so they remain unaware of the impact on the sensibilities until they are forced to acknowledge them.

So if she screams she is being raped and won’t be stoned? They are stoning the adulterers not a person being raped. I’m not saying any of this was right but the old testament was a book of laws. How many laws do we still have that don’t make sense?

Fact: in some countries with Sharia law rape victims are stoned to death or otherwise punished for adultery. When it happens, Western countries are outraged, but that the Bible prescribes the same punishments is ignored

The justification for that one is that if she didn’t scream for help she clearly must have enjoyed it and/or it was consensual. If she didn’t scream because she couldn’t, she should be killed just to be sure

The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. The wise man shouts it from the rooftops.

No Jake, you are INTERPRETING the word rape the way that fits your world view. There is NOTHING, and I repeat NOTHING, in the words written that indicate anything other than rape is just that. You choose to read and interpret one way to suit your delicate worldview and needs. For you to do otherwise calls into question each and every little passage you live life to, and I would imagine that is incredibly scary.

But, when you are ready to read as is, and live using intellect and reason, we are here for you. Embrace it. We are here and ready to listen.

We don’t hate the person Jake, we hate the sentiments of the bible and the hatred in causes.

We understand. We know your reticence. Let go of the myths and free yourself and bask in the glow of truth and reason.

(anyone else see that…..I just LOVE to use their ways and words as they do!)

Jake,

May I ask what makes you the expert as to what the passage “means”. Because it is pretty damn cut and dry. If there is a way we are supposed to read it, could you please direct me to the tome so I can order up a copy at Amazon; you know, something like a Dick and Jane Reader for Bible Stories or such. Or even  the rulebook for reading it. Anything would help.

So if the rapist holds her mouth shut so she can’t scream, she should be stoned just in case?

That might be a valid excuse if Christians could admit that their holy book is an anthology of ancient texts written by men. But instead they insist that it was written or inspired by their god. And in the case of many Protestant sects that it is inerrant, i.e. error free. That would mean that everything in it is true and that it still applies. Which is it? Or why did an omniscient, eternal god change his mind in such a short time?

It still reduces women to an economical currency. If this is supposed to be the ideal infalliable being who decides morality, a being that is omnipresent, why then does the context of the time matter or factor in at all? Wouldn’t these customs be just a deplorable to that being as they are to us? The Bible as a whole does not seem to reflect that.

But our laws are, by your reckoning(I assume), human laws and subject to flaws and so on. But these, these are supposed to be laws of  an omnipresent sentient being, but then why are many of our current human laws superior in many case such as this? Shouldn’t the god have gotten it right the first time?

We are here for you Jake. We are here for you.

We understand. I know it is scary at first, but when you take that first step toward the light, the other foot just follows along. 

We hate your “sins” little sparrow, but love the man. As always, we will research advanced algorithms in the hope that one day you too will find a path out of the rectal-cranial inversion you have been cursed with.

May science, logic and reason be your guiding salvation to redemption,  my lost brother.

🙂

In case you haven’t deduced it yet, most Christians DO NOT read the Bible in any real sense. They simply listen to the blowhards from the pulpit telling them what to believe. The intelligent Christian who actually reads the Bible from cover to cover usually leaves the religion for greener and more satisfying pastures. Like I did.

an arranged marriage where the woman has no choice is rape….

A member of the SSA at my school went and wrote atheist qoutes all around campus on the sidewalk. They go in trouble, because clubs HAVE to get approval before posting ayn sort of advertisment on school grounds.

It sounds like here that the christians had done it before…yet nothing said until now?

I’ve often thought about standing outside a church some Sunday, waiting for the crowd to leave, and as they pass, selling them bumper stickers (for $5/pop, of course!) saying, “In the spirit of Numbers 31:15-18, God Bless the Children!”

I’ve often wondered how many would put these on their cars before looking up the verses.

It’s possible they’re reading a different translation which reads as such.  I haven’t bothered to read every English translation available, but I know there are differences much more significant than that wording twiddle.  Not to say that outright misquotes do not occur with some frequency, but this particular instance could go either way.  

I guess it’s alright if you don’t worry about inconsequential stuff too much.

Jake, lying for Jesus is still lying.

Is there some part of “He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight” that you do not understand?

I think Jake is trying to make the point that the bible would declare sex out of wedlock to be illegal, and illegal sex is considered rape in this context, consensual or not (think statutory rape). 

However, the bible also says in some passages that if a woman is raped in the city, kill her and her rapist because clearly she did not cry out for help and thus wanted it.  But if a woman is raped in the country then it can be assumed that she could not be heard, so just kill the rapist.  Then it goes on to say that if the guy pays the father of the country girl he can keep her as his wife.  That definitely implies forcible rape.  

To be fair (and this applies to ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Bible verses alike), it often is ‘twisting scripture’ to quote without context. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, if only to point out the danger in quoting selectively, but if we’re going to be intellectually honest, that should definitely be acknowledged. For example, the issue with the rapist marrying the victim is actually a matter of protecting the victim. That’s not true now, of course, but in the historical context, a woman who was raped would be an unmarriageable outcast, and so this, while immensely problematic, is actually protecting the social and economic status of the victim and her family. That’s why men like this (http://rejectapathy.com/news/26007-syrian-men-to-marry-rape-victims-challenge-violence) are so awesome, even if we wish they weren’t necessary. I’m not sure about this next point, but I’m also fairly certain that this has been interpreted, at least in Jewish law, as obligatory on the part of the rapist, but not on the part of the rape victim, meaning that she can reject him if she wishes (though of course she would be under huge pressure to accept).

Just so ya’ll know, WBOC still haven’t contacted myself or my comrades, nor have they corrected the falsehoods and misrepresentations in their initial story.

Seems like the easiest way to protect the woman would’ve been to punish the rapist, and not make her an unmarriageable outcast. How hard is it to not take a woman’s rape history into account when deciding to marry her? We have such an expectation now; I don’t see why an omnibenevolent god couldn’t have couldn’t have given his people such commandments.

Recently, my wife and I watched the movie, Troll Hunter. In the movie the trolls can smell the blood of a Christian Man. It made me think of the No True Scotsman/Christian fallacy. I thought wouldn’t it be interesting to round up a whole bunch Christians of differing sects who like playing that card and seeing if the trolls only go after certain ones.

Sadly, there’s no such thing as trolls.

And this makes it better how, exactly?  I can’t imagine what sense “protecting” someone involved forcing or pressuring that person into living with a violent sex offender that has already severly harmed the person once.  There is stoning for adultery, but a rapist gets a small fine and gets to “keep” his victim (women could not divorce, only men could).

I disagree, we get them here all the time…

So there is absolutely no situation where a rape victim would be unable to scream, unable to be heard screaming, or too scared to scream?

Make up your mind.  Is it a mistranslation, or quoted out of context?

If it is a mistranslation, then quote a legitimate translation of the entire passage by an expert in the language who disagrees with this translation.  

If it is an out-of-context quote, then please show us what context changes the meaning and explain how. 

But you accuse them of taking it out of context, and when asked for the context you instead post a random list of translations of a single word with absolutely zero context.

Just in terms of pure strategy, next time the Atheist students should skip the temptation to “editorialize” the passages, since that is what the media latched onto, ignoring the actual context.  No, next time an Atheist student organization should just quote the bible verse directly, with no additional commentary.  Allow the text to condemn itself, and watch the media squirm in trying to spin it…

I like Gordon Duffy’s post, how funny that the Christians can be upset by their own scriptures.

No, the students didn’t twist the meaning.  Anytime a person has no say in what sexual acts are done to their person, it’s considered rape.  If you then want to argue about the morality of how “way back when this stuff was OK” then you essentially are admitting that your ‘god’ isn’t perfect and doesn’t understand the basics of morality.  If there really was a god things wouldn’t have changed so much for the better as they actually have in reality!  A god would have known this stuff thousands of years ago.

Yep, if the woman doesn’t have control over the transaction then it seems fit the definition of rape pretty well.

If considered as a book written by man, with no intervention from a god, then we can certainly acknowledge historical context (although I don’t see how that changes the evaluation of the ethics). However, when a Christian or the like attempts to argue “historical context,” then the argument simply doesn’t work — whether it was *written* by God, or merely *inspired* by God, the failure is the same. You may have little to say about what a god would do, but the common claim is that the Bible says exactly what God would do. As such, historical context means little, especially when dealing with an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being.

Because most Christians we encounter, especially the more fundamentalist or evangelical conservative types, also live by the Old Testament and quote it often to justify any number of current atrocities.  In fact, during the last presidential election Mike Huckabee was on record as being in favor of eliminating the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights and replacing it with mosaic law from Leviticus and other Old Testament sources–and a lot of believers were cheering the idea.  Many of the same people I see disavowing the OT in these kinds of conversations are also in favor of it in practice, and numerous churches use the OT to justify all manner of bigoted, racist or misogynistic practices.

Christians can’t have it both ways–you don’t get to quote the OT  one day as authoritative then disavow it to make yourself seem more moral when your feet are held to the fire.  And if you’re not the type who sees anything authoritative in the OT, you need to speak up and make some serious effort to drown out the pro-OT fanatics who have taken control of the conversation if you don’t want to be associated with them.  Somehow, I never see that happening–I only see people hop into conversations like this with comments about “Christians don’t follow the OT, ur stoopid”, but I never see any Christians make any public stand against the tide of all the Mike Huckabees–only against the atheists who have the temerity to notice those Huckabees and point them out.

Still won’t get them off the hook though.  As NathanDST helpfully pointed out, the NT isn’t really all that moral a book either, what with the “shut up, woman, and make me a sammich”  imperatives in there, among others.

You have at least a decent argument about the translation issues.  
http://answering-islam.net/Shamoun/ot_and_rape.htm However, the students didn’t twist the passage because they quoted the Bible as translated.   That isn’t twisting the Bible.  If it was twisted, it was twisted by the translators.    If the Christians want to clean up the errors in translation in the Bible, they can do so.   

Considering how morally repugnant a character their god creature is depicted in their book of fairy tales, I think that getting rid of god would be a great start in making the world a better place.  Getting rid of god may not completely get rid of rape, but it should make a hefty dent in it.

Maybe. It might at least get rid of “honor rapes,” but I’m not aware of that occurring in Christian communities. But, given how much sexism and/or misogynism exists just in atheist communities, I have my doubts it would make a “hefty dent.” Many of the central motives for rape seem to be the sort that you can get without a god. I will agree that Jehovah is morally repugnant, and that being rid of that character as a focus of worship would a good thing.

Yes!  Put your money where your mouth is!

I think that’s why I enjoy reading Slacktivist.  Fred does seem to believe that some people are not true christians in a general “I don’t think they are practicing christianity correctly or well”, but he never does it in the usual way–or at least I haven’t seen it.  He’ll say “I think this group of christians is misunderstanding/misinterpreting/misusing [bible quote], and here is why” and then he will go into detail about things like actual historical contexts, such as how some authors were not speaking of some distant time in the future but were speaking in a kind of code about a current despot, in order to communicate rebellious sentiments without being disemboweled and fed to dogs and such.  And he never uses any such context, such as “well, if she didn’t marry her rapist she’d be unmarriageable, so that was actually moral”, to justify the morality of the more hideous and evil parts of the bible.  Or at least I haven’t seen it, and I’ve been reading for years.

To be fair, he does seem to see the bible as a very human document written by humans during various struggles and eras of human history and not some Eternal Holy Book that is True from cover to cover and must be literally obeyed Or Else.  He seems to focus less on the Bible and Christ’s life and death and a little more on enacting the nice things he believes about Christ in our society today, more interested in feeding the hungry and obtaining justice for the downtrodden in a real and human sense than using charity as a coercion tool for conversions.  He also never props up his faith by spitting on or lying about atheists and non-christians either, which really makes him a cut above in my book.  If all christians were like Jimmy Carter and Fred Clarke, I’d have no beef with believers at all!

What he never seems to do is to say “these people are not very nice and I don’t like them or approve of their opinions, so therefore they are not Christian”.  He doesn’t declare all good people to be default christians or all bad people to be default non-christians or atheists using such tactics.  There are a lot of believers who could take some cues from him.

Which is along the lines of why this situation pisses me off.  That Christian group was deliberately baiting the atheist group with that quote, knowing that they’d likely get a free pass on it despite it’s bigoted “all bad people are atheists and all atheists are bad people” message.  Why is it considered offensive to chalk quotes about the inferiority of women and such, but not to chalk a quote that claims that all atheists are the epitome of evil and capable of no good?  Yes, the school handled this well and I’m glad to hear it and I hope it continues that way, but the news station sounds like it’s over-christianized and needs a reality check, if it’s going to take the real story and change it to “atheists get uppity, get taught a lesson”.  As if the Christians and believers were just sitting there innocently, being all Christian and all, when the ebil gnu atheists slunk up and started mocking them cruelly and harassing them–for no reason!  And then the dean spanked the naughty atheists and told them to play nice, and that was that.  How the hell do they get that from the actual facts if they’re not over-christianized?

Not really.  This, much like “under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on the money, is often used by christians to justify that this is a christian nation and that non-christians and atheists are barely tolerated and should concede even more to the christian believers.  Believe me, I’ve had the phrase “CHRIST mass!  CHRIST mass!” flung at me by some overzealous defenders of In Christ We Trust.  Complete with ugly, hate-filled grunting shout on the “CHRIST” part (how appropriate).   Often to “prove” that this is a Christian holiday and no other and that they totally didn’t rip it off of the pagans.  What I often say is that I can take a turd out of my butt and write my name on your car and drive off in it, but that doesn’t mean the title transfers over to me upon that action.  Declaring that stolen property is yours and has always been doesn’t make it the reality.

Besides which, most people use “holiday” as a simple way to include everyone and to not be rude, which isn’t so much PC as just plain common decency and good manners.  The only people who get mad are the fundies because they are like spoiled, overprivileged children who have a tantrum whenever they can’t have everything for themselves.  Most sane Christians realize that many people celebrate many things at this time of year and to use the word “holiday” (which, BTW, originally meant “holy day” so what’s the problem?) is just a nice way to wish someone a nice whatever-they-celebrate without causing unnecessary upset by reminding them that they Are Different and Don’t Belong Here and are Barely Tolerated–which, thanks to the fundies little tantrums, is increasingly becoming what “Merry Christmas” translates into–a passive-aggressive jab at anyone who might have the temerity to either be non-christian or have any desire to include non-christians.

No one ever threw a tantrum in favor of Happy Holidays because it just became a default in a nicer, more inclusive world, and “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas” only became an issue or a battle cry when the fundies found they couldn’t tolerate a Muslim or Wiccan or atheist being treated as if they belonged in and were welcome in this country.  Gasp!  The horror!  Which is why “Happy Holidays” has become so much more important now than it was originally–because believers want everyone saying Merry Christmas just to be bigots and give non-christians and atheists a hard time and remind them how Other they really are and rub their non-Christian noses in a pile of Christian turd they’ve spread all over a season that is celebrated in by a multitude of cultures for a multitude of reasons, as if Christianity invented the idea of celebrating at this time of year and everyone else is just copying them out of spite, rather than the truth that is the opposite of all that.  In my book, when any kind of believer acts this way, it is imperative to defy them.

Also–90% of Americans recognize Christmas?  I find that hard to believe, since Christians themselves are now about 75% of the population (about 15% non-religous and 10% non-christian, all roughly estimated), and I find it incredibly hard to believe that only that non-christian segment doesn’t celebrate Christmas, especially with the increase of unbelievers celebrating “Solstice” and other such alternatively-named holidays.  I also find it hard to believe all those people are actively celebrating “the Birth of Christ” as opposed to celebrating “Present and Turkey/Ham Dinner Season” and just giving it a default name because they haven’t glommed onto a better name.

And I find the wording a bit strange as well–why does it not ask how many people actively celebrate Christmas and instead uses the term “recognize”?  I “recognize” Islam and Christianity as religions because they are, but I’m not a Muslim or Christian.  You don’t need to celebrate something to recognize it exists or to recognize that it is a very common celebration in your area of the world.  Sounds like the kind of semantic game some people use to try and inflate the numbers in their own favor, to be honest.

Also, how many of those non-religious and non-christians are afraid to admit they don’t celebrate Christmas, when there is a frothy-mouthed flock of fanatics shrieking outrage at the very idea that you might celebrate something else?  Just because someone says “Merry Christmas” doesnt’ mean they believe it or celebrate it in such an atmosphere–they may just be trying to avoid an encounter with fanatics.

Umm…no.

I recall that that passage is accompanied by a list of situations that determine whether she can be considered raped or just “a whore”, which determined whether she should have to marry her rapist or whether she should be put to death.  Things like how if she was raped in the city then she obviously didn’t cry out for help because she would have been heard and someone would have come to help her, so she must have wanted it and must be a whore so she shall be put to death, but if she was raped in a country area that was more remote then it could be considered rape because even if she cried out no one could hear her.  And other such rot.  It’s been a while since I read all that, but that part stuck in my head because it was so completely obscene to have a whole chart of judgments of whether a rape victim is a victim or a whore–and yet it is so in-keeping with our practices today, as we further victimize rape victims by calling them whores and trying to decide whether she’s just a lying slut who really wanted it, or whether she “had it coming”.  (Another reason it stuck in my head.)

But one thing is for sure, and that is that the bible does indeed differentiate between “sexual assault” and “consensual but not biblically acceptable sex” just from how it explains how to decide whether a girl “wanted it” or not and therefore whether or not to execute her as an adulterer.  And it is incredibly disingenous to pretend that “rape” didn’t mean sexual assault in the face of that.  Why the hell would a woman cry out for help or even be expected to if “rape” just means “having sex with someone daddy doesn’t like”?

“The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”
If a fool can figure it out, why can’t everybody?

Can’t really argue with Jesus’ saying, “dudes, PLAY NICE.” It’s the bit about loving The One True and Only God EVAR (when said God is, well… the biggest dick in the universe).

Well, yea, except
Matthew 10:34: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

If they actually sat down and read it, they’d go mad from the revelation… oh. Wait. Wrong book.

*puts down her copy of De Vermis Mysteriis and picks up a KJV bible*

If they actually sat down are read the Bible, they’d deconvert.

THIS x 1,000

It’s just so hilarious that the xians are all in an outrage over bible verses.  I don’t understand why the Student Affairs Office needs to get involved so the groups can “engage in a civil discussion.”  There’s nothing really these groups need to discuss.  Seems to me the only thing that needs to happen here is that someone with some authority needs to tell those xian students that the other students have the same right to free speech.

Now that is a whole ‘nother bag of shit where biblical morality is concerned.  I think the attitude is something like “if you didn’t scream you must have liked it and deserve death” or “if you didn’t scream you obviously don’t value your ‘purity’ enough and so deserve death for allowing someone to take it from you”.

But at least they had a concept of “sexual assault” as being different from “illegal sex”.

Won’t work.  No matter how accurate the quote or how much you include of that quote, you will always be accused of “taking it out of context”, because the  believers will be just so sure that you there is a whole lot of incredibly good and justifying stuff that you’re just callously leaving out because you’re a mean ol’ atheist trying to make Jeebus look bad.  Ask them to provide this context and they will only continue to pose and babble and accuse you of deliberately “twisting scripture” out of context.  Copy the whole bible down and they will still be sure you left out something, some sublime text of pure holiness and perfect morality, that really ties it all together and shows how perfect and sublime and holy and moral that book really is.

Or else they’ll do some unbelievable mental twister to make words not mean what they clearly say.  You will be flabbergasted by the sheer immorality and ingenuousness of it all into silence, they will declare victory.  🙂

And how many would be killed for screaming?  Seems being raped is pretty much a death sentence no matter what.

I find that very hurtful.

biblical scholarship is a red herring. That “discipline” is nothing more than a glorified degree in myth.

You may as well say that Spiderman scholarship is well renowned.

And yes, it does require condescension if not  worse.

Jake’s sophistic shell-game is both disingenuous and distasteful.

And I will not recognize this biblical scholarly bullshit as anything but hokum and pap.

That, and it’s just too much work to create drama and discontent! (Go, Sloth!)

Wasn’t that the story where the mob was at the door wanting to rape a couple of angels?  So, to save the angels from rape the guy hands over his daughter?  I always wondered why a ‘divine’ creature would allow such a thing.  Or at least say, “Hey, how about we not give them anyone to rape and I’ll hand out some ‘divine’ justice to anyone who tries it.  Oh, and by the way, god says ‘thou shall not rape!”

If Christians aren’t willing to hold another Council of Trent in order to eliminate the Old Testament once and for all from the biblical canon, then they don’t really have a place to stand if they want to play the “that’s just the Old Testament card”, especially if they want to keep referring to the Old Testament to defend their beliefs in other cases.  Either that, or they also have to stop telling us that the whole thing is divinely inspired, inerrant, and relevant today.  And the ones that don’t say that need to decide what side of the conversation they’re really on when they defend those that do.

Actually according to the story the  men refused the daughters and insisted on the visitors at which point the angels struck them blind and told Lot to take his family and get out of the city.   It doesn’t excuse Lot, but, I’m not sure how much of a good guy Lot is suppose to be (the writer does make him the ancestor (by incest) of two of Israel’s hereditary enemies).

Suggesting that non-believers who quote biblical scripture “out of context” are somehow “intellectually dishonest” is so outrageous that I had to do a quick Google search to make sure it wasn’t a Rick Perry or Herman Cain quote from a recent debate…..  

Chana, I am afraid that in this particular discussion, it is you who seems to be practising intellectual dishonesty.  I say that because generally, random quotations of biblical scripture don’t cause much stir amongst the “un-faithful”, unless they happen to be passages used by individuals with some personal agenda they wish to promote by hanging the garland of “holiness” around it – which unfortunately occurs with alarming frequency.  And when these supposedly pious individuals back up positions of hatred, prejudice or intolerance with bible scripture, it is most assuredly NOT accompanied by contextual explanations.  It is presented as the holy word of God, and therefore infallible and useless to argue with or about.  So, for the purposes of frank discussion, I posit that your passive aggressive accusation of intellectual dishonesty is patently untrue, and patently ridiculous as well.

Apologies for failure to edit poor typing skills due to lysdexic fingers and plaskol keyboard.

I like what you have to say, clayton. Just get “than” and “then” straight, and you’ll be fine. Whatever that job of yours is, it sounds both fascinating and insane. Take care of yourself. 

The atheists (and the Dean’s office) should write or call the TV station and complain about the report and make sure the station broadcast a retraction. 

Most Christians don’t really read the Bible. My friend says they treat it like their iTines agreement… they just scroll to the bottom and click “I Agree”.

The incest thing isn’t so much about Lot as it is a kind of racism
targeted at those two enemy tribes. It’s denigrating to them to say that
they are the product of incest. The whole story is nothing but an
attack on them

Actually, I think the second part of that verse is the one really ripe for rebuttal: 

“They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!”

Christians don’t seem to realize how hard it is to prove such an absolute, sweeping statement.

Adding to the fun, here’s the New King James version:

(28) If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, (29) then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days.

This one seems to support a forcible rape interpretation. Of course, the reason the man has to pay the 50 shekels is because he has “humbled” the woman, which would presumably be the case whether the sex was consensual or not. Jake’s argument is still, at best, inaccurate. The fact that the OT definition of rape may have been broader than the one we use today doesn’t mean that the ancient Israelites and their god didn’t marry victims of forcible rape to their rapists.

That one leaves out the “seizes her” part, which – given its use in other verses – clearly means the use of force

Deuteronomy 22:28
“she shall be his wife, because he has VIOLATED her. He MAY NOT divorce her all his days.”

The real meaning of this verse is being misunderstood, perhaps intentionally. The idea was that a rapist could not be permitted to leave the raped in disgrace with no husband. In their culture, because of how shameful it was to have been raped, no one would want to marry a raped woman. This law was for the benefit of the woman who otherwise would not get to be married at all. The law is meant to be binding on the RAPIST–not the raped. A casual rapist would not want to make the commitment to support a woman who hated him for the rest of his life. This law is AGAINST rape.

No, not Mr. T! 

It looks like the WBOC16 deleted the old article and put up a new one that is more accurate and more fair (IMHO):

http://www.wboc.com/story/16188115/debate-over-chalk-messages-at-salisbury-university

They still didn’t mention that the religious group did it first, nor did they mention that the religious group was posting messages specifically criticizing atheists, nor do I see anywhere that they acknowledged or apologized for their previous article, but at least it is no longer blatantly dishonest.

The shameful act wasn’t the rape. Very far from it. The shame was not being a virgin any longer. Just like at various Islamic countries where exactly that kind of thinking still exists. It’s about men being psychopathically obsessed with only sleeping with virgins – which has grown to the point that few people know what that mattered once (making sure the children are really theirs).

And of course you’re forgetting that’s the rapist probably wouldn’t mind much marrying his victim. Especially in a culture with legalized polygamy. But for the woman it’s a real punishment

No, he’s not.  He’s dodging and weaving like the best of them.  One moment it is “out of contex”, next it is a “mistranslation”, he can’t seem to answer simple questions, he admits he doesn’t have any actual clue what he is talking about.  This is not “productive discourse” by any stretch of the imagination.

Considering he has ignored repeated requested to explain how, exactly, it was taken out of context, I think it is justified at this point concluding that was a lie.

Yes, I stand corrected on the misuse of “you’re”…I didn’t thoroughly edit my comment before posting it.

I stand by my statement regarding the ignorance of Linda’s comment and the lack of an accurate English translation. I will also add your comment to the list of inaccuracies.

John 3:16 is always quoted out of context by these religiots. 

I appreciate your request to explain why. I wouldn’t know how to accomplish that in this format.

My original comment was a result of my annoyance with the ignorance in some of the comments. It seems that a number of the people who have posted have missed the basic points the author made (context matters and the double-standard) and have reduced themselves to the same type of ignorance to which he’s referring and that is seen so often portrayed by many of the religious…both set a poor example for intelligent discourse and are a disservice to the article.

and child abuse in general

And of course, even the “Golden Rule” fails when examined closely (although I do think it works as a *starting point* for thinking about moral actions).

Personally I thought Christians live by the word of Jesus, so let’s go straight to the horse’s mouth

“The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). He
referred to Scripture as “the commandment of God”
(Matthew 15:3) and as the “Word of God” (Matthew 15:6).
He also indicated that it was indestructible: “Until Heaven
and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass
away from the law, until all is accomplished” (Matthew
5:18)

So what do you do, live according to the teachings of jesus or not.

That’s why we find a fair chunk of you as annoying as hell, you cherry pick the bits you want, and ignore the bits you don’t like, no matter what testament it comes from.

I wonder when actual rape-as-we-know-it-today was invented?  Or as some have called it, “Rape-rape!”

Jackass.  

What Jesus denigrated was not the “eye for an eye” law, but the mindset that insisted on following the letter of the law without attempting to understand the intent (the “spirit”) of that law.
The religious authorities of the time had taken what was intended to be a requirement of individual responsibility and turned it into license for unbridled revenge – thus violating the higher commandment (and intent) that one should “love your neighbor as you love yourself” .

You also seem to mistake the Mosaic Law for a “perfectly moral and eternal” guide for behavior: this is not a claim that it even makes for itself. The Mosaic Law was given to one specific nation, for the life of that nation. It is called unending in several passages, but the context is that of a contractual obligation – which always ends with one of two things – the death of either party, or completion of the contract. The “unending” phrase essentially means that there were no “escape clauses.
In addition, about half of it did not apply to what we would now call immigrants or permanent residents – unless they became Jews: effectively applied for citizenship and voluntarily took on that law. Not exactly the way a declaration of a ‘ “perfectly moral and eternal” guide for behavior’ would normally be worded …

We are talking about an omniscient, omnipotent being here.  Claiming that there is anything isn’t simple for such a being is to claim the being isn’t omniscient or isn’t omnipotent.   God’s usual method of wiping out any city that refused to obey his laws would have gotten the job done fine, although I would think an omnipotent, omniscient being wouldn’t need to resort to those sorts of method either. 

I’m not complaining, but simply pointing out a mistake; you have to define slavery if you want to say that the Bible supports it. In biblical times, “slavery” was when one man sold his services to another. It was a two-way deal that was made. If the slave ran away, that was a form of theft–breaking his contract.

It has nothing to do with slavery such as was in the US, which was horrible, demeaning, and wicked.

Some instances of slavery in the bible, yes.  You are correct.  But not all. 

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.

People (especially women and children) are property.  There is no other way to read that.

   I am a christian and found this disturbing (I bet you’re surprised lol). I’ve read the Bible and checked the verses, which the one in Exodus is completely off and I couldn’t find it. I’d like to note that these were laws given to the Israelites before Jesus. Before Jesus came Jews were allowed to divorce, but Jesus said that you can only divorce your spouse if he/she is unfaithful. Why was divorce allowed before? “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard.” -Matthew 19:8
   Same goes for slavery. It never talks in the Bible about God’s opinion on slavery until Jesus, who said “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Also yes, later Paul does talk about how masters and slaves should treat each other, however this is once again because of the “hard hearts” of people. Also slaves were sometimes slaves because of unpaid debts, and they were able to work hard enough to free themselves. Another pointer is that some born as slaves would have trouble surviving in the world. They’d likely do the same jobs as slaves, but with little income. Since Christian masters were to treat their slaves fairly, the slaves could possibly live more comfortable lives in slavery than free.
   As for rapists marrying their victims? Back then culture was different. Women were not given as many rights as now, and they desired mostly to marry, and no one would want to marry someone who had been raped. For a women have such relations with a man that wasn’t their husband under any circumstances would have been considered detestable. By making the man marry the woman, it would keep her from living her life alone. Also it acted as a warning to the man; next time he’d get stoned. And as for the people who think that he would continue to abuse her, people would do something once they found out, namely relatives to the woman (who most likely would drop in from time to time to make sure he wasn’t mistreating her). Don’t forget that these are more “basic laws”, and that if an issue arose (i.e. the woman didn’t want to marry the man, or he was mistreating her) the matter would have been given to the leaders, which as this time would have been Moses and later the Judges and kings.
   I agree that those students shouldn’t have written that. As followers we are not to insult other people, especially unbelievers. This is an unkind thing to do.
   The Bible is the most difficult book to understand because it talks about God. People still don’t understand it completely, and because of its complexity (among other things) many people no longer believe in God. You have to look at it like a puzzle; you can’t tell what the whole picture is with only one piece.

Back then culture was different. Women were not given as many rights as now

So, are God’s laws objective morality, or a reflection of human culture?

That is not quite how it works. 

Children accept their culture according to the current rules.  That is where they begin.  If they are bad rules then the children are given permission to behave badly. 

Rules are changed by thoughtful non-authoratarian adults who make a loud issue of it and begin to change the opinions of the general population.  It takes another generation before these new rules are accepted without question.  It also requires the enforcement of the new rules and the attempted re-education of those who break them because their early childhood conditioning was incompatible with the new thinking. 

In other words, a wise person with absolute power could change at least the next generation of people by providing a new set of rules and some incentive to follow them.  The type of incentives, however, is a covert way of teaching the population the meaning of fairness and reasonableness. 

The Yahweh/Jesus god does a very poor job of both these tasks.  The rule sets are bad and/or irrelevant.  The consequences for breaking the rules are barbaric.  This is not the mark of a wise emotionally mature  morally responsible person.

I am not an expert on biblical slavery, however I can assure you it had nothing to do with kidnapping, as in the US. “Slaves” were bondservants and sometimes prisoners of war. In the passage you quote above, I don’t know what you are trying to show me; if a master frees his bondservant, that doesn’t mean the freed bondservant has a right to free other slaves of his master. when a bondservant becomes a bondservant, he knows that if he marries another bondservant this will be the case. This law gives him the option of remaining with his family. Right? I don’t see how that is oppressive. It’s all in the contract. Some people had to become unpaid dependents to survive.

A better tactic might be to add chalked renditions of similar verses in the Koran and the holy books of other major religions.  A Google search is pretty good at finding relevant stuff.  

What you are saying ONLY makes sense if the Bible is a man-written book that is only reflective and applicable to the time it was written in.

That is not what Christians believe. Christians believe that the Bible was either written by god or inspired by it. That it’s “God’s word”. Some believe it’s error-free.

So again:
Why would the omniscient and omnipotent creator of the universe write a book and set down laws that are so clearly time and culture bound? Why would his book reflect the laws of those ancient times when he know – the instant he created the universe – that things would be different in a few thousand years? Shouldn’t his laws and morality reflect our more advanced understanding of human interaction and ethical conduct? How can the holy book of an allegedly all-loving god condone such conduct?

You’re wrong about slavery and rape btw. There are verses where god explicitly commands his people to enslave other tribes and/or rape their women and/or outright kill them. God commands that. Not people doing it just by themselves

A law benefiting women would have said “any person who has sexual contact with another person against that person’s will shall be required to pay that person 50 shekels per year for for as long as both shall live”.  Was that too hard?

The law is meant to be binding on 
the RAPIST–not the raped.

You honestly think a woman had any choice in the matter?  Like you said, “Women were not given as many rights as now”.  The question is, why?  Instead of all these rules that are “better that she should have a husband who raped her than no support at all”, how about “a woman who has been raped  is no less deserving of respect”.  Or, “A woman who has been raped shall have her choice of any man to marry”.  Or “A woman who has been raped shall be the burden of the rapist’s family”.  You can bet that would get men working against rape!

Apologists keep talking about cultural context and “it wasn’t really that bad”.  And the rest of us are saying “no matter what cultural context, by today’s standards it was messed up”.

As I sorta said elsewhere, a loving omni-everything never would have written that shit in the first place.  Either God doesn’t support equal rights, or God can’t support equal rights.  (Equal meaning men/women, gay/straight ‘Hebrew/foreigner, take your pick)

Actually, the Bible does address what laws only applied to the ancient Israelites and what ones transcend everything. Yes, the law of Moses was written to a particular culture. God was making an agreement with them. God gave them an easier law for them to follow, because they were hopelessly wicked and unfaithful to Him. And yet they still couldn’t keep it! Jesus explains this. That is why Christians believe Jesus had to come and pay the price for sin so that we could be reunited with God. It’s a beautiful thing, really.

Anyway, we have to realize when reading the old testament law that, yes, it was written within the confines of their culture. No one said it wasn’t. That doesn’t mean it didn’t come from God–however, it was not the end of God’s plan.

Deuteronomy 20:10-14 and 21:10-14
although it’s not so much ‘commands’ as ‘encourages’, and no so much ‘rape-rape’ as just ‘rape’, since you don’t have to rape them, and in the latter case  you have to give her a whole month to mourn her family, that you’ve just finished killing.

Against rape? Tell that to the Pope and his peodephile buddies.  Most, fortunately not all, “Christians” believe what they want the bible to tell them and how it will support anything including hate. The book was written by men, and rewritten by men over and ever to do just that.

I’ll grant that if you believe God owes you anything, or that you are good or righteous, the Bible, and particularly the OT, makes no sense. God ordered many, many tribes to be killed down to the last man (not raped, though. none of those passages approve rape, unless you have an unusual definition of rape). But those who believe that humans are a wicked, hateful race understand. They all deserved death, but God held it back from some of them. That was mercy.

I’ll also grant that if you believe you are not a sinner, the “gospel” is no good news to you. The gospel is for those who realize their own sin, as I do.

Anyway, there are too many comments being made to reply to all of them. I can give you all my personal testimony, though, that God is good to His children, and He wants you. He doesn’t want enemies.

Over and out. 😉

P.S. Yeah, I know you’ll all try to refute that. I know it from experience, though.

It won’t happen today.  And it won’t happen tomorrow.  But someday you may gain the strength to realize that you don’t deserve to be abused- that you deserve to be really and truly loved.  Good luck, and we’re here for you if/when you do.

If god really disapproved of their actions, why is he content with just weakly adjusting his laws to fit their society? Why doesn’t he do what he usually does? Destroy their cities in a rain of fire and turn everyone to salt!

Remember, we aren’t talking about just human law here. According to Christianity this is God’s law

The Bible?  You mean that rag-tag collection of Jewish (borrowed) mythology, tribal propaganda, prophetic gainsaying, pseudepigraphic posturing, genocidal rousing, character assassinating, puritan zealotry, war lusting, scribal vandalised writings that went through seven major transliterations, umpteen minor translations, and corrupt church counsels to be ratified as a book?  You can’t expect Christians to know that the Torah was a temporal composite, that almost all the books used famous pseudonyms to gain, that there are multiple variations of monotheistic deities, that there are rivaling prophets and judges with different priestly leanings, that there are numerous plagiarisms from rival cults, and that the political and even cultural intent shifts from book to book.  It’s unfair to expect them to do even a cursory amount of research – so they do not know that the garden of Eden story was borrowed, or that the writers of the gospels despised Saul of Tarsus and his helenising and neo-mythraic mysticism, or that the virgin birth was born of a simple translation in the Latin vulgate, or that the concept of the trinity was a third century addendum , or that the early church was a mix of Essene zealotry and new gnosticism, or that the book of the Revelation, and hence the whole last judgment leverage, was condemned as a heresy until it became useful to a Roman church seeking to make Christianity a state religion (rather like our religious right I suppose).  That Bible????

It’s funny too see many atheists, if not all, take their quotes from the old testament. In the old testament it talked about the history and the laws of the Jewish people(as well as their struggles), NOT CHRISTIANITY. So when quote beginning Jewish laws about rape and slavery, they mostly all took place about 2000 years before the common era(B.C.E). Also it was common to see laws that don’t make sense back then.  It wasn’t until the new testament where Jesus came and spread christianity. He tweaked many of the laws to become more modern. So you don’t offend me when you use quotes that came from that long ago.
Have a nice day.

So your saying the bible is relevant to its time, not now? I thought it was gods word to all his people, including those living now, not the word of man which understandably would need to be taken in context?

I find it incredible (in the true sense of the word) that your god is such a poor communicator.

And anyway, you’re wrong about biblical slavery. There are plenty of unequivocal examples of evil acts (not just slavery) being “encouraged”. If it were the word of the god you describe, there would be none regardless of context.

The bible makes COMPLETE sense as the word of men, and is a great book as such. It makes no sense at all as the word of the god Christians describe, and is the greatest evidence against his existence

The problem with your argument is that the very act of translating the text from the original manuscripts (yes, there are more than one) is an act of interpretation.  Christians have a nasty habit of using only those translations that suit the theology they wish to uphold.

      Now I think I understand. I believe that those laws were more to keep order among the Israelites who had just gone out of Egypt. They had to have laws at this time. The laws needed to be culture bound. Later as culture changed the punishments would change. Nowadays prison time is used to punish rapists. However, since the Israelites were still nomads, they had no place to keep prisoners. Also prison was not as bad a punishment. I would rather go to jail for a year then have to care for someone who would hate me the rest of my days. What other way could have been better? The woman needed someone to support her, and the man needed to be punished. Making him pay was already part of the punishment, and he had to pay a lot to the father. The woman would have been better off marrying the man because no one else would marry her because she was no longer a virgin. Also this takes us back to the beginning, “and the two will become one flesh”. Since he’s had relations with her, this has happened.
   There are no verses in the Bible where God tells the Israelites to rape to women. If men wanted to sleep with captured women, they had to marry them (Deuteronomy 21:10-14)
   God also tells the Israelites to completely destroy the people they conquer. There are two reasons: 1) The people in the area had done detestable things (sacrificed their children, worshiped idols…) and God used the Israelites to punish them and 2) if they let them live (which the Israelites ended up doing sadly), the survivors would turn them away from God.
   Sometimes God let the Israelites take women as “plunder”, but as stated above, the Isralites were to marry them if they wanted to sleep with them. Someone here said that culturally many people would rape the women in the towns they attacked, but the Israelites were not to do this.
   If any prisoners were allowed to be taken, they were virgins. God knew that the Israelites would marry them.
   For a few posts down someone mentioned Samuel 12:11-12 as an example of God allowing rape. This is not true. David had commited the infamous sin of sleeping with Bathsheba, and later Absalom sleeps with David’s concubines at his palace. God used this to punish David. Also, it does not mention either way how the concubines felt about this. Because David had left them at the palace while he ran from Absalom, they might have felt that they should have done it to get back at Absalom. Also at this point it looked like Absalom would become king, so they might also have wanted to insure that they got to stay at the palace. Also it was Absalom’s choice to sleep with the women.

   I wish I had more time to completely answer, but this is the best I can do for now. I know that whatever I say here will not convince you or change your mind. I do hope that you all realize that Jesus is God and that He does exist. lol you all probably think I’m just some “moron who doesn’t know what he’s even talking about”. I probably won’t be posting here anymore (kind of just dropped in for the first time yesterday), and I’m sure you’ll have more questions, or counter-arguments, but if you do, just share them with a pastor. As a teenager my knowledge of the Bible is not as great as a pastor’s, so if you really want to know for sure if you’re right (or wrong), then ask them (and wait for an answer). You’ll never get to hear the other side of the story by spending time around non Christians, because they don’t try to prove that God’s real. It’s like at an election, you’ll never know what the republicans are truly saying they stand for if you’re only around democrats.

God Bless,
               Jon S.

Thank you for trying to answer this John S.  It is a big pity, though, that you do what most other theists do when faced with material that challenges or disconfirms their beliefs:  they dump a whole lot of stuff that they naively believe will be “new” to the readers and then run away so that they do not have to face any more uncomfortable experiences.  Cowards!

You claim that atheists do not know the other side of the story because we have not spent enough time around theists.  This is very funny.  The reverse is true: you have spent too much time around Christians and do not know the other side. 

What you do not seem to have considered is that there is not much point in us talking to “pastors” to get the real story because many of us are ex-pastors and ex-theology students.  We know as much, or more than the average pastor.  If you do work up enough courage to return long enough to see how your comments are received that think long and hard about that.

Your answers are typical of the kind of stuff we used to believe (at least those of us who are ex-Christians rather than ex-something else.)  To be blunt, you are very naive (like most devout Christians) and obviously trying very hard to bolster the belief system that you have been indoctrinated into before you were old enough to use your critical abilities to assess it.  Now, of course, it is very hard for you to stand outside the dogma and see it from the outside.  You may never be able to do this.  Around two-thirds of people people brought up to believe in some kind of god or religion cannot so this.  In the U.S. that figure is much higher and in Saudi Arabia higher still.

There are a lot of problems with your argument.  I will mention just a few.

First, “marrying” someone whom you got as the result of the spoils of war is no more than legalized slavery.  The woman is no more than property and has no say in it. 

As you say, the Top Ten Commandments (both the original 10 that Moses smashed and the god-amended New Nine that were stored in the Arc of the Covenent) as well as all the commandments that were supposedly handed down by god to his people via the local prophet, these were all meant to control the Jewish people.   The glaring problem (which has yet to glare at you) is that the cultural dependence and temporary nature of these rules is not spelled out anywhere in the Bible, with the exception of Paul of  Tarsus who argued that his visions informed him that it was O.K. for the Gentiles to avoid complying with the Jewish rites that gave generally prevented them from taking up Judaism or its sectarian offshoots.  This is the opposite of what Jesus of Nazareth taught and what the Jerusalem church continued to believe.   Modern Christianity stemmed from the Pauline and Roman (Gentile) modifications.

What you  probably do not know is that the original version of the Top Ten Commandments was devised by members of  rival nations in the area (the same ones that the Jews believed their god wanted them to exterminate because they or their ancestors were  “wicked”).  Look up the Laws of Hammurabi, for example.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

The Bible is a very derivative document.  It borrows stories and ideas from all over the place and repackages them with a Jewish flavor.

The Creation and Flood stories and the story of the Garden of Eden were plagiarized from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh.  If these Old Testament stories are true, then they support the existence and power of  THOSE foreign gods, not the one the Jews worshiped (either El or Yahweh).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh (See the section titled: Relationship to the Bible)

You are probably also unaware that the stories of the Old Testament do not all refer to the same “one god”.  Both the El god and his pantheon and the Yahweh god are both credited with having created the universe and their stories are listed one after the other in the Book of Genesis.  That is why there are two conflicting stories about this in the first couple of chapters.  The English translation treats them as one and the same.  They are two quite distinct gods who were eventually merged.   http://drchris.me/higgaion/?p=445   It is a little difficult to worship “the one true god” if there is more than one of them, isn’t it?

You argue that the “those laws were more to keep order among the Israelites who had just gone out of Egypt.”  The problem with this argument is that modern archeologists are almost unanimous in stating that there was never a large group of Jews living in Egypt, either enslaved or free, and that the Exodus never happened.  http://thewordofme.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/the-exodus-never-happened/  This has been politically  described by journalists not wishing to offend the Jews, Christians and Muslims as a “controversial  consensus”  view.  It is not “controversial” as far as serious prestigious archeologists are concerned.  The arguments are so convincing that even Jewish scholars are being forced to accept them.

There is not a scrap of evidence to support these biblical contentions, when there should be at least something if the Jews were wondering around the Sinai desert for a full 40 years.   The evidence supports the view that the Jews originated in Sumeria and the archeological findings show that there was insufficient time in their history for a significant section of the population to have spent time elsewhere.  

http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/doubtingexodus.htm

“Many scholars have quietly concluded that the epic of Moses never
happened, and even Jewish clerics are raising questions. Others think it
combines myth, cultural memories and kernels of truth.”

Besides, there are multiple archeological disconfirmations of Biblical stories and claims. Cities were not in existence at the times supported by the biblical record.  Bethlehem did not exist in Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus.  The walls of Jericho had fallen years before Joshua  was supposed to be there.  And on and on.  All material that early archeologists with Christian agendas have ignored or deliberately tried to conceal.  

In other words, John, you are still operating from scientific ignorance as well as ignorance of a number of other relevant issues.   You have been misinformed by the similarly ignorant and misinformed.   I am sure you know the saying about the blind leading the blind.  

You cannot be truly free to make up your mind about these things if you have only been exposed to material that fails to challenge your indoctrinated world view.  You already know this.  It is just that you had not suspected that the focus is on you rather than the people who your religious leaders insist are theologically ignorant.  Psycho-analysts call is “projection”.  In most cases, especially in the young, I prefer to call it immature naivete.  You can fix that, you know – provided that your real goal is to find out the truth, no matter how personally uncomfortable it may be.  If you can learn to do this then you will make a good researcher or scientist one of these days.    Good luck!

you all probably think I’m just some “moron who doesn’t know what he’s even talking about”

No, you’re not a moron, by any stretch.  I know this will probably come off as offensive, so I hope you know it comes from the same place as your ‘God Bless’ does.  I have done volunteer work with domestic abuse prevention.  It is very common for victims of abuse to rationalize and justify their abuser.  It is really difficult for the human psyche to deal with being abused by someone you love, and who is supposed to love you, and people come up with all kinds of crazy stuff that to those of us on the outside seems totally insane.  They quite simply have a different perspective. I know you don’t feel like an abuse victim.  In fact very much the opposite.

But, what I am saying is that the deity portrayed in the OT is EXACTLY an abuser.  That’s why we are so sure that the OT is not the work of a deity.  It is the work of men.  Most of us also think there is no deity, but that’s kind of beside the point.

That’s a very interesting perspective, Rich.  I’d never thought of it like that, but now that you mention it, it seems to make a lot of sense. 
(I’ve worked with abused men and women also.)

The OT isn’t that old. Most books were written from 800 to 300 BCE, even if some of the material is older

It’s interesting to see the cognitive dissonance in action when people know that certain parts are immoral, but do everything they can to rationalize them away to uphold the beliefs they have been programmed with. Interesting, but sad. And still doesn’t answer why an all-knowing god would change his mind that quickly. Why not get it right in first place? No one can answer that because the answers would be very uncomfortable for them

Dismissing the OT entirely has been declared a heresy twice by the way, as was the case with Marcionism and later the Cathars

Many New Testament writers and characters,  including Jesus, misquoted text from the Old Testament (= the scriptures) or attributed text to it that does not appear in any of the books in the current cannon. 

If the Yahweh god exists and is identical with the Jesus character, or exists and guided the people who misquoted the material then he appears to one or all of contradictory,  ignorant, powerless to get his real message across or an expedient liar. 

Another point to consider is that Jesus also invited Hell, the concept of eternal torture for small and finite “sins”.  That is better described as monstrously unjust than “modern”, don’t you think?

Just because you are in the garage, doesn’t make you a car.  Just because you are in the oven, doesn’t make you a biscuit.  God is LOVE and he does not hate anyone.  But you all know this because you seem to know the Bible better than anyone!

When God speaks to you, He speaks to you in the manner in which you will understand.  Those folks back then understood him completely.  What modern day “followers of Jesus” must do, is to “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”  2 Timothy 2:15

To your question, the answer for many is: we thought. We looked at the evidence, the actual physical, verifiable, evidence. We decided that it was better to believe what is most likely true based on that evidence, than to believe what might otherwise seem to be a comfort. And when doing that, we found… zero evidence to support the existence of a deity. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. 

Believing in air is supported by evidence: we can feel it on our skin, and see it’s effects on leaves in the wind, blowing snow, and devastating hurricanes. We can verify the effects of cutting off the supply of air to a creature that requires it, and watch a balloon expand when prepping for a birthday party. We can observe the shimmer in the air caused by the heat radiating from blacktop on a hot summer day. All of these things are verifiable by others, and by mechanical instruments. A pinwheel responds to wind every time, regardless of my personal feeling on the matter. So no, I cannot see air, but I can find a great deal of evidence to support believing in its existence.

The very proof that He exists is my need for Him!

I may seriously, truly need Adrian Paul to love me romantically, sexually, and passionately, such that I will simply kill myself if he does not. But my need in no way counts as proof that this love exists. If I’m at the bottom of the ocean with my foot stuck and about 10 seconds of oxygen left in my tank, I may need more oxygen in that tank, but that unfortunately doesn’t mean it exists. 

Or, to look at it another way, I was raised a Christian, and at one time believed. And yet, I have never felt any need for God. None. Not as a child, not as a teenager, and not in all my adult years. If your reasoning were to hold, would that not count as proof that God does not exist? Of course not. Our emotions are proof of nothing except themselves. 

And apparently you don’t, and didn’t bother to google the question. If you believe the Bible to speak truth about God, then check Psalm 5:5 “The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.”

Psalm 11:5 “5The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

Leviticus 20:23 “And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.”

Proverbs 6:16-19 “16These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
 17A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
 18An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
 19A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.”

Hosea 9:15 “15All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.”

(all from the King James Version, pulled from biblegateway.com)

Seems God does hate certain people. 

And apparently you don’t, and didn’t bother to google the question. If you believe the Bible to speak truth about God, then check Psalm 5:5 “The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity.”

Psalm 11:5 “5The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

Leviticus 20:23 “And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them.”

Proverbs 6:16-19 “16These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:
 17A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
 18An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
 19A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.”

Hosea 9:15 “15All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.”

(all from the King James Version, pulled from biblegateway.com)

Seems God does hate certain people. 

Actually, according to apologists, God just coming right out with it would be a violation of our free will.

Only in a world where faith is difficult can faith exist.  I don’t have faith in two plus two equals four or in the noonday sun.  Those are beyond question.  But Scripture describes God as a hidden God.  You have to make an effort of faith to find him.  There are clues you can follow.

Peter John Kreeft, as quoted by Lee Strobel in “The Case for Faith” p44

Oy. The way you say that makes me think I should have put a trigger warning on those verses.

Soooo. . . does that make God a passive-aggressive jerk? Because that’s what it sounds like. It sounds like “WELL! If you don’t believe in me, then I sure ain’t gonna show myself! Hmph!”

Compare with: “WELL! If you don’t know, I sure ain’t gonna tell you! Hmph!”

Yea, and how did the Catholic Church treat the Cathars?  Pillaged their towns and Killed all of them in the name of true Faith,…” there just Heretics, ya know!”

“The Mosaic Law was given to one specific nation, for the life of that
nation. It is called unending in several passages, but the context is
that of a contractual obligation – which always ends with one of two
things – the death of either party, or completion of the contract.”

That would mean that the Top Ten Commandments, and the god-amended New Nine that ended up in the Arc of the Covenant,  would be just as irrelevant under the Pauline Christ-schema.   This is not what most modern day Christians believe.  They think the Top Ten (but not the New Nine) are still relevant.

If the Old Covenent was only meant to be temporary then the same argument could be applied to the New (Jesus) Covenant.   After all, it is only Paul’s gentile-friendly assertion that the Old Covenant is obselete and superceded by a New Covenant that seeks to throw out a whole lot of stuff that the Gospel Jesus says should never be thrown out.  The earthly Jesus (who would definitely have been circumcised) did not teach that circumcision and food laws would no longer be necessary after this death.    If the Christ of Paul’s “visions” disagreed then they do not appear to be the same personality.

Spoken by someone who has never honestly and properly investigated the basis of their belief system and has spent their life avoiding material that challenges their indoctrinated belief. 

Your perceived “need” for something is not valid proof of the existence of what you crave. 
That type of circular reasoning can be used to justify the existence of
anything,  including all other supernatural gods and concepts.  

Investigation  that uses the best known methods of truth discovery (rather then the highly unreliable methods used by religious apologists) reveals that the religious “air” is an illusion, and quite unnecessary for survival.   Your reasoning only makes sense to those who are only aware of one side of the fence.

Cheryl: Unless you haven’t been in a fundamentalist evangelical church lately, then you must be aware that those preachers throw around OT passages to support their sermons all the time. Even Michele Bachmann, Red Party presidential candidate has suggested that America should be governed by Levitical law. And as far as making fun of Christians is concerned, if so many of them weren’t so loud, mean-spirited, judgmental, condemning, un-accepting, and scientifically foolish, perhaps the jokes and criticism would cease. I speak from experience. I used to be one of those fundies. I grew out of it. Have a great holiday season.

…and how is it that you believe you are allowed to discard parts of what is allegedly God’s Word? It’s either all true or not. Are you telling me you know better than God? That God just put this stuff in the Old Testament out there and said to himself “Well, that’s just for these primitives, I’ll put out a Version 2 later…”??

You are parroting what you have been told to believe.  You have not investigated these claims to see whether they hold up under scrutiny or whether there are other equally or more probable explanations.  Shame!

For example, ex-Christians and theologists who lose their religious beliefs almost always do so because, on investigation, they either do not make sense, they do not match what we know about reality  or they prove to be morally impaired.  

There is no valid reason to suppose that these people were any less devout and religiously convinced than you are right now.  There is no valid reason, other than wishful thinking, to suppose that they did not experience what they believed at the time to be a “relationship” with their version of the divine.  They all claim that they had such feelings. 

In any case, it is a logical fallacy to classify people AFTER an event, purely on the basis of the event.  It is the same “logic” that dismisses pregnancies caused by a failure of a Catholic-approved birth control methods on the grounds that the pregnant person could not have been following the method.   These pregnancies are as much a failure of the Catholic method than these de-conversion are of the failure of Christianity to stand up under thorough investigation. 

None of these individuals leave the faith in order to be “sinful” or “accountable”.  You are confusing them with youths and young adults who are not interested in religion (apatheism, not atheism) and don’t want to explore it because it might interfere with their life style.  In fact, the more degenerate the life style, the more at risk they are for experiencing a dramatic emotional conversion to a belief set for which they are already partially primed. Atheists (rather than apatheists) do not demonstate behavior that is more morally immature of reprehensible than the average “born again” Christina.   In fact, as a general rule, they tend to behave better than the average devout Christian.   There are certainly very few of them in the prison system. Instead,prisons have a higher than normal proportion of evangelical Christians and devout Muslims.  This might suggest that religious devotion causes criminal behavior.  🙂

They are not afraid of hell and they do not “deny Christ” because they no longer believe in the actual existence of either.  These claims make no more sense than insisting that you have rejected Allah and are afraid of the Muslim Hell (which is far worse than the Christian one, by the way) , or Thor, or Zeus, or Lord Shriva or Aphrodite.    

Using your logic, I could claim that you have rejected Santa and the Tooth Fairy because you wanted to be bad and you that never had a real relationship with either of them.    Likewise, I could claim that you refuse to believe in Santa and Fairies because you are really afraid that you would get coal for Christmas or nothing for your teeth.  (That is backwards logic anyway, because fear of horrid consequences is the reason that many Christians think is a good reason to BELIEVE in their version of “god”.   In fact, it is only a “good reason” for believing if you have been indoctrinated or emotionally converted.)

“The Bible is the most difficult book to understand because it talks
about God. People still don’t understand it completely, and because of
its complexity (among other things) many people no longer believe in
God”

 You are arguing that your version of god is an extremely poor communicator.  :-O

Nowhere in the writings this god caused to be written by others, or in the writings he took a long time inscribing on stone tablets while Moses was on top of a mountain, does this god mention that the rules he dictates or prescribes are only to be followed by the people with whom he is communicating at the time.  There are no clues about when to reject them.

As for the Trinity, the concept does not translate to the simple “masks” and facades that a human being wears.  The Trinitarian god is at least two separate individuals who apparently have very different ways of thinking and interacting with humans.  The Father god is warlike and monstrously cruel;  the Son god is a passive-agressive pacifist who invents the idea of a Hell that requires the “gift” of eternal life to experience its full excruciating horror.  Would a really loving creature create such a place and banish people to it for finite crimes or crimes of ancestry?  Of course not!

The doctrine of the Trinity did not become part of main stream Christianity until the 3rd century.  There was vigorous opposition to it at the time.  After it was proclaimed by the early Church Fathers, those who had been in opposition and those who expressed disagreement thereafter were cruelly slaughtered and their manuscripts destroyed.  Is this in line with how you think your version of god works?  

The early Jerusalem Church (the brothers and disciples of Jesus of Nazareth) did not believe that Jesus was divine.  Nor did the Gnostics, the intellectual branch of Christianity in the 3rd Century. 

The earliest gospel writings included material that makes the divinity of Jesus quite problematic. 
1. Jesus prayed to his god.  Why would he pray to himself? 
2. On the cross, he is reputed to have asked why his god has forsaken him.  If he was god then he could not very well forsake himself.  An alternative explanation is that the god part removed itself while the human half of Jesus suffered and died.  How cruel is that? 
3.  Jesus, or more likely his followers, claimed that Jesus was the Messiah.  However the Jewish Messiah was depicted as a human warrior who was to save the Jews from slavery. The Messiah was definitely NOT god.  The only way he could be made into a god was to remove the Jewish background and substitute it with Greek and Roman mythology:  most of these gods as well as the “divine” emperors, were claimed to have been born of virgins, and to be capable of performing miracles.  Like many of these these gods, the new Jesus god was born during the Winter Solstice on December 25, when many of these gods were supposed to have been born.  

Unlike Christians and Muslims, few atheist are evangelical or feel any need to proselytize or win people over to their viewpoint.  Most, however, find this kind of behavior offensive when practiced by theists.  They will respond to that.  There are currently approximately 38000 Christian denominations in the world.  This is not counting all the flavours of this religion that have died out of been modified out of existence.  Of the current batch, 37999 of them would like to convince you that you are wrong, and they are the only ones who have the real truth.  What if they are right? After all, with facts like this, your odds of being socialized into the only “right” way of thinking about the Christian god are very slim. And that is only ONE religion. If you take all of these into account, your odd of being right are extremely small. Then add all the religions and gods that have ever been believed by a human to exist.  Your odds of being right in the face of this avalanche of contradictory beliefs is so ridiculously small that you would have to be indoctrinated to believe that you had the remotest chance of being right.  Oh wait! You are indoctrinated.  Like every devout member of every other one of these groups and religions you believe that you are your particular religious faction are the only ones with truth.  How illogically naive of you. 

Deuteronomy 22:28-29New International Version (NIV)
 28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. “If they are discovered”.  Perhaps taking a woman out of wed-lock was considered a rape. Or that is the best translation for the word.  Perhaps, because in this century, I saw arabic men saying a raped woman is like a broken dish to discarded, this law protected the life of a woman, who would be killed for becoming “useless”.  By the way, the young man speaking on camera murdered his sister after she was raped. (Not Christians.)  The old testament was changing the laws of a hard-core society.  The new testament does away with the law.  Jesus, when asked what is the greatest commandment, he said to love thy neighbor.  To consider others as much as yourself.  For this, he said, you can do no wrong.

A wise and responsible god could have provided rules that changed the prejudices of the “hard core society” so that raped women were treated as victims, not broken possessions. 

Paul/Saul was the one that did away with the unpopular parts of the Jewish law so that he could attract Gentiles to his Christ Cult. 

If the reports of the words of Jesus are accurate (which is unlikely) then he did NOT do away with the law at all.  He was reported to have said that the law was to be kept.   His injunction to “love your neighbor as yourself” but not new or profound.  It is a re-word of earlier teachings from other cultures and religions.  Some of them say it better.  For example, a better version is to command:  “Do NOT do to others what you would not like done to you.”  Better still, “Do to others what they would like you to do to them, provided that this is not bad for them.”  The last one acknowledges that people have different tastes and what you would like may not be what others like.  

   This thread makes no sense, Why atheists care about some unreal stuff (by their personal views), and why Christians try to convince them of something that they c cannot convince anybody.   
    The person that wrote on the sidewalk was trying to make people mad, not helping people understand about God or any other aspect of his/her faith.

    People lose too much time, discussing about stuff they dont even believe or stuff that they believe without ever living it  fully.

   God cannot be explained, Its through faith alone in Jesus. 
I feel I am waisting my time here also. Bye …

Most of them are just ignorant. They also think “black” people get different diseases! We have GOT to educate. Knowledge is the answer to these very important issues.

 Wow, you are committed. They won’t listen but thanks for trying.

 But God says I have to serve my master even if he wants to rape me, force me to have his babies and beat me nearly to death because he owns me. When, how and to whom does that make sense?

Experience? Did God help you find your keys while millions of children and infants starved, were raped, beaten and murdered? Wow you are special!

 They are still not listening.

 Wow, great comeback aunt Jemima! Is that wat Granny used to say?

 I still think it’s just ignorance. My dad is a backwards, racist, bigoted, Baptist. I never believed a single word of it.

 There is a reason that some things are anonymous and some books have no author.

This is one of my favorite reply’s! Very well said.
 

 Which particular unexplained version of which particular unexplained Christianity do  you choose to believe in through faith?  Which one of them do you choose to “fully live”?  If you cannot explain why your particular version is the only or the best one to fully live then how do you know that is it either true or worth following? 

I’ll bet that you are like the other 99 percent of people whose particular brand of religious faith is held purely on the basis of what your parents and teachers told you is correct before you were old enough or wise enough to challenge it.  And I’ll bet that you have never seriously explored any other faith, or challenged the one you have by listening carefully to what its detectors have to say about it.   That makes you a naive Faith Patsy who is trapped in an authoritarian “don’t ask awkard questions” system.  You can do better.