Negasta

I present here some choice quotes from the not-so-good book:

1) Virgin women are war booty

"Have you allowed all the women to live?" he [Moses] asked them.... "Now ... kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
-- Numbers 31:1-18 (NIV)

This order comes after the entire city and every living thing, human and animal, in it has been utterly annihilated.

2) Woman must marry rapist

If a man [meets] a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her ... He must marry the girl ... He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
-- Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (NIV)

3) Execute stubborn kids

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son ... Then shall his father and his mother ... bring him out unto the elders of his city ... And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.
-- Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (AV)

4) Christian women: be silent

National Bible Week Poster (right panel)Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
-- I Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)

Explain THAT Joyce Meyer! (But only once you are outside the church)

5) Slavery endorsed

... all who are under the yoke of slavery ... who have believing masters ... must serve all the better since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these duties. If any one teaches otherwise ... he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy..., which produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among men who are depraved in mind...
-- I Timothy 6:1-5 (RSV)

6) Wife listed among property

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
-- Exodus 20:17 (AV), The Tenth Commandment

My question: How in God's name (no pun intended) do apologists logically attempt to apologise for the above statements in their holy tome, without shorting out their brains from all the cognative dissonance?

Her pinkness saves

Most people only see what they want to see.

DarkHeretic

Thats the thing that really bothers me about christians. They try and justify sick events like this.

gstafleu

Most of these are indeed prety bad. However:
This is probably to protect the victim as much as anything else. I'm pretty sure that in those days after rape she would be outcast. This way she at least gets some sort of life. The problem of course is the attitude that casts the victim out, and any morality worth its salt should have addressed that. But failing that the author at least tried to do something.
Again, the problem here is slavery. I suspect we should see this in a more or less Stoic fashion: accept the inevitable.

Sparrow

You're postulating that apologits' minds actually work. Do you have any evidence to back that up?

EthnAlln

It's a very old complaint against Christianity. Most of the passages from the Hebrew scriptures are brushed aside by Christians as a law that is no longer binding. (Ask Gamera, and he'll tell you that God was dealing with very recalcitrant material at the time and required a few thousand years before anybody was really ready to hear his message of "love thine enemies.") But I certainly don't endorse that, if only because Christians are so fond of saying that "God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow."

Likewise, the stuff from the New Testament is said to be the misogynist Paul speaking, not Jesus. (Dorothy Sayers has high praise for Jesus in his relations with women, saying that he took them seriously and never reproached them for not being "feminine." She was a Catholic, who bore a child to one of her lovers without benefit of clergy. Quite an interesting old harridan. I rather like her.) Again, I don't endorse that view, since it was Jesus who proclaimed hellfire and made it clear that it was eternal punishment by fire. It is Paul who sometimes suggests that everyone will in the end get to heaven. And the advice Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount about taking no thought for the morrow is about the worst advice anyone has ever given.

It's all a muddle, if you ask me. I agree with Mark Twain that people are generally better than the gods they make. Not always, but generally so.

Ubercat

"Apologetics: The art of trying to remove gods foot from gods mouth." -Me

Bob K

If a person's tactics/actions reveal how his mind works then consider this:

Someone once wrote that religious fundies, esp. Xn fundies, use these tactics:

1. Deny.
2. Evade.
3. Obfuscate.
4. Attack.

Reading these tactics as not dealing directly with issues and challenges, we note, then, that fundies recognize the absurdity of their direct logical arguments (their premises and conclusions) and are therefore forced to use these indirect deny/evade/obfuscate/attack tactics, which do not work on intelligent and informed people.

To go use these tactics obviously means that fundies have subjective needs for gods to exist and to be as they need them to be.

This, in turn, shows an immaturity inre facing reality directly--that we are more than merely likely to be alone, without gods, on the Earth, that we are the result of evolution, and that although we are without gods we nevertheless have each other, and can help each other to make this life a better life.

With this maturity comes the recognition that all religion must be destroyed and thereby eliminated as an excuse for some people to hate and oppress or otherwise wage war against other people.

Luci

You beat me to it :grin:

Johnny Skeptic

How do apologists' minds work? Simple, a comfortable eternal life is the main goal, and the Bible provides what apologists believe is the best way to get it. Although they are not aware of it at this time, apologists don't really care who gives them a comfortable eternal life as long as it is available. While the God of the Bible is definitely replaceable, comfort is definitely not replaceable. If Christianity had not come along, religious minded people would have chosen some other false world view that promised them eternal comfort. Animals and babies are trained using similar baiting tactics.