Originally Posted by Gamera

I think a case can be made that the teaching aobut loving one's enemy doesn't fit the Vedas. But we'll never know, since the mss transmission is so grievous. Nobody doubts that the Vedas were around for a long time. The problem is, in what form and what was later interpolated. Given the mss dates, it's impossible to say.

Originally Posted by Gamera

No, a poor analogy.

How about this. You run a prison and all the inmates are murderers. You want to teach them to love others. But they don't wanna listen. So you hatch a plan to separate out a few of the bad guys, teach them what you know, and let them then teach others. To do that, you play the tough guy, playing up how if they stick with you, they'll be king of the hill, cock of the roost, badest of the bad, getting the most cigarettes and conjugal visits. So you let 'em fight when they want to, because they're going to fight anyway, but you use this appalling aggression to separate their gang from the rest of them. Once you've done that, you start teaching them that maybe fighting isn't such a good way to live, and it isn't really about being king of the hill. And then we're on our way to the New Testament.

Originally Posted by Gamera

It's ironic you should cite this verse. Look carefully. Who gives the order to kill the Midianite women and children. Carefully now. Moses does. Not God.
...
Moses doesn't even say God commanded this scorched earth policy. He just gives what he thinks is the rationale for it. He personally orders them to kill kill kill. He clearly enjoyed it.
...
Moses, being a brute like the rest of us, took God's command and turned it into a scorched earth policy. You've made my point exactly.

Originally Posted by post tenebras lux

Quick question Gamera: if this Moses guy was the homicidal sadistic maniac that you seem to be implying, then why do you beleive anything he said?

Or don't you think he's responsible for any of the bible? Like the first five books, say?

Who knows what was on that first set of tablets from his god - that Moses smashed.
Who knows if there were ever any tablets - we only have Moses' word for it and you don't seem to think very much of Moses do you.

Originally Posted by TomboyMom

No, you run a prison and you order one gang of inmates to kill another and take over their territory. You order it over and over. Then you order them to kill the other gang's children. And their wives. And their babies. And their cats and dogs.

Gamera: Your argument is one of the most unusual I have encountered. To simplify it greatly: God orders the Israelites to kill a lot of other people so that he can eventually teach them not to kill people. Very strange rationale.

Originally Posted by TomboyMom

You define it to mean "people who practice as I do", which is to say, very few people. I define it to mean, "people who worship Jesus Christ and follow his teachings, and who therefore identify themselves as Christians." Under your definition, what percentage of people who call themselves Christian would you accept? My point is that my definition is the common one, which is what makes your usage fallacious.

Originally Posted by Toto

I've been trying to make sense of this, but I can't, nor can I make sense of this:



This presents God as a wily psychotherapist who works from a position of weakness, and is forced to pretend to go along with his wacko patients' delusions until he can gain their trust and slowly turn them around. But the patients (or inmates?) retain the early stories that God told when he was just pretending to go along with their delusions, and cherish them, and become upset and irritable when someone from outside points out that the stories are not very nice.

Is that the argument? would it make sense to split this off and discuss it in some other forum?

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

According to Blue Letter Bible:

"smite" = nakah = 1) to strike, smite, hit, beat, slay, kill

God told Moses to kill them.

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

A clone from a species continues to be a member of that species so it is, by any rational definition of that species, obviously human.

But, as Toto pointed out, this takes us far from BC&H material.

Originally Posted by spin

This is another stunning analogy. You create the murderers and then you want to teach them to love others. Bit late there, Gamera. Besides, you normally lock up such sadists as those who torture people. You normally have no truck with liars. And why do some arbitrarily get separated for special treatment when you are responsible for everyone?


spin