WishboneDawn

I'm a meanie though.


I don't think the strength of faith can be measured in how literally you interpret the bible. Even whether you believe Jesus is historical. I don't think people would claim John Spong is a man of small faith and yet he and I aren't that far apart on our thinking of Jesus. There's a message behind the person/symbol of Jesus that's important to me about the universality of faith and the expectation that you have an obligation to your fellow man (I'd probably make a good humanist). I have a strong faith in that and in God.

Honestly, I have trouble with that too. I don't think it's the exclusive path to God. I know there are claims of that in the bible and I haven't reconciled myself with those but the knowledge that it's a book written by men, not God and not by divine inspiration means I feel it may not need to be reconciled. Knowing Paul the man wrote his letters and not Paul the God-
Inspired means I feel quite safe in chucking aside his nonsense about women for instance.

But I do think Jesus and christianity can offer a path to a good and moral life. The trick is you have to keep your thinking cap on, a sense of responsibility to your faith and not let churches lead you by the nose. But I also think atheism offers a good and moral life. Different paths and since I believe in god and have a (rather thin but there) history with a certain church I choose it. I'm not in it to cover bases anyway. I became an active christian for other reasons that affect me in the here and now. But shucks, I like the compost idea. They actually do that somewhere in Europe too. I'll have to google.

I'm a lady?

And ditto! I always enjoy exchanges where there's some civility and a few smileys more then the knock down, battle royales.

arricchio

Weird. I was at work when I made that post. I couldn't remember the exact wording of the book title, so I copied the title from Amazon. I didn't insert a link to it though. It most have done that itself. Amazon gremlins, maybe. :huh:

Anyway, I'm home now and I looked up the articles I was referring to in my previous post. There are two articles in the book. Only one is from a preacher, however. The other is from DeBow's Review:

"DeBow's Review, Slavery and the Bible, 1850"
"Thorton Stringfellow, The Bible Argument: Or, Slavery in the Light of Divine Revelation, 1860."

From DeBow's Review: I agree. Since the Bible teaches that slavery is right, the Bible is not true.

From Stringfellow:Stringfellow is right. The Bible clearly supports slavery in many places, and manages to condemn it not at all. Either the Bible accurately records God's opinion on the subject (and thus his moral character), or it does not. If it does, then God is evil. If it does not, then the Bible is evil.

Quasimofo

Only if slavery is evil, and who judges what is evil? God!
And the bible shows that God does not consider slavery evil, thus making God evil. But God is not evil God is purely good meaning he must consider slavery evil. Hehe, we have ourselves a paradox here .

Julian

[MOD]
Just a quick note about the magically appearing Amazon link. One of the moderator jobs is to change links to Amazon to make sure that we get a bit of cash if a book is bought due to someone clicking on the link here. Sometimes, we add links to books even if there was no link originally. This happens when we are not lazy and we think someone might actually care to buy the book.

You can make the proper IIDB links yourselves and thus save us, your hard-working unpaid moderators, some effort. Simply do the following:

[amazon=xxx]Put whatever text you want here, probably book title[/amazon]

You will need to change the xxx to the ISBN number of the book and, of course, paste in the title where I indicated.

This was just a quick tip, please do not respond to this post so we can keep the thread on topic.

Julian
Moderator, BC&H
[/MOD]

Johnny Skeptic

Why didn't God care enough about humanity to clearly state what his wishes were regarding slavery? Of course, the same question applies to many other issues. Absentee fathers do not make good parents, right? The U.S. Constitution needs to be revised from time to time, so why not the Bible?

Quasimofo

That's a good point, human laws have to be altered because we are fallible, all we can do is try to make our laws as just as possible. We try to base our laws on morality but there can never be a human consensus on what is "moral". Matters of "right" and "wrong" are always subjective so law can never be perfect and for it to work it must often set arbitrary limits (speed limits, age restrictions, length of terms etc.).

It is against the law to buy alcohol at 18 here in Australia but in America it is 21. Does that mean it is immoral to drink at either of these ages? I was the first of my friends to turn 18 and I had no problem buying them alcohol. The legal age to have sex is 16...where did that number come from and does anyone ever take notice of it?

The law is imperfect, yes, and we admit that, but it's all we have and it's all we can do. All it does is set out the guidelines to follow if you wish to live within our societies. Speed limits merely suggest "Don't speed it's dangerous and you could end up hurting or killing yourself or others". I think this is a fair notion that we can all agree on, but does that mean we have to agree with some of the ridiculous speed limits they post around even though it is clearly safer to go a little faster? Well, some of us can use our own digression but others lack the mental capacity necessary to judge what is safe and should stick to the limits .

In my opinion many laws are way too specific and leave very little wiggle room to judge on a case by case basis. The way we stick to our laws and are almost unwavering when it comes to bending the rules in cases where the law clearly doesn't create a fair outcome is unfortunate...but at least we know and admit our laws are imperfect and can thus bend or break them when we it is not compromising our morality.

But anyway, that is beside the point. The problem with God's laws is that they are actually supposed to be what governs morality, the only way for an act to be immoral is for it to break God's law. With human law it could be the law itself that is "wrong" or "immoral" and if that is the case we can change it because, like I said earlier, we are fallible, we make mistakes. God on the other hand is infallible, God does not make mistakes and thus never has to correct himself. God's laws were either right the first time or they were not his laws at all and that is why they cannot be changed.

And that is what makes it so obvious that God's laws are actually just human laws (poor ones at that). In fact as messed up as some of our laws are today they are still a million times better than those of "God" and do often reflect true morals.

PS: The way America sticks to it's Constitution is not dissimilar to Christians and their Bible in my opinion (though it is the right wing conservatives who fight for it so vigorously and I'd say the majority of them are fundamentalist christians). There are a lot of great things in it, but it is over 200 years old and thus much can be considered out of date (again not dissimilar to the Bible though it is at least 10 times more out of date). Guns have no place in a moral country.

Sven

I would have expected more from you than Pascal's wager. *shakeshead*

WishboneDawn

:frown: I'm so sorry. I'll do better next time!

Seriously, the wager is not why I'm a christian. I meant it more as an explanation of how the afterlife isn't important to me in my belief. If there's an afterlife, well good. If there's not and I'm worm food, I find that an acceptable end as well. Either way I consider it irrelevant to the here and now.