Vorkosigan

Here's an apropo article from Greg Koukl at Stand To Reason, which is sort of Apologetics for people who aren't smart enough to understand AIG <shudder> It just appeared on TWeb:Is Christianity Cruel?

"Here’s a simple way of putting it. One day every single one of us, the morally great and small alike, will stand before God to be judged for our own crimes, such as they are—some more, some less. Either we pay for them ourselves, or we let Jesus pay for them for us. That’s it. If we refuse forgiveness through Jesus, then we stand alone to endure God’s penalty."

That's it folks. Here's the loaded pistol, choose. Since opting out is not an option, that pretty much answers the question of whether the Canaanite Sky Deity Ya is cruel.

Vorkosigan

Sandslice

Interesting; however, my questions pertain to the morality of Yah, not the cruelty. Oh, and to answer yer statement as well as my third question:

The answer to my third question, from a Christian perspective, is yes; therefore Yah is immoral. Cruel? I still point to the first two chapters of Job. That deity is indeed untrustworthy, if it's willing to permit tortures of his most faithful servants just to stroke its own ego.

Doctor X

Part of the problem comes from trying to translate ancient religion into modern times. YHWH represented a person--a figure--much like other gods. He did not represent a "moral example." He did things because "might makes right."

It is a bit like worshiping Ares now.

"Keep him happy . . . or he may squish you."

--J.D.

Conchobar

Morality comes from a combination of social and biological evolution. What we consider moral and immoral today is based on collective experience, and the social selection of genetic misfits from the gene pool over many millenia.

Morality per the Bible is very faulty by 21st century standards because it was written by desert savage tribes who survived by cruelty, genocide of their neighbours, infanticide of their neighbours babies, debasing and holding as property, women. It worked for them. To us it is disgusting. We view the stories from Deuteronomy to Joshua and Hosea as no better and in some ways worse than Mein Kampf.

They may have thought their morality was superior to the remaining Stone Age tribes they encountered.

When the ancient Hebrews invented their god, JHWH, he was a composite of several older tribal Gods, as was Allah to the Arabs. But they gave their new god their own personalities. They made him MALE, cruel, vindictive, mentally erratic, given to rage attacks, genocide, homicide, and genocide. He was just like his inventers.

Now our morality is clearly superior to Biblical. We do not believe in killing innocent people. We do not sanction genocide or infanticide. We consider rage attacks a serious mental illness or a form of epilepsy. (Some Israelite War Lords may have had epilepsy, as other ancient war leaders did, such as Alexander and Julius Caesar.) We would never blame a child for something his 32nd Great Grandfather did.

Who knows. Perhaps in the 32nd Century, they may consider our morality to be defective. And some bloke will consider it due to our primitive 21st century civilisation.

Conchobar

offa

Conchobar
Bible Atrocities
As the supposed punishment for raping a virgin, the rapist pervert is
required to buy the victim from her father and marry her. Rape victims
were forced to marry their rapists.


UNHOLY BIBLE SANCTIONS RAPE.

Deut. 22:28-29 "If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not
betrothed, and lay hold of her, and lie with her, and they be found;
Then the MAN THAT LAY WITH HER shall give unto the damsel's father
fifty she-kels of silver and she SHALL be his wife; because he hath
humbled her, he may not put her away all his days."


Offa, in reply;

Conchobar, it is much more serious than that! I read Scripture in
metaphor. According to my metaphoric dictionary a "virgin" must be
a Samaritan. A female that is not a Samaritan is never virgin, she
becomes "cattle" but never a "sheep" because a sheep is Samaritan.
David tended his sheep. Rapine is "plow". To have sex with a
non-Samaritan is to plough the ground and to have sex with a Samaritan
(Hebrew) is to harvest. Cain plowed and Abel harvested.

Your deuteronomy cut is a marriage requirement. In order to take
a bride one must pay. This is a barter system. A contract is signed
and the girl is livestock. By the way, these girls are not allowed out
of the "tent". They are always in protective custody amongst their
family. Their wandering away and getting "porked" is not plausible.
They are having intercourse soon after they start menstruating and
they are bought.


I Samuel 15:3 "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that
they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and WOMAN, INFANT,
AND SUCKLING, ox and sheep, camel and ass."


Offa; "I have to admit that that sounds like genocide."

Numbers 31:17 "Now therefore kill EVERY MALE AMONG THE LITTLE ONES,
and kill EVERY WOMAN that hath known man by lying with him."


Offa; "the little girls are spared"

Numbers 31:18 "But of the WOMEN CHILDREN that have not known a man by
lying with him, KEEP ALIVE for yourselves." (GENOCIDE, INFANTICIDE,
SEX SLAVES, AND PAEDOPHILIA.)


Offa; "the little girls are spared"

Isaiah 13:15-16 "Everyone that is found shall be thrust through, and
every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. THEIR
CHILDREN ALSO SHALL BE DASHED TO PIECES BEFORE THEIR EYES; their
houses shall be spoiled, and their WIVES RAVISHED."

Offa; "it is a sex thing"

Deuteronomy 2:34 "And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly
destroyed the men, and the women, and the LITTLE ONES, of every city,
we left NONE to remain."

Offa; "Why are they being itemized, the secret is that they young
females are the prey'"

Deuteronomy 3:6-7 "and we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon
king of Hesbon, utterly destroying the men, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN, of
every city. But all the cattle, and the spoil of the cities we took
for a prey to ourselves."

Offa; Cattle are girls.

Ezekiel 9:5-6 "...Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not
your eye spare, neither have ye pity: slay utterly old and young, both
maids, and LITTLE CHILDREN, and woman..."

Offa; "but not the girls"
I do not want to become redundant. The message is that the goal
was to take females from other tribes and make the and their children
into slaves. The conquering males would have sex toys and the children
produced would become slaves. The males produced from these foreign
women would be rendered into eunuchs (dicks cut off, not castrated)
whereas the males produced through the Hebrew women would have their
foreskins removed. The end result would be the chosen males having
harems (few boys many girls).

The "eye" in Ezekiel is a penis. The reason that Jacob's first
wife had weak eyes was because she was already a mother several times
over. Saul's son Jonathan ate honey (had sex) and was condemned by
Saul. The bad thing that Jonathan did was invade Saul's harem and the
woman he had sex with was one of Saul's wives. Jonathan uncovered
Saul's nakedness. Having intercourse with a female is uncovering
the spouse. Noah's son Ham porked one of Noah's women.



OTOH, I accidentally posted this message on another thread.
my apologies for wasting bandwidth.

thanks, offa

B. H. Manners

Could anyone knowledgeable in Hebrew tell me for sure that "eye" in the above post really is penis? I could kill me some Christian arguments with this one.

Madkins007

I looked for this reference and I could not find it without knowing more detail or having better words to search for. Please provide chapter and verse so we can better discuss it.

Just from what you stated, however, the laws of the Sabbath were well described and well known to the Hebrews, as were the penalties. He would have been stoned for breaking God's law.

Sandslice

Which still raises the question of whether or not a law that allows capital punishment for pickin' up sticks on the wrong day, is just or moral. It doesn't matter which cloud-hoppin' "source of authority" is invoked.

If you can tell me, unequivocally, how it harms a person's neighbours to clean up the backyard or gather firewood on Saturday, instead of waitin' until Sunday, and if you can tell me how the degree of harm is sufficient to require capital punishment, then you can assert that this is a just, moral law. Else it isn't.

The requirement here is that a just law necessarily protects one individual or group from a certain action taken by another. The "crime" here is doin' this work on Saturday. Since the only "victim" is Almighty Yah, and bein' almighty They cannot be harmed, the "crime" has no true victims, and the call for capital punishment is therefore immoral and unjust.

Madkins007

How antrhro-centric.

If God lays down a law, is He obligated to explain the why to us?

In this case, we know the 'why'- it is a period of rest. You have 6 days a week to work and get your yard in shape (and considering the biome of the area, I doubt 'yardwork' is what is in question.)

As creator, He has absolute authority to determine the law and the penalties. If He thinks this is a captial offense, where do we get the authority to over-ride him?


More on topic-

Again- I don't know the verse in question so I cannot research the context. Wood would be a valuable commodity to these people- as fuel and raw materials. For all we know (without the context) the key issue here may be avoiding giving a guy an unfair advantage in collecting this commodity by ignoring the rule.

This reminds me of the old Blue Laws that prevented stores from being open on Sundays. Gas stations were one of the businesses that were immune to the law, so some of them started selling other stuff on the side. This gave them a HUGE unfair advantage and created the entire business of convenience stores. (Many drugstores also had this advantage, and started carrying more and more non-medical stuff- supposedly one reason Walgreens grew the way it did.)

Doctor X

We have the right to recognize him as unjust and evil by his actions if he exists.

"If by he works ye may know him."

--J.D.