Doctor X

[Redundant post.--Ed.]

Ed

No, the Christian believes that what the entire bible states is relevant.

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dx: I think it significant that this individual argues that babies are "very selfish and even manipulative" such that it would Justify their mass-slaughter. How this Justify's the death of the unborn children I remain uncertain. Apparantly a fetus can prove most obstreperous. . . .

Because of the extreme seriousness of even just desiring to sin. By living in the temporal realm we often fail to see this seriousness. Also, another reason God probably took their lives is to reduce the amount of sin they would commit in the future after being raised in a very corrupt and evil society. So he sends them to heaven by taking their lives before they can commit serious sins.

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Ed: No, see above about all humans from their day of birth dx: Such delusions speak for themselves. Unfortunately, they are not justified by the text.

Fraid so, read Genesis 8:21.

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Ed: So you believe in the existence of objective evil? If you don't then your comment is meaningless. dx: Non sequitur that does not respond to the point. --J.D.

No, your whole point is how evil God is and his ancient people so if you do not have a rational basis for your argument about what is evil then your argument is baseless. You have yet to explain how you know killing babies is evil or even wrong. Also you have yet to explain what unjustified or justified deaths are.

Jack the Bodiless

I think this provides another possible explanation of why Christians so greatly outnumber atheists in prisons.

Biblical-literalist Christians need to convince themselves that atrocities such as baby-killing are NOT evil. They worship an evil deity masquerading as a good one. I think it's hardly surprising that, in at least some cases, their morals get screwed.

Rymmie1981

OK......

Um, so you agree with me? I'm confused. I thought your stance was that Pharoah used his free will to go against God. Maybe I was confused when you originally posted. So, let me lay this out without hyperbole.

1. Pharoah chooses repentence by asking for forgiveness and letting the people go.
2. God hardens Pharoah's heart so that Pharoah will not let the people go.
3. Pharoah did not choose to keep the people in Egypt.
4. God chose to keep the people in Egypt.
5. Pharoah's free will was overridden by God.
6. Pharoah did not get unrestricted use of his will.
7. Pharoah's will was not free.


I think I made it through there without any fallacies. One more time, free means "without restriction". Moving on.

So, God used his omnipotence to cause sickness, death, and various injuries to the entire nation of Egypt in order to let them know that He was omnipotent. If God is omnipotent, then he has some huge inferiority issues. Of course, I would too, if I was omnipotent and iron chariots beat me in battle. Wait, that was after the Exodus...I guess your God is just sadistic. He inflicts pain and suffering, even death, for his own gratification. Right? Isn't that what the scriptures you quoted just said?

Doctor X

[Complaint about moderation deleted]

BadBadBad

Yes. He believed in God, what other choice did God give him? He begged for forgiveness of his sins. What more could God have wanted?

Yes exactly. Nice guy huh? My God? nope!

NOGO

I find this very amusing.
I had a thread going with Ed which lasted several months.

Note here how he focuses on just one part of the text which he hopes will help his case and ignores all the other parts which are clearly against him.

So Ed sees salvation with the words
they are discovered

so it consesual. Right?

Well what about these
If a man finds a girl

seizes her and lies with her

he has violated her

This points to one and only one thing.
The man found the girl alone where she could not call for help.
He seized her against her will.
He violated her.

Cannot be clearer than that.

BUT Ed will ignore all that is against him and concentrate on the trivial.

they are discovered ... in the act.

Question?

What happens when they are not discovered?

Well the girl has a big problem.
She is no longer a virgin and is not married.
No one would want her.

There is a case where this happened if my memory is good.

Tamar!

Her brother violated her.

He found her alone.
Seized her
raped her.

Definitely not seduction. They were not discovered.

They got married.

Problem solved.


Don't expect this to have any effect on Ed.

Ed does not believe in facts.

Ed

Uhh... you obviously do not know much about the Documentary Hypothesis. DH scholars think that Deut. was written in the 7th century BC. If that is true then they would have not known anything about the Hittite Suzerainty Treaties which was 700 years earlier. In case you didnt know they didn't have archaeology back then!

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jtb: And are you seriously arguing that the Hebrews wouldn't otherwise have known that a nearby nation consisted largely of sandy desert, or that they wrote on papyrus? Just how ignorant do you think they were?

Now you are contradicting yourself, first you say they are backward and ignorant now you say they were sophisticated world travelers. Which one is it? Anyway I didnt say they didnt know that Egypt didnt have a desert, I am saying that they would not have been WELL acquainted with the desert unless they had actually traveled there. Also they would not have known Egyptian geography so well unless they had actually been there. And all the evidence points to the writer of Deuteronomy being very familar with it.

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Ed: No, nowhere does He demand human sacrifices. jtb: Wrong, as previously noted. You have tossed aside the Bible (again).

Where?

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Ed: No, it is quite obvious from the context that El Elyon and YHWH are the same being and His sons are are humans not gods see below the phrase "sons of man": Deu 32:6 "Do you thus repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is not He your Father who has bought you? He has made you and established you. Deu 32:7 "Remember the days of old, Consider the years of all generations. Ask your father, and he will inform you, Your elders, and they will tell you. Deu 32:8 "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel. Deu 32:9 "For the LORD'S portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. He is plainly referring to when he gave humans their places of habitation that he set aside the hebrews as his special people. jtb: Why bother to post a verse which disproves your position? OF COURSE "sons of man" refers to humans! The verse makes it quite clear that those are the humans that are divided up by El, with the people of Jacob forming YHWH's share!

Umm did you even read what Dr X was claiming and what I was responding to? He was claiming that the sons of man was a reference to other gods! It obviously is not. And it is also obvious that El and Yahweh in this passage is referring to the same being.

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Ed: Also if what you say is true then human bones would have been found in association with hebrew sacrifical altars in the 14th thru 11th century BC. But they have never been found that way. dx: Is actually not surprising since the practice did "die out" or stop. They have, however, found a very long-in-use "Tophet" in Carthage used up to the first century. The details are in Levenson. Ed: But there is no archaeological evidence that it ever even STARTED on a widespread scale. jtb: There IS archaeological evidence of human sacrifice among the Caananites.

So what? We are talking about the hebrews.

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Ed: What extreme and extensive suffering? A sword to the neck or heart causes very little suffering. Death is almost immediate... ...But why is unjustifiable homicide bad? Is homicide ever justified? If so why? Why does it need to be justified? jtb: More excuses for the worship of an evil deity. You still haven't explained why you have a problem with some evil (even to the extent of denying the Bible), but not this.

What is evil? How did you decide He was evil? So you believe that objective evil exists? Where did it come from? If you don't believe that evil exists then you destroy your own argument.

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jtb: The very same terms are used in I Samuel 1 and Samuel was not killed but placed in Temple service which is what the phrase means in that context. jtb: Samuel is a later book, written after the practise of child sacrifice was ended.

Actually there is evidence that while it was finalized around the 7th century BC it draws from 11th century sources. And it was the later perioid when even the bible says that some child sacrifice was committed by the backslidden hebrews.

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jtb: ...And do you remember THIS? jtb: Baloney. Read Numbers 31, in which 32 virgins are ritually sacrificed. Ed: No, when humans were "given to the Lord" they were either made servants in the Temple or for women they became the wives for the priests. See I Samuel 1 about how Samuel was given to the Lord. That is what the phrase meant. jtb: This was obviously wrong, because the phrase DID mean human sacrifice when used in Numbers 31 (from Callahan: "The Hebrew word translated as a "heave offering" in the KJV is terumah, meaning specifically, a sacrificial offering"). So the phrase acquired two meanings, depending on the context..

Since not everything mentioned in Numbers 31 was sacrificed see verses 50-54 where the gold is mentioned and used as a memorial for the people to remember it plainly did NOT always mean sacrifice (in the sense of destroy or burn up). By having these women convert and become the wives of the priests they were like living memorials of what happened and an offering to God.

Ed

Evidence?

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Ed: Because this not human sacrifice, it is the herem which is the utter destruction of the people preventing the acqusition of the PL and the day of reckoning for their sins. dx: By definition and by the texts, the herem is human sacrifice. Blind denial does not change that. --J.D..

See my post above where I provide three criteria of what sacrifice meant to the ancient hebrews and herem does not fit any of them.

lpetrich

Actually, I've seen Deuteronomy compared to Assyrian suzerainty treaties, and Assyria lasted until around 612 BCE, when Nineveh fell to the Babylonians and Medes.

Treaties which may have been similar in style to those earlier Hittite ones; that style may have been a common way of expressing suzerainty.

Thus, Ed's treaty-style argument falls to the ground.