Atheos

Well of course these would be the two greatest commandments. If you love God first, nothing else matters. If God wants you to divebomb a plane into a tower filled with infidels and destroy the lives of thousands of people, leaving a wake of orphans, widows, widowers and generally bereaved people, then by all means you should do it.

If in any doubt about anything in the Bible? God sends poisonous vipers to bite and kill people because they're out in the desert with scarce food, little water and in dismal condition and they have the nerve to gripe? God routinely has his people utterly destroy innocent children for no other crime than they were born in cities populated by people who didn't worship him (or had the *gasp* nerve to worship some other god?) God sadistically teases Abraham by requiring him to offer his son Isaac as a burn offering, only stopping him at the last second before the knife came down? Give me a freaking break. This "god" has no business trying to claim to be a god of love, certainly not "peace" as the wars and atrocities sanctioned (even ordered) by God in the Bible would make the things Adolf Hitler seem tame by comparison.

-Atheos

Atheos

I just have to weigh in on this statement as well. When I worked (for over 16 years total) as a preacher I ran into countless situations which the Bible should have had the answer for and did not even come close. Any God worth his salt trying to provide an "instruction manual" for living could have done better than that. Hell, even I could have done better than that all by myself. As Vorkosigan so eloquently pointed out...

In the area of family issues addressed in part by the Bible there were other gross examples of faulty or at least non-conclusive information. How about "Marriage"? Jesus's diatribe on Marriage in Matthew 19:1-9 pretty much sums up all the New Testament has to say about the subject. But it doesn't address any of the real-life scenarios we have to deal with. What about someone who makes a mistake and gets married at a very young age, then gets a divorce (maybe wasn't married for more than a few months), then years later at a much more mature age they get married, start a family, finally get religion and want to "raise their kids up right". They go to the bible and find out that they're living in adultery because of a previous marriage that wasn't ended because of the other person committing adultery. Now what do they do? Break up a perfectly functional family on a technicality? Are non-believers amenable to the same law of God regarding marriage that believers are? Are these children bastards? Are they bastards until the 10th generation (the Law of Moses would say they were). On and on I could go. I just get really heated up (as you can see) when I see people saying that the Bible is a pattern for living my life. Maybe I turn to a page in the bible one day that describes how one of the great heroes of the Bible assassinated a king by sneaking into his bedchamber and knifing him to death, or someone else who went on a rampage with the jawbone of an ass and killed a bunch of men. Or he lost a bet and killed 40 men to rob them of their clothing so he could pay his gambling debts. Or I refuse to help with the final arrangements for buring my father because Jesus would have me "follow him" instead. Why aren't these "patterns" just as much as some of the other things people throw up as ways to live your life?

Okay, guess I need to lay off the caffein. I got riled up and couldn't shut up.

-Atheos

Sparrow

Where in your holy book does it describe traffic laws or cell phone ettiquette? If all you're going to use out of the whole text is "love thy neighbor as you love yourself", then what's the need to post the ten commandments everywhere? Let's shred the whole thing and give everyone a plastic laminated keychain card to remind them of the neighbor loving duties.

The reality is that the bible text has some good ideas and some bad ones. Christians can't even agree on which ones are which. You interpret them to match your own external perception of the culture you live in. There's nothing there any better at telling me how to live in the 21st century than what I could write up for how to live in the 41st century.

If you seriously want to claim there's anything specific about how someone should live their life that is also unique to the bible, start a thread on it. Let me know so I can watch the flambe.

Eric H

Hello Epictetus,

Sorry my mistake

peace

Eric

Eric H

Hello funinspace,

Man being man we want to do what we want to do, and like Frank Sinatra says so well we do it our way.
Agreed, me too.
Only if there is no God.

peace
Eric

Eric H

Hello Vorkosignan,

Conquering armies confiscate property and land using the law of the victors. A controlling dictator can make laws that would protect his own interests. Wealthy industrialists could influence laws, which would give them a commercial advantage.
Whenever laws are written for the benefit of the rich and powerful they often are not for the benefit of the workers.
The law needs a guiding principle something that is fair and just for all people

The greatest commandments are a profound statement, Christ said all the law hangs on the greatest commandments. He did not separate the law and say only the religious laws hang on the greatest commandments.

If all laws could hang on the principle of loving your neighbour as you love yourself, whether your neighbour is a billionaire or a beggar then they would be fair and just for all people.

peace

Eric

funinspace

I think I would have to agree with Eric on this part...if xians actually held fast to these first 2 laws, it would keep most of the other idiocies at bay. For they would still have to love the homosexual, just as they love the greedy and gluttonous. They're swearing at a bad driving would fall in the same secondary law book. Sadly it's mostly only a modern liberal Christian axiom. I'm just not sure how one holds onto that greased pig of allegorical rendering of canon that no longer fits, works, nor is ethical and still find this god real.

Eric H

Hello Atheos,

If God exists then we cannot understand the mind of God.

If God is a loving God then I think mankind test his love, maybe to far.

I can imagine the case of loving parents who find out that one son has grown up to be a serial rapist and the other son has grown up to be a serial killer. The parents may still love their children but they would also feel that society needs protection from them.

In the same way God might have been pushed to intervene in seemingly extreme ways. Maybe mankind has been slow to learn.

Also one of the big lessons that come across throughout the Bible is having faith, and it seems that God puts us to the test in many ways.

Man will do what man wants to do, if a Muslim wants to fly a plane into a building in the name of Allah, he will have his own reasons to do it. Not all Muslims are suicide bombers because Islam is still growing in numbers.

We search for the way of life we want to lead, then we search for ways to justify what we want to do, good or evil.
If God exists and there is life after death, then maybe there is hope for us all.

Peace
Eric

Biff the unclean

And just why not? If God is perfect then He would be perfectly understandable.
The reason we cannot understand the mind of God isn't because there is something wrong with us. The reason the God stories seem to be nutty and to contradict themselves is because they are nutty and they do contradict themselves.
There is a perfectly valid understanding of the "mind of God" to be had. And that perfect, simple and elegant understanding is this...there is no mind of God. There isn't a God to have a mind, it's all a fake.
That bit of understanding answers all the questions you might have.
You have no hope to be alive after you are dead, you'll be too busy being dead. So stop beating yourself up while you are alive.

Zeda

If all law hung on these two commandments there would be NO billonaires and NO beggars.
(/starts singing Lennon's Imagine)