Amergin

And we men shall create God in our own image and likeness. We shall give him supreme hatred, maximum cruelty, jealously, arrogance, insecurity requiring constant worship, mood swings, homicidal rage attacks, vindictiveness, mercilessness, narcissism, indifference to suffering of others, capriciousness, and moral depravity. And to include our mentally ill followers, we shall also make him insane with multiple personality disorder.

Amergin

Starboy

Ed, I know this is off topic but I am curious as to what you think the reasons are for god to send Hitler or Dahlmer to heaven or hell.

Starboy

Ed

Why do you consider these things evil?

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Ed: Actually most rape experts say that rape has very little to do with sex. They say that it is primarily a desire for domination and control of another human being. jtb: Sure, that's part of it in many cases (not all). But the rapist still doesn't want the victim to fight: he wants her to SUBMIT, and usually convinces himself that she'll learn to appreciate the experience when she does. This is identical to your evil belief (I can't think of a better term) that women forced to marry the murderers of ther families will eventually be grateful.

Well that contradicts your own earlier weird point that most men want to be sexually attacked by a stronger woman.

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Ed: Of course most scientists are not going claim any specific cause of the universe because they would be (horror of horrors) branded a fundamentalist and run out of the towers of academia! But nevertheless logic (the law of sufficient cause) points to a specific cause, the Christian God. jtb: Except that it doesn't. A nonexistent mythical being is insufficient cause.

You have yet to prove His non-existence.

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Ed: Actually this problem goes deeper than I have let on. If there is no God then you do not even have a rational basis for believing in an external reality. It could just be a very realistic dream. jtb: And you are in exactly the same position. Theists have no defense aginst the "brain-in-a-jar" argument. God is irrelevant to this. Ed: No, the theist using logic can demonstrate that there is an objective reality. He knows that he exists and his memory is finite, therefore he must have had a beginning and therefore a cause and the cause probably has a personal aspect to it because he as an effect is a person. Therefore in relation to this personal creator the theist is an object (also subject) therefore a subject-object correlation has logically been established therefore the objects around the theist are objective. jtb: No. The theist does NOT know that logic works, or that it has any relationship to any hypothetical "real world" even if it APPEARS to work within his own mind.

He doesnt KNOW it works but it IS a rational assumption given that without logic you cannot even think.

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jtb: The theist does NOT know that "persons" exist, or that a rock is any less "personal" than a human (not knowing that rocks or humans exist). The theist doesn't know ANYTHING except that there is an "I". He certainly doen't know ANYTHING about any "external reality" that might not even exist.

He doesnt know that he as an "I" is a person but he can make the rational assumption that whatever caused his existence has at least what it takes to produce an I, so it is likely to have some of the aspects of an "I"(person). So that once that is established then he can look around with the rational assumption that other objects exist.

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Ed: Again you have not demonstrated that your external reality exists objectively from an atheistic viewpoint. jtb: Nor can YOU demonstrate that an external reality exists. We both have to ASSUME that an external reality exists. But, given that we agree on this: my worldview follows inevitably from the operation of known physical laws and principles in that reality, whereas yours does not. Therefore mine is superior.

I think I have demonstrated that for a theist he is acting rationally to believe that an external reality exists, see above. While the atheist does not have a rational basis for believing that an external reality exists. Actually if physical laws exist then that means there is order in the universe and order only comes from a Mind.

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jtb: If you cannot provide clear evidence that this word was present in the original Aramaic text and omitted during translation: then you have abandoned the Bible yet again. Ed: No, using grammatico-historical hermeneutic, we need to also study ancient history in order to interpret the scriptures. And most ancient genealogies only list the significant personages in a persons lineage, only in modern times do we care much about the little people in a person's genealogy. jtb: Nonsense. The Jews cared a lot about tribal lineages, which require ACCURATE genealogies. One of those "little people" might have been from a different tribe! A single break in the chain, and a Levite isn't a Levite anymore! Furthermore, many of the names which appear in Biblical genealogies are NOT "significant". They are only mentioned in Biblical genealogies!

The hebrews like modern mormons had genealogical records that they kept separate from their sacred scriptures. The scriptures were not meant to be exhaustive genealogies. They used those genealogical records when determining who was qualified to be a priest. Some of the names are not recognized as significant to us, but to the people that lived closer to them in time recognized them as such.

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Ed: The Christian understanding of scripture is that you interpret scripture with scripture. There are overarching principles that God operates according to, ie justice, mercy, any sin ultimately deserves death, and etc. Also the scriptures are not exhaustive, they do not give us all of God's reasons for doing things but we know from experience and other incidents in the scriptures what God is like and therefore can make rational assumptions given this knowledge. jtb: Yes, we DO know what God is like from scriptures. Vicious, evil, tyrannical, genocidal, bloody, warlike, unjust...

You have yet to demonstrate that God fits these characteristics other than from a very superficial perspective. When looking at the scriptures as a whole and in context it is obvious he is none of those things and in fact is the antithesis of them. Also, ironically, it is only because you have been influenced by His moral laws (being raised in a Western Judeo-christian society) do you even think that such things are evil. People who have rejected His moral teachings such as the Nazis don't consider all those things evil.

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jtb: Is it OK to punish children for the sins of their fathers or not? jtb: Like the Bible itself, you are utterly unable to give a straightforward answer to this question. Ed: It is ok for God to punish the fathers with the children's deaths but the children's deaths do not necessarily have anything directly to do with what their fathers did, because God sees the "big picture" as I stated above. jtb: You have just said "It is ok for God to punish the fathers with the children's deaths". Therefore you CANNOT claim that "the children's deaths do not necessarily have anything directly to do with what their fathers did". By your own admission, they WERE killed for what their fathers did!

Their deaths ARE directly related to their father's punishment, ie their death is a major part of their father's punishment. But their deaths are not DIRECTLY related to what their father's did. They are only indirectly related. Also death is not always a punishment to the person experiencing it, sometimes it is a rescue. And this is probably the case with many of the Amalekite children. Living in a morally bankrupt society could have resulted in great suffering to them in their adult years or it may have caused them to commit great evils as adults. So God just took them to heaven to "rescue" them from a horrible future.

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Ed: Just because God timed their deaths at the time of the accounting of the adults does not mean that they were receiving punishment for what their fathers did. jtb: The Bible says otherwise.

No, He was punishing the fathers NOT them, see above.

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Ed: The Amalekite situation is based on rational assumptions about the nature and character of God (as shown above) and human nature, such as nationalism and ancestral pride and military glory. jtb: There is nothing remotely rational about the assumption that the original Amalekites DID NOT celebrate their victory over the Israelites, and neither did any of their descendants for 400 years, and THEN they suddenly started celebrating, and THIS provoked God into action but the original victory did not!

No, he was merciful to the original ones, except of course in the afterlife for the ones that didnt repent. It just came about that after 400 years of mercy that justice needed to be satisfied.

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jtb: The RATIONAL assumption is that God does not exist. This explains why he couldn't act at the time, or at any time thereafter, until the Israelites were militarily capable of striking back WITHOUT God's help..

Again, you have yet to demonstrate He does not exist.

schu

If matter/energy cannot be created nor destroyed, the idea of the universe having always existed is consistent with physics. We may not know whether it is an osculating, steady state or continually expanding where entropy gets everything in the end. But if the statement "Matter/energy cannot be created nor destroyed" is true, then there is no need for a creator or any other explanation for its existence. It has always existed.

Jack the Bodiless

So that's your excuse?

Forcing women to marry the murderers of their families is NOT evil?

Genocide is NOT evil?

Punishment of innocents for the crimes of others is NOT evil?

This is a classic demonstration of the "psychopath problem": the inability of Biblical inerrantists to recognize evil.

Were you a psychopath before you became an inerrantist, Ed? Or did the Bible turn you into a psychopath?

Was there ever a time when you thought that genocide, or the punishment of innocents for the crimes of others, WAS evil?
If a rapist wants to force himself upon a specific woman, then he generally won't mind if that specific woman initiates sex with him instead. Hence the misapplication of the Golden Rule.

But this is irrelevant anyhow, because we're talking about the Israelite society described in the Old Testament. You cannot use New Testament teachings to describe the legality of rape in Old Testament times.
The Biblical God cannot possibly exist, due to Biblical errors and contradictions.

Many have already been mentioned. For more, see www.skepticsannotatedbible.com or the II Library.
And an atheist can make the SAME assumption, for the SAME reason. The difference is that, having made this assumption, the atheist can then use these faculties to investigate WHY they work, and come up with a more complete answer than the theist can.
My parents caused my existence. They are persons.

And I observe that many animals have various "person" characteristics, therefore I can see that there is no reason why a distant ancestor that was 50% human couldn't have come from one that was 49.999% human. And there is overwhelming scientific evidence that this did indeed happen.

Therefore I know where "personhood" came from.
This statement is false, and you know it. Therefore you are lying again.
This statement is obviously false. You've never seen crystals form?
Evidence that names were deliberately omitted from Biblical genealogies:
{ }

Evidence that they were NOT deliberately omitted: the continuity of dates. The actual age of each person when HE (not someone else) begat the next.

Therefore this claim is bunk.
No, it isn't. But we have already determined that you are a psychopath: you are not capable of recognizing these characteristics.
Plenty of other societies recognize these things as evil, and the Nazis were predominantly Christians. They didn't reject Christian morality: that is clear from YOUR defense of genocide on this thread.
Their "fathers" are LONG DEAD, Ed.
The Bible says you're lying, Ed.
And the victims of the Holocaust, right?

But this isn't evil anyhow, right?
The Bible SAYS OTHERWISE, Ed!

No matter what you PREFER to believe, you cannot deny that the Bible SAYS OTHERWISE.

If you DO deny that the Bible SAYS OTHERWISE, then you are lying AGAIN.
Why won't you address my point that punishing one generation in sixteen is incompetence, not "mercy", and that this means there is virtually no danger of punishment?
Yes, we have.

Re-read this entire thread. NOW.

...and so it goes, around and around and around...

beyelzu

Ed


You are so making this up. But I will play along.

Why doesnt god "rescue" homeless people and people with terminal illnesses and people living in a "morally bankrupt america" by having the israelites kill all of them?

or maybe he could send one of those angel dudes?

Ed

Yes, I am doing well.

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BS: Thanks for your attempt at clarification, but I'm afraid it really raises more questions than it settles. I think that we've been down this path before. Using "persons" and "personal" in the manner in which you're doing doesn't really seem to make the point you think it does. "Personal" is an adjective applied to things that are "of a person." So, of course only persons produce the "personal": that's the definition of the word. Your argument is therefore self-referential and self-referential reasoning, also called circular reasoning, is a logical fallacy.

No, I am referring to things that are related to what makes up the essence of a person. Such as only persons can communicate propositionally, therefore they can produce personal communication. This is not self referential or circular reasoning.

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BS: As I know that I've noted to you before, we can also say "only dogs produce the dogsonal". If we define "dogsonal" to mean "of a dog", then it should come as no surprise to see that our sentence makes perfect sense.

Actually this is true, though it would be better to say dogs produce things related to being canine.

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BS: However, I suspect that you won't agree with this (no big surprise there!). You obviously don't believe your argument to be circular, even though in its present formulation it clearly seems to be. That's why I asked you to provide some non-self-referential definitions in my last post: I believe that there are some hidden premises in what you mean by "person" and "personal" that eliminate the circularity for you, but which are not clear to the rest of us. So, since you're not claiming, as I originally believed, that "personal" meant "rational and conscious", perhaps you could provide non-self-referential definitions of "person" and "personal". In that way, we can get beyond the apparent circularity of your position and see what you really mean... Regards, Bill Snedden _______________ "Though 'bother it' I may, Occasionally say, I never use a big, big 'D'" W.S. Gilbert

See above.

Ed

Well that is not the only definition as I stated earlier.

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Ed No, this was plainly consensual see above. If it was rape then she WOULD cry out, wouldn't you? ng: This kind of arguement cuts both ways. If it was consensual then he did not humble her she humbled herself.

Actually given God's ideal of sex only within marriage, they both humbled themselves.

Quote:

Ed, I will concede that that is a possible interpretation except for the order of the verses, the order of the verses seem to imply that they get married first in verse 13. But it may not be in chronological order, ie she may have just lived in his house for a month to see if they were psychologically compatible and if not then she moved out, if she was, then they were married. ng: Ed, I am glad to see that you are not a dead rock and that you do respond to arguements. Then again maybe I just don't articulate them well enough ... Ah! the stories you make up. The month was to mourn her parents. Ed, what you need to come to terms with is the situation itself. This woman was captured in battle and her people massacred. She is a slave. The. "Marriage" (to me rape) is not something that she can refuse. No woman who is free will accept to marry the butchers of her parents.

The month could also very well have been for other purposes in addition to mourning. She was not a slave because Moses specifically stated that she could not be sold. Actually she could refuse in a way, by not being "pleasing" to the man. Then he was required to let her go her way.

Quote:

ng: As you point out above "humble" may mean to take a decent woman and make her into a prostitute. Whether you admit it or not this decent girl who still lived with her parents end up being "humbled" in that very sense. In those days a woman who was not married and not a virgin was considered scrap and that is the reason that such women were not captured in battled but simply killed. You see, Ed, women had value only if they were virgins otherwise they were sinners and were required to die. What a wonderfully moral world these people lived in.

No, the Hebrews considered married women and mothers very valuable, see Proverbs 31. Also they also believed the overarching principle from Genesis 1 that women were created in the image of God and entitled to all the dignity and respect that entailed. But of course if they sinned by having sex outside marriage or worshiping false gods they had to face the same consequences that men that committed these sins did.

Sue Sponte

I find the very premise of this discussion disturbing: questioning whether a non-religious person can distinguish right from wrong. It implies that humans have no ability to judge right from wrong, but rather must garner these concepts solely from literature. For many, that literature is the Christian bible.

If one has no independent sense of right or wrong, then whether you are "good" or "bad" is solely determined by what someone else tells you to do. This, in turn, creates a very real danger that such a person comes to believe that something objectively very bad (i.e. killing) is somehow a reasoned moral choice.

And how does one choose the Bible as having the "right" view on morality before deciding to follow the moral principles one thinks the Bible relates? Absent some independent ability to judge for oneself what is right and wrong, how can you believe that you have chosen a text that promotes admirable, rather than reprehensible, morality concepts?

winstonjen

Welcome Sue! That's a very rational, reasonable post there, and I agree with what you say. Anyone can claim to be righteous and holy, and if they do not permit people to disagree and question them, how can they truly be 'good'? It seems to me that they don't want people to see that they are merely bigots and control-freaks.