Pain Paien

As any fool can see, I never said that was the specific disobedience he was punished for. It's amazing your strawmen keep your company so loyally, what with how you insult them. However, had you read the passage I posted, you would have read:

"you will die and be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people. 51 This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites.

yguy

I'm familiar with the passage, and it doesn't contradict anything I've said. I'm quite aware that you are comfy with the idea that the God of the OT is a tyrant who demands robotic obedience as any human tyrant would, but the examples of Abraham's dissent just before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the one involving Moses which I've already mentioned pose a serious problem for such a view if we are to take the OT at its word.

Pain Paien

The passage speaks for itself.

yguy

Bummer that it doesn't say what you want it to, huh?

Pain Paien

I have no particular preference as to what your book of mythology says. It's obvious to most people what it does say in this case, however, whatever you may like to believe.

yguy

It's not mine. And it is very plain indeed that you have no particular bias as to what it may say so long as it can be interpreted in such a way as to ridicule it.

Pain Paien

If you say so, but you're the one advocating for it.

There's absolutely no need for me to insert anything ridiculous into that book, there's plenty there to draw from.

This little tiff isn't terribly fecund, however, as it's rather irrelevant to the topic anyhow. Since obviously neither one of us really cares about the other's opinions [of the bible], there's no real point in continuing to argue over it.

Keith

You have a very creative way of interpreting the bible.

Pain Paien

Not really, as that's exactly what it says. Knowing your particular faculties of reading, however, I'm not suprised you think so.

Keith

QueenofSwords: "So if I can discuss Hinduism with a Hindu without becoming a theist by doing so, why is it that I cannot discuss Christianity with a Christian without involuntarily relinquishing my atheism?"

Keith: "You can't relinquish what you never really had."

QueenofSwords: "Did everyone know this god before the bible was put together? If you built a time machine and picked a profoundly mentally retarded person out of the depths of Papua New Guinea in 1100, would he/she somehow know your god, and how could you discern this?"

Keith: "I don't know the answer--if you're asking only about a retarded person. I know that we have knowledge of God and his moral law because that is what the bible tells us."

QueenofSwords: "Unless you have global telepathy, your statement that everyone knows your particular god is unverifiable."

Keith: "Yes, in terms of the scientific method, it would be unverifiable."

QueenofSwords: "The creation of what? Pathogenic bacteria? Nuclear bombs? Cancer?"

Keith: "From all of creation."

QueenofSwords: "Firstly, if your statement was true, everyone would have something different "written on their hearts", considering the number of religions in the world. Secondly, there is nothing "written on my heart". The very phrase sounds like something out of a Madonna song."

Keith: "The fact that so many different and conflicting religions exist doesn't mean that God has failed to make His moral law
clear to human beings."

QueenofSwords: "Finally, if emotions are the evidence for your god's existence, every god and belief out there can claim the same thing."

Keith: "True. But I don't believe that emotions are the evidence for the existence of God."