Bible Humper

<a href="http://iidb.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=45&t=001456" target="_blank">The lust for blood of the OT Yahweh</a> is of critical importance!

Although animal carcasses aren't ritualistically burnt so that Yahweh can enjoy the "savoury" smell anymore, the fact that this took place at all says a lot about this religion on it's own.

It doesn't only refute the idea that this is a gentle and loving deity! This ritual, among many other things, reveals that the worship of this deity has a barbarian genesis. It is natural after primitive people have supposed that there are supernatural entities responsible for everything unknown or misunderstood to try and gain the favor of said entities through both prayer and ritual. Giving something to these imagined entities that they themselves value is a natural expression of this, as shown by the practice of sacrifice being found in many religions throughout the world. I advise Xians to tell us that it was necessary for the sake of free will, that the apparent enjoyment the deity gained from the stench of fried cadavers was feigned at the time so that later readers of his book could find reason to believe that this deity started out as just another Sky-Juju in the shaman's tales among the hundreds of thousands of others.

I don't think that I need to convince any modern apologists that the idea of a transcendant, omniscient being who loves to smell burning corpses is ridiculous. It is something that might seem reasonable to a savage, though. His life is hard and cruel because nature is a constant antagonist, so it makes sense for him to imagine a deity who is hard and cruel too.

And I already know that he considers this "debt" we owed him to be paid in full since he sacrificed his avatar to himself, but the fact that he demanded sacrifices before he bribed himself proves that he likes it, but just doesn't require it anymore.

Don't tell me Xianity is "different" from the others in content, the more sophisticated ideas just developed over time.

A story told by a shaman in ancient times that concludes with "Sky-Juju sez give to Chief, what belong to Chief."

later becomes "Give unto Caesar, that which is Caesar's" during a time when emperors were a fact of life, and it was expected that you were to respect them.

Nowadays, it is harder for priest-shamans to convince many people that the deity told them something new, so the modern Xian's creativity is applied to intepretations of existing text only.

Now that monarchs and Caesars are rather out of fashion, the modern Xian imagines the passage to mean that worldly things are of little consequence, so don't worry about them too much.

[ December 08, 2002: Message edited by: Bible Humper ]</p>