NOGO

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.

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

NOGO: Fine, so to return to my point ...
It says that HE HUMBLED HER
NOT that they humbled themselves so this is not adultery because as you put it above adultery is when they both humble themselves together.

My point is that since she did not cry they did not know for sure that it was adultery. She may have been afraid for her life etc. etc.

so she is punished (killed) because she did not cry and not because she humbled herself (adultery as you put it). The man on the other hand was punished because he humbled her (ie rape).

It is the uncertainty which makes it different from plain adultery.

Ed

No, while they are not identical, it IS an example of a genealogy that skipped multiple generations.

Quote:

Ed: Also look at the high priestly line of Aaron appearing in I Chronicles 6:3-14 and Ezra 7:1-15. Chronicles has 22 generations and names and Ezra has sixteen. When the two lists are placed side by side, it is clear that Ezra deliberately skipped the 8th name to the 15th name thereby abridging his list, but in a way that was legitimate within the traditons of Scripture. jtb: Chronicles and Ezra CONTRADICT each other! This is clear right from the outset: they don't even agree on the names of Levi's sons! The sons of Levi are Gershon, Kohath, and Merari (as stated four times in Chronicles), NOT Mahli. The "traditions of Scripture" is simply the tradition that errors must never be admitted. It is traditional for inerrantists to ASSUME missing names whenever this is necessary to cover an error.

No, I Chronicles and Ezra were written at approximately the same time, so the Jews living at the time would have been able to compare each of the books and either corrected them or rejected the one that was incorrect. But they didnt do this because they knew that Ezra deliberately abridged his list. Ezra was a biblical scholar in his time, it would be absurd to believe that He thought there was a grandson of Aaron and a son of David coming up from Babylon with him after the captivity, also he could just go out check for himself. That would be like a well known historian believing that George Washington's son fought with him in the Vietnam War! He would have to be a delusional nutcase! I am afraid your theory fails the test of credulity.

Quote:

Ed: And there are many other examples. jtb: Of course there are! Like the contradictory genealogies of Jesus, for instance. But they're ALL Biblical errors. This is clear from the specific count of "fourteen generations" in Matthew.

Fraid not, see above.

Quote:

Ed: For more details about how the bible genealogies give the age of the ancestor that initiates a family line, read "Hard Sayings of the Bible" by Walter Kaiser pages 48-50. jtb: Quote the relevant passage. Don't expect me to buy a book just to read one paragraph of it. But I hope Kaiser can come up with something better than "I assume they must have done it this way because otherwise the Bible would be wrong".

You dont have to buy it, just go to your local library.

Quote:

jtb: So far, you have failed to support your assertion that the word translated as "begat" ever means anything other than "fathered" (or "mothered"), or that the Hebrews ever deliberately skipped generations in genealogies. Nor have you actually provided any support for the claim that ANY culture has EVER used this bizarre "X became the ancestor of Y when he fathered the one destined to become the NEXT ancestor of Y" system. I win, you lose (again).

See above. I never claimed that other cultures used that type of genealogy, only the hebrews.

beyelzu

I have always considered the atheist to be stronger moral than the xian, because he xian must contend with the contradictory veiws of morality in the bible.

But it is kind of amusing how theists will argue that us poor dumb atheists cant be moral.

edited to add,


welcome to the iidb, by the way

Fiach

An Atheist or agnostic has a morality based on the principle that his/her deeds once done cannot be erased. We must live with our mistakes for the rest of our lives. We must live with guilt and the only way to partially relieve it is to make some reparations.

The Christian not only has the contradictory morality of the Bible with its shifting ethics over time. He/she also has a very easy cop out. If he is Catholic he can confess his sins to a priest and free himself of all responsibility. If he is a fundamentalist he can be saved throught Jesus and the Holy Spirit and his sins do not count at all. So in reality there if a very weak inhibitiion to immoral behaviour in Christianity.

Fiach

Jack the Bodiless

There is no attempt to present Abraham - David - Jesus as a genealogy. I'm not disputing that the phrase "son of" can be used in a metaphorical sense. Jesus is not the only "son of God", for instance (and it is quite likely that Jesus was not regarded as a literal son of God by his immediate followers).

A genealogy is a detailed list of names, showing who "begat" whom. The best genealogies also give the age of each person when he begat the next: these are never "metaphorical".
They did not do that. In fact, they NEVER did that. The Bible contains many contradictions between the writings of different authors, in both the Old and the New testaments. Probably, nobody dared to correct these "holy" books.

It is likely that both Chronicles and Ezra were compiled from oral traditions, and that the names missing from Ezra were simply forgotten before they got written down.
Many of the books in the Bible were written centuries later (e.g. Daniel). Records were poor, and no actual calendar dates were used in the books that became the Bible. A better analogy would be Walter Raleigh's son fighting in the War of Independence, with no dates given in the history books that would contradict this.

The Bible is a book of stories, Ed. Some historical, some mythical: but all mixed up by people who didn't know the difference between history and myth.
Nothing "above" addresses the specific problem of Matthew's "fourteen generations". You have failed to provide any credible answer to this problem.

Therefore, when you say "Fraid not, see above", you are attempting to direct us to a rebuttal which exists only as a hallucination in your own increasingly addled mind.
I live in a rural area, Ed. My local library has a VERY small selection of books. I have always found it to be completely useless.
And there is no evidence that the Hebrews did either! This is apologetic nonsense, invented in an attempt to patch up one of the contradictions between the Bible and actual history: the date of the Flood.

As there WAS no world-inundating Flood since the appearance of humans on this planet, this is entirely unnecessary. Why invent this nonsense when you can simply use Biblical hermeneutics to argue that the Flood was a local event, as Hugh Ross has done?

Ed

No, the concept of original sin is based on representative justice. Like a lawyer representing you in a court case. Adam and Eve were chosen by God to be our representatives for a one time case, your parents and the Amalekite parents were not chosen as the children's representatives.

Ed

But the computer is also limited by the program that it runs on. The weighing of evidence requires a free will. An inflexible output from a computer program can hardly handle situations that its computer program was not written for. The human mind with a free will is much more flexible than computer programs.

Quote:

Ed: You misunderstood my point. Without a free will you cannot make a choice based on anything. With a free will you can make a decision based on empathy or self interest or scientific evidence or some other reason. You decide between the different options. Without free will you cannot do any of these things. jtb: All of these involve the processing of inputs to determine an output. They differ only in the weighting given to the various factors during processing.

Exactly. The pre-weighing of the various factors in the program limit the ability of a computer to truly have a free will.

Quote:

Ed: Again you misunderstood my point. You have the ability to NOT choose the best option if you have free will. And without a free will you cannot even determine what is the actual best option. jtb: See above. Free will is not necessary for selecting the "best" option. If it gives the freedom to select the WRONG option, then why claim that it's necessary for "justice"?

See above.

Quote:

jtb: In other words: God is not omnipotent. There are "things and situations in the spiritual dimension" that conveniently interfere to absolve God from the charge that he is simply incompetent. Ed: He is not omnipotent in the sense that you understand it. He is omnipotent in that he has ultimate power in the universe. You have yet to demonstrate incompetence. jtb: How can I "demonstrate incompetence" when you're willing to invent any number of imaginary problems that God can't handle?

What imaginary problems did I invent?

Quote:

Ed: They were killed for that AND what they had done and what they were doing and for things that are not revealed in the bible. There is such a thing as collective and national guilt. See above about the scriptures not being exhaustive. jtb: The Bible says WHY they were killed. So the Bible is lying, because it doesn't agree with Ed. Gotcha.

No, see my other posts about using reasoning and the historical context and our knowledege of God.

Quote:

jtb: Similarly, the Jews were killed largely for being the DESCENDANTS of those who had done what God disapproved of: rejecting and executing Jesus. Ed: While that may be true for some of the ordinary germans, most of the Nazi leaders hated Christianity, see Ian Kershaw's excellent bio, "Hitler". The Nazis primarily hated the Jews because they considered them subhuman parasites on the evolutionarily advanced Aryans. jtb: The Nazis were primarily Christians. They were 50% Lutheran, 35% Catholic. That makes them at least 85% Christian.

No, see above and next time read the reference. The few that did claim to be christians were influenced by the overwhelming liberal theology of the Lutheran church of the time. They wholeheartedly accepted Wellhausen's theories and no longer believed in the authority and inerrancy of the scriptures, therefore no longer accepted moral absolutes. Read "Twisted Cross" by Doris Bergen.

Quote:

jtb: And they believed the Jews had SUPERhuman powers of cunning, deviousness and so forth. There was obviously no factual basis to the claim that the Jews were subhuman, so the claim that they WERE subhuman was pure propaganda born of pre-existing hatred. This hatred stemmed from what the Jews did, and what they were accused of doing.

No, Nazi scientists claimed to have scientific and evolutionary evidence that jews were subhuman.

Quote:

jtb: Obeying Christ "out of love for him" is an EMOTIONAL reason. It is not a RATIONAL reason. Ed: No, you are misunderstanding. Emotions can have rational and irrational bases. The Christian's emotion has a rational basis, the atheist's does not. jtb: Exactly the opposite is true, as I have already demonstrated. We have a rational basis for why emotions exist: you do not.

No, atheists believe that emotions evolved from impersonal random processes, theists believe ultimately emotions came from a personal emotional source. And that source can be logically demonstrated to exist. The impersonal has never been observed producing the personal.

Quote:

Ed: We don't know why God has something similar to emotions. jtb: AT LAST! So why did you just claim that "The Christian's emotion has a rational basis"?

Just because we don't know why God (the source) has something similar to emotions does not make the deduction about the source (God) of those emotions irrational.

Quote:

jtb: However, the Bible contains many contradictory statements on moral issues (e.g. the punishment of innocents for the crimes of others) and fails to provide guidance on many others (e.g. slavery, abortion). As a result, Christians can do pretty much anything they like, as they can find the verses which support them. Ed: That has yet to be demonstrated. jtb: The Nazi example demonstrated it.

No, see above about the Nazis.

Quote:

Ed: The reason there is an emphasis on worshiping God is because morality at heart is a spiritual and relational problem not just a list of dos and don'ts. Once you have a right relationship with God then all the morals generally fall into place. jtb: But whenever those who profess to be Christians act immorally, you conveniently invoke either the "no true Christian" response or the "God has inscrutable reasons" response. Being Christian apparently makes no real difference to morality.

Hardly. Almost everything good about western civilization is the result of christians following the teachings of Christ. Modern science, modern universities, modern hospitals, most charities, the ending of American and British slavery and many other things were all founded and accomplished by Christians.

Quote:

Ed: And the mindless sheep quip is wrong, both the OT and the NT say you should test the teaching and leadership of your religious leaders to see if it matches God's word. jtb: ...Which is determined by the religious leaders. Heck, they even voted on which books to include in the Bible! How much more obvious could this be?

Although the leaders did vote on which books would be included in the canon, their criteria had nothing to do with trying have a grip on the laypeople. If it had they would have deleted the sections about the greater accountability of the leadership and multitude of other teachings regarding freeing the oppressed and etc.

Quote:

jtb: So the only real constraint on Christian morality is the morality of whichever type of "spiritual authority" that particular Christian chooses to recognize (or has been brainwashed into following). Ed: Evidence {}. jtb: Violence between different religions, and between different denominations of the same religion, throughout history.

The good of Christianity far outweighs the evil committed in the name of Christianity, as mentioned above.

winstonjen

Ed, I think you're using a strawman to confuse the issue. Please stop trying to complicate matters more than needed. If you are trying to win the argument by making the discussion so difficult that everyone gives up against you because they can't understand what you're saying, please stop.

Sue Sponte

Please explain. Historically this is a tough sell, unless you equate all socially acceptable or redeeming behavior of Christians to their faith.

For the same reasons that Christians reject bad behavior as reflective of Christianity, why should you presume otherwise for good behavior? This begs the question of whether the faith is causing the behavior, or whether it is merely reflective of the fact that most people, believers and non-believers, do not purposely engage in socially unacceptable behavior.

I remain interested in a response to this query.

Jack the Bodiless

So, if my lawyer commits a crime, I can be punished for it?

Ed, you have NO IDEA what "justice" is and how it works. The punishment of others for the crimes of Adam and Eve CANNOT be "justice".
You are now confusing intelligence with "free will". The ability to cope with a wide range of scenarios is intelligence. But if there is only one "just" solution to any moral issue, then the choice of that solution MUST be determined solely by the FACTS of the case. This has nothing to do with "free will". There must be NO freedom to choose otherwise.

A computer would make an ideal judge, if its program is sophisticated enough to process all the relevant facts of the case.
Irrelevant. We were discussing JUSTICE.
"Spiritual DNA", for starters.
And see all of OUR other posts explaining why this is bullshit.

You are hallucinating again, Ed. You apparently live in a fantasy world in which you actually have valid arguments.
Hardly ANY Christians believe in the "inerrancy of the scriptures", Ed! This is NOT a core Christian doctrine! For several centuries now, only a handful of fundie nutcases still (mistakenly) believe the Bible to be "inerrant".
You seem to have missed my point that NO SUCH EVIDENCE ACTUALLY EXISTS.

Therefore, regardless of what they CLAIMED, their hatred was NOT the result of such "evidence".

The root of the problem was RELIGION. Blaming the Jews for the death of Christ, and resenting the money the Jews made because of the medieval Christian ban on "usury" (lending money with interest).

...Unless you now wish to argue that the Jews WERE subhuman? How else could actual "evidence" exist?

Besisdes, according to Christianity, all the Holocaust victims went straight from the ovens of the death camps to the fires of Hell anyhow. So how can you possibly argue that Hitler wasn't serving God?
...Which is, of course, bullshit.

And it will REMAIN bullshit, no matter how often you repeat it.

And we will keep on pointing out that it IS bullshit, no matter how often you post it.

You don't understand logic or science. Stop pretending that you do.
Yes, it is irrational. Again, you lack the ability to understand what is "rational" and what is not.
You should have stopped at "the result of Christians". Scientists, even Christian ones, certainly were NOT "following the teachings of Christ" during the Enlightenment. And slavers were Christians too: they even used the Bible to justify slavery.
These were RELIGIOUS leaders, not POLITICAL leaders. They WANTED politcal leaders to be accountable (to them). They also wanted their religion to appeal to the politically oppressed. But the Bible doesn't talk about freeing the oppressed (it endorses slavery), and there is no concept of RELIGIOUS freedom either.
Christianity is responsible for more deaths in its name than any other religion in the world, including Islam.