Evangelion

BH -

I thought this had been made quite clear by Jess and others.

The ritual was a test of adultery. If the woman was thought to be (unexpectedly) pregnant, adultery was naturally suspected.

The ritual required her to drink a herbal abortive. If she was pregnant, she would suffer a miscarriage; if not, she would be found innocent.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

brighid

Evangelion,

How is it you are able to discern the actual intention of an anonymous poster on any forum without having a way in which to peek into his/her mind without them knowing?

By stating that the original poster “clearly did so WITH NO SUCH intention” you are making a factual claim that you somehow KNOW what his intentions are. Your predictions about “atheist” behavior also show your very own, special kind of bigotry. How is it, pray tell, does one who lacks a belief in Gods (not just the Christian one) predictably behave? Or perhaps you have elicited a certain response in order to confirm your own prejudices? Perhaps as the pot you should not call the kettle black.

Brighid

Bible Humper

Sorry, hit reply by accident.

Why the hell wouldn't I?

I don't see any around right now, but when I do be assured that I will!

Spare me the persecution fantasy. Christians are accountable for explaining the behavior of their deity as found in his grimoire whether you like it or not.

Well, you have an ultra-liberal theology, it would seem, so it shouldn't be too surprising that many critiques which apply to the vast majority of your fellow Christians won't quite apply to you.

Bzzt! I accept your explanation(minus theological details, of course)! You acknowledged that this is some primitive voodoo already.


Alright, that's fine. You aren't off the hook yet, though. If this ritual doesn't actually trigger a magical effect like they supposed it would, then where did the idea for this ritual come from?

According to the Bible, Yahweh was much more communicative in those days. So how could this mistake be made?

Bible Humper

Come on, Evangelion, don't play these games. The ritual consisted of much more than merely giving her a concoction to drink, so what was the rest of it all about and how did they come to conclude that it would work?

Evangelion

brighid -

*snip*

Well, perhaps it's because his writing style was so refreshingly direct.

Like this:

Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me that this tells you absolutely nothing about his view of the Bible in general, and Christianity in particular? Seriously?

And are you going to try and tell me that this was a simple, objective enquiry, without any polemical intent?

Come now. Read it through.

And please, spare me the melodramatics. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> I get enough of that from the Fundies.

jess

uh, huh...


you did see that the demand was made for biblical literalists and bible freaks to defend/ discuss the point, not christians? It never avoided jews.


seems like your tirade was a guess... simple and true.

edited to add: terry had mentioned that while a christian him(her?)self, it had never been discussed. That is hardly an attack.

[ December 12, 2002: Message edited by: jess ]</p>

brighid

No I am not, but it still does not speak to his intentions that claim to be quite clear about.

Is it possible he simply felt utterly disgusted after coming across this rather hideous test in the Bible and simply wanted to vent his frustration and help relieve the sick feeling in his stomach?

Did he NOT specifically address it to the FUNDIES and literalist FREAKS - and not those who fall outside of that?

So, again could you please tell us what special powers you have that make you so absolutely CERTAIN what this posters intentions ARE?

Brighid

Evangelion

Jess -

ROTFL!!!

For the past I-don't-know-how-many posts, people have been telling me that this is a Christian-specific argument, with certain Christian-specific questions to be answered by... Christians. I've also been told that the people on this thread are asking Christians "because they preach at us, etc.", and that they are not asking Jews, "because they don't preach at us." Now you want to try and put a little spin on it.

No such luck.

Alas, no.

I've got you cold.

-RRH-

If I mock someone for being an idiot, that won't make them intelligent.

Besides, the way I see it, the worst motivation the original poster had was trying to provide a reason for why one would mock Christianity.

Many Christians like to maintain an air of superiority over other religions. Islam, Hinduism, etc. are all primitive superstitions, but Christianity is above all of that. This quote makes it harder to maintain that view.

It seems that one way to hold onto that view is to distance Christianity from its roots, and say, "Oh, that's OT Judaism. Nothing to do with us." And then you can add OT Judaism to the list of religions you look down on.

Evangelion

diana -

That's fine. Can these expectations be presented in a mature fashion, or do I have to pick my way through the polemic every day?

Oh, that's perfectly fair. I don't mind answering a question - as long as it's a genuine enquiry.

But it seems that very few of the participants on this thread were interested in hearing any sort of explanation. They seemed to have no other purpose in mind, than to "reinforce their prejudices", (as galiel would say.) The person who started this thread, set the tone with his polemic - and so it began.

You'll find that plenty of Anglicans are happy to take the Genesis account as mere allegory, withouth (in their minds) compromising the fundamentals of Christian theology.

And just for the record, a belief in "the Fall" is not equivalent to a belief in "Original Sin." There's actually a variety of views on this subject, and I subscribe to the school of thought which accepts "the Fall" but denies "Original Sin."

Yes, I do.

I expected all of this. My mistake was in failing to anticipate the wanton polemic and the lack of maturity.

Mea culpa.

Well, again, when I read this...

...I tend to get a certain... impression.

Perhaps that's just me.

I've gone back and read your posts. We are in agreement on the purpose of the ritual and its subsequent effects.

*sigh*

I've been through this already with at least four different people on the thread. Please read what I've written to them. It's 4:36 AM, and I can't be bothered copy/pasting it.

*snip*

Well, that's what you'd expect to find in America. But I'm not an American, and I don't follow their rules. You won't find me jumping on the abortion bandwagon.

Doesn't concern me in the slightest. I'm not anti-abortion; I'm pro-choice.

*snip*

If he's genuinely concerned by his wife's pregnancy in the first place, it's reasonable to assume that the pregnancy occurred unexpectedly. Agreed?

He's taken his gloss from the King James Version, which was notoriously prudish. (Yes, astonishing as this might be, they didn't really like to have too many explicit statements in their version of the Bible.) I guess you can invent all sorts of conspiracy theories about "obscuring the meaning", but at the end of the day, none of them are going to be remotely credible.

Even the KJV gloss is more than explicit enough to show what was going on here. TerryTyron's reaction has proved this quite clearly.

Yes, well... par for the course, I suppose.

I think not.

I don't think I've made any overgeneralisations here, but YMMV, and thanks for the invitation.