Hi Dan~,
Sorry, Sir, but I didn’t understand where you were going with your last post.
Connect
Exactly.
I believe a translation of the bible (not sure which one) says that one shall not kill without REASON. Reason is the key word here. If you feel that someone is a threat to…lets say…the community, and you know where to find him, why not kill him?
Of course man’s laws come into play here and you would most likely be arrested. But my point is that there is no universal right or wrong because EVERY SITUATION IS DIFFERENT. Sometimes it might be VERY rational to steal a pepsi and other times it might not be. In my opinion all bible anything and everything can be rationalized at one point or another. It’s not just black and white, but shades of grey.
Which is another reason why the bible is stupid. 
haha ive been enjoying Dan ripping apart the bible and christian views =D>
Haha that’s funny because I haven’t seen one good argument yet. If anything his ripping your small brain apart with his seductions of your mind.
Note: Philosophy should be kept with an open mind. You shouldn’t hear what you want to hear, or believe it as truth until you’ve looked it over.
Note : You should lay off the ad hominem, becuase it is making you look like a narrow minded christian. The truth is that there were some good questions brought up, and the closest response I got to my "So, what do we disregard concernign the OT? Everything? Nothing (that doesn’t work in the real world these days)? Whatever we choose?" question, was a bit of what seemed to be sarcasm from sirswed’. Club29, if you want to save face in my eyes, answer this question in a succinct manner.
Why does God tell us not to murder, then tell us to murder many times over later on in the bible? It is not mans place to judge another man, so the bible says, yet we are burdened with the task of judging, then murdering our own son? It is a simple contradiction I would like answered, without beating around the bush. Mick tried to clear it up by saying the NT is “better” then the old one… but it is sitll the word of God, and if you think it is in your ability to judge what part of Gods word is to be followed, and what part of Gods word is to be ignored, I would like an explination as to how you came upon this devine knowledge.
God tells people to kill in the Old Law, that’s before Christ came. Mick just didn’t have a good answer to your question. None of the bible should be ignored even though many parts are more important than others. It should all be taken in.
Does this answer your question? I believe I laid that out very simple. People also had to give sacrifices before the new law as well, but they don’t anymore, all they need to do is accept him into their hearts and minds.
You didn’t clear up anything at all. I said “clear this up for me” and you regurgitated what I said in just as cloudy a manner.
If one is not to follow some aspects of the OT, then why should one follow ANY of it? If one is not to follow even one single aspect of the OT, then why should one follow anything the Bible says? The Word of God is The Word of God, end of story, is it not?
Ok I’ll explain as easy as possible here.
The Old Laws don’t have to be followed anymore. For example, If the Old Law says to kill and the “NEW” law says not to kill, don’t kill. The things in the Old Law that aren’t denounced by the New Law are ok, they can be followed but aren’t necessary(Example would be circumcision).
The OT is alot of History my friend. Still have questions?
Well there is another perspective on old laws vs. new laws. Kids that thought their parents would actually drag their happy little butts out to be stoned were not going to misbehave, so no stoning. Not an empty threat but a life threatening dire promise. It works wonders. You have to get your kid to believe that their punishment was going to be horrible, easiest way: make a community law. sorry kiddo the law says we gotta do it. The other 13 kids fall into line quick enough. Really though how many parents do you actually believe dragged their kids out. The bible is shock effect it is a darn good controller. Probably only one or two in any community were killed in the name of the bible, after that due to urban legends the following generations held their tongues and followed the straight and narrow. People are sheep and the bible and its laws are their shepards.
If kids now thought they were going to get publicly stoned would jails have so many kids?
Also as the bible condoned death as a punishment it was not man judging. It was held that god made the judgement and passed the sentence and did the actual punishment using man’s hands as the tool. That was the idea anyway from my understanding. So in theory man did not do the killing it was all God. Convienent Huh? Pretty darn smart keeping your hands clean like that.
The bible old and new are full of contradictions but, not really, folks just have a habit of taking the things out of context as is done here. One sentence in a paragraph does not give the full intent of the paragraph. Its not the sentence that is important it is the paragraph. It works like this; when reading, the full meaning of the story is priority, then chapter, then paragraph then sentence. Slapping one sentence into lead priority takes all context out of whack. Speed reading does not help when truly trying to understand and comprehend.
Reading books like the bible or philosophy or other religious texts or some good entertaining books is like a 7 course meal, meant to be injested slowly and thoughtfully gathering the textures, aromas ambience and tastes. Not a hamburger and fries pamphlet, or short story.
If you are going to read religious texts, read them, put yourself there think about the time that it was written, think about how they may have felt about day to day living and survival, how harsh was it, how did they manage this, that and other things.don’t rush it, learn it. What was their daily perspective.
then you maybe able to understand what is written and you may be able to glean more from it.
contradictions are a physical fact of existence keep that in mind too.
oddly enough i was just reading this last night.
biblestudylessons.com/cgi-bi … oday_1.php
the old testement, in my opinion should be taken very loosly and somewhat like a methaphor.
Jesus in the new testement discounts the laws set forth in the old testement. For instance the old testement tells us we cant eat shrimp shellfish, pork. Discuses circumcision, animal sacrafice feast days. It also says we can stone a women if she lies about her virginity.
if that last one was true 2/3 of 20 year old women would be dead.
why was my penis choped up 
Good question. We keep the character of God and the way he interacted with his people. Nothing has changed about who God is. We don’t discard the law of Moses, but we recognize that it has been fulfilled in Christ. So we don’t need to follow the law and slaughter sheep at church on Sunday (some are glad, some are sad about that!), we need to follow Christ instead and recognise him as the “slaughtered sheep” for our sins. This can sometimes seem like a complete cop-out where Christians are free to do whatever they like with impunity since they don’t have to follow any law. However, despite the popularity of such a view, this is clearly not biblical. The “law of the spirit” that Christ brings is actually much, much HARDER than moseic law since it requires absolute SINCERITY and not just observance of a set of external rules. Remember Jesus saying that the old law condemned adultery, but now if a man even thinks about a woman he has committed adultery? So, even though Christ fulfills the law, he brings another “law” of the spirit that is written in our hearts rather than on paper. This “law” is actually much harder and indeed is absolutely impossible without God’s help daily by his spirit. Does that make any sense describing the Christian’s relationship to the OT? No throwing away!
I think you are confusing murder and just punishment. The direction of God to stone a law-breaker or kill an enemy is a just punishment that God ordains and is not murder. Whether death is ever a “just punishment” is much debated these days. But as God gives life in the first place, if there is one person who is entitled to take it away, it would be him. Don’t you think?
This can be a complex question. Although Jesus taught “do not judge or you will be judged”, he clearly did not mean to suspend all moral decision making. Loook at the verse in context below. the issue of “taking the plank out of your own eye first” is sometimes used to justify a stance where Christians are forbidden to make ANY statement about another persons morality. However, what Jesus actually said was to remove the plank AND THEN take the speck out of your brother’s eye. So, clearly some sort of moral descision making is indeed allowable. The important thing is that this must be preceeded by serious self-examination. Often times I’ll admit that doesn’t really happen, but it should.
Matthew 7
1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
christ didn’t do away with the old law, and in fact there are many “sayings” by christ, and sayings by the epistle writers that support this. The bible is now cherry picked, you still believe that it’s either “literal” or “inspired” word of god, but you don’t believe it necessary to follow all of the commandments, especially those that society finds unpleasant.
look these up:
in Matthew 5, Jesus raises the stakes for the law. No longer is it against the law to act, it’s against the law, to THINK about acting. And if you do, jesus recommends self-mutilation to keep your whole body out of hell.
also in this chapter he tells us that he has not come to do away with the law, but to fulfill the law.
“Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.”
in Matthew 10, Jesus tells his followers to ignore their family, and LEAVE their family to follow him. Most followers if their son or daughter rebelled against christ would not leave them.
In Mark 7, Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for not killing their disobedient children.
Luke 7 is jesus proclaiming that slaves should serve their master well.
As an example to parents everywhere and to save the world (from himself), God had his own son tortured and killed. John 3:16
Romans 1:31, Paul condemns homosexuals to death
1 corinthians 7:21, Paul tells us that slaves should not desire their own freedom.
in Acts 3:23 we learn what must happen to non-christians (based upon Dt 18:18-19)
So, in conclusion… christianity cherry picks what it wants from the bible, based upon the society it’s in.
it’s all relative. 
I agree. Was there something I said that made you think otherwise?
This is a common complaint. However the truth is that no-one takes the bible completely literally. When Jesus said “I am the door”, no one seriously believes that he was claiming to be a large piece of wood. So, everyone to some extent interprets what they read and decides whether Jesus was speaking metaphorically or not in a given instance. By and large it is actually quite self-evident, and it doesn’t really require much in the way of “cherry-picking”. For example, when Jesus tells us that the only way to the Father is through him, we can have a discussion about HOW we reach the Father “through him”. But a discussion of WHETHER one can reach the Father by another means is largely irrelevant, since Jesus spoke to this issue directly. Of course one can choose not to believe what he said, but that’s not a problem of biblical interpretation, it’s an issue of faith.
However, your complaint about Christians is not without merit since following many of Jesus commands would require a radical change of lifestyle and outlook. The fact that many Christians do not appear to have a radical outlook or lifestyle leads many (like yourself I imagine) to complain that they “cherry-pick” the bible. The probelm is that the implication of this complaint is that Jesus words are somehow unintelligible (I assume this is what you mean when you say everything is relative). I do not think this is a correct analysis. In fact the truth is much simpler. Jesus can be understood quite clearly. The simple fact is that many Christians including myself are disobedient. We may well roast in hell for our behavior, but don’t blame Jesus for being unclear, he was not.
It seems like most of the answers on this thread are just to offer speculation into why the bible seems to be contradictory on many things. There doesn’t seem to really be one “good” answer. That is life, there often is not anwers to everything. (unless you want to pretend there is)
I think scythekain has got the best argument so far, trying to show that Jesus actually still followed jewish law. (since he was obviously a jew)
This is the way I understand it. Jesus created a new religion from Judaism. Jews were waiting for a messiah, that didn’t show up after years of the date of prophesy.
So, Jesus showed up, and the Jews who followed him, believed in his version of Judaism, and called their version of Judaism, Christianity . . . and so it was NEW religion. And all new religions come with new peculiar and different laws, though it has similarities with the religion it came from.
Look,
Judaism came from Zorastrianism, and Judaism has similarities to Zorastrianism, but it also took on new laws.
Christianity came from Judaism, and it has similarities and differences.
Mormonism, Jehovas and many other new sects came from Christianity, they have similarities, but also many new characteristics.
Human beings re-arrange their belief in the metaphysical according to need and circumstance, that is why the old testament and the new testament are different, they were written in different times for different needs.
I think that’s a stretch to say the least. Whether Zorastrianism influenced Judaism or the other way round is unclear. But to claim definitively that one came from the other is pure speculation.
I was talking about how mundane perfectionism is, and how people shouldn’t take their gods literally. Gods are thought-forms, basically. No need to argue.
Can we talk about the biblical events in which “the sun stood still in the sky”? Why did no other civilization on earth record this supernatural event? Especially the astrologers?
“God is perfect. God cannot lie.” [But Jews can. Har har.]
I could say the same thing about Sesame-Street.
Which beings gave you more wisdom and joy in your life?
Angels, or muppets?
Sesame-Street should not be ignored, even though some parts of it are less important than others.
Because Jewish godforms use lies to steel and squander the natural system, as they claim that their ideal owns the universe wholely.
Your penis was most likely chopped up out of tradition.