Let’s pretend that you are the God of the Christian bible, and you are greedy and tyrannical. you are about to issue rules to your subjects with exploitation in mind.
1: you shall have no other gods before me.
This will prevent you from worshiping another lord and giving them your subservience. any good lord wants more subjects.
2:You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’
symbols are powerful. they can start out good and quickly gain a negative reputation. this regulates control to only the highest authority. they also evolve. discrepancy can become an enemy.
3: You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
this again insures that no negative reputation of god is induced. the best servants are willing ones.
4: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
regulated ritualistic focus groups inducing positivity into the reputation of the one uniting idol. this is the other side of the coin of avoiding negativity.
5: Honor your father and your mother.’
Servants teaching servants is just good tactics… If parents indoctrinate their children then the level of devotion will steadily rise
6: You shall not murder.’
you don’t want servants fighting amongst one another. more slaves is better. After divide and conquer comes unite and control.
7: You shall not commit adultery.
more slaves is good, but growth has to be regulated to sustainable levels. this reduces waste. it’s simply good management
8: You shall not steal
As a tyrannical lord you steal from your servants and not the other way around. You want willing slaves not rebelling uncooperative or ambitious ones.
9: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
again an emphasis on cooperation. the leaders need to be able to sort out the bad servants from the good ones.
10: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.
Advanced social control telling you that normal emotions are bad, causing you to restrain them and become more docile, cooperative, and satisfied with your position in life, not matter how low. this will ensure continued production for the curse… oops i mean cause…
This is definitely a revelation… i noticed a few and then realized they all had something in common…
The Bible also defines God as “good”, so if we are accepting the text on its own term he has to be seen as, if not an enlightened despot, a benevolent one. If we don’t accept the internal definitions of the Bible or choose to impose our own onto it in a superseding fashion in addition to those, well then, errr, why are we discussing it?
Accepting the bible at face value isn’t the same as thinking about alternate theories…
Having no other gods before the one true god is the first rule of the so called “jealous god”…
if we are his sheep, and he is our Sheppard…
He isn’t a very good one…
I am not interested in the origin of these laws, only their effects.
This post is aimed at exposing the social effects of the ten commandments from a governing perspective, specifically from the perspective of malevolence.
We could discuss anything from how we should update the bible to cope with modern times to examining social control and religious abuse of power.
I am just getting my feet wet in this area, but I have a couple of thoughts.
The commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me.”, does not literally mean that you can not worship other gods. The Old Testament talks about other gods, and as best as I can tell does not prohibit their worship.
The other point that I am not certain about is:
What do you mean by the Christian Bible? Do you think that the books of the Protestant Christian Bible have an ordered meaning?
For example, do books following each other, when they conflict with an earlier book have some sort of priority? If so then the Christian Ethic would tell us that we need to reinterpret much of the Old Testament.
This might mean that in Genesis the words of “Lord God” need to be replaced by the words of “God”.
This subject matter is not my strongest suit, but I am curious about it.
This is an interesting aspect of the matter. God is often defined as the one true God but then these other gods are named.
From the tyrannical Lord perspective acknowledging competition ca be a necessary move, but so long as they are not worshiped above, then the controlling effect is still achieved
I am not overly familiar with the differences between the catholic vs protestant bible, but roughly they seem to be similar.
The major contradictions like how the bible sets up all these conditions for following god (all the esoteric sacrifice/stoning/ritual stuff) and then in the NT makes the rules obsolete through the death of Jesus are somewhat of a mystery. The specifics of the religion have to work tactically in terms of maintaining devotion, my best guess is that the transition of the OT to the NT represents a change from the old mythos to the new way of thinking.
As a prisoner adapts and evolves, so to does a good captor.
Have you ever thought about the story where Abraham tells God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? It seems odd to me that a human can tell a God that He is immoral, and that God accepts that premise.
I am not sure, but I think this happens more than once in the Old Testament. It makes me think that God is somehow bounded by man’s innate sense of morality.
It might be just my own peculiar interpretation, but it does seem odd.
What exactly is the ‘revelation’ you see here? It’s obvious that the ten commandments were meant to regulate and control the population that subscribed to them, but this is true of any system of law, and it’s rarely ever a secret.
I notice the theme of building up a positive reputation for the good Lord in your interpretations. Is this what you’re getting at? Is this the ‘revelation’?
I remember back in my university days learning that the ten commandments were meant to be divided into two sets. The first set consists of the first four commandments, and they are characterized by man’s relation to God. The rest are characterized by man’s relation to man. I think it goes without saying that the purpose of the latter set of laws is simply to regulate the Isrealite society - the same with any other set of laws - and if you want to call this subservience, by all means it is a fitting description, but not necessarily one that warrants our disdain or labelling as corrupt. Albeit, there are a couple that might seem rather foreign or unfamiliar to us - I’m thinking particularly of “honor thy mother and father” and “don’t covet they neighbor” - but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine how these might function towards regulating a society. As for the laws between man and God, these seem to serve a similar function but an antecedent one - that is to say, they serve a function that must come prior to that of regulating a society. They seem to lay the groundwork for “who’s boss”, thus legitimizing the laws between man and man by grounding them on an authoriative source. They are meant to paint an image of God as the absolute and ultimate authority on all matters of life. The first and third commandment are self-explanitory. The second and fourth, less so. I like your interpretation of the fourth (keeping the sabbath), but I don’t know about the second - let me elaborate below:
I’m not sure why you’re hung up on this reputation theme, and I don’t think it needs to figure in. It must have been a genius who hit upon the insight, as counterintuitive as it may seem, that an abstract, metaphysical, immaterial God that you can’t see, hear, touch, or sense in any way can actually be more powerful and ominous in people’s minds than can a God incarnated in a stone figure. Perhaps it’s the fact that such a God would be everywhere all the time, constantly watching you, constantly hearing everything you say. The theme of immaterial omnipresence seems to be a reoccuring theme in the story of Moses and the bestowing of the ten commandments. It’s the one commandment that seems to stand out as ‘odd’ compared to the rest, and I’ve often wondered if the author of this biblical tale was on to something here - or at least, trying to push a certain conceptualization of God that was rather unorthodox in comparison to the gods of other contemporary religions. I wonder if he knew this commandment would serve the purpose that seems to stand behind the whole set of man-and-God commandments - namely, to establish God as an absolute and ultimate authority, thereby giving force to the other commandments concerning man’s relation to man.
sociologically it is no secret that the Bible contains societal laws which govern and organize members of society to help it function more efficiently.
Usually people just look at things in terms of what is a benefit to society and what is a hindrance, from whatever perspective.
This thread would have us assume the bible is designed as a means of subversive control. The bible is not just something that helps or hurts society, it is something designed to make it controllable and exploitable.
For example the first commandment forbids anyone to follow a different way of life. Some sociologists would say this simply promotes cohesion. Given the perspective of this thread, i would say it consolidates and preserves the power of control by maintaining more followers.
Don’t you think a “good” society is one you have a choice in?
If there is no choice, what would this imply about society and it’s government?
positive interpretations?
Could you give me an example?
I can appreciate the tactical genius of the bible, but this is simply a matter of having respect for my enemy.
The revelation is that the bible is designed for ‘evil’.
Power over others is primarily a mental field.
I may have a gun, but if you don’t understand that it’s a gun and fear me using it on you, i would have no power over you through the gun.
‘God’ is often used as a gun. Carved images can be tested, compared and thrown away. Idolizing God personally and mentally gives Gods gun much more power.
Sociologists here say that the second commandment is about maintaining and consolidating worship for the overall good of society.
Here i step in and say, “who’s to say that worship and subservience are good for the individual or the masses”?
It depends on who’s pulling the strings, and while nobody has the gaul to question God, Priests and popes escape OUR judgment
Controllable? But of course! That’s the whole point of establishing a system of law. Exploitable? Well, that’s a different matter. The law certainly isn’t meant to make it easy for those in power to take advantage of the rest. But I still question whether it’s a foregone conclusion that this is precisely what the ten commandments were meant to do.
Certainly, but again, control and amassing followers is part and parcel of a system of law.
Yes, choice makes for a good society, but not to any extent. I don’t think it would be good if everyone had the choice, for example, to kill or rape whomever they wanted. How much freedom of choice one should have, and how good a society it makes, is a very debatable matter. We’re biased, living in the free world of the 21st century, and knowing what we know about the effects on society of certain kinds of governments, recognition of human rights, and scientific facts concerning human and social nature. What did man know of this back in the bronze age? What reason would a typical citizen of the ancient world have to protest against a social system like that based on the Israelite code of law? To many, having one God rule over a people may have seemed like a very sound idea, for it fosters a sense of justification for the establishment of a consistent system of law and order. I wouldn’t prescribe such an idea today, of course, but my point is that while it could be said that monotheism is a powerful tool for cultivating control, I don’t think it’s so obvious that, back in the bronze age, it passes for exploitation or political corruption.
No, no - positive reputation.
You talked about it at least 3 times:
Is it the whole Bible we’re talking about or just the ten commandments? I doubt the authors had ‘evil’ in mind when they wrote the many biblical tales we find in the Bible. We see it as evil today because our values are in such stark contrast to those expressed in the Bible, but back in the day, I’m sure the authors thought they were preaching righteousness and holiness. Perhaps those who canonized the Bible in (when was it?) the first or second century C.E. may have had some corrupt motives (since they were very selective about which books went into it and which didn’t - the former being overwhelmingly centered on promoting obedience and subservience, and placing the Church in an incredible position of power over its flock), but then again this could all be interpreted merely as a tactic for establishing control, which at the time was a common trend of governments and authority figures and was seen, even by a great many common citizens, as the necessary and proper mode of conduct for establishing law and order in a functional society.
I’m not saying there was no ‘evil’ motive, just that it’s not obvious that there was.
Yes, I agree it has this effect, but again, I say that this being ‘evil’ is a perspective that’s easy for us to take because of our circa and place in the world today, but I see no reason to conclude that back then, those who crafted and maintained such a system had ‘evil’ intentions.
this goes beyond law into esoteric thought patterns. It is not considered a law that jealousy is wrong. We understand it as natural. Biblical law however declares it a sin. to covet and desire more for yourself is a sin.
Some sociologists say this helps people to restrain from stealing, I observe that it would make a person content with less, which is ideal for the leadership only if they want their followers low on the scale of economic leverage.
The old testament talks about making your descendants as numerous as the stars and yourself wealthy, all by following the complex code.
When you sin, sacrifice a cow to a priest, or something fitting. if you steal a goat, give your best goat to a priest and your second best goat to the guy you stole the original goat from. Give 10 % of everything you have; Gods tax.
And by the way, if any of you are jealous or greedy, you are going to wind up in hell.
Some say that not being jealous will make for a more content self and a happier more secure society.
I see capitalism without competition; domination.
i would say it did pass for utter corruption.
As written word grew and expanded, so did this new regime.
forgive me for using the term evil liberally, technically i don’t believe such a thing exists. What i meant to say is that the intentions of the Bible makers are definitely against the good of the people in various ways.
You cannot describe an all powerful god, put fear and desire into you, slap you with ten commands (which is the bulk of what the evil reference is based off of), and not have sheer societal control in mind.
It’s too comprehensive. At times the bible is like a tale and then turns into a dense set of laws. Back in the day the bible must have been a big set of rules that people could have confidence in.
And the priests get the control.
Aside from creating a big set of laws, the bible gives power to anyone willing to represent God.
If there’s one thing i can say with certainty about the Bible, is that it is by an authority and for an authority.
let’s look at commandments 1234 and 10 consecutively, forget the others for now
1: you shall have no other gods before me
2:You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’
3: You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain
4: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
10: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.
Without the others these ones seem kind of demanding and pointless. The stuff about not coveting just seems suspicious
There is also the fact that this book sells itself as truth when it is, as some say, blatantly delusional.
L. Ron. Hubbard wrote a book… Was he under divine influence when he created Scientology? are you willing to entertain that idea for a second if just to counter me here?
In the words of L. Ron, The easiest way to get rich is to start your own religion
People can make up any laws they want. We might say that some laws are unfair, but that hardly means the arm of the law can’t reach that far. In this case, however, such a law is not only unfair, but stupid, for even if one were to admit to jelousy, how would the law enforce itself? Can jelousy be punished out of us? I doubt it. Can one lie and deny his jelousy? Certainly. And I think this is where this law proves to be effective. So long as one acts as though he doesn’t covet his neighbors possessions, the law has done its job of fostering order and peace among the citizens.
I think that depends on how you interpret this commandment. Does it read: though shalt not covet exactly those possessions which your neighbor owns? Or does it read: though shalt not covet anything that is alike in kind and value to those possessions which your beighbor owns? According to the first reading, we should merely refrain from wanting to take our neighbors’ possessions from him (tantamount to stealing), but according to the latter, we should refrain from wanting anything like what our neighbors’ own, even if we can strive to acquire it by means other than stealing (so we and our beighbors can own identical possessions). The latter would entail capitalism without competition, but not the former. I further note that the latter is rediculous at its extremes, and couldn’t possibly work overall, for one usually has a lot of neighbors who own a whole variety of things - not the least of which include basic necessities like food and shelter - are we thus prohibited from desiring even these no matter how we get them or where we get them from? Taken to its logical conclusion, each citizen would be reduced to owning and coveting absolutely nothing, for the moment one neighbor owns something - anything - no other neighbor is permit to own anything like it.
Yes, and again, there’s no reason the purpose behind this couldn’t merely be the control of a population. Corruption and exploitation need not figure in.
Just like our legal system gives power to anyone willing represent the law - judges, lawyers, law enforcers, etc.
I agree. Does it follow that such an authority is corrupt?
It could be done if we were peasants, and it would work as ever to the advantage of the controller.
i was envisioning varied colors of Mercedes. Yes i think the individualistic approach to the tenth commandment is one the makers hadn’t counted on.
What they truly aim to do is prevent you from feeling pain because you might be less wealthy than other people, God loves you after all.
i need not say who benefits here (aside from the poor, yes i know the poor benefit in a way here)
the bible renders social (and for awhile rendered complete) control over the people in charge of the church.
I guess we have to hope that the religious leaders are good people.
Now back to teh perspective of the bible being written by an authority for an authority, unless they believed what they were writing, they knew that it was lies which was giving them power.
Good for them and beneficial in ways to the masses.
It compares to slavery with full dental care.
and we live in a fascist world. ‘the people’ is a force long buried.
what follows ain’t pretty.
so what do we know about the lord given the commandments.
1: powerful and greedy
2: bashful and cautious
3: vengeful
4: ritualistic, demanding
5: old fashioned
6: anti-sex
8: shotgun wielding
9: nosy
10: hypocrite
Some of this is comedic, some is more serious.
If you look at it from a bigger picture, where an all knowing God created us, basically this god is toying with us. telling us to stone one another and worship him.
What follows are some pretty negative morals, and some pretty negative implications of the bibles effect on you.
As it concerns the ten commandment in particular, I see nothing that benefits a priestly class, or any class, over another. The only remote exception to this is “Honor thy mother and father” giving leverage to parents over their children. Now, if there were a commandment that stated “Thou shalt not question the clergy”, I’d have different things to say on the matter. There might be something to be said, however, about the first four commandments (man-to-God) since it clearly establishes God as the ultimate authority over all and everything, and therefore those who are knowledgeable about the ways of God and the divine, like the priestly class, would be more authoritative than a lowly uneducated simpleton. However, unless the priestly class is closed off the general population, removing any possibility for entrance (or at least setting the bar extremely high), every citizen has equal opportunity to learn his culture’s theology and priestly practices, thereby gaining entrance to that class. This is why I compared it to the professions of those in the legal system. They, like the priestly class, are far more knowledgeable in matters of law and authority, thereby giving themselves way more power over those less informed, but it isn’t as though such professions are barred off from anyone or any class in society. In fact, this example shows that in any social or political system, there must be a group of people who are more knowledgeable than others in the systems of law at hand and the grounds for them. It’s not the law itself that gives them this power, it’s the fact that they know far more about it than others. Add a law like “judges, lawyers, and the police can murder and get away with it” and then the law would give advantage to those who work in the legal system.
Now, as it concerns the Bible as a whole, there are certain elements that I see giving power to the clergy. Namely, that the Bible was canonized with a select handful of writings that all seemed to have one thing in common - that one needs the Church, or a priestly class, to mediate his relation with God. I’m not sure how familiar you are with the Gnostic Gospels, but if you do some research, you’ll find that there were a whole collection of alternate gospels that didn’t make the final cut - gospels that promoted following your own spiritual path, connecting with God directly and from within, of seeking ever greater knowledge rather than settling for what some authority has to teach you, of not heeding the teachings of Christ word-for-word, of the superfluousness of the Church (because it’s just a material structure). If these gospels were included in the final editing of the Bible, the Church would have been far weaker since Christians the world over could follow their own path, considering the Church unnecessary. So the final canonizing of the of Bible does seem geared towards establishing a strong power base for the clergy.
I’m sure some authors knew they were weaving lies, but I think a lot of them thought of their own writings as something akin to philosophy or simply the way they saw things - I wouldn’t be surprised if some believed they were being influenced by some divine source of inspiration like a muse or a daemon. At the time, it wasn’t an uncommon interpretation of how one felt when he was moved to write such things. Knowing a bit of human psychology, it is easily plausible that many such authors would readily convince themselves that what they were writing was, if not some divine revelation, then at least something that struck at the core of Truth.
Think about it: imagine a king in the middle ages reviewing two proposals for a new law. One proposal suggests that the kings power be limited in order to prevent political corruption. The other grants the king absolute authority over all his subject and the entirety of his kingdom. Now, obviously, the latter proposal is going to appeal to the king far more profoundly, but does he have to select that one fully conscious of the fact that his sole motivation is that he wants as much power as he can get? No! He’s more likely to conjure up excuses in his mind, fabricate some kind of reason other than the simple fact that he wants power. He’s likely to say something like “Uh, well, you see - eh-hem - it’s important that power be put into the hands of a single responsible individual like myself because to distribute power among many hands only creates conflict and confusion among those who hold such power. No decision will be made. No agreement met. The whole system of government risks collapse and chaos will ensue.”
People will believe what they want to believe, and what they want to believe is whatever appeals to their will to power - however, it is far more often the case that they will only feel comfortable believing such things if they can conjure up some excuse or justification other than that they want power.
I’d say these morals are negative only in comparison with the morality of today’s world (and only those parts of it that can be considered ‘modern’). Today, we know better. Today we know it doesn’t have to be that way. Today, we know of systems of government and ways of life that maximize liberty for the greatest number of individuals possible, and we’ve seen that our social and moral systems don’t come crashing down. We live happily under these systems. We thrive. We’re healthy. We have more respect and love for one another than any time before in history. Compared to this age, and this part of the world, the world of the bronze age seems dark and corrupt indeed. But back then - and this is my key point - they didn’t know any better. They had no other example to follow. What they had was the best - so by what standard could it be considered ‘corrupt’? By the same token, I consider anyone in today’s world who continues to push for the old bronze age morals and principles, with exactly the same naive reasoning, is corrupt because they should know better (either that, or they’re extremely stupid - but stupidity can be fixed with education).
Hello Wonderer:
— Accepting the bible at face value isn’t the same as thinking about alternate theories…
O- Nothing new about this. It is a part of the tradition you criticise.
— Having no other gods before the one true god is the first rule of the so called “jealous god”…
O- Before you consider “alternatives”, you may be fair to the object of your criticism. For example, do not try to judge without considering what the rule presupposes. God is knowledgeable of His creation as well as Himself. When He says:“Thou shall have no other gods…” it might just be because He knows Himself. Our existence takes place in a Reality that presupposes causality. In the case of God, this means that He reacts to our actions. His jealousy is probably better received than His indifference, which would be chaos. His warning about His jealousy is also a clue about the ways for US to control reality. So it may seem as the subjugation, a narration of prostration, but in fact can be seen a narrative of control, not just God’s control but our control of God, or the rationality, predictability of God and the diminution of chaos. The tradition is dividedd between two perspectives which gain ascendancy depending on the circumstances of the community. In times of strenght, the view of revelation, of atraight up rationality of God, and reliable predictability of His actions gain power. In times of decline, it is the perspective of His transcendence, His mysteriousness and UNpredictability which gain power. The ten commandments for part of the former. The Psalms and Job of the later.
— if we are his sheep, and he is our Sheppard…He isn’t a very good one…
O- This is the motor that drives innovation into the narratives.
— I am not interested in the origin of these laws, only their effects.
O- 1: you shall have no other gods before me.
“This will prevent you from worshiping another lord and giving them your subservience. any good lord wants more subjects.”
The counter is: This makes the playing field more determinable, more predictable, reducing the variables involved in the search for possible causation. Instead of having to assign responsibility to thousands of God for any one event, it finds One God involved in all possible events. This type of hypothesisation is more scientific, and no different that the early greek philosophers who were said to be the fathers of scientific thought and who also sought the ground-principle that explained all phenomena or events.
2:You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’
“symbols are powerful. they can start out good and quickly gain a negative reputation. this regulates control to only the highest authority. they also evolve. discrepancy can become an enemy.”
The counter is: The lack of carved images eliminate crude and vulgar tendencies that anthropomorphize the Divine and render it vulnerable to criticism and ridicule, as jewish thinkers were prone to ridicule and criticise other people’s graven images, rocks and poles. This, again, made God more of a Principle of Nature than another inhabitant of Nature. The closest God became to being an image was in the Arc of the Covenant and even there you see that the image is a Document of Law originally (tradition) carved by the Divine Itself. Most other idols are man-made, but in the case of Israel’s God (perhaps uniquely so), the “idol” is God-made. Other idols were also “symbols”, but crude symbols at that, which were easily reduced to being gods-in-themselves. That is, that while a rock, or sacred tree, may only be a local resident of the Divine, which itself was not confined to this locality itself, the vulgar would easily adjudicate Divinity to the thing, rock or tree, themselves. This can still be see in southern italy’s cult to saints, where statues made to saints, and originally meant as representations, of the Divine, are now, in what I have seen, taken as PRESENTATIONS in themselves, or Divine themselves. Instead the cult of the Law protected God from being reduced to a parlor trick, an amulet or good luck charm.
The rest of the post can be addressed in much the same way. Your reading is unsympathetic and reached conclusions that were critical of nothing but it’s own caricature. It is not a serious, nor objective, study of the Decalogue, but a smear campaign. After inflating the plastic doll with your own hot air you proceeded to relieved yourself on it.
— This post is aimed at exposing the social effects of the ten commandments from a governing perspective, specifically from the perspective of malevolence.
O- Did you lived in Israel 6,000 years ago? Do you have any experience of the Decalogue on the society which advanced them? Then how can you pretend to speak of the “social effects” of the Decalogue? The durability may very well be abscribed to the fitness rather than to the unfitness. Not everything is gained through violence, nor malevolence. This is just an unexamined prejudice.
— We could discuss anything from how we should update the bible to cope with modern times to examining social control and religious abuse of power.
O- Abuses of power are not excluvely religious. And since you’re attacking the core of the tradition, your aim seems less to update the Bible and more to simply supress the Bible, which to me would seem like a secular abuse of power. Communism anyone?
As a matter to be considered in and out of context, it isn’t that simple
You compared priests to lawyers, personally i would compare them to politicians. Sure anyone can become a politician right? But you have to go though the same channels as competing politicans. You need support and clout.
In order for me to make a change and create my own party i would have to fight against the Goliath that already exists. This demonstrates my point that power is indeed consolidated to the clergy.
As far as questioning goes, what the priests cannot explain is attributed to mysteriousness.
Taken in context, things like tides and sacrifices of the old testament are implied dealings with God, and since God is intangible the priests and other clergy act as accountants AND owners.
Seats of power are left unchecked, and again we are left hoping for righteous leaders.
Where does the glory of God come into play and fix things? it doesn’t. I would basically have to start my own religion, competing against mainstream Christianity and it’s existing leaders. And we have already touched on the mechanisms the bible uses to prevent competitors from, dare i say, cause switching of religions or faiths.
We have the indoctrination of the parents, the demands for submission, the rituals, the caution and disambiguation against symbols, and finally the cherry on top, the tenth commandment which tells you to stop desiring more and be content with what you have (which is sound advice if it didn’t come from someone who just robbed you)
Everything in the bible is to the benefit of religious and social leaders, and by constantly painting itself as good, Christianity always seems to a christian as fresh and the best.
That’s the first step in logic toward realizing that not only did they desire power for the clergy, but they wanted to use this power for wither Gods or their own advantage.
King James knew what he was doing.
“the problem with religion today is people are always following a man instead of God” - some random preacher.
perhaps the long since edited origins of the stories throughout the bible had innocent or earnest beginnings, but in its compiled and arranged form it’s intent becomes malicious. It is presented as truth, and as we have already agreed, designed to organize and control society in a way which gives undue power to the leadership.
lol, the old greater good delusion.
Here is what he most likely thought:
"Hmm, if these animals had their freedom they would destroy each other, better to have civilized personages like myself, who can actually read, be the unquestioned commander…
So how can i trick these yokels for their own good? hmmmm."
no matter how they percieved what they were doing (for all we know they thought they were doing a morally good thing), this act of deciding the future of the masses for them, even in the name of good, is “evil”.
That would be like me meeting you, and then brainwashing you to behave differently because i assumed that you were too stupid to take care of your own life.
And this is one of the best possible reasons to give for me doing this, which is still atrociously immoral by any sane standard.
the bible says treat others as you want to be treated.
the bible treated me like a gnat to be brainwashed, so I’m just treating it accordingly.
Kind of ironic eh? King James pleading stupidity by today’s standards?
This thread is not meant to be vindictive, and you need not defend the innocence of the maker of the bible, that is secondary.
Even if they did not perceive it as tyranny, or did not perceive tyranny as bad (perhaps they were trying to make the world a better place), today the effect we see is tyranny or fascism, and we have to change this.
The clear cut intent of the makers was to make society more controllable, whether they actually wanted riches or were simply deluded is unimportant to my point.
The christian God is a tyrannical lord, and so were they.
Greetings Omar, hopefully you will enjoy responding as much as i know i will
you have said a mouthful.
I think everyone knows what the first commandment presupposes. I have said many times that it presents itself as fact, as a command directly from our all powerful loving jealous creator.
You theorize that if such a god existed and understood itself, it would realize that showing jealousy is more beneficial to us than showing indifference?
You say this would be chaos, i assume because the bible makes it clear that without gods influence the world would fall to evil?
I’m not sure where indifference and jealousy come into play concerning a God who understands himself. If God is loving and understanding, how could God be indifferent? Could God not love us despite our faults? which this God obviously understands, having created us himself?
Are you positing that by getting closer to God and understanding him we gain control or divine blessing?
Or perhaps now i understand the indifference point.
Are you saying it’s better to have a jealous God that forces you to be with him and benefit than to have a God which will sit by and watch you walk away from the only true salvation?
This is a valid assessment, but it still does not justify adequately the leap of blind faith we take in accepting it as true.
This is the motivation that drives me to pick up a new book
I am not concerned with the search for causation, as the bible claims to be all about, nor can your rationalizing of what the bible says distract me from what i see. The effects.
This reducing of the playing field usually takes place in the form of murder, this is the negative effect i see that i want changed, and no amount of sticking to the other commandments or trying to find the “right” religion or interpretation can save what for me is a well founded perspective of a tyrannical organization and narrow minded philosophy.
this is exactly what i thought. this commandment is about preserving gods reputation.
For you, sorry but i must assume that you accept the bible as true, this is a great explanation, but for me, who sees no evidence of validity in the claims of the bible, this becomes an obvious tactic of how the mythology of the bible propagates itself.
sting! lol
i try to be unsympathetic in all my writings.
Again, and i apologize, from your gnostic perspective you doo see my analyzations as overly critical.
but overly critical of what?
the validity of the bible? Your faith in this validity?
I assumed from the get go that the bible was designed for tyranny, and by analyzing it as such i created a picture of basically how well the bible accomplishes this goal through the ten commandments (not that it isn’t pursued in other areas of the bible).
I have made many comparisons of how if the bible were true, the laws of the bible seem to function less well than if they were actually for a malevolent leader.
my argument is that since the bible fits better for a corrupt leader than a benevolent one, and since it was obviously organized by leaders, it was designed with malevolence in mind, by our standards.
prejudice… To make a pre-judgement. To discriminate based on bias, etc…
I didn’t really sense you tying these accusations into your main communications. it’s seems like you sort of said your piece and are now doing a worse job labeling me than you claim i did on the bible.
Why does everyone ask silly questions? of course i didn’t live in Israel 6k years ago, did you?
Even supporting socialism people ask me if i’ve ever lived in 1944 Germany, Russia or present day Cuba.
Do i have any experience on “The Decalogue” and the society which advanced them?
How can i speak of the social effects of “The Decalogue” ?
The durability of the bible might be because it is really really good?
=D>
Omar, Omar, Omar… If the bible was so good, society wouldn’t suck. And if i was blind, maybe then i wouldn’t have any experience on the social effects of “The Decalogue” , having been born and raised in a christian society for 20 years.
I make observations and logical inferences. If you want to try and counter these inferences, you will have to do better than high hopes and an easily offendable pallet.
why are you so worried about potentially libelous claims against the righteousness of the origins of the Bible?
Right, because you accept it as true… This must be why you ignore the actual effects of “The Decalogue” and instead focus on why if they are honest they are necessary.
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I can’t resist…
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…
ohh priceless…
Yea I’m more about exposing the core tradition of the bible as harmful.
You’re a patriot through and through aren’t ya?
So go ahead and spread your libel… Ignore what i have to say, religious and political dissidence are bad anyway. Go ignorant capitalism and shame on all you bad bad communists who just want to spread lies and pee in my cornflakes.
I’ll tell you what Omar, go consult your Jack Bauer shrine and come back when you’re ready to have a discussion.
