What you say is all true. I just don’t see how the ten commandments makes it so. Chances are the clergy grew in power and secluded their power from the general population all on their own. They would have done so no matter what the ten commandments said. True, they do rely somewhat on God being the ultimate authority and all other gods coming in as secondary powers at best, but if it weren’t for these commandments, some other class of ‘experts’ would have been given the advantage. For example, say instead of God being the basis on which the commandments are held as sacred and to be revered, the Isrealites were inclined towards science and naturalism. Therefore, in order to establish a justification for the majority of commandments, they appealed to nature - saying things like “Though shalt understand the laws of nature thoroughly” or “though shalt not attempt to circumvent the laws of nature, for they are infinitely more powerful than man” - in that case, you probably wouldn’t have clergy gaining in power but scientists. Say the Isrealites were philosophers, believing that reason and logic were the ultimate authority. They might write the first few commandments as “Though shalt recognize the infallibility of logic” or “though shalt use reason as a means of settling disputes”. In that case, philosophers would gain the upper hand. There’s always somebody who stands to gain from a system of laws no matter what those laws are. If such a legal system were a hodgepodge of arbitrary rules - that is, without establishing a set of justifications first (perhaps including them in the body of the law much like the first four commandments) - then they would hold sway over the population for more than a short while.
You have to remember that the ten commandments came from Moses after climbing mount Siani (or so the story goes). At the time, we are told, there was no priestly class, no hierarchical structure. These were a people who had just been release from bondage and were on their way to settle in a new land. If Moses had a motive for writing the laws he did (for I think we can dismiss the possibility that God actually gave him those laws), it would most likely be to give the Israelites something to believe in, some system of rules by which they could live harmoneously and peacefully amongst each other, and a set of justifications on which to base them. Knowing well that they devotely worshipped the one Hebrew god, and knowing that they were a tribe at odds with the surrounding societies, it made sense to make this justification God himself and to put God above all others as the most powerful. That would be the surest way of establishing the most firm grounds on which to feel the laws were justified. All this before any priestly class and governing power had grown its roots. The priestly class grew into their positions of power by adjusting to the laws set down by the ten commandments.
That’s what I was getting at. Glad to see you understand.
That’s another plausible account. So long as he somehow can tell himself reasonably that he’s doing it for unselfish reasons.
I suppose according to some standard of “evil” it could be considered as such… but I think there’s got to be more to it than that - the standards have to be more. One thing to consider is that we are all selfish. We always do things for selfish reasons. Are we all therefore evil? What about parents who want to do what’s best for their children and know that this can only work if they have a great deal of authority and control over them? Are they evil for using such reasoning - reasoning which is very much like that of the king? Consider whether it’s true that the king is responsible and wise enough, and his subjects too immature and stupid, to rule over them - not likely, but if the king sees it this way, does he really have an evil motive? Perhaps “delusions of grandeur” would be a more fitting description than “evil”.
Of course, no matter how you cut it, tyrannical over lords like the mideival kings and infallible popes of europe don’t make good leaders and certainly don’t nurture a healthy and happy society. So whether evil or not, they’ve got to go.
Not so. If you really believed this, I’d call your motives good and noble, but I’d also think you were seriously misguided. Doesn’t mean I’d just let you continue to treat me that way, but my reasons would be that you’re delusional, not evil.
My argument uses the ten commandments as a jump off point. Just today while listening to a Christian radio show i mentioned that i trust myself.
Pastorann, the host, said that this is the antitheses to Christianity.
Some guy quoted proverbs at me
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
I reared with laughter of course, and explained i am looking for a religion which i can understand and agree with.
This type of mentality mobilizes followers into indoctrinating other followers into the religion.
One guy said that only through Jesus could one reach God. I asked about random obscure tribes and he said “unfortunately no they cannot, according to the scripture” He went on to say that is why it is their mission to get out to those people. he said he wanted to blanket the earth.
There is a lot of power to be had there. And as i said before, whoever represents God (or appears or claims to) can gain that power.
an unselfish king?
isn’t that some sort of oxy-moron?
I suppose according to some standard of “evil” it could be considered as such… but I think there’s got to be more to it than that - the standards have to be more. One thing to consider is that we are all selfish. We always do things for selfish reasons. Are we all therefore evil? What about parents who want to do what’s best for their children and know that this can only work if they have a great deal of authority and control over them? Are they evil for using such reasoning - reasoning which is very much like that of the king? Consider whether it’s true that the king is responsible and wise enough, and his subjects too immature and stupid, to rule over them - not likely, but if the king sees it this way, does he really have an evil motive? Perhaps “delusions of grandeur” would be a more fitting description than “evil”.
Of course, no matter how you cut it, tyrannical over lords like the mideival kings and infallible popes of europe don’t make good leaders and certainly don’t nurture a healthy and happy society. So whether evil or not, they’ve got to go.
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you might know by now that i don’t really hold people morally responsible (or i try to remember not to). the kings guilt is sketchy. We know that the bible is designed for direct mental economic and social control, so we can consider him a fascist. (i suppose fascists believe they are doing things correctly).
I’m just saying it is what it is. And yes, it does have to go. the delusions and ignorance that is.
lol, i agree.
The can i count among the ranks of my anti-theological army?
lol, just kidding, give me a few years to gather the resources…
— 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.
O- You still do not understand the connection between jealousy and order.
— 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?
O- Beneficial? Why does everything have to revolve around you? The point is indifferent, at this point, about humans and what is beneficial to them. It is about a characteristic of order.
— You say this would be chaos, i assume because the bible makes it clear that without gods influence the world would fall to evil?
O- Evil is merely chaos. Describe the Book of Genesis for me. What does it say about the time before creation, or before the action of that which is Jealous?
— I’m not sure where indifference and jealousy come into play concerning a God who understands himself.
O- But you should if you pretend to criticise the Bible.
— If God is loving and understanding, how could God be indifferent?
O- Who said that He is “indifferent”? The Bible says that He is jealous. I have not opposed that characterization. But if God wasn’t jealous, an extreme emotion, wouldn’t he be “indifferent”, which is at the opposite end of the emotional spectrum? Indeed He would. Is love independednt as an emotion from Jealousy? Do you have a girlfriend? If you do then you should know the answer. So a loving God, I would expect, would also be a jealous God.
— Could God not love us despite our faults?
O- Would it still be “love” then? Our “faults” are not the only aspect that we possess. We also possess virtues…some more than others. But the point is that love is placed on that which is precious and that which is precious is also that which is best and so the love of God follows the dicernment of God or the jealousy of God.
— which this God obviously understands, having created us himself?
O- It is not the existence of our faults that condemn us…a vulgar paulinian dogma…but the absence in us of redeeming virtues.
— Are you positing that by getting closer to God and understanding him we gain control or divine blessing?
O- I am positing that the Decalogue is a rite that adds order to what is otherwise a chaotic reality. Basically what it says is that here are these Ten rules; do then and you get X; don’t do them and you get Y. There is no mixture but an ordered exchange of goods= loyalty for favors etc… This is a narration of power, of control that is more palatable to an early mind, void of advances in medicine etc, and which wishes to have the means available (even if in this case it is arbitrary and taken on faith rather than fact) to affect his situation. By writing the Decalogue mans get closer to meaning, to control…God is just the means to an end at this point, the end being a measure of control, of having recourse, even if unreliable.
— 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?
O- First of all you’re taking a christian perspective of a jewish tradition. Salvation is a later concept, alien, I believe, to the Spirit in which the Decalogue was written. God, second of all, is not some physical being that does this or that. It is what we make Him to be. It doesn’t matter what I say is better or worse. I am trying to make you understand that at the time it was written such a God was preferred over other perspectives and that is why It gained ascendancy. Before you go flaying at it with the concepts and ideas developed thousands of years after the society that gave us the decalogue has passed on, try to consider how was such a God possible. And don’t just accept the idea that it was because they were immoral or stupid. Be charitable and try to put themselves in their shoes. Something about that God resonated deeply in the human psyche enough that even today it survives, mangled and deformed, but still influential, still breathing life into human wish for control. They did not “invent” the Decalogue because it was unbearable that God would be indefferent. The Decalogue simply rehashes tradition and stamps it with the Highest Authority. Walking away from it was not to forfeit your eternal life or forgo your eternal salvation…there was no such thing. The was Sheol and that was it. These was simply a narration of power about this People and this People’s traditions and God had to be actually elevated to His status again and again to live up to this People…to be worthy. God is jealous as the People, His people, are also Jealous.
— This is a valid assessment, but it still does not justify adequately the leap of blind faith we take in accepting it as true.
O- Faith is not a “leap” one makes. It is the ledge from which we are perched…no leap is needed. A leap is a decision. But faith is not a decision. It is like being in love. You do not take a leap of faith to fall in love. You simply are in love and everything else that follows is a predicate of that original condition and not the condition in-itself. Taking a leap presupposes the “faith”. And we accept it as true much as we hold other things to be true…not through “blind” faith, but through a little bit of imagination.
— 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.
O- What “effects” are these? Are you sure they are effects “caused” by religion or the Bible, as it may, or simply coincidence? How do you differentiate between the two and what is your methodology?
— 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.
O- Reducing the playing field is an evolutionary drive. It can co-opt religion and manifest itself through religion but it is prior to religion, and certainly not an effect of religion. It is what we as beast will most likely do. And it does not have to be decided by the building you go into, but can be brought upon by what political loyalty you hold, what tongue you speak and what is the color of your skin. All of this forms of discrimination are repeated, sometimes mimicked in religious narrative, but discrimination, war etc, is simply a biological trend in man and not something which we adquired through just religion. We, as a species, simply love too much of sense of order and hiearchy.
— 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.
O- I am not here to clarify just how I see the Bible…that is irrelevant and it would be tooooooo complicated to add to an already long response. We can discuss that some other time. The explanation I gave you was more nuance than what you absorbed. You read badly. In refining their theory about God, the early israelites avoided mis-conceptions of the Divine, not to avoid criticism or just for that reason, but because you want the most accurate portrayal of your subject. For you, who “sees no evidence of validity in the claims of the bible”, you should ask yourself (REALLY! and I would love to read your response to this) just what would constitude as “evidence of validity”, validity being after all a subjective judgment…I am going to enjoy that response.
— Again, and i apologize, from your gnostic perspective you doo see my analyzations as overly critical.
O- Gnostic perspective??? That is fresh…
— but overly critical of what? the validity of the bible? Your faith in this validity?
O- It is not that you are “overly” critical…it has nothing to do with the quantity of your criticism but the quality of your criticism. You are all over the Bible, but I get the impression that you don’t know much of it except what christians, parents or friends, have told you and you have reduce that Book to the lowest denomination, the crass, the vulgar, as if that is what it always has been or was always intended to be. Your condemnation does not far enough and your respect, where it is due, is lacking because you lack a true understanding of the subject…in my opinion, based on what I have read so far.
— I assumed from the get go that the bible was designed for tyranny
O- Hardly philosophical don’t you think? And I call that a pre-judice. I wasn’t just throwing ad homenins at you…your view is prejudicial.
— 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.
O- When it says that Thou shall not kill, how does that coincide with a Tyrant’s wishes? Benevolent from whose perspective? Perhaps the “corrupt” leader of today would be the benevolent leader of yesterday. And perhaps what you should remember is the People for whom This Divinity was God. If you are bent of conquest then a warrior-like God is your version of a benevolent God, who trashes your enemies for you and promises you their land. The point is that the Decalogue is not just a ploy from a tyrant to control a defenseless herd of sheep but a ploy by the wolves clan to devour other wolves, as if they were sheep. Like I said, your condemnation is superficial. It is not that you criticise, but that you criticise badly that bothers me.
— Omar, Omar, Omar… If the bible was so good, society wouldn’t suck.
O- Nice statement. Care to back it with some form of argument? How do you reach this conclusion?
— 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.
O- You presume the Decalogue to be of Christian origin, which it is not. The effects of your christian society has nothing to do with the decalogue, any more than it has to do with Jesus. Again, there is a manner in which we are wired that has led to the society in which you’ve grown up in. More than a christian society, it is a human society.
— I make observations and logical inferences.
O- leaps of faith if you ask me, vague statements void of argumentation, principles, logical necessity, information, calculation, differentiation, dicernment, yet full with prejudice, ill will, an axe to gring, an effigy to burn…a plastic doll, a caricature, empty of substance yet full of hot air.
— why are you so worried about potentially libelous claims against the righteousness of the origins of the Bible?
O- I am not. I am not offended, nor hurt, bless my heart, thank you for the concern. As I have added here and there: You have an argument that is immature, that still needs a few seasons. The theme you are on is probably one that even I could defend but not in it’s present argumentation. I am no friend of religion, but not for this do I just mount smear campaigns. It is not that I object to your criticisms but to your bad criticisms. They are criticism of religion made by a yet too religious man. You could very well have written a Psalm, had you lived in different times. Criticising God is seen as a duty. I am past criticism for a renewal, for I believe that such renewal is never to come. Then you see that Bible as a symptom rather than as a disease to be cured.
— 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.
O- Did I say “honest” and “necessary”?
— You’re a patriot through and through aren’t ya?
O- Because I mentioned Communism in a critical light? Oh, did I cross the line? Did I step on some toes? Was CRITICISM of THAT RELIGION NOT ALLOWED? How about we start a tread: “Stalin/Lenin/The People as a tyranical lord”?
— So go ahead and spread your libel… Ignore what i have to say, religious and political dissidence are bad anyway.
O- Not at all, Dissidence, criticism, political or religious is good and invited, but only when they are actually good and informed instead of prejudicial and empty.
no, you said it’s better than indifference and i asked what happened to love.
but this is an order that you are randomly asserting is true.
This order you speak of is hypothetical, incomprehensible and unlikely from my point of view, so i revert to my normal understandings of words like order jealousy and love.
first they say god ,oves, then say jealousy is better than indifference, then i infer something about what i stand to gain out of the deal so you infer i am greedy?
i don’t know… nothing and presumably inhabitable?
this is a criticism. logically an understanding creator would forgive the faults of its creation.
but naturally you will have some random explanation for this as well, right?
Love is a double edged sword. By the same emotion which supposedly draws him to us he can become repulsed by us.
Don’t cheat on god?
Forgiveness is something i don’t see a lot of these days. Perhaps God needs to send another son to die?
so god is jealous… he covets and hoards… us…
He is a loving God and a forgiving God but will forsake you if you do not meet his standards.
Does this leave me to pray to God for the strength to stop sinning but because i am such a sinner he ignores me?
Does God require true repentance?
When god created me, why did he not give me that capacity?
which he is also responsible for, so the point stands.
i could just get on a soap box and start explaining and justifying an idea for living socially.
We have laws for this sort of thing. tangible police works better at times than a figurative father in teh skies judging us and getting ready to spank us for our mistakes.
why buy into all the theological specifics when you can just understand simple concepts like “treat others as you want to be treated”?
why can we not teach morals to our children without grandiose lies involving all powerful deities?
The danger and the abuse creating this monolith causes is not worth the trade off from chaos.
we should create for ourselves the best system possible, and not just one that is better than nothing.
they united people together and gave them security. it provided them with confidence in an unknown and sparse world.
As children we learn rhymes to learn and remember how to tie our shoes.
I am wary situations where i am absolved of choice.
i think about every atrocity or war that i have heard of which was committed in the name of some religion, or the name of god.
The bibles solution to problems is to stone them . those are the words…
and sure, there are other words…
all i am saying is that the ideals of a group of peoples which lives 6000 years ago which were low brow security blankets just above animistic beliefs and just below common sense have no practical use in an educated world with the potential to educate everyone.
oh what heights we will reach with our football teams.
i love riots.
are you nit picking my choice of words?
do i really read that badly?
wait a second…
what the hell are you talking about?
no evidence of validity in the claims of the bible. sorry if my choice of vernacular was not congruent with your preferences, in the future i shall remain more vigilant in terms of communication and vocabulary…
give me a break…
i do not accept the bible as true. i see no evidence indicating that it is true. i see evidence to the contrary.
then you my friend are a poor reader. at the beginning i stated the purpose of this thread. i also stated my perspective clearly, to which i have held fast.
This is technically a social sciences thread looking to examine the social effects of the bible from the perspective of a tyrannical lord. this is obviously to be compared with the perspective of a benevolent lord but the only comparisons you have given me are convoluted card houses.
Frankly i think most of the bible is arranged to intentionally induce social control, not for the pleasure of some almighty god, but because men wanted control.
It seems that to explain the laws of the bible in a logical way from the perspective of a tyrranical lord is done so much easier than explaining it logically from the perspective of an all powerful perfect jealous god.
if only you could see beyond your front lines and understand the thought experiment/conclusion comparison intentions of the thread, perhaps you wouldn’t so readily challenge everything i say with fallacious appeals to myself like being inexperienced, prejudicial, and yes, a communist. You contrive explanations which don’t compare well to my explanations from my perspective.
you say gods jealousy is designed for our own good, comming along with the love of a perfect almighty god.
i say gods jealousy is something implanted into a story to justify the continual assimilation of new minds and lands.
this is what makes Christianity healthy, not the ‘fact’ that it is inherently good for people.
if you were a tyrranical leader, would you want your subjects murdering eachother?
no, you would want them united under you, to serve you.
the bible says thou shalt not kill, and then it tells you to kill in the name of God.
from the perspective of the tyrannical lord what you want to do is confuse your subjects with all kinds of contradictory nonsense while brainwashing them to believe exactly what you want.
The fact that millions are starving and live in squalor.
hmmm… disease, ignorance, war…
and how about those suicide bombings?
how about abortionists being murdered by fanatical Christians influenced by the “good” book?
this is trivial. have you got any more appeals for me to address?
aha…
Do you realize that this statement describes itself?
it’s a crutch for the mentally lazy.
by the way, you keep calling my criticisms bad, but haven’t begin to explain why beyond trivia and fallacy.
seemed like explaining Gods jealousy for him while accepting the commandments as true implies these things…
It’s o.k to make these comparisons, but you have to actually compare and not just state.
lol. well you did cross the line into fallacy. but i saw it comming, which was entertaining.
did i live in israel 6k years ago… lol. I next expect you to tell me to leave the country and live in solitude if i don’t like the way things are.
This is what gets to me. you all percieve me as someone trying to change things to be the way i like them, but from your perspectives you like things the way they are, so you assume i am greedy and instinctively oppose me. In truth i am trying to make things better for everyone.
making things better is the focus, not whether i suck personally.
if you want to debate my depiction of why religion sucks, go ahead. stop questioning my philosophical status.
You look like a delivery boy, but you’ve got no pizza.
And it was a jump off point for Judaism and Christianity - if it began without corruption, it certain acquired enough corruption as it grew and evolved.
Depends on what you mean by “anti-theological”. I’d describe myself to be more against dogmatic certitude. In that respect, I’m more a follower of Bill Maher than Richard Dawkins in that I embrace the religion of “I-don’t-know” and that theology may be OK so long as it’s philosophy (however rare that is) which he distinguishes from religion proper. Even though I always find myself agreeing with Richard Dawkins, he strikes me as a bit too militant and all too willing to throw out the baby with the bath water.
— no, you said it’s better than indifference and i asked what happened to love.
O- “better received”, big difference there. I am not offering value.
— but this is an order that you are randomly asserting is true.
O- “True”? When have I written the word “true”? I am not asserting that the order is “true” but that jealousy is connected to theory of cosmic order… The jealous God is also the God of order. Shouldn’t you ask:“Why is that?”?
— This order you speak of is hypothetical, incomprehensible and unlikely from my point of view, so i revert to my normal understandings of words like order jealousy and love.
O- Order is hypothetical? Isn’t that in itself another hypothesis? The truth is that you cannot know for sure, but the Universe is considered by Physicists as ordered- that is why physical laws can be expressed in mathematical equations.
— first they say god ,oves, then say jealousy is better than indifference, then i infer something about what i stand to gain out of the deal so you infer i am greedy?
O- “Good is Love”…Shouldn’t you ask: by whose definition of “love”? Then God says that God is a jealous God…isn’t that expected if God loves X? If your girlfriend is not jealous of you, does she even care about you? Or perhaps you have no choice and so she has nothing to fear, no fear of losing you to other women and so no reason to be jealous…are you getting what my analogy is about? I am not saying that the Bible is true, but at times quite self-consistent.
— i don’t know… nothing and presumably inhabitable?
O- Shouldn’t you know about this? Shouldn’t you be sure about your understanding of it before attampting a critique of it?
— this is a criticism. logically an understanding creator would forgive the faults of its creation.
O- depends on where the origin of our faults lie. If you believe in Divine Determinism, like Paul, then God either forgives His Creation, for the faults of the creation are the responsibility of the Creator, or God is unjust by our standards. Or, you can believe in Freewill and thus the faults as well as virtues, are originated in the moral agent and not in God. They are our faults and not the faults of creation and so we are responsible and earn our punishment or rewards. The evil we do or the good we do, would be OUR creation and not God’s creation, and God cannot be held responsible for them. The son or daughter is held responsible, it is the son or daughter that is punished and not the parents, because the young adults have the freedom to do as they wish in the eyes of the Law.
— Love is a double edged sword. By the same emotion which supposedly draws him to us he can become repulsed by us.
O- The jealous girlfriend scenario…how is she repulsed? A jealous girlfriend does not leave her man. She asks her man to conform to crazy rules and schedules, which, if you fail to maintain, then pissed her off and she leaves you. I am not saying that God is nothing but a jealous girlfriend or that His character is that of a jealous girlfriend…that would be to forget God’s trancendence, but I am saying that people at the time understood God’ character in the most basic of human emotions (jelousy, love, anger etc.), and that these emotions are found in us as well. To “know” God was to “know ourselves”, so to speak.
— Does this leave me to pray to God for the strength to stop sinning but because i am such a sinner he ignores me?
O- I am not going to answer a question that only faith can answer. But look at this:
If a man believes that his cheating is biologically determined…he has a disease that prevents him from abstinence…when the jealous girlfriend comes asking for an explanation for the latest infidelity, he might say: “Oh come on baby, that is the way I am!” That is how I am made".
By contrast, a man that believes in his own freedom will ask for forgiveness and promise always to do better and feel guilt when he fall short of his promise because he always holds himself as in control of his actions.
— Does God require true repentance?
O- What is that?
— When god created me, why did he not give me that capacity?
O- Who said that He did not? It does not take something extraordinary to feel regret, to say:“I am sorry”, to ask for forgiveness, except the belief in your own freedom.
— which he is also responsible for, so the point stands.
O- Again, presupposing Divine Determinism as true.
— We have laws for this sort of thing. tangible police works better at times than a figurative father in teh skies judging us and getting ready to spank us for our mistakes.
O- alright Mr philosopher…Why do you think that this is the case? If police works better than some myth in keeping order then why does the myth persist?
— why buy into all the theological specifics when you can just understand simple concepts like “treat others as you want to be treated”?
O- The Golden Rule is a biological disposition in social animals…a basic morality which we are born with. Onto this we acquire secondary morals, traditions of the group that still resonate with that instinct of fair exchange. Why expand on the Golden Rule? Because religion is more than just morality. It expands into other areas of social concern, such as politics and tries to define reality as rationally ordered, as intended. The Golden Rule is not, in my opinion, the foundation of religion, but is just added in there for good measure…sorta like “just so that we are sure we are not leaving anything important out”.
— why can we not teach morals to our children without grandiose lies involving all powerful deities?
O- Again, religion does not only teach morality to our children. It talks most heavily about the consequence of sin. Moral behaviour, in Christianity for example, can be seen as a means to an end and not an end in itself and that is why the curriculum of the Church goes much farther than just teaching ethical behaviour but explaning “why?” be moral and the certain consequences of sin.
— The danger and the abuse creating this monolith causes is not worth the trade off from chaos.
O- The dangers exists even without it. Mao’s China was as represive as Catholic europe, AT LEAST, same with Russia and today people still risk life to escape from Cuba. And there is yet another unexamined assumption in all of this. The socialist assumes that man is a noble beast, a blank slate to be molded or deformed after birth. It relies, therefore, heavily on indoctrination, thereby committing one of the crimes of the Church. What if Chaos is just what we are made of. What if we are not noble savages, but merely savages, always on the lookout for a tidy narrative that makes our aggression go down with the least mental strain? What if we are just, as a species, “wired” for “religion”? What if all that you lament about this world has nothing to do with God and everything to do with forces like natural selection and group dynamics? What if war predated and will also survive religion? God was declared by Nietzsche to be dead. How was his own society improved? We saw in the years after the horrors of two world wars and what Gore Vidal called “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace”. People are still sore about 9/11 and rightfully so but we must not forget that the casualties of the attacks pale in comparassion with Pearl Harbor, and that these attacks were the result of not just a religion but of that basic instinct of revenge, quite independent of religion.
— i think about every atrocity or war that i have heard of which was committed in the name of some religion, or the name of god.
O- Why did we go into WW1 and WW2? What was so religious about Vietnam?
— are you nit picking my choice of words?
O- Nope. I am just asking what you define as “evidence of validity”?
— no evidence of validity in the claims of the bible.
O- Again, all I am asking is for some clarification about what constitutes as evidence of “validity” for you at least.
— i do not accept the bible as true. i see no evidence indicating that it is true. i see evidence to the contrary.
O- I got that. But still you have not addressed what would constitute as “evidence”.
— then you my friend are a poor reader. at the beginning i stated the purpose of this thread. i also stated my perspective clearly, to which i have held fast.
O- Stating your perspective clearly is admirable…but it does not grant immunity from criticism to your perspective.
— This is technically a social sciences thread looking to examine the social effects of the bible from the perspective of a tyrannical lord.
O- …from a formed prejudice. But go on…
— this is obviously to be compared with the perspective of a benevolent lord but the only comparisons you have given me are convoluted card houses.
O- But I have already explained that “tyrant” and “benevolent” are merely modern perspectives that lack historical objectivity. What use is there is playing with inflatable dolls? Perhaps you are an epicurean…
— Frankly i think most of the bible is arranged to intentionally induce social control, not for the pleasure of some almighty god, but because men wanted control.
O- If that was the case then the Bible could have been written a lot better, don’t you think?
— It seems that to explain the laws of the bible in a logical way from the perspective of a tyrranical lord is done so much easier than explaining it logically from the perspective of an all powerful perfect jealous god.
O- And that is where we disagree. I see quite the opposite. The conspiracy theory is not supported by the text but a belief in some cosmic jealous and all-too-human God does explain the text. Then there are other things to take into consideration such as the evolution of Yahweh…but you do not mention any of that. The Bible is made of priestly text but also of prophetic literature against the priest…again you are silent on that, not because you choose to be, but I think because you have no clue about what I am talking about. This is the source of my frustration, because it is not that Religion as a whole is not due criticism but because you are callous in yours.
— if only you could see beyond your front lines and understand the thought experiment/conclusion comparison intentions of the thread, perhaps you wouldn’t so readily challenge everything i say with fallacious appeals to myself like being inexperienced, prejudicial, and yes, a communist. You contrive explanations which don’t compare well to my explanations from my perspective.
O- I have been there and back, young one. I have a few years on my head. I have been through that period…then back…then off again. Let me tell you what I despise the most: Those who praise or despise the Bible without ever giving a look at what it says. Have you read the entire thing? Probably not and it shows. So don’t ask me to see beyond my “front lines” when you obviously have not followed your own advise. You feel me? And don’t take it personal. To me, anyone who goes on to criticise something that they have not even experience, thus marks them as in-experience and since they render judgment even without a fair trial, they are, in my eyes, pre-judicial. The fact that my explanations don’t compare well stand as evidence of a proper discussion, young one. That is the point of the whole entire thing. if I merely agreed then I would not even bother to post a response- for what? Back-slapping?
— you say gods jealousy is designed for our own good, comming along with the love of a perfect almighty god.
O- No, no, no. “received better”, as in "preferred by those involved in that society…
— i say gods jealousy is something implanted into a story to justify the continual assimilation of new minds and lands.
O- The society that created the decalogue was uninterested in “assimilation” as transaction with God was genetical- a matter of birth and not of choice, and as for land, this too was seen as part of the universal order, and probably not just by them but by their neighbors as well who contributed to strenghten the association of divine favor with the acquisition of land.
— if you were a tyrranical leader, would you want your subjects murdering eachother? no, you would want them united under you, to serve you.
O- But would you want someone to charge you with inconsistency, just as you have easily done: “the bible says thou shalt not kill, and then it tells you to kill in the name of God.” Well, wouldn’t it had been easier for the tyrant to keep such sweeping command to himself. For here is the thing: The Law placed even the kind under it. The kind was not above the Law. david was punished by the Bible when he became tyranical…now wouldn’t a tyrant have little to do with laws that circumscribe their power? Wouldn’t a tyrant make his own desires Law instead of a written law that is all about setting limits to power. If I wanted to be a tyrant the first thing I would do is toss the Bible out of my country and burn all books for that matter and keep for myself a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Books have generally been enemies of totalitarian states and where you find a tyrant there you also find limited access to books and even knowledge.
— The fact that millions are starving and live in squalor.
O- How is the Bible responsible for that? Does it commands that you will let millions to starve?
— hmmm… disease, ignorance, war…
O- Do you think that the Bible is the cause of disease, or ignorance or war?
— and how about those suicide bombings?
O- Yeah, I guess the Koran also orders that you will use women and children…Sure…all that violence is what religion is about. Of course, since you have not read the bible is it too far to assume that you haven’t read the Koran as well? Suicide bombings are the preferred strategy of the desperate, the underdog. Atheist children stormed Columbine High School and committed what amounted to a suicide attack…just not in the name of God. Tymothy McVey bombed a Federal Bldg, yet not because he was a Christian…
— how about abortionists being murdered by fanatical Christians influenced by the “good” book?
O- That is a good example of an exception. It is universally condemned as being unchristian. Why bother when vengance is His?
— This is what gets to me. you all percieve me as someone trying to change things to be the way i like them, but from your perspectives you like things the way they are, so you assume i am greedy and instinctively oppose me. In truth i am trying to make things better for everyone.
O- You sound just like Moses…
why does god either have to be jealous or indifferent?
i can conceptualize the spectrum, but who’s to say God couldn’t be smack dab in the middle?
shouldn’t you explain that?
I have no clue what cosmic order is or why your explanations of Gods hypothetical jealousy are logical.
where does jealousy and indifference and love figure into physics?
neurochemicals?
No, love is not jealousy. in the terms you sue you equate love with desire, and then desire with jealousy, so far as i can gather.
I can understand jealousy arising from love, I cannot however understand the benefits of a jealous and loving god over a plain old loving god.
i don;t understand your motives.
are you perhaps entertining yourself by explaining away my objections to the bibles logical consistency.
jealousy is covetousness. jealousy is a selfish desire.
I do not like to think of love as a selfish emotion
— i don’t know… nothing and presumably inhabitable?
O- Shouldn’t you know about this? Shouldn’t you be sure about your understanding of it before attempting a critique of it?
[/quote]
Genisis?
Do i have to be well read on every verse in the bible before i speak a word against it?
God was alone in the beginning. He apparently wanted people to worship him, so he created us.
Is this the jealousy you speak of?
Make your own points. what about genesis are you getting at?
but God knowingly created the faulty moral agents, or did he blindfold himself and throw the dice?
the bible implies divine determinism, which implies that God is sadistic.
let’s say i make a murderous robot, should i be blamed?
Let’s say i keep a dog and make it worship me and only me. Should i be blamed when it mauls a child to death?
I throw a deck of cards into the air, and it becomes reality. Should i be blamed for the outcome?
So you’re saying that the god of the christian bible is not a perfect loving God but a god perplexed by basic human emotions?
Are you for updating the bible? Reinterpreting and rationalizing it?
I am for moving beyond petty symbolism altogether.
a man reflecting over the morality of his own actions and knowingly choosing the immoral route does not change the facts. it simply implies he is greedy. His god given gift.
repentance where you really really mean it and are not just doing it to save yourself from eternal damnation
He did not give me the capacity to repent my sins to an abusive father.
according to the descriptions in the bible it logically follows.
anyone who knows everything, and does something, knows exactly what is going to happen.
it persists by design.
indoctrinate your children, minister in far lands, repent, believe, have eternal blind faith.
Cathedrals… Remnants of the past pestering the present
Some people say that treating others like dogs is immoral…
I say treating dogs like dogs is immoral…
Hitchens thinks that we all need some sort of authority figure.
spare me the rituals and the self delusion. let’s evolve already.
do you mean hell?
or the woes of the current heathens?
you’re telling me that teh bible is a means to and end. it is a device that lies in order to control and organize, apparently for the benefit of all.
spare me your political views.
I will not accept these generalizations even if they are passing. if you want to discuss what’s wrong with Cuba, or the merits of Mao, contact me via another thread.
assumptions indeed.
i thought they were government conspiracies driven by greed to motivate war, but this is an issue for a different thread…
I love when people talk about human nature… it’s always so… wrong…
what if we are wired for religion?
What if religion wires us?
What if we are savages?
Should we delude ourselves and pretend otherwise to make or a happy tea party?
We are savage? what makes us savage?
what drives war?
Human nature?
Is a religion which makes people more docile and content with delusions the answer?
Here is a bit of human nature for you. you see people in eternal conflict, and you seek to weaken everyone to prevent these conflicts from causing harm.
Tragically minds like yours can cause just as much harm as any war by invading and silencing minds.
Wars are started out of desire. Both sides covet something and then proceed to fight for it. This is the way of “animals”
Yet wolves hunt in packs, so do lions. Countless species of animals not only cooperates but lives peacefully with eachother.
Why can’t we teach cooperation instead of docility?
why can’t we teach independence instead of superficial dependence?
independence doesn’t lead to war, dependence does.
sure religion can make us cooperate, but in the end we cooperate and fight other groups of people, other religions.
It’s what it was designed to do.
the bible is a banner under which masses can congregate.
but what good is a banner which the congregation does not have control over?
the president people voted for?
greed fueled those wars so far as i know, religion was a tool.
something to verify a claim. evidence in general.
scientific or logical proof.
i was insinuating that your lack of comprehension as to the nature of my perspective in this thread is the cause of the ineffectiveness of your criticisms.
from one “prejudice” to another, yes. from benevolent to malovelent.
i’m just comparing. what’s the beef?
well in terms of historical objectivity, “tyrant” and “benevolent” are just words, with meanings. i’m sure those meanings have been around for a long time.
i would like to know exactly why something i have said is not historically objective.
frankly historical objectivity does not come into play. this is a thought experiment, not an excavation of desert scribblings.
The bible is the subject, not ancient Israelites.
i’m thinking new king James, not obscure beginnings.
i’m thinking modern Christianity, not esoteric insights into the simplistic nature of our past.
not really. it seems to have done a good job.
what would you change?
hold it right there…
it’s not a conspiracy theory. king james’ grave will be left unsullied.
why would a deceitful document lend support to arguments exposing this deceit?
yea…
The God I’m concerned with is the one the anti-abortionists worship.
i’m not interested in esoteric beginnings or heart felt stories.
If you have some relevant recorded history, please direct me.
I’m not interested in pride and i’m not interested in walking away from this discussion with a fuzzy feeling inside.
i’m trying to logically compare ideas in a format involving discussion and debate.
We should stick to the debate at hand. I believe that my current point is that primarily this thread assumes the bible as being meant for tyranny.
(perhaps my focus on the ten commandments offended you, i don’t know)
I make assumptions, yes, known and stated assumptions.
I simply want to follow through to conclusions and see how well they fit for what i already know.
You make assumptions as well, but you don;t state them as such very clearly.
I welcome these assumptions, they are meant to be compared to mine.
but as you make your assumptions, you must realize that you can go no further than the assumptions i have made, lest your perspective becomes too complicated and mine seems more plausible.
whoever first came out with the ten commandments knew that they were trying to create an idol which maintained and strengthened itself over time.
you fail to grasp what this entire thread implies.
the bible is designed for tyranny, but it is especially designed not to seem like tyranny, lest it not last long.
i’m just saying that if it was so good for society why havn’t we solved our major problems yet?
refer to last line
God is dead remember? this is mans doing, not the koran, not the bible, but the people who pick up these things and use them for their own selfish ignorant desires.
p.s, read the bible, reading the koran, so stop making these arrogant appeals to my intelligence.
because you have to carry out Gods will for him, otherwise he remains dead, remember?
Is that a compliment or an insult?
nana says Moses went to hell for the sin of pride.
(along with everyone from the old testament, not having been forgiven by teh sacrifice of Gods son sent to die for our sins because, for some reason, God needs blood to forgive. Needs sacrifice. there’s the rub…)
— why does god either have to be jealous or indifferent?
i can conceptualize the spectrum, but who’s to say God couldn’t be smack dab in the middle?
O- YOU can conceptualize God in such a way, so therefore, if it had been up to you, that is how YOU would have characterized God. But of course those from a different age were not relativists and saw in all absolute distinctions, filled with confidence.
— shouldn’t you explain that?
O- Don’t you think that my responses are long enough as they are. Do you really want to see me go into such complex tangents? I am just inviting you to “wonder” just a little more.
— I have no clue what cosmic order is or why your explanations of Gods hypothetical jealousy are logical.
O- Cosmic order is what was and always has been sought by human beings, be it in the Logos, or the Forms, or in atheists’ Laws of Nature. Cosmic order, or just “Order”, is “predictability”. What has an order can also be predicted.
— where does jealousy and indifference and love figure into physics?
O- Not into physics but into Order. God’s jealousy is not mentioned randomnly but is predicated by the cosmic order. God creates the cosmos and life on earth, capping his creation with the creation of man, upon which he breathes life and creates, unlike everything else, in His own image…so the story goes. It is the freedom man possessess that makes man more precious than angels, because, like God, and unlike angels, man has a choice. This is how Genesis presents the circumstances and these are the assumptions imbeded in the Decalogue, and not only, but also in any code of justice. This is then how the universe is ordered. because man is essentially free, man is not God’s possession, at his best…not a robot, not a slave, but a lover. the story of God and Man is a story of two lovers and in fact the Bible is filled with erotic descriptions and analogies that use marriage as a description. jealousy is explained in Wiki as such:
"… insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, such as a relationship, friendship, or love. Jealousy often consists of a combination of emotions such as anger, sadness, and disgust. "
Now read the Bible- the Old Testament specially and what you see is a narration of just this situation. God is insecure, perhaps not fearful, but anxious over the potential loss of His flock to other gods, and this is also because man is the capo-lavoro of God, His masterpiece and of the Highest value to God. With angels and all other creatures in Creation, God cannot have a “relationship”, because it is man among all other creatures that is capable of the highest level of unscripted action, or freewill. This freedom is a double-edged sword. Under one hand it renders man special. But it also presents the actual danger that man may choose to walk away from God. yet God must have preferred this than to lose the possibility for a relationship.
Plato once asked who is the best man: the one who is good because he lacks the ability for evil or the man who does good when he could’ve chosen to do evil. It is without a doubt the person who chooses that is best.
— I can understand jealousy arising from love, I cannot however understand the benefits of a jealous and loving god over a plain old loving god.
O- At one point does a girlfriend that is not jealous start to become a bit jealous and lose trust? After you have cheated on her, probably. Now remember that the story of Genesis is the story of that original infidelity. By the time that we get to the decalogue God is mistrustful of man, as one is of a cheating boyfriend, because it begins to dawn on them that perhaps they will not choose to stay and so that girlfriend, out of her insecurity, begins to prescribe rules about what is acceptable, to explicitly state what was once counted on. God does not give the decalogue to Adam and Eve because God probably took for granted man’s obedience and also that no other god would challenge Him for the heart of Man. But the story of Eden ends in infidelity, in a love triangle etc, etc.
— are you perhaps entertining yourself by explaining away my objections to the bibles logical consistency.
O- Now. I enjoy expanding your vision to include not just negative speculations about tyrants and subjugation, but also of love, desire and loss.
— I do not like to think of love as a selfish emotion
O- Are you in a relationship?
— Do i have to be well read on every verse in the bible before i speak a word against it?
O- Well, that shouldn’t be a problen right? You say that you are well read, right?
— the bible implies divine determinism, which implies that God is sadistic.
O- Does it imply that? Show me how did you arrive at that conclusion?
— let’s say i make a murderous robot, should i be blamed?
O- We are not robots, last time I checked.
— So you’re saying that the god of the christian bible is not a perfect loving God but a god perplexed by basic human emotions?
O- Love and Perfection cannot co-exist. what is Perfect is also Unmoved, in Perfect homeostatsis.
— Are you for updating the bible? Reinterpreting and rationalizing it?
I am for moving beyond petty symbolism altogether.
O- It is “petty” only if the interpreter is himself “petty”. It is not what goes in you that damns you but what comes out of you.
*************************************************** BREAK***********************************************************
— a man reflecting over the morality of his own actions and knowingly choosing the immoral route does not change the facts. it simply implies he is greedy. His god given gift.
O- God dod not give solely the gift of greed but also of abstinence; but the real gift of freedom to choose whichever we prefer. A person who reflects on an action and then commits it is either praised or blamed for the action. Reflection and choice changes everything especially in a court of Law.
— repentance where you really really mean it and are not just doing it to save yourself from eternal damnation
O- It doesn’t seem that such quality is necessary, at least it is inconsistent as a requirement…but again, only faith can answer that. Perhaps it is like true love versus lust, or just trying to get into the girl’s pants…maybe you will just say anything to get in His pants, in His Heaven etc. But just like those guys that are only thinking of sex, perhaps the reason why you do not find it in you to care for anything else other than the sex is because you haven’t gotten to really know this girl. maybe if you did, you would appreciate her not just for her warm genitals but also for her mind as well. You still get the sex but a more meaningful sex. Maybe God does not care that you love sex, but simply cares that you care about His mind as well; that you love Him more than you love sex (Heaven); get my analogy?
— He did not give me the capacity to repent my sins to an abusive father.
O- God is an abusive Father? How has He abuse YOU, if you mind me asking? But this is progress. At least anger is a more personal relation to God than you admitted to have previously. Hey, I don’t blame you. If you are living like Job (surviving meaningless tragedies one after the other, then I do not say anything to you about believing in such a God. But the Bible does. The Bible is not silent on the suffering of man, the problem of the innocent sufferer. I wounder though if you’re innocent? If you have Job’s integrity to demand of God rewards instead of punishments? But I can suppose that you’re a good citizen…if that is so, as I was saying, the Bible also acknowledges that. The story between man and God is not finished with the decalogue. as I said before, there are at least two trends in the biblical narrative, with one affirming God’s order and which gave us the tend commandments which presuppose, as you correctly imply, a good father that gives to each child, mind you, as he or she deserves. The other trend in the biblical narrative is more humble in the face of defeat and accentuates either our faults or God’s trancendence to explain the lack of goods from the, still believed as good, Father. Now, this is where you have to note the generation that produced the commandments. It was a more blessed generation, baskin in the rewards for their fidelity, given land, triumph etc for the fact that they were good sons who deserved it. It would take defeat for the character of God to evolve yet again and become self-consistent again, for the society to regain homestasis. The Bible, when viewed in this way is seen as a book that is comprised of many books and many story-lines that are self-consistent when taken separately and inconsistent when other additions are made. A good effort is made to sorta gel the pieces together, to smooth out the edges between each stone, but the story always will continue to point to the authors and their situation and how this in turn affected their perspectives about God. The Bible, from a religious perspective, can also be seen as a Book detailing man’s relationship to God and God’s relation to man. It is not, and was never meant, I think, as a close canon from the start, but was naturally open to self-criticism and additions to resolved inbalances.
But…in the end, like I said before, the Problem of Evil, or “the abusive Father” is the single most damaging criticism of God. Now, now, now you’re getting somewhere with this criticism. This is more like it. Criticising the Decalogue as if it was created for tyrants etc, etc…that is weak and can be overturned in just a second because it is dependent on a modern interpretation of tyrants which was absent in that society which was tyranical. It was like criticising a carnivore for liking meat and to try to suggest that it could be a veggie carnivore. It was inevitable that the ten commandments were framed the way that they were framed and tyrany was not the purpose of it, at least not from the perspective of the authors.
But meaningless tragedy? Suffering of the innocent?.. Ahhh, this is understood accross the millenia; a criticism found even in the Bible and repeatedly…that is one of the reason that the Bible is such a good book, in my opinion, because it no only carries mindless adoration of an idea but also the story of the idea, the obstacles against the idea and the proposed solutions to the objections. When criticising the Bible one need not look for conspiracy theories, that it was a tool of power for priest, kings and emperors, because it truly wasn’t the best of tools, as those empires suffered destruction, but simply look within the Bible itself.
— anyone who knows everything, and does something, knows exactly what is going to happen.
O- The God of Genesis was not omnisense. read the Book of Genesis again and you’ll see what I mean. An omnisense God is a product of hellenic influence.
— it persists by design. indoctrinate your children, minister in far lands, repent, believe, have eternal blind faith.
O- Not everyone that comes to the faith is a child, and the rest of what you say bear no causal relevance in the matter.
— you’re telling me that teh bible is a means to and end. it is a device that lies in order to control and organize, apparently for the benefit of all.
O- Nope. The Bible was an Israeli book for Israeli ineterests. There is no “all”. There is a Chosen People, remember?
— I love when people talk about human nature… it’s always so… wrong…
O- Just as wrong as your criticism, for the most part, have been. There is some improvement. But socialism, another religion…yes, yes, we’ll discuss it later, is fundamentally a theory about human nature. If you are a socialist, then be prepared to be disillusioned.
— Here is a bit of human nature for you. you see people in eternal conflict, and you seek to weaken everyone to prevent these conflicts from causing harm.
O- It is not always conflict that they generate. Conflict predates religion and it will survive the death of religion.
— Why can’t we teach cooperation instead of docility?
O- Sure. Very easy to do. Show them a common enemy and they all sign together the war chant. Now try to teach cooperation in a peacetime. Go on and teach them cooperation and then lets get rid of armies and even police…so wrong on so many levels…
— the bible is a banner under which masses can congregate.
O- And that is why it is the prefer social glue. You cannot teach cooperation and you cannot do away with war. Both are natural limits of our species. Religion tries to make war a symbolic war. It does not look for a fight. It looks for converts, for “cooperators”, if you will. The religious authorities did not simply enter your house and burn your body simply because they knew that you had a different God. Galileo was offered a chance to “cooperate” with church authority. Of course we both know that such cooperation was fake, but that is just the eternal problem of the freeloader…look it up.
— but what good is a banner which the congregation does not have control over?
O- Only a recent historical change, and don’t believe the hype either. Catholicism has changed significantly in many ways…even protestanism under the social pressure of a humanist, or social instinct, that has been encouraged in liberal societies.
— something to verify a claim. evidence in general.
O- In the case of religion, what would that evidence consist of? What would especifically be evaluated as evidence, in your study of religious claims?
— i would like to know exactly why something i have said is not historically objective.
O- Because you have no historical evidence, some manuscrip of the time, for example, claiming exactly what you’re claiming. So the historical witness, that could give you objectivity, for your position is absent.
— frankly historical objectivity does not come into play. this is a thought experiment, not an excavation of desert scribblings.
O- If what you want is speculation for the sake of speculation then I return to the analogy that you’re just looking to relieve yourself even if it is on a plastic doll inflated by your own hot air.
— The bible is the subject, not ancient Israelites.
O- And this is just your mistake, because the portion of the Bible you’re refering to is about ancient Israel.
— i’m thinking new king James, not obscure beginnings.
O- Then your beef is not with the Bible but with a man named James.
— my current point is that primarily this thread assumes the bible as being meant for tyranny.
O- And I have simply submitted counter-assumptions which place the purpose of the Bible as other-than-for-tyranny.
— but as you make your assumptions, you must realize that you can go no further than the assumptions i have made, lest your perspective becomes too complicated and mine seems more plausible.
O- It is a fallacy to think that simplicity is equal to plausibility. It is a monk who created the principle of the Razor. Are you comfortable with that?
— holei’m just saying that if it was so good for society why havn’t we solved our major problems yet?
O- Because of that human coil we carry around, that human limit of our species. The poor, Jesus said, you shall always have with you…maybe he was onto something. Note: He did not command to NOT help the poor, but after commanding such a virtuous act, also predicted that the poor we shall always have because he could infer, I suppose, based on what he knew about society, that men were selfish and that unselfishness, such as seeling everything you own to give to the poor, is the hardest thing for man, and in fact Jesus does not make this any clearer than when he uses the analogy of the rich man as having a tougher time to get into Heaven than a Cammel passing through a neddle.
— p.s, read the bible, reading the koran, so stop making these arrogant appeals to my intelligence.
O- Really!!! Then I expected better…
right, and all i’m saying is that these confident distinctions cause harm and bring about tyranny.
You have questioned my motives and intelligence more than you have questioned presuppositions and logic of this thread.
from where i stand, i explained why the bible makes sense from the tyrannical lord perspective, you explained why it makes sense from an ancient Israel confident distinction of God perspective, then i proceeded to attack your explanations for lack of logical consistency and simplicity. you have not debated me but to say i am wrong or lacking in intelligence.
If i accept the definition of jealousy purely as you would have it used, then the christian god becomes a possessive God, and this only furthers the view that this God simply wants our worship.
This makes more sense if the god was actually a tyrannical leader rather than a benevolent perfect all powerful lonely god.
Not only do you bring our understanding of this god to a more obscure place than a tyrannical leader or a perfect god, but you remove yourself from teh debate by failing to adresss the reason which prompted you in the first place; you are writing messages to logically dismantle the implications of what i have said.
You have ignored what i have said about plausibility, simplicity, and logical consistency.
You declare me to be wrong by repeatedly using fallacious reasoning.
You simply state what is, and even if you merely state hypothetical, you do so sympathetically.
You give every benefit of doubt to the bible and you dedicate all your resources to state things the way you want them to be instead of the way they are.
You object because “the precious Decalogue” is something which you obviously have some sort of confidence in.
when i say the makers of the bible were tyrannical lords, what i mean to say is that the very people who started mass printing and selling the bible, with ideas in mind of starting churches and making a living off the land (the people), the original catalogers of the books of the bible, the ordering, the meaning, the specifics, did not want the bible because they praised god per se. I’m sure some of them did, indeed i know many truly faithful pastors, and again i know (of) many wicked pastors. these are the televangelists. the people who do things on grand scales, the pastors and priests who live in luxury.
I’m talking about those churches which interfere in matters of governance. If mainstream Christianity is saying praise bush because he seems like a good christian, what chance do the alternatives have?
regardless of the origins of religion, you must inevitably judge it by the effects we see.
What do i see in Christianity? Old school prejudices, confusion, indoctrination, trivial rituals, dependence and reliance on authority, non-thought.
i have always assumed that the human perspective will never be able to completely or even significantly understand “the laws of nature” enough to predict it. So long as there is a question left unanswered, theists will find a root for their fabrications.
In a relationship, jealousy by your definition is the anxiety i feel when my girlfriend or date seems disinterested in me and interested in someone else. This makes me work to keep the relationship intact.
So does god work harder for us when he becomes jealous? It’s nice to think so, but we have no way of verifying any of it.
When a jealous person loses, what happens?
to preserve their own happiness, they mentally destroy their image what they have lost. they come to dislike people places or things.
God apparently sends us to hell. If he cannot have power over us when we are willing, he will physically send us to hell (according to the bible).
In genesis god forbids adam and eve to eat the fruit. He does not want them to think for themselves; does he desire power over them?.
This god does not covet a relationship with us according to the bible, What god is jealous about is our constant worship and praise, his power over us.
i was going to allude to this as well.
some people use anonymous sex as a means to satisfy themselves. Having a relationship with God can be as real and as rewarding as a relationship with a real person, it’s all about what you believe.
perhaps it is good that we have an imaginary partner to stabilize us and make u happy regardless of circumstance in life.
in the end the immoral sex fiend, the religious fanatic and indeed us all reach for the same goal: a happy life.
which god implies he is creating us as some sort of pleasurable trophy. jealousy is greed is it not?
What i’m saying is that (and though you may believe the Israelite’s simply perceived god in this was and should not be taken as any sort of intention to mislead) this complex and convoluted ancient interpretation of what God is is causing harm today, and has of late been functioning to the benefit of man and not God. god is dead remember?
God threw us out on our ass (perhaps because he was confused, a simple human emotion), so he didn’t bother to indoctrinate us into loving him anyway.
according to the bible God did not want us to have a conscience, to not eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
But then gods omniscience later would contradict this and indicate that since God knows everything, he knew what would happen/
Jump now back to the ancient Isrealites, it seems like they were just writing random shit down. whatever they thought at the time.
And besides that the oldest writings of the bible date at only 2600 years old, so when i say ancient Israelite’s, i really mean nomadic and feudal peoples amongst emerging societies.
I’m just saying it has all become inappropriate for today. t is overly abused and no longer necessary.
We should be taught to follow our own principles and not the principles of others.
metaphors of atrocities?
i am in hundreds.
seriously now, again i do not want to find and make your points for you. if you tell me the answer is elsewhere then show me where or i’ll assume you are unable to explain properly yourself
Yes sir!
""for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done
Is 46:9-10 c.f. Is 42:8-9
So if we go by Gods word, he dealt us our hands in life knowing what we would get, giving us what he wanted to give us.
If you accept that some people receive worse hands, insufferable hands, then you can assume God wanted to see you fall. It’s what he desired.
Sadism is when you feel pleasure at the displeasure of others.
You could say that God did it unwillingly, but that would contradict his absolute will.
really? is there a “not a robot, made by god, soul included” stamp somewhere on us? right by the “made in China” symbol?
we are a bunch of neuro-chemicals floating around in our brain it’s a science experiment.
Gods controlled and predicted experiment.
why cannot it be constant love?
Now you’re saying God isn’t perfect?
"As for God, his way is perfect. The word of Yahweh is tested. He is a shield to all those who take refuge in him."
2 Samuel 22:31
right, which brings me back to the divine determinism robot analogy providing evidence against gods skills and even your explanations of how god is afflicted with human emotions while being almighty and perfect according to the bible.
So what you logically tried to posit is that an interpretation that something is petty can only have come from a petty interpreter?
this is blatanlty illogical and constitutes libelous fallacious inferences appealing to a negative view of my personality used to discredit what i am saying.
me too.
my personal philosophy is to not hold people morally accountabe, i blame nature and nurturing.
A court of law should be to find guilt only, not decide punishment. punishment should not exist.
We should rehabilitate criminals, not harden them.
yea i get it but it’s far fetched.
do you get me?
Is god that needy? or is the establishment…
i’m just going to cut this bit in half, i can sense some recruiting going on.
I do not believe in such a God. If i did believe in the christian god, i would not forgive him his transgressions in this world.
He knew what would happen. he caused famine war death disease rape, everything. according to the bible that is.
and ye the bible says to rejoice at all of gods judgments, and not just the bad ones, for gods judgment is just and wise beyond our understanding…
just the other day someone was telling me hoe gods word in teh bible is the absolute intended words god wanted in there and we have to profess it with vigor.
Do you agree?
These are just some of the effects of the holy bible. You seem to maintain some idealistic view of religion while ignoring the transgressions, instead saying transcendence
Gib mentioned earlier that we are all to eager to throw the baby out with the bath water…
well now we’re old enough to swim in the ocean. So why not?
ah yes but who are the authors?
King James?
Human greed is enough to insure a common theme throughout the ages of humanity. Some say it’s natural, others say some people are tricked into believing it is not natural by our superficial society (i.e government, media, social indoctrination, religious indoctrination etc…). I say we should evolve and educate ourselves.
if everyone who wants peace prepares for war then nobody wins.
i don’t really believe all of teh bible. it seems you are using it as documented history. is this true?
from my perspective in my society and its history of late it has been a great controller of society.
did you know at one point people were burned at the stake for being left handed? demons they said.
so when god becomes perfect he is left in a situation where he doesn’t help us.
he is either not all powerful or sadistic.
and niether does this non input.
minister in far lands is a part of the “not every one who comes to faith is a child” bit. saying what i say is worthless is not a proper explanation.
and the forsaking of the rest.
And people gather their morals from this old testament you speak of, which i have read. at AGE 9. at age 9 i had access to this harmful bologna.
socialism is a vision, but unfortunately greedy establishments always fail us.
but what a catalyst eh?
sounds like you are a gun supporter…
Would you wield a gun in the name of god?
are we all a bunch of violent crazies?
Galileo was threatened and then put on house arrest.
before one power dominates everything and we lose out freedom, we should evolve beyond the war.
it goes back to the new king james version
well for example, seeing is believing.
by our standards the laws of Deuteronomy are tyrannical. They even describe fair treatment of slaves.
What they believed was a good thing, is a bad thing by our standards.
I don’t want to have to give my priest my best cow because i sinned in my mind by being lustful toward women.
you could call it vengeance…
I have it in for religion (all religions) which cause harm to my myself or others. That’s not how i want to be treated.
effects, not origin.
which still is quoted and used in many ways in today’s society. it is causing harm. why?
my beef is with the bible itself.
compared with my assumptions, your reasoning’s are (in my now submitted opinion) less convincing than mine, and endlessly more complicated.
and he did not deal in doctrines i wager.
the plausibility of the bible is such a convoluted matter that asll we have is opinion. and that is what this thread aims to influence
[quote=“omar”
— i’m just saying that if it was so good for society why haven’t we solved our major problems yet?
O- Because of that human coil we carry around, that human limit of our species. The poor, Jesus said, you shall always have with you…maybe he was onto something. Note: He did not command to NOT help the poor, but after commanding such a virtuous act, also predicted that the poor we shall always have because he could infer, I suppose, based on what he knew about society, that men were selfish and that unselfishness, such as seeling everything you own to give to the poor, is the hardest thing for man, and in fact Jesus does not make this any clearer than when he uses the analogy of the rich man as having a tougher time to get into Heaven than a Cammel passing through a neddle. [/quote]
i guess we’re all sinners.
First of all I want to salute you for the stamina you are showing in these responses. “Long” now falls short of a description.
— from where i stand, i explained why the bible makes sense from the tyrannical lord perspective, you explained why it makes sense from an ancient Israel confident distinction of God perspective, then i proceeded to attack your explanations for lack of logical consistency and simplicity. you have not debated me but to say i am wrong or lacking in intelligence.
O- If that was all I was doing my posts would be a third of the lenght of what they were.
— If i accept the definition of jealousy purely as you would have it used, then the christian god becomes a possessive God, and this only furthers the view that this God simply wants our worship.
O- Possessive only as love itself is possessive. We “take” a wife, for example, and in ancient times, women were commodites that were exchanged…still goes on in certain societies where marriages are still arranged.
— This makes more sense if the god was actually a tyrannical leader rather than a benevolent perfect all powerful lonely god.
O- What is the ultimate purpose of possession? That answer separates the tyrant from the husband or in this case, “God”.
— Not only do you bring our understanding of this god to a more obscure place
O- Enlightened place, if you ask me. My responses have been pretty consistent and point to a comprehensive perspective that is simple…once you take the time to understand it. It is simple and yet complicated, because we are talking about thousands of years worth of history. The tyranical/king James-did-itscenario maybe even simpler but by that reason also false. You state that you’re not interested in the origins and all of that, but to me without that background, any comparasions will be from YOU, from your taste, your emotion and lacking in content, in reasearch, in objectivity etc.
— you are writing messages to logically dismantle the implications of what i have said. You have ignored what i have said about plausibility, simplicity, and logical consistency.
O- Before you declare some idea as plausible, you must first construct the idea from various sources outside of yourself. Otherwise the idea is very plausible, but not as idea, but as emotion, as taste, as calumny. It is, so to speak, “plausible” either that you are right or plausible that you are wrong. It is your job, as the person criticising, to build up your case with more than just your own intuitions.
Now, intuitions are very simple, but do not, because of that, necessarly contain truth or should be regarded as true.
As far as logical consistency, you probably mean formal logic. But logical consistency only speak about the structure of the argument and not about the truth of any proposition thereby used to reach a consistent and inevitable conclusion. As I have shown, your premises are disorganized, open to counter-speculations and do not committ one to accept the conclusion. You could have worded it differently and perhaps that may have worked, but as of right now, the angle of the Bible being a tool intended for tyrants does compel my reason.
— You declare me to be wrong by repeatedly using fallacious reasoning.
O- Only one problem: Don’t say that my reasoning is fallacious- demonstrate it.
— You give every benefit of doubt to the bible and you dedicate all your resources to state things the way you want them to be instead of the way they are.
O- The way they are? Which way is that? We already been through this before…the way things “are” can be explained without soiling the Bible. War, famine and disease predated the Bible and shall, I repeat myself over this, shall survive the Bible. I am sorry if that complicates matters, if that requires you to re-evaluate humanity, but your “simple” theory had the flaw of being empty of history. The problems of humanity did not begin with the Bible, I tell you that much, and if what you want is to blame God, then that is no problem, for in fact even the Bible writers would have joined you in such enterprise. In fact, born in a different time, you might have been the author of the Bible, so what do you know?
— You object because “the precious Decalogue” is something which you obviously have some sort of confidence in.
O- No, no, no. It isn’t about me having “confidence” in it. The Code of Manu, Hammurabi, and Moses are barbaric, violent, tribal, racist, mysoginist…I could go on. But they stand as precursors to the laws of today, to our morals today. They were not obstacles, but steps in a ladder that humanity has been climbing since the dawn of the species. It is right that we find fault with them, but not because, like you think, these are laws made to serve tyrants, for they have served everyone, not just tyrants, but Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr> and of course a man by the name of Jesus. The Bible, of course has been used by tyrants, but also by emancipators, so it is in itself neither tyranical nor benevolent, nor a tool solely for either, but it is (the Bible I mean) whatever you MAKE IT TO BE. It is on the tyrant or the saint and even on you what you make of the Bible. It says much more about YOU than about the Bible to say that IT condones this or that…as if…
— when i say the makers of the bible were tyrannical lords, what i mean to say is that the very people who started mass printing and selling the bible, with ideas in mind of starting churches and making a living off the land (the people), the original catalogers of the books of the bible, the ordering, the meaning, the specifics, did not want the bible because they praised god per se. I’m sure some of them did, indeed i know many truly faithful pastors, and again i know (of) many wicked pastors. these are the televangelists. the people who do things on grand scales, the pastors and priests who live in luxury.
O- But again, you are refering to a time well beyond the creation of the Bible. And it is funny because what you’re refering to was done to liberate the mases from the tyranny of the Papacy, the Catholic Chuch, which, up to that point claimed sole right to Bible access. By printing the Bible en mass power was drained from the Church. Again, I don’t want you to think that I have been simply defending the Bible or denying that it has been used to consolidate a ruler’s control over society, but I have argued against considering this use of the Bible the “proper” use of the Bible. Can you understand that?
— When a jealous person loses, what happens?
O- What we see in the Bible. There is a thin line between love and hate…
— to preserve their own happiness, they mentally destroy their image what they have lost. they come to dislike people places or things.
O- Now this is a proper criticism. You are correct and in fact this is supported by the text itself and by human interest as well. But the Bible knows about this. It knows about the actions of the jealous husband, but often it places blame not on His jealousy but in us, because His jealousy is well founded…with certain exceptions, like in Job. It holds man as the stray wife and God as the patient but jealous husband who punishes her and still sees her leave night after night to cheat on Him…eventually that man loses it and from time to time, such as in the flood and in Sodom and Gomorrah, God kills indicriminately,… just like that jealous husband. Now, you’ve to understand that this used to be something permitted to men in those barbaric times and this was filtered into the Biblical narrative as God was made in the image of any man of his time. See, that is a better critique. Why not approach the Bible not as designed for tyranny and instead see it as designed for men? If man prefers tyranny, the Bible is ambiguous enough to suit this taste and the opposite as well and that is why it has served both dispositions of the slave and the slave-owner.
— God apparently sends us to hell. If he cannot have power over us when we are willing, he will physically send us to hell (according to the bible).
O- Very much so. But Hell was an innovation. First there was no Hell, only Sheol…then came defeat, then came doubt, and we see the tone of the Bible change. You get Ecclesiastes, Job and the Psalms and you see that loss of confidence, a proto-nihilism that “order” in just in our heads and that God is truly trancendental of our finite understanding. God could care less about His Law…His Law was open to His own revision…God was seen as tyranical because He had let His Chosen One fall in the hands of those that did not really care about God. The remedy fro this was the invention of a judgment Day, a Day in which God would do all that He SHOULD HAVE DONE and was EXPECTED TO DO in this life. Basically it was US THAT GAVE GOD A SECOND CHANCE TO DO IT RIGHT, to rise up to our expectations. If He has no power over our willing, over our choice-making-ability, then it is not Him that sends us to hell but our actions which earn for us, we earn for ourselves and by ourselves a place in Hell.
— In genesis god forbids adam and eve to eat the fruit. He does not want them to think for themselves; does he desire power over them?.
O- Obedience. It is He that grants man his own existence, Him that places man in a wonderful paradise, so the POWER is with Him, it is His…He does not “desire”, no, He has power over them, over man. But God built man to gain an admirer. God had it in Him to say:“It is good”, to render a judgment, to assign a value, onto everything in creation. But the moment man eats the fruit, he acquires this ability but maar by his own finitude and so man criticises what he can never hope to understand. This is what Camus called absurd. Perhaps God was trying to protect us from too much knowledge? It is said that “ignorance is bliss”…could this have been the same reason why God was not too crazy about the idea that we may have gained critical thinking? Criticism brings with it rebellion as God and Satan knew, for other than man and prior to man only Satan had received the ability to know right and wrong…that is probably why the serpent is hanging on that particular tree. And as “satan” means “the accusser”, so it can also mean “the critic”, if you ask me.
Leibniz called this the best of all possible worlds…but people always imagine one that is better by that or this measure. Job too opened a criticism of God and His ways. When God appears, it is not to agree with Job, but to challenge Job’s criticism, asking him if He knows about the most fundamental things, the foundations of reality which God alone knows of and this revealed eventually the finitude of Job’s mind, as he admits eventually that he spoke of things he could not possibly know. So, to summarize, if that is possible, man gains the ability to critique but God is weary of this ability because man cannot trancend his finitude.
— I’m just saying it has all become inappropriate for today. t is overly abused and no longer necessary.
O- Very well, I would agree that it no longer applies, but I would not deny the influence it in-itself has had in us. In a way, it no longer applies because the law itself contained within it the seeds for it’s overcoming, meaning that we have transcended the Law because of the law. At the time of Jesus it was though that there was a written Law and an Oral Law. The Written Law was prone to become stiff and was confined to stone or paper while the Oral Law was alive in every breath…this is one of the reasons I oppose the canon. In Judaism, the canon was closed, the written law complete, but there emerged a tradition of interpretation culminating in new books, new refinements, a softening of ancient barbarities, a modernization of the written law by the Oral Law. This, I believe, has continued to take place up to today. It is not automatic. We have to invite it. And it is not without restrain either.
— We should be taught to follow our own principles and not the principles of others.
O- But not in spite of others or without considerastion to others. It should not be something that we take up individually but as a community. That is why we have a Supreme Court that is made up of several judges, not just one, and we decide upon the guilt of a person through a jury, a group, not an individual. We are not just individuals, but we are also part of a society. We are social beings and we must not forget that. We should criticise, but not from a pedestal, not from a high horse, but from the market place.
— i am in hundreds.
O- So I guess the answer is no…
— ""for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done
Is 46:9-10 c.f. Is 42:8-9
So if we go by Gods word, he dealt us our hands in life knowing what we would get, giving us what he wanted to give us.
If you accept that some people receive worse hands, insufferable hands, then you can assume God wanted to see you fall. It’s what he desired.
Sadism is when you feel pleasure at the displeasure of others.
O- Very good start. There are some people who feel themselves as impotent and others to whom freewill is a given. God is all powerful. In Exodus, He “hardens” Pharaoh’s heart…but notice here that God acts upon this man to take away what is normally there, i.e. Pharaoh’s freewill, in order to carry out His plan. For this reason God could tell Moses from the beginning how it was going to end. That is how I think that text should be interpreted, how it makes most sense, but I do not see it as evidence for determinism or the idea that human action is amoral.
If it was as you say then there would be no reason to assign blame to man, just as the crowd told Paul. In the story of Jonah, God tells Jonah how it shall all end for Nineveh in 40(?) days. He tells jonah, from the beginning how it was gonna end but he did not harden the hearts of the citizens, so when they got wind of the upcomming doom, the repented and God relented, making poor old Jonah a liar in the eyes of many. This story combined with what I asserted before, present a picture that Divine Determinism is a special condition and not the default condition, that we have freewill, but that God is at his disposition to take it away. I do not deny that, but that does not take away the fact that normally man has the power and that God does not know how it shall turn out…or shall we call God the liar? Not at all. The Mercy of God makes our freedom effective. In the case of Pharaoh, God was displaying His wrath and so He was not open to a change of heart from Pharaoh, an act of repentance. This was payback time. God intentionally takes away Pharaoh’s humanity, leaving him as a puppet that was unable to reconsider his ways in the presence of new information. Pharaoh was to serve as an example to other humans, to display his Glory God said. Why this? Because He was addressing an audience that still possessed a choice.
— Gods controlled and predicted experiment.
O- Didn’t you say that God was dead?
— why cannot it be constant love?
O- Because love is experienced as a constrast between different states. Without that constrast, that relieve, then love would be invisible to us.
— Now you’re saying God isn’t perfect?
“As for God, his way is perfect. The word of Yahweh is tested. He is a shield to all those who take refuge in him.”
2 Samuel 22:31
O- …His way is a different thing than God.
— just the other day someone was telling me hoe gods word in teh bible is the absolute intended words god wanted in there and we have to profess it with vigor.
Do you agree?
O- Nope. But I never said that I was a “Christian”. I told you before that I believe that Christianity should be and is due criticism. I just want the criticism to be better.
— i don’t really believe all of teh bible. it seems you are using it as documented history. is this true?
O- Some parts of the Bible are recorded history, other sacred history. It is hardly doubted that there was a Pontious Pilate and Paul, etc, etc. What one could doubt easily is the sacred history, such as the existence of a man named Adam. But this is just what people used to write like. Herodoutous is called by some as the father of recorded history, but even he was prone to exaggeate, if not worse. The authors of the Bible, as you said before, lived thousands of years ago, so what we have is a book that is embeded with ancient myths, but also, we should know, with pieces of objective history, because they wanted to explain their history, what was happening to them, their victories, their defeats, and so recorded these events, which did take place in history, with tall-tales about how God was behind it all, in mythological, or “sacred” history.
— so when god becomes perfect he is left in a situation where he doesn’t help us.
O- The perfect God is like Aristotle’s God, the Unmoved Moved, caught in perennial Self-contemplation without a care about anything or anyone else. Indifferent…
— he is either not all powerful or sadistic.
O- Exactly!
— it persists by design. indoctrinate your children, minister in far lands, repent, believe, have eternal blind faith.
O- Not everyone that comes to the faith is a child, and the rest of what you say bear no causal relevance in the matter.
— and niether does this non input. minister in far lands is a part of the “not every one who comes to faith is a child” bit. saying what i say is worthless is not a proper explanation.
O- The rest of what you say is irrelevant because “repentance” cannot be part of the design that could perpetuate religion. In fact it is an obstacle to religion, same as age (which carries a greater degree of rationality), same as culture (foreign lands- which ususally corrupt the religion, mixing it with some other respected autoctonous tradition), “believe” cannot be part of the design when people simpli do not “believe” after reading thousand pages in the Bible. Faith, belief, repentance, contrition… none of these can be built into religion and that is why so many are persecuted in the name of religion.
— but what a catalyst eh?
O- It can be many things including, yes, religion…but do not propose to me that no religion=no war, famine, disease etc.
— well for example, seeing is believing.
O- Suppose I had been alive when Jesus died, and like Thomas, saw Jesus three days after his death. That even can stand as evidence of many things. In fact this was a problem the Catholic Church had to deal with because Gnostics cited the same evidence as them but for entirely different conclusions. Seeing is one thing, but what you think you’re seeing is quite another. Have you seen the movie “Knowing”?
Who becomes the man in the relationship, us or God?
God the polygamist. How much love does he have?
Does God love us, or our worship?
ahh, what is the purpose of this possession?
You view is to save our souls, my view is to influence and control our souls.
wiki has my back at least
“The Gunpowder Plot (an assassination attempt against king james by English Catholics) reinforced James’s oppression of non-conforming English Catholics; and he sanctioned harsh measures for controlling them. In May 1606, Parliament passed the Popish Recusants Act requiring every citizen to take an Oath of Allegiance denying the Pope’s authority over the king.[82] James was conciliatory towards Catholics who took the Oath of Allegiance,[83] and he tolerated crypto-Catholicism even at court.[84] However, in practice he enacted even harsher measures against Catholics than were laid upon them by Elizabeth. Towards the Puritan clergy, with whom he debated at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604,[85] James was at first strict in enforcing conformity, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans;[86] but ejections and suspensions from livings became fewer as the reign wore on. A notable success of the Hampton Court Conference was the commissioning of a new translation and compilation of approved books of the Bible to confirm the divine right of kings to rule and to maintain the social hierarchy, completed in 1611, which became known as the King James Bible, considered a masterpiece of Jacobean prose”
the logical ramifications of the decalogue in teh context of teh king james bible was what i was focsing on as a case. i have explained generally in what ways this bible is beneficial to a tyrannical lord.
You have described in what ways the bible is beneficial to a benevolent lord.
The way i see it you have to jump fewer hoops to make my view be logically consistent.
and yes, we’re talking about thousands of years of history, but in truth we’re only talking about 600 or so years.
i cannot historically prove they were tyrants. i can merely judge what i do know of them by the standards of today, and declare them a tyrant or not by those standards.
i’m trying here…
i’ve been saying that to you!
The bible didn’t start war, people did. the bible merely enhanced it.
i aim to fight war itself, not fight in a more meaningful war
what about burning left handed people at the stake?
or red hair with blue eyes?
Sorry i do not have time to finish this, i will finish it tonight, feel fre to respond however. I’m sure that wiki quote is a tantalizing challenge =D>
This is the problem:
The Kind James translation did not really serve as a vehicle of tyrannical rule. Maybe it enforced the evangelical bend of the Chuch of England, the ecclesiology, or “the study of the church as a thing in itself”. Partial to Calvinist, Protestant leanings? Probably. What do you think other versions had? Leanings towards the power of Rome and the Pope? So the question becomes who does the Bible support for being God’s appointed leader: The King or the Pope? I could care less. Either way is simply to put in an absolute ruler. In sense I feel as if it was a mere power struggle between Rome and the House of Stuart and that James probably felt that in order to stand up to Rome he had to elevate himself to the stature of the Pope. But it also can be the Calvinist ideology that he learned as a child. But that is better presented in “The True Law of Free Monarchies”. There he defended the idea of the king’s divine right to rule. But James did not consider himself a tyrant anymore than the apostles could envision themselves as tyrants. This could be considered as tyranical but this is the book that presents this tyrannical, in your modern viewpoint, idea and not necessarly the Bible.
Don’t get me wrong. As a work which, as I have already said, preserves series of anachronisms, the Bible, IN SOME PARTS AND NOT IN IT’S ENTIRETY, defends absolute power, but then, in other parts, either criticises absolute power of certain kings, such as Saul, or, as James knew, qualified just who should hold absolute power. Absolute power, as an idea, has always held friends in those that are afraid of the slippery ground they are left in by relativism. But, these friends, often, like in the case of Plato, also know of the attrocities that can be committed by those that misuse power. So what they do is that they define and qualify the terms “King” and “Tyrant”. Both are endowed with absolute power, but one because as Kind he is rightfully the best man, the man selected by God, yadada, yadada, and the “Tyrant” is a man who is underserving of such power, an ursurper, a criminal etc.
The Bible then, just like the Republic, is not a treatsie, or tool of and for tyranny, but a book of and for Kingship. You and I can be skeptical about the optimism in man that such works can have, optimism in themselves or in others, but we cannot reply to that with some misplaced nihilism, as Paul did. Rather, I prefer to hold on to the idea as an “ideal”, rare, and for that reason that much more special. Anyone of us can be a tyrant but only very few can be a king.
moreover, when the bible was translated from dead languages that only a handful of humans could read, for whom did they translate it? the masses? they couldn’t read… did they understand latin? not many…
The bible is indeed something used. Do you think it is used more for good or for the good of authority?
Your argument seems to be that the good of authority and its evolution is what is good for us.
How does this argument relate to what we see today? Should i be content with wide spread ignorance with the notion that it will be better one day, even if thousands of years from now?
Why not oppose dogma and harmful abuse of authority?
Why not understand the old, and look to something new; evolve?
s far as you saying what i get about the bible says more about me than it does about the bible, i think you are wrong.
If you say the bible as ambivalent, i say this thread speaks to the nature of society.
Today Christianity is wide spread and constantly abused.
It espouses immoral tenants and is responsible not for evolving thought but dumbing it down.
It preaches trust in an invisible authority, which gives any spiritual leader control by default. It preaches that you do not trust yourself. That you do not trust your own emotions.
Politically it is an atrocity. I am afraid of a leader that thinks dinosaur bones were a trick put there by God, or that at one time we actually lived with dinosaurs.
You say it created our morals. I would like to know which morals you speak of, because it seems every person or group has their own set.
which are the best morals?
With as much at stake as christianity claims, how can people be open minded?
when things don’t change, like laws, it’s usually tyranny. It’s definitely not evolution.
The new king james version is perhaps one of the most dogmatic doctrines i know of. This is what concerns me. When i refer to makers i am indeed refering to this much alluded to king James character and his posse.
It’s funny that the text which i base all of my inductions (yes, inductions) was after all commissioned by a lord… A tyrannical lord perhaps?
I just read the short “The Trew Law of Free Monarchies”. written by king James.
Basically it sets the ideological ground for “monarchies”. It says that the king has power over his subjects like god does, and should not be questioned in any governing matters.
the way you say it, it seems like he was taking power away from the church, which is a good thing by my view i guess…
But apparently he did this to further his own power, so it’s one tyrannical lord usurping another.
you justify explain their actions by saying that it was a part of the times and that the natural progression of humanity is taking place. You say we are right to perceive of them as negative.
this is why i see society as negative. because the same type of tyranny and ignorance is perpetuated in today’s society.
King james says he is unto his subjects as is God. period.
This is the fear and pleasure drive which keeps us interested and devoted out of need.
it is a control mechanism which reflects the mechanism which drives us, pain and pleasure and the search for happiness.
almost an abuse one might say. certainly not moral by any standards beyond what the bible claims be true. (or perhaps a tyrannical lords perspective)
perhaps in earlier traditions more innocent things took place…
the tyranny i see in the king james version has always been clear. And the tyranny i see in society and the church is clear as well.
Why did society feel it had to forgive itself metaphysically in the first place?
did men simply need to feel that they were not evil or had meaning?
Was society that harsh and horrific?
Our shame persists…
which would man prefer, tyranny as a leader or equal as a peasant?
but this is all figurative and divinely motivational (putting the fear of hell in you).
Why should i go out of my way to abide by the standards of aa God who created me to please him, who is not only a hypoctrite, but not perfect at all…
in fact many would say God is the bane of their existence for creating them.
In all the confusion how am i even to know which path is teh right one given the violent and absolute opposition amongst most mainstream religions?
choosing a side doesn;t seem logical, too often leads to conflict with myself, logic other religions and peace in general.
well it would be quite the magical and presumptuous fruit…
The religion is then inherently against criticism.
Perhaps this is aids the longevity of religious establishments?
How can we evolve if we don’t use our brains?
peraps he knows that job will appreciate heaven anyway.
did job get into heaven?
None the less, this story explains away random problems we are stricken with. meant to make people mroe content, like the tenth commandment.
In my mind i see it as God making a bet with the devil. Thanks again god =D>
i invite change more than you know.
And i don;t really believe that religious law is somehow responsible for our understanding of morality today.
every society takes its understanding and comes to a concensus on which laws should be in place.
it follows by logical thinking, not what we read in books abut dieties.
we do not need to be inspired to act morally. we simply need to understand why it is good.
the bible defines itself as good. people focus on good. the whys are either non existent or cop outs.
here in 2009, our goods are a lot better than the goods of yesterday.
can we credit the goods of yesterday for the goods of today?
perhaps. that’s something i’d like to see argued.
listen friend, if you would like to bring my interpersonal knowledge or skills into question, try pming me.
for the umpteenth time, this type of argument is equivalent to calling me stupid.
Gods knowledge is described as perfect; omniscient.
You may feel that God only knew what would happen because he interfered, but this not only contradicts the notion of god given free will (freewill that he can remove at leisure), but this also contradicts popular descriptions and the bible itself stating god knows everything.
for starters i already believe in determinism, but i believe it is impossible to fully predict future events from our perspective. i believe free will is an illusion as is choice. We are passers by and by products of a chain reaction of matter.
I believe that if god exists, it eitehr doesn’t care or is sadistic.
But this all speaks to human nature, not god, doesn’t it?
that seems to be the only discourse.
It places gods craftsmanship in question.
what if you were born a cripple and died at 2 in pain?
what kind of meaning does life have then?
This ambiguous and contradictory notion of freewill simply allows us to praise god for the good and blame man for the bad.
illusion imo, and gods transgressions against the pharaoh are something to be sickened by.
why not make the pharaoh repent?
why not make Gomorrah repent?
again we see a theme of hatred. this is when we decide to live without fearing and loving God.
I’m expanding the ramifications of what the bible implies.
why do some people live long blessed lives and others short painful ones
what kind of contrast to they see?
we all have contrast. The more love we feel the lower our lows will be.
So at least we can chalk God down as a moderate lover…
this is semantics.
Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Hebrews 5:9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
you have not done well arguing that ‘ought’ in terms of Christianities existence.
you have said that it was a natural progression of the thoughts of the ages, but this does not speak to what we had and have now as being desirable or undesirable.
it was painted and organized in their own views. which is natural.
the views were tyrannical xenophobic and immoral however… by my standards anyway…
I have already given examples as to why.
but this again contradicts the bible entirely.
This has no real ordering at all beyond farsical myths.
Sure Paul existed, but did he do the things the bible said he did?
Great, we worship a fraud. A fear monger, a jealous tempermental imperfect God who has done wrong by billions.
have you ever heard the phrase “if you cannot ebat them, join them”?. when somebody is being indoctrinated in, repentance is the first thing that lowers their barriers and makes them vulnerable to manipulation.
You are a sinner, and you need to repent. because you are evil or bad.
This gets tied into induction by fear.
no just less.
Disease no, although there are some arguments to be made.
at one time in the medieval era it was considered unholy to wash. religious monks would wash the feet of lepors and drink the water in order to induce spiritual hallucinations…
no war? no, but probably less war. This i will leave alone for now as it deserves its own thread.
famine?
if we wern’t so xenophobic and consumerist perhaps we could live as a global community. so yes, i think there would be less famine.
nope, but with my scientific knowledge i probably would have been a better skeptic than those folks.
some churches uses incense which gets you high… I’d like to go there just for fun…
when it comes down to it evidence of divinity is subjective and is not easily shared, i simply have not yet experienced anything which would make be believe.
Jezzz Wonderer, another marathon. I’ll try to defer on some issues to my previous post.
— The bible is indeed something used. Do you think it is used more for good or for the good of authority?
O- I explained this on the previous post about the apparent King James’ conspiracy.
— Your argument seems to be that the good of authority and its evolution is what is good for us.
O- It is not that the Bible is a “good”, but that it is a record of humanity’s moral evolution that gives us a snap-shot and argumenty that the “good”, whatever that is, is not a given, fully made conclusion, but a formative and mutable value, as we see in the Bible. Is the Bible good for today? Only if you take it as a lesson that we can change, that our pursuit of understanding of the All, Everything (the "Big questions, Meaning etc), is a series of visitations, confrontations, revelations, with the Highest Principle man can conceive, and not just one totalitarian event, because the All, the Universe, or God, if you wish, all of these, which I call collectively as “the Highest Principle”, are seen as mutable, as formless, as mysterious as well as surprising, because we never have the final view of them and they remain that “Other” that escapes us, trancends us, exceeds us. We hurl theories and we proceed from theory, which at this level of cognition is all we can have, by animal faith.
— How does this argument relate to what we see today? Should i be content with wide spread ignorance with the notion that it will be better one day, even if thousands of years from now?
O- You should not simply deposit of all this unacceptable state of events in religion and even think that if we just get rid of religion, we therefore will be free from future bouts with all you find unacceptable.
— Why not oppose dogma and harmful abuse of authority?
O- Top do that does not require you to oppose the Bible. As with Plato’s Republic, it might be seen as a work endorsing absoltism, totalitarian rule, but you must note the character of the absolute or totalitarian monarch that is in the minds of these authors. It is an idealistic view and thus, from that perspective, totalitarian rule is not a bane against which we must rally.
— Why not understand the old, and look to something new; evolve?
O- Nothing wrong against that, but understand that this is not a perspective wholly or entirely alien to Biblical history and that in fact this evolution took place and is recorded in the Biblical text.
— It preaches trust in an invisible authority, which gives any spiritual leader control by default. It preaches that you do not trust yourself. That you do not trust your own emotions.
O- Not so fast. Read Jeremiah for example where in fact the prophet attacks religious leaders, or Isaiah or Amos, where the priesthood is demoted and rites made irrelevant as what is desired by God, so these prophets contend, is “Justice”, not sacrifice of animals. The spiritual leader is and has been the moral leader. When religious leaders become involved in immoral affairs they cease to be “leaders”. The leader is expected, just like in Plato, to be not just a political leader but a moral leader because the Bible itself is not about political power of a Messiah, but about moral power of the Messiah. It does not preach that you should not trust yourself because the fact of the matter is that God spoke through the peasant and not just through the priest, even though he had available priests- which He in fact speaks against in these works of folk religion.
— You say it created our morals. I would like to know which morals you speak of, because it seems every person or group has their own set.
O- There is probability that morality is not entirely acquired but also inherited as well. For example, a known near-universal is the so called “Golden Rule”.
— which are the best morals?
O- Beats me. To treat others as you wish others to treat you?
— when things don’t change, like laws, it’s usually tyranny. It’s definitely not evolution.
O- So is that why we still jews killing the oldest child? Please…
— the way you say it, it seems like he was taking power away from the church, which is a good thing by my view i guess…
But apparently he did this to further his own power, so it’s one tyrannical lord usurping another.
O- I addressed this on the prior post.
— Why did society feel it had to forgive itself metaphysically in the first place? did men simply need to feel that they were not evil or had meaning? Was society that harsh and horrific?
O- I think that no one can really know but I think that it all ties up to our need for control. It does not mind debasing itself (society that is), so long as admitting it’s baseness gets them something which they want desperately.
— Why should i go out of my way to abide by the standards of aa God who created me to please him, who is not only a hypoctrite, but not perfect at all…
O- Again you take God’s existence as a given. Fine. But you also take HIS CHARACTER AS A GIVEN, and this does not follow anymore than His existence. His character is putative. It is an assumption, a theory which has been made but also for that also mutable and in the Bible this is well presented. The God of Moses (or Moses version of God, which for me is saying the same thing) disagrees with the God of Ezeckiel, his version of what God’s character is. There is nothing that says that you cannot refine who God is, what His character is, for yourself, for you. It is you after all who must choose to enter in a rapport with God, not a rapport with the Bible.
— In all the confusion how am i even to know which path is teh right one given the violent and absolute opposition amongst most mainstream religions?
O- Then rise once and for all above the need for pre-made-religion, or made-for-consumption-religions and actualize God in yourself by yourself…Call this “Existentialist Theology” or “Experimental theology”, if you wish. My observation here is that your “problem” has nothing to do with God, but with what other people have said and tell you about God. I think that a secondary problem for you is that you do not know how to make a connection with God outside of the presented religious alternatives. You don’t know how to generate a rapport with God. I cannot help you there. Some are lucky enough that God sort of confronts them in a physical way, like the Burning Bush or as a voice from the sky. But even these and any other proofs fall short of removing doubt or eliminating the need for faith, because one can always suppose that one has lost their mind and that the bush is a mirage and that the voice is a hallucination, so that they cannot count as proof os something as trancendental as God. Experience, I contend from these observations, is not enough on it’s own to generate knowledge about God, or belief in God. I can see a man risen from the dead and this could not, on it’s merit, prove to me that he is God, nor can aburning bush prove to me, on it’s merits, to be the manifestation of God. And it is not that dead men walking and burning bushes or celestial voices lack somehow some measure of grandiosity, but that no matter of degree of grandiosity separate them from this reality and thus cannot stand for what stands outside of this Set. Check out Russell’s Paradox.
— choosing a side doesn;t seem logical, too often leads to conflict with myself, logic other religions and peace in general.
O- Which is understandable because you have as of yet too narrow a view of God, informed solely by divisive perspectives. But what if that was not all these was, or was ever meant, to the story? People use the Bible as they see fit, from their own perspectives of God’s character. If you find God to be totalitarian then you accentuate, elevate the relevance of this or that passage and suppress other counter-passages, and vice-versa. The Bible, as I continue to maintain, is a compilation of different sets which only coincide in their subject matter but their treatment is not at all objective and never coincide. If they did then they would lose the very reason that spurred their creation, as the first book would then contain all the rest. It is then a series of revelations rather than Revelation. Now you must choose, you must wrestle, you must re-ligarte, re-link, which is the definition of religion, with what you, and not others, consider as God.
— The religion is then inherently against criticism.
O- No. It does however criticise the SOURCE of the criticism.
— How can we evolve if we don’t use our brains?
O- What man has always feared is that he is often a victim of his mind and the illusions of his imaginations. He has to resolve the problem of subjectivity, of his finiteness, of his fallibility before he can critique, what he considers, the infinite and infallible. If anything man learned to use his brain after eating the fruit, but lost at the same time the ability to enjoy the world as is, as a child would and was tormented by what he could imagine, what stood beyond his immediate experience and so he could now experience other worlds and more “perfect” worlds, yet without understanding the mechanisms of this world at all.
— for the umpteenth time, this type of argument is equivalent to calling me stupid.
O- Would you let go of your pride for just a second. Why does everything have to be a freaking insult to you? If I want to call you “stupid” I’ll do so openly, not askance. The fact that I am investing considerable time into these responses should fucking give you some confidence that I do not consider you stupid. I have been frank and direct calling you callous, but that does not mean stupid. I have called you young one, all of these mean inexperience- that is not tantamount to stupid. I call it like I see it. I think that your understandings of religion are limited, narrow, but not stupid. If you were stupid then there is no point in addressing you nor encourage you because you would lack the ability to do so, by definition. But the fact that my responses are filled with invitations, exhortations, etc, it should tell you, since you are not stupid, that I do not take you to be a stupid person. Get me? Now stop it with the insecurities and nervuous projections…
— Gods knowledge is described as perfect; omniscient.
O- Not in Genesis for example, where He asks Adam and Eve questions, that, if He was omniscent, as you use the term, would be unecessary. Instead, I propose that the term means that as part of His Perfection, God trancends, if more powerful than, all of His creations. But still, this does not preclude that God still is able to choose to decide, when to intervene and when not to intervene. Being a mind reader does not mean that you always have to, by force, to read other minds, but that if you chose to you could do it. Same with God. he knows all…all that he cares to know, all that He wishes to know…all that He puts His mind to know.
— You may feel that God only knew what would happen because he interfered, but this not only contradicts the notion of god given free will (freewill that he can remove at leisure), but this also contradicts popular descriptions and the bible itself stating god knows everything.
O- And the herd is always right? What is popular does not necessarly also happens to be “true”…
— for starters i already believe in determinism, but i believe it is impossible to fully predict future events from our perspective. i believe free will is an illusion as is choice. We are passers by and by products of a chain reaction of matter.
O- …And that is fine, but I do not. Determinism is not something I am compelled to believe above my natural observations of choice.
— It places gods craftsmanship in question. what if you were born a cripple and died at 2 in pain? what kind of meaning does life have then?
O- Again, this is a valid critique that has engaged writers for millenia, even in the Biblical record. I cannot answer that in a hundred post. But note one thing that very often it is the cripple that comes to God and not the one who abandons the faith, the cripple who believes that God actually gives meaning to his defects. And he or she is right because a materialist, atheistic, perspective does not speak about the meaning of life nor about the value of any life. A materialist-atheistic perspective may speak about the struggle of life, the competition of life and hold as counter to these values of competition the preservation of damaged organism, unfit to compete in life.
Even if we take God as existing, we are left with trying to define God’s character in the face of death, disease and suffering. But here is where I do not offer easy answers, pre-packaged and pre-felt for consumption, rather I call the listener to wrestle an asnwer for himself. For every person each tragedy means something different about God, and so you should ask only what it will mean to you, what it shall signify. The Bible records, again this struggle in the story of Job. Satan puts down the gaunlet much like you do now and bets God that all those who follow Him pursue God for their sakes and not God’s. Against JFK, they seem to say: It is not what I can do for God but what God can do for me.
I guess the suffering of the innocent presents a choice to either respond as Job’s wife, who counsels Job to curse God and be done with it…kinda like a suicide, or to respond as Job did, choosing to believe in God in spite of aal that had happened in humble admission of his own ignorance about causes and effects. The choice is yours…
— This ambiguous and contradictory notion of freewill simply allows us to praise god for the good and blame man for the bad.
O- How do you see that? Paul in fact refuted freewill because it allowed man to claim the “good”.
— illusion imo, and gods transgressions against the pharaoh are something to be sickened by. why not make the pharaoh repent? why not make Gomorrah repent?
O- Two different circumstances. In the case of the Pharaoh, he rob Pharaoh of choice, so the question should be: “Why didn’t he give Pharaoh the freedom He allowed to Nineveh to repent?” I don’t know if there is a point to even answer the question. This is one of those instances that perhaps has more value as anthropology than as archeology, because the circumstances of how the hebrews entered and then left Egypt are not clear. Certainly, it seems clear that for one author at least, God took revenge upon the bane of the hebrew people, and this was needed for them, that God be an avenger for the Chosen People. Meaning that the story about Pharaoh is probably informed, influenced by tribal concepts that later became outdated.
The actions of the Pharaoh, however, prior to his possession from God, were entirely his own. He was free of God’s effect when he acted harshly towards the hebrews which is what prompted His people to cry out to Him for vengance. This means that Pharaoh is not some innocent joe whom God punishes even with prejudice. Instead Pharaoh is a moral agent that earn the punishment being administered to him. The possession is just part of the punishment, but even without it Pharaoh’s fate had been seal by his actions and not by God’s. God always retains the ability to be merciful but is not constrained or forced to be merciful and can choose not to be.
— but this again contradicts the bible entirely.
O- Not at all. I just propose that “Perfect” be relative to the usage of the time, and not make it equal to the use of “Perfect” given by Aristotle. What we see is that Christianity began to intermingle both meanings, both usages indicriminately and thus we received many conflicting ideas from this forced marriage of Athens and Jerusalem.
— Sure Paul existed, but did he do the things the bible said he did?
O- No. These are the exagerations I spoke about.
— Great, we worship a fraud. A fear monger, a jealous tempermental imperfect God who has done wrong by billions.
O- LOL. Don’t see it as that. A fear monger? Perhaps only presented as that by fear monger authors. Jealous? That is part of love. Temperamental? And because of that we made Him predictable. Imperfect? By whose definition? Who defines what is actually Perfect? Perfection is an opinion, a point of view. Is life on this planet perfect? No? What about the conditions that led to life? Considering the collection of inhabitable planets around us I would have to say that they needed to be perfect, but again, only in relation to us, or from my perspective. Whether God is perfect or not, or done right or not ultimately depends of the conditions of the person whom you ask…so I don’t waste much time on such relative values. God shall be what He is, or as He says:“I am That I am”. He exist as That which exist. Perfection and Imperfection are adjectives and valutations that we add to that which simply exist prior to and unconditioned by our experience. The universe is not perfect because it is perfect for us. That is anthropocentricism, nor is it imperfect in itself because it is imperfect for us as a species. That is to express arrogance that such definitions be determined by our limited experience, and the point of Job’s story.
(jumping in late, I’ll play catch up in a bit, but this caught my eye first)
Then follows a citation of the traditional ten commandments of Christianity.
Now…let’s put some perspective on this shall we?
You essentially just did what it would be like if I said, let’s take the 5 laws of evolution and only slapped them up on their own with no further explanations of what else is housed under those 5 categorical laws of evolution, and then ripped them to shreds for lacking clarity and satirically classified them under a guise of misuse.
Of course, immediately, you would see that I have absolutely bastardized and misrepresented the 5 laws of evolution.
So to is such a case as what you have done here with the 10 commandments.
The 10 commandments are 10 categorical headings for a total of 613 commandments…not just 10 on their own.
“You will not kill” is blatantly not adhered to in the Bible countless times, but if you read the detailed followings of that law, you’ll notice it has exceptions and pardons for when it is alright and when it is not alright to kill.
The heading is, “Regarding not Killing”, more or less.
For instance, some (out of many) of these further explanations of just this one law are:
If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished. (Exodus: 21:20)
Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty. (Exodus: 23:7)
Do not go about spreading slander among your people.'Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. (Leviticus 19:16)
They will be places of refuge from the avenger, so that a person accused of murder may not die before he stands trial before the assembly. (Numbers 35:12)
When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. (Deuteronomy 20:10)
Completely destroy them - the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (Deuteronomy 20:17)
If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)
But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor (Deuteronomy 22:25-26)
These are only some, but the idea is obvious; the 10 commandments were not the only commandments that the Hebrew culture held that God gave to them.
It is therefore, incomplete to make conclusions about the nature of the same God by only looking at roughly 1.5% of the total laws given by this God to these people.
If I chose to select only 1.5% of a given scientific field’s laws and then from that made my conclusions about that science, I would be far off course from accurate to what the science holds.
You posited a defense of king james and i addressed that defense. you also said that the bible is a tool used by tyrants and the righteous alike.
you have not however indicated whether it is more so used by tyrants or more so used by the righteous.
please, indulge me.
is it your animal faith that allows you to recognize “animalistic” behavior and then rise above said behavior?
what do you become then?
human?
If i were to take the bible at its word it presents itself as immutable and divine truth. as precise as possible. a given truth.
What do you think is my beef with religion? honestly would like a response to that, however Freudian you try to get.
there is a large number of people who rally under a christian banner. they accept it blindly and it makes them happy.
These groups can become motivated over various issues like abortion or gay marriage or politics or war or education, over entertainment, and basically over everything.
Politicians abuse, preachers exploit, parents dictate, non believers become oppressed.
Are you pro choice? What is your view on the sanctity of marriage? What of stem cells?
What happens when a wave of non-thought sweeps through Christianity in our society?
Witch trials? Xenophobia? Prejudice? War?
Why is mainstream christianity prejudice against Islam?
Why are people being frightened by their own government controlled media which beat drums for the so called Muslim terrorists?
Why do people think the Prophet Mohammad was a terrorist?
When harry potter came out the church i was going to decided that the author was a witch. and this is a big mega church mind you…
they had a power point presentation showing pictures of phoenix’s and cauldrons.
The church called for solidarity against this film. It asked us to spread awareness against Harry potter and to guard our children (me) against it.
Who elected Bush?
I’m not saying that getting rid of religion will solve all our problems, and i don’t think every aspect of religion is harmful.
But the darker side of religion is still a big part of the problem.
The non-thought inherent in Christianity lends itself to anyone willing to take up a mantle of authority. In mass it destroys the democratic process and removes the power from the people by infiltrating and slowing their minds.
Instead of voting for a rational policy or platform, we vote for good christian politicians. They don’t question beyond how Godly they are.
governments should be afraid of the people, and not the other way around.
because religion is so far reaching into various aspects of society and as i have described is a major lynch pin circumventing democracy, it is a logical first step in the combating of these things (war, ignorance…)
The character?
How about a malfunctioning dogmatic democracy? the Character is that of a christian male, which is to be expected.
The actions are that of a tyrant.
so the stories changed and evolved?
Did Jesus change everything?
In a way he made the old testament irrelevant. all we have to do is ask god for forgiveness and get him to guide us.
In a way Jesus did away with the old.
I would do the same thing and say, if you can forgive yourself, you will feel the same sense of security. Guide yourself, don’t let other people or words in books guide you.
I think we are mature enough to put down the picture books used as manuals
In the bible there are those inspired by god always doing some sort of good work. We don’t always have the ability to speak out against and question authority. Not all authority is willing to let go of their power easily.
What if you are one of very few who believe there is a corruption? if you speak out against the preacher you are only doing harm to your own cause, the crowd will turn on you.
This is another example of how the non-thought inherent in the system facilitates a destruction of critical thought and democracy.
which is?
are you talking about reciprocity? because that may be an old idea but only lately has it been thought to be in practice.
that was what i’ve already said…
and why is that the best moral?
HA!
They don’t go that far because we are less barbaric than we once were, now we are more sophisticated.
This is why we see Jews building contraptions designed to preserve the kosherness of their lives.
steam powered wheelchairs and such.
Oh, and as well, this is why we see a common theme in most religions.
Worship this God and obey our religion or you will die a sinner, and you won’t like where that takes you.
this my friend is tyranny. Ignorance is an effect of tyranny.
no you didn’t.
you merely asserted that king james was trying to take power away from the Papacy.
This is true but it’s because he desired the power for himself.
the gun powerder plot, for which the movie V for Vendetta is a tribute, was an assassination attempt designed to blow up the parliament building with gun powder. Guy Fawkes was motivated by oppression of English Catholics.
If you are going to defer, concisely quote yourself please.
which is the illusion of freedom while drowning in a vat of wine.
except for all that stuff about unchanging and perfection.
What i’m doing is interesting. I’m assuming that god exists, and then taking what the bible says and infers and showing various contradictions and unattractive aspects of the bible itself. what I’m doing is painting the bible as false, illogical, and eventually undesirable.
i could care less what people tell me, so long as they don’t badger me.
Unfortunately society is suffering at teh hands of widespread ignroance. to doubt that is insane. As result i am currently against the inherent dangers in Christianity and other religions which propagate non thought and ignorance. To overcome we must first understand, and I’ll have you know that this thread was not designed for a criticism but for a discussion and distinction.
I have never said the bible is wholly negative
God is secondary to my goal in this thread. I have already found what i need out of life, and God isn’t on my list of materials.
I am concerned with effects in this thread.
Again, this is not about what i use the bible for and your point is a fallacious one.
i am describing how i see people using the bible.
that doesn’t matter. The bias is stll there, generalizing against any possible source.
In scientology they call dissenters “suppressive persons”, and are dealt with in specific and dogmatic ways (including harassment).
some people can’t climb mountains, so they climb foot hills.
Some people take the easy road.
You say ignorance is bliss, but an ignorant man with a gun can take away the bliss of others.
ignorance is bad.
instead of judging me judge what i say. this whole digression is worthless in terms of coming to a conclusion on the subject matter of this thread.
This is a simple facet of a logical debate. though you might be expressing what you see and feel, you are unintentionalyl setting up a bias by which people will judge what i write negatively, presupposing that it is written by an inexperienced and callous individual.
so not only are you wasting both of our times by pursuing such routes you are damaging the potential obejctivity of the discussion.
What could be additional commentary and advice turns into libel in the middle of a debate.
If i have judged you in teh same way then i apologize, but you must understand that the issues i am trying to discuss should not require my credentials checked.
the way i saw it he already knew everything and was only asking his questions to fulfill his own prophecies.
in any case while i use the literal translation of the bible you use the most antiquated and allegorical book of the bible and make inductions based on specific context and circumstance.
In any case, the older parts of the bible need not come into question when it is the claims to absolute power and authority which are being used.
the bible may have been innocent earlier on, but it is it’s latent problems which concern me
and “true” does not concern me. it’s what the effects are.
what the masses believe has effects.
so what the masses believe necessarily concerns me.
and that’s fine, but you should know we cannot verify or disprove determinism any more than we can the existence of God or the validity of the bible.
some people need crutches.
but someone who takes a crutch and does not need it loses strength.
submission or pride?
you’re right, you couldn’t really explain that one with a hundred posts.
the fact remains, ignorance perpetuates these topics. And not that this is unnatural, just that we should progress and l\unchain ourselves from things like dogmatic religious systems.
and you can continue to say this is not the bibles fault, but this is what exists none the less.
exactly. all good is attributed to God.
but when something evil happens, it is blamed on man or the devil.
this is how ignorance circumvents logic.
don;t worry about it, the bible has lacks of consistency.
know what i mean?
look up the definition of teh word perfect from those eras. it means unchanging, consistent, eternal.
so why not accept it as a fairy tale and stop idolizing such stories under the fear of god?
You may preach the merits of Christianities uniting forces but you also preach the fact that everyone’s understanding of the faith is subjective and different people get different things out of it.
This is a dangerous thing. People can unite under negative concepts very easily.
I’m simply trying to promote a common understanding.
Hello Wonderer,
Let me try to cut this this up somehow. You asks too many questions that I could not possibly answer. Who uses the Bible more? How am I to freaking know? My argument doesn’t have to decide who does what with the Bible, only present that some do not while others do. Or what is you beef with religion? How should I know? Only you can answer that. I am no mind reader, and I know next to nothing about you. You seem young, rebellious, tantalized with alternatives to Christianity, such as socialism, marxism. Your discontent is with a form of religion you received as a child and have not yet attempted to form an original belief about God on your own. Other than this, I really cannot say more. Then you ask about who elected Bush, marriage, prejudice against Islam…frankly it is not necessary to discuss these questions as part of this post. It is your tread, I know, but for the sake of my fingers, I must unfortunately decline.
— I’m not saying that getting rid of religion will solve all our problems, and i don’t think every aspect of religion is harmful.
O- Now we are getting somewhere…
But the darker side of religion is still a big part of the problem.
O- And no one denies that this is true. I would have to be blind to not see such defects. But my point is that we cannot define all religious people by the lowest denominator. It is profiling and prejudicial. Rather each individual, we should recognize, is the interpreter of his own religion. Within the human phenomenon of religion there exist several different religions, each competing for a monopoly of believers just as any organism demands space for itself. Within each religions you have further di-versions, measured in difference with the religion the individual inherited from his culture or group, but also different from himself in that his neuro/psychological processes modify his own particular religion at different stages in life. Every religion has enough diversity that it can challenge the accusation of being dark. Like man (and probably because religion is what men do, so that religion is not just like man but “of man”), religion is not just “evil”, or unrighteous, but a little bit of both.
— The non-thought inherent in Christianity lends itself to anyone willing to take up a mantle of authority. In mass it destroys the democratic process and removes the power from the people by infiltrating and slowing their minds.
— In the bible there are those inspired by god always doing some sort of good work. We don’t always have the ability to speak out against and question authority. Not all authority is willing to let go of their power easily.
What if you are one of very few who believe there is a corruption? if you speak out against the preacher you are only doing harm to your own cause, the crowd will turn on you.
This is another example of how the non-thought inherent in the system facilitates a destruction of critical thought and democracy.
O- Okay. Let me just point out these inconsistencies. You condemn the “destruction of critical thought and democracy”. but you also lament how, when you preach against the preacher, the crowd turns on you. Well…aren’t they excersicing their democratic right to disagree with you? Haven’t the voters spoken and the majority rejected the views of the minority. That is perfect democracy if you ask me…That is the crowd using their critical thought about what you had to say… Now if you consider the groud just mindless sheep, then what you want is absolute power so that you can overcome the hostility of the crowd and thus be able to attack whomever, wherever you want.
— and why is that the best moral?
O- Because it has the greater evolutionary value, if you ask me…
— They don’t go that far because we are less barbaric than we once were, now we are more sophisticated.
O- isn’t that exactly what I have been saying? Their sophistication has mutated their religion, therefore proving that religion is not by necessity, static.
— Worship this God and obey our religion or you will die a sinner, and you won’t like where that takes you. this my friend is tyranny. Ignorance is an effect of tyranny.
O- Now, again, you are narrowing your idea of religion to Christianity and it’s view on the after-life, but note that even the after-life is in jeopardy, besieged by…Christians? Talk with Bob or Alyoshka about this. Ask them, or take a survey in general of anyone who considers themselves a religious person, not just a Christian, about what they think God will do to those that do not think like them. Me personally I think that God will do for the believer exactly as His IDEA has always done: give meaning to their lives, easy, simply, and with minmal fuss. What does that have to do with the non-believer? Well, that it is not that God is going to send you to Hell, or even that you need God to live etc, but that not believing in God opens you to new beliefs that may substitute the benefits of believing in God, and this in turn will become a sorta God to you, a sort of Highest Principle. See “God” is not just what was found by the religious. It is what was found by the True Believer.
— you merely asserted that king james was trying to take power away from the Papacy. This is true but it’s because he desired the power for himself.
O- I said that already!!!
— the gun powerder plot, for which the movie V for Vendetta is a tribute, was an assassination attempt designed to blow up the parliament building with gun powder. Guy Fawkes was motivated by oppression of English Catholics.
O- Exactly. Pick your poison. If Fawkes succeeded then you are ruled by the Pope’s authority. If the King survives then you are ruled by the King’s authority. Either way, power does not revert and was not sought for the people. the “People” are always the pawns in these power politiks, or as Orwell allegorized, the are the work horse that is exploited by either one or the other. I know you’re going to lamet this situation and call for our maturation and that is fine, but what if we are built, like other primates, to dicern pecking orders?
— which is the illusion of freedom while drowning in a vat of wine.
O- Only for those looking from the outside who haven’t lived the experience. To those that live in the faith, they are completed and “healed” by it, in more ways than one…why should that be called an illusion? Ever heard of self fulfilling prophecies? Well, I bring you “self fulfilled illusions”…
— except for all that stuff about unchanging and perfection.
O- …“all that stuff” is in your own perception. These are not necessary ingredients for religion. The Bible describes God as changing, as I mentioned, in Jonah, and His perfection is another preception, a limited judgment by man speaking out of place. God is what He shall be (I am That I am), and God’s Perfection, if you ask me, should not lack Freedom, or should it? Yet this Freedom, to be real, requires that He retains the possibility for change (which the text shows) and also that He can transcend our limited ideas about what Perfection is, and again He does, because if you go by the most analytical description of a Perfect God, that of Aristotle, you find an inhuman Immovable Mover. The CLAIM THAT THE BIBLE COULD SUPPORT would be that God is perfect according to Himself and not perfect according to us. When Job questions God’s perfection, God simply asks Job about his perception and how it measures against God’s because the point is that it is for God to judge what is Perfect, what is good. When we criticise God we overstep the boundaries of our cognition, go beyond what science can reveal, go from stating merely what “is” to what “ought” to be, what would “be” in a “perfect” world.
It is like looking at a work of art from two perspective. For the artist the work is what he desired it to be. in that sense it is “perfect”. But the art critic looks at the work and, unable to see what the author had intended, projects into the artist his own desire, his own vision and taste and so can find imperfections. By whose perspective should the work be judged?
— What i’m doing is interesting. I’m assuming that god exists, and then taking what the bible says and infers and showing various contradictions and unattractive aspects of the bible itself. what I’m doing is painting the bible as false, illogical, and eventually undesirable.
O- You have no shortage of bravado, I give you that. You are taking God’s existence as a given but:
1- you DO NOT take what the Bible says…
2- “contradictions” only from a fundamentalist and literalist perspective that willfully ignores the text itself. You understand the text as a modern Christian would and not as a hebrew author would, or as a prophet would, and you take this limited perspective of your choice as if it was the “proper” view. Isn’t that tyrannical?..
3- You paint your own creation as false, as I see very little "Bible and a whole lot of YOU.
— Again, this is not about what i use the bible for and your point is a fallacious one. i am describing how i see people using the bible.
O- Two things:
1- You asks all these questions and then you act as if you never did asks.
2- How you see and what ought to be the use are completely different.
— instead of judging me judge what i say. this whole digression is worthless in terms of coming to a conclusion on the subject matter of this thread.
O- But one that you forced me to make by your bouts of hyper-sensitivity.
— This is a simple facet of a logical debate. though you might be expressing what you see and feel, you are unintentionalyl setting up a bias by which people will judge what i write negatively, presupposing that it is written by an inexperienced and callous individual.
O- If you are not then others will see how I am wrong. I am not suppressing anything that you have posted on this tread. it is your tread. It is your fruits by which you shall be judged by others…not what I say are your fruits…
— If i have judged you in teh same way then i apologize, but you must understand that the issues i am trying to discuss should not require my credentials checked.
O- That is a mtter of opinion. To me a speculator OR critic, either way, should have a basic familiarity with his subject in order to be effective, and when I criticise you as callous, it is precisely this which I have in mind- that is, your speculation lacks effectiveness, undershoots or overshoots it’s targets because it’s target is not well defined.
— the way i saw it he already knew everything and was only asking his questions to fulfill his own prophecies.
O- Suit yourself. i can see that you have invested determinsim with infallibility and cannot entretain diverging narratives from the dogma you’ve placed upon yourself. Sometimes we hate that which is most near to ourselves, most like ourselves…
— in any case while i use the literal translation
O- No. Interpretation…
— of the bible you use the most antiquated and allegorical book of the bible
O- Which one is that?
— In any case, the older parts of the bible need not come into question when it is the claims to absolute power and authority which are being used.
O- Not at all, but relativised, that is, understood in the context in which the text originated and the assumptions that it took as granted. But this granted it should not be taken as granted that the oldest parts are eternal or final revelations and that further revelations, dictations by God to man, revealed a moral evolution, either in the authors or in God.
— some people need crutches. but someone who takes a crutch and does not need it loses strength.
O- But you miss the point. If you are indeed so concerned about effects rather than the causes then shouldn’t you be concerned with a materialistic social darwinism, which would dispose of babies as it does with unwanted kittens because from a materialist point of view there is no inherent value in human life?
— exactly. all good is attributed to God.
O- But not if we have freewill, according to Paul’s argument.
— look up the definition of teh word perfect from those eras. it means unchanging, consistent, eternal.
O- Other than eternal, nothing here applies.
— so why not accept it as a fairy tale and stop idolizing such stories under the fear of god?
O- because we are not talking about Spider-man and while I do not take it’s stories as literally true, I can take them seriously at least and it is then that you appreciate the other insights preserved in that book.
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