This begs the question, although my friend was lucky enough to have the blinders taken off to see how imperfect the god of the bible is, why can't other people?

"Oh, you are taking it out of context!" under what context would it be right to kill all the male children and virgins of a town. I do not give it any slack.

"You are misinterpreting it!" If I can misinterpret anything in the bible, then god is a bad communicator, how can an all knowing god, not know how to word his verses to make sure everyone was on the right track. Also, it says there clearly, no amount of claiming I do not know what it says will make it a good thing to say, it is horrible that you are defending him, ironically, you are playing devils advocate.

What do you all think about blatant deniers?

Seems like there are certain ways various Christians deal with this.

1. Follow their own moral compass. Perform Olympian levels of mental gymnastics in order to make the immoral stuff in the Bible fit their moral compass.

2. Follow their own moral compass. When confronted with things in the Bible that disagree with their moral compass, ignore them, or claim they are some kind of mistake of human origin.

3. Claim that there is nothing in the Bible that is immoral, since it comes from God. Perform actions that they feel bad about, but since the are condoned by God, they must actually be moral.

4. Do obviously immoral things, but claim that that God told you to do them.

The first 3 Christians are more moral than their god. They understand deep down that the Bible contains the god doing and ordering immoral acts.

The 4th type is a psychopath.

I've heard this one: god had a plan. Who are we as mere mortals to question, or even understand gods plan? Just know that it was right.

The texans say: They needed killin.

Their god is a hypocrite. Some will say it's ok when he does it because reasons. Which is hypocritical. Though I doubt they would describe it as such.

(March 28, 2016 at 4:47 pm)GeneralDog Wrote:

So, a little bit ago, I sent one of my friends a text saying "There is a man in the middle east who is giving orders to kill all male children in the town and all the virgin women, isn't that horrible?" and he replied "Heck yes." I said "Numbers 31:37 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man" (he is talking to moses in this verse) At first he seemed shocked, surprised and defeated. All he would say is "Cool" or "God loves you" and wouldn't refute the verse. Then he said he was thinking and he thinks i'm partially right. I gave him some contradictions in the bible. He has now told me he is an atheist, and that I was right.

This begs the question, although my friend was lucky enough to have the blinders taken off to see how imperfect the god of the bible is, why can't other people?

"Oh, you are taking it out of context!" under what context would it be right to kill all the male children and virgins of a town. I do not give it any slack.

"You are misinterpreting it!" If I can misinterpret anything in the bible, then god is a bad communicator, how can an all knowing god, not know how to word his verses to make sure everyone was on the right track. Also, it says there clearly, no amount of claiming I do not know what it says will make it a good thing to say, it is horrible that you are defending him, ironically, you are playing devils advocate.

What do you all think about blatant deniers?

Many of them are irrational. Instead of adapting their beliefs to what evidence shows etc, they adapt their beliefs to what they want to be true. 

Here's an article about what a belief in religion does to your brain [source: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/conflict...study-says] I think it might interest you.

A lot of Christians simply haven't read the tome they supposedly revere. Many of those that have will find 101 ways to justify the heinous shit that's inside. Not because it's logical to do so (it's anything but), but because they've attached part of their identity to their faith, and they perceive any flaw with it as a flaw in themselves. Indeed, that's why the idea of god is so pervasive - it's an intentionally vague concept that beckons the reader/believer to fill in the gaps. And so they fill those gaps with aspects of their own personality and what they believe an ideal person would be like.

Religion is politics. It's fueled by propaganda. Propaganda works through repetition and guiding the person reading/watching/hearing to the desired conclusion by having them fill in the dots in a certain way. We see the same thing right now in the Presidential race.

Donald Trump's slogan is "Make America Great Again!" But, that implies it's not currently great without defining what he means by greatness, and the 'again' portion of the phrase doesn't reference any particular time. Why? Because everyone has their own nostalgia. For some, it was the 1980s, during Reagan's Presidency and the end of the Cold War. For others (and a lot of GOP voters), it was the postwar era. A lot of people have warm, fuzzy memories of the late 1940s, 1950s, and even 1960s when things were 'simpler' and 'better', even though institutionalized racism was still running rampant and we were facing nuclear annihilation. But, his campaign doesn't care about those details. What it aims to do is to get everyone on board with the idea that America isn't great, it once was, and it could be again. The particulars are unconsciously filled in by the audience. And the same thing with god.

And this is why there are ~400,000 denominations (no joke) of Christianity today. There's no consensus about important things, like the value of faith vs. good works, how forgiving god is in general, etc. But, it's also why, despite the number of denominations in existence, everyone thinks their vision of god is the correct one. Their god is really themselves.

Oh, they never killed virgins.  They carried them off for sex slaves - aka extra wives.

They killed the non-virgin women.

God is the source of morality. Therefore, if God does a thing, or commands that thing to be done, then God cannot - by his very nature - be immoral.

(It hurt my forebrain just typing that...)

Boru

Quote:What do you all think about blatant deniers?

They are fucking idiots.