(May 18, 2011 at 10:16 pm)tackattack Wrote: As far as the handout, see my PM

I admit that I was surprised that any Christian would even entertain the idea of going through with it, and you should be commended. However, the bible is clear that no strings be attached. Jesus didn't say give to all who ask of you only if they're poorer than you, he said give to all. Why does it say this? I have no idea, but it does. Perhaps Jesus was a communist. That would certainly explain the "if someone takes your coat, offer him your shirt as well."

The point is that many Christians claim to not know that this passage exists, or if they do know about it they tend to ignore it or explain it away. Hence, cherry picking. I've known many Christian bank loan managers who don't work by this principle. But you're lucky I'm an honest person and won't hold you to actually sending me money, because to be honest I'd feel bad taking it even if you believed your bible commands you to give it to me.

And the fact remains that there are many, many other passages in the bible which command believers to do bizarre things (like offering up burnt sacrifices of animals, for instance) which Christians conveniently ignore.

@DT - I did nothing that would warrant commendation. It also says to give privately, hence the brevity of my post. There are many other passages that a lot of Christians deny exist. I agree that's a problem.
Burnt offerings commonly seen in Leviticus, originating in Genesis, was a common thing and very symbolic for the typical Jew of the era. There was a serious connection with shedding of Blood for atonement. The offering of Isaac, and many other example just lead into Jesus (the lamb) being offered as the ultimate sacrifice as an atonement for our sins. The Bible also stipulates that offerings must be done in the Holy Temple, which has been destroyed. A word of caution to everyone about end timers, if you hear about someone rebuilding the temple, expect People to start giving sacrifices there. But the Bible says we can pray without ritual sacrifice.

My opinion, rituals eventually detract from their intended purpose by focusing spiritual truth in physical terms. I won't be sacrificing any animals on any alter, regardless of the temple being built. I think Christians are further divorced from ritual worship than the typical Jew, generally. Probably why it's not even bohered as a topic of discussion in most Christian circles.

But the trouble is that Jesus himself said in the bible that not the tiniest part of any of the old law would pass with his resurrection, that is, nothing was "nailed to the cross" except Jesus himself and there was no "new covenant." The only reason we don't offer burnt sacrifices these days is probably because people realized that it was a nasty thing to do and they got tired of rounding up all those animals. And, I hope, we're just a tiny bit less superstitious than people were back in biblical times.

Again, though, if Christians are going to claim that Levitical laws against eating shellfish or meat & dairy products together, wearing clothes of mixed fibers, working on the Sabbath, or other such silly laws are part of the "old covenant" that we don't have to follow any more, then so is the prohibition against homosexuality as laid out in Leviticus 18:22, as well as all the ten commandments as described in Exodus. After all, they're also in the OT, and came even before Levitical laws. But for some reason they think that the ten commandments need to be posted on all public buildings.

Here's a fairly brief understanding of the second covenant. It's not that he abolished the old law but he fulfilled it. It wasn't that they went away, it's that we weren't beholden to the written laws because they were laws used to condemn. The new laws were written in our hearts and mind. Jesus said they wouldn't change because he gave us the key to understand their original intent and overall theme is to love God with everything and Love your neighbor as yourself. Our salvation isn't won by following a checklist of laws, the fact we've been saved is shown through behavior that exemplifies the laws on our heart. My point was though, if another temple opened up, you'd probably be seeing sacrifices burnt a it.

Quote:It wasn't that they went away, it's that we weren't beholden to the written laws

WTF is the difference? If you're not required to follow certain laws, then isn't that the same as rendering them null and void? Why would Jesus even mention that nothing in the old law changes with him if nobody had to follow them any more?

Quote:Our salvation isn't won by following a checklist of laws

That's not what I was taught in Catholic religion classes, which took ten of those laws very seriously.

Which is why there is a distinction between protestantism, anglicansim, and catholicism. As far as what's the difference, he wasn't saying there were no rules anymore, or that God's rules were wrong and needed correct, just that the medium is changed because of abuse and condemnation caused by them.

(May 19, 2011 at 6:05 am)tackattack Wrote: How exactly is it cherry picking to look at all of the passages as a whole rather than taking one or two verses out of context. I think my example is still valid and has yet to be addressed. I'll enumerate it clearly here. Example of cherry picking, literal interpretation with no reading comprehansion (What I feel you both are doing):

First of all, I never claimed I wasn’t cherry picking. You’re the one who did that. Right after you expressed your contempt for cherry picking Christians. I’m simply pointing out that that you are looking at the Bible through rose colored glasses. You have cherry picked a goody two shoes version of your holy books that is at odds with the original intent of their authors.

“Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally.”

You are guilty of the bolded part.

Quote:1)Did you say "you should kill your rebellious children" in your previous post?
2)Was it your intent to ask me to kill my children?

If this is directed at me, as opposed to the Bible, yes I wrote those words in my previous post. However I was merely repeating the words of your god as recorded in your holy book. According to your book, it was his intent that you kill your rebellious children if they behaved in a proscribed manner.

The reality is that I don’t believe anything in the Bible has anything to do with god. I believe the reason those words are there is because it was the intent of the authors to give parents the ability to kill their children without fear of reprisal from civil authority.

BTW, where did you learn to spell comprehension?

(May 17, 2011 at 6:53 pm)popeyespappy Wrote:

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(May 17, 2011 at 10:31 am)tackattack Wrote: Since you claim such a strong statement. I'm a memberof a non denominational evangelical church. I'm very farmiliar with the doctine of the First Church of God (Anderson, IN) movement. Please cite proof where any cherry picking was done by me or anyone claiming either label. It's actually one of the first things I teach not to do in my adult and children classes.

Does your congregation teach parents to stone their disobedient children to death? If not you are cherry picking the Bible. Does your congregation teach parents to bear false testimony against their children? If not you are cherry picking the Bible.

Quote:Deuteronomy

21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

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(May 18, 2011 at 8:36 am)popeyespappy Wrote:

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(May 18, 2011 at 6:11 am)tackattack Wrote:

(May 17, 2011 at 6:53 pm)popeyespappy Wrote:

(May 17, 2011 at 10:31 am)tackattack Wrote: Since you claim such a strong statement. I'm a memberof a non denominational evangelical church. I'm very farmiliar with the doctine of the First Church of God (Anderson, IN) movement. Please cite proof where any cherry picking was done by me or anyone claiming either label. It's actually one of the first things I teach not to do in my adult and children classes.

Does your congregation teach parents to stone their disobedient children to death? If not you are cherry picking the Bible. Does your congregation teach parents to bear false testimony against their children? If not you are cherry picking the Bible.

Quote:Deuteronomy

21:18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:
21:19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;
21:20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.
21:21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Don't you see the laughability of YOUR cherry picking. You do realize that you are I hope.
Let's see if you can do this excercise.
Take your verse above and also read Jesus' take on the law (as he believed in it and followed it)
Mark 12:28-33 (New International Version)
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
29 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” 32 “Well said, teacher,” the man replied. “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
and add
John 8:7 (New International Version)
7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her

When you factor in the Bible in it's entirety with all of the lessons and parables you'll see that read together (not cherry picking) they paint a picture of a parent concerned for their child, wanting to punish them for their rebeluousness, but loving them and not stoning them, for the humbleness to acknowledge their own faults in parenting.

You can feel free to read at face value, but to read only one things at face value and make no attempt at reading comprehension would be like me saying that you would like us all to (and I quote) "teach parents to stone their disobedient children to death" Which is in fact what you said, but not in it's context or entirety.

No Tack, I don’t see the laughability of my argument because you are doing exactly what I said in my first post. You are choosing the passage that best fits your thoughts from among contradictory passages. Jesus also said:


"Whoever curses father or mother shall die" (Mark 7:10 NAB)

“He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.” (Matthew 15:4-7)

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)

“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 RSV)

You too are cherry picking. You have chosen the passages that best fit what you want the Bible to be. You ignore the things you don’t like. I won’t argue that you have chosen poorly in this extreme example because you haven't, but the fact remains that you have chosen. You have cherry picked that which suits you and disregarded that which does not. Something all Christians are forced to do.

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(May 19, 2011 at 1:34 am)popeyespappy Wrote:

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(May 18, 2011 at 10:16 pm)tackattack Wrote:

(May 17, 2011 at 6:53 pm)popeyespappy Wrote: No Tack, I don’t see the laughability of my argument because you are doing exactly what I said in my first post. You are choosing the passage that best fits your thoughts from among contradictory passages. Jesus also said:


"Whoever curses father or mother shall die" (Mark 7:10 NAB)

“He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.” (Matthew 15:4-7)

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place." (Matthew 5:17 NAB)

“For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:18-19 RSV)

You too are cherry picking. You have chosen the passages that best fit what you want the Bible to be. You ignore the things you don’t like. I won’t argue that you have chosen poorly in this extreme example because you haven't, but the fact remains that you have chosen. You have cherry picked that which suits you and disregarded that which does not. Something all Christians are forced to do.

No it wasn't cherry picking, I didn't list every single verse because they are just replicating things you've already said, and I agreed that the Bible said that. I hadn't listed the Matthew 5 verses because I also agree with them as a Christian by default. You're absolutely right, Jesus did not come to abolish or change the law of God. He clearly saw it being abused in many cases though and corrected our misuse of the law. When the Pharisees attempted to trip him with the law and asked him which is best, knowing that the real messiah was here as fulfillment of all the law, Jesus used the verses I quoted. That clearly indicated that by loving each other as we wanted to be loved and Loving God with our heart, soul and mind we would be fulfillment of the law God decreed. No more was there need for atonement from the law of Moses, because he was the greatest sacrifice, and they're not necessary now.

You still did not respond, so before this gets really convoluted and tautological answer my question: How do you interpret the meaning when factoring in all the verses you and I both quoted? You call them contradictory because they're not on your side of the argument. They're all talking about the Law of God, which I cited above so they're all relevant, they're only contradictory if you deny they're relevant.

Your right. In this case “kill your children” and “you shall not kill” are not contradictory. However this is only because the word kill in “you shall not kill” is a mistranslation. The word kill should instead be the word murder. Murder is the unlawful taking of life. Killing is not necessarily unlawful therefore it does not have to be murder. You can kill someone without murdering them but cannot murder someone without killing them.

I often hear the argument of killing versus murder from Christians when discussing an order from God to kill. An example of this is the sacking of Jericho. The argument is that the order from God to the Israelites to kill all the inhabitants of Jericho including men, women, old and young the killing was lawful. The reasoning being that any command from God is lawful therefore the killing was not murder.

According to the Old Testament you should kill your rebellious children. The commandment “You shall not murder” does not apply in this instance because any order from God is lawful therefore not murder which is by definition an unlawful act. The New Testament explicitly reaffirms that a parent should kill their insolent children. Despite these instructions you have managed to cherry pick the “you shall not kill” passage out of the Bible in order to justify not killing rebellious and insolent children. In doing so you have chosen a more modern morality over that of the ancient savages that recorded your holy books. For this I applaud you.

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(May 20, 2011 at 10:51 pm)popeyespappy Wrote:

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(May 19, 2011 at 6:05 am)tackattack Wrote: How exactly is it cherry picking to look at all of the passages as a whole rather than taking one or two verses out of context. I think my example is still valid and has yet to be addressed. I'll enumerate it clearly here. Example of cherry picking, literal interpretation with no reading comprehansion (What I feel you both are doing):

First of all, I never claimed I wasn’t cherry picking. You’re the one who did that. Right after you expressed your contempt for cherry picking Christians. I’m simply pointing out that that you are looking at the Bible through rose colored glasses. You have cherry picked a goody two shoes version of your holy books that is at odds with the original intent of their authors.

“Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally.”

You are guilty of the bolded part.

Quote:1)Did you say "you should kill your rebellious children" in your previous post?
2)Was it your intent to ask me to kill my children?

If this is directed at me, as opposed to the Bible, yes I wrote those words in my previous post. However I was merely repeating the words of your god as recorded in your holy book. According to your book, it was his intent that you kill your rebellious children if they behaved in a proscribed manner.

The reality is that I don’t believe anything in the Bible has anything to do with god. I believe the reason those words are there is because it was the intent of the authors to give parents the ability to kill their children without fear of reprisal from civil authority.

BTW, where did you learn to spell comprehension?

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I have no spell check from my browser at work and I work very late and deal with far too many posts in one night to put all of them in word. I apologize, but put the herring away.
So to recap
1) You claim that the Bible teaches parents to stone their disobedient children to death? And if I don’t accept that then I am cherry picking.
2) You cite a single passage to support your claim.
3) I give you an exegesis for your scripture and say that you’re cherry picking. It includes relevant verses to go along with your verses.
4) I give you the opportunity to internalize the exegesis, but you respond with more verses stating the same thing and throw in more to support your views that God wants us to kill our kids. And rightly point out that I’m biased.

Using your own definition I never denied the scriptures you quoted, just the meaning you extrapolated from taking them out of context. I gave you a prime example of how you were doing it. I’ll do it again:
Ex.: In your last paragraph of your last post did you say “I don’t do reality the reason is to kill civil authority” You said these words, and I almost even kept them in order. This is obviously not your intent and I took your words out of context. I only chose a few phrases from the entire paragraph and twisted them to something other than your belief.
I agree that I have some amount of confirmation bias, we all do. We all look through the lens of subjective experience. I am not denying any of the scriptures that you listed, while you’re obviously ignoring the ones I did.
You’re taking only what parts suit your argument; I’m just asking you to look at a broader picture as what you’re doing is ignoring some scriptures. So I’ll sum up in some bulleted, easy to respond to points.
a) We both listed verses can you honestly say you’re not ignoring some? Have I ignored one?
b) You claim that I am missing the original intent of the Bible’s authors, yet then claim their intent has nothing to do with God and is for parents to lawfully kill their children? You don’t see this as perhaps irrationally biased?
c) Did you not even admit that kill your children and thou shall not kill is not a contradiction? You obviously do read things past their individual and literal meanings when it suits you. Are you arguing that Christians should kill their kids to prove they’re Christians? Are you arguing to argue? What is your point in all this?

(May 18, 2011 at 12:51 pm)Whirling Moat Wrote: Would you accept someones hard earned money which you did nothing to earn but put out a hand? Is this the morality which should look forward to from atheists?

Maybe I would accept the money, maybe I wouldn't. It's not like that matters. Me accepting the money or not is step two of this process. Since we were never going to get past step one of this process, my actions in this mythical situation was never relevant in any way, shape or form.

Peace...

Quote:Maybe I would accept the money, maybe I wouldn't. It's not like that matters. Me accepting the money or not is step two of this process. Since we were never going to get past step one of this process, my actions in this mythical situation was never relevant in any way, shape or form.

Maybe you would accept the money..Lets go with that. I understand why you would suggest that a Christian should comply...Good point..Now, why would you accept money for doing nothing from someone who may not be in a position to afford giving it to you?


Whirling Moat