Most Christians is a bare assertion. In my experience of a few thousand Christians nearly 100& don't think it's literal.

Children understand if it's presented logically. Yeah if the person explaining it has no clue then you haven't got much hope. I've seen it, I know it's possible.

The Bible is full of atrocities, of course it's immoral. It's also full of contradictions, absurdities, racism, sexism, rape, murder, etc...

If you're "whole picture" of God contains any of that, he's immoral. End of story.

(August 31, 2009 at 4:26 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Most Christians is a bare assertion. In my experience of a few thousand Christians nearly 100& don't think it's literal.

Even the literalists don't really treat it as literal (all theists interpret their scriptures to some degree or other) but here's the thing ... I know I've said this to you before but the problem you have is that in order to understand your own scriptures you have to interpret them, you have to decide which bits mean something and which bits don't, which bits are literal, which are allegorical. Once you have decided to treat some bits as non-literal (which necessarily you have to) you are at the beginning of a slippery slope because if you apply that logic to ANY of your bible you necessarily have to consider the rest of your scriptures in the same light and unfortunately for you little of your scriptures bears very close examination.

I strongly suspect that THAT, Frodo, is why you have no choice but to insist your bible is the truth!

(August 31, 2009 at 4:26 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Children understand if it's presented logically. Yeah if the person explaining it has no clue then you haven't got much hope. I've seen it, I know it's possible.

Of course children *understand* ... that's because they are built to trust and they trust adults to tell them what is true and what is not true and have no way of truly recognising (until they are older) when an adult is abusing that position of trust! As far as I am concerned, teaching a specific religious belief to a child is psychological child abuse.

Kyu

The Torah is not a moral code per se,it is the mythology of a people. IT DOES however contain a strict legal and moral code.

The teachings ascribed to Jesus are replete with moral instructions.

The biblical code is called "Mosaic Law". (largely lifted from the Sumerians ) The Jews call it simply"The Law" or "The Mitzvot (collective term meaning "the commandments") The Christians have the Readers Digest version they call "The Ten Commandments ". In fact,there are 613 commandments. The church founders found them all a bit much,[notwithstanding Jesus' admonition to keep the law] so have ignored almost all of them since the 1st CE.

The Law was written down around 800BCE.It covers every aspect of Jewish life. It is law and it is morality. It may be argued that this moral/legal code is what kept the Jews together as a people for over 20000 y0ears.

That many (most?) of the rules are irrelevant today changes nothing. Nor is it relevant that many seem stupid or cruel to us .Morality is essentially pragmatic,invented for a range of reasons..



The 613 Mitzvot (Hebrew: תרי"ג מצוות‎: Taryag Mitzvot, "613 commandments") are statements and principles of law and ethics contained in the Torah or Five Books of Moses. These principles of Biblical law are sometimes called commandments (mitzvot) or collectively as the "Law of Moses" (Torat Moshe, תורת משה), "Mosaic Law", or simply "the Law" (though these terms are ambiguous and also applied to the Torah itself).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_Mitzvot

ALL of the Abrahamic faiths are contradictory (Simple evidence they were invented by men and not gods) YET all of them contain quite profound moral admonitions EG: love,compassion,charity,mercy, justice and compensation. Basic Jewish Law (EG "an eye for an eye") seems to have been pinched from Hammurabi,whose laws emphasised compensation as much as revenge. In context: before Hamurabi, codified law was unheard of,as was equality before the law,which was also an alien concept in our own culture until the 18th CE

Fr0d0,

How exactly do you know when you're interpreting it the right way? You say it's moral on the whole, but you could just as easily say it's immoral on the whole, cos there's good in it, but there's also a whole lot of bad in it....and you're either cherry-picking or you're appealing to your own natural morality, that you are using to learn a lesson from it overall, when some fucking pricks wouldn't because there's good and bad, and how can anyone say one view is 'right'?

In and of itself, it's full of some good 'stuff' but also a whole lot of fucking bad 'stuff', and you have to cherry-pick out your own way when you say that your way is 'the right way' and that you get 'the whole message' as opposed to those who don't...:S

EvF

fr0d0,

Children also believe in Santa Claus. Using the argument, "Children get it! It’s that simple, why can't you?!" is a ridiculous approach to explaining logic. Of course, this is the efforts of a man that actually believes the bible is a moral guide.

You should be ashamed of yourself for even trying to argue that there is an ounce of morality worth listening to in the bible. If you had a beer and you were aware that I put just a little bit of urine in it, would you drink it still? Maybe, since you seem to drink the garbage with the "good" from the bible.

The awful stories found in the text are so bad that even we, the supposed "corrupted and sinful" humans, find it detestable. Some people point to rapists and child molesters having a short lifespan in prison due to the other prisoners knowing that such crimes against women and children cross a line even criminals can’t handle. Some would say, “Here-Here” or “Amen!” to these stories because they know justice has been served. No one dares say, “Um, those are criminals. What the hell do they know about justice and crimes? They are there for a reason.”

Yet this is the very logic that is used against us questioning God’s “goodness.” His ways aren’t our ways. He is holy, we are just sinful. They were just criminals, they don’t know right from wrong. They don’t know when despicable lines are crossed, as they are despicable themselves.

Basically, you are asking someone with a worse track record than Hitler for advice on how to act as a decent human being. Well, played fr0d0. Way to think that one through.

Skeptics annotated bible notations count.

Absurdities: 1333

Injustices: 1254

Cruelty and Violence: 992

Intolerance: 627

Contradictions: 439 (questions, multiple verses quoted in each question)

Science and History: 347 (not real science, biblical science as in angels throwing lightning at us)

Interpretation: 342

Family Values: 327 (including "I [Jesus] will kill her children with death." Rev 2:23 LOLOL)

Women: 323 (None of them pro-woman)

Good Stuff: 274 (although many exceptions exist including that it says love everyone, elsewhere says to never be yoked with unbeleivers.

Prophecy: 207

Sex 197

Language: 180

Homosexualisty: 34 (not very popular huh)


So while 'good stuff' is not the bottom catagory many of the good rules are overturned later on or even before they are said. Jesus says to love thy neighbor, as do the commandments yet, 'god' specifically tells christians never to be yoked together with unbelievers.

If this book is truly a moral guide I weep for our species as we truly have learned nothing since the days of sticking leeches in wounds to suck out the demons and cutting people in quarters then hanging the remains in a net as an example to those who do not follow your particular dogma.


Now, is there ANY morality to find? Yes if you use the moral compass you have as a product of natural selection and developed by life experience to determine what parts you agree with then you will be able to find good things. Just so long as you, like many christians do, cherry pick out the good parts and ignore the bad parts.

If you do this just don't say the bible is moral and call yourself a christian because neither is particularly true.

Suffice to say, there is no cherry picking going on at all, only 100% unprejudiced realism. Like I said, you naturally read it out of context - yeah of course there's a lot of nasty stuff in there, but the point is the opposite to what you summise.

What more can I say? Read it follishly and you can pick out many small examples out of context. In context, it is what I say. No contest.

In context god is evil... even MORE so than when out of context. His 'reason's for doing what he does are worse than Hitlers! >.<

Nonsense Saerules. God as the pure actuality is incapable of 'not good'. Your logic is very twisted. You should stick to the out of context meaning, because that is all you can address.