(November 23, 2013 at 6:32 am)Godschild Wrote:

(November 23, 2013 at 3:58 am)Zen Badger Wrote: Hey, I've found some more heartwarming tales of gods love from the bible. Isiah 13...

15 Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.

16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.

17 Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

18 Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eyes shall not spare children.

19 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

20 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

21 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

Christian rationalisations in 3,2,1........

I bet you were good at dodgeball in school, still see no explanation for Deut. 21:18-21. Bet you've never heard of prophecy either.

GC

I was just enjoying the way god splashes his love around like eviserated intestines, that's all.

And why do I have to explain Deuteronomy?

It's your fucked up fairytale, not mine.

(November 23, 2013 at 1:05 am)ChadWooters Wrote:

(November 22, 2013 at 6:46 pm)Brakeman Wrote: Oh, really?

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 expands on the law:

If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his home town. And they shall say to the elders of his city, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard." Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear of it and fear.

That sure sounds like you have the super duper model of magic decoder rings. You couldn't stretch it that much without it!

Do you believe that law has ever been enforced? It contains so many stipulations because it is entirely for instruction. But I wouldn't expect a fundamentalist atheist to understand. "But it says! But it says!" You read but you do not understand....
...
...
...I just said a prayer for you to allow the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to renew your mind.

I would personally say it probably has been enforced a time or two, owing to what we see in the primitive god drunk areas of Afghanistan and projecting that on to similar past peoples of the middle east. But how does that matter? A king that writes an evil law is evil, regardless of how many people he has killed to enforce it, it has unfairly terrorized children, that is all it need do.

What in the world is a "fundamentalist atheist?"

As for the holy spirit prayer, please do if you think it might work. I suggest that you include all of us. It is a prayer I have never understood why god wouldn't answer this every time. If I pray to god to know more about him than I could find out on my own and if I pray that he give me unquestionable direction to which path is correct, I cannot understand why god doesn't not answer that prayer. It seems logical that he would, but in fact he never did when I was a christian. All I could muster was a little bit of short term delusion.

(November 23, 2013 at 10:13 am)Brakeman Wrote: What in the world is a "fundamentalist atheist?"

One that will only read the Holy Scriptures in the wooden literal way fundamentalists do.

(November 23, 2013 at 2:16 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:

(November 23, 2013 at 10:13 am)Brakeman Wrote: What in the world is a "fundamentalist atheist?"

One that will only read the Holy Scriptures in the wooden literal way fundamentalists do.

Do you mean in the way that "fundamentalist christians do?"

Definition of FUNDAMENTALISM (from Webster)
1 a often capitalized : a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching
b : the beliefs of this movement
c : adherence to such beliefs

2: a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles <Islamic fundamentalism>


So your beef from the fundamentalists is they don't claim to hold a super duper decoder ring that makes excuses for the illogical points of their story?

(November 23, 2013 at 5:04 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote:

(November 23, 2013 at 3:00 am)Ryantology Wrote: Where in the Bible does it stipulate which laws are supposed to be taken seriously and which are simply there as a teaching tool?

It's like defending the obvious fantasy parts of the Bible as allegorical. At what point do you simply admit that the entire thing is allegorical, including the most obvious fantasy part, God?

Point of order. Herod, potious pilate and Caesar Augustus were real. So it's inaccurate to say the WHOLE BIBLE is allegorical.

Carry on.

"Ragtime" by E.L. Doctorow, one of my favorite novels, has Harry Houdini, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Henry K. Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit, and Booker T. Washington as characters. Doesn't mean Houdini met a ten-year old child who foresaw Archduke Franz Ferdinand's death and warned him of it, as one event in the novel claims.

(November 23, 2013 at 2:34 pm)Brakeman Wrote: So your beef from the fundamentalists is they don't claim to hold a super duper decoder ring that makes excuses for the illogical points of their story?

No excuses, understanding. Things that appear on first blush to be illogical make sense when considered more deeply. It is like this: you walk into a dark room and you think there is a snake in the corner. When you turn on the light you see that it was a coiled rope. If you let in the light of God's truth it will enlighten your understanding of the text.

(November 24, 2013 at 1:01 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: It is like this: you walk into a dark room and you think there is a snake in the corner. When you turn on the light you see that it was a coiled rope. If you let in the light of God's truth it will enlighten your understanding of the text.

It is illogical to compare an incandescent source to something that cannot be empirically experienced via a clearly mythological concept.

(November 24, 2013 at 1:01 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:

(November 23, 2013 at 2:34 pm)Brakeman Wrote: So your beef from the fundamentalists is they don't claim to hold a super duper decoder ring that makes excuses for the illogical points of their story?

No excuses, understanding. Things that appear on first blush to be illogical make sense when considered more deeply. It is like this: you walk into a dark room and you think there is a snake in the corner. When you turn on the light you see that it was a coiled rope. If you let in the light of God's truth it will enlighten your understanding of the text.

I'll give you that it is possible to read something more enlightening into the bible than the literal dogma the fundamentalists make of it. The same is true of reading absolutely anything. One can always stop at the surface, but that is what reading comprehension classes are for.

Where we will disagree, I assume, is that -of all the books which one might read for wisdom and insight- the bible is unique in that it maps correctly onto a metaphysical reality of the upmost importance. This book is the one which should inform our actions in the world for the sake of winning a reward which will take place in an after life. Here is where I think you are still too literal. The reward and punishment are instantaneous and enforced by no external or higher agency. Eternity has nothing to do with measuring the extent of time, but only the depth of now.

(November 24, 2013 at 1:13 pm)whateverist Wrote: Eternity has nothing to do with measuring the extent of time, but only the depth of now.

This quote is so epic it needs its own soundtrack.

(November 24, 2013 at 1:01 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:

(November 23, 2013 at 2:34 pm)Brakeman Wrote: So your beef from the fundamentalists is they don't claim to hold a super duper decoder ring that makes excuses for the illogical points of their story?

No excuses, understanding. Things that appear on first blush to be illogical make sense when considered more deeply. It is like this: you walk into a dark room and you think there is a snake in the corner. When you turn on the light you see that it was a coiled rope. If you let in the light of God's truth it will enlighten your understanding of the text.

OK so you say that the differences between you and the other christian literalists, A.K.A. Fundamentalists, is that they cannot see the correct meaning of the verses that god had a monk write. But with your special god light, you can see the literal verses in a non-literal way, so that the contradictions and incongruities melt away.

So why didn't god have his "god light" that you use built into the scriptures? Why would a non-evil god make it anything other than perfectly plain and clear? If he wanted only a select few to understand it, why did he make it available to the others so that they would cause so much damage by misunderstanding it?

What would we think if a father tortured and abused his little children if they misunderstood his written rules given to them via another neighborhood kid that wrote then with easy to confuse allegory?