(April 8, 2014 at 7:17 pm)RobbyPants Wrote: If we define the killings as moral and just, then they would be tautologically moral and just, and I wouldn't be offended by them. I don't think microxone was making that assumption, though.

You don't define them as moral and just, you understand that they are. Microxone was making the opposite assumption.

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(April 9, 2014 at 12:07 am)Esquilax Wrote: What we're saying is that the claim and the evidence we're presented don't match up; the bible has an unreliable narrator.

Yes. You're saying that over a 6,000 year period of honing and perfecting the text, that the authors managed to say the opposite of what they stated was the nature of God. You keep a straight face while doing so.

(April 9, 2014 at 1:29 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Yes. You're saying that over a 6,000 year period of honing and perfecting the text, that the authors managed to say the opposite of what they stated was the nature of God. You keep a straight face while doing so.

So, like, you know how, in literature, an author can be writing a character that they clearly set up to be one thing, but either through bad writing, deliberate values dissonance or a simple case of the author being an irredeemable jerk, the actions of the character don't jive with how the author wants them to be portrayed, when it finally gets into a reader's hands? That.

And I love that you bring up the length of time, as though bad writing can somehow be improved through repeated layers of editing, reinterpretation, redaction and spin, all done by different authors and through the lens of a culture so out of whack in terms of morality that they can claim with a straight face that genocide was okay.

You know what this is? This is like you looking at a biography of, say, Kim Jong Il, whom I picked because ridiculous media spin was kinda his deal, while simultaneously looking through the unvarnished reports of his actions; the poverty, the gulags, all of that. Somehow, you conclude that, because the biographer phased the man's life as some pseudo-divine force for good, that therefore all those other actions were good.

And then you scoff at the rest of us for judging based on the accounts of his actions, rather than the spin the writer puts on them.

I think your elastic is at full stretch there esq

Remember we aren't talking about a single author or his particular opinion. Were talking about a constantly reviewed for relevance basis for an entire civilisations belief structure. To compare that to the back bedroom scribblings of some one hit wonder shows desperation on your part.

(April 9, 2014 at 6:32 am)fr0d0 Wrote: I think your elastic is at full stretch there esq

Remember we aren't talking about a single author or his particular opinion. Were talking about a constantly reviewed for relevance basis for an entire civilisations belief structure. To compare that to the back bedroom scribblings of some one hit wonder shows desperation on your part.

Jeez, why is this so hard for you to grasp? I fully accept that the biblical authors wished to present god as morally good. I disagree that the actions they depicted match that presentation, and you're still arguing as though the spin and the moral content of the behavior are one and the same.

They aren't. I shouldn't have to tell you why.

The spin is all yours. You think the authors thought differently to what they documented, and that they didn't understand that they had done that. Your opinion is completely absurd and petty, and an insult to serious study.

(April 9, 2014 at 9:13 am)fr0d0 Wrote: The spin is all yours. You think the authors thought differently to what they documented, and that they didn't understand that they had done that. Your opinion is completely absurd and petty, and an insult to serious study.

Where the hell are you getting that from?

I think the authors fully believed they were documenting the actions of a just and moral god. I also think that they were wrong; morality isn't some relativistic, cultural thing where what they believed was moral to them, after all.

Well I don't intend going over the whole thing yet again. Suffice to say, I find your objections absurd and indefensible. That's not an opinion based on lack of knowledge.

(April 9, 2014 at 9:22 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Well I don't intend going over the whole thing yet again. Suffice to say, I find your objections absurd and indefensible. That's not an opinion based on lack of knowledge.

What objections? Aside from saying that I find the character of god as depicted in the bible immoral, I haven't really made any specific points yet.

Likewise, beyond asserting that god is just because the bible says his actions are just, you haven't done much to defend your position either.

I don't think he meant they thought differently than what they wrote down. They were just wrong in what they thought was just and loving and merciful.

(April 9, 2014 at 9:42 am)Chad32 Wrote: I don't think he meant they thought differently than what they wrote down. They were just wrong in what they thought was just and loving and merciful.

Ding ding ding! Million dollar prize.

I don't have to make excuses for the barbarism of the past, none of this "oh, it was a different time, you can't measure their behavior by current moral standards" excuse-making. I absolutely can; murder and slavery doesn't suddenly become okay just because these guys were technologically and socially backwards, especially not when there's a powerful supernatural being tooling around who can do better.

It doesn't matter the source, there are at least a few things that one can deem objectively wrong.