Why would any woman want to be Christian?

[Creed of Heresy]

Some things in the world are meant to be mocked, insulted, degraded, and generally run through the shitter. Religion. George Bush. Ronald Reagan's corpse. Ditto Joseph Stalin. The Kim Jung family. The Twilight SERIES [I'm not fucking calling it a saga Wiki: ].

What I'm saying here, is that just because something exists doesn't mean I'll like it. And I don't like the ideas religion espouses. I don't like religion in general. Religion has a very bloody, violence-filled past, and has been used for far more evil than what paltry good it can claim to have done. I wouldn't mind religion so much, if every friggin' major religion out there didn't feel the need to make its presence known, loudly, and CONSTANTLY, but it DOES, and they do. I don't like talking about religion because I HATE RELIGION. It used to be something I was apathetic towards. I used to be a kinder, gentler atheist, except once it started being known I was an atheist I started catching all sorts of flak from supposedly kind, loving people. The only time I DON'T get treated differently if it's discovered is in the case of friends, family, and those who are either barely religious, or not religious at all. Almost 10 for 10 is the scorecard on which I get treated like shit by theists because I'm an atheist. The few who do not are so sparse that I can't chalk up anything to their beliefs but rather to their own individual kindness which their religion cannot claim to foster in any event.

I don't want religion gone from the earth. But I DO want religion, and those who participate in it, to kindly shut the fuck up about their beliefs. I don't care if the claims of religion are unsubstantiated. I don't care if the stories they tell are actually pretty abhorrent to subjective modern moral standards. I don't care about any of it. But unfortunately I HAVE to care about it because every damn day, I have to encounter it. I have to encounter it, and I have to encounter smug television personalities smirking with unctuous picture-perfect condescension as they ramble on about how god is good and great and is why anything good happens. I have to listen to music on the radio at my job with singers going on about how great god is and how believing in god somewhat equates to automatically being good, or at least is a requirement for being good. I have to see no less than six churches, giant, ghastly affairs they are, too, during my commute to work, with billboards cheerfully spouting some religious platitudes, and huge stonking crosses so you KNOW what it is. They rub it in my face. EVERY fucking religion rubs the bronze age shit in my face.

And then you know what REALLY fucking gets me? After all this, after I have it shoved in my face every fucking day where I wake up and have to deal with god this and god that in every fucking corner of my life... I go online. And I have Christians with the fucking balls, the unmitigated gall, the ceaseless cojones, the raging organ tissue necessary to actually sit there and go "ATHEISTS ARE ALL LOUD-MOUTH JERKS ONLINE."

So yes. I DO enjoy insulting people for their religious beliefs. Know why? Because you guys aren't happy being stupid to yourselves. You have to be stupid in my face. I have to deal with your stupid every day. And I fucking LOATHE IT. So I insult people for their religious beliefs because after a day of having religious beliefs stuffed into my face, I need to throw it back. It's a therapeutic. And if it is such a problem for religious people? Then they are free to stop the shoving of beliefs into the public view whenever they're ready! Until then? Tough shit.

I am 25. My name is LG. And I hate your religion.

[Fruity]

The nature of my objection? You read those verses and you ask about the nature of my objection? You want me to “show logically why Christians should feel that verses that disagree with contemporary culture should be seen as evidence against understanding the reality of God,”. First, this thread was about women wanting to be Christians. I’m a woman and I was Christian. I gave a list of scriptures that make me not want to go back. Second, this was not me trying to give you evidence about the non-reality of God, but rather his cruelty and stupidity if he existed. That is where my objections rest.

Deuteronomy 20:14, 15 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

Do I really have to explain what my objection is? If you told me that God sent you to take my city and you consider me plunder to use as you wish, I’d laugh at you. Then I’d kill you in self defense.

Deuteronomy 25:11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

If some dude is fighting with my husband and I wish to defend him by grabbing his balls, I deserve to be laughed at, not chopped. How can I express my objection?

Deuteronomy 28: 30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her.

If God gets mad at someone because he did not keep the covenant, he will allow the wife to be raped as punishment. I object. Why can’t the guy be raped by the person who wrote this?

Deuteronomy 22: 13 to 19 If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives. If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

I object to everything, but what bothers me the most is the proof part. You do know that some virgins will never have proof, right? An intact hymen is not always possible. So, what then? If I had a daughter with no intact hymen I’d have to kill her? I object. How do you want me to put it so it sounds logical?

[Esquilax]

Strodel, you are literally one of the worst debaters I have ever come across, and by the looks of it a pretty despicable human being too; scrabbling to make excuses for the most awful immoral things while sniffing with haughty derision at we atheists for daring to disagree with you. You are either a liar, an idiot, or a brainwashed puppet, and this will be the last time I respond to any of your rambling, incoherent posts. However, I feel compelled to put a finer point on my reasoning in a few areas that you seem to have missed in your haste to call me a liberal some more, as though I should take that as an insult.

No, I do not believe that God's morality is unchanging. A lot of morality in the Old Testament is superceded in the New Testament, consider the teachings about the Jewish law. Jesus substantially reinterprets the old testament and softens the law, while in other places increases the standard of obedience. God's commandments are occasional and occur in texts that are related to specific cultural and economic circumstances. The Bible does not really intend to give the unchanging laws of God in many cases (although in some cases it does intend to give this) but merely one law that was inspired as a revelation to a particular group of people.

Sweet! Okay then, I can feel pretty good about not bothering with you after this, because as you've just said, you have no morality! Your entire moral system is based on a system that can change, meaning what you're advocating isn't some divine, objective morality that is rigid and perfect, but for a command structure, where the whims of your deity inform your morality.

Now that we know this, don't you dare ever open your fucking trap again to criticize the strength of secular morality, you hypocritical oaf!

How can you say that God is despicable if he endorses slavery? How can you define slavery as an absolute evil? What you are following is not a real rigorous philosophical view of ethics but a bunch of political propaganda you are taking too seriously. You are like the people that think it is immoral to have a minimum wage below $25 dollars. It is immoral to have the minimum wage below $25 dollars, otherwise people cannot own a house with two stories. Then they will add insult to injury and demand that there is a natural human right to have a minimum wage set at $25 dollars an hour. Where do you find evidence for this? Where does it say that the minimum wage must be $25 dollars an hour? You know where you find this, in promises made by politicians who are trying to get elected. That is where your view of ethics comes from.

I'll get to this in a moment, but I just wanted to say that this is the most breathtakingly ignorant and privileged comparisons I've ever seen. And that I know you understand the difference between the two, unless you really are an idiot, in which case... well, either way, why bother?

This is typical of atheist interpretations of the Bible, in total ignorance of typical methods of interpretation, they read into scripture exactly what their narrow, politicized minds show them. Nowhere in the Bible is Lot commended for his cowardly act. The most elementary principle of Biblical interpretation is to not draw normative conclusions from a lack of specific condemnation of an action.

Well, the reason I brought up Lot specifically is because even after offering his daughters up for gang rape, he was still allowed to leave Sodom as the one moral person in the city. God protects him, allows him to live while striking down the rest of his city for immorality. So... does that not count as something of a hint as to god's opinion on Lot's moral stature?

The Bible is filled with people who things that are mentioned but not necessarily condemned. It is the most basic fallacy to assert that the absence of a specific narrative associated with a divine judgement is evidence of God's favor. Scripture does not support this view, but plainly states that "God shows no partiality". The Bible teaches that God allows all people everywhere time to repent and does not judge people automatically.

So, I've never sold anyone out as badly as Lot did there, I live a fairly normal and moral life, yet I'm going to hell for not believing, yet Lot's okay? Yeah, sounds like a fair system.

Have in, in your whole life, ever read, from cover to cover, the whole book, even like a 150 page book, read a book on how to read the Bible? How to read the Bible for what its worth by Gordon Fee comes to mind. I would suggest that you do this in order to avoiding appearing like you don't even care about having an honest debate or taking the most minimal steps of preparation before trying to debate the most important questions in the world. Unfortunately, most atheists will not even read a 150 page book on how to interpret the Bible, let alone struggle through the thousands and thousands of pages that have already been written in response to their fallacious exercises of immaturity.

You know, you say we need to interpret the bible, but can you step away from your own position for a moment and try to look at it from the outside? What you're really saying by that is "disregard the actual words there, and just pretend it says something else instead."

Who are you to interpret god's word? Or is god just a bad author? Either way, yes, I do refuse to put myself through the doublethink and mental contortions one needs to go through in order to make an immoral book seem slightly less immoral. Two plus two equals four, Strodel. Not five. We have not always been at war with Eurasia.

Slavery was a moral issue, that is why they regulated it. Why not complain about the lack of an investment banking infrastructure in the ancient world? What a bunch of fools, why couldn't they think clearly enough to set the economy up like modern people? And God, man, why doesn't God just realize that instead of cursing the earth for its disobedience and following through with the curse leveled on Adam, he can just will, ex nihilo, a stock exchange with investment bankers? If God cares so much about homosexuals, why doesn't he create a stock exchange? Investment bankers are rick!!

I guess my point was that god has no issues preventing certain social things outright, so why does he ease up on slavery so much? You've made a pretty pathetic strawman here to avoid answering my question, so I doubt you will ever approach this debate honestly at all, but everyone else gets what I was actually saying here, right? All the rational people?

You are trying to derive an absolute prohibition against slavery in all societies and circumstances based on "empathy" and "mutual agreement". No, I havn't ignored the answers, you just made up the answers that you gave. There are a million possible starting points for values. You just made two up. Ok, how do you get from "empathy" and "mutual agreement" to "universal condemnation of all types of slavery, at all times, in all contexts, with no exceptions?".

Okay.

So, I'm an empathic being, which means I can put myself in the shoes of others. Do I think slavery would feel good? No, I think it would cause me quite considerable suffering. Being that I give a shit about other people, does that mean I therefore think of slavery as moral, until it affects me? No, it's immoral, because it causes people suffering and excludes them from being able to contribute to society under their own volition. So, from a moral perspective we seek to reduce suffering, and from a cost/benefit scenario, people who don't actively hate their work are more likely to do better, and the intellectual gifts that might be squandered on lives of hard labor in slavery would be better used in a world of self determined paths. There's your empathy.

Do I live in a world with other empathetic people? Yes, I do, for the evolutionary reasons I detailed to you in another thread. Given this, will they roughly come to the same conclusions, seeing as they can witness the suffering slavery brings too? Yes, essentially. There's your mutual agreement.

Is forced, unending slavery immoral? Yep. I can't understand why a person with a supposedly superior divine morality is arguing otherwise.

You really believe that people that are conquered in a war in the ancient world that it would be better for them to die than to become slaves? Do you think it is feasible to create a democracy when you are armed with swords and spears?

What does this have to do with morality? The people who took slaves were doing an immoral thing... people sometimes do that. What's your point? I should excuse immorality because it happened by force?

Of course not. Even if you could prove that there were no instances in which slavery could be justified (which is highly unlikely, in addition to war with the threat of insurgents, consider famine), it still does not follow from having a mere priority of the values of "empathy" and "mutual agreement" that some sort of universal condemnation against slavery can be uphold. In addition, those terms are hardly sufficient conditions for an economic system (sufficient though they are for liberal political propaganda), which requires a large number of virtues operating together. Of course your system provides no way to relate those virtues together. If you prioritize empathy and mutual agreement to a certain degree, you will see societies dissolve.

And? Am I saying slavery had no positive effects on the world? No, not really. Am I saying that there were much, much better ways to accomplish the same things, and probably surpass them? Yes, definitely. But we'll never know what the alternative history without slavery would look like, now will we?

Additionally, I suspect you brought up economics as a smoke screen because you know that you're arguing for an immoral and unpopular act, but you can't stop because that would mean admitting defeat to an atheist. Nobody is talking about economics but you. We were discussing morality and rights, which is a different issue that requires a different tact.

But hey, I'm not surprised that you were being dishonest. It seems it's just a thing that you do, easy as breathing.

You are not a moral or a political philosopher. You are a naive, politically unsophisticated person who has not really thought very clearly about the issue of slavery. I do not mean to say this to offend you, I am trying to help you to see that you have not thought this out very well. Many people have spent a long time building Western civilization, the majority of these people are Christians. Some of them might even be smarter than you. I suggest that you get your understanding of the world from somewhere outside of your atheist bubble and learn about history the way it is.

Saying all this, just to advocate for slavery? My my, you must be right. Clearly I should bow to you, superior moral philosopher, with your cavalcade of faint ad hominems, constant strawmen and unsupported assertions, and your immoral central position. Yes.

Fuck off, you supercilious prig.

If you dispute these claims, I challenge you to find one nation in history that has been successfully run solely guided by the virtues of "empathy" and "mutual agreement" above all else. Your dichotomizing of virtues related to love and virtues related to power and economic organization is reminiscent of the typical naive, politically unsophisticated undergraduate with a Che Guvera poster on the wall.

I'd call those nations democracies, you fucking moron.

Typical of atheists. The context of Deut 28 is obviously relating that kind of rape to consensual sexual activity, because in a verse right nearby rape is punished by death. Atheists are not always intellectually dishonest, but this is pure dishonesty. Read Deutonomy 28 yourself. Why would the Bible punish non-consensual sex with death in one verse but in a verse right next to it it would show mercy, based on where the woman is.

Because the bible is a self-contradictory piece of trash written by desert dwelling savages with superiority complexes, and the people that follow it are imbecilic cultists like yourself, or indoctrinated normal people who just throw out the bits they don't like.

Now I'm done with you. Feel free to respond as you like. Just know that the rest of us are laughing at you, but we're all secretly disgusted with you too, you dishonest, immoral excuse for a human being.

[EGross]

This is a total misreading of scripture. This shows that you are just cut and pasting difficult passages without even considering the context or what scripture intends to say. The Old Testament condemns rape with the death penalty, see Deut 28.

You may want to read a bit earlier than that:

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

See a cute virgin (hence, not married, and so raping a woman who has no master [another word for husband] is not a capital crime), she doesn't want you, just rape her and she is all yours. And not only don't you need to pay the normal 100 shekels, but you get her at a 50% discount!.

(Rabbis later added a restriction to the law that he also has to pay the full amount upon marriage as well. This would reduce the idea of a discount bride.)

And since a woman cannot divorce her husband, she is stuck with him until he tires of her and divorces her. He can always remarry without a divorce. She cannot. (That state is called agunah and is still a problem when an asshole wants to extort the woman to get out of the marriage.)

God either liked the idea that women are property to use and abuse, (selling daughters into slavery is another big moneymaker in the bible), or he didn't foresee that his chosen people would be such jerks.

[Esquilax]

This is a total misreading of scripture. This shows that you are just cut and pasting difficult passages without even considering the context or what scripture intends to say. The Old Testament condemns rape with the death penalty, see Deut 28.

You may want to read a bit earlier than that:

If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

See a cute virgin (hence, not married, and so raping a woman who has no master [another word for husband] is not a capital crime), she doesn't want you, just rape her and she is all yours. And not only don't you need to pay the normal 100 shekels, but you get her at a 50% discount!.

(Rabbis tweaked it later to read that he also has to pay the full amount upon marriage as well. This would reduce the idea of a discount bride.)

And since a woman cannot divorce her husband, she is stuck with him until he tires of her and divorces her. He can always remarry without a divorce. She cannot. (That state is called agunah and is still a problem when an asshole wants to extort the woman to get out of the marriage.)

God either liked the idea that women are property to use and abuse, (selling daughters into slavery is another big moneymaker in the bible), or he didn't foresee that his chosen people would be such jerks.

Typical atheist nonsense, taking the bible out of context! Clearly that passage was written on Opposite Day!

[EGross]

Well, raping a woman who is someone elses property (a husband is a ba'al or "master") is a death sentence. If the girl had no master, but is owned by her father, then a rape is considered a binding "agreement", to pay for the right to keep using her. Typicall, the father would get to hold onto 200, 100, or 50 shekels for selling his daughter. For selling her into Hebrew slavery for a period of years, then there is better income there, especially if she is an old maid, say 20 years or older! There is also a trick that the slave owner can do with the male Hebrew to get him to remain enslaved forever "Oh, you want to go free. Oh, you know this woman I gave you and your kids. They are mine. Now you can choose to stay or go.")

It is a system of slavery for supposed ex-slaves to be a slave to a God that prefers slaves over the free. (And his "kid" was no better!)

[jstrodel]

A man sees a cute girl. He wants her. She is repulsed by him. He rapes her. He pays a 50 shekel fine and she is required to be his wife.

The guy ruins the other guys property, so he pays the 50 shekels to the father and he gets what he wanted in the first place without paying the normal higher fee for a virgin.

(Later Rabbinical decrees were added to eliminate this sort of loophole).

But that's ok, because God said so.

He also seemed to be cool with slavery. (Not to be confused with an eved ivri who is an indentured slave for a specific period of time. In fact, a father can sell his daughter into slavery and get a better bang for his buck that way). Non-Jews are slaves for life and can be treated however is deemed fit.

God was cool with that too.

The Old Testament punishes rape with death see Deut 22:26. Then someone will object WTF GOD IS SO JUDGMENTAL LOOK HE PUNISHES RAPE WITH DEATH. Why doesn't God just set up society exactly the way it is setup in America. It is not like people in America have problems with sexual issues, right? WTF. There is a distinction made between consensual sex or partially consensual rape versus forced rape. Since you did not give my points detailed analysis, neither will I give your points detailed analysis. I think the passage about 50 shekels of silver is a specific case of semi-consensual sexual activity. The Hebrew word means "seize".

You have probably never done a serious Bible study in your life. The Old Testament punishes rape by death and distinguishes difficult taks. But for the atheist, it is not required to understand the original detailed law code that exists, it is sufficient to read the law code the way that a middle schooler would read a modern day legal code on rape, pointing and squirming and jumping up and down as he half understands things that are related to words that make him feel uncomfortable.

You can do this, but it won't convince me. There is a right way to do science and there is a right way to study the scriptures. The way that atheists typically study the scriptures (out of context, even ignoring the context of the same passage!) is similar to the way that some Christians approach science - as something to disprove while they half understand it.

You didn't even brooch any of my objections to the epistemology of ethical criticism of the Bible, you just repeated the same apologetics.

[Esquilax]

There is a distinction made between consensual sex or partially consensual rape versus forced rape.

I...

I... I can't... I'm not equipped to...

It's not... it doesn't... How can... Why does...

It just doesn't work like that... It's so...

ARGH!

I need to get out of here, or I might slam my head into my desk so hard it splits the atoms there and kills us all. I'm almost vibrating at how angry this makes me.

[jstrodel]

Some things in the world are meant to be mocked, insulted, degraded, and generally run through the shitter. Religion. George Bush. Ronald Reagan's corpse. Ditto Joseph Stalin. The Kim Jung family. The Twilight SERIES [I'm not fucking calling it a saga Wiki: ].

It is unsurprising that you hate Ronald Reagan and Joseph Stalin in the same passage. You are probably one of those people who thinks that you can run the world from your enlightened ideas and see how everyone else in history who did mean things was wrong, and if you did it differently you would be nice.

This is the same sort of attitude that leads you to have these kinds of prejudices in the world. I am not sure that I agree with everything that Reagan did, there was a lot of blood spilled in Central America and elsewhere. But he did lead America to overcome the Soviet Union.

It is sufficient for the enlightened to sit back comfortably and enjoy the hard work that has been built by the toil and sacrifice of those who do not have theoretical prejudices that govern their wills. They do not actually need to understand the right course of action, they need only to come to a sense of what is culturally unappetizing. They call this critical thinking.

I would prefer to live in the real world, and have my love directed towards real people and real problems as opposed to assume that I know the secret to history that enables people to be nicer than everyone else.

---

objections

You are not answering the objection. I understand that you are a woman and the passage are challenging for you. Many passages of scripture are challenging for me to understand the intention of God.

Why should I take your feelings to be authoritative? Where does your worldview guarantee the accuracy of your feelings. You are not really arguing your point.

There are lots of difficult things in life. If God did not permit men to take the woman as their husbands, they would probably have killed them. Then you would complain about that.

What is your argument for what you are saying? How does your worldview now create a requirement for people to accept your understand of feminism?

[Darkstar]

There is a distinction made between consensual sex or partially consensual rape versus forced rape.

I...

I... I can't... I'm not equipped to...

It's not... it doesn't... How can... Why does...

It just doesn't work like that... It's so...

ARGH!

I need to get out of here, or I might slam my head into my desk so hard it splits the atoms there and kills us all. I'm almost vibrating at how angry this makes me.

---

Why should I take your feelings to be authoritative? Where does your worldview guarantee the accuracy of your feelings.

Ditto.