Argument from Conscience

[robvalue]

It is certainly the best one I can remember! It's great to not be thrown into Hell halfway through the debate for not agreeing with someone, which is what usually happens.

As for the bible, if all we need is "love thy neighbour", what's the point of the rest of it? You'd actually have to make a series of excuses why you don't follow the rest of it. It's full of immoral instruction right through.

No there is really only one excuse and that was Jesus fulfilled the law and paid the consequence of sin for all.  That is why Drich and GC will say things like "they don't apply".  While technically true, I think that statement needs clarification.  If we go back to genesis, there was one simple commandment.  "Do not eat of the tree of knowledge of god and evil."  That was broken and Moses had to come up with 613 laws.  I go back to my analogy of the smoke detector.  The sign says "Don't mess with it".  We then do what we want and say, "well it didn't say don't touch, or destroy, or disengage, etc." 

There is an objective standard, "Don't mess with it" and we selectively interpret and redefine.

You're right, that is one big excuse for not following the bible. Either the bible is realiable or it isn't; if it is reliable, we have God on the record condoning such horrors as murder, rape and slavery. I don't know how Jesus exactly makes up for this, considering it's just God pretending to be a human. I've never understood what the big deal is there. At best you're saying God used to be an immoral monster but then improved a bit. Or even that God was immoral because of us or something?

If the bible isn't reliable, then just forget it. It seems that the only important message is just one sentence and the rest is stuff that needs excusing. And even that message is not unique to Christianity, like many of its facets it's stolen from older religions.

If the bible just happens to be reliable when it says stuff you like and is unreliable the rest of the time, you may as well write your own bible!

So, do you really believe Adam and Eve literally happened? And even if it did, how can you respect a being that curses people for what happened before they were even born? That is some fucked up shit.

I'm telling you as a concerned friend, your excuses for God sound just like battered spouse syndrome.