The Reasons why "Just Following Jesus" Doesn't work

[Redbeard The Pink]

Ok, I'm gonna start trimming these down significantly because much of what you say is irrelevant, most of your questions are contrary and infantile (and could be answered with 10 seconds of googling), and these are getting too damn long to be worth my time.

I do not understand how that is giving His creation a choice.  If you have a choice of wither to love Him or to Love Him that isn't choosing.
 
Also we were created in the image of God and He continually chooses to love us and if we are to be like Him we must have the ability to actually choose not live in a world without the pretense of choosing love.

Those wouldn't have to be the only two choices. An all-powerful, all-perfect being could create beings that legitimately have a choice of whether or not to love him and yet will still choose to love him every time. All-powerful means all-powerful, and there is nothing inherently illogical or contradictory about what I'm saying. A perfect, omnipotent being could create beings with the capacity to choose, give those beings a legitimate choice, and still wind up with beings that choose him every time.

how

We're seriously doing this right now?


The flood story is impossible because it would have killed all the land plants and all sea life, the carnivores would have made a species go extinct every time they ate something, the herbivores wouldn't have had anything to eat after getting off the boat, the animals and humans would have lacked the genetic diversity necessary to speciate, the boat would have filled with poop, the animals on the lower decks would have suffocated, the animals would have started killing and eating each other a matter of days into the flood, there isn't enough water on earth's surface or in the atmosphere to cover the entire surface...need I go on?

Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen notes that the price of 20 shekels is a price of a slave in the near east in about the 18th century BC. Gen 37:28 says that Joseph was sold as a slave for 20 shekels to Ishmaellite.
 
Having stated in 1 kings 6:1 that Solomon's reign was 480 years after the exile we can deduce that the nation of Israel's exodus was in 1440 BC. (scholars are in agreement about Solomon's reign)
 
In Judges 11:26  Jephthah tells the Ammonites that Israel was in the land for 300 years. (scholars accept that Jephthah had victory over the Ammonites and it took place around 1100 BC) So the Israelites would enter Canaan around 1400 BC so they would have left Egypt at 1440 BC.
 
The City of Ramses means born of God and this name used before the time of Pharaoh Ramses II. The name Ramses is the name of the Pharaoh that Joseph speaks to in Egypt hundreds of years before the reign of Ramses II. (Gen 47:11). the original name of the city was Rowaty then was later changed to Avaris.
Later Biblical writer updated the text when the name of the city was changed and rebuilt by Ramses II
 
the destruction levels in Canaanite Cites of Hazor and Jericho date to the 1400s. archaeological record also supports a gradual process of cities being conquered during that time as stated in the book of Joshua.
 
I have attached the links below which have bibliographies and more information about this subject.

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a027.html
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/200...px#Article
You can also check out

Your apologist propaganda is not impressive to me. Mainstream scholarship posits that the Jewish enslavement and Exodus did not happen, and they have sound archaeological reasons for believing this. Find me a non-Christian, non-Jewish source that says otherwise.

could you give specific stories from where you claim the bible stole these stories.

Could you learn to use google?


The story of Gilgamesh predates the biblical creation and flood stories and shares elements of both.


The Zoroastrian god, Avesta, is said to have created the earth in six days and rested on the seventh, and the names of the people he created were Adama and Eva.


According to scholars, Zoroastrians were probably also the first to believe in Angels, Satan, demons, and the ongoing battle between good and evil.


The Book of the Dead and Hamurabi's Code both share elements with the Ten Commandments, which they predate. Hamurabi's Code is also one of the oldest iterations of the Golden Rule.


Those are just a few examples.

 

It doesn't say to stone gay people is says to stone a man if he lay with another man (lev 30:13).

The asininity of this statement makes me sorry for the human race.

There are more instruction in Deuteronomy 15:12-18
12 “If your fellow Hebrew, a man or woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, you must set him free in the seventh year.
 
So if the woman is a Hebrew she too will leave after her years are up. not just that
13 When you set him free, do not send him away empty-handed. 14 Give generously to him from your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress. You are to give him whatever the Lord your God has blessed you with. 15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you; that is why I am giving you this command today.

Ah, a defender of biblical slavery. How refershing...  


Notice that this only applies to Hebrew slaves. Not all Hebrew-owned slaves were Hebrew.

 

They can always run away Deuteronomy 23:15-16
 “Do not return a slave to his master when he has escaped from his master to you. Let him live among you wherever he wants within your gates. Do not mistreat him.

Sure...if your neighbor's slave runs away and winds up on your property, don't return him...keep him for yourself. How convenient.

 

Ex 21:7
7 “When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she is not to leave as the male slaves do. 8 If she is displeasing to her master, who chose her for himself, then he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has acted treacherously toward her. 9 Or if he chooses her for his son, he must deal with her according to the customary treatment of daughters. 10 If he takes an additional wife, he must not reduce the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife. 11 And if he does not do these three things for her, she may leave free of charge, without any exchange of money.
 
So this type of sale was a rarity and usually happened when people were in extreme poverty (Neh 5:5).  If she was just a salve she could leave in 6 years (Deut 15:12) if she was to a 2nd wife she had the status of a wife (ex 21:10) If she was to be his son's wife she would be like a daughter. If the man didn't want to treat her in this manner he had to give her to someone who would take care of her or return her to her father without demanding any restitution. (ex 21:8-21:11)

The fact that you attempt to make any defense of this passage at all is kind of disgusting, honestly. It makes regulations for (read: condones) selling one's daughter into sexual slavery, and getting rid of her or "giving her back" if she's not pleasing to her husband/master. It treats women like chattel and is a prime example of why biblical morality is outdated and primitive.

 

Ex 21:20 “When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod, and the slave dies under his abuse, the owner must be punished.

Unless he dies of his wounds more than a day or two later.

 

26 “When a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave and destroys it, he must let the slave go free in compensation for his eye. 27 If he knocks out the tooth of his male or female slave, he must let the slave go free in compensation for his tooth.
 
So if the mater treats his slaves in to beat them with such that he busts his eye and knocks out his tooth the man get to be free. If you have beaten a man to the point that they are bed ridden then I believe this would indicate that that slave get to be free.

You might believe that, but that's not what the text says. It says they only get to go free if you knock their eyes or teeth out. Be careful when you're beating those slaves, now.

Again read the bible in it's entirety. As for the shell fish read Act 10:9-16. Also when you disobey God you are willingly believing a lie instead of the truth (Roman 1:18-32). Also God has made a way out of sin through Jesus Christ. He took our penalty and paid the price for our sin (Isa 53:9). You don't have to go to hell all you have to do is repent and accept Jesus as you Lord and savior. You give him your sinful life and receive the His righteousness.

I have read the Bible in its entirety, probably more times than you have. I also used to be a lot better at the mental gymnastics than you are.

How would you define sin?

 

I wouldn't. The Bible does, though, and I wholeheartedly disagree with probably nine tenths of the Bible's definition. My morality is informed by empathy toward suffering, not some arbitrary list of rules.

Matt 7:12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."
 
If you looked at the end of the statement you will see that Jesus is saying that this statement is a summery of what we now call the old testament or as he stated the Law and the Prophets. So yes this idea wasn't new when Jesus stated it. Still, it does originate with God because He is truth and the originator of all Knowledge.

The Golden Rule predates Old Testament writings by at least a few hundred years. It was not a new concept when the Old Testament was written, either.

Thoughts are still not matter

They depend on matter to exist because they depend on brains, you contrary little shit.

• Abortion is legalized murder. People claim that the baby is not human just like they said about my ancestors the American slaves. In America there are 1.21 million murders of babies each year.
  
• An estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. each year
  
• About 169,202,00 Murdered in the 20th Century due to democide more than any of the previous centuries combined.
  
• Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States. - See more at: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domest...prevalence
  
• Of females killed with a firearm, almost two-thirds were killed by their intimate partners. The number of females shot and killed by their husband or intimate partner was more than three times higher than the total number murdered by male strangers using all weapons combined in single victim/single offender incidents in 2002. - See more at: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domest...prevalence
  
• 1,006,970 women and 370,990 men are stalked annually in the United States. - See more at: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domest...prevalence
  
• Women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence than men: 78% of the victims of rape and sexual assault are women and 22% are men. - See more at: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domest...prevalence
  

 
I going to leave it there but there is plenty more. We aren't better.

We're just going to have to fundamentally disagree one whether Abortion is murder. For one thing, the health and wellbeing of extant humans is more valuable to me than those of a potential human at virtually any stage of development leading up to birth, so medically essential abortions are a moral no-brainer for me regardless of what trimester they're in; the rights of the mother always outweigh the rights of the fetus. As for nonessential abortions, those are generally limited to first trimester pregnancies where the zygote has virtually no human systems and certainly has not developed anything like a consciousness. Abortion is not murder, zygotes are not babies, and fetuses are only sort of babies and shouldn't really have any rights as far as I'm concerned.

As for the rest of that, sure, I'll grant that the raw numbers for violence might seem higher, but world populations are also higher than they used to be. Proportionally speaking, war, murder, and other violence has been declining for a long time and is probably lower than it's ever been. Yes, we are getting better, and yes, those improvements are inversely proportional to global religiosity.