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(October 4, 2015 at 11:42 pm)Cecelia Wrote: I don't need to go by a list on some 'anti-christian' website. These are things that are ACTUALLY in the Bible. I'm assuming you've actually read it.
Yahweh floods the world, and kills every animal, every man woman and child save for two of each 'kind', and eight people. How is that out of context? He killed all of them in the story. Did he, or did he not?
After David took a census, Yahweh gave him choices of how he would punish his people. David refused to choose, so Yahweh decides to go with the plague, and kills 70,000 people and even then he's not even really satisfied. Yahweh was a big fan of blood sacrifices. Even in the new testament, Jesus is a blood sacrifice.
Did he not take all the first borns of Egypt? Did he not harden Pharaoh's heart? These things are actually in the bible. If you've read it, you found them there.
Did he not turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for merely looking back? Did he not have bears kill 42 youths because they made fun of one of his prophets?
I see a few inaccuracies, but for the most part this is correct. The context which is left out however is why. And I do think that the "why" question is very important in regards to morality. I also feel that in much of this, we are crossing between a discussion on immoral and unjust, as these are all related to judgement. That might be an interesting topic for the philosophy folder.
However if you are one who say's morality is subjective, then the argument is mute anyway.
(October 4, 2015 at 10:49 pm)Cecelia Wrote: You see mercy and patience because that's what you have been trained to see. You choose to look past the fact that he killed 50,000 people who looked at the ark. Does this sound like a just punishment to you? If so then you might just be a psychopath too.
I think you are making assumptions about me. And what is the reason that you do not seem to see the mercy and patience? That is in the scripture as well, and you seem to be hinting that you have read the scriptures.
(October 4, 2015 at 10:49 pm)Cecelia Wrote: Also I don't think you understand what poisoning the well is.
I went back, and I believe you are correct in that I was mis-using it. What I was referring to was only giving part of the context, and distorting the story, in order for emotional appeal in the arguers favor. This is not the poisoning the well fallacy although similar in some ways of intention.
Quote:And really the question is why is something immoral at all. I have been told here a number of times that it is subjective, but it seems that we do not measure morality based on that standard!
When you read the Bible you will see that the basic rule is to believe and to obey without exception. It doesn't matter one iota what you are asked to believe and to obey, only that you do it completely and without any lip.
Therefore, when the God character say to kill everything that's what the people were expected to do. They might have had some reservations about doing stuff like that as some of the stories point out. But when they didn't comply they were punished. They were not allowed to think for themselves and to develop their own rules. The system was a 100 percent dictatorship.
People in the 21st Century are expected to be more intelligent than the dummies were thousands of years ago. So now we have volumes of laws covering every aspect of our behavior. It's a ramp up from Moses' piddly 613 rules by a factor of maybe 100,000. But we still have to contend with the crazy God character except now he's in the form of our governments. If you break a rule the government will gladly bitch slap the crap out of you without a second thought. We might think that we are free but we are in the same boat as people have always been in, believe and obey without exception or get the crap beaten out of you by the god character's angels (the police and military).
If our god character (the national government) decides that it's a good idea to screw with some other god character on the other side of the world he will force you or your dumb kids to jump to it and go on a killing spree on the other side of the world even if you can't spell the name of the place you are being sent to in order to kill the local yokels or get your own guts spilled. Is that something you really want to do? Of course not. But that's the human condition and that's one of the themes in the Bible stories. So your own morality will almost always take a back seat to your orders.
