The "Cultural Context" Excuse

[LadyForCamus]

Wait... Eve had sex with the... ahem... serpent?

Would you belief that that's a claim with a long enough history that even Christians as far back as the second century AD have actually explicitly named it as heresy? It's called the Serpent Seed doctrine, and claims that Cain was the offspring of Eve and the Serpent. It's an interesting image, but it doesn't hold up under the slightest scrutiny.

And, with regards to Huggy's requests for Bible verses related to abortion, here are a few:

• Ex. 21:22-3. " If men contend with each other, and a pregnant woman [interfering] is hurt so that she has a miscarriage, yet no further damage follows, [the one who hurt her] shall surely be punished with a fine [paid] to the woman’s husband, as much as the judges determine. But if any damage follows, then you shall give life for life." Barely a chapter after the Ten commandments, and it's clear God doesn't consider the killing of a fetus the same as murder.
  
• Num. 3:15-6: "Number the sons of Levi by their fathers’ houses and by families. Every male from a month old and upward you shall number. So Moses numbered them as he was commanded by the word of the Lord." Even infants who haven't been ex utero for over a month do not matter enough even for the purposes of a census.
  
• Num. 5:21-8: "Then the priest shall make the woman take the oath of the curse, and say to the woman, The Lord make you a curse and an oath among your people when the Lord makes your thigh fall away and your body swell.May this water that brings the curse go into your bowels and make your body swell and your thigh fall away. And the woman shall say, So let it be, so let it be.The priest shall then write these curses in a book and shall wash them off into the water of bitterness;And he shall cause the woman to drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter into her [to try her] bitterly. Then the priest shall take the cereal offering of jealousy and suspicion out of the woman’s hand and shall wave the offering before the Lord and offer it upon the altar.And the priest shall take a handful of the cereal offering as the memorial portion of it and burn it on the altar, and afterward shall cause the woman to drink the water.And when he has made her drink the water, then if she is defiled and has committed a trespass against her husband, the curse water which she drank shall be bitterness and cause her body to swell and her thigh to fall away, and the woman shall be a curse among her people. But if the woman is not defiled and is clean, then she shall be free [from the curse] and be able to have children." God is willing to perform abortions himself, and on unwilling women.
  

And this isn't counting the numerous verses explicitly stating pregnant women are acceptable collateral damage for wars or executions (e.g. Gen. 38:24, Num. 31:15-7, Hos. 9:14-6, 13:16)

And this is one of the fundamental problems with the Christian philosophy. The bible is supposed to be a perfect, unchanging account of god's word, and yet Christians themselves can't agree on what it's saying.