Theists are Insecure

[chi pan]

Regarding the human sacrifice debate, I'm surprised that Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter (due to a vow to sacrfice to God whatsoever comes to greet him at the door when he returns home victorious) as a burnt offering. God didn't send an angel to tell Jephthah, 'Hey, God doesn't hold with this human sacrifice crap, make it seven cows instead'. In fact, God didn't bother to include an injunction against human sacrifice in the Bible.

God never said he approved of this promise. In fact in scripture he has spoken out against such acts. Example: Deuteronomy 12:31. And that debate has been left for over a month.

Sorry, wasn't aware of the time limit. But since you've chosen to respond, certainly the lesson in Jephthah is not to make vows you may regret (as in similar Celtic faerie stories), but perhaps you are interpreting Deuteronomy too broadly since the Hebrew priests didn't let Jephthah off the hook. Maybe they took Deuteronomy 12:31 only as an injunction against the sacrifice of babies, or they considered the vow to Yahweh to outweigh the prohibition against human sacrifice. God never said he approved this promise, but as I pointed out, he did nothing to indicate that he preferred a broken vow to a sacrificed daughter.

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Oh, spoken out against such acts has it? How did exactly such an act become the basis of the faith then? When you remove christ from christianity you come back and talk to me about how ardently scripture decries human sacrifice.

What are you talking about? Basis of our faith? Why would you think that? And why are you talking about removing Christ? That's not what we were talking about.

I think Rhythm is talking about the centrality of the sacrifice of Jesus to Christianity. Although it might be more precise to call it 'scapegoating'.

Ok, so I decided to do some deep searching into this passage and I found your answer. First, the term burnt offering he used was not a literal meaning. It refers to offering Something to God. Burnt meaning ascension. This term is used like this in 1 kings 10:5 and Ezekiel 40:26 as well (original Hebrew). When he said vow, he used the same word as was used in Leviticus 27 where it speaks of offering servents to the lord. What's other evidence of this? Well it's important to know that the vow was made in public, which means her daughter would catch word of this. What? She knew? Yes, so why would she do this? Because it wasn't refering to human sacrifice. And in judges 11:36-37 she knew what she must do to fulfill this. So back to the question of why. When someone is a sacrifice to God, they are considered sacred and cannot do work. One of the main jobs of women was to give birth and raise children. So she did this so she could remain a lifetime virgin living with her father and receive his inheritance. Interesting story.

As for the Jesus sacrifice, I covered this very well but you just don't get it. The Jews did not give him as a sacrifice for a few reasons.
1. He was exicuted by the Romans.
2. The Jews condemned him for blasphemy before this which is why they said crucify him. They even let a murderous thief Barabbas go while Jesus was EXICUTED.
3. The Jews who condemned him did not believe he was the massiah. So then why would they want to sacrifice him?
4. Those disciples who did believe he was the massiah and the son of God did not want him exicuted. They also feared for their lives afterwords because they thought they would be next. This is why Peter denied him 3 times.
5. The word offering is not used for this story. So how is it applied by atheists? Well many Christians refer to him as a sacrifice for our sins. Why do we do this? This is where I referenced John 3:16. Let me translate this verse to simple few words.
For God so loved the world= God
He gave his only begotten son= gave his son
That whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.= to the world.
This is why I said Jesus is Gods sacrifice to us. Not our sacrifice to God. How much sense would that make anyways? We sacrifice Gods son to God. Does he not already belong to God? Sure but we're gonna kill him for God. How did he get here in the first place? Well God sent him. So God sent us his son so we could give him back? Come on think about that.