The 'old testament' argument

[A_Nony_Mouse]

It would help if you had given us specific actions, to give an answer, most Christians do not study the scriptures, so they have no answer except to say those things.
As for the supposed changing God did actually did not happen. Let's take a short look at what happened. God gave Adam and Eve one commandment, they could not manage to keep it, God made it simple for them yet they blew it.

What I find difficult to believe is people who can and do study the bible and not read what is clearly stated but rather invents things which are not there.

There is no commandment on one of the two important trees. What it does say is at most a warning such as don't drink the stuff under the sink. That statement contains its own punishment, immediate death after eating and is also a lie. The serpent tells the truth.

And the reason they are thrown out is very clearly to prevent them from becoming gods by eating the tree of life. It cannot be more explicit but I know people will argue against this so lets just stick with the silly puritanical Augustine invention of what the story means and hear your defense of it. Keep in mind "I do not know the meaning IF any meaning" is always a legitimate answer.

Then comes the 10 Commandments, well the Israelites started disobeying in short order.

Excuse but your god got off to a bad start by sending his priests through the tribes to massacre innocent people for worshiping a golden calf BEFORE there was a commandment against it. No, there is no reference to Noatic law. Yes, the people hear the commandments being spoken from the mountain only in de Mille's movie. That kind of god rules only be fear and terror. There is no problem doing anything you can get away with.

Then comes the law of Moses and again these laws were broken in short order.

Similarly Moses makes up arbitrary and capricious "laws" that mostly appear as exercises in "how silly can it get?" and then has his priests enforce them by terror tactics. Think secret police and summary execution but call them priests and justice.

God kept trying to teach, but man just closed his ears saying la,la,la,la,la and kept right own doing it man's way, if we had listened early on it would not have come down to umpteen laws to keep, just one.

IF that god were trying to teach it would never have let that whacko Moses prohibit mixing kinds of thread and his other insanities. In fact that would god would have publicly defleshed him to restore its reputation among the Israelites/Hebrews/masses oppressed by Moses and his gang of priests.

That god would also have done something recognizable as humane and rational like declaring slavery a sin of course that would have pissed off the Israelites who forceably brought their slaves with them -- no matter how many times it is translated servants. And how is it humans demonstrated superior morality to this god by banning slavery?

When it comes to things like slavery we suddenly discover the god was parochial and provincial and unable to rise above its times. Why do people need to make excuses for this god just because it is their god? What kind of a god regulates instead of prohibits slavery? BTW, it is chattel slavery with a few exceptions which apply only to other "Israelites." Non-jews be damned.

Is there anything else?

---

That's too bad eh, because if there was only that one rule to follow we could have gone around slaughtering each other en-masse for the sheer thrill of it without breaking any rules. Damn. It's un-salvageable, you insult yourself in the attempt.

There are several surviving legal systems that pre-date the mythical 1400 BC invention of the big ten. The Code of Hammurabi is the best known. ALL of them prohibit murder. All of them are more advanced and civilized than the big ten.

But starting with the age of exploration as in post 1492 Europeans, aka Christians, began finding new people all of the world and had no problem calling them primitive. Yet all had close enough to the moral code of the big ten but never having heard of them.

Of course Europeans then concentrated on the specific details of the differences just to denigrate other people. For example they made an issue of Aztec human sacrifice while ignoring all the human sacrifice (plus torture something unheardof among the Aztecs) for witchcraft and heresy and having the wrong religion and pissing off the Church.

---

Genesis 1:31: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.

But not good enough to work the way it was supposed to, even with god's guidance and cajoling and threatening and promises of reward and punishment. God's definition of "good" is not very, uh... good.

Everything was good until Adam and Eve sinned. Creation worked just as it was designed, it did not work as God desired it to. Adam and Eve had the free will to decide to obey God or not to, they chose not to. God's desire was for them to obey, it was one simple commandment yet they allowed selfishness to enter their lives, thus their wrong decision and sin entered the world. Was not God's fault they chose wrong, they were designed to have choice and chose to sin. They were not designed to sin, it was their choice to sin, they were designed to love God, they allowed selfishness to over ride the love they had for Him and sinned.

Let me get this straight. They did not know the difference between good and evil until after they ate the fruit. If one does not know the difference between good and evil how can there be sin? The story clearly states they could not tell sin from grace. So it is arbitrary and capricious to punish them for a completely innocent act. That innocent act was contrary to the advice (lie) of the god because they did not know there was anything wrong with doing so.