Why does god want to cut off women's hands?

[John V]

Also deplorable. Less murderous, but heinous just as well.

Considering that arranged marriage has been common across time and cultures, you're making a good argument that humanity is evil and deserves judgment.

---

Do you not like your personal freedoms? Do you think that other people happen to enjoy theirs? This is the reason that it isn't circular. The things that people want are important to people; I know you think that everything issues from god, but you haven't demonstrated that. In the meantime, I can easily demonstrate that people have positive and negative responses to stimuli and can construct societies based upon those.

Yes, I like personal freedoms most of the time. Of course, drug addicts like drugs, rapists like raping, serial killers like murdering... It's ad hoc to justify freedom as a right because people like it.

No, I'm asking you to support that it is with something other than circles or, in this case, an argument from ignorance.

And again, the fact that you don't understand simple concepts like "people enjoy certain things," in no way makes my argument invalid or circular. Try, just for a little while, considering the atheist viewpoint, where we're required to construct out concepts of good and bad sans divine intervention: what would we build these ideas around, in that case?[/quote]
There's a number of ways, and you can't objectively prove that on is better than another.

It's why I added that whole qualifier about constraints, because it's not just about individual happiness. We aren't children, we understand that sometimes longterm happiness and safety means that we must give up certain immediate, maximal pleasures. Yes, slavery is a distinct advantage for the slave owner, but it isn't for the slaves, and we as human beings have a little thing called "empathy" which means that we can imagine the pain of others. Yes, there's an evolutionary basis for that.

The slave owners were apparently able to own slaves despite their human empathy.

Speaking of which, in purely practical terms, the reason we abolished slavery is because certain things need to be, for the health of the society; allowing slavery puts a target on the backs of everyone, in terms of who can be enslaved in the future. It's best if the whole practice is just forbidden, so that nobody gets hurt. The same with murder, and rape, etc etc: a functioning society benefits all of its members, hence that little "mutual agreement" clause you skipped over.

Societies with slaves functioned for centuries. This argument is imaginary.

So, to be clear: the women are taken from their homes in the middle of a war, while their families are being killed in that same war, and they're married off to the men who kidnapped them, against their will since it's an arranged marriage, and you're saying that they'd consent to sex with the enemy that's pillaging their home?

No, I'm saying that in such societies consent of a bride in an arranged marriage was not required. Call it rape if you like - in so doing you're painting humanity as so evil that it deserves judgment.

Or are you just being obtuse again because it's easier than admitting your holy book is slowly turning you into a fucking monster, one immoral scriptural defense at a time?

Personally I prefer to try to understand peoples of other times and cultures rather than sitting in judgment of them. Go figure.

---

JohnV, there's such a thing called Existential Rights. Look it up.

OK. The site I found said that self-aware beings have rights, and others don't. Seeing as we're self-aware, that's suspiciously convenient.

If beings with superior mental capacity have rights which lesser beings don't, then god has rights that humans don't.

Pocaracas makes a good point. God was apparently able to communicate his wills and wishes to the masses via the Biblical writings (albeit in a time when his presence could not be confirmed in the tangible world), and instead of setting the golden standard for how people should treat other people---he provides Supporting Decrees on How to Enslave and Rape one another?

As noted, it was a compromise. The Bible says that god is longsuffering - i.e. he doesn't like what we do, but he has his own reasons for temporarily allowing it.

How can you believe your own assertions based on the 'nature' of the god you supposedly know?

The god of the Bible has superior mental ability to ours, so he has rights over us.