Four questions for Christians

[Consilius]

It depends on your attitude towards death. From a theistic viewpoint, God kills people every day. I believe that deaths serve a purpose to the living.
There is an aspect of death that makes killing itself a crime. It is…?

No..it does not. Culpability for ones own actions does not depend on ones attitude towards their consequences. Again, no matter how many lollipops are given out, or how necessary it is that people die to make lollipops, they are still dead. It does not matter if we wish to consider killing a crime. We can say that both parties in the story involved just went around offing folks and it's completely amoral - we'll still be left with two parties running around offing folks (that's less than satisfying, isn't it , and it doesn't leave much room for one to babble on about the goodness and moral authority of their favorite spirit). You're flirting with an ends and means now....and that;s not going to go over any better. Regardless of what purpose we might imagine the act to have served, -the act itself- will either stand or fall on it's own. We could say, for example, that a shitty thing was done in service to a noble goal (I'd disagree, but it wouldn't matter...and it's equally as unsatisfying as the last example if you want to go from there to the goodness or moral authority of said favorite spirit).

The reason that this particular argument does not work does not hinge upon either of our opinions or attitudes towards death. It doesn't work because it forms a statement who's conclusion cannot be garaunteed to be accurate -even if- the assertions are true (even if they are sound). That's what it means for something to be logically invalid. It is a categorical, and all-encompassing failure to form a coherent position. No amount of shuffling around, adding, or subtracting ancillary assertions will change the fallacious nature of the argument. Understand? No matter what you imagine for the particulars of the situation, so long as you appeal to hypocrisy -it does not work-.

You still haven't given a specific reason why the death of a child is a bad thing.
Or would you say that we are given constant proof of God's malevolence because people die every day?

[ronedee]

I can't seem to get a straight answer and I don't want to derail more threads, so:

1: Under which circumstances, precisely, would you consider it acceptable to carry out the violent mass killing of every infant and child in a city?

2: Is it just to kill a person because they live in the same place as a person who committed a sin, if they had no direct or conscious involvement in it?

3: If we are judged guilty, and can be punished for our sins even before we commit them, how is this consistent with the notion of free will being the choice between God and sin?

4: If there is any possible alternative to purposefully killing a person in order to achieve whatever imaginable end may involve doing so, in other words, if you can do what you need to do just as easily regardless of whether or not you kill that person, is it just to kill them anyway?

Late to the game here but.... "Man was made in God's own image."

Next question(s).

[Godscreated]

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Sure. You take the original text, compare the words, phrases and sayings with the usage of the same in other texts of the period. Transpose the cultural references to the present and viola, you have it.

Now, are you good for your method of black = white translation? I mean, even every English translation contradicts directly what you're saying.
It's not like the words you're contradicting are even questionable or in doubt according to ANY translation. This is completely unique and unsupported trash.

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I think translation is one problem among many in this discussion, and one which deserves to be addressed only after other problems have been resolved. Problems such as:

1. At what point are you certain that a text is truly the original text, and not a copy of something earlier which is lost to us?

None of the text for the Bible are original, just like all text from that time. Just because it's a copy it does not mean it's not accurate. Do you believe all other text from that time to be original, if not do you believe the copies of the original text to be inaccurate?

2. How can you be certain that the original text is accurate (especially regarding stories such as Genesis, which depicted many events without even the weak support of eyewitness testimony, or the stories which were written down centuries after they were supposed to have taken place)?

Oral stories have been known to be extremely accurate, if you are going to reject the text of the Bible that was first oral, then how much text about history that came through oral stories do we throw out. Especially those you might use to contradict scriptures.

3. How do you definitively establish that any of the spiritual stuff in the Bible is legitimate? Sure, you can have your visions or revelations, but is that as reliable as evidence gets? Minds are terribly suggestive, especially when one's own self is doing the suggesting.

What makes you think we suggest delusions to ourselves and the way you posted that statement do we take it you're speaking from experience. Why do you assume that the spiritual is not real, do you know for certain it's not, is your non experience with God the reason you claim we can not have one. Why would revelation not be viable, we match it to scripture to affirm that we have not fooled ourselves.

4. How much of the internal bias are you supposed to accept? The Bible is not telling facts neutrally; it is told very much from a certain point of view. It seems as if most Christians form their arguments from that internal perspective and insist that this is necessary to derive the truth from what is on the pages. I should think that, if there was actual truth in it, you would find it in spite of the clear partiality, rather than it being necessary to hold the same point of view

The Bible does not in any way try to prove itself, nor does God, the writers of scripture did not write to prove anything, they wrote to give witness to what God will do for those who love Him. There is no partiality except that which you want to see, you read scripture with presupposed ideas and then make it that way.

(see: the entire argument about God killing Amalekites; you have to take for granted (and not seriously question) the internal assertion that God cannot do evil for many of his actions to be perceived as not some of the most cruel examples of evil in history). Scripture doesn't use the word 'rape' to describe what is very obviously rape (indeed, scripture does not make any attempt to avoid the implication that it's rape), but how are we wrong for calling it rape?

There are places in scripture that use the word rape, it is used when the action of rape happens, why would it be used in some passages and then not in others, explanation, because you have no arguments unless you rewrite scripture to say so.

5. What is the single, gold standard by which all scripture should be interpreted? Given that virtually every Christian gets something different out of the Bible when they read it, with little consistency in interpretations from cover to cover, there seems to be no reason that our unflattering interpretation is any less correct a way to describe its contents than those which are pitifully fawning. And, what's more, once that standard is established, what objective facts support its legitimacy?

Could it be that God knew the things each one of us needed from scripture and revealed to us those things that would be helpful to our lives. I have had passages read to me then explained in a way I hadn't seen before, same passage with true meaning to two different people who had different lives and needs for their lives. As to the last question the same could be said of many text we call reliable history.

In my experience, Christians have no interest in exploring these matters, but I think they are serious. What difference do the various translations make, really, when the sources themselves are so questionable and vaporous? That puts the cart miles ahead of the horse.

Here's one that has and will continue to, know how about you being honest about truth being in scripture or reject most of history from that time.

[The Grand Nudger]

You still haven't given a specific reason why the death of a child is a bad thing.
Or would you say that we are given constant proof of God's malevolence because people die every day?

Clearly you still don't understand. This would be some other argument, go have it with someone interested in having it. I'm not going to play the chessboard to your catholic pigeon, thanks. Your defense of the narrative and the claims you would like to make about the "god" character is entirely comprised of an appeal to hypocrisy, it does not matter whether or not the killing of a child is wrong. Whether it is or isn't doesn't change the fallacious nature of the argument. Whether god is benevolent, malevolent, or neither..doesn't change the fallacious nature of the argument. My opinions of your god do not determine, nor are they capable of changing the fallacious nature of your argument.

Is this sinking in yet?

Once it has, I'll have a chuckle at how you're forced to resort to wondering whether or not killing a child is wrong - for the sole reason of excusing your god for having done so. As was the case before, I don't know, you tell me, is killing a child wrong? I'll defer to your interpretation of this as I deferred to your interpretation of the narrative you failed to defend. The beauty of this approach, is that there's no room for wiggling at the other end when things don't turn out the way you hope.

[Consilius]

Clearly I'm missing your point. Let's go back to TQ.
My statement: God isn't taking revenge because he was unaffected by the Israelite infanticide and independently punished the Egyptians for their actions.

[The Grand Nudger]

TQ isn't an issue of revenge. That the narrative is a revenge story is ancillary and unrelated to why your argument failed on the grounds of TQ. Though, admittedly,explanations for revenge often amounts to TQ.

TQ is simple. Discrediting the position of another by reference to some "bad" thing that another party has done. Somebody else can do "bad" things all day long, and that won't establish that what -you- did is good..or at the very least, not bad. IOW, avoiding the point and attacking the arguer (or who the arguer serves as a proxy for). Following? If using an example unrelated to this discussion would help, say the word (not that I'm going to do anything more than quote one of my own posts in this thread that has already been mentioned for you-but hey...if it helps...).

[ronedee]

54,559,615 .......The number of hearts stopped beating since 1973! All by the hand of man.

There's the [real] tragedy. Not 4000 years ago, in some old book that you say is unproven lies and fairy tales.

[The Grand Nudger]

The number of people that have met untimely ends at the hands of other people -is- a tragedy, and? Here btw, Consilius, (in my buddy Ronny's post) is a great example of a TQ thats spoken so timidly and softly that you might not even notice it. That people do shitty things to each other does not excuse the shitty things your faith has done - or the shitty things that your fath exalts - from being tragedies themselves. They're both "real tragedies".

See the similarity? "Others have done shitty things, so your criticism is unwarranted/unjustified/unneccessary".

Thanks, btw, Ronny.

[Silver]

Okay, what is TQ?

[The Grand Nudger]

lol, tu quoque.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque