All the problems with Christianity

[Minimalist]

Leviticus says that Hebrew slaves should be released on the year of jubilee and that they should also be treated well, unlike they were in Egypt. Then it says that foreign slaves are for life, but it makes no comment on the 2nd part of the law, saying that slaves should not be treated with oppression. It seems like that law still applies to foreign slaves as well as Hebrew ones.

Just about the last thing they had to worry about was too many foreign "slaves." However, one can understand why they'd opine that hebrew "slaves" should be well-treated.

It's similar to this.

Ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll,

[Bad Wolf]

Who's kidding who?

So according to you, "hearing" something is akin to "knowing" something? And you have a slide rule in your back pocket too.

How dishonest can one person be? I never said or implied that, you are a liar

So, you are saying that because you have a close relationship with someone, you can be [gauranteed] that they will do something for you?

No, yet again, you are being a dishonest asshole

No that is HOPE!

My daugther doesn't have hope that I will do anything. She has [faith] that I will do everything!

"Faith" is "hope" becoming reality. I have "faith" that God will take care of my entire life. I have "hope" He will take care of [your] life... and my childrens!

Hope is based on reasonable expectations based on evidence e.g. I hope Federrer wins another grand slam. Faith is based on nothing

So, we can quantize our stance, by those with "faith", and those w/o faith".

What does quantize mean?

But, you are also selling "faith" short! You have faith and don't know it! Do you want me to list all the things you have faith about?

Oh please do. I guarantee you cannot list one thing that is true. And if you did, guess what... I would stop believing in it. That is how a rational mind works.

Is that company God?

I can't tell if you are being dull or an asshole again.

[Lemonvariable72]

Okay avoidaiah this may be a bit a of appeal to emotion, but think of this. Think of your mothr being taken as a slave according to the rules of the OT, especially given the "special" treatment of female slaves?

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

@ronedee

Different meanings of the word "faith" are beings used. Faith can be akin to trust, or akin to a belief (well, it can also refer to an entire belief set).

The different definitions of the word are becoming confused and conflated.

[Lemonvariable72]

@ronedee

Different meanings of the word "faith" are beings used. Faith can be akin to trust, or akin to a belief (well, it can also refer to an entire belief set).

The different definitions of the word are becoming confused and conflated.

As a christian he should be referfing to what paul defined in the book of hebrews

[max-greece]

I re-read my original argument to thry and see what was wrong with it. Apparently I'm not as good at explaining my argument as I thought. Undecided
That said, our ability to do math cannot just come from our brains. If it did, we would still be able to add, but we would be clueless as to why addition worked the way it did. Surely even with a simple math problem like 6+9, which you have known for many years, it never came as a surprise to you that 15 was the answer. You didn't just know that when you put 6 and 9 together, you get 15 somehow. You understand what it means to have 6 of something, to have 9 more of them and to put the 6 and 9 together. It's the understanding part that has to come from somewhere else other than our brains.

Again no. Think of a small child learning to add for the first time. Children learn to add 2+2 without understanding it at first. The teacher may illustrate it -

"I have 2 oranges you have 2 oranges - how many do we have together?"

The child may well, at that point, facing addition for the first time, count the oranges and proudly announce "Four."

In other words - we learn maths slowly. The thing is - we are not unique in this ability. Many animals can count and do addition.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121128...-can-count

The above is one link- there are many to the Google search "What animals can count?"

Did God teach these species to add too? Why just these species?

It really does seem to come from our brains. That we can later apply meaning to mathematics (within limits) is merely a result of our higher brain centres.

[CapnAwesome]

The biggest problem with it is that it isn't true. It's modern mythology. The second biggest problem is one that all religions share, which is that it encourages people to think at a group rather than as individuals. The bible is so big and says so much stuff that you can tell the ignorant masses that it means anything you like and as long as they think they have an eternal soul to wager in this whole absurd process then you can get them to believe whatever you want them too.

[The Reality Salesman01]

No, God hasn’t revealed anything to me, there is no God that I know anything about. I know nothing of God and very little of you, so I would not pretend to be able to speak for either. There is no single version of man’s God, but every version I’ve heard comes from a man. If your God does not have a hell, or in some way is incompatible to the way I’ve depicted it, then by all means, offer clarification of your position if you think it may reconcile the things I find incompatible with an allegedly loving God. Your God does not have a hell, or a devil involved in his doctrine I take it?

And what of our children? What is your hope for them? Or, is "hope" not something that means anything as "faith" doesn't?

I have hope. Faith is pretending to know when I obviously cannot. I can’t know something by hoping it is true. That’s quite absurd. If you are claiming to know God exists through Faith, then it appears you are being intentionally misunderstood when you use the word “faith” to describe your anticipations toward your children’s future. In one instance you use faith to depict how you know something. In the very next you are using it as something you hope for. The reason these threads get confusing is exactly because of this. You think “Faith” is a virtue, something to be admired and valued. When you look at these two instances, it is clear that “faith” is an incoherent word used to describe one’s position when they are at a loss for reasons to support a claim. It’s a failed epistemology. Sure, it’s used interchangeably with hope and belief within the context of important issues such as love, an ideal society, and our children, but let’s be honest here…
You can’t KNOW anything through faith. Your persistence to substitute the word “hope” in the place of it to describe an unknowable future should make this apparent to you. I’m willing to bet that you wouldn’t find a babysitter on the internet based on Faith, right? Would you like to revise the definition again?

Do you care that your child may find God? And in a way that you don't understand? Will that affect your love for him?

My mother is still a devout Christian, and I know she still loves me too. At times, the things you say remind me all too well of the things I’ve heard her say on the subject.
My son believing in God will not affect my love for him. If he was struck with a mental disorder, I wouldn’t love him any less, and faith is like a mental disorder.
I’m going to make sure that my son knows about ALL religions, not just Christianity, (just the facts, no values) and without my personal views being solicited to him. Every child in the world deserves to make an informed decision. A successful democratic system depends on an informed society. If people are not informed, there’s no freedom in that. Parents that impose their personal religious constraints on their young are doing their child a disservice by depriving them of truth. If their faith is the right one, and they believe their God will protect their child, they should have no problem exposing their child to all the other religions that think the same thing, and allow the child to decide for themselves whether one is right, or they’re all delusional. I expect the latter to be concluded, but any conclusion he makes won’t affect my love, but it also won’t prevent me from challenging his views and making him defend them critically. It’s my duty to my son to make sure that he learns to be as critical on himself as he is on anyone else, and to use his mind to guide him to truth.

If my children move away from God, (and a few are indeed) I'm saddened, but love them none-the-less! I have Hope.

Why are you saddened? Are your kids not good people?

And [if] God did reveal Himself to you, would it matter at this point in your life? What manner of revelation would be meaningful, and life changing?

It would be trivially easy for God to reveal himself to me if he existed.
Could a God positively impact my life if It existed? Of course. But what I won’t do is arbitrarily attribute good things that happen in my life as being from God, and pretend to know that its true. Such a thing discredits the personal effort put in to accomplish them. I take responsibility for my failures as much as my successes. People that chalk things up to God or plea to the sky for help are avoiding their responsibility in some degree.
The difference between you and I is that I’m not pretending that things are God when there’s no evidence to posit that they’re not Zeus. You are pretending to have knowledge and justifying this knowledge by a failed epistemology.

I'm sorry to be presumptuous, but I say there is none that would change you! You see, the evidence is within, as Jesus' words rely. If it aint there I'm sorry to say it won't become that way.

That’s a deepity and indistinguishable from a description of a delusion. The evidence is “within”? That’s something crazy people say…I’m not calling you crazy, but surely you can recognize that such a justification for how one knows what they believe is true is synonymous with delusion or psychopathy.

Jesus says; "What is impossible for man, is possible for God."

Jesus says lots of things that you believe. What you have failed to show is how you can know they are true.

So, yes there is Hope. At least for those who have it.

Again, you’ve strayed away from your original position on faith. Are you now saying that you hope God is real?

[Tonus]

I agree, people in the Bible did awful things, people have used the Bible as justification to do even worse things. However, the Bible is about people. I think we need to take into account that people are not perfect, they make mistakes. Also, I would like to argue that deconstructionism is not a good thing, especially when applied to the Bible. The author of any book has a meaning in mind when they write it, and if you simply interpret what they wrote in your own way, it won't make sense and you may end up using it incorrectly.

But that makes it sound like any other book authored by humans, even the part where it inspires people to both great and horrifying action. A book provided to us by god should stand out from the rest, but the Bible only does so to those who have presupposed that it is god's work. And even many of them seem to agree with your explanation above, which doesn't mesh with the idea that it stands out as an extraordinary work.

[Avodaiah]

Understood. Like I said, you seem more honest than some theists here, but that's not gonna save unjustified beliefs from the axe.

Not just any axe, but the Esquilaxe! (sorry, couldn't resist)
Anyway...
There's still something I think you might be missing from the idea of slavery, but I'll save that for another time. It seems like a lot of this discussion on slavery is basically an assertion that the Bible must be wrong because it doesn't agree with all of our moral standards. (Not just yours, to be honest some of these laws don't make sense to me either.)
But that's the thing - if the Bible was in complete agreement with what most people already believe, what a problem that would be! It would be evidence that the Bible was written later, as an elaborate hoax or something. But we can't possibly expect to understand why God says and does everything; otherwise we would almost be gods too.
Which brings me to something else.
I've been loving talking with you guys about this stuff, but it seems to me at the end of the day, while we still believe the Bible comes from God, you look at it and see an ancient fairy tale. We can never seem to understand why you don't take the Bible for anything other that what it so blatantly looks like, so you have tho get into the details of it, pointing out problems and contradictions and just hoping we'll come to think of what you've been thinking all along: The Bible is fantasy, about on a level with the Quran and the Gilgamesh Epic. I mean, we might as well translate the Grimm brothers into the world's languages and say it was inspired by Rumpelstiltskin or something!
Is this kind of what you guys are thinking a lot of times? Or am I way off?
P.S. I'm not trying to mock what you guys are thinking, I just want to understand why you think that way.