Evangelical Alliance: "We aren't homophobic women-haters"

[Lek]

You're awfully confident for a man with this sort of material to work from:

Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.

50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality

1 Corinthians 39-54 NRSV

Especially when there are contrasting verses like these:

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks. And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

Mathew 27:51-53

One sounds pretty spiritual and the other, like Jesus and his nail holes, rather original body fleshy.

I'm confident we'll be raised with imperishable bodies. I can't envision every detail. I tend to think it would be a body similar to Jesus' body after he was raised from the dead, being able to walk through walls and such. I don't see the nail holes as imperfections but rather something to be worn as a badge of honor. Those who came out of their graves after the crucifixion were not raised as on the day of the final judgement, but rather like Lazarus who was brought back to an earthly life.

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According to the bible, your god doesn't change.

Is this moral to you

Samuel 15

5 Samuel also said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the Lord. 2 Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. 3 Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”

Saul lost god's favor because he didn't kill a few sheep and the king Agag

Before you tell us that your god is moral, have you actually read your bible?

God had a plan to use Israel to bring forth the messiah. In order to accomplish that, the Jewish nation had to be kept alive. The Amalekites opposed Israel at every turn and were bent on their destruction. It is highly probable that Haman the Agagite (Esther 3:1), who almost accomplished the total destruction of all the Jews in Persia, was a descendant of King Agag whom Saul spared.

God punished the Amalekites by wiping out their nation. You guys always want to use logic, so let's do that. How much of a punishment was a quick death? He punishes every single living person with death; not just the Amalekites. Which is the worse punishment; the quick death of an Amalekite child or the long-suffering death of a young American child from leukemia? How was he more cruel to the Amalkites than he is to anyone else? If I could pick my mode of death, other than dying in my sleep or unconsciousness, a quick death by the sword would be high on my list.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Our morals come from God.

Mine do not. I do not take a monster for my example of behavior to emulate. I don't believe that committing genocide is right, under any circumstances, especially the circumstance of me making those people imperfect in the first place -- why should they be killed for my mistake? I don't believe that punishing children for the crimes of their parents is right. I don't believe that forgiveness should require the murder of an innocent.

Perhaps you think those things are moral. I violently disagree.

Moral relativity is among people.

Indeed ... including you, as shown in this thread.

We all are subject to the same ultimate moral authority.

No, we are not. Morals are relative and subjective, inherently.

If you look at it in one way, God causes us all to die, but we are not allowed to murder anyone.

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You are proving my point for me, thanks.

[robvalue]

Please don't say "we" and "our" like you are stating as fact what applies to the non-deluded as well as yourself.

[Tonus]

Our morals come from God. Moral relativity is among people.

Unless you stone adulterers and people who work on the Sabbath, god is just as much a moral relativist as anyone else. If you want to say that these things are good because god decreed them, fine. But it's clear that even god does not promote the idea of objective morals. Unquestioning obedience based on blind faith doesn't make for a particularly strong set of morals, either.

[Lek]

Unless you stone adulterers and people who work on the Sabbath, god is just as much a moral relativist as anyone else. If you want to say that these things are good because god decreed them, fine. But it's clear that even god does not promote the idea of objective morals. Unquestioning obedience based on blind faith doesn't make for a particularly strong set of morals, either.

They used to hang horse thieves. You could kill a person by stealing his horse. This isn't moral relativism, but the same morality being applied to the situation at the time. God was purposely separating the Jewish nation, which he needed to remain whole, from the surrounding nations. The strict law was one of the ways to keep the pagan influences from working their way into the Israelite nation.

[Chad32]

And then it happened anyway. Good job Yahweh! Apparently killing everyone who doesn't follow super strict guidelines doesn't work.

[dyresand]

Our morals as people and humanity in general did not come from god. if his morals are exact why did people see slavery as a immoral thing and god didn't. God in your religion lek is amoral and no one should ever have his morality. our morality is subject to change as is with racism back then it was acceptable now its not. God in the bible invented racism and slavery those two things themselves are not moral. humanity made its own morals not god or magic humanity has its own moral structure and each and every single person uses the basis of morality to come up with there own. So no god isn't the basis for morality.

[abaris]

They used to hang horse thieves. You could kill a person by stealing his horse. This isn't moral relativism, but the same morality being applied to the situation at the time. God was purposely separating the Jewish nation, which he needed to remain whole, from the surrounding nations. The strict law was one of the ways to keep the pagan influences from working their way into the Israelite nation.

Never underestimate the bending power of a theist. Like a rubber doll actually. Instead of claiming the obvious that half nomadic desert dwellers made up some barbaric laws, which by the way are still followed by some tribes in the larger vicinity, it's god's infinite wisdom to protect his special hobbits.

[Tonus]

They used to hang horse thieves. You could kill a person by stealing his horse. This isn't moral relativism, but the same morality being applied to the situation at the time.

The fact remains that you have a god who once considered certain acts to be so severe that they merited a death penalty, but now some of them are not even considered wicked or wrong. There was a time when it was man's moral imperative to stone a person who worked on a weekend, but now it would be murder, wouldn't it?

God was purposely separating the Jewish nation, which he needed to remain whole, from the surrounding nations. The strict law was one of the ways to keep the pagan influences from working their way into the Israelite nation.

Didn't he purposely separate them by visiting plagues upon the Egyptians, and splitting a sea so his people could walk across, and leading them on one massacre of those surrounding nations after another? Making the sun stand still in the sky, or sending an angel to slaughter 185,000 enemy soldiers in a single night, or making the walls of a city collapse... that wasn't enough to make them stand apart?

He had to turn them into nosy savages, ready to grab some stones at the slightest provocation so that they could pummel each other, as well? Hey, here's a way they could have stood apart from those other nations: by being a model of progressive and generous human behavior. This idea that a being of near-infinite power --who could literally part the sea with but a thought-- suddenly couldn't figure out how to get his kids to behave is embarrassing, to be honest.

[robvalue]

Couldn't God just kill all the pagans? Or make them into christians? Why is he always coming up against these restrictions and barriers to justify his bullshit?