Thoughts on this apologetic

[Cyberman]

Bear in mind that the people who are often the loudest in insisting that the OT laws apply to a demographic with which they don't include themselves (eg same-sex couples), are usually the ones who ignore or downright violate the rest of the laws (eating cheeseburgers, wearing mixed fibres, wearing ostentatious jewellery, praying in public etc). It's hard to take them seriously in these things when they treat their own rules like a pick 'n' mix salad bar.

[Minimalist]

Those who discard the laws of the OT, are they willing to throw out the ten commandments?

Not in Alabama..... of course, there they fuck their sisters a lot which is pretty "biblical."

[Cyberman]

Didn't most of those monuments originate from the publicity campaign for the movie The Ten Commandments? And the rest form part of the invented tradition stemming from those original ones?

[Minimalist]

They originated in the minds of religious fanatics.

[Redbeard The Pink]

As others have stated, the answer you're going to get will depend mostly on the sophistication, denomination, and individual worldview of the theologian you're dealing with.

The whole point of the New Testament is to convince christians that Jesus of Nazareth, through the ultimate human sacrifice, fulfilled all possible sacrifices required by Old Testament law. How much of the Old Testament this erases depends on who you ask, and the two most common positions are these: either the sacrifice totally cancelled OT law except for the "Greatest Commandment(s)," or the sacrifice fulfilled the sacrificial and ceremonial laws, wiping out those but not the "moral" laws.

Of course, which laws are which is mostly arbitrary from what I can tell. I'm told there's some biblical categorizing of some of the OT laws in Acts, but even that isn't comprehensive, plus that book is one of the ones that's mostly fiction and written under a pseudonym anyway. One thing's for sure, though...the christian god does not want us doing any gay shit. He'd rather have us raping under-age slaves than doing any gay shit.

[Regina]

plus that book is one of the ones that's mostly fiction and written under a pseudonym anyway.

Like the entire Bible, it ain't just Acts haha

[Napoléon]

Cherry picking.

[robvalue]

Cherry picking confuses me, and not just because of the hypocrisy.

Let's say a Christians has been through the bible and picked out the 10-100 verses in there that they think "represents" their morality. I'll ignore the fact that this is them blatantly projecting their own morality onto the bible, not getting it from the bible.

What now? Do they feel the need to re read these verses over and over their whole lives, for fear of forgetting not to cave in their neighbour's skull with a wrench? They have to spend their lives worshipping the book and its supposed author? And go around telling everyone else, "Look, look! It says here to not cave in people's heads with a wrench! Isn't that great advice! Look, there's another 50 verses here with similarly great tips!" Wow that is amazing. Thanks for telling me. *Puts down wrench* Just in time.

When I read a book, I take away from it the parts I find useful, and disregard (after consideration) the parts I find to be unsupported or useless. I don't try and have sex with the book afterwards, give endless money to the place where people read the book out to others, and go around trying to strong arm people to also read the verses that I like and join the madness.

What's up with that? Can't you just learn from the book what you think you've learned, and move on to other books? Start with science books.

[Tonus]

Cherry picking is a pretty common form of bias that we use in many different ways in our day-to-day life. So it's natural that people will use it even when it's pointed out to them, and have trouble recognizing that they're doing it even then. The brain has a whole raft of ways that it keeps us believing a certain narrative about our lives, and it takes quite a bit of effort to punch through it. Without the ability to stubbornly hang on to that narrative, we'd have very real problems functioning in human society, especially the current one where the amount of leisure time and choices at our disposal are far greater than in centuries past.

I think that anyone who was raised religious and really followed it devoutly and is now an atheist can recognize just how difficult it is to step back and analyze certain beliefs without burying their analysis under an avalanche of biases and fallacies designed to keep them on track. I would even say that for most of us, the decision to let go of god was made before we came up with most of the reasons for it.

[abaris]

Not in Alabama..... of course, there they fuck their sisters a lot which is pretty "biblical."

Don't they have sheep?