Where are you going with this? Does your ruling depend on his actual religious beliefs?
If he believes that the superior authority of the verses depends on the fact that they were literally burned in stone (rather than merely that the Bible says they were), then he was witnessing. He hasn’t made what he believes clear, but it seems to me that his posts imply the former. I would like him to clarify.
I think that you are wandering into sticky territory here. It’s like the rule on insults. It doesn’t matter if you are joking so Modes don’t have to spend any time deciding if it’s a joke or not. Do you really want to set a standard where atheists can make certain comments that, for example, Christians can’t? A religious test.
Responding to what the Bible says has no bearing on what I might or might not believe. If I spoke of Greek Mythology, would I need to profess a belief in the matter to do so?
I was answering a GQ question. I could care less whether the members here choose to believe, accept, endorse or reject the Bible, and I’m certainly not proselytizing by posting here.
In its simplest form, the Bible is an early history document. Is it true, accurate and without error? I sincerely doubt that. In the context of a Biblical question, it’s going to be hard to answer the same without referencing what is written in the Bible. Additionally, there are volumes of work that define the Biblical writings, not to mention the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, which I also have, which further shed light on the Bible. The latter may not be canonical, but they contain written record of life in those times. Is any of that supported by archaeological evidence? Probably not at all. Is it relevant to a discussion? I believe it certainly is. Is it 100% accurate? I doubt it. That should not defeat the ability to present it though.
So stating that something was written, etched, scratched, burned, carved, whatever, in stone, by God, is merely relating what is in the written history contained in the Bible. If you’d rather I preceded such a statement with a disclaimer, than so be it. Perhaps it’s better to just resign to the fact that it’s futile to enter such discussions and avoid them all together, because it would simply be too burdensome to do add said disclaimer to such statements in the future…
The rule against witnessing in GQ is a longstanding one, and I don’t think it’s been a particular tough one to enforce. If you see an atheist witnessing in GQ, please report it.
Whether he was witnessing or not, he’s indicated here that he wants the thread moved to GD so it can include “faith based dialog,” which I don’t think is a good reason to move it.
If you won’t answer the question directly, I don’t think further discussion with you on the matter is going to be productive.
You feel your question was a fair one? I’m having trouble seeing the fairness in it.
Where in there does God say “and therefore these bits, the bits I put in stone, are most authoritative!”? Colibri’s right, you’ve added your own gloss on it, which would have been fine if you used Irishman’s phrasing, but not the way you did it. IMO.
Is it within the bounds of acceptable behaviour in ATMB for me to opine that this question is inane?
And please allow me to elaborate now that I have a few more minutes.
In my view it is possible to say “This statement is unacceptable for this forum”. There might be grounds for disputing the ruling, but obviously it’s well within a moderator’s purview.
It is not however reasonable to say “This statement is unacceptable for this forum if you hold Belief B”, in my opinion.
Still less is it reasonable to say “…and I will presume for these purposes that you do in fact hold Belief B unless you specifically deny it”.
Meanwhile, Mr Dibble, you may disagree that commandments burned in stone by God have more weight than others, but it doesn’t follow that someone who does reach this conclusion (it seems an easy one to reach intuitively, for me; I don’t necessarily say that it’s right) is attempting to sway someone else to his religious beliefs - especially since the entire conversation is about what the Bible says or doesn’t say.
I wasn’t commenting on whether it was witnessing or not, but that it’s not a statement of fact, and we have other forums for statements of opinion or debates on textual interpretations. That the Bible says they were carved in stone is a fact, that that means they’re more important is an opinion, but Morgenstern didn’t phrase it as opinion.
Anyway, everyone know when God thinks something is really important, he does it on golden tablets.
All this Ten Commandments stuff; for clarity’s sake, could we stick to the book and have no mention of the movie?
I think there should be separate threads on the movie and the book with no mention of the book allowed in the movie thread.
And OMG the movie discussion should be clearly labeled “NO SPOILERS”
ETA: IMMO (In my meaningless opinion), the thread could have been salvaged in GQ if everyone involved had the discipline to not fight the implicit hypothetical that “whether you regard the contents of the Old Testament to be whack-a-doodle woo, poorly written fiction, or God’s divine word, what do the literal contents of the Old Testament say about killing babies and raping women?”
I suspect that someday, Ask Google version 99.0 would be able to answer this with more clarity and less animosity than this place.
I’ll never understand why this board caters so to the Illiturgy. :rolleyes:
The fact is, the Bible does present those verses as more authoritative and binding in exactly the way Morgenstern says. I don’t think the tablets, or God, or Moses, or even the ancient Israelites ever existed, but I don’t think that should mean that I get to point this fact out and Morgenstern doesn’t. And I likely would have pointed it out the same way he did, without specifying whether it was describing actual events, specifically because it was in GQ, and the question was What does the Bible say? not What do you believe really happened?
I agree. The OP, whom I notice has not come back to clarify his somewhat vague request in the first place, asked for bible verses to back up his claim. A poster offered bible versus that completely contradict his claim. Where does archeological evidence come into play? That and the beliefs of the poster are completely irrelevant to the discussion.
And of course a thread in GD as to whether a rape culture existed in Ancient Israel.
The (a) question is, and is asked and batted around in the Talmud, is if Moses came down from Sinai with those [del]15[/del] 10 Commandments, what about the rest of the Torah?
It was written between the commandments. I think that was the agreed upon closer.
Frankly I’m surprised that thread, or this one, hasn’t been hijacked for that.
I think Morgenstern’s initial comments did sound like witnessing. I think the way Irishman phrased it did not. There’s a difference between “The way this happened shows X” versus “The way this was portrayed as happening shows X.”
“The way Hillary Clinton broke the law shows us something.” This is a claim about what it shows about Hillary Clinton.
“The way Fox News shows Hillary Clinton broke the law shows us something.” This could be a claim about Hillary Clinton, but is more likely a claim about Fox News.