No. That would be a different debate from your original post and one I would not argue with. Your debate was:
Bolding mine.
From there you quote a lot of the bible that talks about certain acts. None of the quotes you give say you won’t get into heaven.
But he doesn’t go on to say or you won’t get into heaven. As I said, the quotes you gave are for a holy life here on earth.
I quoted several passages that tell us that heaven is acquired by faith, not by acts.
Do people follow *all *the bible? Hell no. Does *any *member of *any *religion follow all their holy books. Hell no. Does any single person follow *all *the rules of their society? Hell no.
But your thesis that Christians won’t make it into heaven based on your passages is nonsense.
Never said any such thing. The fundamental mistakes being made her are very simplistic. Saying that I am acting like an elitist is like saying that if I tell you 7x2=14 I am being an elitist about math.
I never said any such thing.
Well 1 out of 3 ain’t bad.
Ok, comment away on the stuff I didnt say. I have no opinion on the things you made up.
You are just making numbers up here. Your child would have had to have been converted by someone else for this to occur. Tribal culture just really didn’t work like this.
That’s the problem, people are trying to apply a modern secular humanist ethic to a tribe of antiquity and as a result no real conversation can be had about it.
I did attack the argument and not the person. If one cannot view history without applying a modern ethic to it, they aren’t making a real argument about it. If that’s offensive, then shrug. People are welcome to find my arguments to be invalid for whatever reason too.
No, you clearly don’t understand just fine, the laws were set down as what is good. You have a separate idea of ‘ethical’ behavior based on your own modern context. These were the rules that they saw as being good. You can’t switch between moral relativism and moral objectivism at will. It has everything to do with Good because to a devoutly religious person the laws of God are ‘the Good’. If you know anything about religion at all, particularly Abrahamic faiths, then you know this to be true. If you dispute this, then, well, you’re just wrong, it’s not even about opinion at that point. There is a single correct answer here.
Yes, yes it is.
Your opinion of the ‘ought’ is really irrelevant here. I am more interested in the ‘is’ of this situation. What did they believe, and why did they set down these laws?
Your question about moral accountability is a very interesting one and a great argument against legalistic piety, but people set down their books of law for a reason. You can claim that their laws are not, ‘Good’, but that’s not really interesting or relevant. I don’t care how YOU feel about it. What matters is the motivation to write down these books of law.
Since when is it ‘My’ bible? I have several bibles, and I think they probably say the same thing that your bible says. I get most of my bible reading from Bible Gateway, like most people on the internet.
As I said it’s definitely an interesting argument.
Well, I guess it depends on whether or not you believe in Jewish exceptionalism, or more importantly whether the people living at the time believed that their God was really real, and they had an actual relationship with him via their prophets.
You’re hijacking the thread to soapbox your opinion. The thread is about the legal strictures placed by the bible, and not about your philosophizing of them. What you are talking about is a different thread.
Not at all. There is absolute no indication that James was killed out of obedience to the Mosaic Law. If you think otherwise, then could you perhaps cite the precise prohibition within the Mosaic Law with which he was charged?
The execution of James was ordered by the High Priest Ananus because James refused to denounce his brother Jesus as the “gate unto salvation.” This is NOT the same as saying that he was killed in accordance with Mosaic Law. And even if it were, it still does not support your objection. After all, Ananus was not a follower of Jesus, so his actions cannot be taken as a reflection of Christian belief.
I’m not sure if he missed the point, or is deliberately choosing to ignore it.
So, I will unlimber my own two by four.
It’s simple, ITR. The “righteous christians” are no shining paragons of excellence. They violate the Bible as much as everyone else. However, somehow, they have decided that their “crimes and misdemeanors” are less serious than anyone else’s.
Further, they hold other people in judgement, but make sure that no one judges them. It’s a double standard, and it’s hypocrisy. Right in “their” Bible, is one of MY favorite quotes: “Judge not, lest ye be judged according to thine own standards”. They sure violated THAT one.
Actually, if Jesus was born while Herod the Great was king (as Matthew says), and if we accept his age at death as 33 (which is not explicitly stated in the Gospels, but inferred from Mark’s claim that he began his ministry at 30 and John’s claim that his ministry included three Passovers), then the crucifixion would have to have occurred before 30 CE (because Herod died in 4 BCE…the 6th Century monk who devised the BC/AD dating system got his date for Jesus’ birth wrong).
Having said that, I never said that the dating of Paul’s letters were implausible. I was actually defending them as semi-contemporaneous with Jesus. Paul never claims to have personally met Jesus, though.
Wait a minute. Stoning your own children to death does not eat away at the fabric of society?
Questioning the god that tells you to stone your children to death eats away at the fabric of society?
So you’re telling me that questioning god is worse for a society than stoning your children to death. Is that what you’re telling me? It doesn’t sound right to me.
If you want to pretend that these sorts of accepted dates are uncontroversial feel free. I choose to recognize that different people have different views on these dates. It is not simply accepted that the stories of Exodus and Deuteronomy are pure mythology as you claim. Stating otherwise is argument by assertion.
Right, this is a controversial statement. You may be right, but you might not be. It’s not simply accepted that Moses is a fictional character.
Yea and? So what, tribes warred with each other for territorial supremacy in history. What’s your point?
Your separating of self-defense and conquest is simplistic to the extreme. Sometimes there is no difference, sometimes one has to choose between conquering and being conquered. They decided to conquer the territory in order to ensure their own safety, as many other tribes and states have done throughout history. Wishy-Washy liberal coffee house equivocation is really really boring. History was a nasty and brutal affair. As I said I don’t really care how YOU feel about what they did. I am more interested in what they did and why they might have done it.
To put it simply your personal ethical judgments are irrelevant. I don’t care if it is right or wrong in some objective sense. (according to you)
Made up and written down are two different things. They might have been the writing of an oral history. You are just making really sophomoric mistakes where if you gave it even a modicum of deeper thought you wouldn’t toss around these facts as though you know for sure what happened. Not everyone agrees with you, and it is possible that there was a period of time before Deuteronomy was written from the oral history. I’m not saying your facts are wrong, I am just saying you’re giving them a shallow analysis and are too willing to accept one party line. I know people who would school you in the arguments, who would know your arguments before you make them, who disagree with you. This whole, “I have studied this more than you.”, argument doesn’t hold water because I’ve heard many opinions from many people who have studied it more than I have that disagree with yours.
That’s plausible, but having exact dating isn’t particularly important. When dealing with ancient history, giving or taking a decade is perfectly acceptable.
BTW, I’d like to carefully point out that you haven’t provided any citation for this claim. Where does the Old Testament say that the Jews were commanded to stone to death ANYONE who promoted the teachings of false gods and false prophets? You’re building your case on this foundation, so I think that’s a fair question to ask.
The OP cited Deuteronomy 13, but that specifically mentions close relatives who entice people to worship false gods. Obviously, you can’t use that passage to claim that James the Just was executed in accordance with Mosaic Law – not unless you can show that Ananus was one of his immediate family members.
I can’t fault anyone for being troubled by Deuteronomy 13, but as mswas said, one should at least make an effort to understand the situation of the Hebrews before lambasting their views. They weren’t merely surrounded by people who taught innocently wrongheaded concepts of God. Rather, they were surrounded by the Chaldeans and other tribes that taught worship of Baal (aka Hadad or Moloch), a pagan deity who was worshipped through abominable acts of child sacrifice. This worship included rituals in which a fire was ignited within a hollow statue of Baal until it glowed red hot. Children were then placed within its fiery hot hands, and through some mechanism, the hands were lifted up to the statue’s mouth, causing the children to tumble into the statue and be consumed by the flames.
Now one might say, “But that doesn’t justify killing these Baal worshippers!” I think that’s an overly simplistic objection, especially when viewed in light of eternity, but that’s ultimately a separate debate. The point remains that the Jews were NOT commanded to kill anyone whatsoever who worshipped a different god. Rather, they were to prevent their own nation from being contaminated by such teachings – and when you see what Baal worship was like, it’s not hard to imagine why such extreme measures were commanded.
Moral relativist, my ass, I’m a moral absolutist, dude. What’s right is always right, what’s wrong is always wrong. What have I said that implies the slightest belief in moral relativism? It sounds like you’re the one trying to make a relativist argument
Tautology.
I know that saying “good is whatever God says it is” is tautological and renders the whole concept of good and eveil arbitrary and meaningless.
Notwithstanding your erroneous understanding of how and when they were written down, even your relativist “historical context” defense fails to anything but beg the question. Basically, this is a discussion about whether some of what the Bible alleges to be “good” is really good at all. Your defense is simply to say that it’s good simply because the Bible says so. That the fact that it’s in the Bible is proof in itself that it’s good. That’s no defense at all. It’s just an attempt to define moral good as synonomous with the Bible, and to accuse anyone who questions that of not understanding the Bible. It’s nonsense.
No, the motivation of the authors really doesn’t matter at all unless you think that morality can change. If you’re a moral absolutist (as I am), then what’s right is always right and what’s wrong is always wrong.
Don’t be silly. This thread is about the defensibility of the morality expressed in the Bible. Opinions on that morality are the point of the discussion.
Besides close relatives, it also mentions friends (13:6), doing diligent inquiry to track anyone down (13:14), and nearby villages that have fallen prey (13:15-16). Admittedly in the last case you’re supposed to use sword and fire to do the killing, but I’d generally mark that up as being just as much murdering someone as stoning them to death.
Well, like how I asked mswas to show me the expiration date, I’m going to have to ask you where God or Moses said that Deuteronomy 13 is only limited to false prophets who advocate human sacrifice. I don’t see where Zoroastrianism is put on the okay list. But maybe you do. I can certainly show that people claiming to be a false prophet were executed by the Jewish people a thousand years later, so it seems that they missed the child-sacrificers-only part as well.
I was going to pop into the thread to point out that the OP is naive to assume that conservative Christians would be shamed to learn that they are continually and intentionally sinning, but here you’ve gone and personified it. Of course Christians sin as much as they please; if all your sins are forgiven by a magic sky fairy, why wouldn’t you sin to your heart’s content? Like, duh.
Except, of course the Gospel of John, which was apparently dictated by that Apostle in his later years. The Gospel was also edited by John’s disciples.
Mark also was a contempory of Jesus. There is some doubt whether or not Mark was the sole or even the author of the Gospel attributed to him.
No, what I am saying is that no matter what the context is, killing your children is wrong. You are making, as was just pointed out, an argument based on moral relativity. Killing children is immoral today, but killing children was moral in some other culture.
The problem is that it then becomes impossible to have any kind of discussion about morality at all, because you can declare anything you want “moral,” and make up a justification for it. This technique can even be used to moralize the most heinous acts imaginable, like killing your own children. As you have just shown, if you twist your mind around enough, you can come up with a reason why killing children is moral.
So how are we ever supposed to have a conversation about morality? You are willing to declare horrible unfathomable acts “moral” to avoid the life-altering admission that your god is immoral.
Yes I am. But this still isn’t about your opinion. You might be right about there being an objective morality that stems from a mystical universal consciousness that is innate.
Doesn’t make it wrong.
And yet it is the foundation of Abrahamic faiths.
No that’s not what this discussion is about. It’s what you WANT it to be about so you can hobby-horse it, but it’s not about that. It’s about people being wrong in the context of their own religion. We aren’t attempting to determine what is objectively good, we are working at determining whether it is possible to live up to the strictures of the bible.
Your characterization of my views are well, a straw man. I am not accusing anyone of anything. You are the only one spouting your moral judgments here. I am talking about context.
Then you are just attempting to hijack this thread to soapbox your own views.
No, this thread is about whether or not someone can live up to the expectations set by the bible. Not about whether or not DtC agrees with the bible. Your opinion is irrelevant and uninteresting to me because I already am well aware of your opinion of the bible, as are I bet 99% of the posters in this thread.