I think I see the crux of our lack of communication now. You’re talking about whether it’s possible for people to follow their own legal codes (regardless of any real moral justifiability), and critiquing them as moral codes, period. If you’re just defending the human ability to follow self-crated moral codes, then I do think it’s possible to follow them.I think it’s possible to follow everything mentioned by the OP, for that matter. I think ITR’s complaint that “we’re all sinners” is actually kind of evasive, since anyone could follow those rules if they wanted to. Saying “I’m not perfect” is just an excuse people use to ignore rules they don’t like.
It’s why God took the throne from Saul and gave it to David. God had told Saul to kill all the Amelikes because a few centuries before the Amelikes had thrown some rocks at the Israelites when they were on their way back from Egypt. Saul does what he’s told, but he takes the king hostage instead of killing him and spares some of the animals to use as sacrifices. God (speaking through Samuel) then gets pissed at Saul for disobeying him, and says that he is now “rejected” as king, and that he’s going to give the kingdom to Saul’s “neighbor” (David) instead. Then Samuel tells Saul to bring him the king of the Amelekites (who had personally done nothing to the Israelites, by the way), which Saul does, and then Samuel chops him up into pieces with a sword as a sacrifice to God.
No, it wasn’t like that at all. Some books were already more popular than others, but there was still considerable disagreement over others, and some popular books were rejected for theological reasons.
It was still a human committee voting on which books they wanted to include in a canon which would most conform to their own theological and political agenda.
I should think that you’ve nearly answered your own question. The Bible gives guidance. In other words, it tells us what we can expect to happen if we make certain choices and follow certain moral precepts. The basic idea is really no different than any other source that gives guidance. When the USDA issues nutritional guidelines, do they actually expect every person to eat exactly so many milligrams of potassium every day? No, of course not. They are given guidance, namely broad assessments of what makes a good diet. Is my school’s guide for teachers supposed to spell out exactly what every teacher does at every minute? No, of course not. It is a guide.
As for the idea that this doesn’t lay down clear, moral boundaries, and unleashes moral anarchy, such thinking is obviously wrong. All humans make a great number of our decisions in situations where boundaries are blurry and results are somewhat ambiguous. Yet that doesn’t stop people from making decisions. It merely requires us to think about the decisions we make. When people suggest that there’s no option between complete obedience and being let loose to rob and murder at will, they’re basically saying that there’s no possibility for applying thought to moral decision-making.
What can I expect to happen if I wear a hat in church? What can I expect to happen if I don’t kill my aunt for trying to get me into Eckankar?
So what rules does everybody actually have to follow? Any of them? You’re saying they’re all just suggestions and guidelines? Are any of them mandatory? If so which ones? How do you know which ones you have to follow and which ones you can blow off?
By the way, when Genesis says that all people knew right from wrong since Adam and Eve ate the fruit – is that true? Do I already know right from wrong or do I need to read the Bible to know which is which?
Oh, I agree that the Bible has good in it, especially the teachings of Jesus. In fact, I’ve been thinking lately about why monotheism, and especially Christianity, had to come about, and I think it was to give birth to humanism… to the idea that all human beings are, in a sense, of the same family and that you should love one another as fellow humans.
Of course, a lot of other crap gets dragged in there too.
How very providential of you. You sound almost like a believer.
I think if one is going to eliminate the guiding hand of the divine from the equation then I don’t think it’s fair to say that something existed in order to bring about what came later. Things come about to solve the problems of their day to the extent that the people can solve those problems.
Let me know when yuo find a Unitarian congregation that suits you.
Well, this answer will be a bit complex, but these people do exist.
Admittedly, you don’t hear a lot about people saying “I follow every word of the Bible”, in that form.
But there’s a whole lot of people in the world who say they live their lives by the Bible, and don’t specify which parts. And there are DEFINITELY a lot of people who justify many, many actions (some of which seem evil to me) by saying they are just doing what the Bible says.
Now, whether you’ll find such folks here on the SDMB is a good question. I’m guessing, no, not really. The closest we have is mswas and that’s not very close at all. I think mswas is making his points quite well, actually.
Essentially, the point of my OP is to provide the framework for the logical and rhetorical destruction of Biblical justification. Ideally, it would provide inspiration for those wrangling with the religious right to arm themselves with the quotes I’ve provided, and plenty of similar, and use them the moment anyone tries to duck behind the Bible in a debate.
Maybe even, in this dreamy world, force them to debat the issues.
MichaelJohnBertrand I am a Christian Influenced vague Deist more than anything else. I definitely do not follow those commandments. Actually the most difficult bit for me is the bits you put about usury. Being able to give utterly selflessly, that’s the tough one. I do certainly believe that that is the most humble and moral one can be, but I cannot live up to it myself. I do lend things without expecting it back, but not always.
Hmmm. I agree, my language was too anthropomorphic.
What I am getting at is that it seems like the teachings of Christ, and the religion that sprang up around them, had something in it for people… an appeal. Sure, eventually Christianity was spread by the sword and the torch, but initially, it had to survive entirely on its appeal to people. What would make someone abandon their nice comfy Zoroastrianism or whatever and become a Christian?
I think part of this was the appeal to a greater humanity. Christ’s basic message of “Be nice to each other” was actually quite radical in a day when you were often defined by race, tribe, sect, or clan, and where the idea that someone was your brother and you should love him simply because he is also a human being was quite alien to a lot of people. He’s a bloody Samaritan, and that means he’s my eternal enemy and less than a dog!
Also, Jesus was a reformer. He had the radical notion that many youth have, that they want to keep believing what they were raised to believe, and not just accept that in reality, it’s all a bunch of BS that nobody really believes and we all just pay ip service to while being evil bastards just the same. Hence his opposition to the Pharisees.
I’m no Christian. I don’t think there’s a God, Jesus was not His Son, etc etc. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see the wisdom in what Jesus said. I just see him as a wise man who had deep insight into humanity, humanism, and life.
I find it rather interesting that you expect reason and citations from people in other GD threads, when you’ve tucked your tail and deserted your own previous two GD threads when people pointed out that your OPs were disingenuous and uninformed. You didn’t even have the guts to stick around and defend your position in threads that you started. That’s pretty lame, and i don’t see why people should extend you the same courtesy that you refuse to abide by in your own threads.
Cite:
The Lies of Sam Harris - this thread currently has over 100 posts, yet you, the OP, deserted it after making a total of 2 posts when it was shown that your own OP completely misrepresented both Harris and the general argument regarding the Inquisition.
The Lies of Richard Dawkins, Episode 6: Saint Thomas Aquinas - this thread has over 450 posts, and again you managed a total of two posts (including the OP), and simply abandoned the thread when people began posting rebuttals to your argument and asking you to substantiate your claims.
If you expect people to engage with you in a serious way in Great Debates, a good way to start is not to use the forum as a place to drop a controversial argument and then run away without defending it.
ETA:
By the way, there are quite a few of us still watching the Lies of Sam Harris thread, in case you ever decide that your position is worth defending.
That’s because that’s what the original question was. If the original question is, “Why did God change his mind?”, answers which don’t assume a God but are still trying to defend the doctrine aren’t relevant to the question. That’s just talking about something else.
Like I said in post 19, I don’t expect anyone on this board to honestly defend things as if there were a real God and/or that Deuteronomy was a divine creation. But there was always the chance that there might be.
Well I thought I gave a pretty good response to that, in that Jewish tradition doesn’t seem to cleave to biblical literalism, but that they see it as a historical document. That God’s law, IE the Decalogue is separate from the consequences they set down in Deuteronomy. That there is a separation between God’s law, and how human beings on Earth enforce it.
Do you have a reason to believe that that particular passage was part of “God’s Law”?
Haven’t you kind of changed the word “give” to “lend”, though? Those are entirely different things. Just saying.
But you clearly didn’t answer his question, and by any measure I think it’s an essential one. Think about the ramifications of switching between answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (and it actually being the case) to that question. So you think it’s interesting, that’s great. Now could you answer the question concisely, please? I am genuinely curious.
Besides, with all the posters who have pointed out the serious flaws in the game you played in the OP, why would you come back after all this time to make my little comment an issue?
I think you’ve got it. Becausem at the end of it all, if you ever corner some of the most vocal and judgemental ones, and point out the things THEY do, what is that famous line?
Sounds like…
“do as I say, not as I do”.
So the rules are for you, but not for me. You have to be a good little robot, but I gots me a get out of jail free card, because I said the magical words (“I’m a christian”).
I wrote the OP. I regret its mocking tone and general lack of respect, and I didn’t make the point of it clear enough, but I think it still stands as a fairly categorical destruction of Biblical literalism, Biblical completism, and therefore a solid disproof of Biblical justification of any action, policy, or belief.
If you say “I believe this because it says so in the Bible” then I say “Really? Well it also says not to eat pork or shellfish, and to give all your money to the poor. Do you think people should do that too?”
And if you say “Well, that’s different”, I say “How?”
And if you say “I don’t follow that part of the Bible” I say “Why not? Tell me how you decide what parts to follow and what parts to ignore?”
And if you’re honest, you’ll say "I don’t follow any of it, I just use it to justify what I already think and believe, and ignore the parts that disagree with what I already think and believe. "
And then we can both agree that the Bible is therefore not relevant to any discussion of thoughts, beliefs, ideas, politics, and whatnot. You and I arrived our our beliefs the same way, through how we were raised, what we were taught, what we’ve observed about the world, and who we are.
You just have an impressive-sounding book to quote in order to ward ever having to truly defend your beliefs.
All of Deuteronomy is delivered as a speech by Moses to the people, based on what God has told him on the mountain.
Deut 1:3 – “In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the LORD had commanded him concerning them.” Everything following that is God’s commandments.
