It really is too bad that it’s so hard to get a new email address.
No, I know. I’m just saying that there are other reasons somebody might have an 88 in their e-mail, and it doesn’t neccesarily mean they’re a Nazi.
He can do whatever he chooses, as long as he deletes your thread at your request?
You might want to consider that the reason that you are on the wrong side of a one-sided dog and pony show is not due to the zionists that control this board…
Did you think that on this message board, only the OP gets to express an opinion?
You might look into “myspace”…
Heh. When trying to guess why “88” might be neo-nazi gang sign, I thought along those same lines. I have had a lifelong interest in WW2. I am not learned enough in it to make a living off it, though. 
I’m aware of that. However, the comparison being made wasn’t between Yahweh and the Greek Gods, but between the Greeks/Romans and the Bible. Which is why I said they lacked the power, as well as the inclination. And the OT version of God in general is a more relentlessly nasty character than the Greek Gods, not that they are something I’d like to run into.
I’m well aware of that. That doesn’t change that according to the myth, God did inflict the need to work, the pain of childbirth and so on.
Well, since the reference was to the Bible and not actual historical Hebrews, it’s mythological nature is beside the point. And as I said, the Romans did more damage, but they were also much more powerful.
While I know they practiced human sacrifice, I don’t recall them doing so in large numbers. Also, the Romans eventually outlawed human sacrifice. And the OT calls for killing people over religion for a variety of reasons; it just doesn’t call it a sacrifice. And whether you are killed because Yahweh hates gays ( or wear mixed cloth, or whatever ), or you are killed to thank Mars for victory, you’ve still been killed for religion.
And as Polerius says, it’s an important practical distinction that people actually still take the OT seriously. There ARE people who think we should start killing people just like the OT demands, and impose it’s rules on everyone; no one is trying to impose pre-Christian Roman laws and religion on everyone.
Why don’t Jews and Christians simply remove the sizable amount of text they disagree with?
When the Greeks became Christians, they didn’t keep around their old 12-Gods-of-Olympus “holy books” for historical continuity, and told people “Oh, that stuff? Nobody believes in it any more, but we keep it there”.
If Judaism and Christianity have evolved to the point where there are several parts of their holy books for which people say “Oh, that stuff? Nobody believes in it any more, but we keep it there”, why not just simply remove them?
They don’t stone people because uniformed people with guns will throw them in jail cells if they do. And there are plenty of people who’d destroy cities for God if given the power.
You’re totally forgetting the appeal of tradition, Polerius. People pick and choose what they like from their religions, but the idea that this is revealed truth (of some sort) that has persisted for centuries or millennia is very appealing. People have edited Bibles, or course, but if the RCC chopped out tons of stuff, the whole thing would seem very modern and lacking in grandeur.
-Marley
Who belongs to an almost-50-year-old religion that borrowed a bunch from the Ancient Greeks 
This I will never get.
- If it is revealed truth, then shouldn’t you accept all of it?
- If you only accept part of what the book says, then you are admitting, implicitly, that not every word in that book is revealed truth. (Unless you do believe that God revealed it, but you reserve the right to disagree with God about whether to stone gays to death)
Can I ask the name of the religion?
Maybe I shouldn’t have said “revealed truth,” because I think that may have a specific meaning here. But not everybody believes it’s meant to be taken literally, and not everybody thinks it came from God’s own Bic. And if you don’t believe that, than leaving out the parts you don’t like is no problem. It’s only the people who claim to believe in the literal truth of every signle word who have a real logical problem.
Discordianism. Hail Eris!
Zeus fucks.
Well, the issue was that Judaism was “bad” because of the bad stuff happening in the mythology contained in the OT - and thus that the influence of their religion on modern society was also “bad”.
Never mind that NO JEW BELIEVES IN STONING ADULTRESSES ANYMORE - that is, that modern-day Jews don’t as a matter of fact base their behaviour on the objectionable bits of the OT, any more than modern-day Europeans conduct themselves as the ancient Romans and Greeks did. Certainly Jews (and our society at large) is heavily influenced by the OT - just as modern society is also heavily influenced by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
In fact, modern day Judaism is based more on the Talmud than the OT, in terms of day to day religious observance. The notion that modern Jews go around acting out the OT = wrong, and what is “funny” is the ignorance of seemingly arguing otherwise.
Does he ever! Whew. fans self
If a country like, say, the US, had on its books a law that says “Adulteresses will be stoned to death”, don’t you think there would be a call to remove it from the books, even if the law was a few hundred years old and never enforced?
Or would people say “Well, it’s been there so long, and people obviously disagree with it, so why bother removing it?”
Well, Jews approach it this way: the books of the OT are in fact only half of what was revealed by God. The other half is the oral tradition, which supplements, explains, and in some cases modifies the meaning of those books.
This oral tradition is in turn written down later and forms a part of the Talmud, along with commentaries and learned analysis.
A person can no more comprehend the word of God based on a bare reading of the OT than one can comprehend “the law” in a common-law country simply by reading the constitution documents. You need a whole lot more.
Moreover, no human can be sure that they truly understand what God meant by whatever is writen down - it may have a symbolic or cryptic meaning; it may have been true at one time but is no longer (see: Temple rituals).
I take it that you haven’t tuned in to Dr. Laura recently.
Sorry if I missed this, but why all the fuss about stealing?
Because women should be fairly bought and paid for, goddammit!
See my post above.
Until you have read the Talmud, you don’t in fact know what “the law” in fact is.
You are in the position of someone reading the US Constitution (but not the Amendments and years of case-law) and stating confidently "oh boy, you Americans are really terrible people - you have slavery! Look at article 1 section 2! It clearly states as follows:
“Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
“Other persons” are slaves! It is still in your very Constitution! Oh My! Horrors!
Respectfull cite request.
But the Old Testament isn’t the basis of any law books. Just because Deuteronomy says that if you dig a pit and your neighbor’s ox falls into the pit you have to pay for the ox doesn’t mean anything. And the Old Testament is a 3000 year old document. You can’t pretend it didn’t say what it said, because it did. So rather than getting out your scissors and cutting out the parts of the Bible you don’t like, you simply teach your kids that you can’t take the Bible literally, and it was written by human beings, not by God.
And sure, you can find people who claim to hold every word of the Bible to be literally true, but as Captain Amazing points out, they don’t usually act like they would if they held the Bible to be literally true.
Given that something like 85% of Americans self-identify as Christians or Jews, if modern Christians/Jews really still believed in stoning people, it would be the uniformed people with guns who would be doing the stoning.