It is a shame you went through all that bother with perfectly good data only to draw a bogus conclusion that is a non sequitur. You can exercise the same sort of reasoning by listing all the boneheaded things written by Freud, Marx, and Adler only to sum it all up by saying, “Aint’ science grand?”.
Uzi: I find it extraordinarily difficult to see why people cannot grasp the idea that because something is alleged to have been said or done by someone, including God, in a 2000-year-old document, it is not necessarily therefor something that was actually said or done by that individual. Talking Books are a development from within my lifetime; before that, no Bible or Koran said a damned word about anything. It was all the product of people quoting them for their own purposes. And when we have today an example of a man claiming that God told him to go invade another country, it is not at all difficult to grasp the idea that some nimblewit 3000 years ago did the same damn thing, and attributed his own motives to God. God’s never told me to wipe out any Amelekites, and I’d venture to say the same is true for every Christian, Jew, or Muslim on this board.
The Exodus passage you quote was a problem in the King James Version translation, exacerbated by the fact that old King James VI and I actually did believe in witches, and wrote a book about dealing with them. Modern scholarship is assured that that passage deals with Israelite and Canaanite potion-makers who were as wont to produce poisons as love philtres, and that it is they who are condemned by it.
And I’m very interested why you, as a Canadian citizen, are allowing Canadian history to continue to record the loathsome treatment of Louis Riel and the Metis. Perhaps because you have no authority to rewrite those passages? Perhaps because it’s a historical fact that such things happened, and you want it to be perpetuated as a warning? Perhaps because it’s none of my business as a U.S. citizen why you Canadians do what you do?
The Bible is what it is, a collection of writings by a variety of human beings that purport to tell of their experiences with God. Most people take it as just that – a historical document, to be studied according to the rules of critical scholarship. Granted, there are some nimblewits who hold that every word is directly inspired by God, but that’s a bit of ignorance that we continue to fight. Likewise, the Quran is a collection of material put together after Muhammad’s death that purports to be what Allah told him to recite to the Faithful. And it too deserves exactly the same sort of critical treatment.
“Most people” do not believe in the theory of direct verbal inspiration – whether Christian or not. That case has been made time and again on this board, and it is about time that that canard stopped being flown; it doesn’t walk or quack like a duck.
You might want to clarify that. Maybe “King James I and VI” would have been a better phrase. 
Polycarp and Liberal are the supreme examples of religious liberals. I suspect Tomndeb is one as well, but I have never managed to determiine what his personal religious beliefs are.
You can read the same reasoning on any thread about the violence and cruelty of Islam or Christianity. The rivers of blood, cruelty and torture mandated and even commanded by the holy books are just somehow glossed over or pushed aside by the liberals. They cherry-pick their doctrines until they convince themselves that theirs is a religion of love and joy.
Meanwhile, religious conservatives in the US are using quotes from the Bible to stop gay couples from winning marriage rights, to bring prayer back into schools, to attack science teaching in schools with their creationist/intelligent design campaigns, etc . Much of the tragic US foreign policy and immense waste of lives is based on crackpot fundamentalist beliefs about the ingathering of Israel and Armeggadon and the Rapture and other deligets in the hallucinogenic Book of Revelation.
Islam continues to rage more and more violent and out of control. As recorded by Sam Harris in “the End of Faith” quotes a world-wide poll that found that an estimated 200 million Muslims would accept that suicide bombings against civilian targets (meaning discos full of young people and little old ladies at bus stops) is justified.
Religion is a weapon and a dangerous one. By serving as moral cautions and buffers to religion, religious liberals offer themselves as facades that mask the true extent of cruelty and inhumanity that is inherent in religion.
To some extent, they play the same role as segregationst politicians of the past century played in relation to the KKK. While the violence and bigotry of the KKK was enough to revolt most normal people, lovable, folksy, populist politicians in the South could defend the system of institutionalized racism by claiming that segregation was designed to protect “the Negro”. And if a few white hot-heads went a bit far, wellll, now that really wasn’t what the segregation laws were all about. That was just some extremists.
Just for fun, see the Bible’s Guide to Torture at this site:
Quick quiz: In what year did the Catholic Church, in a Papal Bull, condemn the use of torture: 1611? 1790? 1816? (Hint: It was very very late!)
Just for the record, in case you are wondering which Holy Book, the Bible or the Koran, contains more verses of violence or cruelty, the numbers are Bible: 857; Koran 494. However, since the Bible is a much longer book, the Koran is in fact the cut-off-hands-down winner on a percentile basis, with 7.92% of its verses dedicated to holy violence, maimimg and torture, as opposed to 2.75% of the verses in the Bible.
But the Bible often makes up in quality of cruelty and numbers killed what it lacks in individual verses. Take the case of King David, who “did what was right in the sight of the Lord … save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite” (1 Kings 15:5). Since he tortured the inhabitants of several cities, we must conclude that this is acceptable to the same God that liberals like Polycarp and Liberal worship.
“And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. 2 Samuel 12:31”
“And he brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes. Even so dealt David with all the cities of the children of Ammon. 1 Chronicles 20:3.”
Without religious liberals and “moderates” we would be forced to look directly at the reality, cruelty and fanaticism of religion.
Why do you hate humanity so much?
To whom is that question addressed?
Condider the following fact. The God that people like Liberal and Polycarp would have us worship is estimated to have killed millins of people, including innocent babies drowned in the great deluge, in Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. You can see an actual estimate of the number that God/Allah has killed or tortured at Dwindling In Unbelief: Who has killed more, Satan or God?
And this is taken directly from the Bible, the alleged word of God, so it is God himself confessing to these millions of killings!
And you think that I hate humanity??? 
Kidding, V.
LOL - good point! My referent was of course Jamie Stewart, Rex Jacobus Sextus-et-Primus, not “King James VI and myself.”
Valteron: Thanks. I don’t worship the Bible. I’ve been at pains to say that. Because somebody says “God said this” does not mean that God in fact did say it.
Are you familiar with the Jesse Dirkheimer case? If not, you should be – I guarantee it will be thrown in your face the first time you speak of gay rights to a bigoted audience. Jesse was a 13-year-old gay boy, who suffered an accidental death from erotic asphyxiation while having apparently consensual sex with two men in their 20s. And he’s the poster child for any anti-gay bigot out to slam you guys.
Should his death be held against you as a gay man? Because your approach is exactly the same: “You religionists are guilty of the evil deeds of anyone else who claims to have a religious belief and to act on it.” In short, you’re playing the same card as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on liberals, gays, and the Usual Suspects.
I don’t set my ethical standards on “the Bible” – I base them on particular teachings of Jesus, identified by Him as what’s proper for one human being to do as regards another. Because of the fact of who taught them and when, they are found in the Bible, along with a large mass of other stuff. But it’s not “cherry-picking part of the Bible” – it’s taking the standards taught by one Person whom I have taken as Lord and Savior, and trying to live them out in my life.
It’s perhaps like saying, “You can find true statements and false statements in Wikipedia. How then can I rely on it?” Well, the answer there is in comparative research, checking sources, being sure of the data you get. And the answer for me is not “Is it in the Bible?” but rather “Can we be reasonably certain that it accords with what Jesus taught?” And I use critical scholarship to determine if that’s the case or not.
Enough? Or do you want to pursue this further? Because the next person who accuses me of “cherry-picking the Bible,” I plan to accuse of “cherry-picking the Internet” because he believes some but not all things posted online are true.
But your source, Polycarp, IS the Bible. And you have a hard time showing that Jesus even existed from records other than the Bible. So you’re stuck with it, I’m afraid, and stuck with “cherry-picking.”
As to your threat, yes, I confess. I believe some of the things I see on the Internet, and not other things. I am an Internet “cherry-picker” and I wear that badge proudly.
Right. And, to go back to a point I earlier made, George W. Bush is claimed by his followers to be “winning the war in Iraq.”
Moral: Don’t believe everything you read. And don’t take someone’s claims at face value.
Who does this estimating? Who does this alleging? Why are you so all-fired intent on believing what they say?
I suppose that must be true since Poly and I approach practically every fundamental tenet of Christian faith differently, other than agreeing that the Risen Christ is God. Liberals of every stripe, I reckon, are identifiable by their rampant disagreement with one another.
No. It is not. And that point has been noted on many occasions on this board, recently, for example, here and (addressed directly to you) here.
The bible is the most important repository of belief, (as expressed in stories, essays, poetry, parables, and other forms), but it is not “the” source. The source is the continuing faith of the people as expressed in the bible as well as in many more stories, essays, poetry, parables, commentaries, and other forms that were not included in the bible for one reason or another. Belief in the teachings preceded the bible and continue alongside it. One may certainly reject the beliefs, but to claim that they “come from” the bible is simply wrong.
Cite?
Far as I know, they all derive from the Bible.
And the whole poinrt has been that your knowledge is seriousy insufficient. The Gospel of Thomas (not the infancy narrative) was quite possibly written before any but of the earliest of the letters of Paul. The Didache was contemporaneous with the writings of much of the New Testament. The commentaries of Clement I, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Papias, Ireneus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and a host of other were written long before a “New Testament” had been compiled (and, in a few cases, prior to the actual writings that were later included in the New Testament).
We have ample evidence of what many Christians believed, evidence that stands outside what we now call the bible. It is simply an error to claim that all Christian belief is taken from the bible–an error most frequently and reecently propagated by a select group of Fundamentalist Christians, many of whom demonstrate a rather tenuous grasp of history.
Let’s stick with St. Polycarp for just a moment. As far as I know, he wrote only one text that survives, dating from a century or more after Christ supposedly lived, and that text is heavily indebted to (and refers to) the New Testament. He was, again as far as I can recall, one of the earliest Xian writers whose work survives.
How’m I doing so far? Which of this information do you dispute? (Try to restrain the spittle in forming your answer, please.)
Tomndeb, I remember when I was being brainwashed in a Catholic high schools (by priests who managed to fit religious instruction in between the physical abuse and the sexual hrassment) that we went over that whole bit about how the Christian faith is also based on “tradition” handed down orally, not only on scripture.
I remember a student in the class who had the nerve to stand up for himself and remind the priest that he was the one who just a day or two ago had shown us how a “secret” whispered orally to one student at the front of a row would come out 95% different after being passed back only 10 rows. He was kicked out of class for having the temerity to question how credible “tradition” could be.
So there are other traditions and writings about Jesus besides the Bible? Big deal! You call that “evidence”? I have a question for you. Whom do you think has had the most books written about him, and the most people testifying to the reality of his existence? Jesus or Bigfoot (Sasquatch)?
In fact, there is even the “Patterson Film” that is alegedly of Bigfoot. Of course there are no electronic recordings of Jesus.
The resurrected Jesus was allegedly seen by a couple of dozen people at the most. Reports of Bigfoot sightings must easily number in the dozens, by now. At last count there were literally hundreds of Americans who claim to have been abducted by space aliens and to have later “recovered” these memories under hypnosis. And there are hundreds of millions of people who believe in astrology.
If you were to add up the four Gospels, the gospel of St. Thomas, and all the other so-called evidence you cite above, how would it stack up next to the volume of books, articles, TV programs, eyewitness reports, etc. etc. that “confirm” the existence of Bigfoot?
Let me put it another way. There are maybe a couple of billion Christians who believe that Jesus was the son of God. There are more than a billion Muslims who believe he was only a prophet, and that Mohammed is the final Prophet of God.
Those billion+ Muslims are just as sure of what they believe as Chrsitians are. They could cite just as much “evidence”. They have as many people who have been willing to die for their faith, which, by some leap of logic, apparently proves that a faith is “true”.
But logic tells us that two contradictory statements cannot both be right, although they can both be wrong. So “Jesus was the Son of God” and “Jesus was not the Son of God” cannot both be right. But they can both be wrong if there is no God.
So somewhere on Earth, at least a couple of billion people and maybe several billion are living and dying for a falsehood, filled with the certainty that there is ample “evidence” for their belief.
Makes you think, huh?
Valteron, look at the upside. Getting kicked out of class beats the hell out of being tortured into recanting, doesn’t it? We’re making slow progress here.
Very slow progress.
Right, right, fairly right, and wrong, in that order. No spittle needed. 
Nope, and clearly not. If a discussion to continues from where it actually left off, that’ll be fine with me. I suppose I could spend time helping you sort out your misperceptions, but the last person who pointed out that you were in error sparked off an explosion of nastiness I have no particular wish to repeat.
First of all, I never said that you were personally responsible for all the evil done by religion. I merely said that religious moderates serve as a facade and moral caution that helps give a face of sweet reason and kindness to what is essentially one of the most evil sicknesses ever to afflict the human mind.
Secondly, I am quite familiar with the Jesse Dirkheimer case because it is widely used by gay-bashing fundamentalists. It was trotted out to “counter” the Matthew Sheppard case although the two situations are completely different in terms of intention and hate crimes.
And guess whom these fundies worship? Jesus Christ! Guess whose name they throw in my face besides that of Jesse Dirkheimer? They tell me I must turn away from my “perversion” and be “saved” by Jesus Christ. Guess whom Falwell worships and quotes? Jesus Christ.
The last time I heard, the Pope has some serious connection with Jesus Christ. The same Pope who says that my spouse and I have a “grave moral disorder” and are performing an “intrinsic moral evil”. So who is right, Polycarp? You or the Pope? Or do you agree with him? If you disagree, how can the two of you reach such different conclusions reading the same text about the same Jesus?
Now, Polycarp, either you and they are using completely different gospels about two different Jesuses, or else it is possible to cherry-pick doctrines in both the old and new testaments. For example, the quote by Jesus about the bad branch being cut away and burned in the fire was much used to justify the Inquistion. And the quote about “I am come to bring a sword” has been used to justify untold violence.
Obviously, you and Falwell are reading two very different messages out of the same gospels. Somebody is cherry picking somewhere!