yeah but people don’t ordinarily advocate, and in fact insist, on Jefferson’s moral authority. Nor do poeple get up and give homilies on Jefferson’s actions and decry the national lack of reverence toward Jefferson.
Well, it goes right along with my point: this thread is a thinly disguised attempt to equate Christianity with fundamentalism and then to bash it as a whole, for many (not all) of the participants.
What the Nicene Creed has to do with anything is that it is the core statement of faith of (nearly) every Christian group – even the ones who never use it formally in worship, it’s the “fleshed out” version of the affirmation they do use. (The exceptions are the Mormons, the JWs, the Nestorians, and some conservative protestant groups who vehemently reject “creedal” belief [but have their own shibboleths].)
What we have here is an attempt to identify “the God of the Old Testament” and find out where he is immoral and self-contradictory. And my repeated point that the Bible is not taken as a literally divinely inspired document, rather than a collection of myths, legends, prophecies, history, poetry, proverbs, and Cthulhu knows what else, except by one minority of Christians – the same ones who bash gays, want school prayers legislated, reject the Creed, etc.
So have at it, with my blessing. But don’t think you’re saying a damn thing of any value to anyone else. Most intelligent people know what the Bible is – a collection of Israelite literature, with the New Testament tacked on – and all you all are doing is proving that you can make fun of the fundamentalists.
No, I’m not. I doubt the 8 week old kid did anything at all. But the Egyptian Pharaoh did persecute the Jews, and, according to the morality of the bible, nations are rewarded or punished collectively based on the actions of their leaders. I doubt that’s the belief of most modern Jews or Christians, but that’s the belief of the people who wrote the bible.
I was conceding you the point.
Ok, I’ll amend it to “people who mistreated Jews or had the misfortune to be living in places the Jews wanted to take over”
Neither do I.
They don’t, though. They have a concept of God that’s had thousands of years to develop past that, and doesn’t really have much to do at all with the Israelite tribal god of Exodus and Judges. They readthe bible, but they read it in totally different ways than the people who wrote it read it. And, a few politically impotent Dominionists aside, the people who publically talk about how we need to “return to Christian values” pretty much just want to stop abortions and have kids pray in school. Say what you will about those goals, they’re not a call for genocide.
So go pick on the neo-pagans. 
I still think you’re seeing general Christian-bashing where it doesn’t exist. Look, even Der Trihs has posted in this thread, and he’s stuck to the topic of a literal OT God.
We’re well aware we’re just arguing against the minority who would take the Bible literally. I’m pretty sure Dawkins knows this, too. And no, we’re not “making fun of the fundamentalists” (at least not primarily). We’re debating. We’re seriously looking at the issue. It’s very tempting to just say “Wow, those guys are crazy. Everything they say can be discounted”, but what we’re doing is saying “Ok, pretty much all of this I don’t agree with, but they might have a point on this particular issue”. Isn’t that worth doing?
Hey, thanks a bunch for not really reading anyones posts, and misrepresenting what we’re saying, and basically just responding to nothing in particular. You’ve been a real peach.
Really? You REALLY believe this? That’s even stranger than believing the earth is 6000 years old, because at least that belief has the excuse that it can’t go out today and actually see easily that it’s wrong without learning some geology and stuff first. Your claim, which is essentially that the majority of Christians are liberal progressives that have basically a rarefied English professor’s view of Scripture, is beyond silly. The largest denomination of Christians is still the Catholics, and you aren’t even close to what most Catholics believe and are taught.
I keep seeing this excuse over and over and over again, and the unanswered question always is which parts of the Bible are fact and which are fable? You cannot make the claim without answering that question.
If it seemed that I literally meant that both stories were about Lot, I can see why you’d think I’d be confused. I simply meant that the essential story of a visitor or visitors with whom the men of the villiage need to get butt-funky, and whom the man of the house tries to placate by offering up his daughter (and another woman) is told twice in the Bible. In one, the outcome for the women isn’t as dire (unless you consider losing their mother and committing incest less dire) than in the other.
You don’t deny that these two stories are essentially similar, at least up to the resolution, do you?
Captain Amazing
This argument doesn’t really improve things, IMHO. Now the tortured baby is completely disregarded as a human being and is considered as nothing more than a lever to cause anguish and discomfort to the pharaoh. What makes it worse is that God is causing the pharaoh to resist so he can torture him some more. . .and kill more infants.
Regards
Testy
Question for Chrisitians: what happened to the other Gods mentioned/implied in the Old Testament? Was the OT wrong, did they disappear, or are they still here?
You can’t have it both ways. Either (regarding Christianity) the Bible is the fundamental guiding moral document that Christians claim it to be (regardless of the factual veracity of the stories within) and its flaws are inherent in the religions based upon it–including its psychopathic, often brutal, unnecessarily vindictive deity whose capabilities and attitudes change from book to book–or you pick and choose what you want arbitrarily as it suits your own needs at the time, and cite this docuement as authoritative justification for whatever you do in the name of said deity.
Either way, it’s flat moral relativism, an ability to rationalize whatever you do or believe in terms of a faith that is as factually groundless as the Tooth Fairy. The real offense of Christianity and of religion in general isn’t that a few radicals go overboard and start emulating their god’s described behavior; the problem is that it is intellectually dishonest, and demands that its followers tune out any conflicting ideas or observations. Whenever there’s conflict between faith and observation, it’s Somebody Else’s Problem in bright pink polka dots. You can cite the Nicene Creed all you want; it doesn’t make the ugly bits go away but merely fade into the background. With what’s left, you’re either adhering to some non-God authority’s arbitrary standard (and who bells the cat on what is proper and improper there?) or you’re constructing your own belief system; the latter being a worthwhile endeavor in it’s own right, but not when you justify your actions not upon personal responsibility or a rational judgement but because “the Bible says so”. One might with equal authority invoke the Lord of the Rings or Thomas the Tank Engine as your guiding moral treatiese, and with less confusion and inherent contradiction.
Stranger
Haven’t you read The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul? They’re all enjoying clean linens. Being a god is such nasty, dirty work.
Stranger
What do you want it to be? If you want to make the claim that it’s ALL fable, fine, go ahead. I do. Every Sunday that I sit in the pew and nod in agreement with the literalist priest’s homily, I tell myself, “Yes, it’s a very good moral lesson based on a wonderful fable.” The Bible is Modernist in that the reader completes the art as it pleases him or her; it’s Victorian in that the author invariably injects himself into the text; it’s Romantic, Renaissance, Restoration, Medieval – it’s the most elastic and shape-shifting body of literature in history.
Y’know, these threads always start out with a narrow, specific question (in this case, representing Dawkins’ idea on a malevolent God in the OT) and as the believers start answering point by point, the more rabid among the disbelievers start broadening the question, and then when the believers start chasing down the broader points, the disbelievers start accusing the believers of talking off-topic.
Is the God of the Old Testament a cruel and genocidal God? Uh, yeah, and I don’t think anyone will argue that he isn’t. But it’s just a mythology, people! Yes, a few of our fellow citizens need a simple answer to complicated questions, so they insist on taking the Bible literally. Most of us don’t. And there is far more scholarship devoted to the mythology of the Bible than there is room for on the SDMB servers. So rather than slapping around believers on SDMB, why not delve into some of that scholarship? I’d recommend, as a first step, becoming a patron of your nearest college or university library and logging on to EBSCOhost. It’s not complete, by any means, but it’s a good place to start.
I’m not trying to find out what I believe-I figured that out many moons ago. I’m trying to figure out what the the Christians on this board believe, so that we can have some sort of base to start these conversations on.
But some do. The question I ask is simple because the cheap excuse I always get when the conversations come up is simplistic-it always boils down to “Some of it is parable and some is fact.” It seems to me that everything in the book is “fact” until the evidence gets in the way, then either the evidence is dismissed as a work of the devil, or the “fact” becomes fable.
We fully and completely understand that. Please take a moment to get that. So few “believers” seem to have been able to understand that to this point, so I’d appreciate you taking the time to try …
So, why does the mythology in your book of worship describe such a cruel and genocidal deity for you to worship? Even a mythology that is part of the Holy Book should reflect or represent qualities that you would like to worship, shouldn’t it?
If it is so far from an accurate picture of God that only a few zealots think it accurately describes God, why is it in there? Shouldn’t adherents to the religion try to get it right so that fewer zealots misunderstand God? If you don’t, don’t you bear some responsibility for misdeeds carried out in the name of God through a misunderstanding based on a bit of figurative text?
Or could it be that progressive adherents are not actually as prevalent as you’d have us believe, and that a discussion among a wider group of believers than are reflected here at the SDMB would paint a different picture of what God is all about and how much one must actually pick and choose which bits of text to accept and which to reject?
IMHO, the God of the Old Testament is obsessed with breeding. Genesis reads like a post-apocalyptic science fiction story in which the handful of survivors place the highest possible priority first on breeding more humans as fast as they can, and then on eugenic selection. Examples:[ul][]The Flood wipes out all but the most select specimens of man and beast[]God says to multiply and replenish the Earth[]The greatest promise God can give to Abraham is that his descendents will be as numerous as the stars in the sky[]The worst threat is that someone’s “generations will be cut off” (their lineage will die off)[]Lot’s daughters have incest with him so that he will have male descendents[]Any sexual coupling that doesn’t make babies is condemned: homosexuality, bestiality, etc.[]Onan is condemned for practicing birth control[]The rules of when a woman is “clean” to have sex coincide with her peak of fertility[]At-risk behavior such as promiscuity that would transmit venereal diseases is condemned[]Interbreeding with non-Hebrews is condemned, to the point that the Canaanites were to be exterminated without even taking slave women or adopting infants.[/ul]
Hmm, very interesting! Especially when you consider that, according to evolutionary biologists, that’s precisely what Nature is obsessed with.
If you maintain, as I do, that gods have been created in man’s image, it is not surprising. With a much shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality, and reliance on family rather than government or investments to survive, times were pretty hard and just continuing the species quite a challenge back then. Such concerns were undoubtedly high on the list of priests, prophets and rulers. Certainly planetary overcrowding and depletion of resources was not.
Personally, I didn’t like him on Hogans Heroes or Family Feud and I don’t plan on reading his book.
Further, Tarkin had good reason - notwithstanding Leia’s denials - to believe that the planet was an enemy stronghold. See: The Case for the Empire, from the Weekly Standard.
A metaphor?