Oops, I missed this before because of the coding error.
I retract the implication that you lied about holding offensive, bigoted, poorly founded, and wrong opinions. I don’t think you lied, I think you do hold offensive, bigoted, poorly founded and just plain wrong opinions. You’ve made an excellent case for that.
Your mistake is that though it is true you hold those opinions, that has no bearing on the truth of the opinions themselves.
Don’t bother to tell me, just do it.
I tried, I really did. For page after page of your crap. I regret that I ultimately failed to play nice, and I apologize to the readers of this thread.
It’s not clear from the question how much you understand logic.
Assumptions are not logical or illogical. Informal logic (the kind we use in these debates) serves to connect assumptions to conclusions. We state our assumptions and a train of inferences ending in conclusions.
Provided the inferences are valid (which is by no means automatic), we have several choices. If we accept the assumptions and the validity of the inferences, we ought to accept the conclusions. If we do not accept the assumptions, we are not obligated to accept the conclusions. If we accept the validity of the inferences but reject the conclusions, we ought to reject at least one of the assumptions.
All informal logic can really do is lay out all the propositions that are connected to each other by logical entailment. Some of these may be astounding and not apparent from the assumptions. Then we can decide whether to accept the whole lot or reject the whole lot. In this case, it appears that you wish to reject your opponent’s assumptions, but are insecure about doing that and are instead trying to find a flaw in their reasoning. Screw that, just reject the assumptions. You can do that, you know.
In answer to your specific question, “on Tuesdays” is as logical an assumption as “all the time”, “God didn’t actually say that”, and “there is no God”. It might be the kind of assumption that you would automatically reject (be my guest), but it doesn’t affect the logical validity of the inferences based on it. Valid arguments are not true, they’re just valid arguments. They’re only true if all the assumptions are true.
I think the problem is that you haven’t sufficiently explained how you can:
a) believe in the Bible when those atrocities are clearly approved of, yet reject them and still call yourself Christian.
or
b) state that the Bible has no meaning, but still believe in it.
I’m not sure if I can parse this. Maybe you don’t know that Christianity is about Christ, not Bible.
Who said that? I said something like: even though we cannot agree on the precise intended meaning of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, we have options besides throwing out the entire document.
Newton Meter, the argument you’ve made so far is that we cannot possibly know what god was talking about. If this is the case, then he might as well not have said anything.
No, that’s not exactly my argument and I disagree completely with your conclusion. First, your argument must presume that God has spoken to us. If that’s the case, I can’t just ignore him; just as I really can’t see to throw out the 2nd Amendment because it’s problematic. I also reject your conclusion that we should give up trying to understand God because it’s difficult. The most satisfying things in my life have all been difficult, I see no reason to expect this to be otherwise. You can’t get me to ignore God based on the assumption that he has spoken to me.
The argument I’ve actually made so far is that if you expect anyone to reject their idea of God, you have to suggest a better alternative, not a worse one. The program seems to be:
Find believer
Describe awful God.
Convince believer that awful God is true God.
Ask believer to reject God because he’s awful.
You seem to expect people to get all the way to 3; but asking them to accept 2 merely on your say-so is ludicrous. It might work if they’re stupid; but most of us find the presumption that we’re stupid to be at least mildly offensive. Please don’t enter a debate on the assumption that your opponents are stupid.
You’re stuck with 2. It’s the weak spot of your argument, but you can’t skip it either. You can’t make a halfhearted attempt here. You have to convince me that there truly exists an awful and evil God. If not, I don’t have to accept your conclusion. And if so, I’m gonna reject your conclusion anyway and get down an start praying right now.
My idea of God has evolved due to readings and conversations with friends and clergy. But I’m not sure why I should ever reject it in favor of something worse. Especially when it’s patently obvious the ultimate goal is to get me to reject him completely.
It’s an intellectually impoverished and transparent tactic. And it doesn’t work, so why bother?
While this is one of the wonderful aspects of Judaism (that it evolves over time, and is not a slave to ancient forms and requirements), it actually has no relevance in an argument with Christians who, following their master, must abjure “commandments of men” which “make void the word of God” (Mat. 15:6, Mark 7:8). Do the considerations you mention above apply also to the stoning of adulterers? If so, it would be an example of historical innacuracy in the New Testament and thus worthy of note. Were the traditions reflected in the Talmud current in the early first century CE? In John 18:12, “The Jews (!, but John is rather anti-semitic) replied, 'We are not permitted to put anyone to death.” I’ve read that the Sanhedrin still had the official power to punish Jewish wrong-doers during this period- could this be a reference to the tradition you’ve sited above? Or is it a reference to the Passover holiday? Could it be historically inaccurate?
Hmm… If there were some supernatural power that could keep me from hurting other people, but would otherwise allow me to be free, I’d accept the yoke. The problem is that people from differing (non)religious backgrounds have differing ideas as to what is to be avoided. Most skeptics (I assume) do not think that having lustful thoughts about members of the preferred sex is an act of evil, while most (if not all) Christians do (provided the thoughts take place outside of wedlock). Anyway, this is rather beside the point; the perfect state towards which all Christians aspire is Heaven, is it not? In Heaven one is incapable of committing acts of evil, correct? Do you lack free will, then? I’ve never understood the free-will objection; an omnipotent being can surely create a world where His creatures have free-will yet never choose to do evil- there are an infinite number of degrees of goodness, correct? We could never exhaust the choices available to us in doing good, ergo the absence of an ability to commit evil cannot be rightly seen as a restriction. Beyond this, you are still assuming that we have Free Will- on what grounds do you reject Calvinism? How does a God who creates from outside of time avoid creating a predetermined world?
Welcome to the SDMB, Luc Clark. Nice posts. Interesting questions. The case against Biblical innerancy is, I feel, a strong one. The vast difference between the punishments required in the OT, and the inability (due to their own inherrant sins) of anyone to throw the first stone in NT seems to be an obvious contradiction.
Contradictions aside, the reading of the OT as an instruction manual requires barbaric and unjustifiable death penalties for ridiculous crimes. The writer of those passages does not deserve worship. Rape a woman and you get to marry her for fifty shecklings! Kill your son if he acts up! Kill your new wife if she wasn’t a virgin. Proponents of Biblical innerancy must defend these disgusting and barbaric ideas. It’s a shame they do.
Born of ignorance and propagated with conceit, religion is man’s greatest folly. Knowledge and humility make such better guides.
DJ, I see that you’re still on your rampant “The Bible commands you to kill your bride if she’s not a virgin” tack. Never mind that this has been disproven every which way. Never mind that the passage says nothing about virginity, and never mind that it actually refers to adulterous acts that occur during marriage. You’re still not willing to give up your thoroughly refuted claim, lest this make your argument appear weaker.
I don’t normally speak this way to the people that I debate with, but I find your severe lack of honesty to be incredibly tiresome.
More like “Biblical Inerrancy” requires some pretty awful things be justified. People do believe in Biblical Inerrancy, even if the active folks in this thread do not. I am not attacking you personally, I am attacking the idea of inerrancy whether you or others here defend it or not.
What’s that? I can’t here you. Did you say “Cite?”??? Sure thing chief:
That is the part about the non-virgin. That is the passage I was talking about when I mentioned virgins. Jesus seems to be adressing the issue of stoning in general in the part in the NT. Stoning as a puishment, so any situation where stoning was the answer now requires the throwers be sinless instead of just men (the only pre-requisite in the OT). You seem to disagree, but that does not make me a liar. I keep getting accused of lies, but none can be produced. You go ahead and present the specific lie I said (let’s go one at a time here). I do not think that you can.
Whether or not you hold the idea that every word of the Bible is a commandment that must be obeyed is not the end all be all. There ARE those who hold this position (as has been cited), and I am within my rights to attack those positions without flase accusations of being a liar. I’m really surprised you guys keep stooping to such a thing. If there is one thing I have always been, it is brutally honest.
What trully disturbs me about the Biblical passage you just quote is that the girl has to _prove_ he innocence (i.e. virginity)- a task which no doubt would have proved to be extremely difficult.
Islamic Law (Qu’ran 4:15) is much more careful in this regard, requiring four witnesses to the same overt act in order to secure a conviction. The punishment (permanent house arrest) is also much lighter.
My apologies, DJ. I had confused this point with the previous discussion we had regarding the adulterous woman who was about to be stoned by a lynch mob (in defiance of the Deuteronomical laws).
However, even with regard to Deuteronomy 22, you are overstating your case. Note that the penalty does not merely apply to a woman who is not a virgin. Rather, the passage clearly applies to a woman who is not a virgin and has concealed this fact until the wedding night. In other words, the penalty is not for the premarital sex itself, but for entering into the marriage – a sacred and lifelong commitment – under gross and willful pretenses. In effect, this meant suckering the groom in with false pretenses and a false promise. So while one might question the need for such a harsh penalty, the crime itself is more severe than what you make it out to be – especially since betrothal was not something to be dissolved as lightly as people do nowadays, and especially since sexual infidelity can have tremendous and disastrous consequences for one’s family and community. Given how easily the Israelite nation was absorbing the customs of its neighboring tribes, one can more readily understand why such harsh measures were put in place.
JThunder said: “However, even with regard to Deuteronomy 22, you are overstating your case. Note that the penalty does not merely apply to a woman who is not a virgin.”
You are quite correct. It applies to any bride who doesn’t bleed on her wedding night.
You might think that an omnicient god would have noticed that a large (30%?) percentage of women don’t have rupturable hymens, either from birth or as a result of physical exercise, and might have mentioned this fact to Moses, before it condemned a lot of brides to a hideous death. But I’m sure the theists on the board will find a good reason for this minor oversight.
No, it refers to women who marry under false pretenses. The context clearly refers to women who aren’t discovered to be non-virgins until the wedding night – thereby indicating extended, premeditated deception on her part, prior to entering a lifelong, sacred commitment. It does not refer to merely being a non-virgin – otherwise, the passage would not have to make mention of the wedding night.
Then what are the “tokens of her virginity” that her parents are supposed to display? Certificates of virtue, signed by Moses, maybe?
Obviously the verse is talking about bloody sheets; how else would the dissatisfied husband fail to find “proof of her virginity?”
So: Genocide (as being authorized by God for one nation upon another) is being put forth by some here to illustrate that the God of the Bible is evil and barbaric. If he is evil for that, just what is He for passing the sentence of death upon all men (as the same Bible states): “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return?”
I see. Well if you re-read that part of the thread you will see that when zev brought it up I checked and conceded that he was correct: the two passages were not discussing the same violation. I then further went on to say that I still felt there was a contradiction. Jesus was not talking just about that law, he was talking about the punishment of stoning in general. I did say all of this.
There is more. It also orders her to prove thusly: “Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town”. The fact that Mapache points out is a great one. Not all women will bleed even if they ARE a virgin.
Jeez. One can certainly understand it. One can also be repulsed by it with remarkable ease. You’ve turned it into a racism thing and I wasn’t implying that at all. More like a chauvanistic and cruel thing. The racism is from other passages. It’s interesting you see in this passage an appeal to keep other races away.
So just to be clear: Concerning this passage and the several others from Deuteronomy that have ben quoted in this thread
Are you of the opinion that these words should be considered the exact words of that god named God?
Do you feel that if they are the true word that they should be followed to the letter?
Do you subscribe to the idea that the Christian text “The Bible” is incapable of error in it’s suggested morality, predictions & historical accuracy?