...and thanks for the badge!!

[Kijutsu]

God is perfect in every single way yet he fµcked up his first book, that's amusing, I guess most publishers are superior to him then.

[chrisd]

Lol! You have a point there.... Maybe God is the publisher of the Universe.....

[sinewav]

All you posters from the peanut gallery, pipe down (sorry for the idioms). This is Word's chance to shine by explaining how the questionable passages in the bible instruct you to be a better person if they are explained in the proper context.

Remember, once you start saying certain rules only applied to certain people without proof, once you start making assumptions about what God intended, you give up any hope that your God is a perfect being and the bible is his word. Any of you who feel moral outrage at the stoning to death of Du'a Khalil Aswad are completely unjustified. This is what God dictates. It's in the bible. It's clearly written.

Christians try to distance themselves from the Old Testament by saying it's irrelevant after Jesus. Well too bad, that doesn't work. The two books are inseparable. Jesus' whole existence is dependent on Original Sin (Old Testament) and the prophecy of The Messiah. The more you move invalidate the Old Testament, the more you invalidate Jesus.

I'm still waiting to hear how raping a virgin is justifiable in context. Because you know, silver is going for about $34.74 USD. Its not outside my budget to get 50 silver pieces and find some cute young virgin to rape, pay her father, then marry her and continue sexually abusing her. And the beauty is, you can't pass any judgment on me because it's OK with God.


By the way, I think this is my favorite thread ever because many of you are surely scratching your head as to why the creator of the universe would explicitly say you can't eat pelicans and raping virgins is Ok for a price, but not be clear if these instructions are limited to certain people.

[Word]

I'll reply to the other stuff once I've read enough.

once you start making assumptions about what God intended, you give up any hope that your God is a perfect being

You become aware of your own reason's limit.
You don't give up any hope just because you're able to question something (because you're able to question everything) unless you can find plausible answers that affirm your assumptions - though your initial assumptions can still be wrong or your interpretation originates from a fixation on material hope, a material God and thus lead to incorrect answers.
In other words, if you're asking "why does God tolerate Evil?" , you as an atheist ask that question only because you don't believe that there's a compensation or an eternally worse alternative than the kind of suffering our world is used to, and as you said in another thread you also don't believe in free will. I find it very problematic when you say you 'do all this' without God, because if you're saying you have no free will, how's anything you do worth doing? If you're consequent, you know you can't achieve anything, and you can't fail either since your actions are unfailingly predetermined. I cannot see how that could be a liberating insight. Speaking of hope ...

I'm still waiting to hear how raping a virgin is justifiable in context

You're missing the point again, just like you did with the pelicans. Ask yourself whether it was seen as a worsening or an improvement 3000 years ago.

[chrisd]

Is anyone here trying to apply for a job training crash test dummies?

[chrisd]

Is anyone here trying to apply for a job training crash test dummies?

[sinewav]

...your interpretation originates from a fixation on material hope

OMG, WTF is MATERIAL HOPE? You're just making things up now. Is it German?

In other words, if you're asking "why does God tolerate Evil?"

No, I'm not asking that. I'm asking why your God gave people specific instructions to marry off the victims of rape to their rapists. You're the one who offered to clear up the nonsense.

I find it very problematic when you say you 'do all this' without God, because if you're saying you have no free will, how's anything you do worth doing? If you're consequent, you know you can't achieve anything, and you can't fail either since your actions are unfailingly predetermined.

ITT: Word forgets everything is part of God's plan (omniscient being) and you don't have free will anyway you look at it. In other words, Judas Iscariot.

I'm still waiting to hear how raping a virgin is justifiable in context

Ask yourself whether it was seen as a worsening or an improvement 3000 years ago.

No, I'm asking YOU why a divine, loving being would think it's OK for any woman, at any time in history, to be forced to marry the man who sexually assaulted her.


Alright, I'm pretty sure this is as far as the thread will go. Word doesn't have the answers. You would think it would be more obvious what the right perspective is, but I guess not. God's "wild and wacky" plan I guess. I'm leaving this thread until Word has at least 5, rock solid clarifications to the passages on page 2. You can't cheat and say stuff like "God is beyond time and space and reason" and all that crap -- because it is crap, though I do believe "God is beyond reason." It's beyond reason why anyone would believe this shit.

[Word]

...your interpretation originates from a fixation on material hope

OMG, WTF is MATERIAL HOPE? You're just making things up now. Is it German?

No. I made the term up to describe what I mean. Material, "earthbound" hope as opposed to the hope you experience when you believe that there's an afterlife.

No, I'm asking YOU why a divine, loving being would think it's OK for any woman, at any time in history, to be forced to marry the man who sexually assaulted her.

In other words, if you're asking "why does God tolerate Evil?"

No, I'm not asking that.

I know what you're asking. My reply was another example for the above reasoning. If there's a paradise, why is something like rape that important for a God? We have all means to fight such crimes ourselves.

Word forgets everything is part of God's plan (omniscient being) and you don't have free will anyway you look at it. In other words, Judas Iscariot.

You aren't forced to (not) do anything despite God knows what you do.

[Kijutsu]

If there's a paradise, why is something like rape that important for a God?

I hope everyone realizes what Word just said.

[Titanoboa]

Yeah and it's not a theology he shares with the majority of Christians.

[Word]

I don't belittle rape (or murder for that matter). A rape is a despicable act. If you believe in free will, you can hold the rapist responsible, instead of his fate or determination. And you're ignoring what I've said earlier about the world being possibly even worse without that. We can distinguish between good and bad, and being disappointed by the perceived absence of God is like a declaration of bankruptcy of our own abilities. I haven't said that rape has to be tolerated by us.

[Phytotron]

So, here's the most concise rebuttal to anything espoused by Word, Titanoboa, and ItzAcid: Says you.

Just that, and I'm not being the least bit flippant. Do I need to explain it to you?

*****

Biblical Contradictions:

The bars that run [vertically] along the bottom of the visualization represent the 1189 chapters in the Bible, with the length of each bar corresponding to the number of versus in each chapter. White bars represent the Old Testament and grey bars represent the New Testament. Each arc indicates a contradiction.

bibleContra_big.pdf.zip

PDF for zooming purposes.

(1.57 MiB) Downloaded 104 times

*****

how's anything you do worth doing?

If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do, because that's all there is. What we do, now, today. I want to help because I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.

*****

This topic was originally on the general subject of Mitt Romney, right? Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, in (mostly) his own words — Dana Milbank, The Washington Post

[sinewav]

Ok, I can't let this one go. It's just too much. You're also drowning in pseudo-philosophical babble.

And you're ignoring what I've said earlier about the world being possibly even worse without that.

It looks to me like your justification for virgin rape is that God's command was an improvement from how things might have been. I think this shows a severe lack of empathy on your part. How much worse can life be for a girl that's been raped? I'm going to post the bible text, then I'm going to walk you through a little visualization in the hope you'll start to understand why God's command SUCKS.

If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

Word, imagine tomorrow a man forcibly puts his penis in you. Assuming this isn't a turn on, you would be traumatized. Now, what if instead of going to jail, that man was not punished at all? What if you went to your family for support and they instead looked at you like trash and scolded you for letting a man put his penis in you? Now imagine your disgusted father took money from your violator, and forced you to go away with him for the rest of your lives, and that man continued to put his penis in you day after day (and probably beating, and maybe starving you too). What is worse than that?

Word, this isn't part of ancient Jewish culture. This shit is happening today, in the 21st century, because of the bible.

Grow up. Ditch the dirty drug.


Oh yeah, in answer to your other questions: Even though I don't believe in free will right now (I'm still trying to reconcile that, it's not easy), I still feel good when I help others and when I do good works. And my deeds are pure, because I have no expectation of an other-worldly reward. I do good things out of love, not out of fear that a SkyGod is watching me, recording my every move. Not believing in an afterlife doesn't stop me from loving this one. Amazing, huh? In fact, threads like this aren't me being an evil, trouble-making atheist -- it's me hoping what I write will make a few people wake up so they don't go though life looking like idiots, haha.

[syllabear]

Word, this isn't part of ancient Jewish culture. This shit is happening today, in the 21st century, because of the bible

THE BIBLE MADE ME DO IT!

Sine, I'm sure if you're right, and God doesn't exist, and the Bible wasn't true and wasn't written, then there wouldn't be rape.

Even though I don't believe in free will right now

Well you done goofed now. If you don't believe in free will, then its not Word's fault he believes in the Bible/God/all this other nonsense, its fate's fault! In this case you can still try telling people to change their faith, in the notion that fate wants you to do so, and if they listen, then fate also wants them to stop believing, but you can't blame them for believing, since its not their choice (no free will).

You got logic'd! (By a Catholic no less, but don't worry, fate made me do it)

[Word]

It looks to me like your justification for virgin rape

it's not a justification of rape itself, but of its possibility.

As for your example, I know that rape is cruel but I think that we humans have all necessary means to fight it, and it's everyone's own decision to commit a crime in the first place (if you believe in free will, that is). Some rapists feel guilty afterwards and commit suicide, typical rapists usually want to demonstrate a power they don't have in their normal lives, so it's our duty to find a substitute for that (I'd like to believe that some computer games could already help a great deal...). none of this is meant to justify rape since it's of no use for the victim, but it illustrates that a black and white thinking can sometimes be inappropriate. same for every other (criminal) act that you can decide (not) to commit regardless if you have good or bad intentions. It's still happening today because not all people think like that. That wouldn't change if it happened to me (well, it doesn't just "happen" in my opinion. someone has to make a decision to do it first. While we are at it, I already said elsewhere on the forums that I don't believe that 'group pressure' exists, only cowardice, fear and laziness).

And my deeds are pure, because I have no expectation of an other-worldly reward.

I called it 'compensation', not a 'reward', because I was referring to the suffering. In this sense, I don't do good things to get to heaven either, because I believe in a God who accepts everyone no matter what he has done or endured, as long as he sincerely regrets his mistakes. You can make everything look better by adding that it's altruistic, but can't that be applied for every kind of unselfish crime as well? If you help a friend by killing someone else, wouldn't you call that pure as well (regardless if your victim wasn't a good person)? Why do most people have inhibitions if they can regret it afterwards? why do we waste our time regretting what we have just done although "our deeds are pure" anyhow? You don't need a sense of guilt if all your deeds are pure automatically which eliminates the need to regret any of them.