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Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,926,708 times
Reputation: 4561
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Quote:
Originally Posted by VJDAY81445
I never read anything in the New Testament that Jesus told us ........." how to beat your slave "
If this thread is going to be a pro-atheist, pro-homosexual thread, you should have said so in your title.
But, I'll play along anyway.
Here we go again... The atheist had to show the Christian what the bible says. Why? And the OT is part of your belief system, right?
Somehow it is skipped on the pulpit.
Exodus:
It's okay to beat your slaves; even if they die you won't be punished, just as long as they survive a day or two after the beating (see verses 21:20-21). But avoid excessive damage to their eyes or teeth. Otherwise you may have to set them free. 21:26-27
Now we skip to the NT:
All of Matthew 18:21 onwards deals with issues around slavery and debt, and Jesus not once said anything against slavery but just pretends that everything's okay, its moral, is doesn't matter, and discusses how the debt should be relieved. A moral person would have objectived to the slavery, but nooooo... Jesus gives tacit approval in this parable.
In Luke 12, Jesus decides to pull a Phil Robertson, and describe it in a most vile and violent manner in telling on how a slave will be beaten. Essentially, if the slave didn't do what the master wanted it depended whether he knew or not, so if he knew what the master wanted that slave was to be beaten severely. It's a slave didn't know what the master wanted, he still to be beat. Just not quite that hard.
Some teacher that Jesus of yours isn't he?
A moral person would never use such violent and ugly examples in teaching moments.
Both Robertson and Jesus chose to use these horridly immoral examples.
... as a Christian who believes a homosexual lifestyle is sinful, will not urge Robertson to shut up ... He is not urging violence, be-heading gays, like the Muslim radicals are doing towards Christians ...
It is a bit like the principle of "white privilege" with respect to racial matters. Being in a class that is privileged by default biases you without you being particularly aware of it and perpetuates racism even amongst people who aren't consciously pursuing that as an end.
In terms of your theology, it is a "sin of omission" to not shame Robertson merely because he does not have the temerity to openly advocate overt physical violence. Or to not speak up on behalf of all people to be treated and respected as persons regardless of their differentness. Or to imagine that homophobia does not cause human suffering even if it cannot be filmed and documented in as striking a manner as, say, a mass beheading.
Christianity claims the moral high ground; as such it should be providing moral leadership.
But it seldom does. The Bible for instance failed to be a game changer on slavery, instead acting like it's perfectly ordinary and normal to own slaves and explaining how to be a "good" slave-owner / master. Similarly it follows bronze-age mores in otherizing people who don't tow the party line concerning approved sexuality, and it perpetuates false information about the actual causes and consequences of sexual differences.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,926,708 times
Reputation: 4561
Quote:
Originally Posted by justtitans
There is no proof if you can't even explain how the natural world is. It is no more factual than what people like myself and jeffbase claims. If you can't say well this world was created without a God, then there is no definite way you can leave his teachings out of living and call it factual.
If one doesn't know, godunnit is not the fallback position. They used to say that about the Black Plague, we know it was germs.
There is no proof if you can't even explain how the natural world is. It is no more factual than what people like myself and jeffbase claims. If you can't say well this world was created without a God, then there is no definite way you can leave his teachings out of living and call it factual.
That's not even a coherent statement that I can really engage with.
The earth, tress, clouds, air, etc., exist whether or not I can fully explain their origins. If I do not build a shelter I will get wet when it rains no matter whether I understand meteorology. I don't have to prove that the natural world was or was not created by god in order to prove that it exists.
If you want to seriously put yourself into the position of disproving the natural world, laws and science, go right ahead. It is as much of a fool's errand as proving that invisible beings and realms DO exist.
If one doesn't know, godunnit is not the fallback position. They used to say that about the Black Plague, we know it was germs.
It's no different than assuming we as people rule ourselves. Both have nothing factual to back it. They are both dependent on faith. The point is, neither point of view proves anything.
Over a billion devout Muslims have held their beliefs for hundreds of years, and yet you are not a Muslim. Now, why is that? Do you consider Muslim beliefs to be nothing more than made up fables?
It is your side which uses the lack of evidence as evidence: "we can't find Jesus's dead body, therefore he must have risen from the dead."
The burden of proof is on the person proposing the existence of something, it is not upon the skeptic. This has been explained to you many times. I can't disprove the existence of Bigfoot, but that is most certainly not proof that Bigfoot exists.
You do not have 100 proofs. You were given ample opportunity to present these proofs and you have not done so. You are simply "lying for Jesus" and it's no way to attract people to your religion.
Then stop claiming as if it is fact that Christianity is a myth. That is a POSITIVE claim. That's your claim. Then prove it or admit that it is just wishful opinionated rhetoric.
I tested the waters and offered up proof of a miracle healing. It was rejected immediately. Until you can demonstrate a willingness to examine evidence with an open mind, it is simply a waste of my time.
We have a president who refuses to use the label............." radical Islamic terrorists"
If abortion protesting Catholics started be-heading abortion doctors, I'll bet President Obama would most certainly use the term " radical Catholics" or "radical Christians"
And you have a news media (Fox) partially owned by the Saudi Government that boasts of manipulating news coverage and has been doing so for years. I take it your kind of christianity comes with a pipefull of mj, cause there is certainly a lot of hypocrisy here.
Quote:
Accuracy in Media (AIM) is urging a full inquiry into a report that a Saudi billionaire caused the Fox News Channel (FNC) to dramatically alter its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he called the network to complain. The Saudi billionaire, Al-waleed bin Talal, is a friend of News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and controls an influential number of voting shares in the company.
“This report underscores the danger of giving foreign interests a significant financial stake in U.S. media companies,” declared Cliff Kincaid, editor of Accuracy in Media.
Jesus told the prostitute.............." go and sin no more"
Today the homosexual would tell Jesus............." my homosexual lifestyle is not a sin "
Hard to believe any gay living a homosexual lifestyle can profess to be a Christian.
False equating of prostitution and homosexuality. Apples and oranges, as you'd say.
I can't imagine many gays would want to profess evangelical / fundamentalist Christianity, as at the very least it would require them to be totally celibate. But quite a lot of them are willing to embrace liberal Christianity and other (relatively) tolerant forms of religion. Your quibble with that has less to do with sexual orientation than it does with theology. As a former fundamentalist, I understand that liberal Christianity doesn't "compute" for you. That it didn't "compute" for me is one of the reasons I went straight to unbelief; for people like us, it's "all or nothing".
That said I have recently began attending a Unitarian / Universalist "society" (they are shying away from calling themselves a "church" these days, properly in my view). It is full of LGBT people, agnostics and atheists as well as liberal theists. It has no dogma or theological litmus test for membership. I imagine your head would explode in such a place -- at one time, mine would have -- as it is really a secular humanist social club, not a place of worship. I have just come to see that one can socialize and benefit from group support and activities without religion or theism being inherently necessary as the impulse.
It's no different than assuming we as people rule ourselves. Both have nothing factual to back it. They are both dependent on faith. The point is, neither point of view proves anything.
So now you are denying that actual people have actual governments and that it is an article of faith that actual people have actual governments?
If so then I do not think you understand the nature of either reality or of faith.
Faith is the "evidence" of things not seen. What is not seen is god, his morality, or his heaven or his hell. What IS seen is people and their societies, cultures, and governments. No one (not even you) seriously debates that these things don't exist or that there is no evidence for them, except when it suits you to construct bizarre "arguments" against reason.
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