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This is almost spiritually prescient on so many levels . . . hard to believe it springs from your mind, Ashe.
It's just a simple observation of watching people create their own personal hell worrying about going to hell.
Ones doesn't need degrees to understand people, in fact it probably gets in the way. You seem too busy looking for big words to be impressed by, or poor language skills to ridicule to even have a clue what they are saying or not saying and how that aligns or not with their actions.
There is indeed a cultural context to some of those stories (notably the one about Onan). The problem here is, the man supposedly died at the climax (no pun intended) of his sexual encounter. Whether his death in such a situation was true or not (was the writer peeping from behind the curtains?) or the story is even true (the writer just pulling one out his a$$ to re-enforce a social more) is one thing. Throwing "the Lord" into the mix as the killer is problematic to the modern reader and, if not for ancient superstitions, would have probably raised an eyebrow back then too.
The point, I think, being made or the elephant in the room being subtly referenced is, "who would want to serve a god who kills people for something as simple as that" (something we would consider responsible today). If you believe in such a deity, then it MAY say a lot about your gullibility which expands beyond just this story to other crazy sounding stories in the bible where god, supposedly through his mouthpieces, commanded genocide and other seemingly shocking laws. The key here is, SOME Christians claim that the stories are true and factual and that god had his reasons (often explained through hoops and hurdles) and thus, a divine, just, reason for doing so. The unsaid explanation if often that these people DESERVED their deaths because they angered god.
To the unbeliever, this is ludicrous and having SOME Christians belabor the point that you NEED to or HAVE to serve this [apparent] psycho god is an affront to their intelligence and sense of morals. As a result, the unbeliever often posts these verses to show WHY they find it necessary to reject such a god and offers from his friends to "serve" him, proper context or not.
Even if god is NOT the issue and proper [cultural] context is put forward, the stories are clearly products of their times (a time full of superstition) and should NOT be used to re-create modern society into a remake of the Stone Ages. This is the intention of SOME Christians (I believe unwittingly, as they do not think through the overall ramifications) and this is the fear some unbelievers and liberal Christians have hence a constant reminder of such dark passages no one learns about in Sunday school but hear about when some hatred needs to be displayed.
What exactly is justifiable about slaughtering innocent children? Your god supposedly did it numerous times.
I have two thoughts on that.
One is, if I was to kill someone or have someone killed, which apparently God did. I would be judged by my peers. We are not God's peers.
Two is, we don't know the ultimate outcome of God directing who lives and who dies. There could be a valid and justifiable reason for killing a whole tribe of people. Was there a valid and justifiable reason for God killing everyone on earth except Noah and his? The Bible says that the earth was filled with violence in those days.
Note: the above total does not include all that died as a direct result of one of gods temper tantrums. It omits one of his really off the scale tantrums where he murdered all but a handful of people.
And you call satan evil.............. wow
Most excellent. I love graphs like that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by perry335654
The fallacy here and I have seen it many times is that the OP is using a verse or two to describe a situation that is just a partial story leaving the reader thinking the subject at hand is a monster, this is used for his own bias to prove a point.
There's no bias.
And no, god is not a monster. A monster would behave much better than the Divine Pyromaniac, so that is an insult to monsters.
If you understood what you were reading, you'd see that god kills people because there is no heaven or hell, so the only way people can be punished (or rewarded) is in the "here and now."
As Hebrew theology changes over time, and it did change, god quits murdering people and starts punishing the entire nation as a whole, and then later even that changes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Djuna
There is no fallacy there at all. There are in fact countless times the bible god has either killed people outright or allowed people to be killed by his followers. These are not just random verses, these are whole chapters on nasty things done to a race of people because god didn't like them.
Now how can an omnipotent, all powerful god create people then decide he hates them so much he wants them all dead. Interesting how god has a special little group that he deems worthy. Could it be this special little group made that god up to suit themselves
It just shows how stupid the Judaeo-christian god really is.
I mean this supposedly omnipotent god has a contest between two brothers, Ka'in and Abel, knowing full well what the outcome will be and then banishes Ka'in for killing Abel.
And then murders Onan for the heinous crime of "pulling out."
[quote=Hueffenhardt;21651323]Hey, guess what, I knew all of that. I attended seminary for 4 years and served a mission full time for two years. I have read, nay not just read, studied the Bible countless times. So, actually I was completely aware of all of that, but guess what, I did not include any of that context because it does not change the point, not one little bit.
What does it really matter that Onan spilled his sperm on the floor to avoid fathering a child which would not be considered his according to old Jewish culture, but a child of his dead brother's. Who the heck cares. The point of the story is that God killed him for spilling his sperm instead of impregnating a woman which is exactly how I explained it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by whoppers
It matters a great deal when you retell a story badly, and then condense it into an even simpler synopsis that misses most of the salient features of the story.
Uh, Onan jizzed on the ground and then Yahweh brutally murdered him. Context is irrelevant.
To the extent that context would be relevant, apparently the omnipotent Yahweh was so stupid he didn't know that Onan would "spill his seed" on the ground, or that he would brutally murder Onan.
A smarter god would have simply impregnated the woman and let it be.
Or put Onan in a trance. Or give Onan a divine vision that it was his destiny to sire a child through his brother's wife.
But Yahweh is too stupid to do that.
The fact that it was Onan's duty based on the culture is irrelevant. Onan was the only one history to refuse his cultural duty? I don't think so.
And what was the end result? She didn't get pregnant by Onan since he is dead. That really makes a lot of sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by northstar22
What exactly is justifiable about slaughtering innocent children? Your god supposedly did it numerous times.
They laughed at a bald man. Sounds like a fit punishment by a loving god.
The fallacy here and I have seen it many times is that the OP is using a verse or two to describe a situation that is just a partial story leaving the reader thinking the subject at hand is a monster, this is used for his own bias to prove a point.
Well, why don't you give us the 'context' wherein it is reasonable for all the firstborn children of Egypt to be killed (just to pick one example of Biblical carnage)? What is the offense of young children that they deserve to be killed?
Please, tell us. I for one am fascinated to know when specifically targetting children for death is acceptable.
Well, why don't you give us the 'context' wherein it is reasonable for all the firstborn children of Egypt to be killed (just to pick one example of Biblical carnage)? What is the offense of young children that they deserve to be killed?
Please, tell us. I for one am fascinated to know when specifically targetting children for death is acceptable.
1- It targeted the first-born of the Egyptians, both human and cattle - no matter what the age. Get your facts straight before you assume that the plague was "specifically targetting children". Again - biblical literacy helps.
2- Apparantly, you've never actually bothered to read the entire story. Why not chastise the Pharoah for enslaving the Israelites, increasing their toil and labor to prevent them from rising up to grasp freedom, for ordering the Hebrew midwives to murder every Israelite male baby that was born, and then when the midwives refused he ordered all the people of Egypt to murder all Israelite male babies that were born? Why have you conveniently forgotten this aspect of the story, but have the facts of the later part of the story completely wrong?
3- It's just a story - no corroborating evidence has yet been found to indicate that any of this actually happened. Why was this story told? To point out their own god, Yahweh, was a murderer of little babies (according to you)? Hardly. It's obviously a story told by a people of their experience in Egypt in which they suffered from slavery, oppression, infanticide and finally escaped from all this with Yahweh's delivering of his people from this horror. It helps when you put it in the proper context of the story, and get the story's narrative facts straight. I think the Israelites would have been very appreciative of a god that did this for them.
4- Justice or injustice? After considering the actual story, and getting the actual events of the story correct - it appears that the authors considered what happened to the first-born of Egypt as perfect justice: after all, it wasn't just Pharoah who was murdering the infant males of the Israelites - it was the Egyptian people, as well. An eye for an eye, though the Israelites didn't go around murdering recently delivered male babies. And according to the writers of this story, the Egyptians had plenty of chances to give the Israelites their freedom. It took countless plagues (which should have been enough) and then finally the retributive slaughter of the first-born of Egpyt to set things right, as far as justice goes.
5- In addition, this whole nuclear family thing we are accustomed to has to be taken out of the picture. Families worked differently back then - a family was basically what we would call an "individual" today. This also helps with the Onan story and why Onan's refusal to follow the Law of Levirate Marriage endangered his brother's family - whether you understand the Law or not. Just something to keep in mind.
So how can a verse be quoted out of context, and then misunderstood by getting the details wrong? The above is a perfect example. Since this is just a story, with no historical basis, one should probably ask themselves: why is the author relating events in the way he does? Unless you assume the ancient author lacked all story-telling skill whatsoever, you must look for the motives, the ideas of justice and injustice and how they are doled out. How an enslaved people gained their freedom.
So come on - now: let's see some posts listing all the horrible abuses of non-biblical story characters. Oh, but that wouldn't suit what InsaneindaMembrane pointed out as "The Elephant in the Room" that was never expressly stated in the OP, but was so obvious to anyone who is familiar with common, simplistic ways in which to attack someone else's religion by attacking their ancient stories - as untrue as most of them are.
well they were up to no good for sure.
here is my favorite
if i cross on the red and the car hits me, did God strike me down?
Ha - those prophets were crazy! I honestly cannot find much justification, if any, for the she-bear that came out of the woods and killed the little kids. I'm sure the people who heard the story (and knew it wasn't true) got a chuckle out of it and said the same thing: Those crazy prophets!
A great book about them, written by Heschel and called The Prophets, starts out by saying "This book is about some of the most disturbing people who ever lived: " (p. xiii) The prophets were unpopular with the Israelites of their time, exactly because they were extremely unstable and crazy. They were a little TOO pious, and demanded way too much strict religiosity from the people.
The only thing I can add to the she-bear story, is that it's possible that since Elisha was called "bald-head" this referenced not that he was prematurely balding (or anything like that), but that he had been mourning the death of his master, Elijah. Mourning practices such as shaving one's head, gashing one's self with rocks and knives, and dressing in sack-cloth were quite common in the ANE, though later condemned by some Biblical writers. It's possible that the boys who taunted Elisha just drove him over the edge, and the narrator was trying to tell a morality tale about the importance of respecting those mourning their dead, while also showing how severe the prophets could be. I don't know. It could be possible that they were also part of the town that had rejected Elijah's message.
Since it's a story, and it's just a story, it doesn't offend me as much as some people. If it actually happened in real life - well, there's a reason why the Israelites were fond of murdering the prophets! They were just a little too severe for them.
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