Pray the gay away? Didn't work for the guru of that mantra; he married his boyfriend

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by Vizio

Yes--it was allowed. No...it's not endorsed. The passage from numbers talks about prisoners of war. There is nothing there about slavery. It's about women being taken for marriage. When the alternative is to be put to death, marrying them was pretty lenient.


What's troubling is that you don't even seem to want to know what the truth is. You just post some nonsense and say that's how it is. The truth be darned!

The point here is that your omni-benevolent God never stopped slavery. No, not once did either God or Jesus raise up his voice and pronounce that owning people as property or taking women as war booty was immoral and should not be done by Hebrews (much less anyone else).

The Bible was used extensively to defend slavery right into the 19th Century.

Any GOOD God would have ended slavery and the kidnapping of women on the spot. You claim that the Bible doesn't endorse slavery - except it does. It endorses slavery by not ending it. Allowing something to continue is tacit approval.

Take, for instance, a child shooting spitballs at the chalkboard. If the teacher turns around and says to the child, "You can only use tissue paper for spitballs," then continues with the lesson, would you not consider that an endorsement of spitballs?

If I were the child, I certainly would. I've just been told that I'm allowed to shoot spitballs as long as I obey the rule about tissue paper.

In the same way, slavery was endorsed by laying down a set of rules for the ownership and treatment of slaves rather than slavery being banned. That is an endorsement. Period. You can try and slither your way out of it all you want, but you can't.

The Bible endorsed slavery and NEVER banned it. Ever. Even today, going strictly by the Bible, owning slaves would not be considered Biblically immoral. We have to rise above the Bible to declare slavery immoral. Oh but wait ... we can't. Since the Bible is our only source of absolute morality, it's impossible for anyone to claim slavery should be banned. After all, we only have opinion to work with here, and since none of us has the right to tell a slave owner to free his slaves, I guess we should get out our shackles and tell the slave ships to set sail once again.

Isn't that how your logic works, Vizio?

Morality can only be found in the Bible. If it isn't there, then it is impossible to declare something immoral. That also includes having sex with children as that was never addressed in the Bible, either. Good news for pedophiles! That's especially true if you like little girls - because the Bible never said that kidnapping women and forcing them to marry you is immoral. No, just the opposite - the Bible DOES command people to take women as war booty and force them to marry you.

[Vizio]

Originally Posted by Ceist

Classic. I didn't say that the Bible "teaches a flat earth". I said that the biblical texts describe the flat earth cosmological view that was prevalent in that time and area.

No. It really doesn't.

That you are unaware of the historical cosmological views of that time, is either because you haven't studied the history of the cultures of that time or you choose to ignore it. It's not 'my little idea'. It's history. No 'gotchas' required. Anyone can go to an online Bible and do a search for verses containing words like circle, foundations, firmament, Sheol etc. There are more verses, but that was enough to demonstrate.

Clearly you do not understand where those figures of speech like 'sunrise', 'ends of the earth' etc originated.

I have no problem with the fact that some people had the view of a flat earth. But to suggest the Bible teaches it simply is not true.

[jjrose]

Originally Posted by Vizio

Yes. He made them male and female. He did not make a third gender called "gay".

You have yet to make the case that anyone is created gay, or that it should be treated as a gender.

I absolutely agree. I preach against pre-marital sex. The 2 couples I married this past summer, I told both of them my expectation was that they were to remain celibate until the wedding night.


Why do you believe we have the right to redefine what marriage is?

Gender is not sexual orientation.

My gender is female.
My sexual orientation is homosexual.

Two different things.

[Ceist]

Originally Posted by Vizio

No. It really doesn't.

Yes, it really does. Your denial just shows you don't want to do any research about this to find out the facts.

Originally Posted by Vizio

I have no problem with the fact that some people had the view of a flat earth. But to suggest the Bible teaches it simply is not true.

You keep claiming I said the Bible 'teaches it'. That's not what I said. I said the biblical texts describe the commonly held cosmological view of that time and area. I'm guessing you just can't accept that the biblical writers were ignorant about a lot of things if you are to cling to your irrational belief that they were inspired by your god and that the Bible is inerrant.

[ElizaTeal]

Originally Posted by Ceist

Yeah, it does. Your denial just shows you don't want to research this to find out the facts.

You keep claiming I said the Bible 'teaches it'. That's not what I said. I said the biblical texts describe the commonly held cosmological view of that time and area. I'm guessing you just can't accept that the biblical writers were ignorant about a lot of things if you are to cling to your irrational belief that they were inspired by your god and that the Bible is inerrant.

I think it's a case of too many cooks...

[Ceist]

Originally Posted by ElizaTeal

I think it's a case of too many cooks...

The same flat disc earth floating over water with a solid dome over it theme runs throughout the Bible. It reflects Ancient Near East cosmological views, which is hardly surprising. This has been known by historians for a long time. It's really only the modern-day fundamentalist biblical inerrantists/Creationists who try to argue that the biblical writers wrote of a 'spherical earth' and not a flat disc earth.

For published scholarly work, there is a wealth of information available on the ancient near east, like this anthology:

The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Edited by James B. Pritchard . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011


Or for a quickie overview which also exposes and refutes the fundamentalist arguments, you could watch this video:

What the Bible Got Wrong: A Flat Earth (2011) - Top Documentary Films