Yes, you're right. Just wanted to make sure you'd keep an open mind, unlike this guy. The Bible is an interesting read that does contain a certain amount of wisdom, and it wouldn't be appropriate to give it a low mark just because it is the basis of much bigotry and some ridiculous ideas. The fault belongs to the fundies, not the Bible itself.


"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
-Gandhi.

How I like that quote. ;)

1. That guy is joking. Unless I am severely mistaken.

2.

• "If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives." (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)
  
  
  
• "All who curse their father or mother must be put to death. They are guilty of a capital offense." (Leviticus 20:9 NLT)
  
  
  
• "A priest's daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death." (Leviticus 21:9 NAB)
  
  
  
• "But if this charge is true [that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night], and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father's house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst." (Deuteronomy 22:20-21 NAB)
  
  
  
• "Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods. In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully. If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock. Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it. Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God. That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt. Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction. Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you. He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors. "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him." (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)
  
  
  
• "From there Elisha went up to Bethel. While he was on his way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him. "Go up baldhead," they shouted, "go up baldhead!" The prophet turned and saw them, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two shebears came out of the woods and tore forty two of the children to pieces." (2 Kings 2:23-24 NAB)
  
  

...

which is just scraping the surface of the various outpourings of the God of the Old Testament,

And remember, in terms of sheer page count, the vast majority of the Good Book is Old Testament. The New Testament, of course, is more acceptable by modern standards (after all, it was written under Roman rule, and so a more recognisable degree of basic civilisation had been imposed on its writers), but that's not to say that it doesn't still contain episodes of unacceptable behaviour by the man himself (have you heard the one about the racist Messiah, the Canaanite woman and her critically ill daughter?).

The fault is not with the Christians. The virtue is with those Christians who manage flawlessly to select those parts of the text which are conformant with modern morality (curiously enough identifying the same parts to be the 'important' messages as those who do not share their faith, despite the latters' lack of Biblical instruction in ethics). But the faults, the bad things, are there on the page, and the 'fundies' are only reading aloud.

The problem is that the fundies are very selective in their interpretation of the Bible. What part of "Love thy neighbor" is so hard to understand for Fred Phelps? What part of "Turn the other cheek" or "Blessed are the peacemakers" is so hard to understand for Bush? And if the law of Leviticus 20:13 against homosexuality is supposedly still valid today according to the fundies, then why does everyone ignore Leviticus 11.10-12, which technically forbids to eat clams and lobster? As far as I know, neither Pat Robertson nor Jerry Falwell nor the Pope has ever condemned the eating of clams.

The Leviticus and the Deuteronomy are interesting because of their historical value, and so is the Genesis. If you still follow 4000-year-old laws or still believe that the Earth was created in a week, it's your own fault for being a f***ing idiot. The Bible was written very long ago, and it should be obvious to all intelligent people that most of it no longer applies, except the parts about generosity and forgiveness.

Condemning the Bible's laws today is like condemning the Code of Hammurabi.

What part of "stone to death those who work on the Sabbath day" does the Archbishop of Canterbury not understand? If anything, even more clear-cut than "love thy neighbour". And if the Old Testament is just historical context (in which case the Bible is something like 5/6ths context, 1/6th content), what about some of Jesus' other less-than-ambiguous sayings like "I come not to bring peace, but a sword" and "I am come only to the children of Israel"?

Just as Pat Robertson picks and chooses his Leviticus, 'moderate' Christians pick and choose both their New and Old Testament (for example, the Ten Commandments remain uniformly popular among all Christians, despite the fact they form part of the same 'historical context' as the laws of Leviticus... and the fact that they rank idol worship as worse than murder). Yes, you have to be a deeply unpleasant or deeply stupid person to genuinely advocate the death penalty for homosexuals on the basis of the Biblical command for it. But you would also have to be equally disturbed to advocate the same policy on the basis of a murderous diatribe written by a modern homophobe, which I am sure both you and I would see as a disgraceful thing to put into print. The fact that its 'literalist' adherents toe the line between raging insanity and simple bigotry does not redeem the text - if anything, it indicts it.

I'm not defending the Bible as a book of wisdom. I'm just saying that it is ridiculous to criticize very ancient laws on the grounds that some nutcases still believe they apply in the 21st century. Yes, people were ignorant, narrow-minded and bigoted back when the Bible was written. But the fact that people are still ignorant, narrow-minded and bigoted today is not the Bible's fault; it is strictly their own.

I'd also like to point out that Jesus's "I come with a sword" is pretty much swallowed by the flood of his many, many commandments to love your neighbor, share with the poor and forgive your enemies. If you condemn Jesus because of a single quote while ignoring the rest of his message, you're very selective too. Just view Jesus as a moral philosopher, not as a self-proclaimed prophet, and you'll find that he's no worse than, say, such people as Socrates or Confucius.

This isn't the thread for the kind of discussion this swiftly threatens to degenerate in to.

Right, sorry.

I'll post my review of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell at some time during the next month, though I have no idea when exactly I'll take the time for this.

Good stuff. I wasn't trying to do that: I don't need to criticise those laws, everyone can see why they're wrong. I was taking issue with your statement that

Today's religious trouble-makers are taking the faults in the Bible - caused, as you accurately point out, by its two-thousand-year disconnect with modern reality - and running with them. They are not making them up. To make out that it is their fault is to imply that the Bible doesn't say these things, which it does.

I am happy to concede the Bible's great value as a literary document, as a historical artefact, and as containing the occasional chunk of decent ethics. But I am not happy to see it held up as a moral text, or as a work of philosophy on a par with genuine philosophical discourses. Personally, I will take the pure and genuine philosophy of Socrates, Locke or Hume over the half-remembered story of Jesus and the rambling catalogue of his forebears' various acts of violence any day, and find the implication that he was 'no worse' than the founder of the Socratic method to be slightly demeaning to the great Greek.


As a sidenote:

I don't condemn Jesus. I'm not trying to use those passages to argue that he was evil (that would be near-impossible and pretty pointless). I don't need to point out the bits where he's nice because you, everyone else and their dog immediately think of those bits when you think of Jesus. But I do aim to point out that these bits are there, and thus the 'new covenant' argument that the New Testament contains the only important messages of the Bible holds just as little water as an argument for its morality as selective reading of the Old Testament.

For the record, though you may not agree, I find the doctrine of hellfire, an invention of Jesus', one of the most deeply horrific aspects of the Bible and Christianity in general, and it's something that gets repeated mention throughout the NT. I'd hope you'd remember the Canaanite woman, since I quoted and analysed it in a previous discussion; it's a self-contained segment in which Jesus professes and at the end remains unapologetic in a deeply racist position. And finally, though this may not be something as directly textual as the other two, I find the idea of an innocent sacrifice to atone for others' sins to be a morally bankrupt concept, the antithesis of the principles of responsibility and individualism that our modern society rests on.


EDIT: Sorry Benedictus... simu-post. For the sake of niggling though, we are still reviewing literature. We're just disagreeing over what we think of the literature in question.

You are, which is why I was warning about the kind of discussion this threatens to become.

I find it amusing that I can roundly condemn a novel, or highly praise one and get little more than a 'neat' or a 'that was supposed to be brief?' from folk... yet breathe a word against a text that nearly everyone remaining on this board finds abhorrent and we get discussion.

Amusing. Just goes to show how culturally Christian we -or at least, @ztech- is.

Anyway. I'm happy to have a religious debate again. Just not in this thread. If and when I get around to reading the Bible, I'll post the review/s here and in a separate thread for this kind of discussion.

YAY RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION TAKE 4214.

--

Benedictus, are you going to do a review of World War Z? I know it's not exactly a novel but I have heard about it and it seems entertaining enough.

Sorry to bring this up again, but this is because Peter had a revelation from God after Jesus's death, which was interpreted to mean that all animals were made by God and can be eaten by God's children, or something along that line. When you read the Bible Benedictus, its in the book right after the Gospels I think, the name of it escapes me right now.

On a side the main note, I am now reading a Flashman novel, if anyone has heard of it, and was thinking of writing a review of Moby Dick.

Burro Boskov

Religion again?
Ok here we go:
Benedictus: Atheist bordering on Nilhist
Chilli: Scientist/physicist
Aztech: Agnostic
Burro : Christian
Thragka: Agnositky Christian (sorry if im wrong but thats what i gathered)
KingTut : Neutral with Nilhistic tendacies.
Now that that is wrapped up.
I am currently reading NOTHING at the moment after finishing my three books on Magical Realism
italo calvino's The Nonexistent Knight
Miguel Angel Asturias's The President
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

Atheist actually, but Christian up until 'bout a year ago so I can see why you'd think I was Agnosticky. Secular Humanist to be precise. Or, y'know, Aspiring Secular Humanist. Whether I can reach Exalted Secular Humanist or not, only time will tell.

I'm reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; it's the first of his I've read and his style is completely dfferent to anything I've ever read, ever. Out of interest, what did you think of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, KingTut?

...my religion is physics?

Oh well. Look at me still talking when there's science to do.
I've experiments to run,
There is research to be done,
On the people who are still alive...

I should think so, yes. :P

The cake is a lie.
well now that the holy sword of mod has come down, its awkward to try to answer your question in this topic but, I liked it. It was a different style and I liked the character construction. The themes were fun and it was well written.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=371907

Holy Crap, this guy is a nut. If you go to his website (www.godhates######s.com yes I am serious), you'll get really scared: he talks about how he is the last hope of godfullnes, how his government bombed his church blah blah blah. The idea of his group is they go to funerals of gays, and picket / harass the proceedings.

wow, we have a swear filter: who knew. www.godhatesf*gs.com

Cigarettes, god hates cigarettes. Any patriotic brit should be able to find the URL from that :P

Fred Phelps is one of the most loathsome individuals currently alive.

Even Jerry Falwell qualified him of "first-class nut".

People like that bug me. Fine if you think someone is wrong, fine. It is sometimes ok to tell the person that you think they are wrong but running around with signs pissing everyone off is just not right. They are asking for a fight. And then they make children hold the signs. Thats just wrong. Goes against so many messages in the bible.

Owaria

:edit: This is highly amusing and on vaguely on topic http://youtube.com/watch?v=sV-a1vmZ6y8

Nihilist? What gives you that idea?

Your distain of a lot of things. But atheist probably fits the bill better

First, it's disdain. With two 'd' letters, and no 't'. Second, I think you have a misapprehension of what a Nihilist believes. Third, the two are not mutually exclusive. One could be an atheist without being a nihilist, and vice-versa.

As my lack of belief stems from a very firm belief that there are truths in the universe, calling me a nihilist means you have utterly failed to hit any of my points in these discussions, ever.