Smoking Gun, Oh Atheists?

[JustWondering]

Perhaps you meant to say, "Scientific progress will occur in tandem with man's unending sin."

No, that's not what I meant to say. Don't try to put words in my mouth when you can't back up your ancient superstitious beliefs with reason and evidence.

 

[JustWondering]

Replacing "sin" with "harming another" is just semantics. Biologically, a rapist has urged to prey and a victim has urges not to be preyed upon. Your notions of biologic imperatives and harm/lack of harm fit beautifully with the sin story and the outlines of what sin is in the Holy Scriptures.

1. I didn't replace sin with anything because sin does not exist. Again, stop trying to put words in my mouth when you are unable to support your superstitious beliefs with reason and evidence.

2. The fact that biological urges exist refute your supernatural worldview. Your religion claims that man chooses to "sin" which somehow absolves god of all responsibility regarding his creations actions. Yet we didn't design our own DNA and environment if your god created us. That would mean that god put the urge to rape in rapists which makes god responsible for a rapists crimes. Yet after creating something flawed the biblical god does not own up to his shortcomings and instead blames his creation for his own shoddy workmanship. Why would you entertain such a pathetic god concept? The god portrayed in the bible is a bumbler who can't seem to get things right, he's also jealous, psychopathic, sadistic, and narcissistic.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Food and drink choices often come from the impulse part of the brain rather than the logical brain.

I know. Still doesn't make that soda I had a sin.

Freedom, real freedom, is liberation from sin--divine more so than animal, smart choices rather than weak impulse choices.

Funny how "smart choices" became so much easier for me after I kicked Jesus to the curb, and became easier and easier as I abandoned religion as a whole. I gained new freedoms, and where religion kept me shackled down like a pile of cinder blocks chained to a person in a river, without religion I don't have these weights holding me down, no cosmic justice to fear and worry about what it thinks of a situation and trying to decipher signs that don't actually exist, and my life has become so much better overall.

Rape is punished by execution in the Bible, it's that simple.

A punishment that really only serves to put the victim at risk of being killed by their rapist who is most definitely not going to want their victim speaking out. For an omniscient being, your god did a poor job at thinking things through.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I understand your point of view, however, if you get a beating with baseball bats to earn a million dollars, you are saying the money makes the beating a real breeze. That's an illogical stance.

That's not even a comparable situation. If I were to be burnt alive, that would suck. But if the deal was I'm going to be burned alive but in a couple days will return back to life, no problems, healed, body normal and functioning....."well, that sucked" I would say, "buy ya know what, damn that fire didn't have **** on that ACL tear when I was 17."

 

[BilliardsBall]

Gross false equivocation
The correct one would be five guys beat me to death with baseball bats, then I not only regain my life in three days, but I am immortal and eternally devoid of pain and suffering. Oh, and I am going to be king of the earth.

Okay. Does the beating not hurt now? Of course it still hurts--in the same degree of hurt as without this magnificent knowledge.

Besides, what you are really trivializing is not the pain Christ experienced in the light of the exaltation, but that the beating was delivered to an innocent for our heinous sin.

 

[BilliardsBall]

In the story, God tortures an infant to death over a week because David seduced Bathsheba.

Torturing babies "makes sense" to you?

It makes sense to me, and to you, that sometimes we reap what we sow, and sometimes, one person's sin causes another person to suffer.

A mom may be addicted to crack and her baby suffers painful withdrawals and many side effects following birth. Do you demand punishment for the mother or understanding/rehabilitation?

You seem to desire to ease suffering and to love others. Now do the same for God, to be consistent. You and I caused God pain and suffering with our sin. Be consistent. Be accountable.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Thus says the Lord: ‘I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives [plural] while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.’

"I will take your wives" definitely doesn't sound like "I will accept your wives consent".


So it's not rape as long as the rapist is wealthy, powerful and attractive?


So you believe rape is justified as a punishment. Thank you for finally admitting it.

1. God said, "I will take your wives". Absalom had relations with the wives, not God.

2. No, my point was Absalom was a desirable catch for the concubines if they were looking for a new patron. Something tells me you found these verses on a search (?) rather than reading the entire multi-chapter story, as I have done, several times. Absalom was asked to do this deed, defiling his father's wives, to cement his hostile takeover of the nation.

3. Rape is never justified, as a punishment or in any other vein. If the Bible says rape is justified, the Bible is wrong.

 

[BilliardsBall]

You're missing the point. Let's say that I offer you a deal: the deal is, I break one of your legs, but after three days that leg will magically be repaired and you will be given three million dollars. Furthermore, I have a bomb that will kill millions of people, and in return for you agreeing to this deal I will not set it off.

Does it sound like you agreeing to have your leg broken in this scenario counts as a "sacrifice" just because the period in which your leg will be broken would obviously be painful?

We're not speaking of a broken leg. We're speaking of scourging, spitting, cursing, public humiliation, crucifixion, and the wrath of God poured on Christ.

...On an innocent, because of our heinous sin. The reward for Christ was just, deserved, he took our sin.

 

[Milton Platt]

Okay. Does the beating not hurt now? Of course it still hurts--in the same degree of hurt as without this magnificent knowledge.

Besides, what you are really trivializing is not the pain Christ experienced in the light of the exaltation, but that the beating was delivered to an innocent for our heinous sin.

No, I am telling you your example does not mirror your Christ's experience. Your Chist supposedly rose from the dead, was immortal, and inherited the earth. No such luck for your guy being beaten with bats

 

[ImmortalFlame]

1. God said, "I will take your wives". Absalom had relations with the wives, not God.

I didn't say God DID the rape, I said God USED rape as a punishment. He had Absalom rape the women in front of their husband.

2. No, my point was Absalom was a desirable catch for the concubines if they were looking for a new patron. Something tells me you found these verses on a search (?) rather than reading the entire multi-chapter story, as I have done, several times. Absalom was asked to do this deed, defiling his father's wives, to cement his hostile takeover of the nation.

Once again, you are saying therefore that his RAPE of these women was justified.

3. Rape is never justified, as a punishment or in any other vein. If the Bible says rape is justified, the Bible is wrong.

Then the Bible must be wrong, as I have repeatedly demonstrated that the supposed God of the Bible repeatedly justifies, condones, enables and uses rape.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

We're not speaking of a broken leg. We're speaking of scourging, spitting, cursing, public humiliation, crucifixion, and the wrath of God poured on Christ.

Apparently you don't know how analogies work.

Okay then. Let's offer you a different deal: you are subjected to three days of humiliation and agony. At the end of the three days, however, not only will the humiliation and pain go away, you will be made all powerful and will be a symbol of worship for billions of people. On top of this, you will save all three million people who would have died from the bomb I mentioned earlier. What have you sacrificed?

...On an innocent, because of our heinous sin. The reward for Christ was just, deserved, he took our sin.

Except it makes no sense, since God set all the conditions of the sin and the repeal of it. God could have absolved all the sin any way they wanted, or not even placed the sin on humanity in the first place. What you're suggesting is akin to me setting up the aforementioned bomb and deciding not to set it off, and calling this a sacrifice. It isn't. I set up the bomb, and I could have decided to not set up the bomb, or to deactivate the bomb, at any point. Fact is, if God were truly just, no salvation would have been required in the first place. It's just plain silly.

 

[Milton Platt]

There are two passages not parsed correctly by skeptics. In the first, a woman cries out when assaulted, the man is killed (rape). In the second, the woman does not cry out, both are killed (mutual consent for immorality).

Rape is punished by execution in the Bible, it's that simple.

Why is not crying out punishable by death? How did the decide she did not cry out? What if her mouth was gaged? What if she was a mute? What if the closest person to the rape was standing a mile away? Why punish a rape victim?

 

[BilliardsBall]

Sure, there is no evidence that the people forming a religion two thousand years ago modified the text. There is also no evidence that they didn't. And even if they simply compiled the books into one, it is a lot more complicated than that. There were many more text which were not selected. This is really the same thing. Crossing out the lines that don't fall within your desired religious beliefs and not including text that don't fall within your desired religious beliefs are the same things on different scales.

It sounds like you are making an argument from silence (it could have happened either way, we just don't know what happened). Do I misunderstand you?

Also, know that when Christians rejected the intertestamental apocrypha, one proof was that the Jews regarding the EXACT same books as apocryphal--why you won't find the Maccabees, for example, in either a Hebrew or Christian Bible. It's not as spurious and random as you claim.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It makes sense to me, and to you, that sometimes we reap what we sow, and sometimes, one person's sin causes another person to suffer.

Don't presume to speak for me.

The Bible passage portrays the torturing to death of David and Bathsheba's newborn son as a deliberate choice by God. It's dishonest to portray it as some sort of inevitable consequence.

A mom may be addicted to crack and her baby suffers painful withdrawals and many side effects following birth. Do you demand punishment for the mother or understanding/rehabilitation?

You seem to desire to ease suffering and to love others. Now do the same for God, to be consistent. You and I caused God pain and suffering with our sin. Be consistent. Be accountable.

The passage portrays God as a sadistic, psychopathic murderer. How do you think a human being who tortured a newborn baby to death should be treated?

 

[BilliardsBall]

So say those who won. But historic text talk about books being burned, heretics killed or kicked from the church... All we have are the scraps of books that survived.

Even then, at least one of them implies Jesus was more of a parable than an actual man, and many other important distinctions.

You're not following what I'm saying. Both testaments say thousands of times, "Hear now the Word of the Lord . . . "

Apocryphal books often say things like, "Here is the wisdom that my grandfather taught me."

*no God-author claims
*no prophecies to be fulfilled
*self-contradictory
*etc.

There were reasons to reject the apocrypha, and these reasons were applied with consistency. The same reasons still hold true. I've read much of the apocrypha and 100% of the 66 books of the Bible. I can see stylistic and textual reasons as I read, why the apocrypha is obviously inferior. You?

 

[BilliardsBall]

1. I didn't replace sin with anything because sin does not exist. Again, stop trying to put words in my mouth when you are unable to support your superstitious beliefs with reason and evidence.

2. The fact that biological urges exist refute your supernatural worldview. Your religion claims that man chooses to "sin" which somehow absolves god of all responsibility regarding his creations actions. Yet we didn't design our own DNA and environment if your god created us. That would mean that god put the urge to rape in rapists which makes god responsible for a rapists crimes. Yet after creating something flawed the biblical god does not own up to his shortcomings and instead blames his creation for his own shoddy workmanship. Why would you entertain such a pathetic god concept? The god portrayed in the bible is a bumbler who can't seem to get things right, he's also jealous, psychopathic, sadistic, and narcissistic.

Do you always hold parents responsible for the crimes of their children? That seems an untenable stance. Please tell me more.

 

[BilliardsBall]

I know. Still doesn't make that soda I had a sin.

Funny how "smart choices" became so much easier for me after I kicked Jesus to the curb, and became easier and easier as I abandoned religion as a whole. I gained new freedoms, and where religion kept me shackled down like a pile of cinder blocks chained to a person in a river, without religion I don't have these weights holding me down, no cosmic justice to fear and worry about what it thinks of a situation and trying to decipher signs that don't actually exist, and my life has become so much better overall.

A punishment that really only serves to put the victim at risk of being killed by their rapist who is most definitely not going to want their victim speaking out. For an omniscient being, your god did a poor job at thinking things through.

I guess we would have to examine what it means when you speak of "your life being better". My God heals--I will never pray to you to heal a loved one of their cancer. My God blesses, shines, delights.

 

[BilliardsBall]

That's not even a comparable situation. If I were to be burnt alive, that would suck. But if the deal was I'm going to be burned alive but in a couple days will return back to life, no problems, healed, body normal and functioning....."well, that sucked" I would say, "buy ya know what, damn that fire didn't have **** on that ACL tear when I was 17."

Would you truly compare a torn ACL to scourging and crucifixion? Don't be silly, please.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Would you truly compare a torn ACL to scourging and crucifixion? Don't be silly, please.

Jesus' wounds from that crucifixion apparently healed. I have surgery scars on my knee and a more-or-less permanent limp (even if slight) because of the damage to that and my cartilage. So, yeah, healed/recovered crucifixion would probably give you a super-heightened pain thresh hold to look forward to, unless pain is your sexual thrill.

I guess we would have to examine what it means when you speak of "your life being better".

Since giving up on god, I took the helm of my own life, I'm not suicidal anymore, I went back to school and graduated with honors and distinctions (whereas with god I barely graduated high school), and it's continued to get better so much to the point I'm only a few months from turning 31 and I've drank and got drunk once this year of my life, unlike this time last year when I was still drinking the last handful of my alcohol binges. And, how ironic, I've even gotten better at those things Jesus went on about that people often like about him. But yet that was after I evicted him, his dad, and the holy ghost from my heart, soul, and life.

 

[JustWondering]

Do you always hold parents responsible for the crimes of their children? That seems an untenable stance. Please tell me more.

So your god didn't design human DNA? If that's the case that only leaves evolution for how we ended up how we are. Are you saying you believe in evolution instead of creationism?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Jesus' wounds from that crucifixion apparently healed.

The iconography of several Christian denominations depicts Christ with unhealed wounds.