For Once

[Derideo_Te]

You don't have to respect the religion, just respect people, no matter what they believe. I don't care for people who claim to be Christian, running down other people who are not, but are in fact good people.

And yet here you are running down people who don't believe as you do.

Did you just dis yourself?

there is a big difference in running/putting down people, and disagreeing with people. Name calling, baiting, insults, are just not necessary to try and make your point of what you believe.

That swoosh sound you heard was the irony going over your head.

 

[MaxGrit]

Carla Danger, Agit8er, Sealy, Luddy, Holly, D4E et al., I'd like for once that any of you should advance beyond a 1st level unrefined newbie level in your critique of religion. . . Fact is, you have no clue . . .

They're atheist noobs who easily get owned by intelligent Christians in real life.

 

[Hollie]

Carla Danger, Agit8er, Sealy, Luddy, Holly, D4E et al., I'd like for once that any of you should advance beyond a 1st level unrefined newbie level in your critique of religion. . . Fact is, you have no clue . . .

They're atheist noobs who easily get owned by intelligent Christians in real life.

And yet, so often you extremists need to be corrected for your false portrayals, bad examples and misinformed notions of the various bibles you have skimmed through but never understood.

 

[amrchaos]

I'm confused

Why are people so hot about this issue: slavery?

All it does is tell me that people can identify right from wrong without it being written in stone.

That is a good thing, right?

 

[Hollie]

I'm confused

Why are people so hot about this issue: slavery?

All it does is tell me that people can identify right from wrong without it being written in stone.

That is a good thing, right?

I think we have a very deep problem when "holy texts" alleging to be representative of versions of gawds and divinely inspired moral and ethical codes are rife with immorality and amorality.

 

[Carla_Danger]

I'm confused

Why are people so hot about this issue: slavery?

All it does is tell me that people can identify right from wrong without it being written in stone.

That is a good thing, right?

Since Gawd condoned slavery, and you do not, because you know slavery is repulsive, doesn't that mean your morality is superior to the one who condones it? The correct answer is yes.

 

[Derideo_Te]

They're atheist noobs

Ironic since most of them have been around here longer than you have.

 

[amrchaos]

I'm confused

Why are people so hot about this issue: slavery?

All it does is tell me that people can identify right from wrong without it being written in stone.

That is a good thing, right?

I think we have a very deep problem when "holy texts" alleging to be representative of versions of gawds and divinely inspired moral and ethical codes are rife with immorality and amorality.

Maybe religious texts when dealing with morality is like the US constitution when dealing with rights---everything you should condemn is not written.

I think the concept "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the 9th amendment for the bible......

Oh--I just realized a key problem with what I am saying for believers.

If there are immoral acts not listed in the holy texts, how do you keep from performing them? How do you know what is and is not allowed if it is not listed directly? Also, why wouldn't an immoral act be listed if it endangers your place with your God?

 

[Hollie]

I'm confused

Why are people so hot about this issue: slavery?

All it does is tell me that people can identify right from wrong without it being written in stone.

That is a good thing, right?

I think we have a very deep problem when "holy texts" alleging to be representative of versions of gawds and divinely inspired moral and ethical codes are rife with immorality and amorality.

Maybe religious texts when dealing with morality is like the US constitution when dealing with rights---everything you should condemn is not written.

I think the concept "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the 9th amendment for the bible......

Oh--I just realized a key problem with what I am saying for believers.

If there are immoral acts not listed in the holy texts, how do you keep from performing them? How do you know what is and is not allowed if it is not listed directly? Also, why wouldn't an immoral act be listed if it endangers your place with your God?

Good points. The "holy texts", (the Christian ones), are a confused message.

Actually, man's ethics and morality beats out the morality of the Christian gawd's by light-years. Gawd tacitly and obviously approves of slavery (Jesus speaks of servants to a Master and never thinks to condemn the injustice of one man owning another)-- man finds it repulsive. Gawd not only approves of war, he ignites them left and right -- man creates a United Nations in an attempt to stop war. Gawd commits genocide without blinking an eye -- man imprisons mass murderers and is repulsed by wanton slaughter. Gawd not only approves of raping young women, he specifically rewards his soldiers with them:

Numbers 31:17-18

17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Man finds this an abomination. This list goes on and on. Gawd is not fair, in the bible he's disgusting and makes a sane, loving person astonished at such cruelty and barbarity just reading about his atrocities (don't forget -- I don't believe any of this is gawd, I know this cruelty is legend-- these things were man being cruel to other men and in spite of gawd's viciousness, we've slowly overcome it.... well, not really, we have religion to thank for ISIS.

 

[Carla_Danger]

I'm confused

Why are people so hot about this issue: slavery?

All it does is tell me that people can identify right from wrong without it being written in stone.

That is a good thing, right?

I think we have a very deep problem when "holy texts" alleging to be representative of versions of gawds and divinely inspired moral and ethical codes are rife with immorality and amorality.

Maybe religious texts when dealing with morality is like the US constitution when dealing with rights---everything you should condemn is not written.

I think the concept "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is the 9th amendment for the bible......

Oh--I just realized a key problem with what I am saying for believers.

If there are immoral acts not listed in the holy texts, how do you keep from performing them? How do you know what is and is not allowed if it is not listed directly? Also, why wouldn't an immoral act be listed if it endangers your place with your God?

Good points. The "holy texts", (the Christian ones), are a confused message.

Actually, man's ethics and morality beats out the morality of the Christian gawd's by light-years. Gawd tacitly and obviously approves of slavery (Jesus speaks of servants to a Master and never thinks to condemn the injustice of one man owning another)-- man finds it repulsive. Gawd not only approves of war, he ignites them left and right -- man creates a United Nations in an attempt to stop war. Gawd commits genocide without blinking an eye -- man imprisons mass murderers and is repulsed by wanton slaughter. Gawd not only approves of raping young women, he specifically rewards his soldiers with them:

Numbers 31:17-18

17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

Man finds this an abomination. This list goes on and on. Gawd is not fair, in the bible he's disgusting and makes a sane, loving person astonished at such cruelty and barbarity just reading about his atrocities (don't forget -- I don't believe any of this is gawd, I know this cruelty is legend-- these things were man being cruel to other men and in spite of gawd's viciousness, we've slowly overcome it.... well, not really, we have religion to thank for ISIS.

And how about those family values? Jeebus blows his mother off, over and over, in a not so nice way.

 

[Treeshepherd]

The greatness of the Roman Empire was not in its stone and mortar. Its greatness was in its charter, or identity. The fall of the Empire was the final symptom of a growing incoherence of what it meant to be a Roman. What the Church preserved of antiquity became reformulated in a triple synthesis (the Greek thinker, the Roman doer, the Christian saint), the substrate from which Western culture arose. This is genetic material of our law, art and ideals. To be illiterate, uninformed or misinformed of the value of that substrate is to be culturally impoverished.

Reading Shakespeare without a familiarity of Greek mythology and Biblical symbolism, one would miss half of the import. To read the Lord of the Rings without a mythological and scriptural foundation, one might as well be reading something on the order of Stephanie Myers Twilight saga. Great art and literature require the viewer/reader to bring something to the feast.

You could take Homer Simpson to 1,000 fine art galleries. Not much of it is going to sink in, unless paintings of donuts and beer are featured. Imagine Homer Simpson ‘contemplating’ Pieter Brugel’s Tower of Babel. Is that a donut on the stone table in the foreground?;

The painting would fail to stimulate the larger questions. Is the rise and fall of empires ontologically necessary? What is the consequence of a global monoculture fostered by the internet? Is humanity richer when diverse cultures exist in an ecosystem of creative tension? As we stand on the threshold of the Digital Revolution, does the story of Babel caution us? Are there parallels with the Greek stories of Prometheus?

These are questions that would not occur to Homer Simpson. He lacks that capacity. Others might have a capacity for perceptiveness, but they are so jaded against our cultural heritage as to be dismissive. But, what we see time and time again in the Bible is that God confounds his people, speaking figuratively. Man is not yet man. At certain times in history, order must succumb to chaos for the purpose of being reformulated into a higher synthesis.

 

[Avatar4321]

I'll go first. This example is pretty obvious. SLAVERY--Gawd approves of slavery, but men condemn slavery. We even fought a war over it because it's repulsive.

When people claim they get their morals from reading the Bible, I'm thinking REALLY? How so? I mean, we are way ahead concerning ethics and morality...way ahead.

Okay, your turn.

The book of Exodus is fundamentally about liberation from slavery, and certainly was an inspiration for every historical abolitionist movement of Western Civilization. After being an entrenched 10,000 year old human economic system, slavery was first eradicated in Bible literate countries. It took a very long time for other cultures to catch up.

For once on the internet, I'd like to see religion bashers step their game up. Carla Danger, Agit8er, Sealy, Luddy, Holly, D4E et al., I'd like for once that any of you should advance beyond a 1st level unrefined newbie level in your critique of religion. You string up televangelists and white supremacists like pinatas and then whack at them without a blindfold. Yeah, we get it... people are gullible.

Go after the philosophy of the European and American abolitionist movements, which were principally Christian. Take on the pacifist philosophy of Leo Tolstoy. Ridicule the Christianity of MLK, whose doctorates were after all not in astrophysics. Attack Immanuel Kant. Thomas Merton. The great American Quaker William Penn, tear him a new one. Kierkegaard. JRR Tolkien.

Fact is, you have no clue what the history of Christianity or any other religion is unless you've genuinely submersed yourself in the great writers who represent those religions. You are inspired by themes and sentiments in modern culture, and you have no clue that they spring from the very root you strike at.

Please quote the bible verses where Jesus condemns slavery and tells Christians to free all of the slaves.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hathanointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preachdeliveranceto the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, Luke 4:18

Only problem I have with that is that those are not the words of Jesus. He was reading the words of the prophet Isiah in the synagogue and was subsequently rejected by his own people for claiming to be the son of God. They wanted to kill him for blaspheming.

So while I appreciate the effort it doesn't reach the bar of Jesus condemning slavery and setting anyone free.

I, of course, disagree.

here Jesus is citing His mission as the messiah. Which is to bring freedom and liberty to all.

and his life exemplified this. He went around teaching men how to become free of sin. He freed them from sickness and deformities. He even gave His life to free us from the bondage of sin and death. Then he preached deliverance to the dead and rose from the grave.

Jesus also sent he Holy Spirit. And where h Spirit is there is liberty

 

[amrchaos]

I'll go first. This example is pretty obvious. SLAVERY--Gawd approves of slavery, but men condemn slavery. We even fought a war over it because it's repulsive.

When people claim they get their morals from reading the Bible, I'm thinking REALLY? How so? I mean, we are way ahead concerning ethics and morality...way ahead.

Okay, your turn.

The book of Exodus is fundamentally about liberation from slavery, and certainly was an inspiration for every historical abolitionist movement of Western Civilization. After being an entrenched 10,000 year old human economic system, slavery was first eradicated in Bible literate countries. It took a very long time for other cultures to catch up.

For once on the internet, I'd like to see religion bashers step their game up. Carla Danger, Agit8er, Sealy, Luddy, Holly, D4E et al., I'd like for once that any of you should advance beyond a 1st level unrefined newbie level in your critique of religion. You string up televangelists and white supremacists like pinatas and then whack at them without a blindfold. Yeah, we get it... people are gullible.

Go after the philosophy of the European and American abolitionist movements, which were principally Christian. Take on the pacifist philosophy of Leo Tolstoy. Ridicule the Christianity of MLK, whose doctorates were after all not in astrophysics. Attack Immanuel Kant. Thomas Merton. The great American Quaker William Penn, tear him a new one. Kierkegaard. JRR Tolkien.

Fact is, you have no clue what the history of Christianity or any other religion is unless you've genuinely submersed yourself in the great writers who represent those religions. You are inspired by themes and sentiments in modern culture, and you have no clue that they spring from the very root you strike at.

Please quote the bible verses where Jesus condemns slavery and tells Christians to free all of the slaves.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hathanointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preachdeliveranceto the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, Luke 4:18

Only problem I have with that is that those are not the words of Jesus. He was reading the words of the prophet Isiah in the synagogue and was subsequently rejected by his own people for claiming to be the son of God. They wanted to kill him for blaspheming.

So while I appreciate the effort it doesn't reach the bar of Jesus condemning slavery and setting anyone free.

I, of course, disagree.

here Jesus is citing His mission as the messiah. Which is to bring freedom and liberty to all.

and his life exemplified this. He went around teaching men how to become free of sin. He freed them from sickness and deformities. He even gave His life to free us from the bondage of sin and death. Then he preached deliverance to the dead and rose from the grave.

Jesus also sent he Holy Spirit. And where h Spirit is there is liberty

I think you are confusing the terminology here, Avatar.

Jesus freed people from the "spiritual" slavery of sin which leads to death of the soul. The term "slavery" in this concept is metaphorical

The slavery we are talking about is physical--the case of one individual owning another. The treatment of humans as property. Jesus did not free people--including Christians-- from this type of slavery.

 

[Vigilante]

 

[amrchaos]

A large part of those slaves were christians living in the Sudan.

Guess what--the UN stepped in and split that nation because the muslim north was constantly attacking and enslaving the christian in the south.

So now there are 2 countries because of this issue--Sudan and Southern Sudan. And the border is guarded by the UN.

Of course, there are pockets of slavery all across the world--but the Sudan issue was the largest one of note.

 

[Treeshepherd]

I’ve made a curious discovery in my internet conversations about religion. The fundamentalist Christian and the serial religion basher display a similar reductive form of thinking. The fundy insists on a literal, overly simplistic understanding of scripture. So does the recalcitrant antagonistic atheist ordinarily insist on a reductive assessment of scripture. Usually the sole difference between the two camps is in the response, the one wholly accepting and the other wholly dismissive.

What do the Bible and other scriptures say about this? Let me qualify that I’m referring to a Motive Will, a universal instruction, a Great Spirit, or some other imperfect description when I use the word ‘God’ or refer to a goddess.

The Bhagavad-Gita tells us that God’s creative play in man moves always in an upward spiral, from darkness (Kali) to enlightenment (Satyayuga), from an Age of Iron to an Age of Gold. The age of enlightenment is a period in which harmony, stable and sufficient, is created and man realizes for a time the perfection of his being. Afterwards, the harmony begins to devolve into discord. Then, in ignorance, it finally collapses and is destroyed. But the Kali is not evil. She is necessarily fierce. Transformation is as much about destruction as it is about creation. Kali provides the creative destruction from which a new harmony, a more advanced perfection can be reached.

Krishna and Arjuna’s philosophical discourse is set to a backdrop of war. In his reductive ignorance, the serial religion basher might say therefore that the Gita is a book that promotes violence and bloodshed, missing the value entirely. Both the Bible and the Gita describe and explain the condition of the serial religion basher. The Gita illustrates their dharma within in a cosmic plan. Their dharma is to be collectively like termites, eating away at the pier posts of culture. It’s a low-chakra level of existence, but a necessary one.

 

[amrchaos]

I think there is something wrong is assumed in your assessment, Tree

Many of these "religion bashers" are arguing that you cannot take certain passages literally. They are mainly arguing against those that do.

However, there is one error I do notice that some of these bashers appear to make:Even if the text is a bunch of stories and tales made up by man, there probably some value in understanding these stories.

 

[hobelim]

Many of these "religion bashers" are arguing that you cannot take certain passages literally. They are mainly arguing against those that do.

However, there is one error I do notice that some of these bashers appear to make:Even if the text is a bunch of stories and tales made up by man, there probably some value in understanding these stories.

Exactly.

"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden and buried in a field. The man who found it, buried it again." Matthew 13:44

"I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name." Isaiah 45:3

"Now I show you new things, hidden things which you did not know before. They were not created long ago, but in this very hour; you cannot say, "I know them already." You never heard nor knew. Long ago your ears were closed..." Isaiah 48:6

Time was when many were aghast at you, my people, and so now many nations recoil at sight of him, and kings curl their lips in disgust and shut their mouths before him; for they see what they had never been told and things unheard before fill their thoughts. Isaiah 52:14

 

[hobelim]

Jesus freed people from the "spiritual" slavery of sin which leads to death of the soul. The term "slavery" in this concept is metaphorical

The slavery we are talking about is physical--the case of one individual owning another. The treatment of humans as property. Jesus did not free people--including Christians-- from this type of slavery.

I agree with your first statement but not the second.

The entire subject of demonic possession is exactly about one person owning another through mind control, brainwashing, or sorcery as they would have called it, the treatment of people as property. According to scripture Jesus did free people from this type of slavery in the many accounts of him freeing people from demonic possession, devils who collected people like possessions to fleece or do their bidding through deception, brainwashing techniques, specious falsehoods and every other despicable way that some people dominate and take over the minds and lives of others for personal gain., ..

 

[Treeshepherd]

I think there is something wrong is assumed in your assessment, Tree

Many of these "religion bashers" are arguing that you cannot take certain passages literally. They are mainly arguing against those that do.

Well, I think when someone takes the reductionist view that the Bible promotes oppression or violence, they are insisting that a few vestigial passages trump the overall thrust of a collection of ancient stories which tend to uphold the value of the individual. They're failing to comprehend the cited passages in the context of a world that is completely foreign to modern sensibilities. etc.. Making apples to orange comparisons, putting the cart before the horse, moral equivalence, lacking ability to interpret poetry or mythology, etc..

Such critics fail to approach scripture with any form of creative intelligence. They lack any expertise in exegesis or hermeneutics. It's just my opinion, but in my estimation there are legion of religion bashers on the internet who approach scripture with the same level of sophistication (or lack thereof) of a Christian who thinks the Devil put dinosaur bones in the ground.

"It is a mistake to look to the Bible to close a discussion; the Bible seeks to open one." - William Sloane Coffin