• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

A call to atheists...let's have at the Ten Commandments

Emsy

Member
I can't help but notice that you have equated the words "criticism" and "ridicule." They are not the same, you know. And supposing they are is not going advance any thoughtful analysis.

I absolutely have not equated the words "criticism" and "ridicule".

Total straw man there buddy.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
I absolutely have not equated the words "criticism" and "ridicule".

Total straw man there buddy.
No? Read your own words:

"In the exact quote that I posted, he stated that criticism of the Ten Commandments would lead to "get people to see things from a different perspective."

As if overwhelming ridicule of religion in general is such a new thing."


You wrote those sentences, with those words, in that order, for a reason, to make a point. And in doing so, you very much equated "criticism" with "overwhelming ridicule."

Language has its rules, otherwise no meaning at all would be possible.
 
What is the position or belief of each and every person visiting this thread and crossing by this post?

I'd like people to state what they consider themselves to be and their position(s) please!

I am an Anti-Biblical Theist, Monotheist.

I would like people who believe in the Old Testament Literally, symbolically, Old but not New, New Testament Only, all the variants to clarify what you consider yourselves to be or hold to?

I reject the God described in very important sections of the Jewish Biblical scriptures and implied in the Christian Scriptures.

I fully reject the descriptions given of "YHWH" in their literal forms and the statements attributed to YHWH such as the generational punishing of children for crimes and sins of parents which is wholly unjust and vile.

What are you each and why? What did you start as and move into and feel yourself being pushed towards potentially?

I've wondered a similar thing in my other recent thread:
Moving Towards Atheism or Theism? Shifts, New Beliefs, Etc.

I just don't understand how people can hold on to something they say they are reading which goes against so much of our human common sense and calculations about right and wrong, just and unjust, real and unreal?

There are other more sophisticated and sterile, improved and cleaned up models out there in the Upanishads, Prajnaparamita Sutras, and Qur'an even.

In my view, however religious you think you are, if you think there is a humanoid coming down in a cloud as shown in my earlier post above where I show:
Bible Gateway passage: Exodus 34:1-28 - New International Version

You have No God, since what you believe is wholly imaginary cartoonism, and its hard to believe you even insist on claiming to believe what should not be even possible to just believe since the concept is so ridiculous and you have not seen any such thing nor should you ever worship such a humanoid form if you can avoid doing so!

I call for you to abandon this blasphemous and poorly conceived God, the religion of Jacob wrestling a God or Angel and getting the name Isra El (Wrestles With God).

Abandon this poor conception of YHWH! It is tied to crucial parts of the Bible, so abandon those parts and abandon that deluded scripture!

Read the other scriptures and texts and see their superiority!

The Upanishads, The Prajnaparamita Sutras, the Qur'an at www.islamawakened.com/quran and abandon Man-God literalism, believe in an Abstract Non-Man God like the Power behind Nature and Reality, not a humanoid coming down in clouds like the Monkey King.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
reject the God described in very important sections of the Jewish Biblical scriptures and implied in the Christian Scriptures.

I fully reject the descriptions given of "YHWH" in their literal forms and the statements attributed to YHWH such as the generational punishing of children for crimes and sins of parents which is wholly unjust and vile.
Me too. ;)
I just don't understand how people can hold on to something they say they are reading which goes against so much of our human common sense and calculations about right and wrong, just and unjust, real and unreal?
Neither do I. ;)
 

amorphous_constellation

Well-Known Member
So, the US First Amendment to the Constitution is in direct opposition to the First Commandment!

That hadn't really occurred me, and I wonder if your observation had specifically occurred to the writers. Also, the 'commandment' seems to not be really universally applicable, clearly. I mean, not every people was in bondage in Egypt, so it can't really refer to the wider human race. Unless, maybe 'Egypt' is to be interpreted as some kind of metaphorical idea, though I have no idea how exactly. Perhaps it could be said to represent polytheism, which the greater world was 'bondage' to, before jesus came to free them. That explanation might even be the NT somewhere, I don't know, my subconscious might have got it from there

Second, I can't help but notice that verse 5 is in complete contradiction to every civilized notion of justice -- the very idea of punishing the children, grand-children -- all the way to the great-great-grand-children (them's the fourth generation) -- is completely counter to the idea that nobody is punished except for that which they themselves are guilty of.

It's against justice, but it's kind of the way things sometimes can work out, in a sense. And I mean in that sort of greater sense, of indebting future generations in various ways, or complicating their problems by what we do now. Also, it's worth mentioning that the bible itself is in a debate with this notion, as in Jeremiah 31:29. I had thought that the new testament referenced that specifically as well, but I can't find it. Anyway, as in jeremiah, there also existed the idea that every person dies only for their own sin, which apparently contradicts other biblical ideas about generational curses

No! Commandment 4 is rubbish, and of no use whatever in a pluralistic, capitalistic world.

Again, this verse might lack universality, as it indicates the worship of a very specific god, the god who brought a specific people out of egyptian bondage. However, the idea of a day of rest may have been considered progressive at the time, especially in an era when megalithic structures were being variously constructed, possibly fairly often through force. If you make rest into an actual holy thing, that might make it fairly immune to mortal criticism from several thousand years ago, and so people probably could variously rest in relative security. What is the secular approach to truly securing a day of rest? It seems rational to rest, though the whims of the rational mind are often not stronger than those of the industrious one
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
"Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. "

Can you possibly scroll up to my post above?

I think that punishing children and grand children to the third and fourth generation is soundly and comprehensibly unjust, don't you think so?

For the reasons already given...NO, I do not think that the one who gave us our sense of justice is capable of doing anything that is against his own standards of justice....how could he? Do you not think that limited human understanding and an emotional interpretation of his actions could lead to misunderstanding them?
God's justice is tempered by mercy, not sentiment. Do you understand the difference?

There are standards and laws governing all the things that humans do....but in so many ways God abides by them himself. If you refer to those times when God has judged children along with their wicked parents, you must understand that he judged them according to his standards of justice, not man's......no sentiment was involved. And human behavior by and large betrays the fact that children will adopt their parents' attitudes and actions....because they learn what they live.

As I said...."Giving parents the responsibility for raising their own children in the way they wish is surely not something that most parents would argue against. But it works both ways. Would you like God to take children away from their parents because they are not teaching them about him? Free will is the ability to make those choices. God is not a tyrannical despot who can’t wait to punish people....he gives everyone the same opportunity to get to know him....but only if they want to."

Do you think God should spare the children of parents who are wicked when he has given to those parents sole responsibility for their reproductive choices as well as the upbringing and role modeling that they give to their children? Do you want God to be a despotic tyrant who dictates what parents can and can't teach their own children? He gave us that right....but it is also a responsibility. We have to understand the difference there as well.

No children were spared in the flood of Noah's day....nor were there any children spared when Sodom and Gomorrah were razed to the ground. Why? because God found no righteous hearts in any of those people....and their children were being raised to perpetuate their parent's lifestyle. Realistically, if you come upon a nest of venomous spiders in your house, do you spare the babies? What will they grow up to be?
And, if all the adults were gone.....who would have raised those children?
God spared only those in whom he found good qualities. And these events set examples for the future....for the time of Christ's return.

Matthew 24:37-39....
"For just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. 38 For as they were in those days before the Flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 39 and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be."

2 Peter 2:5-6...
"And he did not refrain from punishing an ancient world, but kept Noah, a preacher of righteousness, safe with seven others when he brought a flood upon a world of ungodly people. 6 And by reducing the cities of Sodʹom and Go·morʹrah to ashes, he condemned them, setting a pattern for ungodly people of things to come."

I believe that we today are facing those "things to come" right now.
 
For the reasons already given...NO, I do not think that the one who gave us our sense of justice is capable of doing anything that is against his own standards of justice....how could he? Do you not think that limited human understanding and an emotional interpretation of his actions could lead to misunderstanding them?
God's justice is tempered by mercy, not sentiment. Do you understand the difference?

There are standards and laws governing all the things that humans do....but in so many ways God abides by them himself. If you refer to those times when God has judged children along with their wicked parents, you must understand that he judged them according to his standards of justice, not man's......no sentiment was involved. And human behavior by and large betrays the fact that children will adopt their parents' attitudes and actions....because they learn what they live.

As I said...."Giving parents the responsibility for raising their own children in the way they wish is surely not something that most parents would argue against. But it works both ways. Would you like God to take children away from their parents because they are not teaching them about him? Free will is the ability to make those choices. God is not a tyrannical despot who can’t wait to punish people....he gives everyone the same opportunity to get to know him....but only if they want to."

Do you think God should spare the children of parents who are wicked when he has given to those parents sole responsibility for their reproductive choices as well as the upbringing and role modeling that they give to their children? Do you want God to be a despotic tyrant who dictates what parents can and can't teach their own children? He gave us that right....but it is also a responsibility. We have to understand the difference there as well.

No children were spared in the flood of Noah's day....nor were there any children spared when Sodom and Gomorrah were razed to the ground. Why? because God found no righteous hearts in any of those people....and their children were being raised to perpetuate their parent's lifestyle. Realistically, if you come upon a nest of venomous spiders in your house, do you spare the babies? What will they grow up to be?
And, if all the adults were gone.....who would have raised those children?
God spared only those in whom he found good qualities. And these events set examples for the future....for the time of Christ's return.

Matthew 24:37-39....
"For just as the days of Noah were, so the presence of the Son of man will be. 38 For as they were in those days before the Flood, eating and drinking, men marrying and women being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, 39 and they took no note until the Flood came and swept them all away, so the presence of the Son of man will be."

2 Peter 2:5-6...
"And he did not refrain from punishing an ancient world, but kept Noah, a preacher of righteousness, safe with seven others when he brought a flood upon a world of ungodly people. 6 And by reducing the cities of Sodʹom and Go·morʹrah to ashes, he condemned them, setting a pattern for ungodly people of things to come."

I believe that we today are facing those "things to come" right now.

You said: "Do you think God should spare the children of parents who are wicked when he has given to those parents sole responsibility for their reproductive choices as well as the upbringing and role modeling that they give to their children? Do you want God to be a despotic tyrant who dictates what parents can and can't teach their own children? He gave us that right....but it is also a responsibility. We have to understand the difference there as well.

No children were spared in the flood of Noah's day....nor were there any children spared when Sodom and Gomorrah were razed to the ground. Why? because God found no righteous hearts in any of those people....and their children were being raised to perpetuate their parent's lifestyle. Realistically, if you come upon a nest of venomous spiders in your house, do you spare the babies? What will they grow up to be?
And, if all the adults were gone.....who would have raised those children?
God spared only those in whom he found good qualities. And these events set examples for the future....for the time of Christ's return. "

This seems quite twisted and vile to me, though I appreciated greatly the writing and work you put in the writing. It reminds me of the sort of ideas Nazis had about killing and wiping out the Jews to wipe out the Jewish mentality from them and their children.

Tyrannical Despot only applies to taking away children from bad parents and not slitting their throats and "dashing them against rocks"?

A person should commit a crime before they get the judge, jury, and executioner, no? What crime have the children committed? Yes, its justice to wait, or else I can just burn your house down and wipe out your whole family and relatives and say "Well, you were about to do something bad surely" like the Minority Report.

Do you even think about the implications of what you are saying?

Can you imagine a villain or a villainous people sitting among themselves and conjuring up a story to justify baby murders en-masse and then convincing you many hundreds and even thousands of years later that their evil deeds were sovereign, rightful, and divine?

I think none of these things even bother you or penetrate your senses though, because you can't let go of what is clearly Satan's Book of Wickedness that lies about God, God's Nature, God's Commands, and promotes and justifies villainy and filthy immorality as if God told them to do it, and dupes generations of people who can't simply say No! Hell No!.
 

Trailblazer

Veteran Member
I think none of these things even bother you or penetrate your senses though, because you can't let go of what is clearly Satan's Book of Wickedness that lies about God, God's Nature, God's Commands, and promotes and justifies villainy and filthy immorality as if God told them to do it, and dupes generations of people who can't simply say No! Hell No!.
I do not believe in Satan but what do you think God allowed the Bible to be written as it was, with all the misrepresentations of Him? The only reason I can think of is that we have free will so that is why God allowed men to write it.
 
Thank you so much! I'm headed there now while using this post to bump this thread as well!

For anyone else following me, I have lots of writing in several threads which can be searched using my username of DagonVarunaMitraApolloZan , but the most so far is probably "Proof of Islam":
Proof of Islam?
ttps://www.religiousforums.com/threads/proof-of-islam.233249/

There I discuss an alternative to the Bible as mentioned in this thread! (Assuming someone may come by my writing here and want to explore more from an Anti-Biblical Theist).
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
in it doesn't even look a tiny bit like the one that everybody wants to carve in stone
let's not overlook the alleged Author

picture yourself as an eighty year old man
yes you can

and you are climbing a mountain to meet your Maker
yes you can

and in the Presence of a disembodied Voice
you find yourself scratching the words as He dictates......

Thou shall not have lesser gods before thee

and you Moses.....did what? as you lived in the house of Pharoah

Thou shall not kill

and you Moses....did what? and that brutal event led to your leaving Egypt

in fairness.....I didn't read the entire thread
but a shift is perspective can do wonders
 
Top