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What is the Absolute Brahman within your religion?
Israel encountered many false gods, with Egypt typifying the idolatrous nation. How many gods did the Egyptians have?
Do you think slavery is ever justified given what is said in the Bible?
They didn't like it, did they? Yet God condones it.
None of these are relevant to there being rules for slave ownership in the Bible, as condoned by God. Or was God wrong, in your view? You can't have it both ways, there being rules for owning slaves, and slavery being wrong. Which is it?
I am aware that Christians believe this and interpret the Bible a certain way, but this is challenged as we see in Blu's comments, among others. Plus, Jews disagree with Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, so that's a strike against this new interpretation. Plus, even Christians disagree with interpretation of the Bible, so that's another problem.
How about the slave owner? Did you know slaves in the South were largely forbidden to learn to read, mostly to avoid them reading the Bible and assuming they have a soul like whites? These were Baptist white people imposing these rules, and they did so based on the authority in the Bible. Were they wrong?
This is a claim, not knowledge. So demonstrate they claim is true objectively, and not just a claim that is often used as a threat.
How do you discern real gods from false gods? Present the method of discernment that any mortal can use. And tell us the method you used to discern a real god from all the fake gods. I'm curious to see your rigorous process.
Exodus is not considered to be actual history. Didn't you know this?
My knowledge is limited, but the knowledge of the one God is not.
That is correct. That is why the Upanisads and the Gita are scripture as they contain no error.
Were you not aware that the 'underground railroad' through which many slaves were able to make their escape from slavery was supported by many Christians, particularly Quakers.
Are you a God yourself, or a fallible mortal who is prone to making errors? Could you be mistaken in your religious belief?
Is it better to examine it objectively, or with certain assumptions you adopt from your religious culture?
That's why examining it from an objective and fact-baed approach is superior.
It's what you believe. Could you be mistaken as a fallible, ordinary sinner? If so, your truth is open for adjustment.
Quakers had a good moral core, as did abolitionists. But you are avoiding my questions: why did Christians own slaves, and do so based on the rules and guidance of the Bible? Is this uncomfortable for you to admit?
This was due largely to the human rights from the Enlightenment. For centuries Christians captured free people, enslaved them, sold and bought them, and thought it was all justified and authorized by God via the Bible. Can you admit this? What does it tell you about the Bible, God, how Christians interpret the Bible, and morality? Thus far you are avoiding my hard moral challenges and trying to only refer to the good things Christians did. You can't avoid your religion's immoral past.
Once again, we have the biblical record to refer to. How do you think Abraham came to believe that God was real? How did Noah come to believe God was real? How did Moses come to have faith in God?
The same way Frodo knew he had to take the ring himself to throw in the fire, that is how the authors wrote these stories.
Of course, that's what the author's wanted people to believe. We can't assume these stories are true at face value given the lack of evidence, and the implausible nature of them.
I notice you offer no method to discern real from fake Gods. Perhaps you don't know of a way to do it.
Well... the smritis of Hinduism have countless people to whom Brahman reveal Itself clearly and unequivocally. They are the rishis. We have thousands.. Angirasa, Jagyavalka, Vyasa, Uddalaka Aruni, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya, the other Bhakti saints, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Vivekananda... the list continues.
There are Jews that accept Jesus as Christ, and Jews who do not. In many 'Torah 'Jewish households it is anathema to even mention the name of Jesus. I also believe that many Jews refuse to read or study the NT because they have preconceptions about the language and contents.
Were any of your great teachers resurrected from the dead? How would you know that the 'way' they teach brings life if you have no evidence of resurrection?
Human beings are already immmortal, merely shifting between old bodies and new bodies as one changes clothes after a day's work. Why would I care about either death or resurrection? Life I already have for eternity.
The Bible does not encourage the ownership of slaves.
Surely less that the Hindu you are having a conversation with currently. But Israel sees Jesus as a false God as well, so what does that do to your claim above? God's are in the eye of the beholder. Even the God Christians worship vary from one sect to the other. Liberal sects see God as tolerant and just to all people, while the KKK Christian will see non-whites as inferior as an edict of God.
Only if you believe the Charleston Heston version of history, which isn't considered true by historians.
Messianic Jews are a fringe subset. Not significant. You could say they are just another sect of an already crowded collection of Christians whose beliefs disagree.
the Old Testament is theirs, and Christians abducted it and changed the meaning of many of its words and stories. It's absurd that Christians interpret the OT in a way that differs from Jews when it is THEIR book.
That's funny, with 44,000 sects of Christianity I'd say they are plenty confused WITH the NT. One of the reasons I'm an atheist was watching my Catholic and Baptist families argue and go after each other at holiday dinners. WOW, even as a child i was smart enough to see how they behaved through their religious belief was contrary to what I was being taught in Sunday school. I could see there was something fatally wrong with this religion.
And this means what? That they are devoted to their religious belief? Let's note that these Jews disagree with you about Jesus, so I'm not sure the wisdom of using them as an authority in religion. I should listen to them about how much your religious interpretation is in error. Yes?
Not according to the Jews.
Assuming a Jesus existed, he would have been Jewish. But that still doesn't make the Gospel true. Let us know when they finish their assessment.
That is what a true believer like Paul would say. The whole "end times" notion is pretty dubious, much of it driven by Revelations, which scholars consider to be describing the time of Nero.
Then it sounds as if your interpretation is that many, if not the majority, of Christians have been deceived. Why would God do that instead of offering a more coherent and clear doctrine? Not very loving.
I find more conservative believers to have more corrupt fruit. The more liberal believers tend to mirror Jesus vastly more. When I was a kid I worked at my grandmothers food kitchen at her church. They fed homeless and hungry people twice a week, which is all the church could afford to do. I felt shame because my family was pretty well off and I had no idea there were families that needed this good service. The ladies that did all this at the church never asked anyone to pray, never brought up religion, or salvation, or anything. They did their duty as human beings, and this is what Jesus taught his followers to do. I see the Swaggarts, the Bakers, the Falwells, the Grahams, all the greedy takers who press government and society to be intolerant their their fellow citizens who don't meet some absurd ideal. They are most definitely rotten fruit. Why they don't see it, I don't know. Greed does something toxic to the spirit.
This tale wasn't written till c. 90 CE, sixty years / two or three generations after the traditional date of the crucifixion, so whether it was historical or just a story, it had all that time to be polished. And if it's roughly accurate, so what? That doesn't make Jesus a Jewish messiah.
So the Jewish messiah, you say, is himself the cause of the greatest and most sustained and most murderous and rapacious antisemitism?
