Smoking Gun, Oh Atheists?

[JustWondering]

I question, sincerely, that medical knowledge will enable you and I to no longer disobey the dictates of conscience--medicine cannot stop us from being sinners in need of redemption.

Scientific progress will occur regardless of your backwards looking religious based beliefs.

 

[JustWondering]

You do realize your second sentence answers your first?

People disobey logical apologetics because they like sin. Sin makes rational people irrational.

I have yet to see any Christian apologetics that were rational and logical.

The biblical god needs to exist for sin to exist. Since the biblical god does not exist, sin is an outdated and irrational thing to believe in.

 

[Milton Platt]

I understand. If a woman cries out, kill the man--or kill them both--rape--consensual fornication...

Don't understand your disjointed sentence. Rape is not consensual, so what is your point?

 

[BilliardsBall]

Yes, and the Bible says Jesus died for everyone, not anyone sort or type of people specifically.
And why wouldn't God's Children crucify Christ? It had to happen. Why would someone who is truly loyal and dedicated want to prevent such a thing from happening?

If it's part of the deal that I get to come back to life, it wouldn't be nearly as big of a deal as it is to a mere mortal who will not be returning to life.

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.

 

[BilliardsBall]

I drank a soda this morning. It meets the "tell yourself you shouldn't" part, but it is not a sin.
Where once I was shackled by this notion of sin, now I am free.

Food and drink choices often come from the impulse part of the brain rather than the logical brain. Freedom, real freedom, is liberation from sin--divine more so than animal, smart choices rather than weak impulse choices. Some people do very well combining Christian grace and power with dieting, for example.

 

[Milton Platt]

You think god said this?

The bible contradicts itself.

The bible does indeed say this. It also sanctions slavery, genocide, infanticide, and other things we find immoral today. Yes, the bible contradicts itself unless you torture the text to excuse it.

 

[BilliardsBall]

I quoted an exact verse of the Bible which states, quite clearly, that God punished a man by having his WIVES "lie with" his neighbour in public. They were not "victims of a war", and they were not "wed" to their rapist.

Apparently you also believe it's okay to force someone to marry you if they are a victim of war. Clearly, you are not as opposed to rape as you like to think you are.

Are you referring to Absalom? Where does it say he took David's concubines by force rather than mutual consent? He was considered the handsomest man in the nation and was wealthy and powerful.

David seduced Bathsheba inappropriately and reaped what he sowed. That makes sense.

 

[BilliardsBall]

I just gave you an answer. To meaningfully "sacrifice" something, one has to actually LOSE something. Jesus supposedly suffered, sure, but after three days of suffering they were then returned to life before ascending to heaven and becoming the literally most powerful being in existence and got to be continually praised by billions of people for thousands of years. In other words, Jesus ended up with MORE, not LESS. Nothing was sacrificed. Especially when you remember that the need for a sacrifice to begin with was created by Jesus in the fist place. They literally didn't have to die, suffer or do anything in order to produce the exact same result. It's like me hiring a hit-man to kill you, and then making a "sacrifice" by calling off the hit man and being endlessly praised for it. It's absurd.

If that is true, we should be able to extrapolate that to:

1. Five guys can beat me half to death with baseball bats, for a million-dollar paycheck.

2. The baseball bat beating doesn't hurt a bit, after all, I have a paycheck coming.

No.

 

[BilliardsBall]

It is fairly unique in history. Although not unheard of. Hundreds of authors wrote about greek and roman deities. If the best of these had been put into a single book form, it would have fit the mold.

My point is this. Many religions have multitudes of authors that wrote about it early in its existence. The main thing that differentiates the bible is that a bunch of clergy got together and codified many of these text into one, mostly matching, text. They understood that not doing this would lead to fragmentation within the church of the day.

There is no extant evidence that clergy altered the text. Compiled books into one book, yes.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Because most of them were in the same circle of friends. They were certainly part of the same 'christian' movement which was fairly small and localized at the time. Why is it strange that they all tell a similar (but not identical) story of Jesus?

Those stories that went too far afield were not included in the bible. (which makes sense when one is trying to build a foundation for a new church.

It's not strange to me. I expect eyewitness to not have identical accounts unless their is collusion--so do the courts.

I've read the entire Bible and much apocrypha. It's not that apocrypha went far afield, rather, apocrypha doesn't contain prophecy, eyewitness accounts, was testified to by followers of the apostles, etc.

 

[Milton Platt]

If that is true, we should be able to extrapolate that to:

1. Five guys can beat me half to death with baseball bats, for a million-dollar paycheck.

2. The baseball bat beating doesn't hurt a bit, after all, I have a paycheck coming.

No.

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.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Scientific progress will occur regardless of your backwards looking religious based beliefs.

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

 

[BilliardsBall]

I have yet to see any Christian apologetics that were rational and logical.

The biblical god needs to exist for sin to exist. Since the biblical god does not exist, sin is an outdated and irrational thing to believe in.

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.

 

[BilliardsBall]

Don't understand your disjointed sentence. Rape is not consensual, so what is your point?

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.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

David seduced Bathsheba inappropriately and reaped what he sowed. That makes sense.

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

Torturing babies "makes sense" to you?

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Are you referring to Absalom? Where does it say he took David's concubines by force rather than mutual consent?

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".

He was considered the handsomest man in the nation and was wealthy and powerful.

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

David seduced Bathsheba inappropriately and reaped what he sowed. That makes sense.

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

 

[ImmortalFlame]

If that is true, we should be able to extrapolate that to:

1. Five guys can beat me half to death with baseball bats, for a million-dollar paycheck.

2. The baseball bat beating doesn't hurt a bit, after all, I have a paycheck coming.

No.

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?

 

[Unveiled Artist]

The bible does indeed say this. It also sanctions slavery, genocide, infanticide, and other things we find immoral today. Yes, the bible contradicts itself unless you torture the text to excuse it.

You think god said this?

[Of course] the bible contradicts itself.

 

[Underhill]

There is no extant evidence that clergy altered the text. Compiled books into one book, yes.

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.

 

[Underhill]

It's not strange to me. I expect eyewitness to not have identical accounts unless their is collusion--so do the courts.

I've read the entire Bible and much apocrypha. It's not that apocrypha went far afield, rather, apocrypha doesn't contain prophecy, eyewitness accounts, was testified to by followers of the apostles, etc.

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.