I know it's hard for atheists to grasp the concept of divine wrath, but I at least expect you guys to be capable of some form basic intelligent reasoning.What you call genocide in the Bible is nothing more than God manifesting His Divine Wrath and punishing nations for their sins/crimes.
Genocide on the other hand means the killing of a group of people specifically because of their racial attributes or because they practice a particular religion.
As for what you call slavery in the Bible, it was more of indentured servitude. In indentured servitude, it is not the human being who is owned, rather it is his ability to work which belongs to his master and it was usually for the purpose of paying off debts.
As for talking snakes and talking donkeys, the Bible doesn't credit snakes or donkeys with a natural ability to talk, rather the talking snake in the book of Genesis is able to speak because it has been possessed by Satan, while the talking donkey received the ability to talk only for one specific purpose on one specific occasion (to warn his master of imminent death). There is nowhere in the Bible where it is ever stated that speaking is a natural ability which animals possess like human beings.
As for misogyny in the Bible, please provide me with specific passages from the Bible where God regards women as being inferior to men.
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And, as for slavery,
Ephesians 6:5 "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear"
Re: OP
Oh, boy. THIS should be fun.... *snicker*... Sadly, I am pressed for time right now.
Hey, everybody, please try not to slaughter this one too badly before I get back.
Sorry Tin, looks like we have already eviscerated this one.
As Whitefire has suggested just be patient for the second coming of the JWs.
I am so jealous that we all have to wait in line to comment on theist brain farts here on AR and there you are getting victims home delivered...by appointment yet!
Mercy!
Ya know I always wonder how people rationalize away things like genocide, misogyny and and slavery.
And now we have our answer.
I wonder if this guy (assuming guy) realizes he is not helping out the validity of his particular god idea but instead pointing out just how incredibly flawed his god idea is.
And yes we atheist are capable of understanding the concept of divine wrath. It is a really simple concept, even if its completely and utterly unevidenced, (with tons of evidence there has been no such wrath.)
@logicFTW
"It is a really simple concept, even if its completely and utterly unevidenced, (with tons of evidence there has been no such wrath.)'
Indeed, although there are is a plethora of horrible claims in the Torah. Including his sadism( to Job and to Abraham)and his genocidal rage; IE drowning the whole world.
IF I believed,I'd be bloody well terrified of him too.
IN recent years, there have been no shortage of idiots claiming the wrath of god. for all kinds of things. AIDS as a punishment for homosexuality was very popular.
I've aways been bemused by the notion that a god of infinite attributes could be pleased or offended by anything we could do. Surely, we must be less than ants to such a being?
One more thing; the notion of anyone suffering for MY sins or anyone's except their own is an obscenity to me. .
@cranky47
Another way I perceive just about any popular religion idea, is the incredible arrogance of it.
This completely unevidenced deity idea, with the power to create entire universes and has been around for billions of years, cares about ME. Because I was born in the right place, to the right parents, at the right time, where it will ignore the other 100+ billion people that have lived and died, let alone all other complex life on this planet perhaps even sending all this to purgatory or hell depending on my particular god ideas.
But this great deity will listen to my prayers, and if I follow some vague rules other humans wrote or said, I get to be by its side for eternity in some sort of paradise idea. And as long as I follow those rules, nothing else I do on this planet/life really matters. The planet was created for ME and other people that think like ME about this unevidenced deity idea, and my god idea can easily fix and clean up any messes I make, for instance: should anyone that believes in all powerful deity idea that is "on my side" really be concerned about something like climate change?
I suspect we both fully agree just how obscene just about any religious concept is.
...I know it's hard for atheists to grasp the concept of divine wrath, but I at least expect you guys to be capable of some form basic intelligent reasoning....
My brain is ***sparking**** cannot comprehend .... not capable - - -
Sorry, I was just responding to what you know. Since you established yourself in your first sentence as “knowing”.
Tin man... you get to play with JWs. Stop being a hog!
... Genocide on the other hand means the killing of a group of people specifically because of their racial attributes or because they practice a particular religion...
Why did you use “on the other hand”?
This definition you gave is the reason God deemed it necessary to clean out the land. The inhabitants were not his chosen people (religion) and they were born and raised in a land God promised to a guy generations back (national and racial).
"As for misogyny in the Bible, please provide me with specific passages from the Bible where God regards women as being inferior to men."
Women are explicitly subordinate to men:
Genesis 3.16: 16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
Women can be given to others based on what men do, like all other property. Jeremiah 8.9-10:
9 The wise will be put to shame;
they will be dismayed and trapped.
Since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
what kind of wisdom do they have?
10 Therefore I will give their wives to other men
and their fields to new owners.
From the least to the greatest,
all are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
If someone rapes an unmarried woman, the rapist must pay the father for the damage he has done to his property (because the woman is regarded as the father's property), and to add insult to injury, the poor woman must marry her rapist. What the woman must think or feel is totally irrelevant. Deuteronomy 22.28-29:
28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
There is more, but I think the point is proven. The bible is full of misogynistic shit.
Oh LOL....
This for starters
Misogynistic - a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.
Genesis 3:16
Exodus 21:7
Numbers 3:15,28
Exodus 23:17
Exodus 20:17
Judges 1:12–13
Leviticus 6:14–18
Numbers 5:15–31
Jeremiah 8:9–10
Exodus 22:29–31
Leviticus 12:1–5
Judges 8:30–31
Leviticus 27:1–7
Nahum 3:4–6
Numbers 36:8–12
2 Samuel 12:11
Deuteronomy 22:20–21
Numbers 31:17–18
Numbers 30:1–8,16
Numbers 31:25–35
Deuteronomy 24:1—4
Judges 5:30
Job 25:4
Ezekiel 36:16–17
Job 14:1–4
Lamentations 1:8–9
Isaiah 19:16
Hosea 9:1
nfanticidal - the act of killing an infant; the practice of killing newborn infants; a person who kills infants.
Isaiah 13:18
Hosea 13:16
1 Samuel 15:2–3
1 Samuel 22:19
Psalm 137:8–9
Isaiah 13:11–18
Numbers 31:17
Jeremiah 13:14
Deuteronomy 13:6–11
Jeremiah 19:3–9
Deuteronomy 28:53
Deuteronomy 3:3–6
Deuteronomy 2:31–34
Hosea 9:11–16
Ezekiel 9:4–6
2 Kings 2:23–24
Exodus 12:29
Leviticus 26:21–22
2 Samuel 12:13–18
Genocidal - relating to or involving the deliberate killing of a large group of people of a particular nation or ethnic group.
Deuteronomy 20:16–17
Deuteronomy 2:32–34
Genesis 6:6–8
Deuteronomy 7:1–2
Numbers 21:2–3
Deuteronomy 2:32–34
Deuteronomy 20:10–19
Deuteronomy 3:3–6
Judges 18:1–28
1 Samuel 15:7–8
1 Samuel 15:2–3
Numbers 31:7–40
Joshua 8:25–28
Joshua 11:12
Joshua 6:21
Joshua 11:16–20
Joshua 11:21–22
Joshua 11:10–11
Judges 1:22–26
Deuteronomy 13:12–15
1 Samuel 27:8–9
Deuteronomy 7:16
Joshua 10:28–40
Jeremiah 50:21
Now wait for it...."Oh but context": "It's a metaphor" "It doesn't really mean that" " Hang on , let me get my Hermenutic goggles and give you several references from random places that contradict that verse...a bit..."
Dear oh dear...someone else can carry the slavery bag....
If you can rationalise things like misogyny, genocide, mass murder, culling of children, plagues etc...
Then really, you ought to just be strapped to a rocket and fired into the sun.
"Then really, you ought to just be strapped to a rocket and fired into the sun."
Indeed.
if you haven't seen it, thought you might enjoy George Carlin and his list of people who ought to be killed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVlkxrNlp10
That gave me a good giggle!
Well I know when I owe the bank and my work provides money to pay back said loan payment and I don not pay back said loan payment... the loan officer is allowed to beat me as long as I don’t die in a day or two.
@Whitefire Re: "...(if) I don not pay back said loan payment... the loan officer is allowed to beat me as long as I don’t die in a day or two."
Damn, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Where do you bank? I might just switch over my loan to there. Because at MY bank, if I don't make my payment on time, my loan officer is allowed to kill most of my family and every other person on the planet, and then set me out to sea for over a year on a small boat overcrowded with every animal known to man. Does NOT sound like a good time to me. However, I've had my ass kicked before. An ass kicking isn't so bad. I can handle an ass kicking. Hmmm.... *scratching chin in contemplation*... Yeah, what's the number to your bank?... *reaching for phone*... Hell, I might even purposely miss a payment every so often. I could certainly use a good ass kicking now and then.
@JACKSON5
Your OP is not so much about what atheists fail to grasp about your concept of a god, as much as about what you fail to understand about atheists and how they think and rationalise.
Many here on AR, like myself are ex-christians, and we once used to share your viewpoint, but then intelligent reasoning and critical readings of the bible have delivered to us some indisputable conclusions.
But first I would refresh your understanding of atheism. We reject theist claims of the existence of any god, using reason and rationalisation. So as there is no god, all your justifications for genocide, slavery, and talking animals, are exposed as merely superstitious evasions and denials of the truth.
And the reasoned intelligent truth here is that without the fanciful excuse of a god, genocide and slavery are simply crimes against humanity, committed by other humans not gods, specifically in this case by the Hebrew tribes against all the other Caanite tribes, including those who were descended from the patriarch Abraham and his second wife Keturah, such as the Midianites, the tribe that Moses is said to have sought refuge with and married into. So your god is used to justify a whole range of types of murders of family members as well.
And yes, I am well aware, as a dilettante student of ancient history, that at the time, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had not yet been penned by humanist philosphers. However the fact remains that the slaughter of men, women, young men, male children, babies (dashed against rocks) is all perfectly justified by apologists who insist 'god done it for reasons above our ken'. And those who were not killed were taken as slaves and if they were young female virgins, sometimes kept for sex toys. Mysogyny anyone?
I reject your notion that indentured Jewish slaves were the majority demigraph of Hebrew slavery. Indentured slavery was employed against fellow Jews who could not pay debts, and featured a few rights and benefits not available to 'foreign' slaves, usually the booty of conquest. Its in the bible.
The refugee Haibru invaders from Egypt sought to venerate their conquest and genocide of Caanan through the authority of their traditional war-mongering god. I would add that it is clear, that the Pentateuch is no more than a justification of genocide and slavery and an elaborate 'title deed' claim to exclusive possession of the lands of what we now call Israel.
Talking donkeys have never existed, except in the realm of miracles and other fairy tales such as the bible.
'Satan' is not mentioned in Genesis 1 or 2. You have been deceived. The snake is only described as being the smartest and craftiest of animals. And from memory the only other vague reference in the bible linking this garden snake to 'satan' comes much later in Revelations "Satan, that old serpent" which makes no real case for connection to the Eden snake
Others have already addressed your bleat about misogyny. I concur with them and remind you of the daily Jewish prayer for men that thanks god for not making them female. Thankful misogyny is still misogyny.
So, once again, the real issue for this OP, similar to all theist claims, is not the attempted justification of 'very cold case' crimes against humanity, written up and confessed to in ancient texts, but the lack of explanation as how through the applicaction of 'basic intelligent reasoning' there is any objective evidence for the existence of your god in the first place.
edit...I have been corrected with justification...the snake doesn't appear until Genesis 3...however that does not change anything I have claimed...as you were.
@ JACKSON5
I wish to address the first accusation, that atheists do not understand the concept of divine wrath. Of course not, in fact, none of it makes sense, atheists do not accept the god claim. Why make up complex rules for an imaginary friend when that imaginary friend fails to pass the first test, of being real? It is like an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" where the main protagonists speculate whether Spiderman can defeat the Hulk.
JACKSON5, I suggest the first hurdle you must clear is to provide proof or evidence your god is real. Until we get past that obstacle, this is all speculation on imaginary beings.
@ JACKSON5
"As for what you call slavery in the Bible, it was more of indentured servitude. In indentured servitude, it is not the human being who is owned, rather it is his ability to work which belongs to his master and it was usually for the purpose of paying off debts."
Bullshit.
You are attempting to dilute one of the most cruel practices in human history, of owning another. Yes, indentured servitude is real and practiced, but the bible refers specifically about people owning another human being and doing whatever they wished with them, including rape, torture, separation from family and loved ones, being worked to death, and murder.
JACKSON5, please take off your rose-colored glasses and answer his simple question, and I suggest you think it through carefully.
Imagine I own your mother and father. I rape your mother when it suits me, maybe even your father in freaky Friday. If you have sisters, I loan them out for pleasure to my friends. And you, the son of slaves, you are a bit of a bother, so in the morning I will take you down to the slave market and hopefully get a good price for you. I thought about castrating you to make you less of a problem, but I hear slaves like you are worth a lot of money. I don't care if your mother will cry herself to sleep every night, I don't care if you are sold to a mine where you spend every day breaking rocks, and I don't care if you are fed to the lions for entertainment.
You are my slave, I own your ass, and I can do what I please with you. I am your god.
Do you accept the above scenario as acceptable by any standard?
@ JACKSON5
I know it's hard for atheists to grasp the concept of divine wrath, but I at least expect you guys to be capable of some form basic intelligent reasoning.What you call genocide in the Bible is nothing more than God manifesting His Divine Wrath and punishing nations for their sins/crimes.
============================================
Is that the all knowing, all powerful god who created the universe? You know the one who created this universe knowing full well that people would be the way they are, not only in general, but down to all specifics, and knowing so much as to be able to account every hair on each and every head.
It's like a guy who deliberately makes something to certainly fail, and to have enough knowledge to know exactly how and when that failure will arise in the future, due to the knowingly built-in flaw. Then when it fails, as it absolutely, positively, inevitably MUST, to then somehow blame the product, and not its producer, (or this case, to punish the product and not see that the blame lies with the multi-omni source of it all).
That god would be playing a game using, sentient beings as programmed pawns, and being stupid enough to somehow blame those pawns, when said god had a choice, (I would presume, to do otherwise). And conferring freewill doesn't do the slightest thing to get this supposed god off the hook - it had the initial choice, and set the ball roiling just-so, as it knew it would roll.
============================================
Mutorc
Jackson5
What a great name you chose--the damaged offspring of a dysfunctional family of Jehovah's Witnesses infamous for child exploitation and crimes against parenthood.
Jackson5, I wouldn't go down the reasoning you have for most of your points. While I agree with you that context matters (i.e., the slavery in the Bible is different from the African slave trade), it's like saying, "it wasn't that bad, y'all are just over reacting."
I would say that the acts are either justified or that God is simply slowly weeding out the worse practices while tolerating bad ones. One common example I hear a lot is that God allowed for divorce in the Old Testament because had it not been allowed (at the time), men would simply resort to murdering their wives. I think slavery is and was always wrong even the "indentured servitude" type but it was allowed for the time being as slavery was so ingrained into the culture and economy of the ancient world that not allowing it at all meant people would simply starve to death. In fact, there's a record in the Bible of the patriarchs begging to be made slaves as the alternative was dying of starvation. I'll try to find the verse as it escapes me at the moment.
As for God's wrath and how you're justifying the killing of people because, "God willed it". It doesn't help the Christian's case to portray God this way.
@JoC Re: "I would say that the acts are either justified or that God is simply slowly weeding out the worse practices while tolerating bad ones."
Holy shit, JoC! You've opened my eyes to something I have never before considered. By golly, I think you may be on to something here! I mean, just imagine what type of society we might be today if God had continued to allow people to wear clothing of mixed fibers as they sinfully dined on sumptuous shrimp and decadent crab legs! EGAD! I shudder to think of the consequences... *cringe*... Yep, I can TOTALLY see now why your god had to put that minor issue of slavery on the back burner while he dealt with those other two unspeakable abominations. Thank you SOOooooo much for that mind-expanding enlightenment.
Hey, Jackson5, you listen to ol' JoC here. You could learn a thing or two from his bottomless well of intellect. Just one tiny suggestion, though. Make sure you stretch REALLY WELL before learning from him. Some of the bending and twisting he does almost defies modern physics.
@Tin -Man
Congrats, you win half a Tim Tam for the most entertaining sarcastic post of the day.
----OH, I'm sorry, the dog just ate it. Dogs are allergic to chocolate ,so that means another visit to the vet. The last one was when he ate the safety pins I had put on the quilt cover to replace the buttons he'd chewed off.
I don't suppose you'd like a 3 year old Jack Russell, for free?
@Cranky Re: "I don't suppose you'd like a 3 year old Jack Russell, for free?"
Gracias, amigo, for the offer. Jack Russells are awesome. However, we are still getting our most recent addition to the family settled in here after visiting the area Humane Society yesterday afternoon. We ended up with a scruffy little five month old Terrier-Shepherd mixed pup. Wife named her Pagan, and she is a little sweetie. And that is on top of the stray little kitten I found at my Uncle's house a couple of months ago. Pretty sure our other two older cats pretty much hate us now... lol...
Oh, I will take that half of Tim Tam, though. Looks yummy!... *drool*...
Edit to add: Oh, wait. You said your dog ate it... Uh, any way you could get your pup to cough it back up? Should still be good if you can get it quick enough.
@Tin-Man
Sorry mate, no regurgitation. He had some pretty disgusting diarrhoea.
A Terrier-shepherd? Unusual mix. Pretty smart dog. Major is scary smart, with a spine decalcifying bark whenever someone is at the door or a pigeon farts. Great nature though, very affectionate. This week we have been eating moths.
@JoCkstrap,
Great rationalization on top of rationalization. Amazing the hoops an all-powerful and all-knowing God was willing to jump through because he loved (primitive) us so much.
@JoC: but it was allowed for the time being as slavery was so ingrained into the culture and economy of the ancient world that not allowing it at all meant people would simply starve to death
The Bible was used to justify slavery right down to the 19th century. So how long does an omnipotent being need to stamp out an absolutely evil practice?
You say you think "slavery is and was always wrong". What's wrong with it? Why didn't god and Jesus share your view?
And by the way, the starvation commonly started after slavers kidnapped the best young workers, leaving communities unable to feed themselves in Gaul (France), Africa, etc. Slaves were only necessary to support luxurious lifestyles for parasitic aristocrats and priests. Adam Smith, one of the first modern economists, observed that free societies were about 12 times more productive than slave societies. So to argue for keeping slavery as a way of preventing famines makes little sense.
The Bible can be used to justify anything you want. Some atheists even use it to justify atheism. Not everything people use the Bible for is justifiable. I'll admit that.
As to your response regard slavery and starvation, we're talking about two different contexts here. You're talking about the African slave trade (chattel slavery) while I'm talking about indentured servitude during old testament times. Common thought even during the first century CE was that slavery is fine. True indentured servitude was viewed as something that did not diminish one's dignity but it was Christian thinkers (Gregory of Nyssa) who said that it, in fact did diminish their dignity.
Later Christians did make the mistake of using the Bible to justify slavery but it can be said that the Bible is at most neutral on slavery (neither endorsing it nor rejecting it explicitly) but lays the foundation for it's eventual rejection outright.
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