Complaints

[JLB32168]

There are a couple of problems I see on this board.
Most atheist/other skeptic criticisms:

• are based upon criticism of 20th/21st Century Evangelical Christianity,
  
  require a slavishly literal interpretation of the Bible that wasn’t even advocated by the ancient Church Fathers (and when such literal interpretations would have been completely natural),
  
  are founded exclusively upon OT passages in the Bible that command the destruction of the indigenous peoples of Canaan, but leave off the NT altogether
  
  concerning (3) ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that provisions are made for converts to the religion of the Hebrews whereby would-be-victims of war would escape punishment,
  
  also concerning (3) ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that the destructions of the indigenous peoples of Canaan weren’t arbitrary and capricious but reasons were provided – the least of which was the Canaanite propensity for immolating infants for the god Moloch,
  
  also concerning (3) ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that runaway slaves could not be returned under pain of death, could not be harassed under pain of death, had to be manumitted if harmed (assuming they didn’t escape first which would make manumission obsolete),
  
  seem to think that Dan Brown is an Ecclesiastical Historian,
  
  know very little, if anything, about the Christian East

Yup – I’d say there’s a lot of atheist/skeptic ignorance on this board. I base that judgment upon that rather limited repertoire of atheist arguments that are here (e.g. The Bible is fiction, Christians are brainwashed, there’s no scientific proof for God, Miracles are like Unicorns – both have the same likelihood of existing, etc.)

[Divine Insight]

What do the Gospels say about Creation, which is what we’re discussing? It says creation happened and God did it and that’s all it says about creation. Are you actually reading my post?

And there you go JLB, that's a slavishly literal interpretation.

You can "complain" all you want. That's obviously the topic of your thread. But if you are trying to hold up the idea that the Bible should actually be believed just because it makes claims that some invisible God created the world, then you are the one who is demanding a literal interpretation.

Apparently you and I don't mean the same thing when we speak about taking the Bible "literally". I'm not talking about acting stupid, as you seem to be proposing. I'm talking about taking the Bible literally for the claims that it is making.

I don't care how "metaphorical" you read the actual text, if you claim that there actually exists a God who did the things described in the Bible then you are demanding that we take the stories to be "literally true".

The bible is indefensible, and all you are doing here is attempting to play word games to try to have your cake and eat it too. That's doesn't fly.

Hypocrisy is the pretense to high morals or principles while practicing the opposite. Your use of it in this context makes no sense.

Sure it does. Jesus did not practice the very things that he taught, and therefore he was a hypocrite. So it makes perfect sense. Jesus didn't practice love toward his enemies, instead he condemned them to hell.

You left out “til all be fulfilled.�
From the cross, Christ said, “It is finished� which in Greek is actually, “It is consummated,� which is even how the Latin translators rendered it. Consummated=Fulfilled. Your interpretation of this passage is based upon your butchering of the passage.

Sorry, but you left out "till heaven and earth pass".

Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

So don't accuse me of being a "butcher" when you refuse to address what's actually written in these fables.

Pick one apology. Explain why you reject it.

How about the one you just gave? You accuse me of butchering scripture while you are the one who is denial of what the scripture actually says.

Till Heaven and Earth Pass. Try going back and reading it for yourself.

Your "apology" amounts to nothing more than an easily discredited accusation toward me for supposedly "butchering" scriptures when I'm accepting them for the they actually say.

So you'll have to do far better than that.

Divine Insight wrote:
First off, if this omnipotent omniscient God knew that the Canaanites were irredeemable then why did he continue to place new baby souls in the wombs of the Canaanite women?

Do you mean “Why did God allow women to bear children?� I don’t know why. Of course, since not all of them were destroyed if their parents converted. What does this have to do with the Hebrews exterminating them because they threw their infant boys and girls into the fire?

Does God create human souls or not?

If you claim that humans are the ones who create human souls simply because they decide to have sex, then you are going to end up with an extreme problem in your religious theology.

Actually I accept the latter. I believe that we are the ones who decide whether or not a life will be created. In fact, I purposefully chose to not create life. And the reason I chose to not create life is because I could not guarantee the fate of the "living soul" that I would create. Therefore I am necessarily far superior to the Biblical God on moral grounds already. Apparently God creates souls, or allows them to be created, even when he knows full well that the vast majority will be cast into his hell of everlasting punishment. The God of the Bible is far beneath me in terms of moral integrity.

And I don't say this to claim that I'm morally superior to some imaginary God. I simply point out this truth to demonstrate why the Biblical mythology must necessarily be false. There can obviously be no such God as I would clearly be morally superior to such a God. That basically reveals that the God myth is necessarily false.

So I am living proof that the Biblical God cannot exist as described in the Bible.

These stories claim that this God caused his own "Chosen People" to wander around aimlessly in a desert for 40 years!

And this is apparently bad because . . . why? Is being nomadic a bad thing?

Clearly, you've missed the point. This God can supposedly control and blind his own chosen people to the point of causing them to wander around a small desert for 40 years yet he can't keep the Canaanites from settling on his precious Promised Land?

Are you capable of looking at the Bible with rational skepticism at all? Or are you just locked into making endless excuses for it no matter how utterly absurd or self-contradictory they need to be?

It's a serious question. If you aren't capable of looking at the Bible with unbiased skepticism then you'll never see all of these obvious problems contained within it.

Divine Insight wrote:
This event was clearly nothing more than one culture using religion and their imaginary made-up God as justification for committing genocide on another tribe to STEAL their land.

But the atheist opinion is that the Hebrews were never in Egypt and were in fact a part of those people. Furthermore, the further view is that Moses didn’t write this stuff but later generations who wouldn’t have been around wrote it – people who didn’t do these things but said their ancestors did.

It my understanding that this isn't an opinion of atheists, but rather this is a consensus among the majority of historical scholars. I imagine the assessment you gave above most likely is the truth of reality.

However, my point is that even if we allow the Biblical fables to be accurate in the own claim to history the story still become self-contradictory. Why would an omnipotent God who is trying to "raise" his chosen people to obey his moral commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill" lead them to a "Promised Land" that had vile evil people living on it and expect his chosen people to do the dirty work of committing mass genocide on them?

I just offered you an extremely simply solution to this problem. All the God needed to do was to make the Canaanites sterile so they couldn't procreate and they would have died out naturally. He could have done this in a timely fashion so that by the time his chosen people got to the Promise Land no one would be living on it.

Again, I must ask if you are even capable of looking at these ancient fables from an unbiased view?

Keep in mind, that my original view of these stories was not to be skeptical. I actually read them originally with the hopes of understanding why these things had to be the way they were. But at the same time I didn't close my mind to the possibility that they could be false stories. And because of this I was able to see the truth that they don't make any rational sense.

You seem to think that I had some sort of predetermined agenda to decide the Bible was false BEFORE I read it. Sorry, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The amount of ire you have for a deity you don’t think exists for committing atrocities you don’t (or shouldn’t think) happened seems odd. Such wrath strikes me more as one trying to talk him/herself into disbelief.

And see, this is a fabrication created entirely in your own imagination. I have no ire for any God. I actually started reading the Bible with the hope (and the belief) that it would make sense and that everything would become crystal clear to me. This is totally the opposite to what you are accusing me of right now.

The fact is that the Bible shoots itself in its own foot repeatedly and consistently in every story it contains. I"m not going to take the blame for that.

Divine Insight wrote:
Yet more proof that Christianity is inconsistent and utterly absurd.

People have different ideas on minor points and this shows something is false. That has no logic in it whatsoever.

But I've offered undeniable proof at every story within the Bible. And no one has ever offered a better explanation.

Please explain to me why a supposedly omnipotent God, who is also omniscient, and wants to raise his chosen people in accordance with his moral values and commandments, would present them with a "Promised Land" that was filled with evil people that his chosen people would need to murder to take over their land?

Please explain to me how this make sense to you.

And keep in mind that you can't justify this by claiming that an omnipotent omniscient God had "no other choice".

Your post is in the right place – random ramblings.

Keep in mind that this thread was created by you because you wanted to complain about atheists.

If you can't justify your supposedly omnipotent omniscient God then I don't see where you have any room to complain about atheists at all.

[Talishi]

There are a couple of problems I see on this board.
Most atheist/other skeptic criticisms....require a slavishly literal interpretation of the Bible that wasn’t even advocated by the ancient Church Fathers

At least Bible believers present something that can be criticized. The alternative is some marshmallow like this:

Atheist: "I believe theists are wrong to believe in god."

Theist: "How can you say that? God is everything. Don't you believe that at least something exists? If you do, then you believe in my God."

[JLB32168]

But if you are trying to hold up the idea that the Bible should actually be believed just because it makes claims that some invisible God . . .

That’s not the claim I’m making.

Apparently you and I don't mean the same thing when we speak about taking the Bible "literally". I'm not talking about acting stupid, as you seem to be proposing. I'm talking about taking the Bible literally for the claims that it is making.

What’s that got to do with Venus being in the seventh house??? I said that people on this website build their skeptic arguments upon a narrow spectrum of Christian belief.

The bible is indefensible, and . . .

You’re entitled to your opinion.

Jesus did not practice the very things that he taught, and therefore he was a hypocrite.

What did he teach and what did he practice, IYO?

Sorry, but you left out "till heaven and earth pass".

Okay – so are you saying it won’t be fulfilled until the last hour before the universe implodes? That is what you’re essentially saying you know.

Yes, you’re butchering Scripture to tailor your hack job to support your argument.

The rest of your argument is more of the same stuff on other threads. You don’t address the point of my post – the glorious ignorance of most skeptics regarding (usually) the faith they used to have.

[catnip]

There are a couple of problems I see on this board.
Most atheist/other skeptic criticisms:

• are based upon criticism of 20th/21st Century Evangelical Christianity,

I am jumping in late because, by and large, I agree with your complaints.

Yes, a terrible problem we have here is that Christianity is being defined on these boards by one Johnny-come-lately version of the faith, while the greater Christian fold denies many of the teachings of that particular version of the faith. The thing is that when we say so, the atheists continue to make the same false claims.

Judaism is not defined by their fundamentalist branch and Islam is not defined by its fundamentalist branch, neither should Christianity be defined by its fundamentalist branch.

require a slavishly literal interpretation of the Bible that wasn’t even advocated by the ancient Church Fathers (and when such literal interpretations would have been completely natural),

Maintaining the view of the scriptures at the literal level was never done in the history of the faith until 1910-12. Doing so actually denies the seeking so necessary to faith formation. Through the Church Fathers four levels of scripture were recognized and so reading the scriptures only begins at the literal level. Furthermore, parsing the scriptures verse by verse is something never done before the Reformation and the insertion of chapter and verse numbers into the text in the 1550's.

are founded exclusively upon OT passages in the Bible that command the destruction of the indigenous peoples of Canaan, but leave off the NT altogether

True, as most Christians acknowledge that the coming of Jesus Christ into the world was the coming of the light--so the OT was included in the Canon as historical and its prophecy that the Christ would come.

Or, more to the point, what the Iron and Bronze age Hebrews claim as their history does not inform our faith nor can we defend it. The Jews have interpreted it, but Christians do no more that read those books literally and it is not part of our cultural history. What is more, the Jews resent what Christians read into their sacred texts. Just ask them! In short, ours is the New Testament and this is the biggest difference between the greater Christian community and the Evangelicals than any other point of divergence between us. Again, I would argue as strongly against the Evangelicals as the Atheists do!

concerning (3) ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that provisions are made for converts to the religion of the Hebrews whereby would-be-victims of war would escape punishment,

also concerning (3) ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that the destructions of the indigenous peoples of Canaan weren’t arbitrary and capricious but reasons were provided – the least of which was the Canaanite propensity for immolating infants for the god Moloch,

The rest of the civilized world hated them as much as the Hebrews did for that very reason.

know very little, if anything, about the Christian East

True and most of the early churches in and around the Holy Land were and are Orthodox. But even still, the ignorance on these boards of the catholic faith is so virulent that they cannot see that even I am arguing with them against the Fundamentalist/Evangelical view of scripture and the Christian faith.

Yup – I’d say there’s a lot of atheist/skeptic ignorance on this board.

There is so much argued here that is false concerning the Christian religion that their arguments don't broach the body of Christian belief and teaching that is and has always been the predominant view of the faith. Without acknowledging the ancient tradition they do not show any comprehension of what the far greater number of Christians believe and practice worldwide.

I base that judgment upon that rather limited repertoire of atheist arguments that are here (e.g. The Bible is fiction, Christians are brainwashed, there’s no scientific proof for God, Miracles are like Unicorns – both have the same likelihood of existing, etc.)

Ironically, while they thump their chests over their shallow victories that do not, in fact, challenge our beliefs, they merely shut down the conversation without having established anything against Christianity itself. I just see more of the same in this thread. They have not dealt with your arguments, they merely continue to promote the same useless arguments without any foundation.

[catnip]

There are a couple of problems I see on this board.
Most atheist/other skeptic criticisms....require a slavishly literal interpretation of the Bible that wasn’t even advocated by the ancient Church Fathers

At least Bible believers present something that can be criticized. The alternative is some marshmallow like this:

Atheist: "I believe theists are wrong to believe in god."

Theist: "How can you say that? God is everything. Don't you believe that at least something exists? If you do, then you believe in my God."

That's not necessarily what we would say, but again the faith cannot be defined by the fundamentalist faction. The fundamentalists have found your arguments against them to be so compelling that they do not continue to debate here and soon leave. You have to consider your audience when presenting arguments in order to insure that you are actually presenting cogent arguments against what the participants do believe.

In short, it does no good to complain that we aren't cooperating with your preferred arguments.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 11 by Divine Insight]

Clearly, you've missed the point. This God can supposedly control and blind his own chosen people to the point of causing them to wander around a small desert for 40 years yet he can't keep the Canaanites from settling on his precious Promised Land?

We can add "real estate agent" to the list of things the God of the Old Testament fails at. If in the real world, a real estate agent promises me a house, and then, after a time, I go to move in only to find out the agent did literally nothing at all to prevent some squatters moving in...I'm a bit p'd off at that agent.