Hello there, I'm an atheist

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ApostateltsopA
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by ApostateltsopA » Tue Oct 13, 2015 1:28 pm

Mattrose,

I'm on my phone so this will be brief. I don't think it is a good idea to keep talking to you. You seeem upset and are being either deliberately dishonest or are too angry to see accidental dishonesty.

First you accuse me of misquoting the bible. However I have provided links, and direct copy paste quotes with information on exactly which version I quoted. Since you don't show any misquotes your accusation is just an unfounded personal attack.

Second when you respond to my points you obfuscate the truth. Above you pointed out the verse that you claim states slaves may not be beaten to death. However this is a lie by omission. That same section stipulates, as I have brought to your attention, that the probibition on killing slaves only counts if they die immeadiately. If it takes more than two days for them to die there is no penalty for the slave owner. You know that because I told you, directly.

I'm sorry this conversation has upset you so. I'll be taking some time off. If you can see your dishonesty we may talk again. If not then I hope you do well.

dizerner

Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by dizerner » Tue Oct 13, 2015 2:36 pm

ApostateltsopA wrote:If you want to claim that no harm has fallen you need to support that with more than just your claim.
I did support it with more than just a claim—please don't lie, it's not good argumentation and makes you look cheap and dishonest. I laid out the logic clearly: A non-existent person feels zero pain. You countered that argument (which you falsely called a "claim" just now) with the logic that: this person could contribute to society, and could have experienced more well being. I countered that argument with the logic that "a negative or positive future contribution is unknown and so cannot be factored" and also I said "future well being cannot be applied to a non-existent person." That's when you lied about me—and we simply can't get anywhere with that.
I can argue for them, but if you really want to insist that killing people isn't bad, then I'll not be able to convince you
You can convince me with good logic. I'm waiting for it. Do you believe in the death penalty?
but I will have good grounds to ignore your further input on the topic, and a very easy case to convince others to listen to me and not you.
Yea, yea, of course. If you want to win arguments by simply assuming you are right with no logic, you can always win, and we shouldn't talk. I'd hope you'd have realized that before you even started. :roll:
If you accept my axioms then we can benchmark harms and well being, since well being does not include being dead, then murder is wrong. Murderers can be punished.
If I accept your axioms... yea.. :lol:. If you accept my axioms you come to my conclusions as well. Axiom: a claim which could be seen to be true without any need for proof. Wow! We all can have axioms! And if we all accept another person's axioms, that person wins the argument! :shock: Man. If that's how we win debates, count me in. And you say you're not a moral relativist!
Not all opinions are equal.
Is that your opinion??? Is it equal???

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mattrose
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by mattrose » Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:14 pm

ApostateltsopA wrote:Mattrose,

I'm on my phone so this will be brief. I don't think it is a good idea to keep talking to you. You seeem upset and are being either deliberately dishonest or are too angry to see accidental dishonesty.
This is interesting because anyone that knows me knows that I am un-emotional to a fault. I'm not sure why you are perceiving anger where, in reality, we're just having grown-up conversation. I'll deal with your other accusation below.
First you accuse me of misquoting the bible. However I have provided links, and direct copy paste quotes with information on exactly which version I quoted. Since you don't show any misquotes your accusation is just an unfounded personal attack.

Second when you respond to my points you obfuscate the truth. Above you pointed out the verse that you claim states slaves may not be beaten to death. However this is a lie by omission. That same section stipulates, as I have brought to your attention, that the probibition on killing slaves only counts if they die immeadiately. If it takes more than two days for them to die there is no penalty for the slave owner. You know that because I told you, directly.
This whole section, here, seems to go back to your mis-reading of Exodus 21:20-21.

I will provide line by line commentary below. Perhaps you'll be able to see why I consider your interpretation a misquote.

Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,
This is very clearly stated. If a man struck his servant and killed him, he was to be punished. The Hebrew word here 'naqam' always involves the death penalty in the Old Testament (Copan, "Is God a moral monster" pg. 135). So the penalty for killing your servant was death. This law was, as far as I know, unprecedented progress against the backdrop of Israel's ancient neighbors. It increased enormously the legal protection of the servant.

21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
In the ancient world, like most of the world today, corporal punishment (physical discipline) was accepted. This law is maintaining the rights of the boss to utilize physical discipline so long as the injuries were minor (just like we draw a line between physical discipline of children and child abuse). So this part of the law protects the boss's right to discipline his employees within reason. Certainly he shouldn't be put to death for disciplining his servant! The rest of the context makes clear that there were serious consequences for causing serious injury.

In your commentary, you are for some reason assuming that if the servant dies 3 or 4 days after the incident, the master gets off without any consequences. Not only is this not what the text says, but it doesn't even make sense given the surrounding context which is all about protecting the rights of victims. Why would a guy get off free for a delayed DEATH when the same context builds in major penalties for severe INJURIES (21:26-27).

Even if you insist on your possible (though not, in my opinion, plausible) interpretation that the servant actually dies after 2-3 days, the obvious conclusion (based on the surrounding context) is that the death was accidental. Clearly the servant, in such a case, could have been killed on the spot of that was the intent. The fact that he survives 2-3 days shows that the discipline was not likely an attempt to kill. The death was likely accidental. Why would the master purposefully take away the source of his debt-repayment?

So, again, you are most likely wrong in your reading of the passage. But even if you aren't, you're still wrong in your understanding of the harsher reading.

I have tried to patiently and methodically respond to your objections, but at this point you are ignoring most of my responses and just accusing me of being either willfully dishonest or emotionally charged. Perhaps your time-out is a good idea for now. But I'd be glad to have you re-enter the dialogue if you're willing to actually respond to rebuttals with arguments rather than accusations.

Perhaps you took personal offense to my claim that you are ignorant of many things when it comes to Bible interpretation. The claim is not meant to be nasty. You yourself admitted that you were ignorant of some of the explanations that I put forward. Now you aren't ignorant of them. You, on the other hand, accused me of being dishonest. Your ignorance might have been against your will (if you're truly seeking truth), but my dishonesty would have been willful. In sum, my major critique has been to your ignorance with the desire to help you become better informed. Your major critique is that I am emotional and/or a liar (which is a character attack used, rhetorically, to (apparently) stifle or end the conversation.

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Homer
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Homer » Tue Oct 13, 2015 11:35 pm

Matt has done well. Additionally I would say that "Apos" appears to have done little in depth study as is commonly done by any serious student of the bible. In this case if he had, he would have first of all looked up the meaning, in Hebrew, of the word translated "a day or two" in Exodus 20:21, (NASB). That word is yowm. Yown can be translated as a day, number of days, some time, or even year. Now if a person thinks the situation through it can easily be seen that vss. 20-21 provide protection for both the slave and the slave owner. The punishment of the slave owner who beat his slave to death is vengeance (Heb. naqam) which, as Matt pointed out, would likely require an "eye for an eye" and thus death for the slave owner. On the other hand, if the owner punished his slave with "a rod" and his slave survived for a period of time then died there would be no likely way in that ancient time to determine the actual cause of death, and the slaves' relatives would have no right to vengeance. Additionally the slave is the owner's "property", literally "money" in the Hebrew, so the benefit of doubt would be that the slave owner would not want to cause economic loss to himself.

Apos, you need to study up a bit.

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ApostateltsopA
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by ApostateltsopA » Wed Oct 14, 2015 1:05 am

@mattrose,

Thank you for posting the specific verses, I can see now what happened. So firstly, I'm sorry, in the NIV the verses read exactly as you describe them. I first ran across these verses in the KJV and there the meaning is as I described it.

[/quote="KJV"]Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.[/quote]

Of the twenty available translations on Bible Hub only 5 refer to the slave recovering. The remaining 15 refer to the slave lingering for a couple days as letting the owner off the hook. I think the Darby version is the most explicit about the slave only needing to live for a day or two,
Darby Version wrote:Only, if he continue [to live] a day or two days, he shall not be avenged; for he is his money.
All 20 are clear that the slave is the property of the master and none of them specify the need for any reason for the beating. Any and all beatings are condoned.

Now, I've previously stated that the NIV was the best translation, according to apologetic and atheist sources I trust, conditionally. If that is so, this indicates a very disturbing degree of flexibility in understanding what should be a clear instruction. Many of the translations that do not mention recovery are recent. Which backs up my point about the obscurity of the original languages.

At a minimum slaves can be beaten with a stick, so long as they recover the ability to walk. At a maximum slaves can be killed so long as their death can not be immediately linked to the beating.

You are correct that I am frustrated with how you communicate. It isn't being called ignorant, alone that is so obnoxious. It is the way you offer your interpretation as though it were the singularly correct one, and your repeated accusation that I am using the "worst possible" interpretation of these words. The phrase "worst possible" can only be hyperbole. You know I could always layer more contempt, or bias, or negative connotation, into the words. However what I have been offering is a literal reading. (With the caveat that I missed the change of wording in versions of this specific verse.) Your offer only a very positive spin on the events I describe. When I mentioned slavery, only generally, this is how you replied.
mattrose wrote:When an Israelite went bankrupt, the Law said they could work off their debt by serving the person they owed for up to 6 years (depending on the size of the debt). The Law protected those servants from abuse. Compared to the nations around them at the time, Israel's laws were a step in the right direction. God works progressively through history to improve conditions. The 'slavery' passages in the Old Testament are usually mis-interpreted by modern people because we have American slavery history in mind when we read the texts.
You limited yourself to only the slavery as described for Hebrew men, and made no mention, at all, of the practice of sex slavery or that these protections did not extend to gentile slaves or women in the same manner as they did to Hebrew men.

To add insult to the fire, in this last exchange you accused me of not responding to your points, one of the things I've stated from the beginning is that I may miss things and anyone is welcome to return to something I missed. I've tried, periodically, to prune back what you and I are talking about to keep from being overwhelmed by having to talk coherently about too many things at once. If there is something you feel is important that I have not addressed, please bring it up.

You have said that you filter your reading of all the nasty bits through your belief that god is love. The reason I brought up some of the nasty bits was to show, these are not acts of love. In your previous post you waxed on about how there needed to be some system to handle debts, and that these protections of slavery were designed to limit abuse. However the same set of laws has capital punishments for disrespecting one's parents. If this is "limited abuse" the limiting falls grossly short of ethical.

I think it's best to set aside all the specifics, and look at the difference between our interpretations. You are excusing slavery because of the time it occurred. That is the very definition of relative morality. That I can not use modern understanding of ethics to condemn the ancient practice of slavery.

However according to the bible these rules were being set down by god. You've stated that god is taking his time to reveal things to us. Why? If it is a limitation of men, then that is a design flaw in men and the designer is culpable for its inclusion.

I think our conversation is really about the problem of evil. Let us set aside the specific transnational or intrepretational issues, for now, and look at that problem. I think we may but heads less doing so.

When I see horrible things happen, I look at a universe which is a set of physical properties in motion. I do not see a god, and so I do not see the things that happen as the product of a mind. This means I don't have an overlay on what I see of "good" or "evil". Things just are, until people get involved, then minds are present and actions taken by people with minds are up for review.

If there were some great designer, then I would need to believe that slavery, torture, leukemia, flesh eating bacteria, and all the other horrors of existence are there by design. Furthermore that it was cosmically right for them to be there, that they are necessary in some way.

It seems you believe that god could not teach the ancients not to own one another. That they were incapable of recording debts and working them off without the need for beatings and ownership. That the practice of selling a daughter could ever be an ethical decision to make.

Why do you believe evil and suffering are part of the design?


Secondly, you keep telling me I'm using the wrong interpretation of the cross. I tried to make it very basic, some problem existed, the solution to this problem was Jesus dying. If Jesus died without solving a problem why did he die? If Jesus dying did solve a problem why do you believe that kind of problem can be solved this way?

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ApostateltsopA
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by ApostateltsopA » Wed Oct 14, 2015 1:21 am

dizerner wrote:
ApostateltsopA wrote:If you want to claim that no harm has fallen you need to support that with more than just your claim.
I did support it with more than just a claim—please don't lie, it's not good argumentation and makes you look cheap and dishonest. I laid out the logic clearly: A non-existent person feels zero pain.
There are two underlying implications in your argument, "That only pain in the present can be considered" and "That well being and harm are synonymous with pain" So you are claiming that only pain of the moment can be considered in moral judgments of right and wrong. You have done this without supporting evidence and were I to agree to it it would render all moral judgments impossible, as they would all be referring to past issues unless you know a means of operating simultaneously. I am not lying, though I see I will need to spell things out for you explicitly. I suppose I should have expected this given the way you misinterpreted the word "matters" in our other discussion. I don't know what you mean by "cheap".

Further, a person who is alive can be said to have some level of well being, once dead they have no well being. Ergo a reduction of well being occurs through murder.
dizerner wrote:
I can argue for them, but if you really want to insist that killing people isn't bad, then I'll not be able to convince you
You can convince me with good logic. I'm waiting for it. Do you believe in the death penalty?
This is a nonsequiter. Were I you, I'd point out that yes, I do believe the death penalty exists. However I can charitably read that you expect me to comment favorably or unfavorably on the practice of the death penalty, to which I'd point to research that it is ineffective and expensive. Little gain in well being, large gain in harm. We do not currently have a good reason to practice the death penalty. (Of course if you mean is it ever ok to kill someone that is a whole different question). Why is it you allow yourself to speak vaguely but insist that my writing be so explicit?
dizerner wrote:
but I will have good grounds to ignore your further input on the topic, and a very easy case to convince others to listen to me and not you.
Yea, yea, of course. If you want to win arguments by simply assuming you are right with no logic, you can always win, and we shouldn't talk. I'd hope you'd have realized that before you even started. :roll:
This is a misrepresentation of what I said, again. I stated that Well Being being good and harm being bad are axiomatic principles. I further stated that you can disagree with them as good and bad, but that I would have an easy time getting others to disagree with you. You may claim not to hold these ideas, though they are nearly universal, however I offer that if you valued harm over well being you would have harmed yourself to incapacity or death by now. Since you are apparently alive and able to type you seem to value well being over harm. Did you have to think about it or do you recognize those principles are axiomatic?
dizerner wrote:
If you accept my axioms then we can benchmark harms and well being, since well being does not include being dead, then murder is wrong. Murderers can be punished.
If I accept your axioms... yea.. :lol:. If you accept my axioms you come to my conclusions as well. Axiom: a claim which could be seen to be true without any need for proof. Wow! We all can have axioms! And if we all accept another person's axioms, that person wins the argument! :shock: Man. If that's how we win debates, count me in. And you say you're not a moral relativist!
Not all opinions are equal.
Is that your opinion??? Is it equal???

From the rest of your text it is clear that you are not engaging in any kind of good faith. I don't see any reason to continue responding to such obvious and hollow mockery.

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ApostateltsopA
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by ApostateltsopA » Wed Oct 14, 2015 1:35 am

Homer wrote:Matt has done well. Additionally I would say that "Apos" appears to have done little in depth study as is commonly done by any serious student of the bible. In this case if he had, he would have first of all looked up the meaning, in Hebrew, of the word translated "a day or two" in Exodus 20:21, (NASB). That word is yowm. Yown can be translated as a day, number of days, some time, or even year. Now if a person thinks the situation through it can easily be seen that vss. 20-21 provide protection for both the slave and the slave owner. The punishment of the slave owner who beat his slave to death is vengeance (Heb. naqam) which, as Matt pointed out, would likely require an "eye for an eye" and thus death for the slave owner. On the other hand, if the owner punished his slave with "a rod" and his slave survived for a period of time then died there would be no likely way in that ancient time to determine the actual cause of death, and the slaves' relatives would have no right to vengeance. Additionally the slave is the owner's "property", literally "money" in the Hebrew, so the benefit of doubt would be that the slave owner would not want to cause economic loss to himself.

Apos, you need to study up a bit.
Homer,

You have now twice avoided my direct responses to you. I take it you concede the point. I will point out only this. If the bible is the word of god, and I need to contradict the top 20 translations on bible hub with direct study of a dead language to properly understand it, and further that I can expect to be tortured eternally, or destroyed for failure to understand it, than the author is unspeakably evil. The fact that the language must be wrung through so much study is instead, excellent evidence that the book is a compilation of stories from ancient people who had a poor grasp of ethics.

It seems like tremendous arrogance to me for you to speak as you do. Why is your interpretation of the Hebrew more accurate than the teams that created all the other versions? Your translation does not appear to be in print anywhere but here.

You are right that I'm not a dedicated bible scholar. I have spent time looking at it, more than most ancient fables, given the way it effects the culture I live in, but I also look at the other ancient works and other religions. If I would have to ignore them to specialize in bible study, someone needs to make a powerful argument that the bible, and not the bagavad gita or epic of Gilgamesh, or tales of Loki and Thor, or any of the innumerable other religions is the correct ancient book. Why all the confusion in light of 1 Corinthians 14:33?

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mattrose
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by mattrose » Wed Oct 14, 2015 8:43 am

ApostateltsopA wrote:@mattrose,

Thank you for posting the specific verses, I can see now what happened. So firstly, I'm sorry, in the NIV the verses read exactly as you describe them. I first ran across these verses in the KJV and there the meaning is as I described it.

Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

Of the twenty available translations on Bible Hub only 5 refer to the slave recovering. The remaining 15 refer to the slave lingering for a couple days as letting the owner off the hook. I think the Darby version is the most explicit about the slave only needing to live for a day or two,
Darby Version wrote:Only, if he continue [to live] a day or two days, he shall not be avenged; for he is his money.
All 20 are clear that the slave is the property of the master and none of them specify the need for any reason for the beating. Any and all beatings are condoned.
Actually, the slave was not really thought of as 'property' in Hebrew culture. Numerous other passages talk about the full and equal humanity of slaves. The KJV is accurate on that point. The word is 'money' (not 'property') and specifically refers to the debt still owed to the creditor. The point is, the creditor has a vested interest in keeping his debtor alive and healthy, so he should only be accused of murder (for which he would have received capital punishment) if the evidence is clear.
Now, I've previously stated that the NIV was the best translation, according to apologetic and atheist sources I trust, conditionally. If that is so, this indicates a very disturbing degree of flexibility in understanding what should be a clear instruction. Many of the translations that do not mention recovery are recent. Which backs up my point about the obscurity of the original languages.
It is true that in some (certainly not most) passages we have to do some homework.

I would re-iterate, however, that with either translation, it is possible to provide a 'defense' for the law.

I think you would now agree that the NIV translation renders the law largely un-objectionable from your point of view.

But even with the KJV translation it, first off, doesn't directly say he dies after those 2-3 days. But let's assume he did. As I said before, the point here would be that the creditor obviously wasn't intending to kill the debtor if the death didn't happen immediately. This would move to case, to use modern vernacular, from murder to accidental manslaughter. The KJV says the man shall not be 'punished' (and remember, the word for punish here refers to capital punishment in Hebrew) for accidental manslaughter. It doesn't necessarily mean the guy gets off w/o ANY punishment... only that he will not be sentenced to death for accidently killing someone (much like in our culture).
You are correct that I am frustrated with how you communicate. It isn't being called ignorant, alone that is so obnoxious. It is the way you offer your interpretation as though it were the singularly correct one, and your repeated accusation that I am using the "worst possible" interpretation of these words. The phrase "worst possible" can only be hyperbole.
Well, of course I offer my interpretation as if it is correct. If I didn't believe it was correct, I wouldn't offer it. But I, by no means, speak as if my interpretation is the only POSSIBLE interpretation. This is obvious to anyone who has been reading this exchange. I consistently refer to other POSSIBLE interpretations even while I think one is more PLAUSIBLE. I directly stated that your interpretation was possible.

So I mean 'worst possible' quite literally (not as hyperbole). There is only a small range of possible interpretations for these texts. In the case of Exodus 21:20-21, I'd say there are maybe 3-5 possible interpretations. Yours is the worst (and by that I mean most negative) of the set.
You know I could always layer more contempt, or bias, or negative connotation, into the words. However what I have been offering is a literal reading. (With the caveat that I missed the change of wording in versions of this specific verse.) Your offer only a very positive spin on the events I describe.
I would like to address, briefly, your suggestion that you are offering the literal reading. I don't think that is the case. You're offering the impression you got when you first read the text. But you cannot know that that is the impression I got from my initial/surface-level reading of the text. What you call 'positive spin' might just be my own literal reading. Literally, it doesn't say Jephthah's daughter died (you read that INTO the text). Literally it doesn't say the debtor died (you read that INTO the text too). So it is at least possible that your atheistic tendencies color your interpretations (just like my Christian tendencies color mine)
You limited yourself to only the slavery as described for Hebrew men, and made no mention, at all, of the practice of sex slavery or that these protections did not extend to gentile slaves or women in the same manner as they did to Hebrew men.
If your fault-finding, here, is that I did not talk about every form of slavery in the Old Testament... then I can only say that I don't think it is in the interest of good communication to talk about so many things at once. I said in my earlier post that I prefer to talk about 2 or 3 issues at a time. All of our exchanges are quite long. I thought it made sense to discuss the type of slavery that most certainly made up the vast majority of Hebrew slavery. I always said I was willing to discuss other types separately. That offer still stands, but, for the sake of clarity, the different types shouldn't be blended together.
To add insult to the fire, in this last exchange you accused me of not responding to your points, one of the things I've stated from the beginning is that I may miss things and anyone is welcome to return to something I missed. I've tried, periodically, to prune back what you and I are talking about to keep from being overwhelmed by having to talk coherently about too many things at once. If there is something you feel is important that I have not addressed, please bring it up.
I wasn't 'accusing' you of not responding as an insult. I was simply stating a fact that our conversation was going too fast since so many points were being missed. You responded to a lengthy post with a post about how you didn't want to continue dialog at the moment. That is fine. If you do have time/interest, the thing I'd most like to talk about is the evidence for Jesus. And here's why... I'll defend the Bible against your accusations because I think you're wrong in your interpretations... but I don't actually put my faith in the Bible. I put my faith in Jesus. The Bible is sometimes harder to defend, admittedly. Jesus' existence is easy to defend.

You could become a Christian without believing in the infallibility of Scripture, so I'd rather get to the source of your potential salvation. The only reason I'm willing to dialogue about other issues is that they can serve as roadblocks to Jesus.
You have said that you filter your reading of all the nasty bits through your belief that god is love. The reason I brought up some of the nasty bits was to show, these are not acts of love. In your previous post you waxed on about how there needed to be some system to handle debts, and that these protections of slavery were designed to limit abuse. However the same set of laws has capital punishments for disrespecting one's parents. If this is "limited abuse" the limiting falls grossly short of ethical.
Hopefully, by now, you can see that I'm not trying to be nasty. I'm just responding to accusations against the Bible. I will admit that I've been told my rhetorical style is somewhat aggressive. My reason for arguing strongly for my positions is twofold. First, I believe them. Second, I have always believed that the best way to find truth is to seek it boldly. I don't want to spend precious time beating around bushes. I try to get right to the point. Perhaps I could better nuance my statements so that you can know for sure that the words aren't being typed with malice, but I hope you can just trust that I am not angry or mean. If you're ever in Western NY let me know and you can see for yourself, haha.

As for the capital punishment for disrespecting one's parents... again, look at the NIV (which you agreed was better). The words used are 'attacks' and 'curses'. It's clearly not talking about killing a kid for any level of disrespect. Now THAT would have been genocide! Israel would have ceased to exist within a generation of such a law! The terms 'attack' and 'curse' are very serious terms in Hebrew. We're talking about grown children physically attacking their (most likely elderly) parents. That is a serious offense. And to curse your parents is a level of rage that is dangerous to society.
I think it's best to set aside all the specifics, and look at the difference between our interpretations. You are excusing slavery because of the time it occurred. That is the very definition of relative morality. That I can not use modern understanding of ethics to condemn the ancient practice of slavery.

However according to the bible these rules were being set down by god. You've stated that god is taking his time to reveal things to us. Why? If it is a limitation of men, then that is a design flaw in men and the designer is culpable for its inclusion.


Ah, I think we are starting to get to the heart of the issues now!

1. You wonder why God only revealed things progressively through time
2. You speculate that it's because of the limitation of men
3. You conclude that this is to be blamed on a design flaw by the designer

Number 1 is a good thing to wonder about.
Number 2 is good speculation.
Number 3 is a conclusion that I would argue against.
I'll do so below:

There are two reasons for the limitations of men (and women).

One reason humans are limited is because God's goal is to genuinely mature them. God's goal was never to create an army of robots that behaved just like he wanted them b/c of some program. God's goal was to create real people who really decided to live love. This involves learning and choosing love. This takes time, but is a worthwhile goal (as any parent knows). This is certainly not a design flaw. It is the only way to arrive at the goal.

A second reason humans are limited is because of sin. Humans rebelled against God and believed lies. One set of lies said that some people aren't equal human beings (women, foreigners, the poor, etc.). God told the truth and certainly didn't force humans to believe lies. But, because the project was genuine love, God had to give them the option to reject Him and believe lies. This is not the fault of the designer. What's more, God refuses to give up on us rebels and makes a way for us to come back into relationship with Him so we can become lovers after all.
I think our conversation is really about the problem of evil. Let us set aside the specific transnational or intrepretational issues, for now, and look at that problem. I think we may but heads less doing so....

If there were some great designer, then I would need to believe that slavery, torture, leukemia, flesh eating bacteria, and all the other horrors of existence are there by design. Furthermore that it was cosmically right for them to be there, that they are necessary in some way....

Why do you believe evil and suffering are part of the design?
This is an argument against dualism, not Christianity. Dualism says good & evil are there by design. Christianity says evil is an intruder. I don't believe evil and suffering are part of the design. Genesis 1-3 clearly says otherwise.
Secondly, you keep telling me I'm using the wrong interpretation of the cross. I tried to make it very basic, some problem existed, the solution to this problem was Jesus dying. If Jesus died without solving a problem why did he die? If Jesus dying did solve a problem why do you believe that kind of problem can be solved this way?
Notice that you've changed your wording here. Previously, you're understanding of the cross always had to do with the anger of God and need for someone to die to appease him. Now you've removed that language and I find your statement less objectionable.

Given the fact that you are not yet convinced of Jesus' existence, it may be better to save discussion of the atonement offered through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection for later. But, to put it briefly, I share a view of the atonement with a number of early Christians. I believe that God became flesh in Jesus to serve as a second Adam of sorts. Adam had chosen a wrong path (one of rebellion against God which led to death). Jesus became an Adam(man) to create a new path for humanity (one of loving and proper relationship with God that went through death but conquered it). Jesus became what we are (human) so that we could become what He is (someone in right relationship with God). Adam's path was, literally, a dead-end. Jesus went to that dead-end to put down some new pavement, pavement that led beyond death.

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Homer
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Homer » Wed Oct 14, 2015 10:06 am

Apos,

You wrote:
You have now twice avoided my direct responses to you.
Seems to me we are both missing some things in the blizzard of responses. I am most interested in your responses regarding how atheists establish any system of morality at all. You apparently overlooked this question I posted to you:
When you speak of the mother's "bodily integrity" it sounds as though you believe the mother should have the right to kill the baby right up to the moment of birth. But wouldn't "their right to bodily integrity" be no different than their right to their "time"? After all our time is limited and a baby certainly requires a lot of it. So under your system please explain why the mother shouldn't be allowed to kill the baby the day after birth. Or a week later, when she realizes how much of her time the baby takes? Or whenever. Certainly a baby has no more value to society when it is a week old than it did a week before birth.

dizerner

Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by dizerner » Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:41 pm

ApostateltsopA wrote:This is a nonsequiter. Were I you, I'd point out that yes, I do believe the death penalty exists. However I can charitably read that you expect me to comment favorably or unfavorably on the practice of the death penalty, to which I'd point to research that it is ineffective and expensive.
Oh, come on. It's not being "charitable" to allow me to use a major definition of an English word.

be·lieved be·liev·ing - Full Definition of BELIEVE -intransitive verb
1. a: to have a firm religious faith b: to accept something as true, genuine, or real <ideals we believe in> <believes in ghosts>
2. to have a firm conviction as to the goodness, efficacy, or ability of something <believe in exercise>
3. to hold an opinion : think <I believe so>

Do you realize what you are saying by implying I made a non-sequitur by using a different definiton of a word than the one you assumed?

It's like if I said "I just caught a bass."

Then you reply "That's a non-sequitur! But I'll be charitable and read that meant fish instead of a guitar."

Or if I said "Let me wind my clock!"

Then you reply "That's a non-sequitur! But I'll be charitable and read that you didn't mean to blow on your clock."

Or if I said "I put a bow in my hair."

Then you reply "That's a non-sequitur! But I'll be charitable and read that you didn't bow down to your hair."

That's not charity, that's context. If this is the kind of dishonest and cheap tactics you use, I'm out.

(YES CHEAP: 2. gained or done with little effort <a cheap victory> <talk is cheap> 3. a: of inferior quality or worth : tawdry, sleazy <cheap workmanship> b : contemptible because of lack of any fine, lofty, or redeeming qualities <feeling cheap>)

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