Whatever, a "perfect God" is and your idea of perfect differs vastly from the rest of ours. God creates two people with free will, chucks them out for eating a fruit, then millions of years later(4000 years if you are a young earth creationist, or believe humans began 6000 years ago) sends His son, who's also Himself to enact a drama, give some good morals and some ambiguous ones who then dies and goes right off to Heaven. It isn't my problem, but my source of entertainment
In addition, the whole issue of original sin itself comes from the Bible. Christianity attempts to essentially solve a problem of its own making. Its like cutting someone's arm to offer them a bandage!
Like I said, your question was answered. The fact that you say it was a 'drama' doesn't concern me at all.
Sure it coud be true, but then lots of things could be.
Indeed they could, and arguments from ridicule are useless in establishing the truth of any of them.
On what grounds do you find them admirable? Is that an emotional reaction or a reasoned one? What is the reality which means that there is something to admire about that behaviour?
On what grounds do you find such behaviour admirable? On the grounds that your God was a bloodthirsty guy for a very long time,and selectively punished and spared certain evildoers and then became His son for 33 years, to preach certain good morals, much of which had been said before by other Prophets and wise men throughout the world and then went off to Heaven? To make matters worse, God as Son said that every bit of the Old Law stands, so that inspired more barbarities amongst His followers, at least till the 19th century.
We were talking about whether it was admirable for one human to give his/her life for another. I was asking you on what grounds you find it admirable. Are you going to answer that?
Then we're no longer talking about Christianity, are we.
I know Jesus was a human for the short time, but He was(according to what you believe) God and going right back to Heaven after 33 years and staging a tiny painful death was part of His plan. If I act on stage in a play of "Othello" as Desdemona and feel some pain as the guy acting as Othello pretends to strangle me, it doesn't really make me Desdemona.
Like I said, then we aren't talking about Christianity. Christian belief is that Jesus actually was human - not that he was acting it. The length of time concerned has no bearing on whether he was really human or not.
You can bash your bastardized version of Christianity all you want.
God gives them to people and the law is clearly about women's virginity, since there's no similar requirement regarding man. Humans in most cultures have sexual double standards regarding women, and God too subscribes to that notion. We can easily see how we've made a God in our own image when it turns out that He hates or loves the same stuff we do. Virginity is one of man's many obsessions, and God's as well.
What about other laws like the one about apostasy at Deuteronomy 13:1 when right after forbidding a symbolic reading, at 13:7-11 God commands people to kill their loved ones.The intent clearly is to prevent any apostasy, and your God also explicitly blocks a symbolic or partial reading. If a Jewish boy 2400 years ago came home excited after observing a celebration of Goddess Isis and told His father that the family should switch to worshipping Isis, maybe the father would spare his son out of love. Or he may proceed to stone him.
Whatever, clearly your point about the stoning of a girl with a childhood injury had no basis.
If the father, otherwise a loving and committed parent proceeded to stone his son, I'd only have God to blame. As Noble Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg, himself a Jew turned atheist says, "Religion is an insult to human dignity, without it you would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But for good people to do bad things, that takes religion." Thus God given laws, which also block a symbolic reading, would be responsible for a loving father stoning his son.Oorr, a committed Christian sanctioning the death of apostates, until they decided to interpret the Bible as fulfilled and the story of a disobedient son as basis for not killing apostates.
What, exactly, in this paragraph is supposed to constitute an argument. I found a friend shot on the streets of Kabul recently. She was there as a charity worker with the disabled and said that she thought that is what God wanted her to do. Am I supposed to think that she was doing something bad or lying about her religion just because Steven Weinberg said so? As far as I can see, all people do both bad things and good things and some provide religious justification for them and some provide non-religious justification. The fact that you think you are one of the 'good people' represents your self-deception, not mine.
men slept with their wives handmaidens', war booties all, but obviously you are fine with the morals established by God.
Do you have some evidence for God commanding this?
No He didn't command, but didn't forbid either.
Then you have no grounds for claiming that it was 'God's morals' for them to do so. God commanded them to love their neighbours and love the aliens living among them. Sleeping with other women does not constitute love to your wife. Actions prohibited do not constitute the sum total of God's commands to people.
If these arguments had truly been "catastrophic" for Islam, there'd have been mass apostasy to Christianity or atheism, or every single Muslim or Muslim nation would've been violent, yet this is not the case.
Don't be silly. These arguments, if true, are catastrophic for the person who holds them's belief in Islam - if they follow through on their implications. The fact that it doesn't result in mass apostacy is because they are not strong arguments. In addition, it is quite possible for many people to be completely ignorant of the arguments, to go on for quite some time with an inconsistency in their beliefs or to hold entirely non-rational reasons for believing.
But the fact is, as I originally said, the arguments presented are not the same as those I have presented her regarding the Old Testament laws.
Many Muslim nations like Senegal, Mali, Niger and Sierra Leone are exceptionally tolerant, with not a single incident of honor killings or forced conversions, and interfaith marriage is common.The ex Soviet nations like Kazakhstan are very tolerant as well. In fact in Senegal, which is 95% Muslim, the First President was a Christian, Leopold Sanghor, son of a Muslim mother and a Christian father. Any Muslim could give just as good, if not better "arguments" why certain Islamic practices aren't for all time. So far, your arguments have failed to convince anyone.While you say God struck down some people, including their non virgin women and children for some wickedness, Muslims say they had to make war on others' in self defence as they were bent on killing all Muslims, and also accuse those people for corruption and evil.
And many muslims haven't read or understood the Quran at all - let alone any Hadiths. What exactly, is your point?
It means that your accusation of favouritism is rubbish.
Course it isn't rubbish.. He spares Jephthah, kills some other child sacrificers. He spares Jacob's sons, kills some others' posing a threat to Israelis. Inconsistency on His part. At times He spares some people for some corrupt practices, while completely exterminating others' for similar behaviour.
You were claiming favouritism for his chosen people. If there were others, not chosen, who were also not killed, then you have no grounds for claiming favouritism. If you want to charge him with inconsistency be my guest. I have no reason to expect that I will know when he will or will not choose to kill someone and am more than happy to leave that decision in his hands.
but He sanctions some similar practices Himself
Now you are contradicting yourself. You already said that he didn't command child sacrifice.
But polytheistic deities didn't sanction child sacrifices either, their followers simply indulged in those, and their Gods' didn't punish them(if those gods exist, just as likely as yours existing) just like your God didn't punish Jephthah.
Which is a different point. If God didn't command it, you have no grounds for claiming that he sanctioned it. The lack of an immediate punishment (in this case, I suppose the natural consequences were pretty devastating already) does not entail sanction.
I also said that God didn't command child sacrifice, just that He commanded certain other "delightful" practices
Read your own words. You said 'similar practices'. Child sacrifice is not 'similar' to anything God commanded and he specifically prohibits it.
I just said that God doesn't have any moral superiority, but as you've kindly "clarified" satisfying our idea of good societies wasn't God's intention.So even if societies without your God's laws were more humane and egalitarian, we have to accept that your God is a just one.
As I argued before, if you want to claim they were 'unjust' you need to provide evidence for the standard you are using. You liking them better or throwing around words like 'humane' and 'egalitarian' doesn't achieve that.
The only relevant standard was the purpose that God was aiming to achieve with the Israelites, given the time in which they were living and the people they were.
"Everyone" means every single wrongdoer at all times and incidents the Bible narrates, both male and female, both Israelites and others' they come into contact with- which doesn't happen.
We were talking about the Israelite society as compared to the other societies so 'everyone' here means all societies - not every person.
"Refutes"? I've lurked around here before, and you also criticised Emerald's arguments as "rubbish" when he criticised Christianity, assuming he'd just gone to SAB whereas he'd done a thorough investigation of the Bible, and I too have read the Bible in entirety. You didn't convince him, me or any of us and we don't find your refutations change our perceptions, if anything they've just confirmed our poor opinion of the Christian God. Of course, you too assume that our reasons for disliking Christianity and Emerald's reasons for rejecting it are not good, so I don't know who refuted whom.
Sorry, I should have said 'posts a refutation'. I make no assumptions about whether or not you are convinced by them nor do I consider it my purpose to achieve that. The point here was that I don't think you are a dumbo.
You are as much of a "cultural relativist" as any atheist.
No, and I've already given the reasons why. An atheist has no external reference point for his morality and therefore has no rational argument to bring against anyone else's cultural practices at all. I do.
If God is the source of your morality, and the Bible the way to find out about it, then Christians have interpreted the Bible differently at different times. Till about 150 years back , Christians interpreted the Bible's Deuteronomy and Jesus's words in John15:6 to mean apostates should be killed, when the Christians killed Latin American babies after baptizing them to send them off to Heaven or kidnapped little Jewish kids from their parents if they'e been baptized by some Christian(like Edgardo Mortara, google him up if you don't know), it was considered acceptable. Today, they consider the Biblical laws "fulfilled" in Jesus, interpret Jesus' words' in John 15:21 metaphorically, and cite stories like the Prodigal son, which don't even speak of religious apostasy, as basis for sparing apostates. At least Muslims have some clear commands regarding non believers, and lack of compulsion in religion. Already many very erudite Christians say the Koran doesn't have any earthly punishment for apostasy, maybe in another 50-100 years punishments for apostasy will be unheard of.
Let's hope so. But again, saying that other people disagree with me or interpreted the bible differently does not constitute an argument against the points I have raised. If you think they have good arguments, bring them. Don't just assert that they exist.
Some Christian denominations say all people go to Heaven, others' say only Christians do, most Christians still discriminate against gays, some say Jesus never spoke about gays so they're equal to everyone else etc.
And?
You failed to convince Emerald long ago(an ex Muslim who'd thoroughly investigated both the Koran and Bible) and you don't convince me. I'm done.
And you fail to convince me! So what!
Topic: Readings from the "Holy Book"