@Russell said in [Thread closed?](/post/1069048) said:
@fair-dinkum said in [Thread closed?](/post/1069036) said:
@Abraham said in [Thread closed?](/post/1069013) said:
@fair-dinkum I would love to pick your brain, because **there are a number of glaring things from your post which i think you have been led down the garden path on.**
But i also realise a football forum isn't the place to do that.
You're a died in the wool atheist, and i don't think a conversation over a forum, with all of its inherent limitations, is going to change that.
Anyway, thanks for the post.
*there are a number of glaring things from your post which i think you have been led down the garden path on.*
***Which part, the horrifying amount of murder, incest, slavery and butchery condoned by your infallible God in the bible?***
I didnt think a dyed in the wool theist would be interested in an honest and open conversation about what they believe in and why, its much more easier to run away when asked to give a coherent explanation as why they hold their untenable position.
Anyway, thanks for the post.
Just for my edification can you post a couple of passages from the New Testament that condone these things you mentioned. Basically the post Christian era.
Thanks appreciate it in advance FD.
***horrifying amount of murder, incest, slavery and butchery condoned by your infallible God in the bible?***
My first question to you is, What do you believe in and why?
**Matthew 5:17-19**
**17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.**
Your god is either fallible or it isnt, which is it? I could write 25 pages highlighting the monster in the New Testament. I cant really be bothered though writing out something you will completely ignore or cherry pick parts like you do from the section that makes up 75% of your fairy tale book, The Old Testament i,e 10 commandments.
Ill leave you with a cut and paste from an article written by James R. Cowles, though i doubt you'll read it and acknowledge any of the points it makes -
I want to deal directly and explicitly with how the practice of perpetual cherry-picking applies specifically to the Gospel texts. The popular-culture account of the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament usually goes something like the following. In the Christian Old Testament -- I will refer to it this way so as to be able to leverage the contrast between "Old" versus "New“ -- God is portrayed as a God of war, violence, and judgment. Furthermore, very much unlike, e.g., Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, both Judaism and Christianity (and Islam for that matter) are historical religions. That is, God has intervened at several critical junctures in actual, empirical, space-time history, leaving Her fingerprints all over the events therein. For Christians, though not for Jews and Muslims (who would consider the very idea mortally blasphemous), the most radical such intervention was the Incarnation, whereby God became incarnate in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, a particular Jew Who was born and lived in the particular time and place of first-century CE Israel, which at that time was part of the Roman Empire. This Jesus -- at least, so the popular understanding goes -- is quite the opposite of the Deity of the Hebrew canon. The Former liked to play with little kids (Matt. 19:13-15); the Latter slaughtered the firstborn children of Egypt. The Former was a peaceable Man, most likely a pacifist (Matt. 26:51-53); the Latter, "a Man of war" (Ex. 15:3). The Former taught His followers to "turn the other cheek" when provoked (Matt. 5:38-40), and to be radically forgiving (Matt. 18:21-23); the Latter describes Himself as a "jealous God". So Christians flee from Richard Dawkins' famous description of the Old Testament God in The God Delusion and take refuge in the Jesus of the New. This is quite understandable. Who would not flee from Jeffrey Dahmer to Mother Teresa?
Problem is that, if you refuse to cherry-pick -- that is, if you read all New Testament texts equally, i.e., if you ascribe equal evidentiary value to all parts of the New Testament canon and give them all equal theological weight -- this approach will not fly. You (think you) flee from horror to health by going from the Old Testament to the New, but the reality is that the New Testament canon, strictly on its own terms, is its own smorgasbord of terror. You think otherwise, only because (a) you want the Jesus of the New Testament to be "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," and so you (b) mostly unconsciously edit your own reading of the New Testament to support this preference. Put a hermeneutical magnifying glass on the New Testament text, however, and Jesus begins to look about as terrifying as YHVH. And, not to put to fine a point on it, this occurs strictly within the bounds of the New Testament itself. You can run, but you can't hide. In other words, you cherry-pick. Herewith some salient examples:
***Regarding Jesus' much-remarked pacifism, it would seem that there are limits, and that even Jesus had limits:**
During the arrest in the Garden, the Gospel narrative says " ... one of Jesus’ companions drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. 'Put your sword back in its place,' Jesus said to him. 'For all who draw the sword will die by the sword.'"
But the complete ending to the story is rather more disturbing and calls into question Jesus' pacifism: "Are you not aware that I can call on My Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" (Matt. 26:51-53). The degree of force embodied in "twelve legions of angels" must be considerable, because it is implicitly contrasted with a single man -- Peter, according to the Gospel story -- wielding a single sword. The "Ol' Blood 'n' Guts" God of the Old Testament does not appear on stage, but Daddy is always there in the background.
***Speaking of blood 'n' guts, there is also Jesus the White-Horse Rider of Revelation 19:12-14: *And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.***
Of course, the usual response -- which is no doubt correct -- is to say that the author of Revelation intended to imbue his persecuted followers with hope by reassuring them that the power of God, as embodied in Jesus, the White-Horse Rider, would overcome all the secular world's centers of power. In other words, the White Horse narrative has a thinly veiled political purpose, the implication being that we should contextualize our estimate of Jesus' character with this awareness. But then we may ask if the depictions of the pacifist Jesus, the Jesus Who admonished Peter to put away his sword, were likewise covertly political. And the accounts of Jesus playing with little children. If we temper our derivation of Jesus' character by leavening it with an awareness of the author's political subtext, should this principle not apply equally across all texts about Jesus, those we like as well as those we avoid? If not, then we are cherry-picking.
***Jesus seemed to at least implicitly countenance reprisals against unbelievers**
If the home is worthy, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. And if anyone will not welcome you or heed your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.… (Matt. 10:13-15)
It is difficult to find an interpretation if this text which is not at least implicitly vindictive in the sense of being intended as a source of comfort to the followers of Jesus whose Gospel message was rejected, i.e., Don't sweat it, guys: they'll get what's coming to them!
***Vindictiveness.**
Vindictiveness is pretty close to the surface in Jesus' sayings about Hell, e.g., Mark 9:43, 47: And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
Granted, this text occurs within the context of a refusal to render temporal assistance and spiritual comfort / consolation. But it is difficult to conclude from this text that the consequences will comprise only the convening of an interfaith conference on religious and hermeneutical diversity across confessional lines.
I could cite other examples of cherry-picking that occur strictly within the confines of the New Testament -- yea, verily, within the even narrower confines of just the Gospels. The point would not be that these texts should be granted no relevance. Rather, the point would be that the reading and the hearing of any religious text -- Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh ... you name it -- "always already" take work and "always already" more work than most of us are willing to give. Hence the cherry-picking. I just mentioned a couple of interpretive strategies vis a vis a couple of texts. Until you have done this, you do not know -- you cannot know -- what the text says. The Tea Party theologians who continually spittle-spray and drivel on about how one cannot oppose Trump, who is a convicted Rapist and Felon and be a good Christian are theologians and biblical scholars only in the same sense that a woodpecker is a carpenter. Granted. But they are doing essentially what most Christians do when they read the Bible: reading it with an unconscious -- or sometimes conscious -- bias about what they want it to say, the advice they want it to give, and that they are determined to read into it in accordance with their prefabricated prejudices.
My alternative: think first!
- James R. Cowles
