The Theism/Atheism Mega-thread Hullabaloo Extravaganza

[alzan]

When someone is obviously trollin' there is no compassion that can be shown.

Congratulations, admitting you're a troll puts you halfway down the road to recovery.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Its funny that the atheist definition of a troll happens to be anybody who doesn`t agree with an Atheist...lolol

 

[alkemyst]

Congratulations, admitting you're a troll puts you halfway down the road to recovery.

Where have I trolled? Was that someone that is conspiring without that I called out here and now you have to protect your house?

I do not troll any sub-forums on Anandtech.

You may not like my answers or my life stories or potentially not believe them, but they are all real and how I feel about the subjects I am responding too.

 

[Caravaggio]

l really don`t care what you think...you have no desire to learn about the Bible.

On the contrary the Bible is a most important document.
Let us see what Deuteronomy tells us. (New International Version, throughout)
Deut 14, verse 21 says:
"Do not eat anything you find dead; you may give it to an alien or sell it to a foreigner"
That's generous?
But, wait a minute, I feel a contradiction coming on:
Deut 27, 19.
"Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien"
Hang on a minute, you were happy to poison him with rotten meat a few verses back.
Money,
Deut 23, 19
"Do not charge your brother interest. You may charge a foreigner interest"
Is this your morality, Yoda?
There are laws against this now.
Deut 22, 10.
"Do not plough with a donkey and an ox yoked together"
That chap never even tried it. They just will not settle to the work. We just went round in big circles. Durn.
But then there is accidental workplace injury:
Deut. 23, 1, 2.
"No one who has been emasculated by crushing may enter the House of The Lord, even down to the tenth generation"
Now, my pal's son Dwayne had a nasty mishap with the Manitou loader in the red barn, but is that any reason to keep him from church for 200 years?

Yoda, if you think this is an omnipresent benevolent God talking to you, then you have an active fantasy life. Or you need to ask nurse to up your Stellazine.

________________

JohnofSutherland says:
"Israel will be safe as soon as it recognises that it used terrorism and ethnic cleansing to take over Arab and Christian Palestine between 1945 and 1949. It's that simple."

See the work of the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe and his book "the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" 2006, ISBN 1-85168-467-0

 

[alkemyst]

On the contrary the Bible is a most important document.
Let us see what Deuteronomy tells us. (New International Version, throughout)
Deut 14, verse 21 says:
"Do not eat anything you find dead; you may give it to an alien or sell it to a foreigner"
That's generous?

Has to do with God providing one for what one needs. If one want's to sell a dead animal to a foreigner that is just about money and not about one of his people eating it.

But, wait a minute, I feel a contradiction coming on:
Deut 27, 19.
"Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien"
Hang on a minute, you were happy to poison him with rotten meat a few verses back.

Not really a contradiction of the previous statement, but good luck.

Money,
Deut 23, 19
"Do not charge your brother interest. You may charge a foreigner interest"
Is this your morality, Yoda?
There are laws against this now.

There are laws against not charging a family member interest? I should be able to lend my private funds with or without interest rates attached.

Deut 22, 10.
"Do not plough with a donkey and an ox yoked together"
That chap never even tried it. They just will not settle to the work. We just went round in big circles. Durn.

What is your point with this comment? A donkey and oxen do not work well together...it's about being compassionate to your stock which is a big part of the Old Testament and stressed more with Judaism and Islam.

But then there is accidental workplace injury:
Deut. 23, 1, 2.
"No one who has been emasculated by crushing may enter the House of The Lord, even down to the tenth generation"
Now, my pal's son Dwayne had a nasty mishap with the Manitou loader in the red barn, but is that any reason to keep him from church for 200 years?

dafuq?

Yoda, if you think this is an omnipresent benevolent God talking to you, then you have an active fantasy life. Or you need to ask nurse to up your Stellazine.

Omnipresence and benevolence are two entirely different things.

The God of the Old Testament was more of an angry God. It was after he more or less gave up his son to pay for all sins of man that he became more benevolent.

 

[SlowSpyder]

What I was replying to was also. No where was it ever said that Jesus died for himself, to save himself....

The discussion breaks down when one is just being absurd.

It may sound like trolling to you, but I tend to agree with bunnyfubbles. He isn't the first one to say something along those lines.

If you are christian you believe in jesus as god. Who's wraith did jesus die to save us from? He didn't say jesus died to save himself from himself, he said he died to save us from himself. The sacrifice was to god, which he also is (depending on if you believe in combination jesus/holy spirt/god or that is three distinct and unique entities).

He sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself.

 

[jackstar7]

The God of the Old Testament was more of an angry God. It was after he more or less gave up his son to pay for all sins of man that he became more benevolent.

This is not the least crazy part of the whole thing.

 

[Caravaggio]

Has to do with God providing one for what one needs. If one want's to sell a dead animal to a foreigner that is just about money and not about one of his people eating it.

I disagree, Deuteronomy 14 begins with a declaration that it is a text dealing with "Clean and Unclean food". That is the title of the chapter, in all three of my Bibles. I agree that several hundred other Bibles exist but I generally use James and NIV. Are you OK with those?
So, in my view, Deut 14, 21 is explicitly dealing with unsafe culinary practice. There is no mention of it being "good food that might be sold for a profit ". It is about ripping- off foreigners if they are dumb enough to buy it. It is defined as UNCLEAN. That is why no Jew should eat it. It is dodgy, polluted, dangerous to consume. Do you agree?
If not we are stuck.

I realise that you are offering an apologia for a text which is Holy to you. While I do not seek to mock your faith I do expect that we should be able to agree about what a text signifies.

Omnipresence and benevolence are two entirely different things.

Quite so. Which is why I used two different terms, two different adjectives.
Most Christians regard them as combined as features of a single Dieity.

The real test of the non-religious content of Deuteronomy, the evidence for its sheer insane, bigoted, psychotic ranting, comes from chapters 27&28. This is where we are told that if we disobey anything Moses commands us we shall be punished in a most flamboyant and awful way.
We shall be humiliated, beaten, covered in itchy sores. Forced to watch our favourite wives raped by our enemies. Our bodies will be pecked by birds. Our daughters and most gentle wives will eat their children in front of us. When we starve, they will eat their own after birth in secret to feed themselves while we die.
Is this the sort of God you wish to worship?

Any psychiatrist, meeting a patient with such aggressive paranoid delusions would prescribe immediate anti-psychotic medication.

Alkemyst, surely you can see that this is not the word of God but the revenge fantasies of a very humiliated human?

The God of the Old Testament was more of an angry God.

I'm sure we can agree about that.
But it introduces further problems for you theistic apologia:
1) are there several gods or one?
2) we are told only one exists, so does s/he have bipolar mood swings? Shifting between loving and authoritarian?
3) why would we worship a psychologically damaged God?
4) what are the qualities of the God of Moses which are to be revered?
The good cop or the bad cop?
Is God benevolent, omnipresent, active and interventionist or over-worked, busy elsewhere, exhausted, or as Nietzsche claimed, dead?

These are important questions for the faithful.

To the agnostic/atheist they merely reveal the extent of our limitless human thirst for certainty when there is so much that we still do not know.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I know that Deuteronomy was written a long time ago by a man, who was probably humbled or ignored, who "let it all go" with a ballistic, vengeful rant.

You seem to want to call that figure "angry God". But the Abrahamic faiths tell us that there is only ONE God. So do you agree that there is a problem for monotheism?