Queue the it-was-a-different-law-for-a-different-time apologia...

*death
*love (gotta show both sides, right?)
*law

Adding video to channels (Death, Law, Love) - requested by messenger.

i have always wanted to stone jesus freaks that work on a sunday at wally world.
praise the lard!

>> ^lurgee:

i have always wanted to stone jesus freaks that work on a sunday at wally world.
praise the lard!


the sabbath is actually saturday.
the irony is that sunday is representative of the sun god amen ra.
sun god.
sun day.
see: horus
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen046.html

(i couldnt resist using this site as a reference.oh how i do love delicious irony)

why do christians have to copy other beliefs?>> ^enoch:

>> ^lurgee:
i have always wanted to stone jesus freaks that work on a sunday at wally world.
praise the lard!

the sabbath is actually saturday.
the irony is that sunday is representative of the sun god amen ra.
sun god.
sun day.
see: horus
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen046.html
(i couldnt resist using this site as a reference.oh how i do love delicious irony)

Hmm. I wonder @shinyblurry. Do you work on the Sabbath?

>> ^enoch:

>> ^lurgee:
i have always wanted to stone jesus freaks that work on a sunday at wally world.
praise the lard!

the sabbath is actually saturday.
the irony is that sunday is representative of the sun god amen ra.
sun god.
sun day.
see: horus
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen046.html
(i couldnt resist using this site as a reference.oh how i do love delicious irony)


http://stupidevilbastard.com/2005/01/ending_the_myth_of_horus/

Use your head for second..do you think that's what Sunday means in Hebrew? We worship on the Lords day, which is Sunday, because that is the day of the resurrection.

>> ^GenjiKilpatrick:

Hmm. I wonder @shinyblurry. Do you work on the Sabbath?


Jesus worked on the Sabbath, so Christians do as well. He is our Sabbath rest.

@shinyblurry
yaaaay.a video argument.
well allow me to retort:




i always find it interesting when people assume that i get my information from zeitgeist.as if the idea that i studied under a biblical scholar is something to not even be considered.

as for defending the sabbath as being sunday. might i suggest that when you use a souce *cough* wikipedia *cough* that you may wish to read the article in its entirety.

achary s has sourced ALL her claims in zeigeist and provides it:
(ok ok.its from the you tube page.too lazy to link diving for all her sources)
The New ZEITGEIST Part 1 Sourcebook (2010) Transcript
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeistsourcebook.pdf

Rebuttal to Dr. Chris Forbes concerning 'Zeitgeist, Part 1'
http://truthbeknown.com/chrisforbeszeitgeist.html

The Mythicist Position - video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKW9sbJ3v2w

'The REAL Zeitgeist Challenge'
http://stellarhousepublishing.com/zeitgeist-challenge.html

9 September 2009 Listen to Acharya S on Peter Joseph's blogtalkradio. Show begins Wednesday September 9th at 3PM Eastern (12PM Pacific)
Acharya appears from 4PM Eastern (1PM Pacific)

This show is now ARCHIVED here:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Peter-Joseph

Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/christinegypt.html

Listen to Acharya on blogtalkradio - Truth or Fiction? Show April 4 2009: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/7hunder/2009/04/04/truth-or-fiction-with-very-sp...

Listen to Acharya talk about her new book on Gnostic Media - Podcast 21 March 9 2009: http://www.gnosticmedia.podomatic.com

31 July 2008 - Listen to the streaming radio interview with Acharya on Black Op Radio...Show #385 Part 1
http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2008.html - thank you Len

Cette vidéo avec des sous-titres français: http://tinyurl.com/594awz

The Companion Guide to ZEITGEIST, Part 1 is a 49-page ebook containing a scientific investigation of some of the facts from Part 1 of the ZEITGEIST movie, dealing with the comparisons of ancient religions and Christianity.
http://www.StellarHousePublishing.com/zeitgeist.html

http://www.TruthBeKnown.com

Acharya's blog post "Zeitgeist Part 1 Refuted? - NOT!" -
http://tbknews.blogspot.com/2008/04/zeitgeist-refuted-not.html

The sun/son issue was addressed long ago in Acharya's FAQ's:
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4835#p4835

Zeitgeist Part 1 & the Supportive Evidence
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2997

"Astrotheology of the Ancients"
http://truthbeknown.com/astrotheology.html

Special thanks go to Freethinkaluva22 for providing tremendous assistance with the research.

Was Krisyhna's mum, Devaki, a virgin?
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1597

The Origins of Christianity
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/originsofchristianity.pdf

shiny.
you know i have no interest in changing how you believe or perceive the world around you.
your faith is your own but please put a tad bit more time into rebuttals when concerning my posts.
apply to boston university and get your degree.i hear their theology courses are top notch.
ooooor continue to play whack a mole with every post,comment or inference that challenges your world view based on limited religious and biblical understandings.
i am sorry if that offends or hurts you but i read your posts and it is painfully obvious that you dont know what you are talking about concerning religious history.

so.try seminary school.
graduate and then our arguments can become legendary!

oh.and another thing.scholars are still unsure of the exact date of resurrection.
just sayin....

i always find it interesting when people assume that i get my information from zeitgeist.as if the idea that i studied under a biblical scholar is something to not even be considered.

as for defending the sabbath as being sunday. might i suggest that when you use a souce *cough* wikipedia *cough* that you may wish to read the article in its entirety.

What I am assuming is that you (and the biblical scholar you studied under) are poorly researched, because the information you've provided here:

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen046.html

is nearly completely false.

If you disagree, then please provide pre new testament sources for some of the claims, such as:

Horus having 12 disciples

Horus being a child teacher

Horus being baptized at age 30

Horus walking on water

Horus being known as the way the truth the light lamb of God, etc

Horus being crucified, dead for three days and resurrected

I'll wait..

As far as the Sabbath, I never claimed it was on Sunday. I said Sunday is the Lords day, not the Sabbath.

shiny.
you know i have no interest in changing how you believe or perceive the world around you.
Your faith is your own but please put a tad bit more time into rebuttals when concerning my posts.

If you actually provided a cohesive argument that was sourced, then I would have put more time into it. As it stands, all you did was link to a bunch of unsubstantiated claims.

apply to boston university and get your degree.i hear their theology courses are top notch.
ooooor continue to play whack a mole with every post,comment or inference that challenges your world view based on limited religious and biblical understandings.

I've done the same research you have and come to different conclusions. I used to have some of the same beliefs that you do, remember? I know quite a bit about what you believe and why you believe it. The Lord has shown me these arguments to be foolishness. They are predicated on very poor (or made up) evidence which has been in every case heavily exaggerated. Bible skeptics are willing to believe anything that is contrary to the bible being accurate, and never apply the same level of skepticism to those arguments.

i am sorry if that offends or hurts you but i read your posts and it is painfully obvious that you dont know what you are talking about concerning religious history.

so.try seminary school.
graduate and then our arguments can become legendary!

There isn't much to argue about. You've rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, and you teach others to do the same. You want to do things your own way, and you're willing to risk that you won't face judgment for your sins. God is willing to open your eyes, if you would humble yourself and repent.

oh.and another thing.scholars are still unsure of the exact date of resurrection.
just sayin....

For you, man is authoritative on these issues. I believe Gods word.

>> ^enoch

this is for sb.

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Friday, June 22nd, 2012 11:01pm PDT - promote requested by lurgee.

To make gay sex more interesting
But as this video suggests, God hates fags...>> ^Fantomas:

>> ^shinyblurry:
words...Why did god give men nipples?

I just love how SB jumps on the Saturday/Sunday issue and ignores the murdering of essentially innocent people with big fucking rocks at the commandment of his omnipotent and omnipresent god.

Shiny once accused me of watching Zeitgeist as well... I always thought it was a 9/11 conspiracy film... I half want to see the film now to see how it goes from Christ myth to 9/11 conspiracy...

Apologist always like pointing out that things that don't matter when talking about the stuff like Horis, the Babylonian Lord of the Harvest and other gods who died and resurrected. There is plenty of pre-Christian stories of them. True the specific details are often post-Christianity, but the general concept has been around long before the Old Testament was put down to paper, back when was just a verbal story passed from generation to generation... somehow avoiding the issues that come up when one plays the telephone game... and somehow avoiding all the errors that we know and can prove cropped up after it was written and copied by hand. When the Israelites were in Babylon, they learned of a Babylonian god which was a god of harvesting, and he sacrificed himself and rose again. It doesn't matter if the time frame of the resurrection was added after Christianity came around, the general story itself existed before Christianity, indeed even before the Old Testament was written in any sort of form we have available today.

I think two important videos relate:
http://videosift.com/video/A-History-of-God-Part-1
http://videosift.com/video/Dr-Bart-Ehrman-Historically-accurate-criticism-of-the-Bible

<snipped a long rant about Christians shopping or going to restaurants on Sunday after church, thereby making people who may have wanted to be at church have to work instead and a lot more...>

There is just so much one has to take on faith... not only the existence of God, but that the errors from repeating the stories, even after they were written down, were God's will, and that the version used by translators is the one God wanted to use, not earlier, supposedly more accurate to the source versions (the Dr. Bart Ethrman video linked above is a nice one for that, in regards to the story of the woman at the well not being in the original texts or commentaries for centuries, but then it appears and everyone likes it so it stuck). You have to take it on faith that not only did fallible men who preserved the word, copied it (errors made not being a result of fallibility but of divine will), translated it, etc. did everything they did perfectly in regards to the Bible. Then fallible men at the Council of Nycea and others that established the books that are generally accepted, somehow were the only ones to become infallible when picking the books that would be in the Bible... differences between the Catholic Bible and Protestant Bible being ignored because many protestants say Catholics aren't even Christian anyhow...Then you have to take it on faith that every person since those times who has had a revelation from God is crazy. You also have to take it on faith that every book or document relating to the church that has been found since then was hidden by God. All to create the perfect infallible word of god...

Anyhow, I am getting off track and enough feeding the troll.

Been looking for an excuse to use this *quality now seems as good a time as ever.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Auger8.

@shinyblurry
you have it backwards.
my authority derives from the creator,YOU on the other hand derive your authority from a book.

and please stop deluding yourself into thinking you have any idea who i am.
because you dont.
and to insinuate i have turned people from christ when i have specifically told you details to the contrary is just vulgar.

what saddens me the most is that your unquestioning,slack-jawed adherence to a flawed document will keep you in a perpetual state of spiritual childhood.

the gospels were meant to free you,not enslave you to a book.
but a slave you have become and you defend that tiny prison you live in like a child who only wishes to remain sleeping and dreaming of deliverance.

any information that may be perceived as contrary to your theosophy will have you scouring the apologist pages for a retort.you become copy-paste happy in order to refute any contrary information in regards to the BOOK you hold in your hand.

are you totally unaware of your OWN motivations?
this is a secular site.the majority here are atheists and/or agnostics.
many of them former christians of one flavor or another and some even from fundamentalist families.so they have become quite adept at communicating the flaws they have found in biblical text.

do you think they do this JUST to annoy you?
did it ever occur to you that maybe..just maybe..many here are actually just sharing the very information that changed their minds concerning religion,god and their place in the universe?
and have you noticed how you treat them?
with arrogance and condescension.
the irony being that you will throw a fit if someone treats you in such a manner yet ignore when you,yourself,partake in such bad manners.
it is the height of hypocrisy.

you have made many ignore lists due to your inability to self regulate.Kceaton being the most recent.which is a shame because he is a righteous dude who has the courage to speak from the heart and has often attempted to speak to you with open-ness and honesty.
many here have and you have responded with arrogance,condescension and a self=righteousness that is annoying as it is petty and small.

and all this because you got your authority from a book.
that somehow you have gleaned the mysteries of the cosmos and people who do not garner their understandings from the same,tangible and physical BOOK are somehow automatically wrong.

you are not perfect.
your understandings are flawed.
your arguments are watered-down copy-pasted weak sauce and the majority of the time not even your own.
you are a child who needs to grow up.

and if you ever even suggest that i turn people from christ again,you will be on my ignore list as well.i tire of dealing with your passive aggressive nature.
it has become dull and boring.
grow up shiny.

(sorry for the lengthy rant everybody, but seeing shiny insinuate that i have turned people from christ just set me off)

Jeez enoch

I don't agree with Shiny Blurry in any way, but it's crazy how your last post accuses them of doing exactly what you're doing.

It seems weird to me to accuse someone of "arrogance,condescension and a self=righteousness"

while saying things like:

"please stop deluding yourself"
"your unquestioning,slack-jawed adherence"
"you are a child who needs to grow up"

Now, I realize your argument may go back many, many threads, and here I am judging by just this one, but wow. "height of hypocrisy" you say, while Shinyblurry appears to be the calm and polite one here while you appear to be flying off the handle nearly unprovoked. SB did accuse you of "turning people from Christ" which in a way, is kind of what it is when you argue against Christianity in a public forum. At least, if you argue well, so not entirely inaccurate.

I'm not trying to get into an argument here, but you should learn to argue with more courtesy and generosity if you're going to accuse people of being "annoying petty and small".

I've never felt the need to use an ignore feature in my life, but if I did, it would be for the way someone argues not the content of their point of view.

Just some food for thought.

-
>> ^enoch

>> ^shinyblurry:

I think taint said it pretty well, the hypocrisy which is veritably oozing from your post, so I won't pile on to that.
What I will say is that all authority belongs to Jesus Christ, and since you do not belong to Him, you have no authority what so ever. You told me that you "counsel" Christians who are in a "crisis of faith". Considering your very public anti-christian stance, and the things you have told me, it's not hard to imagine the kind of "advice" you have to offer someone who is vulnerable in their faith. What kind of ideas you insinuate into their lives.
Your error is that you believe you can do it your way, and you have bought into that selfish trap hook, line and sinker. You rail against the bible, why? Because it says you're wrong. Scripture says that you have bought the lie and fallen into delusion. Why? Because you think you can be like God, just like Eve did. It is the oldest lie that there is. What you call theosophy is described in Revelation 2:24. You cannot know God except through Jesus Christ, period, end of story. You beg borrow and steal from His wisdom to try to make an end run around Him, but you will never know God until you submit yourself entirely to His will. He is the Creator, and He has commanded you to repent and believe the gospel.
>> ^enoch


Your taint speaks to you now? What does it say?

"What's that awful smell?"

Seriously, enoch pretty much smacked you down hard with all those citations. Thass gotta sting!

-
>> ^shuac:

>> ^shinyblurry:
I think taint said it pretty well, the hypocrisy which is veritably oozing from your post, so I won't pile on to that.
What I will say is that all authority belongs to Jesus Christ, and since you do not belong to Him, you have no authority what so ever. You told me that you "counsel" Christians who are in a "crisis of faith". Considering your very public anti-christian stance, and the things you have told me, it's not hard to imagine the kind of "advice" you have to offer someone who is vulnerable in their faith. What kind of ideas you insinuate into their lives.
Your error is that you believe you can do it your way, and you have bought into that selfish trap hook, line and sinker. You rail against the bible, why? Because it says you're wrong. Scripture says that you have bought the lie and fallen into delusion. Why? Because you think you can be like God, just like Eve did. It is the oldest lie that there is. What you call theosophy is described in Revelation 2:24. You cannot know God except through Jesus Christ, period, end of story. You beg borrow and steal from His wisdom to try to make an end run around Him, but you will never know God until you submit yourself entirely to His will. He is the Creator, and He has commanded you to repent and believe the gospel.
>> ^enoch

Your taint speaks to you know? What does it say?
"What's that awful smell?"
Seriously, enoch pretty much smacked you down hard with all those citations. Thass gotta sting!

I'll address it. I think stoning was used as a deterrent. He ordained an admittedly harsh punishment to keep His people from sin. While you don't see sin as a big deal, it is what caused the corruption of this entire world and all of the suffering therein. Every negative thing that has ever happened here stemmed from just one sin, and each of us have committed hundreds, if not thousands of sins. Sin is a big deal and I feel that punishment was a reflection of the seriousness of sin.

>> ^Asmo:

I just love how SB jumps on the Saturday/Sunday issue and ignores the murdering of essentially innocent people with big fucking rocks at the commandment of his omnipotent and omnipresent god.

>> ^shinyblurry:

I'll address it. I think stoning was used as a deterrent. He ordained an admittedly harsh punishment to keep His people from sin. While you don't see sin as a big deal, it is what caused the corruption of this entire world and all of the suffering therein. Every negative thing that has ever happened here stemmed from just one sin, and each of us have committed hundreds, if not thousands of sins. Sin is a big deal and I feel that punishment was a reflection of the seriousness of sin.

Look up stoning videos on Liveleak sometime and tell me how a supposed god of infinite love would prescribe it for collecting firewood on the sabbath... I condemn people who use stoning as monsters. By any standard, it appears that I am morally superior to your god... = P

The proof that you're not is that you give no regard to the sin itself. You are using a relative standard to judge his crime, whereas God uses an absolute standard. There is no such thing as a minor sin in Gods eyes. God is holy and His standard is moral perfection. Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin.

Neither was the crime itself picking up sticks. The actual crime was rebellion. It is not a minor thing to break Gods law, which the man knew full well he was doing. God punished Him not only for rebellion, but also as a public example to the rest of Israel that His laws were to be taken seriously. You have to remember that the Jews were His chosen people, and that they had entered into a covenant with God willingly. They agreed to follow His laws and adhere to His standards, and His standard was that they would be holy as He is holy. This meant that they would obey His law unceasingly with no exceptions. They also agreed with God that if they did not obey His law, they would incur the penalties He laid out.

I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent.

You say there is no way a loving God would ever do that, to which I reply, that a loving God would do everything possible, including invoking extremely harsh punishments, to prevent as much sin as possible and protect His creation from the greatest amount of harm. To not take extreme measures against sin would actually be a point against Him, and not for Him.

>> ^Asmo:

>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll address it. I think stoning was used as a deterrent. He ordained an admittedly harsh punishment to keep His people from sin. While you don't see sin as a big deal, it is what caused the corruption of this entire world and all of the suffering therein. Every negative thing that has ever happened here stemmed from just one sin, and each of us have committed hundreds, if not thousands of sins. Sin is a big deal and I feel that punishment was a reflection of the seriousness of sin.
Look up stoning videos on Liveleak sometime and tell me how a supposed god of infinite love would prescribe it for collecting firewood on the sabbath... I condemn people who use stoning as monsters. By any standard, it appears that I am morally superior to your god... = P

@shinyblurry:

Why does God keep making death-punishable rules against things that don't actually harm people? It's bad because it's disobedience, right? So if God didn't arbitrarily say, "don't do this thing," it wouldn't be bad? And he knows people will break the rules.

Why does God want to kill people?

>> ^shinyblurry:

The proof that you're not is that you give no regard to the sin itself. You are using a relative standard to judge his crime, whereas God uses an absolute standard. There is no such thing as a minor sin in Gods eyes. God is holy and His standard is moral perfection. Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin.
Neither was the crime itself picking up sticks. The actual crime was rebellion. It is not a minor thing to break Gods law, which the man knew full well he was doing. God punished Him not only for rebellion, but also as a public example to the rest of Israel that His laws were to be taken seriously. You have to remember that the Jews were His chosen people, and that they had entered into a covenant with God willingly. They agreed to follow His laws and adhere to His standards, and His standard was that they would be holy as He is holy. This meant that they would obey His law unceasingly with no exceptions. They also agreed with God that if they did not obey His law, they would incur the penalties He laid out.
I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent.
You say there is no way a loving God would ever do that, to which I reply, that a loving God would do everything possible, including invoking extremely harsh punishments, to prevent as much sin as possible and protect His creation from the greatest amount of harm. To not take extreme measures against sin would actually be a point against Him, and not for Him.
>> ^Asmo:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll address it. I think stoning was used as a deterrent. He ordained an admittedly harsh punishment to keep His people from sin. While you don't see sin as a big deal, it is what caused the corruption of this entire world and all of the suffering therein. Every negative thing that has ever happened here stemmed from just one sin, and each of us have committed hundreds, if not thousands of sins. Sin is a big deal and I feel that punishment was a reflection of the seriousness of sin.
Look up stoning videos on Liveleak sometime and tell me how a supposed god of infinite love would prescribe it for collecting firewood on the sabbath... I condemn people who use stoning as monsters. By any standard, it appears that I am morally superior to your god... = P



Hi, shinyblurry.

I haven't responded to any of your posts in a while, but this time your answer made me throw up in my mouth a little so I thought I'd chime in. Let me read back to you what you just said:

"Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin."

But in the Christian tradition, the ONLY being capable of moral perfection is God himself. Humans can strive for it, but never achieve it. So what you have essentially said is that God created imperfect creatures and now punishes them repeatedly, mercilessly, and arbitrarily with death for being imperfect. That doesn't sound much like a loving (or rational) God to me.

"I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent."

Except that "deterrent" didn't work, did it? After Numbers 32-36 there are countless more examples of the people sinning in the Bible. So you're basically saying the poor guy in this passage died for nothing and that the supposedly omnipotent God who commanded the death was unable to see that this deterrence would fail. Nevermind that picking up sticks is treated as a far worse form of "rebellion" than the other various sins recounted both before and after this story in the Bible in which many of the characters are given less severe punishments or the chance to repent. So much for the Christian god being a god of mercy...

These kinds of contradictions and irrationalities are apparent to anyone who takes even a brief moment to consider them... and you wonder why the Sift isn't flocking to your evangelical banner?

To not take extreme measures against sin would actually be a point against Him, and not for Him.


I assume it isn't a point against Jesus that he got that aldulteress out of her perfectly lawful punishment.

I have to admit I find this pretty shocking myself. I personally don't believe that stoning is ever a justifiable action for anything, ever, period. What I find incredible is that I'm even having to take a stance AGAINST stoning in this day and age. Although of course it still goes on legally in several countries. This fact doesn't make it acceptable, it just makes it more disgusting.

Shiny, personally I'm disappointed. I was ready to give it a shot and read the bible all the way through, to give it the benefit of the doubt and try to approach it and what you said with an open mind. I saw this video and thought for sure you would dismiss it as false or something similar, but to see you essentially defending it, I just can't accept that the actions described in this verse are moral. I will never accept them as moral.

If this makes ME immoral in god's eyes than Shiny you had better get some stones ready because here's another sinner deserving of sinner's death.


>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^shinyblurry:
The proof that you're not is that you give no regard to the sin itself. You are using a relative standard to judge his crime, whereas God uses an absolute standard. There is no such thing as a minor sin in Gods eyes. God is holy and His standard is moral perfection. Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin.
Neither was the crime itself picking up sticks. The actual crime was rebellion. It is not a minor thing to break Gods law, which the man knew full well he was doing. God punished Him not only for rebellion, but also as a public example to the rest of Israel that His laws were to be taken seriously. You have to remember that the Jews were His chosen people, and that they had entered into a covenant with God willingly. They agreed to follow His laws and adhere to His standards, and His standard was that they would be holy as He is holy. This meant that they would obey His law unceasingly with no exceptions. They also agreed with God that if they did not obey His law, they would incur the penalties He laid out.
I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent.
You say there is no way a loving God would ever do that, to which I reply, that a loving God would do everything possible, including invoking extremely harsh punishments, to prevent as much sin as possible and protect His creation from the greatest amount of harm. To not take extreme measures against sin would actually be a point against Him, and not for Him.
>> ^Asmo:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I'll address it. I think stoning was used as a deterrent. He ordained an admittedly harsh punishment to keep His people from sin. While you don't see sin as a big deal, it is what caused the corruption of this entire world and all of the suffering therein. Every negative thing that has ever happened here stemmed from just one sin, and each of us have committed hundreds, if not thousands of sins. Sin is a big deal and I feel that punishment was a reflection of the seriousness of sin.
Look up stoning videos on Liveleak sometime and tell me how a supposed god of infinite love would prescribe it for collecting firewood on the sabbath... I condemn people who use stoning as monsters. By any standard, it appears that I am morally superior to your god... = P


Hi, shinyblurry.
I haven't responded to any of your posts in a while, but this time your answer made me throw up in my mouth a little so I thought I'd chime in. Let me read back to you what you just said:
"Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin."
But in the Christian tradition, the ONLY being capable of moral perfection is God himself. Humans can strive for it, but never achieve it. So what you have essentially said is that God created imperfect creatures and now punishes them repeatedly, mercilessly, and arbitrarily with death for being imperfect. That doesn't sound much like a loving (or rational) God to me.
"I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent."
Except that "deterrent" didn't work, did it? After Numbers 32-36 there are countless more examples of the people sinning in the Bible. So you're basically saying the poor guy in this passage died for nothing and that the supposedly omnipotent God who commanded the death was unable to see that this deterrence would fail. Nevermind that picking up sticks is treated as a far worse form of "rebellion" than the other various sins recounted both before and after this story in the Bible in which many of the characters are given less severe punishments or the chance to repent. So much for the Christian god being a god of mercy...
These kinds of contradictions and irrationalities are apparent to anyone who takes even a brief moment to consider them... and you wonder why the Sift isn't flocking to your evangelical banner?

I think all you people thinking that all you need to do is prove SB guilty of hypocrisy really have no understanding of the theist mindset.

Anyone who can read the bible cover to cover and not notice the glaring errors, hypocritical passages and complete falsehoods won't care if they are hypocritical, they are willfully ignorant.

@shinyblurry

...a loving God would do everything possible, including invoking extremely harsh punishments, to prevent as much sin as possible and protect His creation from the greatest amount of harm.

God: "I made random rules, I decided on the most severe punishment possible for breaking any of these rules, and I designed you to be imperfect such that you would all break some rules, requiring me to punish you. Now I'm going to kill some of you so the rest of you'll stop doing bad things (even though you can't stop) so that I don't have to kill you too, following my own rules."

That's some crazy talk.

My standard is absolute as well. Any deity that would command it's people to do evil things in the name of order (as opposed to 'good') is evil...

God's old testament law is not about being good, it's about following the rules. Even if the rules are inherently evil (ownership and (mis)treatment of slaves for example).

Your charactisation of your god is as a slave master who demands absolute obedience, not as a loving father protecting his flock... Further, god changes his mind on the punishment and decides suddenly that the one must sacrifice for the all... Sin didn't disappear, but all the drastic measures you claim are needed to combat it sure did. Mebbe he finally woke up to the fact that commanding people to commit atrocities is.. ya know, WRONG... Gee, convenient for those born AD right? X D

How about you SB? If your god commanded it would you stone your child to death for talking back?

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/children.html

Yeah, your god is loving and kind... Like Idi Amin or Pol Pot was... If any human did what god ordered back then, we would condemn them.. Sharia law and all that right? Pro tip, if us flawed humans can see that something is morally wrong, how can the almighty not?

>> ^shinyblurry:

The proof that you're not is that you give no regard to the sin itself. You are using a relative standard to judge his crime, whereas God uses an absolute standard. There is no such thing as a minor sin in Gods eyes. God is holy and His standard is moral perfection. Moral perfection is what God calls good, and everything short of that is evil. He has also ordained the death penalty for all sin.
Neither was the crime itself picking up sticks. The actual crime was rebellion. It is not a minor thing to break Gods law, which the man knew full well he was doing. God punished Him not only for rebellion, but also as a public example to the rest of Israel that His laws were to be taken seriously. You have to remember that the Jews were His chosen people, and that they had entered into a covenant with God willingly. They agreed to follow His laws and adhere to His standards, and His standard was that they would be holy as He is holy. This meant that they would obey His law unceasingly with no exceptions. They also agreed with God that if they did not obey His law, they would incur the penalties He laid out.
I will agree that stoning is a particularly harsh punishment, but while you don't think the punishment fits the crime, that is because you don't understand how bad sin really is. Consider for a moment that what I said earlier is true, that one sin led to all of the madness that we see in the world today. If you can comprehend that, maybe you'll start to get the idea why God would use such a punishment as a deterrent.
You say there is no way a loving God would ever do that, to which I reply, that a loving God would do everything possible, including invoking extremely harsh punishments, to prevent as much sin as possible and protect His creation from the greatest amount of harm. To not take extreme measures against sin would actually be a point against Him, and not for Him.

I'm sorry that Shinyblurry doesn't fit into the VideoSift mold, but this argument is no longer a discussion; it's bullying and harassment and needs to stop. Now.

A lot of questions here..I think I can answer a few of them by going back to the beginning..

When God created the world, it was perfect. There was no sin, and no evil. Man and God dwelled together in perfect fellowship. Mans only job was to tend the garden, and populate the world. They also had one rule, which was not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

What does the fruit of that tree represent? Well, it's important to understand that up until that point, Adam and Eve had no innate knowledge of good and evil. They were created in innocence and purity. They were not, however, totally ignorant to the concept. They knew two basic things about good and evil. One, that God is good. Two, that eating the fruit was evil, and would lead to death.

So, what the fruit represents is knowledge, specifically knowledge about right and wrong that only God had. The reason that God withheld that knowledge from them is the same reason we don't tell our children everything that goes on in the world. At that point, Adam and Eve were completely reliant on God to know anything at all. I believe because He wanted to mold them in His own particular way. Having that knowledge for themselves would mean they would lose their innocence and start making their own decisions independent from God.

But He had to offer them at least one choice. So, why did He offer them that choice? For the simple reason of free will. If God had simply led them by the nose and caused them to love Him, they would be nothing more than robots. He had to offer them the honest choice to reject Him to be able to form a meaningful relationships with them. God offered them the choice between His will, and self-will.

So, no, these weren't random rules. There is a deeper wisdom here than is apparent from a superficial study of the text. Neither were they set up for a fall..it was their choice, freely made. God gave them enough information to make an informed decision. God is the responsible for the fact of freedom but we are responsible for our acts of freedom.

As far as the moral outrage going on here, I can understand where you're coming from. Who can get behind stoning? Jesus actually stopped the jews from stoning a woman, as someone pointed out. However, this is all very situational. If the text said they killed him by lethal injection, would you admit that God is righteous? None of this is about the way the man died. It's about whether God has the right to take someones life for disobeying His commands. I've already made the argument about why sin is serious enough to warrant such a punishment, but so far no one has addressed it.

God could have killed Adam and Eve and wiped the slate clean, but He didn't. God isn't interested in killing people. He is interested in saving people, which is why He sent His Son. He didn't leave us without a way to be forgiven, and He didn't with the jews either. The man was punished for his crime, but it doesn't mean that he went to hell.

Think about it this way..if life is a gift from God, and it is only through His efforts that you're drawing breath right now , and your purpose here is part of His plan, then why doesn't God have that right? Since it's up to Him where we're born, then the same goes for when we die.

Someone mentioned that the deterrence didn't work, because people still sinned. To which I ask, how do you know how much worse it could have been? Take a look at this study to see why its a valid theory:

http://www.inquisitr.com/262882/believing-in-hell-equals-lower-crime-rate-study/

I appreciate it bro. Christ said we should expect the same treatment as He got so I try not to let it bother me. If God can forgive me, I can forgive them for any personal slights.

>> ^Morganth:

I'm sorry that Shinyblurry doesn't fit into the VideoSift mold, but this argument is no longer a discussion; it's bullying and harassment and needs to stop. Now.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Someone mentioned that the deterrence didn't work, because people still sinned. To which I ask, how do you know how much worse it could have been? Take a look at this study to see why its a valid theory:
http://www.inquisitr.com/262882/believing-in-hell-equals-lower
-crime-rate-study/


Here is the original article which you are referring to in its entirety:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0039048

Did you read it? I question their methodology because they claim that their study found that poverty does not affect the crime rate of a country (which, considering the wealth of other studies which DO show a substantial effect should be enough to make one question the results of this particular study), yet the only measure of poverty they seem to have used is a country's GDP per capita.

I quote from their conclusion:

First and foremost, these findings are correlational, and thus reverse-causation and third variable explanations need to be discounted before causal claims can be firmly endorsed.

In other words, they didn't show that believing in divine punishment causes lower crime rates, only that there was a correlation. But even leaving the correlation/causation issue aside, the authors came to the conclusion that belief in hell independently correlates with the crime rate from belief in heaven. In other words, countries in which more people believe in hell than believe in heaven have less crime than other countries... which begs the questions of who are all these poor people who only believe in hell but not heaven?

But even leaving that aside, this study in no way shows that killing people for picking up sticks is an effective deterrent to the rest of society for committing future crimes of any kind. What it shows is that you can get really wonky results when--instead of doing actual reasearch--you take a bunch of unrelated numbers (i.e. number of people who believe in God, number of people who believe in heaven/hell, crime rates, per capita GDP, etc.) and try to run linear regressions on them.

>> ^Morganth:

I'm sorry that Shinyblurry doesn't fit into the VideoSift mold, but this argument is no longer a discussion; it's bullying and harassment and needs to stop. Now.


I only see one side threatening the other with eternal torture.

He still hasn't answered my question about nipples .

man, thats the OLD testament god! he used to be like that, but having a kid really changed him.