Maybe more simple would be to observe that from the evangelical interpretation, if you were to go out and kill every person that failed to live up to the law, the global population would be zero. From there it is hardly rational to believe that Jesus was teaching anyone was supposed to go around meting out judgement. I don't find it such a harsh leap of logic then to read the old testament laws stating if person X commits crime Y they must be killed as being admonitions against the crime. I think it's not that bizarre to read them as the act of stoning others as not a law itself, but a sentence, and a sentence that Jesus death rendered moot.

Again that doesn't jibe with the text, or his exact words "For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven"
That also contradicts the theory that his death ended the laws....."until heaven and earth pass away" clearly is a different thing from 'until I, Jesus, pass away'.
This is clear that the letter of the laws, not just the spirit of love, are the focus here, and anyone ignoring a single jot will be judged harshly.
In the old testament, those punishments are for failing to live by the specific, set forth rules as written, not failing to live up to some underlying, contradictory, unwritten, hidden message of love behind them.

That's not what the bible says. It's what 3rd parties have told people it says. It also clearly warns about those people....warns against listening to them, and tells you what happens to them....they are called the least, which I interpret to mean considered unworthy of heaven so are sent elsewhere.
It clearly, unambiguously, undeniably tells believers to murder infidels themselves, personally, with rocks. Any other interpretation ignores clearly written specific and detailed instructions in favor of insane mental gymnastics to think " You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God" somehow, inexplicably means 'love and tolerate them with respect and kindness' and not 'go murder them ASAP'.

Evangelicals have never once lived up to your theory of what they believe, they can't even follow the basic golden rule. The respect they demand for their beliefs is never returned to others, in my experience.
Evangelicals in practice usually take the entirety of the Bible as a message telling them they should go out and force others to love their version of God and the righteous, not all people, and without a hint of humility, and that they must accept the grace of their version of God or else are deserving of hatred and damnation.


Edit: As I read it, Jesus said follow every letter of the old laws, but instructed people that he without sin should cast the first stone (that would have been him, wouldn't it?). The old laws said he who casts no stones is committing a horrendous sin and should themselves be stoned to death. Believers somehow don't see the contradiction, while I see nothing but.

Shinyblury might be better at weighing on some of this now .

I agree, the entire old testament seems at odds with Jesus's teachings....unless you interpret murder of infidels as somehow loving them to death.
With how many different christian churchs there are in every single town having a slightly different view it's hard to give a singular answer. I'd hazard the most common explanation though is that the old school laws basically demonstrated one thing to humanity, every last one of you by rights deserves death. Everybody is, by God's standards, inadequate and the penalty is death.
That's why his statements about the laws still being in full effect don't jibe with his teachings of love and acceptance, and no where does he, or God, or any prophet say his death erases God's laws that I find
Continuing what I think is the most common explanation, Jesus message was that the 'spirit' of the old school laws was to encourage humanity to love god and fellow man without exceptions. Strictly following the letter of the laws was to miss the point entire. Also, the punishment for failing to live up to the standard of universal love for God and fellow man was death, fire, brimstone and all the nasty old testament sentences.

So taking those as axioms you have God's law for humanity was and always had been love for him and each other. God's punishment for failing that measure, even in the least, was and always had been death and eternal damnation.

Again, I can't say all Christians are universally agreed on what to do from that, but I would say that the majority again follow Jesus teachings that the punishment for those that fall short was to be left to God and not to humans. As in, no more going around killing each other for breaking the law in letter or in spirit. Evangelicals are probably also universally agreed that ALL of humanity fails to meet the morality bar and thus was doomed to death until Jesus was killed. Jesus having met the bar of perfection required by the law, was thus payment through his death for the rest of humanity. So Evangelicals for the most part then take the entirety of the Bible as a message telling them they should go out and love God and everyone and in the humility that they are but for the grace of God equally deserving of damnation.

I know re-reading that it reads more like a sermon than anything, but it's also the most concisely I could manage to fit in how I understand most evangelicals to read the bible.

@newtboy,

Hate to single you out, but your missing most of poolcleaner's points by focusing exclusively on one. And your even doubling down on 'proving' the sentence you object to.

You first object by saying:
Atheists give theists much more respect than theists give us.

But then one sentence later:
Theists beliefs deserve no respect, neither do beliefs in Santa, Krampus, fairies, Lord Zenu, Ookie (my brother's imaginary friend), or any other belief in fantasy. You don't respect an inability to recognize reality.

And then your next post leads with:
Don't most of you know that Christians are required to murder you if you don't worship properly, or try to leave Christianity?


It is EXACTLY your extremely vitriolic responses that poolcleaner was no doubt referencing in saying Atheists are often the worst for disrespecting the beliefs of others.

Read over the balance of comments above, particularly including Shinyblurry's unapologeticly evangelical one, and tell me which group's representative in this thread is showing the most contempt and disrespect for the beliefs of the 'other'?

It is rather disturbing how accurate he was. Trump isn't really too far off from a Palin, all idiotic bluster and charisma masking an intellectual and ethical vacuum. He's clearly just signing off on whatever he's told, with his own pet issues getting most of the media flak. Can't imagine Trump from before 2015 or so giving much of a crap about the Johnson amendment or anything Jesus-related, but tell him in 2017 it'll get the evangelicals on his side and of course it's a vital issue.

I think I would have preferred Palin, as her family in the White House (rather than swinging quasi-bachelor Trump) would have been entertaining on some level.

Might have to look into seeing what Olbermann is saying about the next few weeks / months / years...

They WANT the apocalypse. If you hang around these evangelical far right people, they truly want it. They want Jesus to return.

Even when I was evangelical, I wouldn't want the end of times. Not because I cared for myself, but I thought the longer the better. I never got the thinking that so many seemed to have, which is why it scares me when they get close to being on the button.

And for Mr Baker here to actually mention the anti-Christ... if I were still Christian (back after I stopped being a Republican and was a Libertarian), I'd be likely thinking Trump is the anti-Christ as I was starting to think the Republicans as a whole were the anti-Christ system, as so many Christians seemed deceived into believing that it was THE Christian party, when the party was so opposed to the teachings of Jesus. I'm frankly surprised more crazy people aren't out there calling Trump out as the anti-Christ... he fits the bill... though going back to my original topic, perhaps that's why some of them voted for him, to help bring about the end.

My mother, another far right evangelical, once said that even if global warming was true, most of that stuff doesn't happen for hundreds of years. The implication I got was that Jesus was coming long before any of the dire predictions of it all. My sister once said that after Obama won in 2008 that it is proof that Jesus must be coming back soon if He'd let somebody like Obama win. So yeah, people of this ilk don't care, because God is in control, we could never destroy His creation, we are foolish if we think we can do anything like that, and if it happens, it is because God willed it, not because it is something we did.

Meanwhile this filth and the horrible people who voted for Trump and support the Republican party, AKA radical right Christians HATE homosexuals themselves. They don't show their hate via bombs, but via tossing stones of bigotry and laws to discriminate against them for daring to sin differently.

And there is no opinion on climate change... again it is science. No denying the science. You are entitled to your own opinions, yes, but not your own facts. Sorry, but the universe isn't only 6,000 years old, no matter what your stupid book says.

And you can think gay marriage is a sin. Nobody on the Left ever said you had to accept the sin, to accept the homosexuality, but you do have to accept them as people. It is the right who wants to deny them rights as human beings, just because they sin differently than the rest of us. Jesus said let those without sin toss the first stone, and then notably didn't toss any stones himself, who hung out with the sinners and taught love was the most important thing, but the Right is far comfortable tossing those stones against the gays, to deny them a wedding cake, to deny them a wedding and other rights, just for a sin that doesn't effect anyone but those doing it. It isn't murder, but the Right treats it as such. That isn't just stating an opinion, that is full action against another human being for being different than you, and this ass hole and anyone who agrees with him is a horrible human being for wanting to deny somebody rights for being different. Yes, we may disagree that it being a big deal, but there isn't an effort to deny you the right to speak out against homosexuality if you are so inclined, but you can't claim you are being repressed when you are the one seeking to do the repression. Apparently the Right's attitude is "my sin, isn't as gross as yours, so it's not as bad... and God isn't doing a good job of convicting you of it, so I'll do that job for Him" as He's too weak or something to do it Himself apparently.

Sodom's sin was being a land of plenty and not doing enough to help the needy and the poor in her borders, and other versus talk about how rude it was to foreigners... sounds a lot like the Republican party in the US... actually, the Republican party and Trump sound a lot like the anti-Christ system in Revelations... but I'll ignore that and assume that Christianity is still more than likely just as fake as the other 5,000 gods. Now, yes, the Bible does mention the sexual immorality of Sodom, so it likely didn't help, but it's specific sin, the thing God judged it for, was not doing enough to help the needy and the poor, though it had plenty of resources to do so. Basically the "I don't want my tax dollars going to help those [needy and poor] people" as my evangelical brother in law once said. That sums up the Right these days, fuck the poor, and help the rich, who cares what Jesus said about the rich and the poor.

Then the whole, you can't judge a whole party based on a few bad apples... yet the Right sits in judgement of all Muslims and want to deny people refuge who are trying to escape the radicals, because one or two radicals might slip in for each thousand saved... that's showing the love of Christ, "stay there you Muslim bastard, have your women raped, and you children forced into military camps and be radicalized, serves you right for daring to be having an accident of birth being born in the wrong country and being raised on the wrong faith". That is the attitude the Right sends out when they want to deny refuge to refugees.

So I sit in judgement of all Christians based on the fact the KKK, Nazis, Westboro... and frankly what seems to be the vast majority of evangelical Christians these days. If they can sit in judgement of others, I'll sit in judgement of them. I realize the hypocrisy of that, and admit it, which is FAR more than anyone on the Right ever would do. But as the Carman (famed Christian singer whom I've seen many many times live when I was a Christian) song says, their "witness could have been more than it had".

Basically this is 5:32 worth of hypocrisy that is so typical of the Right that those deep in it can't even begin to see it.

People love sandbox survival and they love space exploration and they fell in love with the idea of what this game could be. The magazines talked about it like evangelical christians talk about the rapture - this is the end of gaming as we know it and it's going to change everything! And the internet fandom descended with prepubescent fury on anyone that dared suggest the emperor was, in fact, nekkid.

This long video about NMS covers it extremely well, but i'll cut a long story short. There was something veeery slightly disingenuous about the moratoriums placed on reviews, lack of pre-release review versions, and significant backtracking and retconning of promises made by lead designer(? - but definite spokesperson) Sean Murray. The clean cut, well spoken, awkwardly charming Sean Murray. Who I think understood as the release date got closer that a lot of people were not going to be happy with him, because in his interviews he started to look more and more like De Niro playing Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter.

Extra things that immediately pissed me off before i refunded it:
- Menu stuff can appear offscreen if you open it by the edges in 2016
- Can't alt tab in full screen
- Run in borderless window to solve it, performance hit
- i7 6700k, Maximus viii Hero mobo and a GTX 1080 but yes, performance hit and general poor performance anyway
- Can't bind actions to thumb buttons in 2016
- Mouse sensitivity goes from 0 to 100. Changing my sensitivity from 100 to 0 didn't even half the turning speed in game, I had to alt tab to manually change the DPI in razer synapse, which is where i discovered i couldn't alt-tab.

All this for £40? Overwatch cost £30.

They made a lot of money off this, but I'm afraid for me they did it through unfair means. If you check out the quotes from Murray and what the game actually is, there's a huge disparity and the backtracking as release date approached was the final evidence.

Yeah, but even within religions people can't agree on the rules.

Within Christianity, you have catholics, protestants, baptists, pentecostals, eastern orthodox, evangelicals and god knows what else. All of whom disagree on various aspects of their religion (sometimes fairly major points).

Islam is the same (shia, sunni, etc).

There isn't one single religious text that is the definitive version.

And I grew up in catholic Ireland. Everyone went to church, everyone believed in god (hell, it was in the constitution) and even public schools actively participated in religious rituals.
You would find it incredibly difficult to argue these people weren't religious.

Yet, they ignored large parts of their religion from the minor (dietary restrictions, etc) to the major (sex outside marriage, contraception).

I never met a single person who thought the penalty for apostasy should be death. I still haven't.

Sorry, but @slickhead is right about this point. That's a No True Scotsman fallacy.

I think your environment was the exception rather than the rule.

@dag: If he's lucky. I'm thinking more evangelical Ann Coulter.

@bobknight33

the reasons why blacks tend to vote for democrats for the past 50 years is not a mystery and it has been long understood.

labor unions.

the democrats saw the power that was arising from americas labor unions and decided to shift their message to appeal to this growing demographic.

just like the republicans co-opted the evangelicals in the late 70's.

this is about political power,plain and simple and little to nothing to do with actual political philosophy.

this is the second video you have posted today where you appear to be trying to make a case for the republicans,and the presenters are offering a seriously edited,cherry picked and manipulative picture of history.when the history is quite clear.

this is not a republican/democratic dynamic.
this is a power vs powerlessness dynamic.
this is about retaining power at any cost.
to the detriment of our society.

and it is not exactly a secret,but these videos you have posted are a disservice to those who may not know,which it appears,may include you bob.

My Facebook feed is filled to the brim from right wing nuts about cops, "pray for cops", "cop lives matter" and the like. Not a single one of them posted anything about the two recent killings that sparked the demonstrations.

And it's like newtboy said, nobody is saying cop lives don't matter, or that black lives matter more than others. What they don't seem to understand is they rush to find an excuse for a cop killing a black man, "oh look at his prior records" and don't care that he was doing nothing in the situation that caused the fatal shooting. They focus on the report that says the one guy didn't raise his hands and say "don't shoot me" and ignore the other report by the same people, released the same day that there was "systemic" racism in Ferguson, and similar reports have said the same about Cleveland and far too many others. When Brock Turner got 6 months for rape, they evoke his swimming records, and deny that if he was black and poor they would have searched for priors instead of his outstanding swimming records, and if he had no priors these same people would have been outraged had a black judge given him only 6 months in jail. They deny such things, but it's evident from their actions every time something like this happens. They lack any real empathy... which is especially funny since many of these people post things like the reason Christians suffer depression so much is they have so much empathy, and I'm thinking I don't see it, and I'm sure those in the LGBT don't see it when you deny them equal rights under the law, or deny them access to the bathroom of their gender identity, and I doubt blacks don't see it when you ignore their plight and instead post about how cop lives matter, or white lives matter.

If they do so out of ignorance, it is purposeful.

I used to be a evangelical, far right wing nut. Then I started vetting the information and news. Learned what sources are trustable and not. There started to be a pattern. I started educating myself further and changed positions. I became a liberal Christian, and eventually lost the faith due to the far right's overly big influence. So if I, who's not overly intelligent (perhaps more than the average person, but not nearly as intelligent as many family think I am), with no skills or real worth can get out via self education, they can to, but they prefer the comfort of their ignorance, and that I can't abide. You can point things out until you are blue in the face and they will just dig in harder to hold on to that ignorance and their limited world view.

I think we can trace a lot of this back to the rise of right wing radio and eventual rise of Fox News which convinced the Christian right that the regular, responsible news outlets were "liberal" when pretty much all news is controlled by a very select few, and none of them have an interest in making people aware of the truth... just because you can watch perhaps 12 hours of CNN before they point out something in the Obama administration that is bad, where Fox does it several times an hour doesn't make CNN liberal... it makes Fox an ass that is singly focused on making people angry at the Democrats and what they deem as liberals, and then they shift the goal post and make old Reagan era style political beliefs the new liberal... and they work to build the division. It's not longer acceptable to work with Democrats on finding a reasonable middle ground, that's being weak, and they want to dig their heals in and have it their way or the highway (basically they want a dictatorship but under the guise of a democracy). Then the rise of social media is perhaps the thing that really pushed the schism further as they further surround themselves in an echo chamber. So when people say "black lives matter" their echo chamber fills up with "well so do white lives and cop lives" and their echo chamber fills up with the idea that those on the left don't care about cops and that we think most of them are corrupt and don't care about their lives.

...aborts rant early as I'm already a million miles off topic...

er, by the time of the Last Crusade, Indy has seen:
- the literal manifestation of the power of god melt Nazis faces
- some magic rocks burning an Indian guy

I think it's pretty safe to say that Indy has accepted that in his fictional universe, the supernatural is real. Hell, if I saw what he'd seen by that point, I'd be a god-fearing Christian.

As for Pascal's wager, I've always viewed it as the height of moral cowardice. If you want to believe in God and you're not shoving your beliefs down everyone else's throat (looking at you, ISIS, evangelicals, catholic church in Ireland, etc), go nuts.

But don't believe because you're afraid of hell. If you're a good person and you die and it turns out there is a god, if he condemns you to eternal suffering for not believing in him, then fuck him, he's an asshole and I wouldn't want to spend eternity under his thumb anyway.

Both are *dead due to copyright claims from Voices of Evangelism.