Why is god out? but bible still in.

Because the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

During the 20th century, the Supreme Court has held that this means that public institutions—such as schools—cannot impose religious practices on people. This means that schools cannot require prayer or religious observances—this is the “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” part of the amendment. At the same time, in places where people are required to swear oaths, many people find it meaningful to swear on the Bible, and they are permitted to do so—this is the “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” part.

The President is not required to swear on the Bible, and the oath of office stipulated in the Constitution does not mention God. Many (possibly all, but I am not certain) Presidents have used a Bible as part of the oath of office, and many have added “so help me God” to the oath. Both of these are the President’s free exercise of religion.

“In God We Trust” on our currency is the result of the 19th century version of the Moral Majority managing to put its stamp on money; it was made the official motto of the US (replacing Jefferson’s “E pluribus unum” and put on all currency in the 1950s, because of the fear of atheism. It probably shouldn’t be there, but it is.

I think it’s just a tradition that will never be replaced. The symbolic gesture swearing in is magnified when done on the Bible. It’s like swearing on your Mother’s grave. You’d never do that unless you were 100% sure you were telling the truth.

If an atheist swears on the Bible in court, and it’s known that he/she is an atheist, does that diminish his or her testimony?

What do you mean, ” I do not need to hear athiests” ? My views are just as valid as yours. Swearing on a comic book would hold just as much meaning to me as swearing on the bible. None.
I tell the truth because it’s the right thing to do, not because I’m scared of going to hell.

@elijahsuicide I don’t think she necessarily didn’t want to hear from atheists. I think she just didn’t want to hear an atheistic answer like that.

Because scouts honor only works for boy scouts.

@TenaciousDenny: if you ask a question, say you don’t want to hear from atheists, and then blatantly insult them, you’re defeating the purpose.

I’d respond to that, probably much as @elijahsuicide did, if I were an atheist.

You don’t get to choose what answers you want to hear. I wasn’t disrespectful to your religion.

@elijahsuicide I’m an atheist. I’m just saying you’re not really adding anything to the discussion other than the same old God vs. No God argument that has been done thousands of times already on this site with no resolution because people have their own viewpoints and are not willing to budge.

@cwilbur As an atheist, I didn’t realize I was being insulted there. But maybe that’s just because of the horrible grammar in the question.

92% of the worlds population believes in a supreme being, you can’t really say God’s out.

Even if you do not believe in God, the bible still has good morals and life lessons.

no dis respect meant,you have the right to choose your beliefs ,.
i just meant please do not give me that as the answer.sorry about the grammer also.lol

@drbill- The bible has good morals?

I don’t choose to have god on my money.

@cheebdragon The Bible has a lot of good messages (love your neighbor, be generous to those less fortunate, etc. etc.), there’s just a lot of overblown fibs in there that some people take literally. I was raised Catholic, and I consider myself to be a kind and moral person as an adult, and I can’t help but to think there is some correlation there. But then again, I consider my parents’ to be kind moral people as well, and I’m sure that had more to do with it.

edit: sorry about getting off topic

It’s tradition. Until people stand up to the traditions, they will remain in use.
The same thing is happening with the thought of marriage now. People are standing up and asking to change the definition of it.

Plus, there are more substantial issues for us atheists to rally about than something as minuscule as the wording on the money I use. I just took a look at my Canadian money and I can’t see any use of the word God at all, so I’d have to say improvements are already being made in my country. As well, my city was forced to rescind their previous ruling banning the Freethought Association’s bus ads (you know, those “There’s probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life” ads).

Personally, as an atheist, if I am ever asked to swear on a bible, I will ask to swear on something else, so as to say to others that this is an option and to start changing the status quo. I will ask why the bible is being used, and request another book. Maybe I can swear to tell the truth, so help me Richard Dawkins. That would be nice.

i am sorry you are so easy to affend elijahsuicide,but i like that your first part of your name is out of the bible lol

@dynamicduo – You wouldn’t do any of that with or without a book?

@cheebdragon – I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you are asking me. Could you rephrase your question please?

So what, there’s many names in the bible. That doesn’t mean anything.

i just want to know why god is only in the world when needed.
other then that he is restricted.

@dynamicduo- would you kill people if the bible didn’t tell you it’s wrong? Would you be rude to your neighbor and steal everything in sight?

@earthangel I think he is restricted because respecting other people’s thoughts and opinions go both ways. Atheists don’t want God to be forced into their lives, just as believers don’t want their beliefs to be ridiculed and put down by atheists.

Bottom line, not all of us need (a) God in our lives, and I would argue that history has shown that God is becoming less and less needed and/or believed in by the general population. There are still old traditions out there that involve God (e.g. the inclusion of Him on US currency) that come from a time when God had a larger presence in society as a whole.

@cheebdragon – Are you sure you are responding to the right person? I’m confused as I did not mention the bible at all. It seems you meant to call up @TenaciousDenny who did explicitly mention one of those two examples.

But I guess I’ll answer anyway? I don’t care what the bible says, nor what any other holy book says. I do not use them to guide my life. One of the few rules I use is the Golden Rule. Applied to both your examples, I would not like to be killed nor would I like to have my house robbed, thus I do not kill people or rob their houses. It’s as simple as that for me. I would, however, like to be treated equally regardless of my sex, race, sexual orientation, height, favorite polka band, or whatever else could be used to discriminate, thus I do not discriminate against anyone I meet and in fact fight for equal rights for all people. Too bad I can’t say the same for various religions that encourage discrimination and lack of equal rights.

@dynamicduo- sorry, your right, wrong person.

ok this question is not meant to be sarcastic in any way ok. i just want to know.
where do you believe your love ones go after death if you have no belief in god?

Dead= worm food
Memories live in my mind, my loved ones will always exist there.

worm food…lol

@earthangel – I believe that when a person dies, they stop existing, just like before they were born. Their bodies decompose and their molecules are reused elsewhere, starting with bacteria food if they were buried, or starting from carbon/ash/etc if they were cremated. I do not believe in a soul or a spirit, or in a heaven or hell. The person doesn’t go anywhere. They simply do not exist anymore physically, they only exist in our memories of them.

I ♥ the fact that a lot of the Christians on Fluther seem to have thicker skin for taking flack for what they believe in than the athiest folks! The comic book joke seems harmless enough, so why go nuts?

I think it’s an interesting question to pose of post-christian societies. How far do they go to eliminate the establishment of religion, or does the meaning just not matter but the tradition remain (e.g. swearing on the bible).

@DrBill, the Bible has good morals and life lessons, like any other ancient mythological/legal text.

It also has exceedingly bad morals and life lessons, such as

• slavery is legal and you can beat them as much as the Romans beat Jesus (Lev 25:45 and Ex 21:20),

• genocide is acceptable against unbelievers in the holy land (Dt 20:16, all of Joshua)

• if you rape an unbetrothed virgin, you must pay the brideprice and marry her (Dt. 22:28) (also known as “you break it you buy it”).

I’m sorry if I’m harping on this, but I find it absurd that so many people think the Bible is a morally worthy book. It belongs in a museum!

just as laws today ,they are always changing for the better.
the bible was showing the start of laws .
where do you think laws came from anyway?

In hindsight, we should have had Bush43 be sworn in on The Chicago Manual of Style, or my son’s English Comp. Handbook from 9th grade.

@Earthangel? How old are you? Laws sprang unbidden from the head of Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom.

it does not matter my age here,this site is here to ask questions correct?
if you think you know more is not this sites purpose.

it is to learn,right?

@earthangel, are you asking where the Bible’s laws came from? Largely from the Code of Hammurabi (plus a bunch of ritual sacrifice laws ensuring the priests would get lots of meat and grain).

Where did Code of Hammurabi’s laws come from? According to the Code of Hammurabi, they came from King Hammurabi, who received them from “Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki (i.e. high gods), and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi (i.e. lesser gods).” Shamash, the god of the sun and of justice, also appears to have been involved.

I love it when people quote Old Testament (i.e old covenant) texts to justify their view that the bible is backwards.

@earthangel can we try to boil this question down? The original question seems to ask why our money says “in God we trust” and people testifying at a trial swear on a bible when the population at large doesn’t seem to read the bible. Later on you wonder why we only have God around when we need Him. Then you want to know where people go after death. Finally you ask where laws came from. Perhaps it would help respondents to know exactly which question you would like answered.

I believe in God but it would mean about as much to me to swear something on a bible as it would to swear something on a comic book (unless of course it was Superman #1). I will tell the truth, treat people well, and do all the other things that is expected of a moral person in a civil society because it is the right thing to do. I don’t need the threat of hell (which I do not believe in) to keep me on the straight and narrow.

@earthangel: I always kinda thought the beginning of actual written law was more accurately expressed by Hammurabi, not the Bible.

@earthangel: We generally do not exclude fellow flutherers from answering any question. Add to that petty comments thrown at the group you intended to exclude and that pretty much promises some of them will show up to answer.

@benseven: I love it when people make comments about things they love just to stir the pot.

@qingu: What is this, Indiana Jones and the Jelly of Knowledge?

To the actual question:
1. Atheists swear to tell the truth to the best of their knowledge and ability. Same as anyone else. Some of them lie anyway. Just like some Christians who swear on the bible. There are good and bad people. The bad ones are not all atheists. The good ones are not all Christian.
2. We do not teach religion in school because as a nation we believe in separation of Church and state.
3. Can we get some citations when people start throwing up random stats?
4. As already mentioned, the president can choose his or her method of swearing in when it comes to holy books or not having one.

@benseven no one is going nuts, I’m sorry you choose to see it that way. The truth of the matter is some people need god, and that’s fine. Some people don’t, and that’s also fine.
I don’t want god on my money, but he’s there. The problem is that god is forced on me. My kid has to say the pledge of allegience, which mentions god. Why can’t we swear allegience without religion? If you choose to pray in your home or church, that’s great. I don’t want to pray. I don’t want to have Jesus in my government.

@elijasuicide: You could always teach your child the pre-1954 version. Or the original just for esoteric fun.

So a powerful, all-knowing, supernatural being needs people to… what? Praise him? For what? To assuage his ego? To keep him from smacking them? That’s what it sounds like. Us puny humans are supposed to do nothing but praise him and say what a swell being he is all day long? Us puny humans are capable of “using” god by existing and eating food, drinking water, breathing, etc. and if we “toss him aside (by not praising him all day long)” we’re hurting his feelings? Please. Really? I knew a guy like that in high school. If you didn’t tell him how awesome he was all the time, he’d sulk. And as for being grateful to him that we exist, well, so what? I never asked to be here, and if I (or humanity or earth) weren’t here, I wouldn’t know the difference anyway, just like I won’t when I’m dead, so…

One would think that a supreme, omniscient being would be above petty, human-type ego trips.

I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, @earthangel, but that’s the conclusion I’ve come to after long and careful thought over the years. I have no objection to other people worshipping as they wish or not. People shouldn’t be compelled to go along with religious traditions that they don’t want to go along with. People have the right to make those kinds of choices for themselves. I have no wish to live in a theocracy of any kind.

what he ^ said…

luv this trend of mor god questions,people also ignorring goodspeling an grammor.Athiests an grammaterians no need respond

(I shear AC’s vue. And I sware that things have gotten wurst recently.)

gale’your rite.there their rong

@cheebdragon Obviously I wouldn’t kill people regardless of whether or not the Bible existed. And I wouldn’t be an a-hole and steal everything in sight. Like I said, I believe that my upbringing and my parents’ values have had a larger impact on my current personality than anything I learned in Church or in Sunday School. I was just making the point that when I was an impressionable child and my mind and thoughts were still forming, the fear of God and going to Hell may have caused me to choose to do the right thing rather than the wrong. And no, I’m not talking about killing people, but smaller more day to day decisions and and moral conflicts. And it’s commonly said that bad habits are hard to break, and I think the same goes for good habits. Good habits that I formed while I was a God-fearing child have tended to stay with me as a turned into an atheistic adult.

bible is a great piece of literature, not including its religious importance. it has good life lessons and good stories and history. it’s pretty cool in that sense, plus people want to read it to understand other religions.

@AC, Gail: Stop. Stop for the love of—it hurts! You know it hurts!

@EP: I feal yore pane. (Could we ban “cool” and “awesome” for a while? Or is that asking just too much?)

@mdrnmouse, I wouldn’t call any book that actually commands you to commit genocide a “great piece of literature.” Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

@Qingu: I think it is undeniably a great piece of literature. So much of our modern creativity is based on it or references it. I’m not about to hold a bible party to celebrate how totally swish it is, but it is hugely important to Western culture. In that sense, it is a great piece of literature.

I could name another piece of literature that greatly influenced Western culture and also encouraged genocide….

This is why I like to distinguish between “historically important” and “great.” The Mahabharata, that I’d call “great.” Morally mature and ambiguous views on warfare and society, addresses all sides of great questions, doesn’t characterize the protagonists’ enemies as evil creatures worthy of unmitigated slaughter, and has awesome Dragonball Z-style magic archery battles to boot.

@Qingu: Allow me to direct you to my earlier question regarding great literature. The very book you referenced appears on the list. I marked that response “Great Answer”.

If @mdrnmouse meant “great literature” in the sense that it is historically important, then I apologize and this argument reduces to semantics. It seemed to me that s/he meant it in the context of “this book has enduring moral value.” (“good life lessons”)

they do call the bible the good book.

I’d swear on the DVD series of Buffy The Vampire Salyer. WWBD?

@earthangel, which is ironic, because even most Christians would find many of the Bible’s “life lessons” exceedingly bad.

Take, for example, the question of what to do with a girl who can’t prove her virginity on her wedding night. Or how to deal with disobedient children. Or women who want a position of authority.

again that was the start of christian law.
worded this way as not to start everyone on how law was started.
just as any law it progressed with time.
that was then ,this is now…

@earthangel, so you believe it would be wrong—nay, immoral!—to actually follow the laws of the Old Testament? Apparently you disagree with Yahweh, who said in Dt. 4:2 that these laws would be shining beacons of justice and wisdom for all nations and should never be changed…

Also, perhaps you should think about tearing out the first 7/8ths of the Bible before you swear on it in court?

the old testament was for there times ,the new is for the now.

So, Quingu, do you think your moral code should be applied to all people at all times in the past and future?

I understand “applying a moral code” to mean “enforcement,” so it would seem impossible to apply my modern moral code to the ancient Hebrews without a time machine.

I do think a text that claims—and is claimed by its followers—to contain unchanging and perfect morals ought to be aggressively examined for its moral worth. Especially when we’re teaching it to our kids and encouraging people to swear oaths on it.

Oh! Oh! I want to answer that! No. But I think that if future generations find something repugnant about my moral code, they should be willing to decry my code and actions based on that part of my code.

well i want to thank everyone for all there personal input.
thanks for all the privates comments also.
i can see now why god was taken out of everything.
it was not by the answers so much to my question,as to how the conversations carried.

It would be one thing if you were actually examining the moral worth of the Bible, but what you are doing is just examining the points of refutation. Not the worth.

@Qingu
It’s generally accepted and taught in a modern context that the laws laid out in the old testament were for that time and place and changed with the creation of a new covenant.

“The Law is tied to the Mosaic Covenant, which is integrally connected to Israel’s life in the land and the conditional promises of blessing related to their living obediently in the land. Christians are not related to that land, nor are they related to the conditions for being blessed in the land. Also the Mosaic Covenant is obsolete, having been replaced by the New Covenant. Therefore the Mosaic Law, a critical component of the Old Covenant, is not valid as law over believers in the church age.” From here.

It seems to be a frequent argument that the bible is full of kook because people assume modern Christians subscribe to all the laws stated therein as fact and try and apply them today. The Old Testament is a historical document, as far as my understanding goes (and I’m not much of a scholar, I have to say) and the New Testament is the book from which modern Christians live, because of the old / new covenant divide.

This is why you typically don’t find modern Christians stoning people, or avoiding pork.

@benseven, the reason you don’t find modern Christians stoning people is because most modern Christians have absolutely no clue what is actually between the covers of the Bible. Some of them can recite John 3:16 and know “In the beginning” and can list a few commandments. But in general, modern Christians do not draw their morality from the Bible. They draw their morality from the same place I do—the secular, humanist, European Enlightenment philosophical tradition.

As for the context of the OT laws, this is not a clear-cut issue in Christianity and has been debated for centuries. Even Paul was debating this stuff. Read Galatians—Paul is furious at a rival sect of Christians who were teaching that in order to be saved, you needed to be circumsized. The idea of the OT law as a “schoolmaster” to which Christians need no longer be subject post-salvation, comes from Paul’s response in Galatians.

However, the author of Matthew seems to contradict Paul, and even insult him. Matthew 5:17 quotes Jesus as saying he has not come to abolish but to fulfill the law, says you should follow even the least of the commandments, and says anyone who teaches differently will be called “least” in the kingdom of heaven. Some scholars think this is actually a direct reference to Paul, who was known as the “least of the apostles.”

In general, Paul’s theology won out. But for most of Christendom’s history, people tried to model society based on the Old Testament laws, save for the ones Jesus and Paul specifically singled out as no longer needing to be followed (cleanliness laws and circumcision). Popes Urban and Innocent justified the Crusades by quoting Deuteronomy. The laws of Leviticus were used to uphold killing witches and unbelievers. Even important Christian thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas supported killing and torturing unbelievers, based largely on Old Testament ideas. For centuries, women were treated as property in Christendom, which is of course their legal status in the Old Testament.

So yes, benseven, I agree that modern Christians (notably, not evangelicals) do not believe you should follow the Old Testament. That is because most modern Christians have no idea what is in the Old Testament and would be shocked to find out. It is also because the worldview of modern Christians is strongly secular and has little to do with the Bible. It has absolutely nothing to do with any internal theological movement in Christianity.

@benseven – but some Christians still choose to use Leviticus 18:22 to support their claims to deny homosexuals their rights. This is my fundamental problem, the picking and choosing of what words are still valid and what words are not valid, and I can find no logic to the madness of deciding what words in the Old Testament are allowed to still be of value to today’s society and what words are to be discredited. If the Old Testament is as you say more of a historical document than a way to guide one’s life, then why is it still being used to support these viewpoints? One can’t have their cake and eat it too, and it seems that many folk simultaneously do just that by saying “well that’s the Old Testament, we don’t follow those rules” and then saying “homosexuality is a sin as said in Leviticus 18:22”.

Also, it is important to note that the New Testament isn’t exactly a hippie lovefest. Jesus repeatedly threatens unbelievers with torture and hellfire. Nearly all of his parables are thinly masked threats, characterizing humans as slaves and Yahweh as their out-of-town master who will surely torture and/or kill his disobedient slaves when he comes back to see what they’ve done.

And while Jesus doesn’t go into much detail about what exactly is going to happen to Yahweh’s disobedient slaves, the book of Revelation does. Revelation is probably the goriest, most violent apocalyptic text from the period. We are treated to imagery of terrifying monsters swarming and torturing people, causing uncontrollable pain and madness, while the happy believers look down from heaven and watch the sinners get their just desserts.

god has no pleasure in in punishing ,he is a god of love.
i do not believe he would let those above watch there family and loved ones be tormented.
after all it is heavon.

“And just as the Lord took delight in making you prosperous and numerous, so the Lord will take delight in bringing you to ruin and destruction” —Dt. 28:63

Heavon? Do they sell Avon products there? Cause that would explain a lot!

@earthangel, you are stumbling on the Problem of Evil. If you believe God exists, and you believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient, then why does God allow bad things to happen, such as letting poor hungry children die each day in Africa? The simple fact is if God exists, he is letting bad things happen to us. Why is this?

@Qingu: when Jesus says “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it,” he is saying that He is the foretold Messiah, and now that he is here the action of the Law is complete. The opposition is not between abolish/uphold but abolish/complete.

If you’re going to nitpick theological arguments, the least you could do is attack them on their merits and not on your misunderstanding of them.

god does not let this happen,it is man who has caused such evil.
with all there probing to try to improve the things that where already fine.
man is trying to be a god.
come on now cloning and such.
sorry about the grammer.lol

@EarthAngel: Don’t be sorry about the grammar. Improve it. If nothing else, get a web browser (FireFox is free and wonderful) that let you know when you’ve spelled something incorrectly.

wow so many critics here today.

@cwilbur, that has never made sense to me. You’re basically saying that Jesus has “fulfilled” the laws by… effectively, abolishing them.

In addition, the context of the sermon on the mount is “putting a fence around the Law.” You all knew that committing adultery was bad. But Jesus is saying that even thinking about adultery is bad. By avoiding even thinking about breaking the OT laws, that means you’re even less likely to be damned. Which is to say, Jesus isn’t arguing here that it’s okay to break the laws. He’s saying you should be even more extra-careful not to break them.

I’m not arguing that the New Testament is consistent on this point. In fact, I think Matthew’s gospel, or at least this portion of it, serves as a direct repudiation of Paul’s theology. That said, there are modern Christians today who do believe Matthew 5:17 means we should, ideally, follow the OT laws. They are called “theonomists” (also “dominionists”). A theologian named Greg Bahnsen is among the most prominent.

@earthangel, if you truly believe that “things where already fine” circa a hundred or a few hundred years ago, then I sure hope you do not use any of today’s modern medicine (no antibiotics of course, but also no medical machines and certainly no techniques for minimal intrusive operations), because otherwise you would be a hypocrite in both condemning science yet using it when it benefits you.

Man is not trying to be God through the use of science. It may be that we end up with God-like powers, and we are able to create life in the lab, but this is not the driving force for science. Generally, the driving force behind science is our natural curiosity, those simple questions “Why?” “How?” “When?”, not any nefarious purpose or delusions of grandeur.

Qingu: Matthew’s principal audience was Jews. The point of that passage is to show that the old laws are no longer relevant, but not because Jesus is just abolishing them. Instead, He is the culmination of the great work of redemption that was begun in those laws, and His sacrifice is going to be a complete and total atonement for all violations of them. He’s not doing away with the law by saying it doesn’t matter; he’s finishing the work that the law laid the groundwork for by being the Messiah that the law was preparation for.

The concept of sin that Jesus is putting forth is not one of purity of action, but purity of intent. Thinking of adultery is sinful, because it’s an impure thought. And this is perfectly consistent with Paul’s theology, at least where it touches on the notion of sin and the concept of purity codes. Paul says “to the pure, all things are pure”—he is talking about purity of intent, purity of heart.

twisting ones words does not make one right.
i have also just been informed of all the intellagance here,
so you must all be correct.
i did not know when i came to this site you had to be genious.
oh..and a good speller.
sorry this dumb person asked a question.
my how it made you all talk all day,i even went to the store and you all where still going on.
how,s that for grammer ma.
lighten up a little ,people we are here to learn ,.
thats whats important not ones grammer or spelling.

@cwilbur, first of all, it is not clear who Matthew’s “audience” was. We have no idea who wrote the gospel (their traditional attributions are all second-century guesses by early church officials), or how it was received or transmitted. Much of Matthew is clearly copied from the earlier gospel of Mark, as well as another source or sources (which scholars call Q) defined as “all the verses identical in Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark”). The gospel of Matthew does seem to have more of a “Jewish focus” than the others, but this may be simply because the person or group responsible for redacting it had a similar theology to the very people Paul was pissed at in his letter to the Galatians. There were many sects of Christians during this time.

Secondly, again, I don’t think your explanation of what “fulfillment” means in this context makes any sense, because what you are basically saying is that Jesus’ fulfillment of the law ended up abolishing the law. If you no longer have to follow a law, that means the law is abolished—regardless of metaphysical joojaboo responsible for causing this to be the case.

I agree with you that Jesus (in Matthew and elsewhere) is putting forth the idea of purity of intent. However, I think it’s clear that the point of having a pure intent is so you don’t come close to skirting the dangerous sinful territory of making impure actions, defined as breaking all the laws of the Bible.

Now, purity laws are exempted from this, even in Matthew—but that’s simply because these laws dealt with sacrifice and Jesus invalidates the need for sacrifice. But I don’t think there’s any indication that Jesus is saying the non-ceremonial laws—including most of the ones you and I find absurd and immoral—are not important to uphold anymore. Why would he? This doesn’t even really make sense in terms of Paul’s theology, who calls the law “holy, just and good” in Romans 7:12. The whole point of salvation is that you no longer need to follow the OT laws, but that is quite different from saying you no longer should follow the OT laws, or that it would be wrong to follow them.

@cwilbur your answers amaze me.
are you taking up writing?or ancient study.good for you.

@Qingu: you’re free to think that what I have just explained doesn’t make any sense, but the reason you don’t get it is because you’re dismissing the “metaphysical joojaboo.” The law was the preparation for Jesus, and when Jesus showed up, He did not dismiss the law, but complete it. The law is still a good guide for a happy life, but salvation is no longer contingent upon following the law to the letter. There’s probably a better translation for “abolish” that would get past the semantic games, but if you’re determined not to see it, not much I can do.

And no, the point of having pure intent is not that you avoid sinful actions. It’s that purity of heart is the primary thing, and impurity of heart is the sin. The actions you take because of that impurity are evidence of the sin, but they are not the sin itself.

And you have to read the letter to the Romans in context—it’s a letter written to a congregation of mixed Jews and Gentiles, who are arguing over the details of adherence to the law, and to what degree Christians need to adhere to the Old Testament law to be good Christians. Paul’s answer—the Gentiles are not as righteous as they think, and neither are the Jews, because there’s a new way to salvation, which he outlines. Chapters 7 and 8 of the letter to the Romans are where Paul lays out the argument—but he’s writing to a congregation that is partially Jewish, and values adherence to the law. So the core of his argument is that the law is holy, just, and good, but it is the spirit that matters now, not the law.

He is not calling the law “holy, just, and good” in order to exhort his audience to live by it. He is calling the law “holy, just, and good” so that he can frame the argument that the law is now insufficient for salvation, because it is the spirit that matters, without alienating half of his audience. You can’t take those three words out of the larger context of the chapter they’re in, or of the epistle they’re in.

@earthangel: I’m a Christian who is unimpressed with a lot of the untruths I’ve been told about what the Bible really says, so I took it upon myself to study and learn.

the main thing is you wanted to know the truth.

@cwilbur, you said, “The law is still a good guide for a happy life, but salvation is no longer contingent upon following the law to the letter.”

I agree that this is the proper way to interpret the text.

However, I don’t think you agree with this interpretation. Do you really believe, for example, the instruction to stone newlyweds who can’t prove their virginity on the doorstep of their fathers’ houses is “a good guide for a happy life”?

How about the law governing how to deal with men who rape unbetrothed virgins? (They are to pay the victim’s father a brideprice and then marry their rape victim, without being able to divorce the girl—you break it, you buy it).

Would your life be “happier” if you followed the Bible’s “good guide” to go and commit genocide against the current inhabitants of the holy land?

This is what I was trying to get earlier. I said that I understand that Christians no longer have to follow these laws, your salvation lies elsewhere. But according to the Bible, these laws are still good and wise instructions and you should try to follow them. As a Christian, do you agree?

I think that a thinking Christian should consider these laws in the historical context that they were written in. The status of women in modern society is not what it was in the Near East 3000 years ago, and the laws need to be considered in that light.

So, no, to answer the question you really meant to ask: you’re not going to be successful at catching me in an asinine word game. And I’ll thank you to stop presuming what I believe; if you want to set up a straw man so you can feel good about knocking one down, by all means do so; just don’t name him cwilbur.

Hmm, same answer you keep getting over and over, Qingu.

we should remember the bible was written by man.
threw experiences and direction from god.
the old test was wrote for man before jesus came,the new test was after he came.
that is why christians live by the new test.
our salvation is threw jesus.

@cwilbur, I’m not playing word games, I’m not trying to set up a strawman. I just asked you a simple question, I’m trying to extract a simple answer. Are such laws a good guide for a happy life?

I understand perfectly well the context of these laws and ANE culture, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the question. You said the laws are good. Did you mean that God’s laws were “good” to follow in the ancient near east, but would be “bad” to follow today? Do you have any Biblical support for this position?

And incidentally, many of the Bible’s more disturbing laws—such as the ones punishing nonvirgins and killing homosexuals and unbelievers—are not found in the Code of Hammurabi, an earlier document that strongly influenced the Bible. So I dispute that you can even play the “cultural context” card in such cases, but that’s really another discussion.

@Qingu – You’re asking your ‘simple question’ having received several explanations of why the laws are not applied 100% literally in a modern social context, and yet you continue to nit-pick because you think until there is a clear cut yes or know it looks like this isn’t resolved?

The Bible is open to interpretation, and the consensus among a good number of theologians is that in each circumstance the laws in question need to be weighed and considered against a variety of factors…

Identify What The Particular Law Meant To The Initial Audience

Identify the historical and literary context of the specific law in question. Were the Israelites on the bank of the Jordan preparing to enter the land (Deuteronomy) when the law was given, or were they at Mount Sinai soon after the Exodus (Exodus, Leviticus)? Was the law given in response to a specific situation that had arisen, or was the command describing requirements for Israel after they moved into the Promised Land? What other laws are in the immediate context? Is there a connection between them? How did this particular law relate to the Old Covenant? Did it govern how people were to approach God? Did it govern how they were to relate to each other? Did it relate to agriculture or commerce? Was it specifically related to life in the Promised Land? What did this specific law mean for the Old Testament audience?

Determine The Differences Between The Initial Audience And Believers Today

Delineate the theological and situational differences between Christians today and the initial audience. For example believers in the present church age are under the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant. Thus they are not under the laws of the Old Covenant. They are not Israelites preparing to dwell in the Promised Land, nor do they approach God through the sacrifice of animals. Also Christians live under secular governments and not under a theocracy, as did ancient Israel. In addition Christians face pressures not from Canaanite religions but from different non-Christian worldviews and philosophies.

Develop Universal Principles From The Text

Behind the Mosaic commands for the original audience lie universal, timeless principles. Each of the Old Testament laws had a meaning for its first audience, a meaning that is related to the Old Covenant. But that meaning is usually based on a broader, universal truth, a truth that is applicable to all God’s people, regardless

[p.32]

of when they live and under which covenant they live. In this step one asks, “What universal principle is reflected in this specific law? What broad principle may be applied today?”

The principle should be developed in accord with several guidelines: (a) It should be reflected in the text, (b) it should be timeless, (c) it should correspond to the theology of the rest of Scripture, (d) it should not be culturally bound, and (e) it should be relevant to both Old Testament and current New Testament believers. These universal principles will often be related directly to the character of God and His holiness, the nature of sin, the issue of obedience, or concern for other people.

Correlate The Principle With New Testament Teaching

Filter the universal principle through the New Testament teaching regarding that principle or regarding the specific law being studied.

Some of the Old Testament laws, for example, are restated in the New Testament as commandments for New Testament believers. When the Old Covenant was abrogated, the Old Testament Law ceased to be a Law for Christians. However, when the New Testament repeats a law it thus becomes a commandment for believers, to be obeyed as a commandment of Christ. But this validity and authority as a command comes from the New Testament and not the Old Testament. In addition occasionally the New Testament qualifies an Old Testament law, either modifying it or expanding on it. For example for the command in Exodus 20:14, “You shall not commit adultery,” the universal principle relates to the sanctity of marriage and the need for faithfulness in marriage. As this principle is filtered through the New Testament, Jesus’ teaching on the subject must be incorporated into the principle. Jesus said, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28), thereby expanding the range of this law. He applied it not only to acts of adultery but also to thoughts of adultery. Therefore the commandment for Christians today becomes “You shall not commit adultery in act or in thought.” But Christians should seek to obey this command because it reflects a universal biblical principle reinforced by the New Testament, and not simply because it is an Old Testament law.

Apply The Modified Universal Principle To Life Today… etc. All from here

Taking on board the teaching contained in the bible and what its message to us is, is not as binary as ‘Read and apply’. If it were, you’d have a point. But you don’t , because you’re trying to imply that Christians are running around saying 100% of the Bible should be applied directly to modern life – if not that, why are you trying to solicit biblical justification for someone’s standpoint? What if there is no simple answer? The fact that the bible, amongst other things, should be weighed and interpreted before being applied or doctrinated is a widely recognised fact and is taught as such, so what are you out to prove?

well said!

A very well said copy and paste indeed.

It’s a shame J. Daniel Hays isn’t on Fluther, because I’d like to hear what “universal principle” he draws from “rape victims must marry their rapists” (you break it you buy it?) or “you must kill everyone in the holy land” (don’t live in a damn desert?)

It’s pretty clear that @Qingu‘s goal here is to harangue a Christian into saying “yes, they are a guide for a happy life”—at which point he will express incredulity that someone can believe them (as he just did in the answer above this one)—or into saying “no, they are not a guide for a happy life”—at which point he will claim that the respondent is not a really good Christian, now is he?

This is the game that I’m refusing to play.

Far be it for me to suggest that Christians ought to face the moral implications of the book they claim is a divinely inspired paragon for morality.

You really didn’t read that at all, did you?

Put simply, Moses received spiritual truths that were timeless and universal.
The assumption that Yahweh instructed the death is based on a literal reading of the Bible. In my opinion, the references to God after Moses died (and no, I don’t think he was 900 years old when they reached the entry to the Promised Land) were basically a co-opting of authority, much the same way as the Church co-opted the inspired messages of Jesus.

But, yeah, if you run into any biblical literalists… wow, zing! you got em! lol

@fireside: There is a depressingly large number of biblical literalists. But his time might be better served doing this.

@fireside, again, you are not a Christian, and you agree with me—an atheist—that we should pick and choose morals from the Bible and discard the ones that seem outdated. You don’t even think the Bible is a particularly special text (you apparently believe all ancient relgious and philosophical texts have glimmers of divine insight).

So if you don’t think the Bible is a moral paragon, I remain confused as to why you are offering textual criticism from a perspective of someone who does think the Bible is a moral paragon.

Additionally, are you seriously suggesting that Yahweh’s repeated commands for genocide (and the several books of the Bible that describe this genocide in detail?) are supposed to be understood metaphorically, not literally? What on earth do you think this stuff is a metaphor for? What is the “universal principle,” as se7en’s copy and paste noted, that Christians ought to draw from such laws?

@Qingu – I believe that Abraham, Moses and Jesus were the prophets of the Bible. They were the ones who had revelations that set tremendous changes in motion. But they did not write or approve the stories about themselves. The stories are colored by the cultural traditions.

My issue with your approach is that you are trying to dismiss the Bible in its entirety because you want to focus on the negative things. It just seems disingenuous to me.

@Qingu: you’re either falling for, or trying to set up other people to fall for, the fallacy of the excluded middle. Either the instruction in the Bible is to be taken literally, word-for-word, with no consideration of its cultural context (and all of the problems that fall out of that), or it’s completely irrelevant. There is a very large set of other possibilities that you’re completely failing to consider in your zeal.

You would do well, if you intend to pursue this point, to read the alt.atheism FAQ on constructing a logical argument. And yes, I enjoy the irony of a Christian telling an atheist that his argument is fallacious and that he should consult a FAQ put together by atheists that discusses how to put together a solid argument.

“For example believers in the present church age are under the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant. Thus they are not under the laws of the Old Covenant.”

I’m fairly certain the ‘Universal Principle’ concept is supposed to bring light to laws that are slightly more ambiguous as to their relevance (whereas you niftily picked up a couple that seem nicely shocking so as to lend weight to your argument?). I don’t think anyone today has a problem with trying to weigh the relevance of either of your points, and your insinuation that they do is simply laughable.

As for a ‘well said copy and paste’, I could have simply linked to that behemoth of a text page or I could copy in the relevant sections, which I then did with a link at the end, marking the start and end of where my own contribution was.

To be honest, you are coming across less and less as a well-balanced atheist on a quest for discussion about the finer points of the laws and their application to modern life, and more like a bitter pedant on a mission to wind up some believers.

I am trying to dismiss the idea that the Bible is a divinely inspired moral paragon.

Almost every ancient text has both good insights and embarassingly/atrociously outdated morals. The Bible is no different. The problem for me is that religious people say it is different.

@Qingu – “The problem for me is that religious people say it is different.”

Can you please, please, cite for me someone of a position of leadership in Christianity stating that the entirety of the Bible is to be taken entirely literally and applied to every possible modern context one can think of?

@cwilbur, you keep on mentioning “cultural context” as if merely invoking this term allows you to sweep laws you don’t like under the rug.

Very well. Please explain what the cultural context was for stoning nonvirgin newlyweds on their fathers’ doorstep. There is no such law in the Code of Hammurabi; the Bible seems uniquely concerned with virginity, even in the period. Also please explain whether or not it would be wrong to follow this law today.

When you’re done with that, please explain what you think the cultural context was of the Bible’s laws commanding genocide. Lots of ancient cultures occasionally commited genocide, but the Bible is the only ancient moral/religious text I know of to actually codify genocide as a divine commandment. Why was such a law morally valid 3,000 years ago, and what lessons about morality do you draw from it today?

@benseven, feel free to answer the questions in my last post as well, since you were the one who brought up “Universal principles.” I’d love to hear about the principles you’ve derived from the laws I brought up.

Also: the question of “literal/metaphorical” has absolutely nothing to do with legal texts. Obviously the laws are meant to be taken literally. That’s the whole point of laws. Nobody thinks the Code of Hammurabi or the Laws of Draco are “metaphors.”

Are you seriously suggesting the Bible’s laws commanding slavery and genocide are “metaphors? And if so, what on earth are they metaphors for?

@EmpressPixie – that was hilarious

@benseven: Seriously? I just googled “bible literalist”, went to Wikipedia, and was directed to the page on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrency.

@fireside: Thanks. :)

@EmpressPixie – I’m happy to admit that I can’t quite follow what that means, but would be happy to hear an explanation. I’m still in my theological infancy, if you like.

Man, those aren’t even the really scary Biblical literalists. If you want to freak yourself out, read some Greg Bahnsen.

@Qingu – I don’t have to defend the laws of the Old covenant, because I’m not under them. I’m a modern day believer living after the resurrection of Christ, and as such I’m under a New covenant.

I don’t follow where I suggested the old laws were metaphors. My point is, they’re old laws. Harping on about them at believers under the new covenant is pointless.

I can’t explain the cultural context of the Mosaic law, because I wasn’t there, nor have I extensively studied the culture and society of the time. I too have a hard time understanding where on earth such harsh / violent / plain evil commands come from, and what they mean, but I haven’t previously given it a lot of thought given that I don’t live my life bound by the laws of the Mosaic covenant as a modern believer. Thus, I have no need for drawing any kind of modern parallel or explanation of them for you, because they’re there in a historical sense to give context to the story told by the Old Testament. They are neither metaphors nor directly applicable to my life today under the New Covenant.

I know you’d love to make me feel stupid and fanatical about all this, but the fact is I’m not out to prove I’m right, just dispel anything that isn’t a fair and logical assessment of the application of Biblical text. I’m glad that you are resolute in what you believe, just as I am, and I’m getting a lot out of this (as is perfectly healthy, for one to be challenged to explain or defend their beliefs). I clearly am not as well versed on this as you, so I apologise if I tie myself in knots or fail to answer things clearly. I’m just applying my understanding / interpretation in response to your posts, and where I copy and paste it’s simply because I’ve found someone who has already summarised my beliefs on the subject in a more eloquent manner. Shalom!

@Qingu: I’ll give you a shove in the right direction.

In ancient times, women had roughly the status of property, and marriage was the process of handing the woman over from her father to her husband. A woman’s value was pretty much tied up in her chastity; if she was not a virgin when she was married, her husband could not be sure that any children she bore were his.

This is why there is such a strong emphasis on virginity and sex. A woman who loses her virginity consensually before she is married has just given up the one thing she has of value in that society; thus, the harsh punishment, to discourage her further. (It could be argued that an unmarried woman who was that disgraced would be better off dead, because her status is such that she can’t support herself, but without being a virgin or a widow she won’t be able to find a man who will take care of her after her father dies. Remember that this is not a wealthy society, either.) A man who rapes a woman has just taken the one thing she has of value in that society, and has made her worthless to other men; thus, his punishment is that she becomes his responsibility.

These two examples make sense in their cultural context, and they don’t make sense in the modern cultural context. So the exercise for thinking Christians is to consider what the underlying principle is, and whether it applies to modern culture.

Beyond that: I recognize that you want to demonstrate to the rest of us that the Bible is so much twaddle. But given that you’re arguing with a bunch of (1) non-literalists who are (2) Christian or post-Christian and thus (3) not required to obey the Old Testament literally—and, more importantly (4) capable of recognizing logical fallacies, you are unlikely to accomplish your goal if you continue in the manner in which you have begun.

(5) But that’s not to say that we don’t appreciate the passionate and intelligently crafted attempt : )

@benseven, again, I understand that you no longer have to follow the Old Testament laws.

What I want to hear from you is whether or not it would be wrong, today, to (for example) stone a nonvirgin bride to death.

Again, to be clear: I understand you no longer have to stone nonvirgin brides to death. I understand that your salvation is not contingent upon following this commandment. What I am confused about is your strong implication that—since our culture has changed from the ANE—it would therefore be morally wrong to follow God’s commandments.

@cwilbur, I agree with you; the Bible’s laws grew out of an ANE culture that generally treated women as property and virginity as a product freshness seal. I furthermore agree that the OT laws really only make sense in this context.

But I’m an atheist. I believe humans wrote these laws (and that the Hebrews actually just adapted most of their laws from the Code of Hammurabi). You’re a Christian. Do you believe God actually gave these laws to humans?

The question is important, because I still want to hear from you whether or not you think it would be wrong to follow these laws today. I don’t understand how a Christian could believe that following a law from God would be morally wrong in any culture.

We’ve already talked about how in the NT, while the law is no longer required for salvation, it is still good. Consider also this verse from Deuteronomy 4, where God says quite explicitly that his laws are supposed to be a be a beacon of justice and wisdom for all cultures:

You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’ For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

(What other great nation indeed. Personally, I’d rather live in ancient Babylon—they didn’t kill unbelievers and gays.)

Now, cwilbur, I respect that you are a liberal progressive, and I imagine we share most of the same moral values. I imagine you would be just as appalled as I would be if you saw someone stoning a disobedient child to death, or if a rapist was forced to marry his victim.

If this is the case, then I guess what I don’t understand is why on earth you even bother to call yourself a Christian. Christianity would not exist without the Bible. It makes no sense without the Bible, since the Bible is the only testament to Jesus’ salvation and this salvation itself makes no sense without the prior context of OT theology. You presumably believe the Bible is special or “good” book, divinely inspired, in a way that the Enuma Elish or the Iliad or the Mahabharata are not special or inspired. (In this you are different from fireside, who apparently just thinks everything’s divine.)

But if I understand your worldview, you think the Bible is completely secondary to your culture. If your post-enlightenment, progressive culture does not allow for genocide, slavery, or the treatment of women as property, then the Bible’s laws must be interpreted to fit into this worldview, if not ignored outright. In fact, it seems like your entire criteria for picking which laws and ideas from the Bible ought to be followed has nothing to do with the Bible itself—rather, it’s “is the law or idea consistent with my post-enlightenment culture?”

You don’t really seem to have an answer as to why should I want to live in my culture, as opposed to the culture espoused in the Bible’s laws? If you do have an answer, I doubt it has anything to do with Christianity.

“What I want to hear from you is whether or not it would be wrong, today, to (for example) stone a nonvirgin bride to death.”

It’s a non-question. I have nothing to defend or attack from that question, because the old laws do not apply to today. They aren’t God’s commands for me as a New Covenant believer, so why would I waste my time arguing for or against them?

@benseven, partly because there are many Christians who say they should be followed today. What would you say to them?

Also, why are they no longer God’s commandments for you? You think the Ten Commandments are no longer God’s commandments for you? (Or are you just referring to the commandments from the Old Testament that you no longer wish to follow?)

I think that last question was covered pretty thoroughly here

I call myself a Christian because I believe that Christ died as a perfect sacrifice of atonement for all sin, including mine. What definition are you using?

The larger narrative of the Bible is of God, first as Himself, then later in the person of Jesus, leading His people to freedom. My culture is moving towards this ideal. So yes, I do have an answer as to why I want to live in this culture as opposed to ancient Israel. It’s a better culture, in a lot of ways, for the people in it.

And you seem to be completely hamstrung by the idea that everyone who professes to be Christian must follow all of the Old Testament. This returns to your misunderstanding of the passage in Matthew where Jesus claims he is the fulfillment of the Law. You seem to persist in your excluded middle of either strict adherence to the Old Testament or atheism, when even in the context of the Biblical record this is not deemed to be necessary. The correct path is to look to the Bible for moral instruction, consider it in its context, and see how the underlying principles apply to modern culture—bearing in mind that the critical thing, which Jesus explains and which is reiterated over and over in the New Testament, is purity of heart and purity of intent.

The rest of your arguments are similarly shoddy. “What would you say to other Christians who think X?” Well, if ten million people say a stupid thing, it is still a stupid thing. “Would it be wrong today to stone a nonvirgin bride to death?” Yes, even taking the Bible as literally as you seem to want to, because (1) I am not Jewish, and so am not party to that covenant; (2) the Noahide laws, given to the children of Noah after the Flood, make no such stipulation, and I am arguably bound by those, except that (3) Christ’s sacrifice made adherence to the old law irrelevant, and (4) His summary of the law includes the admonition to love my neighbor as myself, and I don’t think that stoning nonvirgins is consonant with that.

@Qingu, you’re arguing illogically, based on premises that nobody else in this discussion agrees with (and several people have told you are flat-out wrong). I’m tired of repeating myself and pointing out your fallacies. As a starting point, you might actually consider the merits of starting from axioms and principles that your interlocutors actually agree with, instead of picking nonsense at random and building a case based on quicksand such as that.

Second, you might actually consider the ramifications of the axioms you choose to start with; even if you start with sola scriptura as an axiom (which may be appropriate for some of your interlocutors here, but most likely not for @fireside and certainly not for me), you need to find a consistent interpretation of Scripture. Here we return to your problem understanding the distinction between fulfilling the law and abolishing it; until you understand what that means to someone who believes that Christ is the foretold Messiah—even if you don’t agree, you need to understand, and you so clearly don’t—you’re not going to get anywhere.

Or, you’re going to keep on setting up straw men and knocking them over, which, while no doubt entertaining for you, gets increasingly tiresome for your interlocutors.

amen @cwilbur

@cwilbur, you spent about half of your post meta-arguing. Give me a frakkin’ break.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter. You are claiming that following certain of God’s commandments would be morally wrong.

Your reasons are as follows:

(1) I am not Jewish/party to covenant —irrelevant to the question. As I’ve said numerous times, the fact that you are no longer obligated to follow such laws says nothing about whether it would be wrong to follow them.

(2) Noahide laws… have absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.

(3) Christ’s sacrifice made adherence to old law irrelevant… is, like reason #1, also irrelevant to the question. I’m not a Muslim; I don’t have to adhere to Islam’s alcohol prohibition. In no way does this mean it would be wrong for me to not drink alcohol.

(4) “Love they neighbor” contradicts, and supersedes, stoning nonvirgins. This is the only one that addresses the question. The problem is that it is a naive view of the Bible’s conception of both justice and love. You don’t stone the nonvirgins because you hate them, anymore than we imprison murderers today because we hate them. The purpose of the punishment is not hatred but justice.

Now, you might argue that “stoning to death” is a hateful form of justice, which is a subjective argument to begin with. It is also not consistent with the Bible’s overarching view of how justice is meted out by a supposedly loving God. Yahweh “so loved the world” but feels no compunctions about forcing people he supposedly loves to eat the flesh of their children and drink their miscarriage fluids (Deuteronomy 28) or sending horrible monsters to torture them before throwing them in a lake of fire (Revelation) if they do not obey him. A nice, quick stoning seems downright loving in comparison.

Despite your repeated assertions that anyone who doesn’t buy this argument (including other Christians) is “stupid” or “illogical,” I certainly don’t find it very convincing. Furthermore, you’ve failed to address the other Bible verses I’ve cited. If following some of God’s commandments would be wrong, then how do you reconcile the verses that say
• the law should never be changed and is a beacon of wisdom to all cultures (Dt. 4)
• the law is “holy, just, and good,” (Romans 7:12)
• anyone who teaches people to ignore even the least of the commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19)

This isn’t a case of the “excluded middle,” this is a case where what you are saying seems to directly contradict what the Bible is saying in multiple locations. So it would seem a defense more valid than “but the law doesn’t seem like it’s loving!” is in order.

As for your distinction between “fulfilling” and “abolishing,” despite your condescending rhetoric you are clearly just playing semantic games. The word abolish means “to end the observance or effect of.” When you abolish a law, that means you no longer have to obey that law. This is exactly, exactly, what you are arguing Jesus has done. Only in this special case, only when you’re arguing about Matthew 5:17, would you ever even consider claiming that “making it so you don’t have to obey X” is fulfilling X, not abolishing X. It is absurd, and you would be more intellectually honest if you just admitted that the Bible appears to contradict itself on this front.

Finally, I find your overarching interpretation of the Bible’s trajectory towards “freedom” absurd. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you if you haven’t read it (because most Christians apparently haven’t), but it ends with most of humanity being viciously tortured for disobedience. It’s my understanding that sin simply means “disobeying God.” Jesus does “free” us from having to obey all the laws for salvation, but only because we now can get “forgiven” when we fail to obey. Disobedience remains the determining factor in our salvation, as Jesus makes clear in almost all of his parables. (And one wonders what you think you’re even being saved from, since you apparently think God’s commandments—disobeying of which constitutes sin—are often immoral to follow in the first place.)

Though I can see why the idea is appealing to you. After all, it’s consistent with your fundamental worldview and Western culture. So of course you’d be tempted to cherry-pick overarching Biblical ideas that happen to fit this, just as you cherry-pick individual laws and morals from the Bible that happen to fit your preconceived post-Enlightenment morality.

(One also wonders why someone so concerned with “logic” and “rationality” would choose to believe that a cosmic Jewish zombie who is his own father had himself killed to save us from his own need to punish us for the influence of an evil force in our souls unleashed because a talking snake convinced our mythical ancestor to eat a magical apple, based on the evidence of a contradictory collection of ancient Mesopotamian myths and arbitrarily cobbled together late-antique Jewish-mystery-cult writings. But I suppose that’s another discussion entirely.)

@Qingu: Quod scripsit, scripsit. None so blind, etc.

i looked up what you said there @cwilbur that is roaman catholic.
christians have a little differant view.
i was raised catholic and went to catholic school.
i later went on to become a christian.
they indeed are differant in beliefs such as many religions are
christians call it a life syle .
but again that is a whole new question.

Catholics are Christians, the last time I checked. Maybe a different flavor of Christianity, but Christianity none the less.

@earthangel: I agree with MeltedCrayon. You may have been raised Catholic and gone to Catholic school, but you apparently missed a huge part of Catholicism. Namely the whole “we started Christianity and don’t you forget it” bit. There was a whole section in World History about it. But yeah—Catholic? Still Christian.

@qingu I’m done with this. Anyone, regardless of belief, could read through this thread and see that you’re ignoring justifications and plain facts on the matter in order to harp on like you actually have a point.

What sold it for me is that you descended into mocking our faith. I hold anyone with a belief (or belief in nothing) in a high enough regard not to stoop to the levels you have, to attempt to look clever and try and one-up us – at this point by any means necessary, apparently. I’m out.

catholcism exactly,catholic .
differant in many ways is all i was saying.
catholics drink,true christians do not.
thats just one example,another catholics tell a father there sins,christians know they can talk to god and be forgiven they do not need a go between,.catholics have jesus still on the cross,christians know he is risen,

@earthangel: To your first statement, does that mean you don’t count Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, or any of the other named sects of Christianity as Christians?

As to drinking, are you talking about communion? Because Episcopals do this as well, but they are non-Catholic Christians. Though this did cause the first major schism in the Catholic church, which paved the way for further schisms until you got whatever brand of Christianity you follow.

If you are not talking about communion, and just mean drinking in general, um, you’d be losing rather a lot of the religion if to be Christian you couldn’t drink. Are you saying all those people out there who enjoy wine with dinner but attend church every Sunday aren’t really Christian?

You don’t have to be Catholic to confess. Sometimes you need to hear it from a real person, so you go find your pastor. He or she listens and tells you that god forgives you. It’s their job. The Catholics just have a more systematic approach. They still follow the bible, believe that Jesus died for their sins, etc. etc.

Jesus turned water into wine; he wants you to drink.

Also, Catholics depict him on the cross to remind you how awful that way to die is and that he really, really suffered for you. They certainly believe the bits in the bible after that as well.

CHRISTIAN FIGHT!

But come on. Everyone knows the only real™ Christians are postmillenialist theonomist reformed reconstructionists.

@earthangel: the only thing necessary to be a Christian is to believe that Christ died as a sacrifice of atonement for your sins, and to accept this gift of grace. That is all it takes to be a Christian.

A lot of evangelical Christians have a lot invested in determining who is a “true Christian” and who is not. It’s not about drinking or not drinking, wearing “modest clothing” or not, being a “submitted wife” or not. The one thing that makes you a Christian is that belief in Christ’s sacrifice leading to your salvation.

What about people, like my old Christianity professor in college, who claim to be Christian but don’t actually believe in the literal resurrection?

What about Christians who just go to Christmas and Easter and don’t really know anything about sin or salvation, and are just doing it out of tradition (sort of like how many Jews are “ethnically” Jewish and don’t believe any of the religion beyond vague theism)?

@Qingu: what about people who claim to be rational atheists, but when actually pressed to construct an argument, come up with one riddled with fallacies?

What about atheists who don’t really know anything about standards of proof, and are just doing it out of contrariness (sort of like how many people online are just atheists so that they can pick fights, and don’t really grasp theology beyond vague and superficial nitpicking)?

@EmpressPixie i am sure if you are catholic you have went to there fairs.
they always have a beer tent.
thats what i am talking about.
as to the confessing to a person answer ,does not stand up to me as being right,no matter what you say.
i lived it.
no priest can tell me to say so many hail marys and our fathers and say i am forgiven.
only god can do that.
also the fact that nuns say they are married to god and wear a wedding band was a big problem with me.
again these are only my views of why i left the domination.
not trying to cause a dispute with anyone.
i could go on and on about my views and all but you would find reasion to argue .
just as you said i went to the school but must of missed this or that.
it has nothing to do with the litature part of it or the history of the church.
it,s the hands on experience i am relating to only.

@earthangel: And those views are why you are a different flavor of Christian and not Catholic. But they do not make you more Christian than any Catholic or any Catholic less Christian than you. It’s about Jesus, not about juice.

Also, lord no, I’m not Catholic. I’m an atheist. I just know a bit about Christianity because I paid attention in school. Also because I grew up in southern Louisiana. Teetotalers don’t really… exist there. Drinking is an important part of the culture. But they are certainly some of the most devout Christians—regardless of their flavor of Christianity—I have ever met. And just as a number of them would be incredibly insulted to hear you judging their religion and dismissing it out of hand as “non-Christian”, I am insulted on their behalf. Who are you to judge their faith? Judge not, right? By saying they aren’t Christian because they drink, you opened yourself up to this argument and this judgment.

Moreover, your entire line of reasoning shows me that you are FAR more concerned with the trappings of religion than actual belief. The priest listens to your sins and gives you a guideline. During those prayers, you are supposed to be praying for forgiveness. The priest basically says, “Wow, that’s a doozy—pray really hard” or “Seriously? Is that even a sin? Don’t worry so much”, but the prayers are rote so that you can meditate on your sin and pray for forgiveness. The priest is just guiding you. The trappings of this are that you confess, get a number, and are forgiven. The belief aspect is that you pray your butt off, asking for that forgiveness and really contemplating your sin.

Nuns aren’t Catholic only. Non-Catholic nuns often wear wedding bands as well. The marriage is symbolic—it means they’ve devoted their life to Christ and the church rather than a husband. The rings are usually recycled, treasures of the church handed down through time. I like it, I feel like not only does it mean that they’ve devoted their life to the church, but they can feel like their sister is guiding them in their belief. However, I also have to say I’ve never actually seen a nun with a wedding ring.

But in the end, the only thing that makes something go from “pretty building” to “house of God” is belief. If you believe Jesus died for your sins, you are Christian. Anything beyond that is mere trappings. Belief should be more important than those trappings.

Of course, if you think religion has nothing to do with the Bible or history of the Church, but only the hands on experience (ie, what other people tell you) then you are exactly the kind of Christian Qingu is railing against. The un-inspected belief.

As for you, @Qingu, Jews are a special case in the world. Treated as a separate race for.. a really long time, there is in point of fact a difference between being religiously Jewish and racially/ethnically Jewish in a way that doesn’t really exist among other religions. I think it is disingenuous of you to choose to ignore this.

As for your professor, religion serves a number of psychological purposes. There should be a psychology of religion class required for every religious studies major. Seriously. From now on. Anyway, a number of psychological purposes. He may still be a part of the church to serve those purposes or for the community it provides. In the end, to an extent, all that matters is that he identifies as Christian. Though, admittedly, as a religion professor he opens himself to rather a lot of debate on that point and I’m sure he relishes it.

@earthangel: as I said above, there is one thing and only one thing that makes you Christian. Everything else, in matters of faith, is about finding the path to God and Jesus that works for you.

For instance, alcohol. Nowhere in the Bible is drinking alcohol forbidden; Jesus’s first recorded miracle was turning water into wine so that the party after a wedding could continue even after the actual wine had run out. Paul, in 1 Timothy, advises Timothy to drink a little wine for the good of his stomach. But lots of people have problems with alcohol, and so some faith communities are opposed to its use or consumption. This does not mean that drinking alcohol is sinful; it means that they think their lives are better without alcohol. Which is a fine thing, until they condemn other Christians on Biblical grounds for drinking alcohol reasonably.

And confession: in John 20:21–23, after the Resurrection, Jesus says to his disciples, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” and “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” He explicitly gives his disciples the ability to forgive sins in His name. The Roman Catholic insistence that only a priest can do this is, I think, wrongheaded, but I think for some sins an explicit confession to someone who can offer spiritual guidance is a really good thing.

The summary of the summary of the summary is: there is one thing that makes you Christian, and there is nothing in Roman Catholicism that is incompatible with that one thing. Roman Catholics are Christian too, although their manner of practicing their faith may not be to your liking. That’s fine—there are other churches, and other manners of practicing faith, and you seem to have found one that works for you.

And you, cwilbur, I’m just picking fights today apparently I highly doubt that Qingu is a secret, terribly devoted troll. In fact, I highly doubt anyone chooses their belief purely on being able to go online and annoy you. Some people like to debate religion. Zealously. Many of them are Christian. Many of them are not. I think it is disingenuous of you to say that Qingu doesn’t really grasp theology. Belief should stand up to nitpicking in my opinion, and clearly in his. In the view of many who believe it doesn’t need to—that’s where the belief comes in. But in this case, there are questions that as long as you are Christian you will never answer to his satisfaction. So he will keep asking them and you will keep saying, “I’ve answered that” and he will keep saying, “But you really didn’t, you gave me something I consider to be a brush off”. Because short of admitting, “Yes, God commanded genocide and it was a crappy thing to do”, he’s not going to be happy but if you do that, you admit God screwed up.

@EmpressPixie, I wasn’t actually trying to draw a line between “Christians” and “non-Christians” in my post. In fact, I was trying to do the opposite—to show that the lines are often blurry.

Personally, I care a lot less about what label people use to describe themselves, and more about how their beliefs actually interact with their actions. There are a lot of people who call themselves Christians and Jews (especially Jews) who, in many ways, are functionally indistinct from Unitarians or atheists.

@Qingu: I’m not arguing “functionally indistinct” with you.

@EmpressPixie again i say these are only my views !
not trying to argue a point.
if your friends are happy with there choice of faith so be it.
it is as i said before there choice.
you say your atheist so you have really no ground as to argue this point with me .
only what you have been told by your catholic friends or read.
again i say i lived it.
i have chose to be of a diiferant denomination.

p.s. yes it does say in the bible to drink a little wine for what ails you,but it also says not to be a drunkard.
there sure must be alot of ill people at these catholic festivals.
that must be why they have such a big beer tent,lol

@cwilbur that answer was for you

@earthangel: Wait. Just because I’m atheist, I can’t view FACTS about religion and repeat them? I’m not saying being of a different denomination is wrong, I’m saying that saying the other denominations aren’t real Christians is wrong. My being atheist has nothing to do with facts. It just makes you judgmental.

Also, my being atheist NOW says nothing about how I was raised or where I was raised. I’ve already mentioned being raised in south Louisiana. If you think I don’t know about Catholic belief and traditions, you are sorely mistaken.

Lastly, “that must be why”... meaning you don’t actually know, you’re just projecting. “Oh, haha, they have a big beer tent, they must all be lushes!” Facts, please. I require facts.

been there done that.
if you have been in the catholic faith then you know what i say is truth no matter where you where raised.
i did not say they all drink but i did say they allow beer tents at there festival and that can send off the wrong impression on a non believer such as your self.
then again many may seek it out to justify there habit.
i have in no way anything aginst in what you believe you are just useing it as a reason to argue with the christians here.
it,s your choice what you believe.

@earthangel: Actually, I’m just arguing with you. Cwilbur agreed with me.

@EmpressPixie: I don’t think it’s disingenuous to say that Qingu doesn’t grasp theology; there is evidence in this thread that he can’t get his head around at least two really important concepts. It isn’t required that he agree with the points, but he has to understand them, and there’s ample evidence if you scroll up that he simply doesn’t. It would probably help if his attitude were more “I can’t see why these people believe this nonsense, so I’m going to tell them they’re wrong” and more “People believe this, and I want to understand why so I can see if there’s any merit to it,” but it’s his time to invest, and if he gets nowhere with his attitude, it’s his problem, not mine.

I also don’t think he’s a troll in the classic sense. He believes what he says, and he’s trying to convince me to believe it too, but the arguments he presents to try to get me to see his point of view are full of holes, and when I pointed out the logical problems in the approach to his argument, he accused me of “meta-arguing” and went back to reiterating his fallacies. If he wants to argue me out of my faith with reason, then he needs to at the very least construct a sound argument.

And this is why I don’t think he understands standards of proof and argumentation as well as he needs to to support his viewpoint, and he’s not even being internally consistent with the premises he’s chosen. He’s setting up strawmen and knocking them over—it’s not that belief doesn’t stand up to nitpicking, but that when the nitpicking has nothing to do with the core belief and has been answered repeatedly, it’s time for the nitpicker to find something else to argue about.

And your final point is the key one. His main tactic seems to be to find a theological version of the “Have you stopped beating your wife?” question, and insist on a “Yes” or “No” answer. The problem is that the premise of the question is flawed, and answering it with a simple “Yes” or “No” implicitly accepts that flawed premise.

And then we come back to the underlying issue: he’s trying to argue me out of my faith by starting with premises that he thinks I believe (such as Biblical literalism, or sola scriptura), and showing that starting with those premises leads to logical inconsistencies. Well, guess what—I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and that’s why I don’t believe in Biblical literalism or sola scriptura. But when he keeps on starting with premises I have already rejected, builds fallacious arguments on top of them, demonstrates his incomprehension of important theological concepts, tries to catch me in trick questions, and keeps on returning to points that have already been soundly addressed, it’s unlikely to convince me and really unlikely to impress me.

p.s. just so you know my mother and some of my family members are still catholic.
and they do not take offense to my views.
so why should you not being of the faith and all.

@cwilbur, as I said in my PM to you—if you think my arguments are without merit, then show, don’t tell. Repeatedly declaring that I don’t understand logic or theology is not a substantive counter-argument.

Do they know you don’t consider them Christian? (Also, that’s like saying, “Some of my best friends are black/gay/hispanic.” That you’ve said it shows you are missing the point.)

My beef with you is that you delineated between Catholic and “true Christian” and have yet to admit that Catholicism is a branch of Christianity. And it’s not something that’s open to opinion. It’s a fact. A well known fact. Not open to debate. I’m not sure why I’m still bothering. I’m not trying to prove it is “better”. I’m trying to make you realize you are shouting at the sun that it’s a cow.

I walk into a store. I see the owner of the store say to another patron, “We don’t allow your kind in here, boy” and kick a black man out. I’m offended. By your logic, because I’m not black, I shouldn’t be offended. However, I hate to see any group of people unfairly marginalized. In this story, the black man denied service for the color of his skin, in this forum you marginalizing Catholic beliefs as “not true Christians”.

@Qingu: I did show, and I told, and it seemed to make no difference. Reiterating the same points and the same logical fallacies is not a substantive counter-argument either.

But here goes. Here are the flaws in your arguments.

* You’re starting from premises that are not universally held even among Christians—namely, Biblical literalism and sola scriptura—and not taking into account that there are people among your interlocutors who do not believe them.

* Even in the context of Biblical literalism, you ignore the meaning of the text.

* You persist in misinterpreting important theological points (such as the distinction between abolishing the law and fulfilling the law) that illuminate the argument you’re trying to make.

* You introduce the fallacy of the excluded middle frequently, and when it is pointed out as fallacious, instead of addressing that point, you simply ask the question again.

* You have a fondness for begging the question in its interrogative form—asking a question where either a “yes” or “no” answer affirms the premise of the question, when the premise of the question is one of the points of the discussion. When this is pointed out, you simply ask the question again.

On the basis of this evidence, I conclude that there is a great deal of theology you don’t understand—otherwise, you wouldn’t insist on arguments based on Biblical literalism and sola scriptura to discredit Christianity as a whole, and you wouldn’t dismiss the distinction between abolishing the law and fulfilling the law as nonsnese—and that you have significant problems constructing a logical argument—otherwise, you would understand the importance of either starting from agreed-upon premises or discerning what the different premises that people are starting from are, and the meat of your argument would not rest on trick questions.

If that’s not an accurate conclusion to draw, the other option is that you do understand theology or argumentation, and you’re making these errors intentionally. That puts you firmly in the troll camp. I don’t think you belong there, but the more you reiterate your points without acknowledging the problems with your premises, the fallacies in your arguments, or the nature of the trick questions you’re so fond of asking, the more I think that judgment is suspect.

And given your behavior thus far in this thread, I half-expect that the only thing you’ll take away from this is “cwilbur called me a troll!” Go back and reread the bullet points, above, and make a stronger argument when you’ve addressed them instead of playing the personal persecution card.

ok there christians you mean you would of shut up a long time ago ,thats all you wanted to hear.
no they do not say there christians they say there catholic.
ok enough said on this,your beating a dead horse about something
you don,t know.

@cwilbur, I wrote an 800 word response to your counter-argument.

You responded with a pithy Latin phrase and a dismissive 3-word comment.

If you’d like to bow out of this discussion, I respect that. But I don’t think you’re fooling anyone by your temper-tantrum-like proclamations that you’re not responding because your debate opponent is an idiot.

And now we are meta-arguing, so I’m going to stop now. Feel free to respond to my substantive post, though.

@EmpressPixie, while I agree with you that it doesn’t make sense to exclude Catholics from the definition of “Christianity,” I also think it’s important to keep in mind that Christianity itself has a long and colorful history of excluding groups from Christianity.

The Catholics themselves did it for hundreds and hundreds of years, starting with the Marcionites and the Arians and then any other Gnostic-flavored sects. During the rise of protestantism, Catholics said protestants weren’t real Christians, and vica-versa; wars were fought over this. American protestant groups have a long history of excluding Catholics, and millions of evangelicals continue to do so today.

Even Paul got in on the exclusion. His letter to the Galatians seems to exclude a rival sect of Christians (well, they thought they were Christians!) who advocated circumcision.

This is why I’m sort of ambivalent about the issue. Though it is fun to sit back and watch the infighting. :)

@Qingu: I responded with a pithy Latin phrase that you probably ought to have recognized (especially if you know as much about theology and the Bible as you claim), because you actually didn’t address my points, aside from making some rather insulting inferences about what I believe and why.

Okay, I’ll bite. What points, in particular, do you think my 800-word post failed to address?

Also, maybe I should clarify. I’m not making a “general argument” against Christianity or the Bible here. (If I wanted to do that I wouldn’t really have to go past the first page of the thing, which claims the sky is a solid dome and the sun revolves around the earth, in the fashion of contemporary Mesopotamian mythology.)

I’m arguing that your morals are inconsistent with the Bible’s. Additionally, I’m arguing that claims in your counterargument are likewise inconsistent with the Bible. I understand you’re not sola-scriptura, but I have yet to hear from you that you believe all the verses that contradict your claims are wrong or mistaken.

@earthangel Thank you, that is what I wanted to hear. I could have done without the petty insult against my intelligence at the end though.

@EmpressPixie my bad ,i quess i should go to confession.

@earthangel: I don’t know what catholics you seem to know, but the several in my family and friend circle readily admit they are Christians, though yes, they generally refer to themselves as catholic.

Your logic, however, is still incredibly, incredibly flawed.

Look at the newt. The simple next. Newts are a subspecies of salamanders, which are a branch of amphibians. If I point at a newt and say “That’s a newt” as opposed to “That’s a salamander,” does that make it any less of a salamander? If I point at it and say “That’s a newt,” does it make it any less of an amphibian? Just because a catholic might use the word catholic to describe their religious beliefs as opposed to the word Christian doesn’t make them any less of a Christian.

as i said earlier and as you said also they prefer catholic.
the insight of there beliefs are indeed differant.
whether they are part of the christian faith or not does not pertain to how they practice there faith.
that is what i was trying to get at of why i left the catholic church.

@Qingu: I think I have laid out my argument multiple times, and I have pointed out the flaws in your argument multiple times, and it will be far less work for me if you just scroll back and reread them. Good luck.

and there we have it,it has finally ended.
or has it?
thanks for everyones input on this question…