Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 d-usa wrote:
I never understood how "age of earth" has any theological relevance. That is something that has always confused me about young earth creationists. To me, the Bible is the guidebook for our relationship with God. It's not an explanation for everything that ever happened or how it happened.

Fair enough, I don't know much about the bible but I assume that's an appropriate way to interpret the book.

 Manchu wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
In a nutshell, the Church used to carry out gay marriages in the era of the Roman Empire.

That requires some very heavy qualification. For example, according to the link you posted:

Also, marriages over a millennium ago were not based on procreation, but wealth-sharing. So "marriage" sometimes meant a non-sexual union of two people's or families' wealth. Boswell admits that some of the documents he found may refer simply to non-sexual joining of two men's fortunes — but many also referred to what today we would call gay marriage.

That last bit is why this guy's work (or at least how it has been popularly deployed) is criticized as wishful thinking; there is some pretty intense desire to sublimate onto the past the values and politcal agenda of today.

I agree. But I also think it's persuasive evidence that a defence on marriage being based on tradition is an invalid one, as you note itself. That's the main power of the evidence.

To be fair, I think this is also silly when bishops do it: claiming there has never been a such thing as gay marriage as advocated today is ... true but kind of silly. It's not like the current conception of heterosexual marriage has been around for thousands of years, either.

Marriage isn't even an exclusively religious concept. It is most often an instrument of the state used to regulate property inheritance, civic responsibility, and taxation.

And if what you want is Biblical marriage, then you cannot object to polygamy, which is specifically permitted in the Bible.
There are a few Biblical examples of incest being regarded as the right thing to do, too.

Evil & Chaos wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
There is a difference between "something is a sin" and "people should not be allowed to do something". In my non-Catholic opinion at least.

I agree, and didn't (I don't think) imply that the Catholic Church actively tries to prevent people being gay (albeit it has campaigned against gay rights issues such as equal marriage).
It does however, say to gay people: "you should not be gay".

My question is by what authority does the Church get to say that, if as Manchu says all religious laws are mutable and subject to evolution.

It can say "it's a sin", just as it says "sex before marriage is a sin" and "murder is a sin".

Sin only affects your personal status with God, and saying something is a sin is not the same as forcing people to stop sinning.

Christianity (using the big umbrella term, although maybe Protestant Christianity would be better here since I am not familiar with Catholic nuances in that regard) should not be that focused on making you stop doing certain things. If we could just "not sin" then we wouldn't have a need for divine grace. The focus is not "stop sinning", it's "we all sin".

The other point, the whole "out understanding evolves" thing, is that we simply cannot understand our relationship with God the way God understands it. But just because our understanding evolves does not mean that the relationship ever actually changed. Trying to understand the way God thinks and acts based on our thinking and actions projects our own fallacies and shortcomings on God.

I understand that "we can never fully understand/know/comprehend" will likely seem like a convienent way out of taking any responsibility for changing theology though.

I also want to reinforce that I and Manchu speak from different theological perspectives and background here, so I don't mean to answer for him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit: also typing on a phone, so my responses take a while and when I do post the discussion has sometimes moved on to other points...

 d-usa wrote:
I never understood how "age of earth" has any theological relevance. That is something that has always confused me about young earth creationists. To me, the Bible is the guidebook for our relationship with God. It's not an explanation for everything that ever happened or how it happened.

Although it seems counterintuitive, what we call religious fundamentalism these days is actually a product of the Enlightenment along with modern science. They are both based on the modernist conceit that truth is available to the human mind in a literal and absolute mode. Where fundamentalism took its "wrong turn" in contrast with science is choosing a merely textual rather than strictly materialist appeal to authority. As a matter of utility, religious fundamentalism therefore cannot compete with science. Even so, their common ancestry is apparent as a matter of practice (considering that both give rise to absolutist claims) and in their ongoing and intense ideological competition.

 d-usa wrote:
I never understood how "age of earth" has any theological relevance. That is something that has always confused me about young earth creationists. To me, the Bible is the guidebook for our relationship with God. It's not an explanation for everything that ever happened or how it happened.

Here's the thing: Creationists are simply taking what's written in their holy book, and actually taking it seriously.
The Bible does say the world is about 6000 years old (you can add it up by taking a few known historical dates, and then adding up the ages of all the people listed as being born and dying in a direct lineage back to Adam and Eve from that point).

Modernisers say it's okay to take the Bible figuratively and not literally, that the Bible is a guidebook for how to live your life.
The problem with that approach is that the Bible is essentially a distorted history of quite a number of savage wars, and vicious tribal life in bronze age palestine. Lots of genocides and slave-taking goes on in between the pages where god turns up and performs some miracles, then disappears for another twenty pages.

So modernisers say it's okay to ignore some rules (don't eat shellfish, don't wear clothing made out of two different kinds of cloth) because they're nonsense rules, but that other rules (god doesn't look kindly on gay people being gay) still count, or that some of the rules like "don't go to work on a saturday" can be changed to "don't go to work on a sunday" and god will still be happy with you.

I approve of the modernisers, because it's taken the edges off of Christianity and Judaism and it's starting to do the same for Islam in some regards, but I also think that they face a paradoxical challenge in trying to make their books & creeds fit a world increasingly at odds with the exhortations to savage conquest that their texts undeniably contain.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
I agree. But I also think it's persuasive evidence that a defence on marriage being based on tradition is an invalid one, as you note itself. That's the main power of the evidence.

The distinction is a matter not only of tradition, as in finding any old example from the past and claiming it supports what you want to do today, but more specifically of unbroken tradition. There is no point in the history of Western Civilization where the union of man of woman in marriage was not practiced and universally endorsed. Even texts that purport the superiority of celibate lives of religious devotion do not proscribe what has come down to us today as heterosexual marriage. This cannot be said for what we today call homosexual marriage in the political arena. This is entirely a matter of sudden invention rather than sustained development.

 d-usa wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
There is a difference between "something is a sin" and "people should not be allowed to do something". In my non-Catholic opinion at least.

I agree, and didn't (I don't think) imply that the Catholic Church actively tries to prevent people being gay (albeit it has campaigned against gay rights issues such as equal marriage).
It does however, say to gay people: "you should not be gay".

My question is by what authority does the Church get to say that, if as Manchu says all religious laws are mutable and subject to evolution.

It can say "it's a sin", just as it says "sex before marriage is a sin" and "murder is a sin".

But why can the Church take one rule from the book of Leviticus (don't eat shellfish) and say it's old hat, and take another rule from the same Old Testament book (don't be gay) and say that rule is still in effect?
How is this behavior intellectually cohesive?

 d-usa wrote:
I also want to reinforce that I and Manchu speak from different theological perspectives and background here, so I don't mean to answer for him.

I don't see any major problems there, from my understanding of Catholic theology.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
they face a paradoxical challenge in trying to make their books & creeds fit a world increasingly at odds with the exhortations to savage conquest that their texts undeniably contain

It is certain that no age known to historians has been so savage as this one, the one that followed the Enlightenment.

Both rules, and their application to non-Jews, are found in the New Testament. So Leviticus, which is a set of laws given to the Jews under the old covenant, is not really a factor here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Bible also doesn't say "the Earth is 6000 years old", some people just interpret it that way.

And even if it did, so what. I mean it says Samson beat a huge army with nothing but the jawbone of a donkey. I don't believe that literally happened.

@Manchu: I just would be surprised if theological differences show up as we go deeper into discussions, so I just wanted to throw up a general disclaimer that there might be differences in interpretations both on a denominational level and based on personal understanding.

And just to be polite and to avoid looking like I am trying to answer for you.

 Manchu wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
I agree. But I also think it's persuasive evidence that a defence on marriage being based on tradition is an invalid one, as you note itself. That's the main power of the evidence.

The distinction is a matter not only of tradition, as in finding any old example from the past and claiming it supports what you want to do today, but more specifically of unbroken tradition. There is no point in the history of Western Civilization where the union of man of woman in marriage was not practiced and universally endorsed. Even texts that purport the superiority of celibate lives of religious devotion do not proscribe what has come down to us today as heterosexual marriage. This cannot be said for what we today call homosexual marriage in the political arena. This is entirely a matter of sudden invention rather than sustained development.

Not to concede your point (I suspect gay people have wanted marriage for a lot longer than they've felt safe enough to vocalise their desire for it), but lots of things have been invented, or recovered from the past after many years of suppression, only to be accepted by the Church as moral after a volt-face.

For 1800 years the Church was pro-slavery, because the Bible has specific rules and regulations on how to take, keep, and treat your human slaves (you can beat them, just so long as they don't die within a couple of days of the beating, apparently)... and then the Church changed its mind, when the invention of "all men are created equal" came along.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
they face a paradoxical challenge in trying to make their books & creeds fit a world increasingly at odds with the exhortations to savage conquest that their texts undeniably contain

It is certain that no age known to historians has been so savage as this one, the one that followed the Enlightenment.

Every age thinks it has it the worst.
If you look at what percentage of the world's population is currently suffering war, poverty, disease, famine, etc. this is the most peaceful time of known history.
TV makes strife seem immediate and ever-present, but actually more people than ever before are living in peace, and living in a comparative luxury that their antecedents would have been stunned by.

Yeah, we've got nukes. And Hitler.
But we don't have the Black Death killing half of western Europe. Or the Mongols killing a 25% of Europe. Things are, depressingly, better than they used to be. These are the good times.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
Both rules, and their application to non-Jews, are found in the New Testament. So Leviticus, which is a set of laws given to the Jews under the old covenant, is not really a factor here.

Jesus says nothing about gay people. The anti-gay rules are in the Old Testament, and it's those rules that the Church uses to justify its "don't be gay" opinion.

Likewise the Ten Commandments, Jesus references a few of them, but skips half of them. If you want the full list, they're only found in the OT.

The Bible also doesn't say "the Earth is 6000 years old", some people just interpret it that way.

It does say it, you just add the ages of the people in it up (the Bible is pretty good on who begat whom and when).

It's just some people interpret that the Bible is telling a metaphorical story about how God hates it when people don't pay attention to his rules, when he drowns everyone on earth (including lots of unborn babies, presumably) except for Noah and his family. And some animals on Noah's boat.

People used to believe that story literally, back in the bronze age, and the iron age, but now reformists see it as a metaphor, because ... science ensured that the story had to become a metaphor, or else God's veracity would be challenged...?

Even Adam and Eve is a metaphor now. If the endless, slow retreat carries on, then one day, God himself will end up a metaphor.

As to the slavery example, it's a bit more complicated: scholars have demonstrated the novel cruelties of the Transatlantic slave trade in contrast to ancient slaveholding. Without arguing that slavery has ever been morally right (it doesn't really matter what I think in any case, for the sake of this conversation), I will point out that it's rather misleading to talk of slavery as an undifferentiated phenomenon. Also, the egalitarian elements of Christianity are what informed the Enlightenment; not (at least principally) the other way around.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
People used to believe that story literally, back in the bronze age

I don't think you're in a position to tell us how people thought about the concept of truth or history in the Bronze Age.

As to the slavery example, it's a bit more complicated

I agree it's much more complicated than can possibly be related in a few paragraphs. But the broad strokes are correct - the Church was in favour of slavery for 1800 years because the Bible said slavery was permitted (even explicitly encouraged), and then once it became socially unacceptable as a consequence of social (and dogmatic - I'll grant symbiosis even if some Atheists would claim secular morality rather than faith as the leading force here) evolution, it did a 180 on the subject, and decided that those particular rules in the Old Testament weren't applicable to Christians anymore.

I don't think you're in a position to tell us how people thought about the concept of truth or history in the Bronze Age.

As a former student of Judaism and Jewish history, I'm not in the worst position to make educated statements of informed opinion. If you like, I'll add "it's rather obvious that..." to the start of the sentence in question.

- Food laws and sexual sins are mentioned in the NT.
- Adding ages together does nothing to prove that the Bible days the earth is 6000 years old, since Genesis acknowledges the earth (and other people) existed before the creation account of Adam and Eve.

Why are you using your personal interpretation of a book you claim is not true to prove your points?

Sure, you can make a lot of points if you stroke broadly enough. For example: science is responsible for the most catastrophic instances of mass murder in human history. I mean, it's totally misleading, it's a purely ideological statement, but as a matter of broad strokes ...

It's not obvious that Bronze Age people had the same concept of literal truth as you and I. If anything, it is obvious that they did not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
- Food laws and sexual sins are mentioned in the NT.

They are mentioned as in Gentiles not needing to follow them.

 d-usa wrote:
Why are you using your personal interpretation of a book you claim is not true to prove your points?

My point is that interpretations change.
First slavery was ok for 1800 years, and the Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus for 1967 years, and then slavery was evil and the Jews aren't all responsible for killing Jesus.

What you claim today as a ridiculous, stupid, interpretation, was often considered the rational interpretation not just in the bronze age, but in (relatively) recent times by the majority of theologians.

... and one day, the Church will probably be ok with performing gay marriages. The Pope will wonder if the Popes of the 21st century were mad.
It might take a thousand years (assuming it lasts that long), but the Christian religion is quite clearly a mutable thing.

Evil & Chaos wrote:
It might take a thousand years (assuming it lasts that long), but the Christian religion is quite clearly a mutable thing.

Yep, I am 100% in agreement with you there.

Sure, you can make a lot of points if you stroke broadly enough. For example: science is responsible for the most catastrophic instances of mass murder in human history. I mean, it's totally misleading, it's a purely ideological statement, but as a matter of broad strokes ...

I think my strokes, though rough, are narrower than yours.
The Church was specifically in favour of the African slave trade, and based that support on bible passages in the Old Testament, and then later it changed its mind.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:

Evil & Chaos wrote:
It might take a thousand years (assuming it lasts that long), but the Christian religion is quite clearly a mutable thing.

Yep, I am 100% in agreement with you there.

Oh wait, can I re-type that?
I'd like "all religions are clearly mutable things". Not a single one of them stays where you left it then year before.
Always evolving despite static eternal commandments, funny things. Even the mormons don't think black people are all innately evil anymore. Spoilsports.

uh, christianity might be mutable, but its subsects are not.
I'm fairly certain that catholicism may turn a blind eye to homosexual union, but more than likely will not conduct ceremonies of homosexual unions. This new pope dude has done alot, but remember, he's still a catholic. Just like how jesus went and did alot (if he even existed) he was still a jew (and a close and careful reading indicates that he was a hard-line fundamentalist, which explains why the cosmopolitan/urban jews would have wanted him disposed of....)

I am also fairly certain that there were denominations/churches/Christians that opposed slavery/[insert othe social issue] during the times that you say [the church] supported these things.

d-usa wrote:- Food laws and sexual sins are mentioned in the NT.

Ninja'd by Manchu

since Genesis acknowledges the earth (and other people) existed before the creation account of Adam and Eve.

Care to elaborate this point? I don't recall where in Genesis it claims anything other than Adam and Eve being the first people.

Why are you using your personal interpretation of a book you claim is not true to prove your points?

I had to laugh at this. It's something I've said many times to pastors, professors, and students of the christian faith.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
I am also fairly certain that there were denominations/churches/Christians that opposed slavery/[insert othe social issue] during the times that you say [the church] supported these things.

So which one has got it right? Paul spent a lot of time going around establishing "THE Church" how are we now supposed to figure out who's doing it correctly?

At a computer this time, so I can multi-quote

 Lint wrote:

d-usa wrote:- Food laws and sexual sins are mentioned in the NT.

Ninja'd by Manchu

My main point is that the majority of sources that claim that homosexuality is a sin use the NT as the source for that argument. So saying [OT source says gay = sin, but it also says x = sin, so you are wrong] is not a good counter to that since OT was not the source to begin with. Now if you want to use NT sources as a counter, such as the very open discussion between the early church leaders in the NT about how much OT law applies to Gentiles, then that is a more valid course of argument in my mind.

since Genesis acknowledges the earth (and other people) existed before the creation account of Adam and Eve.

Care to elaborate this point? I don't recall where in Genesis it claims anything other than Adam and Eve being the first people.

This is definitely going more into personal interpretations in my mind.

One part is that even if we use A&E as the start point of all humanity, it doesn't set the age of the earth unless we also take "Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc" as actual days. We don't know how long everything has been around before we got to "makes Adam...".

The other part is where I probably go more into a personal interpretation (and keep in mind that I don't think it is a literal "on Day 5 of the earths existence this happened..."):

Genesis 1 talks about all creation, God made everything and it finishes with the creation of man:

Genesis 1 wrote:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day

No mention of Adam and Eve, no mention of any rules, mankind was able to do everything they wanted. Earth, beasts, men are all roaming all of the earth.

Then we go to Genesis 2:

That chapter starts with an affirmation that all of creation is in fact, done:

Genesis 2 wrote:Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

At this point the narative changes from "creation of all the world" to "creation of the Garden of Eden as well as A&E".

Genesis 2 wrote: 7 Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. 16 The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; 17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” 19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.

Note that the creation order changes. In Genesis 1 God created everything, then man. In the garden God creates man, then shows him that he created everything. Also note that in contrast to Genesis 1 (eat whatever you want) there is now a rule in Genesis 2 (don't eat that one tree).

So, in my opinion (and I realize it is just that) God created everything over an indeterminate amount of time including humanity (Genesis 1). At some point God created the Garden of Eden and showed himself to Adam there and established an actual two-way relationship with humanity. The Garden of Eden and A&E were not the first things created. Adam and Eve were the first humans that God revealed himself to and had a relationship with.

This also explains the whole "who did their kids marry when they left the garden" question.

Again, I'm not claiming this to be 100% fact, this is just my interpretation of Genesis 1&2 and how there is no way for us to tell how much time passed between the individual "days" in the creation account or between creating humans and creating "A&E" and then starting to count generations from that point.

Why are you using your personal interpretation of a book you claim is not true to prove your points?

I had to laugh at this. It's something I've said many times to pastors, professors, and students of the christian faith.

I do think it's fair for people who believe the book is true to use it as a source.

But I think it's dumb for people to go "this book is completely wrong. And you are wrong because the book (that I believe is wrong) says you are wrong so that makes me right".

If you think the Bible is wrong, then attack the validity of the Bible. Don't use a source you think is invalid to make your points.

But that's just me

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
I am also fairly certain that there were denominations/churches/Christians that opposed slavery/[insert othe social issue] during the times that you say [the church] supported these things.

So which one has got it right? Paul spent a lot of time going around establishing "THE Church" how are we now supposed to figure out who's doing it correctly?

If you realize that the Church is just a community of believers, and not an authoritative body of laws ans rules, then it doesn't matter.

Faith is what justifies us, not rules and regulations. And Faith comes from my relationship with God, not my membership card to "X Church of Y"

If you think the Bible is wrong, then attack the validity of the Bible. Don't use a source you think is invalid to make your points.

I've been trying to do something a bit more intelligent than that.
Attacking the bible head-on is easy, and you just get answered with some variation of:

A - We don't pay attention to that monstrously immoral bit of the bible any more.
B - *I* don't interpret it that way.
C - You have to look at that monstrously immoral thing in context.
D - God did it / commanded it / said it, therefore it's moral.

You can excuse every kind of immoral exhortation, lesson, or historical event just by saying "God told us to do it / God says that's what people should do to be good in his eyes"... or at least you can excuse them in the mind of a believer. So I don't see why we should be discussing (absent of context) how the exhortations to genocide or slave-taking or wife-beating in the bible are evil, because the believers will just deploy one of the defences I listed above and believe they have fully refuted the charge.

That's why discussing specific actions of the Church(es) or groups of believers in the past and in the present is more useful - you get a context where those theologies as applied to real life have caused great suffering ("Mother Teresa"'s awful hospital mortuaries where suffering was regarded as a blessing and palliative care intentionally withheld from the dying, for example), or many deaths (Catholic teachings vs. AIDS, for example, or Muslim opposition to the polio vaccine which alone has prevented its eradication thereby causing much suffering and death).

A - I pay attention to it
B- It is a personal relationship, and it does require personal interpretation. You don't interpret it a certain way, and base your opinions about it on how you interpret it?
C - You always have to look at everythin in context. Every action by anybody.
D - You judge God by human standards, God judges us by His.

 d-usa wrote:
D - You judge God by human standards, God judges us by His.

And yet the fundamental point remains - show me any proof what so ever that god exists or is required to exist.

Manchu - my wife made me do things around the house last night so I did not get a chance to look up UK law regards cannibalism - going out tonight and Friday, so not sure when I will get the chance to answer you back.

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
D - You judge God by human standards, God judges us by His.

And yet the fundamental point remains - show me any proof what so ever that god exists or is required to exist.

Why?

Are we done talking about "tell me what you believe" ?

 d-usa wrote:
A - I pay attention to it
B- It is a personal relationship, and it does require personal interpretation. You don't interpret it a certain way, and base your opinions about it on how you interpret it?
C - You always have to look at everythin in context. Every action by anybody.
D - You judge God by human standards, God judges us by His.

A - You drag your children to the edge of town and stone them to death when they're unruly? You beat your wife if she annoys you? You never eat shellfish? You hate gay people? You kill witches on sight?
B - There's no moral way to interpret "gay people are evil" or "if a girl is not a virgin on her wedding night, kill her". Those are evil commandments. Hell even the Ten Commandments lumping in your male neighbour's wife with your male neighbour's property, animals, and slaves, is not a moral worldview (the Ten Commandments do not speak to women as God considers them just "baby factories" - like any other property).
C - There are some inalienable truths. Murdering babies is always bad, and if God commands you to murder babies (as he does, in Exodus), then God is evil.
D - Unless you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that your God exists (and disprove all the other gods, too), then I'm going to regard your god as a human creation, and judge the effects of your human creation's influence on the world by human standards. When a woman beats her children to death because she says "God told me to do it", if she can't provide proof that God actually told her to do it, I'm going to regard her as mad, or evil, or both. I'm not going to grant her claim of being able to know God's will any more than I'm going to grant your claim of knowing God's will.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
D - You judge God by human standards, God judges us by His.

And yet the fundamental point remains - show me any proof what so ever that god exists or is required to exist.

Why?

Because otherwise you have no more proof of your claim of knowing (some of) what God wants than a woman who murders her own children on God's orders.

Are we done talking about "tell me what you believe" ?

You can ask questions of others, if you're intellectually curious.

So we are done with "ask d-usa what he believes and why he believes it" and have entered the "demand that he prove why I should believe the same thing that he does and why his belief is the truth or make him admit that he is wrong" stage.

My interpretation of the Bible has absolutely zero effect on you, so I'm just confused as to why my belief is so important to you or why it upsets you.

 d-usa wrote:
Why?

Well, if you are basing your world view on there being some being in charge of the universe who watches over us/judges us/etc, it would be nice to have some observable evidence to support this. Over the years as science has advanced our knowledge, the goalposts keep on moving to be "just outside what science can currently do", to the extent now that god exists now entirely outside the observable universe.

And I did not mean by my statement that you personally, or indeed anyone, should provide proof of gods existance, I meant more that the fundamental problem facing my, and many other people's acceptance of any religious argument rests upon the inability of anyone to provide any tangible evidence for, let alone proof of, gods existance.

I bring back my unicorn and space dust entity from earlier in this thread... it is not "your" job to disprove its existance, but "mine" to prove it.

Are we done talking about "tell me what you believe" ?

No - I am still interested in comparing and contrasting what people believe. Again, I did not mean to try and cut that line of conversation off.