kiki5711 wrote:

Agi Hammerthief wrote:

kiki5711 wrote:The beginning of this starts with Adam & Eve and Lucifer.

not quite

it starts with Adam & Eve and a Talking Snake

it was only much later in the book that someone collected all the names and occurences of Evil Personified and put it in writing that Lucy = Teh Devil = Talking Snake in an attempt to patch over discrepancies in the stories

That wasn't my point. You want to call him Lucifer talking snake Isabella Roselini..........doesn't matter. The point of my reply was that you need to read a book, from beginning to end then have discussions. Not just read one chapter in the middle and pretend like you read the whole book.

Also when you read a book, any book, do you read a book backwards, do you take one chapter at a time here and there at no particular order? No you don't. You read it from page one to the last page. That was the point I was trying to make.

yeah, only the thing labled "The Bible" is not one book

it's a collection of myths jumbled together and patched over

Agi Hammerthief wrote:

kiki5711 wrote:

Agi Hammerthief wrote:

kiki5711 wrote:The beginning of this starts with Adam & Eve and Lucifer.

not quite

it starts with Adam & Eve and a Talking Snake

it was only much later in the book that someone collected all the names and occurences of Evil Personified and put it in writing that Lucy = Teh Devil = Talking Snake in an attempt to patch over discrepancies in the stories

That wasn't my point. You want to call him Lucifer talking snake Isabella Roselini..........doesn't matter. The point of my reply was that you need to read a book, from beginning to end then have discussions. Not just read one chapter in the middle and pretend like you read the whole book.

Also when you read a book, any book, do you read a book backwards, do you take one chapter at a time here and there at no particular order? No you don't. You read it from page one to the last page. That was the point I was trying to make.

yeah, only the thing labled "The Bible" is not one book

it's a collection of myths jumbled together and patched over

That's why all the more it should be read from beginning to start. There are books that have several additions to it which you can also read separately, but you will understand it better if you start with book one.

kiki5711 wrote:If you're looking at it as an atheist, god didn't kill anybody, because god has not been proven to exist.

Technically, that's not a logical conclusion. It could entirely be the case that God exists, yet has not been proven to exist, and God could have been the cause of all the people which the Bible says died at the hand (or at the order) of the same God. Even assigning the strong atheist position to the "atheist" here, what a person believes (i.e. that God doesn't exist) does not automatically translate into the state of reality (i.e. that God doesn't exist because this hypothetical strong atheist believes God doesn't exist).

If you're looking at it from a christan point of view, this graph is all wrong. It should say then that satan is and has been killing mankind through their evil deed every single day to date to which you don't know the number.

To assert that conclusion would be to claim that the Bible is wrong, or intentionally misleading on a very, very large scale. The Bible claims that between two and three million people were killed (or ordered to be killed) by God, while the Bible also only attributes ten deaths to Satan - seven of which were sanctioned and permitted by God.

What you would prefer the graph to look like has nothing to do with what the Bible actually claims.

kiki5711 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Kiki wrote:
If you're looking at it as an atheist, god didn't kill anybody, because god has not been proven to exist.

The question was ‘How many people did God kill in the Bible?’ It doesn’t matter whether you are atheist or Christian any more than if the question had been ‘How many people did Hannibal Lecter kill in Silence of the Lambs?’ They’re both books of fiction, but you can still talk about what happens in them.

Kiki wrote:
If you're looking at it from a christan point of view, this graph is all wrong. It should say then that satan is and has been killing mankind through their evil deed every single day to date to which you don't know the number.

Is it your defense of God to imply that Satan has killed more innocent people than God? All that would do is show both of them to be evil assholes.

Exactly. So if it's a book of fiction why get all hyped up about it?

It's necessary to get all hyped up about it as long as there are people who think it's not a book of fiction. They're trying to legislate their beliefs and elect political candidates who will support (or appear to support) those beliefs.

You can't argue about god or satan if you don't believe in it. What's the point?

There's no prohibition of arguing against a fictional character, as others have already pointed out. In these discussions, God's existence is assumed for the sake of argument, but it's a rather dull argument: God's character is that of a psychotic mass murderer, and the argument involves whether an entity of this character is or is not admirable.

kiki5711 wrote: If you're looking at it from a christan point of view, this graph is all wrong. It should say then that satan is and has been killing mankind through their evil deed every single day to date to which you don't know the number.

Interesting point, which raises a question: Would God have been able to kill anyone at all if Satan hadn't caused The Fall? From a Christian POV, of course.

Put differently: Can God create something so immortal that not even He can kill it?

kiki5711 wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Kiki wrote:
Exactly. So if it's a book of fiction why get all hyped up about it?

You can't argue about god or satan if you don't believe in it. What's the point?

Anyone can talk about the book where so many people say that their basis for belief comes from.

I think that the point of bringing up how may innocent people where killed by God in the Old Testament is to show a certain inconsistency and even contradiction about how certain people describe their God and how the Old Testament portrays that god.

You could ask Christians this question, “Do you think that people should be killed and have their homes and places of worship demolished because they are worshipping a different god?” I don’t think that you would find many except the true lunatic fringe that would answer ‘yes.’

“How about killing everyone except the virgin daughters, and keeping them for yourself?” Any takers for that one? Probably not.

The next question could be, “Are you aware that you are disagreeing with God?”

It's kind of a useless point to bring up if you don't understand why and how they came to believe that.

They have a tendency to go silent or withdraw from the discussion whenever that question is raised, though. One of the most common questions which illustrates this principle is "If God ordered you to sacrifice your own son, would you do it?" Clearly, there's precedent that God's done this before (with Abraham and Isaac), so it's not the case that God would never ask that of anyone. When a believer is pressed to answer, all of a sudden it's "Hey, would you look at the time? It's late, gotta run!" followed by "exit, stage right."

Also, even within Christianity there are different views on the events in the bible.

Within Christianity there are more than 30,000 sects, all of which are generally distinguished by at least some "different view" on something within the Bible. Which one has it all correct? Not surprisingly, the overwhelming consensus answer is that the sect which an arbitrary believer belongs to is the one which has it all right, in the view of the same arbitrary believer - otherwise, that believer would belong to some other sect which had it more right.

You are looking from it outside in and when you ask the questions it makes perfect sense that "it all makes no sense" but that's not all there is to it.

As others have already pointed out, you're quite wrong when you assume there's no understanding of what's going on in various religions - many of us used to be theists, most of those used to be Christians. Even looking from the outside in, from the perspective of someone with no prior theological experience, it would be relatively easy to understand: faith is a requirement in situations where there is no supporting evidence, and in some cases where there is strong counter-evidence. It's a good thing to have faith, according to those who have a vested interest in you having faith in whatever unfalsifiable assertions they're peddling. From the theist's point of view, the approach is functionally identical to "wishful thinking," as if the harder you wish, the more likely it is to come true. It's really not very complicated.

I spent 15 years doing all kinds of stuff with the church I was with years ago, that's why I wanted to comment. It's not the way you see it when you're a part of it.

Indeed - 15 years is a large part of people's lives. It is quite natural to view it as a situation of "throwing good money after bad," or not wishing to consider a large investment of time to be a waste, so more time is invested and committed to the cause, without any tangible results.

Osscam'sLaser: Indeed - 15 years is a large part of people's lives. It is quite natural to view it as a situation of "throwing good money after bad," or not wishing to consider a large investment of time to be a waste, so more time is invested and committed to the cause, without any tangible results.

Actually I don't see it as a waste of time and money at all. The experience gave me so much understanding that I treasure it. Now that is just me. I have a tendency to learn from every situation in my life. Being in that church was definitely the high light of my life. I would never go back to it ever again, but I treasure the years that I was there.

Kiki wrote:

Let me just take this one paragraph to reply.

To understand all the events in the bible (and I'm speaking from a religious point of view now) you need to go to the very first beginning, otherwise none of them make any sense. The beginning of this starts with Adam & Eve and Lucifer. Now since you've been in and grew up in Christian home, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. We cannot just take isolated events and make any sense of them. But if you're looking at it how it became to that point and look and read in order from the beginning it comes in place. Now, I'm not saying that is the truth or the way or whatever but like I said it has to be viewed by reading from the beginning.

Same as you would with any other book. You don't just pick up a book read something in the middle and argue about it. Naturally you have to read the book from the start to understand what the writer is trying to portray to the reader.

Does that make any sense?

You take for granted that I haven’t read it. I have, both the New and Old Testament. And I am not taking a chapter out of order or out of context.

Oldskeptic wrote:

Kiki wrote:

Let me just take this one paragraph to reply.

To understand all the events in the bible (and I'm speaking from a religious point of view now) you need to go to the very first beginning, otherwise none of them make any sense. The beginning of this starts with Adam & Eve and Lucifer. Now since you've been in and grew up in Christian home, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. We cannot just take isolated events and make any sense of them. But if you're looking at it how it became to that point and look and read in order from the beginning it comes in place. Now, I'm not saying that is the truth or the way or whatever but like I said it has to be viewed by reading from the beginning.

Same as you would with any other book. You don't just pick up a book read something in the middle and argue about it. Naturally you have to read the book from the start to understand what the writer is trying to portray to the reader.

Does that make any sense?

You take for granted that I haven’t read it. I have, both the New and Old Testament. And I am not taking a chapter out of order or out of context.

Well, ok kudos to you.

kiki5711 wrote:

Osscam'sLaser: Indeed - 15 years is a large part of people's lives. It is quite natural to view it as a situation of "throwing good money after bad," or not wishing to consider a large investment of time to be a waste, so more time is invested and committed to the cause, without any tangible results.

Actually I don't see it as a waste of time and money at all.

That's pretty much my point. You wouldn't see it as a "waste" of time and money, if you've already put that much into it, and are continuing to do so. The question of value is answered by whether anything significantly good came out of it. In the context of this discussion, apparently it was a benefit that you, being on the "inside", gained some sort of enlightenment or understanding of a proper interpretation of the Bible to reconcile these nasty problems... an understanding which you neglected to provide here. The smokescreening and handwaving response that one must begin reading the Bible from page 1 of Genesis does not answer the question at all, and certainly appears intellectually dishonest to those of us who have, in fact, read the entire Bible. There is no deeper understanding to be obtained; in my experience, after having read the Bible cover to cover five times, each time through, God only appears more and more of a psychotic, homicidal (genocidal) maniac. Thus, the charge of smokescreening and handwaving - a proper answer would be "If you want the correct interpretation of why God apparently kills people by the millions, then you'd need to read the Bible cover to cover, or start with 'Book 1' - where you would find the answer in Genesis X:Y-Z, Leviticus A:B-C, Deuteronomy M:N-O, etc." Instead, you're deflecting attention away from the issue by requesting that your critics immerse themselves in a very broad, ultimately irrelevant body of knowledge (as if a question was answered by "Go look it up on the Internet; read every web page if necessary") without providing much of what you are about to call treasured understanding relevant to the subject at hand.

The experience gave me so much understanding that I treasure it.

You treasure it so much that you will not share it with anyone else - or else, you overvalue it so much that you cannot perceive this understanding isn't very comprehensible.

Now that is just me.

How selfish of you! You could at least have given it an attempt.

I have a tendency to learn from every situation in my life.

You seem to have much less of a tendency to teach others what you have learned.

Being in that church was definitely the high light of my life.

Other people feel the same way about the churches they attended, for very understandable reasons, mainly social support. The value of that experience, in this context, is the extent to which the main topic is addressed - that is, why did God cause or order the deaths of millions of people in the Bible? Granted, it's a tough question, but if your understanding is so treasured, cherished, and valuable to you to the point of you feeling confident of your position, why not at least try to express it in something a little more specific than (paraphrased) "go read the entire Bible"?

I would never go back to it ever again, but I treasure the years that I was there.

Sounds like a mildly interesting backstory which is ultimately irrelevant to this discussion. As much as I like to hear a good excommunication story, or leaving in a huff (cue Groucho Marx - "Don't leave in a huff. Leave in a minute and a huff"), I'll pass on this one.

It's scary sometimes to see the disconnect in Christians about this. Just the other day I heard an otherwise pleasant man saying "remember the story in 1 Samuel when God ordered Saul to kill the Amalekites, but he didn't complete the job? It was a wonderful story . . . " How does a person not notice when the entity they've dedicated their entire life to has ordered the genocide of an entire nation of people, and they talk about it as if they were recalling the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? I don't get it.

Here's an example of it from a blog I found. Just reading the first section will show you the attitude I'm talking about. The writer asks:

Saul’s refusal to totally annihilate the Amalekites costs him his kingdom. It is a most serious sin. Our text not only exposes Saul’s sin, it may very well expose our own. Saul is willing to do things we might never even consider – like killing little children. Would we have put the Amalekite children to death as Saul did? If not, why not?

WTF does he mean why not? Why would we not kill little children? Because we have enough morality to know that it's not OK to kill little children!

How do you even address this kind of question? I just don't know how you can rationalize with someone who thinks its ok to kill children.