archibald wrote:

Nocterro wrote:Why does no one ever care to look into this verse?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_137 :

"The psalm is a hymn expressing the yearnings of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC"

It's a SONG. It's not a direct command by God, or anything like that.

"n its whole form, the psalm reflects the yearning for Jerusalem as well as hatred for the Holy City's enemies with sometimes violent imagery."

It expresses the attitudes and desires of the Jewish people at the time.

"Rabbinical sources attributed the poem to the prophet Jeremiah, and the Septuagint version of the psalm bears the superscription: "For David. By Jeremias, in the Captivity."

It's written by Jeremiah. It's not God speaking.

"The poem then turns into self-exhortation to remember Jerusalem. It ends with violent fantasies of revenge, telling a "Daughter of Babylon" of the delight of "he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.""

Yes, the Jewish people were pissed off and vengeful. So?

...

Is this supposed to have anything at all to do with the truth of Christianity?

No offense but, hey, way to miss the point. You and the other theists in here.

Cherry pick the stories, if you must. That's all it is. Take only the nice bits. Build your religious beliefs on those only. Sheesh.

nunnington wrote:That's pretty ironic, since this whole thread is based on cherry-picking one line from a psalm, ripped out of context. Or is it not cherry-picking, when atheists do it? Then it becomes textual hermeneutics, eh?

Sophie T wrote:
Personally, I'd give the majority of Lightweight Christians an A for compassion, a C- for honesty, and an F for consistency. This is better than the grades I'd give fundamentalist Christians, which would be an F for compassion, an F for honesty, and an F for consistency.

Sophie T wrote:
Personally, I'd give the majority of Lightweight Christians an A for compassion, a C- for honesty, and an F for consistency. This is better than the grades I'd give fundamentalist Christians, which would be an F for compassion, an F for honesty, and an F for consistency.

archibald wrote:

Sophie T wrote:
Personally, I'd give the majority of Lightweight Christians an A for compassion, a C- for honesty, and an F for consistency. This is better than the grades I'd give fundamentalist Christians, which would be an F for compassion, an F for honesty, and an F for consistency.

Not sure about this. I might give the fundamentalists more marks. Seems to me they have divined the bible correctly. It's christians lite who are kidding themselves that the core message is not ultimately harsh. They're the worst kind of cherry pickers. If Jesus were around today, he'd be recognized as the firebrand he was described as. They have him mixed up with the guy from godspell. Another made up story, but this time not written to scare people into conforming.

Hnau von Thulcandra wrote:
It is the particular case of Psalm 137 - as in all the Psalms - that I insist it is man speaking, not God, and though man speaks truly by the inspiration of God, his thoughts and emotions there recorded are not the same as the divine ones.

Nocterro wrote:Why does no one ever care to look into this verse?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psalm_137 :

"The psalm is a hymn expressing the yearnings of the Jewish people in exile following the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC"

It's a SONG. It's not a direct command by God, or anything like that.

"n its whole form, the psalm reflects the yearning for Jerusalem as well as hatred for the Holy City's enemies with sometimes violent imagery."

It expresses the attitudes and desires of the Jewish people at the time.

"Rabbinical sources attributed the poem to the prophet Jeremiah, and the Septuagint version of the psalm bears the superscription: "For David. By Jeremias, in the Captivity."

It's written by Jeremiah. It's not God speaking.

"The poem then turns into self-exhortation to remember Jerusalem. It ends with violent fantasies of revenge, telling a "Daughter of Babylon" of the delight of "he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.""

Yes, the Jewish people were pissed off and vengeful. So?

...

Is this supposed to have anything at all to do with the truth of Christianity?

jaredennisclark wrote:Not that this is something I would like to go discuss too heavily, but I agree. My girlfriend and I were having a conversation on my way to work this morning and we ended up getting into this subject a bit.
Not that it means much of anything, but we came to the conclusion that the Fundamentalist truly has the right to call themselves a Christian. They fucking believe, and they go all the way with it.

Hnau von Thulcandra wrote:

DoctorE wrote:Theists are slaves

Hm, well I suppose we are in a sense, if indeed God does exist. But we have freely chosen to become so.

Now, I must say, of all the violent and troublesome passages in Holy Writ, the 137th Psalm is not very high on my list. Allow me to quote in full:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion".
How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, "Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof".
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Is this a command from God? Not at all. It is a lament of a defeated Israelite, and in it the psalmist bitterly predicts the downfall in turn of the Babylonians - I'm no expert on Near Eastern history but I believe this did indeed happen sometime later by the Persians under Cyrus - upon which "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." So, most Christians would take it as an inspired prediction, and thus one which no doubt came true, but in no sense is this particular verse saying God willed the death of Babylonian infants.

Hnau von Thulcandra wrote:

Bretski wrote:I thought the bible was the word of God though? Was this not also inspired by God.

bdcarlitosway wrote:
So the bible is not 100% God's word and parts of it are corrupted with no attempt from the omnipotent author to even correct it even though the eternal fate of humanity depends on what is said on this book!!

Um... I do believe the whole of Scripture to be divinely inspired. Where did I say any of it was not, pray tell?

"Inspired" does not mean the the Lord personally chose each word and turn of phrase in the Bible, though of course where He is recorded as personally speaking He did in those cases - and He certainly did not do much of that in the Psalter, which more than anywhere else in the Bible is the words of man to God rather than the words of God to man. The Psalms were written by humans, using their own literary skills and idiosyncrasies - which is why some of them are quite a bit nicer and more poetic than others - and God preserved them from writing anything false. Which by no means indicates that He approved of the true things the authors wrote down.

Sophie T wrote:
Not all Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. These Christians appear to be members of a version of Christianity I like to call Christianity Lite.

Of all of the Lightweight Christians (members of Christianity Lite) I have met, I have yet to encounter one who is willing and/or able to outline an objective method that he/she uses to determine which Bible passages are authoritative (inspired by God) and which are not. Apparently, it's a matter of subjective taste. This may seem dishonest, but it's probably no more dishonest (and in some ways, a little more honest) than what fundamentalist Christians do when they manipulate Bible verses that contradict their favorite doctrines in order to make those verses say what they want/need them to say.

Personally, I'd give the majority of Lightweight Christians an A for compassion, a C- for honesty, and an F for consistency. This is better than the grades I'd give fundamentalist Christians, which would be an F for compassion, an F for honesty, and an F for consistency.

Very true, but I'm thankfully neither a Lightweight Christian nor a Fundamentalist Christian, and would like to award an "A" to myself in all three categories, if you don't mind.

II Kings 2:23-24 - From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Numbers 16:23, 31-33 - Then Moses said, "This is how you will know that the LORD has sent me to do all these things and that it was not my idea: If these men die a natural death and experience only what usually happens to men, then the LORD has not sent me. 30 But if the LORD brings about something totally new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the grave, then you will know that these men have treated the LORD with contempt."

As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah's men and all their possessions. They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community.

Deuteronomy 25:11-12 - If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

Judges 15:15-16 - Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.

Then Samson said,
"With a donkey's jawbone
I have made donkeys of them. [a]
With a donkey's jawbone
I have killed a thousand men."

Hnau von Thulcandra wrote:

Sophie T wrote:
Perhaps it would be helpful if you provided your definition of the word inspired in the context of the Bible being inspired by God. If God inspired the writing of the Bible, then he actually did something to affect what is written in the Bible. What exactly is it that you think God did?

I would say that "Inspiration" consisted of God

I. Ensuring all the information needful for our salvation was included in the Bible
II. Ensuring there were no falsehoods in the Bible

Beyond that, I don't know. Now of course some things in the Bible are not true when you first look at them - such as when the Serpent told our First Parents "Ye shall not surely die". But you must then notice the "layer of quotes" they are in - the text does not say "Ye shall not surely die", but it does say, truthfully, that the serpent said it. And also there are a few times when St. Paul says that "I not the Lord" says something. It seems clear there that Paul's personal opinion is given, which is in no way infallible.

Hnau von Thulcandra wrote:

archibald wrote:
No offense but, hey, way to miss the point. You and the other theists in here.

Cherry pick the stories, if you must. That's all it is. Take only the nice bits. Build your religious beliefs on those only. Sheesh.

How is this "cherry picking"? Were I doing that, I would surely ignore the far more troubling verses where the LORD commands the Children of Israel to destroy the Canaanites and such. Honestly, I wish those verses did not exist. But they do, and I cannot disown them.

It is the particular case of Psalm 137 - as in all the Psalms - that I insist it is man speaking, not God, and though man speaks truly by the inspiration of God, his thoughts and emotions there recorded are not the same as the divine ones. Or are we to suppose that in Psalm 51 God is confessing His sinful nature and begging forgiveness? I think not.

I do not dispute in the slightest that the God I worship has committed acts that were He man we would likely call "genocide", and worse. All I ask is, don't lay this specific verse to His charge.

Hnau von Thulcandra wrote:

jaredennisclark wrote:
Should I take that as answer to my question? The one you conveniently left unanswered?
I would like to know why god has allowed such a vile verse to remain in his holy book (whether it was his view or not), especially seeing as how that verse could be so easily twisted and misconstrued.

Never mind - I'm tiring of this. It's simply testing your story-making abilities, nothing more. I could ask this same question to anyone and they would give me the same sort of evasive and unsatisfying answers as you.

I haven't the slightest clue how you can keep yourself doing this.

As I said before, while I don't know exactly why He decided to put this psalm in the Bible, I will guess that He did so to show the sadness of the Israelites after their deportation to Babylon, and their overzealous desire for revenge. I'm not evading this in the slightest, but I am admitting I don't know completely why every verse exists - just like I have no idea why there was a naked youth running around when Christ was arrested. Luckily, it doesn't matter what those obscure verses were included for, and there's no need for us laymen to fuss over them.

NineOneFour wrote:
Probably late in saying this, but your "interpretation" is merely the cherry-picking of the Bible by disingenuous Christians. Christians interpret one verse as literal and sancrosanct, but ones they disagree with as "songs".

It isn't the Jewish people who are pissed off in the Pslam. That is a dishonest claim. It specifically says GOD will be happy with those who KILL babies.

I don't disagree with Psalm 137. I believe every word of it is literal truth. But could you please tell me exactly where it indicates that God will think that? It certainly says the killers will be happy, but is there a single word in there about what God feels?

NineOneFour wrote:
Fail.

It's an immoral passage in what purports to be not only a moral book, but inspired by God.

Or are you saying that Psalms was NOT inspired by your God?

Once again, yes, the Psalms, like all of Scripture, are inspired. But what exactly is immoral, pray tell, in recording a statement of fact spoken by a sinful human being? I will quote it again:

Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, "Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof".
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

It seems pretty obvious to me that "the LORD" is the person being addressed here, and not the person speaking. Do you really dispute this?

NineOneFour wrote:
Oh, so now that we've found a Psalm that doesn't fit in your Christian bubble, now the Psalms aren't inspired by God.

How the fuck do you know that? THIS part of the Bible over here is the Word of God (TM), but this over here is not?

How about this?

http://bible.cc/1_samuel/15-3.htm

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

That right there is the fucking quote from your sick, twisted, fucked up god, telling the Israelites to genocide the Amalekites.

Or now is 1 Samuel not "inspired by God"?

Sheesh.

The. Psalms. And. The. Entire. Bible. Are. Inspired. By. God.

Are you happy now?

1 Samuel 15:3 is a fine example of a command from God (strictly one from God through Samuel but I won't quibble here) - as opposed to a cry to God such as Psalm 137 - and if you want to thus argue that God is a genocidal monster, go ahead, I won't gainsay you. You're finally using the right verses to support your claim.

Hnau von Thulcandra wrote:

NineOneFour wrote:
Translation: "I can't explain them, so I dismiss them out of hand and don't worry about them because to do so would upset my finely-crafted view of the universe."

Um... not at all true? I don't dismiss them, either in hand or out of hand. I just don't worry about them because, quite simply, there is nothing to worry about. I just don't know the exact reason why they are here, and since I don't claim perfect knowledge of the Bible (anyone who does is a liar) I see no reason to let it be bothersome.

NineOneFour wrote:
Oh, sorry, it's merely a song to God that was put in the Bible by the hand of God. So, obviously God had nothing to fucking do with it.

There's no logic like Christian logic.

Really, what is the problem here? It was inspired by God and chosen by God, of course He had something to do with it.

NineOneFour wrote:
Do you dispute that this part of the Bible is as holy as any other?

Actually, yes I do. Our Lord did name two commandments as greater than any else; it seems clear some parts of Scripture are more important than others.

NineOneFour wrote:
And this doesn't bother you why? You worship a sick fuck. In all of mythology, where did even Satan genocide an entire people, including the infants?

It does bother me, do be honest. However, since it has nothing to do with Psalm 137, maybe we can discuss it elsewhere.