The PRINCIPLES of the OT Law were not wrong.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Here is one question: How can you accept the concept of a god that just happens to have human attributes?

For instance, as I have said before, we postulate a god capable of creating entire universes but it is worried about humans (who didn't come on the universe scene for nearly 14 billion years) not worshiping this god?

So 13 odd billion years goes ...[text shortened]... ttention?

Doesn't that strike you as just humans attributing human aspects to a made up god?

i question god every time.

i question what motives he would have for creating us.
i question what it is like to be him
i question what are his likes and dislikes.
i question the bible, his supposed holy book.

i question his existence sometimes. i have doubts. i overcome them. at least at the moment.

who knows what tomorrow might bring.

so far i have come to a personal opinion that he doesn't care if you worship him or not, in fact he would rather you didn't.
i think he is more interested in how you live your life, if you find it fulfilling, if you are living up to your potential.

i have come to a personal opinion that each should experience god in his/her own way.

Originally posted by Zahlanzi
i question god every time.

i question what motives he would have for creating us.
i question what it is like to be him
i question what are his likes and dislikes.
i question the bible, his supposed holy book.

i question his existence sometimes. i have doubts. i overcome them. at least at the moment.

who knows what tomorrow might bring.

so fa ...[text shortened]... ential.

i have come to a personal opinion that each should experience god in his/her own way.

Having said that, doesn't it strike you as odd, in fact revealing deceit, in those bible verses where this god demands attention from humans? A GOD, DEMANDING the attention of humans.

This goes (to me anyway) way beyond mind boggling. It just tells me the whole edifice is made up and there is no such thing as the Abrahamic god, whether or not there is or are god(s) is another question but it seems clear as a bell the Ab God is made up by men.

How can we come to any other conclusion unless a person cannot shuck the programming inherent in the Ab religions.

Originally posted by CalJust
As I see it, Principle and Enforcement are two totally different issues, and must be separated.

One could also call the Principle the Spirit of the law vs the Letter of the Law.

Let's take for example Stop signs at an intersection. The Principle (or Spirit) behind this law is that cars using the same intersection don't crash, and that p ...[text shortened]... w would punish me, because it makes no allowance for my judgement of its "applicability" or not.

Yes, Principle and Enforcement are separate concepts, but my point is that the enforcement dictates how important the law is to society. Just the fact that you do it often and get away with it shows that society has not devoted many resources to enforcement. If they caught you, you'd probably pay a small fine. It's nothing that will land you in jail.

Whereas if you ran a stop sign, hit a car, and killed the driver of the car, you'd be facing a charge of criminal negligence/manslaughter and prison time. Society takes this offense much more seriously, as indicated by the more severe enforcement.

In the OT, there are several dubious laws that are CAPITAL crimes. Hard to see how it gets more serious than that.

Originally posted by twhitehead
If you have to ask, you didn't understand.

[b]Within the first page of the thread you created, you've latched upon Deuteronomy 25:11 (no pun intended, of course), practically hyperventilating over how disproportionate the punishment is to the trespass... which, in turn, is intended to show exactly what you set upon to do in the first place:
the princ ...[text shortened]...
Maybe you should think twice before calling people 'shallow minded' for lack of understanding.

I didn't say you introduced the topics from Deuteronomy, rather that you and others latched onto them.
I concede I could have been more precise and given the references for each of them, but the concept remains the same: you wish to heighten the supposedly bizarre underpinnings to prove your intentional point, as stated by me... and you.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Having said that, doesn't it strike you as odd, in fact revealing deceit, in those bible verses where this god demands attention from humans? A GOD, DEMANDING the attention of humans.

This goes (to me anyway) way beyond mind boggling. It just tells me the whole edifice is made up and there is no such thing as the Abrahamic god, whether or not there is o ...[text shortened]... any other conclusion unless a person cannot shuck the programming inherent in the Ab religions.

It makes perfect sense to me. Why else would God make humans in His own image, if He did not want human attention?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Having said that, doesn't it strike you as odd, in fact revealing deceit, in those bible verses where this god demands attention from humans? A GOD, DEMANDING the attention of humans.

This goes (to me anyway) way beyond mind boggling. It just tells me the whole edifice is made up and there is no such thing as the Abrahamic god, whether or not there is o ...[text shortened]... any other conclusion unless a person cannot shuck the programming inherent in the Ab religions.

"god demands attention from humans"
yes, that is why i dismiss that.

"there is no such thing as the Abrahamic god"
maybe there isn't. for me, the discrepancies in the bible simply say that god is not as portrayed in the bible.



it is time to get back on topic. this is not what the thread is about

Originally posted by RJHinds
It makes perfect sense to me. Why else would God make humans in His own image, if He did not want human attention?

so that we be reasoning beings, and not puppets? he could have stopped at puppies, and have 1 million of them, eternally young, following him around.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
I didn't say you introduced the topics from Deuteronomy, rather that you and others latched onto them.
I concede I could have been more precise and given the references for each of them,

You could have been more precise and pointed out that I didn't 'latch on to' the verse you mentioned at all. I never once referenced it in any way shape or form.

but the concept remains the same: you wish to heighten the supposedly bizarre underpinnings to prove your intentional point, as stated by me... and you.
Or so you claim, but you are wrong - hence my claim that you have not understood my motives.
Maybe you should have been more precise and pointed out that you were really talking about someone else altogether? Or maybe you were just so desperate to make that pun that you were not thinking straight?

Originally posted by SwissGambit
Yes, Principle and Enforcement are separate concepts, but my point is that the enforcement dictates how important the law is to society.

In the OT, there are several dubious laws that are CAPITAL crimes. Hard to see how it gets more serious than that.

Yes, I agree. The punishment should reflect the importance to society.

If you are saying that some OT laws have excessive, even obscene punishments, then again I agree. That has been my point all along.

And you and I are in good company on this issue, because that was exactly how Jesus felt too.

Originally posted by CalJust
Yes, I agree. The punishment should reflect the importance to society.

If you are saying that some OT laws have excessive, even obscene punishments, then again I agree. That has been my point all along.

And you and I are in good company on this issue, because that was exactly how Jesus felt too.

That being the case then, why do Christians still insist on the bible being the OT plus the NT? Isn't it time to cast out that which nobody follows any more?

Originally posted by twhitehead
You could have been more precise and pointed out that I didn't 'latch on to' the verse you mentioned at all. I never once referenced it in any way shape or form.

[b]but the concept remains the same: you wish to heighten the supposedly bizarre underpinnings to prove your intentional point, as stated by me... and you.
Or so you claim, but you are wr ...[text shortened]... ether? Or maybe you were just so desperate to make that pun that you were not thinking straight?[/b]

You could have been more precise and pointed out that I didn't 'latch on to' the verse you mentioned at all. I never once referenced it in any way shape or form.
No, you silly goose: I should have been more precise and, instead of lumping BOTH of the instances made in Zahlanzi's post--- the second post of this thread, by the way, the first response to your OP--- into the reference of Deuteronomy 25:11, I should have ALSO cited Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
The former was for the ball snatch, while the latter was for the woman playing the whore who gets stoned.

Or so you claim, but you are wrong - hence my claim that you have not understood my motives.
Well, my claim you have quoted, so I will here quote you (again) for you to see how eerily similar the two ideas are:

So would you concede that the principles of many of the OT laws were wrong and still are?

Originally posted by CalJust
Yes, I agree. The punishment should reflect the importance to society.

If you are saying that some OT laws have excessive, even obscene punishments, then again I agree. That has been my point all along.

And you and I are in good company on this issue, because that was exactly how Jesus felt too.

OK, so perhaps we should move on and discuss some OT laws that do not work on any level (IMO), even as guidelines without enforcement.

What about the law "you may enslave a person of any race, except a fellow Israelite?"

Or, "if you kill someone by accident, you must run to a city of refuge or else his relatives can just kill you."

These seem like morally bankrupt laws to me. Slavery and vigilantism? How can anyone defend those things.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
No, you silly goose: I should have been more precise and, instead of lumping BOTH of the instances made in Zahlanzi's post--- the second post of this thread, by the way, the first response to your OP--- into the reference of Deuteronomy 25:11, I should have ALSO cited Deuteronomy 22:13-21.

How would separating them make you any less wrong about your claim that I 'latched on to' the first?

The former was for the ball snatch, while the latter was for the woman playing the whore who gets stoned.
Ouch. A woman who may or may not have lost her virginity (and purely on her husbands say so) prior to marriage is 'playing the whore'?
Talk about shallow mindedness!

It is not shallow minded to criticise an argument simply because you don't understand it. It is shallow minded to think that any argument is safe from criticism simply because you think (or worse, claim without evidence) your critics cannot understand it.
You have not understood the arguments I have made in this thread, so you must either admit that you are shallow minded, withdraw any criticisms you have made, or admit that your claim that understanding is required prior to making criticism.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
What about the law "you may enslave a person of any race, except a fellow Israelite?"

Or, "if you kill someone by accident, you must run to a city of refuge or else his relatives can just kill you."

These seem like morally bankrupt laws to me. Slavery and vigilantism? How can anyone defend those things.

These are tough questions but legitimate ones.

Firstly, let me make it quite clear that I do not pretend to be either a historian or an expert in Hebrew history. Just a layman trying to make sense of stuff.

What I said before about culture definitely applies here. We are talking about 4000 to 5000 years ago, for goodness sake! How on earth can you try to impose your 21st century morality, and insight on how bad slavery is, on a society at that time?

Also, as I said before, the slavery regulations in the OT were more compassionate than those practiced in the US as recently as 200 years ago! I would be most surprised if they were not substantially more humane than those of the surrounding nations.

As far as the Cities of Refuge, here we have a concession, a way out, to those guilty of accidental death, i.e. manslaughter or culpable homicide. The "eye-for-an-eye" law would allow a family member of the deceased to kill the guilty party. These cities allowed them an escape, which is therefore a compassionate and humane law.

Just before you again say: yes, but killing somebody for such an accidental death is totally wrong, just consider how vendettas thrive in this day and age in some (e.g. Sicilian) society.

Again, at the risk of repeating myself, please resist the urge to look at actions and habits of millennia ago with the insights that humanity has only gained during the last century, and that only in certain (more civilised) countries.

Originally posted by CalJust
What I said before about culture definitely applies here. We are talking about 4000 to 5000 years ago, for goodness sake!

In your telling of it, why was God ~ in issuing His Law ~ in anyway beholden to the cultural norms of "4000 to 5000 years ago"

How on earth can you try to impose your 21st century morality, and insight on how bad slavery is, on a society at that time?

But it wasn't SwissGambit trying to "impose" a convincing moral code on the society. In your telling of it ~ never mind about what SwissGambit can or can't do ~ why was God unable to impose a convincing moral code on the society, regardless of the century?