Timmah! on 28 June 2007
@DuncanMcneal
1. Because someone ate an apple? That's why people I love die. I think you shouldn't take your mythology and let it pertain to the real world, because it sounds crazy to a normal person.
(Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie that is his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all humanity because a rib-woman was convinced to eat from a magical tree by an infinitely sadistic being disguised as a talking snake with legs. )
2. There is no difference - that is something you don't understand. Nowhere does it say - ignore the rules about slavery - but keep the rules about homosexuality. Ignore the rules about rape - but keep the ones about marriage. (All of those rules are morally wrong though..) In fact, Jesus says that we must follow all of the rules in the Old Testament. This means every rebellious teenager would be stoned to death, anyone who works on sunday is dead, anyone who speaks out against god is dead, and it is never forgived. Either you didn't read that, or you're dismissing it as mere metaphor, and that is just a copout.
3. So christians took no part in the crusades? No part in the various christian inquisitions? If you don't think these things were done by christians... you may need to study history - and study your christianity again - it is certainly a bold thing to say that accepted history is false and that things in the bible are false - just because you can claim the people who did these things aren't christians, and the bible is meant to be a metaphor. I'll tell you what, these "fake christians" make up the largest portion of people who are christians.
4. I didn't say that a scientist rapes a boy - I said that doctorS save liveS and priestS (who are christians or aren't christians in your opinion? I forget) rape boyS (I said that, because these are things that really happened it may be hard to figure out the difference for a christian). If a scientist raped a boy, the scientists wouldn't get together and move him to another place and hope he didn't do it again - they would treat him like any other person. When christian priests DID rape boys in the US - they were moved (by more christians) to other parts of the us - and treated as though they wouldn't do it again they did do it again, and doctors keep saving more lives.
5. You're not really being fair to me, I'm following history, and you're following the bible - in which over 3/5 of the world knows was written by corrupt tribes (the ones who managed to survive and change the bible) and accepted by constantine 300 years later - as the word of god.
Again, these evil, disturbing things, are in YOUR book. It is your duty to compare at all times what you think with what can be proved.
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams -
If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.
1. Nope. Not about the apple. It's about the act of being separated from god due to disobedience. God wanted people to be friends with him, so he gave them a choice (there's no such thing as forced friendship). He could've said 'don't walk in circles' and it would have been the same thing. It was about trust, they trusted the serpant (maybe figurative? don't know) instead of god and made their choice.
2. Big difference... old and new covanant (testament). One was made to show mankind they couldn't do it on their own, the next was made in order to give mankind a way through a man (jesus) who was perfect.
3. Yes, people who called themselves christians did horrible things, you can't equate these with God. You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater so to speak.
4. Once again, you can't throw out a whole movement because of the actions of a few twisted individuals.
5. Evil, disturbing things happen throughout every book that tells the history of everything. The things you are talking about take place in the OLD testament, there is a difference.
