Jesus didn't condone child stoning. You really think theologicans for 2,000 years misunderstood that part, and then all of a sudden comes Dawkins and a bunch of internet dudes with their "evilbible" websites and re-interprets Jesus the "right way"?  Just stop, man.

No, I don't think that a bunch of internet dudes re-interpret Jesus the "right way". I just believe that they take scripture at face value instead of jumping through a bunch of hoops and say "that's metaphorical" when a verse is inconvenient

The essense or spirit when Jesus says he is not removing the OT law is that God's view of mankind is unchanged, and what constitutes sin is unchanged. That it's still practically impossible for a human to satisfy the law, and that there is no way for man to attain righteousness except through the grace of God.

So, God placed in a bunch of (terrible) laws that humans couldn't possibly satisfy, and made himself the only means to satisfy them? That's like me putting an 11 ft basketball hoop in front of you, and telling you to dunk, and when you can't, I tell you that I, Dwight Howard (for example), am the only means that you can dunk. Which is terrible because Dwight Howard knows you can't possibly dunk (aka God is omniscient). So he placed these rules in place....knowing that people couldn't satisfy them, only until they went to him. That's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, that he punishes mankind for if they don't let him have his way.

A literal interpretation of sword is laughable. It's allegorical/symbolical speech, just trust us on this one.

I conceded that it may not be literal because the similar verse in Luke said "division", so, like I said, it could have meant "to sever ties". But that isn't a good thing, either way. Because the verse continues to say that he'll "put father against son; mother against daughter". So just because it's not a literal sword, it then becomes ok to pit family against each other and make them their own enemies?

But then again, it could be a literal sword considering that Jesus said, in another verse, to sell your clothes to buy a sword if you don't have one. You can't buy "division".

Loving Jesus more than your own family. Surely you can see the point in that? The message is that to every human, God should be the most important of everything, that he is worthy of all praise, that he is a "jealous" God. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't love anybody else. Yes, you could say God has a strong ego, but it's perfectly okay. If you have children you want them to like you more than anyone else. It's not dramatic or controversial to me.

No, I don't see the point in that. I can understand loving Jesus. But, if you don't love him more than your family, you're not worthy of him? He is a jealous God? That is incredibly human in nature, not divine. And if/when I have children, if they love someone more than me, I won't deem them "unworthy". As long as they still love me, that's all I need. And I mean, are there "levels" of love. Why can't we love things equally? If you love both your mother and your wife, can you really love one more than the other? That makes no sense. So it is a controversial issue.

"Jesus said that if people don't want him to be king over them, bring them before him and slay them", it doesn't say like that in Luke 19. Jesus is telling a parabel, a story, and in that story there is a king that kills people.

He does say this in Luke 19, first off, and secondly the parable drew an analogy to God, stating that, basically, he can do what he wants. Even if he is harsh, you still do what he says. If you don't like it, tough noogies.

Eternal damnation. That's a heavy topic, and I get upset too at Christians who believe in eternal torment for ordinary unsaved people. To make it simple, it's just one interpretation of what will happen in eternity. I and many others interpret the NT so that it promotes destruction of the unsaved (after punishment), but not eternal suffering.

Convenient that it's "just one interpretation", when you realize how gruesome it is. Can I respond to someone saying "God loves you. Look at John 3:16" with "well, that's just one interpretation. It could actually mean something completely different"? (this is the problem with leaving holy books up to your subjective interpretation, as opposed to have an objective understanding that everyone can agree on)

But, I guess, utter destruction is better? Well...either the soul is eternal or it isn't. You can't get out of eternal suffering by saying that, instead, the soul is destroyed, because it then contradicts your belief that the soul is eternal.

And I'm pre-empting a response to this post about taking those verses "out of context". If there's one thing I dislike more, in a religious discussion, than "Jesus made the OT obsolete" (untrue), it's "you're taking that out of context". It's awful convenient when something nice like "turn the other cheek" and "love thy neighbor" are completely "in context" no matter how you use them, but "I didn't come to bring peace, but to bring a sword" is all of a sudden "out of context". Personally, I've read the surrounding verses, and chapters to those verses, and let me tell you, "if you love your father or mother more than me, you are not worthy of me" means exactly what it says. Don't believe me? Read the "context" yourselves. In the meantime:

This isn't an argument about principles. It's an argument about truth. 

Yes, you did mention that you believe it's more likely that a being exists than a force but you failed to back up that claim. Why bother making the claim if you can't back it up? It's not furthering anything. Saying "I can't back it up right now" is simply admitting you have no rational reasons for that position. 

If there is evidence for a particular belief, it isn't naive or childish. You were the person who said the belief was naive and childish, so don't pretend there is evidence. 

I don't despise hope or wishes. But they have no place in an argument for the validity of a claim. I'm about as logical a person as you will find, but I'm human; I emote.

Of course what draws people to Christianity is more than blind faith. It's one of more of the following: Credulity, Indoctrination, Spiritual Experience, Desperation.

"Instinctual impulse" - this can be described as the desire for answers. Humans are anxious about the words "I don't know". Simply, any answer seems better to fallible minds than no answer. That being said, it's not evidence for anything even remotely supernatural. 

"Spiritual Experience" - this can be refuted by not being exclusive to Christianity. Every religion ever manifested by mankind has had members who had these. Some replication has even been performed in laboratories. 

"Prophecy" - this one is rather easily explained. Are you familiar with Nostradamus? Same deal, accompanied by cherry picking and deliberate obfuscation.

"The biblical analysis of humans and human nature" - if you think humans are made of dirt I think you need a basic chemistry lesson. I hope you weren't being sincere in this argument. Its elementary interpretation of the psychology of humans is readily apparent as well. You mean if you dangle food source in front of a hungry human, they will consume it? Wow, astonishing.

If you put more trust in some internet guys for a correct interpretation than thousands of theologians through centuries, I don't have more to say on that. If you feel that way, it makes me a little sad, but it is how it is.

---------

Now a comment on "subjective interpretation". Exegesis, to interpret the bible in a correct way, to try and figure out what the author wanted to say, is key. It's very important for sincere christians. Subjective interpretation is the total opposite and absolutely not an ideal. Only some corrupt half-christians condone and idealize subjective Bible-reading, and mostly it is either unbelievers or people with confused belief systems who do that. But: Nobody can avoid some element of subjective interpretation, obviously. Because we're just humans.

Exegesis is a huge topic within the Church. Obviously you are aware of all these denominations, the division within the Church. It can't be avoided, but it's not an ideal. Every sincere believer strives for the correct interpretation.

So the last paragraph above, about an alternative interpretation of eternal punishment, is not a cop-out or attempt to make Jesus appear as a better person. It is serious doctrine. I am totally against "bible bending", to twist and misuse scripture so it fits your agenda. I'm just putting things on the table and telling that there exist competing doctrine on the topic of eternal damnation. I wanted to be very clear about that.

When you said "internet guys", I thought that was just a generalization, meaning a new age of people that don't see the Bible as "good" and are vocal about it. They're only vocal because we have the means to have a message spread to millions at once. As opposed to having no advanced technology and having to use carrier pigeons to spread news, like we did hundres and thousands of years ago.

And I responded, to that understanding, in that there are people who study the Bible, right now, at face value, and take the words to mean what they say. Just because some theologian from 500 years made a bunch of interpretations and made some things metaphor doesn't mean that I or anyone else doesn't have the ability to look at the Bible and not see certain declarations from Jesus as metaphorical, but as declarations. Did you see Reza Aslan interview on Fox News? Yes, it was bad, but someone like him has been studying religion for a long time and he looks at Jesus in a historical fashion. Despite his credentials, should I not trust his interpretation of looking at Jesus in the context of his time in favor of the interpretation of some people hundreds of years ago that made the sweeping judgment that Jesus is "nice" and all this stuff that can be taken as bad or mean.....don't really mean what the words on the pages of the Bible say, and they're just metaphor?

Just because I'm not from hundreds of years ago doesn't mean I can't study the Bible. And it doesn't mean that if I come to a different conclusion than some old theologians, then my opinion is invalid. We have much better tools for analysis of the Bible, in today's day and age, than theologians from hundreds of years ago, so I can look at the Bible with much more scrutiny than days passed.

It'd be different if the information would continue to compound and result in the same results, like a scientific theory. Gravity, for example. Newton may have come up with his formulas back in the day, but Einstein had better tools of analysis. And instead of completely debunking Newton, he added on to Newton's principles (in practical settings. Not near light speed). But the Bible, on the other hand is different. As time has passed, it has come under more and more scrutiny after we've analyzed it more deeply. For example, "if a virgin is raped, she must marry her rapist" is no longer a moral law given by the creator of the universe that must be upheld, but rather, an abhorrent law from a culture that's no longer applicable to the world we live in.

It's not just "internet guys" that came to these conclusion.  Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertand Russell, Thomas Paine, Voltaire, David Hume; and then current people like Hitchens and Dawkins who read the Bible and came to such conclusions.

Are they to be discounted because they don't agree with the fanciful notion that God is nice and loving, a notion that was convenient for Kings and church leaders to tell the lay people in order to keep them in servitude, because they'll "be rewarded later" (remember, they didn't want the people to be able to read the Bible on their own at first, that's why they kept it in Latin, which only royalty and the church could read)? They are to be ignored, because when they see the story of Abraham, and how God told him to kill his son, they saw it at face value: that God knew what the result of the test would be, because he knows all, yet he still made a man almost kill his son; instead of saying "oh this is just a wonderful tale of man's faith in the Lord"?

Well, I'm sorry that you feel sad that I and others won't do mental gymnastics in order to make the Bible seem nice, logical, trustworthy, or otherwise something to live our lives by. I'm of the kind that calls a spade a spade. When Jesus says "sell all your possessions and give them to the poor", that means sell all your possessions and give them to the poor, not some "metaphor" theologians came up with to mean "be nice to poor people". When in 1 Timothy 2:12-14, referring to within the church, it says that woman shall not teach or have authority over man, she is to remain silent because Adam came first, not Eve, and Eve transgressed against God, not Adam it means that women cannot have authority over men in the church not "something we have difficulty with and here's why [insert long winded explanation]" <---- look up any apologetics on that chapter, and that's what they say.

I call it like I see it. I understand what similes, metaphors, and allegories are. But a lot of the stuff that I brought up was terrible. What were they metaphors of? What were they allegories for? What were they parables for? Analogies, similies, metaphors, etc. relate one topic to another through words, but the relation that the one topic is talking about is the same as the relation another topic is talking about. So what allegory is he relating to when he says to sell all your garments to buy a sword?

I love it how desperatly you are trying to find something ''bad'' Christ did, and forget 99% of what Bible says about him. ''So do what Jesus did?'' LMAO! Seriously??  Yeah, if were all like Jesus, heaven would already be on Earth.

But seeing your other posts in this thread, it is clear how close minded and hateful you are towards anything Christian. Disgusting

Well, I'm sorry that you feel sad that I and others won't do mental gymnastics in order to make the Bible seem nice, logical, trustworthy, or otherwise something to live our lives by. I'm of the kind that calls a spade a spade. When Jesus says "sell all your possessions and give them to the poor", that means sell all your possessions and give them to the poor, not some "metaphor" theologians came up with to mean "be nice to poor people".

I have no respect for Hitchens, Dawkins and all those politically correct rats who only dare to attack Christiany but are afraid of muslim rage.