Bible - Great threat to morality?

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Does symbolism mean anything to you?

And I thought I had problems with taking things literally...


You can argue all you want about Abraham, the fact is God did not let him kill the child. It was a test of faith, probably a precurser for the coming of Jesus.

Are you saying a central dogma of the Catholic faith is mere "symbolism"?



IT STILL SETS A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT. Namely speaking, the "if 'God's' voice tells you to kill your child, go through with it until the Angel says no.

The idea isn't that you're a cannibal for goodness sakes. It is that Jesus's sacrifice for our sins and a ritual of what Jesus said during the last supper.



Actually, I could argue it is Satan's voice telling you to kill someone. There has been no other incident of God telling someone to put their child or anyone else's child on an altar and kill the child. Any other sacrifices in the Bible referred to using a Lamb or some other animal, not a human child.

My actual point wasn't so much about canibalism (even though, technically, it is if you regard that Roman Catholic Church's dogmas regarding Transubstantiation as true), but was more that their belief that crackers turn into flesh is harming people with Celiac Disorder.




Actually, I could argue it is Satan's voice telling you to kill someone. There has been no other incident of God telling someone to put their child or anyone else's child on an altar and kill the child. Any other sacrifices in the Bible referred to using a Lamb or some other animal, not a human child.[/quote]

So, there were no instances before Abraham as well. Why didn't Abraham question whether the voice in his head was Satan?

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 16 Nov 2010, 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That would be Abraham not Isaac and Abraham knew it was God don't ask me how he knew. Not to mention there is a huge gap between Noah and Abraham. Anyways, the point is God stopped Abraham from killing Isaac and showed that God had no intention of letting the boy be killed.

If you look at the New Testament and Jesus it takes on a new meaning especially with Jesus dieing for our sins.

The Isaac-Abraham transposition was cased by fatigue over too much time in front of the screen.

The precedent is still the same - trust "God's" voice over your conscience. I mean, God's voice could just as well tell you that he's doing another reversal or that your child "doesn't really count" as salvation is conditional, and your child just doesn't meet the prerequistie conditions.

Or it could be the idea that Abraham would sacrifice his son for God. Therefore, God should be willing to let his son die for our sins as shown in the New Testament.

YHWH said to Abraham: Stop! I was just f*cking around with you.

ruveyn

I see no reason whatsoever to accept that interpretation.

tell me, Inuyasha, if you heard a voice in your head, how would you know to whom the voice belongs?

personally, i would assume that the voice, being internal, was internal (me). i have the benefit of modern psychology, which, much as it still has to understand, tells me that sometimes people hallucinate voices in their head.

despite such benefit, are you telling me that you, yourself, would be torn between believing the voice to be that of "god" or "satan?" i'm not sure of your age, but you seem quite young. schizophrenia can often manifest in early adulthood. if you start hearing voices in your head, you should consult a psychologist.

but i highlighted a specific point of yours for a specific purpose.

"if you really want to show me you think i'm awesome, kill your kid" sounds like something your god would say. probably because this is me paraphrasing your god telling abraham to sacrifice isaac. can you give me an example of something you think that "satan" would say if he were the one talking in abraham's head?

Catholic theologians are quite literal about transubstantiation. They are not dealing in metaphors.

ruveyn

this still doesn't actually touch the premise you think it's attacking.

You know, Catholics don't have a monopoly on Christ. What's funny is I have some friends who are Catholic who go to Mass on Saturday night and show up bright and early at my church (the Baptist church just across the street) because they like the music better.

But no, it doesn't set a dangerous precedent. Well, it doesn't if the person reading the Bible reads ALL of the Bible, not just isolated events to support whatever crazy notion they may have.

First, the would-be sacrifice was a test of Abraham's faith, and Abraham (if you read the story) responded to questions by saying that God would provide the sacrifice. It is a test to show how a person who will be totally committed to God's will ought to be a patriarch of an entire people dedicated to God's service. God never "leads us into temptation," but "delivers us from evil."

Second, human sacrifice is forbidden as an act of worship. Yes, that came later with the law given to Moses. However, if God had accepted Abraham's sacrifice of the son who was chosen to head God's family on earth and rather gave Abraham another son in his place (from whom the Israelites would have descended), we might find that the religion itself might have found human sacrifice acceptable and God would have instructed Moses NOT to write any prohibitions against it.

But child sacrifice was NOT unheard of in other religions, and it is expressly forbidden in Yahweh worship.

There IS a parallel with Jesus' sacrifice. The important differences are that "the Father and the Son are one," meaning God's sacrifice of Himself in a physical form, and that Jesus served as both the sacrifice AND the high priest of the sacrifice. While Abraham was poised to sacrifice the next head of God's chosen people, Isaac was NOT Abraham's "one and only" son. Don't forget about Ishmael, and don't forget Abraham married again after Sarah's death and had other children. There are NO other gods, either equal with the Son or subordinate to Him. Just us. For all the faults that are within us and originate from us, God accepted the blame and the death penalty for that blame. So the sacrifice of Jesus, the "One and only," occurs at a heavier price than Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. And in this case, there was no going back.

Besides, self-sacrifice in the Christian context does NOT mean that we engage in some kind of suicide pact. Suicide happens at one's OWN hands. Going to one's death because one refuses to deny Christ means dying in the same manner as Christ died. TRUE Christians have no problem facing their own deaths. Something that disturbs me about living in the USA is just how many people are Christians because they are comfortable being Christian. I wonder how many self-proclaiming Christians would still be Christians when faced with recanting or death. Sure, that would drive Christianity underground, but the Bible also says "Whoever denies me before man, I will deny Him before the Father." We have no choice but to be open about our faith when we are asked, so the only "public" profession we could make would be before fellow believers. I think Christians would take the religion much more seriously if they understood they could die for being "outed."

But as far as a great threat to morality goes, you have to consider what the Bible actually calls believers to do. We are NOT to pose any serious threat to the political or cultural status quo. In the USA, we are guaranteed the right to speak our minds and vote according to our conscience. With our freedoms (including religion) comes the responsibility to be active politically. At the time the NT was written, Christians were seen as a political threat, so political maneuvers such as universal abolition of slavery in Roman world was out of the question. Christian slave owners, however, were put in a position by their faith to treat their servants as though they were free, and Christian servants were to seek freedom IF they could gain freedom but otherwise be respectful of their masters, showing a proper servant-like attitude just as Jesus displayed to His disciples.

In terms of modern-day morality, IF slavery were still an established institution, it sounds to me like Biblical principles of how slaves and masters should relate to each other would still be an excellent guide as to how that institution is to be carried out. However, I think that the reason that slavery as an accepted institution is either dead or nearly dead is because of Biblical emphasis on freedom and human decency, especially since OT laws regarding slavery were only written because God knew and understood the evil nature of mankind and the desire to enslave others. We're responsible for our own freedom; but if we are to lose our freedom, at the very least we have a Godly means of dealing with involuntary servanthood.

The emphasis of the value of life is a recurring theme of the Bible. The 10 Commandments might be viewed as an outline for laws in any country in the world. I've already mentioned fair treatment of slaves/servants. What about women? In a time when women were treated more like property than human beings, the Bible emphasized fair treatment and gave wives a certain amount of power and authority within the household. When searching for an appropriate wife for Jacob, why did Isaac send him to his own family? Because of Rebekah's complaining about her daughter's-in-law married to Esau--she said she was sick to death of those Hittite women. When Jacob was getting ready to leave Laban, what did he do? He consulted with his wives first. And speaking of Jacob's wives, if you want good reason against polygamy, check out what went on between Rachel and Leah competing with each other to see who could make the most babies. It was war. In certain cults in which polygamy is practiced today, it's not unusual to find the same or similar kinds of power struggles among so-called "sister wives." Not to mention that the first marriage instituted by God, Adam and Eve, was between ONE man and ONE woman, "the two become one flesh."

Proverbs deals with, among other things, properly acquiring and managing wealth. Ecclesiastes reminds us to keep things in proper perspective.

And then the gospels, which constantly reinforce the idea that we should all "love each other."

Abstaining from sexual immorality has a lot of benefits--preventing unwanted pregnancy, avoiding STDs, not to mention emotional consequences. I'm aware of other ways to have sex that also avoid those risks, but you gotta admit abstinence works every time. Rape is a horrible, violent crime and rape victims will probably mostly agree that rapists ought to be put to death along with murderers. If a man gets a woman pregnant, he should make every effort to support her. Yep, that's in the Bible, too.

We don't like liars and thieves, right? Neither does the Bible.

I could go on and on, but the Bible provides a rock-solid moral code. The Pharisaic attitude of "eye-for-an-eye" established a system of equivalency for personal injury in which the wrongdoer could still contribute to society while at the same time paying a penalty for injury against another. The Sadducees were a little bit more heavy-handed than that--they wanted to enforce these laws a bit more literally, but by and large the Pharisee doctrine was the prevalent one. We still do this. Criminals who are incarcerated for their crimes, especially for minor felonies and misdemeanors, can opt for community service if they are unable to pay fines or if they pose no significant danger while locked up for an extended period. I even got out of paying a traffic ticket by playing a free gig at a nursing home--my typical fees for things like that would have actually exceeded the ticket, but I didn't even have the money to pay the ticket and I didn't have anyone booking me at the time. Criminals and other debtors were released from their debts at the Year of Jubilee. While we don't have institutionalized slavery, many of us become indebted to others and find ourselves unable to pay debts due to reasons beyond our control (loss of a job that ordinarily would have been secure). While a slave in Biblical times could run away from an unfair master, we are able to use the justice system for bankruptcy proceedings. One command in the Bible is "Do not muzzle an ox while it treads the grain." In bankruptcy, you can protect your house and your primary means of travel along with any professional tools of your trade, so the concept is exactly the same. The Bible in many ways is more fair to more people today than many systems of government, sometimes including even our own. So I fail to see how the Bible poses any real threat.

you don't seem to realize what you're saying when you say "it was a test of faith." why was it a "test of faith?" the position put forward by the OP was that, in order to pass this "test of faith," abraham had to be willing to kill isaac. it doesn't matter if god was going to prevent it from happening if the point is that abraham needed to be willing to kill his own son to please the voice in his head.

it's hard enough for many modern schizophrenics to sort out reality from paranoid delusion, how hard must it have been before we understood that voices in one's head originate there?

ffs, a woman in Fernley Nevada stabbed her 7 year old son while he slept, trying to kill him. she said she did it at god's urging and also because he was the antichrist. this happened less than a week ago.

he's alive but this is going to color the rest of his life.

maybe it's time to stop relying on a book that says "you should totally listen to the voices in your head when they tell you to kill people, especially your own kids" for moral guidance. maybe it's time to realize that even you are more capable of making moral judgements than abraham, as you've at least made the concession that it could be "satan's voice."

According to the Bible, since there is a prohibition on child sacrifice and murder AND because we are instructed to discern between what you call "the voices" tell us to do and what is established as the will of God as set forth in the Bible, one may readily ignore "the voices" if they are instructing someone to do what is known to be evil. You're refusing to acknowledge the point of what God instructed Abraham to do.

http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/201 ... ofile=1058

^^^ Waltur's story