The absurdity of Christianity

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First of all, the Bible is full of demonstrable factual and logical errors.

But that aside, even if the Bible were true it is still full of inhumane and barbaric edicts. It is full of stories of God committing atrocities or directly ordering his followers to. Just because it does not document the enforcement of certain laws does not negate that those laws are still present within it. This is like a king passing a law that permits the lynching of ethnic minorities, but when the people say no we won't do that the king takes credit for it. It is totally absurd.

No matter what response anyone gives to your absurd demands, you will not be satisfied that it is sufficient. Because you are in denial and refuse to accept simple facts. That every other person here but you can clearly see the problems within the Bible demonstrates that.

Last edited by dorkseid on 11 Jul 2021, 9:39 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yeah I can see how that comes across for HP and Ron Weezly lusting after girls in Hogwarts (they made a porno on HP).

For Twilight a lot of the movie was through the eyes of Bella Swan. Girls do get fought over by guys in real life. It made for interesting and complicated drama given Edward Cullen was alluring but could only offer eternal damnation and a life of drinking deer blood whereas Jacob Black was restless and hot but fancy waking up next to snarling wolf in the morning.

Well, "has been used" is perhaps even an overly optimistic assesment.

There is currently an ongoing concern about the European Union potentially tearing itself apart - largely fueled by the Christian Right in Eastern European countries passing legislation to discriminatate against women and LGBT individuals.

---

The Old Bible is A True Assessment in Old

Testament And YeS Old New Testament

Of Just How Horrible and

Even Potentially Loving

In A Few Small Parts of it
At Least Humans Still Will Be...

The Bible At Its Most Dangerous

Part For Democracy is 'Trump' And Other

Demagogues Have Risen Out of it To Harm,
Rape, Maim, And Kill Other Humans And Dominate
And Destroy Parts of Nature Out of Balance As Well...

Death Valley

At 130F

Degrees Now

Tells A True

Source of the Old Bible

Overall the Nightmares Still

Humans Continue to Bring

To Fruition Out of Balance With

The Rest of Nature... The Old Bible

Is Humanity's Self indictment in Print Still

How People Miss this is Beyond the Love of me

Now And

That's

For Damned Sure

Before as Lies Yet Truths Now

It Makes me Giggle That So Many Folks

Used to Feel Guilty to Even Touch Themselves...

Not So Much Now With the Break Through of Pornography of Course

Now as 98 Percent of Males Won't Refuse the Muse or Even 73 Percent

Of Women For Masturbation Purposes Inside or Outside of Church Now

According

To Scientific

Study... if The Bible

Is No Longer Useful

At Large to Shame Reproductive

Freedoms The Bible is Dead As Without

The Ability to Shame Others It's No longer

A Useful Tool to Subjugate and Control Others...

The Grey Hairs are Slowly Being Swept Underneath

And Away From Pews of Fears... Days of Organized

Deceit From that Book at Least Are Indeed Numbered Now...

Yet of Course

It's a rather Slow
Process as it took

Until the 1300's to even

Number the Verses in that
Old Antiquated Dusty Mostly Evil Book...

Humans May Evolve into Fruition of Nightmares

Or Dreams in Just One lifetime... Yes the Old Bible Indeed

A Source of Much Horrible Nightmare Fruition Brought to
All of Nature Now...

Erasing It In
Change at

Least

One Step

Of Dance

One Step

Of Song

Ahead to

More Loving Progress...

New Human Testaments Never Stop...

Only the Labels Change my FRiEnD...

Nor New Testaments of the Rest of Nature...
Change is the Only Rule that Stays the Same...

Change is a Hard Pill Now to Swallow For Some
Folks... Deal with it or Choke a Little bit more
Without Freer Fearless Loving Breath For All Concerned at least...

Real 'God'

Is A 6 Letter
Word 'Change'

And A 7 Letter Word

'Balance'... Yes or No Flow With 'God' or Stagnate Indeed...

iNdeed A Force of 'Love' Makes Icing All That Much More Delicious Adding to A RiSinG Cake

That's ALL Just A Combination of 3,4,6 and 7 Letter Words My 'God' THeRE Is So Much More to

Appreciate

And DO 2..

HAha

This Bible

Writing 'Business'

Is Truly Unlimited... When Free...

---

Yep. I've got no problem with anybody believing or following anything as such, as long as no harm comes of it and they don't put pressure on others to believe or follow it.

Frankly I think a lot of people follow a religion for the social benefit thing, though I mean the ready-made community rather than competitive social climbing. I'd probably go to church myself it it wasn't for all the superstitious stuff and the top-down thing, just as a way of meeting people.

I rather like the idea that Jesus was the first socialist, because it's that side of him I like, assuming the stories about him are anything like accurate. I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and find out what really happened, and if as I more than strongly suspect he didn't come back from the dead, try and get the crucifixion stopped, though I suppose that would violate an important law of time travel and I'd get back to 2021 to find that monkeys had taken over the world or something.

This is something that is ASSUMED. If I make the opposite assumption, then at worst I’m on par. If an omniscient being reveals himself to people who in turn become believers, then it’s everyone else who is full of demonstrable factual and logical errors. Reason cannot exist without divine revelation.



The problem is you refuse to even entertain the premise that the Bible is true. Conclusions that are both valid and true cannot be reached by false premises. The only conclusions you can draw from evidence you claim supports the premise of the Bible being false are tainted by confirmation bias. You are unable to make any knowledge claims to that end.




There again is the assumption of absurdity. You are unable to prove absurdity. As to every other person...mass delusion and hysteria are a thing. What makes you so certain I’m the only one who disagrees with you? For all the certainty you really have regarding other people here, we could all just be bots and everything we say are programmed responses based on the same old, boring, centuries-old counter arguments that are no more meaningful or useful now than they were then.

“Every other person here...”. Well, so much for intellectual honesty. I’ve made references to majority opinions before when it was relevant. The problem is in describing something as logically necessary because of majority opinion. It’s logically possible for majorities to be wrong. But if numbers matter, then slightly less than a third of the world are Christians. About half of that number identify as secular or non-religious. Many of those are culturally religious or syncretic. Whatever’s left represent the world’s atheists. If we are allowed red herrings, then it seems more people agree with me.

AngelRho - I'm curious. Why don't you reply to this part of dorkseid's post?

If you don't answer this one, we are forced to not just assume, but to conclude that both you and the bible are wrong.

Last edited by Cornflake on 11 Jul 2021, 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.: Removed some personal attacks

I also have a big problem with the “has been used” thing. I don’t believe in pressuring people to convert to any religion. That’s something people have to decide for themselves. I’d rather encourage people who want to become Christian and tell them about my experience, but imposing on those who do not wish to believe is not my thing.

The problem I see as a church is that if you call one thing a sin, you have to call everything a sin. I believe that homosexuality is immoral according to the Bible, but so are lots of things. Intoxication is immoral according to the Bible, but so are lots of things. Sex outside a committed, permanent relationship is immoral, but so are lots of things. You can’t run your mouth against Biden and everything Democrats stand for and at the same time look the other way when Trump says and does inappropriate and unacceptable things towards women. If it’s fair for the worship band drummer to be welcomed back after sleeping with the bass player’s wife, then it’s fair for a gay person to attend if he or she wishes to. One of the core principles of Christian teaching is repentance, so the question of why sinners would CONTINUE to attend church is not one that has a simple answer. With numbers of Christians steadily declining at the moment, my guess is it’s partially due to a more consistent adherence to scripture rather than appealing to those who don’t actually want to follow Christ. Jesus drew large crowds with all the “blessed are they” talk but lost them with the body and the blood. They celebrated Him entering Jerusalem but had Him nailed to the cross in less than a week. Truth is not always fun and comforting and might get you killed. So blowing sunshine and enabling people to do whatever they feel like doing under the guise of being “seeker sensitive” or whatever the new buzzword these days isn’t going to be in line with Biblical morality.

As to whether gays or adulterers or drug addicts or drunks SHOULD be allowed into the church or persecuted, consider that never once in the gospels does Jesus say gays aren’t allowed in church. Never once does Jesus say drunks can’t come to church. Jesus didn’t run people off for committing adultery. A woman who was ritually unclean touched Jesus and He singled her out for having faith. Jesus healed lepers. Exorcised demons. Ate meals with extortionists (“tax collectors”). If Jesus welcomed sinners and called them to repentance, then the church likewise should be welcoming. I’ve known a few gay men and women who attended Baptist churches with me and elsewhere, and never once did anyone do one thing to make them feel unwelcome or unwanted, and I’m a member of one of the most conservative Evangelical denominations.

If a church kicks someone out for any particular reason, I would ask where it is written in the gospels that Jesus taught His disciples to do that. If Christ never taught that, is it unchristian when people behave badly towards outsiders? If yes, is a church that enables persecution of sinners actually a Christian church? That doesn’t mean that churches don’t have the right to kick people out at all. I’ve seen drunks wander off the streets and disrupt church meetings. I’ve seen a neurotic drummer who’d been off his meds disrupt a service more than once. We kicked him out of the band but encouraged him to keep attending. I think maybe his parents got him and took him home so he could get help. So I’m not saying it’s unbiblical to keep congregations safe and maintain order. But picking on people for being different and seeking God isn’t something we do if we are seeking to follow Christ. That is a problem you see more with cultural or nominal Christians.

I didn’t think it was relevant.

But I CAN answer it. It’s not a difficult question. God created the universe for his purpose and pleasure. He can set whatever rules he wants and destroy the whole thing just for fun. I’m not saying God DOES that or wants that, I’m just saying that we are all God’s possessions and he has the right to do with us what he will. This principle is set in the first chapter of Genesis.

The assumption that God committed or directed a nation to commit any atrocity is unnecessary. Something that is an “atrocity” would be assumed to be evil by definition, right? Or not? I’m going with the definition of being evil for the purpose of this discussion. If an atrocity is defined as being an evil act, then there were no atrocious acts as God is not evil. If God commits atrocities, then God is evil.

Well, a singular God that is evil is an absurd notion. Who defines good and evil? God either defines good, depending on how you choose to look at it, or he completely knows what good and evil are. Either way, it’s irrelevant—Good and evil are ultimately the domain of God and divine will, not the domain of human beings in any deterministic sense. We don’t define good and evil, we are merely subject to the consequences of the interplay between the two in human nature and the nature of a fallen world whether we cause bad things directly, others do bad things to us, we get in the crossfire of evil people doing evil things, or whether we get caught in a natural disaster or some other thing beyond our control. And whether we choose good or evil, we cannot escape the whim of God in how he disposes of us.

Since good and evil are the domain of God, human beings cannot define it. Nor is it our place to completely understand it and be fully responsible for it. We weren’t created for that. Since we cannot shoulder total liability for comprehending good and evil, we cannot inform God what good and evil are and what they are not. We can complain to God all we want, but that changes nothing. It is unreasonable for a human being to presume his limited understanding of good and evil are superior to God’s. It is irrational to presume superiority to our Creator and assert human will over the supernatural. The assumption that God commits atrocities, which by our working definition is evil, is absurd for the reason that it is irrational to presume human supremacy. God’s actions may APPEAR barbaric and atrocious, but it’s not really our place to judge that. The best you can say is “God did some violent things to naughty people and I don’t like it.” You don’t need to like it, but this is a problem of bias. That’s not going to make anti-theistic excuses any more valid.

Regarding cherry-picking, a degree of cherry picking is necessary in that not every single verse of the Bible is relevant to specific issues. What day of the week God created birds doesn’t have any bearing I’m aware of on why abortion should be banned. No, I’m not debating abortion, but in order to craft a scriptural argument against abortion, you have to pick among all passages of the Bible dealing with the sanctity of life. I happen to believe that killing unborn infants is murder, which derives from scriptural evidence of the sanctity of life. The only verse I’m aware of that deals DIRECTLY with abortion is related to and in the context of accidental death. I do not believe this one verse is relevant to the modern issue of abortion, which is the INTENTIONAL destruction of a baby. The closest you can get is point to the ban on Molech worship in which infant sacrifice was a regular feature. However, any time someone caused the death of another while trying to protect themselves from harm, that was considered self-defense. Whether the person killed was guilty or innocent of anything is irrelevant. One CAN make an argument for abortion being self defense if it can be proven that the baby is a threat to the mother’s life. But then, that’s going to go over about as well as the insanity defense for capital murder. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It just means that it is exceptional.

So despite my personal feelings on the matter, given what the Bible DOES say regarding life and the destruction of it, I do not see how there can be a TOTAL ban on abortion. If it were a matter of cherry-picking, I could just pick out only those verses regarding personhood, sanctity of life, and murder. I don’t believe that a rational, scriptural response can be limited to just those things. I think the Bible insists that believers see the bigger picture before deciding in absolute terms which moral path is the correct one. That’s a recurring theme throughout the Old Testament.

The problem is that "bad people" are still cherry picking scriptures from the bible to weaponise against the vulnerable,

I have a seared image of good christians carrying placards at little black children trying to go to school in the 1960s or a christian couple carrying loaded weapons standing in front of their mansion with malice as young people and teenagers walk past their property during a protest march.

Christians aren't the only ones immune to hypocrisy/blasphemy, almost every organised religion has such individuals who rise to power on the back of their scripture, whether it be judaism, islam, buddhism or hinduism.

No. It is a demonstrable fact. Here are some examples of factual errors in the Bible:


Insects have six legs, not four.



Rabbits do not have split hoofs and do not chew their cod.



The earth is in constant motion around its axis and in orbit around the sun.


Bats are not birds.

These are only a few examples of factual inaccuracies from the Bible.



That is a baseless assertion with nothing of substance to back it up



Because it is demonstrably not true, as I've shown above.

Besides, why should I? Do you entertain that the Quran is true for no reason? Or that Harry Potter is? There is nothing special about the Bible that requires me to give it such consideration. The burden is on you to prove that the Bible is true.



I’m not simply appealing to the majority. The difference is that every other poster in this thread based their position on facts and logic, while you appeal to blind faith and denial of reality.



Can you not understand basic math? Two thirds is bigger than one third. In fact, it’s twice as big. Two thirds of the human species are not Christian. That means that most of the world does not agree with you.

Also, I love how you keep playing the No True Scotsman card elsewhere, but now suddenly a third of the world are true Christians when it’s convenient.

Christians may overall outnumber atheists, but Christian didn’t become so by appealing to reason or evidence while atheists did. The vast majority of Christians are so simply because that’s the religion they were born into and they never questioned it. But non-religious former Christians vastly outnumber converts to Christianity.



Perhaps. But then you can’t pretend he’s loving, kind, or merciful. Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.



But the Bible says he has many times over.



Even if it’s God who decides what’s good and what’s evil, that still has to stay say consistent. If genocide was good when God did it because God decreed that it is good, then it was also good when Hitler did it. If it was evil when Hitler did it, then it was also evil when God did it. Was it not you who said:



If you try to argue otherwise, then you are special pleading.



Scriptural evidence of the sanctity of life, you say?







Sorry. What was that about the sanctity of life again?



Oh! The irony!

Intellectual dishonesty and confirmation bias. Your problem is quoting things out of order and context. These aren't Biblical errors. They are errors in your thinking, which is fundamentally wrong from the outset.

If you want a response from me about supposed errors in the Bible, how about you pick 2 at a time and go from there?

Yeah, there's nothing factually wrong with the Leviticus 11:20 passage. The problem is you don't know what עוף means. You need the Bible to be wrong, so you conveniently ignore the FACT that words have multiple meanings.

If you're quoting from the KJV, then you're ignoring the how translations are always products of the time they were written and the culture they are translated for. In the case of the KJV, the attempt was made at preserving as literal a word-for-word translation as was reasonably possible. The word "עוף" can sometimes be translated as "insects," but if you look at the original language...well, heck, you don't even need to know Hebrew to get this one right. Context alone is enough to figure it out what was meant.

It is so obvious that you in denial and are panicking for any mental gymnastic, no matter how absurd, to convince yourself the reality laid bare before is not real.

Please, do explain to me this context in which slaughtering children and tearing open pregnant women is suddenly acceptable.

And sure, I don't expect ancient Hebrews to have understood insect through the lens of modern taxonomy (though I don't understand how their alleged creator wouldn't), but that doesn't change that this passage is factually inaccurate. The passage gives four examples of whatever עוף means, all of which are insects. Utilizing inference when reading is a skill that you should learn. Furthermore, whatever it is talking about, it describes it as an animal that has wings and four legs. Problem is that no such animal exists. Insects are the only Arthropods that have wings, and they all have six legs. All animals with wings fall into one of three categories: birds, insects, and mammals of the order Chiroptera (bats). None of which have four legs.

You are incorrect. In context, the phrase “4 legs” can also mean “many legged.” Priests traditionally understood saltatory legs to not count as legs in the same sense as legs used for crawling, and the passage actually makes that very clear. In other words, this refers specifically to creeping and swarming insects with some exceptions. It also need not refer specifically to arthropods. It includes certain reptiles, birds, and even mammals, so your biased inference is mistaken. The list of acceptable exceptions happens to name insects, but saying that a mistaken inference from specific exceptions must apply to a general group as a whole does not prove your point. Time to move on.

Taxonomy has always been the domain of human beings from the beginning, and understanding better ways of classifying living things is dynamic as humans learn more about the world. Current science doesn’t even guarantee certainty, and terms get redefined as people understand things better. Sometimes this makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t, like whether Pluto is actually a planet or not. So if you actually intend to understand what is meant by something and why it’s relevant, you’re going to have to take time to understand it in historical context as well and not only see it through a modern lens alone.

But how about that modern lens? How is this passage relevant? What was the intent? Dietary restrictions in the ancient world were never about health since at that time they wouldn’t have had the same medical understanding that we do. Pigs, for instance, are easily bred and cared for, perhaps more easily than cattle. I’ve heard people speculate (modern lens) that pigs are more prone to parasites and ancient people would have noticed that pig-eaters are less healthy. Ok, that makes sense, but that isn’t the point. Dietary laws were intended to establish Hebrew identity. These are not laws that would ever apply to a goy.

The only reason I bring that up in the context of a discussion on Biblical hermeneutics is to point out that a word that applies to creeping things, fowl, four-legged creatures has nothing to do with making a significant theological point. Translators usually prefer to keep literal word-for-word translations as much as they reasonably can since dynamic translation can yield a meaning that was never intended.

Finally...to point out these Bible “difficulties” requires an additional assumption that the Bible is wrong. It’s an unnecessary assumption. People who don’t feel the need to make unnecessary assumptions and to whom God has revealed himself do not have trouble understanding these passages in the sense they were intended.