The absurdity of Christianity

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Still just seems brutal as f**k women could get executed just for lying about being a virgin and I at least think that sounds super fcked up.

It seems a great coincidence that the god of the old testament seemed remarkably similar to the men of that age. Allowing and encouraging his chosen people to smite and vanquish other tribes including women and children.

You’re making a big deal out of nothing. Yes, men could be put to death over sleeping with engaged/married women and some instances of rape, depending on circumstances. Don’t forget at the time Israel was nomadic, there were no prisons, and human beings, men and women, could be traded as property. Women in Israel, Egypt, and Canaan at that time enjoyed a high status and were treated well. The Bible can sometimes codify a minimum standard, establishing what someone CAN do in seeking justice. The Bible doesn’t DEMAND the death penalty for what a woman does before her wedding day.

Marriages at that time could be business arrangements between two wealthy families. A woman who wasn’t a virgin at that point in time could not guarantee her children belonged to her husband, and at the time such guarantees were vital to the survival of various clans. If you consider all the changes that happened over time in Israel and Judea, MANY of those laws became moot. You couldn’t have broken them even if you tried. There are laws that apply only to the priesthood and the temple. Have you ever met a Levite? No? Me either. And what temple? And since more often people prefer to marry “for love,” because of age of consent laws and being forced to wait later to marry, and because of paternity tests, virginity and protecting bloodlines just don’t matter anymore. Nobody cares about it. So why concern yourself with something that hasn’t had teeth for thousands of years?

I know, you think laws specific to women are unfair. Well...the burden of protecting the family, fighting in war, and providing for the needs of his wife and children while women enjoyed the comforts of domestic life seems a little unfair to me. It balances out. But also don’t forget your thinking is a product of the time you live in, and you’ve never had to live under a fledgling theocracy. You might have felt differently had you grown up in that time under different circumstances.

^^^

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"A lot of Something Out of Nothing..."

Oh What A Profane Book 'That Bible'

Is; So Full Of Ignorance; My God There

Is No Test That Works For Virginity; A Hymen

May Be Left Intact after Sex or Be Missing With No Sex at all;

Women Still Suffer Horrible Deaths for this Ignorance in Other Countries;

Is God that Ignorant;

Responsible For that

Text That Stones Women

Tested Not Virgin; Yes God is that

Ignorant For that is Only Ignorant Men Who
Wrote that Text unless Nature is too Stupid to

Understand Nature

if the Nature of God

Is that Frigging Dumb;

That Book As Alan Watts Once

Said is a Very Dangerous Book As that

Religious, And Philosophical, And Yes Political
Scholar too Said it Was Worthy of Ceremonial Burning

At Easter, No Different than the Profane of the Revelation

Part of the Book That Presents A Torturing Unforgiving God Forever

Sending Folks to A Lake of Fire With No Possible Way to Get Out of Torture

Forever True

Just like the

Hymen Test For Virginity And
The Stoning; There Are People in
This World, Horrible People in this World

Who Still Used that Book to Justify Slavery and

Not Give Women A Write to Speak in Spiritual Matters
Or Voting Matters in the United States Until Just a Little over
Hundred Years ago and if Women Wanna Be Priests Now to Interpret

The New Testament More Like a Franciscan Friar 'Richard Rohr', Still A Priest
For the Catholic Church Who Sees Christ as Just A Metaphor For UniVersal Love

And Has enough Frigging Common Sense to Understand The Biblical Scholarly Work

That Shows How Inconsistent The Bible is Full of Ghost Authors And Scribes With Mistakes
And Intentional Changes Across the Centuries; Just A Bunch of Scripts pasted Together from

Different places Not

Much Different than

A Day of my Poetry

Gathered Up From Sources

of Muse All Around the World

Yet of Course i am One Person; just
one Person for Real Who Writes my Own
Personal Bible Now Close to 9.5 MiLLioN
Words After 95 Months on 7.18.2021 of Gaining Love Muse Hope
in Light; And Yes LieS in Dark Muse of Fear And Hate From Around

The Globe too...

Yet You See, No Longer is the World Illiterate As it once was except
for some Countries Like Pakistan; Yet Still Human Beings Have Freer Access

to Other Sources of Truth in light

And Lies in Dark And Guess What

They have Free Agency to Choose to

Metaphorically Burn That Bible Out of the

Nightmares And Potential Dreams too it has brought...

Sadly With Hope the Ignorance is Enough For Most Young Folks Today

To Drop the Book OFF As this Overall Evil it is; Yes, Put it in 'Gehenna' Where

Most of it still

Belongs;

in other

Words the Garbage Heap...

i Find a Few Jewels; Yet i've been
Enough of NOT a Fool From a Small Child

to Believe that the Portrait of the Long Haired

Dude Modeled After DaVinci; A Renaissance Dude

Hanging Over my Bed At 6 Years Old Was Any More Real

Than Santa Claus As A God Who Was Dam Sure Nicer as at least

if You Were Naughty As A Child You Missed out on A Gift And Weren't

Sent to A Lake of Fire

Forever by a

God Who Loses

All Mercy All Forgiveness

And Isn't Even as Nice As

Most Humans Except if they

Are the Coldest of Serial Killing

Psychopaths and even More EVIL than
that as Pscyhopathic Folks Don't Get

To Torture Folks For Being Bad Children of
God Forever in the 'Silence of the Lambs' Transformed into Goats....

After Catholic Kindergarten Devil Class at 5 Years-Old They Showed

Pictures of the Old Devil Beast With A Forked Spear; i Dreamed

That Old Devil Beast Speared me Through the Throat; Yet

i had Enough Common Sense at 5 Years-Old to Understand

It was Just A Terrible Myth; Nothing More or Less Oh the

'Sheldon Cooper

Intelligence' hehe

at 5... i had only

Been Speaking a

Year; Yet let's just

Say With Hyperlexia

i Was pretty Good at

Decoding Symbols

Even at that

Age and

Still Creating

Them now

As well;

Hehe, You
See i am Just

'Singing to the Choir'

Here, There Are Very Few

Folks On the Wrong Planet Who

Believe in Such an Ignorant Story;

Yet As Research From Boston University

Once Found in this Same Political, Religious,
Philosophical Forum on the Wrong Planet only

26 Percent of the Folks Assessed Were Admitted Atheists;

And Many of the Folks Developed Their own Spiritual Ways of

Looking at Life; no Different than me and That very Intelligent

And Compassion Filled Dude, the Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr, Who

Managed to make

A God of Love

Real at Least

By Throwing Out

All the Chaff of that Horrible

Truly Overall Demonic Pagan Against

the Love of Nature Book; There are so many
Better Ways of Seeing Existential Intelligences and

The Younger Folks are leaving the Ignorance of the Past
Behind; Some Folks Just Can't Seem to Let go of that truly Evil Tradition....

Obviously, For the Most Part, Closed Minded Folks Who Are Less Open to New ideas....

In this Case Sadly, It's Like Being A Millstone At the Bottom of the Ocean of a Nicer Way of Love at the Surface

to

Break

Through

Yeah, A God

Who Doesn't Torture

the Less than Goody Two Shoes Forever...

Yet i guess a Cool Horror Story Bro Still for some

On Bended Knee; Just wondering if they will eventually
be slaughtered; Not just once, yet forever; one day people
are gonna be amazed there was ever a book like that folks actually believed in...

That Day

Is Already Here...

Where Every one

Gets to Write Their Own 'Book of Eli'...

And Do it too, if it pleases Their own Volition in Contemplating Creation Activity of Life...

'Whitman' Already Predicted it And The Form Folks Are Using Globally online is

'Blogs'... 'Bible Logs'...

And Indeed

They Are Starting

Very Young oh the

Beauty Of Love Freedom Still to Come...

In A Place Online Beyond Sun, And
Moon, And Stars; Beyond Space, Distance
Time, And Matter As the Spirit of Breath

LiveS on

Even After

Death As

Words Become
Living Souls... HeARTS SPiRiT Breath....

A Religion No Longer A Tribal Monarchy...
Onward Christians Soldiers No Longer Marching
to Kill.... Inflicting A Pandemic oF iGNorance... in Living Death...

Honestly, i Mostly Go to Church to Watch The Chaff Slowly Fall Away

i've Already Seen the Pain it Brings... How Close Homosexual Relatives

Whose Parents Where Convinced by Catholic Church That Their Behavior

Their Natural Way of Loving Was Evil How They Held A Gun Close to

Their Head As They Could't Live With Those Closest to them

Not Accepting Their

Natural Existence

As Is... It's True i Picture

That Still as i attend Church

Behind Shades As Surely Otherwise

my Eyes Would Burn A Hole in the Soul

of The Deacons Who Still Spewed Such Evil From the

Pulpit That at least i Was Successful Erasing From the Church
i Attended With an Email Just like this to the Priest Along with
Views That Dissed Single Mothers Not Worthy to Raise Children

As My Divorced

Mother Didn't

Do Me Any

Toxic Patriarchy

Divorced Single Mother Favors

Raising me into the Ignorant Trump
Voter my Father Become Long Before

Trump Came onto the Scene Prejudiced

Against those Not 'Chosen' The Same Way he was in Ignorance...

Yet, Nah, i Couldn't Convince the Church Leaders that Trump Wasn't

Such a Good Replacement For the Little Brown Dude From the Middle East...

Yet i noted

All the Evil

As i Watched From
A Distance in the
Back Pew Still
Covered With SHades in 'my Book'....

Now That Trump Has left the Room on the
'Wrong Planet' and the Nation, The Voices
of THAT Are Once Again Mostly in Hiding...

And There is at Least not as Much

Emboldened Ignorance coming

From the 'Front of the Church'...

Oh the Minions And Their

Despicable Leaders So Damned Predictable....

If it isn't Christianity, There Will Always Be

Another Form of CuLTuRE to Support That DarK Part of Human Nature...

Either in Broad Daylight or A 'Bates Motel' Somewhere in the Dark Distance...

Thing About the Folks Here on the 'Wrong Planet' Most of 'em Have already

Been Outcast

Enough from

'Normie

Ignorant

CuLTuRE'

To Speak Their Peace with no Fear..

i kinda like that; i don't care if it's Nice or Not...

And i Don't Care if anyone Ever Says Anything to me..

i Am Still That Quiet Child Putting All the Pieces of the Puzzle together...

Other than that

Women From

Other Countries in Loving Ways of Life

Freer Give me MORE THAN Enough Attention hehe...

Even some From This Country the Good Old USA at Least

the Younger More Educated ones Out of 'Biblical Gehenna'...

The Dudes

Not So Much...

i kinda have this
Gift Most Don't when
it comes to Women: A Soul...

It's Something A Person is Gardened with or not...

Toxic Patriarchy, Particularly in Old Stale Religious

Traditions, not so much... Sadly it's a

Source of much "Incelitism"

And Women Increasingly Are
Becoming Unchained From

Their Cattle Breed... What's Left

Over For Many of the Dudes; Yes,

A Religion of "Incelitism"...

Oh God There is

A Better Way, Hint:
"Love" And Yes More
Than 'Getting Some' Everyday...

Last Four Letter Word Hint of the Day: "Give"...

When Give Becomes Receive; Whole, Complete; Voila, All Is Enough Now...



https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312646016_Autism_and_Christianity_An_Ethnographic_Intervention

---

^^^

Fine. So answer this question: Where in the Bible is it written that a woman was ever put to death for not being a virgin? The law provided that option, but is there a record of any significant incident when it was actually carried out? Before you say that’s irrelevant, remember there are examples of punishments for other crimes that WERE actually carried out. Even Joseph had the RIGHT to put Mary to death for being pregnant with a baby that wasn’t his but preferred a course of action that spared her life. Even one of the prophets married a woman who ended up cheating on him and becoming pregnant by another man or other men. Rather than having her killed, he pushed for reconciliation and adopted her children as his own. God reserves the right always to destroy humanity for infidelity but prefers forgiveness and reconciliation to immediate destruction. Sodom did not become what it was overnight, nor was the flood a casual whim. Sodom was safe as long as Lot camped near it, and humanity was redeemed when Noah’s family was spared. The adulteress mentioned in the gospels—if she actually existed, there was nothing stopping her execution. So why didn’t her accusers go through with it? Because they were trying to trap Jesus. They had no actual intention of killing her, no actual interest in doing so. That should have been up to her husband, and it would have meant the life of the other man. Nobody actually wanted anybody to die. Over the course of so many hundreds or thousands of years since God handed the law to Moses, you can’t honestly say laws regarding virginity, fornication, and adultery were ever rigidly and senselessly enforced. Girls fell in love with men other than those they were arranged to marry. Or if there was no such arrangement, people fell in love or fooled around and things went too far. That doesn’t excuse immorality by any means, but it doesn’t mean wholesale slaughter for people who are in love and can’t wait to express it. Nor does it mean that a man couldn’t fall in love with a non-virgin and want her with him for the rest of his life. The only thing the law obligated her to was honesty. A simple “hey, before you sleep with me, there’s something you need to know...” would do it. The two women I slept with who weren’t virgins—I only had one question: “Are you clean?” They knew what that meant and their answer was good enough for me (no, I’m not perfect). I sincerely doubt men and women have truly fundamentally changed much since ancient times in terms of falling in love and giving in to their feelings for each other, especially when doing so by itself is not a bad thing. So please find me actual Biblical examples of widespread destruction of women, and I mean names and statistics, who didn’t bleed on their wedding night, else it is anti-Biblical bias and hatred towards Christians that is absurd.

The unbiblical belief that sexual pleasure is a sin is what’s absurd, and there have been pseudo-Christian sects that believed that. Given that the human body does react involuntarily to stimuli, even rape victims sometimes experience orgasm. Pleasure is intended in the act of sex, and there is no shame in enjoying it. For the purpose of Biblical theology, there is pleasure that glorifies God and pleasure that does not. But in principle there is nothing inherently wrong with sex, nor does virginity magically make someone as a person more valuable than others. This is true now and was also true in ancient times. In the present day, virginity seems more a mark of shame than not, and it makes me sad that a person’s self-worth is judged on one’s coital history.

You're very likely correct, though the exact identity of the religious authority who stuck that bit in there isn't relevent to the point I was making. Still, interesting that whoever assembled the scriptures got the authors mixed up, or just lied. I'm still waiting for the upgrade of the Bible that corrects all the known errors. I'm not even sure what the Old Testament is doing in there, for the most part.

One of the biggest absurdities of Christianity is the fundamental assumption that the Bible, which has been written, re-written, translated and re-translated countless times, is literal fact and unbiased truth.

Which version?

The Tanakh/Old Testament Canon wasn't fixed until after the death of Jesus (and Jews and Christians are still not in agreement over the order of chapters), the Catholic Canon wasn't fixed until the Council of Trent in 1546-1563, and in 1522 Martin Luther tried to to exclude the Epistle of James from the Protestant Canon.

... no wonder people eventually decided to settle religious discussions with cannons instead of canons.

See bolded text. Is that not itself an assumption? There are two main manuscript sources, one for Old Testament and one for New Testament, that are used as sources for nearly all available translations. There are manuscripts and early translations such as the Vulgate besides those two, but, aside from the Vulgate, they function more to add context to other manuscripts and clarify the intent of the writers. There's very little deviation among the earliest, best manuscripts.

Your point would make sense if the Masoretic Text had been translated into the Septuagint which was translated into the Vulgate which become the King James Version which was translated into German->French->Italian->Portuguese->Spanish->Swahili->Mandarin->etc., but that's not how it works. One exception has been The Message, which seems to me a King James version that got chopped and screwed into sermon fragments that got pasted back together in the KJV order. It's popular with certain congregations and preachers, but it gives me a headache trying to read it and you can see instances where the meaning of the text is changed completely. Personally, I really liked the HCSB when it first came out, and it was quickly replaced with the CSB. The main difference between the two is that the HCSB used the word Yahweh, which offended Jewish scholars because nobody actually knows what The Name is or how to pronounce it, not to mention ancient Hebrew law forbids saying The Name anyway. Someone gave me a copy of the ESV, which I've heard is a more accurate translation than CSB, but I haven't studied it yet. Ancient Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Aramaic were all highly idiomatic languages, as most languages tend to be, so exact, literal, word-for-word translations are not going to be easily understood by the average lay person. So sometimes equivalent words and phrases get substituted with footnotes added to alert the reader that changes have been made. One example of a phrase that remains a mystery is "Do not boil a baby goat in its mother's milk." Not even Hebrew scholars are entirely sure what it means, but regardless Jews traditionally do not mix any meat and dairy because of that passage. We can guess pretty much what was meant by most similar writings from context, but that's a rare example when context doesn't really give you much. In every translation I've ever read, that phrase is rendered almost identically. However, this is a matter of understanding dead languages that haven't been spoken in their Biblical form for thousands of years rather than corruptions of translation and retranslation. Ancient scrolls had strict usage rules and high standards for copying. The best modern translation are very open about passages that seem out of place or might have been a copying error. No such errors I know of exist when it comes to significant theological points.

The most glaring, unresolved error in the whole Bible has to do with a disagreement between the books of Kings and Chronicles on which king ruled when. Other issues are typically dealing with numbers of people involved at various events like battles. Some numbers are obviously rounded, sometimes military numbers denote military units of more/less indeterminate sizes, or there's the ancient equivalent of moving a decimal. The story of the adulteress is missing in the best Greek manuscripts, so the inclusion of that story is possibly a result of oral tradition meant to correct a known omission--from everything else written about Jesus, it was within His character to respond the way He did in that situation. But for the purpose of seeking truth and in the spirit of full disclosure, that particular passage is clearly marked in most translations to make readers aware that it's POSSIBLE that the encounter with the adulteress never happened. IIRC, I think back in the 1800's something like an entire chapter of the New Testament disappeared, and it was precisely because with new archaeological evidence it was determined that it was a later addition that never belonged there. And, of course, there's the debate between Catholics and Evangelicals about apocrypha. Even Catholics are fully aware what apocrypha are and why they're consider apocryphal: Not divinely inspired, lack of Hebrew or apostolic authorship. Catholics keep the apocrypha for the sake of tradition, such as prayers for the dead, and for other reasons. Protestants omit them as unnecessary. Both Catholics and Protestants actually AGREE that apocryphal writings are apocryphal.

The myth of translation/retranslation can be safely be put to rest. Claims of gross inaccuracy in the Bible lack significant evidence. Reliability of scripture never has been seriously challenged.

---

Hehe, i Don't Hate the Sinner;

Only The Ridiculous Ignorant

Nature of 'the Book'; The Law

Of Putting Non-Virgins to Death

On ItS Own is Proof the Total

Book is Overall Bull CR8P;

Truly Not Worthy

of Trash

in my

Opinion;

Manure Would

Fertilize Truth Better...

And In Actuality Manure

Makes Beautiful Roses;

That Book; Just Dam Ignorance, Overall...

The More i Read it, the More i See Hell in Pages...

Of Course

By The
Actions

That Continue
to Be Motivated by
it; A 3 Year-Old Child
Relates God in A Non-Sensical
Dance And Song of Joy Infinitely
Greater Than Any Word or Page of that

Book

Yes

Including

All 9.4 MiLLioN Words

Of Mine NoW in my own
Bible Poem For the Last 94

Months too; How do i 'KNoW';

i am Still That Child of God Nature
Free With ZERO FEAR in LOVING Dance Song FREE

And Hehe, i Surely See No Offense in Any Bodily Pleasures...

Not The Kind of Child Who Enjoys Diapers Sitting in my own Stuff too...

Meh, Once i Write/Art

Something It's No

Longer Worth 'Reading' to me...

Too Busy Dancing, Singing, Arting New to 'Read' the Past...

Key Is Keep Dancing Singing Different, "Don't Look Back"...

Great Suggestion By the Old Band 'Boston' my FRiEnD; Yet
Of Course Some Folks Get Stuck in the Millstone of Tradition...

Yet

Many

Children

Still Now Before

They Most Become

Pawns of 'the Game'

Do Play Free For Real Now...

A Solution is to Become Reborn
into Free Loving Fearless Play Now...

Meh; It Works For me, MaKinG
TiMeLess Heaven Within Real NoW..

---

Somewhere in the OT is a tale of someone who was killed when touching the Ark of the Covenant, grabbing it to stop it overbalancing. Said Ark would appear to have been some sort of high-voltage electricity conductor or machine with lethal potency if handled incorrectly.

I try to avoid all but the Authorised King James version myself, simply because I prefer the literary style to all those later editions, it's an aesthetics thing. If I'd done better with Latin in school I'd probably prefer the Latin version. But I didn't see anything but the KJV when I was at school, till rather later on. I know they tell us they worked hard to correct the mistakes, but if it was translated by believers then there'd still be a bias problem.

If there's any truth in the Jesus story, his doctrine was revolutionary, and revolutions don't usually keep the previous stuff. If the UK had a communist revolution I wouldn't expect them to bundle Friedman with Marx. Similarly the OT and NT make strange bedfellows these days, the one being broadly into hate and the other love. It would make a neat resolution to the problem of the Jews and Christians disagreeing on the OT, if the Christians just dropped the OT completely and they just had the one testament each.

Somebody criticised the Christians for seeing scripture as perfect and literal truth, but a lot of Christians don't. Naturally I'm much more comfortable with allegorical.

Well to some it is nothing, but to me it is a big deal...I didn't stop being a Christian for no reason. It was specifically a lot about the treatment of women in the bible that was a big part of why I came to reject the religion.

A friend of mine remained (sort of) Christian but she always referred to God as "Godess," and generally chose the elements of Christianity she agreed with and ignored the rest. She said it didn't go down well with most Christians she knew, who usually don't approve of that kind of independent thinking, and insist it's got to be about taking up the opinions of a spiritual authority. I don't understand how anybody could even be able to let others do their thinking for them like that, let alone want them to.

Nope, it still is irrelevant. Stories in the Bible of laws being enforced and punishments carried out typically fall within the context of the story of an important figure like a king or prophet. There is no reason why every mundane occurrence of an enforcement of Biblical law should be recorded in the Bible. The vast majority of instances of enforcing laws and penalties in all historical societies were likely never documented, and the vast majority of documentations likely have not survived to modern times. So an absence of a specific biblical record of these penalties occurring is not evidence that they did not occur. Furthermore, that the laws exist at all, regardless of whether or not they are ever implemented or not, is abhorrent. That they exist means that the authors of the Bible intended for them to be enforced.

In the examples you cite, it was humans, not God, who chose to show mercy by not enforcing biblical penalties. Arguing that the Bible somehow deserves credit for people choosing not to do what it specifically instructs them to do is absurd. And that God waited for his favorites pets, Noah and Lot, to get out of the path of danger before committing genocide does not absolve him of murdering thousands of people. So what if the flood was not on a whim? Does being a pre-meditated genocide somehow make it acceptable? I suppose that you're going to try to argue that every single man, woman, and child in an entire civilization or multiple civilizations in the case of the flood, somehow all deserved what was done to them.

While honesty is always important, given that the circumstances are ideal for it, that still hardly justifies a death sentence for lying. The punishment is grossly disproportional to the crime in this instance. Additionally, the context here is that of a culture where not being a virgin resulted in extreme consequences for unmarried women. No reasonable person can blame a woman for lying about her virginity under such circumstances. Your personal anecdotes have no bearing on the commandments of the Bible. Keep in mind that this is a discussion about the morality of the Bible, not your personal character. How you chose to interact with your sexual partners has no bearing on the contents of the Bible. And those women who were honest with you about their virginity or lack thereof were not living in Biblical times and did not face the same consequences women did in those times.





So now you're playing the "No True Scotsman" card. Your personal interpretation of the Bible is no more objectively the "true" interpretation than anyone else's. There is no way you can demonstrate that you alone understand the true intentions of the Bible's authors.



The Bible is demonstrably factually incorrect about many things. Citing evidence from outside of the Bible has no bearing on it contents.



What does and does not glorify the biblical god are arbitrary fictions.



In reality, yes. But not so much in the Bible.



I agree. But that goes both ways. Christians have always wanted to treat women as if losing their virginity made them less valuable, judging them according to their coital history.

Do you honestly believe that countless generations of kings, scholars, theologians, and so-called prophets over thousands of years all failed to correctly understand the Bible, until you came along and was the first person to get it right?! Your problem is that you're starting out by emotionally deciding what you want your conclusion to be, and then working backwards to force the facts to fit that presupposed conclusion. Critical analysis shows that the Bible is objectively barbaric and immoral. There is no anti-Bible bias here. It's just fact.

All Christians cherry-pick the elements of Christianity they like and ignore what they don't. Including AngelRho. In fact, that's exactly what he's doing in this very thread.