Why was it ever ok to take virgins as trophies and kill helpless civilians (including women and children) in war? Why was it ever ok to kill children for being disobedient? We can all agree that these things are timelessly immoral, can we not?
I'm having trouble finding where God told the Israelites that it was okay to do these things, though I'm pretty sure they did those things. All except for the one about stoning disobedient children. I'm familiar with that one. Atheists bring that one up a lot.
Morality is not universal. There are some things all cultures agree on, but there are a lot of differences.
In today's society, children are nurtured and protected. Nowadays there are even doubts about the usefulness of corporal punishment. It's common belief that it does not work so well in America, but it may work better in places like China, where culture puts more emphasis on respect for elders.
In the time when stoning children was legal, it probably did have some positive consequences. First of all, parents are not typically quick to kill their children, no matter how many times they may say they want to. I doubt the law was taken advantage of too often. But knowing that death was a possible outcome probably would have had an effect on their children's behavior.
But again, this was before Jesus. God takes sin very seriously, and one of the Ten Commandments is to respect one's parents.
As for war, women and children were not considered to be off limits. If you had an enemy, you'd destroy them completely and not give them a chance to recover.
They probably didn't view their taking of the virgins as an act of cruelty, but as an act of mercy. I'm not entirely sure how these women were treated (the Israelites were less than godly), but they were allowed to survive.
You can't seriously believe that carnivores were vegetarians in the garden? Then again, you apparently believe in a literal garden so I guess it's not that much of a stretch. Have you considered the possibility of a figurative garden? (The evidence doesn't point to the human race starting out from a single couple 6,000 years ago)
Actually, I have considered that. But I still refer to it as if it were literal. It doesn't matter to me much whether it's literal or not.
When I read the story of Creation, I look at the important points. I don't think it was meant to tell history, but to explain certain things.
For one, it tells us that God created the universe alone, unlike the pagan gods who were less powerful. God took what was disorderly, and He gave it form. Sin then entered the world, bringing distance between God and people, causing the world to become chaotic.
I don't like the idea that we evolved from lesser animals, however. That's something I can't believe.
And I don't think it's beyond God's power to change a vegetarian animal into a carnivorous one (they wouldn't be considered carnivorous until
after the Fall, not before it).
I'm still having trouble seeing why, despite all of this, God condoned and even ordered killing sprees. It's one thing for them to wage war, but it goes to a completely new level when God sanctions the death of civilians and the raping of women.
When did God order the raping of women? I remember a prophecy that such a thing would happen to the Israelites when he sends their enemies to punish them, but I don't recall God telling them to go out and rape the women of their enemies.
You can say that all you want, but the thousands of fractures in denominations attest to the ambiguity of the Bible. You guys need to get your story straight. It's so easy to say "hey, just read the Bible! It's self explanatory!" But how many denominations claim to be sola scriptura? Even they don't agree!
When there was the big debate over slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War, there were preachers on both sides saying "just read the Bible, you'll see I'm right".
The ambiguity comes from our lack of understanding the Bible, and our own personal bias towards it.
Most of the denominations I'm familiar with will cherry pick the Bible. The United Pentecostals are the worst, in my opinion. They believe that we should baptize only in Jesus name, and that it's wrong to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is completely contrary to the commandment at the end of Matthew, telling people to baptize by those three names.
They also say that you have to be able to speak in tongues to have the Holy Spirit and be saved. But this is also contrary to what the Bible actually says about speaking in tongues. Not only do not not follow the instructions wrong, they miss the part where Paul describes the gift of speaking in tongues as a lesser gift, not so important. It's more useful to the individual than the church as a whole.
Pentecostals will speak in tongues in front of the whole church (and I'm sure 99.99999% of them are faking it), with no one to interpret for them. The crowds, likewise will wail their meaningless words. But Paul instructed the church that only two, or three at the most, should speak in tongues at a meeting, and
only if there is someone present who has the gift to interpret tongues. Otherwise, it's just useless babbling.
Some churches preach free will, and ignore the verses which plainly state that God selects
us before we were born, and even use a form of the word predestination in the passage.
You would probably bring up the fact that Paul said that women should remain quiet in their meetings. I believe that this was more of a culture-specific rule. Women were not educated then, and they were not considered equal members of the society. The men would have found it insulting if the women were allowed too much authority.
Things have changed since then, though many still believe that a preacher's role is still meant for a man, and that the father of the family is supposed to be the spiritual head and leader of the house. It's not considered a difference in value, but of responsibilities.
I've also heard that some denominations think that it's wrong to sing and dance. This I find to be absolutely absurd, considering how many times the Bible tells us to sing and dance.
I'm not sure how many other ways we disagree. Most of the differences come in when we try to push our own personal agendas, or create our own rules.
Prior to Christianity and Islam, Judaism was just like any other religion. Sure, the Greeks and pre-Christian Rome did some oppressing, but that's not what anybody talks about when they discuss oppression of Jews (and no, the Egypt/Exodus story doesn't count). What they're talking about is:
1) Oppression during the Middle Ages
2) Inquisition
3) The Holocaust
ALL THREE of those were religiously motivated. Martin Luther, the father of protestantism, penned an antisemetic tract (On the Jews and Their Lies), years after the Catholics had already spent a jolly time beating the Jews to a pulp. Face the fact that Christians have been doing some terrible things to Jews for a very long time. This oppression would not have existed if Christians weren't there. Sure, the Jews could have been oppressed in different ways if Christianity never existed, but is that really a good enough justification for the horrors inflicted upon them in the name of Christ? Can you think of any other reason, other than the doctrine of deicide, that would have inspired those people to oppress the Jews?
If these "Christians" knew scripture better, or cared to know it, they would have known better. Jesus never condemned the Jews, and neither did any of the disciples. When Jesus was on the cross, He begged God, the Father, to forgive them. The Bible does not say that the Jews are no longer the people of God, but that God started reaching outward to the gentiles,
in addition to the Jews. The Jews still have the covenant that God made with them.
There is no Biblical justification for what they did. It was their own stupidity and hatred that drove them to violence.
The Jews did not kill Jesus. The Romans killed Jesus. And Jesus' ministry was not all that convincing -- he was one of many who claimed at that time to be the messiah; he was hardly unique, and the bulk of the Judaic population in Palestine (and elsewhere) ignored him totally. It was among the Gentiles that Christianity found a fertile place to grow.
The Jewish leadership was merely the middle-man for Roman governance; all that Rome wanted was the people quiet, and the tax rolls undisturbed. The natives, the Hebrew people, did not have the power to execute under Roman lawL, which is why he was brought before Pilate, and crucified (a purely Roman form of execution), along with many, many other Jewish men. On the other hand, as the Prefect of Judea, Pilate could, and did, execute summarily. Even Roman citizens.
The whitewash that went on the gospels, portraying Pilate as going along with the crowd but not wanting to sentence Jesus to death, is incredibly improbable based on what we do know of him: he crucified significant portions of Hebrew men, lining the road to Jerusalem with their corpses; he massacred Jewish civilians on multiple occasions, and he was eventually recalled to Rome, to answer personally to Tiberius for his actions -- the most important one, being too hard on the people and so interfering with tax collection. He was just lucky that the emperor was dead by the time that he arrived.
Why is this stuff in the Gospels? Easy answer. Early Christianity had one major competitor, Judaism, and the Roman Empire was the greatest power in the world -- no sense antagonizing them, especially when you want to spread your religion across its territory. The early church fathers, referring to the hatred and persecution of Christians by the Jews, has no basis in historical fact. They were simply used as a scapegoat, as competitors often do with each other. The Romans definitely did not want any other religions in palestine, other than Judaism and their own cults; Christianity, as an upstart, young religion, would not (and was not) even considered in this determination.
So everytime somebody says, "the Jews killed Jesus" ask them why a Roman Prefect, in a Roman court, in a Roman-occupied country, executed him using an exclusively Roman method of execution.
Jesus ministry was
very convincing. Yes, there were many fakers back then, but their following thinned out pretty quickly. When Jesus traveled, he had several hundreds of people following Him around, eager to listen to Him speak, and even more eager to see Him perform miracles.
The reason why the gentiles were more open to His message was that they found Him less threatening. A prophet is least welcome in his own hometown, as Jesus put it.
The others who claimed to be messiah did not follow the OT prophecies which predicted many of the events which would surround Him, including the traitor who would betray Him for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12), or that he enter into the temple (it was destroyed, as Jesus also predicted, soon after), or that he would be born of a virgin (a common objection is that it could also be translated to mean "young girl," but in this society, a young girl was usually a virgin, and there's nothing special about a married girl getting pregnant).
There were some very specific qualifications this Messiah had to meet, and Jesus satisfied every one of them.
I am aware that the Jews did not have any power. They wanted Him dead, and they rejected Him, and they choose a real criminal's life over His.
I'm not really sure why Pilate didn't want to kill Jesus, but he and the Romans were not portrayed in a positive light. Christians were basically told not to stir up trouble with them, in order to make their lives easier, but they knew the kinds of horrible things the Romans were capable of and hated them for it.
The Roman emperor was Jesus very first obstacle. As soon as he heard about Jesus, he had the intention of killing him. When he couldn't find him, he ordered every male child in the town of Bethlehem under the age of two to be slaughtered.
I actually found that they portrayed Pilate as sort of a coward, who wanted to diffuse the responsibility off of himself. Perhaps he was intimidated by the extreme reaction of the mob. I don't know much about Pilate aside from what the Bible says, and a few things I've heard about his background. (Unless I'm mistaken, he got to be where he was though his corrupt business, selling pure white sheep at a high price to the Jews, after having ruined the one's they had brought with them. The Jews needed pure white sheep to make sacrifices.)
