Raf

The show is currently on the air. Its title characters do not speak. I thought those two fact alone would have done it. I'll add: It's fiction. So far. (And we ALL hope it stays that way).

Well, there are whoremongers in the Bible. Interesting in English: The word "whore" does nothing to judge the man, but the word "whoremonger" judges not only the man, but also the woman he beds. I wonder if that's the same in Greek or Hebrew.

Hold on! You're forgetting about love! The REALITY is that benevolent slave owners acting in love while holding wives and children hostage unless their recently freed slaves agree to have auls driven through their ears to signify they are "volunteering" to be slaves for life, and who demonstrate their adherence to the First and Great commandment of loving God by keeping His commandments by tithing, stoning to death homosexuals, stoning to death non-virgin women, and stoning to death mouthy kids while avoiding pork, shellfish, and milk with their meat are the most virtuous people on the planet.

Apparently he'll only do that if you lie to the Man of God about how much money you have to put in the cornucopia or if your entire city is on fire and you succumb to the perfectly normal human impulse to look back. Picking up sticks on a Friday night does not rise to that level of evil. For that, we need a slower, more painful death inflicted by the people acting on Yahweh's direct order, which is ok, because He is the potter and we're just clay.

To sit there and justify a capricious death penalty because God can kill whoever the pluck he wants because we're mere pottery, then accuse ME of retaining a cult mindset. Gall. That said, while I PASSIONATELY disagree with TnO's arguments and conclusions, he is assuredly on topic. Unmistakably. It needs to be said because there is a continuing FALSE accusation that I declare posts off topic when they don't agree with me.

I just can't. There is SO MUCH morally wrong with this. Where to start? Do you realize you just justified ISIS? I mean, can't you see that? We are human beings, not some potter's clay! I thought atheists were the ones who didn't value human life. Now to exonerate Allah... excuse me, to exonerate Yahweh, you HAVE TO DEVALUE HUMANS! We're pottery. We're robots. Is that what Yahweh thinks of you? And you worship that? Yeah, that's morally repugnant.

Laws are not laws. Facts are opinions. Slaves are not slaves... TnO, the first words of mine you quoted were "This is pointless." You went on to demonstrate it. Since neither of us will change the other's mind, I will not go on to address your points. I apologize if it seems rude, but I can't argue with someone who reads a law and says it's not a law, who reads that you can beat your slave as long as you don't maim him because the slave is your property and concludes the slave is not your property and you can't beat him, etc. You keep accusing me of employing straw man fallacy, then you go on to validate my predictions. It's hilarious. "If all this was really about Raf's description of Yahweh, you should have said so at the beginning. I don't think anyone would have disagreed. Sure, we're all more moral than YOUR description of Yahweh." This is the guy accusing ME of strawman, ladies and gentlemen. Won't admit that I'm describing Yahweh straight out of the Bible. Has to make it about me. Transparent. A verse that talks about allowing escaped slaves to live within your gates is addressed to a class of people, not to individuals. Scholar after scholar, THE VERY SAME SOURCES I'M BEING ASKED TO TRUST REGARDING THE CULTURE OF THE TIME, agree that the verse in question is discussing foreign slaves escaping into Israel and not Hebrew slaves who escape from Hebrew masters. http://biblehub.com/commentaries/deuteronomy/23-15.htm An inconvenient truth, to borrow a phrase. To be blunt, I think you've proved my point better than I ever could. Why argue? Feel free to continue posting.

"I'm a prosecutor. I'm part of the business of accusing, judging and punishing. I explore the evidence of a crime and determine who is charged, who is brought to this room to be tried before his peers. I present my evidence to the jury and they deliberate upon it. They must determine what really happened. If they cannot, we will not know whether the accused deserves to be freed or should be punished. If they cannot find the truth, what is our hope of justice?"

No proper names.

"Hedge of protection" works if we're talking about "don't be sexually promiscuous or I will give you an STD." It's the promiscuity that brings the STD, not the person making the threat. "Don't be sexually promiscuous or I will order the people to stone you with stones until you die" is NOT a "hedge of protection" issue.

Fine, I'll do it. There's a common word for the title characters of this series. That word has not been uttered a single time in the six seasons the show has been on the air. Other words are used, the most common of which is used in another tense in the title. We could ask the title characters how they would like to be referred to, but they don't speak, so that doesn't really do us any good.

If the God is invented by the man to validate his own practices, the answer becomes clear. Same reason the Anglican God allowed divorce. Because Henry VIII wanted to be able to divorce. That simple. We keep looking for complicated answers when the simplicity is staring us in the face. Why does God come off as such a scientifically ignorant morally unacceptable intolerant, jealous horrifyingly violent monster? Simple. The MEN who concocted him, though they didn't stand out in their time, would today be treated as sociopaths. Look at Victor Barnard. Would he stand out among the 12 tribes? Hardly. But today he stands out. That's why "it was another time" loses this argument. It admits the culture created the God and not the other way around.

But he's not, Tzaia. He's really not.

Darned curious to know what's God got against dwarfs.

I was saving the crushed testicles for later

It occurred to me later that this observation loses its punch when you recognize God as the One who set it up that way. God could very easily have devised a way for a man to prove he is a virgin on his wedding night, especially if virginity is SO important that it's worth executing a woman over.

Well to Yahweh, of course. God first. First and great commandment. If you love him, you will keep his commandments. Love your neighbor as yourself? Secondary.

But in love...

Keeping money from the Man of God is a greater sin than raping an unbetrothed woman? The former sin gets instant death penalty. The latter, a wedding to the raped woman.

why does he kill two people on the spot for withholding money from the church, yet he cannot stop a pedophile priest?

The sleepy part of Iron Man 3 ?

Without delving into the notion that these might be maximum penalties rather than mandatory ones (and I think WW will agree that the language is assuredly mandatory -- you SHALL stone her with stones), the issue remains simple: Under what circumstances is the maximum penalty justifiable? Please note that in Numbers, a man WAS stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath. Yahweh's direct order. No lenient sentence for a first offense. Stone him! With stones. Until he dies. And they DID! Not "they could have." They did. How, in ANY culture, is that moral? How can any moral person consider that law and that punishment, directly ordered by (as I call him) Yahweh himself, and still say "I don't have a problem with the law"? You don't? You don't have a problem with ordering a rapist to pay a 50-sheckel fine to the father of the woman he violated, and to marry the woman? You don't have a problem with holding a man's wife and son hostage unless the man agrees to be your slave for life? You don't have a problem with stoning a non virgin woman to death if there's not enough blood on the bedsheets when her husband sleeps with her the first time? You don't have a problem with ending a man's life violently for the victimless crime of sabbath breaking? You don't have a problem with any of these things... but you DO have a problem with selling animals for sacrifice at the temple... let's discuss THAT instead? Really? Because I don't believe you.

We have been over this. This thread is NOT a survey of the Mosaic Law. It is not about whether anyone ever followed or applied it. You are not welcome to discuss any subject you want so long as you tie it to the Law. You ARE off topic. You are being asked to stop and you are refusing to do so. This ends NOW. It is not about whether you agree with me or not. It is about staying on topic, which you openly refuse to do. This. ends. Now.

You're half right. ;) It's Cobra