Raf

Cisco Kid? impossible. Keep dreaming.

Well then. You're gonna have trouble figuring the rest out, aren't you. Terrible, terrible trouble.

I found that if I followed through on what the Bible says about God, the concrete things, not just the feel-good-isms, follow them through to their logical conclusions, and you end up with moral questions whose answers range from unsatisfying to genuinely frightening. Scarcely a comforting answer in the bunch, when you carry it through to its logical conclusion. Most of us never ask the questions. We're taught that merely entertaining the questions makes you evil and immoral. But how much more immoral can you be than someone who will kill you to death for picking up sticks on a Friday night and thinks the victim of a rape is the woman's father or husband?

But what you describe isn't questioning God because it denies him outright. Not a comforting or satisfying approach for the average Christian, no? Or have I misinterpreted you? I don't think I'm smarter or more moral than God, by virtue of the fact that I don't believe He exists. But if you were to take the premise that He exists for granted, as well as the premise that the Bible accurately reflects his character, then I believe you have to conclude that his moral standards are lower than yours. He's capricious. His application of justice is arbitrary. He's vindictive as hell. Wierwille had to retcon the entire Old Testament just to absolve Him of the moral atrocities attributed to Him. But it doesn't fit. If you kept Yahweh's attributes intact and changed his name to Allah, we would not be debating these things. The defensive walls go up for the God we worship, and him alone.

Does it? How? (I assume your reason for saying this is on-topic. Just trying to draw it out).

Nah. Scarface

Don Diego de la Vega, si ju muss no.

You're welcome

Wait, no. Don Diego

A guess: Captain Bligh

Well, one thing I hate about this game is when one person knows the one title, the other person knows the second, but neither knows both. Maybe George can figure it out from here. If not, I'll have to come up with nine other things.

Does the answer only work phonetically?

S.O.B.

Sure.

Ha!

Here's my question: do you agree that it is morally impossible to free a man without also freeing that man's wife and son, and to permit that man to reunite with his wife and son only if that man agrees to be your slave for life, all while simultaneously being loving? Because if you don't, congratulations. Look right into the camera and say "I am NOT more moral than Yahweh (or AS moral as any decent person in the 21st Century)." It's easy to concede the Bible SAYS to love God in the law, and to love your neighbor. The challenge is in recognizing that the laws regulating ebeddery instead of abolishing it are presented as consistent with loving God and loving your neighbor. If you're consistent, you HAVE to say it's possible to lovingly buy own beat barter bang and sell your ebed. But it's not. Your moral standards are higher than the standards presented in the Law of Yahweh. That's why you have to come up with a week and a half of preamble before announcing that you're finally going to directly address the subject (and I'll bet dollars to donuts we're still not going to see a direct discussion for at least another week). But please. Prove me wrong.

Do I agree that the Bible says what it actually says? Um. Let me retire to consider that question. I'll get back to you. For pete's sake will you just get to the point already instead of asking patronizing questions?

Edge of Tomorrow Tom Cruise Oblivion

For the record, no I won't. The only thing I'll come away thinking is, at most, that I won or lost a debate, which is nowhere near the same thing as being proved right or wrong.

Why on earth would you issue a blanket refusal to criticize the NBD? Did someone declare it God-breathed while I wasn't looking? I don't think it is criticizing that publication to say that it is biased in favor of trinitarianism. I think that is an openly acknowledged fact. I suspect they would be offended if you tried to portray them as being open to the idea that the Trinity is incorrect.

This is getting tired. Mark, you can agree with TnO's posts all you want, but so far, by his own admission, he's not done making his point. He's saying God is love. That's wonderful. But how do you reconcile a loving God with some flat out evil laws? Because telling a man "Bye, thanks for all your hard work. Your wife and kid are staying with me because they're mine, but you can have them back if you'll be my slave for life" is pretty evil, wouldn't you agree? I mean, if this were the Koran, would we be having this discussion? TnO has not made a single point that directly addresses the verses I raised. He will, I'm sure. After a word from our sponsor, these short messages, and who knows what else. You have accused me twice now of changing the subject. I have not changed the subject. I have allowed the subject to go on a tangent based on a claim that YOU made that I refuted. Your assertion that I've changed the subject is FALSE. You need to stop repeating false assertions. I'm sure you think I'm trying to divide people, but you can't demonstrate it because it's not true. I am not trying to get you to reject the NBD based on their support of the Trinity. I am trying to get you to admit you were wrong to call NBD unbiased, and that's it. I'm not trying to get you to say they were wrong. I'm not trying to get you to say they're a bunch of idolaters. I'm not trying to get you to say they are poopyheads. I'm not trying to get you to say you've forgotten more about the Bible than they'll ever know. All I'm trying to get you to SEE is that when you called the NBD unbiased, You. Were. Mistaken. That's it. And on MORE than one occasion, I tried to bring the subject of their bias BACK to the discussion at hand, which is that they are also biased when it comes to the morality of the Old Testament God when it comes to slavery. They're no more "unbiased" than you or I. Where, in their article on slavery, is the discussion about wives and sons being held back by the owner who lets a male slave go free. That's Bible, which I quoted, not commentary, which you quoted (isn't that supposed to be the other way around? Why am I the only one quoting scripture on slavery?) Your last two sentences are non-sequiturs. You cannot say God's support for slavery was okay because Jesus saved us. Of course, you can feel free to disagree with me on that. But you'd be wrong. Please stop arguing ABOUT me. It's much more profitable to your position when you argue WITH me. Arguing ABOUT me makes you look insecure.

That is a personal attack and not a refutation of anything I've written. If you do not wish to argue FOR your position or AGAINST mine, no one is forcing you. But slandering me and making false accusations about my motives will be immediately reported. If you can't refute me, then agree with me or sit there and stew. For the record, when it comes to the Bible, I am only here to do exactly what you're doing: Share what I've come to learn and believe in the hopes that you will at least understand me and at best come to agree with me. This forum is a place of discussion, and up until that last post, you were on topic. I even learned from our previous exchange and tried to be a bit more flexible when it comes to determining whether a tangential discussion has strayed too far to still be on topic. This is gibberish. The subject I started was Are You More Moral Than Yahweh. You cited an article in NBD that supports your on-topic position. You called that the NBD unbiased. I challenged you on that, citing an example. You challenged THAT and cited another one. Instead of declaring YOU off topic, I engaged, not crossing a single line in terms of the GSC rules. How that translates to me "finding some doctrines that are not taught the same way that other people teach..." Dude, you're babbling. That doesn't even mean anything. I think anyone reading this can see that I've directly refuted points you've made, and you've responded with a cute little temper tantrum, which is no substitute for a reasoned argument.

Seriously? You think the writer of that article does not believe Jesus is God? Or that he meant something else by "The Bible thus presents Christ as altogether God..."? REALLY? You're wrong. And I personally think it's hilarious that you accuse me of reading the item out of context, promise to provide the "accurate quote", and then quote the exact same thing I quoted. CHUTZPAH! Then for you to impose YOUR anti-trinitarian bias onto the work of an obviously Trinitarian Nelson writer is extraordinary. You can't even admit that the writer of that entry believes Jesus is God? You can't admit that he means to say exactly that? The section on the Person of Christ contains numerous subheadings: The Son of Man (because the writer believes the Bible teaches Jesus is the Son of Man); The Messiah (because the writer believes the Bible teaches Jesus is the Messiah); The Son of God (because the writer believes the Bible teaches Jesus is the Son of God); Word and Wisdom (because the writer believes the Bible teaches Jesus is the word and wisdom of God); The Holy One of God (because the writer believes the Bible teaches Jesus is the Holy One of God); The Lord (because the writer believes the Bible teaches Jesus is The Lord); and God (because the writer believes the Bible teaches Jesus is God). Oh, but he's not saying Jesus is God. Are you kidding me? Why can't you admit that the writer of that article is a Trinitarian who is biased in favor of the Trinitarian viewpoint? Indeed, it would be shocking if that were not the case. Just like it would be shocking (returning to topic) if an article on slavery in the Nelson Bible Dictionary would actually take God to task for His failure to condemn the immoral practice. Why is this difficult?

They are indeed.

Returning to topic: I've already dealt with the second sentence in that quote from Nelson's Absotively Unbiased (Except In Articles That Disagree With Me) Bible Dictionary . I'd now like to look again, briefly, at the first. It's hard to tell what the writer of this article is actually trying to say here. Whatever it is, it is morally unacceptable. Is he saying the God couldn't be bothered to abolish slavery because everyone was doing it? I mean, was it God's practice to allow moral abominations so long as enough people practiced them? Isn't it the point of the law to stop people from doing immoral things that they would do if it wasn't forbidden? There's a law against boiling a goat in its mothers milk. Not only is that a law, it's one of the Ten Commandments! (Only one set of commandments is actually referred to in the Bible as THE TEN Commandments, and the law against boiling a baby goat in its mother's milk is actually one of them. Check it out. Exodus 34. It's a hoot). Must have been easy to make a law forbidding the boiling of a goat in its mother's milk. I guess Israel's heart wasn't as committed to the practice of boiling a goat in its mother's milk as it was to the practice of owning people and holding their wives and children hostage. "Since slave practices were part of the culture in biblical times, the Bible contains no direct call to abolish slavery." Shouldn't that read, "Since slave practices were part of the culture in biblical times, the Bible contains repeated direct calls to abolish slavery"? Isn't that what you would expect from the author of absolute, objective morality? "Since slave practices were part of the culture in biblical times, the Bible contains no direct call to abolish slavery." Isn't God's existence the basis for objective, absolute morality, as opposed to cultural relativism? Why appeal to cultural relativism to explain one of His apparent moral failures? Etc.