Raf

So. Umm. Do we agree that executing a man for picking up sticks on the sabbath is immoral?

Gotcha.

5. You own two slaves, a man and a woman. You decide to give the woman to the man. They have two sons. After six years, the man is supposed to go free. But you still own the woman and the two sons. What do you do? A. Set the man free, but keep the woman and boys. They are your property, after all. B. Give the man a chance to stay with his wife and sons by committing to be your slave for life. C. Set the sons free, because they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, including liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Keep the wife because she's a good cook and can work a plow, if you know what I mean wink wink. D. You effing own effing slaves? What the eff are you effing doing owning effing slaves?

Please elaborate on what you mean by "finite criteria." If I think Halle Berry is more attractive than Rosanne Barr, does that mean I'm holding them both to a "finite criteria"?

New question. Why does the Old Testament contain some laws and punishments that are barbaric by today's higher moral standards? A. Who said today's moral standards are higher? God is the standard of morality. His law is holy just and good. We should get back to it. Start stoning some heathens and Sabbath breakers. Rape my daughter? pay me 50 shekels and marry her and we'll call it even. B. God gave Israel barbaric laws in Exodus - Deuteronomy in response to Israel's demand for a king hundreds of years later. C. The laws were not given by God but concocted by a society that was no more morally advanced than other societies of the time.

MOD EDIT: off topic content deleted. According to the Bible, God instituted these barbaric laws. Stop trying to pass the responsibility for their barbaric immorality to the Israelites. Israel RECEIVED the law. Israel didn't concoct it. At least, not unless the Bible is false. If the Bible is false, then Israel, not God, is responsible for the barbaric nature of the Old Testament law. What a concept.

Are you reading your own posts? "All I am doing now is a short evaluation of God's Laws. However, if you want to actually read a bible you might see that God did not have strict laws when he started the nation of Israel. Instead they originally had a system of judges. It was only after the demand of the people of the nation that a King was set-up with the people wanting to copy other cultures and this would of course include some of the strict laws of death." Those be your words. And they be ridiculous. The law preceded the kings by GENERATIONS. MOD EDIT: off topic content deleted

Well, shucks, I'm sorry, but you're kind of sort of wrong. You see, the issue is NOT whether the barbaric law prescribed by God was ever carried out. The issue is whether the barbaric law was prescribed by God. The question is GOD'S morality, not ancient Israel's. Or modern Israel's. Or first century Israel's. The sick thing is that the laws are patently immoral and yet presented to us as though they are God's Word. If these laws are God's Word, then God's Word is immoral, and if God's Word is immoral, God is immoral. It makes not one whit of difference if no one ever carried it out. In fact, if it was never carried out, it goes down in Israel's ledger as a positive achievement. Mark, being patronizing doesn't become you, especially when you're so demonstrably flipping WRONG about the point you're making. "God did not have strict laws when he started the nation of Israel. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Every law I have cited is from the Pentateuch, which LONG precedes the reigns of the judges and the kings. That law that prescribes death by stoning for the crime of picking up sticks on the sabbath? That's in Numbers. That's a little bit before Judges. I cited three strict capital offenses in recent posts, just for kicks. NOT ONE of them fits your description of being "only after the demand of the people of the nation that a King was set-up with the people wanting to copy other cultures and this would of course include some of the strict laws of death."

If you disagree that exercising freedom of religion should be punishable by death by stoning, you are more moral than Yahweh. If you disagree with killing an entire town, men, women, children, and pets, because someone in that town -- or, hell, the entire town -- converted to a different religion, you are more moral than Yahweh.

If you disagree with stoning children to death for being disobedient, you are more moral than Yahweh.

I'm just curious -- why are you spending more time attacking me than you are defending your God? By not challenging the premises of my argument, are you conceding that God was responsible for ALL the Old Testament laws (the good, the bad, and the utterly barbaric)?

If God shows through one part of the law that He is not moral (say, prescribing the death penalty in a barbaric manner for a petty offense), but shows through another part of the law that He is capable of establishing a compassionate microeconomic policy, does that make Him moral? I would expect YOU to be able to come up with a compassionate microeconomic policy WITHOUT prescribing the death penalty for a petty offense. That makes you more moral than God, which is the topic of this thread. Mod edit: off topic content deleted.

The topic of this thread, again, is "Are You More Moral than Yahweh? (Spoiler alert: the answer is Yes)." 1. For how many crimes do you feel it is appropriate to kill the perpetrator by having everyone in town surround him and throw heavy rocks at him until he dies? 1.a. Did a child being disobedient to his parents make the list? 1.b. Did picking up sticks after sunset on a Friday make the list? 2. If you were to start a society from scratch, how many laws regulating slavery would you require? 2.a. Would any of those laws crack your Top Ten list? 2.a.i. Why the hell not? 3. What difference should the marital status of a raped woman make in determining the punishment meted out to the rapist? 3a. Who is the victim in a rape case, and how much restitution is he due? 4. You have the ability to instantaneously kill someone by turning him into a pillar of salt. On whom do you demonstrate this ability? A. A couple in the process of fatally torturing their 3-year-old son. B. A modern day pedophile. C. Cain, a split second before he makes Abel the first murder victim. D. A woman fleeing her burning home who takes a look back to watch everything she knows going up in flames. E. Hitler. F. No one. You demonstrate this horrifying ability on no one. Incorrect. I am saying outright that Yahweh is not moral. "Implying" implies that I'm holding back in some way. I am not. Yahweh is immoral. Have a look at question 4 above for an answer to your question.

All Summer Long ?

Dispensationalism is a valiant attempt to put some distance between the patently immoral Law of God recorded in the Old Testament and our modern sensibilities, which have a bit more in common with the New Testament (not withstanding Jesus's wholehearted endorsement of the Old Testament law). Dispensationalism raises many fascinating issues, but I would submit none of those issues have any bearing on the points I am raising.

4. You have the ability to instantaneously kill someone by turning him into a pillar of salt. On whom do you demonstrate this ability? A. A couple in the process of fatally torturing their 3-year-old son. B. A modern day pedophile. C. Cain, a split second before he makes Abel the first murder victim. D. A woman fleeing her burning home who takes a look back to watch everything she knows going up in flames. E. Hitler. F. No one. You demonstrate this horrifying ability on no one.

God had a choice between abolishing slavery (which we deem today to be ALWAYS wrong) and abolishing interest (which can be abused, but is not ALWAYS morally wrong). God chose to abolish interest. And shellfish. Interest and shellfish are banned in the Bible. Slavery is regulated. Would it not have been more moral to ban slavery and regulate interest? Not a rhetorical question. There IS a correct answer.

Please stop referring to it as the "death penalty of this day and age." It was the death penalty prescribed by Yahweh. By definition, it SHOULD be the most moral death penalty ever. Pointing out that it is "equally harsh" in comparison to other cultures only serves to reinforce my point. You are more moral than the God you worship.

And that makes up for stoning a man to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath? (Not a rhetorical question. There IS a correct answer).

The One who directed that a man be executed by stoning because he worked on the sabbath was Yahweh, not the Hebrews in the desert, not the first century Jews, not the 1960s hippie counterculture. God. Promising that Jesus is going to make it all better someday does not mitigate the fact that Yahweh Himself was singularly responsible for directing a man's brutal execution for a petty, petty offense. If you think that was a moral penalty for his offense, ever, then I have serious doubts about your morality. In reality, I do not doubt your morality at all. But I am somewhat entertained by the contortions you twist yourself into in order to avoid saying yeah, that was a flat out immoral instruction. If it were Allah, you would not hesitate to condemn his barbarism. And you would exhibit not one second of patience for anyone who suggested it was okay then because it was a different time then in a different culture then. There are laws in the Old Testament that are far, far worse than "very harsh." They are cruel, inhumane and (I'll say it again) barbaric. Why should anyone be impressed that Jesus will make it better when Jesus is supposedly the perfect representation of the moral monster who established such a barbaric law in the first place?

please clarify whether you are arguing for my position or against it. I am having trouble keeping up with you. Mod Edit: The issue of who was first to bring up first century Jews is off topic. All references from this post onward are being deleted. My question is whether you are more moral than God. You are.

So you agree that the Old Testament law was not God's law? What Jewish leaders were doing in the first century is totally irrelevant to this discussion and my point. It would be nice if you stayed on topic. For this, see my posts.

that's just proved to me that the law of Israel was no different from all the other man made laws. are you seriously arguing that it was moral to execute a man by stoning him to death for the crime of picking up sticks on the Sabbath? are you seriously arguing that there is a moral way for one human being to literally own another? I would expect the perfect law of a perfectly moral God to be more moral and to stand out from the moral codes or the legal codes of other cultures.I would not expect the perfect the law of a perfect God to be indistinguishable from the savage and brutal legal codes of other cultures of the time. quibbling about which Greek word Jesus used while speaking Aramaic to his disciples does nothing to undermine a single point I am making.

Is that really true? Do all the law and the prophets really hang on the principle of love God and/or love your neighbor as yourself? When a man rapes a married woman, he is to be executed by stoning. If it's in the country, the married woman's life is spared. If it's in the city and she doesn't scream, then she's executed too. Because she could have yelled for help but didn't. Apparently in those days, "Make a sound and I'll kill you" hadn't been invented yet. So they are executed. BY stoning. A punishment that we reserve today for... NO ONE, because it's a flipping barbaric practice. I guess God didn't know then that it was barbaric. Otherwise, maybe "thou shalt not stone people" would have been right there next to "thou shalt not own people," another commandment He found no room for while He was banning midgets from his tabernacle. I swear I didn't make that up. But good news! If the rapist goes after an unmarried woman, she will not be killed! WHEW! Neither will the rapist. [Wait, what?] No, the rapist pays the victim 50 shekels. Oh, and by the victim, I mean the girl's father. The victim is not the one who was pinned down and forcibly violated. It's her father. The rapist also has to marry the girl. Because, you know, justice. I mean, heh heh, what's the father going to do, pass her off to some other man even though she's no longer a virgin? So dad gets rid of his damaged property, and he gets his 50 shekels. Meanwhile the rapist is saddled with a wife, a life sentence. Was there EVER a time when this was moral? How about, "Thou shalt not force yourself on a woman. Ever. And the punishment is the same whether the woman is married, unmarried, cute, ugly, a harlot, a nun, ANY WOMAN. Thou shalt not rape!" Surely we can move another equally necessary commandment out of the way to make room for something important like banning rape -- like the commandment against cooking a young goat in its mothers milk (which actually made the Top Ten. Well, the second Top Ten, the only set of laws actually CALLED "The Ten Commandments" in the Bible. You can find the list in Exodus 34. Is the concept of cooking a goat in its mother's milk covered by loving God or loving your neighbor as yourself? I can see why it gets a higher place than "thou shalt not stone people" and "thou shalt not own people." After all... Ok, I lied, I can't think of a single reason why goat cooking gets a commandment but the buying and selling of human beings as property does not). A different law for a different culture? A barbaric law for a barbaric culture. An immoral law for a culture that had a LOT to learn. Not the "holy, just and good" law of a loving God who could have instituted any law he wanted.

When you have a God who embodies morality, his law should embody morality. The Law does not. Either it is not God's law, in which case, oopsie, or Yahweh is not moral. The only other alternative is, slavery IS moral, stoning is a moral punishment for a petty misdemeanor, and marrying the person you raped is a fitting punishment for a rapist.