Tear those pages from your bible!

[Rhea]

I often think (and comment) when people talk about how they are a good or loving or even liberal christian, I think, "do you really expect that there is no effect from you carrying around and talking about a book which contains hate, though? If you _really_ only believe in the love parts, why are you reluctant to tear the others right out of there as ungodly? Unworthy of your worship, unworthy of the definition of your god?"

I think of the lines about murdering children who disobey. All of the lines about slavery. About making women marry their rapists. About women being servants to men. About atheists having only wickedness, not any good at all.


I'd like to think about a list of chapters/verses that really are unarguably horrible and that anyone who claims that religion has no evil would be relieved to have officially removed from a book that they are seen carrying and speaking from.


Anyone care to add to the list?

 

[Rhea]

just taking a quick browse at the skepticsannotatedbible.com


Gen 3:16 In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. ... Thy husband ... shall rule over thee.
Gen 6:7 "I will destroy ... both man and beast."

or

Lev 21:21 No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.
(yeah, you handicapped people, you PROFANE THE TEMPLE!) aren't people ashamed to carry this verse with them?

John 7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. [...]
10 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed:
How can you say you accept all people if you carry around a book that still has this verse in it?

 

[Elixir]

Personally, I tear out all the pages except the ones telling us how to stone victims of rape to death. What more "moral guidance" does anyone need?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Rhea, even the good stuff in The Books is good only because the supreme skybeast says it's good.

The book does not teach anyone how to derive moral behavior from a set of standards, or how to adapt morality for a changing world. It's just a list of dos and don'ts.
There's not even a shelf-life, no discussion about 'slavery is okay as long as all the tribes around you practice it' or 'slavery will become sinful once you start the industrial revolution.'

The whole The Books does not equip one to make moral choices save only those specific choices which have been put forth in examples.
Like, if kids taunt a bald prophet, you can set bears upon them.
If a town believes in a different god than you do, Kill everybody, including animals, and burn the town.

That sort of thing.

 

[Rhea]

Rhea, even the good stuff in The Books is good only because the supreme skybeast says it's good.

The book does not teach anyone how to derive moral behavior from a set of standards, or how to adapt morality for a changing world. It's just a list of dos and don'ts.
There's not even a shelf-life, no discussion about 'slavery is okay as long as all the tribes around you practice it' or 'slavery will become sinful once you start the industrial revolution.'

The whole The Books does not equip one to make moral choices save only those specific choices which have been put forth in examples.
Like, if kids taunt a bald prophet, you can set bears upon them.
If a town believes in a different god than you do, Kill everybody, including animals, and burn the town.

That sort of thing.

I agree with all of that, personally, but if this person is someone saying they want to be christian, just only the rainbows and unicorns stuff, then I want to say, all right, I can accept that. Tear out all of the non-rainbows and unicorns stuff and then I can believe you. Until then, yeah you are "maligning your neighbors with your chirstianity."

 

[ideologyhunter]

God killing untold thousands of children as they sleep (Exodus 12)...God commanding genocide down to the old, the infants, the beasts of burden (Joshua, otherwise known as Mein Kampf, passim)...God zapping whole clans to death because the elders were bitching about Moses (Numbers 16)...and why stop at the murder tales? Numbers 5 is the nuttiest chapter in the whole anthology, for me...the adultery test, with the dirty water???? This, in THE BOOK OF WISDOM FOR THE AGES? Not a whit of this fazes the orthodox believers. They're immune. I love how Christians will listen to you object that god commits people to hell for heresy, and, instead of defending this, they'll say that this is god's way and they must let god be god.

 

[Valjean]

Personally, I tear out all the pages except the ones telling us how to stone victims of rape to death. What more "moral guidance" does anyone need?

Wait...How can a rapist marry his victim, as prescribed in Deuteronomy 22, if some poor schmuck's jumped the gun already and stoned her to death?

See, this is the problem. How are we to conduct ourselves honorably in the world if the rule book's so ambiguous?

 

[Rhea]

Numbers 5 is the nuttiest chapter in the whole anthology, for me...the adultery test, with the dirty water????

Not just dirty water, but "the bitter water" it's an abortifecant (based on subsequent lines). If the drink causes an abortion, it was adultery. If the fetus survives the drink, it wasn't and the fetus gets to continue gestating.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Reminds me of the Jefferson bible.

In any case, this is precisely why we must decouple religion from morality. Too many people swallow the two concepts as a whole, when in reality they are greatly unrelated. Clearly people are using an outside standard by which to judge the bible, so never mind just keeping the good points. Those aren't needed either. The bible is an interesting piece of literature from antiquity - nothing more.

We now know there was no Adam and Eve, and we know that humanity is a complex mix of competing desires, some good, some bad. Thus there's no need for a savior, much less a barbaric blood sacrifice, be it human, animal or demigod. We know the bible doesn't teach morality. We know miracles don't exist. What do we have left? Watered down platitudes, some good (and bad, even by Vogon standards) poetry, some stories, and...culture.

Jettison the thing already. It's not sacred any more than other books from antiquity are sacred. They should be researched and have value, there is things we can learn from them, but at all a source for morality? No. Not any more than the epic of Gilgamesh.

Once we do finish removing the claim that religion, specifically Christianity = morality, this is what I predict it will become. A supportive social construct, nothing more. That's OK by me.

 

[Elixir]

Personally, I tear out all the pages except the ones telling us how to stone victims of rape to death. What more "moral guidance" does anyone need?

Wait...How can a rapist marry his victim, as prescribed in Deuteronomy 22, if some poor schmuck's jumped the gun already and stoned her to death?

See, this is the problem. How are we to conduct ourselves honorably in the world if the rule book's so ambiguous?

What's the problem? Is necromancy somehow any worse than the rest of the prescriptions?

 

[Keith&Co.]

What's the problem?

The problem is getting full bride-price for a corpse.

Is necromancy somehow any worse than the rest of the prescriptions?

Wait, wait, wait. You mean it's still possible for me to marry Farah Fawcett?
But they're going to stop me from digging her up.

OH! I'll just get a proxy, like the Mormons do!

And suddenly the day has purpose.

 

[Elixir]

The problem is getting full bride-price for a corpse.

Is necromancy somehow any worse than the rest of the prescriptions?

Wait, wait, wait. You mean it's still possible for me to marry Farah Fawcett?
But they're going to stop me from digging her up.

OH! I'll just get a proxy, like the Mormons do!

And suddenly the day has purpose.

You're very welcome.

 

[Rhea]

There are so many. So many reasons to say. "you can't call yourself a liberal tolerant loving Christian if your book still has THAT in it.

 

[outhouse]

I often think (and comment) when people talk about how they are a good or loving or even liberal christian, I think, "do you really expect that there is no effect from you carrying around and talking about a book which contains hate, though? If you _really_ only believe in the love parts, why are you reluctant to tear the others right out of there as ungodly? Unworthy of your worship, unworthy of the definition of your god?"

I think of the lines about murdering children who disobey. All of the lines about slavery. About making women marry their rapists. About women being servants to men. About atheists having only wickedness, not any good at all.


I'd like to think about a list of chapters/verses that really are unarguably horrible and that anyone who claims that religion has no evil would be relieved to have officially removed from a book that they are seen carrying and speaking from.


Anyone care to add to the list?

I viewed a vid once that showed a girl ripping pages out of the bible.


Here dad calmed her down and said calmly, you dont fix the bible it fixes you.


It always stuck with me. Reading it today as it was written then with all its barbaric behaviour is doing nothing but taking it out of context.

It was written to and for barabric people living in filth, read around it is my advise to you if you must read it.


I study it, and could care less about the theology inside it.

 

[Valjean]

I've always been baffled by how anyone can see a coherent message in two such different anthologies as the New and Old Testaments.
Were I a Christian I'd discard the OT as an embarrassing absurdity and work solely from the NT.

 

[Keith&Co.]

It always stuck with me. Reading it today as it was written then with all its barbaric behaviour is doing nothing but taking it out of context.

Documents in my industry are constantly updated for new equipment, new policies and faults identified. Changes are incorporated, or revisions delete all previous versions. It's wrong to use a Mod 4 reference to operate Mod 6 equipment.
But the context for the The Books is supposed to be the eternal guidance of the all-knowing creator. Every word in scripture exists for the purpose of our instruction, it says. That's why so many claim that an OT verse against gays still applies. Why bronze age myths should be taught as science.

Although slavery verses and verses describing the messiah apparently expired without documentation of the change...

I just don't think you can ignore the content without some sort of update being released, even if it's only redlines through the no-longer-useful verses.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I worked at a church camp 40 years ago (although I was a stealth atheist, go figure.) I used to 'innocently' quote some of the nastier bible ravings and get reaction from my peers. One obvious passage was the need to stone to death any sons who cursed at their parents. My friend, who was a rabidly devout Christian, had the rationale for this worked out: god had to enforce a strict and even pitiless moral code to get his chosen people through those perilous times, to make way for the future glory of the Christian era. For god is love. Makes ya want to speak in tongues.

 

[BMD]

Personally, I tear out all the pages except the ones telling us how to stone victims of rape to death. What more "moral guidance" does anyone need?

Wait...How can a rapist marry his victim, as prescribed in Deuteronomy 22, if some poor schmuck's jumped the gun already and stoned her to death?

See, this is the problem. How are we to conduct ourselves honorably in the world if the rule book's so ambiguous?

I may be responding to a rhetorical question, but here goes.

If you read the whole chapter, this is how I interpret it. There are three situations including the two you reference.

One is the poor virgin who is not engaged who gets raped. She gets to marry her rapist.

Another is the engaged or married woman who is raped in the city but doesn't scream loudly enough to get caught in the act. If she didn't scream loudly enough in a city for someone to hear, we can't take the chance that she might have been, god forbid, enjoying sex when not married so we have to stone her, you know, just in case.

Finally there is the engaged/married woman who is raped out in the boonies. We'll give her the benefit of the doubt that no one heard her screams since she wasn't in town. Except for the whole being raped thing, she makes out OK compared to the other two. Low bar, I know.

That one chapter also has some more good bits. Like if you find your new wife to not be a virgin on the wedding night, you can stone her on her parents doorstep the next morning.

 

[credoconsolans]

I keep thinking about that story of the young prim proper Victorian woman who when reading her bible, found things not to her liking. Indecent, terrible. She proceeded to only keep the good things and finding out the volume was then as slender as a book of poems, she decided to 'fill it in' according to her standards.

Her bible ran to 12 volumes.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I often think (and comment) when people talk about how they are a good or loving or even liberal christian, I think, "do you really expect that there is no effect from you carrying around and talking about a book which contains hate, though? If you _really_ only believe in the love parts, why are you reluctant to tear the others right out of there as ungodly? Unworthy of your worship, unworthy of the definition of your god?"

I think of the lines about murdering children who disobey. All of the lines about slavery. About making women marry their rapists. About women being servants to men. About atheists having only wickedness, not any good at all.


I'd like to think about a list of chapters/verses that really are unarguably horrible and that anyone who claims that religion has no evil would be relieved to have officially removed from a book that they are seen carrying and speaking from.


Anyone care to add to the list?

All of it? For me, Romans 8 - 11. God creates the elect and the reprobate. The verses of Mark 4, Matthew 13, Luke 8, Jesus speaks in parables so people will not understand and be saved. Romans 11, God hardens the hearts of the Jews to not believe, and thus damns them to Hell. The bad verses of Jesus. The bad verses of Paul. Luke 14, hate your parents and family et al.

The faithful brush off God's OT massacres, but the NT horrors can't so easily be dismissed.

Google for "evil verses of the OT" and "evil verses of the NT" for many sites that collect the evil, callous, and senseless verses of the Bible. Some better than others, pick your faves.