So... umm... about Passover?

[Learner]

You live in an odd fantasy world if you think there is a loving, righteous god who would demonstrate his might through child murder (and notice the crass justification above: "But the Egyptians did it first!!" So...child murder is, I guess, a bad practice, but if they do it, then God gets to indulge?

(prt 1)
Again It's a matter of perspective.

When God warns a nation (ten times even?) giving advanced notice that he wants his persecuted people to be set free. By God giving options to prevent the Egyptians from disastrous calamity, because freeing the Israelites was the purpose then it ain't murder!

Murder was commited by the Egyptians killing the first born of the Israelites...just like that. God did not retaliate in return. The method used by the Egyptians they chose for themselves to be judged by, which was used later... delayed to be the very last option as the 10th plague!

That's warped, but so is every justification for God's infanticides. Don't know that this excuses God killing David's infant son in 2 Samuel, but I'm sure the Christians are good with that one, too. )

Christians defend the OT because Jesus refers to it. i.e. he tells us you (and those like you) are reading incorrectly, which is saying... your erroneous characterization of God in the bible is perspectively a human comprehension error of understanding, since an Almighty God portrayed through Jesus should by far, be of a superior moral standard!

So for a Christian, Jesus is key to God's 'actual' Character, because he declares the 'Father etc, (who is the same God of the OT).

 

[ideologyhunter]

You live in an odd fantasy world if you think there is a loving, righteous god who would demonstrate his might through child murder (and notice the crass justification above: "But the Egyptians did it first!!" So...child murder is, I guess, a bad practice, but if they do it, then God gets to indulge?

(prt 1)
Again It's a matter of perspective.

When God warns a nation (ten times even?) giving advanced notice that he wants his persecuted people to be set free. By God giving options to prevent the Egyptians from disastrous calamity, because freeing the Israelites was the purpose then it ain't murder!

Murder was commited by the Egyptians killing the first born of the Israelites. God did not retaliate in return. The method used by the Egyptians they chose for themselves to be judged by, which was used later... the very last option being the 10th plague.

That's warped, but so is every justification for God's infanticides. Don't know that this excuses God killing David's infant son in 2 Samuel, but I'm sure the Christians are good with that one, too. )

Christians defend the OT because Jesus refers to it. i.e. he tells us you (and those like you) are reading incorrectly, which is saying your erroneous characterization of God in the bible is perspectively a human comprehension error of understanding, since an Almighty God portrayed through Jesus should by far, be of a superior moral standard!

So for a Christian, Jesus is key to God's 'actual' Character, because he declares the 'Father etc, (who is the God of the OT).

Killing a child is wrong. There are no exceptions. Killing a child for something his/her parents did is wrong to a berserk degree.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?
Genocidal war to wipe out an entire people is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?
Buying and owning your fellow human, stealing his/her labor and freedom, is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Every atheist I know -- and certainly every moderator on the Atheist Experience -- can make those bolded statements. Christians, who pretend that love is the key virtue in their faith, sometimes cannot. I'll qualify with 'sometimes' because I've heard some Christians who don't defend the obvious atrocious tales in the Bible. The more rigid ones end up defending slavery and infanticide and wars of extermination.
I'll do you the compliment of saying that I don't really believe you could do what the compliant soldiers in Moses' army did, in the Bible stories-- actually take a sword to an infant, or child, or elder, and hack them to death, then call it righteous and commanded by God.
I'm right about that, surely?
Could you, Learner, kill a defenseless human because you thought God had commanded it? The Bible says that this happened over and over. Could you do it?

 

[Learner]

You live in an odd fantasy world if you think there is a loving, righteous god who would demonstrate his might through child murder (and notice the crass justification above: "But the Egyptians did it first!!" So...child murder is, I guess, a bad practice, but if they do it, then God gets to indulge?

(prt 1)
Again It's a matter of perspective.

When God warns a nation (ten times even?) giving advanced notice that he wants his persecuted people to be set free. By God giving options to prevent the Egyptians from disastrous calamity, because freeing the Israelites was the purpose then it ain't murder!

Murder was commited by the Egyptians killing the first born of the Israelites. God did not retaliate in return. The method used by the Egyptians they chose for themselves to be judged by, which was used later... the very last option being the 10th plague.

That's warped, but so is every justification for God's infanticides. Don't know that this excuses God killing David's infant son in 2 Samuel, but I'm sure the Christians are good with that one, too. )

Christians defend the OT because Jesus refers to it. i.e. he tells us you (and those like you) are reading incorrectly, which is saying your erroneous characterization of God in the bible is perspectively a human comprehension error of understanding, since an Almighty God portrayed through Jesus should by far, be of a superior moral standard!

So for a Christian, Jesus is key to God's 'actual' Character, because he declares the 'Father etc, (who is the God of the OT).

Killing a child is wrong. There are no exceptions. Killing a child for something his/her parents did is wrong to a berserk degree.Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Child murder is wrong!

Killing children is wrong, when humans murder humans. No Christian is permitted by the same God to do so.

Genocidal war to wipe out an entire people is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Our faith allows us to say it! Absolutely!

Genocide in moderns times...when classified in terms of people being murdered, then that term is not the one that fits the biblical God.

By the doctrines of faith. (according to Jesus) you should be able to tell: That christians are forbidden to be part of genocidal murder.

Christians defend God of the OT because God has a far more superior moral standard than man. God places the SOUL far more valuable than the physical body. The Perspective is... the body can die and can be raised again and live..
...but not the soul! The soul dies that's it!

Souls are to be saved!

Therefore...God has a different perspective regarding the value worth of humans. It's a different morality on a different level!

Buying and owning your fellow human, stealing his/her labor and freedom, is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Bond servants/ slaves was common and normal then. You worked for seven years as a slave, paying your debts then you are released. Even captives of war by ancient Hebrews were to be well treated...
...that was also their law. Not the Romans of course

It's quite typical of atheists to mix-in the images of atrocious treatment that African slaves went through to illustrate the false image of slaves being treated in the "same" way by the Hebrews.

Every atheist I know -- and certainly every moderator on the Atheist Experience -- can make those bolded statements. Christians, who pretend that love is the key virtue in their faith, sometimes cannot. I'll qualify with 'sometimes' because I've heard some Christians who don't defend the obvious atrocious tales in the Bible.

Christians who don't defend the bible because they may have been troubled or influenced by the atheists paradigm, like you are posing.. just only need to remember...

..Jesus is God's true character. They don't need to explain it as I'm doing.
(if one can pardon my limitations for wording articulation )

The more rigid ones end up defending slavery and infanticide and wars of extermination.

See the above.

I'll do you the compliment of saying that I don't really believe you could do what the compliant soldiers in Moses' army did, in the Bible stories-- actually take a sword to an infant, or child, or elder, and hack them to death, then call it righteous and commanded by God.

See the above... God values humans highly from a different moral perspective.

(Humans don't bring people back to life,so certainly, they should not have the right to be judge, taking innocent lives )

I'm right about that, surely?
Could you, Learner, kill a defenseless human because you thought God had commanded it? The Bible says that this happened over and over. Could you do it?

You should asked that to the Jews.
As a Christian, God forbids us to.

You are asking me if "murdering" someone was commanded by God, would I do it?

Nah I wouldn't (humouring your paradigm, that this god is evil)

 

[ideologyhunter]

Buying and owning your fellow human, stealing his/her labor and freedom, is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Bond servants/ slaves was common and normal then. You worked for seven years as a slave, paying your debts then you are released. Even captives of war by ancient Hebrews were to be well treated...
...that was also their law. Not the Romans of course

It's quite typical of atheists to mix-in the images of atrocious treatment that African slaves went through to illustrate the false image of slaves being treated in the "same" way by the Hebrews.

What you say here is horseshit. Israelite slaves had a different code applied to them than the 'foreigner' slaves.
That 7 year business does not apply at all in Leviticus 25:44-46, which is about chattel slavery with no manumission. Please read those 3 verses before you try to gloss over Bible slavery as seven years indentured servitude.
"Atrocious treatment.." of "African slaves"? Owning slaves always brings out the beast in people, and beyond doubt you know about Exodus 21, which grants you as the slave owner the right to beat your slave up to the point of death.
I'm an atheist, and I can say that Ex. 21:20-1 is an evil teaching. Pure evil. Isn't it pathetic that your faith won't let you say that?

 

[ideologyhunter]

You should asked that to the Jews.
As a Christian, God forbids us to.

You are asking me if "murdering" someone was commanded by God, would I do it?

Nah I wouldn't (humouring your paradigm, that this god is evil)

Fine. Let's leave you out of the equation. Were Israelites who slaughtered children and young women and elders and other defenseless noncombatants -- according to copious accounts in God's book -- were they morally upright people? Or would those killings make them morally debauched? Moses, the great hero of the Pentateuch -- when he got furious with his men for not slaughtering the kids and the nonvirginal women -- was he upright and moral in seeing that those captives were hacked to death? Or was he a stone-hearted zealot?

 

[ideologyhunter]

Killing a child is wrong. There are no exceptions. Killing a child for something his/her parents did is wrong to a berserk degree.Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Child murder is wrong!

Killing children is wrong, when humans murder humans. No Christian is permitted by the same God to do so.

But the god in the Bible DOES command his people to kill all kinds of children. Did you miss that?
So...we should not try to be godlike, because this god of love and mercy and righteousness is allowed to kill children? Seven chapters into his book, he kills every child on the planet. But somehow he's.......love.
Do you not understand how bizarre this is, to those of us who classify the book as fantasy? Can you understand how passing off the God killings as actions we dare not criticize appears to the outsider as cult thinking? Black is white, up is down. Love coexists with killing. Yeesh.

 

[steve_bank]

From a show on archeology the Exodus tale may be a conflation of multiple events at different times.

Cairo to Jerusalem is only about 300 miles. They wandered around the Sinai for 40 years?

'Hey Moses. didn't we pass that rock last year?'

 

[ideologyhunter]

Archaeology in the Sinai has yet to turn up evidence of a mass nomadic population. Perhaps there was one big kegger (I mean, Beer-sheba is there, so my linguistic detective hat is on) and someone concocted a story about their extra-long weekend, and the story just got out of hand.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The Passover, that's when the God of Love slaughtered the children of Egypt because the Pharaoh, who's heart He had hardened, would not let the people go?

Always need to remind people that Pharoah hardened his heart first (Ex. 5:2).
In Ex. 7 God did say he would harden Pharoah's heart as confirmation that Pharoah had already started the process.
Pharoah's pride and hubris would sufficient of themselves.

But that isn't relevant to the thread. There was no Pharaoh, there was no Exodus. The question of the OP is to ask why Passover has such importance despite it being related to a story about an exodus that never happened. Passover is quite real and must have originated with something of significance. Being in the spring, that always points to a Pagan sort of beginnings to the very important ritual and transitioned into the Judaic faith. Much like how Passover transitioned into Easter for Christians.

 

[steve_bank]

Why is Santa Claus so important in American culture?

Our American origin myths abound.

The traditional Thanksgiving ritual and the children's Thanksgiving play.

Why was Monday Night Football so important? It became a ritual, people talked about it all week.

 

[Learner]

Buying and owning your fellow human, stealing his/her labor and freedom, is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Bond servants/ slaves was common and normal then. You worked for seven years as a slave, paying your debts then you are released. Even captives of war by ancient Hebrews were to be well treated...
...that was also their law. Not the Romans of course

It's quite typical of atheists to mix-in the images of atrocious treatment that African slaves went through to illustrate the false image of slaves being treated in the "same" way by the Hebrews.

What you say here is horseshit. Israelite slaves had a different code applied to them than the 'foreigner' slaves.

As I allude to from the previous post...

...even captives slaves of war i.e. even these foreign slaves were treated well,which I meant to mean 'treated better', than African slaves - they were even permitted to marry the Israelites.

If they were circumcised and adopted the Israelites customs they too could be under the seven year servitude "code" as one of them!!

That 7 year business does not apply at all in Leviticus 25:44-46, which is about chattel slavery with no manumission. Please read those 3 verses before you try to gloss over Bible slavery as seven years indentured servitude.

I was highlighting there are variations or degrees, but to be fair, I was lacking the correct articulated wording.

But, I was automatically thinking you were applying the African slavery "code" (abhorrent treatment in comparison) to slavery of the Hebrews.

point of death.
I'm an atheist, and I can say that Ex. 21:20-1 is an evil teaching. Pure evil. Isn't it pathetic that your faith won't let you say that?

It's only seems pathetic.. if you are thinking your reading of the bible is viewed from the same perspective as mine.

(oops,, didn't realise I was still logged in.. still working, so responses will come slow)

 

[ideologyhunter]

You have a rarefied perspective where beating to the point of death -- which Exodus clearly permits -- is not evil. I get it. By the way, that's easily the kind of treatment our slaves had in America. It was not common to beat a slave to death, because in the U.S., they could cost up to $2000 per human. But, as Dickens showed in American Notes, our slaves often had the scars of past beatings and mutilations -- permissible here and permissible to the Israelite slave owners.
In any case, God allowed for permanent chattel slavery and for savage beatings. It's all there if you read Ex. 21 and Lev. 25.

 

[steve_bank]

Learner exemplifies the modern Christians who try to shoehorn an ancient tribal brutal morality into a modern context.

Ancient Jewish tribal law was akin to the extreme Mulish sharia law of today.

Ancient Jews were not unique, all cultures had a brutality.

The 613 Commandments from the bible.

The extreme punishments in Leviticus were a small part of it. Death for blasphemy and sex offenses like some Muslims today.

The 613 Commandments (Mitzvot)

The Talmud tells us that there are 613 commandments in the Torah; 248 Positive Commandments (do's) and 365 Negative Commandments (do not's). Here's a complete list --as compiled by Maimonides.

www.chabad.org

 

[bilby]

When God warns a nation (ten times even?) giving advanced notice that he wants his persecuted people to be set free. By God giving options to prevent the Egyptians from disastrous calamity, because freeing the Israelites was the purpose then it ain't murder!

It might not be, if there were literally no other alternatives.

Say, if God couldn't have just freed His people Himself.

In the counterfactual world in which the Jews were in bondage in Egypt and needed to be set free, and in which they had an all powerful God backing them, He could just have teleported them to Judea without killing any children (would have saved Him doing all the Red Sea grandstanding, too).

Killing children was unnecessary. No number of warnings changes that.

 

[bilby]

Why is Santa Claus so important in American culture?

Because the Coca-Cola Company spent a lot of money making it so.

 

[DBT]

You live in an odd fantasy world if you think there is a loving, righteous god who would demonstrate his might through child murder (and notice the crass justification above: "But the Egyptians did it first!!" So...child murder is, I guess, a bad practice, but if they do it, then God gets to indulge?

(prt 1)
Again It's a matter of perspective.

When God warns a nation (ten times even?) giving advanced notice that he wants his persecuted people to be set free. By God giving options to prevent the Egyptians from disastrous calamity, because freeing the Israelites was the purpose then it ain't murder!

Murder was commited by the Egyptians killing the first born of the Israelites. God did not retaliate in return. The method used by the Egyptians they chose for themselves to be judged by, which was used later... the very last option being the 10th plague.

That's warped, but so is every justification for God's infanticides. Don't know that this excuses God killing David's infant son in 2 Samuel, but I'm sure the Christians are good with that one, too. )

Christians defend the OT because Jesus refers to it. i.e. he tells us you (and those like you) are reading incorrectly, which is saying your erroneous characterization of God in the bible is perspectively a human comprehension error of understanding, since an Almighty God portrayed through Jesus should by far, be of a superior moral standard!

So for a Christian, Jesus is key to God's 'actual' Character, because he declares the 'Father etc, (who is the God of the OT).

Killing a child is wrong. There are no exceptions. Killing a child for something his/her parents did is wrong to a berserk degree.Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Child murder is wrong!

Killing children is wrong, when humans murder humans. No Christian is permitted by the same God to do so.

Genocidal war to wipe out an entire people is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Our faith allows us to say it! Absolutely!

Genocide in moderns times...when classified in terms of people being murdered, then that term is not the one that fits the biblical God.

By the doctrines of faith. (according to Jesus) you should be able to tell: That christians are forbidden to be part of genocidal murder.

Christians defend God of the OT because God has a far more superior moral standard than man. God places the SOUL far more valuable than the physical body. The Perspective is... the body can die and can be raised again and live..
...but not the soul! The soul dies that's it!

Souls are to be saved!

Therefore...God has a different perspective regarding the value worth of humans. It's a different morality on a different level!

Buying and owning your fellow human, stealing his/her labor and freedom, is wrong. There are no exceptions to that.
Isn't it pathetic that your faith doesn't allow you to say that?

Bond servants/ slaves was common and normal then. You worked for seven years as a slave, paying your debts then you are released. Even captives of war by ancient Hebrews were to be well treated...
...that was also their law. Not the Romans of course

It's quite typical of atheists to mix-in the images of atrocious treatment that African slaves went through to illustrate the false image of slaves being treated in the "same" way by the Hebrews.

Every atheist I know -- and certainly every moderator on the Atheist Experience -- can make those bolded statements. Christians, who pretend that love is the key virtue in their faith, sometimes cannot. I'll qualify with 'sometimes' because I've heard some Christians who don't defend the obvious atrocious tales in the Bible.

Christians who don't defend the bible because they may have been troubled or influenced by the atheists paradigm, like you are posing.. just only need to remember...

..Jesus is God's true character. They don't need to explain it as I'm doing.
(if one can pardon my limitations for wording articulation )

The more rigid ones end up defending slavery and infanticide and wars of extermination.

See the above.

I'll do you the compliment of saying that I don't really believe you could do what the compliant soldiers in Moses' army did, in the Bible stories-- actually take a sword to an infant, or child, or elder, and hack them to death, then call it righteous and commanded by God.

See the above... God values humans highly from a different moral perspective.

(Humans don't bring people back to life,so certainly, they should not have the right to be judge, taking innocent lives )

I'm right about that, surely?
Could you, Learner, kill a defenseless human because you thought God had commanded it? The Bible says that this happened over and over. Could you do it?

You should asked that to the Jews.
As a Christian, God forbids us to.

You are asking me if "murdering" someone was commanded by God, would I do it?

Nah I wouldn't (humouring your paradigm, that this god is evil)

God has a different moral perspective to what we have written in the bible as a set of laws and moral values?

 

[Learner]

God has a different moral perspective to what we have written in the bible as a set of laws and moral values?

Deeper, on multi-levels shall we say instead. Remember, the importance value of the Soul as compared to the physical body ( the body dies,returns to dust, but only he can make new).

 

[ideologyhunter]

Insane that anyone worships and considers perfect the author of so many acts of killing -- and killing of the innocent -- as this old Middle Eastern deity. Each to his own.

 

[Learner]

As I said, Jesus is key for Christians. He tells us the morals of the God of the bible is superior.

The theme here is: Love for humans valued by their souls is beyond the materialist 'made of dust' physicalness (which ironically in itself, one could see being 'worshiped too' by men..as little gods).

Christ is saying... people are reading God of the bible wrongly.

I suppose this ties in with the 'I am the Truth..' narrative, and relating to Moses and those before him.Connecting them all to himself etc..

I also thought the OT in a similar way to you. Viewing from the angle...completely separating the NT, and disassociating it from the OT.

 

[steve_bank]

Jesus said he did not come to end Mosaic Law, IOW Leviticus. He said Jews had become lax on divorce.

He lumped murder and fornication in the same sentence.

Sorry, no sale on Jesus and biblical morality.

I call Christian biblical morality a 'Chinese menu' morality.

Pick one from column A and one from column B.