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I do notice that Mary doesn’t seem to be wearing a wedding band.
Now, now…you’re just taking it out of context. ;)
Come to think of it, that could be the babysitter. She’s not wearing a name tag.
This post almost caused me to choke on my ice. But it was worth it. Hilarious!
Wasn’t Mary fucked by God?
And since there is no indication anywhere that her consent was even asked for (let alone given), we can add rapist to the list of thing that make Yahweh a terrible role model for morality.
And because “she” was said to be only 14 years old, when “she” gave “birth” to the little bastard, we can also add pedophile to the list as well
Actually Yoav, I hate to play “devil’s advocate” but Mary did give her consent.
That’s not consent. She was too young to consent by any modern standard, but that could be argued to be different at the time. However, when an all-powerful god that you have been raised to believe can and will do anything and must be obeyed at all times asks you to be their baby mama, what is a teenage girl supposed to say? She was clearly coerced. God sent a being of light to appear to her and scare the shit out of her. What was she supposed to say?
The text from Luke, Chapter 1, for the record:
28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among awomen.
29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
30 And the angel said unto her, aFear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name aJesus.
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the aSon of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the bthrone of his father cDavid:
33 And he shall areign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no bend.
34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I aknow not a man?
35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The aHoly Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the bSon of God.
36 And, behold, thy acousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her bold age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
37 For with God nothing shall be aimpossible.
38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.
The angel doesn’t really seem to be asking permission…
But then she wouldn’t be the virgin Mary, unless you’re speaking metaphorically, of course.
You should check out “Jerry Springer: The Opera”. When Mary turns up, the choir jauntily sings “raped by an angel, raped by an angel, raped by an angel, raped by god!” :)
How is she supposed to have gotten pregnant then? Did the Holy Ghost magically inject divine sperm into Mary’s vagina? Did he magically create a Jesus fetus inside her womb?
No, the Holy Ghost injected the divine sperm into her poo portal, so she was technically still a Saddleback virgin. The zygote implanted in her colon rather than her womb; an ectopic (ectoplasmic?) pregnancy. Very unusual, but it made the delivery as easy as a bowel movement. You might ask: how could such a thing happen? It’s a miracle.
It will be another miracle if this comment is not censored.
There are very few things you can’t say on this site, bro, no matter how inane, juvenile, or trollish.
“Did the Holy Ghost magically inject divine sperm into Mary’s vagina? ”
No, it went directly into her womb, according to a nun I overheard discussing this. It wasn’t physical sperm, either, it was numinous light-sperm, and it was “poofed” in, just like all of creation was poofed into existance.
But you still do not have to worry about STD’s when you practice abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage. No one seems to want to recognize this fact.
In the USA every single year 19 million new people are infected with an STD. Half of those new cases are among teens 15-24 years old (our future). This equates to 10 thousand newly infected teens every single day or one new infection every 8 seconds. Abstinence and fidelity would stop the problem rather quickly.
“But you still do not have to worry about STD’s when you practice abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage. No one seems to want to recognize this fact.”
Really … well I never. Who would have thought it … you’re such a clever boy.
Mocking is not a rebuttal. Try again.
Stupidty isn’t an argument … try again.
Did you know that if you go out in large crowds, or talk to people in person, or eat food prepared by others… etc, your chances of sickness and death increase?
Clearly, people should be forever alone!
“… or eat food prepared by others …”
Is that true as I thought that the average level of hygiene would be better, it’s just that food outlets have a much better potential to effect large groups of people.
Your own kitchen is largely full of your own germs, though. That’s why so many people get nosocomial infections – Because hospitals are full of other people’s nasties for you to catch.
Oh and can you sort your maths out as 15-24 years old doesn’t cover the teen years and here’s a quick sum for you work out – how does 10,000 per-day equate to a year and what is half of 19 million.
See this is your problem – if I was a cynic (which of course I’m not so this is not how I view you) then I would think you’re just making shite up as it sounds good or just copying and pasting bits from websites.
Check it out yourself http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-teens-and-stds
So you have just cut and past for a website then which also seems to have problems with maths. Where you by any chance home schooled?
paste -with an e
Obviously you did not read the facts, just went straight to your argument (which is wrong because you are not arguing against bad math) I believe that you just tried to create a straw man argument instead of confronting the facts, how typically atheistic of you.
19 million is among all ages (not just teens)
3,650,00 is the number of newly infected teens per year (19 million was not just among teens, please read what is there)
15-24 covers a large portion of the teen years, especially the sexually active teen years.
Epic fail on your part. Thanks for trying.
… as I said before, stupity isn’t an argument please try again.
at least admit that you were wrong (I called you on it and showed you how with the numbers). I will hold my breathe until you eat some humble pie and say that you were wrong (being sarcastic).
Honestly Eric don’t you know what *half* of 19 million is and don’t know what 10,000 times 365 is then?
So you can take your humble pie and shove it up your own arse to be honest … I’ll pray for you.
<blockquote cite="In the USA every single year 19 million new people are infected with an STD. Half of those new cases are among teens 15-24 years old".
New Christian Math & Definitions.
Half of 19 Million is: 3,650,000.
Adults ages 21-24 are: Teenagers
Too bad it’s totally unrealistic, equally so among the pious religious.
Very possible. I am living proof and know many more who are like me. Maybe you should get to know more people instead of running around you little closed circle of people who all think like you.
Oh the irony …
I live among people who do not think like me. Unlike most atheists, I do not live in a bubble (especially in the area of social issues).
“Unlike most atheists” … statements don’t mean much unless you can back them up. Care to try or is evidence, like maths, another thing you don’t do?
We hardly live in a bubble. We are surrounded by believers, and sometimes have a hard time finding like-minded individuals.
It’s certainly within the spectrum of human behavior; I don’t think that anyone here would argue against this point (at least, not anyone with a brain). You can also apply social engineering techniques to shift the percentage of people who behave this way. But if you are arguing that it is possible to get everyone on the planet to behave in exactly the same way on even this one single issue, I’d have to say that you don’t know much about human psychology or behavior.
Having multiple sexual partners in your lifetime does not automatically lead to STDs, either. I am living proof and I know many more who are like me.
Having multiple sexual partners puts you at a much greater risk of STD’s. As a man who likes wisdom, I believe that it is logical to reduce the risk to zero whenever possible.
Abstinence and fidelity should be the norm (not everyone will follow the norm but that is each person’s choice). It is better for society. I want what is best for my fellow man (unlike atheists).
I take it you never cross the street then? It’s the only way to reduce the risk of getting hit by a bus to zero.
Realistically speaking, of course, reducing risks to zero is impractical, expensive and inefficient. Generally we consider risk to be a variable which multiplies the cost of an action when weighted against the benefits.
This doesn’t mean the costs will always outweigh the benefits, and we don’t all assess risk in the same way. We also place different values on the costs/benefits of actions, so insisting on a uniform response is also insisting on a uniform valuation. Good luck with that one.
We all have reasons for living, and reasons for taking certain risks and not others, and for many of us, sex is one of those things that improve quality of life enough to warrant promiscuity (for some “variety is the spice of life”). If you don’t find meaning/pleasure/purpose/identity/fulfillment in sex, then hey you’re abnormal, but that’s okay!
I say this as an atheist who lost his virginity on his wedding night, and has never cheated (nor intends to cheat) on his wife.
Unless you use these things called con-doms. They are available at pharm-a-cies. They reduce the risk to ze-ro.
I have not argued otherwise. My point is that STDs are not an inevitable consequence of having multiple sexual partners. What’s yours?
If you’re going to look down your nose at atheists, please do us the favor of looking down on us instead of on some strawman of your own devising. It’s pretty obvious from your comments that you don’t know much about real atheists.
@Darwin: condoms do not reduce risk of STDs to zero. They minimize risk, but do not eliminate it.
I know Ursa. In hindsight, I should have stopped for a second and gone with ‘they also min-i-mize the risk’. I’m just sort of the end of my tether today. Also, how come nobody before me mentioned other forms of birth control?
Or you can look at the actual data. Sweden with it’s very liberal attitude toward sex has lower teen pregnancy and STD (the data is for HIV) then the US. The same is true for any other country in the OECD. The US has similar teen pregnancy rate to Cambodia and Rwanda. Clearly being a prudish as*hole and pretending that teens will just not have sex instead of giving them proper sex ad isn’t really working.
Thanks for letting us know that you are or were an immoral person.
Because he had more than one sex partner? Seriously?
You’re welcome, Erik. Thanks for letting us know that you’re the ultimately moral authority.
Ouch. Any argument from you is hereby void, Ursa, on account of your blatant immorality.
Duly noted. Somebody else will have to take over for me.
Can’t. All of us atheists are alike, remember? Besides, none of us want what is best for our fellow man. Looks like Erik has us beat.
Wait till he finds out that Ursa bats for the other side … in Erik’s mind (what he has of one) that pretty much means you’re a child abuser.
I’ve heard of more than one person practicing fidelity in marriage who has come down with an STD. They didn’t realize that their partner was not practicing fidelity in marriage. And many abstinence only educated teens are victims of STDs because they don’t think that oral or anal stimulation is sex.
@blotonthelandscape
Comparing a moral issue to crossing the street, good one. Whatever keeps you feeling good about your self.
You’re already comparing a moral issue to crossing the street by attempting to conflate STD risk with immorality. Blot just pointed out the logical implication of your “reduce the risk to zero” stance.
Immorality and STD risk go hand in hand. A moral person (abstinent until marriage and faithful in marriage) will not have to worry about STD’s (unless raped, which is a form of immorality).
Immorality and STD risk go hand in hand.
I guess lesbianism must be super extra moral, then, eh?
Or is your point more–let me see if I’m getting this right–that God inflicted AIDS on mankind as a gentle reminder not to let their eyes wander?
Lesbians are at risk of STD’s too (because it is hard to find a person who is purely lesbian, I know there are some, and I am sure that you “have a friend” but I am talking as a trend). They are at risk because they live a lifestyle that puts them at risk. They usually end up having sexual relations with men too (even though they say they are lesbian).
AIDS is a consequence of immorality (it is mostly spread through sex). Live a moral life and you do not need to worry about it. You are trying to blame God for man’s actions. Please stop trying to shift the focus.
Lesbians are at risk of STD’s too (because it is hard to find a person who is purely lesbian, I know there are some, and I am sure that you “have a friend” but I am talking as a trend). They are at risk because they live a lifestyle that puts them at risk. They usually end up having sexual relations with men too (even though they say they are lesbian).
I don’t know from where you get your evidence for these statements. Please share.
AIDS is a consequence of immorality (it is mostly spread through sex). Live a moral life and you do not need to worry about it. You are trying to blame God for man’s actions. Please stop trying to shift the focus.
So let’s say a woman and man are married, and the woman is moral and faithful, but the man cheats and gets HIV. He doesn’t know he has HIV and so he inadvertantly passes it to his wife, who now is also HIV positive.
Now, in the example above, what is the immorality of the wife being punished? Is it inattentiveness? Failure to keep her husband sexually interested? What moral failing of hers leads to her getting AIDS?
@blotonthelandscape
How expensive is it to treat HIV/AIDS on a yearly basis in the USA? (HIV/AIDS is largely transmitted through sex)
It does not cost you anything not to have sex. It does not cost you anything to be faithful to your spouse.
People can choose to be immoral if they want to but they will have to pay the price. The problem is, one immoral person not only hurts himself but also those around him. That is why immorality is so bad. If you want to hurt yourself, that is your business. It is when what you do begins to hurt others (which is what immorality does).
Immorality will never improve a person’s quality of life. There are way to many physical, social, and psychological risks involved.
Yeah, you see, the problem with that statement is that your definition of immorality is whatever you don’t personally like. Premarital sex, homosexuality, what have you. Apparently, even having had sex with more than one person in your life seems to count as immoral to you.
Personally, I consider bigotry and selfrighteousness to be immoral. It has certainly never improved anyone’s quality of life.
You wrote “Yeah, you see, the problem with that statement is that your definition of immorality is whatever you don’t personally like.”
Sorry, I do not define what immorality is. God has already defined it in the Bible (but in order to know that you would have to read It).
You wrote “Apparently, even having had sex with more than one person in your life seems to count as immoral to you.”
Why yes, it does (unless your were married to each person during the time of intercourse). Again, it is clearly defined in the Bible (you should read It).
If you see any bigots or self righteous people, please let me know.
My mistake. I forgot that whatever is commanded by the Bible is always totally moral and non-bigoted.
Say, anyone in here been to a good gay killing lately?
How is do not steal not moral?
How is do not murder not moral?
How is do not have sex with your neighbor’s spouse not moral?
How is do not lie not moral?
How is honor your parents not moral?
The list goes on and on.
Not agreeing with a lifestyle does not make a person a bigot. I do not agree with murderers, does that make me a bigot?
I didn’t say everything commanded by the Bible is immoral. What I am saying, is that some of its commandments are immoral.
Please explain to me under which circumstances killing a homosexual person exclusively because he or she is homosexual can be considered moral.
“I do not define what immorality is. God has already defined it in the Bible”
No, you just latch on to an already existing definition of immorality, and use it as an excuse to be the small minded bigot you already want to be.
Since your basing your morality off the old testament, can I assume that you don’t eat shellfish or wear mixed fabrics, and that you routinely kill your neighbor for working on the sabbath?
I have written about the selfish and other weak arguments already on this thread, look it up.
You wrote, “use it as an excuse to be the small minded bigot you already want to be.”
Can you please show some proof instead of just empty words? I like evidence, don’t you? (wait I forgot, you are probably an atheist)
“Thanks for letting us know that you are or were an immoral person.”
Thanks for letting us know what you are.
Again, condoms. The word is condoms.
And having more than one sexual partner is your version of immorality, not everybody’s.
There is no such thing as “my morality” and “your morality”. Morality is an absolute and has been defined by the Creator of morality.
Being sexual active with multiple partners puts you at a much greater risk of STD’s than being abstinent until marriage and faithful in marriage. Fidelity is better for all of society. You want to promote a system that is not good for society while I want to promote one that is best for society. Based on the evidence, who cares more about his fellow man?
Again, not if you practice safe sex. And, I’m sorry I’m the one who has to tell you this, but not everybody believes in your god.
You can choose not to believe in God. You can choose to be a fool if you want to do it. That is the beauty of having free will. You can freely choose to ignore all of the evidence that this world has to offer.
Free will implies that I have a real choice in life. However, your god threatens us all with eternal burning if we don’t believe in him. That’s not free will. That coercion. -an ex-believer.
@ Heather
Glad you wrote ex-believer instead of ex-Christian.
As to free will. You can choose obedience or disobedience (that is a choice if you do not realize it).
He does not condemn you. You condemn yourself. Why blame Him for your actions?
Yeah, we can all just feel the loving concern you’re spreading. I just took a quick look at your web site. So much love to go around.
Can you use some actual proof or do you just have empty words???
@Darwin
You wrote “Unless you use these things called con-doms. They are available at pharm-a-cies. They reduce the risk to ze-ro.”
Wow, you need to educate yourself a little better. Let me help you.
“Condoms do not protect against many forms of STD’s. There are some people who are so evil minded that even though they know the truth about condoms and STD’s, they continue to deceive with the lie that condoms protect you up to 98% of the time when used properly. The key here is to ask 98% against what? It is a fact that condoms protect 98% of the time against unwanted pregnancies (still not 100% like morality). The problem is that this 98% somehow gets promoted as the amount of protection against STD’s which is a flat out lie. It is difficult to find good info on condoms and their protective powers but if you can find it then you will learn the following. One study says that condoms protect against STD’s anywhere from 18% to almost 100% (that is a wide margin of non-protection if you ask me). Another set of stats claims anywhere from 92% to almost 100% of the time, against STD’s but it is not very specific on which STD’s. It seems to me that the “protection” and “safer” sex labels that go along with condoms are not so safe. There is a saying that goes something like this, “if you play with fire long enough, then you will eventually get burned.” God warns us about sex outside of marriage and the consequences that go along with it, “Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (Hebrews 13:4). Be sure of the fact that God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, he will also reap. It does not say when or how the judgment takes place in this verse but it will surely happen. I really believe that STD’s are a form of God’s judgment. People try very hard to hold off God’s judgment through many methods (condoms being one of them) but it does not work.
Condoms do not protect from HIV/AIDS like they are promoted to do. Many boast and brag that condoms protect against HIV/SIDA at a very high rate. This seems to be correct until you actually begin to study the stats as they are (without all of the spin). It is hard to find studies that test the effectiveness of condoms against HIV/AIDS. Some people will tell you that condoms protect you up to 98% against HIV/AIDS. That is a complete lie. The worst case scenario is 30% while the best case is close to 100%. I do not know about you but the risk seems to be greater than what the experts are presenting. Another set of stats that I found on condom distribution and HIV/AIDS comes from Africa where over the past 20 years condoms have been given out regularly to the Africans and in the areas where distribution was the most dense the number of HIV/AIDS cases has increased instead of decreasing. Please do not be deceived into thinking that you will be protected from God’s judgment if you do not do what He says.”
source http://erikbrewer.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/international-aids-awareness-day/
“According to a 2000 report by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), correct and consistent use of latex condoms reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85% relative to risk when unprotected.
Analysis published in 2007 from the University of Texas Medical Branch and the World Health Organization found similar risk reductions of 80–95%.”
That’s from the Wikipedia page. I apologize if I don’t have faith in that random set of points you posted on your blog.
“Hey, I’m right because this page says I’m right. And I wrote the page so you know it’s right because I’m right because the page is right!”
Anybody can post and change things in wikipedia (good scientific source)
I linked to all of my sources on the blog post, if you would just take the time to look.
You also linked to the Wikipedia page in your blog post. But somehow I’m wrong and you’re right? Brilliant.
I did not say that I don’t use wikipedia. I just showed that you are mocking me for using stats from my site and then you brag about wiki (the scientific site).
No, I was mocking you for the fact that the figures on the pages you link to are not the same you wrote down here.
Anybody can say anything they like while pretending to be whoever they like on the internet. It’s the internet. Wiki is actually a pretty reliable source most of the time, since there are always people who care enough about a given subject to oversee the Wiki entry.
Do not try to use it as a source for a research paper on the University level. It is not accepted because it is not reliable enough.
Well bugger me if I’m not about to graduate my second university degree. Wiki is not deemed reliable – the sources it cites often are. Out of interest, do you regard the Bible to be a reliable source?
Actually, don’t try to cite any encyclopedia at the university level, regardless of its perceived accuracy. That’s high school level stuff.
And for what it’s worth, as long as you’re aware of the weaknesses of Wikipedia, using it as a stepping stone for later research is fine. It helps that a lot of the people contributing articles are the very professors and TA’s who are teaching courses.
Never take a Wikipedia article at face value. Always follow the links back to the primary sources, and confirm that those sources are themselves examples of good scholarship.
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words “DON’T PANIC” inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
And this is a quote from the MSNBC article you linked to:
“When latex condoms are used every time and put on early enough, they reduce chances of pregnancy over a one-year period to 3 percent, compared with 85 percent without birth control. Likewise, condoms cut risk of HIV infection by about 80 percent, to less than a 1 percent chance of infection per year.”
Did you read all that was there? Or like most atheists, did you cherry-pick?
Come on Erik, accusing atheists of quote-mining and/or cherry-picking is laughable. Do you wear mixed fibers? Do you gat your hair cut? Do you believe gay male love is wrong? All three of those things are condemned in the same passage of the Bible. Which ones do you decide to ignore?
“It is a fact that condoms protect 98% of the time against unwanted pregnancies (still not 100% like morality)”
So if a moral woman gets raped, she will never get pregnant, simply because she’s moral? That’s what your 100% idea implies to me. I find it fascinating. Not correct at all, but fascinating. It’s like magic.
Rape is immorality (on the part of the rapist). The woman is a victim. The criminal should be punished.
If there were no immoral people then her chances would be 100%. That is why immorality is bad, because it makes the innocent suffer. Do you like when the guilty are free to do what they will why the innocent are punished for being innocent? That does not sound like a good society to me.
I would suggest that it is more accurate to say that when dealing with moral absolutism, those who are not the people providing the definitions of morality are the ones who suffer.
But you avoided T’s question: Decent, moral, upstanding women get raped. And some of them get pregnant. Clearly, morality is not an effective contraception.
Deuteronomy 22 is a bit less clear on that issue.
“Do you like when the guilty are free to do what they will why the innocent are punished for being innocent?”
Of course I do. How clever of you to pick up on the fact when I thought I had disguised it so well in my comment by not saying one word about guilty people going free or innocent people being punished. You are one smart cookie.
So your idea that morality protects 100% against unwanted pregnancies only applies if EVERYONE is moral? Well, then what’s the point? If I spend my life trying to be good, and some jackass comes along and f*cks it up by raping me, I just wasted a whole bunch of time I could have been enjoying a little bit more.
Well argued :D
Thanks. :)
I’m sometimes hesitant to post, because I am no intellectual giant in these areas. Once I left christianity, I had no desire to go digging any deeper. But I can usually throw around some sarcasm pretty well. ;)
I very much appreciate you all!
So if everyone will not be moral then let’s just promote immorality, is that what you think? What about those who are moral and want to promote morality, do our views not matter?
Being good is not a waste of time. It protects you from many problems. That is why we need to promote morality and punish immorality so you will be less likely to be raped by the immoral person. Problem solved!
“That is why we need to promote morality and punish immorality so you will be less likely to be raped by the immoral person.”
What…the flying….fuck?
Flying fuck lololol -my point exactly. I like reading all the comments because some people are lost causes. Case in point Brew boy. Thanks for the laugh Flying.
wow. quoting yourself as a source.
I didn’t know this was an option.
that makes my life SO much more interesting.
I can say whatever i like now and it MUST be true because i can repeat it!
Sweet.
I quoted what I have already written on the subject. Why reinvent the wheel every single time I deal with a different set of atheists?
Oh, big mister pioneer here.
Well, let’s see. I’ve written about people being eaten by dragons in great detail. So I suppose that i have authority to say that dragons eat people, because i wrote about it.
@UrsaMinor
God is the ultimate moral authority. Sorry, I never claimed to be. That is your straw man argument.
Which god are you referring? People believe in lots of them.
The only God, the One of the Hebrew/Christian Bible of course. (I have a feeling that you knew that but just had to ask)
Why do you choose to believe in that particular god? Again, there are lots of gods that people believe in. The Hindu pantheon alone has hundreds.
Because the other gods are just figments of man’s imagination.
The Hebrew/Christian God is so different from the rest of the gods. His standards are so much higher. His morally cannot be compared to in any other religion. When man invents gods, they are too much like man.
How did you arrive at that conclusion?
I’d have to disagree with that statement. The Muslim Allah in particular displays some remarkable similarities to the Hebrew/Christian concepts of God.
Have you actually read the Koran? There is not much morality there. Have you ever lived in a Muslim country for an extended period of time? Do you know what daily life is like in Muslim countries? (other than just what you have read or copied and pasted from another site)
The Muslim god is far different from the God of the Bible. Obviously you have not read up (from the sources) on the two.
Erik, the Muslim god is the god of Abraham, and therefore technically the same god as the god of Judaism and Christianity.
Yes, I have actually read the Koran. There are plenty of moral prescriptions in there, just as there are in the Bible. The Bible tells you how to live a righteous life according to Yahweh. The Koran tells you have to live a righteous life according to Allah. Both entities are omnipotent, omniscient creator gods who get to define what is moral and what is not moral by virtue of the fact that they are omnipotent, omniscient creator gods. If such a creator god exists, your opinion (or mine) on what is or is not moral does not count; in fact it’s completely irrelevant. You have no logical or philosophical basis for saying that you can determine which of these two gods is real or true based on their moral prescriptions, because in order to know which set of rules is correct/moral in order to tell the false god from the true one, you have to judge it by the correct set of moral rules. It is impossible to bootstrap a proof this way.
Of course the Koran contains things that are immoral according to the Bible, and the Bible contains things that are immoral according to the Koran. And we are back to my original question, why do you believe that Yahweh is the Creator, and not Allah?
You are missing the point. Your “God” is a projection of your own preexisting system of values. You pick and choose what to take from the Bible and how to interpret and practice it based on your own convictions independent of any scripture or divine revelation. In this sense, you are your god.
Christians (like most monotheists) first choose the religion and denomination that best suits their opinions, then further diverge from dogma in other ways where they believe the church is wrong. They attribute unsavory parts of their holy book to mistranslations, metaphor, or mystery. They then proudly proclaim to everyone that only they are truly moral because only they follow the will of their self-invented god.
I know you won’t believe me because you do not, and perhaps cannot see this, but everybody else can. Do not expect to attract any nonbelievers with this kind of extreme bullshit.
@UM
you wrote “My point is that STDs are not an inevitable consequence of having multiple sexual partners.”
You know what they say, “if you play with fire long enough, you will eventually get burned”.
So you should stop cooking entirely? Barbecuing is immoral because it might hurt people?
Mocking is not recommended.
http://erikbrewer.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/the-dangers-of-being-a-mocker/
If you cannot beat the facts, shift the focus. Good tactic but not recommended.
“You know what they say, “if you play with fire long enough, you will eventually get burned”.”
Those are your facts?
Cooking and playing are 2 different things. Cooking and morality are very different issues. Quit shifting.
Hey you’re the one who thought old wives’ tales constituted an argument.
Technically, it’s a homily, not an old wives’ tale.
But it doesn’t hold up to the most rudimentary analysis. If the probability of contracting an STD is 0.01 per partner (when using standard precautions against transmission), you would have to have sex with 70 different partners before you hit a 50% chance of contracting an STD. If the probability is 0.03 (probably a much more realistic figure), then that’s 23 different partners before you hit a 50% chance of contracting an STD.
Risk increases with the number of partners. No one is disputing that. But claiming that contracting an STD is in inevitable consequence of having multiple sexual partners is just flat-out incorrect. I’ve seen varying figures for the average number of sexual partners, most of them put it in the 9 to 15 range (i.e., the average person who uses prophylactics probably has a 25% to 36% chance of contracting an STD over his or her lifetime). The real-world situation is that the average prophylactic-using person is more likely to be STD-free than not.
And interestingly, the people who are least likely to have multiple sexual partners appear to be the very non-Christian, officially atheist Chinese, although one must take into account the phenomenon of underreporting in all such studies. The take-home lesson here is that cultural norms appear to be a bigger factor than religious ones in determining the number of sexual partners you have. Christianity is neither sufficient nor necessary to lower the incidence of multiple sexual partners in a population.
Didn’t I ban you and your wife from commenting on the old site before we migrated to the new host? I seem to recall some fairly repugnant views about “disciplining children” (read: violently abusing them) from a husband and wife team. I could be wrong, we get a lot of trolls here.
I do not agree with abusing children. I do not abuse my children. Do you equate spanking/discipline with abuse?
Any form of violence perpetuated against a child is abuse.
If you can only ‘discipline’ your child through physical abuse, then you’re doing it wrong.
Okay I missed this one the first time.
You’re pointing to a blog post of you snickering about Christopher Hitchens getting cancer to make a point against mocking.
I’m not even going to bother pointing out the logical inconsistency of that.
I’m just going to point out that your inhumane reaction to the suffering of your fellow man and what appears to be you threatening Darwin with cancer if he mocks you, do not speak well for the morality you claim to represent.
Obviously you did not read the entire post. I feel bad for Hitchens. I just pointed out the interesting connection between what the Bible teaches and what is happening to Hitchens. You are the one who adds the rest. Nice try but sorry, try again.
The Bible teaches that drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco is a high-risk combination for throat cancer?! How did I miss that verse?
I seem to recall that god likes to barbecue. If god does it, it is A-OK.
I’m still trying to figure out how Solomon and David got by the whole single partner only within marriage sex rule.
They chose to disobey God. From the beginning the standard was set, one man and one woman in marriage. Those who chose to ignore that paid the price. Read up on what life was like for those who took more than one wife. Wait, that would involve actually opening the Bible, sorry.
The Bible contains many examples of marriage that don’t conform the the modern Christian “one man, one woman” paradigm, Erik. In fact, it arguably contains more examples of those that don’t than those that do. What part of “We’ve all read the Bible” do you not grasp? Do you realise that atheists are more likely to have read the entire Bible than Christians are? Certainly in your case – the ignorance over it’s content that you’re displaying (while simultaneously claiming it as authority) is appalling.
Just because people choose not to follow the standard does not mean that the standard changes. Those in the Bible who did not the one man one woman standard suffered the consequences. I keep writing this over and over again but you people seem to “overlook” that quite often.
Once again: You do not get to define the word “Christian”. Your arrogant solipsism is hardly unique among Christians, but it’s no less distasteful from you than it is from any of the others.
chris·tian
Noun:
A person who has received Christian baptism or is a believer in Jesus Christ.
Nothing in there about “A person who believes the exact same things and behaves the exact way that an ignorant, hypocritical redneck named Erik thinks they should”.
Just like the standards set by the bible that you choose not to follow. It’s not that they’re not still what was decreed, you just choose not to follow them because you don’t want to. fair enough. Your god does seem to be lenient for people that don’t follow his rules, even when they can justify them to themselves why they aren’t following them.
They chose to disobey God. From the beginning the standard was set, one man and one woman in marriage.
Where, exactly?
Those who chose to ignore that paid the price. Read up on what life was like for those who took more than one wife. Wait, that would involve actually opening the Bible, sorry.
Yeah, they were kings, patriarchs, judges and generals. Life really did screw them, didn’t it, compared to the slaves and peasants with one or fewer spouse. Having more than one wife is just such a millstone, you know, comes with so many responsibilities….
I spent 20 years opening the bible and believing the same crap you are trying to sell. I went through the same mental gymnastics (not my phrase, but I so love it) that you are displaying right now. I have no interest in reading it ever again.
Wow, I never said that I was trying to sell anything. You just assumed that (common theme among atheists).
Have you ever studied the Bible inductively using the tools of interpreting literary works? Or were you one of those who opens the Bible 5 mins in the morning and 5 at night to calm the soul?
There is more than one meaning of “sell.” You are being deliberately obtuse, as if you want to be seen as a moron.
So, people who do not agree 100% with atheists are considered trolls and blocked (typical)
Nice straw-man there, Farmer Giles. Did I say that> Did anybody say that? No. Commenting here is a lot more free than on any Christian blog I’ve ever visited.
You can comment on mine as long as you do not use foul language.
I have been on enough “free speech” atheist websites to know that “free speech” is for those who agree with them.
My experiences differ from yours, clearly.
“Free speech” means you can say what you want and we can say what we want. As far as I can tell, that is exactly what is happening here.
If we were not allowed to criticize you, then free speech would be violated.
@ Custador and @ Darwin
Now you both make yourselves the authority on what is abuse and what is not. You accuse me of it from one side and then do it yourself. Please look in the mirror and say, “I am a hypocrite.”
Excuse me? Where have I committed any abuse?
you wrote “Any form of violence perpetuated against a child is abuse.”
How do you define violence? Do you consider spanking a child violence? (not beating, two totally different things).
The exertion of physical force by one human being against another is violence. I don’t consider there to be any exceptions to that. Of course, sometimes violence can be justified – But I struggle to think of many real-life examples of when it can be justified by an adult against a child.
So you have made a moral judgment. Is this a moral absolute?
I happen to believe in spanking (not beating). It is Biblical. I was spanked and am the better for it.
Not spanking is your choice. But now you are imposing your choice as the moral standard. How ironic.
I was spanked and am the better for it.
How do you know?
Did I not just point out that violence can sometimes be justified? That should answer your question about moral absolutes.
@ Custador
You wrote “Do you wear mixed fibers? Do you gat your hair cut?”
Now that is cherry picking on your part. Plus you compare moral laws with civil laws. Can we say apples to oranges.
Plus, I have answered this in depth on my blog. You really have no idea what you are writing about and I have proved why and how.
So civil laws can be disregarded?
No, it isn’t. It’s an example of part of the Bible that most Christians cherry-pick in order to avoid the parts that might inconvenience them, whilst still giving them justification for their own prejudice. I’ve no intention of buffing your hit-count, but if you’d like to explain to me why some paragraphs in Leviticus are concrete law and some are optional, I’d love to read it. Please, continue. Copy and paste from your blog if you like.
The way a priest was to cut his hair was specifically for the priests of Israel (because of the pagan practices that were happening during that day, which involved hair cutting). That was a ceremonial law and had nothing to do with morality (except for the fact that the pagan practices also involved immorality in gross forms, which is why the men of Israel were to avoid every aspect of immorality and the pagan practices because their ways were entwined with immorality).
That’s certainly a viewpoint, but how do you delineate that law being for priests and the law about man love being for everybody? Has it occurred to you to think that they might either both apply to everybody or both apply only to priests? And if not, why not?
Incidentally, are you aware that you’ve just advocated a subjective moral standard? That causes huge problems with other arguments you’ve used in this thread.
Check the context of the passage to see whom is being addressed. That is the starting point. From there you will discover much.
I’ve read three versions of the Bible so far, cover to cover. Sorry, but you don’t get to palm me off that easily, since I seem to know the passage somewhat better than you!
So, from the context you obviously saw that God was speaking specifically about priests with the hair cutting. Historical context helps clear up why.
Do you really think you could understand Shakespeare’s works by reading them one time from cover to cover?
It’s certainly a better strategy than just making up what you think Shakespeare would have said and calling it Hamlet.
So you do agree that context is important and that you should actually have studied the text that you are arguing against. Thanks, all I wanted to hear.
Shellfish was dietary law (again, nothing to do with morality). They did not have the food preservation methods that we have today so they had to be careful about what they ate and how they stored food. Shell fish are usually the garbage cans of the sea (they even eat fecal matter). It makes sense not to eat it. Just like pork (which eat anything, including feces). It was for their health.
Pardon me, but I grew up on a farm and raised (and ate) many animals, including pigs. What you’ve just said about their dietary habits is just plain false. They’re incredibly clean animals, and they certainly don’t eat faeces. They’re infinitely cleaner than chickens, for example.
You use a 20th century example (with our medical system and food preservation methods) to try and disprove a B.C. century example. You see, that is why I say apple to oranges. There is a huge difference.
Maybe you should check this out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia
Just like your attitudes to homosexuality are centuries out of date, Erik. We’re in the 21st century now, not the 1st century.
I believe that’s what’s known as a “gotcha” moment. And I wasn’t even trying for one.
Not so fast. The dangers of homosexuality that were present in the 1st century are still here today. Take a look at St. Paul from the first century. He is speaking about homosexuals and other immoral people.
26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions ; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural , 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.
The received punishment in their own bodies (does that sound like STD’s to you? sure does to me). The danger is still present therefore the teaching is still valid. Sorry, nice try but you need to try again.
And you need to realise that the Bible presents mythology – fiction – not history.
nice opinion, but that is what it is, your opinion,
it is not a hard connection to make between the verses presented by Paul (a real person) and the problems that homosexuals face with STD’s. I’m just saying.
You have still not demonstrated that homosexuals face more problems with STIs than heterosexuals. Further, you have not demonstrated that STIs have anything whatever to do with sexuality. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to demonstrate the link between “abstinent” and “monogamous” Christians and high rates of STIs, infidelity, divorce, and unwed pregnancy.
You keep on failing, Erik.
It probably was for their health.
But that’s not what the book says.
It is stated as a moral commandment from god. The same god you keep referring to as the creator of “unchanging”, “clearly defined” morality. The same god whose broken morality you are trying to impose on others here.
So you don’t eat shellfish right?
A commandment from God is good for your health. I do not see your point.
Broken morality?
Is do not lie broken?
Is do not murder broken?
What about sleeping with your neighbor’s spouse?
What about stealing?
All of the laws, rules, and regulations of the OT were just a shadow of what was to come in Jesus Christ. Not that the real thing is here, the shadow has been replaced. You really should read the Bible before making statements for or against It.
‘Not that the real thing is here’
Yes, He is. Christ in you, the hope of glory, Col 1:27 (as it was in the beginning, that man made in God’s ‘very image and likeness’). All the best.
“You really should read the Bible before making statements for or against It.”
I have.
You clearly have not.
“…What about sleeping with your neighbor’s spouse?
What about stealing?”
What about “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Numbers 31:17-18)”.
What about “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling. (1st Samuel 15:3)”?
I’ve always drawn great moral inspiration from “Of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
But thou shalt utterly destroy them.(Deuteronomy 20:16-17)”.
Or that great moral classic “When the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them(Deuteronomy 7:2)”.
What about “Whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. (Exodus 31:15)”.
Is “Every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death(Leviticus 20:9)” broken?
Is “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering. (Genesis 22:2)” moral?
Is “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live (Exodus 22:18)” moral?
Or “If this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)
Or “When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house (Deuteronomy 21:10-12)”
This is the short list of the immorality of biblical morality. But it’s enough to prove my point.
The morality you are trying to impose on others is not only based off a book that is demonstrably wrong on hundreds of scientific and historical points, and not only based off a book that you yourself have never actually read, but it is based on a book which contains the worst moral advice ever recorded.
At this point, I am done feeding the troll and am going to hand the trough to the inimitable (and infinitely more capable than me) Nox, I think.
Custador,
Thank you. And you were doing a fine job (your translation of Leviticus 20 was the best f*cking thing to come out of this thread so far).
Anyway, I think I’m almost done with this one myself. The next twenty things he’s going to say are already prerefuted, and if any willfully dishonest condescending dumb*ss has thoroughly proved they deserve the Jabster treatment, it’s this willfully dishonest condescending dumb*ss.
Jabster,
Sorry bout the “dickish” comment. Didn’t actually think you’d object (or even disagree). My point in taking a shot at you was that some theists deserve to be treated more disrespectfully than others. There’s stupid, there’s honestly misinformed, and then there are the liars. I believe there should be a range of responses to accomodate this range of positions.
Zephan was stupid and misinformed. This one is a liar. He knows the things he is saying are not true, and shamelessly spreads his sh*t anyway.
Of course as always the choice is yours. I’d never ask you to attack someone on my behalf, any more than I’d actually ask you not to be a dick to people that I think are honestly misinformed (and I actually do appreciate what you do here, it makes it easier for me to play good cop).
I’m just saying this one’s yours if you want him.
@Nox
@Nox
Honestly … I found your “enthusiastically dickish” comment rather amusing and with some accuracy – hell I even used it about myself in a later comment.
Personally I have no time for the likes of Erik – calling him a complete wanker is an understatement he’s more of a ‘see you next Tuesday’ person.
p.s. In real life I’m apparently quite a nice person (so at least one person has said anyway) and as one of my friends accurately pointed out to someone else ‘oh no if he’s taken the piss out of you that means he likes you, it’s when he just doesn’t speak to you that you know he doesn’t like you.’
@Jabster
I’m glad we’re on the same page.
Yes, you’ve read it but that doesn’t mean you can truly discern or comprehend it Nox. While you are plenty smart, superbly intelligent indeed, yet that is not the means of apprehension here despite your rigorous scholastic self efforts. Its impossible since there is no light in unbelief (Ps 36:9) and it is (mercifully) hid from you lest you be accountable for it in your current state.
Your same quandary is depicted in Abimelech’s story who was prohibited by God from ‘entering into Sarah’ the wife of Abram, the man of faith because he is ‘uncircumcised’ meaning he is dominated by and continues to trust in his own fnatural reasoning faculties and therefore can not ‘enter into’ union (agreement) with her in the heavenly (spiritual) delights of the new covenant reality which Sarah is a type of (Gal 4:22-26) because such things are not rightfully discerned by the natural man and mind, they are foolishness to it and therefore ‘entrance’ is prohibited since you refuse to ‘enter in’ by the only and One Way, by the Door.
Kill Amalek? That nature that God is ‘at war with (in us) from generation to generation’? (Exod 17:16). Again, you can not know its true meaning and miss it entirely here in your rebuttal to Erik the ‘fundamentalist’ inevitably concluding falsely concerning the true nature of God and will each and every time if you insist on trying to read scripture as you would a mere textbook.
The sun (a type of Christ) is given to ‘rule the day’ but the moon (a type of us, who have no light of our own, are dependent on the Light Himself) was given to rule the night. Now there is a seventh day (symbolizes spiritual perfection), a day of rest (called the Sabbath which was made for man) that the Light Himself would bring us UP to in Him, in His radiant, glorious light. We see a picture of this beautiful amalgamation of His light in us, the sun & the moon blended together in Isaiah 30:26 saying ‘Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the brokenness of his people…’.
While I’m sure your natural intelligence yields great benefits to you in your chosen vocation, academics, etc, it will never be of any benefit to you in comprehending the spiritual realities. In fact it will be a detriment until it is ‘blended’ together with the Light that ‘lights every man coming into the world’. (Jn 1:9). All the best.
Well thanks for clearing that up for me. And this whole time I’ve been laboring under the delusion that what the bible says is somehow connected to what is explicitly stated in the text of the bible.
If you want to draw a metaphorical lesson from selectively interpreting the bible, and use it as inspiration for your own life, that’s fine (better than fine if it somehow inspires you to be a better person as some biblical lessons can certainly do).
I’ve actually endorsed the value of what we can learn from the bible and it’s metaphorical lessons (see here), including gnostic interpretations similar to yours (I’d link that one but the forums are down). I’ve even argued in favor of everyone being nicer to John C (again no forum, but hopefully you remember that one), so I hope you won’t take this the wrong way because it is a really important point.
What the bible says to you and your private gnostic decoder ring has f*cking nothing to do with what the bible actually says.
But of course, its not the ‘Bible’ that’s doing the talking is it? Rather, its Author is and unless you know Him you can’t understand a Word He/It says. ;)
All the best Nox
Not Gnostic either. Gnosticism holds to an imperfect God. Why would anyone entrust themselves to an imperfect Being?
John C,
Upon rereading my last post, it comes off as slightly more hostile than I was intending.
And it was meant to be a serious point. So if you don’t mind I’d like to rephrase a bit.
The problem with private revelation is that what you say has been privately revealed to you has not necessarily been revealed to me or anyone else.
All the best.
No problem, Nox. All the best friend.
“Not Gnostic either.”
Okay, that’s kind of confusing. I mean if you say you’re not, I believe you. I guess only you would know.
But you do realize that you keep saying stuff that is remarkably similar to gnostic belief? And that this has been a pretty consistent pattern for about as long as you’ve been here?
I always assumed that was intentional.
“Why would anyone entrust themselves to an imperfect Being?”
That’s been my whole point this whole time.
All the best JC.
Definitely not Gnostic. I can not relate at all. I don’t much care for labels (they couldn’t put a label on Him either, Jn 9:29) rather only to be identified with and in Christ alone.
As I’ve said previously, if you’re trying to label me for discussion purposes, etc, I suppose the closest possible label, if I had to identify with one, would be that of a mystic. I realize that’s not too terribly specific, but its the closest, best I can muster friend. Take care.
@ your Numbers quote
That was my next passage to address. Thanks for bringing it up for me. Now people can see that there are those who actually use these stupid arguments.
Keeping in mind all of Scripture (what we saw in Deut, about rape), we see what was meant by by sparing the women. To be the wives of the soldiers. God only allows sexual activity in the confines of marriage. The people knew this well. Death was the result. This passage does not stand alone in a vacuum. It goes along with the rest of Scripture and must be interpreted that way. Plus the war with the Midianites was God’s vengeance upon them for the way that they treated Israel. The got what they deserved in other words. The Israelite men had been negatively influenced by the Midianite women in the past. They paid a heavy price for it. That is why they were to stay away from the non virgin Midianite women. They could take the virgins (the Israelites were to marry virgins only) as their wives. This is opposed to the heathens, who raped and murdered the women. With Israel, the women were protected (the innocent ones, that is).
One more little bit of info. This is Moses’ command to the people (not God’s). God told them not to spare anyone and especially not to marry the women. In fact, the actions taken here (taking the women for wives) is a sin that God told them not to do. There is still no rape here though (you are reading in to what is there, or, trying to judge Israel based on what heathens do with the spoils of war, both are incorrect on your part).
So, this is a weak argument on your part and shows a lack of intellectual integrity. Before recycling what you read on a website or out of a book somewhere, learn to study the passage in context. Thanks for your participation. Bring on the other ones that you have “read somewhere”.
So all that stuff about victorious soldiers taking the virgin daughters of their defeated enemies as concubines – That doesn’t count as sex outside of marriage?
Numbers: “all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves“.
Erik: “The got what they deserved in other words.”
No further refutation needed.
I’m just gonna take this opportunity to point out that after round 2 of Erik trying to show us what a paragon of morality he is, this thread’s best argument for christian morality is still…
The other christian saying, “I’m not with this guy”.
What’s interesting is that you accuse others of either not reading or misreading the Bible text and merely repeating the canards of others. Yet you do not demonstrate reading comprehension. First of all, in Numbers 31, God does NOT tell the Israelites not to marry the Midianite women. Second of all, Moses had a direct line to God and spoke as God’s representative. Do you have any evidence that Moses contradicted the wishes of God? That would be a sin, yes? Then why wasn’t Moses punished for contradicting God? Third of all, God told the Israelites to murder pregnant women and babies, since the only ones who could be spared were virgin girls. You think that unborn children and babies deserved to be killed? Fourth of all, how is taking the virgins as wives NOT rape? These girls were forced into marriage with and by the people who committed genocide against their families! Finally, where does the Bible say people who have sex before they are married get the death penalty?
1. How is the problem of preserving pork significantly different from preserving beef?
2. Do you think rabbits are filthier then sheep, because your god prohibit one but not the other?
How about things that are clearly not about health issues.
1. Do you like your god consider slavery acceptable?
2. Is a child being disobedient justify the death penalty?
3. Should a rape victim be forced to marry the rapist?
These and many more can be found in your magic book.
God does not promote slavery. http://erikbrewer.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/does-the-bible-promote-slavery/
It is not true that children who “disobey” their parents are to be put to death. Again, you prove your lack of intellectual skills. The passage to which you refer is in Deuteronomy 21.
18 “If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,
19 then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.
20 “They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.’
21 “Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death ; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear.
I need to point out a few details that obviously escaped your attention (I am sure the website where you got this absurd idea from did not catch these details either).
the son is stubborn and rebellious – the word translated as stubborn is to be refractory (resistant to change) this person is told to change and warned about not changing his errant ways yet he insists upon doing evil. The word rebellious can be translated as open disobedience or bitter disobedience. He has no shame in his evil, wicked ways.
the word son does not mean “child”. He is old enough to be warned and understand that what he is doing is wrong. He is old enough to acquire and consume alcohol. He is old enough to acquire food for himself (he is not an infant or toddler)
he is first chastised by his parents and he will not listen to them
he is a danger to his parents and to the other people of the society through his actions.
he is judged in court, found guilty, still will not repent, and only then is he put to death for his crimes.
Rape explained here http://erikbrewer.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/does-the-bible-condone-rape/
You have just proved that you are like the other atheists. You do not think for yourself, just repeat what you have been told. Nice try.
The spam filter has started identifying you as a black-hat SEO bot because of the amount of links to your own site you include in your comments. If you could stick to only putting them in the “links” field, it should stop your comments getting filtered and needing to be approved by a mod. Given the 5000+ spam comments we get per day, we might not even spot yours when we empty the bin, so it’s best to avoid the issue in the first place if you can.
Did you legit just quote your own blog for factual content? Fail….
He does it a lot. I’m wondering if his purpose here is really to increase his Google visibility by spamming as many links as he can.
I really think he is. It’s a more effort-filled version of trolling. What he doesn’t understand is that he is not going to gain followers from over here because he causes a fuss. We’re not going to subscribe just to argue with his ridiculousness. His written arguments over here are so fallible that it would make reading his blog a pointless venture. There’s only so much sickeningly wrong religious theory that we can take ;)
@ Custador
I never accused you of abuse. Please read what I write more carefully. I accused you of making yourself the moral authority on the subject of abuse. I was accused earlier of making myself the moral authority. I was just pointing that out.
You were not accused of that by me, though.
I know, by a like minded person on this thread. Sorry for not being more specific.
No problem at all, but as a word of advice I’d suggest caution of you’re going to accuse somebody by name of something like that. Particularly me. If I reach the point of flinging insults, you will know I’ve reached that point, I assure you.
I will not revert to name calling. That is what the atheists and homosexuals do. I know from much personal experience.
Pardon me, but you’re the one who made a false accusation against me, not vice-versa. Your persecution complex, while very typically Christian, is becoming somewhat tiresome.
“I will not revert to name calling.”
And then name calls in the next line. Thanks a lot, ASSHOLE. Not nice, I know. But neither are you. *You* come on here, when you didn’t have to, blathering away, already having made your mind up about us. You’re not looking for meaningful debate. You want the boner you get from preaching to those you consider second-rate humans. Well, guess what. We could say many, many nasty things about Christians, just based on the ones we’ve encountered here; we could apply them to you as a blanket statement and refuse to consider your arguments and drop snotty little asides about how immoral you are. But we don’t do that. We believe in respectful dialogue and discussion. Jabster and some others may come on strong, but if you’d seen all the bullshit we’ve seen you might develop that kind of aggression too. So TL;DR version, you’re not here to learn anything and I highly doubt we are going to learn anything from you (based on evidence thus far) except how to twist ourselves in knots trying to follow your thought processes. Personally I’ve never said this before because I honestly value your democratic right to hold this opinions, but I’m going to go ahead and tell you, you should probably leave. This isn’t the right place for you.
But hey, I’m just being a typical atheist, right?
Other things I have high doubts about include you ever seeing this, as unable to follow the comment system as you are.
@k.holdomo
I lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the ‘I don’t do name calling’ when there are clearly cases where they have. Maybe thinking you’re a virtuous arsehole somehow allows you to do it?
“You want the boner you get from preaching to those you consider second-rate humans.”
That is the conclusion I’ve come to about some of the twats we get posting here … they obviously realise (no one can by that stupid can they?) that they’re are not going to change anyone’s mind so what else can it be. I sort of feel violated that I’ve become the equivalent of a jazz mag for Erik!
“I highly doubt we are going to learn anything from you …”
“I’ve never said this before because I honestly value your democratic right to hold this opinions, …”
I don’t value his rights to free speech at … the only reason we have to leave the ‘it’s your right to act like a complete arsehole’ clause in there is it’s basically impossible to separate it from what freedom of speech is really about.
There are benefits to letting even the most obnoxious commenters speak freely beyond the grudging acceptance that it is by the same principal which allows any of us to speak freely (which imo is already an inescapably good reason).
It puts their words on record.
There are also disadvantages in that it can be seen that if ‘it’s not illegal then it’s not wrong’.
Which is the right choice of action … well I don’t know but what I can say is that the law can be used as a reminder of right and wrong?
@ Darwin
Discipline and spanking are not the same thing. Spanking is part of discipline. I can discipline without spanking (not saying that spanking should not be allowed, just do not want to be misunderstood). Discipline is a theory of educating or training a child. Part of that education involved spanking (not beating).
@Elemenope
I avoided doing a lot of stupid and wrong things because I knew what the consequences would be. If there would have been another form of punishment then I would not have detoured from the bad things so easily (or at all).
That’s a judgement call, and certainly not one backed up by independent research. There are more effective ways to discipline a child and instill behavioral standards in them – And they don’t teach children that violence is an acceptable solution.
According to you, I cannot use the Bible as evidence. I cannot use personal experience. Wow, just trimming away what does not line up with what you believe (typical)
But Erik, you were the one up-thread demanding rigorous sources of evidence be used, not me. I simply asked the question.
The Bible is a source. But you choose not to accept it. You accept the sources that already agree with you.
I have not said that. I asked whether or not you accept the Bible as an accurate source, because you critiqued somebody else’s source selection.
As it happens, I think that Bible can tell us many interesting things. It’s certainly required reading for anybody who wants to make a serious attempt to understand English literature. But it’s certainly not a source of historical facts.
@Nox
Do the facts about homosexuality bother you?
Please nest your comments properly. It makes following the thread much easier.
There is no more room to reply in the right spot.
Then click the “reply” button that’s nearest above where you want to reply, and your comment will thread properly, only without indenting.
Okay, I’ve found the thread and followed the link, and I have to say: Your basic errors are staggering. You claim “facts”, but what you’ve written seems to be entirely devoid of them – You’ve cherry-picked statistics and been extremely choosey about giving wider context (in many places, you haven’t given any at all).
Further, from your opening section onwards, you’ve displayed your prejudice like a badge of honour. Your opinions on homosexuality seem to be based entirely on ignorance, fear and hatred. I can’t really get on with that, I’m afraid.
You wrote, “You claim “facts”, but what you’ve written seems to be entirely devoid of them – You’ve cherry-picked statistics and been extremely choosey about giving wider context (in many places, you haven’t given any at all).”
Please show me where and how. You are being very general in your accusations.
You said:
Homosexuality is not a choice. The very phrase “[people] who are considering becoming homosexual” is ludicrous. Sexual orientation is developed primarily in utero as a response to maternal hormones, which are in turn a response to pheromone triggers in the immediate environment. The process is becoming increasingly well understood, but positing it as a “choice” would be absurd even of it wasn’t. I’ve treated homosexual men in the emergency room when they’ve tried to kill themselves because they hate what they are. Not because they’ve actually done anything sexual with another man. Just because they’re gay, and they’ve been raised, like you, to hate gays.
You give this whole section in isolation, with no comparison to similar heterosexual situations; usually there’s only one reason for such a glaring omission of context.
I’ve had sexual relations with somewhere in the region of twenty women, and I’ve never had an STI. Your blanket proclamation is therefore disproved. I know that sounds trite, but it happens to be true. Promiscuity doesn’t lead to STIs – Carelessness and ignorance lead to STIs.
Your section heading is about promiscuity, but the content of the section has nothing to do with promiscuity – It’s entirely focused on homosexuality. It’s also entirely wrong. That there’s a correlation between homosexuality and suicide does not mean that one directly causes the other. In fact, I’d bet dollars to pesos that in the absence of bigotry from people such as yourself, there wouldn’t even be a correlation.
Well that’s just a demonstrable lie, isn’t it?
Like I said: Your article is entirely absent fact, instead being extremely heavy on baseless opinion.
For anybody who wants to read the original, here’s a link for you, but I wouldn’t bother. It’s just a bigoted rant.
Homosexuality is not a choice? Wow, can you demonstrate the gay gene? I am sure the entire medical and scientific communities would love to know about your findings. Saying homosexuality is not is choice is your humble opinion (I hate to burst your). Homosexuality like heterosexuality is a lifestyle choice. There are actions that go along with the lifestyle (that is why it is a choice).
There are moral heterosexuals and immoral heterosexuals (the moral ones choose to be moral and the immoral ones choose to be immoral). All homosexuality is immorality. You see, people choose what they want to be, moral or immoral. Are murderers born the way that they are? Should we excuse their actions because they claim that they cannot help it, that is the way that they were born? What about rapists and child molesters? These are all lifestyle choices but they could claim that they were born that way.
Can you please show me in my own words where I have written that I hate gays? If you cannot then you should apologize for false accusations.
Homosexuality does promote promiscuity because it is a way of life (a packaged deal). There are immoral heterosexuals and that is wrong too. No one has said that there are no immoral heterosexuals. I am against all forms of immorality, homo and hetero. I have written this but you chose not to acknowledge it because you are trying to spin.
You brag on your immorality again. I did not write about isolated case (i.e. I have a friend or my own personal example). I wrote about the trend as a whole. The old saying, “a blind hog can find a acorn every once in a while” applies here. I am not writing about isolated cases but a trend, in general.
You say I lie but you do not prove how, just empty words on your part. I linked to all of the sources. Do your homework. I am not interested in your opinion. I want to see facts.
And you also start with name calling. Please show my in my own words how I am a bigot. Until them, stop with the false accusations. I am sure that I will be called a racist soon.
Why? Did you post racist sh*t on your blog too?
Why would anyone “choose” a lifestyle that has traditionally entailed persecution and comes with a smaller collection of civil rights?
Do you remember the moment when you sat down and consciously made the difficult decision to be attracted to women?
You are a bigot. Custador already did show that. So did I. So did trj. But more importantly, you’ve shown that yourself.
Not that that has anything to do with the validity of your arguments. They fail on their own logic. I just wanted to let you know that you’re not fooling anyone.
Congrats on displaying your ignorance. I just told you that it was an in utero hormonal response – NOT genetic, but still NOT a matter of choice. That fact that you’re too fucking stupid to understand the distinction tells me that you perhaps need to shut the fuck up and stop waving your ignorance around for the world to point and laugh at. Why do people kill themselves because they’re gay if they could simply choose to be straight?! Ye Gods man, the internal inconsistencies in your own arguments are bewildering!
Tell me Erik, when did you CHOOSE to be heterosexual? Choice implies that you’ve met men you’re sexually attracted to and decided not to do anything about it. Tell us about how that felt, please do.
Your every word proves how much you fear and hate gays. You don’t need to explicitly say “I hate gays” to prove that you hate gays.
Are you referring to the “facts” in the post from your blog that I linked as evidence of you trying to set yourself up as a moral authority after you told trj that there was no evidence of you trying to set yourself up as a moral authority?
There were no facts. Just you making sh*t up like you’re doing here. That fact kind of bothers me.
@trj
The Bible does not call us to put homosexuals to death (they do it to themselves through AIDS and many other STD’s).
Before you bring quotes from the OT, just know that I have seen that argument before and refuted it quite thoroughly.
The highest rates of heterosexual STI infections in the developed world exist in American Christians who take chastity pledges. They also have the highest rates of teen and unwed pregnancy. Rates of divorce and infidelity are disproportionately high among fundamentalist Christians.
So, Erik: It seems to me that, by your own standards, you’ve chosen a dangerous and immoral lifestyle for yourself and your children.
Shame on you.
Wow, just because a person “says” he is a Christian does not mean that he is one. You can say that you are a dog but if that were true (in deed), we would not be having this convo. The proof is in the pudding as they say. If a person is living an immoral lifestyle then he is not a Christian (that is what the Bible says, again, you should crack It open from time to time). So you really have not argument. You just showed how living an immoral lifestyle brings negative consequences (like I have been saying all along)
I’m shocked it took so long before you hit the no true Scotsman.
And the No True Scotsman fallacy rears its ugly head again.
If you would read the Bible you would know how a Christian is defined. But since you have not, you draw your illogical conclusions (I guess you could plead lack of knowledge of the subject as the reason)
You seem to be blissfully unaware of how many people on this site are seminary trained, Erik. I would wager that Nox’s knowledge of Biblical history (and content) would put yours to shame.
You also seem to be rather quaintly attached to the idea that you get to define the term “Christian”. You are mistaken.
Are you the real deal? I have some bleach if you want to prove it.
Pretending something doesn’t exist is not the same as refuting it.
Anyone can look up the passages in question (for example Leviticus 20:13) and see that anyone claiming “the bible does not call us to put homosexuals to death” is lying.
That is for the Hebrews living under a theocracy. Are you a couple of 1000 year old Jewish person living under a theocracy? If yes, then you should be obedient to what God is telling you. If not, then you really have not point.
God tells Christians in the NT, to share the Gospel with homosexuals, to show them the dangers of their lifestyle, to pray for them, and then let Him do the rest. If He chooses to put them to death then that is between Him (God) and them (homosexuals)
You really should study up on the Bible. Would you try and debate Shakespeare without actually reading his material?
“God tells Christians in the NT, to share the Gospel with homosexuals, to show them the dangers of their lifestyle, to pray for them, and then let Him do the rest.”
No. Beyond a more vague and broad command to “share the gospel” none of that stuff is anywhere in the new testament. Jesus never mentions homosexuality at all, and Paul mentions it twice, both times to say something significantly different from what you are suggesting he said.
You know what “god” does tell christians in the new testament?
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
-Jesus
(Matthew 5:17-18)
“It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one letter of the law to fail.”
-Jesus
(Luke 16:17)
Your repeated attempts to mock others for not opening a bible might work a little better if you didn’t include all the demonstrably wrong statements about what the bible says.
Why is the bible so chock full of rules that no longer apply?
Indeed:
Let me translate that into English for you:
Now, out of interest, why is it that I only hear Christians endlessly carping on about ONE of those things?
You know as well as I do that isn’t true, Erik. Furthermore:
a) You make the usual excuse, claiming that commandment doesn’t apply anymore. It undermines your claims to absolute morality that God’s laws need to be adjusted to the society in which they’re used.
b) Even if we don’t observe that commandment anymore (and even if we according to you are justified in doing so), it doesn’t change that it had to have been moral in time past, and certainly at the time it was decreed by God. So please, give us your best shot at explaining the circumstances under which it was 100% moral to indiscriminately kill gays solely based on them being gay.
“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them.” (Lev 20:13 NRSV)
The phrase “put to death” is used throughout Leviticus to refer to capital punishment. For instance, just 18 verses earlier, God says:
“Say further to the people of Israel: Any of the people of Israel, or of the aliens who reside in Israel, who give any of their offspring to Molech shall be put to death; the people of the land shall stone them to death.” (Lev 20:2 NRSV)
So clearly if someone is to be “put to death,” it means they should be killed for their transgression. Interpreting these verses any other way is internally inconsistent.
But then, you are a grandmaster of inconsistency.
Nooo, my blockquote endtag didn’t work. Must’ve been a typo or something.
Only the first line should be enclosed in <blockquote></blockquote>
The srvr munkehs fixed that for you.
Hey Erik, how do you distinguish between “civil laws” and “moral laws” in the Bible? Where are the parts that say “these are civil laws” and “these are moral laws”? As a neutral third-party, I do not see where the distinction is unambiguous at all. There are millions of Christians who argue that homosexuality, sodomy, masturbation, and cross-dressing are not moral sins according to the Bible. There are also millions of other Christians who point to the same laws in the Bible and argue that the widespread acceptance and practice of these acts is causing the decay of today’s society. How do we know which interpretations are right and which are wrong? How do we know that the voice inside our heads telling us right from wrong is really the voice of God, instead of a projection of our own feelings, or a symptom of schizophrenia?
By the way your argument for abstinence and fidelity fails in the real world. To claim that you are “living proof” is absolutely meaningless. You are only “living proof” that you are lucky, not that your argument is correct. The reality is that the vast majority of adults everywhere have sex before marriage. Teen pregnancy rates are consistently higher in places that practice abstinence-only education (which also happen to be the most religious places), which means that no amount of education, encouragement, or threats are going to stop most teenagers from giving into their desires. Many STDS, such as HIV, can be transmitted through non-sexual means. The United States has among the highest divorce rates of all Western nations, despite being among the most religious of all Western nation. Self-declared Christians divorce at a higher rate than self-declared non-believers. Each subsequent re-marriage has a greater chance of failure than the previous one, leading to a high likelihood of serial marriages. Virgins can get STDs and pregnancies through rape. Rape rates tend to be higher in the more religious countries.
For abstinence and pregnancy to be 100% effective at avoiding unwanted STDs and pregnancies, then no one must be raped, no one must divorce, no one must remarry (not even widows and widowers), blood screenings must be perfect or else no one must get tranfusions and transplants, and diseases must not be transmitted between different species. You know, many conservative Christians regard AIDS as God’s punishment for homosexuals, but epidemiologists have determined that HIV came from Africa, where it was originally a form of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that most likely crossed over to humans when an injured native hunter came into contact with a chimpanzee’s blood. The earliest cases of AIDS (in the early 1900s) were most likely not transmitted primarily by homosexuals. Only the hand of God could make the world in such a way that following moral laws to the letter would prevent unwanted pregancies and STDs. Yet that is not the world that we have, even if we were always on our best behavior. Your views imply that unwanted pregancies and STDs are punishment for immoral behavior. But that would mean that a virgin girl is punished for being raped if she contracts AIDS and became pregnant as a result of that rape.
FYI, according to the Bible, God condones or endorses polygamy, incest, and rape.
I will answer your arguments one by one but first I have to address the cheap shot at the end (very petty).
I have answered these question already (you guys are all the same, you are not as “free thinking” as you think).
http://erikbrewer.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/does-the-bible-condone-rape/
The question then arises, “how is it that the Old T. personages were able to have more than 1 wife?”. God allowed them to have more than 1 wife but He did not bless it. They chose to be disobedient to God and take more than 1 wife. Look at the problems that each of the men who took more than 1 wife had. From Abraham to Solomon, all of them had major problems because of their extra wives. It was not God’s will yet they chose it and paid the price for it. So, just because the men chose to disobey, does not mean that God approved of their actions.
God condemns incest and rape, as well as slavery and all the other “non-arguments” that you will use.
God condemns incest and rape, as well as slavery and all the other “non-arguments” that you will use.
Wait, where did God condemn slavery? Chapter and verse, please.
25 “But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die. 26 “But you shall do nothing* to the girl ; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case. 27 “When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her (Deut 22)
What does that have to do with my question?
Uh-huh, so what about girls who are not engaged?
But we know that the law is good if a man uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous one, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for homosexuals, for slave-traders, for liars, for perjurers, and anything else that is contrary to sound doctrine, (1Timothy 1:8-10)
4) This is a case of consensual sex between 2 people who are not engaged to anyone. This would be compared to today’s one night stand, or cohabitation. When they are discovered (probably by her expanding belly) the man must go to the girl’s father, ask for forgiveness, and ask for her hand in marriage. If the father agrees, he must marry her (so she will not be a victim, accused of adultery) and stay married to her all the days of his life. She was not raped, she went willingly. The problem is in the word “seized” of verse 28. The original word is trapped, but not necessarily by force. It could be translated as manipulated (with words and promises). If it were rape, like in the previous case, then the man would be put to death. Since it is not rape, he deceived her or manipulated her to come to bed with him, and he is not put to death.
1)
You’re defending rape.
2)
Both examples are of rape. In both examples the primary concern of the torah author is not the rape of the woman but the violation of a man’s property.
In the first example, the rapist is punished not for forcing himself on the victim but for f*cking the property of her husband. Force is only even mentioned here to mitigate the woman’s “sin” since even Moses realized a woman who gets raped is not guilty of adultery.
In the second example, the rapist makes restitution by paying her father fifty shekels. There is no thought for the pain of the girl who has just been raped. Only the lower price her father will get for her without a hymen.
3)
The actual question you were supposed to be answering was “where did God condemn slavery?”. It’s not surprising that you couldn’t find an example, but I’m a little baffled as to why you thought this was a good diversion tactic.
4)
If you asked where god does not condemn slavery, I’d have no trouble giving you chapter and verse. In fact here’s one right now.
Leviticus 25:44-46
44 Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
45 Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.
46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.
You have an interesting definition of consent.
Apparently, you do not understand the meaning of the word “condone.” If something is condoned by God, then logically it cannot regarded as “wrong” or “sinful.”
In the story of Lot, his two daughters get him drunk and take turns having sex with him after they all flee from Sodom. They do this because they are under the mistaken impression that there would be no other men available to preserve their bloodline. Did God come down from heaven and tell them that they were wrong? No. Did God punish Lot and his daughters? No. Instead, they were allowed to engage in incest, rape (since Lot did not give his consent), and sex outside of marriage. And Lot is still revered as a righteous man, and his bloodline through his daughters was never condemned.
There are other passages that share God’s feelings toward incest (He is against it). Read the Bible and you will find it.
Lot’s shame was enough punishment for him. Every time he saw is children/grandchildren he was reminded of his folly and the sins of his daughters.
The story of Lot is ridiculous, and I would argue the earliest recorded case of victim blaming I know of. Dad gets drunk and his daughters get knocked up? And it was the daughters’ fault? That’s likely!
In the same story, Lot’s wife gets turned into a mound of salt by God for the mere transgression of looking back toward her former home. How is that punishment proportionate to Lot’s shame? And why should Lot be punished for anything? He was raped by his daughters. The daughters who raped him with the intention of getting of getting pregant by him, what punishment did they receive? None! God is either a hypocrite or insanely capricious for contradicting himself time and time again in the Bible.
If you read the Bible, most of the mandated punishments for sins seem to be death. Yet rapists almost never get the death sentence in the Bible, so we’re supposed to consider rape to be a lesser crime/sin, since that’s how God evidently feels about it?
Poor, poor Lot. It would have been so much better for him if the sex-crazed townspeople had just taken him up on his offer of using his daughters as sex toys. They would have most likely been dead by morning, and he’d have never had to have that inconvenience of being raped by them after getting drunk.
Can you imagine that news story in a modern setting?
I think I know what I’d believe!
God tells Lot’s wife not to look back toward her former home as she and her family flee. She disobeys him and gets instantly turned into a mound of salt. Men in the Bible engage in polygamy, allegedly disobeying God, and their lives just become more difficult. How is that fair? At the very least, it proves that God is sexist.
Oh but Jesus does speak of homosexuality
[Link moved to link field] – Custador
As previously requested, please avoid the spam filter by keeping your links in the link field.
For anyone who is curious but doesn’t have the stomach for Erik’s website, the verse he is pretending to quote is this:
Matthew 11:24
But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.
That’s your example? And you’re sure you’re not a poe?
Apparently the rationalization is that since Jesus mentioned a well known torah story of god’s judgment to threaten some people for not listening to him, he must have actually meant god hates gays.
Despite how homophobic the bible overall is, despite how most strains of modern christianity obsess over hating the gays like it’s the first commandment or something, despite how much some christians may personally want Jesus to have condemned homosexuality, there is absolutely nowhere in any of the four gospels where Jesus makes any mention of homosexuality at all.
And in response to your next false statement about what your book says…
Where the f*ck in Genesis does it actually say that anyone in Sodom was gay?
Erm, 2 Peter is not the words of Jesus. Neither are any of the other letters in the NT. And your direct link between homosexuality and Jesus mentioning Sodom is tenuous in the extreme.
By the way: You stated previously that the Bible doesn’t command homosexuals to be killed, although you know perfectly well about Lev 20:13. You then state that that particular OT command only applies to a theocratic Jewish society.
On your web page which you’ve linked to, I then find this little gem of yours:
Ah, smell that hypocrisy. Not only do you justify your views on gays using the exact verse whose applicability you just denied; you’re also extending it to Christianity.
Wait. So God gave Mary AIDS?
(ok. I admit that when there are a lot of long comments, I mostly skim)
You saved yourself some WTF.
Erik Brewer. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Oh absolutely … the contrast between yourself and Eric is one of the main reasons I stopped using the blanket term ‘Christians’ and try to either identify which group or at least say some Christians.
I want you and Erik to fight it out. Christian v Christian, though the similarity ends there.
I’m sure JonJon is not a True Christian™ by Erik’s standards.
Oh, who the hell would be? JonJon’s our best bet.
I’m pretty sure Erik’s not a True Christian (TM) by anyone’s standards – including his imaginary sky-friend.
Not so. It’s a given that the god Erik thinks up fully approves of Erik’s loathsome attitude.
I’d do it if only this was the forum. I can’t be organized enough here. Here, what I can say is that Erik should be ashamed of himself, and hope that maybe that counts for something. Although I can’t imagine it will.
I think it does.
When christians show they are willing to police their own ranks and call out bullsh*t from other christians, it makes a better point for christian morality (or at least the idea that not all of you are as bad as the loudest and most visible of your church) than anything else we’ve seen in this thread.
Info on STD’s from cdc.gov (I am sure you guys will admit that this is a reliable source)
19 Million
STDs are one of the most critical health challenges facing the nation today. CDC estimates that there are 19 million new infections every year in the United States.
(exactly what I wrote before, but you guys cannot admit anything that destroys your arguments so you shift and spin)
New info
$17 Billion
STDs cost the U.S. health care system $17 billion every year—and cost individuals even more in immediate and life-long health consequences.
Regardless of race or gender, data show that sexually active adolescents and young adults are at increased risk for STDs when compared to older adults.
Being sexually active without being married places you at a high risk of contracting an STD. Translation, sexual immorality has negative consequences (like I said before)
Now I want to see how you guys will try and spin these facts.
I want you to provide sources showing that ‘being married’ has anything to do with your STD risk.
Translation: I want everyone else to see the invisible link between things I don’t like, and negative consequences.
I don’t see any facts that need spinning from this end. Your attempt to spin the facts was rather pathetic though.
If I am married and faithful to my wife and she is faithful to me then our chances of getting an STD are almost 0 (there is chance of rape because immorality is tolerated in our society).
STD’s are transmitted through sex. If you are not having sex then you are not going to get an STD. If you are faithful in marriage and your spouse is too, then you are not going to get an STD. This is logic but I guess the atheist in you will not see what is right before your eyes.
If all immorality were stopped tomorrow all over the world, would STD’s carry on to future generations or not (3 or 4 generations from now)? Please answer that one for me. When I say all immorality stops, I mean, abstinence until marriage, fidelity in marriage, no more rape, no more homosexuality, no more incest, no more pedophilia, etc.
Eric
How do you feel about mere monogamy? Would you call being monogamously sexually active outside of marriage “immoral”?
Because that has roughly the same risk of STD as does a marriage.
Of course, Biblical marriage wasn’t always monogamous, and having sex with multiple partners was probably close to as dangerous as it is now. I know you’ve claimed that Biblical polygamists were unhappy, but I think that’s pretty dishonest of you (not to mention unimaginative.) Moses had two wives. Will you explain how his life sucked after that?
At any rate, Moses had two wives, and even if he didn’t have sex with them before he was married, he had a greater chance of getting STDs than I, who slept monogamously with someone I wasn’t married to for several years.
But maybe you’ll disregard that. Let me ask you this instead: does your position make the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctrine of refusing blood transfusions correct? Because it is eminently possible to contract AIDS (the alleged scourge of an angry God upon the sexually licentious) from blood transfusions.
You are wrong, and you are badly representing Christianity, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Rapists rape because that’s what they are driven to do, just like serial killers are driven to kill. It has nothing to do with society tolerating immorality. How exactly would society go about NOT tolerating immorality? Rape and murder are among the most heinous crimes and result in the most severe punishments, yet they still happen regularly. Rape is common within theocracies. Child rape by clergymen is common within the Catholic Church, even though priests devote themselves to the teachings of Jesus as much as anybody could.
STDs do not have to be transmitted sexually. A “sexually transmitted disease” is merely one in which a main form of transmission is sexual contact. But consider this: If your wife had to get a blood transfusion as a result of a medical emergency, and the donor blood wasn’t properly screened and carried HIV, then you’d get AIDS later from having sex with your wife, even though she didn’t have sex with anyone else. And if she got pregnant, then your baby would have AIDS, too.
You have yet to provide even one reason why “being sexually active without being married” equates to “immorality”.
No one here or anywhere disputes that STDs are a real problem. Someone who wants to fix that (or just give the phony impression that he cares about actual solutions) would do well not to disparage condom use.
One obvious reason why teens are at higher risk of STD infection than older adults is because teens tend to be less well informed and make more impulsive choices.
Abstinence is fine as a personal choice, assuming it is one’s choice and not forced on them. But as an expectation for human behavior, abstinence is not only unrealistic but dangerously naive. Promoting an unrealistic option and disparaging actual solutions is not going to bring those numbers down.
Abstinence divorced from the power of Jesus Christ is impossible. The reason that some abstinence only programs do not work is because they are divorced from the teachings of the Bible, which give the person the power to say no to sexual immorality. If you only use half the medicine that the doctor prescribes then you cannot blame the medicine or the doctor. That is what happens when abstinence programs without Jesus Christ are like.
Are you kidding? Abstinence programs *exist* because of the bible, they are still used despite mountains of research showing they are ineffective because people listen to their bibles more than reason, and yet again neither you nor the bible are demonstrating any reason that sex before marriage is an immoral act. You’re not even trying.
Your “research” comes from abstinence programs divorced from the teachings of Jesus Christ. I want to see the stats on abstinence programs that teach the teachings of Jesus Christ (I am sure you have all of zero)
Didn’t take you long to get smarmy with me, did it? And like I said, you’re not trying. You’re deflecting questions asked of you and just plain lying about where abstinence programs come from. There’s no need for Jesus to abstain from sex, plenty of other cultures practice or encourage abstinence, but when it comes to sexual morality in places like America, abstinence programs are entirely fuelled by biblical fanaticism. That even they aren’t enough for you, and that you cannot conceive of non-biblical abstinence being valid, shows that you are one heck of a fundamentalist.
First of all, the only places where abstinence-only sex education exists is in the most conservative Christian areas. Second of all, any public education that “teach the teachings of Jesus Christ” would be illegal (unconstitutional); therefore, you hate America. Third of all, abstinence-only sex education in schools need not mention Jesus because, in every place that has it, parents relate abstinence to Jesus within the home. And finally, chastity pledges, which are explicitly Christ-based, are proven not to work; teenagers who take chastity pledges have just as much premarital sex as teenagers who don’t.
@ John
You cannot live according to God’s moral standards divorced from the teachings of Jesus. All people are slaves to sin. Without being set free by Jesus Christ, a person cannot say no over and over to sin and temptation. It is impossible when you are a slave.
And yet you are a slave to your magic daddy.
Erik, this has been painful to watch unfold, good as your intentions may have been friend. First, on this side of the cross, we don’t ‘try’ in our own self-effort to live by some ethical/moral standard or code, ie, what you call ‘morality’ but instead from His indwelling life and nature within. Otherwise you are still ‘eating’ from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil (a duality) instead of the One Tree, the Tree of Life, ie Christ…who is our life, Col 3:4.
God doesn’t ‘try’ to be holy, He just is. He says, ‘Erik, you will be holy too (set-apart, distinct from the world and its fallen, corrupt ways) because I AM and you are in Me’. (1 Pet 1:15 &16). Its a by-product of His life in us, of our spiritual paternity & lineage, do you see friend? So its pointless to come in here championing ‘moral’s to this audience.
You are still in the separation, seeing ‘God’ (who is Spirit, Jn 4:24) as someOne outside of you who lives up in the sky somewhere dictating down principles that you must live by in order to please Him (the law) etc, but that is not the reality of the new and much ‘better’ heavenly covenant, no, its far better. You and I have ‘died’ (Gal 2:20, Rom 6:6, Col 3:3) and dead men have no morals, and now Christ is our life, Col 3:4 (not morality, not keeping the law) and when He ‘appears’ (in you, is recognized by you as your one-true-only life) then you too shall ‘appear’ with Him in the (same) state of glory, Jn 17:22-24 & Col 1:27, Christ in you, Erik’s hope of (restored) glory (as it was in the beginning, before the fall, that man created in God’s ‘very image and likeness’, Gen 1:26). Do you see this friend?
The fundamentalists (the law-keepers, religious leaders, etc) have a strong hold on you right now and you can not ‘see’ God outside of this thing you desperately cling to, ie ‘morality’, religion, etc.
I know you’re convinced that God wants you to preach ‘morals’ to atheists but what if all Love (God is Love right? 1st Jn 4:16) really wants is for you to love and accept them, just as they are and to leave the rest UP to Him, ie ‘to love you neighbor as yourself, love your enemies’, etc?
Now get free friend, yes, get free and finally cast off the yoke of (religious) slavery once and for all. All the best.
You know you’re dealing with somebody batshit insane when John C makes sense in comparison ;-)
Ooh, I love it when I totally agree with John C. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I’m all about it!
Utter nonsense. Being abstinent or not is purely a state of choice – no gods required. What you (and many, many others) have failed to do is provide any good reason to make that choice.
I don’t believe your Christ exists. Do you have ANY other argument? I can be inabstinate and still be reasonably safe by wearing a condom and getting checked regularly, so the safety issue fails. The same is true of unwanted preganancy.
Modern science prevails. Two thousand year old superstition fails.
You do not have to believe in gravity either, that is your choice. Ignorance is a choice.
“Ignorance is a choice.”
Strange choice you’ve made there …
You do not have to agree that God exists, that is why I wrote what I did.
With modern science we still get 19 million new STD cases in the USA, something is not working.
Yes, and that something is fucking idiots like you who insist that abstinence only sex education works (protip: It provably doesn’t) and therefore don’t teach kids how to use condoms which, as an FYI, actually DO work.
The United States ranks very high for religiosity among developed nations and is the only one where conservative forms of Christianity are a major social and political force, where creationism and abstince-only sex education are still being debated as a matter of public policy. It also ranks high for teen pregnancy, STD transmission, and violent crime rates. Yet the United States ranks rather low for science education, healthcare outcomes, standards of living for low-income households. If anything is not working, then it must be Christianity. Face it: Religion is really only for those who are desperate, not those who are content. It’s been proven throughout history.
Perhaps that explains why someone who has never read the bible is having so much trouble remembering Jesus’ advice.
Still sort of fails to explain why so many christian priests keep raping children.
Apparently I f*cked up the tag on that last post. “remembering Jesus’ advice” was supposed to link to Biblegateway:Matthew 25:40.
Fixed.
Thanks Custador.
The context of Matthew 25 is all about the Jews. Please pay attention to context. It is very important. What am I not doing for the least? Sharing the Gospel with people who are enslaved to sin (so that they can be set free) is what all Christians are called to do.
Erik, we aren’t called to “share the gospel.” We are called to “make disciples.” Do you understand the difference? “Sharing the gospel” means that you get to press your twisted version of Christianity on other people, insist on its factual nature and disregard every alternative interpretation without thinking, and feel self satisfied afterwards. And we, as Christians, are not called to do that.
We are called to convince. We are called to persuade. We are called to open a dialogue that leads to soul searching. We are called to ask tough questions–questions without easy, canned answers–and work through those questions in a spirit of fellowship and brotherhood. We are called to live and love and work in a world alongside people who don’t know what we know, and don’t hope what we hope.
What you are not doing is everything you have been called to do. I’ll cut you the tiniest bit of slack because you’ve probably been taught badly. You know next to nothing about the Bible, and even less about the way human beings work. And that is only partially your fault. But it doesn’t make what you are doing righteous.
What you are doing is accusing people of being immoral, pointing out what you perceive to be their inadequacies, and misrepresenting the words that make up your sacred text. Tell me, where does Christ call us to do that?
This sort of thing (JonJon’s admonition, not whatever this ends up next to) is why I have to disagree with the religion triangle.
At this point I’m not particularly worried that some uninformed agnostic may stumble across this thread and be misinformed by Erik (which was my original purpose in jumping in), but the Matthew 25 thing is actually kind of cool.
And since I’m always making cryptic statements to the atheists here about how the bible actually does contain some really good ideas (and since I’ve already demonstrated in this thread that it contains some ridiculously bad ideas), this seems like a good opportunity to point out something I think Jesus was right about.
The son of man makes a good point here, and if you can look past the explicitly religious way this point is stated, I think it’s one most here could approve of.
“The context of Matthew 25 is all about the Jews. Please pay attention to context. ”
The context is not one that changes the statement.
He was probably talking to a mostly jewish audience. The story takes place in Israel. The lead in tells us Jesus and his disciples were hanging out by the temple shortly before this speech (but not during this speech according to Matthew 24:3 which places it at the Mount of Olives).
But “all about the jews”? No. The context of Matthew 25 is that one of his disciples asks him “what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?”.
Jesus responds with a speech that goes through the rest of Matthew 24 (warnings of false prophets, warnings of wars and natural disasters, further warnings of false prophets [the Jesus in the bible appears to be far more concerned with people corrupting his message than where they put their c*cks or what they wear on them. He certainly mentions it more. There’s a lesson in that somewhere], Jesus predicts more false prophets who will do great signs and wonders, Jesus predicts his return, Jesus predicts this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled, the parable of the fig tree, be watchful for no man knoweth the hour when the master will return to punish his lazy servants)…
… continuing through Matthew 25 (the parable of the virgins, the parable of the talents[this has nothing to do with my overall point, but I find it interesting that the son of god quotes god (in parable form) as describing himself this way. “I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed”. His words, not mine],
and then Jesus says this.
Matthew 25:31-45
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
That’s the piece of advice from Jesus that I was referring to. How you treat your fellow man is how you treat god.
You assert that abstinence is impossible unless people follow your god’s rules, and you’re just going to ignore all the abstinent non-Christians who have ever lived on this planet as if they don’t exist?
I’m sorry, this is a joke. No one is that thoroughly incapable of reason.
On a whole, when you separate abstinence from the teachings of Jesus Christ it will not work. There will be some examples (and eunuchs of course, but I would not recommend that) of people who are abstinent without following Christ. But en masse, without teaching people to follow Jesus Christ, they will not have the power to say no to temptation and sin (because we are all slaves to sin). It is hard to remain faithful when you constantly give in to temptation. Following Jesus Christ gives the ability to say NO to temptation and sin, therefore leading to a moral lifestyle (abstinence before marriage and faithfulness in marriage).
The fact that Christians have higher rates of infidelity and divorce than non-Christians, implies that following Jesus Christ does NOT give that ability.
Inb4 no true Scotsman.
Really? I’m abstinent and atheist. I have a much higher self control than most anyone I know. I’ve never done drugs, (i’ve smoked 2 tobacco cigarettes in my life if that counts)
You seem to think that without the threat of your god’s damnation that people can’t control themselves. What you fail to realize is that most people who do follow “da faith” use it as a coping mechanism instead of just being better people. I can make a moral choice by what is right, not by what i am told is right. I don’t need an oppressive father-figure looking over my shoulder all the time to watch everything i do to do the right thing. i don’t need fear and paranoia to rule my life. I’m free to do what i wish, and I do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because if I don’t, I’m going to be banished to eternal punishment by something that you claim loves people so much. What is really pitiable is that you do need that sort of thing in your life. And, that you think that it is love and still believe that you must be forced to do as the book says or that love will be taken away. it greatly makes me doubt your ability to truly know what love is.
Ah, but this is not the same thing as your original statement, which was “Abstinence divorced from the power of Jesus Christ is impossible.”
How does it work that even though “we are all slaves to sin”, some non-christian people can be abstinent?
Surely if “some” can rise above their status as slaves, the rest can too and simply choose not to.
‘Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.’ (just to clear up so that you don’t accuse me of misquoting you, that is a line from a movie.)
What the actual fuck, Erik? You posted some stats about STIs from a reliable source, and then jumped to a totally unrelated and unsupported point – And you think that because the first part is true, the second part that you tenuously shoe-horned in there is also proven?! Come on man, just how stupid are you?!
Nice language, did you learn that at Harvard or Yale? I posted from a source that was right on line with the other source that I posted from. The argument stands. We are destroying ourselves with STD’s that could be easily prevented; a moral lifestyle. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage. I know you will never agree with the truth (you are an atheist, that already states that you deny the truth).
No Erik, you did no such thing. You posted some stats, and then you made a giant leap onto something that you have not demonstrated in any way. You’ve proven that STIs are a problem, but you have NOT proven that STIs have anything to do with unmarried sex.
Unmarried sex and extra marital sex, if you erase those two things (and rape as a well) then STD’s would decline. It is very simple logic.
Bullshit. Not just bullshit, but completely unachievable bullshit. I’ve never had an STI. I’ve been in a monogamous sexual relationship for six years. I’m not married. I’m representative of a huge portion of my generation. I also have a long sexual history and, pay attention to this part, I was taught how to use condoms in school. So were all of my friends, most of whom have similar or longer sexual histories than me, a lot of whom are also long-term monogamous and unmarried, and none of whom have ever had an STI.
Teach kids how to use STIs and make good sexual health services available to them all, and STIs will be eliminated.
Well, if everyone practiced safe sex, then STDs would decline as well. It is very simple logic.
Do you know what wouldn’t eradicate STDs? A false sense of security, just because you think that abstinence and fidelity will make you immune.
“We are destroying ourselves with STD’s that could be easily prevented”
Well, I wouldn’t say we’re destroying ourselves with them (climate change, overpopulation or nuclear war will probably do that first), but it certainly is a problem and it can be easily prevented. Condoms for everyone!
“a moral lifestyle”
Describe again (or, actually, for the first time, since you refuse to answer the question) how exactly premarital sex between consenting partners is immoral. You must cite two independent sources.
Condom distribution (not 100% effective) vs morality (100% effective). I will go with 100%, but according to atheists’ logic something lower than 100% is better.
OK, prove that “morality” is 100% effective.
If the two consenting unmarried partners are both virgins when they meet and have no other sexual contacts for the duration of their relationship, they are as safe from sexually transmitted infections as a faithful married couple.
Morality is not 100% effective. Lots of people lead good, moral lives then get raped. Often by priests.
Also you ignored the question again. What is wrong with you? You are still not demonstrating that having sex out of wedlock is actually, objectively immoral.
If you check the link I provided earlier in this tread you will notice that countries who are far more liberal about sex and where gay marriage are legal and where the population is predominantly secular (all of western Europe) have lower teen pregnancy rate as well as lower STD levels then jeebus land USA.
I love that Erik constantly starts new threads, as though to distract us from the fact that he has left so many fair questions unanswered.
I am answering them as fast as I can. There are many of you and just one of me. Unlike the atheists, I seem to have a life, so I cannot sit in front of the computer all day and throw rocks at people with whom I do not agree.
p.s. I answer the thread until it will not give the option to me anymore
Oh give it a rest. “You have no life” was a petty, pathetic cliche of a retort online before Google existed.
And what do you know about my life? . . . That is what I thought.
I am a born again Christian who has a passion to know the Lord Jesus Christ. I have served as a missionary for more than 8 years. I am a disciple of Vasile Filat, the greatest teacher in the world. I love to use my spiritual gift of teaching. Discipleship is the central focus of my life. I enjoy teaching Bible studies in many different forms, through ESL, computers, simple studies, and sports. I enjoy leading seminars on missions and discipleship training. I was born to a religious family but I did not realize that I was a lost sinner until I was 18 years old. I encountered the Lord Jesus Christ through His Word in the summer of 1999. My life was totally changed and I have not been the same since.
I live in Eastern Europe, with my wife and our 2 children, Abigail and Emmanuel, where we spend our time leading Bible study camps through English, sports, and other various ways. I am a pastor at the church “Good News” in Chisinau, Moldova. I love sharing the Gospel and counseling others through the Word.
That’s just from your own page. Not hard to find the information on you.
I find it kind of sad that you have to identify yourself by your beliefs first, rather than the things that really matter when it comes to determining who/what someone is as a person.
Just as an added bonus, your wife’s name is Elena.
I can provide lots more if you like.
(Mississippi)
I never said I was trying to hide anything. I am glad you found what you did. I am defined by my beliefs. They make me who I am.
I’d define myself as a family person first. By the people who i care about, and those that matters to me. Knowing that you put your delusions before your family in importance is kind of frightening.
I didn’t say I knew anything about your life, you’re the one who said you knew that ‘the atheists’ (are they related to ‘the gays’?) have no life and sit in front of a computer all day. I’ll have a stab at one thing in your life though – you need glasses and you have mislaid them. It’s the only explanation for how you could completely misunderstand what I said.
he does wear glasses. So does his wife.
Protip, Brewer: if the last comment does not have the option for a reply, that means you need to go back up and find the last indented comment that was being replied to…
What does a true Christian look? The word “Christian” was actually an insult that mean “little christs” because they were living according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus explains what a true Christian looks like in His famous Sermon on the Mount.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/matthew/passage.aspx?q=matthew+7:15-23
Not everyone who says that he is a Christian, is an actual Christian. You will know them by their fruit (not the fact that they say “Lord, Lord” but by their actions. 1) They do not practice lawlessness (sin, anything contrary to God’s teachings).
http://www.biblestudytools.com/nas/matthew/passage.aspx?q=matthew+7:24-27
True Christians hear the Words of Jesus Christ and act on them (put them in to practice, or in other words, they live according to the Bible).
People who are not the real deal, 1) say they are (call Jesus Lord) 2) Practice sin as a way of life 3) Hear the Words of Jesus but do not apply them.
There is no clearer definition than this. Either you obey God or you do not. Those who live by the Word of God are genuine. Those who do not are not genuine.
This is Jesus Christ’s explanation, not my own. If you have a problem with it then you need to take it up with Him.
What does a true Christian look?
I hear they wear kilts.
I believe you wrote “I didn’t say I knew anything about your life,”
Your words “you have no life”
So which one is correct???
Those were your words Erik.
The no-life comment came from you (“unlike the atheists I seem to have a life”) and your fairly transparent attempt to weasel out of actually answering questions or addressing the numerous times you have been caught lying.
@Custador
Name calling and foul language, wow I feel like I am on the play ground again. Did you learn those techniques in Law school or debate class?
As opposed to your super-mature “nu-uh” and “cuz my (imaginary) daddy said so.” or is that more in line with “my delusions can beat up your reality”? paraphrasing, of course.
This isn’t Moldova. This is a website. The words you just said five minutes ago are still in print right f*cking there next to you pretending you didn’t say them. At this point, catching you in a lie doesn’t even require looking at your blog (sorta counterproductive since plugging your blog is the only reason you’re here), it’s as simple as scrolling up.
Erik’s IP is assigned to an address in Mississippi, actually. I won’t say which town :-p
Not surprising. I’d have guessed that or Alabama.
But according to his website he lives in Eastern Europe, and is the pastor of the Good News Church in Chisinau, Moldova.
Maybe he’s Telepastoring.
Straw poll on throwing the troll back under its bridge, please.
I don’t think anyone would hate you for it. :)
No, but I practice chew-toy deprivation by consent.
Do as you see fit.
I appreciate you asking, but as a chew toy he’s served his purpose.
I can’t vote for banning anyone, but this troll needs to go away (and isn’t going away on his own).
So do as you see fit.
It’s not my website, but there will be other trolls and other days, and maybe more worthwhile discussions than this.
However, if you do ban him from commenting further, I’d like to request that any comments he’s posted so far be left as they are.
You know my opinions on banning. Not in favor, on principle.
I don’t think he deserves a ban … he may be an complete twat but that’s as far as it goes.
He is a fun chew-toy, I suppose. Still, the spam filter has started picking him up anyway – presumably because of all his link spam. I’ve let a few of his comments through as I’ve seen them, but I’ve got no intention of going through a thousand comments at a time just to let through the torrent of bullshit he’s spewing. Anyway, he can effectively only comment when a mod is online because of that.
That seems fair. Banning someone just because we disagree, or because they’re a complete idiot, isn’t really fair, but if his own nonsense makes him trip up over the filters, that’s his problem.
I did tell him three times that his link spam was triggering the filter. Meh. Horse, water, drinking.
I agree with you and John. You did tell him multiple times, and that’s the only reason why his comments have to be approved one by one. I’m not a fan of banning someone, but you shouldn’t have to sit there and go through a hundred spam comments just to find him because he refuses to listen to what you’ve told him several times. Also, he really isn’t bringing anything new to the table. He uses his blog as credible evidence, which is what is making his comments not go through, so I think spam filter is taking care of him as needed. If he wants to comment correctly, then let him of course, but if he can’t follow the rules, there’s only so many times you can and should help him.
I had my say further up. I can’t see any benefit to keeping this guy around. Cue the “I’m being censored for my shitty beliefs!” screeching.
I’m noticing a pattern here. Erik Brewer says something, gets taken apart in successive replies to the point where there’s nothing but a smouldering pile of rubble where his argument used to be … then his next comment addresses an entirely different point, as if the first never existed.
It’s been entertaining though, thank you … :)
That’s an old fundie tactic, throw their feces all over the place in the hope that some will stick. when the forum is resurrected (Hint, hint) look up the epic tread, it went on for over a thousand comments in which the resident fundie cycled through all of his claims had them demolished and then, several comments down the line, assuming people forgot just posted the same claims again as if they were new.
The word epic gets thrown around far too much these days… but it is entirely applicable in this case. Many facepalms were had by all, Kris…
It spilled over into multiple threads after the first one broke.
Links (in what I believe are the correct order) for anyone who wishes to witness the truly epic unawareness of Notashamedofchrist (he shows up near the end of page 1 of “Conversations”).
Conversations Like This Are Probably Why I’m An Atheist
The Epic Thread
Things I’ve Always Wondered About The Bible
Do Not Feed The Trolls? — An Informal UF Poll
Enjoy.
Oh and probably wear some kind of protective headgear.
Since we haven’t heard from Erik in a couple of days, I’m wondering which explanation obtains:
A. He’s been banned.
B. He’s given up on us heathens and gone away of his own accord.
C. He’s ignored Custy’s very clear instructions and his replies are all stuck in the spam filter where no one will ever see them.
Nah, he ran away to his own blog and then lied about being banned.
Doesn’t surprise me. I don’t think he actually claimed he got banned, but he hasn’t done anything to make it clear what really happened.
He has also seized on the few people who lost their temper, and failed to mention the many of us who were civil, probably to reinforce stereotypes and pump up his own image with his blog readers.
I suppose the appropriate response would be to take it up with him on his blog, but he controls all the comments there, and I don’t care enough about his opinion to go to the effort.
I don’t think he actually claimed he got banned, but he hasn’t done anything to make it clear what really happened.
The title of the blog post, “If An Atheist Cannot Win The Argument, He Just Blocks You”, I took to be the claim, but yeah, upon reading the text of the post it isn’t at all clear what exactly he is claiming, other than that he is greatly aggrieved by our childishness, or something.
Also, read the comments. He’s copy pasted some of the arguments on this thread( it’s not cherry-picking because he’s not an atheist) using a different account, and posted replies to them.
Wait, my mistake. It looks like a real person. I was confused because the first 2 posts by the account were exact copy pastes without context or quotation marks.
I guess I messed up on that. :-P
The first Meh, Chrsitians post was from Custy. The second was from Nox (I think – forgive me for not wanting to wade back through that morass).
It was a copy-paste of me, but I didn’t post it.
Second was a copy paste of me. I did not post it there.
My Copy Pasta, my little green gravitar.
On his blog, Erik wrote (in response to a C&P’d post from Custy – with the name Meh, Christians):
So I wrote the following:
It’s currently awaiting moderation…
@Len: It was up before I posted my 2nd comment. Erik has even posted a reply. Weird.
Erik has accepted my post, but says it’s not worth sticking around when his argument-winning responses are not shown. Oh well. Maybe some of his readers will come here and see what we all saw. Maybe it will start someone thinking.
I guess that in some people’s minds it’s a good way to “win” an argument: By your own actions (and ignoring the warnings of mods), get yourself recognised as a spammer, then claim that because your brilliant stuff got blocked, it looks like you didn’t win.
Dropped my 2 cents in too. Nothing groundbreaking though. I nearly invited his readers over myself though, so they could see the warnings and such first hand.
I say, quite a lot of Erik’s comments must have become lost. At the top of my head, we never got answers to these questions:
- Where in the Bible does God condemn slavery?
- How was it ever moral to kill gays simply because they were gay?
- Why would someone voluntarily choose to be gay when it leads to discrimination and diminished civil rights?
- How exactly does a faithful, married couple have a smaller chance of getting an STD than a faithful, unmarried couple?
What a pity those answers were lost. I’m sure they were brilliant.
Finally, he provided proof of one of his claims… from the Catholic Education Resource Center – http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html
This and “God says so” is why homosexuality is objectively immoral and wrong and the gays are bad and should, presumably, be murdered for daring to exist. He doesn’t say they should be killed, of course, but what else are we supposed to do with these “aggressive, violent, manipulative” homosexuals if we’re listening to what god says?
When it was pointed to him in a comment that he wasn’t actually banned he sure tried to make is look as if the link issue was not a preexisting part of the spam filter but was added just because we were all scared of his arguments.
I especially like his statement about how we atheists try to “avoid the black and white truth.” That really sums up the depth of Erik’s argumentation.
My favorite part is:
“If you have any atheist friends, please pray for them and try to share the Gospel with them. Do not be afraid of their childish tactics. Share the truth unashamedly. God will do the rest. On Judgment Day, they will not be able to claim ignorance because you did your part.”
So, wait, you’re saying that if you didn’t just come in here and spew scripture everywhere I might have gotten in on a technicality? Well, gee, thanks, don’t do me any other favors!
My favorite part was when he compared us to demons.
I call Dantalion.
I call shotgun on Vapula.
Can I be Moloch?
I call Crowley.
I’ll take Ahaz.
Its awesome when they offer arguments against spreading their own religion.
Usually they try the, “You know in your heart what I’m saying is true.”
Er I mean: People have already heard Jesus’ message in their heart
He hasn’t been banned, but I’m fairly sure the filter is picking him up anyway because of his link spam. The filter currently has 433 comments in it (meaning it must have been emptied within the last 45 minutes), and I for one have no intention of going though all of them just in order to let Erik through!
I did a search. He ain’t in there.
You’re a braver man than me. I did used to try to check every comment, but since we’ve moved the volume of spam is ridiculous (as you know), and there’s only so many times I can read about cheap Ugg boots, outcall escort services and child pr0n before I get depressed. Ergo, now I just give it a quick glance and then empty the folder.
What are we up to? About 6,000 – 8,000 per day?
Usually, when it gets to about 1000, I just empty the directory without checking. If he ended up in the spam directory, he could very easily have been lost.
Obvious though, I didn’t ban him. Unless Daniel did, I think he could only have lost a post here or there to the server monkeys.
Must be at least that. I habitually empty the filter at about 07:45 GMT, and there are usually at least 1500 to 2000 in it by that point. I also empty it every couple of hours while I’m online in the evenings, and it rarely contains less than 400 to 600 comments when I do. And it’s not like there aren’t three or four of us regularly emptying the thing.
Usually when I see it, it’s at 200-300. I get the sense that Custy sees the lion’s share of it; must have to do with spammers’ time zones. :)
A mere 1300 in it this morning.
Custador,
This has nothing to do with any of the above conversation, and I apologize if it’s inappropriate. I would like to ask you about nursing school in the UK. Is there a way to contact you here? Should I leave my email address?
Again, sorry if this is not the right way to go about things!
I’ll email you in the morning, no worries.
To clarify, you don’t need to leave an email address in public view, I’ll use the one you post with, assuming it’s genuine.
Well, he swears blind that all his perfect, logical answers were caught in the spam filter. I suggested he simply try again but he doesn’t feel like repeating himself because that would be too much work and fears he would be ‘spammed’ again (I presume he means blocked for spamming). The idea of just giving us some of the responses on his blog seems to have not occurred to him.
Also, I’m determined to get him to answer my bloody question but he completely ignored it. I suppose asking him the same question while he refuses to answer it must not be honest and fair, somehow…