TheBoost said:
darth_ender said:
Let's assume God is real for a moment. Let's assume that a modern-day Moses exists and the whole world knew this man was a prophet of God. Let's go on and imagine that God provided commandments that were completely consistent with our way of thinking in the year 2013. Let's then imagine that we wrote down these commandments and preserved them for 2,000 years. Let's then say with great certainty that the people of 2,000 years in the future would look at our society, our people, and our values as a bunch of idiotic baloney. Then they look at our scriptures that match our values, and decide that the God (which we already are assuming exists) must be false simply because he spoke to a more primitive people in a way that they would understand. You don't have to believe the Bible is true, and you may give a number of reasons why you think that way. But if you think God is false because he was working with a primitive people, you're kinda expecting a little much from him.
So this same God gives the Book of Leviticus to these people, which is mainly list after list of really really specific instructions to follow.Are these people really SO PRIMITIVE, that in that list of 500+ laws He couldn't throw in "Don't rape people" or "Don't keep slaves" or "Don't kill dudes because they screw other dudes."
Were the people who built the great cities of Egypt and Babylon, who irrigated the Fertile Crescent, so primitive these laws would have made their brains overheat?
It's amazing! So many atheists, yet they still maintain a "holier than thou" tone! Obviously their technology was amazing. I'm not saying they were idiots. But I'm talking about context. Do you think if you traveled back in time (a feat limited to Bingowings at the present) to visit the Egyptians and told them about your clearly superior notions that there are no gods, they'd be ready to hear it? Do you think if you shared with them the ideas of electing their pharaoh or treating women equally that they would be ready for such notions? God was speaking to people of a different time. Besides, if you've been keeping track of the conversation instead of jumping in the middle and using typical atheist talking points, you'd see that the Bible does not advocate rape. It talked of treating slaves well in a time when slaves were not treated well. I already have spoken against killing gays, and my only understanding is that the people of the time would have done the same, and this only codified it.
Forgive me Boost, as my frustration is not just at you, but rather at the persistent feeling of each and every atheist who enters this thread to try and make those who believe in God prove everything in the Bible and justify everything that goes contrary to our modern notions and understandings. I think all points have been made over and over. Rather than accept that some people believe something different based on different criteria, this zealous missionary effort to dissuade a belief in Christ because of a rather obscure passage that was seldom enforced, even less so at the time of Jesus. It seems that rather than accepting there are good people who believe in a book that has a lot of truth, perhaps more than they are willing to accept, every atheist's purpose is to shove their own reasoning down someone else's throat.
I don't know how many times I've been told that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are annoying because they keep coming back and sharing their beliefs. What about those who keep coming back and demanding that you see things their way?