Bingowings said:
darth_ender said:
Bingowings said:
DuracellEnergizer said:
As someone who generally appreciates theism, your theology still makes me sad.
I think it's makes perfect sense.
If you take the Bible even remotely to be the story of God's interaction with humanity then everthing we attribute to 'the Devil' is done by the Old Testament God.
He wipes out whole civilisations, visits plagues and death on even his most devoted followers, urges people to rape and murder and even to murder their own children.
Jesus is in total opposition to all that and as the word for adversary is Satan one could make a perfectly good reading of the Biblical text where God is the Devil and Jesus is his rebellious son.
In fact it makes more sense that way.
The Eden Serpent whispers the Word "rebellion" into the ear of Eve and urges man to embrace free will.
Jesus urges man to not fear death on the promise of a new eternal incorruptible Kingdom with himself as ruler.
Embrace Gnosticism kids. You know it makes sense...sort of
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/26/fact-check-does-the-bible-really-support-rape-and-polygamy-theblaze-explores-atheists-critiques/
http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-rape.html
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Religion/post/704502/#TopicPost704502
Someone needs to spend more time reading the Bible and less reading critiques from others clearly out simply to tear it down.
That's more of a call to read your links. The Bible God clearly requests rape, murder and infanticide (though an angel saves the day in one case).
I didn't have time to do much this morning, as I had to head out the door to work (where I am now). But I can say that there is more to the Bible than "clearly" a request to rape, murder, and kill one's adult child. Those links might help, but so can a frame of mind not bent on convincing others the Old Testament is pure evil. The last link is worth a read. The author is brilliant. ;)
In all seriousness, if you consider the surrounding cultures of the times, the Israelites lived in a very liberal, progressive culture. Many of the things we find so reprehensible today were miles ahead of their neighbors' standards.
Reread the passages you hate in light of that context (and note where it does not say rape, though women are taken to be married and obviously subsequently have sexual relations with their husbands). You will see that God did not condone rape. The culture of the time did hold women in lower regard with certainly far less freedom of choice than the men, but if God can command his prophets to write scriptures that condemn the perpetrator of rape to death, surely he did not advocate for such behavior later.
Perhaps we should take this aspect of the conversation to the religion thread.