the bible is anti-gay. even if there was nothing explicitly against gays (which there in fact are), the jewish culture at the time did not tolerate homosexuality, so the bible would be anti-gay by omission. religious gays who try to say otherwise are deluding themselves. but who cares. i think gays should be honest and say that they don't believe everything in those ancient texts, the same way religious people today might say animal sacrifice is wrong, but at least they're not trying to say the bible is actually against animal sacrifice by some weird reinterpretation.

Because.

One verse is enough...and all the typical Bible-banger (ie, someone who bangs their Bible and does NOT hear both sides of the argument or even know their own position in depth first, a lemming-like follower, if you will) can typically remember.

My guess...

Is that if more people actually READ the Bible...

Less would be inclined to follow that book.

We're all told Moses frees the Israelites, very good, very good...

How often are we reminded he then has them slaughter the Amalakites on the way back?

We're told that God is love...

Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge/wisdom" (depending on your translation.)

Now, doesn't THAT sound enlightened and like the kind of guy you want to love and follow:

"The first thing you better know about me, folks, isn't that I love you, or that you should think for yourselves, as my great creatures, no! you must FEAR ME...THAT is the beginning of all TRUE 'knowledge.'"

Despicable.

So, yeah...

The one verse is popular because it's quotable...because it's made for a culture that reads in quotes and not the whole book...

And while, yes, I myself haven't read the bible cover to cover:

1. I'm working on it, it's just such a terrible book to read, truly awful and boring...
2. I'm betting I know more than the average Bible-banger, given my definition of what they are
3. I know that the context of the Leviticus quote, and it's crap, and
4. I still say that it fails at Genesis, as the Creation myth flops, Noah flops...

If the beginning foundations of a faith or idea or anything else crumb right off the bat...

Do you really need to wonder if the structure or argument will stand or if it will fall?

You need to understand that the bible was written back in a very different culture, and what was accepted as 'ok' back then is very different from now...

well well, look who's interpreting the text literally in black and white. I'm astounded at your ignorance Obi. Don't you know god is one of the most layered writers of all time?

"It is curious that, when God chose to become an author, not only did he choose to learn to write in Greek, but that he did not learn it better."

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Layered my ass...but joke well made, if, indeed, it was one. :)

what is the point of bashing religion or the bible. some people believe that stuff, so who cares, let them believe it. point out some contradictions in it and errors, but people who believe it might just think that there is some kind of holiness there that is just improperly expressed because it is written by real people. let them think that. people will have principles with or without the bible.

There are more things in heaven and earth.... than in nietzsches <quote>philosophy</quote>

it's hilarious how the elite have seemingly convinced everyone that religion causes problems in the world. i don't even really know how they did it. i guess through school and media. religion does not cause the problems to any greater extent than any other generally accepted set of customs or rituals.

OT, but sort if on topic.

There seems to be far more religious Christians here than I meet in society. I'm not sure why that is. Either I just don't mix with the religious crowds often, WebDip has a disproportional amount of religious people or maybe it's because America just tends to be more religious than Canada (does it?).

I dunno, just a bit flabbergasted by how many Believers there are here.

Most of us are FBI agents undercover. Shhhhh!

@fiedler, when did God become an Author, i though he inspired humans to write the bible...

All of them ghost writers! Writing the word of the lord.
I though I thaw a puddycat.

Has anyone here read "The Good Book"? It's by some Harvard professor, I think, and he discusses things like slavery, women's rights and homosexuality (among other things) in the Bible and his theories on how those things in the Bible should be viewed and/or "translated" by today's society. I think it's a good book, lol! ;-)

Obi, "fear" in most biblical translations is a poor word choice because it doesn't mean "scared-afraid," It is "Extreme veneration or awe, as toward a supreme being or deity." this usage is well known and used in other contexts within the English language. Do not distort the bible foolishly. There are plenty of places you can criticize it without making a fool of yourself.

There is a lot of misinformation floating around just this thread! I'll deal with these topics in this order: 1) Fear of the Lord, 2) God ordering the Israelites to kill some of the Canaanite tribes, 3) The experience of reading the Bible.
First, the "fear" of the Lord is not like just being afraid of someone. It's being in awe of someone who both loves each one of us enough to sacrifice the most precious thing ever just to rescue us, and at the same time has the power of life and death, the moon and the stars, and is the creator of the universe. It implies an attitude of submitting our will to His, and accepting him as our boss (King, master) as well as our savior.

2) God has the power of life and death, and He used it many times in the Bible. He calls Egypt his people at one point, but he send the Angel of Death to kill all the firstborn children when they did not let Israel leave Egypt to go (back) to the promised land, he says that the Philistines and Canaanites rebelled against him and committed evil (They sacrificed babies to the god Moloch by burning them alive, for one thing), and he used Israel to punish them as an example for others.

3) If you truly read the Bible in a quest for truth, you will find it. I recommend a modern translation in your own language. In English, The Living Bible is very accessible, using modern mainstream expressions and vocabulary, the New American Standard Bible is technically extremely precise but not as easy of a read, and the New International Version is somewhere in the middle. The Message Bible is an extremely slangy version, not really mainstream, but it's the dialect that some people speak, so great. And you won't understand it all the first time. But you have to see it as at least a potential source of information and/or inspiration, or the truths won't sink into your head.

Every time I open the Bible with the intention of learning something, I learn something about God and His relationship with us, often something awesome. The exception is if I just want to check "Read the Bible" off of my to-do list, or I want to do it to be a good person, or I want to do it just as an obligation, or I try to read it in the left-over times between a long day and bedtime, or in the middle of a rushed day. My best time to read is first thing in the morning, before anyone else is up and before my mind gets full of the furor of the day.

I recommend reading the whole bible in manageable chunks. There are several Read-the-Bible-in-a-Year plans at blueletterbible.org, and you can choose from a large number of translations. I use the NLT (New Living Translation) most of the time.

It took me two years the first time I read it, because there was so much to think about.

OR you go do some thinking of your own, read other texts, learn about other religions and philosophies, and realize that no single book has all the answers. To argue that any one text is conclusive and though finite in its existence somehow contains all the infinite variations of life is either arrogant or naively misguided.

Oh and one more point--The Bible is *not* anti-anyone. God loves each of us, hetero- or homosexual, ordinary Joe, politico, pagan, just as much as he loves Mother Teresa, the Pope, Billy Graham, and Jesus died to pay the price for all. The Bible does condemn the practice of homosexuality, but it also condemns lusting with your heart, sex outside of marriage, thinking yourself better than other people, wasting your money, even overeating. A good Bible quote to think about: "I did not come to save the righteous, but sinners." But if we don't admit that we are sinners and in need of help, we can't accept that help, can we?

Zultar, there are three possibilities. Either Jesus was a liar that he is the only way to God, or he was a lunatic with delusions of grandeur, or he was telling the truth. Likewise, you said that's either arrogant or naively misguided--but you forgot the third option: It could be true. :-)

I'm just saying the there is no logical impediment to believing in God and trusting in Jesus.

Finally, Obi, Jesus quotes the Old Testament when he gives the greatest commandments in the Bible: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind (Love, not Fear, Obi), and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself.

Yeah, because everything in life can be broken down neatly like that. Life and everything in it is a continuum, not easily separable into distinct categories of absolutes.
Moreover, much of what Jesus said was in parables and metaphors, not declarative statements. There is also the epistemological issue of how one knows that the Bible is the *truth.* A critical examination of how one knows anything almost always run into circular logic or a heuristic argument.

@Mujus, i think you forgot one important translation: the bible according to lolcat http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Did what I said make sense, or did it just sound pretentious?

Pretentious. If you want to discredit sola scriptura, you just bring up Jericho. You don't need a big philosophical discussion about what is truth (besides, Jesus already told Pilate, He is truth).

Also, while Jesus did use parables, he also used some straight statements. you cannot say "that straight statement that Mujus quoted is invalid because he also spoke in parables" without sounding ridiculous. False comparison, but the Riddler didn't always speak in riddles. Milton didn't always write in epic poetry. Faulkner didn't always write in novels. JFK didn't always speak in English.

I don't know if I understand your second paragraph.
I always prefer discussing the concepts themselves rather than referencing some authors.
I was afraid what I said could come off as pretentious. :(

@Mujus is correct. God loves all people and those that post the signs that says God hates fags or God hates dead soldiers. They really need to read the bible because God loves everybody. Plus he sent the Israelites to war many times. All sins are equal except for ones that break the ten commandments or the unforgivable sin of denying your faith.

All sins are equal and forgivable (although there are consequences here on earth) except the sin of rejecting God's offer of a relationship with him. Given free will, that one will put you out of his presence for eternity if you hold to it. And that's my definition of Hell.

Ok that came out wrong!!! All sins are not equal in terms of their gravity or earthly/human consequences. But all sins are equal in separating us from a completely holy God, in whose presence no darkness, no sin, can exist.

But God separated Jesus from himself, sent Him down to earth, and sent him to his death, so that if we accept that payment for our sins, we can spend eternity with him.

You are now either proselytizing or trolling. Either way, please stop.

@obiwan,

"We're all told Moses frees the Israelites, very good, very good...

How often are we reminded he then has them slaughter the Amalakites on the way back?"

Roughly once a day, if we spend any time on the internet.

@yonni,

I actually think that, relative to people I know, there are far FEWER believers on webdip, percentage-wise, and in the US, statistics would bear that out. So it's probably a self-selection thing or a US/Canadian thing.

'Plus he sent the Israelites to war many times.' - cause war helps you feel the Father's love... unless you happen to have been influenced by Buddhist teachings :)

"religion does not cause the problems to any greater extent than any other generally accepted set of customs or rituals."

Uh-huh...

Just taking the Abrahamic Religions...

Hitchens, in an Intelligence Squared debate, once read off a list of events, listed by Bishop Marini of the Catholic Church, a subset of ONE religion, who stated that, yes, the Church does have some things to apologize for...just a few small things...among them, and quoting here:

"The Crusades...
The Inquisition...
The Persecution of the Jewish People...
Injustice towards women (that's half the human race right there...)
And the Forced Conversion of Indigenous People, especially in South America."

And that's JUST a bit of the problems the CATHOLIC CHURCH has caused and has to apologize for.

That's leaving out such gems as, say...

The Salem Witch Trials...
The extermination of Kurds/Shiites/Sunnis in turn in Iraq and the Middle East...
9/11 (we can count that one partly political if you wish, but certainly religious, too)...
The ongoing war in Palestine/Israel...
The bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland...
Multiple Churches decrying condoms, one even calling it worse than AIDS...

And I think I'll stop there, though I can keep going, EASILY, for quite some time.

Religion has been, is, and will be, until we stop it, not only the LEADING CAUSE of suffering in the world, but the leading cause BY FAR and in the most horrific sense.

"The bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland..." - no, sorry, you can't have that, it is founded on nationalism and the colonisation of Ulster by the British, which was bloody to being with... the fact that the partition of ireland in 1921 lead to a resurgence of violence in the 1970s has less to do with religion and more to do with British policy and military enforcement damaging the civil rights protests...

@obiwan,

The original quote was,

"religion does not cause the problems to any greater extent than any other generally accepted set of customs or rituals."

In your list of things religion had caused (because the RC church had apologized for), you include "Injustice toward women." Now the RC Church may well have participated in the longstanding tradition of injustice toward women, so it certainly should apologize. But surely you can see that, inasmuch as such was almost universal in western civilization from well before Christ, this can hardly be traced to religion?

The usual obilogic at work.

One might also point out that JUST the suffering caused under Stalin would virtually equal, at least numerically, all the atrocities you list.

Oh, and the ongoing war in Palestine/Israel? I think you'll find that with or without religion, people get a little annoyed when another people group is planted in their homeland (and that goes both ways -- it WAS the historic homeland of the Jews, so they were annoyed as well.)

So I think bolshoi's original quote was measured and about right, notwithstanding your devotion to your new hero, Hitchens.

@orathic:

Alright, if I have to give that one back, as it were, so be it...there's still all the other examples. :)

@semck83:

"But surely you can see that, inasmuch as such was almost universal in western civilization from well before Christ, this can hardly be traced to religion?"

I don't think Genesis' account of women help...

Or the Greeks and their account of Pandora, and women being made as a "punishment" for man in THEIR religion...

So, no, I'm sorry, but I must reject that, semck83:

Christian religion or pagan religion, STILL, it is RELIGION that is responsible, at its root, for the oppression of women these many millenia.

That's exceptionally naive, obiwan. People wanted to treat women right, but their religions kept them from it? Please.

Oh well though. There is no use arguing subtle points with a new atheist. If a religious person did something, then his religion was the cause.

"One might also point out that JUST the suffering caused under Stalin would virtually equal, at least numerically, all the atrocities you list."

Stalin was a horrific man, no doubt about it...

But are you HONESTLY going to say, numerically or otherwise, he outweighs:

-All 8 Crusades
-The Inquisition
-The mistreatment of women (and we'll be generous and limit that one to the Judeo-Christian harm done to women, though, as I've stated above, I think it goes beyond that into other religions through history as well)
-The Persecution of the Jewish People (right there we have 2,000 years of genocides and pogroms to contend with...)
-The Forced Conversion of Indigenous Peoples, especially in Africa and S. America?

To leave that whole second list alone?

Go ahead and try, if you may, but I'm pretty sure you'll fail to prove Stalin, horrible as he was, was "numerically" worse than all of those out together, leaving off that entire second list, even...

"Oh, and the ongoing war in Palestine/Israel? I think you'll find that with or without religion, people get a little annoyed when another people group is planted in their homeland (and that goes both ways -- it WAS the historic homeland of the Jews, so they were annoyed as well.)"

True, but the root cause is still mostly religious...

Not only because of the religious ties to the land, but, again, because of the fact we very possibly COULD have had a settlement there between the Israelis and Palestinians...except for that one city they just can't agree on, and so, because of Jerusalem and the RELIGION surrounding it, the two sides are forever at war.

"So I think bolshoi's original quote was measured and about right, notwithstanding your devotion to your new hero, Hitchens."

Have at it, then. ;)

"People wanted to treat women right, but their religions kept them from it? Please."

Well, I'm afraid I think YOU are the one being exceptionally--and perhaps selectively--naive, sir...

What's one of the first thing most children learn from their parents when they become old enough to understand words?

Their religion.

And when you have it drummed into your head, at 4 or 5 or 6, that women are inferior to men, that they're the cause of sin and suffering...

You don't think that will lead to their treating women poorly in their lives, or restricting their rights?

Give me a more plausible answer, semck83--

Because they're "weaker?"

Rather a broad brush to paint with, and not at all true, AND, lest we forget them...

Some Native Americans had matriarchal, NOT patriarchal societies...

And guess what THEIR religions had to say about women--that they were strong and life-givers and to be valued at or above men in that sense...

NOT that they were full of shit and sin.

So, yes, I'm sorry--

I think, until you can give a better explanation, we have to ascribe the mistreatment of women, to at least a very significant extent, to a great many religions in the Western World, and especially to those, such as the Catholic Church and certain sects of Islam, that continue to discriminate and teach such insidious and awful things about women to young children to this very day, as well as maintain the practice of keeping women unequal.

@obiwan,

If, at some point in world history, the world had thousands of different, warring religions, but ALL the cultures treated women as inferior, do you think it's really fair to blame religion, and not, oh, I don't know, a cultural bias against women, for this treatment?

"but ALL the cultures treated women as inferior,"

But I just gave a counterexample, ie, the several NA tribes who did NOT treat them as such?

So...?

Sorry, yes, I should have specified Eurasia. Even then there might have been some exceptions, but I don't know of any, and it doesn't impact my point either way.

Another point, though, would be this question: Native Americans also had religions. Do their religions get _credit_ for how they behaved? Or can religions only be blamed, not credited?