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Immoral, Nonsensical Scriptures


BillM

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You imagined the Israelites as an ancient, ignorant desert people who performed barbaric acts and then attributed their behavior to an imaginary god. Your words exactly.

 

This is a hot mess, and I cannot proceed from such a racist and condescending viewpoint. Take a mulligan and start over with a specific bit of Scripture you find enlightening and edifying so we can proceed in a positive direction.

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You imagined the Israelites as an ancient, ignorant desert people who performed barbaric acts and then attributed their behavior to an imaginary god. Your words exactly.

 

This is a hot mess, and I cannot proceed from such a racist and condescending viewpoint. Take a mulligan and start over with a specific bit of Scripture you find enlightening and edifying so we can proceed in a positive direction.

 

No, not my words exactly Burl.

 

I commented on your 6-days-means-this post, to which you responded by asking me which parts of scripture do I respect. I responded to that request. Now you don't want to discuss that answer of mine, but you are upset at my older post. Okay, let's address that.

 

My comments are not racist or condescending and certainly not imaginary.

 

I only used the label Israelite here because that's who we were talking about, but I would lump much of the world around that time in the same basket and again say that most were scientifically ignorant (oh, I didn't use the word scientifically earlier - is that your issue?) compared to modern understandings of science (world is not flat, sun does not revolve around the earth, etc). That's just fact - no emotion or racism there. If I had lived in that time I suspect I would have been just as scientifically ignorant.

 

Ignorant - I did say ignorant around the cosmos and planet Earth. Do you think they were more scientifically advanced than today in these matters?

 

Ancient - they were, some +2,500 years ago.

 

Barbaric - compared to modern times they were. Nowadays acts of genocide are considered evil. Killing all and sundry (women, children, animals) even in times of war is avoided at all costs usually. People stoned to death for breaking laws - that is a barbaric act.

 

Attributed such acts to God - clearly the authors of some of the bible did - it is written.

 

Imaginary God - your words, not mine. I used it in the context of that is how they saw God. You put you own connotation to that phrase.

 

You asked my views on respect for scripture - let's close that out before I start again with your next question perhaps. Care to?

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Seeing as I started this thread, I think the conversation here perhaps illustrates how the scriptures are seen and interpreted is, for some, at the heart of Progressive Christianity. For the older paradigm, the scriptures are God's revelation of himself and his will for Israel and then, most likely, for all of humanity. In this sense, the scriptures are authoritative i.e. they carry divine authority. For the newer paradigm, the scriptures are the views of ancient tribes (whether Hebrew or Christian) and are not authoritative for us. For some, they may be so out-of-date as to be almost irrelevant. For others, they may be helpful or useful if we have the freedom to bring reason, common sense, and morality to them, searching them out for wisdom that, though ancient, may still speak for us today. In this context, we may 'accept' some ideas and 'reject' others, much as we would do any other document that the ancients of any culture might have found meaning in.

 

My own thoughts on respect: When I was a child, my father did his best to raise me according to what he believed was right. He taught me to be honest, to not give up, to do my best, to put in a hard day's work for my pay, to do the right thing even when no one was looking. But he also physically and emotionally abused me. I watched him occasionally beat my pets to death. I watch him beat my mother to where she had to be hospitalized a number of times. (They are both gone now so I don't mind sharing this.) Now that I'm an adult, I respect the things that my father did right. In fact, in his later years he managed to apologize to me for a number of things, something not easy for him to do. But I'm no longer under his authority, even if I can sometimes hear him speaking in my head. I respect him for being there in my formative years and for his part in shaping who I am today, both in wanting to be like him in some ways and not like him in others. But I'm not under his authority. I have my own life and I'm responsible to my own family to do my best by them.

 

This is somewhat how I see the scriptures. I respect them for what they are, but they have no authority over me.

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