Just read 'Jehovah Unmasked'. Here's what i think of it! (page 2)

lowden

Hey Scully

Sorry about that! If he did read my post i hope he would be sensible enough to realise that i'm actually endorsing people reading it, if only to broaden their outlook on another man's faith. Point taken though.

Peace

Lowden

Scully

Lowden

No need to apologize - just thought you deserved a fair warning.

Narkissos

Nice to "see" you SoJ -- hope you're doing fine.

It's funny how both sides of those discussions regularly avoid a now well-known fact: most of those "divinely-ordained slaughters" never happened.

Both archeological and linguistic evidence shows that the vast majority of Israelites were native Canaanites, and that the whole idea of having their ancestors driving out "former inhabitants of the land" through violent conquest is pseudo-history: a literary fiction designed to back up the religious-political agenda of the Judeans who came back from Babylon among the "people of the land," i.e. the Israelites who had never left the country, in the 6th century BC.

Of course this doesn't solve the moral problem in the fiction. It does promote a horrendous picture of "God".

But I'm still amazed that most Bible apologists would rather defend the idea that their "God" really did order wholesale slaughters than admit that he never did so.

To be fair about Nate Merit, afaik he did threaten to sue one poster who had harassed him quite a lot. That was certainly not the best thing to do and I told him so back then. However, I don't think he was opposed to short quotations of his books for discussion.

greendawn

Indeed the God preached by Jesus is far more long suffering and understanding of human weakness than the God of the Old Testament. But the Jews could not accept this more humane image of God, and prefered to hark back to the Mosaic law.

I don't think making a few short quotations from any book is illegal or contrary to the interests of the writer.

mkr32208

most of those "divinely-ordained slaughters" never happened.

WELL THAT DOES SPEAK TO THE POINT THAT THE GOD IN QUESTION DOESN'T EXIST EITHER DOES IT NOT?

Hellrider

5. Escape was not impossible

Oh, good. That means that those poor women and their small children only had themselves to blame, for not getting out in time... Would you use the same logic on jewish women and their children who were slaughtered in the gas chambers some 60 years ago too, for not getting out of Europe before the war?

Even the death of one single child by the hands of yhwh, disqualifies him as a God in my opinion. Killing children? That`s what Hitler and the other tyrants of history used to do. Would God, who is supposedly omnipotent and benevolent, be a violent mass-murderer, capable of making the above mentioned monsters, Hitler and the others, look like little school-boys?

I think these stories in the Bible, is what makes some christians (still) and has made a lot of christians in the past, such horrible people. And that goes for religious jews too (not to many of them, fortunately), because: If you believe that God would order his people (whoever you believe those to be, whether christians or jews) to slaughter whole cities of people, then all sorts of disgusting, immoral behaviour (even in Gods name) can be justified. It`s just a matter of truly believing that you have God on your side, and then you can quote Joshua or Deuteronomy or whatever, and go on a murderous rampage.

The only way to "save christianity" or "save judaism" is to view the Bible as a book in which some things can`t be interpreted literally. God couldn`t possibly have ordered these massacres, and if the Israelites believed that he did, then they screwed up. God must have turned his back in shame over what they were doing in his name, and held them accountable for it in the afterlife (or something like that). Otherwise, he/she/it is a real shit.

lowden

Hellrider

A very intelligent post. Nice one!

Lowden

JamesThomas

I applaud anyone who lets go of Jehovah.

I was raised as a Witness, and as a young stupid person (some would say the stupid condition hasn't changed) I tried very hard to believe that the god presented in the Bible was the creator of this wondrous universe. But as I matured and gazed through microscopes and telescopes and read of the amazing things of life, the more obvious it became how a tribal war god was indescribably too limited and moronic to have anything to do with anything real.

That people like SoJ continue to think it honors the Source of this universe to champion the god of the Bible, is, ummm, interesting.

j

EAGLE-1

Good post and I share your feelings

moomanchu

Jehovah kind of reminds me of the USA .

Show your enemy that you can totally destroy them,

and hopefully you will ultimately save lives, both yours

and the enemys (most importantly your sides).

I'm thinking of one example in particular the

nuculear bombs dropped on Japan .

Did the caananites really care their children

were killed anyway, saved them the trouble of doing it .

Just read 'Jehovah Unmasked'. Here's what i think of it!

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