Let's use the Bible...
Atheists let's list all the immoral shit god either commanded, or allowed under his law using only the Old Testament!!!!
Theists let us know all the awesome stuff god did according to the New Testament only!!!
At the end we will tally it up and let's see if Jesus made up for all gods immoral actions.
I will start with my favorite one...
God allowed people to own others as property and beat them as long as they didn't die within a day or two.
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Slavery; Murder; Genocide; Rape; Abortion
Should we define what immoral is though? What should be considered immoral? Maybe their society at the time was just different and viewed some of these things as morally acceptable?
@Jon
That's a very good point. If we try to judge the past by modern standards we get a distorted picture of history. That doesn't excuse the horrors that religion perpetrated on humanity, but if you want to be fair you have to take that into account.
To us, the lives of those slaves were nasty, brutal and short. But to them, it was normality.
Infanticide.
However, in God's defence, didn't allow a baby goat to be boiled in it's own mother's milk, that would just be sick. Lol
Some of my favorite.
“Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel.” (Peter 2:18)
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.” (Timothy 2:12)
Allow me to chime in a bit. How do we know that slavery, infanticide, genocide, murder, and rape are immoral for these ancient people?
Hi Jon,
Just for the sake of the exercise, let us consider all those things that are universally considered illegal today in those countries with a majority Christian population today to be immoral, and go from there.
@Jon the Catholic: "How do we know that slavery, infanticide, genocide, murder, and rape are immoral for these ancient people?"
Most of those things were perfectly moral in Old Testament times. They worshipped the same god as you. You worship the same god as them. Morality and society have changed radically. God has stayed the same. Therefore morals are linked to society, not god.
I stayed away from commenting to see if any theist would at least try to defend their belief with scripture. I have had long conversations talking about morality etc.. again I have been disappointed. I love that instead of actually quoting Jesus and how he fundamentally changed morality for the better we only get circular arguments of how we atheists know what is moral. I am angry at the lack of knowledge and lack of honesty the theists on this site have. How about instead of apologetics that you heard online you actually read your holy book. Read every line and tell me where Jesus overturns these immoral acts god let's happen. The entire Christian religion relies on the ignorance of its followers, it allows people to throw out their critical thinking skills and adopt excuses as truth. The Bible is disgusting smut! Written by men for men, the backwards logic and acceptance by people today saddens me.
JOC, AJ777 let me explain something to you guys, read your bible and use the same questions that you ask atheists on yourself, do not ask your church, do not look online. Read for yourselves and use your critical thinking skills in order to come to your own conclusions! JOC if you believe that the Bible has truth as well as stories that are metaphors in order to prove points then ask yourself,"how do I differentiate between what is actually true and what is made up?" If you rely on others to solve these with excuses, then why think for yourself at all? Ask what you should do every day and become the immoral robot your holy book wants you to be. Your facts are flawed, your logic is flawed, your worldview is flawed, you are flawed. Stop making excuses for your god and realize that if you constantly have to make excuses for the all powerful all knowing god that maybe he isn't real or isn't as awesome as you think. Look at the world with a little bit of skepticism, don't believe everything that people tell you! Shit don't even listen to me! Prove me wrong, instead of logical word problems like some use actually read the claims of the holy book and figure out if you truly believe after examining the evidence that this could or did happen. I hold no value in your life other than a post on a website but if you believe what you say you do than you should have no problem with defending your position! Stop tap dancing around answers to questions and actually answer the fucking question! THINK FOR YOURSELF!!!
@Jon the Catholic
"How do we know that slavery, infanticide, genocide, murder, and rape are immoral for these ancient people?"
Well, that's the whole point, you see.Let assume they were not immoral back then.And with all of those things advocated in the Bible, there is no doubt that the Bible is NOT the source of moral absolutes.If it were, then you wouldn't need to ignore those verses from the Bible to measure up to the moral standards today.It just proves the human nature of the Bible.There is nothing special about it.
In other words if all those things you have mentioned were a norm back then, how can you claim that the Bible is the 'absolute' word of an omnipotent and omniscient being, because if it were absolute it would hold good for all ages and for everyone around the world.And also the verses from the Bible wouldn't be open for human interpretation.
Give it a thought..
There are people who try to tell me that philosophy has no relevance.
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Soooo, we can't really say any of the things in the Old Testament were immoral now, can we?
Yes they certainly are atleast by present moral standards.
What's your point.
Yes. But not by the standard of their time.
I just find it funny how atheists who reject the existence of an objective moral truth can’t honestly say that the actions in the opd testament can be considered immoral.
JOC what you are saying makes no sense.
Just because people didn't think something was wrong in the past doesnt mean that it was ok! Even if it perfectly normal to own other humans as property, it is morally wrong. Where is your confusion on this?
@Burn your Bible
I think what Jon is saying is that if morals are not absolute and keep on changing with human progress then we cannot consider actions in the Bible immoral.
If there is no objective sense of morality then the same human behaviour can be both moral and immoral considering different civilizations.
And if it could be considered moral by one society and immoral by another that would be called what?... Subjective.
Job well done. I rest my case.
I guess that should have been at Jon the Catholic, but you get it.
Exactly. We don't disagree on the proper length of a board, because it is objective. We disagree on whether Coke takes better than Pepsi because it is subjective. The same goes for morality.
Yes I understand what he is saying but I disagree... progression is the key word. Our morals have been progressing not regressing, just because it was socially acceptable in the past does not make it moral, as we understand more now. My biggest issue is that if the Old Testament was written through men by god and god is unchanging, then god is immoral and his acts are immoral. Unless you can show me the passage that says " for I am god and I will not change in my ways but as a society if you feel that acts of the past are immoral than it's ok to not do as I command for I am GOD!!!!" I have never said that people in the past had awesome morals and as we progress forward as society we continue to upgrade our moral standards.
Burny what are we progressing towards if there is no objective standard? God does not change in his attributes, but he does change his commands. In the same way as your children get older, you give them different rules and freedoms. Jesus brought all believers into a new covenant which affirmed 9 of the 10 commandments. The old covenant was only for Israel at that time.
V.S.
I don't see the contradiction, Nyar. AJ actually explained it in his comment when he said. You simply chose to ignore that part.
Changing your commands is a change (hence the word change). He said god was unchanging. He also told us that god died (a change), and that god added humanity to his divinity (also a change).
If you don't see a contradiction in that; well I don't know what to tell you.
Sure.
Genocide!
The explorers that were are christian always commit genocide. The New World suffered countless deaths because chrstians wanted their land. Even if smallpox hadn't decimated the population the christian would have murdered even more than they did. How many cultures, languages were lost due to christian invasion and genocide brought by these christians? How many slaves, rapes, murders, were committed on people that were not christian just because they were not christian?
@Mykcob4: "How many cultures, languages were lost due to christian invasion and genocide brought by these christians?"
How much knowledge and history were lost because of book-burning by Catholic invaders like Diego de Landa? The invaders also turned gold and silver art treasures into coins to feed the greed of the Catholic church and the Spanish king. The death, suffering, destruction, and vandalism wreaked by the Christians in the New World are unequalled in human history.
We rightly condemn the Nazis for the Holocaust, yet the Catholic church continues to demand and receive respect. I don't get it.
Maybe because the claims you make are unfounded.
@Jon the Catholic: "Maybe because the claims you make are unfounded."
Look up the history of Diego de Landa. Look up the history of King Ferdinand and his lust for gold to pay for his dream of imposing Christianity everywhere. Everywhere the Conquistadors went, there were Catholic priests and monks aiding and justifying their colossal vandalism and cruelty.
Yep. Unfounded. It seems people are willing to scavenge the internet for anything that may look like the Church is the most evil institution on earth, or is up there. They take an action by a Catholic leader and if it’s bad, condemn the entire institution, if it’s not that bad, they’ll make it sound bad and if it’s not bad at all, they twist the story so the action will seem worse than it actually is.
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