5 ms·

Agreed. That characterization of Old Testament vs. New Testament is one of my pet peeves. There's some horrific brutality and violence in the Old Testament. Bu

by geowwy 9y ago

Agreed. That characterization of Old Testament vs. New Testament is one of my pet peeves. There's some horrific brutality and violence in the Old Testament. But the overall story is one of Yahweh's love and compassion for his people in a world where everything is falling apart around them. The same theme carries through into the New Testament. If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians.

ux-app 9y ago
dude, c'mon get real. I've read the old testament. It's brutal. Yahwe loved him some genocide.
- geowwy 9y ago
  I know the Bible pretty well. I couldn't get realer.
  - ux-app 9y ago
    https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_kil... seems pretty fked up to me :) I don't know anything about rationalwiki.org, it's the first site that showed up when I googled "old testament character punished" Each statement is linked to Biblical verses though, so any objections would be to the spin they put on it rather than disputing whether those passages are actually there. Basically, old testament Yahwe is a weird dude. Very thin skinned with a hare trigger temper. He's a sociopath who "tests" people by murdering their family among other atrocities. He does have his bro's back though. He sent 2 bears to maul 42 youths to death for mocking Elijah's bald head.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      "In the late stages of the Second World War, Evelyn Waugh was trapped in Europe in the company of Randolph Churchill, the boorish son of the wartime prime minister. "In the hope of keeping him quiet," he wrote to Nancy Mitford, "Freddie and I bet him £20 that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud... or merely slapping his side & chortling 'God, isn't God a shit!'." We were taught the bible every day by our splendid primary school headmaster, who had been a Spitfire pilot in WW2, and he seemed to focus on the most unpleasant bits of the Old Testament - even at at tender age this did not create a particularly positive impression of G. Years, later I did wonder if old Mr C was being just a wee bit subversive with us.
    - geowwy 9y ago
      > seems pretty fked up to me :) I'm sure it does. You're a product of the Enlightenment and when you read you read the Bible you interpret it as a product of the Enlightenment. If you want to actually understand what the Bible was trying to communicate you need to remember who the Bible was written by and who it was written for. A Bronze-age Middle-Easterners is going to get a very different message from the Bible than you are.
      - ux-app 9y ago
        >If you want to actually understand what the Bible was trying to communicate Why try to whitewash the bible? The old testament Jehovah was a vile sociopath. Jesus is a cool guy with a dad that has some screws loose. I grew up in a fundie family, the hoops fundies jump through to justify old testament idiot God are ridiculous and I have no time for that.
        coldtea 9y ago
        >Why try to whitewash the bible? Understanding (and understanding in context) is not whitewashing. There's excellent scholarship in the bible, from religious and non-religious authors. Knee-jerk reactions about "vile psychopaths" are not that. For one, the "old testament Jehovah" was the person who gave life, the universe and everything to the people who died (e.g. in Sodom) anyway. So it was his to take. Psychopathy applies to people, not gods.
        ux-app 9y ago
        > So it was his to take fuck off, that's gross. as humans if we ever create AI we'll (hopefully) do it in the context of a robust ethical framework, and yet all knowing Jehovah couldn't fucking do some due diligence? Jesus fucking Christ, how pathetic of him.
        jorangreef 9y ago
        "if we ever create AI we'll (hopefully) do it in the context of a robust ethical framework" There are no grounds (rational or otherwise) for objective morality outside of God. See Hume's "is-ought" dilemma. And if you're into Atheism see also Sam Harris' debate with William Lane Craig.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- jorangreef 9y ago
  Would you say that God had no right to judge the Canaanites after waiting 400 years for them to stop their child sacrifice? Melvin Tinker provides historical background on the Canaanites and the question of justice vs genocide here: https://www.amazon.com/Mass-Destruction-Melvin-Tinker/dp/1783971851 https://www.amazon.com/Mass-Destruction-Melvin-Tinker/dp/178...
  - ux-app 9y ago
    idiot God from the OT sanctioned the murder of Egyptian babies, so I don't think he had the high ground there ;)
    - jorangreef 9y ago
      I may be an idiot, but personally, I would find it hard to believe in a God who never sanctioned judgement, who never advocated justice at all. That would be truly evil. As far as the Egyptian first-born, was God not patient and slow to anger? Was that the first plague or the last plague? How many years had the Egyptians oppressed another people? How many Israelite children did the Egyptians not kill? Did the punishment not fit the crime? Is God not just? ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’ “Therefore, son of man, say to your people, ‘If someone who is righteous disobeys, that person’s former righteousness will count for nothing. And if someone who is wicked repents, that person’s former wickedness will not bring condemnation. The righteous person who sins will not be allowed to live even though they were formerly righteous.’ If I tell a righteous person that they will surely live, but then they trust in their righteousness and do evil, none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered; they will die for the evil they have done. And if I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ but they then turn away from their sin and do what is just and right— if they give back what they took in pledge for a loan, return what they have stolen, follow the decrees that give life, and do no evil—that person will surely live; they will not die. None of the sins that person has committed will be remembered against them. They have done what is just and right; they will surely live. “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, they will die for it. And if a wicked person turns away from their wickedness and does what is just and right, they will live by doing so. Yet you Israelites say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to your own ways.”
pavlov 9y ago
If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians. A group of people is not defined by a 3000-year-old folklore collection. You can’t infer anything about the text this way.
- ionised 9y ago
  And yet Jews, Christians and Muslims all define themselves based on millenia-old folklore collections.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >A group of people is not defined by a 3000-year-old folklore collection. You'd be surprised. Especially Jews, which are an ethnoreligious [1] group. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group
- jorangreef 9y ago
  "a ... folklore collection" Are you implying the Old Testament is not historical? Or not accurate with regards to history? Or what do you mean by folklore?
  - MagnumOpus 9y ago
    Yes, that is what folklore means. And apart from people who really believe that the world is 6,000 years old or that bronze-age jews lived hundreds of years, nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?
    - jorangreef 9y ago
      "nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?" Sure, as someone interested in history, I certainly take the Torah as accurate history. And I think that not a few ancient historians and archaeologists would do the same, irrespective of their views on Genesis 1. For example, and I am referring to the entire Tanakh, I understand that Hezekiah was a real king in history who built a real tunnel which people really walk through today. I have no problem with that. I wouldn't consider that "folklore". As someone interested in the historical method, I understand that the fact of an event, whether it happened or not, does not depend on the perceived likelihood I myself or others impute to it. I don't have any Naturalistic presuppositions. I don't subscribe to Naturalism as a philosophy, nor would I mistake it for science. So I won't immediately grab at revising the date for say Isaiah if he happens to mention Cyrus ahead of his birth. Coming back to Genesis 1, you're forcing many literary and scientific issues if you want to tie Genesis 1 down (and dismiss it) as claiming a 6,000 (or 7,000) year old earth. From a purely scientific perspective, the "age of the world" discussion needs to be wary of Hume's is-ought distinction. It would be a mistake to assume that the laws of physics have always been (and always will be) as they currently are. That would be to derive an "ought" (they must always have worked this way) from an "is" (the way things work today as we observe them). In fact, from a literary point of view, if we read as far as Genesis 3, we see that Genesis itself suggests a seismic shift in the way things work, when death enters the world. The point of Genesis 1-3 is that the world as we know it, is markedly different to the way God created it. I don't think we should overlook that. So I see no contradiction between science and the Bible. In fact, I think they encourage and support each other.
nl 9y ago
But the overall story is one of Yahweh's love and compassion for his people in a world where everything is falling apart around them Sucks to be Job's family though. I guess God winning his bet was more important than this love and compassion in that case. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians I'm pretty sure any religious group can find something in their teachings to justify any possible position from complete non-violence to outright aggression.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Sucks to be Job's family though. I guess God winning his bet was more important than this love and compassion in that case. It's not a mere bet, it's a story about life -- one of the more profound in literature, religious or not. It has been widely and often extravagantly praised for its literary qualities, with Alfred, Lord Tennyson calling it "the greatest poem of ancient and modern times" [1] It's not meant as they biography of some family who died and things that happened to an actual person, but as a moral tale. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job
  - jorangreef 9y ago
    The Bible elsewhere comments on Job as a historical person, see James 5: "Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy." The book of Job itself suggests a historical context from the very outset, see Job 1: "In the land of Uz there lived a man..." It would be a mistake to reduce the book's message to a mere "moral tale" (although it is at least that - and much more).
  - ux-app 9y ago
    this is a classic example of moving the goal posts. according to modern sensibilities Job's tale is one of a sociopathic, malevolent God, therefore it must be simple a "tale" not an actual historical account, otherwise our loving father Jehovah would be worse than Charles fucking Manson.
bjourne 9y ago
> If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians. Judaism has also developed a lot since antiquity. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, it developed into Rabbinic Judaism with a number of rabbis creating authoritative interpretations of the Halacha, or Jewish law. One such famous rabbi was Maimonides who lived in the 12th century.

by geowwy 9y ago

ux-app 9y ago

dude, c'mon get real. I've read the old testament. It's brutal. Yahwe loved him some genocide.

geowwy 9y ago
I know the Bible pretty well. I couldn't get realer.
- ux-app 9y ago
  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_kil... seems pretty fked up to me :) I don't know anything about rationalwiki.org, it's the first site that showed up when I googled "old testament character punished" Each statement is linked to Biblical verses though, so any objections would be to the spin they put on it rather than disputing whether those passages are actually there. Basically, old testament Yahwe is a weird dude. Very thin skinned with a hare trigger temper. He's a sociopath who "tests" people by murdering their family among other atrocities. He does have his bro's back though. He sent 2 bears to maul 42 youths to death for mocking Elijah's bald head.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    "In the late stages of the Second World War, Evelyn Waugh was trapped in Europe in the company of Randolph Churchill, the boorish son of the wartime prime minister. "In the hope of keeping him quiet," he wrote to Nancy Mitford, "Freddie and I bet him £20 that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud... or merely slapping his side & chortling 'God, isn't God a shit!'." We were taught the bible every day by our splendid primary school headmaster, who had been a Spitfire pilot in WW2, and he seemed to focus on the most unpleasant bits of the Old Testament - even at at tender age this did not create a particularly positive impression of G. Years, later I did wonder if old Mr C was being just a wee bit subversive with us.
  - geowwy 9y ago
    > seems pretty fked up to me :) I'm sure it does. You're a product of the Enlightenment and when you read you read the Bible you interpret it as a product of the Enlightenment. If you want to actually understand what the Bible was trying to communicate you need to remember who the Bible was written by and who it was written for. A Bronze-age Middle-Easterners is going to get a very different message from the Bible than you are.
    - ux-app 9y ago
      >If you want to actually understand what the Bible was trying to communicate Why try to whitewash the bible? The old testament Jehovah was a vile sociopath. Jesus is a cool guy with a dad that has some screws loose. I grew up in a fundie family, the hoops fundies jump through to justify old testament idiot God are ridiculous and I have no time for that.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        >Why try to whitewash the bible? Understanding (and understanding in context) is not whitewashing. There's excellent scholarship in the bible, from religious and non-religious authors. Knee-jerk reactions about "vile psychopaths" are not that. For one, the "old testament Jehovah" was the person who gave life, the universe and everything to the people who died (e.g. in Sodom) anyway. So it was his to take. Psychopathy applies to people, not gods.
        ux-app 9y ago
        > So it was his to take fuck off, that's gross. as humans if we ever create AI we'll (hopefully) do it in the context of a robust ethical framework, and yet all knowing Jehovah couldn't fucking do some due diligence? Jesus fucking Christ, how pathetic of him.
        jorangreef 9y ago
        "if we ever create AI we'll (hopefully) do it in the context of a robust ethical framework" There are no grounds (rational or otherwise) for objective morality outside of God. See Hume's "is-ought" dilemma. And if you're into Atheism see also Sam Harris' debate with William Lane Craig.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jorangreef 9y ago
Would you say that God had no right to judge the Canaanites after waiting 400 years for them to stop their child sacrifice? Melvin Tinker provides historical background on the Canaanites and the question of justice vs genocide here: https://www.amazon.com/Mass-Destruction-Melvin-Tinker/dp/1783971851 https://www.amazon.com/Mass-Destruction-Melvin-Tinker/dp/178...
- ux-app 9y ago
  idiot God from the OT sanctioned the murder of Egyptian babies, so I don't think he had the high ground there ;)
  - jorangreef 9y ago
    I may be an idiot, but personally, I would find it hard to believe in a God who never sanctioned judgement, who never advocated justice at all. That would be truly evil. As far as the Egyptian first-born, was God not patient and slow to anger? Was that the first plague or the last plague? How many years had the Egyptians oppressed another people? How many Israelite children did the Egyptians not kill? Did the punishment not fit the crime? Is God not just? ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’ “Therefore, son of man, say to your people, ‘If someone who is righteous disobeys, that person’s former righteousness will count for nothing. And if someone who is wicked repents, that person’s former wickedness will not bring condemnation. The righteous person who sins will not be allowed to live even though they were formerly righteous.’ If I tell a righteous person that they will surely live, but then they trust in their righteousness and do evil, none of the righteous things that person has done will be remembered; they will die for the evil they have done. And if I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ but they then turn away from their sin and do what is just and right— if they give back what they took in pledge for a loan, return what they have stolen, follow the decrees that give life, and do no evil—that person will surely live; they will not die. None of the sins that person has committed will be remembered against them. They have done what is just and right; they will surely live. “Yet your people say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just. If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and does evil, they will die for it. And if a wicked person turns away from their wickedness and does what is just and right, they will live by doing so. Yet you Israelites say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to your own ways.”

pavlov 9y ago

If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians. A group of people is not defined by a 3000-year-old folklore collection. You can’t infer anything about the text this way.

ionised 9y ago
And yet Jews, Christians and Muslims all define themselves based on millenia-old folklore collections.
coldtea 9y ago
>A group of people is not defined by a 3000-year-old folklore collection. You'd be surprised. Especially Jews, which are an ethnoreligious [1] group. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group
jorangreef 9y ago
"a ... folklore collection" Are you implying the Old Testament is not historical? Or not accurate with regards to history? Or what do you mean by folklore?
- MagnumOpus 9y ago
  Yes, that is what folklore means. And apart from people who really believe that the world is 6,000 years old or that bronze-age jews lived hundreds of years, nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?
  - jorangreef 9y ago
    "nobody takes the Torah as accurate history. Do you?" Sure, as someone interested in history, I certainly take the Torah as accurate history. And I think that not a few ancient historians and archaeologists would do the same, irrespective of their views on Genesis 1. For example, and I am referring to the entire Tanakh, I understand that Hezekiah was a real king in history who built a real tunnel which people really walk through today. I have no problem with that. I wouldn't consider that "folklore". As someone interested in the historical method, I understand that the fact of an event, whether it happened or not, does not depend on the perceived likelihood I myself or others impute to it. I don't have any Naturalistic presuppositions. I don't subscribe to Naturalism as a philosophy, nor would I mistake it for science. So I won't immediately grab at revising the date for say Isaiah if he happens to mention Cyrus ahead of his birth. Coming back to Genesis 1, you're forcing many literary and scientific issues if you want to tie Genesis 1 down (and dismiss it) as claiming a 6,000 (or 7,000) year old earth. From a purely scientific perspective, the "age of the world" discussion needs to be wary of Hume's is-ought distinction. It would be a mistake to assume that the laws of physics have always been (and always will be) as they currently are. That would be to derive an "ought" (they must always have worked this way) from an "is" (the way things work today as we observe them). In fact, from a literary point of view, if we read as far as Genesis 3, we see that Genesis itself suggests a seismic shift in the way things work, when death enters the world. The point of Genesis 1-3 is that the world as we know it, is markedly different to the way God created it. I don't think we should overlook that. So I see no contradiction between science and the Bible. In fact, I think they encourage and support each other.

nl 9y ago

But the overall story is one of Yahweh's love and compassion for his people in a world where everything is falling apart around them Sucks to be Job's family though. I guess God winning his bet was more important than this love and compassion in that case. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians I'm pretty sure any religious group can find something in their teachings to justify any possible position from complete non-violence to outright aggression.

coldtea 9y ago
>Sucks to be Job's family though. I guess God winning his bet was more important than this love and compassion in that case. It's not a mere bet, it's a story about life -- one of the more profound in literature, religious or not. It has been widely and often extravagantly praised for its literary qualities, with Alfred, Lord Tennyson calling it "the greatest poem of ancient and modern times" [1] It's not meant as they biography of some family who died and things that happened to an actual person, but as a moral tale. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job
- jorangreef 9y ago
  The Bible elsewhere comments on Job as a historical person, see James 5: "Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy." The book of Job itself suggests a historical context from the very outset, see Job 1: "In the land of Uz there lived a man..." It would be a mistake to reduce the book's message to a mere "moral tale" (although it is at least that - and much more).
- ux-app 9y ago
  this is a classic example of moving the goal posts. according to modern sensibilities Job's tale is one of a sociopathic, malevolent God, therefore it must be simple a "tale" not an actual historical account, otherwise our loving father Jehovah would be worse than Charles fucking Manson.

bjourne 9y ago

> If the Old Testament is really as bad as people say then Judaism really has a problem. But in my experience Jews aren't any more violent than Christians. Judaism has also developed a lot since antiquity. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, it developed into Rabbinic Judaism with a number of rabbis creating authoritative interpretations of the Halacha, or Jewish law. One such famous rabbi was Maimonides who lived in the 12th century.