You believe what you believe, and I'll believe what I believe......your last sentence is what pi$$es Christians on the Fire off, and I'm sure you cannot help yourself....you love triggering folks like me, Aces, IZH27, CCCC, There_Ya_Go, just to name a few...I think that is why you keep coming back as you really enjoy harassing, incensing, and infuriating us.
But, to help you to understand, not only is the Bible we have today a reliable rendering of the ancient writings as evidence; it is by far the best documented collection of ancient texts in existence! I know you will not do it, but I would like to suggest you go to a good Bible or Bible dictionary and look up such topics as “Text of the Old Testament,” “Text of the New Testament” or “English Bible” versions.
By the way, there are many excellent modern versions of the Bible out there. The newer versions that the Gideon's distribute are well grounded in the ancient texts of Scripture.
Antlers, above has good info too....
The majority of the world don't share your faith though - deal with it.
Deal with it..
10. Cao Dai (4.4 Million Followers) 9. Muism/Sinism/Shingyo (10 Million Followers) 8. Daoism (12 Million Followers) 7. Judaism (14 Million Followers) 6. Sikhism (25 Million Followers) 5. Shintoism (104 Million Followers) 4. Buddhism (500 Million Followers) 3. Hinduism (1.1 Billion Followers) 2. Islam (1.8 Billion Followers) 1. Christianity (2.3 Billion Followers)
Surely there is a less vile religion than Christianity in that list - you checked any of the others out yet?
Don't try changing the subject that you brought up....presently, how is our faith vile?
Just read the bible. The old testament is a fertile ground for good information for starters.
What part...you prove you are correct.
How about these bits:
1. God destroys a good family 'for no reason.'
God made a bet with Satan that Job, a good and blameless man, would remain faithful even if he killed his children and ruined his life. Here we see God indicting himself for the crime, openly confessing that he destroyed a family "for no reason."
"The Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the Earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.' " (Job 2:3 New Revised Standard Bible)
2. God destroys the fetuses of those who do not worship him.
This is not the only feticidal passage in the bible, but it is the worst:
"You shall acknowledge no God but me. . . . You are destroyed, Israel. . . . The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open." (Hosea 13:4, 9, 16 New International Version)
3. God approves the massacre of a peaceful people so one of his tribes could have a place to live.
Most believers think God destroyed the Canaanites because they were depraved and immoral, although the bible does not make that claim. They were killed — and labeled "evil" and "wicked" — simply because they did not worship him. Here is a group of people who did nothing wrong. They were "at peace and secure," but they had to be eliminated.
"And in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking a place of their own where they might settle, because they had not yet come into an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. . . . Then they said to [the priest], 'Please inquire of God to learn whether our journey will be successful.' The priest answered them, 'Go in peace. Your journey has the Lord's approval.' . . . Then they took what Micah had made, and his priest, and went on to Laish, against a people at peace and secure. They attacked them with the sword and burned down their city. . . . The Danites rebuilt the city and settled there." (Judges 18:1–28 NIV)
The Canaanites were not the evildoers. The Israelites were the invaders!
4. Babies are slaughtered and wives raped.God - The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction by Dan Barker
The murderous Old Testament deity deemed human life to be worthless, placing his own megalomaniacal glory above human values. Here is one of the worst examples:
"See, the day of the Lord is coming — a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger. . . . I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty. . . . Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives violated." (Isaiah 13:9–16 NIV)
5. A mixed-race couple is murdered by a godly priest to keep God's people pure. The righteous priest Phinehas murdered a loving couple for the crime of miscegenation. Then he was praised by God and rewarded for the hate crime with a perpetual priesthood for keeping the nation racially pure.
"Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman into his family, in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the Israelites. When Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he got up and left the congregation. Taking a spear in his hand, he went after the Israelite man into the tent, and pierced the two of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. So the plague was stopped among the people of Israel. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the Israelites by manifesting such zeal among them on my behalf that in my jealousy I did not consume the Israelites. Therefore say, "I hereby grant him my covenant of peace. It shall be for him and for his descendants after him a covenant of perpetual priesthood, because he was zealous for his God, and made atonement for the Israelites.' '" (Numbers 25:6–13 NRSV)
6. A daughter is burned as an acceptable sacrifice to God.
General Jephthah made a vow with God in order to defeat the enemy. When Jephthah won the war, God received his hundred pounds of flesh.
"And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: 'If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.' . . . When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! . . . After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed." (Judges 11:30–39 NIV)
After burning his daughter, Jephthah was rewarded with a prestigious judgeship and was later buried with honor.
7. The cannibalistic God makes people eat human flesh.
There are nine passages in the Old Testament where God makes cannibalistic threats. Here is the worst one:
"And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat." (Leviticus 26:27–29 King James Version)
8. God threatens rape, then takes credit for it.
This passage was new to me, and it blew me away. I guess I had only read it before in the King James Version, where the sexual molestation is not obvious. Here it is in the NRSV, where the Israelites were asking why they were being attacked by the Babylonians: "Hear and give ear; do not be haughty, for the Lord has spoken. . . . And if you say in your heart, 'Why have these things come upon me?' it is for the greatness of your iniquity that your skirts are lifted up, and you are violated . . . because you have forgotten me and trusted in lies. I myself will lift up your skirts over your face, and your shame will be seen." (Jeremiah 13:15–26 NRSV)
"Skirts lifted up" is sexual assault. "Violate" is rape. The King James Version has the quaint "heels made bare," which obscures the sexual assault.
Notice that the "iniquity" for which they were being raped was not immorality or depravity; it was simply because "you have forgotten me."
9. God threatens sexual molestation.
The Lord will harass attractive uppity women by exposing their private parts. "Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts." (Isaiah 3:16–17 KJV)
The New International Version covers up this embarrassing passage with "make their scalps bald" in place of "discover their secret parts [Hebrew: poth = vagina]." Other translations are more honest: The Orthodox Jewish Bible has "lay bare their nakedness," Amplified Bible "stripped naked," Complete Jewish Bible "expose their private parts," Common English Version "uncover their private parts," and Living Bible "expose their nakedness for all to see." Even if "daughters of Zion" is a metaphor for Israel, it is a metaphor of sexual assault.
10. God wants you to be happy to dash babies against the rocks.
I have always thought this was the worst verse in the bible, and my opinion remains unchanged.
"O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!"(Psalm 137:8–9 NRSV)
God was not merely saying that regrettable collateral damage might occur during wartime. He said believers should be happy — some translations say "blessed" — to kill innocent babies of those who are keeping you from worshipping your own god.
There's a few more other gems worth mentioning:
1. God himself will kill tens of thousands if it pleases him: 1st Samuel 6:19 in the King James Version: “And he smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and threescore and ten men (50,070)”. Kill 50 000 men for looking at something?
2. You can kill a woman if she seizes a man's private parts without his permission: Deuteronomy 25:11-1: If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
3. Perversity and human trafficking condoned: "Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse." (1 Peter 2:18)
4. Sex slavery condoned: "When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again." Exodus 21: 7-8
5. Divorce akin to debauchery: "Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery." (Luke 16:18)
6. Cannibalism: "And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son...." (II Kings 6:28-29)
7. If your genitals have been damaged, stay out of church: "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord."(Deuteronomy 23:1)
8. Incest and getting drunk with dad is no problem if the world is running thin on suitable DNA donors: And the elder said to the younger Our father is old, and there is no man left on the earth, to come in unto us after the manner of the whole earth. Come, let us make him drunk with wine, and let us lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the elder went in and lay with her father: but he perceived not neither when his daughter lay down, nor when she rose up. And the next day the elder said to the younger: Behold I lay last night with my father, let us make him drink wine also to night, and thou shalt lie with him, that we may save seed of our father. They made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in, and lay with him: and neither then did he perceive when she lay down, nor when she rose up. So the two daughters of Lot were with child by their father. [Genesis 19:31-36]
9. Looking at a woman with desire is akin to adultery: "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." (Matthew 5:28)
10. But incestuous rape is cool: And when she had presented him the meat, he took hold of her, and said: Come lie with me, my sister. She answered him: Do not so, my brother, do not force me: for no such thing must be done in Israel. Do not thou this folly. [II Kings 13:8-12] But he would not hearken to her prayers, but being stronger overpowered her and lay with her. [II Kings 13:14]
11. Pray in private, and if you do so in church, do so quietly: Matt 6:5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others."
12. If you offend God he will kill you: "And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him. And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also." (Genesis 38:7-10)
13. God smites women, children and often animals with equal gusto, he seems to equal evil and wrong doing by association, rather than by being guilty of the personal, individual act: "Behold with a great plague will the LORD smite thy people and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods: And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day." (II Chronicles 21:14-15)
14. Rev 21: 8 "liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." Eternal damnation for lying? In South Africa murderers and rapists often get released for good behaviur, lying is politics.
Originally Posted by mauserand9mm
Originally Posted by mauserand9mm
Originally Posted by Raspy
Whatever you said...everyone knows you are a lying jerk.
That's a bold assertion. Point out where you think I lied.
