Religion: pros & cons pt1 (Religion)

by dhw, Monday, October 27, 2014, 19:38 (3678 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained
edited by dhw, Monday, October 27, 2014, 19:59

TONY: You are looking for laws spelled out in modern legal terminology that cover a specific subset of actions according to what you hold to be correct by today's societal standards. You are looking for loopholes and methods to circumvent the law. The law truly was, love Jehovah with everything that you are, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.-I am questioning the validity of specific laws set out in a collection of books written many centuries ago, and of course I judge them by today's standards. What is the point of obeying laws that are not applicable today? But those specific laws cannot be taken as a “subset”. Either they are laws or they are not laws, and someone who rejects the call to execute homosexuals is not trying to circumvent the law that we should love Jehovah and love our neighbour. I do not regard executing my homosexual neighbour as a sign of love for him.
 
TONY: Jehovah is not just described as a God, but also as a king, a sovereign lord. If your king or ruler tells you to go to war with these people, but not these other people, do you trust his judgement, or do you question every decision he gives out?
 
I question most of the decisions my rulers give out, including the wars they have led us into. They are fallible human beings, as is apparent from their frequent blunders. In the case of biblical texts, if I see a commandment which I consider to be unjust (as above), I do not and cannot question God (if he exists); I question the reliability of the author, or of the translator, or of the person interpreting the text, or possibly all three.-TONY: His laws are not burdensome, and they applied to everyone. He was not partial, to his friends or his enemies.-According to Deuteronomy, he ordered the Jews to slaughter people who worshipped other gods. I'd call that partiality.-TONY: I've already proven many of the points from your latest reply unsound in my previous responses, and I am not going to do so again at the moment because I am short on time.-I sympathize with you over shortage of time! I'm not at all sure which points from my latest reply you have proven to be unsound. I have shown you that other biblical scholars reject your interpretation of the blood issue, which proves that the text is open to interpretation. I have asked how you can equate Jews approaching a far away city, and besieging it if it doesn't surrender, with “defensive action”. I have suggested that a law which allows a slave-owner to beat his slave to within an inch of his life is not designed “to protect slaves from abuse”. I have pointed out that even if the New Covenant abolished slavery, Christian slave owners in both our countries used the bible to justify their practices. And I have pointed out that the Mosaic laws you praise so highly are still causing trouble today.
 
TONY: However, I will say this: If you try to take any law, mans or God's, outside of the framework of the entire body of the law, you will find some thing that looks wrong. The law is a system, not a bunch of individual independent components. You have been taking them as individuals without looking at the entire framework.
 
Of course the law is a bunch of individual components. It sets out a code of conduct to cover individual facets of human behaviour. The Ten Commandments are a prime example. If we had one law that said “Love your neighbour as you love yourself”, you might have a case, but that's not how the law or society works, because our neighbour can get up to all sorts of things we don't like. If my neighbour is a thief or a rapist or a murderer, I would want the law to protect me. Since I disapprove of the death penalty, I would want him to be put in prison. But if he's an atheist or a homosexual or a glutton, I would not want him even to be put in prison, let alone executed. Individual components of the law are constantly changing as society changes. Some of the bible's individual laws still apply, and others don't. If they did, you would be hanging me up from the nearest tree.