Acme

95% of laws listed in the OT are not followed by Christians - the ideas of progressive revelation and agrogation come into play here. That's why I said all that killing in the OT does not matter.

Citation please. [agrogation???]

 

Crimes committed in the past are not "crimes of Christianity" - they are either crimes of secular rulers or crimes of the Church. There is nothign in the teachings of Jesus and his apostles that justifies all these crimes.

And what is the Church if not Christianity? As to Jesus justifying 'crimes' of the OT:

Matthew 5

17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. ...

Further on the notion of Christians not following the OT, we have only to look at the gal in Kentucky refusing to grant marriage licenses to gay & lesbian couples. Her protest and that of her supporters sporting "God hates fags" posters is based on Leviticus.

Leviticus 20

13 If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

Because she is a government employee, she is also ignoring Jesus' admonition to render under Caesar what is Caesars' and unto God what is God's. Then of course she is also ignoring Jesus' admonition on divorce inasmuch as she has been married 4 times.

Mark 12

17 Then Jesus said to them, Give back to Caesar what is Caesars and to God what is Gods.

Matthew 5

32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Where is the hue and cry of the apologists over this and similar Christian evils?

 

Same sort of hypocrisy and justification of crimes coming out of Islam as we are all painfully aware.

What education is needed to design weapon systems from scratch? Let's say it's basic stuff - an assault rifle or a simple solid fuel rocket guided from a PC for example. Would a mechanical engineer manage to do that?

Design has little to do with education or drafting equipment; it's all in the mind of the beholder. Timothy McVeigh blew the Oklahoma Federal Building to smithereens using the simplest of systems. Making public enquiries such as yours is highly likely to bring you to the attention of the authorities, and undoubtedly already has.

Whatever in the OT God ordered people to kill or not is redudant. The Old Testament is not an important source of guidance for Christians.

I don't understand the first sentence. As to the second, the OT is of considerable guidance to the creationists and fundamentalists. While they may be a minority, they are loud, divisive, hypocritical, and arguably evilish groups in the US.

 

I can see a lot of contribution that Christianity made to the Western world - we can begin with the knowledge of Latin that would be completely forgotten and was restored thanks to a group of monks in Ireland. Then we have cathedral schools and universities that constituted pretty much the only source of formal education in medieval Europe - and the only place where one could read and write. Then we have numerous Catholic scientists who until the Renaissance, made up the majority of scientists. We can mention monasteries that helped spread technological innovations around Europe.

Yes well, other than the OP no one is contesting these facts. It is as easy to list evils done by Christianity, but as I said earlier, trying to establish some scoreboard is a fool's errand.

But then they should not give or receive repps themselves !

 

Don't you think so ?

Should a government official not be allowed to vote in elections?

... There are also very few videos online not supporting unschooling, most of them support unschooling. But in reality not all unschool children end up in a good position when they are thinking about going to college.

Do you have any references other than your feeling that unschooling leads to unpreparedness for college? Moreover, many students in 'traditional' schools also end up in poor positions for attending college. What or who is to blame for them?

 

Here's a page by John Holt -the major early promoter of unschooling- that addresses common objections.

Common Objections to Homeschooling

 

Keep in mind it's not your child and over-intrusion can have detrimental consequences.

...

As to law. I reviewed an early post. I take back "criminal negligence" on the hooks thing. If a gun on hooks is legal in some states, there's no criminal intent. However, I will replace that with "negligence, gross negligence, reckless endangerment or contributing to a minor" when accidents happen.

As I noted and quoted from my gun manual in post #410, numerous states have exactly these kinds of criminal liability laws on the books.

I went on to suggest a federal law of the same nature is a good idea.

Well, it's like this: Christianity has done both good and bad with and without the help of powerful people. It is not light nor evil, but respects the balance between the two.

The words in the Bible have been translated many times. Anyone bilingual knows that chain translations misconstrue the original thought. I once translated the word "Light" through three different languages and then back to English. I got "Howl." If someone were to take original Hebrew and Aramaic scripts and translate them literally, I'm sure we'd be reading a different bible.

The FACT here is that no magical, wish-granting prayer-wizard ever TOLD anyone to kill anyone. This is called psychosis, when people start having daylight hallucinations and vivid delusions. It's skitzo, not divine inspiration. Though, I'm being painfully specific, I have a point: Christians and Jews alike believe that God has commanded the death of human kind before. They also believe that God was directly responsible for the genocide of an entire planet. The hypocrisy here is that "God commanded: Thou shalt not kill." Awfully funny sounding, isn't it?

It would appear that humans have been using faith as a means of controlling the mob since the words "In the beginning." And it's not difficult to do, either. Minds are very easily changed and humans are greatly flawed and weak of will.

Pretty much agree with that all. On what I have bolded, we should add Greek, and in fact the Bibles we have were translated -and continue to be translated- by language scholars. Scholars mind you, not the ignorant.

 

The Biblical quotes I gave weren't out of context because I included the exact passages so anyone could go and read what came before or after the germane passage. Sure, I could have pasted the entire books, but we know how walls of text fly at fora. I used Bible Gateway and the New International Version. Let's see where that came from.

 

New International Version @ Wiki

...

Features

The manuscript base for the Old Testament was the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia Masoretic Hebrew Text. Other ancient texts consulted were the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, the Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Peshitta, the Aramaic Targum, and for the Psalms the Juxta Hebraica of Jerome.[11] The manuscript base for the New Testament was the Koine Greek language editions of the United Bible Societies and of Nestle-Aland.[12] The deuterocanonical books are not included in the translation.

Translation philosophy

 

The core translation group consisted of fifteen Biblical scholars using Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts whose goal was to produce a more modern English language text than the King James Version. The translation took ten years and involved a team of over 100 scholars.[13] from the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The range of those participating included many different denominations such as Anglicans, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Christian Reformed, Lutheran and Presbyterian.[14]

 

The NIV is a balance between word-for-word and thought-for-thought or literal and phrase by phrase translations.[15]

...

And of the King James Bible:

King James Version @ Wiki

...

James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy.[6] The translation was done by over 40 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England.[7] In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic text, while the Apocrypha was translated from the Greek and Latin. ...

So it goes.

 

Edit: Note that the King James translators weren't privy to the Dead Sea scrolls.

I was just questioning the logic you were presenting.

And I was just explaining it.

You do understand that there is a difference between the statements "God told people not to kill" and "God did not tell people to kill" right?

...

Yes, I understand the difference. Fiveworlds implied God only tells people not to kill when he said "God tells people to not kill and to not lie etc." If he meant otherwise he is free to say so.

 

But I don't see how killing is a contradiction. It would [be] like saying that killing someone is a crime even though self-defense can involve killing, but it isn't a crime or bad in the first place.

The contradiction comes when considering the commandment [ostensibly God's instruction], though shalt not kill, and juxtaposing it with all the other passages wherein God instructs people to kill.

 

I'm not much interested in engaging in a debate with believers and/or apologists. People can and do use what is written in the Bible -whether rightly interpreted or no- to justify evil as well as good and that's the long and short of it. And as I said earlier, Christianity is not alone in promulgating these actions. Attempts to give a measure of whether more good or more evil has been done on religious grounds is a fool's errand.

Providing passages without explanation of the proper context is not factual citation.

Quoting out of context fallacy.

But I gave explanation. They are passages from the Bible -which IS the context- wherein God instructs people to kill other people.

 

 

False authority fallacy.

Well, I think you mean 'appeal to authority'. I was less appealing to my advanced age as an authority and more to your youth as a lack of authority. I can appeal to the Bible's authority on how to treat children if you like. Here too it is fickle, from Jesus' suffer the little children to me, to spare the rod and spoil the child.

 

I should also point out that I do not buy into the title's assertion that Christianity has done nothing but damn humanity. I hold that Christianity has both blessed and damned humanity and that pointing out the contradictions is a worthwhile exercise.

...

Mostly in the bible god kills. God tells people to not kill and to not lie etc.

This is where I came in with citations of passages from the Bible that show God does indeed tell people to kill. These passages show your implication that God does not tell people to kill is mistaken.

 

Many people have not read the bible. Me to mine own genuine misfortune have actually read it.

I, to my own genuine fortune have read it as well. Moreover I have read it well enough to know exactly where to go for those citations I gave.

 

I think many of your accusations against the Bible are merely putting the passages out of context.

...

Taking the passages completely out of context to further a point that is mostly baseless is more ignorant than anything else.

I gave factual citations from the context of the Christian Bible which is the very base of Christianity. Since I knew those passages, I can not be ignorant of them.

 

I am old enough to be the great-grandfather of you & Fiver and to paraphrase Cat Stevens, your faults are that you are young. Relax and take it easy.

 

Okay, new to forum functionality, not doing the "quote" thing.

 

Those passages from Matthew are new to me. It's really difficult to twist those words in any context.

...

Yeah, this paragraph took a tangent, but it's still kinda relate-able. Do forgive me if I show my insanity. Don't be too mean. Oh, I'm just joking, c'mon HIT ME! (And correct me where mistaken, I literally cross referenced none of this.)

No worries & kudos for admitting your ignorance and acknowledging relevance. Glad to have been of help.

 

None of which changes the passages I quoted.

Yes it does God states his name is jealous. God is not infallible and does actual evil out of jealousy. One day god told Abraham to kill his only son because god was jealous. But when Abraham follows god's instructions he tells Abraham not to kill his son.

 

No. Apologetics does not change what is written. And God doesn't actually state anything. The whole of the Bible is at best 3rd hand and adding your apologetics makes it at best 4th hand. Religion section or no, this is a science site and it's the facts that carry the day.

Yeah, the OT is really crazy territory. However, Yeshua's stories have a clearly different undertone. Where the OT says "thou shalt not suffer a sorcerer to live," Yeshua said "Live by the sword and you will die by the sword." Where the OT says "An eye for an eye," Yeshua said to forgive a trespasser "seventy times seven times." Christ-ianity is based on Christ. I realize that the most cherished story of his is the crucifixion, but that's one of many stories. He was know for many things before he died, not just the dying part. Frankly, the way the stories are told, Jesus was a cool cat to chill with. He tried to leave a positive mark, but things can get twisted.

Matthew 10

34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,

a daughter against her mother,

a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—

36

a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’[c]

You said it. Also there is a line after the golden calf story where Moses is talking to god. God wants to exact his wrath on the people who defied his commands so easily. And the lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people.

None of which changes the passages I quoted. Twisted is good, fickle fits fine too.

Genesis is pretty tame. When Abraham's servant finds Rebecca, the wife to be for Isaac, they give her the choice to stay or go. She is not forced to marry Isaac even though God has apparently picked her.

The sacrifice of Isaac is perhaps the most troubling part of Genesis. He goes so far as to actually strap Isaac to the alter for the burnt offering before the angel actually intervenes. Isaac knows what the alter is for, he asks where the sacrifice is at as they're preparing it.

Disturbing...yeah that's the ticket. One does what [one believes] God says, be it an act of kindness or an act of brutality.

 

It's just such a gigantic book. Moses comes in after Genesis. Frankly, from what I've read, Moses sounds like a psychopath. If he really existed, he was probably lying about his religious experiences to manipulate his followers. That's what psychopaths do.

 

Genesis may have had more Mesopotamian influences. It was Moses who forced monotheism on everbody, whereas before they were worshipping Mesopotamian gods. The Epic of Gilgamesh is also very tame. Perhaps moreso.

Yes well, the psychotic element is exactly what makes for the evil element of the OP. Since it's God or gods we're talking about giving the commands, there is no way to question the inspiration directly. That's true if we're talking about Moses, John Smith, Mohamed, or Arjuna, or yada yada yaweh. Pick your poison...and then kill for it when it suits.

Yes god should also have had aaron killed for building the golden calf but he didn't.

That's not the issue. The issue is whether the Old Testament God tells people to kill other people and clearly God does. Or rather, the people of the Old Testament who claim God speaks to them in private say that's what God says.

Or even more to the point, it's what the people who wrote the Old Testament said that the people of the Old Testament who claim God speaks to them in private said that's what God said.

Exodus 20 verse 15 clearly states Thou shalt not kill.

 

The word is smitheth meaning to attack with godly force.

So it does. And the verses I quoted clearly say the opposite, contrary to your claim. 'Smiteth' is from the King James, but in any regard the passage is clear.

 

Need more unambiguous commands to kill from the Judeo-Christian God? Can do.

 

1 Samuel 15

1 Samuel said to Saul, I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so

listen now to the message from the Lord. 2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

Deuteronomy 20

16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] themthe Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusitesas the Lord your God has commanded you. ...

...

Mostly in the bible god kills. God tells people to not kill and to not lie etc.

Erhm...no. In the Old Testament God tells people to do quite a bit of killing. To whit, a small sample:

Exodus 21

12 Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. 13 However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate. 14 But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.

 

15 Anyone who attacks[c] their father or mother is to be put to death.

 

16 Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnappers possession.

 

17 Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.

Exodus 22

19 Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal is to be put to death.

Exodous 32

27 Then he [Moses] said to them, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor. 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.

Exodus 35

1 Moses assembled the whole Israelite community and said to them, These are the things the Lord has commanded you to do: 2 For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a day of sabbath rest to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it is to be put to death.

...

source

 

Not that the Bible is alone in this, e.g. in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna instructs Arjuna to do the right thing and kill his friends, family members, and teachers.

 

Oversights by authors? Erhm...no.

Thanks AJB, generating the Mandelbrot set, and of course Conway's Life were the reason i bought my first pc in `86 .

I thought it was a cheap hobby but it can get expensive in terms of sleep-loss(for a spaghetti-coder like me).

When James Gleik's book Chaos: Making a New Science came out, it included a disk full of tools for generating & tweeking Mandelbrot sets, Julia sets, and more. I spent oodles of hours with it and without the need to do the programming.

The software is still available along with links to add-ons needed to run it on newer machines.

Click here: >> The Chaos Software

What's In Chaos

 

CHAOS has six modules.

 

MANDEL. A very fast Mandelbrot set program, incorporating: quadratic and cubic Mandelbrots, various fill patterns, quadratic and cubic Julias, and the gnarly "cubic Mandelbrot catalog" set that Rucker calls the Rudy set. The image in the background of this page is the RHORSE.FRP parameter set for the Rudy set. As mentioned above, you can also run these rules with the Ultra Fractal software, as described on Rucker's blog post, "The Rudy Set as the ultimate Cubic Mandelbrot."

 

MAGNETS... A Pendulum and Magnets program showing chaotic physical motion.

 

ATTRACT. A Strange Attractors program showing some of the Hall of Famers as the Lorenz Attractor, the Logistic Map, the Yorke Attractor, the Henon Attractor, etc.

 

GAME. A "Chaos Game", which is a Barnsley Fractals program showing Iterated Function System fractals such as the famous "fern".

 

FORGE. A "Fractal Forgeries" program that shows mountain ranges based on random fractals.

 

TOY. A "Toy Universes" program that shows some cellular automata.

...

Thanks AJB, generating the Mandelbrot set, and of course Conway's Life were the reason i bought my first pc in `86 .

I thought it was a cheap hobby but it can get expensive in terms of sleep-loss(for a spaghetti-coder like me).

What is this 'spaghetti coder' of which you speak? Conway's Life is an example of a 2-dimensional cellular automaton, but you can make any set of rules you want on a 2-dimensional array and get interesting results equally sleep depriving. 1-dimensional cellular automatons are a hoot as well and as I recall produced results reminiscent of Sierpinski gaskets.

oh cool I wish we had more books that deal with feminism is the awakening written by Kate Chopin ? I am interested in reading it. so I guess if principles approve the books every school would have different books. I would have thought the country's education board would require the whole country to read the same books and the district could add on any books they wanted.

Erhm...it's 'principals', not 'principles'. Yes; every school may have different books. There is no national education board in the US that decides required reading lists.

...if I cant afford healthy food I live in the city so I cant grow my own food ...

Living in a city does not of necessity preclude growing one's own food.

Urban agriculture @ Wiki

 

Search the phrase 'urban farming' for a bountiful harvest of returns.

That is quite cool.

 

What amazes me about some of these fractals and fractal-like images is just how regular some of these pattens are given the often very simple rules in constructing these images. This is especially true in my opinion for IRS that are generated using the 'game of life', that is just random choices from a finite set. Even seemingly random things can be very regular!

 

If anyone else wants to generate such images, there are lots of tools online as well as some you can download that will help you do this. Or you can look into modifying or writing code in your favourite computer language or computer algebra system.

Cool reference! I used to play with Conway's Life after being assigned to program it for a class. I particularly enjoyed setting the initial condition from different square graphs such as Vedic squares and hoping to discover a Garden of Eden formation. Good times and thanks for that blast from the past.

We have a phenomena called the Seneca Guns that is often attributed to small offshore quakes, not sure if it is.

 

http://www.starnewsonline.com/section/topic9909

While the NC geologist cited in the article suggested quakes, the USGS pointed out there is no such correlation with seismological records. Given that we don't have the phenomena here on the West coast, I hazard the guess that this is an acoustic effect generated by wave action which is tuned and amplified by coastal landforms.

 

Have you heard the guns yourself Moontan?

I like the Logitech wireless Trackball M570 for the ergonomics. I also hate the Logitech wireless Trackball M570 for its poor durability. I'm on my 4th one in 3 years. The buttons stop working. !!!$%!!@@@%!## This time I paid $8 for a 2 year extended warranty that will replace it no matter what. Take that Logitec!

Sure 1700 earthquake, my mistake after reading the Juan de Fuca history.

 

You can zoom in, there is a slider on the bottom left. It is in english.

 

 

Screen Shot 09-17-15 at 09.42 AM.JPG

Acknowledge mistake. I don't have a slider or any tools visible at the link you give. I backed up a slash and got a download option but when I clicked it I got "you have to be logged in to do that" message. No worries as it doesn't seem to be particularly important to the main topic here. Thanks for trying.

 

In fact that is not all you are doing. For lack of a better term, I'd call your posting in this thread 'trolling'.

Just because you don't like it, it doesn't make it wrong, or trolling. If all you want is a bunch of people agreeing with you, then you are on the wrong forum.

 

More non sequitar. Just because I don't like 'it' doesn't make 'it' right either and nothing I have said leads to the logical conclusion that all I want is people to agree with me. I have made a number of debatable suggestions directly related to the OP, none of which have received reasoned rebuttal or approval from you or other posters. Thanks for more of nothing but hyperbole.