LorienvArden said:
1) Let's just agree on a word here - I don't agree that those things are signs of schizophrenia; schizophrenia is a very specific set of conditions. I do agree that interpreting anything as a sign of God's wrath is crazy, especially in a modern society where we can explain most of the phenomena that get such credit.
2)The Phelps do not commit violence. they don't even threaten it. They say that your loved one is in hell, because according to their holy book, your loved one is in hell. As a religion major, you should know all about the myriad harmless things a person can do, that lands them straight in the lake of fire, where they will be tortured forever. More on that in a bit.
3)I suppose I can agree with you that in the greater society they are socially inept, but as a tribe unto themselves, they get along just fine, and they follow another tenet of scripture that, as a religious major, you should recognize: they are in this world, but not of this world. As true believers, they believe themselves to be separate from society. As true believers, they consider it their duty to win converts. They don't exist to make friends; per scripture, that's not what they are supposed to do.
4)The Phelps' cult doesn't place fucking landmines. Seriously, where are you getting this? They protest. They protest peaceably. They protest within their rights, with the proper permits, on the land that they are permitted to use, in a society that values free speech - do you value free speech? Your analogy fails in the most basic sense.
5)Which "teachings of Christianity" are they smearing? Did you gloss over the bit where the Bible condemns homosexuality as an abomination? It's not my fault or yours, that that happens to be the part of the Bible that they place emphasis on. I'm glad you disagree with them. Obviously we both do, but for chrissake, please don't pretend that the Bible doesn't say things that it absolutely does.
We stopped numbering things hrere, but I'm gonna stick with enumeration, for ease.
6)I agree wholeheartedly that taking the Bible literally is no way to live in a modern society - I'd take it a step further and say that it's no way to live in any society. That opens up a whole can of worms, though - at that point, which parts do you take as literal, and which parts as allegory? The Bible says to love your neighbor, and this is generally considered to mean, "love your Jewish neighbors." The same book has instructions on how to keep slaves -- not just slaves from other tribes, but Jewish slaves. It even explains the loophole for getting around that pesky seven-year limit on keeping Jewish slaves. To me, that's a contradiction; slavery and love are necessary mutually exclusive as far as I'm concerned. Which one is allegory? Personally I take the whole damn book as allegory, and as fiction.
As an aside, there is no extrabiblical evidence that the Exodus ever happened as described. Ever.
Yes, it does also say lots of terrible things about women. Is that literal or allegory?
It says awful things about pork and shellfish (before you bring up Peter, that still never fixed the pork problem), plots of land with more than one kind of crop, poly-cotton blends, and dozens of other nonsensical non-transgressions that will land you in hell. And that brings us to hell.
You say that the single overarching idea in the Bible is love, so answer this:
If you had a child, and that child didn't love y-- no, change it up.
Say you had a child, and you gave him up for adoption, not because you didn't love him, but because you could not support him: if you gave your child up for adoption as an ultimate act of love, so that the child could have a better life than you could ever give. The child goes through life unaware of you. He doesn't know you exist until, sometime in his late teens, you come and visit him and explain that you're his real father. He doesn't lash out violently, or even seem to mind terribly much that he was adopted, and he even thinks it was good of you to give him a better life -- we'll even say he's gracious and thankful for the gift, but ultimately he doesn't love you. Maybe you two just don't get along, or any reason really. For whatever reason, he doesn't love you.
Would it be an act of love to construct a torture chamber in your basement, kidnap him one night, and torture him until he dies -- moreover, fill the basement with space-age life-extending technology, giving him practical immortality, and then continue to torture him forever and ever?
Because that's as close an approximation to hell as I can think of, and that was God's idea, not mine.
Now, let's take a look at Jesus. Overall a decent guy - had some crazy ideas about not having a savings account, or even going out to look for food, but I could probably get along with him, long as he wasn't too pushy. Then he got tortured to death, and rose to become God again.
Wait, let's take a look at that again.
He got tortured for three whole days (although really it was more like a day and a half - Friday evening to Sunday morning), and after that he got to ascend bodily into Heaven and be God. I dunno about you, but I'd sure as hell take that deal.
And finally we get to Seven, which is good because this has been a lot of typing, and my hands are getting tired.
7a) I don't see an awful lot about respect in the Bible. I see a lot about shunning society and living separately from it, indeed actively seeking persecution because that's a sign that you're doing it right.
7b) Yes, God freed his people. He also sold them out to their slavers in the first place, because they rebelled (i.e. they didn't love him).
7c) Cool! You found one piece of proper mercy -- except taht Cain was, of course, the first person ever to feel the guilt of a murder, and the first person ever to experience the death of a family member, but whatever, right?
7d) I don't need the Bible to tell me to lead a good life. I have friends, and I like it when my friends are happy, so I do good things for them, to make them happy. I like people in general, and even if I didn't, it would still behoove me not to act like an asshole, because that is more likely to encourage people not to treat me like an asshole.
7e)The Bible has not been abused to commit evils; it has been used. I hope that I've made that part clear enough in this post, and many others before it in this very thread. It is not a 'good book.'
7f) You're damn right, brother. There are way too many people who call themselves Christian, and every last one of them believes something different about who God is, and what God is, and whom he loves, and whom he hates, and how to please him and what pisses him off, and what you should do to people when they commit atrocities against God like get drunk or disobey their parents (protip: death for both, if you follow it to the letter).
8?) I apologize for assuming that - you seemed to be defending the Bible, and from here, it still looks like you are. If I'm wrong about that, then by all means correct me, but if I'm right, and you are defending the Bible, then why did you reject Christianity?
9?) OK, so hedonism condoned by God, if I'm reading that right? Fair enough, sounds a little bit like Laveyan Satanism to me, at least on the surface. I can dig that. Do what you like, long as you're not hurting anyone else, right? Good philosophy, and I'll laud it all day and twice on Sunday.
Not quite getting the 'destroy them' part, though. How many people have you killed for being a nuisance?
P.S., I'm mostly kidding about that last little quip.
EDIT: Collapsed the exchange in a spoiler tag, fixed a few typos.
