The Bible is an immoral bit of utter crap.

From your position, it seems that my task is two fold: 1) I need to establish that the Bible is immoral to the highest degree. 2) I need to establish that blasphemy should not offensive. -- My opponent claims that "the Bible is a book, and cannot be immoral, because it is the basis of 1/3 of the world's traditionally held moral principles". This is wrong on several points. The Bible is immoral and thus is not the basis for any amount of morality. You cannot have morality based on something immoral. In fact, the idea that I could make a coherent argument against the Bible morality, in and of itself, says the Bible is not moral. - Deuteronomy 20:10-14 - "As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you." The Bible commands genocide, slavery, and rape. This is quite clearly immoral. In fact, it's an obvious war crime by today's standards. The fact that I can even offer the argument that the Bible is immoral is because it isn't the basis for any standard of morality. In fact, by today's standards the Bible is largely immoral. - Judges 5:30 NAB - "They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera's spoil, an ornate shawl or two for me in the spoil." The idea of taking sex slaves and raping them seems a bit "conflicting with generally or traditionally held moral principles". - We are told to kill, witches (Exodus 22:17), homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13), fortunetellers (Leviticus 20:27), Unruly children (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9), Adulterers (Leviticus 20:10), Nonbelievers (2 Chronicles 15:12-13), Entire towns with non-believers (Deuteronomy 13), Non-virgin brides (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), Children of sinners (Isaiah 14:21), etc. - Which is not to say that the Bible has been at times treated as a moral guide. Take slavery for example: Leviticus 25:44-46 - "However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way." One could argue that perhaps such things were ignored or just not part of our morality. But one need not look further than the actual arguments invoked in the antebellum years of the United States: http://docsouth.unc.edu... "Nellie's mind was not at rest. The Bible certainly did teach that slavery was a perpetual institution. Its chains were forged in heaven, by God himself, and so fastened, that no power could sunder them but His." The book itself is a wonderful refutation from a Biblical standpoint that the absolutely immoral practice of slavery is very much supported by the Bible. I contend, just as I did in the comments section of the other debate, that "Southern Slavery and the Bible." by Ebenezer Warren isn't an argument that slavery is moral, but that the Bible is an immoral bit of utter crap. - Let's not forget DATCMOTO's points either. The Bible enforces thought crimes. You are not to covet your neighbor's wife, his house, his male or female slaves. You cannot lust after a women, because that's adultery in your heart. You cannot be angry because that is murder. Thought crimes, rape, murder, slavery, genocide, and you have the audacity to suggest this is the core of our morality? That's what's actually offensive. -- As for your definitions, I'm fine with most of them, but from context it's clear that I wasn't literally calling the bible feces. I was saying it was "utter crap" http://www.urbandictionary.com... , to suggest that this is akin to saying it is extreme feces is wrong. It's worthless and immoral. It causes more harm than good and is immoral and suggests we conduct immoral behaviors. I didn't mean literally feces: it's paper, just paper, with horrible things written on it. -- "Additionally, to call what a religion reveres to be sacred a piece of defecate is considered blasphemy" I'll gladly concede to being blasphemy. It's a victimless crime. Religions can revere whatever they want. It doesn't suggest for a moment that those things are worthy of more respect. Speaking the truth should not be objectionable. The Bible is an immoral bit of utter crap. It condones atrocities, thought crimes, murder, hate, bigotry, and what little nuggets of wisdom are to be found buried in places are almost always unoriginal and taken from older religious traditions. I'm sure you could cite, do not kill and do not steal, as a moral backbone of the Bible (which suggests running into towns, killing the people and stealing their stuff) but those rules are found in every semicoherent set of laws from Hammerapi to "ask some kid to make up rules to live by". >> and does indeed cause me to feel displeasure and resentment, because you are insulting my religion, so yes, it is offensive. You are not your religion. Why do you not feel displeasure and resentment when I insult your politics, or your opinion on the state of the economy? Why does your religion allow for offense? Further, why should saying true things about it be offensive. Supporting justifications for thought-crimes is absolutely immoral. While I understand that you are entitled to having paroxysmal responses to telling you the truth, your offense does not make something offensive in any proper understanding of the word. I am offended that you suggest the Bible is the source of morality for anybody today. If people followed the Bible as a moral guide, the world would be a reprehensible place of barbaric forms of injustice and the petty bigotry of small minds. The fact that the Bible supports, rape, murder, slavery, genocide, thought crimes, and hate doesn't mean that those things are moral. Rather those are all arguments which say that the Bible is an immoral bit of utter crap!