From: joeb@arden.linet.org (Joe Beiter)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: The Bible As A Rorschach
Date: 31 Dec 92 02:00:43 GMT
Organization: The Courts of Chaos

>Obviously not.  The men who broke into my flat a year ago also had a
>sense of what was acceptable and what was not which differed strongly
>from mine.  I don't call them good, though.  I call them thieves, and
>in the same way I call the god of the Bible a sadist and a murderer.

Well multiply that sense of insight into the evil of man by about infinity
times two.  God looks into the raw 'heart' of man not only the actions.
But why are we talking about something you don't even think is there?

>This is exactly how Hitler and Stalin got their power and kept it for
etc...
>Big Brother never punishes innocent people.  Big Brother is always right.

Yea well they were men now weren't they.

>This is an extremely dangerous way of thinking.

I agree.  Stalin may have had good intentions but I wouldn't suggest 
following someone like Hitler.

>>For your assumption of contradiction to hold water you would have to know
>>both God and the people that were killed intimately.
>
>Not one of the victims of the Holocaust has been an acquaintance of mine.
>I reckon I should feel comfortable with their deaths.

Hitler had no right to do what he did.  Hitler is not God.

>>and then proceed to be crucified, boiled in oil, stoned, sawn in half etc...
>>knowing full well the lie they were dying for.
>
>What about the priests of Baal whom one of the prophets of Yahweh
>slaughtered, in 1 Kings 17 (I think)?  Did they die for a lie, or
>maybe Baal is The One and Only Lord after all?

Its in 18.  Isreal was starting to abandon the Lord and go over to a false
god Baal.  Jezebel (Ahab's babe) was killing the prophets of God in the name
of Baal.  That was God's way of showing who was the Real God.  They died
for a lie.

>What about the people who were tortured to death by the Inquisition
>for maintaining the opinion that the Bible is a book of lies and that
>Christianity is drivel?

You're confusing political powers with people who try to follow Jesus and
the gospel.

>Or they did confess that they had been talking nonsense, but were
>executed none the less.  Or they had managed to brainwash themselves
>and one another into believing the strange tale they had come up with.
>Or they had simply lost their wits, all of them.  Or one of feenty-feen
>other explanations, none of which is more implausible than what they are
>claimed to have claimed.

yea right.

>
>>hint: Start claiming all the apostles really didn't get martyred and IT was
>>      all a lie too!
>
>This is certainly a claim which is worth considering.  I'll sooner
>believe that it was all a lie than that what the Gospels say about
>Jesus of Nazareth is anything other than a lie.
 
A lie of that extent would have been uncovered and squashed during that time
and would not have lived.  How long does a lie like that live now-a-days?
(ie: Nixon/Watergate, Regan/contras, Quayle/intelligence, Swaggart/lust etc..)

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