From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: The Bible As A Rorschach
Date: 29 Dec 92 14:02:18 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Dec28.230529.19778@arden.linet.org> joeb@arden.linet.org (Joe Beiter) writes:
>In article <9211241258.AA21354@inet-gw-1.pa.dec.com> I3150101@DBSTU1.RZ.TU-BS.DE (Benedikt Rosenau) writes:
>>[...] when one actually reads the
>>OT (instead of thinking one knows the content), one finds a lot of disturbing
>>stories of genocide, mass murder, killing of almost every living being,
>>slavery, and mutilation ordered or directly done by god.  [...]
>>Interestingly, a Fundi came up with an excuse like: Genocide, when ordered by
>>god, is ok.
>
>Justice, when it is Just, is OK.  You appear to assume God has your sense
>of what is acceptable and what is not.

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.

>Did you actually know the people God killed?
>How do you know they didn't deserve death in the eyes of God?

This is exactly how Hitler and Stalin got their power and kept it for
such a long time.  This is the kind of attitude on which they relied.
You saw and heard of people who were arrested, condemned, executed,
but you assumed that everything was fine.  After all, you couldn't be
sure that they didn't deserve their fate in the eyes of Big Brother.
Big Brother never punishes innocent people.  Big Brother is always right.

This is an extremely dangerous way of thinking.

>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.

I have no intimate acquaintances in Somalia or Bosnia.  Perhaps things
are all right there after all.

>>>Actually not, because his biographers - or inventors - could have easily
>>>adjusted the biography to fit the prophecies.
>
>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?

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?

>The fact is, they either
>witnessed the fullfilling of these prophecies and deemed it worth dying for
>or they fudged and knew the real truth.

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.

>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.

-- 
 `D'ye mind tellin me whit the two o ye are gaun oan aboot?' (The Glasgow
Ivan A Derzhanski  (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk; iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)    Gospel)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK