From: I3150101@DBSTU1.RZ.TU-BS.DE (Benedikt Rosenau)
Subject:      Re: THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 93 14:03:15 MEZ
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Malcolm Lee types:

mlee@post.RoyalRoads.ca (Malcolm Lee) writes:
>Love God.  Love your neighbour as yourself.  Do not murder.  Do not bear false
>witness.  Do not commit adultery.  Do not covet thy neighbour's possessions.
>Do you find fault with any of these?  What is wrong about being a Christian?
>Is your life diminished in any way by following these rules?  What have you got
>to lose?


-  Love God

How? And what is a god? Define it for me/us, please.

In order to be loved, it must exist. I am afraid that you will have to give
evidence for its existence as well.
By the way, the sentence so far could as well mean love Shiva. So, when I
am not supposed to love Shiva, give reason for why I shouldn't do it.


- Love your neighbour as yourself.

I cannot force emotions as strong as the attachment I have to myself upon me.
Nor does anyone I know. Nor do I believe that there is anybody who can do so
for every possible neighbour.

It can be that you mean the Christian buzz word 'Love'. Since I have never
seen any working pragmatics defined for it, I think the burden of definition
is again on you.

And don't forget to include to say who my neighbour is and who not.


-Do not murder.

Almost a truism, it seems. But given the weird way Christians use language,
I definitely want to see a definition for it.
For many of the definitions of 'murder' I know, I can think of situations
where it would be a good thing to 'murder' someone.


- Do not bear false witness.

I recall that the original quote is: Do not bear false witness against
your neighbour.
The neighbour thing again. And it looks as if it is ok to bear false
witness against others.


- Do not commit adultery.

Why this general condemnation?

Anyway, I think the original goes about: don't long for anything of your
neighbour, his goods, his wife, etc.,  and all what is his. Note that
this is not forbidding her to do it. It rather looks as if the guy who
thought of this could not think beyond the petty and sexist restrictions
of his society.


-Do not covet any of thy Neighbour's possessions.

Neighbour again. And it says that longing for it is already a sin.
Humans do so, and to demand the impossible is not exactly a sign
of godly insight.


Where do I see faults?

- There are no definitions given.

- There are no reasons give, and the system does not necessarily appeal
  to intuition.

- Some demand the impossible.

- Some are immmoral. Like the general ban on adultery.
  To decide who sleeps with whom should almost always
  be the decision of those concerned and only of those.

- It cannot evolve, being the absolute truth as spoken by a god.

- Lots are left out. It does not speak of right, for
  instance.

Which brings me to my most important point.

- I have seen better. So much better, and incompatible to the
  petty system above, that the claim that it is approved of and
  demanded by a god, is utterly ridiculous.



Same with similar systems of other religions. None of them impressed me.
   Benedikt
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc