From: czl30@duts.ccc.amdahl.com (Chris Lee)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: The Bible As A Rorschach
Date: 29 Dec 92 19:05:29 GMT
Reply-To: czl30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (Chris Lee)
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

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:
>>
>>Fundis appear to work on the following premises: God is Good and the OT (plus
>>the NT for christians) is the word of god. However, 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. Looks like the
>>premises given above contradict, doesn't it?
>>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.  Did you actually know the people God
>killed?  How do you know they didn't deserve death in the eyes of God?
>For your assumption of contradiction to hold water you would have to know
>both God and the people that were killed intimately.
>

I think you've missed the point. We don't believe in any gods, including
the god of your religion. So we don't make any assumptions about them
(apart from the obvious one that they are figments of the imagination
until proved otherwise).

All the poster wrote was that your god's attributes are self-contradictory
and that fundamentalists who believe in biblical inerrancy go through hoops
to try and rationalise the contradictions.

"How do you know they didn't deserve death in the eyes of God?"

Substitute "a figment of the imagination" for "God" and you will get some
idea how silly your argument is.

>
>>>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.  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 were mistaken. Or were misled. Or (you fill in the rest). This is the
old "A rabbit is not a cat so it must be a dog" fallacy.

>
>hint: Start claiming all the apostles really didn't get martyred and IT was
>      all a lie too!

People of ALL religions have died for their faith. Does that mean that
Sunis who died at the hands of Shiites were right, or Shiites who died
at the hands of Sunis were right?

Nobody is saying that it is a lie. Just that it is not the truth. It is a
religious pseudo-truth which is somewhere between the bounds of true and false.
Believers think it is true. Other religion's believers think it is false. The
The rest of us just don't care.

>
>>Further, the authors of the NT could not adjust the biography because the
>>prophecies about a messiah are too, er, well defined. Jesus postponed them,
>>but even when one buys into Christianity, to say that he *has fulfilled them*
>>is counterfactual.
>
>in what way?

All religions claim to be the one and only revealed truth, and use the same
kind of circular arguments to back up their claims. What is your reaction
to a moslem who quotes the Koran to prove his religion is the correct one?

>
>>
>>And, assuming that the bible is a Rorschach, then I maintain the claim that the
>>god who inspired it is a lousy communicator.
>
>I wasn't aware that givers of the Rorschach were supposed to communicate what
>the viewer was to see.

I think that the original idea of this thread is that different people read
whatever they want to read from the bible.  Certainly all the different sects
of christianity interpret it differently, selectively ignoring the bits that
contradict the bits they like.

>
>-- 
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Chris Lee