From: joeb@arden.linet.org (Joe Beiter)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: The Bible As A Rorschach
Date: 31 Dec 92 01:24:05 GMT
Organization: The Courts of Chaos

In article <9212291743.AA21979@inet-gw-1.pa.dec.com> I3150101@DBSTU1.RZ.TU-BS.DE (Benedikt Rosenau) writes:
>
>As far as my assumption of contradiction is concerned, we have the following
>premises:
>God is good and man knows good and evil (a consequence of having eaten from
>the tree of knowledge). In order to keep your god just you have to assume
>that the people who have been killed did deserve it.
>
>So how exactly do children deserve to be drowned in the flood?
>Have you got an explanation that holds water? Is it a Good thing to do?
>What information is to be derived from the statement 'god is good', when
>one gets such counterintuitive statements?

my only explaination comes from the Bible (ie: word of God).
Psalm 58 (from a song David wrote).  
	"Do you rulers indeed speak justly?  Do you judge uprightly among
men? No, in your heart you devise injustice, and you hands mete out violence
on the earth.
	 Even from birth the wicked go astray; from the womb they are way-
ward and speak lies."
----Psalm 51 (after David screwed up with Bathsheba).
       4."Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in
your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak.
    and justified when you judge.
	  Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother 
conceived me."

>And, back to my assumptions, I think that gods have been invented
>in order to rationalize/justify things like genocide.

I'd bet you're right to.  Maybe not for that reason alone but I'd say they
came in handy for an excuse.  

>People who refer to commands of god in order to bypass human rights
>are potentially dangerous. The history of religions is full of people
>who could simply claim that they were on a mission from the various gods,
>and do the worst atrocities unchallenged.

I've not seen that in Christianity (I don't count the European Mid-Age
political power as Christian).

>>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.
>
>This is wrong. Most of the Christian martyrs cannot have seen Jesus, if he
>has ever existed. And there are only few and dubious pointers to that the
>evangelists (our sources) have been persecuted. You base your claim on
>the wrong group of persons.

Well I'm not talking about "Most" martyrs.  I'm talking about the dozen or
so eyewitnesses that would have had the ablity to 'fudge' "The Bible".
Specifically the apostles (excluding John who was not martyred).

>>hint: Start claiming all the apostles really didn't get martyred and IT was
>>      all a lie too!
>
>Exactly. The source for the persecution of the apostles are examples of
>partisan writing. The simple assumption that they were ordinary people
>who have been fooled by a charlatan/madman and whose pride did not allow
>them to admit that they have been fooled explains everything. Especially
>when one takes the possibility that they were mad themselves into account.

except were talking about 17 or so that are mentioned in the New Testament.
All that were either so stupid as to all get fooled (not one of them that 
all hung out with each other for several years saying "pssst. I really don't
think he was God because ......").  To the extent of DEATH and all the crap
they went through.  Remember they were bucking their country and the Romans.

There is no motive *I* can imagine for pre-meditated deception.

>>>but even when one buys into Christianity, to say that he *has fulfilled them*
>>>is counterfactual.
>
>>in what way?
>
>He has not fulfilled them. Jesaia 9:6-9 is one example, if memory serves.

I've not heard of the book of "Jesaia".  Is that the Hebrew name or Greek
or just a really bad typo? :-)


>Those who take the Bible as a Rorschach, interprete the parts of what we are
>supposed to see symbolically, too.

That would be a very incorrect way of approaching the Bible.  The Bible says
that we are to expect lies and deception from our own hearts.  To approach
the Bible as a Rorschach we would have to seek out what is in US not the
Bible itself.

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