|
Post by Taita Collins on Jul 23, 2007 6:22:22 GMT -5
To add to this, it is all in how you interpret the bible. There is a big difference between how Religious Conservatives view the bible's opinion of homosexuality and how Religious Liberals view it. It is all in the way you read it. Such as this, a few same-sex relationships as described in the bible, seen from the view of conservatives as well as liberals: www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bmar.htm#rutIt's actually quite interesting, as this is solely based on interpretations of the bible. ----- EDIT: Oh and by the way, to mention something else. If you truly believe in the Bible and follow what it says; Do you also believe in the oppression of women? The Old Testament clearily states women as inferior to men, and so do later translations of the Bible. Yet, women have been fighting to be seen as equals and now they (nearily) fully are. They stood up for themselves regardless of the original Bible's views, and the Bible had to evolve along with time. Women could no longer be oppressed. Why won't the same go for gays?
|
|
|
Post by Katie on Jul 23, 2007 10:12:44 GMT -5
Regarding the link you provided: It is an interesting article, but I don't see it as a trustworthy source. Aside from the Biblical passages, the article gives no other citations to credible sources. It discusses the meanings of Hebrew words and such, but it gives no source for the information. This troubles me, as the author himself is not a reputable scholar of the language.
About the cartridge connection: Is this the only connection? What are some other links -- perhaps ape-man transitions? -- that have been found?
But if there is no God -- no ultimate standard for perfection -- how do we know know what perfect is? Moreover, if there is no God to which we are accountable, why should we even care about being "the most perfect person you can be"?
Can you give some examples of this?
---
I didn't get to everything, but I have a few other things that I need to take care of. If I missed something that you really want me to answer, just point it out and I'll try to pick it up later.
|
|
|
Post by Taita Collins on Jul 23, 2007 10:34:39 GMT -5
About the site, I am not saying it is unevitable evidence. I am just saying that the way you interpret the Bible might be in the way you read it (even without the Hebrew meanings). Some people read and interpret things differently. That was the point I was trying to make with that URL.
As I said, I have watched and read many things about this but they were all in Dutch. I can't really fully translate them to English in this matter cause there's just a lot of terminology my brain sadly can't process. XD; So you might want to do some research in it yourself.
Well, as I said.. I agree with Nietzsche's view on this. He says that when a person knows what he calls the 'sad truth' that "God is dead", we have to go and search for who we are even more so. If you avoid this 'duty', you are just fooling yourself. If there is no God to tell people what is wrong or right, it is your own task to find these boundries and establish them. Because people can, without God, establish boundries for themselves. I have. I do not care if the church says that it's improper for me to go out and get drunk and be promiscuous, because I have for myself determined that I do not want to be like that. I come from a family of non-believers, but we are all decent people although we do not take our morals from God.
Several.
God fashions a woman out of one of Adam's ribs. This was necessary since Adam couldn't a helper for mankind in any of the animals that God made for him. 2:20-22 This suggest that women are just men's helpers.
Laban gives Rachel and Bilhah to Jacob. 29:28 He 'gives' women to someone. I do not think this is a sign of much respect. In fact, in many passages of the bible women are considered men's property, free to give to anyone without the woman's consent.
Several versions of the Bible even use this passage: "...thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Pretty clear in my opinion.
"And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live." -> While this would have been good news for us XD, it suggests that women cannot pose a threat to society anyways, so they don't have to be killed. They are not capable of standing up.
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's." This one of ten commandments even portrays the wife as the husband's property. Of course we find it wrong if someone desires someone elses wife, but the way this is written defines her as property.
"And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do." Whereas male slaves were freed after 6 years, women would remain slaves their entire life. Even more so, if a male slave regained his freedom and if his master had allowed him to have a wife, his wife and any children remained slaves and the freed male slave had to leave on his own.
I could give more examples, but then this would just get too long. XD;
Well, after those examples. Do you not think the Bible has evolved with time? It clearily has, for we do not see a woman as a man's property to give to anyone or to take whenever he pleases.
|
|
|
Post by Katie on Jul 24, 2007 8:15:46 GMT -5
This is true. People do read and interpret literature differently. I see it all the time in English class. But there is a right and a wrong way to interpret a piece of literature. There are themes and ideas in the Bible that God expects everyone to get, and they're not hard to pick up on. It's not like they're written in code or anything. But people sometimes just miss it anyway -- perhaps because they don't want to see it.
There is one other thing that I realized about this article. It lists three possible homosexual relationships in the Bible, but it never provides evidence that God condoned those homosexual relationships. For example: David was "a man after God's own heart," but his adultery with Bathsheba was still wrong. Even though David was a godly man, God never signed off on David's sin. The same is true for homosexuality. A homosexual may still be a Christian, but that does not mean that God condones what they are doing.
Are these boundaries the same for every person?
Regarding the so-called oppression of women in the Bible:
Hard-core feminists and liberators of women are probably not going to like what I am going to say, but here goes. In marriage and in the family, there is a chain of command, and it goes like this: Husband --> Wife --> Children
So yes, the woman is under the authority of her husband. But that does not mean that she is his slave. A woman is called to submit to her husband, but her husband is called to love her just as Christ loved the Church -- and Christ loved the Church enough to die one of the most horrible deaths ever conceived. See Ephesians 5:22, 25: "Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. . . Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her. . ." (NASB).
You reference the fashioning of woman from Adam's ribs. I once heard the significance of this event put in this way: "God did not make woman out of Adam's head to top him, or of his feet to be trampled by him, but out of his side to walk beside him, under his arm to be protected, close to his heart to be loved." That is not a Biblical quote, but it is certainly something worth noting.
I mentioned earlier that there is a chain of command in the marriage and in the family. This is not a structure to perpetuate the oppression of women. This is a necessary institution. I think of a family as a miniature military unit (such as a squad) or an organization. And just like squads and organizations, a family needs a chain of command. A family needs a leader, and God has placed the leadership role on the shoulders of the man.
I have mentioned earlier that people have this odd idea about leadership. There are a lot of people who think of leaders as being at the top of the pyramid, and everyone else below the leader is supposed to cater to the them. This is not a leader. A leader is not a consumer, a dictator, a server of his own interests. Instead, a leader serves the people underneath him. I agree with Christ when he said that those who would be greatest in the kingdom of Heaven must be willing to serve.
The husband's leadership role is no different. It does not give him license to abuse his wife or children. Instead, he is expected to love them and to take care of them.
Regarding the passage about killing the male babies and not the female: I'm pretty sure that this is a passage out of Exodus and that it was an edict by the pharaoh. He was paranoid about the the exploding population of Israelites, and he feared that they might start a revolt -- and men are usually the main organizers and participants of such affairs.
I don't pretend to be an expert on ancient Hebrew society, so I cannot give you a definite answer for this. But I would like to suggest that this law actually functioned as a protection for female servants. For one thing, the master could not throw them out on the street on a whim. (For unmarried women during this time, the street was a bad place to be.)
You also mentioned Laban. From what I've read on him, he's not the best role model for how to treat women. Like I've said before, just because someone in the Bible does something does not mean that God signs off on that action as right.
I actually think that the Bible is elevates women more than most civilizations and religions did / do. Deborah, Esther, Ruth, Mary, Rahab, Sarah, Miriam... all women, and all of them played important roles in their times.
|
|
|
Post by Taita Collins on Jul 24, 2007 8:45:30 GMT -5
Who says you read it the right way? You can't exclude the possibility that you are wrong about the way you read it, because it's not like God will come down and point out the one who is right. You can't know this. What irritates me about this is that America does not seperate the church from the state. Not everyone follows the Bible. People who don't follow the bible couldn't care less about what your God has to say (blunty said, but it is true) yet the state does force the bible's rule upon them. You just can't be a free country if you let religion do the ruling. How would you feel if the muslim religion took over your country and you had to compromise your lifestyle? You wouldn't want that, yet it is exactly what christianity is doing in America.
Not even being a hardcore feminist, I completely dissagree with this. The chain of command in my view is this: Husband and Wife -- Children. In my opinion husband and wife share authority over their children, but none of either has authortity over the other. It is a partnership where both parties are expected to love, protect and take care of each other.
The Bible says Adam needed a "helper", which he could not find in the animals, so God fashioned a woman for him.
As I said, I believe in shared leadership. The time in which the Bible was written did opress women. They were not allowed to speak freely, they were expected to stay inside, they were expected to listen to their husbands and to obey him. They were expected not to speak up about their opinions. Every history book will tell you this. Every grain of common sense in your brain will tell you this. If God did not mean to opress women, then why did women have to fight to gain equal rights in a christian world? Your view of what a leader is is a good one, but it is not one portrayed by the time in which the Bible came to be, or in my opinion of the bible itself.
Then look at it this way. The bible clearily condones slavery, in this example as others; Many biblical characters have slaves. In this time and age we do not condone slavery. Christianity had to evolve along with this, because we do not tend to commonly accept slavery anymore. You can't deny that we do not take up on everything said in the bible. It is a fact that we don't, and neither do christians. The bible has to evolve. It had to when slavery was no longer condoned, it had to when women started to equalize, and it will have to when gay people have gathered enough courage to stand up for themselves as they are doing now and claim their equal position in society.
This is your opinion. Personally I think the bible tries to opress women by saying it was a woman that got mankind kicked out of paradise, and therefore men should control the silly creatures, cause they don't have the mental capacity to be rational. Again, that is your opinion, this is mine. I am not saying I am right, I am saying that you must also see the possibility that you can be wrong.
I won't talk anyone out of their faith (and I doubt I can =P), but I can not stand the way many religious people think they know everything. Realize that hindus, muslims etc. also think they know the absolute truth. I admit the possibility that I am wrong, and that is why I can open up to other people's beliefs.
They will be in time, because experience will correct mistakes. There is even philosophies that will give you logical, rational theories in which you can put your situation, and you will receive the right answer based solely on rationality. I do not know if you are familiar with Kant, but he says;
Only act by those laws of which you can rationally want them to be universal laws.
Practically speaking; If you are about to lie to someone, you have to ask yourself; Can I rationally want that everyone would lie? You can't. Because if everyone would lie all the time, then the whole sense of the word 'truth' is gone. This is purely based on logic.
Besides that; I personally do not believe that I will be judged. I do not believe that after I die I will stand before God and he will send me to heaven or hell. Not a molecule in my body believes that I will. Yet I do not live an outrageous life. This means that is possible to live a decent life without God. Everything in my life is based on me; My mistakes, what I did good. All I know is at the end of my life I will stand before myself and look back at what I have done. And I want to be able to say then that I lived my life to the fullest; And to me this means to develop my talents to the fullest.
Some philosophers also give examples of what you need to develop. Aristotle says:
What divides us from plants and animals, what makes us uniquely human, is what we must fully develop. What makes us uniquely human is our rationality. So in his view we need to develop our rationality to the fullest.
What I am trying to say is: There are more options to decide what is wrong or right than what God or the bible tells us.
EDIT: I don't mean to be rude and I apologize if anything is particularly blunt. o.x
|
|
|
Post by Katie on Jul 25, 2007 12:45:10 GMT -5
Yes, I will respond to this. But right, I am sitting at my computer, in my room, and my brother is standing behind me and threatening me with a giant water gun.
"Do you think it's loaded?" he asks.
No," I say, scowling at him, "Now go away."
Then he shoots a stream of water at me.
This episode repeats once more.
Any suggestions on how I should deal with this miscreant?
|
|
|
Post by Taita Collins on Jul 25, 2007 12:59:51 GMT -5
Ah. XD I have an older brother, I know how to deal with them. Fight back. >D
Buy one of those small waterguns, fill it up and hide it at your desk. Whenever he comes in, shoot him. He'll get enough of it eventually. :3
|
|