Hey Cannon, do you stone women to death for wearing pants? Do you kill a man for working on the sabbath?
Because if you do not you are as guilty of discounting the law and the prophets as anyone else.
No, I don't. I am not an ancient Israelite, but I am guilty according to the Law, because it was never there to establish anyone's righteousness. So I agree to sign Christ's contract and follow it.
As it is, I relish the Law and try to understand it within its ancient context, then apply the meaning to my life. Most anyone is capable of doing this. Disagreements and mistakes will occur, of course, but so it is with any noble pursuit.
This is without getting into the broader topic of, oh, capital punishment. I happen to believe that if one commits some immoral acts, their life is forfeit, and that person ought to be killed. I am not exempt, but that rather goes without saying.
You say you got my point, but I have to assume you didn't based on your post. The point is that in the context of the "the law" as, Judaism has classically approached it, the 10 commandments aren't elevated and observed separately from the rest of the law. They're 10 rules among hundreds. The practice of taking the 10 commandenments separately and especially revering them doesn't make particular sense for either Christians or Jews.
Regardless of any possible miscommunication, thank you for elaborating. My little dig at people who quote verses out of context didn't add anything, I'll admit.
I view the Ten Commandments as a good place to start, but a bad place to stop when it comes to understanding biblical morality. So, naturally, you want to have an eye for the whole covenant, but I'm not sure what you're getting at when you point out Jesus's compression of the Law. Is that preferable, somehow? Does it have the same problem as choosing Exodus 20 to emphasize? Please explain further.
Man you just cannot let on that you actually admire God's enormous douchebag streak without all the devil's advocates trying to form their counterargument as you clearly don't admire him enough.
Since I cannot seem to suffer fools like that quietly, I've resolved to become another one of those strawmen atheists that nobody's particularly interested in challenging.
Look, if you want to make jokes about the God of the Bible's character as though He were any other fictional character, that's fine. It's the Internet. Ridicule or backhanded compliments are not good arguments, Richard Dawkins.
I can accept the idea that there is an omnipotent being. I can accept the idea that there is an omnibenevolent being. I cannot accept the idea that there is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being; you can't justify it without limiting the scope of one of those two omnis.
Well, unless you want to argue that it's not good for people to be happy.
Hey, I'll take some of that action. If happiness is "good," then why are other states "bad?" Sometimes angry people get things done. Sad people can make us think about what's wrong around us. And so on. Sure, happy people can be productive (they can also be shiftless), but it's a transitory, subjective, and fragile state; same with other emotional states. What if your happiness is built on another's misery, for that matter? Do the ends justify the means? Only if you think your happiness is more important than mine. Would we always happily disagree? I doubt it.
Yes, this is me just kind of "cutting out" happiness as we understand it now, but what other example can I furnish?
Sure, I believe God could make us delighted and merry all the time, but that would make us cattle, not human beings. So I'm not really interested in "what ifs" as proof or dis-proof of God's existence and character. I'd rather go with what is. There is pain, but it can be a call to action. There certainly are consequences, but they can be learning experiences. There are mysteries, but they can be explored. None of these things would really exist in a state of eternal, blissful euphoria (really just a kind of intellectual oblivion, I do believe), and going by real life as the contrast, we would be the poorer for it. There's so much more to experience than just happiness.
Feel free to call me out on anything, Burrito! This did end up as something of a rant, but I like it, so I'm leaving it.
I would pay up to twenty dollars to see Fundie WFE for five minutes, even if only to see Bizarro ZedPower being a tolerated atheist.
Oh, man. Would Bizarro Cannon be socialist and bear an Indigo avatar, too?
Because Green Lantern funnybook references are what holds the multiverse of possibility together,
obviously.