Christians Defending the Unthinkable

[@notavailable4891]

This is a very widespread thing amongst a lot of protestant or non denom circles mostly non denom and even some of the more charismatic of the apostolic churches. I like to think of this as believing you have your own personal charism of infallibility. What they are doing is divinizing their intuitions meaning they believe they have the proper interpretation, so instead of thinking of it as their interpretation they say things like, "God said" or "according to God's word" when what they really mean is according to their reason or intuition. I saw this with a family member who said the holy spirit was guiding her to hit the breaks with her boyfriend and slow things down. This was an intuitive sense she had that things were moving too fast, but she gave it an air of infallible inspiration by attributing it to God. As a Catholic, this sort of thing gives me a chuckle because these are the same people who would balk at the idea that a church, her bishops priests and laity could have a charism of infallibility like they apparently personally have.

[@sohu86x]

So what you're saying is that Protestants and Catholics are all ridiculous? If so, I agree with you.

[@piesho]

"Are you God? Have you created the universe?" And now, someone else is quoting Job to justify the torture God permitted the devil to inflict on His faithful servant. Pure madness.

[@ThreeFortySeven]

Any belief system that explicitly tells you not to question is cultish and definitely hiding something. I know and have known many Christians in my lifetime and not one of them has ever said I shouldn’t question God. I haven’t always agreed with the answers, or even thought they were good answers, but not one Christian has ever said to me: Don’t question God.

[@Tiredhike]

A timely post today being the feast of the Holy Innocents. We mourn for the children of Bethlehem, Canaan, and around the world for all time. God mourns with us. It is interesting the often used false dichotomy between human ethics and divine ethics as if Jesus ethical teaching is irrelevant. Jesus speaks to our moral intuition and brings together the human and divine.

[@algl4569]

Nah jesus is iao Yahweh the god identified by early historians as the source for child sacrifice in the Levant

[@printface4935]

Frailty TRIGGER WARNING: very disturbing child abuse. I very nearly walked out but I'm glad I didn't. It's an outstanding horror story.

[@MaverickChristian]

Ah, I love Frailty! Not sure it was the best movie to prove your point though considering how the film ended.

[@MorrisJohn-vo2vn]

Before arguing if it is humane or not, we should firs argue if it was what was commanded or not. And given the response to Saul sparing livestock I would say enough of those incidents demanded exactly that.

[@KingoftheJuice18]

I've been following you for a few weeks now and I'm still very puzzled why you keep repeating these questions/challenges over and over without attempting to provide any kind of answer or response. (You came a bit closer today to hinting at a possible direction of a response, but you didn't develop it at all.) It's obviously much easier (in all spheres of life) to tear down than to build up. Is there a good reason you don't discuss how you resolve these issues for yourself as a Christian? Is it simply because you want people to buy your books? I ask this because, as a religious educator myself, I don't feel it's helpful to raise what you're calling terrible problems without offering any guidance to those who revere the Bible-and God.

[@thelmaallen9424]

Isn't getting people to stop and think about things one of the best things an educator can do? And isn't it good to acknowledge that the answer I have now could someday be surpassed by a better answer? I grew up in a world where we were given answers to memorise and discouraged from asking questions. If science did that where would we be? Yet religion seems so resistant to changes as if we have God all figured out.

[@KingoftheJuice18]

@@thelmaallen9424 I'm not saying that he should give simplistic, dogmatic, catechetical answers. I'm asking why he doesn't seem to engage with any possible responses at all on his channel. Science didn't just say, "Well, we can't figure out the motions of the planets and the stars very well, if the sun goes around the earth. Bye now, take care." Yes, science is always seeking better or more complete solutions, but it offers working ideas and theories wherever possible. Theology, like science, should attempt to explain the data to the best of its ability. There's a world of difference between saying, "We have God all figured out," and providing your best insight, new interpretive models, rational religious possibilities, and so forth. I'll just add this: when science can't explain how to integrate Einstein's relativity theories with quantum mechanics, no one's day to day life is affected in any serious sense. But if someone is told that the God of their Bible looks to be immoral-and they are immoral for defending the text-that can have a huge impact on the lives of real people. Leaving them empty-handed is problematic.

[@chad969]

"I don't feel it's helpful to raise what you're calling terrible problems without offering any guidance to those who revere the Bible-and God" Is it better for people not to be aware of the problems associated with their genocide apologetics, than to be aware of those problems without being given an easy solution?

[@KingoftheJuice18]

@@chad969 Who said the solution(s) would be easy? And if you don't engage with the answers, then I believe you're actually doing a disservice to the cause of liberal religion. More conservative believers get the impression that they must choose between devotion to the Bible and a human-centered, liberal morality. You're actually likely to strengthen their commitment to defending readings of Scripture that you find so awful.

[@thelmaallen9424]

@@KingoftheJuice18 I don't see questioning the understanding of the Bible handed down to me as worse than believing God would command cruelty. That would be a fearful way to live.

[@DIBBY40]

In the gospels Jesus spoke of God as a loving heavenly Father. Something that we COULD relate to. Surely beyond the best that we can imagine an earthly father to be. Certainly not given to irrational, non-comprehensible and disproportionate acts of violence. ❤

[@GarthDomokos]

When FT said "god cannot have justified reasons for doing something if we can't figure it out". Which is ironic, since he left the catholic church since apparently, he had a hard time justifying John 6 because he couldn't figure the part where Jesus said "my flesh is real food, my blood is real blood" He really should listen to himself talk.

[@emmanuelmasih2296]

The Last supper was a pessach meal. Jesus had to perfectly keep the Torah to serve as a substitutionary sacrifice and to be true to his holy nature. Therefore transubstantiation is a blasphemous nonsense. Jesus immediately says that he will not drink the fruit of the vine until he drinks it in his father's kingdom. This is after he consecrated the wine and bread.

[@tomesplin4130]

If we can’t imagine or comprehend the Jesus of the gospels commanding the atrocities contained in portions of the Hebrew Scriptures, or Revelation, then we should deeply question the inspiration behind the authorship of these passages.

[@ChixieMary]

These are the people who talk about babies as "vipers in diapers". 🥺

[@newtonfinn164]

It's about as obvious as anything can get that the bible, while containing inspiring, perhaps even inspired, passages, is a very human book about God, not divine dictation to humans. How freeing it is when a believer in a good and loving God, in Jesus' Abba, comes to recognize this truth and relates to, communes with, stands before his or her Creator eyes lifted, face forward, without the filter, the barrier, the distorting lens of words written by unknown authors thousands of years ago.

[@algl4569]

It's not about god it's about iao/Yahweh who has been identified by early historians as the god responsible for child sacrifice in the Levant

[@davethebrahman9870]

One applauds your rejection of the barbarities in the Bible, but what is the criterion for truth about God? Is it just whatever makes you feel good?

[@MorrisJohn-vo2vn]

Yes, it isn't divinely dictated that was always the teaching. What has ur pastor been telling you?. The claim is divine inspiration, i.e. all it's teaching when taken in sum are true.

[@superpowerman4354]

Don’t you dare even think about attacking this film lol. Don’t spoil it either lol.

[@fallenexposure9663]

Its a banger

[@tomfrombrunswick7571]

No one human has the right to question God's motives and actions? The questions are Does God Exist? Is the Bible the inerrant word of God? Were doe we get morality from? Most people reading Old Testament passages are Christians. They will be repelled by them. This does not mean they lose their faith. It instead leads them to seeing the Bible as a means to come closer to God but that the Bible is not inerrant rather a book that was written by Iron Age men who were not perfect. But that the task is to see the intention of God through the words .

[@davethebrahman9870]

Why would God be incapable of communicating with his creatures? How do you determine what is true and false in the Bible? Why believe any of it?

[@tomfrombrunswick7571]

@@davethebrahman9870 Have you read any history of Christianity or the Bible? The church went for 300 years without a Bible. The basis of the church was the orally tradition and philosophy. The Bible as a series of documents selected by the Church based on what was thought to be true and useful. Luther later tweaked things a bit. So people choose what is God's word

[@davethebrahman9870]

@ That isn’t quite correct. From the beginning the churches had the Jewish scriptures and apocrypha. There was also no single stream of tradition, rather all sorts of positions later classed as heretical. There was no ‘philosophy’ until well into the 2nd century. If you (commendably) reject the Bible as a source for your beliefs, there is nothing else but speculation.

[@tomfrombrunswick7571]

@@davethebrahman9870 Of course there were scriptures. But there was no Bible. Which was the point i made. Yest there was divergent doctrine. Up to when Constantine became Christian and the new persecution of Christians started. A Orthodoxy was established and diverged sects were persecuted and their wettings destroyed

[@davethebrahman9870]

@@tomfrombrunswick7571 Not true. ‘Τα Βιβλια’, ‘αι γραφαι’ are both common terms in the NT and other early Christian writings, and the Christian canon was established by the end of the 2nd century, long before Constantine.

[@SquekretGenius420]

Alright, alright, alright.

[@theunknownatheist3815]

Right guy, wrong movie. 😂

[@JJFrance]

Well, let's acknowledge reality...every human being is carrying a death sentence. So assuming you believe in evolution the question of evil is irrelevant...human life has no intrinsic right to exist so talking about serial killer Christians is foolish. Assuming there is a Creator the question is...whether the Creator is evil or not. If the Creator is evil then we're screwed, period, and again what's the point of talking about evil if the whole system is evil? If the Creator is not evil then we must ask why evil exists. The only answers I've found that account for reality are in the Bible.

[@emersonb.5399]

How does evolution make the question of evil irrelevant? You can believe in evolution while also being a theist and believing that human life has inherent worth and value.

[@JJFrance]

@@emersonb.5399 Those that believe humans are just a result of a chain of evolutionary adaptations are basically denying that mankind or any organism has an intrinsic right to life. Its survival of the fittest. There is no moral imperative in that scenario. There is no evil, or good. There is only adaptation and survival of the fittest.

[@emersonb.5399]

Maybe if they’re an atheist. But there are plenty of Christians who believe in evolution, and believe that God ordained it with the end result in mind.

[@JJFrance]

@@emersonb.5399 If evolution, which is a survival of the fittest game, is God's creation story then that god is not the god of the Bible. It denies many of the fundamental principles of Christianity. So basically those that believe man is a product of survival of the fittest from the beginning have created a god of their own understanding. That said, there is dome evidence for adaptive evolution where species change and adapt to their environment but do not become another species.

[@emersonb.5399]

What principles are those? The physical evidence for evolution is undeniable. It is the overwhelming scientific consensus. If it is not true, that would mean God created a world set up to trick us into believing a falsehood. Is that the God of the Bible?

[@mofopeolaleye8187]

I read Paul Copan's book "Is God a Moral Monster?" and he found that the archeological evidence concerning Old Testament wars were pointing to the fact that the Israelites only attacked military forts, not the main cit(ies) in which innocent people were living. This aligns with the intepretation that the commands for genocide like that of 1 Samuel 15:3 were hyperbolic commands that was common practice at the time. In short, the Israelites weren't actually commanded to kill innocent children. They were just exaggerated ways of ordering the Isrealites to destroy the armies that attacked them first.

[@WinstonSanks]

The Book of Numbers 31:17-31:18

[@MorrisJohn-vo2vn]

While what u said is true, What of God telling Saul to specifically, kill everything that breathes among the enemy and being punished for taking livestock as booty?. Hey, maybe not all the genocidal commands actually meant that but, this specific case most certainly meant that.

[@rogersacco4624]

God didn't say anything. Read The Minds of The Bible by Rabbi James Cohn about Julian Jaynes and the bicameral mind And Data Over Dogma podcast "God Breathed?" Eye opening from scholars

[@johnnygnash2253]

The idea of the bicameral mind is really interesting, but doesn't seem to have gotten much traction. It's a treat for me to see reference to it here. Years ago, i tried to tell the only person that I thought might find it interesting about it and he dismissed it out-of-hand. Does it strike you as a reasonable thing to thing to think about?