Could you quote me an answer to any of the questions before my post @ #10 ? Besides tame_deuces is the only one besides you to give an answer and he is atheist just parroting afaik.

I assume that your use of air-quotes implies that you don't regard the questions as being actual questions? I would be very interested to find out which ones fall short of your is-an-actual-question-measuring-stick and why.

This could be true, but unless you inform me of where I have been ignorant, assumed facts not in evidence and asserted lies, then how will I (or others reading this thread) discover my mistakes?

Perhaps you could enlighten me; what is a better format for starting an actual discussion than a collection of questions?

Judges 21:25 - "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

Question one was "Why did god act morally reprehensibly in the Old Testament?", perhaps you could explain how Judges 21:25 helps to answer that question?

I have to admit that this post has me very confused. Are you channeling an apologist? Has your account been hacked by NotReady?

From reading your posts over the years, I'd always assumed that you were an atheist. Yet here you are doing a fairly convincing act as a believer. The answers aren't sarcastic enough to be satire, but neither are they good enough to give a satisfactory answer to any of the questions. Very confusing!

Another Christian with enough knowledge to dismiss these questions as a joke, but not enough time? energy? love? to explain why these questions aren't even worth asking, to people who are interested.

I assumed your post referred to the situation at the time it was written. If you meant it to refer to a condition at some earlier time, you should make that clear. I concede that there were no answers when you wrote post #10, but I do not see how that makes your later post accurate.

Also, why would I disregard tame_deuces answers. They appeared to be reasonable. I do not ignore him simply because of his stance on any given issue. I take his answers at face value.

They're answers and they are more than good enough to answer such weak questions. If you have a problem with the answers then address them in turn instead of playing the "zomg stupidity" card, which frankly I don't really buy.

I have answered these questions in dozens of various threads.

Fair enough, i skimmed over tames answers because hes an atheist and up to that point no Christian answered any. But it really shouldn't matter if people want to start a thread and not post in it again anyway. Others will join in.

here are mine.
1. God likes to kill.
2. God has poor morals.
3. Paul was high ?
4. Because they were written by people with different agendas.
5. Because he wasn't a vary important figure at the time.
6. Because although Christianity claims absolute morals they are just bull****ing.
7. Because God doesn't like whiners.
8. Same as 7

Being able to convincingly play the part of a believer is the single greatest sign of credibility in an atheist.

It's easy to dismiss the opposition when you don't understand the opposition.

Worst possible format is a "bunch" of questions, leading to a completely unwieldy and impossible-to-follow thread. It's be like posting 8 HHs from different games and asking for discussion of each one. Unless the moderator objects, I'll take them one at a time and start individual discussion threads. But I'll wait until a bit later in case there is some objection.

A question is something you actually want an answer to. When these kinds of posts appear, it seems very obvious that the OP thinks there are no answers. However, maybe someone reading the OP does, which would lead to the individual discussions.

RGT threads don't have to worry about things like this, because every single one of them will become derailed or separate into different debate clusters.

lol, RGT is awesome!

It's the only forum where I will consistently post in the wrong thread because a post made me thing that thread X was actually thread Y, and no one will notice.

lol, this is so true. This just happened as I thought that I had been posting in the thread that I created but it turned out to be the thread (where basically all discussion pertaining to my question had moved to!) and when I went looking for something that I posted I was quite confused as to where my posts went.

I wanted to clear up what your motives were for making the post before responding to your answers. Clearly it would have been a waste of my time to respond to your answers if you viewed them all as a joke. Now I know that you were serious, I will gladly give you a serious response.

1. The rules are for you, not God.

What rules do you mean, the Ten Commandments?

Let's assume that morals are an emergent property of successful societies. Given that assumption, why would a supposedly omniscient, loving and caring being act in ways that our current morals find abhorrent? Is god's behaviour in the Old Testament really what you would expect from an intelligent, loving and caring being?

Question one was "Why did god act morally reprehensibly in the Old Testament?", your answer implies that he acted that way "because he could", however that doesn't in any way explain away the gulf between "loving and caring" and "murder and slavery".

2. That some of the commandments seemingly have no purpose in a court based on secularity is as big a revelation as water quenching thirst. Neither is morals having existed prior to the stone tablets being handed down a good argument as to why they should not be in the bible or handed down in the first place.

Question two was "Why are the Ten Commandments such a poor set of moral standards?", your answer doesn't appear to address the question in any way.

3. Paul's mentions Jesus and even says in the Corinthians that "we once knew Jesus as a human being, but no longer know him that way". So he explains this perfectly well himself.

Question three was "Why didn't Paul mention anything about the life of Jesus in his letters?", not "Why didn't Paul mention Jesus at all in his letters?". Again, your answer doesn't appear to address the question in any way.

In the King James version of the Bible, the word "human" does not appear in either 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians - perhaps you could point me to the exact passage you are referring to?

4. Not all Christians assume the apostles are perfect, nor is believing in the perfection of the apostles a necessity to to be a Christian.

By "apostles" I assume you mean "the unknown authors of the Gospels", and not "the disciples of Jesus"?

I agree with you that believing in the perfection of the apostles is not a necessary attribute to be a Christian. However, I don't see how this fact relates to the question of why are there are such obvious errors in a supposedly inerrant book attributed to a perfect god?

5. Romans were good at documenting Romans, not so good at others. It also not a secret, even in the bible, that Jesus' impact is also much greater a good while after his death than before his death.

What about the Jews?

Jesus supposedly performed miracles while he was alive and appeared to large numbers of people after he had been killed. Wouldn't these be exactly the kind of events that would spread by word-of-mouth and be written down by an author whose work didn't appear in the New Testament? Wouldn't god want there to be more evidence for his time on Earth to help convince people to believe in him?

6. That some believers cling to the laws of the old testament even though Jesus clearly dispelled them is something you will have to discuss with them.

Question six was "Why do Christian moral norms shift towards secular moral norms over time?", you appear to have answered the opposite of this question.

7. Why should a prayer have to violate the laws of nature? It's perfectly fine to assume god operates within the parameters he himself created.

By definition, a miracle has to violate the laws of nature. Most Christians believe god can perform miracles and pray for them to happen. As I demonstrated in the explanation of the question; prayers are completely ineffectual. Your answer doesn't explain why this is the case.

8. Jesus healed the sick, a testament to his human nature, not the divine. God has made the world and given us the free will to operate within it.

Question eight was "Why doesn't god heal amputees?", your answer was that god has given us free will. You have yet to demonstrate how our free will has any affect on god's ability to heal amputees.

That's great, it means it should be very easy for you to give a brief answer to each question and link to those previous threads where you've given more a more in-depth analysis.

Or are you suggesting everyone should search through your entire posting history in the hope of stumbling across your answers?

I am very sorry to hear that my posts in this thread have come across as closed minded. Especially as close mindedness is one of my least favourite traits in other people, and something that I consciously and continuously try to avoid falling into myself.

Clearly I need to think about my language even more than I have been. Thanks for the heads-up.

To address your assumption; I have not yet come across answers to any of these questions that I find satisfying. However, I have not ruled out the possibility that those answers exist. Part of the reason for creating this thread was to see if anyone on this forum had discovered them.

here are links to threads that attempt to answer your question. Be prepared to be severely underwhelmed.

1. Slavery
OT vs NT

5. Why aren't there any reliable non-biblical sources about Jesus?
Evidence for God outside holy book

7. Effects of Prayer


8. Why doesn't god heal amputees?

enjoy!

It really sounds like you are endeavoring to believe God again in your posts! Actually and honestly it sounds like you have a very bitter heart.

wtf? im just warning the OP that the answers in the threads i linked will probably not be to his liking. for some who claims he can understand the bible so well, you really lack in the reading comprehension area.

Yes.

God is not merely all-loving and compassionate. He is also wrathful and jealous, read the bible because it says so. Does it surprise you? Man is made in his image after all. My answer does not imply that he acted that way because he could, I don't know the mind of God.

Obviously, as a Christian I don't find them to be a poor set of moral standards, but to be a very good set of moral standards. My religion can't be held attributable for your values.

I answered this with 100% perfection, even quoting Paul's explanation on the issue.

King James' Version: 2 Corinthians 5:16: "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more."

I'm obviously referring to the disciplies of Jesus, whose accounts were handed down verbally and put to the paper years later.

If you agree with me that perfection is not necessary for the disciples, then stop claiming the perceived lack of it invalidates my religion.

Nope, not esp. good historyrecorders, mostly verbal accounts.

What do you mean? The new testament is a collection of such stories, you continously alude to this point yourself and now all of a sudden we lack such a work?

Oh, then I misunderstood it. For the same reasons everybody else does ofcourse, it's not rocket science.

Only by a lousy definition you read on wikipedia, I see miracles every day.

I answered why Jesus healed amputees with complete clarity.

OK. Starting here:

1. Why did god act morally reprehensibly in the Old Testament?

Most of those quotes on the cited websites are from the Pentateuch - so, understanding what the writers were writing and how that worked for them gives a pretty good insight into why they attribute so much to the God of the Hebrews.

First, these writings evolved over many years/centuries/ most beginning with ancient oral histories. Deuteronomy is probably the only one that was written basically as it is, and it's a kind of compendium of the others.

These were warring tribes of desert people with little regard for life, mostly nomadic, some of whom became farmers and such when they finally became the dominant culture in a geographic area. All the tribes had a god and their god would, they hoped, beat up your god. They attributed anything that resulted in a positive outcome for themselves as benign intervention by god and anything that was bad for them as god being angry about something. The histories and law are couched in the culture of the time which was a very quickly evolving culture. As understanding about God evolves, the OT "god" seems like a monster. But in fact, we are just seeing as much of their history as was available to they, themselves, once they became a civilization. Essentially, five thousand years of history put together over the course of a few hundred years.

It makes no sense to me to bring contemporary mores to bear to judge the people of a distant past who's lives are essentially unimaginable to us. Some of the things on the referenced pages are actually pretty good things, if you know how stuff worked then. Here is one included under "infanticide:"
Including more of the passage puts this in it's correct context:
So, the law is given to stop innocents from being killed as had been the common practice.

Seems purposely misleading to me at worst and just lazy at best.

2. Why are the Ten Commandments such a poor set of moral standards? ....The remaining six commandments are, to a greater or lesser extent, morals that have spontaniously evolved in pretty much every successful and non-self-destructive society ever.

Well, they can't be all that bad, then, can they? If everyone just followed the last 6 and ignored the first four it'd be a great old world.

There weren't "Ten Commandents." There were many many many commandments and instructions and laws all appearing together in Exodus. When, in I think the 1700s, I'll have to check if anyone cares - the chapters and verses were added by a Protestant Bishop bored during a long journey on horseback, the first ten verses seemed handy-dandy and easy to remember moral lessons for the flocks who were 99% illiterate and had no copies of Scripture to read, anyway.

Personally, I'm fine with the ten you are referring to, as a Christian.

No. It is more like 621 or something.