There is a judgment according to works in Mat 25:33-40, where works that prove one has unknowingly received Christ also saves.

31 "When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory.
32 "All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.
33 "And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 "Then the King will say to those on His right hand,`Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 `for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in;
36 `I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.'
37 "Then the righteous will answer Him, saying,`Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink?
38 `When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You?
39 `Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?'
40 "And the King will answer and say to them,`Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'
(Mat 25:31-40 NKJ)

Clearly this is a third group judged according to works…according to their own conscience:

14 for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves,
15 who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)
16 in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel. (Rom 2:14-16 NKJ)

2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. (1Jo 2:2 NKJ)

So its not "us only" Christ died for, His sacrifice allows God hear the cases of those who died without Christ, but had proved by their works they didn't hate the light. They just didn't know Christ before they died. These acted well according to their conscience which now excuses them for sins done in ignorance of God's law.


Same here, Judgment Day happens a thousand years after the church has been reigning with Christ as Kings and priests in His kingdom, therefore "the dead" who rise up from Hades are NOT the church:

11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them.
12 And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.
13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. (Rev 20:11-13 NKJ)

Yet the book of life is opened indicating some of these would be written into it, after passing the judgment according to their works.

Had these believed in Christ while alive they would have been raptured or resurrected a 1000 years earlier at Christ's second coming (Revelation 20:4-6; 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18; 1 Corinthians 15:51-58; Mat 24:29-31; Rev 14:14-16) their salvation wouldn't be in question (John 5:24) now.

But they didn't, they died not believing in Christ therefore they are "the dead" in Hades and Death. AND these are judged just BEFORE they are raised to determine what sort of resurrection body they will be raised in, glorious or abhorrent. (Daniel 12:2-3; Isaiah 66:25; John 5:28-29)

They are the third group, the "intermediate" being neither the elect or the wicked, they are the "average sinners" who, if they prove they would have received Christ into their homes if only they knew He was in need (Mat 25:33-40), are saved by God's grace, because THE propitiation of Christ isn't for "us only", its also for them.
2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. (1Jo 2:2 NKJ)


28 "Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice
29 "and come forth-- those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.
(Joh 5:28-29 NKJ)[/size]

Take your time!  Sorry to hear that you have been the victim of gravity - one of the main causes of injury and death worldwide, depending on how you read the statistics.  We should probably look into banning it.

Speaking of statistics, here's a fun fact - can you guess which country has the highest per capita crime rate in the world?  The answer will surprise you.


....





....





Have you guessed?  Columbia, right?  South Africa?




...













Nope, it's the Vatican.
Not a particularly dangerous place, but the trick is that it has a tiny resident population but massive influxes of tourists every day, leading to an artificially high number of crimes per head of resident population.  Cool eh?

This is my way of comforting the sick.  No wonder we get so many people hurling themselves off the top of our hospital eh?

Take care buddy,
Dan

Hey Danny:

I havent forgotten you. I fell down my basement steps and crushed my.knee. Surgery.next week followed by several months of recoverg.... Woo hoo.

I'll get back to you soon.

EB,

Unless you can provide some consistently applied standard for how you select which OT verses applied only to the ancient Israelites and which were intended to apply universally, other than your personal preference, then you really can't expect to be taken seriously on this point.  I shall wait with bated breath.

Seems you missed the fact that I was simply reflecting your logic back to you. But you always do seem to be blind to your own inconsistencies.

I did miss your point there (to be fair, you didn't make it incredibly clear).  While I don't really expect you to admit this, the two cases are not quite the same.  It is quite coherent, especially for the sake of argument when debating believers, to discuss the characteristics of a being you consider to be fictional as if they were real.  On the other hand, God's alleged injunction against worshipping other Gods is a little less clear cut.  You might say that it's perfectly possible to worship a non-existent deity, and of course I agree with that (and consider you to be a case in point).  However, if I say to my wife "thou shalt not have sex with any other man than me" then I am kind of assuming the existence of other men, yes?  And people wouldnt worship a god that they personally believed to be non-existent, so at a minimum that commandment tells us of the existence of polytheistic beliefs in the Israelite population, acknowledges that worship does not necessarily indicate existence, and forces us to notice that if God had wanted to be a little clearer, "He" could have said "I am the only god, and all the others are not real".

Not that that would have been an especially unique message from allegedly monotheistic deities.

"You'll have to explain to me the difference between something being universal and universally applied - might it also be true of the ten commandments?"

Would you agree rape is universally bad? Would you agree it's often carried out regardless? Do you see the point now?

No, I really have no idea what your point is.  Just to refresh your memory, this bit started out with you critiquing my understanding of the ten commandments by saying that "...by your reasoning the message of the Bill of Rights only applies to American men because of it's location of address and male overtones".  I pointed out that the Bill of Rights did originally include legal protection exclusively for land-owning white males, making your example somewhat of an own goal since it referenced a document which was male-centred in it's original language and meaning (as i contend the commandments were).  You countered, mysteriously, that the Bill of Rights "...was indeed always universal, even if not universally applied".  When I asked to be enlightened about this strange profundity, you come up with "rape is always bad, but sometimes people still do it", which has nothing at all to do with what we're talking about.

I have made a case - not a conclusive one, by any means - that the OT was primarily addressed to men.  I have used some examples of verses which appear to support this view, and asked you to provide ones which refute it.  Instead, you have tossed out a few wishful-thinking essays by other people and gone off on tangents which you have been unable to support about the Bill of Rights.  Why do you expect anyone to be satisfied with your apparently infallible opinion that some portions of the OT - to be decided by yourself - apply universally, despite heavy textual suggestions that they do not?

And you dismiss the fact that there may be a good reason why the "status quo" is such as it is, especially if it's been the same for centuries.

There might be, but since you show no willingness to examine those reasons, apart from to reaffirm your assumption that the prevailing right-wing evangelical interpretation of the bible is the one that God intended, then I have little choice but to assume that your reasons for believing what you believe rest on a deep intellectual laziness and unwillingness to look beyond what other people have told you to be true.

I'm not saying you've pointed to gender-default pronouns as the basis of your argument, I'm saying your fixation on examples like "thy neighbour's wife" are of the same level of absurdity. What is the 10th Comandment about? Telling people not to "desire" what belongs with/to someone else and not to you. Is that indeed gender-neutral and universal? Yes it is.

That is textbook question-begging, I'm sorry to say.

You seem to forget that if the women isn't forced to have sex and does so willingly, you can't say she doesn't have any involvement with the outcome. You seem to prefer the guy be able to hump and run, without any consequence (especially if she becomes pregnent).

Actually the word translated here as "seduce" ("pathah") is most often translated as "to deceive" or "to entice".  I would question the justice of a young woman (who in your assessment of Numbers 30 you seem to agree to be entirely unable to make binding decisions for herself) being involuntarily committed to married life with a man who deceived her into having sex with him.

Also, for a wider treatment of this issue, i recommend you go back to Deuteronomy 22:23-29.  There is no other reasonable conclusion that a woman is property here, first of her father and then of her husband.  The man who rapes a woman is punished depending on who she currently belongs to.  If she is promised to another man, then he is put to death (and so is she if she happened to be too scared to cry out during the assault).  But if no one else had yet claimed her then he effectively is forced to take possession of her.  Shouldn't rape, which I think we agreed above is always wrong, always be punished the same way regardless of whether the victim is married or single?  Isn't the real problem of rape the offence against the autonomy of a woman, rather than against the property rights of the men in her life?

You seem to overlook that Num. 30 addressess "young women" and "rash promise" of a newlywed and is giving a way out rather than hold them to it regardless (a pretty generous exit). You seem to oppose any form of parental authority.

I would be pretty ok with it if there was any such provision for a young man.  But the overriding assumption here is one of the intellectual inferiority of women, otherwise why is it only women who can have their vows overturned in this paternalistic manner?

And given that many nations would simply rape and kill female captives, I'd say Deut. does indeed show a great deal of protection. Or would you prefer the latter option?

No, I think that being raped and forced into marriage (assuming of course that you're sufficiently attractive) is way better than being raped and then killed, but I do sort of feel that there might also be other solutions to the problem.  You have very low moral standards for your god if you can celebrate his commandments as merely comparing quite well against acknowledged thugs and barbarians.  I would want to be able to say something a little more emphatic about the morality of my god (if I had one), rather than hiding behind false dichotomies like "obviously they had to take the pretty ones for themselves, would you rather they had just killed them?!".

Your lack of concern for ugly women, old people and young men is noted by the way.  They all got the latter option (except probably without being raped.  Probably).

This is why I can so confidently point to your lack of historical knowledge as it's pretty much because of Christianity's dominance in western societies that led to equal civil-rights movements for both women and different races.

There is an astonishing mixture of arrogance and ignorance on display here.  First of all, the task of proving beyond any doubt which of a myriad societal characteristics led to a particular change in that society is a near impossible one.  Nevertheless, Christianity seems an unlikely candidate for having initiated the secular progress in civil and women's rights over the last century and a half.  You have to wonder, for starters, what the heck it had spent the whole previous fifteen hundred years of complete ideological dominance in western europe doing, before it decided at last to be true to it's alleged principles and start emancipating the oppressed.  Secondly, the things that we today consider to be obvious tenets of an egalitarian society are really very new.  Although there has been slow progress, until very recently both my country and yours were formal systems of white male supremacy, and in some respects still are.  And although there have been Christians on the right side of these arguments over the last two centuries, there have always been many more who were opposed to change.  And you, who now claims the mantel of emancipation for your belief system, stand firmly and proudly opposed to allowing equal marriage rights to the homosexual community, the natural progression of the civil rights movement.  To see someone so reactionary try to appropriate the legacy of the enlightenment is indicative of a serious historical delusion.

The motto of the confederacy was "Deo Vindice".  Look it up.  Need I say more?

The idea that an omnipotent omniscient God would somehow take a people living in 1500 BC and turn them into a 2000 AD society over-night, just to satsify a Liberal's sense of "power imbalance" is what's truly foolish.

Because he couldn't, or because he didn't want to?  If he couldn't then he is not omnipotent.  If he didn't want to then he is complicit in three thousand years of racist and sexist oppression, tribal warfare and every conceivable sort of human suffering resulting from his choices.

"You just knew that I was wrong, regardless of the specific arguments as to why.  The arguments are interchangeable and ultimately unimportant to you, in other words, in pursuit of your predetermined conclusion."

No, I knew you were wrong, and was unaware that I had another piece of evidence to prove it.

Not "another" piece of evidence.  An entirely different and mutually exclusive piece of evidence.  As i say, you reveal yourself as someone who is primarily conclusion- rather than evidence-driven, because you hop between contradictory arguments as and when it suits your preexisting beliefs.

Except you AGAIN miss the fact that if her act was consentual after being 'seduced' as the Exodus verse shows and this verse just further elaborates on, she DOES indeed play a part in the outcome. Which undermines your notion entirely. But you don't care, do you?

Again, you should really look more closely at the text you are discussing before you get too excited.  The word used in Deuteronomy is nothing like "seduced".  As I have already explained to you, it is something between captured, seized, profaned or grabbed.  Agency is not entailed on the part of the woman in question.  Leaving aside the wider context of the preceding verses which I discussed above, which are unequivocally about rape - the word used there is "chazak" which can also be translated as grabbed, seized, captured, etc - and how if she is betrothed but doesn't cry out then she will be killed, but if he takes her in the fields then she won't be because if she cried out no one would have heard her, etc.  And then we come to the closing injunction, which stipulates what will happen if she is not betrothed to anyone.  In that case, she has to marry the guy.  You spinning this as a chosen encounter on the woman's part is not supported by the text - it is a discussion of varying penalties for rape dependent on the circumstances.  But you just don't care, do you?! [cue overly dramatic denunciation which I imagine might end with you slamming your bedroom door]

"Happy new year"

Any resolutions?

I'm going to try to be more awesome.  Whatever baseline one is starting out from, that seems like a good aim.

Joe,

"How do the two sets of in-laws get on?"

They don't. There's not a feud or anything. They live in different parts of the state and never see each other.

My parents are both professional people-people, and can successfully get on with just about anyone.  But Southern Africa is a long way away.  However, they sort of meet through us, because of how like our parents we can be in some ways.  I'm always on time, for example, and get really tense and anxious if something prevents me from being punctual.  Mercy is a little more laid back about this, and her brothers even more so.  One of her brothers actually missed our wedding in Namibia because he didn't make it to the airport in time to catch his flight.  When I am flying anywhere I am literally there hours in advance of when I need to be.  Anyway, when we're at Mercy's parents' home, there'll be a plan to go out for dinner, and someone will say "We'll leave at seven".  Fairly straightforward, I think to myself.  So at ten to seven I am sitting in the car, where I will continue to sit, alone, until maybe half-past seven when the first non-crazy person will wander out to join me.

On the other hand, Mercy is always slightly stunned at my parents house when the same arrangement is made and is then followed by notifications of increasing frequency in the form of one or other of my parents standing at the bottom of the stairs shouting "we're leaving in half an hour people!", then "we're leaving in fifteen minutes!", "ten minutes!", "five minutes!  Everybody got their shoes on?" and so on.  Cultural differences.

I like to think that, if God is love and Jesus was human, then God would be humane when the situation called for it. When I read the Gospels, that's how I see Jesus responding to those he meets. I also enjoy your perspective because not only do you have a huge heart for those who suffer most in this world, you're also open to understanding people with different ideas.

Uh-oh, this seems altogether too friendly to me.  I could get in trouble with the Worldwide Humanist/Atheist Conspiracy to Kill or at least Judiciously Offend Believers (WHACKJOB).  Quickly,... Make it right... Uh, STOOPID sky-daddy follower!  Don't you know that myths are for kids!!!

Ah, much better.

Mercy asked me earlier who I was arguing with now (slight tone of impatience there), and I told her a little bit about our amicable discussion.  She said something like, "So, is he an atheist too?", presumably because of the lack of violent disagreement that I alluded to, and I said "No, he's like you - one of the nice Christians".

The only alternatives I see (and forgive me if this sounds blunt) is to say that if God doesn't conform to my understanding of morality within my perspective, he is either a sadist or he does not exist.

While I have to acknowledge the possibility that my human perspective may be myopically limited, I don't find it useful to question my basic understanding of morality as far as it appears to be shared by most other primates.  The bible gets treated as a great moral text only because we cherry-pick from it, using our own intuition to select the good ethical lessons it contains.  But that makes us, not the bible, the source of those lessons.  What if, for example, I went to the bible with no preconceptions in order to discover whether killing children en masse was wrong.  It appears to depend entirely upon who is doing it - when it's Herod, it's very bad, but when it's Joshua it's fine.  This is a tribal form of relativism that I can't associate with a supreme being which I would want to have anything to do with.

Now, if the bible is a human document, then it becomes more understandable, but then I have literally nothing to go on to discover who god is and what "he" is like.

One of the things the Bible says over and over again is that we are flawed. Wouldn't that flaw extend to our understanding of morality?

I don't think that you can really be that uncertain about the basics of right and wrong.  I am not saying that there aren't some difficult moral issues that we may not yet have a good answer to, of course there are.  But if you were put in the position of Abraham, and told to take your son out and sacrifice him to show your love for god, I very much hope that you would recognise that as an immoral command, whether or not the action itself was allowed to proceed.

A while back, I suggested (with absolutely no intended flippancy, with the understanding how incendiary that can sound coming from a Christian and with full understanding that many atheists have tried this and, as a result, have a rocky history with God and/or religion in general full of intellectual as well as emotional potholes that would take a lot of work to make right if God does, indeed, exist) that if you're looking for a way to prove conclusively, to yourself at least, that God either does or does not exist, a good way to go about that would be to approach it like a science experiment, ask him for reasons to believe and see what happens. That's the closest thing to falsifiability I can think of. Did you try it? If so, how did it go?

I haven't prayed, which is what you originally suggested.  I have difficulty with the idea of even trying, because of the baggage it seems to carry along with it.  Assuming (and not just for the sake of argument) that the universe is other than how I believe it to be is not easy, but I feel a little bad about not fulfilling what seems like a reasonable request from a very reasonable fellow.  It is something that I have done once or twice before, but for the record let me do it again here:

To any Gods who may be reading,
I would be truly and genuinely interested to know that you existed, and if, as my friend Joe suggests, I might receive some sort of enlightenment by this means then that would be worthwhile and important for my personal development.  So, if you are really out there I would very humbly request that you let me know it.
Regards,
Dannyboy

Feel free to call me names and/or throw things at me. I completely understand.

Innnnnnncommmmmingggggg!!!!. No, thanks anyway.

I love Louis C.K.!

I only just discovered him, having seen him being hilarious on the Daily Show (by chance, because I usually skip over the interviews unless it's someone I know something about).  I especially liked the thing he did on "being white".

Are you present for just the tragedy, or do you get to see the extension of time leading up to and away from those difficult moments?

Sometimes I get to be with families of the dying for an hour or two before it happens, hopefully preparing them, but more usually it's the few hours afterwards that I get to see.  Most people who die in the ED are brought in either very very sick or effectively already dead and then we work on them for a bit, but it has an extremely low success rate.  Children are the hardest to deal with.

It could still be a human response even if God exists. Whoever authored Job, I'm guessing he/she was human. 

This is quite true, but beyond some sort of revelation or spiritual experience (which, I am forced to notice, occur in all religions, which makes me doubt their reliability as they seem to be used to validate many mutually exclusive doctrines), that leaves me with no way of finding out what God is really like, or if he actually exists at all.

You sound a little frustrated here. I hope I haven't said something offensive and I hope I haven't been giving canned, lame Christian responses. Please let me know if that's the case. That's not my intent.

I wasn't frustrated, perhaps just being a little more emphatic than usual.  Worry ye not.

Re: Bethlehem and virgin births

I have a hard time buying the merely "young woman" translation for three reasons.

First is context. The verse you're referencing here (Isaiah 7:14, right?) also says to expect a sign (sometimes "a great sign"). Young women give birth to babies all the time. How is that a (great) sign of something? What's unique about it?

As I understand it, Almah means something along the lines of "young woman who is not married", which would obviously have a large overlap with the word virgin in ancient Palestine but is not truly synonymous with it.  For an "Almah" to give birth would therefore be an unusual event, but to interpret this as necessarily a miraculous conception is unwarranted.  "Bethulah" is the Hebrew word that, as far as i understand it, more specifically refers to virginity (as used in 2 Samuel 13:2 and elsewhere).

Second is greater context. Nowhere in the Tanach is almah or its plural used in reference to a young woman who is married or is not a virgin. At least as far as I can tell. I'm not a Biblical Scholar, so maybe it is and I missed it. In genesis 24, the text refers to Rebekah as almah verse 43: "See, I am standing beside this spring. If a young woman comes out to draw water and I say to her, "Please let me drink a little water from your jar." (which, itself, sounds like a euphemism). In Exodus 2, when Miryam tells Pharoah's daughter that she could find a nurse for baby Moses, the text refers to Miryam as almah. In Proverbs 30:18, the text uses almah: "There are three things that are too amazing for me; four things that I don't understand: The way of the eagle in the sky; the way of the snake on the rock; the way of the ship in the heart of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid'

I agree that it is not used for any married woman, but that is to be expected given the meaning of the word, mentioned above.  This is still a long way from implying definite virginity.  If I were to say that "a young unmarried woman shall bear a son" there would not be sufficient evidence to conclude that i was describing a case of supernatural intervention, either back then or in the present day.

Finally, the Septuagint translation of almah uses the Greek word for virgin, parthenos (or something close to that spelling).

Which I guess is why Matthew and Luke, who wrote, and therefore presumably also read scripture in Greek, thought that this "prophecy" intended that a virgin would bear a child.  As I said earlier, this is not an uncommon theme in religion or mythology, and translation is definitely not an exact science.  Sometimes you have to compromise on the closest available meaning, and that can lead to misunderstandings like this.

But what is striking to me is that Paul seems to know nothing about the alleged virgin birth, which you would have thought to be worth mentioning.  That gives it the air of a later tradition.  Also, Mary, despite apparently being told by an angel that she was going to bear a divine child, in later stories of Jesus appears utterly bewildered by the activities of her son.  Why is he arguing with rabbis in the temple?  What does he mean when he says that he is on his father's business?  You would think that the whole angelic visitation thing would have stuck in her mind a bit better.  Unless it is merely a thematic device by later Chroniclers who wanted to give their hero the gloss of fulfilled prophecy in retrospect.

"If a prophecy is known about then a pretender to fulfil that prophecy can consciously and deliberately act in a manner which fits with its specifics."

Right, but if a prophesy is legit and eventually comes to pass, it's just as easy for us to step in post-hoc and declare it a pretender with delusions of grandeur. Either way, it feels like we're cheating. If we're going to evaluate a prophecy fairly, how can we KNOW one way or the other without assuming anything beforehand?

I don't think we can, which brings us back to a balance of probabilities.  Even if we lived in the same time and place, there would be no way to conclusively verify Mary's virginity prior to giving birth to Jesus.  We would have only her word, and in the present day we only have her alleged word, though nowhere specifically reported as such, recorded second or third or forth hand, more than half a century after the allegedly miraculous birth but not apparently known to anybody writing earlier than Matthew and Luke, or to anyone not aware of their works writing afterwards (John, for example, seems unaware of it).

So, rather than believing that the laws of biology were suspended on the flimsiest of evidence, I think it is far safer to assume that Jesus was born in the usual way, and that later writers who already believed him to be the messiah wrote him what they considered to be a worthy back-story.

I know Luke and Matthew differ on whether or not Mary and Joseph were living in Bethlehem at the time. Is it an issue that getting to Bethlehem seems unlikely or is it the differences seen in each of the gospels?

Well, the account in Luke of the census requiring everyone to go back to the town of their ancestors is intrinsically unlikely and not corroborated by any historical source (which you would think ought to have noticed a mass population movement like that).  The two stories are not really consistent - one has Herod, the other has the decree from Caesar.  One has shepherds, the other has wise men.  And both use different methods to have Jesus born in Bethlehem as the prophecy demanded.

In Matthew, Joseph and Mary apparently live in Bethlehem as you mention - not only is there no mention of them travelling there from somewhere else, but when they flee to Egypt, on their return Joseph rejects the idea of going back to Judea because Herod's son is now the governor there.  Why would he be considering going back to Judea if his hometown was in Galilee, as in Luke?  And on the subject of the flight to Egypt, there is no time for it to occur in Luke's gospel anyway, because he has them returning to Nazareth after Mary's ritual purification (about a month).

Jesus is multiply attested to come from Nazareth.  Matthew and Luke, who already shown to be writing with an eye to fulfilling prophecy, wanted him to be born in Bethlehem, and accomplish it in conflicting ways in accounts which are not historically credible even when taken separately (the unnoticed census, the disparities between the reign of Herod and the period when Quirinias was governor of Syria, etc).

That's pretty much why it seems fake to me.

Take care brother,
Dan

PS - it's weird how little choices can have big effects.  The decision of maybe one guy to translate the Hebrew "almah" into Greek as "parthenos" is the bedrock of the whole Catholic reverence for the "virgin" Mary, and Matthew and Luke's wish to have Jesus be seen to fulfill prophecy meant that i grew up singing "Oh little town of Bethlehem" every Christmas like a schmuck.  Ok, that last one isn't such a significant effect, but a major dogma of the present and historical roman church is.

Really?  This list of instructions which is immediately preceded by the words ""I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery"?  They would apply just as equally to the Egyptians, in your view?

Yep.

You have previously said that the OT represents a record of the period of God's direct relationship with one group of people, and have used this explanation to dismiss any suggestion of the current relevance of prohibitions against eating shellfish, wearing mixed fabrics and "suffering witches to live".  Now you want to say that the statements of God during this time period actually apply universally, both in time and space?  Or you just want to say that only specific statements, such as the commandments, apply universally, with no reasons presented other than "it's obvious!!!".  This is inconsistent and erratic behaviour, hypocritically buttressed with mean-spirited aspersions about my alleged inconsistency, evasiveness or lack of honesty.

Heh. No, I'm saying the 10 Commandments apply universally, not every single instruction found in the Bible. The sum of your argument is if a public speaker says: "Hey Montgamery High School! Don't do drugs! Don't drink and drive!" this somehow would translate that such things are only bad to this one school, while perfectly ok to everyone else throughout the world.  However, if that school has a dress code saying to wear blazers or such, this means every single school in the world need follow the same dress code.

Obviously, you will not think so.  I will have to leave it to other readers of our discussions to judge.

And I'll leave it to other readers to see how patently ridiculous your literary logic is, as I've illustrated above.

So you don't recognise the possibility of someone discussing the characteristics of a fictional person without implicitly assuming their existence?  This seems like more hopeless groping on the face of it.  Must I really believe that Sherlock Holmes existed in order to make any comment on his personality, habits or morality?

...who even implicitly acknowledges in the commandments that there are other Gods which "his" people must avoid...

Seems you missed the fact that I was simply reflecting your logic back to you. But you always do seem to be blind to your own inconsistencies.

You'll have to explain to me the difference between something being universal and universally applied - might it also be true of the ten commandments?

Would you agree rape is universally bad? Would you agree it's often carried out regardless? Do you see the point now?

Assertions about my lack of historical knowledge are cheap and easily made, and appealing to the status quo interpretation is just plain lazy, and suggests an insecure unwillingness to engage with the actual issue.  I am fully aware of Christianity's history of opposing (and oppressing) homosexuality, which is derived more from the opinions of those who came before and after him than anything that Jesus is ever recorded as having said.  As such, analysis and discussion of his recorded words relating to the subject seems relevant unless you already have fixed and unalterable opinions derived from other sources than the spoken word of the alleged son of god.

Uh, your lack of historical knowledge goes to the heart of the matter, since it means you are judging a culture without all the facts of the circumstances they lived in. Like judging that a society with no easy mode of transportation or several buisnessess offering employment, means the working class has to often be joined to the hip with those they work for - indentured servent. And you dismiss the fact that there may be a good reason why the "status quo" is such as it is, especially if it's been the same for centuries. As such, I'd call "new" translations to be as equally derived from the opinions of modern day people/society looking to impose their own beliefs rather than what the original text has to say. And that seems to be more the case given your proven fast and loose method of interpretation.

I will charitably assume that this was written with humorous intent.

And I will point to this dodge as proof that your beef with the final Commandment comes down solely to a single given example, than the heart of the Command itself. Which is what makes this whole issue just a case of overly sensitive PC nonsense.

I have never once mentioned the gender-defaulted impersonal pronoun in our discussions of the male focus (or not) of the OT.  Glad to see that your ability to construe an opponents' argument in the stupidest and most simplistic way possible remains intact.  Again, you do nothing to make your own case other than to drearily repeat it with the prefix "I say that...".  I was already aware that you say that, I have not yet seen you offer any actual evidence in support of it however.

You miss the point. I'm not saying you've pointed to gender-default pronouns as the basis of your argument, I'm saying your fixation on examples like "thy neighbour's wife" are of the same level of absurdity. What is the 10th Comandment about? Telling people not to "desire" what belongs with/to someone else and not to you. Is that indeed gender-neutral and universal? Yes it is. The basis of your argument in this comes down to a simple given example of "wife" being appropriately included (acknowledging the inherent trait of men being less faithful than women), and that is indeed equatible to you ranting and raving about how "he" is used more often than "she".

Passing over your habit of uncritically offering other people's apologetics in lieu of presenting any of your own thoughts (other than the irrevocable and tediously repeated conclusion) on the matter, I will give you my first responses to this, rather long, essay here:

Ex 22.16: "If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. 17 If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins."
Observations: In this case, notice that the violated virgin is still protected. She either gets a home, or, if the father deems it NOT a good idea, she doesn't have to marry the guy!

This is a representative example of the kind of biased analysis which characterises most of what I have read of this essay.  Presenting this verse as indicative of a positive feminist subtext to the OT as a whole requires a suppression of the intellect to a fairly radical extent.  Where is the feminine agency in this little morality tale?  It is an exclusively male transaction from start to finish.  What about if a woman seduces a male virgin?  What if she doesn't want to marry him?  Why does her father have the final word?

heh. For someone who complained so much about my calling your interpretations being biased driven, you sure don't seem to mind doing the same. The only one requiring a supression of intellect is you here. You seem to forget that if the women isn't forced to have sex and does so willingly, you can't say she doesn't have any involvement with the outcome. You seem to prefer the guy be able to hump and run, without any consequence (especially if she becomes pregnent).

This exercise in wishful thinking also manages to construe Numbers 30:3-8 (in which a woman's father or husband can override a binding vow that she makes) as being protective and nurturing, suggests that proscriptions against even touching a menstruating woman are (bizarrely) to allow her "flexibility", and interprets Deuteronomy 21:11-14 ("if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife....") as demonstrating "God's concern for the protection of this captive female".  What?

You seem to overlook that Num. 30 addressess "young women" and "rash promise" of a newlywed and is giving a way out rather than hold them to it regardless (a pretty generous exit). You seem to oppose any form of parental authority. And given that many nations would simply rape and kill female captives, I'd say Deut. does indeed show a great deal of protection. Or would you prefer the latter option?

The only thing that the author convincingly argues is that the OT laws were an improvement for women on some of the other legal codes in the same area at the time.  I have no problem with admitting that this might be the case.  They are, however, a massive step backwards for any woman benefitting from the hundreds of years of secular, not religious, progress which has gone some way to redressing the power imbalance between men and women in human society.  The idea that this was simply the best that an omnipotent God could do is foolish, and the idea that it ought to have some application in modern life is hugely retarding as far as women's autonomy and quality of life would go.

*snort* This is why I can so confidently point to your lack of historical knowledge as it's pretty much because of Christianity's dominance in western societies that led to equal civil-rights movements for both women and different races. It's even more apparent when one remembers most of this "secularism" of today is barely even a hundred years old. The idea that an omnipotent omniscient God would somehow take a people living in 1500 BC and turn them into a 2000 AD society over-night, just to satsify a Liberal's sense of "power imbalance" is what's truly foolish. Especially when one remembers the Covenant wasn't going to last, and was only a stepping-stone to God's plan to take away the sins of the world. Which being omniscient He knew all this beforehand.

You are specialising in non-sequiturs today.  A knowledge about the causes of disease could have saved the lives of those who were blamed for it's incidence in lieu of the bacteria and viruses which were genuinely responsible, and might have saved innumerably more lives by hastening the human progress towards finding medical solutions for them.  This is knowledge that an omniscient God could have given us but apparently chose not to.

Or it might not have made any difference whatsoever. Seeing how your speculation is based on the idea that people had the time, resources, or energy to devote to scientific discoveries, rather than aknowledging that your talking about a culture where almost everyone had to work just to put food on the table and deal with various bandits and hostile nations. Like maybe you're looking through the lense of a prosperous society in the 21st century, rather than something even less than a third-rate nation of today.

You mean the "current modern understanding" that you just discovered and now take as being entirely unarguable?  I am happy to acknowledge an ambiguity about the correct interpretation of the word in question, but you have found your brand new point of certainty and now are ready to be infallibly dogmatic all over again.  Reminds me of when the Vatican repudiated the doctrine of Limbo.

Given your proven staunchness to interpret everything in a negative light of women's oppression (which seems to look more and more like your defintion of "oppression" is 'not having sex without responsibility'), I'm just going to smile at the irony of you decrying my sense of certainty.

You just knew that I was wrong, regardless of the specific arguments as to why.  The arguments are interchangeable and ultimately unimportant to you, in other words, in pursuit of your predetermined conclusion. 

I rest my case.

No, I knew you were wrong, and was unaware that I had another piece of evidence to prove it.

Try to continue your epic learning curve by admitting, if only to yourself, that the woman has no autonomy granted to her in this story whatsoever.  The man at least makes a conscious choice to grab, seize, capture or rape her, and then pays the penalty of having to get married.  The woman who is grabbed, seized, captured or raped has no agency ascribed to her at any stage of the game.  Her life choices are irrelevant.

Except you AGAIN miss the fact that if her act was consentual after being 'seduced' as the Exodus verse shows and this verse just further elaborates on, she DOES indeed play a part in the outcome. Which undermines your notion entirely. But you don't care, do you? Because you are soooooo infallibly certain that the OT is a "step backwards for any woman benefitting from the hundreds of years of secular, not religious, progress', aren't ya?

Christianity helpfully provides a solution to the problem that it has created - the concept of sin.  Somehow I think you'd be less forgiving of a doctor who went around slashing people with a knife so that he could stitch them back up and then claim the credit.  Christianity is convicted, not only by the implausibility of it's historical claims, but by the rampant immorality and incoherence of it's central metaphysical claims - for example the idea that the most unambiguous innocents, newborn babies, are inherently deserving of death as a part of the praiseworthy master plan of an omni-benevolent God - and people who embrace this horrible idea with the apparent relish that you do are convicted alongside it as moral and intellectual traitors to the human race.

You ought to be aware however that an ideology's "feel good factor" has no demonstrated correlation with how objectively likely it is to be true.

Heh.

Of course, we see your blatant bias attitude yet again, when the Bible clearly and explicitly lays the blame of sin squarely on the feet of humanity. So you see why I don't think much about you disparaging MY intellectual honesty. Even if you don't believe the Bible, you can at least aknowledge the facts it gives. Or is that too much to expect?

Happy new year

Any resolutions?