Krimsa;

Perhaps you should look a little closer as to Abra winning this debate. There are some of us who do not agree with Abra's cheering section - but tend to examine the issue a little closer. As far as I can see, He's still needs to adress his misquoting scripture to prove his point.

Well - I don't lose my temper - does that mean Abra lost? Or shall we continue the debate. I'm still awaiting his response to my rebuttle. And since I have rebutted him - can I get a vote?

Smiless... recount the tally if you would.

Krimsa

I'm not sure what you're seeing as a contradiction here. Could you form it as a question - or statement? Thanx.

Abra made the following rebuttal.



Without supporting evidence, this argument MUST be thrown out by any reasonable judge. Otherwise, I can respond with a gratuitous assertion of my own...here, here is my gratuitous assertion to counter Abras.

The Bible clearly says that nobody before the flood was repentant. In fact, the scriptures say that everyone in the years leading up to the flood were crack heads. They were also largely Meth dealers and prostitutes. Not only weren't they repentant, but they had a custom of mocking God on a daily basis. They would cry out "God can't flood the world, because he's a big doo-doo head!" The people would ring bells and everyone would come out of their homes and say "God can't flood the world, because he's a big doo-doo head! If God could flood the world, he should, because we all hate him." and then they would laugh and laugh and laugh. Even the babies back then would say this. Babies would start talking while they were still in the womb and they would make idols to satan and worship them in utero.

There. My argument is just as strong as Abras. I offered no evidence, but that doesn't matter, because you don't believe evidence is necessary. Do you see the problem? Evidence is required or EVERY assertion must be accepted.

EDIT:

Oh, before anyone accuses me of being "angry", please understand that I am illustrating absurdity with absurdity. I am making absurd claims to make the absurdity of accepting Abra's arguments without evidence clear.

ADRESS BELUSHI on thse points spider!!!

Look, I will defer to everyone who seems to feel that Spider was not given a fair shake at things. I don’t want to go on for days about it and it's already been 48 hours. I guess I’m less interested in the "contest" here. It’s not live. There is no appellate division. Let’s move on.

Can we get back to the issues with the bible? Mainly all of the discrepancies and inconsistencies? I can’t say yet I have found a cold hard contradiction. This last was borderline. He wants people to have kids, yet wait a minute, since the woman is actually creating the infant, no, its dirty, lets pay some atonements to the priests with pigeons and turtles etc... Priest was a good line of work evidently.

Eljay. You wanted me to formulate it into a question.

Why does it go from "be fruitful and multiply" to birth is essentially dirty and questionable? God seems to want a lot of children, presumably more Christians for the flock, yet he’s not totally comfortable with the idea of women making them and giving birth. Perhaps there is some continuous concerns over “jurisdiction” and who is responsible for what miracles. Alright, so he compromises with okay, it HAS to be done so she’s, gotta pay up and atone for this. Then, well, I guess it’s alright. She best not touch anything while she is menstruating either! Hmmm, alright. It’s like he's chastising little kids. There is no getting around childbirth. That must have been irritating to some degree...Also why is this "new cleansing period" LONGER for a female infant??

God requires purification rites following childbirth which, in effect, makes childbirth a sin. What gives?

But I did give supporting evidence. Noah, his wife and sons, and their wives, were all supposedly decent people prior to the flood.

If we're going to appeal to reasonable judges then I hold that my argument is reasonable.

In fact, it's even MORE reasonable based on what Eljay had to say,...



My actual assertion is that God changed the way he handles humanity. I'm not going to stand for a semantic arguments based on précising wordings that are obvious efforts to try to side-step the real issue.

Spider argued that there were no "repentant" people prior to the flood. However, if there were no laws prior to the flood then it would be impossible to 'sin' (be disobedient to God) in the first place. So why drown out people who weren't even told that they are being bad?

Without laws to define what is sinful, then how could anyone even sin? Or be guilty of sinning? This opens up a WHOLE NEW CAN OF WORMS concerning a changing God.

If the Ten Commandments came after the flood, then God clearly changed. Prior to the flood he had no laws. After the flood he has laws.

That's an inconsistent changing God right there.

My original assertion is that the biblical God Changed the way he deals with humanity prior to the flood and after the flood.

It seems that all arguments to refute my assertion appeal to a God who indeed did change. Prior to the flood he gave no laws, after the flood he gave laws.

That just confirms my original assertion that biblical God changed the way he deals with humanity. Prior to the flood he dealt with them differently and responded to them differently, than he did after the flood.

That's a changing God right there.

And that's my assertion. The contradiction is that the Bible says that God is unchanging.

It seems to me that every argument that has been given thus far to try to refute my assertion that the Biblical God changes are arguments that actually support my assertion by requiring that the Biblical God did indeed change the way he deals with humanity after the flood.

But that is my assertion. The biblical God changed the way he deals with humanity. Thus it can't be said that the biblical God is an unchanging God.

The claim by Eljay seems to be that prior to the flood there were no laws. After the flood there were laws. This sounds like a God who is experimenting with how to raise humans. This doesn't sound like an all-knowing unchanging God who knew how he was going to deal with humans from the get-go.

So far, every argument given to try to refute my assertion just supports my assertion all the more.

Owl be glad to appeal to any reasonable "judges" that we can find.

I think there might be a problem with terminology and semantics here:

from what Abra is saying and concluding seems to be this [and I'm sure he will correct me if I'm misunderstanding]

Abra:

My original assertion is that the biblical God Changed the way he [deals with humanity] prior to the flood and after the flood.

tribo:

changing the way one "deals with something" is not the same to me as - god himself changing his supposed attributes.

for example i change the way i deal with employees all the time depending on the criteria that i my self have to follow that are again given me by upper management [that puts me in the part of Noah]. if i consider upper management to be "god" in this case then they have put me into the position to "deal with something" that does not affect my personal nature but does directly affect those beneath me in a very real way. They might not like it, i may not like it, but they are the ones with the power to hire or fire [kill or let live in gods example]

on a more personal level, it would be as my changing my mind on how to discipline my children - if the way i started out with disciplining them was not working, then would i be changing my character if i started grounding them instead of spanking them? Or visa versa? am I myself changing my self, or just the way I'm deciding to deal with there disobedience? If others see no personal change in me then i have to conclude that i am just as i was before changing how i "deal with the problem". The problem was dealt with but i did not change in any way.

Now i know Abra is talking of a consistent non changing being and maybe won't except my premises here, since mine are of a non omniscient being, but of myself, yet i can't help but see that god himself did not "change" - only the way in which he dealt or handled the situation.

so if it is meant that god himself changed - i disagree

if it is meant that god changed how he deals with man - then i do agree

so to me it's a tie so far no winners as of yet.

M.O.

Also there was some mention of "Abras cheering section"? What is that all about? I feel he provided a superior argument and Im not sure who else agrees? Tribo is kind of down the middle and feels it was a tie. Its not like everyone is against spider or for Abra as far as I see it. Unless Im missing something. Spider might have members that are annoyed with or dislike him on a personal level but that can not be held against him as far as his debate is concerned as long as he recognizes all rules. Arguably he has where Abra is concerned in this latest.

hi krisma, i still lean towards Abra because of this - he states that an all knowing being should know in advance how his creations are going to act and should have been able to remedy this long before it actually came about instead of waiting till it was so bad that he had to destroy all of what he created minus Noah and his family, this wreaks of things i summarize as to the book being written by man and not god, that's a plus for his discussion. I'm merely stating that IMO that from a literary stand point of words i cannot accept god himself has changed only his ways of dealing with things - which is still a change - just not in his character, and as i state this could be thrown out if one looks at Abra's other statements. i still think it has to be taken further than it has at this point so there will be no more questions for either side and it can be put to rest.

I disagree. In his scenario you've changed your behavior based on what you had 'learned' about what works and what doesn't work.

To apply your scenario here, would imply that God is indeed 'learning' how to deal with humanity. He changes his tactics based on what he has 'learned'.

That's a no-no for a God Sam. Because if God changed all the time based on new information then we couldn't not depend on God to be the same tomorrow as he is today.

So yes, I'm in disagreement with your analogy of God to a human parent who learns from experience. That is not a good analogy for a God IMHO. That merely suggests that God is no different from a human in the way he learns about how to deal with things.



I understand what you are saying here Sam, but I must disagree in the case of a God.

All this would be saying is that God is always benevolent in spirit and he never changes in that regard. But he could still changes the way he does things.

But why would he change the way he does things if that's the case?

The only reason would be similar to what you've described. He's trying different things in the hope of learning how to become a good parent. But that flies in the face of God being all-knowing and all-wise. That would suggest that God's benevolence never changes, but he has no clue what he's doing so he keeps trying different things.

If that's the case, then we have no clue what God might try tomorrow.

A trial and error God?

That doesn't work IMHO.

If God is all-knowing and all-wise, and doesn't change, then there's no reason for him to change how he deals with humans. But according to the Bible he did change the way he deals with man after the flood.

That's a contradiction in the Bible. That's my assertion.

If we're going to allow that God can change how he deals with humanity then why even bother claiming God is unchanging? Why not just own up to the fact that God can change anytime he feels like it.

That's exactly what I'm arguing Sam.

If God is all-knowing and all-wise, and doesn't change, then there's no reason for him to change how he deals with humans. But according to the Bible he did change the way he deals with man after the flood.

That's it exactly Sam.

Something's gotta give.

We can't have a supposely all-knowing, all-wise god drowning out his creation one time, and then offering to send his son to die to save in the next time.

That's not a consistent God. That's a God who changed the way he does things.

God is never very consistent. He’s also a little bit warlike and full of vengeance at times. That’s what I’m noticing about his overriding character thus far. I side with Abra on this. Also, who here believes that "god" wrote the bible? He's like a mystical being? How is he writing anything? I thought it was common knowledge it was a bunch of stories written by different people. That would also explain some of the discrepancies.

the christains don't claim that god personally picked up a pen/pencil/quill and wrote the words. what they do claim is that god directly "inspired" men to write down what he was either saying to them personally or in some way communicating the info directly to them.

but unfortunately, this is true of all the medditerrainian religions or monotheistic religions and if not all the rest. my biggest problem is with God having human emotions, every god ever written about acts like man emotionally, how can you thern seperate one out and say - yeah but this ones for real - the others are all lies.

i understand all of what you've said James, i knew you would probably shoot it down based on the fact of god's standards compared to your or mine etc.. but i still think that it has to play out to where there is absolutely no room to squirm out of what your stating - i'll see if such takes place. hopefully that will be soon.

Krimsa;

Thank you. Much easier to determine what to respond to. I don't think "dirty" (as in wrong, guilt-ridden, etc) is the reasoning behind the purification ceremonies, as much as it was for health reasons. Obviously not a concern for woman today - as most children are born in a hospitol environment - and the healthcare issues are attended to immediately. Not being a woman myself - I cannot adress this topic from experience - but it would seem to me that once a child is born, and you've severed the imbilical cord - there is now an open wound for the female. A period of healing is needed here, as well as cleansing to prevent infection. (I would assume) This seems more the intent behind the cleansing ritual - rather than the "disgust" of the outcome of a sexual act.

And it wasn't more "Christians" - for those rituals were given to the Jews.

But to state that God had changed the way He dealt with man is to understand that you knew how He was going to deal with man previous to His actions. Where are you getting this information? All we know of God's dealing with Man is what He did AFTER man's actions. We know that the expectations of God is that Man be rightious. We do not know what God's actions are to those who are not rightious - until much later on in the old testament - then He states to the profits what He will do if man is rightious, and what He will do if he's not. He never "tips his hand" on WHEN the consequence will be dealt with - just that it will. In this - God is consistant. While this may not be the best example of "reasonable" - no where in scriptures does it premise that God is "all-reasonable". So why is this being used to establish anything about God's consistancy - or this anticipated expectation of his dealing with Man. This is subjectivity at best.

I can’t agree with your explanation that it has anything to do with health. I can’t know for certain of course but based on Leviticus and what the words seem to indicate:

"then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean."

They seem to be implying that the woman is being asked to separate herself from others. That doesn’t sound to me like it has anything to do with health or medical concerns as you are suggesting.

"And she shall then continue in the blood of her purifying three and thirty days; she shall touch no hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying be fulfilled."

Also if this had anything to do with the mother’s health, why double the time for a "maiden" infant and why all these atonement payments to the priests? This guy is milking these poor peasants for turtles and lambs for all intensive purposes so she can adequately “cleanse” herself.

eljay:

no where in scriptures does it premise that God is "all-reasonable".

tribo:

if god is all everything else, perfect in every way - which is stated - then it only follows that he would HAVE TO BE "all reasonable"he can not be all everything else and lack in one or two areas and still be concidered: "perfect" biblically.