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anarchir

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #135 on: January 12, 2010, 03:57:55 AM »

The lesson is that god will kill large groups of children for petty things.
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Sam Gunn (since nobody got Admiral Naismith)

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #136 on: January 12, 2010, 04:20:18 AM »

The lesson is that god will kill large groups of children for petty things.
I really don't think that's the lesson.
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anarchir

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #137 on: January 12, 2010, 04:32:17 AM »

The lesson is that god will kill large groups of children for petty things.
I really don't think that's the lesson.

I think youre reading too deep into the bible.
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Rillion

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #138 on: January 12, 2010, 09:19:30 AM »

If the lesson was not to taunt your elders, why couldn't the story be about kids who....don't taunt their elders?  Or God showing up and saying "Hey kids, knock that off.  That's not nice!"

Having them killed by bears is a sociopath's morality tale. 
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Sam Gunn (since nobody got Admiral Naismith)

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #139 on: January 12, 2010, 10:11:28 AM »

If the lesson was not to taunt your elders, why couldn't the story be about kids who....don't taunt their elders?  Or God showing up and saying "Hey kids, knock that off.  That's not nice!"

Having them killed by bears is a sociopath's morality tale. 
Because it's a story.  Perhaps an R rated story.

Or maybe it's because Jews like eating children who talk back to their elders!
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"Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today." —Herman Wouk 

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cavalier973

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #140 on: January 12, 2010, 11:41:26 AM »

It wasn't little children, it was a group of youths (really, you must start reading other translations than the King James),
NIV
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20kings%202:23-24&version=NIV
NAS
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20kings%202:23-24&version=NASB
Amplified Bible
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20kings%202:23-24&version=AMP

The point being that the "little children" were most likely teenage boys, which means they were considered full adults in Jewish culture.  Plus, it is implied that they were accusing Elisha of murdering his master Elijah and faking his mourning (bald head).
http://www.tektonics.org/af/callahanproph.html#2kin223
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Ecolitan

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #141 on: January 12, 2010, 11:52:05 AM »

Well, that IS interesting.  So, if the KJV is so horrible which I've always suspected, when you go looking for different bibles do you choose one that includes or excludes books differently than the KJV or is the assumption that the choosing of the books to include was divinely inspired and just the translation that got all cocked up?
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davann

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #142 on: January 12, 2010, 11:53:11 AM »

The Brothers Grim had some really horrific fables also. But they did not have Yogi and Booboo.
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Diogenes The Cynic

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #143 on: January 12, 2010, 12:13:24 PM »

I wasn't aware of the bear thing till this thread.

Read about it in Me'am Lo'ez, and he says thus:

Elisha is  walking along and sees "katanim naarim" which is a phrase that would seem to be repetitive. What it means is that the boys themselves were not good, and he saw through prophecy that they would grow up to be terrible people. G-d did fulfill Elishas decree but punished Elisha for it, by making him sick later on in life.
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BobRobertson

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #144 on: January 12, 2010, 12:53:00 PM »

The Brothers Grim had some really horrific fables also. But they did not have Yogi and Booboo.

I don't recall anyone asserting that the Bros. Grim were writing some god's words, or were inspired by the gods, or are "The Truth", etc.

On a homeschooling mailing list for a xian based curriculum recently, I read someone asserting that the U.S. Constitution was "divinely inspired", and that's why the American "Way of Life" was OK to impose on everyone else by war.

No one contradicted her. After all, to contradict her "faith" in one old piece of paper being written by the gods would endanger the rest of their "faiths" in another old piece of paper.

Oh, great joke that was circulating by email some 15 years ago, "Orientation Day in Hell" or some title close to that. The opening line by the sorting demon was,

"Christians, line 2 please. Sorry, Jews were right."

Google search didn't help, I guess the joke has gone down the memory hole.
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Rillion

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #145 on: January 12, 2010, 12:53:20 PM »

The point being that the "little children" were most likely teenage boys, which means they were considered full adults in Jewish culture.  Plus, it is implied that they were accusing Elisha of murdering his master Elijah and faking his mourning (bald head).
http://www.tektonics.org/af/callahanproph.html#2kin223

Oh, that makes it perfectly all right to send bears to maul them to death!  Issue resolved.

 :roll:
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Diogenes The Cynic

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #146 on: January 12, 2010, 12:57:59 PM »

The point being that the "little children" were most likely teenage boys, which means they were considered full adults in Jewish culture.  Plus, it is implied that they were accusing Elisha of murdering his master Elijah and faking his mourning (bald head).
http://www.tektonics.org/af/callahanproph.html#2kin223

Oh, that makes it perfectly all right to send bears to maul them to death!  Issue resolved.

 :roll:

Problem being its factually incorrect. True a 13 year old becomes a man in the legal sense but he wouldn't be an adult in Jewish culture for years.
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cavalier973

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #147 on: January 12, 2010, 12:59:12 PM »

The point being that the "little children" were most likely teenage boys, which means they were considered full adults in Jewish culture.  Plus, it is implied that they were accusing Elisha of murdering his master Elijah and faking his mourning (bald head).
http://www.tektonics.org/af/callahanproph.html#2kin223

Oh, that makes it perfectly all right to send bears to maul them to death!  Issue resolved.

 :roll:

God, as man's creator, is also the owner of man.  If He chooses to kill some individual or group of individuals, of whatever age, it is no more an evil act than a farmer destroying some of his diseased livestock.
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BobRobertson

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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #148 on: January 12, 2010, 01:00:29 PM »

Going back to the opening question of this thread, "Do ethics matter?"

After all this discussion, I must admit to being highly sceptical of religious ethics. It seems that religions define their ethics arbitrarily and with a major focus to pragmatic issues of the moment.

This is not what I would call "ethics".

The Non Aggression Principle is at least consistant, and although it could be used to rationalize shooting IRS agents that still first requires the existence of IRS agents.
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"I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it."
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Re: A Question to the Athiests
« Reply #149 on: January 12, 2010, 01:25:57 PM »

The Non Aggression Principle is at least consistant, and although it could be used to rationalize shooting IRS agents that still first requires the existence of IRS agents.

Even that can be resolved with a minimal/proportional response restriction... but does not address Diogenes's root question (as I perceive it) of why one would choose to adopt any particular system of ethics.
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