[Shyone]

Phanta, on 07 December 2009 - 11:01 AM, said:

May they remain on this side of sanity.

Phanta

Religion and insanity are not mutually exclusive. I suppose an insane person without religious convictions can do horrible things, but the particular types of strange behaviors that religion promotes would not occur to the purely secular loon.

Insanity is where the beliefs become translated into reality. Concepts like human sacrifice and Hell are religious and dangerous.

[Neon Genesis]

Phanta, on 07 December 2009 - 11:01 AM, said:

Once I challenged a Christian on this somewhat less directly, and he manipulated it in his brain to avoid cognitive dissonance, declaring it a one-time special event to prepare for the coming of Jesus, never to be asked of any Christian or non-Christian again. Because his God is largely a figment of his imagination, I am comforted that he will likely never be "asked by God" to do this thing.

This was the way I had interpeted it when I was a Christian. God gave Abraham this commandment as a test of his loyalty and because he passed the test, God was going to bless him with a great nation and this was the beginning of the bloodline that would lead to Jesus or something like that. But hadn't God already promised Abraham several times before this story that he would bless him with a nation of his own? He did it about three or four times but I wonder if that's because of that whole theory about the OT being a bunch of stories from different traditions being spliced together in one narrative and could it be possible that the different times God promises Abraham are from the different traditions?

[NonXNonExX]

This story sucks morally for so many different reasons you can easily miss how illogical it is. Didn't they have story editors back then?

If the crowd was so hungry for fresh man flesh, why would they even want his "virgin" daughters? If Lot wanted to protect the angels (who really shouldn't have needed protection anyway) and spare his daughters, why didn't he hand over his sons-in-law? That way he could protect his guests AND his daughters and better satisfy the crowd as well. Or maybe the sons-in-law were already too well known "carnally" by the other men of the town? Why didn't the husbands flee with their wives, thus making the incest unnecessary? I think i could have improved the story considerably by just changing and adding a few details.

[belladonna]

NonXNonExX, on 10 December 2009 - 10:24 AM, said:

This story sucks morally for so many different reasons you can easily miss how illogical it is. Didn't they have story editors back then?

If the crowd was so hungry for fresh man flesh, why would they even want his "virgin" daughters? If Lot wanted to protect the angels (who really shouldn't have needed protection anyway) and spare his daughters, why didn't he hand over his sons-in-law? That way he could protect his guests AND his daughters and better satisfy the crowd as well. Or maybe the sons-in-law were already too well known "carnally" by the other men of the town? Why didn't the husbands flee with their wives, thus making the incest unnecessary? I think i could have improved the story considerably by just changing and adding a few details.

If he was truly concerned, why didn't he just offer himself?

[Japedo]

belladonna, on 10 December 2009 - 10:32 AM, said:

If he was truly concerned, why didn't he just offer himself?

That would have subjected himself to 'sin' the Xtians will say. I think he should be held accountable for the rape and attempted rape of his two daughters in the very least.

Anyone with critical thinking skills can see the horrific lopsided justice of this story. A honestly 'just' god can not be unjust, no matter how much the apologist wish to make it so. It's fun to watch pretzel logic in any case. I see the defenders have stopped responding to the ugly and impossible questions, It's a pity, really. Where's all the new Christians who've signed up here at ex-c? Don't any of them have answers?

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

Phanta, on 07 December 2009 - 11:01 AM, said:

Once I challenged a Christian on this somewhat less directly, and he manipulated it in his brain to avoid cognitive dissonance, declaring it a one-time special event to prepare for the coming of Jesus, never to be asked of any Christian or non-Christian again. Because his God is largely a figment of his imagination, I am comforted that he will likely never be "asked by God" to do this thing. But other Christians are prepared to bare and slash their child's veins if so asked. May they remain on this side of sanity.

Phanta

This has become more frighteningly apparent the past day or so

[Skepticaldude541]

NonXNonExX, on 10 December 2009 - 10:24 AM, said:

This story sucks morally for so many different reasons you can easily miss how illogical it is. Didn't they have story editors back then?

If the crowd was so hungry for fresh man flesh, why would they even want his "virgin" daughters? If Lot wanted to protect the angels (who really shouldn't have needed protection anyway) and spare his daughters, why didn't he hand over his sons-in-law? That way he could protect his guests AND his daughters and better satisfy the crowd as well. Or maybe the sons-in-law were already too well known "carnally" by the other men of the town? Why didn't the husbands flee with their wives, thus making the incest unnecessary? I think i could have improved the story considerably by just changing and adding a few details.

I'm willing to bet the reason it is written this way is because the ancient Hebrew's viewed women as worth FAR less than a man. Giving up your son-in-laws would be a disgusting travesty when you can offer two worthless daughters!

Edit: Forgot, he doesn't have sons-in-law, so instead he should have offered up himself. I would consider him heroic for that.

This post has been edited by Skepticaldude541: 10 December 2009 - 12:56 PM

[Japedo]

Skepticaldude541, on 10 December 2009 - 12:35 PM, said:

NonXNonExX, on 10 December 2009 - 10:24 AM, said:

This story sucks morally for so many different reasons you can easily miss how illogical it is. Didn't they have story editors back then?

If the crowd was so hungry for fresh man flesh, why would they even want his "virgin" daughters? If Lot wanted to protect the angels (who really shouldn't have needed protection anyway) and spare his daughters, why didn't he hand over his sons-in-law? That way he could protect his guests AND his daughters and better satisfy the crowd as well. Or maybe the sons-in-law were already too well known "carnally" by the other men of the town? Why didn't the husbands flee with their wives, thus making the incest unnecessary? I think i could have improved the story considerably by just changing and adding a few details.

I'm willing to bet the reason it is written this way is because the ancient Hebrew's viewed women as worth FAR less than a man. Giving up your son-in-laws would be a disgusting travesty when you can offer two worthless daughters!

Edit: Forgot, he doesn't have sons-in-law, so instead he should have offered up himself. I would consider him heroic for that.

Well it does say he has Sons-in-law in Gen

Quote

Genesis 19: 14 And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law.

So the women didn't know "men" but were also married. Yet another hole in the story,unless he had more then the two daughters. In any case it's about a clear as muddy water.

[belladonna]

Phanta, I've found the same thing among many traditional Jewish scholars, and some consider the fact that his daughters were able to "rape" him as his punishment from God for offering them to the crowds. However, this again is contradicted by other stories in the Bible, so that argument doesn't make sense, either.

What I always wondered is if Lot was really so drunk that he did not know he was having sex with his daughters, would his penis actually still have functioned? Would he still have been able to get it up? I know that's pretty gross, but, honestly, how could he not have known?

[Japedo]

belladonna, on 10 December 2009 - 02:54 PM, said:

What I always wondered is if Lot was really so drunk that he did not know he was having sex with his daughters, would his penis actually still have functioned? Would he still have been able to get it up? I know that's pretty gross, but, honestly, how could he not have known?

Exactly! Would this defense hold up in a fallible human courts? How many people would find Lot innocent of raping his children due to being under the influence alcohol defense? Lets not even talk about courts, how many 'godly' women would tolerate this defense from their husbands having sex with their daughters?

The entire story is so repugnant and vile that I really have no stomach to even think about it being 'real' never mind stretching the story to hold it up as some beacon of Justice and Integrity.

[belladonna]

There are so many contradicting verses and stories in the Bible...Some between the OT and the NT, some in the OT...When you start reading the Bible, and really start studying it, you become almost overwhelmed at the amount of bullshit in it. The one thing that seems to stay true throughout is the misogyny, though; women were never very highly thought of.

[belladonna]

Sorry, Phanta, just reread your post and got what you meant.

The Biblical story of Lot is often paralleled with the Biblical story of Abraham (who prostituted his wife to Pharaoh, by the way, but was still considered a great man), and how he was willing to sacrifice his son in the name of God, but was stopped because God saw how righteous Abraham (who was married to his half sister, by the way)was. Lot was considered a great man who was willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect the angels, but God stepped in, and the angels struck the masses blind. However, when it came to sacrificing a child or cowardly men appeasing unruly crowds, the stories in Judges show that those offered weren't always saved.

Read Judges 11: 30-40, and Judges 19:22-29.

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

belladonna, on 10 December 2009 - 06:32 PM, said:

Sorry, Phanta, just reread your post and got what you meant.

The Biblical story of Lot is often paralleled with the Biblical story of Abraham (who prostituted his wife to Pharaoh, by the way, but was still considered a great man), and how he was willing to sacrifice his son in the name of God, but was stopped because God saw how righteous Abraham (who was married to his half sister, by the way)was. Lot was considered a great man who was willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect the angels, but God stepped in, and the angels struck the masses blind. However, when it came to sacrificing a child or cowardly men appeasing unruly crowds, the stories in Judges show that those offered weren't always saved.

Read Judges 11: 30-40, and Judges 19:22-29.

That story depressed me so greatly as a child.
Interestingly enough this event directly lead to a battle with the Tribe of Benjamin where their women were all killed. The other tribes already swore they would never let their daughters marry a Benjamite so their only solution to save the tribe of Benjamin was to have them destroy a town and take its virgins and then steal the rest from Shiloh while the girls danced for the feast of the Lord. The point of all of this then was to show how messed up Isreal was and why they needed a King. Which also didn't turn out so well after a few generations.

[belladonna]

Isn't it funny how so many of the stories of the Bible don't turn out well? And we're suppose to look to it for guidance?

[godlessgrrl]

Isn't it also funny how biblical morality is all over the map, yet xians often claim that its pages describe a black-and-white, absolute, unchanging morality?

I don't get anymore how anybody who's actually read it can fail to see that it's a very relativistic book. Characters in the bible run the gamut from utterly loathsome to morally ambiguous to rather decent to a mix of all of the above. That includes god.

Seems so very human to me.