A father a son, devout Christians imprisoned their stepsister in a basement and raped her repeatedly. They believe their actions are entirely in line with the Bible, a book that encourages its followers to treat women as property.
I know you will say these are "bad apples." However, Christians claim that the Bible and Christianity foster moral behavior, and yet we have a many examples like this one where the Bible is used to justify clearly immoral behavior. And, people like these two would argue that Christians who condemn them are the ones who do not understand God's will.
2017-01-23T17:10:55Z
@dewcoons - Your argument about the Constitution is a good one. HOWEVER, you missed an important point. The Constitution was meant to be changed over time. Indeed, the very first thing the framers did was add the first 10 Amendments that form much of the backbone of the American government.
2017-01-23T17:11:14Z
The Bible makes no such allowances for institutional change. Individuals change it to suit their needs, but a sizeable percentage of the Christian population still believes in a literal and hard line interpretation. And, while you and many others dismiss these two men as bad apples, you fail to see that the Bible is used regularly to justify racism, sexism, violence, materialism, and other unsavory acts.
2017-01-23T17:12:02Z
The Bible makes no such allowances for institutional change. Individuals change it to suit their needs, but a sizeable percentage of the Christian population still believes in a literal and hard line interpretation. And, while you and many others dismiss these two men as bad apples, you fail to see that the Bible is used regularly to justify racism, sexism, violence, materialism, and other unsavory acts.
dewcoons2017-01-23T14:50:07Z
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Most of us would agree that the US Constitution is a good source for defining how government should work and what rights people should have, It protects many basic humans rights and defines a form of government that should be response to the needs and will of the people.
But it has not always been properly carried out. There are the extreme gun nuts who want to take the Second Amendment to mean that they should be able to own rocket launchers and automatic weapons and sell guns to people who are mental ill. There was a time when the US Courts interpreted it to allow slave ownership, support segregation, or to prohibit interracial marriages.
Those things are NOT the fault of the Constitution, but of the way that people tried to interpret it. Most of those injustices have seen been corrected.
If you were to poll the people who believe in the Bible on whether or not it has rules that allow a father and son to imprison and rape a daughter/sister, you would find that 99.9% of Christians would NOT believe that is supported by the Bible. Those two are simple nuts trying to twist the text to justifiy their actions. If you were being intellectually honest, you would know that.
What next? We reject all laws become some sleazy lawyer somewhere tries to twist one to allow his client to "legally" commit a crime? Or we reject all science because some nut somewhere does comes up with an off the wall theory that it points to a science concept to try to support it? Of course not. We are smarter then that. (Or at least such be....)
The same with this case. You should be smart enough to know that 99.9% of the Bible who actually read the Bible know that it does not support raping daughter or sisters.
When I read God’s revelation of Himself in the Bible, I realize you and most atheists commit the straw-man logical fallacy. You has misrepresented God—suggesting God is like man in that His moral standards are merely personal, subjective preferences—and then are trying to refute that false idea of God.
From its first verse, the Bible asserts, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Because God created us and made us in His image, we belong to Him and are obligated to live according to His standard or face His judgment.
If a fellow human were to arbitrarily decide what morality involves and impose his standard on us, we could say his morality is subjective, according to his personal preferences and beliefs. But because God created us, He has authority over us and has the right to hold us to His standard. We inherently know this ultimate standard of right and wrong because God has written His law on our hearts (Romans 2:15).
God’s character and moral standards do not change. The atheist confuses God’s rules to man at various stages of the past to His moral character. This is apples to oranges.
God has always perfectly balanced His justice and mercy—reserving His wrath for unrepentant, unbelieving sinners, and showing mercy to sinners who turn to Him in faith (Romans 4).
God Himself testified, “For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6). He didn’t ever think up a moral standard to decide right from wrong. Rather, His moral standard flows from His perfectly pure and holy nature. Since His nature is unchanging, His standard is absolute.
You will find silly people claiming to be Christian but never read God's Word and rarely are they seen in church and have little idea who God is or what he desires, and certainly has no intention of following God's commands when he doesn't even know what they are. And you want to judge ALL Christians by this person? You're delusional.
Here is just one moral absolute: God’s moral standard prohibits lying, a standard flowing from His nature that cannot lie (Hebrews 6:18). Yet atheists claim there are no absolutes w/ no evidence or fact of their own whatsoever; in denial of truth and delusional.
Have you fallen short of God’s absolute, objective moral standard? You can deny it, but you cannot avoid absolutes of truth and morality in science, law, philosophy or reality.
You could learn nothing true or of value w/o absolute truth. Ignorant atheists show us this every day here with their unfounded, unsupported, illogical, irrational fabricated OPINION.
If people are silly enough to deny verifiable evidence, they are silly enough to do just about anything and justify it any way they can.
This is a denial of responsibility issue, not a Bible issue.
These two SICK individuals will find NO support from the Bible for what they have done...
In fact, the Bible strongly condemns these offenses with the death penalty. Consider:
Leviticus 18:6, 17 ays "No man among you should approach any of his close relatives to have sexual relations...You must not have sexual relations with a woman and her daughter. You must not take the daughter of her son and the daughter of her daughter in order to have relations. They are her close relatives; it is an obscene act."
Deuteronomy 22;25, 26 "If, however, the man happened to meet the engaged girl in the field and the man overpowered her and lay down with her, the man who lay down with her is to die by himself, 26 and you must do nothing to the girl. The girl has not committed a sin deserving of death. This case is the same as when a man attacks his fellow man and murders him."
Exodus 21:16 "If anyone kidnaps a man [[woman or child] and sells him or is caught holding him, he must be put to death."
Deuteronomy 24:7 "If someone is found to have kidnapped one of his Israelite brothers and he has mistreated him and sold him, the kidnapper must die. You should remove what is bad from your midst."