"You're going against God."

[white_wolf]

My friend just moved out on his own and his girlfriend moved in with him, because she and her step-mom can't get along at all. Anyway when my friend told his mom about it she got mad and told him he was sinning and going against God. When I heard this I almost laughed at the absurdity of it all, because I find it ludicrous that an ancient Semitic desert deity would give a damn about what two people in the U.S. are doing in the year 2011.

Am I the only one who is amazed that people are caring about what the god of a bunch of desert dwelling nomads would think? I find it very strange this God our culture has adopted. Yahweh is not even an ancestral god of the West, but a god of an ancient middle-eastern nomads. He never gave his commandments to the Italians or Portuguese, the two cultures my friend's family is from,but to the Jews. If he does exist, which I'm 99% sure he doesn't, I highly doubt he cares about what two people in the U.S. are doing right now. I just find it ludicrous that we have people alive today who are living by the commandments of a God of desert nomads, a god whose cruelty and violence would make Thor and Odin blush.

I just don't understand why people are praying to and living in fear of a God who likely does not even exist and even if he does exist his commandments are no more binding on the majority of his worshipers than the commandments of Baal.

My biggest question about all of this is why Yaweh? He never spoke to ancient Europeans and gave them commandments. He spoke to the Jews and gave them commandments. Let's look at the opening of the Ten Commandments: "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me, and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments."

It says "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage." Yahweh never brought my ancestors out of Egypt or out of bondage. He never made a covenant with my ancestors so or most of his current worshipers ancestors so why are we following him? Oh and the whole punish to the third and fourth generation thing is total bullshit. Guilt by association is a classic logical fallacy, but I guess Yahweh isn't logical.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Just sets my teeth on edge

If people are still ready to fall for this shit it goes a long way toward explaining why we can't fix our country.

[polichick]

2. You said it - FEAR, lest they should be smote or smited or whatever.

[Iggo]

9. Smitten?

Nah, that can't be it.

[polichick]

13. He smiteth them and they were smitten!

[closeupready]

3. Or a god whose injunctions are absolute, violations of which send you straight to hell.

Thus, why worship such a cruel being????? If he's all-powerful and unforgiving, then he could just strike us down at any moment. And even if he doesn't, we are led to believe he will send us to hell when we die. So what's the upside here...?

[ejpoeta]

4. whether god exists or not, marriage is completely man made and has nothing to do with god.

it is a contract between two people and the state. and as you see in the example from the mother, religion is a means of controlling people to conform to desired behaviors. since she would rather her son be married before he live with someone, she is going to play the it's a sin card to try to guilt him. all she is going to do, probably, is make him roll his eyes at her and avoid certain topics with her.

[HockeyMom]

5. Daughter's mother-in-law is like that

ALL the pitfalls in their lives can be blamed on their godlessness, and the fact that they are using birth control and not letting god decide when they have children. You have no job and you are going to have CHILDREN at that time because some god wants you to?

[monmouth]

6. It's all about control..n/t

[KansDem]

7. Myth and superstition have no place in an enlightened society...

For example, as far as the Ten Commandments go:

Three (#6, 8, & 9)--no killing, lying, stealing have been the basis of society long before Christians arrived. I read H.W.F. Saggs Civilization Before Greece and Rome and learned that prohibitions against these three can be found in ancient civilizations.

Three (#5, 7, & 10)--no planking other women not your wife; kids need to respect their parents; not wanting stuff you neighbor has, including his wife) are really a "wish list." If "respecting your parents" was truly a law, 90% of teens would be in jail! And the "not wanting stuff you neighbor has" law would decimate Madison Avenue. Of course, a law about not planking anyone but your wife would land many Republicans in jail!

The final four (#1-4)--keeping Sunday holy, not saying "goddamn," having no other gods except the one god, and no more idols, are just ways to worship some other guy's god. But just imagine what laws forbidding "no other gods" or "no more idols" would have on the Entertainment Industry!

Embrace the Enlightenment--it's so much easier!

[DCKit]

8. OH, you are sooooo going to hell for that. nt

[saras]

10. So get out of my way and let me go against God. And be sure to acknowledge when I win.

[mwb970]

11. Well, to be fair,

if God is beyond time and eternal as described, then he/she/it is not really "the god of a bunch of desert dwelling nomads". In fact, this dismissive characterization makes me wonder whether you are thinking deeply about what you are saying or just casting scorn.

By the way, I'm not at all religious myself, I'm just sayin'.

[white_wolf]

14. He is the god of a group of desert nomads.

That is how he is described in the oldest biblical texts, as the God of the Hebrews. You can even see it in the Ten Commandments when he says "have no gods before me." He wasn't saying there were no other Gods, he was saying that the Jews were to worship no gods before him. The early Jews were polytheists in their beliefs. Exodus says Yawheh passed judgment of the gods of Egypt. You can't pass judgement on something that doesn't exist. It wasn't until the time of the Babylonian Captivity that the Jews began to conceive of him as the only God in existence.

[mwb970]

18. It is possible to have a conception of "God" that does not involve the Bible.

You quote Scripture like a religious advocate, but in this case to DISPROVE a point!

Pretend there is no Bible. Without quoting Scripture, do you believe that there is any transcendent reality beyond what we perceive in our daily lives, or do you feel that our five senses reveal the full reality of the Universe to us exactly as it is?

This is the question, not what "a group of desert nomads" did or did not believe.

[white_wolf]

20. This thread is specifically about the Judeo-Christian God.

I specified that in the OP. This thread is addressing Christians. If you hold a view of a God different than the Judeo-Christian one, that is fine. This thread is not about your view of God, this is specifically about Yahweh and the strangeness of a modern society following a God whose origins are really not all that different than Baal.

To answer your questions about my own beliefs. I'm not religious, but I am strongly influenced by Buddhism, though I'm not you could call me a Buddhist.

[mwb970]

22. I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to explore religious belief.

Now I understand. You just wanted to mock the views of people you don't like and make them sound stupid. My mistake. Carry on!

[white_wolf]

23. No we are discussing a specific religion with a specific set of beliefs and history.

I'm sorry if you can't grasp the fact that this is specifically discussion of the Judeo-Christan god, a god that can't be separated from the Bible as it claims to be his revelations. The Bible is where we get our information on Yahweh, this thread is discussing him. We are not talking about a generic God, but a very specific God with his own history and mythology. Again, I'm sorry if you can't grasp that concept or can and would rather troll. Oh, and I don't have to make evangelical Christians sound stupid. They do that on their own just fine.

[okasha]

19. No.

That came earlier, with the Josiahan reforms.

[white_wolf]

21. Do you have a link for that?

Every thing I've read in including my western Civ book claims that the Jews began to develop their monotheist belief system around the time of the Babylonian Captivity. Before then they only worshiped Yahweh, but they believed that other gods existed. The early Jews were polytheists in belief,but monotheists in practice. The actual term is Henotheism. According to the Wikipedia article on the topic, states that by the end of the Babylonian Captivity the Tanakh was strictly Monotheist. However, even it points out that Daniel calls Yahweh "God of gods" and the book of Psalms has very strong Henotheist undertones. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism#Judaism)

[AlecBGreen]

12. thats a tough situation

"sinning and going against God."

I would say "How? Show me the chapter and verse." Biblical marriage is a train wreck horror show compared to today's monogamous, partner-for-life marriages. If they are a Christian, I would tell them Im pretty sure Christ was mum on the issue. He had some strong things to say about adultery and divorce, but AFAIK, didnt say a peep about cohabitation.

[Odin2005]

15. There are still idiots that think cohabitation is evil? WTF?

[xfundy]

16. It's worse than that. There are still idiots who think Republicans care about the USA.

Hard to believe, I know.

[white_wolf]

17. I'm assuming from your username you used to be a fundamentalist?

Maybe you could explain this mindset to me, what is so bad about living together before you get married? I know the Bible says sex outside of marriage is a sin, but hell they were doing that anyway and I really don't know where they are getting that living together before marriage is a sin.

[proudlib8134]

24. i agree. just ridiculous

[Tyrs WolfDaemon]

25. When asked about Yahweh, Odin replied...

I remember that guy. He flunked out of God school. Every time we were given a world he would go and kill everyone in it.
He liked to keep one or two people around in those Homework assignments, but then he would also give the survivors all sorts of weird
rules to abide by like 'don't eat that perfectly good fruit'.

Jupiter laughed as he recalled a time in global biology class:
That Yahweh kid decided that he could make one of his science fair project mortals gather
one male and one female of every animal in his project's world and shoving them into a homemade boat
(he also got a D in shop class)
while he went on one of his world killing sprees. He purposely flooded that world to kill off all the animals. The idiot was trying to prove that he could recreate all the diversity using just those animal pairs in the boat, but that is what you get when you fail mortal biology.

Aphrodite just shook her head as she recalled the school delinquent:
Mortals all have to have sex. It is something wonderful, a great ritual that I have always promoted in my projects.
Yahweh was all weirded out by sex though. He keep making rules for his mortals to follow and then he would change the rules depending on which
group he was screwing with at the time. I mean, he tells one group that they can't use birth control while giving another group the ok to wrap their little rascal. We all enjoyed going into our project worlds and having relations with the mortals, but not him. He goes into this one project I recall and knocks up this poor girl before she is to get married without actually having sex with her...I mean, what the hell kind of sex
is that? I'd hate to be his wife.

[LuvNewcastle]

26. When people who are romantically involved

live together, fornication is almost inevitable. Couples having sex without marriage is considered no big deal these days, but until recent times it was frowned upon. More traditional people here in the South don't like it, not just because they consider fornication to be a sin, but because they don't like the idea of people receiving the benefits of marriage without making the commitment. Also, they think that men who don't marry a woman he's having sex with (getting the milk without buying the cow) is more apt to leave when something 'better' comes along. These rules against cohabitation have more to do with traditional ideas about the roles and desires of men and women than with any proscriptions from the Bible.

[darkstar3]

27. traditional ideas about gender roles that have been perpetuated by bible thumpers.

[LuvNewcastle]

28. That about sums it up.

Fundy Christian religions grew out of Protestant sects that arose in the British Isles. Many things including the organization of their churches and the songs they sing and their views on morality are a mix of clan traditions and Biblical rules. It's often difficult to distinguish between the two.

[darkstar3]

29. You mistake my meaning.

The "proscriptions" you speak of are definitely in the bible, and it is the fault of the bible thumpers and those who make excuses for them that such proscriptions perpetuate into modern society. Without a religious framework to support such drivel, it would have gone the way of the dodo long ago.

[LuvNewcastle]

30. Of course they're in the Bible, but a lot of those

rules were already part of, as an example, Scottish culture before the Scots were Christianized. The ancient Jews didn't assign gender roles or morality for all Western societies. When a new religion enters a culture, it doesn't sweep away all the old beliefs. The old and the new are blended together and what does not get homogenized generally gets expelled. All of the people who carry on 'Biblical' morality are not religious. In some parts of the U.S., these 'Biblical' rules are just part of the culture; it's the way things are done. You're right that Bible-thumpers perpetuate these ideas, but they wouldn't be able to keep it up all on their own. A lot of people don't believe things have to be that way, but they LIKE it that way. It is a part of who they are as a people.