Is the Bible sexist ?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by Ted Grant II, Dec 15, 2016.

  1. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    I guess talking in tongues is like "scatting" in jazz.
    This is where the vocalist makes sounds which are not a language.
    Bip bop ziddly do bin mid flibby zoot.
    It makes them feel good and seems clever.
    Interesting.
    Alex
     
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  3. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    I think you have gone overboard with your extension in interpretation if the bible . The basic of the guide on how to live are the 10 Commandments
    " except for the parts that tell you all the people you should rape and kill. " Can you tell me where Jesus said such things . Did not Jesus say " If they hit you in one cheek put the other ? "
     
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  5. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    I assume you have no experience
    Sorry my friend you speak like a blind man trying to understand a tree and how it produces a fruit .
     
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  7. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    I have no personal experience of folk talking in tongues.
    I have improvised on guitar whilst another has scatted.
    I have had a blind mechanic work on my car.
    This chap is unbelievable I haven't seen him for years but if you saw him pulling a motor apart I doubt if you would consider he was limited in any way.
    I was trying to be kind and suppress my negative response and find some sort reasonable explanation of behaviour I think is strange.
    Alex
     
  8. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    In some places, talking in tongues will look like that. It only has be from a spontaneous spirit. Scatting can be unique each time andmay not reach the level of prophesy, like a more traditional song with lyrics. There is one spirit but with many manifestations.
     
  9. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    All these things are beyond me probably because I don't believe in spirits or a soul.
    Alex
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Really? Do you ever do work on weekends? Do you have any statues or figures in your house? (dolls or animal toys for kids, little symbols of fish on a plate, anything like that.)
    I can easily show you where the Bible says such things. Here's a good one from Numbers ,in which the Lord tells Moses to kill everyone in a city, then kill all the male children, and all the women except for the virgins - they were to be left for the officers to rape as a reward.
    ===========================
    And they warred against the Midianites, just as the Lord commanded Moses, and they killed all the males. They killed the kings of Midian with the rest of those who were killed—Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian. Balaam the son of Beor they also killed with the sword.

    . . . Moses was angry with the officers of the army, with the captains over thousands and captains over hundreds, who had come from the battle. And Moses said to them: “Have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.
    ==========================
    Yep. He also said "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household."

    Which one is the "real" Jesus? You can choose either one.
     
    Xelasnave.1947 likes this.
  11. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you for pointing out one of the "fillers" Timojin conveniently ignores for in doing so you expose the nonsence these folk,who hold up the bible as a book to be revered, do indulge without comprehending the sheer stupidity of what they do.

    Yet one can present passage after passage and they simply don't respond. It is like a part of their brain is missing, that part which allows realistic assessment of the most fundamental words.
    What virtue can be picked from the horror story of a God encouraging nay demanding the killing and rape of others.
    Timojin will avoid answering this he will fall back to a blind faith position where reality is discarded and anything that suits is substituted.

    How crippled has such nonsence made human progress.
    How has this bible caused women to be treated as second class, how long did this bible perpetuate the notion of slavery.
    I can just imagine those plantation owners justifying their greed and indulgence in human misery with their wonderful bible endorsing their most evil deeds.
    Tolerating the bible in its present form is evil and very very wrong.
    Alex
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Well, I would point out that PEOPLE treated women as second class; the Bible just provided a handy excuse.

    You can get whatever you want out of the Bible. Want to read it and see all the goodness and generosity that Jesus displayed? You can find that. Want to find a justification for hate, xenophobia and bigotry? It's there too. In that sense it's no more evil (or good) than any other book out there - it's the "true believers" that are responsible for that.
     
  13. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Surely you're not reducing the Bible to the 10 Commandments? That's in the Old Testament isn't it? Jesus is in the New Testament.

    Most of the Commandments are about who to worship and how to do it.
     
  14. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Well I certainly think your proposition is reasonable however I believe that the bible is indeed different to other books.
    I can not think of any other book that is held as the ultimate authority in a similar fashion.
    Of course there are others but of a similar status within their particular religion.
    Pleading a case that one can justify both good and bad actions does not address the problem that there is content that is very wrong by any reasonable standard of decency and to condone those passages can have absolutely no justification.
    There are too many apologies offered and of course I can understand why nothing is done but that is simply wrong.
    Why blame the true believers they should not have material at their finger tips to support the unsupportable so given they believe this bible is the word of God how can they be blamed if they present as thinking slavery is OK or that women are subservient to men.
    I mean if I respect the law of the land I take it in it's entirety and do not select the laws I will follow and reject those that don't suit me.
    I could say well I can drive after I have been drinking so I just won't worry about that one...
    It is not OK to accept these wrongs on the basis of a work of literature for no believer sees the bible as such.
    Just think of this, we edit the bible to say, Jesus said that women are higher in the eyes of God and so no man shall dishonor, disrespect or harm a women and shall place the needs of a women above his own...do you not think that would see a better outcome for women.
    Of course it would because it is in the bible that is the point.

    Alex
     
  15. RuneSpider Registered Senior Member

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    The Bible has some moral teachings. It also has some frankly terrible morality as well.
    Leviticus and Numbers, Deuteronomy, even Genesis isn't great.
    Frankly, the Old Testament God would make a great villain in any story.
    The New Testament is... Better, I guess.
    Though we get hell. The Old Testament guy let you alone after you died.
    New Testament introduces never ending torment.
    Though the good parts are sort of bland, in the sense that by the time the New Testament was compiled, by whoever compiled it, many of the better parts had already been argued about and proposed centuries before hand.
    And philosophical schools in Greece and elsewhere were bringing in women as students and as teachers, an unfortunate often by product of students, when Paul wrote to Timothy forbidding women from doing the same.

    You can take the Bible and boil out the bad stuff until you get something approaching modern sensibilities. And of you ignore most of anything applying to the physical world.
    But that doesn't place it much higher than other holy books.
    And pointing to another and saying "Oh yeah, well theirs is worse!" Won't get you very far.
     
  16. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    5,160
    If the old testament was written thousands of years ago, the audience it was written for lived thousands of years ago. Life was different back then and the advice was written for an audience living at that time. The analogy is you don't teach 4 year olds, the same way you teach adults. They are not ready for that. However, there are some adults who act like they are four years old and may benefit by child psychology. The old testament persists because some people benefit by these older lessons.

    The bible is about the evolution of the modern human psyche. It begins the story with a transition from paradise; natural human instinct. One does no need to choose since instinct helps you and no matter what instinct does it is OK. The transition is connected to the repression of natural instinct via law; eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This leads to repression and compulsions, with the subsequent chapters evolving solutions to the needs of the evolving and changing generations.

    The little child is allowed to be natural free spirit, even in modern times. It is fun to watch. About the time of school, social rules take affect and the natural instinct of the child has to become repressed, at east at school. This can create problems for some children. The early bible describes this change occurring cultural wide, as adults, in the childhood of modern humanity, eats of knowledge of good and evil; law. Picture a 200 pound man with a sword, having a temper tantrum like an angry child. His instincts are repressed and he needs to vent and let off steam. He can do a lot a damage. Rules will need to get stricter, to help him contain his rage, which only serve to increase his repression and violation. Now new lessons appear.

    The wisdom of the bible may not appeal to everyone since some is dated backwards in time and some is dated to the future. You can't easily teach the teenager the wisdom of saving for retirement, since their mind is not there yet. They prefer to wing it and learn the lessons of life. They benefit by teenage wisdom, which is more concerned with being accepted and belonging to a group and then having prestige among their peers. They will not get the lessons of the old man, speaking his mind, until deeper into the future, when it makes more sense.

    The atheists appear to be stuck closer to the early mythology lessons. This makes sense since the modern secular approach is an attempt to return to natural instinct. Or in the case of PC, it is like the teen years all over again. The mythology lessons are closer to the natural instinct transition. The lessons latter in the bible, are in the opposite direction, they are hoping to head.
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    The Koran, the Talmud and the Vedas come to mind. And out in the secular world, we hold documents like the US Constitution (and state constitutions) to an even higher authority. Fortunately, most people who read the Constitution don't heed the requirement that we return escaped slaves to their owners.
    Stephen King has written a lot of books that contain materials that are wrong by any standards of decency (i.e. digging one's child out of a grave to try to reanimate him, murdering vagrants, raping women, going up in a clock tower and massacring dozens of people.) But everyone thinks that's OK because no one takes those books seriously; they are just entertainment. (And if someone did take the story Apt Pupil seriously, everyone would say "well, it's not the story - it's the guy! He's crazy if he thinks that's how you are supposed to live.")
    That I definitely agree with.
    I do. There was a law on the books for years that single women couldn't skydive on Sunday in Florida. I was in Florida quite a bit in those days and jumped with single women on Sunday all the time. I rejected the law because I thought it was absurd.
    Or "well, the speed limit is 40 but 45 isn't so bad."
    Agreed. Just as I disregard laws I don't agree with, I disregard Leviticus.
    Or perhaps just a warning.
    "WARNING - This document was written thousands of years ago by dozens of authors and has been retranslated at least four times from the original. It contains errors, misstatements and archaic, outdated law. Use your judgment before heeding anything contained within."
     
  18. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    It was a trademark still of the 20th century, much less the ancient past.

    But that said, sexism is a recent concept. With developing precusors ideated during the last three centuries or so. If an era lacks certain preconceptions for cognitively discriminating some activities, tendencies, and things in the environment -- and in turn even identifying such with labels and any moral evaluations and baggage which those terms may carry by definition... Then that era is in more of an ideologically naive state than ours. In the context of the Bible's own stories or mythos, it would be sort of akin to Adam & Eve being blamed for lewd exposure in Eden before eating the Forbidden Fruit which gave them knowledge of that.

    Of course women below the noble class experienced a variety of psychologically and physically ill consequences in respect to how they were treated as lower class citizens and domestically dominated due to gender. Perhaps hen-pecked husbands, too. But there were no (or few) solidly formal constructs and their arguments yet invented to intellectually liberate them from the box of cultural norms in those times which went unquestioned. To open their eyes to there being something "wrong" about the standards and impel they had a "right" to challenge them. To be loosened from the "that's just the way it is, learn to bear it" of reigning hierarchical structure.

    Technological progress helped a lot, also. Isaac Asimov once contended that the latter actually had more to with enabling social changes than the progress of arguments, reason, etc in the cultural venue.
     
  19. RuneSpider Registered Senior Member

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    Pretty much, slavery ended more from advancing technology than reasoned arguments. Though it isn't entirely true.
    While history has never been particularly kind to women, there arepoints and times where women received better conditions than what the Bible allows.
     
  20. RuneSpider Registered Senior Member

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    What is the value of say, an old man offering his wife as his sister and selling her off as property.
    Only for the man who bought her, this itself not being immoral according to the book, to be punished by a deity?
    Or the wisdom of putting to death a gay man who enjoys a good crayfish etouffe and wears a sharp set of clothes?
     
  21. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think its OK.
    I do not read fiction I can't see its value.
    I will watch fiction on TV but rather a documentary I don't understand why folk are entertained by the mythical lives and deeds of others.
    I watched Captain and Commander ??? If that was its title, starring Russell Crowe, and enjoyed it because it showed old sailing ships I did not enjoy the battle and representations of people killing and being killed.
    But it was computer generated mostly so nothing was real.
    It would appear the law was wrong in so far as it seems to me that it did not extend rights that should be extended.
    Such a law being wrong should be amended and it is my view that a similar approach is sensible in respect of the bible that where it is wrong it should be amended.
    To correct mistakes or remove offence is the best thing to do and pandering to folk who are happy to indulge wrongs because of what ever reason is simply silly.
    I suggest the attitude that ignoring the law if it does not suit one may be found in the general approach to the bible where folk select what they like and ignore stuff that does not suit them.
    I wonder if we changed this pick it or leave it approach to the bible if that would see a higher respect for laws.
    I think if you grow up being presented with the bible as absolute authority and finally realise folk treat it as fitting their personal convenience then surely it is not unreasonable that such behaviour may establish a more general approach so we can obey only the laws that suit us.
    Certainly what you suggest could be implemented.
    However I think it should be fixed, edited and made relevant to the modern era...but I have already said that.

    And I thank you for your well considered reply the points you make are not lost on me.

    Alex
     
  22. Xelasnave.1947 Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly so why in this modern era should we look to folk who did not have the benefit of an education such as most enjoy today.
    Why present it as in any way relevant to a modern audience.
    I do not see the point.
    If I want to learn about science would I be better served reading the largest papers rather than a book written even two hundred years ago.
    If I have medical issues would I be wise to follow treatments used a hundred years ago.
    You are correct the old testament was written thousands of years ago for an audience back then.
    You get a pass mark for observation.
    And you do not think there is anything in a modern library that may be more suitable?
    The bible persists because it is tied to religion which is devoid of ability to change even when proved incorrect or proved inappropriate...slaves anyone?
    I do not see that at all.
    I really have no idea what point you make.
    I have no idea how the bible addresses what it is you think it addresses.
    I have raised kids.
    So well adjusted they stood out as mature and knowledgeable when still kids.
    I did not talk baby talk and explained how things worked such that they developed minds able to reason.
    I took time with them and did not turn them over to brain washing dished out by some fool seeking wisdom in texts written thousands of years ago.
    Absolutely disagree.
    My Son at 14 started his own hot dog stand and purchased his first real estate before he was 21.
    Can't help but think that because his brain was not preoccupied with the purpose of life or confused by guilt he just got on with living.
    I really do not understand the point.
    To me you seem to be reading between the lines which is dangerous because there is nothing between the lines.
    Thank you for posting.
    Alex
     
  23. MacGyver1968 Fixin' Shit that Ain't Broke Valued Senior Member

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    Ok...so Ted Grant posts a controversial OP then never returns to answers the questions that the members here post to him. Isn't that just spam...worthy of Cess?
     

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