I am poking huge holes in the bible and undermining parts of it.
I am not attempting to convert, but to attempt to get you to examine the bible with an unjaundiced eye.
@Agnostotheist Having blind faith I can respect, but you take it further and make up weird stories and nonsense in an attempt to justify the bible.
Entirely at odds means not agreeing with each other at all. Like the deity depicted by the bible and the alternate deity described by you.
Actually despite decades of searching no archaeological evidence can be found in that region that the Hebrews were ever present in Egypt in any significant numbers, basically it exposes the book of Exodus as a myth.
This does not support your claim that those murdered by, and the behest of the old testament deity ended up in heaven. It also doesn’t address the contradiction between such a barbaric, sadistic and cruel deity as is depicted in the old testament, and the one with limitless mercy and love some christians believe in.
You think my accusation of inherent bias misses the point that you intended to be biased? Hmmm…
That irony aside, why would you think biased beliefs are real? if you recognise the bias, then this should call into question your conclusions.
Have I misunderstood the meaning of the word courtesy, or bias?
You’re making me blush now, I am a struggling and uneducated rube.
Are you sure abolitionist and suffragette we’re not Christian? That reads like an unfound claim (-:
My unsubstantiated claim is modern society has a significant different value set than socialites at/prior to 13 century bc.
The basis for human ethics is very interesting and perplexing. Do ethics need to be based on constant truths? Or is relative truth okay?
Does humanity generally need to agree that human persons have an intrinsic dignity/value to know that murder is wrong or is it that we don’t want someone to take away our loved ones? If it is the former then abortion/euthanasia is immortal (if a fetus is a person). If it is the latter, then killing of the genetically impaired or assisted suicide of the chronical depressed might be considered ethical.
You make a good point with regard to semantics. Intending to be biased is not the same as not trying to be unbiased.
I miss represented myself. I am not trying to be unbiased, when it comes to responding to the questions about my above stated beliefs.
Careful now, @Sheldon. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, as I’m pretty sure you are well aware of. Current archaeological evidence (or lack thereof) does not show the presence of Jews in Egypt in the numbers described in Exodus, nor of an Exodusian exodus. Thus, Exodus does not have archaeological support on that point. To show that the Exodus exodus is a myth not based on any true events is much harder, and will require direct evidence. I’m not sure as to the nature such evidence would have to have, but I suspect it will be very hard to prove (in a judicial meaning of the word, not mathematical-logical). However, given that there is so little (if any) evidence of the central story of Exodus, it should be treated as myth anyway, until any unequivocal archaeological and/or historical evidence directly supporting it should surface.
What’s a constant truth? Come to that what is a relative truth?
Those are not mutually exclusive criteria.
An insentient blastocyst is demonstrably not human in the same sense the woman whose body it is developing in is a human. prohibiting the murder of a sentient human being that can suffer emotional and physical pain, doesn’t enslave anyone, telling a woman what she may do with her own body does.
That strikes me as facile nonsense, who is advocating that anyway?
I think it is, but that was not my point. My point is that beliefs based on obvious bias are likely to be unsound, for pretty obvious reasons.
I know this, this is precisely my point.
My apologies if I worded that a little too stridently.
I agree of course.
Why do you believe in Christianity though?
There’s no evidence that’s been presented. So why just go off of the words of followers and believe in it without physical evidence?
Hypothetically speaking. If you were born and lived in the Middle East, You’d be a Muslim because your family and culture forced it on you, and if you took up another religion there, they’d kill you. If you were born in Japan and lived there your whole life, you’d be Shinto. Point is, there’s tons of religions out there.
How do you know you have the right deity?
You don’t even need to ask that, if there is no objective evidence, and you admit your belief is based on bias, then that’s a very dubious standard for belief. Bias is quite obviously something we should try to avoid in pursuit of the truth. True and false are often not binary states, rather we gather evidence and assess how likely something is to be true. Bias quite obviously makes our reasoning less likely to understand what is true.
You’re correct. There isn’t any objective evidence currently. Just curious and wanting to know why he’s a Theist.
Lol…depends, eh??? The Christians of the south and other countries (that propagated it and benefited) were Christian and supported via scripture.
I would argue that the abolitionist and suffragette has less of a scriptural footing than the Christians that held firm to God’s word for their moral standing (both regarding economics and family unit).
However - interestingly enough…just like today, the various interpretations and cherry-picking of scriptures allow for all forms of “Christianity” to exist and be practiced.
Why would an all-powerful and all-knowing god that knows everything about the past, present and future dread anything? Or be surprised? It just doesn’t make sense given this trio of fantastical attributes. So the only logical conclusion must be that these three attributes coupled with suprise and regret are incompatible.
And then we have the often cited attribute of all-merciful (or infinitely good, or the goodest of the goodest, or whatever you want to call it). Others have already cited genocide, infanticide, obsession with revenge, warmongering, and total disrespect for the value of each human by accepting and encouraging slavery, treating rape as a crime not against the victim (the woman), but against the father who now has damaged property, among other things. Even though the Old Testament depicts a bronze age culture, what would have stopped an all-powerful and all-knowing god from giving these people laws and rules that explicitly outlawed such practices? And wouldn’t this god be able to make sure the enemies of “his” people were not attacked by competing tribes and nations? Sure, he is all-powerful, right? Oh, but not so powerful as to provide protection against iron chariots (Judges 1:19 – “The Lord was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.”)
I think you should rethink the attributes you give to your god.
And our fine (but well-meaning) theist friend has displayed this in action. There was a comment about jesus in Matthew and the response was he had to reach over to Mark in Acts to support his argument.
I doubt our theist friend even realizes the gross inadequacy of such logic because this is practiced every Sunday in sermons.
You want to find biblical passages that support slavery, they are there. You want to find the contrary, they are there. Pick almost any subject, the same methods apply. As I have stated often, the bible is the greatest multiple choice book ever written.
The cherry picking and different interpretations have went so far with this one that he appears to have made up a new christian sect with a following of one.
You have just placed yourself in the category of theists who know the qualities of their god. Any future attempts to deflect questions on the nature and qualities of your god by claiming ignorance does not speak well about your character.
The outcome will be similar but more prolonged because apologists have no shame or morals. Unlike you they have their playbook ready, with the typical arguments (Kalam, Pascal, etc) at the ready.
But if you find an apologist, please send that person here.
Let’s see… hmmmm 
a dash of OT (Jehovah) mixed with a lot of said Jesus (grabs jar of love Jesus) mixed with “new age” god is the universe - ignore cooking instructions - consume raw.
Awesome 
… we understand how well prayer works. By all means, continue talking to yourself if it makes you feel better.
Like far too many theists, deities often don’t seem to care about avoiding or preventing suffering. The biblical deity seems to actively enjoy causing suffering, In a human being we call that sadism.
Mercy is defined as compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. Yet christianity boasts that the majority of human beings will be tortured forever when they die.
As you say, I think the attributes of a loving merciful or forgiving deity are entirely at odds with other core beliefs christianity has traditionally encompassed. The biblical deity’s petty, cruel, often murderous and vindictive tantrums seem all too human to me. Make of that what you will, but Occam’s razor suggests a very simple explanation for such biblical errancy, that requires no assumptions, and nothing supernatural.
I was about to point out that intercessory prayer has been tested, in double blind clinical trials, and the results showed that those prayers had no discernible results.
Are you referring to Catholic intercessory prayer? I have always been curious about that, but haven’t gotten around to looking at it. If so, do you know which Saint the trial participants were asking for intercessory prayer? And for what they were asking? Also, do you know of any research on the validaty oof the intercessory prayers that Catholics use for beatification?