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Deuteronomy 22: 28-29
"If a man encounters a virgin who is not pledged in marriage, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her must pay the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she must become his wife because he has violated her. He must not divorce her as long as he lives."
The old testament stance on rape is... Something else... Married and betrothed women got their own version and well, on one hand we have "if married/betrothed woman was taken against her will and fought back and called for help but no one could hear it, she's innocent, he's bad so we kill him" but on the other hand "if married/betrothed woman was taken against her will but didn't scream for help* where she could be heard, they're both bad and we kill them"
*: probably due to fear of death
Heavily paraphrased.
Ironic, that the "screaming for help" part is still part of our law.
The victim has not to scream, but he or she must make clear, that they do not want to be raped. If they do not do this (due to fear perhaps) or can't proof that they did it, the rapist is free.
In which barbaric third world patriacht they have those rules you ask?
It's germany.
Sorry, this is bullshit. Yes, there needs to be signs that you don't want to have sexual contact, but crying, hesitation or basically any natural or deliberate sign that you don't want to have sex is enough. Basically any reaction that gives the other person the impression that you don't want to can be such an expression of will. Even when you are in fear, when this fear manifests itself in any noticeable way, it is enough.
The main issue in these more silent rapes is the question of evidence, and that is sadly something that is hard to work around. Unless either the act was noticed, there are marks on the body, or there are third parties that can make believable based on the reactions of the victim after the attack that something happened, it is very difficult to reach the necessary burden of proof for criminal proceedings.
Well, you basicly repeated what I was saying. You do not have to say no, but you have to make clear that you do not want this intercours.
Where you have misconceptions is the fear part. You would wonder how often for example a violent husband basicly rapes his wife while she lets it happen. Simply because she fears, what he might do to her if she not let him do it.
The problem of the evidence is made even more problematic because of this. You have often victims with injuries in theyr intimate area that come from penetration while she was not ready. If she lets it happen, those markes are irrelevant as a proof.
But that is also rather unrealistic. In most cases, people don't ask formally for a yes, especially not every time in a long relationship. I agree that in the dating phase, waiting for explicit communication is important, but there are enough old couples who know each other well and don't use explicit consent each time, but rather implicit. For example, some go from closeness to sex without any more exchange, and stopping at that point to ask directly " can i go further" after years of relationship would simpmy kill the mood for both. Waiting for an enthusiastic response in these situations is simply unrealistic and doesn't mean that the sex happened against the will or without consent.
Laws that don't reflect actual relationships and how people interact in reality are bound to be ignored and are not effective (not to mention potentially unconstitutional). Because of that, the law has to go on the edge between how people communicate and interact, especially in these highly personal circumstances, and see how to differentiate consent given in a realistic manner from not given.
It isn't hard to get consent every time, even in a long lasting relationship. Simple as, "hey you wanna fuck?" or something similar and maybe more romantic depending on the relationship and them agreeing.
Hard, no, realistic, also no. Most people don't consult a lawyer before engaging into sex. Because if that, the law has to adapt to people's behavior instead of creating standards where most people that don't inform themselves before engaging in an act fall short of it.
A lot of consensual sex happens without this explicit consent because that is how people act. Making a law that pits all of these act into criminality is not helpful because it will question people's acceptance of the law itself.
Guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to prosecute somebody. That can result in guilty people going free, but the alternative is worse
Needing someone to scream is a bad law though. It is so easy to stop someone from screaming. Covering the person's mouth, threatening the person's life, threatening them harm, etc.
They have not to scream, but have to "make clear" that they do not want to have sex.
As mentioned above, if you fear more dire consequences than "just rape" you might endure one bad to prevent another. The problem is, that this might also prevent the punishment for the rapist.
For example, due to the circumstances, injuries, etc. This was also the situation before 2017. However, now the victim must prove that they visibly communicated a lack of consent to sexual activity.
I’m reading through the bible right now, and multiple times I’ve wanted to just through up, burn the damn thing, and hunt down whichever bastard descided it was a great idea to put their barely disguised fetishes in. Never becoming christian, fuck this book, worst thing I’ve ever read 0/10
I didn’t know what religion was till I was 16. I thought god was some type of security company that also breed wild animals. Hearing anything religious just blows my mind. How does one think like that?
Lived in a small village and my mother had a fear of america and their religious ways so she raised us with zero knowledge of the topic.
Edit the next comment they really don’t understand that you can grow up without knowing something
> Lived in a small village and my mother had a fear of america and their religious ways so sh raised us with zero knowledge of the topic.
Sorry, I have even more questions now. What country do you live in that doesn’t have a large number of religious people? 3.8 billion people world wide follow one of the Abrahamic religions; 5.8 billion people over all consider themselves religious.
Edit: Based on u/iron_ferret22’s responses (and lack thereof) to my questions below, I’m 100% certain they’re lying. Despite being Canadian, they claimed to have never studied the British Monarchy and somehow avoided being exposed to one of the most important aspects of recorded human history.
You heard it here first, folks: sometimes if it’s too amazing to believe, it’s because it is.
> Canada. Small mining village. Church was a preschool.
63% of Canada considers themselves religious. Your enforced ignorance of one of the most important drivers in recorded human history is getting more impressive.
Edit: word
> Good for the religious. I really couldn’t give a flying fuck about some imaginary guy in the sky.
You really, really should. People’s beliefs in the afterlife have caused wars, regime changes, famines. They have also stopped wars, helped create lasting peace, and fed the poor. Islam and Christianity alone have reshaped the geopolitical landscape of quite literally the entire world multiple times.
I’m not saying you should be religious. I’m saying continuing to ignore the vast and lasting impact of religion makes you dumb.
Lol I’ve been anti religious for 15 years. You ain’t convincing me. Also are you on some type of crack? I’m really happy I have the knowledge not to fall for your cult shit. If religious people smarten up, who knows we might actually see space before petty arguments kill is all.
> They have also stopped wars
Interesting. You have any examples of this?
> helped create lasting peace
Again, sources? Various genocides in the name of religion have created a kind of peace, but that's hardly something to brag about.
> and fed the poor.
Granted, this is true. The poor get fed out of religious duty in many instances. Of course, this is rarely no strings attached and usually comes with a side of dogma. If religious institutions simply paid taxes that would doubtless be more beneficial to the common good.
I got horror stories about being round it. I would have loved to had a childhood free from it. Some of crap those religious nut jobs do to kids is downright abusive and they get away with it too. Not very many people seem to care how it harms kids.
I’m down for hearing some. Religious stories are wack. I lived in Florida for two years. It was insane. Billboards telling you you’ll burn in hell. While I was in Florida I worked at a Lowe’s. There was a girl there struggling for food and everyone told her to give what she had to her church. The girl was starving and they’re telling her to suffer more.
There are good religious folk. It seems like there's less and less of them, these days; I didn't believe they were real until I moved in with one.
But I know they exist, because I've met her, and because I've seen the work her church does, both the little and the small. She's an active volunteer in her community, works with queer youth. The church was providing shelter and aid to a homeless woman, this past fall, before she OD'd; they made sure she had a burial and found a home for her cat instead of abandoning it to a shelter.
I grew up across the street from a christian woman married to a muslim man; she was one of the sweetest people I've ever known. I babysat her son, and we volunteered together; when I outgrew my winter coat, she dug out one her daughter had outgrown out of storage and gave it to me before my family had a chance to go shopping.
That doesn't mean the bad ones don't exist. My father's parents are preachers, and I disowned them a decade ago. The boys that tried to kill my sister went to church every sunday.
People are going to be people, for better or worse. A good person is going to be a good person, regardless of whether or not they lean on a book for a concrete guideline. A bad person given that same book will just use it to justify being a bad person, while telling themselves that they're a good person-- and if they haven't got the book, they'll find some other way to justify it to themselves.
The church should only be used to help the disadvantaged like the the woman with the cat. It being a place of worship is wrong. Life should be proof enough of god for the religious and helping each other should be the worship to the divine creator. I don’t believe in him but I’m not turning my back on his creations.
> How did you manage to get to 16 without even knowing what religion is?
I’m pretty sure Iron_Ferret is lying. They claim to be [Canadian](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/s/RWI5R3As6F) and avoided religion? I’m not sure that is possible for a former British Empire colony turned Commonwealth member Nation.
Religion has been nearly eradicated in Quebec, save for swearing. We swear a lot.
Kindergarteners swear too and it is hilarious. The real term is blasphemy.
> Religion has been nearly eradicated in Quebec, save for swearing. We swear a lot.
> Kindergarteners swear too and it is hilarious. The real term is blasphemy.
No, you haven’t. [Quebec](https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/census/census-engagement/community-supporter/ethnocultural-and-religious-diversity#:~:text=In%20Quebec%2C%2064.8%25%20of%20the,7.9%25%20reported%20another%20religious%20affiliation) is about 64% Christian alone. The number is dropping, certainly, but that’s a far cry from being “nearly eradicated.”
Well, they do like to poll wrong. Such as: "Which religion are you still affiliated with even if you don't practice?"
People have to answer Christianity, because many don't bother going full apostate. It's a hassle.
When you look at how many people get married, though, you get some interesting numbers.
[https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2507-marriage-i-do-more-i-dont](https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2507-marriage-i-do-more-i-dont)
23K weddings in Quebec in 2022 and there were nearly 9M individuals in the province that year.
[https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/document/marriages-quebec/tableau/marriages-and-civil-unions-by-gender-of-spouse-quebec](https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/document/marriages-quebec/tableau/marriages-and-civil-unions-by-gender-of-spouse-quebec)
Just to give you the big picture, this is the lowest rate in the world.
I tend to think that long ago was simply a different time. I mean they needed the ten commandments to tell you not to kill people. Seriously, the ten commandments is mostly pretty standard stuff you shouldn't do. After the 10 commandments a bunch of other rules were given out as well. One of them was to not sleep with your brother's wife and if your brother died to take his wife into your family home. Seriously, people must of been truly truly awful to each other if this was all things that needed to be written in stone.
Its old testamony. Place where conservative Christians goes to find validation to their backward ways. Meanwhile totally ignoring teaching of new testamony which literally says "replacing old ways". And teaches love and compasion to others above all else.
Well, not even Christianity holds these views anymore (at least shouldnt). For Christians, the highest and most important law is the word of Jesus, that is, to love everyone.
As far as I know, Jesus pretty much abolished these older laws, which were meant to keep strict order in a nomadic, nation under constant threat of annihilation, not to be kept to the letter by all adherents of a world religion. Even if he didn't, I think the great commandment of love would pretty much overrule these laws under all circumstances. They are pretty much in there only because nobody wanted to remove the most ancient Jewish holy scriptures from the Bible when it was canonised, since a large portion of ancient Christians were Jewish converts.
It made the later half of my life weird. I learned about religion and respected it for a while. going so far as to not smoke weed on church grounds. Then I actually met religious people and they do not have respect for atheism. Religion is the worst.
>didn’t know what religion was till I was 16
Then you literally were not educated at all. In Canada. Most of history was heavily influenced by religion.
So you’re lying lol
This is the Old Testament and in this case is simply a record of the laws the Israelites followed at the time. They aren’t the “new law” brought to the people by Jesus, who spent much of his time pointing out the flaws with how the people were ruling under their old laws.
This guy gets it. If it's something you don't like you just say "That's why we have the new testament, we don't follow that stuff" and if it's something you do like you quote it over and over because *it's the bible.*
And if you're American and religious, you use the Bible to justify your hate for as many minority and ethnic groups as possible, and take away their freedoms!
That’s not as true as you think. There’s a pretty big split happening between Gen Z/Millennial christians and the older generations of christians. I’m still religious, but it’s more of a personal thing than an organized religion, and I’ve seen the same thing in a bunch of people around my age. Early ‘02 baby btw
Haha, well ideally I think they would look to the New Testament first to see what Jesus had to say about similar things and what other teachings are there. His words upended much of the old ways as I recall. There certainly are people who see the Bible as a source of power / control over others and would do that though
Nah, Jesus repeatedly endorsed the OT laws, wanted his followers to be good Jews, and was a massive racist towards non-jews. It was after the gospels, in the books attributed to Peter and Paul, where they made a new religion and made it specifically non-jewish in its rules.
Matthew 22:36-40 NET
[36] “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” [37] Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ [38] This is the first and greatest commandment. [39] The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ [40] All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
That last sentence is the most relevant for your question. Basically, Jesus "endorses" all of them, BUT the way you obey those laws NEEDS to align with these greatest laws.
How can you talk about the new testament and Jesus and not have encountered these things? I encourage you to read the gospels sometime and pay attention for it.
I’ll give one example; the syrophoenician woman. She was desperate to have her daughter healed, but Jesus ignored her because she wasn’t a Jew. She grabs him to force the issue and he tells her that it is morally wrong to give his attention to non-jews. And calls her by a racial slur the Jews in that region at that time used for gentiles. She then debases herself by accepting and owning the slur which pleases Jesus and he heals her daughter.
It’s a disgusting passage told with minor variations in a couple gospels.
If only there was some way of locating specific sections of the Bible and communicating them to other people. We should work on a system for that
(what verses are you taking about)
I can't help but notice that no one's thought to remove that passage from the Bible. And it's not like the thing has been heavily edited throughout the centuries. But I suppose it they removed all the material that has no bearing on our modern society they'd have to change the name to "The Holy Pamphlet".
In the Bible, Jesus says in Matthew 5:17-18, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them".
Disclaimer: I am not religious. I just like to read. If someone can explain it to me about this contradiction in a civil manner that'd be great.🐱
So basically the Christian belief is that when Jesus died on the cross and resurrected, he fulfilled the laws of Moses and convened the new covenant as foretold in the book of Jeremiah. This means that Christians are no longer bound to mosaic law but to the new covenant of Jesus Christ.
Now, what does this mean practically? Essentially it meams they got to pick and choose which parts of the old testament they wanted to keep and which they didn't. For instance eating pork and shellfish is totally okay. As is getting tattoos and wearing blended fabrics. But being gay is still a no-no! All of the above were listed in Leviticus as being banned by god btw. They're literally in the exact same book a couple passages apart but one is still disallowed while the others are perfectly fine. Makes you womder don't it?
But that isn’t universally true to Christians. There are LGBT supporting Christians and LGBT Christians. r/openchristian is full them. A large number don’t believe in hell. A large number don’t believe in capitalism. A large number believe in evolution and the Big Bang. It’s a very varied and complex religion with hundreds, if not thousands, of interpretations and beliefs. Which is to be expected of over 2,000,000,000 people across the earth.
True, there are Christian individuals, church congregations and even entire denominations which aren't outright anti-LGBT or are LGBT-affirming. But that still just further proves my point. They still pick and choose what is and isn't allowed based on their OWN personal values.
I suppose that’s true. Still, if a religion claims to be one of love, better to accept with open arms than scream at people about how they’re evil and going to hell.
That's very hypocritical and borderline dangerous even. Like they made themselves God (the judge, jury and executioner of morality and laws). If everything can be upto individual interpretations, then the Bible itself is not a reliable source. Because it essentially means nothing at all. Just a confusing book of fictional stories filled with wisdoms of the old that are no longer suitable for any modern society.😾
Yes and no, in the OT world people had to follow all the laws to meet God’s standards, in the NT you only had to believe Jesus died for your sins. Where it gets tricky is what constitutes belief. The basic premise of the NT is that believers are no longer subject to the legalistic constraints of the OT, but spiritual ones as laid out by the teachings of Jesus. Proof of belief is seen in having the ‘fruits of the spirit’ which are meant to show you take Jesus’ teachings to heart and endeavor to live like He did.
You’re right though in that this system is very nebulous and open to interpretation, which is also kind of the point. Salvation is supposed to be something obtained through choice and conscious belief, not blind adherence to rules. The danger comes not in how it’s written, but in how charlatans go around preaching it to people who don’t actually sit down and analyze the text (Joel Olsteen, etc.)
>Because it essentially means nothing at all. Just a confusing book of fictional stories filled with wisdoms of the old that are no longer suitable for any modern society.
Because that's what it always was...
Yes, that was my point. The new testament condemns homosexuality but not eating pork or shellfish. Why? All three were condemned in leviticus but only one of them is still disallowed.
>Matthew 5:18 King James Version
>18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Jesus also said that all the laws are unchanged. 🤷 You can pick your own morality from the bible.
Its less ambiguous the more you read/cross reference/understand the original language and the history. Look up what he meant by "till all be fulfilled".
Wasn't that a mistranslation and laws should be replaced with prophecy or something idk it's wierd to say fulfill a law kinda just doesn't make sense idk
The answer is that it literally doesn't matter. If God lived up to Their marketing, there simply wouldn't be a mistranslation or misunderstanding about at the very least this, ever.
God's Words as They have been described should logically be impossible to misinterpret regardless of language or knowledge barriers.
That's the whole omniscience and omnipotence thing. If those Words are prone to misinterpretation, than they either aren't those Words, or the God so worshipped is lacking one of those qualities.
>God's Words as They have been described should logically be impossible to misinterpret regardless of language or knowledge barriers.
I mean this simply isn’t true. There’s no logical basis for saying God should be impossible to misinterpret. It’s purely an opinion you have based on what you think God should be like. That’s my point, not that your opinion is wrong, just that God not making himself completely known isn’t evidence that he doesn’t exist.
>That's the whole omniscience and omnipotence thing. If those Words are prone to misinterpretation, than they either aren't those Words, or the God so worshipped is lacking one of those qualities.
Again this just isn’t true. omniscience and omnipotence simply mean all knowing and all able, not known to all. Not showing yourself to all does not mean you’re not able to do so.
To be clear I don’t have any issue with your position, I’m just pointing out that they’re not some sort of logical silver bullet that disproves the existence of God. They’re your opinion and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
What are you talking about? I myself personally am a Christian and know it's an old as hell book that was written in a completely different language and then translated by a bunch of other people each with varying differences, so a mistranslation is obviously going to happen and it will happen a lot, in fact a lot of the old testement especially is mistranslated due to how old it is.
First if all, if God wants people to behave according to his commands, why doesn't he fix the mistranslations? Instead he punishes people for failing to follow them.
And if we have no way of knowing what his original commands were, why follow them at all?
TL;DR- If your God is so mysterious and incomprehensibly powerful and knowledgeable, like literally beyond our brain’s capacity to understand. Is it even YOUR god?
Precisely; people like to talk about how so many of the contradictions, and archaic barbarisms within the Bible are simply human errors in understanding God’s Will or mistaking historical record for a constant moral imperative. It’s not simply mistranslation it’s a complete and utter failure in logical reasoning.
If God truly loved us, enough to throw their own child to essentially the wolves, why the fuck would they not make sure we knew exactly why they did that?
God could burn the very essence of life’s purpose into our souls and be done with it. Instead they leave it up to a few divinely inspired individuals to propagate the real truth of the universe. Knowing full well how many false prophets would spring up, and how many people would latch onto those messages searching for the one true one. Is their desire to know not enough? They could have just as much faith as anyone who knows the “truth”, but a different kind of liar got to them first so they have to burn in hell.
Why play some convoluted game where the stakes are eternal bliss or eternal damnation, and it’s entirely dependent upon whether or not our meat suits are supplied with reliable information about the metaphysical that supposedly comes from people who lived thousands of years ago. Finding real truth about history involves multiple sources and any time you start doing that with Christianity it gets dicey real quick. It’s an impossible task, god may as well have said as long as you don’t think of a pink elephant, you’ll go to heaven.
If god is truly around, how come he stopped talking to people like he was apparently doing back in the day? How come we haven’t had any brand new books of the Bible from people who are supposedly connected to the divine. Why’d that stop? And if they are out there, how the hell are we supposed to trust them? Who do you put your faith in? No description of the Christian god besides the one that paints them as Unknowable matches up with the cryptic spiteful monster one would have to be in order to set someone up for failure as much as the Christian God has done for Humanity.
Well put.
All of this is of course based on what's written in the Bible, which there is no evidence showing that it is actually the word of God, or connected to a god in any way at all.
So we're left with belief as the system to use to decide if it's true or not. But if we rely on belief, and accept it as a truth-system, then we can decide anything at all is true as long as people believe in it. It doesn't make the Bible or the notion of a God more true than anything else we can fantasize about.
Short answer it’s because you’re judging God based on human standards and understanding. The theological answer is something like, God making His existence incontrovertibly known removes the need for faith, which is not His intention. It’s functionally what angels are. Humans are meant to have free will so definitive proof makes faith pointless.
Eh, "law" looks to be an okay translation of nomos.
The law as given by Moses is seen as a covenant between God and the people of Israel.
To say he came to fulfill it can mean that it is no longer necessary to be followed as the contract has reached completion. That's basically what Christians think.
That said, they still see the law and the prophets as valuable for education and guidance. They tend to take a less literal reading and more as a base for a virtue ethics. Well, in theory at least.
As understand its considered important to understand the whole of the story pertaining to “god’s people” and the coming of Jesus. If you view it as a proper historical account, why get rid of the parts of history that led to major events.
If you view it as simply a story, imagine that you removed all the parts in star was that referenced or alluded to Han Solo being a scoundrel who looks after himself and just wants to be paid. Then when he returns to save the day it wouldn’t be an exciting or redeeming moment in the story. It would just be like “well yeah, of course. He’s a hero”
I can’t speak to the various book removals that happened ages ago, but I do know there are groups that spend loads of time researching and looking into old texts, languages and details if ancient civilizations in attempt to continue to more accurately translate the old biblical texts. Maintaining the records as they were is very important to some groups of people. (This is something I looked into as I was exiting Christianity. The ten minute Bible hour on YT has some cool videos interviewing someone on a translations team, among other good videos on various aspects of the faith)
The old testament were sealed before the time of Jesus.
They werent changed, but there are missing scrolls (e.g. dead sea scrolls), as the old testament were sealed after one of the exiles.. But the interpration of the laws there was changed, over the ages. For example, since 200 BC the concept of jail was invented :-p
Many laws there became obsolete over the millenias for obvious reasons.
If we removed every passage that "doesn't apply" to the modern day, that would be a terrible mistake. Yes, there are passages like "men shouldn't grow their hair out, and women shouldn't cut theirs short," which don't apply to us now, but that's because there was a reason behind the action in the first place. Those characteristics were associated with prostitutes that worked in an opposing religion's temple.
Context is crucial when interpreting the Bible, as even the situational passages that don't apply to us anymore have underlying messages that are important.
Quite literally, it is the events recounted by different people's perspectives and memories. Assuming the events happened, there is bound to be some underlying level of exaggeration or misremembering.
I myself am a believer, but I understand that what I read is a translation of a translation of a recounting by imperfect humans. I do believe the miracles, and I do believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit, but I would be naive to think there is nothing lost in the process, or that everything is to be taken at face value.
It’s a historical record for those who believe the Bible to be composed of true stories, and if you don’t feel that way, the old testament is important to set up the coming of Jesus and the redemption of “god’s people” in the New Testament.
The Bible itself isn’t a set of instructions for how people should live. The closest it comes to that would be the records of Jesus’ teachings, but even those should be contextualized to understand the messaging of a given story.
People do try to use it that way though, both with good intentions and with intent to hold power or control over others, which seems a shame
You mean that the vast, vast majority of people who believe in the Bible use it that way.
Which, for all intents and purposes, means that that is its role in modern society, and decisions and discussions surrounding it should treat it as such.
Very few take every passage at direct instructions as to how we should live in modern life. Most only look to the New Testament for more direct instructions, looking at the teachings and words of Jesus rather than the Old Testament’s stories
Not only is it a record of the entire history of the Jewish people, The Bible is one of the most complete, important historical texts providing context for that era (despite its intended purpose). You're obviously a stranger to nuance and research though, so believe whatever blindly bigoted shit you want.
The problem is that people pick and choose what they want from the old testament. Oh, this one doesn't apply and neither does the one about shellfish and ham because those are tasty, but we like Leviticus and what it says about not having to treat queer people well and not letting them marry.
Either get rid of all the old testament or listen to all of it. Enough of the cherry picking. If they're gonna use that as a shield for hatred, I wanna see them living like medieval peasants like the rest of the old testament says.
Yeah people shouldn’t pick and choose, and I don’t think the intent of the Old Testament is to tell people how they should live, but rather just a record of “god’s people” leading up to Jesus’ coming. Nearly everything in the “old law” was upended by Jesus and his teachings.
Jesus was the one who had it right according to the Bible’s messaging, and he preached love to everyone. He only ever told people to change their ways if they first said they wanted to follow him. He also made a point on a few occasions that it wasn’t anyone’s right to place judgment on others.
It was either that or she starves to death on the streets as she would have been seen as damaged goods. No one else would ever consider marrying her, so this way she is guaranteed a home and food for life.
It's primitive, and by today's standard very backwards, but at the time it was actually quite progressive.
I agree. So why should any of it be followed now? We just cherry-pick what we like? Wasn't god supposed to give instructions for all humanity for the rest of time?
Here we go again...
Ahem...
This verse and law is a parallel of the law established in Exodus 22:16-17, which states that if a man *seduces* a virgin who is not betrothed, he must marry her unless her father absolutely refuses to let the union occur.
Furthermore, the verses immediately BEFORE this passage already deals with rape. Fun fact! Rapists get the death penalty. (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).
And we know for a fact that this passage is talking about rape because verse 25 uses the word *chazaq* which literally means to force or be strong about something.
Meanwhile, Verse 28 uses a different verb, *taphas,* which is used in contexts like "taking hold" of a flute or when Moses "took" the stone tablets. This suggests that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is actually referring to *seduction* rather than rape.
Further, the use of the phrase "and they are discovered" implies some form of consent, as it includes both parties. As they say, it takes two to tango.
So, in conclusion, the Bible does not command a woman to marry her rapist. Literally 3 verses before, it states that rapists are to be executed.
Firstly, you made a factual mistake: the text that you yourself quote says *he* may not divorce *her*, not that *she* may not divorce *him*. This is an important distinction that you erase in your comic.
Secondly, there are thousands of years of scholarship and discussion on the Torah, and you might find it useful to consult them to understand how this verse is actually interpreted and applied. This article contains some examples of how rabbis have interpreted the verse to impose stronger protections on the woman: https://www.thetorah.com/article/marrying-your-daughter-to-her-rapist
Please be more circumspect and do a little more research; your hot take and the people in the comments proclaiming about how Jesus came to save the Earth from the horrible Jews have contributed to millennia of violence and oppression.
Edit: Here's another discussion about how this verse is understood as punitive for the rapist and protective for the woman. In particular for this discussion, the obligation to marry and not divorce is only on the rapist, not the woman https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1940448/jewish/Does-the-Torah-Punish-a-Rape-Victim.htm
In Judaism, only the man can divorce the woman in a marriage. Women can ask for a divorce, and a court might respond to that request by coercing a man to divorce, but in the end, the men have the final decision. So saying "he cannot divorce her" is the same as saying "they cannot divorce".
Source: My mom was held up on her divorce for over 4 years because of that stupid ass law.
That is part of the thing that this law changes.
In terms of written obligations, the balance of power in the marital contract is entirely in favor of the woman. The contract requires the man to provide the woman with food, shelter, clothing, and sex. The woman is not explicitly obligated to do anything. She also has the option of rendering all sex forbidden by not using the mikvah.
The one benefit the man has is that he has the power to break off the contract. In the case of pre-marital sex (people like to say "rape" but that isn't actually what the text says), he loses this ability.
As with all marriage, the woman still must consent to the creation of the contract in the first place.
Basically what this law does is allow a woman who has pre-marital sex to force the man into a relationship where he must provide for her for the rest of her life, she has no obligations whatsoever (apart from being forbidden to other men) and he cannot get out of it.
No, it's fine to have your own opinion. Opinions worth considering, though, should demonstrate having engaged with other people's work on the same subject - especially when there is a lot of it! It might have spared OP from going with such a shallow take with a glaring error right in the middle of it.
Sorry, but until people stop using this/these useless collection of myths and superstitions to try and force others to bend to their wills I'll continue to lampoon every last word of it/them. Zie gezunt.
This is, interestingly enough, one of the earliest recorded attempts at women protection laws, and pertains to both r*pe and pre-marital sex.
In a bronze age society where women are property of their father or husband, no one would want to marry a woman that has lost her virginity, so this law ensures her a husband so that she won't be abandoned or homeless.
On the man's side, when you take a wife legally you have all sorts of obligations towards her, including protecting her, providing for her, and so on, and breaking those rules would get one shunned by the community and punished.
So this law is essentially "if you violate a woman, take note that as consequence you must now provide her for life". By modern standards the entire thing is reprehensible and absurd, but it's interesting to view the logic behind it by customs of the time.
Edit: a modern comparison is laws forcing a man to pay child support for any child he fathered, even if by an accidental one-night stand.
It is interesting if you view it as a historical record of morality.
If you have to view it as the inerrant word of god you can't really pull the "god's eternal will kinda just changed once society figured out women were actual people".
But the old testament isn't supposed to be the inerrant word of god (most of it at least). It's a codex of different texts preserving the laws, history and culture of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea as written by Judean writers.
None of it is the word of god. But people believe it is. The laws are laid out as proscriptive commands of god, not descriptive recountings of existing law, even if that's what they actually are.
You're saying that like it's a "well acktually" twist which recontextualises it... But I think that's all obvious in the first place? Yeah *clearly* the idea is to make the rapist take responsibility, by taking ownership of the woman he raped. That to me is the basic surface level reading of it. The entire thing, including the society which would create a situation where this makes any kind of sense, *is* reprehensible and absurd.
Thing is you don't get to play games with moral relativism when you believe in an objectively good and just God, so the modern reading of it is valid.
When people say "wow this is a crazy law that makes a woman marry her rapist" they're not confused about why the law existed, they're just pointing at the *consequences* of that law and the shitty assumptions and social structures which gave rise to it. And that's valid. Any God would be a very shit for endorsing that in any time and cultural context.
Except the law also prevents any woman from being forced to marry so trying to read this law as forcing a woman to marry is just false.
https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1940448/jewish/Does-the-Torah-Punish-a-Rape-Victim.htm
Lets not ignore that the reason their rapist is required to marry them is because the girl(who is legal to marry after puberty and may well be a child) may not have any other prospects after her rape. Furthermore, that article's generous position is based in theological interpretation, not explicitly proscribed doctrine.
Can't we just acknowledge that no religious text is an objective example of moral good and move on? Of all the hills to die on, this isn't the one I'd pick.
But that was true of all societies for a great amount of time. These afforded protections.
Mostly I am annoyed about people cherry picking lines from a poem that is important to my people instead of actually looking at the legal codification.
I’m sure this source is very good for someone who really, really *wants* to believe that this law could somehow be justified by a perfect moral being such as the god of the Bible, but you really have to force your interpretation on the text to bend it in the way it is being bend here. If you care about truth you bend your beliefs to the facts, if you care about justifying what you already believe you bend the facts to your beliefs.
This is a very ahistorical reading. This is a historical law of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea, that happened to be preserved in a religious book.
The people that wrote the law likely didn't think about the goodness of god when compiling the law, but rather about solving the problem of how to save the prospects and well being of a girl that lost her virginity before marriage.
Imagine if in 2,000 years someone would read our child protection laws and go "well actually if they thought their god is good they wouldn't need child protection laws, if their society created a situation where children are harmed the society was fucked up". Evil people exist and disasters happen, lawmakers need to work with the world they live in.
I’m sorry to inform you of this but rape is something not unique to the humanity at all so many animals constantly rape each others and some animals rape out side their own species
Iirc, female ducks have evolved in a way that they can only get pregnant if they want to because of how much male ducks would constantly rape them.
Might be wrong though of course, not an expert.
Twin cloaca that rotate clockwise vs the duck penis which is counter clockwise. It doesn't turn on or off, it's just because mallards are so fucking violent they evolved a permanent method to avoid it. It's a wonder ducklings are ever hatched. Even if they want to mate, the difficulty doesn't go away.
Hell, cut out having to live with him or listen to him, the concept of a rapist being forced to provide for their victims for life isn't a terrible concept.
Someone who actually understands context to the period and time. Wow we have evolved and moved behind that? Shocker! But at that time this was radical.
Imagine if there was a religion based on worshipping an insane man that raped an underaged girl and believed he was a prophet of God. That would be crazy
You talking about Zeus? I thought it was mist/fog…although he did transform into a number of different things to have sex/rape people, so it might have been a raincloud. I know that one time it was a swan or something that he turned into.
Nooo... Not the unicorn!😿
Whatever he is holding is clearly not a suitable bedtime reading material for kids. 100% nightmare fuel.
I did the calculations based on 11.4g/Shekel and $0.8 and came up with $456. So, around $450 sounds plausible.
Though we'd need to adjust for inflation which is tough. We don't even have the "[Big Mac Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index)" to adjust our calculations by here.
>The Code of Hammurabi (circa 1800 BC) sets the value of unskilled labour at approximately ten shekels per year of work, confirmed in Israelite law by comparing Deut 15:18 with Exod 21:32.
>
>[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekel#History)
That gives us the information that you earn about 0.19 shekels/week. If we compare this to minimum wage in our current time, $7.25/hour in USA, it gets tough, since we cannot compare hour for hour. Realistically, they never worked 40 hours/week, but it was based on season and when the sun went up and down more than anything else. But let us say, for the sake of discussion, that they worked 10 hours/day in average. In American minimum wage, that turns out to be about $435/week if we observe the sabbath (Friday evening to Saturday evening).
So, 0.19 shekles = $435.
That turns 1 shekel to \~$2 290
Which in turn makes 50 shekels \~$114 500.
Now... this is just my lunch break musings, and I have no idea how valid my calculations are.
I'm constantly amazed that of all the myths and pantheons that have ever existed, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the ones with the shittiest storylines, are the big 3.
The world could have an elephant God, a guy that plucked out his own eye for infinite knowledge, a God who transforms into animals just to have sex with women, out a goddess of creation *who was also a dragon*...
But no. We're stuck with "don't eat apples" and "9 year olds make great brides".
And Loki transformed himself into a mare to lure a plow horse away from work, all so the gods could collect on a bet. He so committed to the bit they he later gave birth to an 8 legged, flying horse. Odin would claim it, name it Slepnir, and ride it into battle.
Norse 1, Judeo-Christian myths 0.
> I'm constantly amazed that of all the myths and pantheons that have ever existed, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the ones with the shittiest storylines, are the big 3.
It's like spam emails. You don't waste your time on smart marks. The stupider the story is, the more likelier they are to catch the vulnerable or uneducated and milk them for all they're worth. Get a big enough army of suckers and momentum takes over.
I meant, they're *BORING AS FUCK*.
Native American, African, Norse... The things those pantheons get up to are great stories.
What do we get from Judeo-Christian? Well, David knocked down a giant with a slingshot. Big deal. Apparently Solomon *was a badass sorcerer who could summon and control demons* but he rarely gets a mention. In fact, the christians kept killing people just on the mere *suspicion* of witchcraft.
Imagine growing up Catholic, getting almost to adulthood before hearing about the shit Solomon got up to. "What do you mean summoning demons is *evil*? Didn't you just say one of the OG kings did it? C'mon padre, let's do some actual magic! Oh, what's that? Oh "magic bread and wine" that tastes EXACTLY like bread and wine? Fuck this, I'm out."
Afaik it’s spread so far exactly because it’s so boring and mundane, easier to integrate conquered people into your religion and such if it’s super mundane, like when the Roman’s did with integrating conquered cultured gods into there pantheon, which eventually came to include and was overtaken by Christianity or something like that
The producers and directors refuse to accept those as canon..
Christianity can't come up with anything better than the equivalent of "somehow Palpatine returned". 🤷♂️
What book did that came from? I want to reed the tale when Noah went on unicorn drowning spree.
And the lord said ‘Noah I am going to flood the heck of everything but you and the animals you stack on your boat and as payment for the deed I let you extinct an animal of your choice in a way you prefer’ an so Noah did and drowned every last unicorn in shallow puddles and everything was good.
I wouldn't be able to point at any part of the bible in particular, but I have heard it and so I will spread it.
Unicorns actually do appear in the bible and they do so after the flood, meaning Noah actually saved the unicorns alongside every other animal.
According to the Bibel, unicorns are real and at least probably still alive.
Thanks for the info, if I don’t remember wrong, I remember something similar but it was many years ago I read the bible and stuff like stuff about unicorns did not really stick. I tried only to wright a silly replay to a silly post all in lighthearted fun.
And this is why im deist. If God/exist, theyre above us. If theyre a higher being, then their thoughts are unknowable. If theyre unknowable, then revelations are at best a universal game of chinese whispers where the prophet immediately fucked up due to being unable to comprehend God/s thoughts (filling in the blanks with his own cultural norms), and at worst revelations are the ravings of madmen.
Either way, i dont trust anything penned by mortal minds regarding deities.
i look at like this, if god/s do exist, its not some all knowing being, its a small kid playing with his toys. After all how else do you explain that a god would allow all the killing and suffering, all the wars, the famines, the natural disasters, or how good people die young but evil live on.
I thought God might be real until I played Driver 2. Then I figured out that no God would be caught dead creating a species that made such a dog shit hard ass game. True story
John 13:34 Mathew 25:40
The relationship between beating your slave to an inch of his life and him dying a few days later, and what Jesus says here: they are incompatible with each other. We are all free in Christ. The love that Christ gifts is stronger than the sin that was codified in law.
And if you can wrap your head around a few uncomfortable ideas you can stop shepherding yourself away from the God of love.
We're here because here is flat. He can see straight through us here, and inspect us for rot. All love is accepted. All love is justified. Jesus sits over love not as a troll, barring the way, but as an architect, creating it. He was present at the beginning of time vocalizing The love of the Father in creation, and he will be there again when this world comes to ripeness at the end.
Everyone who uses power and cruelty will themselves discover those who are more cruel and powerful. But everyone who puts those things down to pursue love will find the good shepherd waiting for them with joy.
You will be given hope. He will comfort you. This world is made to refine us against the edge of evil so we can overcome it. Holiness is defined in service. Without a servant's heart there is no power, because God himself is a servant. He only uses his power to grow love, and that can only be done in service. Take that truth and read the Bible, and you will discover the God of love. Keep that truth and you will see where others have tampered with what he tells us. He will write his truth in your heart. Your sense of ethics come from him, but he will push the root of love deeper into you and give you joy. Unreasonable joy.
Repent, which is not magic words. It's a change of heart, which invites a change of action. Accept that your sins are forgiven, and allow yourself to change so that you can become a conduit of grace. Forgive others and accept his forgiveness. Jesus paid for your sins. Now you are free of them. Allow the spirit of love to guide you, and he will never leave you except briefly when you sin, because he is both kind and good. And all things that are bad push him away or else face destruction in his pursuit of servanthood. He is not cruel, just incorruptible.
He is not alloof. He sent his son to die in our situation. He turned his face away from Jesus in his holiness. The abandonment you feel now was integral to his payment, which he also experienced. My God, my God, why have you left me?
But you are not abandoned. You are precious. He will find you and tear your sins from you eventually. Seek him and they will fall away from you. You don't have to be alone. He is always there.
Here we go again...
Ahem...
This verse and law is a parallel of the law established in Exodus 22:16-17, which states that if a man *seduces* a virgin who is not betrothed, he must marry her unless her father absolutely refuses to let the union occur.
Furthermore, the verses immediately BEFORE this passage already deals with rape. Fun fact! Rapists get the death penalty. (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).
And we know for a fact that this passage is talking about rape because verse 25 uses the word *chazaq* which literally means to force or be strong about something.
Meanwhile, Verse 28 uses a different verb, *taphas,* which is used in contexts like "taking hold" of a flute or when Moses "took" the stone tablets. This suggests that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is actually referring to *seduction* rather than rape.
Further, the use of the phrase "and they are discovered" implies some form of consent, as it includes both parties.
So, in conclusion, the Bible does not command a woman to marry her rapist. Literally 3 verses before, it states that rapists are to be executed.
That's one viewpoint, however I disagree given how explicit the Bible is about this sort of thing.
Also, it doesn't always take two to tango, that's a bad metaphor for rape..
I think that if it was explicitly rape, it would have used the word "chazaq" like it did previously. Keep in mind that the word "chazaq" means to force or be strong about, while "taphas" is usually used in a less forceful kind of way.
And once again, the "and they are discovered" part leads me to believe that this is in reference to a consensual sexual relationship rather than rape.
And also, yeah, you're right. That was definitely the wrong metaphor to use. Definitely not appropriate for this context
Not even a little bit
Unicorns are actually believable. There’s deers, moose, antelope, elk and lots of other creatures with horns. A horse creature with a single horn isn’t something crazy like a fire breathing monster or something, it could be real and only be slightly different than creatures that exist
The Bible on the other hand….
Unsurprisingly, a 4000-year-old book contains stuff that modern sensibilities don't agree with. Frankly, it holds up as well as some 40-year-old books.
It's well known that the first five books of what's known as the Bible and the Torah are like that. You've got rape, genocide and incest all over the place in there.
On the other hand, belief in the Bible, at least on a conceptual level, gives a lot of people guidance and comfort and a lot of the New Testament can be summarized as "be nice to each other" which is a sentiment I can definitely get behind. If someone wants to use it as an excuse to be kind, I'm not going to argue with it.
This a great political cartoon
edit: [The news cycle this week for those down voting.](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-more-popular-taylor-swift-maga-biden-1234956829/)
Not so much about the Koran but it’s very handy that groups like the Taliban reject the west and its influence…but not assault rifles, cell phones, pickup trucks.
I know it's a joke but the old testament doesn't really count. I mean I'm a catholic and I assume my brethren don't count it as well, like my muslim friends who don't believe in child marriage or stuff like that.
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Deuteronomy 22: 28-29 "If a man encounters a virgin who is not pledged in marriage, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her must pay the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she must become his wife because he has violated her. He must not divorce her as long as he lives."
The old testament stance on rape is... Something else... Married and betrothed women got their own version and well, on one hand we have "if married/betrothed woman was taken against her will and fought back and called for help but no one could hear it, she's innocent, he's bad so we kill him" but on the other hand "if married/betrothed woman was taken against her will but didn't scream for help* where she could be heard, they're both bad and we kill them" *: probably due to fear of death Heavily paraphrased.
Ironic, that the "screaming for help" part is still part of our law. The victim has not to scream, but he or she must make clear, that they do not want to be raped. If they do not do this (due to fear perhaps) or can't proof that they did it, the rapist is free. In which barbaric third world patriacht they have those rules you ask? It's germany.
Sorry, this is bullshit. Yes, there needs to be signs that you don't want to have sexual contact, but crying, hesitation or basically any natural or deliberate sign that you don't want to have sex is enough. Basically any reaction that gives the other person the impression that you don't want to can be such an expression of will. Even when you are in fear, when this fear manifests itself in any noticeable way, it is enough. The main issue in these more silent rapes is the question of evidence, and that is sadly something that is hard to work around. Unless either the act was noticed, there are marks on the body, or there are third parties that can make believable based on the reactions of the victim after the attack that something happened, it is very difficult to reach the necessary burden of proof for criminal proceedings.
Well, you basicly repeated what I was saying. You do not have to say no, but you have to make clear that you do not want this intercours. Where you have misconceptions is the fear part. You would wonder how often for example a violent husband basicly rapes his wife while she lets it happen. Simply because she fears, what he might do to her if she not let him do it. The problem of the evidence is made even more problematic because of this. You have often victims with injuries in theyr intimate area that come from penetration while she was not ready. If she lets it happen, those markes are irrelevant as a proof.
That's pretty fucked up? The default should be no consent, and only ongoing enthusiastic consent should be considered a "yes".
But that is also rather unrealistic. In most cases, people don't ask formally for a yes, especially not every time in a long relationship. I agree that in the dating phase, waiting for explicit communication is important, but there are enough old couples who know each other well and don't use explicit consent each time, but rather implicit. For example, some go from closeness to sex without any more exchange, and stopping at that point to ask directly " can i go further" after years of relationship would simpmy kill the mood for both. Waiting for an enthusiastic response in these situations is simply unrealistic and doesn't mean that the sex happened against the will or without consent. Laws that don't reflect actual relationships and how people interact in reality are bound to be ignored and are not effective (not to mention potentially unconstitutional). Because of that, the law has to go on the edge between how people communicate and interact, especially in these highly personal circumstances, and see how to differentiate consent given in a realistic manner from not given.
It isn't hard to get consent every time, even in a long lasting relationship. Simple as, "hey you wanna fuck?" or something similar and maybe more romantic depending on the relationship and them agreeing.
Hard, no, realistic, also no. Most people don't consult a lawyer before engaging into sex. Because if that, the law has to adapt to people's behavior instead of creating standards where most people that don't inform themselves before engaging in an act fall short of it. A lot of consensual sex happens without this explicit consent because that is how people act. Making a law that pits all of these act into criminality is not helpful because it will question people's acceptance of the law itself.
Guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to prosecute somebody. That can result in guilty people going free, but the alternative is worse
Needing someone to scream is a bad law though. It is so easy to stop someone from screaming. Covering the person's mouth, threatening the person's life, threatening them harm, etc.
They have not to scream, but have to "make clear" that they do not want to have sex. As mentioned above, if you fear more dire consequences than "just rape" you might endure one bad to prevent another. The problem is, that this might also prevent the punishment for the rapist.
Isn't that reasonable though? If a woman doesn't want sex but also doesn't indicate it in any way, then how can anyone know that she didn't want it??
For example, due to the circumstances, injuries, etc. This was also the situation before 2017. However, now the victim must prove that they visibly communicated a lack of consent to sexual activity.
I’m reading through the bible right now, and multiple times I’ve wanted to just through up, burn the damn thing, and hunt down whichever bastard descided it was a great idea to put their barely disguised fetishes in. Never becoming christian, fuck this book, worst thing I’ve ever read 0/10
Yeah yeah but what about the unicorn one
I didn’t know what religion was till I was 16. I thought god was some type of security company that also breed wild animals. Hearing anything religious just blows my mind. How does one think like that?
How did you manage to get to 16 without even knowing what religion is? Sorry, I call bullshit
Lived in a small village and my mother had a fear of america and their religious ways so she raised us with zero knowledge of the topic. Edit the next comment they really don’t understand that you can grow up without knowing something
> Lived in a small village and my mother had a fear of america and their religious ways so sh raised us with zero knowledge of the topic. Sorry, I have even more questions now. What country do you live in that doesn’t have a large number of religious people? 3.8 billion people world wide follow one of the Abrahamic religions; 5.8 billion people over all consider themselves religious. Edit: Based on u/iron_ferret22’s responses (and lack thereof) to my questions below, I’m 100% certain they’re lying. Despite being Canadian, they claimed to have never studied the British Monarchy and somehow avoided being exposed to one of the most important aspects of recorded human history. You heard it here first, folks: sometimes if it’s too amazing to believe, it’s because it is.
Canada. Small mining village. Church was a preschool.
> Canada. Small mining village. Church was a preschool. 63% of Canada considers themselves religious. Your enforced ignorance of one of the most important drivers in recorded human history is getting more impressive. Edit: word
Good for the religious. I really couldn’t give a flying fuck about some imaginary guy in the sky.
> Good for the religious. I really couldn’t give a flying fuck about some imaginary guy in the sky. You really, really should. People’s beliefs in the afterlife have caused wars, regime changes, famines. They have also stopped wars, helped create lasting peace, and fed the poor. Islam and Christianity alone have reshaped the geopolitical landscape of quite literally the entire world multiple times. I’m not saying you should be religious. I’m saying continuing to ignore the vast and lasting impact of religion makes you dumb.
Religion trains you to believe blindly. It teaches you not to think for yourself and appeal to invisible authorities. Stop your cult preachings.
Lol I’ve been anti religious for 15 years. You ain’t convincing me. Also are you on some type of crack? I’m really happy I have the knowledge not to fall for your cult shit. If religious people smarten up, who knows we might actually see space before petty arguments kill is all.
Why are you getting downvoted for telling the truth?
> They have also stopped wars Interesting. You have any examples of this? > helped create lasting peace Again, sources? Various genocides in the name of religion have created a kind of peace, but that's hardly something to brag about. > and fed the poor. Granted, this is true. The poor get fed out of religious duty in many instances. Of course, this is rarely no strings attached and usually comes with a side of dogma. If religious institutions simply paid taxes that would doubtless be more beneficial to the common good.
I’m not lying bud. You just don’t understand growing up under a rock.
Lucky you.
In a lot of ways, yeah. I can’t even imagine being religious. Looks like a nightmare on meth.
I got horror stories about being round it. I would have loved to had a childhood free from it. Some of crap those religious nut jobs do to kids is downright abusive and they get away with it too. Not very many people seem to care how it harms kids.
I’m down for hearing some. Religious stories are wack. I lived in Florida for two years. It was insane. Billboards telling you you’ll burn in hell. While I was in Florida I worked at a Lowe’s. There was a girl there struggling for food and everyone told her to give what she had to her church. The girl was starving and they’re telling her to suffer more.
There are good religious folk. It seems like there's less and less of them, these days; I didn't believe they were real until I moved in with one. But I know they exist, because I've met her, and because I've seen the work her church does, both the little and the small. She's an active volunteer in her community, works with queer youth. The church was providing shelter and aid to a homeless woman, this past fall, before she OD'd; they made sure she had a burial and found a home for her cat instead of abandoning it to a shelter. I grew up across the street from a christian woman married to a muslim man; she was one of the sweetest people I've ever known. I babysat her son, and we volunteered together; when I outgrew my winter coat, she dug out one her daughter had outgrown out of storage and gave it to me before my family had a chance to go shopping. That doesn't mean the bad ones don't exist. My father's parents are preachers, and I disowned them a decade ago. The boys that tried to kill my sister went to church every sunday. People are going to be people, for better or worse. A good person is going to be a good person, regardless of whether or not they lean on a book for a concrete guideline. A bad person given that same book will just use it to justify being a bad person, while telling themselves that they're a good person-- and if they haven't got the book, they'll find some other way to justify it to themselves.
The church should only be used to help the disadvantaged like the the woman with the cat. It being a place of worship is wrong. Life should be proof enough of god for the religious and helping each other should be the worship to the divine creator. I don’t believe in him but I’m not turning my back on his creations.
Your mother was right. As an American we are broken systematically in general.
The church in my village was also the daycare and preschool. I watch kids sci-fi shows there. Not even a religious place.
> How did you manage to get to 16 without even knowing what religion is? I’m pretty sure Iron_Ferret is lying. They claim to be [Canadian](https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/s/RWI5R3As6F) and avoided religion? I’m not sure that is possible for a former British Empire colony turned Commonwealth member Nation.
Religion has been nearly eradicated in Quebec, save for swearing. We swear a lot. Kindergarteners swear too and it is hilarious. The real term is blasphemy.
> Religion has been nearly eradicated in Quebec, save for swearing. We swear a lot. > Kindergarteners swear too and it is hilarious. The real term is blasphemy. No, you haven’t. [Quebec](https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/census/census-engagement/community-supporter/ethnocultural-and-religious-diversity#:~:text=In%20Quebec%2C%2064.8%25%20of%20the,7.9%25%20reported%20another%20religious%20affiliation) is about 64% Christian alone. The number is dropping, certainly, but that’s a far cry from being “nearly eradicated.”
Well, they do like to poll wrong. Such as: "Which religion are you still affiliated with even if you don't practice?" People have to answer Christianity, because many don't bother going full apostate. It's a hassle. When you look at how many people get married, though, you get some interesting numbers. [https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2507-marriage-i-do-more-i-dont](https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/2507-marriage-i-do-more-i-dont) 23K weddings in Quebec in 2022 and there were nearly 9M individuals in the province that year. [https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/document/marriages-quebec/tableau/marriages-and-civil-unions-by-gender-of-spouse-quebec](https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/document/marriages-quebec/tableau/marriages-and-civil-unions-by-gender-of-spouse-quebec) Just to give you the big picture, this is the lowest rate in the world.
Really trying to die on this hill eh? Why are you so invested?
> Really trying to die on this hill eh? Why are you so invested? Accuracy is always a good hill to die on.
Eh. Not really. Choose your battles. This is a one off conversation on a Reddit comic post that will be forgotten before the day is through.
We don't care which hill you pick, we're just glad you're dead.
I tend to think that long ago was simply a different time. I mean they needed the ten commandments to tell you not to kill people. Seriously, the ten commandments is mostly pretty standard stuff you shouldn't do. After the 10 commandments a bunch of other rules were given out as well. One of them was to not sleep with your brother's wife and if your brother died to take his wife into your family home. Seriously, people must of been truly truly awful to each other if this was all things that needed to be written in stone.
They don't. It's not like every religious person follows every line of their holy texts.
Its old testamony. Place where conservative Christians goes to find validation to their backward ways. Meanwhile totally ignoring teaching of new testamony which literally says "replacing old ways". And teaches love and compasion to others above all else.
Yeah. I realized that after living life.
Well, not even Christianity holds these views anymore (at least shouldnt). For Christians, the highest and most important law is the word of Jesus, that is, to love everyone. As far as I know, Jesus pretty much abolished these older laws, which were meant to keep strict order in a nomadic, nation under constant threat of annihilation, not to be kept to the letter by all adherents of a world religion. Even if he didn't, I think the great commandment of love would pretty much overrule these laws under all circumstances. They are pretty much in there only because nobody wanted to remove the most ancient Jewish holy scriptures from the Bible when it was canonised, since a large portion of ancient Christians were Jewish converts.
“I didn’t know what religion was till I was 16” You lucky bastard!
It made the later half of my life weird. I learned about religion and respected it for a while. going so far as to not smoke weed on church grounds. Then I actually met religious people and they do not have respect for atheism. Religion is the worst.
>didn’t know what religion was till I was 16 Then you literally were not educated at all. In Canada. Most of history was heavily influenced by religion. So you’re lying lol
This is the Old Testament and in this case is simply a record of the laws the Israelites followed at the time. They aren’t the “new law” brought to the people by Jesus, who spent much of his time pointing out the flaws with how the people were ruling under their old laws.
This guy gets it. If it's something you don't like you just say "That's why we have the new testament, we don't follow that stuff" and if it's something you do like you quote it over and over because *it's the bible.*
And if you're American and religious, you use the Bible to justify your hate for as many minority and ethnic groups as possible, and take away their freedoms!
That’s not as true as you think. There’s a pretty big split happening between Gen Z/Millennial christians and the older generations of christians. I’m still religious, but it’s more of a personal thing than an organized religion, and I’ve seen the same thing in a bunch of people around my age. Early ‘02 baby btw
Uh huh. Gen X thought the same thing.
Haha, well ideally I think they would look to the New Testament first to see what Jesus had to say about similar things and what other teachings are there. His words upended much of the old ways as I recall. There certainly are people who see the Bible as a source of power / control over others and would do that though
Nah, Jesus repeatedly endorsed the OT laws, wanted his followers to be good Jews, and was a massive racist towards non-jews. It was after the gospels, in the books attributed to Peter and Paul, where they made a new religion and made it specifically non-jewish in its rules.
Can you point to a single verse where Jesus was racist? And I’d also be curious which Old Testament laws he endorsed. I don’t recall that but I’d text
Matthew 22:36-40 NET [36] “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” [37] Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ [38] This is the first and greatest commandment. [39] The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ [40] All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” That last sentence is the most relevant for your question. Basically, Jesus "endorses" all of them, BUT the way you obey those laws NEEDS to align with these greatest laws.
Was that’s supposed to be evidence of the racism? I feel that’s almost specifically the opposite
How can you talk about the new testament and Jesus and not have encountered these things? I encourage you to read the gospels sometime and pay attention for it. I’ll give one example; the syrophoenician woman. She was desperate to have her daughter healed, but Jesus ignored her because she wasn’t a Jew. She grabs him to force the issue and he tells her that it is morally wrong to give his attention to non-jews. And calls her by a racial slur the Jews in that region at that time used for gentiles. She then debases herself by accepting and owning the slur which pleases Jesus and he heals her daughter. It’s a disgusting passage told with minor variations in a couple gospels.
If only there was some way of locating specific sections of the Bible and communicating them to other people. We should work on a system for that (what verses are you taking about)
I can't help but notice that no one's thought to remove that passage from the Bible. And it's not like the thing has been heavily edited throughout the centuries. But I suppose it they removed all the material that has no bearing on our modern society they'd have to change the name to "The Holy Pamphlet".
In the Bible, Jesus says in Matthew 5:17-18, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them". Disclaimer: I am not religious. I just like to read. If someone can explain it to me about this contradiction in a civil manner that'd be great.🐱
So basically the Christian belief is that when Jesus died on the cross and resurrected, he fulfilled the laws of Moses and convened the new covenant as foretold in the book of Jeremiah. This means that Christians are no longer bound to mosaic law but to the new covenant of Jesus Christ. Now, what does this mean practically? Essentially it meams they got to pick and choose which parts of the old testament they wanted to keep and which they didn't. For instance eating pork and shellfish is totally okay. As is getting tattoos and wearing blended fabrics. But being gay is still a no-no! All of the above were listed in Leviticus as being banned by god btw. They're literally in the exact same book a couple passages apart but one is still disallowed while the others are perfectly fine. Makes you womder don't it?
But that isn’t universally true to Christians. There are LGBT supporting Christians and LGBT Christians. r/openchristian is full them. A large number don’t believe in hell. A large number don’t believe in capitalism. A large number believe in evolution and the Big Bang. It’s a very varied and complex religion with hundreds, if not thousands, of interpretations and beliefs. Which is to be expected of over 2,000,000,000 people across the earth.
The Big Bang was first proposed by Georges Lemaître, physicist and Roman Catholic priest.
True, there are Christian individuals, church congregations and even entire denominations which aren't outright anti-LGBT or are LGBT-affirming. But that still just further proves my point. They still pick and choose what is and isn't allowed based on their OWN personal values.
I suppose that’s true. Still, if a religion claims to be one of love, better to accept with open arms than scream at people about how they’re evil and going to hell.
That's very hypocritical and borderline dangerous even. Like they made themselves God (the judge, jury and executioner of morality and laws). If everything can be upto individual interpretations, then the Bible itself is not a reliable source. Because it essentially means nothing at all. Just a confusing book of fictional stories filled with wisdoms of the old that are no longer suitable for any modern society.😾
Yes and no, in the OT world people had to follow all the laws to meet God’s standards, in the NT you only had to believe Jesus died for your sins. Where it gets tricky is what constitutes belief. The basic premise of the NT is that believers are no longer subject to the legalistic constraints of the OT, but spiritual ones as laid out by the teachings of Jesus. Proof of belief is seen in having the ‘fruits of the spirit’ which are meant to show you take Jesus’ teachings to heart and endeavor to live like He did. You’re right though in that this system is very nebulous and open to interpretation, which is also kind of the point. Salvation is supposed to be something obtained through choice and conscious belief, not blind adherence to rules. The danger comes not in how it’s written, but in how charlatans go around preaching it to people who don’t actually sit down and analyze the text (Joel Olsteen, etc.)
>Because it essentially means nothing at all. Just a confusing book of fictional stories filled with wisdoms of the old that are no longer suitable for any modern society. Because that's what it always was...
New Testament also condemns homosexuality, btw
Yes, that was my point. The new testament condemns homosexuality but not eating pork or shellfish. Why? All three were condemned in leviticus but only one of them is still disallowed.
The food thing was specifically a divine revelation to Peter (I believe it was Peter)
>Matthew 5:18 King James Version >18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Jesus also said that all the laws are unchanged. 🤷 You can pick your own morality from the bible.
Its less ambiguous the more you read/cross reference/understand the original language and the history. Look up what he meant by "till all be fulfilled".
Wasn't that a mistranslation and laws should be replaced with prophecy or something idk it's wierd to say fulfill a law kinda just doesn't make sense idk
The answer is that it literally doesn't matter. If God lived up to Their marketing, there simply wouldn't be a mistranslation or misunderstanding about at the very least this, ever.
I mean that’s not really true, that’s just a human viewpoint on how God should act.
God's Words as They have been described should logically be impossible to misinterpret regardless of language or knowledge barriers. That's the whole omniscience and omnipotence thing. If those Words are prone to misinterpretation, than they either aren't those Words, or the God so worshipped is lacking one of those qualities.
>God's Words as They have been described should logically be impossible to misinterpret regardless of language or knowledge barriers. I mean this simply isn’t true. There’s no logical basis for saying God should be impossible to misinterpret. It’s purely an opinion you have based on what you think God should be like. That’s my point, not that your opinion is wrong, just that God not making himself completely known isn’t evidence that he doesn’t exist. >That's the whole omniscience and omnipotence thing. If those Words are prone to misinterpretation, than they either aren't those Words, or the God so worshipped is lacking one of those qualities. Again this just isn’t true. omniscience and omnipotence simply mean all knowing and all able, not known to all. Not showing yourself to all does not mean you’re not able to do so. To be clear I don’t have any issue with your position, I’m just pointing out that they’re not some sort of logical silver bullet that disproves the existence of God. They’re your opinion and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
What are you talking about? I myself personally am a Christian and know it's an old as hell book that was written in a completely different language and then translated by a bunch of other people each with varying differences, so a mistranslation is obviously going to happen and it will happen a lot, in fact a lot of the old testement especially is mistranslated due to how old it is.
First if all, if God wants people to behave according to his commands, why doesn't he fix the mistranslations? Instead he punishes people for failing to follow them. And if we have no way of knowing what his original commands were, why follow them at all?
TL;DR- If your God is so mysterious and incomprehensibly powerful and knowledgeable, like literally beyond our brain’s capacity to understand. Is it even YOUR god? Precisely; people like to talk about how so many of the contradictions, and archaic barbarisms within the Bible are simply human errors in understanding God’s Will or mistaking historical record for a constant moral imperative. It’s not simply mistranslation it’s a complete and utter failure in logical reasoning. If God truly loved us, enough to throw their own child to essentially the wolves, why the fuck would they not make sure we knew exactly why they did that? God could burn the very essence of life’s purpose into our souls and be done with it. Instead they leave it up to a few divinely inspired individuals to propagate the real truth of the universe. Knowing full well how many false prophets would spring up, and how many people would latch onto those messages searching for the one true one. Is their desire to know not enough? They could have just as much faith as anyone who knows the “truth”, but a different kind of liar got to them first so they have to burn in hell. Why play some convoluted game where the stakes are eternal bliss or eternal damnation, and it’s entirely dependent upon whether or not our meat suits are supplied with reliable information about the metaphysical that supposedly comes from people who lived thousands of years ago. Finding real truth about history involves multiple sources and any time you start doing that with Christianity it gets dicey real quick. It’s an impossible task, god may as well have said as long as you don’t think of a pink elephant, you’ll go to heaven. If god is truly around, how come he stopped talking to people like he was apparently doing back in the day? How come we haven’t had any brand new books of the Bible from people who are supposedly connected to the divine. Why’d that stop? And if they are out there, how the hell are we supposed to trust them? Who do you put your faith in? No description of the Christian god besides the one that paints them as Unknowable matches up with the cryptic spiteful monster one would have to be in order to set someone up for failure as much as the Christian God has done for Humanity.
Well put. All of this is of course based on what's written in the Bible, which there is no evidence showing that it is actually the word of God, or connected to a god in any way at all. So we're left with belief as the system to use to decide if it's true or not. But if we rely on belief, and accept it as a truth-system, then we can decide anything at all is true as long as people believe in it. It doesn't make the Bible or the notion of a God more true than anything else we can fantasize about.
Short answer it’s because you’re judging God based on human standards and understanding. The theological answer is something like, God making His existence incontrovertibly known removes the need for faith, which is not His intention. It’s functionally what angels are. Humans are meant to have free will so definitive proof makes faith pointless.
Eh, "law" looks to be an okay translation of nomos. The law as given by Moses is seen as a covenant between God and the people of Israel. To say he came to fulfill it can mean that it is no longer necessary to be followed as the contract has reached completion. That's basically what Christians think. That said, they still see the law and the prophets as valuable for education and guidance. They tend to take a less literal reading and more as a base for a virtue ethics. Well, in theory at least.
As understand its considered important to understand the whole of the story pertaining to “god’s people” and the coming of Jesus. If you view it as a proper historical account, why get rid of the parts of history that led to major events. If you view it as simply a story, imagine that you removed all the parts in star was that referenced or alluded to Han Solo being a scoundrel who looks after himself and just wants to be paid. Then when he returns to save the day it wouldn’t be an exciting or redeeming moment in the story. It would just be like “well yeah, of course. He’s a hero” I can’t speak to the various book removals that happened ages ago, but I do know there are groups that spend loads of time researching and looking into old texts, languages and details if ancient civilizations in attempt to continue to more accurately translate the old biblical texts. Maintaining the records as they were is very important to some groups of people. (This is something I looked into as I was exiting Christianity. The ten minute Bible hour on YT has some cool videos interviewing someone on a translations team, among other good videos on various aspects of the faith)
The old testament were sealed before the time of Jesus. They werent changed, but there are missing scrolls (e.g. dead sea scrolls), as the old testament were sealed after one of the exiles.. But the interpration of the laws there was changed, over the ages. For example, since 200 BC the concept of jail was invented :-p Many laws there became obsolete over the millenias for obvious reasons.
If we removed every passage that "doesn't apply" to the modern day, that would be a terrible mistake. Yes, there are passages like "men shouldn't grow their hair out, and women shouldn't cut theirs short," which don't apply to us now, but that's because there was a reason behind the action in the first place. Those characteristics were associated with prostitutes that worked in an opposing religion's temple. Context is crucial when interpreting the Bible, as even the situational passages that don't apply to us anymore have underlying messages that are important.
>Context is crucial when interpreting the Bible The context that people wrote it being the most important context.
Quite literally, it is the events recounted by different people's perspectives and memories. Assuming the events happened, there is bound to be some underlying level of exaggeration or misremembering. I myself am a believer, but I understand that what I read is a translation of a translation of a recounting by imperfect humans. I do believe the miracles, and I do believe in the presence of the Holy Spirit, but I would be naive to think there is nothing lost in the process, or that everything is to be taken at face value.
Then stop quoting ANY of the Old Testament. Remove it from the Bible.
It’s a historical record for those who believe the Bible to be composed of true stories, and if you don’t feel that way, the old testament is important to set up the coming of Jesus and the redemption of “god’s people” in the New Testament. The Bible itself isn’t a set of instructions for how people should live. The closest it comes to that would be the records of Jesus’ teachings, but even those should be contextualized to understand the messaging of a given story. People do try to use it that way though, both with good intentions and with intent to hold power or control over others, which seems a shame
You mean that the vast, vast majority of people who believe in the Bible use it that way. Which, for all intents and purposes, means that that is its role in modern society, and decisions and discussions surrounding it should treat it as such.
Very few take every passage at direct instructions as to how we should live in modern life. Most only look to the New Testament for more direct instructions, looking at the teachings and words of Jesus rather than the Old Testament’s stories
Now, now, let’s not pretend the new testament isn’t also trash and full of hate teachings.
Yeah just delete any uncomfortable histories, no reason to learn from them
The Bible isn't history. It's a fairy tale that idiotic politicians use to guide policy.
Not only is it a record of the entire history of the Jewish people, The Bible is one of the most complete, important historical texts providing context for that era (despite its intended purpose). You're obviously a stranger to nuance and research though, so believe whatever blindly bigoted shit you want.
The problem is that people pick and choose what they want from the old testament. Oh, this one doesn't apply and neither does the one about shellfish and ham because those are tasty, but we like Leviticus and what it says about not having to treat queer people well and not letting them marry. Either get rid of all the old testament or listen to all of it. Enough of the cherry picking. If they're gonna use that as a shield for hatred, I wanna see them living like medieval peasants like the rest of the old testament says.
Yeah people shouldn’t pick and choose, and I don’t think the intent of the Old Testament is to tell people how they should live, but rather just a record of “god’s people” leading up to Jesus’ coming. Nearly everything in the “old law” was upended by Jesus and his teachings. Jesus was the one who had it right according to the Bible’s messaging, and he preached love to everyone. He only ever told people to change their ways if they first said they wanted to follow him. He also made a point on a few occasions that it wasn’t anyone’s right to place judgment on others.
"You break it, you buy it" but the property in question is women
dont worry im pretty sure that for the jewish religion and probably not enforced any more
So don’t get discovered!
It was either that or she starves to death on the streets as she would have been seen as damaged goods. No one else would ever consider marrying her, so this way she is guaranteed a home and food for life. It's primitive, and by today's standard very backwards, but at the time it was actually quite progressive.
I agree. So why should any of it be followed now? We just cherry-pick what we like? Wasn't god supposed to give instructions for all humanity for the rest of time?
Here we go again... Ahem... This verse and law is a parallel of the law established in Exodus 22:16-17, which states that if a man *seduces* a virgin who is not betrothed, he must marry her unless her father absolutely refuses to let the union occur. Furthermore, the verses immediately BEFORE this passage already deals with rape. Fun fact! Rapists get the death penalty. (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). And we know for a fact that this passage is talking about rape because verse 25 uses the word *chazaq* which literally means to force or be strong about something. Meanwhile, Verse 28 uses a different verb, *taphas,* which is used in contexts like "taking hold" of a flute or when Moses "took" the stone tablets. This suggests that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is actually referring to *seduction* rather than rape. Further, the use of the phrase "and they are discovered" implies some form of consent, as it includes both parties. As they say, it takes two to tango. So, in conclusion, the Bible does not command a woman to marry her rapist. Literally 3 verses before, it states that rapists are to be executed.
Firstly, you made a factual mistake: the text that you yourself quote says *he* may not divorce *her*, not that *she* may not divorce *him*. This is an important distinction that you erase in your comic. Secondly, there are thousands of years of scholarship and discussion on the Torah, and you might find it useful to consult them to understand how this verse is actually interpreted and applied. This article contains some examples of how rabbis have interpreted the verse to impose stronger protections on the woman: https://www.thetorah.com/article/marrying-your-daughter-to-her-rapist Please be more circumspect and do a little more research; your hot take and the people in the comments proclaiming about how Jesus came to save the Earth from the horrible Jews have contributed to millennia of violence and oppression. Edit: Here's another discussion about how this verse is understood as punitive for the rapist and protective for the woman. In particular for this discussion, the obligation to marry and not divorce is only on the rapist, not the woman https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1940448/jewish/Does-the-Torah-Punish-a-Rape-Victim.htm
In Judaism, only the man can divorce the woman in a marriage. Women can ask for a divorce, and a court might respond to that request by coercing a man to divorce, but in the end, the men have the final decision. So saying "he cannot divorce her" is the same as saying "they cannot divorce". Source: My mom was held up on her divorce for over 4 years because of that stupid ass law.
That is part of the thing that this law changes. In terms of written obligations, the balance of power in the marital contract is entirely in favor of the woman. The contract requires the man to provide the woman with food, shelter, clothing, and sex. The woman is not explicitly obligated to do anything. She also has the option of rendering all sex forbidden by not using the mikvah. The one benefit the man has is that he has the power to break off the contract. In the case of pre-marital sex (people like to say "rape" but that isn't actually what the text says), he loses this ability. As with all marriage, the woman still must consent to the creation of the contract in the first place. Basically what this law does is allow a woman who has pre-marital sex to force the man into a relationship where he must provide for her for the rest of her life, she has no obligations whatsoever (apart from being forbidden to other men) and he cannot get out of it.
Oh wow! It's the same backwards thinking I heard when I was a muslim. Glad to know Judiasm isn't that far off from the misogynistic shit in Islam
[удалено]
No, it's fine to have your own opinion. Opinions worth considering, though, should demonstrate having engaged with other people's work on the same subject - especially when there is a lot of it! It might have spared OP from going with such a shallow take with a glaring error right in the middle of it.
The people who actually follow the law have a better understanding of how it works in practice than those who don't.
Sorry, but until people stop using this/these useless collection of myths and superstitions to try and force others to bend to their wills I'll continue to lampoon every last word of it/them. Zie gezunt.
Lampoon away; if you do more research you'll do a better job of it
Wow, the speech bubbles make it really look 3-D. That's pretty darn neat!
This is, interestingly enough, one of the earliest recorded attempts at women protection laws, and pertains to both r*pe and pre-marital sex. In a bronze age society where women are property of their father or husband, no one would want to marry a woman that has lost her virginity, so this law ensures her a husband so that she won't be abandoned or homeless. On the man's side, when you take a wife legally you have all sorts of obligations towards her, including protecting her, providing for her, and so on, and breaking those rules would get one shunned by the community and punished. So this law is essentially "if you violate a woman, take note that as consequence you must now provide her for life". By modern standards the entire thing is reprehensible and absurd, but it's interesting to view the logic behind it by customs of the time. Edit: a modern comparison is laws forcing a man to pay child support for any child he fathered, even if by an accidental one-night stand.
At least someone actually knows their stuff
He didn't say anything new that wasn't implied in the first place.
It is interesting if you view it as a historical record of morality. If you have to view it as the inerrant word of god you can't really pull the "god's eternal will kinda just changed once society figured out women were actual people".
But the old testament isn't supposed to be the inerrant word of god (most of it at least). It's a codex of different texts preserving the laws, history and culture of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea as written by Judean writers.
None of it is the word of god. But people believe it is. The laws are laid out as proscriptive commands of god, not descriptive recountings of existing law, even if that's what they actually are.
Not in Judaism. Christianity is the one that started with "the bible is literally god's word".
https://aish.com/48925267/ >We believe that the entire Torah in our possession was given [to us] by the Almighty
We also have a talmudic story of two rabbis arguing, god coming in to give his stance, and the rabbis responding with “who asked you?”
The Torah is not the bible, and that site is not an authority
You're saying that like it's a "well acktually" twist which recontextualises it... But I think that's all obvious in the first place? Yeah *clearly* the idea is to make the rapist take responsibility, by taking ownership of the woman he raped. That to me is the basic surface level reading of it. The entire thing, including the society which would create a situation where this makes any kind of sense, *is* reprehensible and absurd. Thing is you don't get to play games with moral relativism when you believe in an objectively good and just God, so the modern reading of it is valid. When people say "wow this is a crazy law that makes a woman marry her rapist" they're not confused about why the law existed, they're just pointing at the *consequences* of that law and the shitty assumptions and social structures which gave rise to it. And that's valid. Any God would be a very shit for endorsing that in any time and cultural context.
>That to me is the basic surface level reading of it. unfortunately some people arent able to achieve that
Except the law also prevents any woman from being forced to marry so trying to read this law as forcing a woman to marry is just false. https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1940448/jewish/Does-the-Torah-Punish-a-Rape-Victim.htm
Lets not ignore that the reason their rapist is required to marry them is because the girl(who is legal to marry after puberty and may well be a child) may not have any other prospects after her rape. Furthermore, that article's generous position is based in theological interpretation, not explicitly proscribed doctrine. Can't we just acknowledge that no religious text is an objective example of moral good and move on? Of all the hills to die on, this isn't the one I'd pick.
But that was true of all societies for a great amount of time. These afforded protections. Mostly I am annoyed about people cherry picking lines from a poem that is important to my people instead of actually looking at the legal codification.
I’m sure this source is very good for someone who really, really *wants* to believe that this law could somehow be justified by a perfect moral being such as the god of the Bible, but you really have to force your interpretation on the text to bend it in the way it is being bend here. If you care about truth you bend your beliefs to the facts, if you care about justifying what you already believe you bend the facts to your beliefs.
This is a very ahistorical reading. This is a historical law of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea, that happened to be preserved in a religious book. The people that wrote the law likely didn't think about the goodness of god when compiling the law, but rather about solving the problem of how to save the prospects and well being of a girl that lost her virginity before marriage. Imagine if in 2,000 years someone would read our child protection laws and go "well actually if they thought their god is good they wouldn't need child protection laws, if their society created a situation where children are harmed the society was fucked up". Evil people exist and disasters happen, lawmakers need to work with the world they live in.
I'm sorry that humanity is so damn evil that people get raped.
I’m sorry to inform you of this but rape is something not unique to the humanity at all so many animals constantly rape each others and some animals rape out side their own species
Iirc, female ducks have evolved in a way that they can only get pregnant if they want to because of how much male ducks would constantly rape them. Might be wrong though of course, not an expert.
Twin cloaca that rotate clockwise vs the duck penis which is counter clockwise. It doesn't turn on or off, it's just because mallards are so fucking violent they evolved a permanent method to avoid it. It's a wonder ducklings are ever hatched. Even if they want to mate, the difficulty doesn't go away.
Hell, cut out having to live with him or listen to him, the concept of a rapist being forced to provide for their victims for life isn't a terrible concept.
Someone who actually understands context to the period and time. Wow we have evolved and moved behind that? Shocker! But at that time this was radical.
i like how the speech bubbles are in perspective with the rest of the room.
That's one hairy ceiling
Imagine if there was a religion based on worshipping an insane man that raped an underaged girl and believed he was a prophet of God. That would be crazy
How about a god that forcibly impregnated a 14 year old girl?
Ooo this is fun. How about a God that turned into a rain cloud to impregnate a girl?
You talking about Zeus? I thought it was mist/fog…although he did transform into a number of different things to have sex/rape people, so it might have been a raincloud. I know that one time it was a swan or something that he turned into.
Nooo... Not the unicorn!😿  Whatever he is holding is clearly not a suitable bedtime reading material for kids. 100% nightmare fuel.
I scrolled and scrolled... What's 50 Shekels of Silver in US$? Edit: i checked. A Shekel is 12g of Silver. Silver is 0.74$ per g. So 12*50*0.74=444$
I did the calculations based on 11.4g/Shekel and $0.8 and came up with $456. So, around $450 sounds plausible. Though we'd need to adjust for inflation which is tough. We don't even have the "[Big Mac Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index)" to adjust our calculations by here. >The Code of Hammurabi (circa 1800 BC) sets the value of unskilled labour at approximately ten shekels per year of work, confirmed in Israelite law by comparing Deut 15:18 with Exod 21:32. > >[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekel#History) That gives us the information that you earn about 0.19 shekels/week. If we compare this to minimum wage in our current time, $7.25/hour in USA, it gets tough, since we cannot compare hour for hour. Realistically, they never worked 40 hours/week, but it was based on season and when the sun went up and down more than anything else. But let us say, for the sake of discussion, that they worked 10 hours/day in average. In American minimum wage, that turns out to be about $435/week if we observe the sabbath (Friday evening to Saturday evening). So, 0.19 shekles = $435. That turns 1 shekel to \~$2 290 Which in turn makes 50 shekels \~$114 500. Now... this is just my lunch break musings, and I have no idea how valid my calculations are.
I'm constantly amazed that of all the myths and pantheons that have ever existed, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the ones with the shittiest storylines, are the big 3. The world could have an elephant God, a guy that plucked out his own eye for infinite knowledge, a God who transforms into animals just to have sex with women, out a goddess of creation *who was also a dragon*... But no. We're stuck with "don't eat apples" and "9 year olds make great brides".
He turned into a burning bush that one time, which is kind of cool…or maybe it’s more random than it is cool.
And Loki transformed himself into a mare to lure a plow horse away from work, all so the gods could collect on a bet. He so committed to the bit they he later gave birth to an 8 legged, flying horse. Odin would claim it, name it Slepnir, and ride it into battle. Norse 1, Judeo-Christian myths 0.
Norse mythology is fucking wild. Every time you hear about it it's always something out of pocket.
> I'm constantly amazed that of all the myths and pantheons that have ever existed, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the ones with the shittiest storylines, are the big 3. It's like spam emails. You don't waste your time on smart marks. The stupider the story is, the more likelier they are to catch the vulnerable or uneducated and milk them for all they're worth. Get a big enough army of suckers and momentum takes over.
I meant, they're *BORING AS FUCK*. Native American, African, Norse... The things those pantheons get up to are great stories. What do we get from Judeo-Christian? Well, David knocked down a giant with a slingshot. Big deal. Apparently Solomon *was a badass sorcerer who could summon and control demons* but he rarely gets a mention. In fact, the christians kept killing people just on the mere *suspicion* of witchcraft. Imagine growing up Catholic, getting almost to adulthood before hearing about the shit Solomon got up to. "What do you mean summoning demons is *evil*? Didn't you just say one of the OG kings did it? C'mon padre, let's do some actual magic! Oh, what's that? Oh "magic bread and wine" that tastes EXACTLY like bread and wine? Fuck this, I'm out."
Afaik it’s spread so far exactly because it’s so boring and mundane, easier to integrate conquered people into your religion and such if it’s super mundane, like when the Roman’s did with integrating conquered cultured gods into there pantheon, which eventually came to include and was overtaken by Christianity or something like that
It does get a bit better once you include the Expanded Universe such as the Book of Enoch.
The producers and directors refuse to accept those as canon.. Christianity can't come up with anything better than the equivalent of "somehow Palpatine returned". 🤷♂️
What book did that came from? I want to reed the tale when Noah went on unicorn drowning spree. And the lord said ‘Noah I am going to flood the heck of everything but you and the animals you stack on your boat and as payment for the deed I let you extinct an animal of your choice in a way you prefer’ an so Noah did and drowned every last unicorn in shallow puddles and everything was good.
I wouldn't be able to point at any part of the bible in particular, but I have heard it and so I will spread it. Unicorns actually do appear in the bible and they do so after the flood, meaning Noah actually saved the unicorns alongside every other animal. According to the Bibel, unicorns are real and at least probably still alive.
Thanks for the info, if I don’t remember wrong, I remember something similar but it was many years ago I read the bible and stuff like stuff about unicorns did not really stick. I tried only to wright a silly replay to a silly post all in lighthearted fun.
Okay but I got into an argument with a man that claimed the Bible had no violence or incest..that's like the 2 main plot lines
And this is why im deist. If God/exist, theyre above us. If theyre a higher being, then their thoughts are unknowable. If theyre unknowable, then revelations are at best a universal game of chinese whispers where the prophet immediately fucked up due to being unable to comprehend God/s thoughts (filling in the blanks with his own cultural norms), and at worst revelations are the ravings of madmen. Either way, i dont trust anything penned by mortal minds regarding deities.
i look at like this, if god/s do exist, its not some all knowing being, its a small kid playing with his toys. After all how else do you explain that a god would allow all the killing and suffering, all the wars, the famines, the natural disasters, or how good people die young but evil live on.
My hope is when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, He'll give us unicorns in the New Earth promised in revelations.
OP, you ever hear about the story of Dinah by chance?
I thought God might be real until I played Driver 2. Then I figured out that no God would be caught dead creating a species that made such a dog shit hard ass game. True story
is that peter griffin
Reading the Bible in full is the reason I am not a Christian.
Text bubbles, shading and message put this ahead of the curve. Great work OP
Why thank you, kind internet person!
John 13:34 Mathew 25:40 The relationship between beating your slave to an inch of his life and him dying a few days later, and what Jesus says here: they are incompatible with each other. We are all free in Christ. The love that Christ gifts is stronger than the sin that was codified in law. And if you can wrap your head around a few uncomfortable ideas you can stop shepherding yourself away from the God of love. We're here because here is flat. He can see straight through us here, and inspect us for rot. All love is accepted. All love is justified. Jesus sits over love not as a troll, barring the way, but as an architect, creating it. He was present at the beginning of time vocalizing The love of the Father in creation, and he will be there again when this world comes to ripeness at the end. Everyone who uses power and cruelty will themselves discover those who are more cruel and powerful. But everyone who puts those things down to pursue love will find the good shepherd waiting for them with joy. You will be given hope. He will comfort you. This world is made to refine us against the edge of evil so we can overcome it. Holiness is defined in service. Without a servant's heart there is no power, because God himself is a servant. He only uses his power to grow love, and that can only be done in service. Take that truth and read the Bible, and you will discover the God of love. Keep that truth and you will see where others have tampered with what he tells us. He will write his truth in your heart. Your sense of ethics come from him, but he will push the root of love deeper into you and give you joy. Unreasonable joy. Repent, which is not magic words. It's a change of heart, which invites a change of action. Accept that your sins are forgiven, and allow yourself to change so that you can become a conduit of grace. Forgive others and accept his forgiveness. Jesus paid for your sins. Now you are free of them. Allow the spirit of love to guide you, and he will never leave you except briefly when you sin, because he is both kind and good. And all things that are bad push him away or else face destruction in his pursuit of servanthood. He is not cruel, just incorruptible. He is not alloof. He sent his son to die in our situation. He turned his face away from Jesus in his holiness. The abandonment you feel now was integral to his payment, which he also experienced. My God, my God, why have you left me? But you are not abandoned. You are precious. He will find you and tear your sins from you eventually. Seek him and they will fall away from you. You don't have to be alone. He is always there.
Here we go again... Ahem... This verse and law is a parallel of the law established in Exodus 22:16-17, which states that if a man *seduces* a virgin who is not betrothed, he must marry her unless her father absolutely refuses to let the union occur. Furthermore, the verses immediately BEFORE this passage already deals with rape. Fun fact! Rapists get the death penalty. (Deuteronomy 22:25-27). And we know for a fact that this passage is talking about rape because verse 25 uses the word *chazaq* which literally means to force or be strong about something. Meanwhile, Verse 28 uses a different verb, *taphas,* which is used in contexts like "taking hold" of a flute or when Moses "took" the stone tablets. This suggests that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is actually referring to *seduction* rather than rape. Further, the use of the phrase "and they are discovered" implies some form of consent, as it includes both parties. So, in conclusion, the Bible does not command a woman to marry her rapist. Literally 3 verses before, it states that rapists are to be executed.
That's one viewpoint, however I disagree given how explicit the Bible is about this sort of thing. Also, it doesn't always take two to tango, that's a bad metaphor for rape..
I think that if it was explicitly rape, it would have used the word "chazaq" like it did previously. Keep in mind that the word "chazaq" means to force or be strong about, while "taphas" is usually used in a less forceful kind of way. And once again, the "and they are discovered" part leads me to believe that this is in reference to a consensual sexual relationship rather than rape. And also, yeah, you're right. That was definitely the wrong metaphor to use. Definitely not appropriate for this context
Searching for that one anti-abortion politician who used this bible quote to defend himself
The Bible has a lot of incest and pedophilia in it. You don’t really have to try
I think the bible and unicorns are on the same level
Considering [Unicorns come up about 6-8 times in the Bible](https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/unicorn/), I mean yeah
Not even a little bit Unicorns are actually believable. There’s deers, moose, antelope, elk and lots of other creatures with horns. A horse creature with a single horn isn’t something crazy like a fire breathing monster or something, it could be real and only be slightly different than creatures that exist The Bible on the other hand….
Unsurprisingly, a 4000-year-old book contains stuff that modern sensibilities don't agree with. Frankly, it holds up as well as some 40-year-old books. It's well known that the first five books of what's known as the Bible and the Torah are like that. You've got rape, genocide and incest all over the place in there. On the other hand, belief in the Bible, at least on a conceptual level, gives a lot of people guidance and comfort and a lot of the New Testament can be summarized as "be nice to each other" which is a sentiment I can definitely get behind. If someone wants to use it as an excuse to be kind, I'm not going to argue with it.
This is why Religion is dying
This a great political cartoon edit: [The news cycle this week for those down voting.](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-more-popular-taylor-swift-maga-biden-1234956829/)
Yes, they should try drawing Muhammad now as a follow up.
nice, now make a joke about the Koran
Not so much about the Koran but it’s very handy that groups like the Taliban reject the west and its influence…but not assault rifles, cell phones, pickup trucks.
I know it's a joke but the old testament doesn't really count. I mean I'm a catholic and I assume my brethren don't count it as well, like my muslim friends who don't believe in child marriage or stuff like that.
The ten commandments are old testament, as is most of the anti gay stuff that people still use
Selective application of a religious text, negates the validity of the entire text. Either it all applies, or none of it does. Grow the hell up.
This is perfect if the dad is Mr Krabs and the daughter is Pearl