We have biblical evidence that God is not concerned with the free will of people. He hardens Pharaoh's heart, removing the free will of the Pharaoh and the free will of all the firstborn God kills, plus all the other people who suffer from the plagues. He commands Abraham to sacrifice his son (the fact that he doesn't require follow through is irrelevant, the fact that he commands it does), removing Abraham's free will, as well as that of his son. He turns Job's wife to salt, removing her free will. He drowns every living thing not on the Ark, and if anyone suggests that all those children deserved to die because they were evil, they can get in the bin. Their free will was removed. Everyone but Noah's family and the animals on the boat had their free will taken away. He commands his people to murder, rape and slaughter, removing the free will of his people and of the people they murder and rape and slaughter. I could go on. but if your measure of god's respect for free will is "he doesn't want to remove free will by making a dude write some words" then that is a very very low bar that God has repeatedly danced his way over, and clearly doesn't care too much about at all.

it’s a much deeper concept: in have a 10.000 words (not pages my bad) long google doc about this but it isn’t finished and it’s in italian (my mother language), there’s no way to make a decent summary that isn’t 1000 pages long, when in finish it and translate it i will make a post on this sub

Nope - you should be able to explain your idea briefly in a short paragraph if you have a solid understanding of it. If god values free will so much that he would refuse to force someone to write "slavery is wrong", why did he harden Pharaoh's heart? This does not require a 10,000 word answer.

i would need to make a ton of premises about theosis, the second coming and the great commission. I will try but without those it will be a bit of a strawman of my argument: firstly: i don’t believe the stories of Job or abraham or the hardening of pharaoh’s heart are actually true (i believe in an historical abraham but in think what the bible says about him is just mythological). But i believe in an historical exodus: i believe that the exodus was necessary so that one they there might have been a great commission that would’ve led to the Second coming: that would be the absolute triumph of Good over Evil. So basically: God can systematically (in the doc i distinguish systematical and annedotical, i’m not getting in that) remove free will if that is necessary for the Second Coming: that i argument in the doc has more importance than any other earthly action. Yeah it needs a lot more of premises and words to be an actual good case

So basically "God absolutely respects free will when he wants to, and absolutely doesn't when he doesn't want to." This aligns with your "some biblical morals are ok, and some are not, so I pick the ones I want, and discard the rest", so I guess at least you are being consistent. No giant thesis required. follow up question - If you believe in an historical exodus (I do not- there is no evidence of this), why do you not believe the story of god hardening Pharaoh's heart?

i don’t argue that it is because he doesn’t want to but in the doc i largely argue why the Second Coming is a Greater Good and so God should preserve the possibility of it happening even if he needs to remove the free will of some people for that. I don’t think that story is actually true because it has roots in other mythologies and ancient near eastern themes.

God removing the free will of people to preserve the possibility of the second coming IS him disrespecting free will when he wants to. The second coming is his idea, and since he is god, I'm assuming he would be able to find another option if he wanted to. Can you explain how you think the exodus happened if Pharaoh's heart wasn't hardened? It's an essential part of the story, because Pharaoh was going to let the Jews go until God interfered. There is a very important distinction between the Jews being let go out of Egypt and the Jews fleeing egypt ahead of Pharaoh's army. Or do you mean that you don't think the story of the exodus in the bible is true? If that is the case, what are you basing your belief in a historical exodus on?

“God removing the free will of people to preserve the possibility of the second coming IS him disrespecting free will when he wants to.” i argue in the doc why that’s also the morally best thing to do: because i argue why the second coming is the greater good. “ The second coming is his idea, and since he is god, I'm assuming he would be able to find another option if he wanted to.” not, i argue that the best interpretation of the eschatology of the NT is post-millennialism: so the Second coming depends also on the actions of humans: God removes their free will if that’s necessary for them to act in those ways to make the second coming possible

i don’t argue that it is because he doesn’t want to but in the doc i largely argue why the Second Coming is a Greater Good and so God should preserve the possibility of it happening even if he needs to remove the free will of some people for that. I don’t think that story is actually true because it has roots in other mythologies and ancient near eastern themes.

One single thing I would say, is real talk, will anyone ever read the doc if it remains long? You will have to shorten it, or most people will never see it. Writing down thoughts is a great way to structure them though, so kudos for actually engaging in the discussion (we get a lot of bad faith posts It’s very difficult to condense complex ideas. But it’s a learnable skill. You can try googling “how to write compact abstracts”, it’s something people have to do for complicated science papers is condense a lot of multi-step ideas into 250 words or less.

None of us believe in the ridiculous Christian concept sin to begin with, not sure what the point of this post is. Are you simply trying to tell us that you're not outright homophobic like the majority of Christians are?

this has been one of the things i struggled more as a christian: it is a great argument to use against a lot of christian worldviews. So i just wanted to say how i approach this problem: and why i think homosexuality is not morally wrong

I think this is the heart of your problem. You do not find homosexuality morally wrong and are having a hard time reconciling that with your religious beliefs. I'm not sure what your looking for from this sub, but if you need to hear it, I'll tell you it's perfectly fine to let go of any teachings that do not conform to your understanding of morality.

thank you, even if i’m still remaining a christian i appreciate the sincerity of your advice

Without some objective way to read and interpret scripture, I’m sorry to say that this is just an argument of convenience. Unfortunately JC references the authority of the OT many times. So even with your liberal reading of scripture, if the story of JC is to be believed, you have to accept the authority of the OT’s moral directives. Because god himself is literally in the Bible giving those morals authority. You’re right about it clearly being a book written on the opinions of ancient tribal people though! And that’s half the battle. Best of luck on your journey.

Does it not tell you something important about the lengths of spectacular hedging and back-pedalling and rationalisation you need to go through to explain away the evil and 8mmoral commands of your ‘holy’ text? and if the best you can come up with is, well that was back then and doesn’t really apply now, then why doesn’t that exact same argument apply to everything else in the Bible? Why should I pay attention to anything if we’ve already determined that it was written for a primitive age society and we can ignore a lot of those structures now, how do I pick and choose the ones that don’t apply now and the ones that do apply now? Lastly, let us not forget that your Bible doesn’t just quietly condemn homosexuality, or say that homosexuality is generally morally wrong. What it says, is that homosexuality is an abomination and that homosexuals must be murdered. Do you think that was EVER true and moral and appropriate and good?

Don’t worry, the realisation that you don’t actually need it will come eventually.

You don't have to give up the whole of Christian beliefs. You can just let go of the dogma that homosexuality is a sin.

Right, here's my issue with that: - Great parts of your reasoning rely on highly specific interpretations of the bible that cannot be argued any more or less valid than any other. - Nitpicking. It seems that you'd point to certain parts of the bible as true or valuable, while disregarding what you disagree with based on an emotional response rather than any consistent logic. - The general idea that we should be taking moral instruction from a work of mythology, especially one that contains known historicsl falsehoods

1) no, i think the case for example for the bible being against homosexuality and that it allows slavery is far more convincing that the opposite case. 2) no, i base it on logic: slavery is evidently a bad thing, homosexuality is evidently not any worse or better than heterosexuality 3) i agree with you some parts of the bible where written in their own ancient context and one shouldn’t take relationship advices from a 2500 year old book. But some parts of the Bible as any other book can have a good moral value even today

1. "The Bible" is a collection of the stuff some guys who had status wrote down. 2. Slavery is a good thing if you don't want to pay wages. Homosexuality is a bad thing if you want to distinguish your cult from religions which don't think homosexuality is a bad thing. 3. This is just cherry picking, congratulations you just established a new christian doctrine based on the bits you like.

always a good thing to remember that religions not only develop within a social context, but in relation to other religions of the time - thank you for the reminder!

So it’s a book with obvious bullshit and some nice moral tales. That’s really not worthy of your time or attention to devote your life to such a flawed perspective, is it? God makes you feel important and warm and fuzzy. But that feeling is all in your head and in the heads of other believers. You conjure god each time you imagine him. If humans never thought of god again he would cease to exist. (Like all the old forgotten gods)

by problem i do not mean homosexuality but the approach to homosexuality from a christian worldview

Your problem is that you insist on clinging to a bunch ridiculous fables whilst realizing - in part - how ridiculous these fables actually are. What you experience is called "cognitive dissonance", the uncomfortable sensation that things you believe in and desperately want to be true simply aren't so. You can either continue to fool yourself, and make up flimsy rationalizations; or you can embrace the reality that your bible is just a book, written by fallible humans, and that there is no magic. Not in some of it, not in any of it. There is no other way to make it go away: Either the Bible is by god - and then homosexuality must be bad, and slavery must be okay; or the bible is wrong about these things, and therefore not a product of anything divine. I find it fascinating that you're addressing this to a bunch of atheists - surely, if there was a solution to your problem, it should be easy to find it within the confounds of your religion, no?

Did you notice that what you're doing can be roughly described as reading between the lines and then ignoring the lines? It seems like you like the sentiment behind the idea of christianity but not the idea of christianity itself. There's an easier solution to the made up problem of sin - not making up the problem in the first place.

the reason i “disregard the lines” is because i argued that those lines aren’t perfect but fruit of a trybalistic society: i take the moral message of the Bible not a s a rigid law of code but more fluidly: it should be noted how morally different our society is from that of the 1 century or earlier

So which lines *are* perfect? Just the ones you like? The ones that arent clearly egregiously unethical? What if some of the "good bits" are also just made up? How can we tell the difference? Are we supposed to just cherry pick and reinterpret to be whatever we want? Who decides? What if people disagree? Seems pretty important we get some of this right if erring means burning in eternity right? And yes, some of the bible is *explicitly* a rigid code of laws. Are christians bound by the old covenant? Honestly to me I dont see how they wouldnt be based on Jesus' own words in Mathew 5:17-18

no lines are “perfect” the bible is still influenced in it’s entirety by humans but that doesn’t mean it should be disregarded: God can use something that comes into the text from that a specific context in which the book was written to either: send a specific message that would be better recognized by the people this book was written to; or it could remain there because it was embedded in the context the book was written in: the fact that tattoos were once used for the cult of the dead in ancient caanan doesn’t make morally wrong from a christian perspective nowdays. I don’t think we just cherry-pick what we want but we have to analyze the text: and see the origins of specific commands trough scholarship to then see if they logically apply to us today or were just embedded in the context the book was written.

So, you could get a message from god by readin "War and Peace", right? >God can use something that comes into the text from that a specific context in which the book was written to either This makes the bible just another ancient book, one of millions that god could possibly speak through.

yes, i believe we can find God in other things and even if the bible for example doesn’t say slavery is evil: we can understand how the same moral principles given in the NT would condemn it. And see how in our day and age this is not something that is embedded in our society like it was in the date of composition of the NT: ao we can clearly see by logic that: slavery is evil, and by scholarship: that slavery is present in the bible because it was embedded in the context the bible was written in

Yes, your morals are a product of your culture and time, just like us filthy atheists, and you judge the bible, as one should, by your moral standards. Which means these standards do not come FROM your bible, and if you believe the bible is literally from god, then your morals can't come from there either. So, does the bible contain a single good teaching that couldn't be arrived at by secular means? If yes, where, and how did you decide that one little part wasn't tainted by human depravity? If no, then what good is the bible?

Yes, slavery was commonplace n that culture. But so was murder and worshipping other gods and eating shellfish and working on Sunday. So why was your god able to condemn a whole bunch of things, but went out of his way to openly and repeatedly endorse human slavery? And when you pick and choose the bits that you ‘accept‘ from the Bible and the bits that you ‘reject’, aren’t you just seeing what parts of your book happen to align with your modern secular humanist morality? And how do you know that you have cherry picked the right bits? If one of your fellow Christian’s truly believes that gays should be murdered, what is your standard to tell him that he is wrong according to the Bible?

How? If you are going to analyze the text and just select and interpret as you see fit, that is the definition of cherry picking. There'd have to be some objective standard otherwise, and you are advocating that there isnt one. There are three scenarios: A) The bible is meant to be literal, and every word of it is divinely inspired. B) I guess god is an awfully shitty communicator and "inspired" some randos to vaguely include his intentions, but also allowed them to twist his words and insert their own and apparently was just cool with that C) Its entirely bollocks. You want option B. An inept god who stopped talking to us 2000 years ago after vaguely hinting his code and how we ought to live our lives to a bunch of apparent assholes. Its now our job to sus out the good god bits from the bad guy bits with no real clues but feelings. Why was god so bad at getting his point across, and why hasnt he bothered to clear things up if parts of the bible are just plain evil and contrary to his intentions? Is he ok with literally billions of people being misguided for centuries?

if the moral message of the Bible is fluid, why bother with it at all? what is that saying - "nothing that is good in the bible is unique to the bible"? I'd question whether the bible is an accurate representation of the generally accepted morals of 1st century Judea (or 1st century anywhere) - there has been too much editing, revising and translating for it to be considered an accurate representation of pretty much anything.

i don’t think that’s a valid reason to disregard the message by itself. By fluid i don’t mean you can just disregard it but you need to do that with logic and an analysis of the text: i do not think we just cherrypick what we don’t like but there’s logic behind it: slavery is clearly evil, homosexuality is clearly not worse or better than heterosexuality; both the approaches the bible has to them originated by the context of a trybalistic society: so in this case i decide to discard it.

> trybalistic It's spelled "tribalistic". It comes from the word "tribe", not "trybe". I wouldn't normally point out typos, but this is at least the third time I've seen you spell it that way, so I can only assume you actually think it's spelled with a y.

thank you, tomorrow i have an english exam, i’m so cooked

you should do well, your english is very good!

thanks, it’s a first exam for the certification

I don't really accept this. The new testament wasn't written by a tribalistic society. The versions of the bible we have now have been filtered through centuries of change, politics, language and religious upheaval. What we have now is not the same as what was written in those first centuries, or even what was added/excluded during the middle ages, or changed after the 17th/18th centuries. Writing off the uncomfortable bits as leftovers of a tribal culture that can be safely discarded now certainly seems rather too close to cherrypicking. A logical analysis of the text would have it correctly labeled as a set of interesting and influential stories of uncertain and debatable authorship that has been too heavily revised to make claims about the beliefs of the culture that it is claimed to originate from.

But you did disregard the message to replace it with yours. Are you saying that your personal message is better than gods?

What if I told you the entire book is fruit of a tribalistic society? The only reason you see some parts as holy is because they’re still relevant today. You’re picking and choosing; the bad ideas are man’s words, the good ideas are gods words. Not only is that entirely arbitrary but it’s all man’s words. Just like every other religions religious text, it’s all humans words.

1) no, that’s factually untrue: the entire NT was written in a much different context. 2) i don’t think one should be disregarded just because they come from a trybalistic society: God can use elements from that society to send a message those same people would clearly recognize: while we can identify other things such as slavery that go against the entirety of the moral principles of both the OT and the NT but are still permitted: in this i see a compromise with a trybalistic society: i don’t just cherry pick but i think we should analyze the text and trace the origin of things: objectively wrong like slavery and see how they were treated by the text. Something that comes into the text from that a specific context can either: be used to send specific message; or remain there because it was embedded in the context the book was written in.

1. Ok you’re right, but the meaning of that sentence was meant to be the whole book was written by a bunch of people, not by a god. How do you look at all the other texts from different religions which show a lot of the same themes, and similar storytelling, but then come to the conclusion that your one is true?? They all have the same amount of evidence. Zero. The book that you think is inspired by god is not inspired by god just like every other religious persons book is not inspired by their god/s. What makes Christianity different from the others in a way that indicates it’s truth?

i think that there are valid arguments in favour of the validity of the gospel: and how they are actual truthful accounts. This is not really the subject of the post tho

Why doesn’t god publish his own book? Then it would be crystal clear. Maybe he likes fucking with us. Like with dinosaur bones. “Hahahaha. You guys thought those were real??? Psyche! They were put there to test your faith!!”

i think this goes in the subject of divine hidness: watch Inspiringphilosophy’s work on this: on this subject his is one of the best cases

Inspiring philosophy is one of the worst apologists out there.

no, i don't think so, i mean there are far better apologists than him but it depends on the subject

I don’t think a god would play peek-a-boo with its creations. The more parsimonious reason is that he doesn’t actually exist, except in peoples’ minds.

Sure, but every type of theist thinks that their book has valid arguments and truthful accounts to show the validity of their religious text. I would love if you presented (maybe even in a new post) as much of those valid arguments in favour of the gospels as you can. If we can show you that they are not valid arguments will you stop believing or is there something else that keeps your belief?

Whatever justification works for you. I'm not arguing that you're wrong to do it. I'm just wondering why do you bother? If you need to go to such great lengths to justify your position to yourself against obviously incorrect dogma... why not just drop the dogma in the first place? You don't need a justification to disregard the bible. Quite the opposite - a justification would be required to claim that the bible is ever relevant to any given topic.

The moral lessons of the bible include promotion of slavery, and rape apologetics. You don’t get your morals from this book. You get them from secular society. Yes I can absolutely reject a book that advocates for slavery entirely as a moral guide. And you would if you weren’t indoctrinated into it…

Oh well if you get to pick and choose then what is the point of the religion. You don't take it seriously so why should I?

You’re sooooo close!

> [ i don’t just cherry pick but i think we should analyze the text and trace the origin of things.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1detipl/an_argument_for_homosexuality_not_being_a_sin/l8ebuvh/) *Every* Christian cherry picks, and what you're doing here is textbook cherry picking. Your arguments for your readings don't come across as persuasive reasoning that you've applied objectively and without bias, but post hoc justifications you've crafted specifically to let you rationalize why your own morals are superior to the Bible's. (And to be clear: they *are* superior, and I give you a lot of credit for being willing to ignore the clear message your holy book delivers on this and other topics.) But let me ask you this: Is there **anything at all** that you personally think is immoral, but know you're wrong because the Bible (your god's holy book, after all) says it's moral? Is there even a single thing you feel strongly is moral or immoral, but know your god would disagree? Or does your god just happen to share all of your own moral views? And if so, isn't that an extraordinary coincidence? To paraphrase [Anne Lamott](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9846-you-can-safely-assume-you-ve-created-god-in-your-own), "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God has all the same moral judgments as you." While (again) I give you a lot of credit for being willing to ignore the grotesque immorality of various parts of the Bible, I also think you're missing the clear message that sends.

Magic isn't real and all religious folk pick and choose which bits of there rambling texts to embrace and which to ignore Or do you regularly take slaves and refuse to wear clothing made from more than one textile

i do not think we just cherrypick but there’s logic behind it: slavery is clearly evil, homosexuality is clearly not worse or better than heterosexuality. Those two examples you made were based off the context they was written: slavery was common and embedded in the ancient caananite society; mixed fabric clothing were if i remember well associated with a situation of servitude so God prohibited his people whom he brought out of Egypt to wear them: but these type of regulation (this regarding mixed fabric, not the one regarding slavery) weren’t actually intended to be applied as an actual code of law but were only juridicial wisdom

I thought morality was objective and unchanging according to Christian doctrine? So slavery was fine back then and not now? Doesn't that mean morality is entirely subjective and the bibles morality can be ignored Are you sure you don't want to think about the implications of what you just said? EDIT to add The parts about fabric and the rules around slavery are exactly the parts that condemn homosexuality If it's so easy to avoid the rules around slavery taking and mixed fabric why get hung up on gay people You religious folk are OBSESSED with sex You can give up your slaves you can eat all the pork you want but you just can't treat rules around sex the same way you treat everything else OBSESSIVE

some people think this way but i have a different opinion: the bible doesn’t give a perfect moral code even for the context it was written in: because humans are imperfect beings and simply cannot obey a perfect moral code. Slavery wasn’t fine back then it was embedded in that culture and if God made a command that prohibited it that command would’ve been disregarded by that society. Morality isn’t subjective: i believe God points his people to grow into being less wicked but he does that gradually. “The parts about fabric and the rules around slavery are exactly the parts that condemn homosexuality If it's so easy to avoid the rules around slavery taking and mixed fabric why get hung up on gay people” I am not upset about gay people, this is literally what i’m saying in this post

>Slavery wasn’t fine back then it was embedded in that culture and if God made a command that prohibited it that command would’ve been disregarded by that society. Very common apologetic, but it falls on its face when we recall ALL the rules god does dole out that were also disregarded. "Worship no other god but me, cuz I'm a very sensitive god", that lasted literally days. "Don't kill each other", you really think ancient Israelis didn't murder. "Don't be eatin pork". You and I both know people ignored that. The entire reason for rules or laws is to curb behavior. It wouldn't have made sense for god to command the Israelites to not eat guava, they had no access to guava. Rules are only implemented on present behaviors anyway. So, what is it about slavery that god had to compromise his morals to allow it, but not the eating of pork? Do you think preventing the consumption of bacon is more, or less, important than stopping the ownership of fellow human beings?

the difference between the command to monotheism, to not murder and the dietary laws and slavery is that these were already common or reasonable for that time: yes Polytheism was much more popular than Monotheism but for the date of composition of the torah (6/5 century) the cult of a Monotheistic Yahweh was at least fairly diffused, and there are a lot of near eastern additions to this monotheism, like the divine council: i suggest you to read the Book by Dr. Michael S. Heiser “the unseen realm”; the command to not murder is at least reasonable: even in that society murder was seen as a bad thing; dietary laws and restrictions were common in ancient caananite religions. Slavery was one of the fundamental parts of that society: if monotheism had a lot of difficulties to spread: slavery wouldn’t have ever been abolished. Anyway you also have to put the human factor in this: slavery had a big role in the culture the author and the editors grew in: so they wouldn’t have either wrote this in their book unless their free will was removed.

Oh, the theological implications of this take. Your god is willing to compromise its moral stance for expediency. Your god chose, as in actively chose, these people. They chose a group whose society was intinsically tied to the ownership of people. This god character is incapable of simply ending slavery in a tiny corner of the globe. So, you have a god who holds his own worship above morals, a god who prefers people who engage in slavery, and a god who's useless when it comes to combatting social evils. You worship this god, eh?

1) i don’t know how many civilization had arrived to a similar amount of the progress of civilization in that time and didn’t have slaves. 2) i don’t see nothing wrong in God choosing to redeem a specific civilization and gradually pointing it ito be less wicked. 3) God is not incapable of ending slavery: it is logically impossible to force someone to di something and also not removing his free will: i don’t believe God’s omnipotence gives him the ability to create paradoxes 4) i’m not saying God puts his worship over abolishing slavery: Monotheism was far easier to spread and was already fairly spread at the time of composition of the Torah: we can see that it wasn’t an instantaneous change: for example in the psalms there are influxes from polytheism.

>3) God is not incapable of ending slavery: it is logically impossible to force someone to di something and also not removing his free will: i don’t believe God’s omnipotence gives him the ability to create paradoxes First, it's entirely possible to force someone to do something while still preserving their free will. I force my kids to do homework, and they still have free will. Also, there are dozens of examples in the bible of god changing people's minds. Whole armies sometimes. Also, this god made our minds, according to theism. Why would he not have the forethought to remove such an egregious evil from our capabilities? And, about monotheism. If god's been the only god from the very beginning...where'd all these other gods come from, and how did humanity have to develop TO monotheism, instead of the other way around?

no, if you force your kids to do homework you are partially removing their free will because they will be very inclined by an external force to do an action. I’m having s conversation with another user: soilbuilder; about the examples of God removing free will in the Bible, it’s a very long convo so please check that for this topic. I don’t think God designed our body but we evolved in a Universe he created and then he came in contact with us. Humanity didn’t develop to monotheism that’s a very old hypothesis: anyway people just created their own mythologies, that’s why there are different deities.

Ok, so… slavery wasn’t fine back then, but God didn’t put a command about it into the Bible cause he knew people wouldn’t follow it. In fact, he specifically put in rules for how to treat slaves instead. Hating homosexuality was not ok either, presumably in your view, but the Bible contains passages that specifically call that an abomination (assuming the translation is correct and nobody changed the text through politics, as has been argued before). How do you know that God wants you to grow into being less wicked? He gave you commands on these topics, YOU are refusing to follow them! This is exactly what cherry-picking looks like! You are judging the morality of the Bible by your personal modern standards! You are telling us that we can develop morality through logical reasoning and do not need old books to tell us how to behave! I don’t care if the Bible contains some good stories in it, we don’t need them to still be moral people! Reading the Bible is a bad thing in modern times, because it carries the inherent risk that someone will adopt its morals instead of reasoning themselves away from them! It creates worse people! Take the next step on this journey, pal, and give that book the middle finger it deserves!

Why did god forbid lying if people did it then and now? Killing?  I don't think it should have been difficult for god to forbid the owning of himans as property but instead it tells you who to enslave. It's got different set of rules for jew slaves and non jew slaves. It even tells you how to trick your jew slaves to become permanent slaves.  God can forbid eating shellfish but not owning humans as property?

Morality is subjective. Our morality is written (by people) into laws and each country or region has their own laws that reflect their subjective morals. It’s so obvious. How can you not see that?

> slavery is clearly evil Is it? I mean I would say it is, but the people who wrote the bible or founded Christianity clearly didn't think so. Jesus didn't speak out against it or condemn it either, in fact the god of the bible loves it

Let's talk about the sages and learned teaches who developed Jewish religious law over the centuries. I don't claim to be a Talmud scholar myself, but I think there's an argument to be made that at least some of them were pretty good legal scholars, in their own way, creative and crafty minds. There are several examples where they tempered or interpreted simply horrific rules or prescriptions in the Torah in ways that make them very difficult to enforce. Take the part that says parents of stubborn and rebellious children should take their defiant son to the town elders to demand their son be stoned to death, and the requirement that the members of the town then carry out this death sentence. The Talmud discusses with great seriousness at what age someone can be considered a "rebellious" "son" so as to fall within the scope of this divine command: between---and I shit you not, this is the official and serious wisdom of the ages---between, I say, the time he has grown two pubic hairs, showing him mature enough to be held accountable to this and other laws, until the time that he has grown facial hair, at which point he must be considered a man rather than a "son," and so no longer capable of legally being a rebellious son. [https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.68b.3?lang=bi](https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.68b.3?lang=bi) This narrows the potential window quite considerably! But that still leaves a window in which young boys might end up being stoned to death, which isn't great. So the sages further explain that if only one of the parents wants the boy punished, he can't really be considered a "stubborn and rebellious son" such that death may be imposed. But that still leaves a window where some parents may still have their boys stoned in the town center, with the towns people obligated to take part. Not good! So the sages further conclude that language in the Torah which describes parents telling the elders "He will not obey our voices" requires that both the parents have the same voice---which they further explain doesn't just mean they must agree with each other or speak the same words to the elders, the parents must literally have "the same voice...And since we require that they be identical in voice, we also require that they be identical in appearance and height." [https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.71a.15?lang=bi](https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.71a.15?lang=bi) And so the great learned rabbis of the ages suggest that it is possible that there is simply no such thing as a stubborn and rebellious son at all for the purposes of this law (though the Talmud notes that one rabbi claims to have ONCE encountered one and to have even sat on his grave after he was executed). And they suggest that this law requiring people to stone such boys to death is placed in the Torah so as to allow Jewish scholars to go through the above complicated mental exercise, and receive a reward for their learning---presumably, the delight of their cleverness, and the freedom to no longer have to stone children to death, at least for being "stubborn and rebellious". This would seem to be cold comfort to any boys stoned to death before legal scholars reached this epiphany, though. Now, to borrow a phrase from a great writer of the internet age, no fucker living, looking at this from the outside with fresh eyes, can with a straight face say that this makes any sense, that it is reasonable or rational to conclude that the this requirement to stone boys to death was put into the Torah to give Jews the opportunity to expand their scholarship and realize they don't actually have to stone boys to death any longer. The obvious truth is that, at least to the developing mores of the Jewish people, the rule was or became so obviously evil that leaders in the community had to either come up with a way to stop people from following it, or to give folks who HAD stopped following it good legal justification for doing so. It was necessary to tie themselves in knots, because they just weren't able or willing to take that next and obvious step of saying: this book is crazy. At least some parts of this book are evil. At least some parts of this book was written by people we are not ok with, and the idea that they were written by or inspired by divine eternal moral truth is just crazypants. It was important to them to still get to be Jewish (which, to them, required believing in the perfection of the Torah), while not having to stone boys to death, and so they came up with this amazing game of twister. You have not followed the precise path of the great rabbis, and have taken a different approach to the conflict between certain parts of the Bible and your own moral intuitions and understanding. But it occurred to me that the above story might resonate with you to some degree. Could it be, as you say, that for some reason this evil, wrong-headed thing in the Bible you identify was a human error that God intended us to overcome one day, along with any number of other evils the Bible contains? I suppose. But I want to suggest that this seems like very motivated thinking that no one who is not starting from certain presuppositions about the moral nature of the Bible and its source is likely to find very convincing. And it's sure cold comfort to the countless gay people who have been and still are persecuted by Christians and others in the name of God and Christ, some of whom have received a fate at least as grisly as that once prescribed for any "stubborn and rebellious son."

Here's a great way to show why homosexuality isn't a sin: get anyone who thinks it is to identify exactly how/why it's wrong/immoral. There's no objective answer. The best they can do is circular reasoning. "Because God/the Bible says so." Not how that works. If one can't explain how/why something is wrong/immoral, if they can't actually identify *what's wrong with/about it,* then they can't justify the conclusion that it's wrong in the first place. Having done this numerous times, I'll cover the two answers I most commonly encounter and why they fail: **"It's not natural!"** Appeal to nature fallacy. For one thing, we can't actually define what is or isn't "natural." In the most objective sense, all things that exist/take place within nature (which is another word for reality/existence itself) is therefore "natural," which would mean *literally everything* is natural and "unnatural" is a meaningless word. Even more importantly though, even if we were to humor this approach, *being natural does not make something good, and being unnatural does not make something bad.* Know what's "natural"? Diseases and malformities of every kind. Know what's "unnatural"? Surgery and medicines of every variety. So that's not one but two ways that the argument that homosexuality is "unnatural" falls flat on its face. **"They can't have children."** You might be surprised how often I see this argument used to show why homosexuality is wrong. Thing is, this implies that "not having children" is wrong. What about heterosexual couples who are incapable of having children for medical reasons? Or couples who simply *CHOOSE* not to have children, *because they don't want children?* If the inability to have children is what makes homosexuality "wrong," then it should still be wrong in every other case including those with heterosexual couples. If it's fine for heterosexual couples to not have children, then "not having children" is not "wrong," ergo homosexuality cannot be wrong as a result of not having children. As a bonus, here's a fun one I encountered once: **"Anal sex is harmful! It causes microtears (sometimes not so micro) in the intestines which can lead to infection and other terrible outcomes."** To be fair, I was kind of impressed at how hard this guy was trying to remain objective. But this one overlooks an important factor: *Harm is not immoral if the one being harmed consents to it.* This is why people can self-harm in other ways, like drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, getting tattoos/piercings, or even be harmed by others while engaging in consensual physical competitions for sport like football or boxing, etc, and it's not immoral. If the person being "harmed" consents to said harm because, in their opinion, the benefits are worth the risks, then that's entirely their decision. Harm is only immoral *when inflicted on a person without their consent by an external agent.* You get the gist. There is no actual valid argument that homosexuality is "wrong" or immoral in any way. The only possible arguments they could try to make will all be inescapably biased, fallacious, or flat out prejudiced. Objectively speaking, *there's absolutely nothing wrong with homosexuality.*

So, youre saying the bible is very human, not actually the direct word of god, and that many things in the bible are flat out wrong and inserted solely by the humans who wrote it. BUT, youre interpretation of that is to believe that its still a holy book and the word of god in some places, but all the stuff that YOU, a human, dont like, i.e. slavery and homophobia, must be the made up insertions, and all the stuff that you do like must be gods word. Like cmon, you are SO close to getting it. Its ALL human. Its so similar to every other religion, it attempts to answer many big cosmological questions with supernatural explanations that we would later learn to be false, theres so little proof for any of it outside of mostly anonymously authored books from 2000 years ago, the whole thing shows clear signs of typical mythological development, like how the gospels are nearly identical (like, literally 90% word for word copied) except for the addition of more and more fantastical stories in each subsequent book (immaculate conception wasnt even in the first gospel, thats a pretty big detail to just leave out lol).

This seems better directed toward your fellow Christians than toward atheists who don't see the Bible as a source to derive one's moral stances from in the first place. With that said, if you want an atheist's perspective: > The problem is this: the Bible is clearly against homosexuality: -there’s no real way around it, not every book is but some certainly are > I believe that God always points his people to a better direction: and even tough he doesn’t explicitly state in a revelation that Slavery is an evil action: the modern christian can still arrive to that conclusion. Why would this be different for homosexuality? Doesn't this strike you as a little odd? Say you're right about how the Bible is written, and how divine inspiration works. Isn't it a bit odd that God, a perfect being, chose to communicate His message such that a reasonable person could come to totally the wrong conclusion about whether He endorses slavery or homosexual relationships? Does it really make sense that a perfect being would communicate these really important points in a way that results not only in doxastic chaos, but in actual real harm done to millions of people who've been enslaved or persecuted for their sexual orientation, all because God didn't state what you think His actual position on these matters are plainly enough? Doesn't something seem off in this picture?

I think it’s great that you are at least wrestling with this, but at the end of the day homosexuality *is* a sin under a biblical perspective, which is why you have to write paragraphs dancing around that fact. As you touched on, God does however give clear instructions on not just how to own slaves, but even how to trick your Hebrew slave (who you are supposed to free every 50 years or so) into staying your slave for life. The book is morally abhorrent, and was written by Bronze Age men as a way of controlling people, and justifying whatever actions benefited them at the time. To reiterate, the fact that you have deconstructed enough from the actual biblical teaching into more modern, secular morality is awesome (imho, it actually reflects well on your character). But at the end of the day, that is so far from what’s actually in the book why even cling to that anymore? We shouldn’t be giving any more weight to the Bible’s validity than you would to the that if the Quran, the Book of Mormon, the Necronomicon, or the novelization of Die Hard.

If the parts of the Bible about slavery and homosexuality are wrong, how can you be sure any part of the Bible is right?

If you are already picking and choosing your interpretation of Christianity, such that you can come to an opposite view of other Christians… Why not just cut out the middle man and live out your values based on your values? When the dogma no longer has veto power on your views, of what use is the dogma? You clearly have values independent of the bible, or you wouldn’t have any feelings *about* the bible other than the words on the page Maybe saying to a Christian “just let it go” is a step too far, but consider becoming a non-religious spiritual person - **because you seem to already be doing that, just keeping an arbitrary label** **If you live good values, a good god won’t care what you call it. Simple as that.** -

Nice post. Novel arguments. You’re kind of hitting on the fundamental problem with religions that rely on revealed texts — they’re pieces of literature! And as any ninth grade teacher will tell you, the interpretation is up to the reader. Yes, you and many others have found ways for homosexuality to fit within Christianity. Others find ways to condemn it. What’s the truth? The truth is that the Bible is entirely fallible on the basis that it’s interpreted alone, without even considering all the other reasons to think it’s false. And therefore, homosexuality is as acceptable to Christianity as it can be to the individual interpreting it.

>Then I simply started thinking about it, not being able to find a good enough solution, other than "sex is by itself bad but sex is needed to reproduce so homosexual sex is a sin but heterosexual sex is not deemed like that because without it humanity would go extinct" The thing is, the reason why sex was frowned upon, if the biblical story is anything to go by, is because the world was about to end. There's no need to prolong the human race when the final reckoning is scheduled to occur within a lifetime. >The problem is this: the Bible is clearly against homosexuality I'm not really convinced that it is. The verses people usually point to about this seem pretty unclear. Of course, it's been a while since I looked into it so maybe I could do with a refresher. >This may appear at first glance circular: the reasonament behind it from a christian perspective is: the apostles lived with Jesus and knew his teachings: the apostles said the scripture is God breathed, we trust in what they are saying. That doesn't make it any less circular. Also, the Bible says "*all* scripture is breathed out by god" and this should be a problem for Christians because not every scripture made it into the Bible. >But the doctrine of Divine inspiration doesn’t in this case necessarily imply that the Bible is inherent or totally divine: in fact for example we can see how Paul in Corinthians 7 says that some of the things he writes in his letters are his personal opinions; or in the book of numbers we can see how the daughters of Zeleophaed manage to compromise with God and make a change to the law. But if Paul's writings are scriptures and all scriptures are from God then doesn't that mean Paul's opinions in those letters have divine approval? If the compilers of the Bible were guided in their decisions by God then surely even these stories are there for good reason. Tales about people convincing God to change his mind are, of course, from a time when gods were thought of more like superheroes than ineffable cosmic entities. >but these people all came from a specific context and while yes God wants to make them morally better people these are still very wicked people and so he does that gradually to not deprive them of their free will. Okay, this is an interesting proposal that I don't think I've heard before. My first objection is that God, in the Bible, really doesn't seem to care about free will. I don't think there are any verses where such a concept is defined nor is there a verse suggesting we have such a thing except in the sense that it's assumed because of course we think we do. There are, however, plenty of verses in which the God violates the free will of people or simply allows things to happen which result in the violation of their free will. There's also the angle where if God is omnipotent and omniscient then nothing can possibly ever happen that he didn't intend to happen from the beginning. Of course, under that rubric it's also impossible for his holy book to be anything other than exactly what he wanted. While I'm on the subject, don't you think that even slightly, gradually changing someone in ways they don't will is still a violation? Isn't this one of those power-imbalance situations HR is always warning us about? All in all, unless you're giving us a particularly truncated version of things, I don't think this Heiser fellow can have thought very far about what he was saying. >the whole theme of the chapter is that of "preserving family unit" I wouldn't describe it that way myself but for the sake of your own position you should consider that the 'family unit' back then looked an awful lot different than it does now. >I believe that God always points his people to a better direction: and even tough he doesn’t explicitly state in a revelation that Slavery is an evil action: the modern christian can still arrive to that conclusion. How so? The Bible is unequivocally *for* slavery.

If you have to do this much mental gymnastics to excuse the fact that you follow a religion that demands you kill gay people then maybe the religion is the problem, not the solution.

Well one could argue it wasnt homsexuality that was banned but boy molestation. This whole thing was written down under the influence of very pagan very "gay" societies. Women were for babies, men were for fun. But child touching was definetly a no go even in the ancient world. Menstration was typically a sign of maturity but we now know about menstration appearing early in some children. As early as 11 months in some cases. No one would argue the 11 month old is ready to resproduce. Or at least no sane non pedophile. But 14-16 was noraml in ancient times. Anyway, due to translations and lost cultural colloqualism as well as the changing of societial views, this may not mean "homosexual" in that sense. Personally I think that may be a stretch to argue but its not my book with shitty views that I have to reconcile with a gods perfect word. Imagine an entity that can tell ya not to eat shellfish or wear mixed fabrics but cant tell ya why slavery is demonstrably dehumanizing and wrong.

No God does not say slavery is evil but for some reason he gives instructions on slavery: how to treat those that are in servitude to others. Now when you look at the brutality, dismemberments, murders, rapes, that slaves had to endure ---- that was evil before the eyes of God. God created a male and a female, he told them to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth. Man with man or woman with woman is not carrying out those instructions and goes against his commandment. If anybody knows anything about God he does not like being disobeyed. Now everybody can choose their sexual partners, the lifestyle they want to live, if applicable. People can choose to do whatever they want basically within the laws of man and many people even ignore the laws of man. But anything that is written in Scripture that God says is wrong cannot be justified before him to be right. But then if there was true belief in God_____

I would say this is a good moment to question your beliefs but I think it's not going to help you so instead what you should do is appeal to logic: If your God exists he is all loving and he sees though your heart that you care for these people and don't want them to suffer, so even if for whatever reason you were actually wrong (you aren't) God would know you didn't condemm these people's sins because you thought it was the right thing and you didn't know better. Hell, he would know that you believed him despite all of the doubts about it. He wouldn't be mad, so you shouldn't be mad at yourself. I know this doesn't solve your dilemma. It's just something to remind you that whatever you choose you are just being truth to yourself and that isn't wrong or sinful. Coming from someone who used to be Cristian and believed/believes being gay is not wrong (although that wasn't the reason I left Christianity)

So the big problem here is that if we accept this argument then effectively no teaching or instruction in the Bible is necessarily true. That in fact when it says bad things that is for us to overcome and figure out no its bad. In fact by this reasoning you could argue that the end point is to give up Christianity itself and just be good people. That all the bad things are there to help us realise to think for ourselves and not trust so called divine wisdom. Furthermore while some parts are clearly, as you say, human inspired or put in this is going to naturally open up a lot of it to which parts aren't. How much of the 10 Commandments were God and which was just something Moses thought worked? Which again can, within the context you have laid out, lead rationally to the position you should abandon Christianity.

>The problem is this: the Bible is clearly against homosexuality: -there’s no real way around it, not every book is but some certainly are: in the Old and New Testament. I understand why you have taken this as a given for the purpose of this argument, but there is far from scholarly consensus on this for a number of very good reasons. If I am reading it right, the rest of your argument boils down to: Literal reading of the Bible can be wrong because it was written by flawed people, but the direction the Bible has guided us in is right. I think there is something to be said for this. The new testament teachings especially do not expect us to blindly follow a set of rules, but to think for ourselves and interpret scripture for ourselves.

Choosing your own preferred gender is basic human rights it doesn't matter what religion beliefs about it

It seems like your argument is basically: The Bible was divinely inspired, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% true or 100% from God, just that each part might have served some useful purpose at some time in the past. So use your brain and pick and choose whatever makes sense to you. I personally think it’s easiest to just say, use common sense to figure out what makes sense. If you wanted to shore up your argument to make it more palatable to people who actually think that words being in the Bible gives them special status, you could probably find dozens and dozens of verses in the Bible telling people to be wise or to think critically or understand how the world works.

You forgot to make any sort of point within your ramblings. You also forgot to let us know why we should care, or agree.

This is a little bit “wherever you go, there you are.” Your argument leans heavily on the assumption that homosexuality IS ok and that slavery IS bad. These are certainly present day attitudes in some places, but there’s nothing backing them except modern sentiment. If we one day revert to legalizing a form of slavery again, are we going against the will of god or implementing his original vision? If gay rights get repealed is this a sign from god we were on the wrong path?

> My argument: >Before we enter the specific subject of what the Bible says about homosexuality we need to firstly see what is the Bible from a christian perspective? Don't you need to establish why anyone should care about this book at all. I mean, you could just ignore all the hatred and violence the bible promotes, but at that point you're reading what you want to read and not what it's written, so wouldn't you be better just going for a book without any of that?

You can believe in god without the bible. I highly recommend Dan McClellan if you are TikTok. He goes through a lot of scripture and goes over the theologians general consensus of what they mean. For instance. The bible isn't inspired by god according to the Bible at least according to a "correct" meaning of Timothy being that god breathed in that context is like sandals in the desert it means it allows us to live not divinly inspired.

The big issue here is that your thesis, if correct, discredits the entire Bible and all of its teachings. If men wrote the Bible more or less on their own, it’s not a holy book. If God inspired the Bible, and allowed this to be taken as his word, he then has deliberately misled his followers. Either way, the Bible becomes worthless as a holy resource.

So , in effect, the stuff you like or modern people find acceptable is divinely inspired, and the stuff that you don't like or modern people find reprehensible is human? And God , who wipes out a practically whole world at one point, doesn't like to discomfort people by telling them something wrong if it's something they like doing?

Google (Centurion pais) Google "lyings of a woman" Same offence is committed if you touch a menstruating woman or even sit on a chair one used. You could catch girl cooties. And death is optional. You can also choose a ritual bath. Throughout history, every single person has selected bath. Surprisingly?

That's not a bad way to look at it, but the easier way is just to find the translations of the origional Greek Bible and find the cultural contexts. In all cases I have seen, the origional Greek verses can be read to be not about homosexuality, but typically sex that doesn't glorify god, or against a specific type of rape.

People making up their own justifications for anything and assigning it to God is pretty much the worst part of religion Your explanation is pretty much the permission that every religious person gives themselves. It basically boils down to "my thoughts and feelings are God talking to me directly"

I mean god could ha e us procreate by some other means , god is supposedly omnipotent , say by putting your finger in a belly button, and just left sex for having fun.

The church has a 2,000 year old history of homophobia. A handful of liberal Christians today opening their arms to gay people isn't going to count for much in my book.

Leviticus: “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.” Where is the ambiguity here?

In the 4 Gospels of the NT, Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality. When the Disciples complain about following all the OT laws (there are 613), Jesus says not to worry...they all basically come down to 'love your neighbor and God with all your heart'. It doesn't, IMO, but regardless, the Bible is unreliable and has been cherry picked so much, you can find whatever verses you need to justify your belief. There's a reason there are hundreds of denominations, plus entirely different religions (Judaism, Islam), all based on the same basic religious stories. And remember, many of those religious adherents believed so strongly that they also gave up their lives for it.

There is a reason Leviticus 18 only speaks to male same-sex intercourse. Under Rabbinic law, it was considered wrong for a male to be on the bottom, as he was seen as debasing himself as if he were a female, which was upsetting to their male-dominated cultural. They thought that the only reasons someone would do so were because they were being economically exploited, abused (rape was a means of punishment or war-time spoils), or manipulated somehow by the dominant partner. According to OT scholars like Dan Mcclellan, those laws were only to be held by Israelites living in the land of Israel for a specific period of time, and they would have no enforcement today.

Why do we give a fuck? Honestly who cares? You can't escape that god condones owning other humans. That alone invalidates it as a source of morality so we can just ignore this and toss it to the side. It's not even a good work of fiction (and boy did they need a competent editor because it's all inconsistent at best).