No, you're wrong. The Hebrew context for Genesis 3:16 has a very different meaning than that used in Genesis 1:28 and similar verses in which humanity is told to 'subdue' and have 'dominion' over the earth. It is translated in Hebrew as, 'You are turning away [from God!] to your husband, and [as a result] he will take advantage of you.' The verb contains a simple statement of futurity; there is not one hint of obligation or normativity in this verb.
1 Corinthians, 11:13 -- but I want you to realize that the head of man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
Certainly sounds like the bible gives man authority over women to me. From what I understand, so does the Quran. That's my point, on that issue. You were bashing Muslims for asserting total authority over women, but it would seem the bible allows Christians to do that too.
God’s original intention for humankind was a monogamous relationship of equals, as depicted in the Old Testament creation stories (Gen. 1:27, where women and men are both ‘made in God’s image’) clearly implying that God regarded exploitation of one by the other as part of the fallen world, and not integral to the order of creation.
Do we live in Eden or the fallen world? If we live in the fallen world and live under New Testament rules, then the man is currently head of the women. Eden is not our place of residence.
You're obviously ignorant Omni, with respect to both Christian and Islamic religious epistemologies and how starkly the real special revelation of God contrasts with the false religious cult invented by a rebellious youth in a cave after being rejected for his tribe's leadership to bypass the social order in the way of his ascendancy to wealth and power.
Saying I'm ignorant does not make me ignorant. You're yet to prove that I am, logically and honestly.
Your assertion that Islam teaches the same morality as Christianity (or ancient Judaism for that matter) fails for the simple fact that they do not. Their truth claims and morality conflict. And it matters for reasons I've already provided.
Islam does not teach the same morality as Christianity. That's not what I said. In fact, many different moralities are taught within both Islamic traditions across the globe, and Christian traditions across the globe. For instance, a group of Shia Muslims known as the Nazari Shi'ites fundamentally believe that Islam is to be interpreted in the context of a changing world, placing values such as equality, dignity and the freedom to choose ones' beliefs for oneself, above all other tenets. There also exist extremist sects of Islam which teach total subduing of the Earth under harsh interpretations of Sharia law.
Likewise, in Christianity there exist sects such as Evangelicals who propose subduing the entire world under Christian laws, while other more moderate sects such as Presbyterians do not attempt to further the oppression of the entire globe under Christian law.
Christian morality and Muslim morality are not fundamentally the same, however, both books -- the Quran and the Bible -- do share commonalities -- THAT is what I said. Those commonalities include teachings of male authority over women. Please stop engineering strawmen out of what I have said -- it's misrepresentative and dishonest.
Which is why instead of making a lot of false assertions, spreading misinformation, and maligning people's characters and calling people names; you should instead begin educating yourself. Start by reading '
Is God a Moral Monster?' by
Dr. Paul Copan (professor of philosophy
Palm Beach Atlantic University) as this is where your mind is presently at.
Again, you report me for telling you up front what I think of you, for using ad hominem arguments, but you have no issue doling out ad hominems, albeit more passively than I. You assume I'm uneducated on these topics because I don't agree with you -- that, fundamentally, is attempting to discredit my arguments by making unfounded accusations of ignorance on my part -- attacking my credibility and my character. Pot and kettle.
I'll get you started with a quote from bible scholar Walter Kaiser:
"'In most of these situations, a distinctive Old Testament concept known as ḥerem is present. It means 'curse,' 'that which stood under the ban' or 'that which was dedicated to destruction.' The root idea of this term was 'separation'; however, this situation was not the positive concept of sanctification in which someone or something was set aside for the service and glory of God. This was the opposite side of the same coin: to set aside or separate for destruction.
God dedicated these things or persons to destruction because they violently and steadfastly impeded or opposed his work over a long period of time. This 'dedication to destruction' was not used frequently in the Old Testament. It was reserved for the spoils of southern Canaan (Num 21:2–3), Jericho (Josh 6:21), Ai (Josh 8:26), Makedah (Josh 10:28) and Hazor (Josh 11:11).
Frame it how you like: Permitting followers to slay men, women, children, infants and livestock is by its very definition permitting genocide. So, the Muslim God, in the Quran, permits genocide, and the Christian God, in the bible, permits genocide. That you attempt to normalize, rationalize and even discount that fact by re-framing the issue, speaks volumes about your attitude towards violence -- it's okay for the Christian God's purpose, but not for the Muslim God's purpose? Whut??
In my opinion, it is not okay in either instance.
In a most amazing prediction, Abraham was told that his descendants would be exiled and mistreated for four hundred years (in round numbers for 430 years) before God would lead them out of that country. The reason for so long a delay, Genesis 15:13–16 explains, was that 'the sin of the Amorites [the Canaanites] has not yet reached its full measure.
'
This mass persecution you speak of -- I assume you mean the Jewish slavery under the Egyptian Pharaohs and subsequent Exodus -- has no historical or archeological evidence outside the bible. So I cannot logically or honestly comment on that any further. However, I can note that God, if we are to take the biblical account literally and consider it to be fact, allowed his own people to suffer horrendously under horrible rulers for hundreds of years in order to prove his own powers of prediction in a world paradigm that He, through his total omnipotence, omnipresence and omnipotence, could have proven in an infinite variety of ways that would not have required any of those hundreds of thousands of human beings to suffer as they did.
Thus, God waited for centuries while the Amalekites and those other Canaanite groups slowly filled up their own cups of condemnation by their sinful behavior. God never acted precipitously against them; his grace and mercy waited to see if they would repent and turn from their headlong plummet into self-destruction.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that God, knowing the Amalekites from the moment they were concieved, sewing them in their wombs, foreseeing all possible futures and knowing for certain which future would unfold, knew instantaneously from the moment of the creation of his arbitrarily chosen paradigm that the Amalekites would die under his hand. The concept of God "waiting to see the outcome" is false if God sees all that is, all that was, and all that will be -- he knew from the beginning that he would kill the Amalekites, their men, women, children, infants and livestock.
Not that the conquering Israelites were without sin. Deuteronomy 9:5 makes that clear to the Israelites: 'It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations.'
So God allows the wickedness of the Jews (which he recounts as being worse than their "sisters" the Sodomites and Gamorrans) but not the wickedness of other nations. Surely that Judaism is the religion of the Jews makes one wonder if God is so favourable to the Jews, regardless of their wickedness, because coincidentally they are the ones who invented the Judaistic religion. Brain melt.
These nations were cut off to prevent the corruption of Israel and the rest of the world (Deut 20:16–18). When a nation starts burning children as a gift to the gods (Lev 18:21) and practices sodomy, bestiality and all sorts of loathsome vices (Lev 18:25, 27–30), the day of God’s grace and mercy has begun to run out.
Surely if all men are fallen and bound into sin then corruption is the default position of all men, regardless of religion. And surely if God foresees all things and has power over all things, then God knew from the very moment of conception of every single thing that exists, what those things would turn out to be like. Therefore, at least insofar as God is concerned, everything is at his arbitrary discretion. Which absolutely suits the Jews who God apparently justifies more than other ethnic and religious groups. Just another coincidence, I suppose?
Just as surgeons do not hesitate to amputate a gangrenous limb, even if they cannot help cutting off some healthy flesh, so God must do the same. This is not doing evil that good may come; it is removing the cancer that could infect all of society and eventually destroy the remaining good.
There's nothing, from what I gather, that God "must" do. If you remember Christianity 101: God is all powerful. God didn't have to create existence with the limits he created it with. There's no reason God can't maintain the illusion of free choice in a predetermined paradigm and simultaneously have created that paradigm with more favourable preconditions for his creation. Our psychological makeup is one of infinite possible makeups that an all powerful being could bring into existence. It begs the question: why did God choose to create beings with psychologial flaws that predisposed them to falling short of his perfection in the first place? An omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient God, intelligent enough to create an entire universe so vast we cannot travel across even a miniscule fraction of it -- a universe made up of countless stars and galaxies all composed of exchanges in simple energy, which is a magnificent, unthinkable feat on its own -- couldn't or wouldn't create a less injurious psychological paradigm for human beings to reside in? Wow.
God could have used pestilence, hurricanes, famine, diseases or anything else he wanted.
He also could have used kindness, liberation, education, self-revelation, the unlimited power to create any paradigm of existence whatsoever that he chose.
In this case he chose to use Israel to reveal his power, but the charge of cruelty against God is no more deserved in this case than it is in the general order of things in the world where all of these same calamities happen.
No, you're correct on that point. The charge of cruelty against God for in the general order of the world -- which includes death, birth without consent, genocides, unjust wars, hate, spite, anger, revenge, malice, injustice, unfairness, natural disasters and generalized suffering -- is consistent and maintained in all instances within that paradigm, since it was his decision to create it; WE did not consent or consult.
In the providential acts of life, it is understood that individuals share in the life of their families and nations. As a result we as individuals participate both in our families’ and nations’ rewards and in their punishments.
Perhaps that's just according to you -- that a son inherits his father's sins -- but that's just one reason why I'm against making you leader of the free world. There are many other reasons.
Naturally this will involve some so-called innocent people; however, even that argument involves us in a claim to omniscience which we do not possess. If the women and children had been spared in those profane Canaanite nations, how long would it have been before a fresh crop of adults would emerge just like their pagan predecessors?
I'm not sure, but I'm rather certain that an infinitely powerful God would know. And if he knows through his infinite power and foresight both that the Canaanites would have ended up sinful and wicked and that a fresh crop of sinful wicked Canaanites would emerge had he not slaughtered innocent children, well, that makes me wonder what was the point of ever creating the Canaanites to begin with.
It is an absolutely valid point to make: why did an all powerful being, with infinite opportunity, power, foresight, presence and stature, choose to create an entire universe with a world full of beings he foresaw would fail his arbitrary expectations and therefore endure suffering for hundreds of thousands of collective years, when he could, by virtue of being totally and absolutely powerful, have engineered creation to present the same illusion of free choice under conditions that did not require suffering?
Why was God so opposed to the Amalekites?
God arbitrarily decided to create the world and all it contains; a chosen-by-God particular paradigm that includes punishing people for failing expectations he absolutely and totally knew they would fail to begin with. That God is "opposed" to some of the people he created within that paradigm, seems to me at least, to be a less important question than why he would ever create that specific paradigm in the first place.
When the Israelites were struggling through the desert toward Canaan, the Amalekites picked off the weak, sick and elderly at the end of the line of marchers and brutally murdered these stragglers.
That's horrific.
Warned Moses, 'Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and cut off all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God” (Deut 25:17–18).
Some commentators note that the Amalekites were not merely plundering or disputing who owned what territories; they were attacking God’s chosen people to discredit the living God. Some trace the Amalekites’ adamant hostility all through the Old Testament, including the most savage butchery of all in Haman’s proclamation that all Jews throughout the Persian Empire could be massacred on a certain day (Esther 3:8–11). Many make a case that Haman was an Amalekite. His actions then would ultimately reveal this nation’s deep hatred for God, manifested toward the people through whom God had chosen to bless the whole world.
In Numbers 25:16–18 and 31:1–18 Israel was also told to conduct a war of extermination against all in Midian, with the exception of the prepubescent girls, because the Midianites had led them into idolatry and immorality.
So the Jews can sleep with young girls but not the Muslims?
It was not contact with foreigners per se that was the problem, but the threat to Israel’s relationship with the Lord. The divine command, therefore, was to break Midian’s strength by killing all the male children and also the women who had slept with a man and who could still become mothers.
So Israel, an admittedly wicked and corrupt people (like all fallen people, I might add) were favoured because the God who endowed them with the psyches required to commit heinous acts wanted to prove his precognated plan was true to this chosen ethnic group whom he apparently let suffer at the hands of Egyptian slavers for hundreds of years? Am I to take the view that this is all just to prove to humans that he's all powerful?
Don't you think it's more likely that the Jews just wanted a religious justification for murdering their competition and raping underage girls?
The texts of Deuteronomy 2:34; 3:6; 7:1–2 and Psalm 106:34 are further examples of the principle of ḥerem, dedicating the residents of Canaan to total destruction as an involuntary offering to God."
Source: Kaiser, W. C., Jr., Davids, P. H., Bruce, F. F., & Brauch, M. T. (1996). Hard sayings of the Bible (206–207). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity.
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