Texas State Rep. James Talarico using biblical scripture to tear down conservative Christian arguments

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      They’re fine with the Old Testament, it’s got plenty of treachery, rape, slavery and fraud cheered on by God, mixed in with smiting and destroying things that disagree with you.

      They have a problem with the teachings of Christ in the New Testament, which is all a bit too “someone was different to me so I made friends with them and we ate together”.

      • darth_tiktaalik@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        rape, slavery

        It draws an odd moral line here where a virgin prisoner of war can basically be raped for the rest of her life as a “wife” but the act of doing so makes it so the “husband” cannot sell her into slavery after leaving her.

        I think the best way of summing up biblical ethics is “there’s animal rights but women are the animals”

        • APassenger@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Jewish tradition celebrates reason and doesn’t have the hell Christians do (or so I’m told).

            • treefrog@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              The sarcastic air quotes reveal your bias towards organized religion as a whole as well as your ignorance of Jewish culture.

              Science and education are a fundamental part of Jewish culture. Someone regarded as one of the smartest people in recent history is Jewish and I imagine that without his parents valuing education and science, the rest of us would still think time and space are two separate things.

              Yes, there are orthodox and dogmatic Jews just like in any religion. But just because someone has a much different world view than you doesn’t mean they don’t value reason.

              • Cranakis @lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                doesn’t mean they don’t value reason.

                … they believe in 3000 year old fairy tales. They don’t value reason any more than any other religion. Reason gets in the way.

      • Mossy Feathers (She/They)@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        The new testament and old testament “god” are so different that sometimes I wonder if the new testament is 5% Jesus^1 hijacking an old religion to try and make something good out of it, and 95% his followers trying to make sense and reconcile what Jesus taught with the old testament.


        ^1 afaik it’s fairly well established that Jesus - or someone like him - existed, the big question is if they were actually a deity or not.

        • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
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          1 year ago

          I think there’s definitely something in your line of thinking. In modern terms, there’s a lot retconning in the New Testament to make the books add up as a series. They spend the whole “intro” persuading you it follows a direct lineage over ~2000 years.

          There’s some pretty wild “fan theories”. Some say it’s correcting the “errors”, “corruption of language over time” or “devil influence” of the older book, others say OT “YHWH” is not NT “God almighty”, but an unrelated angry local God.

          They all claim “Newest is truest” - even the more controversial “later sequels”.

      • FrenLivesMatter@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        To be fair, the Bible says nothing about having to follow the pope in order to get to heaven.

        In fact, one could even argue that Jesus would not have approved of such an institution, because in Matthew 23:9, he explicitly says this:

        Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven.

        Meanwhile, the verse that the Catholic church bases the legitimacy of the papacy on (Matthew 16:18) is far more vague:

        And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.