I'd say No, F**k you

And not scorning the 3 delightful children who resulted, and who are everything to me and who are my only chance of a second life, and if I was told to sacrifice them to to prove my devotion to god, show my love to god, I'll say: "no, fuck you" - Chris Hitchens.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO129-RfhVE

Excerpt from The Atheist Experience TV Show #653 of April 18, 2010, with Matt Dillahunty and Jen Peeples.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itad7AWwTJ0 (11 minutes)

No valid god would make such a demand. In the cosmic scheme of things that believers tell us about whether we want them to or not, god is all good and all knowing and would know the depth of such a person's faith beforehand, making the request pure cruelty. Only Satan could possibly put a parent through that.

We sacrifice our kids everyday or has anyone been watching the news?

(Gen 22 NIV) Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. {2} Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

Not a chance, Binky.

...like the love a child has for the ants he burns with a magnifying glass. Or the love Michael Vick has for dogs.

I eagerly await his next avant garde position: a thundering denunciation of Southern slavery? a courageous attack against Hitler?

You seem to have forgotten the number of times this story (along with others such as Job) has been trotted out to show people that if they just have ENOUGH faith, everything will work out OK.

But what you seem to have really forgotten is that while everyone can agree that Hitler was an asshole, you'll find very few people who feel the same way about God, even if he did demand their firstborn.

Though in fairness, sacrificing his daughter was his idea. The Celestial Dictator just agreed to go along with it.

What a sweet savor the daughter's burning carcass must have been.

You can't see god.


--imm

I was a horrified 8-year old, being told in religious school that Abraham should be lauded for his willingness to kill his son and that we should all have faith equivalent to his.

This wasn't some conservative church in the Bible belt but a reform synagogue in the Seattle area.

Wow.

My mom would have said: "Fuck no!"

Especially the Cain and Abel schtick.

I have never heard this before, though I suppose this might be common knowledge on certain websites I don't ever visit. How many brothers or sisters or cousins did you lose? Was this just in your family, or did you have friends whose brothers and sisters were being slaughtered? Growing up, did you hear stories from your parents and their friends and parents about Poor Schlomo! Oh, yes, he was a nice kid. We were in yeshiva together. Then suddenly one day, he was gone! Sacrificed by his father ...?

After that childhood, I suspect you need professional help

Here, try this: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=causal+conditional

Investigate the material you find there and then evaluate the following statement:

IF God says to do something THEN you should put your full faith in God and do it.

The Abrahamic religious tradition teaches that Abraham, by putting his full faith in God, was right to agree to sacrifice his son because IF God says to do something THEN you should put your full faith in God and do it.

Let me put that another way in case you still don't understand:

The three Abrahamic religions teach that when God says "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of," the right thing to do is to say, "Ok God!" and do it.

When I learned that in religious school, I was horrified. Of course since no one I know actually sacrifice their children, that must completely contradict the teaching. I'll even bet that with Google at your fingertips, you're unable to find a single instance of a parent sacrificing their child to God in Seattle, so that means that "If God says to do something, you do it" is never taught.

And just in case you still don't understand, here's a third time:

If [condition], then [action] is an example of a causal conditional--you take the action when the condition is met. In this case, people are taught that you should kill your child if God tells you to do so. That doesn't mean that people immediately start killing their children. It means that people are taught that you should kill your children if God tells you to do so.

I'll bet that if you were brought up in one of the Abrahamic religions, you encountered this teaching at some point.

(Did you see that? If you were raised in one of these religions, then you probably encountered this teaching. It doesn't mean that you've killed children or that you must have encountered this before, just that under a specific condition, you likely did.)

and I'm trying to figure out you think there's any evidence "the Abrahamic religions" teach it. The story of Abraham and Isaac is now thousands of years old, and it does not actually tell of a sacrifice but rather of a sacrifice interrupted. I'm unaware of any historical Judaic, Christian, or Islamic culture of human sacrifice. I'm not Jewish, but none of the rabbinical commentaries I've read remotely suggest a tolerance for human sacrifice -- so I've got to wonder why you think whatever you heard in synagogue advocated it

The point isn't the condoning of human sacrifice, or the actual act (which BTW good ol' smites-a-lot had no problem with in Judges 11). It's that the lesson taught is blind obedience to God, exemplified by Abraham's willingness to kill his son. Abraham is offered as a role model because he was willing to kill his son on God's say-so.

Hitchens' point is that such behavior isn't laudable, but reprehensible.

seems strange, since the old stories about Abraham and his lineage seem to teach a certain amount of contentiousness and "talking back"

There was the teaching that God was the ultimate authority and it isn't our place to question God's laws or commandments (interpreting them to fit contemporary lifestyles is just fine though). And then there was the teaching that a central part of "being Jewish" was always questioning authority, no matter the source.

Abraham didn't question God. Read Genesis 22--God said 'go here and kill your son' and Abraham took Issac on a road trip the next morning. When Issac asked where the sacrificial lamb was, Abraham just said, 'oh it's there,' then tied up Issac and put him no the pyre.

If you could provide examples of the children of Abraham talking back and not being punished, I'd love to see them. Aside from the occasional, "but Lord, that sounds impossible" followed by God saying "just trust me," there's no real questioning.

Arguing With God, Talmudic Discourse, and the Jewish Countermodel: Implications for the Study of Argumentation
David Frank, 2004
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/5298

... In Jewish tradition, people argue with God and win. In the bible God changes God’s mind, in the Talmud God concedes the turf to the Rabbis. The Jewish tradition takes a pluralist approach, in which minority opinions are preserved, and the truth is contained in multiple voices. Frank shows how Jewish thought contrasts with some of the basic assumptions of Aristotelian logic: “In Jewish logic, it does not follow that if two people disagree, only one must be right… Talmudic logic seeks out and cultivates an “included middle” – one that attempts to find or invent common ground between contraries.” The biblical arguments with God are about ethics and justice; people are arguing that God should live up to God’s own standards ... http://www.alevin.com/?p=2043

as an explanation for why the Jews, unlike some of their neighbors, did not practice human sacrifice. (Jepththa being a rather dim-witted exception--but it clearly wasn't a routine practice.)

How? It's hard for me to read it as anything other than a story meant to teach a lesson about the virtue of faith. If anything, the message is one of faith above all else.

How does the interpretation of it as an explanatory tale go?

Liberal believer can't defend a bible story or passage, so they claim that "some have interpreted this to mean..." and then make up whatever they feel like, with absolutely no reasoning or citations or anything needed.

Theology is pretty damn easy.

He's dead on with this point - what LOVING god would ask a person to sacrifice (murder) their own child?

The primitive and barbarian god known as Yahweh (AKA: Jesus), was only doing what all the other gods in the neighborhood were doing. You know how it is when you're a pimply young god, don't you? You tend to follow the crowd. Because he didn't want to feel left-out and weird and everything, so he thought he'd get in on this human sacrifice action along with all the other gods on the scene. But he found out that he didn't have the stomach for it.

- The wanker.....

The problem I've always had with the Bible is that God isn't held to the same standard as we would hold any person to. Take Job. If anyone screwed you over the way Job was screwed over, you would curse him--but nooooo. You're just supposed to take it from God. And child sacrifice--evil, yes? But nooooo, if God says do it, well, it must be right this one time, eh? And the Ten Commandments say "Thou shalt not kill", but the Book of Joshua goes on the depict the city of Jericho, the city of Ai, the Amorite kings after Gibeon, and Hazor as all being slaughtered. Very not killy-deathy, Joshua. (Although I think these cities' collapses are all shoe-horned into the Book of Joshua even though they might have happened decades apart--per Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed)

But at any rate, I think that story of Abraham and Isaac was just like the story of Iphegenia in Greek tragedies, where by the tragedy "Iphegenia at Aulis", it was supposed that the doomed daughter of the House of Atreus was substituted with a stag by the goddess and made a priestess instead. The past practice of child sacrifice is misremembered as a specific act of mythology--and is sweetened with a better ending. In this way, cultures improve upon even history. Unfortunately, this "improvement" is sometimes viewed as an example of mythological power-- but no. It's just made up stuff to make things sound better, I think.

If one could make killing one's children sound good....which I would also agree is a mark against religion.

It's a post-exilic allegory set in an indefinite time period.

Cued to the point of insanity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxD4sETwIng#t=3m23s

Hitchens and some Christian scholar who proudly stated that the commanment to kill Amalekites is perpetual and if he ever met one he would kill them.

I had to google Amalekite because there were so many competing tribes the Hebrews fought. As they say, history is written by the victors.

Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." (1 Sam. 15:3).

Yep, that sounds like Him.

:rofl:

Another ancient ethnic insult that got turned into the Immutable Word Of God, so that idiots still believe it to this very day. (See also "Good Samaritan.")

This one originated in the charming story of Lot and his horny daughters. You may remember, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot and his two daughters fled to a cave in Zoar.

The daughters got Lot drunk and boinked him. Both got pregnant. According to the Buy-bull, their two children went on to found the tribes of the Moabites and the Ammonites.

Now the reason this story originated is pretty obvious.

The Moabites and Ammonites lived on some choice real estate that the Israelites REALLY wanted to occupy.

There was, however, a slight catch, as the book of Deuteronomy notes. Their god absolutely forbade them to grab that territory:

2: 9 - "Do not harass the Moabites or provoke them to war, for I will not give you any part of their land. I have given Ar to the descendants of Lot as a possession."

2:19 - "When you come to the Ammonites, do not harass them or provoke them to war, for I will not give you possession of any land belonging to the Ammonites. I have given it as a possession to the descendants of Lot."

Like much of the Buy-bull, the whole story was a scam and con-job so that the Israelites could, forever after, look down their noses at their neighbors.

You can almost hear the little Bronze Age brats on their metaphorical playground: "Yeah, well, YOUR tribe was founded on incest! Neener-neener-neener..."

I don't even remember who it was, where it was, or when it was. I did watch it on YouTube at least a year ago, but the other details aren't coming to mind.

blathering, hatemonging, self righteous, bolshevik bigot.

:rofl:

Do you disagree with his response? If so, how would you respond to someone telling you to kill your children?

as in you've got to be kidding. The man makes his living by ad hominems. No one is telling him to kill his children.

It's a simple commentary on the Bible, not an ad hom like your attack. If you have nothing to say to it except to attack Hitchens, then you have nothing.

Not to mention an inability to understand basic sentence structure. S4P had the same problem up-thread, so at least you can take comfort in not being the only person on this thread to have trouble with the words "if" and "then."

that there is no god. No one can make such a statement with 100% certainty, just as no one can make a statement attesting to the absolute existence of a diety without 100% absolute objective proof.

BUT:

He is a better father that god the father was.

History is replete with people like Hitchens who cultivate hatred for other groups of people. He belongs in 1920's Russia. The major problems in this world are not caused by religion, but by Extremism. He is just another extremist.

without mentioning Russia?

I think I know the answer to this question, but I just thought I'd check.

n/t

does he call for hatred towards another group with whom he disagrees? Hitchens certainly fits the mold.

And for giving credibility to Naziism:

They decriminalized abortion, decriminalized drugs, and legalized gay marriage in quick succession. And had the indecency to do the last only 3 days after the Pope left. They'll put out the good china when he visits, but forget about him after he's gone, like some sort of loopy relative.

Then there's that story about the Saudi woman who beat the daylights out of a virtue cop...

It's been a bad week for theocratic bullies :)

What a breakthrough! I'm proud of you rug.

Well done. :)

:shrug:

if a bunch of people on this planet were to try to model their lives after Professor Moriarty, or on Lex Luther, or many other imaginary villians from fiction, people would condemn these literary figures, would they not? How is God any different?

God is a hell of a lot more evil a character than Professor Moriarty.

But then if you actually cared what he was saying you'd already know that. It's called a rhetorical tool, much like what you implemented just above regarding God being imaginary.

Claiming that Hitchens is attempting to curse a being he thinks is imaginary is only possible if you take the words "fuck you" out of context. Sure, that's easy to do and it certainly makes him look like a lunatic, but it's not even close to what he was trying to say, and by changing Hitchens' argument into something that is laughably easy to tear down, you have created a straw man.

My interpretation made me laugh, it made laconicspouse laugh, and I'm guessing that it at least made darkstar3 laugh. Therefore, I've correctly interpreted your words, no?

I must be incorrect.