I can't believe that anything is based on the laws of leviticus. What I find most irritating is how people pick and choose which ones to follow. I know jesus didn't say these things and some of the christians believe in what jesus says is most important but its all in the same book. Why not edit the book and just have a whole new book? Its not like Jesus commanded the whole book be read in its entirety. He didn't write any of it. I would support a religion that cut the nasty jew law part out and just left in the messages of Jesus. Keeping that baggage in the book to me, nullifies the books messages as a whole.
This whole leviticus book is so utterly ridiculous:
Leviticus 20.13: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Lev. 18.22
Why are they not passing laws to prevent men from lying with women "having their sickness" lol. He seems to be pretty much against that too.
Leviticus 20.18: And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.
Or from eating unclean beasts. We have a whole proposition against gay marriage but nothing against unclean beats on the state constitutions.
Levitius 20.25: Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean.
I want to see prop Eat Clean and proposition Period.
About Bible picking & choosing... what about the extra books the Catholics have that the Protestants don't? How do folks reconcile that with the below-quoted Revelations?
One more thought. Most of the "crazy" rules actually come out compassionate or reasonable when you learn the context/thinking behind them. 1,000 years ago, when human science will have made all sorts of advances and we operate with all kinds of different assumptions, many of our laws will seem crazy, too.
@jim the canon of the New Testament was formed over time, and finalized after the council of Nicea, even though there was a pretty good consensus way before. :::link:::
The cannon was not decided so much as it was recognized. Only a few books were really considered and rejected, like the Didache (which was found to be orthodox enough, but not directly connected to one of the apostles). The councils less "sliced and diced" the cannon, and more codified the consensus that already existed.
@JohnAllen When Rev 22:18 was written, the author was most likely referring only to that book, not the whole of scripture. In fact, he had no idea that his writings would be combined with others into a volume that would become scripture.
@paul You left out the part where Mystic inserts a virus into your machine that empties your bank account.
Seeing as PHP is open source, I have been work steadily on a new branch of it called Mystic as I feel like my life is missing the randomness of mysticism.
Some parts of it are obvious like the old PHP but then then there are the mystical parts where you put variables into a function and sometimes they come out as you would expect, othertimes they are influenced by $divine_intervention which arbitrarily manages data integrity from a distant network that does not have a static IP address.
If you read the underlying source code in C, it gives you a feel for what might happen and some guidelines to program by, but even that won't give you the whole truth because that breaks down into machine code. If you don't read the machine code created by your high level language, you can't really even be a programmer. At least not with Mystic, lol.
I do the same with Zen Buddhism, which is 'my religion' if you squint hard enough and look sideways. I chop out what I don't like, and add it back in if I realize I was wrong. People that I've never met don't get to make that decision for me, and I don't get to make it for anyone else.
No, I know. I'm talking about myself, not anyone else. I like lots of stuff in the Bible, and that's how I pick and choose.
I don't expect to convince you of anything :)
"Take out the mysticism, leave in the human, and I'm sold."
I'm sorry (e:Jim), but that totally made me laugh. It's like if I told you, put the mysticism into your belief system and then I'd be sold on it. Lol.
I don't think the Christians are going to take the mysticism out anytime soon and I wouldn't suggest secularists put mysticism into their belief system. Lol.
The Council of Nicea sliced and diced the New Testament, thanks to Constantine, and they didn't get the plague. That was 300 years after the fact. Revelations is kind of a rambling mess, anyways. If they can judge what's in or out, so can I. Thomas Jefferson had the right idea. Take out the mysticism, leave in the human, and I'm sold.
Johnallen, you should have told that to the Council of Nicea.
Paul, I am not one to quote scripture but the reason why the Bible can not be cut and pasted is found in the book of Revelation Rev 22:18 I warn everyone who hears the prophetic words in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words in this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city descrided in this book." It is just about teh last verse of the Bible.
To pick and chose from the Bible can be very dangerous, look at the hatfull groups that have, the Mormon church has its edited verson, the Jahovia Witnesses, the Church of Christian Science (not too much of a problem)
The biggest difference between denominations are those that take the Bible literally, and those that use it as a study guide/example,
The Bible can be extremely confusing, I mean how can you "put them to death." in the Old Testiment and then have Jesus telling you to "love thy neighbor as thyself." Seems to be off target.
And not to sound like a dork, but you shouldn't let these groups of people discourage you Paul. You are a great person and the only thing you need to worry about is your family, not the Church of Later Day Retards.
Seriously though I think (e:Paul) you make a good point. I think a lot of people look at the bible and pick and chose parts of it to follow. But I also think that some people understand that certain things about food and things from the olden times don't apply to now. The other thing to remember that I think everyone should remember is that the Bible is really a set of books. There are texts from the time that where not included for what ever reason. I admit I'm not sure what those texts are and I'm sure different people have different ideas of why they weren't part of the bible. I think some of the book is a reflection of the times and people should remember that. I have my own theory about the man laying with a man thing, and that is that gay sex was common in greece (hence the term great style) and so that was a way to distance them selves from that.
(e:tinypliny) that is a great idea but if I study that who will I study it with and do I start at Position one or at 69, HA.
LOL.
You all should just switch to the Kamasutra.
That one is great but I think they should expand it to any woman who seizes a man by his private parts - not just a wife - and even extend it to kicking if they doesn't already count in seizing, lol.
This is one of my favorites from OT law. It's in Deutoronomy.
"11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity."
I'm with you on Prop Period. It's a mess.
However I'd totally vote against Prop Eat Clena. Have you ever had pork belly?!
"Why not edit the book and just have a whole new book? Its not like Jesus commanded the whole book be read in its entirety. He didn't write any of it. I would support a religion that cut the nasty jew law part out and just left in the messages of Jesus. Keeping that baggage in the book to me, nullifies the books messages as a whole."
My short answer is that the we use the whole bible including Leviticus as a context for a better understanding of the teachings of Jesus and his apostle Paul. Will elaborate in another post.