Here are some of my favorite bible passages. Favorites because they expose critical hypocracy in religious norms and political actions:

God is not all knowing?
—————————————————-
Genesis 18:
20 Yahweh said, "Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, 21 I will go down now, and see whether their deeds are as bad as the reports which have come to me. If not, I will know."

What is "life":
—————————————————-
Deuteronomy 12: 22 - 23
22 Even as the gazelle and as the hart is eaten, so you shall eat of it: the unclean and the clean may eat of it alike. 23 Only be sure that you don’t eat the blood: for the blood is the life; and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.

—Since a zygote has yet to produce blood, does this means that God does not consider it to be ‘life’.

Sanctity of Marriage:
————————————————-
Judges 8:30 - 31
And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten; for he had many wives.  And his concubine that was in Shechem, she also bare him a son, and he called his name Abimelech.

1 Kings 11:1 - 5
Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites; . . .  He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines;. . .

Who is this powerful God "Chemosh", I thought there was only one God?
———————————————————————————————————————-
2 Kings 3:24 - 27
24 When they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and struck the Moabites, so that they fled before them; and they went forward into the land smiting the Moabites. . . .
26 When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too severe for him, he took with him seven hundred men who drew sword, to break through to the king of Edom; but they could not. 27 Then he took his eldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. There was great wrath against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

—Moab makes a sacrifice of his eldest son as an offering to the God Chemosh, and in so doing, escapes Yaweh’s soldiers.

Yahweh the jealous God
———————————————————————————————————————-
Deuteronomy 6:14 - 16
14 You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who are around you; 15 for Yahweh your God in the midst of you is a jealous God;

if there is only one God, who else is there to be jealous of? When did the worship of one Gods change to the belief in the existance of only one God?

A test for the existance of God! :
————————————————————————————————————-
Judges 6: 36 - 37
36 And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by my hand, as thou hast spoken, 37 behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing-floor; if there be dew on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the ground, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by my hand, as thou hast spoken. 38 And it was so; for he rose up early on the morrow, and pressed the fleece together, and wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowlful of water. 39 And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be kindled against me, and I will speak but this once: let me make trial, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. 40 And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.

—what, isn’t God’s word good enough?

The writers of the Torah/Old Testiment did not deny the existence of other Gods - reference to and conflict with other Gods was frequent. Jehovah was the God of Israel . . . not the God of everyone. Only the Hebrews/Israelites were chosen, and as such only the Israelites received favor from God - all others could be slaughtered and killed (children and elderly alike) and their lands taken.

Judges 10:22
22 And they possessed all the border of the Amorites, from the Arnon even unto the Jabbok, and from the wilderness even unto the Jordan. 23 So now Jehovah, the God of Israel, hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess them? 24 Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever Jehovah our God hath dispossessed from before us, them will we possess.

—

Favorite bible passages

Here are some of my favorite bible passages. Favorites because they expose critical hypocracy in religious norms and political actions:

God is not all knowing?
—————————————————-
Genesis 18:
20 Yahweh said, “Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, 21 I will go down now, and see whether their deeds are as bad as the reports which have come to me. If not, I will know.”

What is “life”:
—————————————————-
Deuteronomy 12: 22 - 23
22 Even as the gazelle and as the hart is eaten, so you shall eat of it: the unclean and the clean may eat of it alike. 23 Only be sure that you don’t eat the blood: for the blood is the life; and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.

—Since a zygote has yet to produce blood, does this means that God does not consider it to be ‘life’.

Sanctity of Marriage:
————————————————-
Judges 8:30 - 31
And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten; for he had many wives.  And his concubine that was in Shechem, she also bare him a son, and he called his name Abimelech.

1 Kings 11:1 - 5
Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites; . . .  He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines;. . .

Who is this powerful God “Chemosh”, I thought there was only one God?
———————————————————————————————————————-
2 Kings 3:24 - 27
24 When they came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and struck the Moabites, so that they fled before them; and they went forward into the land smiting the Moabites. . . .
26 When the king of Moab saw that the battle was too severe for him, he took with him seven hundred men who drew sword, to break through to the king of Edom; but they could not. 27 Then he took his eldest son who would have reigned in his place, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. There was great wrath against Israel: and they departed from him, and returned to their own land.

—Moab makes a sacrifice of his eldest son as an offering to the God Chemosh, and in so doing, escapes Yaweh’s soldiers.

Yahweh the jealous God
———————————————————————————————————————-
Deuteronomy 6:14 - 16
14 You shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the peoples who are around you; 15 for Yahweh your God in the midst of you is a jealous God;

if there is only one God, who else is there to be jealous of? When did the worship of one Gods change to the belief in the existance of only one God?

A test for the existance of God! :
————————————————————————————————————-
Judges 6: 36 - 37
36 And Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by my hand, as thou hast spoken, 37 behold, I will put a fleece of wool on the threshing-floor; if there be dew on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the ground, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by my hand, as thou hast spoken. 38 And it was so; for he rose up early on the morrow, and pressed the fleece together, and wrung the dew out of the fleece, a bowlful of water. 39 And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be kindled against me, and I will speak but this once: let me make trial, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. 40 And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground.

—what, isn’t God’s word good enough?

The writers of the Torah/Old Testiment did not deny the existence of other Gods - reference to and conflict with other Gods was frequent. Jehovah was the God of Israel . . . not the God of everyone. Only the Hebrews/Israelites were chosen, and as such only the Israelites received favor from God - all others could be slaughtered and killed (children and elderly alike) and their lands taken.

Judges 10:22
22 And they possessed all the border of the Amorites, from the Arnon even unto the Jabbok, and from the wilderness even unto the Jordan. 23 So now Jehovah, the God of Israel, hath dispossessed the Amorites from before his people Israel, and shouldest thou possess them? 24 Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever Jehovah our God hath dispossessed from before us, them will we possess.

—

Well done. There are lots of these sorts of passages. For more ideas, check out Tom Paine’s wonderful Age of Reason and Robert Ingersoll’s Some Mistakes of Moses.

:wink:

Isaiah 42:19—“Who is blind but My servant, or so deaf as My messenger whom I send?  Who is so blind as he that is at peace with Me, or so blind as the servant of the Lord?”

It’s right there in black and white!

Hi Riley,

I agree with you completely. Similarly you will get verses in the Koran which is contradictory, hillarious often plain stupid.

However, the problem is not discovering such verses, which one reading of the Bible, Koran and Torah will easily do. The problem is convincing a biblical scholar of your interpretation.

You will notice that as soon as you confront any Biblical scholar about your interpretation he or she will relish debating the semantics of the scripture with you. In fact you will ultimately get “lost” in the interpretation from Hebrew to Greek to English.

From experienced I learnt to stay away from that “botomless pit” of semantical debate with the theist (although we would certainly appreciate such enlightenment on this blog of secular humanist).

You will notice that amongst Christians they have thousands upon thousands of different interpretations where they differ with the meaning of scripture. As long as GOD is not there to be the referee of HIS WORD your interpretation just gets lost in this dark and endless void.

My advice, debate the Christian, Muslim, Jew at the level where all discussion can be REASONABLY and objectively debated. Be careful not to be drawn into the meaning of various passages in the Bible. This is the HOME TURF of the religious.

[quote author=“mfmahamed”]My advice, debate the Christian, Muslim, Jew at the level where all discussion can be REASONABLY and objectively debated. Be careful not to be drawn into the meaning of various passages in the Bible. This is the HOME TURF of the religious.

Yeah, I think you’re right mahamed, on all of you assessments.

But maybe I think there are non-scholarly people who belong to religious institutions, but whom are not familiar with the holy book the institution is founded upon;  I think this is in fact the case with many Catholics, who are only familiar with selected passages read to them in church. I know this was the case with me and it was a real shock to my thinking when I first read the whole Bible and could see just how stupid it was.

Also, a bit of an aside, the most effective observation that brought about my own conversion was seeing the lack of ability among theological scholars to reach agreement - unlike disaggreements among scientists who gradually reach agreement on issues and then move on to new issues to disagree about, Biblical scholars are just as likely to unravel as move forward.

And most powerful REASON-based arguement that I found myself asking internally was the following:

Why would God, infinite and wise, aware that scattered throughout human history are men claiming to be prophets, claiming to act with the authoriy of God, claiming to be the offspring of God (or a god), and even outright claiming to be God (or a god) . . . then choose to send His most important message using the same methods already so thoroughly corrupted? Such an act would predicably be confusing and inevitably lead to incessant conflict.

—

“and lusted after her paramours there, whose members were like those of donkeys, and whose emission was like that of stallions.” (Ezekiel 23: 21, NRSV)

A favorite Bible passage

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.  Psalm 137:9 KJV

Or the Contemporary English Version:
9 May the Lord bless everyone who beats your children against the rocks!

Now that is scary.