[Ford Prefect]

there is a bit about parlours and it goes into inferrence of eunuchs and fellation <kama sutra>

it's not all orgies and upside down sumersaults

actually, it's a lot less fun stuff then people are lead to believe

Wikipedia (for whatever that's worth) says that "eunuch" is not exactly an accurate translation of the Hindi word "Hijra", which actually refers more to effeminate homosexuals or transgender individuals. Apparently ritual castration was not particularly common.

[redmenace]

I am not too interested in this thread but I will say this,
The times when homosexuals were killed in mass was when almost the entire tribe of benjamin was wiped out for raping a servant girl and the intent to have sex with a prophet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe_of_Benjamin

[Gank]

Nowt about homosexuals in there but feck me, those israelites were a right bunch of cnuts. Killed all their women and children then gave them a gift of 400 virgins from another town they massacred? If thats the sort of stuff your god encourages he can go way and ****e for himself.

[Ace]

there is a bit about parlours and it goes into inferrence of eunuchs and fellation <kama sutra>

it's not all orgies and upside down sumersaults

actually, it's a lot less fun stuff then people are lead to believe

Wikipedia (for whatever that's worth) says that "eunuch" is not exactly an accurate translation of the Hindi word "Hijra", which actually refers more to effeminate homosexuals or transgender individuals. Apparently ritual castration was not particularly common.

Hijras are considered a 'third gender' with male and female aspects. From an outsider's perspective they might be viewed as homosexual or transgender but within their own culture they are simply 'Hijras.'

Now the Phillippines are a case of biological males taking on a female social role. Of course these people are highly offended if called a homosexual, and do not view themselves as such even if from a biological definition they are. Local christian churches don't view it as such due to the mix of local and foreign beliefs, but foreign groups scream about the un-godly homosexual heathen practices of the Phillippines.

While gender is not entirely a social construct, it is an *incredibly* malleable concept.

[redmenace]

Nowt about homosexuals in there but feck me, those israelites were a right bunch of cnuts. Killed all their women and children then gave them a gift of 400 virgins from another town they massacred? If thats the sort of stuff your god encourages he can go way and ****e for himself.

As I understand it, most of the men were killed as well. I also don't think that article from the wiki is really complete or unbiased. In other words, it is incomplete in that it doesn't really discuss the massacre nor the reasons for such.

[Quest_techie]

there is a bit about parlours and it goes into inferrence of eunuchs and fellation <kama sutra>

it's not all orgies and upside down sumersaults

actually, it's a lot less fun stuff then people are lead to believe

Wikipedia (for whatever that's worth) says that "eunuch" is not exactly an accurate translation of the Hindi word "Hijra", which actually refers more to effeminate homosexuals or transgender individuals. Apparently ritual castration was not particularly common.

I don't know how good the translation I looked over was, it had some footnotes in that section I didn't bother looking at as I was trying to speed through it as quickly as possible anyhow

and I do know, at least now some devotees of shiva undergo ritual castration, whether that bears any on historical practices, no idea, haven't looked enough at the history of the area to see how that would be affected

[Gank]

As I understand it, most of the men were killed as well. I also don't think that article from the wiki is really complete or unbiased. In other words, it is incomplete in that it doesn't really discuss the massacre nor the reasons for such.

Can you post a link to the relevant chapters, because theres something seriously wrong with killing a whole people over rape then giving them 400 girls whose familys you've just slaughtered, or are we supposed to believe these girls went willingly to their new fellas?

[redmenace]

Judges 19-21

[Ace]

...are we supposed to believe these girls went willingly to their new fellas?

They did because it was god's will... Gaius...

[TrashMan]

Sorry for the tangent, just got reminded by this snippet by Aldo: "But why does God care? Surely an omnipotent, omniscient deity" and needed to vent

BINGO! You just hit the nail on the head and my biggest roadblock to organized faith. GOD (under any name you want to use) is all knowing period. He knows Humanity is a flawed creation, he knows what acts will happen over the whole of material existence, and more importantly he knows how it will end (presumably badly, a Pyhrric victory separating the truly "faithful" from the masses probably at a ratio of 1/10,000 by my guestimation).

Here is MY big question no one seems able to answer: "If he conceptualized existence as we know it before making it (unless he/she/it was just screwing around one step at a time like a kid with a home science kit), WHY even bother making it happen when you know:

 A.) It's fundamentally flawed B.) You're ultimately and sorely responsible for creating any and ALL evil that arises from it! You can't blame "SINNERS" cause according to "THE PLAN" God's will determined that they be born sinners and die sinners... WTF? Free will my ass! I think it's a cop-out for "God", instead of taking responsibility for his screw up (creation) and saying "My bad!"

Here I am a mere Human and even I would have said to the "almighty",  "Nope that's a stupid idea. I really wouldn't do that if I were you."

(but then we wouldn't have FS2, so maybe it was worth it after all?) 

I like to think Jesus was God's way of making it up to Humanity for being a half-assed landlord...

Is humanity flawed? Or is it exactly as He wanted it to be?

You have to look at the parent-child analogy of things.

You don't want your child to be a mindless zombie following your every whim. You want it to think and act for yourself, to grow and learn, even if it is sometimes a painfull process.

Do you blame the parent if the child doesn't listen to him and makes wrong choices?
All evil his fault? Yes and no. Ultimately, it is our choices that make that evil happen. I can give you a gun, but it's your choice to use it to shoot people.
Besides, there's no way to tell how it will all end and will it be worth it all in the end.
And you musn't forget the old saying - every dark cloud has a silver lining. For all that evil, somme good things were also created (and vice-versa)
He didn't create a "perfect" world, but then again does he have to?

[aldo_14]

God wants to love people, and he wants them to love him back.  A person must be able to choose to love, or not love; or else the love isn't real.

If all God wanted were automatic worshippers, there would be no need for free will.  But true love requires an opt-in contract.

Shouldn't we regard it as a Good Thing (tm) for God to give us the dignity of making a choice?

Why does God need to be worshipped?  Isn't it said somewhere in the bible it's an offence to claim the mind of God, anyways?

Marriage is not all about sex.  Sex is (from a holistic viewpoint) only a fringe benefit.  Marriage is all about a couple entering into a contract to love and care for one another.  You're right; no marriage is guaranteed to (or is even inclined to) work, not automatically anyway.  Marriage requires effort on both sides.

Of course sex is a good selection tool; if you plan to have sex with someone on a regular basis, it makes sense that you'd be more inclined to do it with someone you enjoy having sex with.  But a marriage that's only about sex is a marriage that's only superficial.

Um, what's that got to do with my quote?  Perhaps it'd be clearer if I said "why need marriage before sex?"

Okay.  Midian was one of the tribes that tried to turn Israel away from God.  God is saying to repay them by wiping out their leadership (males and their wives).

Okay.  An Israelite who tries to turn a fellow Israelite to a foreign god is essentially a traitor.  God is saying here that traitors deserve the dealth penalty.

Okay.  So God is making certain exceptions to his "wipe out everybody" clause -- namely, that if they surrender, they will live.

So, essentially, God says to kill unbelievers? (because it's not like God discourages conversion, after all.... who'd have thought a diety could be so hypocritical?)

There is.  Again, these are the countries that have built up a massive sin debt over many years; and their cumulative sin debt earns them the punishment of being wiped out.  God is using Israel as his instrument of punishment.

He could have used a natural disaster as his instrument of punishment, as he has on many other occasions, but he wanted to demonstrate clearly to the neighboring nations that he was the one behind it all.

Right....by using men.  That makes perfect sense.

Nooooo.....wait a sec.  Men.  Crikey.  You could almost think - and I'm sure we've never seen this before - God was being used to justify the settling of old scores with extreme violence and cruelty.

Here's an applicable passage:..snip..

Righty-o.  Biblical, then.

[Mefustae]

Perhaps it'd be clearer if I said "why need marriage before sex?"

Exactly. Doesn't make sense at all given the obviously non-monogamous nature of males; the whole 'spreading our seed' trait of our psychology which directly contradicts all this "marriage" bollocks. You'd have thought that God, given he designed us [rather badly, i'd say], would have either programmed out this trait or at the very least preached a polygamous marriage system.

[aldo_14]

Perhaps it'd be clearer if I said "why need marriage before sex?"

Exactly. Doesn't make sense at all given the obviously non-monogamous nature of males; the whole 'spreading our seed' trait of our psychology which directly contradicts all this "marriage" bollocks. You'd have thought that God, given he designed us [rather badly, i'd say], would have either programmed out this trait or at the very least preached a polygamous marriage system.

Ah, but God wants every second of our lives to be a struggle against some combination of exterior stress and interior contradiction, rigidly sticking to a 20 century old set of morals written by people who might or might not have made it all up to suit their own goals like slightly less (more?) whacky Scientologists.

Just because he loves us.

[Goober5000]

God wants to love people, and he wants them to love him back.  A person must be able to choose to love, or not love; or else the love isn't real.

If all God wanted were automatic worshippers, there would be no need for free will.  But true love requires an opt-in contract.

Shouldn't we regard it as a Good Thing (tm) for God to give us the dignity of making a choice?

Why does God need to be worshipped?  Isn't it said somewhere in the bible it's an offence to claim the mind of God, anyways?

First of all, the Bible does say God desires worship and love, so that isn't "claiming" anything.

Second of all, God doesn't "need" anything from us.  He owns "the cattle on a thousand hills"; he created the universe; etc.  He wants to demonstrate love and grace and goodness, and the proper response to that is worship.

Marriage is not all about sex.  Sex is (from a holistic viewpoint) only a fringe benefit.  Marriage is all about a couple entering into a contract to love and care for one another.  You're right; no marriage is guaranteed to (or is even inclined to) work, not automatically anyway.  Marriage requires effort on both sides.

Of course sex is a good selection tool; if you plan to have sex with someone on a regular basis, it makes sense that you'd be more inclined to do it with someone you enjoy having sex with.  But a marriage that's only about sex is a marriage that's only superficial.

Um, what's that got to do with my quote?  Perhaps it'd be clearer if I said "why need marriage before sex?"

Actually, the biblical rule is that once you have sex with someone, you are married to them -- two people becoming one flesh.  The marriage "ceremony" is just a public declaration of your intent to enter into a marriage covenant.  It's a celebration, which is good; and it's an invitation for friends and family to uphold the marriage, which is also good.  But once you have sex, the covenant exists, whether or not you had a ceremony.

So taking this into consideration, "sex before marriage" isn't possible.  If you have a bunch of partners, all you're basically doing is marrying and abandoning a whole bunch of people until you find one you like.

So, essentially, God says to kill unbelievers? (because it's not like God discourages conversion, after all.... who'd have thought a diety could be so hypocritical?)

He's not being hypocritical.  These people were being wicked; they deserved judgement.  So God judged them.  God extends mercy in certain situations and in certain ways, but he is under no obligation to show mercy in particular circumstances.  This was just one of those times.

He could have used a natural disaster as his instrument of punishment, as he has on many other occasions, but he wanted to demonstrate clearly to the neighboring nations that he was the one behind it all.

Right....by using men.  That makes perfect sense.

Nooooo.....wait a sec.  Men.  Crikey.  You could almost think - and I'm sure we've never seen this before - God was being used to justify the settling of old scores with extreme violence and cruelty.

Not really.  The Israelites' quarrel was with the Egyptians; they held no particular animosity to the people in Canaan.

Look at the larger picture.  The Israelites had just been divinely rescued through a great series of miracles, and news of their deliverance had spread all over the world.  Now the Israelites were invading Canaan, also with God's help.  God's objective was to demonstrate his role in both situations.  The same God who delivered Israel from Egypt was also helping them invade Canaan.

Exactly. Doesn't make sense at all given the obviously non-monogamous nature of males; the whole 'spreading our seed' trait of our psychology which directly contradicts all this "marriage" bollocks. You'd have thought that God, given he designed us [rather badly, i'd say], would have either programmed out this trait or at the very least preached a polygamous marriage system.

Actually, nothing at all in the Bible prohibits polygamy.  On the contrary, God expressly makes provisions for how husbands are to treat their wives, and lays down several rules.  (For example, a man should not take the sister of a current wife as a new wife, because they'll become rivals.)

The requirement for a man to have only one wife at a time is a human invention, and a rather recent one at that.  IIRC, it was part of Roman culture, and when the Roman Empire established Christianity as a state religion, it became part of Christian practice.

[aldo_14]

First of all, the Bible does say God desires worship and love, so that isn't "claiming" anything.

Second of all, God doesn't "need" anything from us.  He owns "the cattle on a thousand hills"; he created the universe; etc.  He wants to demonstrate love and grace and goodness, and the proper response to that is worship.

So God doesn't give a damn (appropriately enough) whether you worship him or not when the whole heaven/hell bit is judged?

Actually, the biblical rule is that once you have sex with someone, you are married to them -- two people becoming one flesh.  The marriage "ceremony" is just a public declaration of your intent to enter into a marriage covenant.  It's a celebration, which is good; and it's an invitation for friends and family to uphold the marriage, which is also good.  But once you have sex, the covenant exists, whether or not you had a ceremony.

So taking this into consideration, "sex before marriage" isn't possible.  If you have a bunch of partners, all you're basically doing is marrying and abandoning a whole bunch of people until you find one you like.

That seems all rather tenuous; does the biblical rule anticipate either non-reproductive sex or articifical methods (such as surrogate mothers, IVF, etc)?

He's not being hypocritical.  These people were being wicked; they deserved judgement.  So God judged them.  God extends mercy in certain situations and in certain ways, but he is under no obligation to show mercy in particular circumstances.  This was just one of those times.

If God doesn't care about worship, and allows free will, then why punish the consequences?  If I said to a guy 'fine, throw rocks anywhere you like; I'll join in', and then beat him up for hitting my petunias, isn't that hypocritical?

Not really.  The Israelites' quarrel was with the Egyptians; they held no particular animosity to the people in Canaan.

Look at the larger picture.  The Israelites had just been divinely rescued through a great series of miracles, and news of their deliverance had spread all over the world.  Now the Israelites were invading Canaan, also with God's help.  God's objective was to demonstrate his role in both situations.  The same God who delivered Israel from Egypt was also helping them invade Canaan.

So God demonstrates his prescence by trying to start a genocidal sectarian war?  A diety who could click his metaphorical fingers and replace the entire Canaanite society with a big empty desert and a "God Woz 'Ere" sign, decides to instead get his followers to die and murder for him? (of course, Canaan wasn't utterly  destroyed anyways because the southern part of it became Phoenicia; tut-tut to the Israelites then)

What sin was exactly being punished in attacking Canaan, anyways?

(Nitpick: I doubt the Chinese, for example, were much aware of the Israelite 'deliverance')

[Gank]

Shagging.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2018;&version=31;

[Goober5000]

So God doesn't give a damn (appropriately enough) whether you worship him or not when the whole heaven/hell bit is judged?

I'm not sure what you mean here, but judgement is about justice, not necessarily worship.

That seems all rather tenuous; does the biblical rule anticipate either non-reproductive sex or articifical methods (such as surrogate mothers, IVF, etc)?

Whether sex results in reproduction or not is irrelevant, as far as the Bible is concerned (see Gank's link).

As for artificial reproduction, consider that these methods have only been around for the past few years and would have been completely irrelevant for most of human history.  The Bible says nothing one way or the other about either cloning or IVF.

So I don't think it's tenuous at all.  Sex creates a marital bond between two people, regardless of reproduction.

If God doesn't care about worship, and allows free will, then why punish the consequences?  If I said to a guy 'fine, throw rocks anywhere you like; I'll join in', and then beat him up for hitting my petunias, isn't that hypocritical?

It's a bit of a leap to claim that "doesn't need" implies "doesn't care".

In any case, God dispenses justice as well as love.  I don't know if lack of worship per se is a sin, but theologically that's irrelevant, as people have plenty of sin to deal with regardless of whether they worship God.

So God demonstrates his prescence by trying to start a genocidal sectarian war?  A diety who could click his metaphorical fingers and replace the entire Canaanite society with a big empty desert and a "God Woz 'Ere" sign, decides to instead get his followers to die and murder for him? (of course, Canaan wasn't utterly  destroyed anyways because the southern part of it became Phoenicia; tut-tut to the Israelites then)

One of the ways God demonstrates his presence is by executing justice.  In this particular case, the instrument of justice was war.

What sin was exactly being punished in attacking Canaan, anyways?

"You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them."

This is repeated in several places in the Old Testament.  Mostly in relation to idolatry, sexual immorality, filicide, and so forth.

[Sphynx]

Pardon me for throwing in a tangent.

I thought I'd stay out of this, but I just wanted to comment:

A marriage that is sexless prior to existing is a marriage more likely to result in strife.  The sexual compatability of a couple is a must.

This is a common myth. In fact, one of the major pre-marital predictors of marital satisfaction and stability is little to no premarital sex for both partners. For a concise discussion of this research, you could refer to Jeff Larsen, Ph.D. (not the Far Side guy, but it's the same name) and his book "Should We Stay Together," with a discussion that is very "lay-person" friendly. He has done a wonderful meta-analysis in his scholarly works (available through a scholarly search engine), and they say a lot about this issue.

In short, sexual compatiblity is more accurately the product of the degree to which each partner can be sensitive to the other's needs, wants, and experience. Everything else is mostly just unfounded popular assertions and social constructs that do not hold up under scrutiny.

So, under the weight of the empircal evidence, the exact opposite of the quoted statement is true.

[aldo_14]

I'm not sure what you mean here, but judgement is about justice, not necessarily worship.

So it wouldn't matter one jot at the Pearly Gates about whether or not I was Christian when I died?

Whether sex results in reproduction or not is irrelevant, as far as the Bible is concerned (see Gank's link).

As for artificial reproduction, consider that these methods have only been around for the past few years and would have been completely irrelevant for most of human history.  The Bible says nothing one way or the other about either cloning or IVF.

So I don't think it's tenuous at all.  Sex creates a marital bond between two people, regardless of reproduction.

Sex exists because of a 'marital bond', surely; because clearly mutual attraction is a necessity prior to consensual intercourse (note; not including prositution in this).  What exactly does sex add beyond a swapping of - potentially - bodily fluids?

I mean, I'm not a fan of one night stands and I believe sex is worthless unless it's with someone you genuinely care about, but i'm not sure there's anything there which automatically ramps up a relationship 'state'.  Certainly it's a bonding excercise, but also one which requires a strenghtening of a relationship beforehand.

Incidentally, apparently some religions - well, Buddhism at least - include opinions on artificial methods of reproduction.  Also, surely an omniprescent god would at least hint on these things, I mean it's not like the Bible was due to be sent back to the copywriters every century, is it?

It's a bit of a leap to claim that "doesn't need" implies "doesn't care".

In any case, God dispenses justice as well as love.  I don't know if lack of worship per se is a sin, but theologically that's irrelevant, as people have plenty of sin to deal with regardless of whether they worship God.

Why care?  Is god subject to human emotions of want, now?

One of the ways God demonstrates his presence is by executing justice.  In this particular case, the instrument of justice was war.

Genocide, you mean.  And it failed.  D'oh.

"You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them."

This is repeated in several places in the Old Testament.  Mostly in relation to idolatry, sexual immorality, filicide, and so forth.

So they were being punished for being different.  Wow, we've never seen that in history before.......

[TrashMan]

So it wouldn't matter one jot at the Pearly Gates about whether or not I was Christian when I died?

It might get you bonus points, but if you were  good person, it does not REALLY matter what race, color, nationality or religion you are... in the long run anyway.