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[MirrorIrorriM]

The main difference here is that in one scenario it is a man saying to do something ridiculous.  In the other it is God saying that you should do what he frikken says because he is God.  Sometimes the justification in an order is found in the authority of the person giving it.

That's kindof moved the goalposts rather a lot (from "Most Christian laws make sense because of hygeine" to "Christian laws should be followed because God says so and he's God").

I'd like you to expand on that view.  Does God saying it make it ok because he must have a secret reason for not wanting people to collect sticks on Saturday?  Or is the stoning justified because God simply cannot be disobeyed, with the law itself being irrelevant?  Or is it because God somehow defines what's right by saying it?  I'm kindof interested.

I would say that there are often justifications and sometimes not.  According to Genesis, God put the fruit of good and evil in the garden of Eden, but why would he do such a thing?  There is no real REASON not to eat it, he simply said they shouldn't because they shouldn't.  God gives laws on some occasions to test loyalty, not logic.  Think of it in the perspective of a parent.  If mom says not to eat the chocolate because it is special and you eat it, whether or not she actually had a reason to keep you from eating the chocolate, it was a wrongful act because you defied her rule.  Now if mom says you CAN eat the exact same chocolate, was it wrong that you ate it?  No, because she didn't SAY it was wrong.

[G-Flex]

I'm more bothered by the broad swaths of popular Christian belief that are based on either relatively creative translation or bizarre misinterpretations. For instance, how anyone can get "don't masturbate" out of the story of Onan is beyond me; that's like saying that the moral of Goldilocks and the Three Bears is to not eat porridge. Add to this any proscription on premarital sex; premarital sex within a long-term committed relationship between adults isn't a question anybody back then even really had to consider, since marriage was much younger and courtship worked differently, and any prohibition based on the word "fornication" can be argued to be about something fairly different in the first place.

[Shambling Zombie]

I would say that there are often justifications and sometimes not.  According to Genesis, God put the fruit of good and evil in the garden of Eden, but why would he do such a thing?  There is no real REASON not to eat it, he simply said they shouldn't because they shouldn't.  God gives laws on some occasions to test loyalty, not logic.  Think of it in the perspective of a parent.  If mom says not to eat the chocolate because it is special and you eat it, whether or not she actually had a reason to keep you from eating the chocolate, it was a wrongful act because you defied her rule.  Now if mom says you CAN eat the exact same chocolate, was it wrong that you ate it?  No, because she didn't SAY it was wrong.

True, but stoning the child to death for eating the chocolate wouldn't be right either, and in fact would monstrous. Same thing here - pointless rule that should be followed out of respect is broken, so someone gets -killed-... just seems wrong.

[Reelyanoob]

For instance, how anyone can get "don't masturbate" out of the story of Onan is beyond me;

Agreed, if anything the moral is "don't use the withdrawal method" when sleeping with your brother's wife.

[MirrorIrorriM]

True, but stoning the child to death for eating the chocolate wouldn't be right either, and in fact would monstrous. Same thing here - pointless rule that should be followed out of respect is broken, so someone gets -killed-... just seems wrong.

Again it has to do with the person you are disobeying.  Sure a mom doesn't have the right to kill their child because the child disrespected them, but we aren't talking about mom here.  If you were to go up to a king and flip him off, he would have you executed for disrespect to the king of the land.  Was he justified in doing so?  Yeah, you just flipped off the frikkin king.  In this other regard God gave an order, and not following an order that God himself gave is like a big "screw you".  The order was that you set aside a day to follow him, ignoring him and working is a direct disobedience of this order.  Now you also must take into consideration that the whole carrying stick things was mostly a work of Pharisees.  I know this is the infamous Christian interpretation engine at work, but the original intent of the order was "Don't ignore me, I'm God and I created you and I ask that you acknowledge that and don't blow me off." not "Don't you dare move that stick or I will kill you".

[G-Flex]

For instance, how anyone can get "don't masturbate" out of the story of Onan is beyond me;

Agreed, if anything the moral is "don't use the withdrawal method" when sleeping with your brother's wife.

Or "when God tells you to impregnate someone, don't have sex with her but refuse to finish the job". Seriously, it's like people don't even understand the context. It was about God having Onan impregnate his brother's wife and Onan disobeying, not about some broader sexual morality. At least I wouldn't think so.

[devek]

True, but stoning the child to death for eating the chocolate wouldn't be right either, and in fact would monstrous. Same thing here - pointless rule that should be followed out of respect is broken, so someone gets -killed-... just seems wrong.

Again it has to do with the person you are disobeying.  Sure a mom doesn't have the right to kill their child because the child disrespected them, but we aren't talking about mom here.

I am a parent and my daughter has disobeyed me believe it or not. If I had the right to kill her, I wouldn't because I love her. That makes me a better person than both you and your god.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

"Executed for disrespect" is an absurd concept that has no place in modern society. I am very glad I live in a society that values freedom of speech to the point where someone very well could flip off the President in public and not be legally indicted. (There being no kings in my society, this is the closest figure I could think of.)

In any case, Divine Command Theory (that would be the "I'm god, you do what I say because I say it when I say it and it is automatically correct because I am your god." thing) is flawed. It supposes that the god in question's opinions dictate morality objectively. Let us say, for example, that the god in question tells you to pick up a rock and beat your best friend to death with it. I doubt many people would beat their best friend to death with a rock because a god told them to, and even a portion of those that could be so easily coerced into murdering someone close to them wouldn't consider it to be morally correct.

[G-Flex]

Keep in mind social context here. Group mentality and a cohesive cultural identity were very very important to the people of Israel at the time. A lot of these laws reflect that, although it's not clear how seriously they took the "stone everybody" approach the Old Testament seems to imply sometimes.

[Leafsnail]

I would say that there are often justifications and sometimes not.  According to Genesis, God put the fruit of good and evil in the garden of Eden, but why would he do such a thing?  There is no real REASON not to eat it, he simply said they shouldn't because they shouldn't.  God gives laws on some occasions to test loyalty, not logic.  Think of it in the perspective of a parent.  If mom says not to eat the chocolate because it is special and you eat it, whether or not she actually had a reason to keep you from eating the chocolate, it was a wrongful act because you defied her rule.  Now if mom says you CAN eat the exact same chocolate, was it wrong that you ate it?  No, because she didn't SAY it was wrong.

The apple is actually an interesting example - being completely naive and innocent, how were Adam and Eve meant to tell the difference between what God was saying and what the snake was?  How were they to know that they needed to be absolutely loyal to God and not to the serpent, especially when they had no knowledge of good or evil?  And there's the interesting thing about how God lied and the serpent told the truth.  But I digress.

To be honest, I believe in nonviolent resistance of tyranny for the sake of tyranny.  I don't think Civil Rights activists were wrong to break racial segregation laws, for instance.

[G-Flex]

There's an important concept here that you're both probably not understanding, although I cannot blame you.

The "tree of knowledge of good and evil" is not what the English name implies. The term "good and evil" in the original text reads more like "good and bad" in a literal sense, and idiomatically means something more like "everything". It's not about moral knowledge, at least not necessarily. Even if this linguistic theory isn't completely true, the point here is that you can't take the phrase "knowledge of good and evil" too literally; just think of it as a tree of forbidden knowledge in general.

Also, presumably, despite being naive, they still understood that God was God and that they were supposed to obey him.

[devek]

I don't know, I tend to think of it more of a history lesson than a moral lesson.

It was just a few thousand years ago that Earth was in its last ice age. There were humans who experienced it and described the events to their descendants, and when written down they would sound a lot like what people currently believe the creation story is.

Furthermore, the environment at one time was probably like the garden of eden to them.. but due to natural climate change and poor farming technology the land was turned to shit, but the people probably saw it as punishment from God than just a natural consequence of everything going on.

This is a much more simple and realistic explanation than trying to justify a god that murders us for even thinking the wrong thing lol.

[G-Flex]

Out of curiosity, how is the last ice age in any way similar to Genesis?

[devek]

Well, if you read the bible there are events that took place before genesis(such as the fall of satan). Genesis itself doesn't refer to itself as the creation story, except the first verse stating that god created everything in the beginning.

Who knows what really happens, maybe it wasn't an ice age per se but many natural events such as meteor impact and volcanic eruption can block out the sun. The world would be cold and devoid, but eventually the sun would come back, the waters would appear, and life would go on. It isn't surprising that people would write about this, and considering that they didn't know what the hell was going on would attribute it all to god.

[G-Flex]

Well, if you read the bible there are events that took place before genesis(such as the fall of satan). Genesis itself doesn't refer to itself as the creation story, except the first verse stating that god created everything in the beginning.

Who knows what really happens, maybe it wasn't an ice age per se but many natural events such as meteor impact and volcanic eruption can block out the sun. The world would be cold and devoid, but eventually the sun would come back, the waters would appear, and life would go on. It isn't surprising that people would write about this, and considering that they didn't know what the hell was going on would attribute it all to god.

Er, why would meteor impacts and volcanic eruption cause the oceans to go away?