Where Science And The Bible Meet

A good point. I can't remember the last time I boiled a baby goat in the milk of its mother (Ex 34:26) and I never offer blood sacrifice with leaven (Ex 34:25) and no male I know has had sex with another male - not without getting a compulsory eath sentence anyway! (Let 20:13), and God forbid (literally) any Brit from eating Black Pudding.Yep - everybody follows all of the OT laws... Once again, you're right. Every country in the world has wisely rejected the Islamic law forbidding murder (5:32), perjury and perverting the course of justice (4:135), and thank God we are allowed to kill our children to alleviate poverty (17.31). It certainly says something. Confirmation bias seems to be in play. The OT and the Koran do really bad when it comes to agreement with contemporary laws as practiced in countries with a long enough history of religious freedom.Now we all agree that murder is bad, but when is killing someone murder and when is it justified? Is it generally justified to kill Uri Gellar or Russell Grant or other spiritualists/mediums? Go to any free country and you'll find the answer is basically 'no.'. Go to the Bible and the answer is 'yes' (Lev 20:27; Ex 22:18).Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Huh? I have never done it, I don't know anyone who has ever wanted to do it. My point was that some Biblical laws are followed by coincidence. I don't think to myself "I'd better not boil any baby goats today. But if I really do want to, I must make sure to avoid using it's mother's milk"If it was Biblical law that one should not scream "balabala!" on a Tuesday whilst naked on horseback whilst be chased by 9 sabre-toothed tigers and an elephant....the whole world would follow the commandment but it is hardly surprising: they could easily be doing it out of ignorance. And I have never ever ever offered a blood sacrifice in the manner prohibited by the Bible. The point I was making was not a moral judgement on whether certain sacrifices are good or bad - but that I would have not engaged in said religious sacrifices anyway. That's is why I said that we shouldn't consume blood. Are you reading me right? In fact: just about all the major moral principles that are universally practiced throughout the world either precede the OT (Such as murder and theft) or come massively after it (enlightenment principles). That was kind of my point - just because a moral principle was codified in a text doesn't mean that the text was the first instance of this moral principle being practiced. Of course not, that would be murder. What is classified as 'innocent' is under question. Psychics and sorcerers and witches are not considered 'innocent' - they commit crimes against God...the worst crime possible. Yep - that's my point in a nutshell. If we look at things from a certain angle the Koran becomes a wonderful enlightened text of wisdom and beauty. Likewise we can do so with the OT. However, if we don't omit things such as our obligations to kill those that say they can communicate with the dead...then we start to get a different picture of a paranoid village mentality not a divine morality that lasts for millennia (since we've cast most of it off now, only the most blatantly obvious 'commands' are kept by the majority of the world today...and many of them as you admit came before the OT was composed).If we are going make empirical claims about the Bible (the topic...), we need to explore them - not try and ignore things that disconfirm the claim (the whole world follows all the commandments of the OT...except some bits. Like that one.)

You made a scientific claim that there were 613 moral laws in the OT and that they were accepted in the world at large. I mentioned one law about boiling baby goats in their mother's milk. You defended the law, admitting that it was indeed one of the laws you were considering. It is not one of the 613 laws cited anywhere I have seen:- thus there are more that 613 moral laws in OT. Choosing a subset of that may be considered cherry picking.Further, you go on to say that no ethical principles exist that are not in the OT. There is no ethical principle in the OT that forbids capital punishment (indeed, the methods are explicitly given: decapitation, strangulation, burning and stoning)
- an ethical principle that is accepted by much of the world. There is no ethical principle forbidding the eating of all animals, an ethical principle many hold. There is no ethical principle of acceptance of sexually active homosexuals or the equality of the genders. The ethical principles that the rights of the people outweighs deference to deities - a principle many hold to today.Some of the 613 moral laws are dietary: many of which are entirely ignored by the world. Another is that God is One. Very few people write a scroll of the Torah themselves. Interfaith marriages are now accepted by many - but are forbidden in the 613 laws. We castrate our pets, work on the Sabbath and during Passover, and most people do not fast on Yom Kippur, we loan and borrow at interest, we do not think that certain tribes can become the property of other tribes for eternity, we cross-breed animal species (cattle and birds), transvestitism is accepted in many parts of the world, we don't commonly think that menstruating women are 'unclean' and that this uncleanliness is contagious and we don't treat Hanson's Disease by shaving the hair off the sufferers.You suggest that the command to slay psychics was because psychics were for a short time committers of vile deeds. I say that if this was commonly known at the time:- why didn't God simply command that those that commit vile deeds should be slain? Why specify psychics and sorcerors? Surely, due to the fact that the practices of these people would come to change it would certainly lead to innocent deaths - a grave sin. It was a terrible mistake to give ambiguous moral commands.Your hypothesis stands falsified. I hope you enjoyed this meeting of science and the Bible.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

My bad - I see it now. So your argument that "there are 613 laws in the OT - all of them being active and accepted by the world at large today" (emphasis mine) is trivially false, agreed? My point being that not everybody agrees with this ethical principle. In fact many many people disagree strongly with it. Thus: your argument is falsified. OK, but it is definitely an ethical principle that exists outside of the Torah. I was talking about principles when you replied to me, since you didn't raise this objection then, I assumed you were happy to go with that.However, it is law to treat homosexuals as complete equals, which is not, as you claim, a ritual law. As I pointed out. A simple 'do not be cruel to animals' would be a much better ethical principle for maintaining relevance and sidestepping ambiguity. Since you now accept that all of the 613 laws are not accepted by the world at large, could you actually give me a number of laws which are accepted? In the most used list of 613 laws it states "Not to intermarry with gentiles (Deut. 7:3)" 1/5 of the world is Muslim. 1/3 is Christian. Jews are negligible. Hindus make about a 1/10. That's a slight majority of monotheists, but Hinduism doesn't really keep in line with the laws on the nature of God and Christians often don't either (god is three is one is different than god is one). Either way that still leaves billions of people that simply don't agree that god is one and the subsequent laws regarding said one god. Only the Muslim world has made it a crime to not follow this law, so your idea that these laws have to enshrined in civic law to be counted topples you entirely here.Only 20% of the world's religions have enshrined this into law, and not all of them have it either since many Muslims live in areas without such a law. A minority of the world have this as law: thus your claim that this is 'accepted by the world at large today' as being 'mandated as a law' is false yet again. Gender equality and the fair treatment of transexuals are mandated by law - thus I gave you examples of ethicial principles mandated by law that do not come from the 613 laws. I also gave you some examples of 613 laws that are not mandated by law in many places. Repeating yourself isn't going to make the problem go away. You claimed that it wasn't sorcery or mediumship or what have you that was being forbidden (on pain of death) but the vile deeds associated with them. Why could god not foresee that the mediums would change their vile practices once a crackdown on vile practices had taken place (thousands of years later)? Why not just make the laws about vile practices, listing them, rather than just give a broad statement forbidding sorcery and witchcraft? You made a hypothesis that "there are 613 laws in the OT - all of them being active and accepted by the world at large today" and added that 'active and accepted' meant mandated by law. I have shown your hypothesis to be false. Accept it and move on, that is science. Deny it and repeat it, that is faith. Your choice.

To conclude the discussion: You made a claim that all 613 laws were mandated into law around the world. You have now admitted that not all 613 laws have been mandated into law around the world: eg., the dietary ones. If a person chooses to not follow the restriction on eating lobster or something, they are not considered outside the law of the land. Your claim has been falsified. You may accept this or deny it and repeat it. You seem to be denying it, I don't feel like repeating it.We have also discussed some ethical principles that have not come out of the OT. You may take that discussion to "The OT...contains all accepted moral laws" - calling out IamJoseph.