How to prevent Christians from stoning you.

[Apostateabe]

My brother sent this to me in email:

I just found the gem. Before this I thought death to apostates was strictly an Islamic belief.

Deuteronomy 13:6-10

6 If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; 7 Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; 8 Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: 9 But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

I think that would be an excellent reason for someone to stand up in church on Sunday morning and say:

"Everyone, I have an announcement to make. I would prefer it if everyone serves the Flying Spaghetti Monster instead of God. I am saying this publicly to you all, because I don't want to accidentally suggest secretly to anyone that we should serve the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because, according to Deuteronomy 13:6-10, if I entice you secretly with other gods, I will be stoned to death, and that would be horrible. Thank you, that is all."

That is my advice for how to stay alive around true Christians.

[DaveL]

Nice one Aa,

Now all society needs is some fervent nutbag to take it literally and we'll be back in the dark ages.

Perhaps we should say:

'He who is not without sin shall cast the first meatball'

[Dan (dat haole dude)]

Arroha, DaveL..wotchu mean, mah bruddah, wen you said "we'll be back in the Dark Ages.."? in some p-arrgh-ts uv da world, da D.A. be alive 'n' flourishin' (locally we gots da Institute for Creation Research & its low-budget version of dat "Creation Museum" wot's in KY or someplace south of da Monongahela)..&, if yer thinkin' uv castin' dat first meatball--do a bruddah a favour an' toss it my way, mahalo

[Edd]

I’m curious about this part:

‘10 And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die;’

Did ‘stoned’ have more than one meaning then, also?

[pieces o'nine]

Good try, Edd, but there is a lot of built-in redundancy and repetitiveness and saying the same thing again more than once in those verses,* partly as a means of helping pass on an oral tradition. This type of construction also allows a poetic cadence, which further helps memorization.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
* not limited to the "OT" but found in ceremonial oral histories from all over the world.

[Dan (dat haole dude)]

Arroha, good on ya, P.O'N..repeatin' phrases do wonders fo' stickin' 'em inna memory..it's how me bruddahs, cuzzins, an' i learnt da "Buggah.."* song wen we was but adorable, wee, likkle tykes...



<><><><><><><><><><><><>

*"buggah, buggah, buggah.." (repeat 'til parental units smack ya wit' a medium-sized dead fish)

[black bart]

It be the 'House of Bondage' wot be worryin me...how much do they charge?

[Scott the Pirate]

In junior college (SO many years ago) i once made and distributed a list of offenses that the old testy-ment says that you can be killed for. The short list includes eating anything that crawleth beneath the waves (lobster, crab, shrimp, etc.), planting two different crops on the same field, working on sunday, adultery, wearing a garment made of two different kinds of stuff and lipping off to your parents. I spread copies that included my email across campus and waited for the hate. It came. A christian group on campus was so upset that i was "mocking" them that they even got a petition together to have me kicked off campus for "religious descrimination and intolerance". Didn't work. The admin informed them that i was expressing my right to freedom of the press and that there was nothing they could do about it because i had followed the rules by getting the approval of a faculty member to post my flyers.

Scott

[Cardinal Fang]

Besides you are only quoting their holy book - why are they objecting?

CF

[Apostateabe]

In junior college (SO many years ago) i once made and distributed a list of offenses that the old testy-ment says that you can be killed for. The short list includes eating anything that crawleth beneath the waves (lobster, crab, shrimp, etc.), planting two different crops on the same field, working on sunday, adultery, wearing a garment made of two different kinds of stuff and lipping off to your parents. I spread copies that included my email across campus and waited for the hate. It came. A christian group on campus was so upset that i was "mocking" them that they even got a petition together to have me kicked off campus for "religious descrimination and intolerance". Didn't work. The admin informed them that i was expressing my right to freedom of the press and that there was nothing they could do about it because i had followed the rules by getting the approval of a faculty member to post my flyers.

Scott

Beautiful.

[ralphie]

In junior college (SO many years ago) i once made and distributed a list of offenses that the old testy-ment says that you can be killed for. The short list includes eating anything that crawleth beneath the waves (lobster, crab, shrimp, etc.), planting two different crops on the same field, working on sunday, adultery, wearing a garment made of two different kinds of stuff and lipping off to your parents. I spread copies that included my email across campus and waited for the hate. It came. A christian group on campus was so upset that i was "mocking" them that they even got a petition together to have me kicked off campus for "religious descrimination and intolerance". Didn't work. The admin informed them that i was expressing my right to freedom of the press and that there was nothing they could do about it because i had followed the rules by getting the approval of a faculty member to post my flyers.

Scott

I sure am glad that the gospel of the FSM doesn't have any of that stuff. I would hate to be a part of any organization that publishes such an easy target for mockery. I bet that took a long time to look up that stuff, I fall asleep every time I start to read that book. (I like you spend much time learning about those who would try to debate me.)

[Scott the Pirate]

They take it really hard when you tell them that their book is full of mistakes and outright contradictions, and therefore cannot be the final word of a perfect being. For example, the book of soloman (sp? song of soloman?) states that king soloman built a huge cauldron and that it measured 30 cubits around and 10 cubits from lip to lip. That's wrong. Pi is 3.14 not 3.0. This is a terrible estimate even by the standards of the ancient world. That fact alone says to me that the bible is only a collection of stories written by men, not a divine creator. They also don't like it when you point out the fact that the bible was written by men for men. All you ladies out there need to remember that according to the bible, you are first the property of your father and later the property of your husband and could be sold as such.

Scott

[Apostateabe]

They take it really hard when you tell them that their book is full of mistakes and outright contradictions, and therefore cannot be the final word of a perfect being. For example, the book of soloman (sp? song of soloman?) states that king soloman built a huge cauldron and that it measured 30 cubits around and 10 cubits from lip to lip. That's wrong. Pi is 3.14 not 3.0. This is a terrible estimate even by the standards of the ancient world. That fact alone says to me that the bible is only a collection of stories written by men, not a divine creator. They also don't like it when you point out the fact that the bible was written by men for men. All you ladies out there need to remember that according to the bible, you are first the property of your father and later the property of your husband and could be sold as such.

Scott

Well, pi is not 3.14 either. And it isn't 3.1415926535897932384626433832795. That is just an estimate. By the primitive precision of that time, 3 is good enough. Maybe you wanted 30.00 cubits and 9.55 cubits. But they rounded up to 10, the nearest whole number. So what? There aren't even any fractions or decimals in the Bible. It would be a problem if they implied that pi is 2 or 4.

[Zankou 2.0]

They take it really hard when you tell them that their book is full of mistakes and outright contradictions, and therefore cannot be the final word of a perfect being. For example, the book of soloman (sp? song of soloman?) states that king soloman built a huge cauldron and that it measured 30 cubits around and 10 cubits from lip to lip. That's wrong. Pi is 3.14 not 3.0. This is a terrible estimate even by the standards of the ancient world. That fact alone says to me that the bible is only a collection of stories written by men, not a divine creator. They also don't like it when you point out the fact that the bible was written by men for men. All you ladies out there need to remember that according to the bible, you are first the property of your father and later the property of your husband and could be sold as such.

Scott

Well, pi is not 3.14 either. And it isn't 3.1415926535897932384626433832795. That is just an estimate. By the primitive precision of that time, 3 is good enough. Maybe you wanted 30.00 cubits and 9.55 cubits. But they rounded up to 10, the nearest whole number. So what? There aren't even any fractions or decimals in the Bible. It would be a problem if they implied that pi is 2 or 4.

.1 cubits is a significant length if you're building a cauldron. It's still very inaccurate.

[Apostateabe]

.1 cubits is a significant length if you're building a cauldron. It's still very inaccurate.

It would be inaccurate for the engineers (or, technically, accurate but imprecise). The passage is not an engineering plan. Not even a preliminary engineering plan. It is a report from a layman as-built.