The Old Testament Still Matters Rebuttal

         

3/4 of the Old Testament Still Matters Debate

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       I talked with Phil, and we both agree that the Old Testament certainly does matter! The main problem Philip had with my post is the examples I peppered in to make a ruckus. This is understandable, of course, and seeing as how my original contention for this topic has been settled peacefully (for once), I will proceed to rebut the accusations he made in regards to my claims and quoting style, as well as some simply incorrect statements. I also need to amend my previous post that stated, "but instead he creates a system where people are murdered for being unproductive, wearing cloth of two different fabrics, and planting two different crops on the same field." While the first link is true, the second link about the fabrics and crops is incorrect. They were not murdered for breaking these decrees. Rather, they were afflicted by a long list of God-induced curses that is 54 verses long. It seems God's anger against people who wore half polyester and half cotton is arguably worse than death, in light of all these curses for their obviously horrid fashion sense.

"Moses, I swear to Myself I will kill your crops if you go out in that awful sweater"

         Now, I want all the readers in the house to pay attention when reading Philip's blog versus reading mine. If you look closely (you actually don't have to look too closely, to be honest), his strongest tool, and almost his entire argument at the moment, is Appeal to Emotion. To sum up what this even means, his style of argument goes like this: "Daniel calls all of you idiots! Well, I don't think you're idiots, therefore I'm right and he's wrong!" If his appeal to emotion succeeded, then he just won you over to his side without so much as a single refuted idea or proven claim. This is bad for obvious reasons; mainly because this is a debate, not a presidential campaign (zing!). It's an effective tool, especially when I'm inherently the enemy and him the good guy; nonetheless, it's a terrible way to determine who is right or wrong. Here are examples of some appeal to emotion from the previous blog post alone:

"...deliberately picking out only the verses that fit into the narrative he’s trying to weave, which is that Christianity is crazy and God is equivalent to Hitler."

"You are the PRO side to your (general) argument that God is Hitler and Christians are stupid, ignorant buffoons."

"Daniel throws up a cadre of Scriptures, twists them inside out,"

"We’re not idiots Daniel!"

" If you want to convince us all that we secretly worship Hitler,"

" Maybe it’s something else Daniel. Perhaps Christians aren’t all that stupid and God isn’t actually an evil dictator."

      So, yeah. I'm not denying that this is a very personal overall theme with insulting topics, but to judge the correctness of said topics based on personal, opinionated disagreement and hurt feelings (where Philip draws power behind his arguments) is falling right into his trap and being played perfectly. 

       Philip's "calling out" of my cherry-picking accomplishes nothing; if I don't change my initial assertion, I still have the notably stronger argument. Copy-pasted here: "The great thing about disproving a book or God that claims to be absolutely anything is that all I have to do is cherry-pick one contradiction or immoral act and I'm good to go. Telling me that I'm cherry-picking is like saying "Yeah, God is immoral here, but he isn't immoral over here!" It doesn't matter; the problem is that he's immoral at all! That's why my entire job is to cherry-pick!" An example (aside from my original) I can use to demonstrate this is if Philip claimed the colors of the rainbow to be ROY B. BIB-that is, brown instead of violet at the end. If Philip claims to be indisputably, entirely correct, then all I have to do is point out this one simple error and his reliability instantly vanishes, and his claim made false. It doesn't matter that he was correct about everything except one color: the problem is that he's wrong at all! I will also copy-paste my argument in regards to cherry-picking and perspective, along with relevant picture, since I have nothing to add or detract: "And remember, who's cherry-picking depends on perspective. To me, you cherry-pick the good and leave the bad, but to you, I cherry-pick the bad and leave the good; the bad is all I need to prove my point."

Notice the opposite perspective on cherry picking!

        For some reason, Philip invokes the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" to show that God is  guilty by default according to me (I have no idea where that idea even comes from). I've never claimed such a thing, and I know better than to do so. With an audience that is majorly (if not entirely) Christian, my entire job is to prove the Bible and God guilty (of something) because he is already held innocent

in all of your minds. I do this by providing Bible verses and passages that show God guilty of something and summarize or explain this verse/passage to prove my assertion. Apparently this process isn't similar enough to myself being a prosecutor and Philip being the defense, as Philip finds fault in my process (which appears to be exactly like prosecution/defense). He claims that I don't always go into an in-depth analysis of the text, which is true. I don't always analyze the verses like I'm an ancient Hebrew translator, but I do provide the source for my summary (a Bible verse/passage) and the claim, because I feel that the source combined with my summary is fairly self-evident. My challenge to the defense, in this case, is to prove this claim wrong; be it through revealing that the source is completely out of context or is misunderstood on my part. The defense also needs to provide an antithesis to my claim, because saying "you're wrong" gets us nowhere in revealing the true context or true interpretation. Don't be mistaken; if Philip fails to disprove my argument, it doesn't automatically prove mine correct. It simply means that Philip couldn't find any fault with my interpretation; might that give you reason to believe my interpretation? You're the judge of that.

       Philip also provided an inadequate response to my question, "Why does God conform to the culture of primitive desert people?" [As opposed to creating the perfect justice, social, and economic system]. Philip's response: "As to why God doesn’t provide his own culture to humans? Because He transcends culture." Um, Philip. He doesn't quite transcend culture if he modified an existing culture and called it "The Covenant", which defined Israelite culture from there on out. Then he actually creates culture. And in this case, he created a horribly primitive and faulty culture for no apparent reason [As opposed to creating the perfect justice, social, and economic system]. Even if he now offers salvation and relationship to all cultures, it's evident that he isn't transcendent of culture because of his meddling with the Israelites. 

      It is interesting to note, however, that Christianity is very widespread compared to other religions. This is due to it's acceptance of all people (Gentiles) and loose requirements of "Accept JC, go to heaven". Also the 500 years of global conquest and forced evangelism wouldn't hurt it's chances. So I wouldn't attribute God's transcendence of culture to Christianity's success.

     And I'm not angry with God, because I don't think he exists. But if I did, oh boy oh boy would I be furious at him. I'd be pissed that he kills so many innocent children, directly through natural disasters or indirectly through lack of intervention, despite his omni-potence. I'd be pissed that he stands by and respects the free will of the rapist over that of the rape victim, despite his omni-benevolence. This is why I'm so confused as to why you aren't mad at God. 

     You believe this omni-potent, omni-benevolent God exists while allowing and causing these things to happen, but is still worthy of praise. I'm not mad at God; he doesn't exist. But the idea of a character that sits idly by, throwing earthquake after earthquake at innocent people, allowing innocent people to be raped, and killing those who haven't died from the first two horrors by giving them AIDS, cancer, and malaria...the idea of that character having the ability to stop all these atrocities yet choose not to is insulting to their families and loved ones. Claiming that this character chose not to stop (or chose to actually cause) these things while having the power to and also being omni-benevolent is contradictory and impossible. Claiming that this character simultaneously sends the people he kills to hell, despite being omni-potent and omni-benevolent, is contradictory and impossible. Claiming that this character is real without calling him "Satan" is delusional. Claiming that this character is worthy of worship is why I'm mad.

Problem of Evil