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The bible tells slaves they should obey their masters., but last i checked most Christians believe slavery is immoral

Did they considered religious tolerance before, in the Bible?

Time and culture, I don't think there was such concepts as: consent, domestic violence, child abuse, human rights, tolerance, equality, written in the Bible.

Same deal as with divorce:

Matthew 5:31-32 KJV
(31) It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:
(32) But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Mark 10:2-12 KJV
(2) And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him.
(3) And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you?
(4) And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.
(5) And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.
(6) But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
(7) For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;
(8) And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
(9) What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
(10) And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter.
(11) And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her.
(12) And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.


Among the people of Israel none of them were to be slaves:

Leviticus 25:38-42 KJV
(38) I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
(39) And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:
(40) But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile:
(41) And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.
(42) For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen.

This translates to more of an employment and the regarding slaves and masters, such as:

Ephesians 6:5-9 KJV
(5) Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;
(6) Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;
(7) With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:
(8) Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.
(9) And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

Translates to current employee-employer situations as Enoch was translated.

Certainly the Goyim, such as the Gibeonites were made into slaves for Israel on account of their treachery and the integrity of Israel, but could not the principle of not having slaves of your brothers apply to all the sons of Noah as it did to the sons of Israel?

Ugh! Bad grammar!

Religious tolerance should only be true if all religions are equally false.

If one religion is true, then what of the other religions? They are false!

Religious tolerance then is putting up with falsehood. Is that good? No!

It is like letting OJ get away with murder.

I would argue that atheists don't start war for the sake of shunning Christians or other religions. At the very least, there is no bible or some code that makes you less of an atheist if you don't tease people of other religions or torture them the same way the bible says to shun non believers and torture them.[/quote]

What the bible says is not actually interesting when discussing this topic. Most of the Christians in Medieval Europe had never read any part of the bible, simply because they were illiterate. Most of the crusaders didn't go to war because the bible said so, they went to war because the pope said it was right and good to kill "saracens". The pope commanded, the people obeyed. So simple is that.
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And the pope might not have commanded people to do such things if the bible did not say these things. Perhaps people didn't read back then, but someone did and told them these things.



At least it's better that atheists can't use such a justification for any war or torture of other religions--there is no statement in atheism that makes it necessary for atheists to go to war or to shun other religions. Such is not the mentality of a large number of atheists anyways. The fact that you can even use the bible to "justify" killing people or torturing them because they don't have the same religion as you seems more believable than atheists trying to start a war--not that I'd want it to happen.



Atheists don't have an authority figure. They do not do things in the name of an authority figure, and you may say that atheism is defined that they do not follow an authority figure--that they would do so or even start a war for the sake of an authority figure would seem absurd.



You would be arguing for the nature of people, and not the religion themselves, in which case you could suggest that people would start wars in their own nature and not because of religion. However, I argue that religion could be the cause for some wars, and it would have to do with the nature of the religion itself. As I have said, atheists are not bound to believing in absolute authority figures like a God or deities, at least in a moral sense, so there is no unification that could drive atheists to want to start a war with anyone because their morals would differ enough that they wouldn't succeed in trying to start a war--the only thing they share is not believing in God, but every atheist has a different take on why they don't believe in God or how they treat or see people who do believe in God. But the bible and religion drives people to believe the same things and to think in pretty much the same way--they all believe the same morals, the same God, and the same consequences if they don't please their God--if they believed God wanted them to start a war, they'd do it. Taken together, it's more accurate to say that human nature and the nature of religion is what makes certain people go to war, and others who don't--but notice how there are few atheists who start wars, because they lack unification in needing to do so, and the large number of people who started the crusades because they believed in the pope when he said to believe in God and if God wanted a war.



Atheists have minds of their own. They don't cooperate when trying to gang up on Christians or other religions because not all atheists believe that Christians deserve that kind of treatment--there is no book or "commandment" binding them to believe that they must give Christians a bad treatment. It's harder for religious people to think otherwise when the bible they believe in actually condones it though.

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Now go through and read these in context. Or at least print the verses and not your paraphrase. The ones in the OT are specifically for in the land of Canaan and the ones in the NT are specifically for those claiming to be Christian. Your claim that a "large number" of misquoted verses makes a doctrine is ridiculous.
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I have, and they more or less say the same things. I can't see what they might mean otherwise, unless you wish to twist this into some meaningless metaphor that doesn't make any sense to anyone else, and I'd consider it redundant and useless--which means there's absolutely no reason why Christians should be shunning or treating non believers or people of other religions any differently. It doesn't matter who or how you apply these verses to; the fact that they claim religious intolerance is already bad enough.

If you read what I wrote carefully, I only suggested that it was improbable that even if, by some chance, these quotes did happen to be taken out of context, (and having read through them, I can't see how that is the case) seeing the words "stoned to death" and "unbelievers" and "killed" occur so frequently together that it would be hard to believe they're saying to leave the unbelievers alone.



Have you ever considered that as the number of religions approach infinity, the probability that any one of them is true approaches zero? There are a lot of religions in this world. To believe that any one religion is true is highly improbable.

well, I hope it is not a sinful act.


That sounds a little extremist, you know.
Religious tolerance = Freedom of religion, isn't it?
If your church would have absolute power on the government, and you would be a high authority, what would you do with other monotheist and especially pagan religions? I wonder.

I am only visiting Friendship Church, which is General Conference Baptist. However I don't hold to any particular denomination - Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostal, Charismatic, etc, can all have members which are Christian and members which are christian. Truly, Christ is the final judge. However, as a tree shall be known by its fruit so can a sheep be known from a goat.

Those that don't hold the Bible (Tanakh only or both Old and New Covenants) as their standard of living are the goats. (Also acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Biblical Messiah is a Biblical requirement, but in terms of a system of government before Christ's return I would accept many Conservative and Orthodox Jews.)

I would divide the nation geographically and let the goats pick which half they want and pay for their moving expenses from our pockets. You all may do as you like on your own land but "as for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord."

This may or may not be the best and I'm sure for all the liberals complain about war they'd make an exception for us.

If you want to see what Jesus will do read Revelation, particularly the last few chapters.

To be an Atheist is not the same thing as being an independent individualist with a mind of his own. An Atheistic authority figure could be someone like Stalin or Pol Pot, these are classical examples of Atheistic authorities who demanded absolute obedience and had many religious people killed. Both Stalin and Pol Pot were communists.

Experience shows that Atheism rarely comes alone, it is usually followed by some philosophical system, ideology and/or world view that upholds and explains Atheism. Humanism is such an ideology. Communism, in at least one of its forms, played an important role in demonizing religions and believers. Religion is, according to Marx, the "opium of the masses" it makes people passive and stops them from revolting against their oppressors. Religion was, according to him, something harmful that had no place in his Atheistic utopia.

Atheism in itself is not an ideology, but in order to make sense it has to be accompanied by some form of philosophy that explains WHY there is no God or gods. I also has to explain why some believe in deities that don't exist. Usually these ideologies have nothing good to say about religion and faith.

I'm not entirely sure how much communism has to do with religion--communism is more political, and atheism might not be considered a religion, but I wouldn't call it a political disposition either. It's a non unifying description for those who lack religion. Either way, even if atheistic authority figures exist (although I would say that they were just authority figures that happened to be atheists; you could just be an authority figure for something other than religion) there is no unification that makes atheists need or want to join other so called atheist authority figures, which was my point all along--why else do you suppose it works more easily for Christians to be culled as a mass? Because everyone believes in a book and just about everything it says. Atheists have no such book and are encouraged to think for themselves. Not all atheists become atheists for the same reasons, or disbelieve in God for the same reasons either. I'm not going to say that being atheist is equivalent to being an independent individualist, but I could suggest that it encourages it from lack of a unifying "greater purpose", and because atheists are not encouraged to think the same way, nor are they punished for thinking differently.



Not really. Everyone has a different view of atheism, including the atheists themselves. You may think it's rather vague or free, but that's only because the concept of atheism is rather simple, and it can just be summed up in one sentence or statement. You don't have to disbelieve in God the same way another atheist disbelieves in God, and if most atheists disbelieve in God for the same reasons, it would usually be because they came to that conclusion on their own, and not because someone else (or some book) told them to. And clearly, not all atheists are communists. Here is another example in which you can't label all atheists under one umbrella of terms because again, there is no unification in principles in atheism other than disbelief in God. Communism is not one of them. I could suggest an example where you may say Marx wanted religion completely destroyed, or at least away from his own world, but other atheists may not mind that other people have their own religions, or that they even exist and still exist--the fact that Marx's view is different from another atheist does not make either one of them any less of an atheist than the other--they both still don't believe in God, and that's all that matters.



And that's what I've been trying to tell you--there is no "one" explanation as to why there is no God or gods--that's something atheists decide for themselves. Usually, most atheists probably don't believe in God because science can't make such a conclusion, but that need not be the case. If you didn't believe in God, say, because God is too cruel or horrible to have existed, you could still be considered an atheist. You might say that this is because no such book or code exists that tells atheists they have to disbelieve God for particular reasons. Again, you're not any less of an atheist if you don't believe in God for other reasons from most other atheists.

The irony in saying that atheists don't have anything "good" to say about religion and faith is that some religions (particularly Christianity) don't have anything "good" to say about atheism either, since they fit under the "unbelievers" label in the bible. But at the very least, I can explain why I don't view religion or faith in a good light. Can religious people explain why they don't have good things to say about unbelievers, even if they are kind, decent people that never did other religious people any harm? All the religious people have is usually because "the book says so", and they act on it. But just because atheists might criticize religion or faith doesn't mean they go around killing or hurting other people of other religions. It just means that they themselves would not ascribe to faith or religion.

Interesting how people who don't share your religious views are called "goats", especially when your religion has no more solid evidence than any of theirs..... Giving such christian extremists their own land might be beneficial, as it would get you out of our way.
I mean you talk about "what would jesus do?".... Well I'll tell you what he WOULDN'T do, he wouldn't blame an entire culture and race of people for one bad incident and declare holy war upon them to scratch them off the earth while exploiting them for oil profits. In the bible it stated "hate thy sin, not thy sinner", "love thy neighbor", and "tell those who would listen" as opposed to "force everyone else to become christian or subjects of Christianity and if they resist shun them".
The fact your referring to us as goats is sheer ignorance and prejudice. Many people come from other cultures where the dominant religion isn't Christianity, that does not make them less American. American does not mean one has to be a white, Christian, straight, white bread corn fed poster boy for the kkk.

You might also be interested to know that most of the founding fathers of America were not Christian or did not believe in using Christianity to make their decisions. The constitution also doesn't consist of any really religious topics, except that religion shouldn't be used to determine who gets into public office, and most of them did not support religion of any particular kind. They also supported separation of church and state, yet these things get ignored quite a bit.

No fear! It's bad enough that Israel is partitioned - we don't want that kind of thing to happen anywhere else. I don't understand why people would want to fight over such godforsaken tracts of land anyway - hot, desertified etc.

Calling other people "goats" as an insult is rather silly because goats are fine creatures and very useful.

So you are proposing a little ethnic cleansing? Do the moving expenses you are offering include payment for my house, or just a U-haul truck?

im tired of this religious bs, god needs to kill everyone!~

No doubt he would if he were a real being able to see all the bigotry, hatred and discrimination being done in his name by people who refuse to accept and love their fellow man