Sharing with the poor - what a divine concept - no one human could have thunk that up, only G-d.

Oh, do you not comprehend what stoning to death means?

In case you need a refresher here is a modern day Islamic stoning. This is what Judaism was like at the time of Moses.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9eb_1293414372

Tell me which ones of the list below are not brutal and if so what ones should be law today?

Things the Torah says you can be put to stoned to death for :

 if you are a medium (Lev 20:27)  <<<=== do you believe in mediums?

 if you blaspheme Jehovah's name (Lev 24:16)  <<<== This nullifies what you said

 if you worship a different god (Deu 13:6-10)  <<<=== This nullifies what you said

 if you rebel against your parents (Deu 21:18-21)

 if you are a drunk (Deu 21:18-21)

 if you are a woman who is not a virgin when she marries (Deu 22:20,21)

 if you are gay (Lev 20:13)

 if you work on the Sabbath (Num 15:32-26)

 if you are a witch (Lev 20:27)  <<<=== Do you believe in witches ?

 if you are a woman and you didn't scream loud enough when you raped (Deu 22:23-24) 

For this burning to death is the punishment. Are you saying burning someone to death is not brutal?

 if your father is a priest and you become a prostitute (Lev 21:9)

Nor is there any value in pretending the OT has any relation to such things. It is contrary to all the available evidence with none in its favor.

As I have often noted Islam is Judaism Lite. Compared to Judaism, Islam has only a few crimes for which that is punishment while even a cursory romp through the Torah will quickly use up all the fingers and toes tallying them. As for implementing them, that only ended in Europe after the Treaty of Westphalia when civil law replaced religious law within religious communities. The last gasp was in Romania in the late 19th c. when Shtetl executions for violations of the Torah were finally prohibited.

Try God Hates You Hate Him Back Making Sense of The Bible CJ Werleman.epub It is rather superficial but it makes the main points.

Here's Isaiah 13:9, as presented in the New American Bible.

"Lo, the day of the Lord comes,

   cruel, with wrath and burning anger;

To lay waste the land

   and destroy the sinners with it!"

Okay...we've got this...sinners need to die.  <<<SIGH>>>  It's not as if we can expect better from the Bible.  But now look at this more famous verse:

"all have sinned, and are deprived of the glory of God."  Rom 3:23, of course.

Great.  "God" just gave himself, and the more ruthless members of His flock...an excuse to kill literally anybody.

Conor Wilson

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"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII

"But it should!"--Me

Tho' it probably should have been 'the way of maid with a man' and not the other way around...the way of a man with a maid is clangingly obvious. 

1. I never said "I don't like the Song of Songs."  Oh, I don't *believe* any of it, in any religious way, but I was attempting to demonstrate that the Bible can be very entertaining reading, when bearing in mind the conclusions (...pardon the expression...) that Christians sloppily draw from their favorite book.

2. You referred to "Shir Ha'Shirim;" in context, I take it that this is the title, in Hebrew, of the Song of Songs.  You also referred to it as "porn."  The only other person that I have heard so refer to that book was a Latter-Day Saint.  So the question arises: are you LDS?  (I hope you don't mind me asking.  If you do, just say so, and I'll move on.)

Conor

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"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII

"But it should!"--Me

EDIT: *Another* deleted multiple post.  Apologies to the mods.

Conor

Hell no Judiasm isn't a prudish religion !  

Just look at the breeding habits of Abraham ( married his half sister then had conjugals with the maid ), Jacob / Israel ( married two sisters who were also his first cousins and then with the approval of his wives he even diddled their two female servants ) David and Solomon who between them had so many wives and concubines I doubt they even bothered to learn their names. 

Am I leaving out any other noteworthy marital arrangements Furry ?

Polygyny was pretty common until the Christian church got their hands on things -- Jews engaged in polygyny until after the Church took to killing Jews who practiced it.  If you look at the historical life expectancy of men, even ignoring deaths during war, there was going to be the need for men to have more than one wife, assuming all the women were married (I know, not a safe assumption, but ...)

My recollection of Sharia is that Islam tidied things up a bit and insisted that there not be "favored" wives, which is nonsense.  I can't imaging a man having two wives and not preferring one over the other.  But sometimes rules are meant as guidelines, not absolutes.

As for the consanguinity of their marriages, at the time of Abraham, the global population was, as I recall, about 7 to 10 million.  By 5000 to 4000BCE most of the Earth was inhabited, so it isn't like they all lived next door to each other.  Small towns still have major issues with consanguinity -- an ex-lover of mine went to a wedding in which the bride and groom only got around to discovering they were second cousins AT the wedding.  I mean they GOT TO THE CHURCH and found this out.  One of my other ex's is from the same small town as a friend's family.  They are apparently 3rd cousins and have never met.  I'm not concerned about consanguinity in ancient times -- my guess is natural selection solved the problem: people with genetic defects just didn't reproduce because they just plain died.  That's the real reason not to marry too closely -- increased risk of passing on genetic defects since both parents are more likely to be carriers.  Now we do everything possible to prevent genetic defects from resulting in death and we've got people with some pretty nasty genetic issues passing those genes along.

I'm inclined to agree.

Reproductive issues aside,  why wouldn't it have been just as acceptable for polyandry ( A wife with multiple husbands ) to be practiced ?   (  Were females in marital situations simply to function as baby making machines ? )

Why was a Hebrew mother who gave birth  to a female child  ceremonially unclean for two weeks while if she gave birth to a male child she was only ceremonially unclean for one week ?   ( females are just dirtier ?   because Eve was traditionally seen as a temptress of Adam  in the Garden of Eve myth ?  )

Or for instance a Hebrew male could divorce his wife but were Hebrew women afforded this same right of divorcing their husbands ?

A Hebrew female who was raped must marry her attacker after the rapist had paid the rape victim's father fifty pieces of silver ( Deuteronomy 22: 28-29 )

When the Hebrews went on a war party the females ( virgins ) of the conquered people were collected as prospective mating stock.

Were female Levites ever allowed to function as Priests ( Priestesses ? ) during their religious rites ?

etc, etc.

More likely, atheists are just dumber and think a woman who's just given birth should have sex immediately, instead of getting a couple of weeks to recover?

Ritual impurity means, among other things, the man CANNOT approach her for sex.  But "ritual impurity" has squat to do with being physically clean or physically dirty.

If you think it's really that simple, you have no CLUE.  The amount of effort a community can apply to a man who refuses to provide a get (bill of divorce) is huge, even today.

Well, that's the usual anti-semetic crap interpretation.

Bill and Sue are in a field.  Bill winks at Sue, Sue winks back.  They get naked.

There are two possible outcomes --

1). Bill is stoned for rape.

2). Sue says "Hey, I really like Bill".  Bill owes Sue's father 50 zuzs (pieces of silver) and the dowry should still be 200 zuzs (pieces of silver) as she was a virgin.  Bill can't later say "Whew!  Glad she pretended to like me so I didn't get killed -- I think I'm going to dump her now!"  However, should Sue decide Bill is a bore, she dumps him, gets the 200 zuzs as the bride price, her dad gets the 50 zuzs and they call it square.  Sounds like a deal to me.  In Happy Atheist Land there are no rules about what happens to some guy who fancies himself the Don Juan.

Yeah, because you're completely ignorant of all the laws relating to sex ...

No, of course not.  The Levites weren't ever allowed to function as priests either.  But to answer the question you think you asked, no, a bat Levi is not required to clean up after the priests get finished doing their thing in the Temple.  On the other hand, a bat Levi can marry and own land.  A ben Levi can't -- the entire tribe of Levi GETS NO LAND AT ALL.

I look forward to when the Temple is rebuilt and I can take an animal in for some free butchering and cooking.  In Happy Atheist Land there is no such thing as a free butcher and if you want food cooked, you probably don't get that for free either.

  You know Furry I was hoping that you could express yourself without automatically flipping into your sarcasm mode.  Why you feel the need to condescend to me when making your reply is most discouraging.  I was hoping we could bypass such emotionally charged dialog but I see that you still prefer to disparage and insult while you attempt to enlighten.   I mean, you sling the "Anti semitic" accusation at me again ?

Uuuhh, okay.

Why are mothers "ritually impure" for a longer period of time if they give birth to a female child?

But when Sarah's sea went dead, Abraham got to hire a call girl so he could sire Ishmael (whose descendants apparently went on to start islam -- thank you for that).  So if the husband happens to shoot blanks, shouldn't the wife be able to get her milk & honey elsewhere?

Just remember to say your Daily Prayer and thank g(0) = D for not making you a woman. 

You can't tell me you'd have absolutely no use for three or five adoring husbands who obeyed your every word.
Besides, multiple men instead of women may slow things down a bit, but gene diversity intensifies just the same. So it wouldn't be pointless.
You'd also be more likely to survive regular life since you'd have disposable mates to throw at dangers, and wouldn't have to worry about that pesky mourning bs before finding a replacement!
Actually, I can probably come up with dozens of reasons why polyandry would make sense reproductively and otherwise.

Your experience is restricted to a gender equal society, more or less. In a gender dominated society, things are significantly different.

"Polyandry doesn't make reproductive sense. One man can get 1, 10 or even 100 women pregnant. The rest of the men are surplus to reproductive requirements."

FurryCatHerder, what you said is true as far as it goes.  However, the few societies that practice polyandry do so, not out of an attempt at reproduction, but rather as an attempt to conserve what arable land they have, such as the Tibetan and Pahari societies.  *They* attempt to keep land within one (small) set of heirs, because they don't have much land to divide.  So...one woman will marry a set of brothers, and her offspring inherit the land.  Obviously, this does nothing to make women even remotely equal to men, in those societies.

Conor

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"Faith does not fear reason."--Pope Pius XII

"But it should!"--Me

                                                               bump.

They aren't hard to find, if you know where to look.  They just aren't all that appealing to straight guys, which is why most straight men have no clue they exist

for fuck's sake, hasn't there been enough goddamn bloodshed in that shitty, useless, arid country already?  are you really so eager to see blood spilled (because there are plenty of fanatical fucks on both sides of the equation ready to slaughter thousands for that worthless hunk of rock) in order for a bronze-age barbecue pit to be rebuilt in jerusalem?

go to tony roma's if you want to see a burnt offering.  fuck...

just, really.  you try to pass off your bullshit religion as some kind of enlightened philosophy based on permissiveness and rationality and then you spew nostalgia over some ancient fetish whose ruins, for some totally incomprehensible reason, people still kill each other over.

I seem to recall the White House was rebuilt after the British put fire to it about 200 years ago.  Being a big Commie, I'm sure you don't much care about the White House, but I'm sure you'd want to rebuild something like the Kremlin or Lenin's Tomb if it were destroyed.

                                                  You'd have to ask the people who came up with the concept of "ritual impurity."  

                                                                         Okay, that's pretty much of an evasive, non-answer.  

                                                   Being an atheist accomplishes the same thing.  I am not bound to any religious obligations.

                                                                         Somehow I just I just don't feel any sense of loss.  Sorry.

                    Lastly, why is the period of ritual impurity twice as long for the birth of a female as opposed to the birth of a male ?  Why the disparity ?

                                                                                           Again, another non-answer. Pretty weak Furry. 

I have.  It's not a "bad thing".

In Judaism, the reward for doing a mitzvah, is getting to do another one.

Not at all -- you've made up your mind it's a "bad thing", you need to justify that position.  Now, maybe back when you were a Christian someone taught you it's a "bad thing", but it isn't.

This is a true story --

A man goes up to one of our greatest rabbis of all times and he tells the rabbi he wants to convert to Judaism and become a priest.  The rabbi tells him no.  The guy gets upset, until the rabbi explains that even King David, the greatest king we ever had, couldn't become a priest.  Ritual impurity is just ritual impurity.

Not being a Jew accomplished that long before you gave up dead carpenter worship ...

Oh, come on -- you want to wear the funny hat and learn to write right-to-left.  Deep down inside you really want to have a deep-seated urge to eat corned beef on rye with a bit of Thousand Island dressing and a pickle on the side.

Okay, it's so mothers get twice as much time to bond with their newborn daughters.

That's as valid an answer as any other I could make up for you, seeing as you didn't like "G-d said so", which is the correct answer.