Onan! What is best in life?



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  • @coldandtired I love this kind of thing. You just know there was a troll involved somewhere during the process.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @cartman82 said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    You just know there was a troll involved somewhere during the process.

    You think they had a hand in the production of that material? If so, I'd have hoped that they made a decent fist of it…



  • @coldandtired

    And there's even a verse that tells soldiers not to spill their seed on holy ground, implying that masturbation isn't the problem....

    sigh

    People... not even reading the book...

    As cringeworthy as the "Monster Drinks are from the devil" level of misinformed.


  • Java Dev

    @xaade said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    And there's even a verse that tells soldiers not to spill their seed on holy ground, implying that masturbation isn't the problem....

    The only actual biblical reference I've heard of actually regarded Jewish marriage law and denying a widow her heir.



  • @xaade said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    As cringeworthy as the "Monster Drinks are from the devil" level of misinformed

    To be fair, caffeinated "energy" drinks are from the devil.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @xaade said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    And there's even a verse that tells soldiers not to spill their seed on holy ground, implying that masturbation isn't the problem....

    I don't remember it quite like that. I thought it was some dude that was getting kinky with his daughters and pulled out, and God struck him down for (apparently) refusing to continue his lineage or something.



  • @Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    God struck him down for (apparently) refusing to continue his lineage or something.

    You're mixing stories.

    1. Two daughters get their father drunk and have sex with him to produce an heir.
    2. Onar spilled his seed to avoid impregnating his brother’s wife, Tamar. Which was totally not adultery, because his brother was dead. Because God had killed him.


  • @xaade That's in the Bible?

    I think I'll just get the second edition that came out some 640-odd years later then...


  • kills Dumbledore

    @xaade said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    Two daughters get their father drunk and have sex with him to produce an heir.
    Onar spilled his seed to avoid impregnating his brother’s wife, Tamar. Which was totally not adultery, because his brother was dead. Because God had killed him.

    The bible. Source of all morality.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    @xaade That's in the Bible?

    I think I'll just get the second edition that came out some 640-odd years later then...

    You have to view a lot of this stuff through the eyes of a small, non-proselytizing tribe in hostile territory to understand the reasoning. Not having kids means the tribe is smaller next year.



  • @Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    @xaade said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    And there's even a verse that tells soldiers not to spill their seed on holy ground, implying that masturbation isn't the problem....

    I don't remember it quite like that. I thought it was some dude that was getting kinky with his daughters and pulled out, and God struck him down for (apparently) refusing to continue his lineage or something.

    I think you're conflating the stories of Lot and his daughters1 and of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar2.

    1. Long story kinda short version: Lot took his family (wife and two daughters) to live in the Las Vegas of the civilized world, where his daughters married a couple of scumbags. God decided to destroy the city because Lot was literally the only righteous man living there, and he warned Lot to take his family and flee; the scumbag husbands laughed it off, so Lot+wife+daughters fled just before God nuked the city; Lot's wife looked back wistfully (God had specifically directed them not to), and God turned her into a pillar of salt. Anyway, instead of fleeing to, I dunno, any other city that wasn't being destroyed (which God had specifically given them permission to do), Lot took his daughters to go live in a cave. His daughters, seeing that there were literally no men for them to marry and so to continue their family line, schemed to get Lot so drunk that he could get them pregnant and not know what he was doing. It worked great, and the descendants they conceived went on to be mortal enemies of Abraham's descendants, which was sort of God's way of saying "ya done goofed".
    2. LSKSV: Judah had three sons; the oldest married Tamar, but he was wicked and eventually God saw fit to judge him, and killed him, leaving Tamar a widow. The common custom at the time if a widowed woman had no heirs was that the dead man's closest male relative was duty-bound to marry her (ensuring that she's not homeless and destitute) and get her pregnant (ensuring that she had an heir); the first male child thus conceived would not belong to the biological father, but would be the heir of the woman's dead husband. So Judah's second son married Tamar to do his brotherly duty, and quite a lot of it, but rather than finishing the deed and honoring his brother with an heir (and, I speculate it might've occurred to him at some point that Tamar might decide to keep her legs shut now that she had the heir), he spilled the semen on the ground to make sure that she wouldn't get pregnant. God saw how evil it was for him to deny his dead brother an heir -- while sleeping with the brother's widow, for that matter, ostensibly for the very purpose of giving him an heir -- so God killed him too. Judah now freaks out because Tamar's a bit of a black widow and, since his third (and last) son is still kinda young, tells Tamar that she has to wait until he's old enough to marry her, not actually intending to let her marry him at all for fear that his last remaining son will end up dead too. Tamar waits, but eventually she figures out that the son is old enough and Judah's not ever going to follow through on that promise, so she disguises herself as a prostitute and seduces Judah himself to try to get her heir (and actually, he was the next closest male relative, not counting the son he wasn't letting her have), taking a few personal effects of his as promise that he'd return to pay her (apparently he didn't carry around goats in his wallet). Then he sends "a friend" to go back and pay her, and you have the scene where the guy's dragging this goat around and asking everyone if they've seen this prostitute, which pretty much makes him a laughingstock. Meanwhile, Tamar's pregnant, and when she gets to be showing, Judah discovers that she's been sleeping around and got herself knocked up and demands that she be brought and stoned, which was the customary penalty for anyone caught in adultery (for the woman and the man, natch). At this point she produces his personal effects, and he suddenly realizes that 1) the baby's his, 2) he's as guilty as she is (remember that about the man also being stoned? well, visiting a prostitute wasn't exactly Kosher...), and 3) he's a giant asshole for not letting his youngest son marry her and give her an heir for his firstborn son. Anyway, he beats a hasty retreat with his tail hanging limp between his legs, and coincidentally she gives birth to twin boys -- so God gave her an heir for the firstborn son and the secondborn son, I guess? One of the sons, Perez, goes on to become a great-great-ancestor of the Jesus Christ hisself, which was sort of God's way of saying "ya done goofed... but see, I worked it all out".

    @xaade pretty fair explanation, yes?
    @Mikael_Svahnberg



  • @Tsaukpaetra said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    @xaade said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    And there's even a verse that tells soldiers not to spill their seed on holy ground, implying that masturbation isn't the problem....

    I don't remember it quite like that. I thought it was some dude that was getting kinky with his daughters and pulled out, and God struck him down for (apparently) refusing to continue his lineage or something.

    His name was Onan. Back in the 80's, one of my coworkers (a middle-aged woman) had a calendar from Onan travel. I informed her that Onan was the inventor of birth control in the Bible. She said, "Weird!" very loudly.



  • @chozang well, it doesn't say that, and I'd be quite surprised if it was true. He's just the only person it specifically mentions using that practice.



  • @anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    @chozang well, it doesn't say that, and I'd be quite surprised if it was true. He's just the only person it specifically mentions using that practice.

    He was the only person HaShem killed within a day of an action mentioned in the bible. If he was not the inventor, then why was he singled out?



  • @chozang said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    @anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    @chozang well, it doesn't say that, and I'd be quite surprised if it was true. He's just the only person it specifically mentions using that practice.

    He was the only person HaShem killed within a day of an action mentioned in the bible. If he was not the inventor, then why was he singled out?

    First of all, I don't know where you got the "within a day" part. That's not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. And secondly, God killed him not because of what he did, but because of why he did it. It's pretty clear from a simple reading of the passage:

    Gen 38:8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.



  • @anotherusername said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:
    God killed him not because of what he did, but because of why he did it. It's pretty clear from a simple reading of the passage:

    Gen 38:8 Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” 9 But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. 10 What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.

    It seems clear to you only because that is what you wish to believe. It is not at all clear from an objective reading.



  • @chozang you'd have to deliberately ignore the part that says he did it "to keep from providing offspring for his brother" when you read the part about how God thought it was wicked to get any other interpretation of it. Your "objective reading" is anything but. An actual objective reading says that since his intentions were specifically included they must be significant somehow.

    So let's see, according to your non-logic making a sacrifice of vegetables to God must also be wicked, because Cain did it and God rejected him for it -- OH WAIT, BUT GOD SPECIFICALLY DEMANDED SACRIFICES OF VEGETABLE CROPS LATER.



  • @anotherusername You're right. Cain was rejected for the sincerity of his sacrifice.

    We don't see it specifically in that story, because the story is about murder. People need to understand that the Bible doesn't comment on the morality of every single detail, otherwise it would be infinitely long.

    However, we do see it later on, with God outright killing people for being insincere (Ananias and Sapphira) or interrupting the sincerity of someone else's sacrifice (like with the sacrifice exchanges in the temple who were gouging people).

    Other oddities.

    1. Polygamy goes unchecked quite a bit, but it always seems to be a source of trouble and chaos.
    2. The Roman soldier who wants his servant healed is praised for his faith, but these guys did terrible things to Jews on a regular basis.
    3. Jacob steals the birthright, but Esau doesn't care about it until it's too late. God rewards Jacob for valuing God's promise and his inheritance. Jacob risked everything for the promise. But.... he stole it to get it. God values faith over not-stealing?
    4. The shrewd steward is also praised by Jesus for acting shrewdly.

    It's clear to me that God cares more about people caring about what he's up to, then any hard set of independent guidelines.

    But we like rules, so we're given them, but only to prove that we can't follow them.
    But we like kings, so we're given one, but only to prove that valuing status over God is stupid.

    Then Jesus comes along and boils it down to , "Love God, Love others", and we're left to interpret what that means. Humans don't like that. It puts emphasis on the motivations rather than the outcome. The means matter more than the end. The end is far easier to control, but the means have you putting your heart into following God, rather than a checklist.


    So yeah, Onan was killed because he was told not to put his hand in the cookie jar, and so he turned the cookie jar upside down thinking he was smart.

    "But God, I slept with her, like you said."

    Then God did the typical parent thing,

    "Screw you, you know what I meant."


    Oh, and thanks for providing my next Sunday School lesson.

    @boomzilla Can we get this little Onan conversation Jeffed. I don't know where to put this response.



  • @xaade said in The Official Funny Stuff Thread™:

    @boomzilla Can we get this little Onan conversation Jeffed. I don't know where to put this response.

    Well, "Funny Stuff" really isn't the worst place it could be...



  • Very good explanation of the story. One bit that I would add to, though:

    @anotherusername said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    One of the sons, Perez, goes on to become a great-great-ancestor of the Jesus Christ hisself, which was sort of God's way of saying "ya done goofed... but see, I worked it all out".

    To some people, Perez was more importantly the ancestor of David. I vaguely recall that it isn't clear that Jesus was a descendant of David (i.e. something about Joseph being a descendant, but for Christians, Joseph wasn't Jesus' father). I could be imagining that, though.



  • @xaade now that this is in a separate thread, I'll just chime in that this explains the etymolgy of the swedish word for masturbation: "onani"

    Although somewhere along the line the woman was -as usual in Christianity- left out.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg

    So, if I understand correctly, somewhere along the line we downgraded using a woman as an object and started using our hands?

    Man feminists have been around for a while. There's literally no other explanation for this shift in treatment of women.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Although somewhere along the line the woman was -as usual in Christianity- left out.

    I suppose "usual" applies.

    But we have to consider a few things first.

    Men were used in genealogies of men. So if you wanted to know where Jesus comes from, you check his father's father, etc.

    However, in Matthew women were included in that genealogy when they did something notable, while traversing Joseph's lineage.
    Ester, Ruth, Bathsheba, Mary, are all including in Jesus' genealogy.

    In Luke, the genealogy is paths down Mary's lineage.

    They split at the sons of David, where Mary is a child of Nathan (David's son, named after the prophet)
    And Joseph is a child of Solomon (king).

    This gets lost in the translation because Heli is the father-in-law of Joseph, not his actual father. But it appears that Luke (the doctor) sided with the biological genealogy of Jesus. Whereas Matthew (the tax collector) sided with the legal genealogy. In this case, it was legal custom almost everywhere to path genealogies through the fathers. Clever trick Luke.

    Women weren't left out when they did something notable, but like history goes, women usually weren't notable actors due to roles. However, they weren't left out when they were.

    Ester, Ruth, the various Marys, Martha, the woman at the well (who didn't bother giving her name to Jesus), Deborah (female judge and deliverer).


    The same thing happens in the Chinese romantic narratives like the Three Kingdoms.

    And you could argue it's happening again with Wikipedia. More men are mentioned than women, who are usually left out.



  • @xaade It happens all the time, and everywhere. A recent survey of history books in Swedish schools showed about the same distribution. The solution is not to edit in more women into the history books, but to hold an active discussion as to why they were left out.

    I was not actually calling the bible out for the lack of women therein -- I have not studied it to the degree where I can say anything about it (except that the book of Ezekiel would make an awesome script for a SciFi movie). It was more a reflection on how two millennia of sexually pent up priests have actively worked to downplay the importance of women in history, and have actively worked to marginalise their role in society.

    Onan's (and God's) objectification of his brother's wife is a story by itself, but remove the woman and just focus on the act of spilling your seed on the ground (and how shameful this is supposed to be) gives a completely different discourse.



  • @xaade said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    women usually weren't notable actors due to roles

    This is simply not true. They had different roles compared to their men, and history books as they were written up until a decade or two ago focused more on the extramural roles that men had (guess who wrote the history books; the aforementioned sexually frustrated monks). But they had a very active and significant role in a family/household/country which enabled the extravagancies of their husbands that made it into the history books.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Onan's (and God's) objectification of his brother's wife is a story by itself

    I can't tell if Onan willingly had sex or not. That distinction is important.

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    but remove the woman and just focus on the act of spilling your seed on the ground (and how shameful this is supposed to be) gives a completely different discourse.

    Especially since masturbation is explicitly forbidden on holy ground, which implies that masturbation isn't forbidden in general. How to reconcile that with what Jesus said about being lustful is identical to actually having sex in the eyes of God, is a difficult one. Does that imply that the act of conjuring an imaginary woman for the purpose of masturbation is not actual lust. Maybe lust involves more than imagining having sex with the person? I don't know.

    Again, I have to default to grace.

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    But they had a very active and significant role in a family/household/country which enabled the extravagancies of their husbands that made it into the history books.

    But a single individual person working at home is not notable. That includes myself. I can't just go on Wikipedia and make an article for myself talking about my personal exploits at my job which no one is aware of. Even the individual actions of the court of the King is often not recorded outside of a ledger or log. Leading an army in a war is far more notable.

    This is why British queens are recorded for their actions in war, but foot soldiers are not, outside of "a number of them".


    And yes, "a number of women" are recorded in history for their duties in the home.



  • @xaade said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    I can't tell if Onan willingly had sex or not. That distinction is important.

    Did anyone ask the woman? If not, then the distinction is not important.

    But a single individual person working at home is not notable.

    How about this, then. It was the woman's job to run the household. All of it. Including the farmlands associated with it if it was a big estate (or a country). The king was not able to go to war unless his wife (the queen) managed the household (i.e. the country) and all the goods produced by it and going in and out of it well enough to pay for and feed his army.

    Or how about this: When the people of the country (i.e., the "household") wanted something, they would petition to the queen who would most of the time solve the matter, except for when it dealt with foreign affairs. The clue is still in the word "domestic" -- and who had the keys to the household.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Did anyone ask the woman? If not, then the distinction is not important.

    If the woman didn't have a child, then being not related to the family other than by marriage means she gets no inheritance. If you think that's wrong, then you have to tell me how it should work? Should she, being "equal" forced to find labor on her own? It's hard to compare our moral system with theirs so casually. Having a child with her is doing the right thing, under their society, preserving her life. Otherwise she has to figure out how to start a business with nothing, or is stuck gleaning the fields.

    This is why Jesus emphasized charity for widows and orphans.

    We don't get to hear whether she wanted to or not, so it's all just speculation. And I don't like making arguments about what should have happened purely on speculation.

    We don't get explicit confirmation that Bathsheba was consensual in sex. However, later, she's very complicit in helping David cover up, etc. Should I speculate that she wasn't consensual because the Bible doesn't mention it, and that there's a severe problem with consent?

    “See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.”
    Maybe Delilah was threatened to uncover Samson's secret? Maybe they threatened to rape her, and the Bible just skipped over that part.

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Or how about this: When the people of the country (i.e., the "household") wanted something, they would petition to the queen who would most of the time solve the matter, except for when it dealt with foreign affairs. The clue is still in the word "domestic" -- and who had the keys to the household.

    Apparently it was recorded in history. You know about it.

    Should we have to list the X million women who performed this duty, along with the X million men who aren't listed for performing their duties?

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    they would petition to the queen

    Who is notable and is recorded in history by name.

    I don't think you're understanding "notable".

    Notable does not mean worthy or valuable. It means notable. Assholes throughout history are recorded for being notable. That doesn't mean we value their contribution.


    What do you suggest should be done.

    "In the third month of the 15th year, the army broke through the gates. They were supported domestically by Mary, Martha, Heidi, Sarah, Julie, Bertha.... Monday Mary washed the dishes, Tuesday she washed the dishes, Wednesday she found a broken dish and reported it to her [unnamed male] supervisor."

    Hell, often the men don't even get that much detail, and we're left with...

    "[Nation] raided 37 villages in the month of May".

    Without even a mention of how many men participated, or which villages they raided.



  • @xaade Context is important to interpret history, I agree. And the solution, as I already said, is not to edit in more women into the history books, but to discuss why they were left out.

    I would also argue that a history that only focuses on the foreign affairs and the wars of nations is a very poor history. It is much more important to understand how people lived and thought, and what shaped their lives.

    As for "washed dishes", that is a glib answer that you will have to defend for yourself.

    Think more in terms (if we have to focus on the wars) of "Anne decided that the south field should be ploughed first. This yielded a better crop, of which they were able to sell a portion so that Eric was able to recruit another cohort of mercenaries which turned out to be decisive in him winning the battle of Mumble."



  • @xaade said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    We don't get explicit confirmation that Bathsheba was consensual in sex.

    If her life depended on it, I would venture she were.

    This is why Jesus emphasized charity for widows and orphans.

    Nice charity going on there :giggity:.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    As for "washed dishes", that is a glib answer that you will have to defend for yourself.

    Oh.... people are so butthurt. I honestly don't care who gets offended. I worked a whole year as a dishwasher. There is no shame in it.

    Women also manufactured weapons and tended to the wounded. Like I said, do I need to mention every woman and every task she did? Because then we'll have to do the same for the men.

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    If her life depended on it, I would venture she were.

    That's an interesting conversation. But like I said, purely speculative. We don't know. Maybe she was waiting on the king to ask? Maybe she swung both ways? Who knows.

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Nice charity going on there .

    It's in the Bible in several places. Brothers had the duty of giving their deceased elder brother an heir.



  • @xaade not all women did great deeds, just as not all men did great deeds, but the gender skew in history books says more about the chroniclers than the actual state of affairs.



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    the gender skew in history books says more about the chroniclers than the actual state of affairs.

    Maybe?

    Maybe women literally didn't do as many notable deeds.

    Speculation is speculation.

    You can't say, "this must be wrong because the percentages aren't 50/50"

    All we can do is make sure we do the right thing today and record the notable deeds of women.


    If scientific experimentation only worked that way.

    String theory must be right because there must be an explanation...



  • @xaade The thing is... In recent years a new generation of historical researchers have started questioning much of the old dogma, and by going back to the original sources and reinterpreting them, they find a completely different story. Another example is that there are a lot of historical records written by women that have previously been ignored, and these are a treasure trove for the new researchers who are willing to reinterpret history with a new set of biases. Their work emphasises quite different aspects of life and what constitutes "notable deeds" compared to previous historical research.

    If scientific experimentation only worked that way.

    In fact scientific experimentation does work that way. If you conduct a series of measurements and find that you get no or very little data from one of your sensors, you do not just shrug and think "Oh well, nothing notable happened there". Instead, you check your measurement equipment to make sure that it is working as intended. If you are still getting less data than expected, you re-check again and again and run different measures until you are completely satisfied that your measurements are accurately capturing the true state of affairs.



  • @xaade said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    notable deeds

    This is one of the research biases. What constitutes a "notable deed"?

    Is this the same now as it was a hundred years ago (when nations did their best to glorify themselves)? What about five hundred years ago (when glorification of your own bloodline was the most important aspect of history-writing)? Or a thousand years ago (when only a select few could write down the notable deeds, and they all happened to belong to the same cult)?



  • @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    a new set of biases

    Great...?

    Just.... swap out the biases, because now.... we must be correct this time.

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Another example is that there are a lot of historical records written by women that have previously been ignored

    And, there you finally have a legitimate point.

    @Mikael_Svahnberg said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    In fact scientific experimentation does work that way.

    I think you misunderstand my metaphor.

    Fix the equipment all you want, but if you never get any data back, you don't just presume your answer to be correct and presume the instrument failed.

    I'm not saying this is what's happening here. I'm saying you have to be aware that a lot of people are doing this, these days. They are presuming what they want, creating their own contexts, and then reinterpreting information until it fits their bias. And if they can't find actual evidence, they continue to presume anyway because.... the numbers aren't 50/50%.

    For example. There aren't enough women in STEM because it isn't 50/50. Therefore, something MUST be wrong, and it won't be right until it's 50/50. We'll conveniently ignore any situation where the opposite is true, where it is 40/60 in favor of women, because... male tears. Men don't have problems, right? (I could easily say that not a single woman in America has a problem because women in Saudi are drinking American tears, but I digress).

    You see, in science, when you perform an experiment 9 thousand times and 1 time it produces results that don't match, you consider it a fluke, because reality is consistent. So, your theory gets jot down (yes, theory, not hypothesis, because you have enough evidence now), and until it's proven wrong, it's the current theory.

    But when it comes to human behavior, you not only have the fact that humans don't produce things in equity no matter how many ways you divide society, you also have humans interpreting human behavior who don't produce ideas in equity... etc.

    So, you absolutely can't presume the missing data, or presume vast swathes of data is a fluke simply because you presume humanity is consistent. Therefore when women aren't represented in history 50/50, you can't presume that there were just as many sole female leaders as male and that a bunch of men got together and formed a conspiracy that succeeded in wiping out all female sole leaders from history, save a handful because... they kicked them men's arses proper.

    And that's my problem.



  • @xaade The problem is, I think, that "religiousness" doesn't necessarily come from religion, like people assume.

    It's not that people read the Bible, and decide to take it literally. What happens most commonly is people acquire a set of beliefs ("masturbation is baaaaaad!") from whatever source, then rationalize them as being taken from the Bible or whatever religion they like (not saying that real bible literalists don't exist).

    If an ancient lost passage of the Bible was uncovered in Jerusalem, and it said "gay sex is totally fun", do you think most hardcore christians would just accept it? No, they'd claim it was fake or planted by the devil or something. Because they're not actually taking all their beliefs from there.

    Just like how some people claim that God is the only possible source of morality, and whatever He says is good, is good by definition. Yet if those people had a vision of God telling them that there was a mix-up, and murder and torture is A-OK, whereas love and peace are bad, they would still most likely not torture their families. How can that be? Perhaps they were following their own morality all along?



  • @anonymous234 said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    If an ancient lost passage of the Bible was uncovered in Jerusalem

    Point of information -- any ancient lost passages you might uncover will not ever be part of the Bible unless and until they are canonized. If you find an ancient text and it's not a dupe of a text that's already in the Bible, then by definition it's not in the Bible.



  • @anonymous234 said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Just like how some people claim that God is the only possible source of morality, and whatever He says is good, is good by definition. Yet if those people had a vision of God telling them that there was a mix-up, and murder and torture is A-OK, whereas love and peace are bad, they would still most likely not torture their families. How can that be? Perhaps they were following their own morality all along?

    That's kind of part of the definition of Christianity. The founding principle was basically, "You know all those laws and stuff that Jews have had for the past thousand years? Yeah, just kidding." There isn't really any explanation other than God had a change of mind.



  • @Dragnslcr said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    There isn't really any explanation other than God had a change of mind.

    Wut.

    The whole point was, "The prophecy has been fulfilled, and the debt has been payed." ...Who ever presented it as a change of heart or something that could be interpreted that way?

    Gah, whatever, you people keep making things up I guess.



  • @anonymous234 said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    If an ancient lost passage of the Bible was uncovered in Jerusalem, and it said "gay sex is totally fun", do you think most hardcore christians would just accept it? No

    It would undergo a lot of criticism. But if Bible scholars and historians accepted it, then I'd take a look myself. Scripture like that shows up from time to time, but it's often invalidated. Then there's all those other gospels.

    We are relying on what secular people chose to do with the canonization of the Bible.

    @anonymous234 said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    God telling them that there was a mix-up, and murder and torture is A-OK, whereas love and peace are bad

    There are several characters in the Bible that get similar visions. They struggle with it too. The Bible also says to test the spirit speaking to you.
    Again, I always have to fall back on grace. The Bible makes it clear that sinning in ways you aren't aware of is very likely.

    @anonymous234 said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Perhaps they were following their own morality all along?

    Of course we have an embedded sense of morality, but that is very susceptible to corruption.

    The most evil things are slightly good.



  • @Dragnslcr said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    There isn't really any explanation other than God had a change of mind.

    Yes there is.

    @Magus said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    The whole point was, "The prophecy has been fulfilled, and the debt has been payed."

    That.

    The law hasn't changed, the penalty for law still exists, even JESUS said so when he said "strike not one letter from the law". But God is aware that human will only goes so far. So he has a choice, let grace take over or burn everyone.

    When people complain about bad things happening, that's where it comes from.

    One seemingly insignificant sin is enough to burn for, so I'm pretty glad that grace exists.



  • @anotherusername said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    then by definition it's not in the Bible.

    People always forget that 'The Bible' is a bureaucratic entity.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @xaade said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    It would undergo a lot of criticism. But if Bible scholars and historians accepted it, then I'd take a look myself.

    Surely you realize it doesn't work like that.

    As @AyGeePlus points out, nobody really believes that there has at any point in time existed a complete, authorized text called The Bible. Hell, even the actual Bible makes no such claim. Given the number of texts and the amount of time encompassed by them, 'twould be a miracle, indeed.

    Instead, the Bible represents a collection of texts that was found to be acceptable to the religious authorities at the time. Unsurprisingly, there exists some disagreement between denominations as to which books are canonical scripture and which aren't.

    The implications are threefold:

    1. Whether something is considered part of the Bible, or not, is wholly independent of the qualities of the actual text and solely dependent on the inclination of people to accept it as such (or lack thereof),
    2. In light of the fact that what the Bible says is a lot less important that what it means to the devout Christian here and now, said religious authorities do not require new texts to come up with new interpretations. Few people are reading the Bible literally, as it is.
    3. Conversely, even an indisputably authentic text - say, a different version of one of the canonical books - doesn't actually change anything, absent the aforementioned imprimatur. It may be seen merely as a corrupted copy. Even if it could be shown that the canonical version is the actual corruption of an older text, it could be interpreted as "finally getting it right".


  • @GOG said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    Surely you realize it doesn't work like that.

    Ok, let me rephrase.

    Bible scholars and historians that I have agreed with in the past.


    But that's all a tangent, because, once again, I operate on a principle of grace.

    It's not my concern of whether any action anyone commits is a sin or not.

    However, I do have my personal convictions based on my personal interpretations.

    And because I recognize that I could be wrong, and because of all that you mentioned, I am not interested in legislating my personal convictions.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @xaade And it's a commendable position, to be sure.


  • area_pol

    Bible is not the only source of religious information for Christians, they also rely on tradition (past decisions of councils etc). This seems like a reasonable approach, as it allows them to adjust their teachings as the world changes.



  • @Adynathos said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    they also rely on tradition (past decisions of councils etc). This seems like a reasonable approach, as it allows them to adjust their teachings as the world changes.

    Tradition frequently leads to more rules which get harder to change. That's how you end up with Catholicism.

    The christian message is dead simple.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Magus said in Onan! What is best in life?:

    The christian message is dead simple.

    Is it: if you suggest that everyone might be nice to each other, they'll nail you to a tree?


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