Bible Questions?

Discussion in 'Sanctuary' started by OlderWaterBrother, May 17, 2009.

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  1. Rudenoodle

    Rudenoodle Minister of propaganda Lifetime Supporter

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    Isn't not having sex with your brother or sister just common sense though?

    Did Noah and Abe really need a law law telling them that it was unnatural to have sex with there direct relatives, and by that same logic if murder was never forbidden by god are you saying that it would be justifiable?
     
  2. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    I wouldn't call the incest taboo common sense, although it probably has an evolutionary basis in species survival, since it's widespread. It takes some knowledge to be aware that screwing your sister could lead to deformities. The Egyptian royalty practiced brother-sister incest regularly, as a means of keeping the royal line pure.
     
  3. Rudenoodle

    Rudenoodle Minister of propaganda Lifetime Supporter

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    Can you link an example please?
     
  4. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Link an example? I'll have to go out on the net and see what I can come up with. Off the top of my head, there was Cleopatara and her kid brother, but that doesn't count, because he was too young to consumate the marriage before they fell out and she hooked up with Caesar. An example of the results of such a union, judging from pictures of him, was Pharoah Ikhnaton, unless he was an alien from Outer Space. And it wasn't just Egyptian royalty. In Egypt under the Roman Empire, the practice was extended to commoners, as well. And it wasn't just Egypt. The ruling classes of Hawaii, the Incas, and China did the same thing, as a way of keeping wealth and power in the family.
     
  5. Rudenoodle

    Rudenoodle Minister of propaganda Lifetime Supporter

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    Pictures of him?

    Polaroid?
     
  6. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    I don’t feel a need to always take the Bible literally, in fact most of the Bible was meant to be taken both literally and symbolically at the same time. The Bible is a Book that has many different levels of understanding and those levels seem to deepen as one understands the Bible as a whole and begins to bring his life into harmony with what it says.

    I would be interested how you view this scripture, I know that you consider some parts of the Bible to be God’s word and this scripture seems to be literal, why do you think it’s in the Bible?

    Anyway, since the scripture only applies to people that are members of God’s people and not homosexuals that are gentiles this law would not seem directed at creating a hatred for homosexuals in general, this would seem to indicate that God does not want homosexuals among his people. So this scripture would seem to also indicate that God would not want Christians to be homosexuals.

    Okay let’s say that there is such a moral sense, how is one to know that moral sense has not been corrupted? What about suicide bombers or serial killers who seem to believe what they are doing is right. What happened to their moral sense?

    As I noted above, the moral conscience can be corrupted and needs to be properly trained was to what is right and wrong.

    (Titus 1:15) . . .but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.
    (2 Peter 2:14) . . .They have a heart trained in covetousness.. . .
    (Hebrews 5:14) . . .those who through use have their perceptive powers trained to distinguish both right and wrong.

    So it seems to me that the Bible says we should use the Bible to train our hearts and consciences and not be letting our hearts and consciences decide where God and the Bible is right or wrong.

    And this explains what God’s will is? Okay.
    Why wouldn’t there be disagreements? If a person has a personal agenda, to such a person it doesn’t matter what the Bible actually says, that person is going to say the Bible says what he wants it to say.

    I don’t know how many times I’ve been told that the Scripture where Jesus says “the Father and I are one”(John 10:30) means that Jesus is God. But interestingly in the same book a few chapters later Jesus says at John 17:20-22 “I make request, not concerning these only, but also concerning those putting faith in me through their word; in order that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in union with me and I am in union with you, that they also may be in union with us, in order that the world may believe that you sent me forth. Also, I have given them the glory that you have given me, in order that they may be one just as we are one. Now does that mean that all the disciples are the same person, somehow I don't think so. And all it took was just to continue reading, not a whole lot of interpretation, the more you know the Bible the more it seems to do this.


    Just like the plain meaning of day is 24 hours and we know how that turned out.
    It’s not incumbent on us to do anything. Although I like to try and explain the Bible, such explanations are pointless unless the Bible backs them up. Anyone who wants to know what the Bible says, really must check the Bible for themselves. (Acts 17:11) . . .for they received the word with the greatest eagerness of mind, carefully examining the Scriptures daily as to whether these things were so.
     
  7. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Paintings and sculptures actually. They show him as a grotesquely deformed hermaphrodite. Of course, he was a rebel, and this may have been a statement. As for the links, the ones I've come up with aren't particularly impressive, but they're a start, and they do have references for (your) future research. The usual wiki sources, for what (if anything) they're worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest?redirect=no; http://psychology:wikia.com/wiki/Incest taboo (I can't get this one to open up, possibly because there's a _ between Incest and taboo that doesn't show up with the underlining); a Christian think tank, that also addresses your question to OWB; http://www.christian=thinktank.com/qincest.html ; a scholastic source, SCOLAR Learning Environ. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/scolar/cl2361/lectures/9.html ; and a scholarly prospectus for future research by Scheidel www.stanford.edu/~scheidel/incest.htm
     
  8. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Now a days one would think so but in the kink forum that sense doesn't seem so common. But as Okiefreak pointed out, at one time "incest" was common and not considered wrong. Also the Law Covenant was one of the first to make it illegal.

    The Bible does not indicate that it is unnatural. Noah did not engage in "incest" that I know of and Sarah was only Abraham's half sister.

    The logic is not necessarily the same, with "incest" when mankind was closer to perfection there was not much of a problem with genetic problems but as mankind got farther from perfection the problems had gotten worse thus the problem was not always the same, whereas with murder the problem has remained the same though out time.
     
  9. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Just a couple of qualifications. I don't think incest was ever the norm. The incest taboo is and historically has been close to universal. But incest is defined differently in different cultures, and as a cultural norm, incest among close family relatives like brother and sister has typically been confined to royalty who were assumed to be gods and outside the norms for mortals. Unofficially, incest of course, is and has been much more common, though illicit.

    Logically, it would seem that incest would be inevitable when you have only a few people, like Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants. What else are they going to do? If they followed an incest taboo, we wouldn't be here having this discussion. As populations grew, the need for an incest taboo developed for two reasons: genetic, to reduce the probability of inheritable birth defects; and sociological, to bring unrealted households together in alliances. If the offspring of incestuous unions die before they reproduce, inbreeding is not necessarily a disadvantage. This is more likely to happen in smaller populations, but as populations increase, larger numbers of carriers of genetic defects will be statistically more likely to survive and pass the defects on. Anthropologist Levi-Strauss also stressed the social advantages of exogamy in building alliances that facilitated the expansion of social networks. From that standpoint, it would seem reasonable at to develop social norms of avoiding incest, and at some point to formalize and regularize them, as is done in Leviticus.
     
  10. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    Question: doesn't the idea of a law that God hadn't thought of yet (which I think is implied by a law that is not applied retroactively, if we believe that God's laws are moral rather than merely legislative) conflict with the idea of God as omniscient?
     
  11. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    I think it would, but that's not exactly what's involved here. I guess God could have said incest is okay until the population reaches a certain level, after which it has to stop, because the benefits of population growth are outweighed by the risks of passing on defective genes and the benefits of exogamous alliances. But that would have been a little complicated.
     
  12. Hoatzin

    Hoatzin Senior Member

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    God cares deeply about population control. Just not with condoms, birth control, or any other method that works.
     
  13. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Interesting.

    Not all of God's law were moral, such as the sanitary laws. So perhaps the law against incest was not a moral law, something that was always wrong but a health law that was not needed when humans were closer to perfection but was needed later as humans got farther from perfection.
     
  14. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    What?
     
  15. Rudenoodle

    Rudenoodle Minister of propaganda Lifetime Supporter

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    I think he may be hinting at the numerous mass murders and genocides that have been occasionally carried out in the name of various gods.

    Then again maybe not.
     
  16. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    The notion that humans were once "closer to perfection" than they are today is interesting. Could you elaborate and provide some support?
     
  17. TheGrayRaven

    TheGrayRaven Member

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    Is this asking for a linking of an example specifically of Egyptian Royal incest or for an example of incest causing deformities?

    If the latter, I believe the most famous example would be the Hapsburgs

    Note: I do not know much of the source I cited but the story of the Hapsburgs is a fairly common thing to find on the internet. There are available pictures of them also.
     
  18. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    I've explained this before I guess you missed it.

    According to the Bible Adam and Eve were perfect. After they sinned they lived almost a thousand years and people continued to live almost a thousand years for many generations after that but slowly that life span shortened till at the time that the Law Covenant, which prohibited "incest", was given general life span was less than a hundred years, where it seems to have leveled off. Although the Bible does not directly say this, to me it seems reasonable.
     
  19. neodude1212

    neodude1212 Senior Member

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    If they sinned how could they have been perfect?
     
  20. OlderWaterBrother

    OlderWaterBrother May you drink deeply Lifetime Supporter

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    Okay I give, what were they before they sinned?
     
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