Chuckle-A-Duck
ChuckleADuck is a webcomic that examines atheism, religion, politics, and general silliness from its own unique perspective. Its audience includes atheists, evangelicals, the spiritual, the cynical, young, old, liberals, conservatives and the occasional space alien.
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People who believe like this lad have never really understood God’s response to Abraham’s bargaining prior to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were destroyed by the way foremost for being a rich and haughty people who oppressed and afflicted the poor and furthest down the list was that they did detestable things. Ezekiel 16:49
In one of the mind your own business passages Peter wants to know why John won’t suffer the same fate as he and Jesus’ response was along the lines of “What is it to you if I want him to remain alive until I return?”
To be sure those in the Church will answer for the stumbling blocks placed before seekers, something about a millstone being placed around one’s neck and tossed into the sea would be better off than causing someone to stumble or prevent one from entering into the kingdom of God.
Likewise for those who wish in this life to be apart from God so shall they be after parting from their flesh and blood.
There`s a taste of the God I know. And a taste of their own medicine for some westboro fruitcakes.
I wasn’t writing it with Westboro in mind but they’re certainly prime examples of the problem.
I want to see a military protest at one of THEIR funerals.
It will never happen. The military respect the dead. They also respect (or learn to respect) the right of others to have opinions that run counter to their own socially, religiously, culturally and sexually. It is impossible to live amongst multiple cultures and not learn tolerance (of course you do need to leave the installations to live amongst the people).
I really don’t understand the flap.
If everyone involved wants it, and no-one is harmed, who cares who gets married to who? They’re consenting adults!
My thoughts on the subject? http://jondkelley.blogspot.com/2009/11/non-traditional-marriages.html
Let consenting adults do what they consent to – treat the children properly, don’t cause any harm, and we’ll get on just fine.
If they’re worried about “protecting the sanctity of marriage,” then how about doing something about all these damned Hollywood divorces?
There’s a deeply set busybody gene in some people, apparently.
Well, actually, its the Fundamentalist Evangelicals who are doing most of the divorcing. Ironic, isn’t it?
The divorce rate among heterosexuals has been around 50% for years, and yet marriage needs ‘Defended’ from gays? How can they do more damage to the institution than we straights have already done?
Cogent question indeed.
The 50% divorce rate is technically accurate – but seriously in error.
Without question, there are more divorces today, even among those who have married for the first time. However, first marriages ending in divorce are still below 25%. A large majority of those 25% will marry a second time. Those persons are more likely to divorce; at at least the 50% level. Of those persons who divorce, there are many who will marry a third time and will have an even higher divorce rate, and the rate is even worse for fourth marriages. Therefore a successful marriage where there is no divorce is easily outweighed by the number of multiple people who divorce and remarry.
I once represented a man on his third divorce; for his soon-to-be-ex wife, it was #7. Take those ten divorces and put them with ten first marriages with no divorces, and you have 50%…
I believe GOD is a very benevolent god.
Seeing how we treat gays, women, children, animals, nature and each other, the things HE is piling on us is peanuts compared to the things we pile upon us ourselves (no idea how much punctuation I left out in this sentence. Set as see fit).
If I compare the export of toxic waste to Africa where it slowly poisons whole regions, the immense amounts of garbage due to packing every item in some plastic shell and and and to some shortlived hurricanes or the occasional volcanoe, the Lord is still very good to us.
Humanity may consist of humans, but that does not make the individual humane.
A – I think – polish philosopher once said: “His consciousness was clean. He never used it.”
If we all take care of each other and the guy/gay/girl/child/animal from next door and act as if to preserve our world for us and that guy for many years to come, GOD won’t have to pile up any more … and probably won’t.
Great cartoon. Thank you for it.
Nice comment, Logan!
You seem to be a lot more moral than the god described in the Christian Bible. Thank goodness you don’t try to be like the example he sets. If you did, you’d be stoning homosexuals, keeping slaves and beating them to within an inch of their life, provided they didn’t die for at least 3 days, selling your daughter into slavery (to be beaten by someone else), making your daughter marry her rapist, making sure all women never cut their hair or speak in church and when a family member is ill, avoiding medical science and calling in the church elders to pray over, caress with oil and lay their hands on the victim. If the family member dies in agony from a burst appendix you would be rejoicing that the Lord had taken them to heaven. Sick.
I see that you’ve done a masterful job of mashing the historic books of the Herbrew Bible and the Christian Testement into an unsavory mess. Let’s see what you can do with the Political parties, you should be able to come up with quite an interesting stew.
Hah, anyone can do that with politics. That’s not hard at all. It’s more moderately hard to do that with a pair of fiction books that only got accepted as gospel truth because of the lack of actual, scientifically proven truths to be had around 30 AD (like the fact of evolution), but it’s still not very hard.
Reminds me of that guy I saw on Youtube once, who was trying to prove his beliefs: “Just because other people don’t accept my evidence doesn’t mean it’s not evidence…” That is one of the most spurious statements I’ve ever heard.
I’d say that the world is diverse enough so that if you try to say that God has a specific quality, like benevolence, you can always find an example of something that such a God would disallow, if he had the power – I think disease and religious wars are two great counterexamples in that case. I’d then think that God is therefore impotent, malicious, or just plain cracked, so I’d think that his followers here on Earth weren’t worth listening to. And to all those people who’d say I’m going to hell, I’d say, “Either hell doesn’t exist, or God is an idiot for not bringing me into heaven as long as I try to do what I consider good deeds my entire life, even if I don’t have religion.” And as a final parting shot to that inevitable class of people who sneer at any perceived hole in an argument, I’d say that my idea of good deeds only involve such things that are certain to benefit the world – education, for one – nothing that could be construed in any way as being non-beneficial. And that I’m ready to argue that education is always beneficial, to anybody who might challenge it.
you do know evolution is not fact but theory do to lack of proof when archeology actually proves things like the bible and such as true more often than not.
Archaeologist here, to tell you that simply is not true. To start off, let me explain that you are misusing the term “theory” in this context. It’s a very common mistake, and I know it might not seem like a big deal, but please allow me to explain.
Within modern science, the term “theory” refers to scientific theories, which are a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, and made in a way consistent with scientific method. Such theories are described in such a way that any scientist in the field is in a position to understand and either provide empirical support (verify through hypothesis testing) or empirically contradict (falsify through hypothesis testing) it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge, in contrast to more common uses of the word “theory” that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which is better defined by the word ‘hypothesis’). Scientific theories are also distinguished from hypotheses, which are individual empirically testable conjectures, and scientific laws, which are descriptive accounts of how nature will behave under certain conditions.
I hope that has at least helped you to better understand how the word “theory” is in use in the scientific community. Thanks for your time.
You call me sick because of high moral standards? Everything you citated came from Leviticus. If you ever read on, you’ll find a second part of the bible. It descibes the life and doing of a man, who – probably for the first time in a very violent world – propagated love for each other, turning the other cheek, sharing, gathering the lowest among the people and so on. He is seen as Gods son and a whole religion is based on his existence and doing.
Apparently views changed over a period of time, else Jesus himself would have suffered punishment at Leviticus’ rules.
Turning to the old testament, God gives fair warnings and only once was fed up with his creation. So yes, even when punishing a city (Sodom and Gommorha), a people (the Egyptians) or even the then known world (Sinflood), he gave man the choice to turn from his doing.
Western civilization doesn’t give Africa that option. Refuse toxic waste means less / no money. No money means no infrastructure. No infrastructure means disease, hunger, starvation, death.
We talk about dwindling ressources like oil but wrap anything in plastic in our Western advanced societies. So thousands of CEOs of thousands of companies obey the dictate of .. who?? US people, who want their groceries neatly packed and fresh.
WE do not care about the next generations, the way we treat our planet. And we do it willfully, of our own free will. Obviously, God allows his creation to make decisions.
The Bible is a book of lore of times long past even during writing it. It describes a time long gone and was one of the first books collecting the old written or told codes of conduct. Times changed, world changed, people changed. Codes of conduct changes.
Why would I even think to stick to codes that were created 2000 years ago? I happily accept the ten commandments (especially in the broader interpreation of today) as I think, they are timeless and good in any society.
Leviticus on the other hand was a clear example of keeping people down with a religious overtone. If Leviticus was considered the ONE spokesman of God, we would have ten – or more – completely different commandments, many of them having to do with stoning and killing. Obviously, Gods commandments (given to Moses) turned way more popular – and in the end changed a world.
What did religion do to you to reduce it to the rants of a hateful, narrow-minded village chief with no happiness in his heart (I mean Leviticus)?
Actually, most of what’s in the Old Testament is taken out of context by most Christians. The Book of Leviticus, for example, was not meant for the average joe. It was a book of laws written for the Levites. So, unless you happen to be a Levite, I wouldn’t concern myself with Leviticus.
What about cancer, malaria and the thousands of other diseases that kill off people at a far faster rate than humans kill each other? If God existed and wanted to take credit for creation, he would also need to take responsibility for the hundreds of genetic diseases that condemn children to a short life of suffering. These horrible conditions are not “peanuts”, so you either need to live without a God, or live with a God who permits needless suffering.
Goes to show Adrian, better without that viscous, selfish self centered god!
With the first sin, death entered the world as a punishment. And with death came all its causes. Death was not an act of God, but an act of satan. God punished man and satan, saying the man shall crush the serpents head, while satan bites at his heel. And all these genetic diseases? Wouldn’t that be our fault for disobeying the commandments and sleeping with woman unmarried? The world is falling apart due to our sins, he is not permitting such disasters. He works through us. We have to allow him to do so.
YEAH! There it is. The obligatory satan blame. Where did satan come from? Who created him? If god didn’t create him how come he didn’t know satan would become evil? He’s omnipotent he knows everything yet he doesnt know one of his angels is going to rebel and become his opposite? Bringing death and disease to the world? Nice try but just like the rest of the bible im not buying it.
You’re not required to buy it. You’ve been given the option of believing, that is sufficient. I say this without malice – yes, if you don’t believe that Christ has died for your sins, then of course you’re going to hell. It’s just the way things are.
Christ said to love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. You do neither, so how am I to treat you? I do not bear you any ill will. You sadden me with your lack of faith, but again, it is your choice.
The fallacy here is that anyone pretends to comprehend the will of God. You’re talking about the creator of existence here. His nature is outside anything we can understand by definition. You cannot prove or disprove God, nor does He have to provide a reason for why He allows what we understand to be ‘evil’ to exist. He is God.
Also, science, philosophy, etc. are all exclusively human studies built upon our observations of reality. How can we use this as a basis to say that God does not exist? He designed the very systems on which our observations are founded. We can prove nothing beyond the derivations of our observations, assuming those are even correct. Taking a popular example, how do we know God did not design evolution? How do we know that evolution is even what we think it is? Only our ego convinces us that we are correct in our theories.
As the ancients accurately observed, our notions of reality are indelibly marked by the fallibility of our senses.
Here is an interesting gay perspective on thesubject of gay marriage:
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2013/01/10/in-france-anti-gay-marriage-voices-emerge-from-gays/
Gay people are still people and therefore each and every one of them will have unique opinions on things, not necessarily in line with those of others. Even if they share the same sexual orientation.
So, this does not really come as a surprise to me. From what I’ve seen so far, they’re quite a minority though.
Just FYI, the Web site Homovox is sponsored by Maillard Jean-Baptiste, who also runs http://www.jesusprems.com. He’s an anti-gay French Catholic.
great cartoon, but you should have made the peasant look less like jesus and more like an old white republican
Most of the problems of the world have been caused by religion. Think of the crusades, the inquisition, the dark ages, the witch burnings, the restrictions on learning, free speech, instilling guilt and shame into children, and the wars fought in the name of religion.
More recently, think of family planning clinic bombings, oppression of gays and non-believers, murders of doctors and homosexuals, imposition of religious beliefs by force of law, and illegal use of public funds to promote particular religions.
Mankind will never truly be free until the black yoke of religion is lifted by the clear light of truth and rational thinking.
That’s not caused by religion, it’s caused by people. If you read the New Testament you would know its all about caring for each other and no hate, so those people who did those things are wrong in gods eyes. Also you think war and violence would end if there was no religion? Humans are innately violent and use religion as an excuse for the things they do.
Right on James. Don’t forget that the U.S. is 34th out of 35 countries in the disbelief in Evolution. Duh!
I’m right with you James and Rick. I say that what needs to happen is for rational thinkers to approach religion in the same way we have with smoking. You can’t just ban it outright; the resistance would be too great and we would make martyrs and victims out of the believers. Outright prohibition has never been successful.
Consider what has happened with smoking: in the 1970s, half of all adults in the West smoked and smokers were seen as cool, “with it” and sophisticated. Today they are seen as unwelcome social pariahs who need treatment for a dirty and unhealthy addiction.
This change in perception didn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of decades of campaigning, advertising and graduated legislation that has slowly reduced smokers’ opportunities to indulge their habit. First it was banned in cinemas and theatres, then on planes, a few months later on public transport, then it was banned in restaurants, some time after that banned in clubs, pubs and bars, now it’s been banned even outside at bus stops and children’s play areas. Slowly, over the years, the times and places where smokers can indulge have been steadily curtailed.
At the same time, advertising and mass media promotion has worked to shift public opinion against smoking. As more and more people quit, they join the ranks of those calling for more legislation to regulate tobacco and ostracise blowhard smokers from respectable society.
The same approach needs to be taken with religion. We need to aim for an end result whereby religious believers are seen as addictive sufferers who need treatment, and to be ostracised as social outcasts if they insist on pursuing it. We need to remove the “veneer of respectability” attached to religion and to promote it as disrespectable and disreputable. We need graduated legislation (banning school-sponsored prayer in classrooms was a great start) slowly breaking down the opportunities for believers to practice and proselytise. And above all we need to replace the concept of “freedom OF religion” with “freedom FROM religion”. Nobody pushes “freedom to smoke”; we talk about being “smoke-free”. So-called “freedom of religion” should be subject to the same principle.
Also, just as children have long been prevented from smoking by purchase-age restrictions, so to they need to be protected from the poison of religion by similar age restrictions. Slowly but surely, religions, like tobacco companies, can be increasingly prevented from promulgating their unwelcome habit to kids. And at the same time, media campaigns and advertising can be used to sway public opinion against religion, just as it has been against smoking.
It will take decades, just as stopping smoking did. But as the transformation from a smoke-riddled to a smoke-free society has demonstrated, working towards a religion-free society is certainly possible.
“banning school-sponsored prayer in classrooms was a great start”
Yeah. Schools are so much healthier now than they were 50 years ago. Great example.
And after you do that, the violence will continue growing.
It’s great to see that there’s the thought police around in the atheistic circles they accuse religion of. And great to see the idiotic attitude of “The world will be better off without religion guaranteed!” in it’s natural environment.
The truth is, you will always have violence as long as there’s two humans on the planet. Where there’s a competition of resources, a disagreement of views. Where there’s downright anything there will be violence, hatred, and strife. Religion itself has little to do with it than the person. Now some people will hide it behind religion to give it an air of respectability. Some people hide it behind “the light of reason” to give it legitimacy. Street Gangs hide it behind a desire for turf and respect. The truth is, violence will never end among humans.
I don’t usually bother the atheists for disagreeing with me on the existence of God because I prefer to worship quietly and privately seeing it as a personal matter but when I see this crap I always gotta say something. It’s hypocritical at best and just damn stupid at worst. Religion the same as smoking……what the hell is this crap. If you gotta compare religion to anything, compare it to shark attacks. As in most religious people won’t bother you and they’ll live in peace, but the ones that do and smell blood are nasty pieces of work.
If you want to be the stereotypical arrogant atheist, be intelligent about it.
While I like the message of the cartoon, it sort of gets dirtied when one reflects on Christianity and homosexuality. There is no grey, only black and white. It is clearly stated without any doubt, in both testaments that gays are vermin who should be murdered if they have sex. There is zero, zero, zero lattitude. God would never say that. Only a christian who deletes verses they don’t like, would believe this.
“We need to remove the “veneer of respectability”
Seems Higher Ed is well on its way:
“THERE IS NO DOGMA MORE PREVALENT within American high culture than that smart people outgrow God,” said Douglas Henry, an assistant professor of philosophy and director of Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning. “The more educated, the more erudite, the more discerning and wise one is, the less one is inclined to be a deeply pious Christian, the thinking goes. In higher education, this dogma gets expressed in the axiom that academic excellence and Christian faithfulness are incompatible.”
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/12/professing-faith
Your data set you use to prove your thesis is incomplete. To accurately assess the aggregate impact of religion one must include all of the good as well. Start with the foundation of your beloved higher ed in America then on to hospitals etc. I am not saying religion is perfect just not nearly as bad as your complaint makes it out to be.
Another facet to your rational thinkers is that you neglect that all of the last four mass shooters in America were rational thinkers. Insane as well but rational. All made rational choices e.g. Loughner chose the only theater that was known to be a gun free zone not the largest nor closest to him. The Sandy Hook shooter and the mall shooter both fled when they saw a weapon approaching. Rational thinking for their paradigm. It was rational for the Third Reich paradigm to rid the world of the least fit, no? As I said insane perhaps but rational and then who are you to say it was wrong? Then of course there are those Milgram type experiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment All rational thought processes.
Speaking of limited data sets is not a most irrational position to absolutely rule out (in the light of the dimensions beyond the four which we know that we experience) a being from one of those dimensions? Kinda like the third dimension permeates all orientations of the 2nd dimension but the 2nd knows the third not.
Homosexuality is an abomination. Does it produce new children? Let’s suggest a ridiculous hypothetical: everyone in the next generation is “genetically born gay”. Can anyone take some responsibility and procreate? If gays are physically capable of procreating, then they are deliberately choosing to not marry and are not doing their duty of procreating, Genesis, “be fruitful and multiply”. I am amazed there haven’t arrived more forceful critics of homosexuality from the right using more reason and logic. Liberals love “sustainability”, and yet homosexuality is not sustainable but would destroy the future generation of new babies. It’s not a natural indefinitely sustainable “lifestyle”. What’s so great about sex, anyway? Why can’t people just be abstinent and have good friends and make big families in normal marriages anymore?
Would you say that in this day and age humans still need to be “fruitful” and reproduce? That we are in any danger of dying out anytime soon? Since breeding is clearly not an issue, over population is, therefore nature will introduce genetics that promote homosexuality in attempt to lower it. And bi-the-bi, homosexuality is natural, if you’d open a book or even watch discovery channel there sre actually multiple species that exhibit homosexuality. Sidenote, sex is marvelous, and in a healthy relationship, one of the key building blocks, again, read a book. Preferably one that’s a bit more modernized and has scientific background.
First of all, love, your getting off on the wrong foot. I’m a bisexual, gonna let you know that now. Gays, are not an abomination, they are human. Now, if you think gays are wrong, then maybe you should also look at it this way. What if everyone was gay, and only you were straight and we were all calling you an abomination, because we as humans believe you are a screw up. How would you feel then. Just because gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and whatever else don’t produce children does NOT make them abominations. You can’t just wake up one morning, and think your not gonna be straight. You are born that way. If you think I am wrong, then maybe you should go back to Sunday and realize, that man is the one who said gays and transgenders and so on and so forth are bad. Because last time I checked it was man who created the bible that so many Christians base their thoughts on. We are not put on this Earth to make children we are put on this Earth to be here. So, please, take it from a teenager’s advise, and grow up.
Homosexuality is not an abomination. Let’s just get it out right now.
If it was, then I would be an abomination by the same logic. I am not homosexual, but I have chosen at this juncture in my life not to get married because each of the women I’ve dated I haven’t wanted to get married to for various reasons. I don’t have children so I have not been fruitful and multiplied. So am I evil and in the wrong? Not at all.
Here’s the thing, up top I attacked the atheistic ideal of killing religion to let the light of reason to rule. Eventually the batteries would run out and I don’t trust the people to change the batteries that are trying to tell me how to think. Now here we go again, people that use religion to spew the filth are just as bad and idiotic. Why should I want that crap representing me? Shut up with the abomination crap, it’s cliche and stupid.
If we say God is a God of love we need to first start by showing it in ourselves. Hatred is a horrible horrible thing to deal with but we must confront it head on. The problem lies here that using hatred against hatred only makes hatred grow.
For God to be a God of love, we must find that love in ourselves first. Be it acceptance of self, acceptance of others even if we fail to understand what makes them tick, and acceptance of our place in the world. If hatred breeds non-acceptance, love must breed acceptance. And that’s the only thing that can fight hatred. And when acceptance becomes common place, that’s when the world will be a better place. It doesn’t matter if that acceptance comes from an atheist’s heart or a religious person’s heart.
@Logan.
No, Logan. I’m not calling you sick at all. I am calling the supposed basis for your morality sick.
It seems you are not very familiar with your holy book. The examples that I gave did NOT come from Leviticus. They came from the same book that lists the first set of what are erroneosly called “The Ten Commandments”. They occur in the next few chapters after these, actually. The REAL set of commandments, the ones that the Bible itself refers to as The Ten Commandments, are listed later on in that book.. They are the ones that were put into the Arc of the Covenent which was then stored in the Jewish Temple.
The REAL Ten Commandments are rather different from the set that you, and millions of ignorant Christians, think of as the Top Ten. They were part the stipulations that the Yahweh god made with the Israelites in exchange for his help in slaughtering the neighboring tribes so that they could take over their land. Some of the commandments are the same, but the last one commands the Jewish people not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk. You have probably never broken that one.
If you were familiar with your holy book you would know that Moses smashed the tablets containing the Real Ten Commandments when he got to the bottom of the mountain. He saw a group of his people worshiping an idol of the local god and got so angry that he immediately broke the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill. He instructed his henchmen, not just to kill all of these people but to kill them in an extremely brutal and blood thirsty manner. Cut off their heads, and that kind of thing. I’ll bet you haven’t read that bit yet. The Old Testament Yahweh god (that’s your god’s name by the way) didn’t tell Moses he was displeased with this brutality. In fact, he continued to treat Moses as if he were a very righteous and god fearing man. Obviously this god has a different set of moral values from the ones that modern industrialized societies consider to be exemplary.
It is only when Moses goes back up the mountain for new tablets that we see the phrase “ten commandments” (Exodus 34:28) mentioned in the Jewish Bible. In an interesting turn of events, the commandments on these tablets are significantly different than the ten rules Moses recited for the people from memory, after he broke the tablets with the originals on them. This means that either Moses’ memory is faulty or the Yahweh god changed his mind.
THE REAL TEN COMMANDMENTS (supposedly written by the Jewish Yahweh God.)
I. Thou shalt worship no other god.
II. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
III. The feast of unleavened bread thou shalt keep.
IV. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.
V. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year’s end
VI. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord God.
VII. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.
VIII. Neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
IX. The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.
X. Thou shalt not seethe a kid [ie, a young goat] in his mother’s milk.
This set didn’t appeal to the Christian Churches so they ignored them and, instead, chose the first few ten rules that Moses gave to his people after he had finished killing his idol worshiping brothers.
There is a third alternative that explains the discrepancy. The consensus among modern archeologists is that the stories of Moses, the captivity of the Jews in Egypt, the Exodus and Forty Year Wandering around the Sinai desert never happened. Where you would expect lots of evidence, there is not one valid and uncontested scrap of it – and archeologists have been looking very hard and carefully for over fifty years.
So that rather undermines the horrific stories of the bloodthirsty commands of the Yahweh god and the examples he gives of very bad parenting. Most morally normal people would not kill, torture or harm people after giving them “fair warning”. That is really sick behavior. If you think these are ” high moral standards” then your religion has warped your sense of morality and made you into a monstrous sociopath.
You mention that views had changed so much by the time that Jesus of Nazareth was alive that he was only subjected to crucifixtion instead of the biblically required stoning (for blasphemy and failure to do honor his parents.) {Do you recall that Jesus ran off without telling his parents where he was going when the family went to Jerusalem. His parents got part way home before they realised he was not with them. How very thoughtless of him! Naturally, his parents were very worried and went back to look for him. They found him arguing with the Rabbis. Instead of apologizing to them and asking forgiveness the boy Jesus cheekily told them that he was doing God’s work and implied that they could either like it or shut up. How very rude of him! }
In any case, neither of these sets of Top Ten Commandments is particularly good compared with earlier versions from the surrounding tribes (The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which is very similar).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
Other people wrote better Commandments to Live By. Here are the Ten Commandments of Solon (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 1.60), which run as follows:
1. Trust good character more than promises.
2. Do not speak falsely.
3. Do good things.
4. Do not be hasty in making friends, but do not abandon them once made.
5. Learn to obey before you command.
6. When giving advice, do not recommend what is most pleasing, but what is most useful.
7. Make reason your supreme commander.
8. Do not associate with people who do bad things.
9. Honor the gods.
10. Have regard for your parents.
Unlike the Commandments of Moses (or the Yahweh god), none of these is outdated or antithetical to modern moral or political thought. Every one could be taken up by anyone today, of any creed–except perhaps only one. And indeed, there is something much more profound in these commandments.
I would strongly recommend that you read ALL of the book you think is a good moral guide. You might be surprised to find that the god you think you know is substituted in the Old Testament by someone you think you don’t know.
Once again, the 10 commandments are misunderstood and taken out of context. Did you realize that the original translation of “thou shalt not kill” is actually translated as “thou shalt not murder.”? The Hebrew verb רצח (r-ṣ-ḥ, also transliterated retzach, ratzákh, ratsakh etc.) has a wider range of meanings, generally describing destructive activity, including meanings “to break, to dash to pieces” as well as “to slay, kill, murder” Also, the bible never used the word “retzach” in association with war. You have an interesting way of slanting the truth and telling the story out of context. Moses did indeed order the Levites to slay people, after he had given them the opportunity to let go of their wicked ways and repent. Exodus32:26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. The people that the Levites slew were of the same ilk as those of Soddam and Gamorrah. These weren’t just people who were “sexually liberated, ” they were rotten people who cared more for possessions than their fellow man. Where do you get your information from? You make the same mistake most uneducated liberals make, you haven’t actually read the book and you’re mixing up the sections. You’ve got a bunch of Leviticus mixed in with your Exodus. Listen, I’m not even a Christian, I’m an atheist, but if you’re gonna refute the bible, at least do it from a scholarly standpoint and don’t just spew whatever ignorant drivel you read on some ultra-liberal website. It’s ignorant nonsense. Do your homework and KNOW what you’re talking about before you open your mouth.
Mystikan and Rosemary: Your comments made me facepalm so hard that I’m surprised my skull didn’t shatter.
Let’s address your idiocy first, Mystikan. Fun fact: the nations that are growing the most in terms of Evangelical Christianity are those where such a belief will get you killed. So let’s just say that you could get Christianity to be banned as smoking is. It will make very little difference. You cannot surpress God’s truth, Christ’s love, or the workings of the Holy Spirit. It has never worked when it’s been tried before, and it never will.
Rosemary: No. What you’re doing is mashing together Exodus and Leviticus. The stone tablets that Moses broke in anger? Yeah, he received a new set. The laws in Leviticus are very much so separate from the Ten Commandments. I’d take the time to explain just how wrong you are, but your foolishness can only be tolerated for so long.
I’ll be praying that you guys recognize the truth some day.
I’m impressed you managed to be as funny an poignant as this in just two panels. Nicely done. I’ve seen this strip reposted in a few different places. Glad I was able to find the original.
The chuckleaduck.com url and copyright “should” have been on any reposting. Hope it was.
Honest to (deity deleted), could you all give it a rest??? You have all made your points, ad infinitum, ad nauseum… Give the rest of us a break from your constant braying.
Well, what did Ezekiel have to say about the destruction of the cities?
Ezekiel 16:49
English Standard Version (©2001)
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
New American Standard Bible (©1995)
“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.
King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.
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Odd, I don’t see anything in there about gays. And I will point out that the first sentence of that chapter says “This word came to me from God”. So that’s not Ezekiel’s opinion, that’s Gods thoughts on the matter. So the usual (USA) conservative Christian claim in this matter has to be considered error at best and blasphemy at worst.
Your parse of the text shows your bias and is an excellent example of the error of ‘proof-texting’. You conveniently left out the context of the following verse to make your point. They very thing of which accuse the USA Christians.
Ezekiel 16:50 (which is in the same breath of verse 49)
English Standard Version (©2001)
“50 They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.”
New American Standard Bible (©1995)
50 Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it.
King James Bible (KJV)
“50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.”
I usually go to this set of verses to show that verse 49 seems to be of more concern than verse 50 (to the western mind) to get the hyper conservatives to see the log in their own eye but this does not negate verse 50. In other words verse 50 is not the ONLY cause. Rather than doing another lengthy post as this not a bible study forum, I will offer this for those who are interested in the fuller context. Read Genesis 14 through chapter 19 to understand the character of Sodom and Gomorrah.
To be honest, I have no problems with gay people in general…Only those who try to (figuratively speaking) try to cram it down my throat.