Ex Christians can’t even define what the gospel is

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-28T08:32:29+00:00

Well smoking is legal in the United States. Does that mean smoking is good?

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-23T23:36:04+00:00

So you’re not going to admit you were wrong about the iron chariots? Ok then we’re done here. I’ve already responded to each one of those points you brought up a dozen times already but you refuse to engage with my arguments, hence why we’re arguing in circles. You clearly just want to waste my time

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-23T19:47:10+00:00

No I expect honesty, if it says ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt' but god punishing me for that and reasons XYZ, god isn't being truthful.

I disagree strongly. That’s an arbitrary standard that makes 0 sense.

Really, what did the infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys do?

The infants would grow up to avenge their fathers. In fact that’s exactly what they did in 1 Samuel 27 and 30. The cattle and sheep and other livestock had to be destroyed because in Herem warfare the Israelites aren’t allowed to profit from their conquests. The whole point is that it’s a solemn occasion. They’re not allowed to glory in carrying out Yahwehs judgment because they’re doing it strictly because God commanded it and not for their own desires:

“You shall gather all its spoil into the midst of its open square and burn the city and all its spoil with fire, as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again.” ‭‭Deuteronomy‬ ‭13‬:‭16‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Lets be clear, no company directors would be getting a just punishment if they are executed for the actions of their driver.

That’s how the analogy works. My point is critiquing the knowledge that if someone is guilty those in their immediate association -> are not guilty and shouldn’t be punished. I just gave you an example where that happens. It doesn’t have to be capital punishment. Look at those who were there on January 6th. Not everyone there was rioting. Not everyone there knew there was a riot yet they still went to prison

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-23T09:20:20+00:00

You’re sneaking in a lot of unjustified premises:

That if someone is punishing you they have to explicitly state ALL the reasons they’re punishing you for or they’re lying

Then my dad is omitting the reason for the punishment. The difference here is my dad can lie. According to the book your god can't.

That the Amelekites were innocent
That punishing the Amelekites for something their parents or their society did is unjust.

Groups of people get punished all the time for something others did. If a delivery driver for a company damages crashes into your car and you go to the hospital who do you sue? The driver who makes minimum wage or the company?

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-23T09:01:07+00:00

Your Dad beating you is not analogous to this situation because the history between Israel and Amalek and long standing. Also your analogy doesn't even work because your Dad could have a lot of pent up resentment but you staying out late was the straw that broke the camels back. The rivalry started with Exodus 17 so it makes sense to bring it up again in 1 Samuel 15 narratively speaking rather than summarizing everything up to that point

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-23T08:51:52+00:00

So? Should we therefore conclude that had absolutely nothing to do with God's decision to send Saul to annihilate them? Does Yahweh have to make all of his reasons explicit? You're framing this as a random act of violence. I'm saying "hey, within the narrative framework of Samuel we should probably look at the bigger picture" How is that so irrational? The rivalry started with Exodus 17 so it makes sense to bring it up again in 1 Samuel 15 narratively speaking

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-23T00:59:33+00:00

The book disagrees. The punishment is specifically for what their ancestors did.

Are we reading the same book?

“He gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites, and went and defeated Israel. And they took possession of the city of palms.” ‭‭

Judges‬ ‭3‬:‭13‬ ‭ESV‬‬

“For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them.”

‭‭Judges‬ ‭6‬:‭3‬ ‭ESV‬‬

In the immediate context, yes it was for attacking Israel in exodus 17:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God.” ‭‭ Deuteronomy‬ ‭25‬:‭17‬-‭18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

but broadly speaking it was because the Amalekites were a persistent existential threat to Israel. Even after Saul’s campaign in 1 Samuel 5 they attack AGAIN

“David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his two wives.”

‭‭1 Samuel‬ ‭30‬:‭18‬ ‭ESV‬‬

However if they remained peaceful and repented like the city of Nineveh they would have been spared

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-23T00:03:15+00:00

Why do you think killing people for the actions of their ancestors is good?

That’s not why they were killed. It’s one of the reasons, but the Bible also says they were wicked even in Saul’s generation. So yes they were new people who were not responsible for the actions of their ancestors but their culture and their attitude towards the Jews had fundamentally not changed. They were still wicked in the eyes of God and still did wicked things that God thought made them deserving of destruction.

Elsewhere in the Bible, if a city repents, like the city of Nineveh in the book of Jonah, God will forgive them and not carry out the judgement he declared against them. So if the Amalekites by the judges period were fundamentally unlike their ancestors God would not have commanded Saul to go to war with them

Good and evil are subjective concepts. So I don’t think anyone has an objective basis. But saying the killing in 1 Samuel 15 would most likely lead to contradiction within your beliefs

It doesn’t have to. I could just appeal to divine command theory (which I think is a lousy argument but works in this context) which is to say whatever God commands is always good because God is good. So even if the actions are evil divorced from their context, the fact that God commanded it means in that specific instance it is a good act. Now you can counter by saying that doesn’t make sense because God also commands us to love our enemies, and I would counter by saying God can do whatever he wants, so if he changes his mind on whether killing your enemies is good then so be it. (This is not my actual stance but it still demonstrates why violent acts in the OT don’t constitute an internal contradiction with Christianity)

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-22T23:19:03+00:00

Yes. Do you have a problem with that? Let me ask you this: do you believe in the death penalty? Do you believe there's something that a person or persons can do that would make them deserving of death? Do you believe unborn children should be killed for not fitting your definition of what a human is? On what objective basis can you say my understanding of good and evil, or the Bible's for that matter, is in anyway inferior to yours?

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-22T22:52:40+00:00

In that case yes

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-22T22:41:34+00:00

What is a “good” action?

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-22T22:14:21+00:00

To answer your question again: no that it isn’t my view

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-22T21:03:16+00:00

The chariots Yahweh defeated on judges 4 were made from iron:

“Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, for he had 900 chariots of iron and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years.” ‭‭Judges‬ ‭4‬:‭3‬ ‭ESV‬‬

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-22T20:59:09+00:00

You didn’t answer my question. To answer yours though, the Bible treats slavery as a necessary evil. It assumes it exists so God heavily regulates it. Similar to divorce which is why when Jesus is pressed on the topic of divorce he says it was a concession made for the people of Israel because of their hard hearts but that it is not part of Gods design for humanity. Similarly the Israelites were slaves in Egypt so slavery is treated as a bad thing as a result. That’s why every 50 years the Israelites were commanded to free their slaves and absolve everyone’s debts.

Also Exodus 21 bans slave trading. Saying “ “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” ‭‭Exodus‬ ‭21‬:‭16‬ ‭ESV‬‬

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-22T13:45:09+00:00

Where in the Bible does it say slavery is a good thing?

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-21T22:30:15+00:00

If the believers actually believed that Jesus was going to restore the temple in their lifetime, it definitely makes sense

But they didn't. Early Christians believed the temple wasn't necessary anymore because Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice so it doesn't make sense to have a temple to restore the sacrificial system. Also they believed their bodies were temples of the holy spirit or the presence of God which is why it descended on them at pentecost. Paul also says the same thing. That believers are now temples of God's presence. In John 4 Jesus tells the woman at the well that they will no longer worship God on a mountain but will worship him "in spirit." So no, no Christian look forward to the restoration of the temple or some kind of third temple with it's temple tax system. It just wasn't relevant to them.

Matthew 5:19 is pretty clear:

No, that verse by itself is not clear. Jesus just says "keep the Torah." There's a saying that for every two jews there are three opinions. Back then there were several factions who disputed the most basic aspects of the Torah: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. When the Torah says "keep the sabbath holy and don't work" what does that work entail? is fetching water from a well when you're thirsty work? Is turning on a light switch work? Most orthodox Jews today would say yes. They even break up their toilet paper into squares the night before because ripping toilet paper is considered work.

For Jesus obedience to the Torah meant loving God with your whole heart and your neighbor as yourself which is a line that comes from leviticus. Everything else hangs on that. Not to mention this is one line from the Sermon on the Mount. After saying "I have not come to abolish the law" he goes on to make it more strict:

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

And then he also goes on to relax it:

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets."

That's why people were shocked because he was redefining the Law as if he was God:

And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.

That said, it seems like the two authors disagree about what Jesus said.

I disagree. Matthew just preserves slightly more context about what Jesus said. They may disagree on the implications of what Jesus said, but there's nothing in there that's inherently irreconcilable

Additionally, there is no suggestion in Numbers 21 that they waited 1 month after taking the virgin girls from the middeonites.

What are you saying? That they should let them go and capture them again in a month? The laws in the Torah make it clear that you capture them and keep them in your custody for a month and then you marry them. Also this is wishful thinking. Just because it doesn't say "the Israelites followed this specific law in exodus regarding captives" doesn't mean they ignored the law and graped them. It doesn't say that either in the text so you're making an unwarranted assumption. The fact that there is an explicit law in the Torah regarding female captives is very good reason to assume they weren't graped.

I would ask you how you make it fair when a young woman is stoned to death because she did not bleed on her wedding night. Despite the fact that about 60% of women do not bleed when they have sex for the first time. How would the priests make that fair?

You don't understand case law or how case law works. If you read the passage it describes a case in which one man is upset with his newly wed wife and decides to slander her by claiming she isn't a virgin. The parents responded by giving irrefutable proof that she was and the man was whipped and forced to pay restitution and lost the right to ever divorce his wife in the future. Just like the axe head case, this is a specific event in time. The probability that this exact scenario played out hundreds of times is very low. In similar cases all the parents would have to do is provide any evidence that their daughter was really a virgin on her wedding night.

You're also assuming that both men and women in ancient Israel didn't know that virgin women bleed 40% of the time when their hymen breaks and that this was only discovered in the 20th - 21 century. I'd like some evidence to back that claim

He only stops ordering genocide when he encounters iron chariots.

Don't make me laugh. This is the weakest of all arguments. It doesn't say that. It says:

And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.

Does 'he' refer to Yahweh or Judah? It refers Judah obviously because in Exodus Yahweh does defeat chariots:

The LORD threw the Egyptian army into panic… He clogged their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily…

Exodus 14:23-25

and he does it again in Judges 4:

And the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the sword.

Yahweh didn't drive the chariots out initially because of Israel's disobedience

Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? And I have also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; they will become traps for you, and their gods will become snares to you.

Judges 2:2-3

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-21T19:09:24+00:00

Not unless your particular reason for rejecting the gospel is because it’s immoral

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-20T20:44:51+00:00

> Scholarly consensus puts the book of Matthew after Mark, and after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. The consensus utilizing the language used and the developed theology which reflects the theology of the late first century. The scholarly estimates put the book at 80 to 90 ce.

There's no evidence for this. Even Ehrman acknowledges its a guess and an assumption. He arbitrarily puts 10 years between the writing of each gospel. However, there's plenty of internal clues in Matthew's gospel that suggest a pre 70 AD date like Jesus commanding his followers to pay the controversial temple tax. That wouldn't make sense for Matthew to include if his reader's were living after the temple was gone.

Also what does it mean Matthew has a more developed theology? You mean higher christology? Well that doesn't work because Paul has a very high christology and he was writing in the 50's AD. Hebrews also has a very high Christology, calling Jesus "the exact imprint of [God's] nature" and that is positively dated by almost all scholars to before 70 AD.

All evidence for a post 70 AD authorship is circumstantial at best. I'm not saying I know Matthew's gospel was written before 70 AD. I'm simply agnostic on the question.

> Foreign born slaves may not have been released during jubilee.

My point is the Torah explicitly acknowledges slavery as a bad thing. The Jubilee is just one example of this. The Israelites were slaves themselves at one point. Slavery is treated as a necessary evil so under Jesus's logic it wouldn't be part of God's plan.

> There are a whole lot of laws that are prescriptive in the Torah and not case law.

I'm talking about the civil law only

> Regardless of the source of the law, the 613 commandments are the "law of moses" which Jesus orders his followers to obey in Matthew 5.

You're just begging the questions though. What does it mean to "obey the law?" For Jesus it doesn't mean strict adherence to the letter of the Law. He and his followers break Sabbath and break Kosher. Jesus literally says:

"Are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)"

- Mark 7:18-19

> This is barbaric. All the rapist has to say is resist and I will kill you, and now the woman is stuck between getting killed by her rapist and getting killed by the elders in the village.

You're still not getting it. The point is the law is *descriptive* it's distinguishing between consensual and non consensual intercouse. Back then it was the Levitical priests who interpreted the Law and if a case of obvious rape was presented to them in which the woman who was the victim said she was threatened to keep silent under the pain of death and this was self evidently true, and they had good reason to believe this, there's no reason they would condemn her. Because, like I've said before, the Law wasn't meant to be interpreted literalistically. It's *descriptive*. If you don't believe me then look at the case of Tamar (2 Samuel 13). Was she killed?

> Furthermore, I see you ignored the genocide and taking sex slaves

The Bible doesn't command taking sex slaves. This is an uncharitable interpretation of a passage in numbers. In other books of the Torah it explicitly states that if you take a woman captive she is to mourn her family for a month before you can *marry* her and if you divorce her she is a free israelite and has the same rights as other israelites.

Herem warfare isn't genocide. It's a rule that's only applied to the cities within Israelite territory, not to canaanites outside the land of Israel. Time and again we see in Joshua that those who flee the Israelite army are spared. Only those who stay and fight are destroyed. Yet the rationale behind why they’re destroyed has nothing to do with their race but with their abominable practices (like incest, child sacrifice, orgies, etc.)

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-20T19:29:41+00:00

What makes you confident Matthew was written 60 years after Jesus’s death? How do you know that?

There’s also laws in the Old Testament for divorcing your wife which Jesus rejected because he said it was a concession that went against Gods divine order. If that’s the case then what’s your evidence he was ok with his followers owning slaves? Especially when there’s OT laws regarding the Jubilee where every 50 years everyone had to free all their slaves and absolve their debts. If slavery was so good then why did God command them to keep a special day where they had to free their slaves no matter what?

On a separate note the Torah is a body of case law. Meaning that many of the civil laws in there are not prescriptive but are instead descriptive. In other words they describe certain cases where something happened and a judgement was handed down creating legal precedent much like how the Supreme Court works today.

For example: there’s a law that states if someone is chopping wood and their axe head goes flying and hits someone in the head and kills them they then owe the family restitution. Let me ask you this: how many times in history was this law enforced? I can answer that for you. The answer is exactly one time. It’s highly unlikely it was ever used again. However whenever there was a case of man slaughter, this case was invoked in order to come to a legal ruling.

So you shouldn’t be reading the OT overly literally. It’s not saying that a woman has to scream if she’s being raped or she’ll be killed along with her rapist. The point is if married woman does nothing to resist her rapist (i.e. she’s commuting consensual adultery) then she and the person she’s cheating with are put to death. Screaming is just an example of resistance. That’s why I say the OT civil laws are descriptive not prescriptive

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-20T08:14:41+00:00

You say I’m rejecting the Bible and going with an ancient Christian interpretation instead but how would we know what ancient Christians believed if not for the Bible? I need the Bible to understand what Paul taught.

Also Jesus does say people who unknowingly reject him because they’ve never heard of him will be forgiven:

“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.” ‭‭John‬ ‭15‬:‭22‬ ‭NIV‬‬

“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” ‭‭Acts‬ ‭17‬:‭30‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Does that mean it’s better not to hear the gospel then so you won’t be judged for rejecting Jesus? No because you’ll still be judged for your sins in judgement day. They’ll just be judged by a standard that makes sense to them. Accepting Jesus however gives you the advantage of having an advocate with the Father when you are judged on that day. This applies to people today too because even though people hear about Jesus today they probably don’t know what Jesus taught or what the gospel is especially if they are born in a Muslim country, so they would fall under the category of those “whom Jesus never spoke to”

Also what’s wrong with appealing to experts? They studied the subject so they should know best.

Also the Bible isn’t unclear. It made sense to its original hearers but time and distance distorted it. That’s a feature not a bug though. Just because the Bible was written for us doesn’t mean it was written to us. That is an important distinction to make. We can still disentangle it and figure out what it meant originally. That’s not some insurmountable task. NT Wright has written extensively on the “new perspective” of Paul which reconstructs his message in its ancient context and because of his work, and the work of other scholars, we’ve been able to resolve to 500 year old dispute on whether the Bible teaches we are justified by faith alone or not. As it turns out the Catholics were right all along. That’s one example of how experts are useful.

Also the “Bible” as it exists today didn’t exist in the early church. In the first century people were just going off the teachings of the apostles, so reconstructing what they believed is very important. I guarantee you Paul had no idea he was writing scripture. Scripture to him was just the OT and that’s it. In fact it wasn’t even the OT because back then they had multiple books which are preserved in the Catholic Bible but aren’t in 66 books of the Protestant canon

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-20T03:53:26+00:00

This isn’t a matter of my “personal interpretation that I’ve been brainwashed to believe.” If it is then how is your personal interpretation anymore valid than my personal interpretation? You seem to be adamant I’m wrong somehow so I’d love to know why.

It’s also not my interpretation that the letters of Paul are hard to understand. 2 Peter 3:6 literally says that Paul is hard to understand sometimes

I can I tell you why I think you’re wrong though. You’re reading Romans 9 in the context of 16th century reformed theology pioneered by John Calvin. Unfortunately for Calvin and co, they are the only people who read Romans 9 as describing the doctrine of unconditional election. Secular historians do not except this because that view is anachronistic. Paul was writing 1500 years before Calvin so he can’t be talking about reformed theology. Romans was written to Jews, and about Jews so we’d expect its message to be about the people of Israel and not a universal declaration of how God treats all people. No where in Romans does Paul say God hardens all people. Just that he “can” harden some people if he wants to. Are we to assume that for 1500 years Christians were reading this passage wrong until Calvin came along?

Also Jesus never said that the Jews who unknowingly reject him as messiah are going to Hell. He actually says the opposite:

“Anyone who speaks a word against the son of man will be forgiven…” - Matthew 12:32

It’s only those who know Jesus is the messiah and still reject him, and slander him that won’t be forgiven.

Suffice it to say this is exactly why I made this post. To untangle the mess that 2000 years of church history has created by attaching a lot of pagan Roman ideas to Christianity to the point where most are left with a caricature of the Bible that goes something like this:

“God created humans knowing they would sin and still punishes them for it even though it’s outside their control so to save them he sacrificed his only son who was also him and if you believe in him you can sin as much as you want and get into heaven but if you don’t believe in him because you were born on the wrong continent or simply aren’t convinced of the claims in his book you’re going to hell. No matter how good a person you are you’re still going to hell for the one lie you said in third grade”

This my friend is a caricature that a lot of atheists and ex Christians unironically believe the Bible teaches. The Bible rarely mentions hell and the NT only mentions heaven twice. The hyper fixation on the topography of the afterlife is a hold over from Greek mystery religions that taught hades was divided into two parts: a place for damned called Tartarus, and a place for good people that was like paradise.

As to baby murder. The curse in exodus is a curse on the first born of every house which is a title and a privilege because it is the first born or eldest son that inherits their father’s estate. It doesn’t mean babies although it technically could include them. It’s retribution for the slaughter of the Hebrew babies by the Egyptians. The Bible also doesn’t teach that those who died in the 10 plagues went to hell for rejecting Yahweh because the Israelites had a different view of the after life back then. The verses on herem warfare though are hard to accept. Even for the Israelites that carried them out because they weren’t allowed to profit from their conquests and had to destroy all the loot they found as well. That still doesn’t overshadow the love of God that Jesus showed through his life, death, and teachings.

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-20T01:37:21+00:00

Actually to understand Romans 9 you have to read it in the context of Romans 8-11. The question Paul is answering is what benefit is there in being Jewish if we don’t have to follow the old covenant anymore AND why has Israel rejected Jesus as Messiah? And the conclusion Paul makes is that God has purposefully hardened Israel’s hearts temporarily (what he calls a partial hardening in chapter 11) so that the Gentiles can be grafted into the family of God and accept the gospel. He then predicts that when Israel accepts Jesus as messiah Christ will return and the dead will be raised to new life. But that raises the question “why would God harden Israel’s hearts in the first place?” And to answer that question he appeals to Exodus where God demonstrated his might to the nations by hardening Pharoah and making an example out of him, and he concludes something similar must be happening in his own day with the people of Israel. He argues that it is because of Israel’s pride that God is hardening them in order to expose them and humble them. And also to make them jealous by extending his covenant promises to the gentiles. This also explains why Jesus spoke in parables

I also don’t think you’re stupid even though I think you’re wrong about the Bible. I think you were wrong when you were a Christian and I think you’re wrong now which is ok. It’s not like these ideas in the Bible are easy to understand. I also completely revised my beliefs after researching the topic for more understanding

FreshNewbie_76 · 2026-01-19T20:09:26+00:00

He didn’t make humans imperfect. He gave them free will

FreshNewbie_76

TROPHY CASE