Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 12:32:17 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, Elden Fenison <moon_dog@spamcop.net>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Religions (was Re: helping victims of terror) Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20011022121909.04230b70@localhost> In-Reply-To: <20011022122517.D28419@lpt.ens.fr> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20011020213112.0489f2f0@localhost> <1003617187.3bd1fba3d31ff@webmail.neomedia.it> <4.3.2.7.2.20011020213112.0489f2f0@localhost>
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At 04:25 AM 10/22/2001, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: >Christian states were equally barbaric a few hundred years ago. If >they aren't today, it's because religion (apart from a ritual invoking >of God's name) has ceased to be important to most people; more >importantly, the clergy are no longer the ones who wield power, and >can't tell people what to do. And as mails on this list have shown, >there are still plenty of Christians today who will not accept that a >single word of the Bible can be wrong. Including the commandment in the Old Testament to commit genocide? Yes, that's right: there is one. Look in the section of Exodus where the Israelites have just fled Egypt are attacked from behind by a tribe which the text identifies as the Amalekites. "Remember Amalek," says God unto Moses, instructing the Israelites to wipe out the entire tribe and all of its descendents. The notion of God commanding genocide was so repugnant, even to the relatively primitive Jews of that era, that by the time of the Roman Empire the Pharisees (who codified Jewish law in the Talmud) did everything they could to rationalize it away. IIRC, they said that since no one knew who the descendents of the Amalekites were, one could not and should not attempt to carry it out. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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