[SunW]

(07-03-2015 07:03 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Why did God in Deuteronomy allow Jews to practice usury on gentiles?

I'm going to assume that we agree on the definition of usury - unreasonably high interest, so 6% interest would not be considered usury, while 21% might be, and anything over 100% would fall into usury without a doubt.

Why does someone with a poor credit score typically face higher interest rates than someone with an excellent credit score? In the banking system, someone with a credit score of 800+ might get an interest rate of 7-8% while someone with a poor credit score would get an interest rate of 18-21% (in a natural interest rate environment). Are banks unfair (leftists on this forum will say yes)?

People who search for the why learn that it's based on risk; people with poor credit scores are higher risks, thus a higher interest rate offsets the risk of default in that the bank knows that some of the people with poor credit will default. When you see payday loan lenders and their 100%+ interest rates, these rates are that high because they're expecting a significant portion of them to default and they must offset these losses.

Since you're in the fifth book of the Old Testament, by now, you should have read some of the law that God put forth. The Jews know what God expects - don't lie, don't steal, don't murder, etc - but other cultures (ie: strangers) that don't serve God may not value these and they are a risk because they didn't know strangers. It makes no sense to lend at a low interest rate if you know nothing about someone. Note that God didn't say that they had to charge ridiculous interest rates, but that they may.

Once the Jews start disobeying God, He quickly punishes them, as you'll read in Judges and later in the OT prophets. God dishes out bloodshed to many cultures in the OT, including His "own" people. The message is that God cares about people's behavior.

[Lumbre]

(07-04-2015 08:23 AM)SunW Wrote:  

Note that God didn't say that they had to charge ridiculous interest rates, but that they may.

Deuteronomy 15:6

"For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee."

Thou shalt lend unto many nations (Gentile peoples) ... and thou shalt reign over many nations.

Here the context clearly shows that the purpose of the lending unto non-Jewish nations is so that the Jews, Yahweh's Chosen People, can subdue them and bring them under their own control.

Later, in the so-called prophecies, we see a messianic ideal of a world of nations headed by Jerusalem and ruled over by the same Chosen People of the biblical god.

The Zionist bankers and elites know what exactly they are doing and anybody who exposes their true identity and the real nature of their religion as labelled as madmen!

[SunW]

(07-03-2015 06:07 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

I am to believe Moses, a Jew, when he said that God wanted the Jews to dominate other peoples because they were held in favor? Isn't that a bit self serving? And both Christianity and Islam accepts the God of Abraham as the one true God, meaning that the Old Testament is fact to them.

The "Jews are God's chosen people" in the OT is only partially correct. Judeo-Christians tend to believe that in OT times the Jews were God's chosen people based on Jacob vs. Esau, or in some cases, God's promise to Abraham (depends who you talk to). Yet there are non-Jews in the OT that are saved, such as Ruth and Rahab, and possibly Job (though this last one will lead to some interesting debates). For instance, in the case of Job, God never boasted about anyone throughout the Bible like He boasted about Job - bragging to Satan about how honorable Job was. Even when God appears to Job, He converses with Job in a way that we don't see Him do with anyone else, and it's obvious that God respects Job enough to say "Look at who I am."

What about Native Americans? Or Americans living in South America? What about the Chinese? These people don't get mention in the OT either (or NT) because the book seems to be written more from the point of view of Jewish history following Jacob.

[SunW]

(07-04-2015 08:42 AM)Lumbre Wrote:  

(07-04-2015 08:23 AM)SunW Wrote:  

Note that God didn't say that they had to charge ridiculous interest rates, but that they may.

Deuteronomy 15:6

"For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee."

Thou shalt lend unto many nations (Gentile peoples) ... and thou shalt reign over many nations.

Here the context clearly shows that the purpose of the lending unto non-Jewish nations is so that the Jews, Yahweh's Chosen People, can subdue them and bring them under their own control.

Later, in the so-called prophecies, we see a messianic ideal of a world of nations headed by Jerusalem and ruled over by the same Chosen People of the biblical god.

The Zionist bankers and elites know what exactly they are doing and anybody who exposes their true identity and the real nature of their religion as labelled as madmen!

Dad, is that you?

Shall doesn't mean must. Also, lending doesn't mean usury. If I, a gentile, accept a loan from a Jew, who's the responsible one for accepting the loan?

[N°6]

(07-04-2015 08:23 AM)SunW Wrote:  

(07-03-2015 07:03 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Why did God in Deuteronomy allow Jews to practice usury on gentiles?

I'm going to assume that we agree on the definition of usury - unreasonably high interest, so 6% interest would not be considered usury, while 21% might be, and anything over 100% would fall into usury without a doubt.

I beg to disagree. For most of Christendom's history usury was considered any interest. The view within Christendom and indeed pagan antiquity was that money is a sterile medium to facilitate free exchange between producer and consumer. When something sterile begats even more sterility through compound rates, an anti-production ensues. It begins with full production not reaching the consumer despite demand until - inevitably - all production is smothered by the usurer.

Your definition has been dripped fed into the Western man since the era of the di Medici popes and now the NIV translation of the Bible has replaced the term usury with 'excessive interest'. Who publishes the NIV?

[Truth Teller]

(07-04-2015 05:57 AM)Lumbre Wrote:  

I find it hilarious and also quite disturbing that either a hardcore Christian or a pro-biblical sympathizer, somebody who believes in or respects the sacrificial atonement cult of the Nazarene, could call me "psychotic"! We really do live in a twisted and degenerate society wherein perversion is seen as "normal" and immorality is considered "morality".

Christianity, a depraved cult of ritual human sacrifice, the immolation of the son of "god", for the exoneration of the sins of the believer!

I'm neither a hardcore Christian or whatever a "pro-Biblical sympathizer is." I'm a Catholic, yes, but I don't hold to several Catholic doctrines, and I'm skeptical of certain other ones. And yes, our society is twisted.

Christianity is far from a depraved cult of ritual human sacrifice. You're confusing Christianity with paganism. Having one guy die on a cross, and having that interpreted as an atonement for sins is very different than sacrificing people so that the sun will continue to rise.

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Judaism, an earlier depraved cult of constant animal sacrifice to the blood-lusting Hebrew war god Yahweh for the atonement of sins and transgressions of the Law of Moses!

People who believe that the ritualistic shedding of innocent blood and the sacrificial destruction of animal life can cleanse one of his sins and gain him forgiveness for his errors and transgressions are the most psychotic perverts of all.

But in today's crazy society, the blind and the deluded will mock the awoken ones accusing us of being fools and madmen.

"Awoken ones," you wonder why I think you sound like a lunatic? Your childish exegesis is showing. Animal sacrifice was part of Middle Eastern religions for thousands of years. The early Jews were fairly similar to most of them.

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In the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh, the god of the Jews, clearly orders his people to burden the nations (non-Jews) with usurious debt so that they may rule over them, yet dishonest Christian apologists will read into the passages their own justifications in order to save face for their deceptive cult.

Also, for anyone with knowledge of pre-biblical Middle Eastern mythology, it is clear that the central narratives of Genesis are nothing more than late recasts and even plagiarisms of the earlier Mesopotamian mythological accounts.

Yes, it's the EVIL JEWZ! Never mind that there's zero evidence of some sort of world Zionist conspiracy; it must be true. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were faked, I regret to inform you. The JEWZ must be behind the Chinese attempt to eliminate American prosperity through debt! That's how it must be!

Also, nice try pretending that I don't know how Genesis came into being, etc. Yes, there are parallels between Babylonian and Mesopotamian stories in Genesis 1-11. As I write above (which you plainly didn't see), Genesis 1 is likely written as a polemic against the Babylonian Enuma Elish. As for the flood narrative (which is the other one often cited), you find flood narratives in many ancient Middle Eastern religions.

[Truth Teller]

(07-04-2015 08:18 AM)Lumbre Wrote:  

First of all, it is an absurd fallacy that the biblical god Yahweh is an embodiment of goodness and morality. His own scriptures show him to be a ruthless tyrant who orders genocides against non-Hebrew peoples, lootings of foreign wealth and ritual sacrifice of living creatures. The wise American Deist Thomas Paine in his famous book 'The Age of Reason' famously expressed that belief in a cruel god makes for a cruel person. I see today that Christians have no qualms about the many cruel and sadistic acts of barbarity perpetrated by their warlike god throughout the Bible and therefore expose the perversity of their own minds as they value blind faith over reason and innate morality.

Yes, "faith over reason." Please ignore Thomas Aquinas and many other great philosophers who thought that the existence of God could be determined through reason alone. They don't make the narrative fit.

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Please don't come with the myth of so-called biblical 'moral absolutism'. That has always been a fallacy. The biblical religion is really a clear example of moral relativism. Throughout the scriptures we see that it is always one rule for Yahweh's chosen followers and another rule for everyone else. A departure from Christian "values" was never the cause for the evident moral decline. A departure from common sense and reason was!

You're making moral judgements. Therefore, you're either tacitly accepting an absolute morality or you're making completely incoherent statements.

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I am not confusing Christianity with any other religion. Nice deflectory technique buddy! The Old Testament religion, the foundation of the abrahamic worldview and contextual backdrop of the Christian offshoot, was always a religion centered around the bloody sacrifice of living animals through ritual slayings and holocausts for the atonement of the follower's transgressions of the Mosaic Law and also for the appeasement of the violent and bloodthirsty local deity Yahweh. In ancient Judaism, there were three main types of sacrifices: The holocaust, a daily fully burnt animal offering to Yahweh in order to show him devotion and appreciation; the Peace Offering, a bloody sacrifice in order to thank Yahweh for his "mercy" towards his Chosen People; and the Atonement Offering, a brutal immolation of a living creature over the jehovitic altar in order to ask for the forgiveness of so-called sins and transgressions. Judaism was always a cult of barbaric bloodshed and sacrifice.

Presentism and more moral judgments. The anthropomorphic conception of animals DID NOT exist until the 18th and 19th centuries. Saying that animal sacrifice is wrong and evil does not make sense to these people, largely because they don't see animals in the same way that Westerners (in the post-Enlightenment) do.

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As for a crazy society of blind and deluded folks, I was referring to people like you, those who follow the absurd sacrificial cult of biblical religion while portaying themselves as moral and enlightened. I don't need some primitive book to reach the conclusion that society has gone mad and has been mad for hundreds of years. In fact, Judeo-Christianity has arguably brought about a lot more madness than anything else.

Yes, hospitals, science, literacy, universities, all of those are so bad. So evil. Perhaps you're projecting and YOU'RE the one portraying himself as moral and enlightened.

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The evidence offered here is clear. But as I suggested to Roosh, for more information you can read Tony Malone's great work on the matter. Search for 'Saint Oxen Books'. That said, can you offer any evidence for the veracity of the Bible other than "the Bible itself says that it's the word of god"?

Archeology, much? Perhaps the fact that we have overwhelming evidence for an itinerant Jewish preacher who lived in first century Palestine, preached the kingdom of God, and was crucified by the Romans? Perhaps the fact that the tomb was empty?

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On topic, the Jews have always had a reputation for being usurers, in ancient times and today. They were expelled from many European lands hundreds of times. What has always compelled the Jews to engage in usury and financial deception? The obvious answer is that they are motivated by their own scriptures which not only permit this crime but also encourage and even order it. Turn a blind eye if you want, but the truth will always be the truth.

It's the EVIL JEWZ AGAIN! They're controlling everything! Less than 0.5% of world religion controls everything! The EVIL JEWZ DO IT!

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The Sumerian cuneiform texts are more ancient than even the oldest books of the Bible by not only centuries but millennia. The Sumerian culture is the most ancient known civilization in the region and predates the Hebrew culture by an enormous timespan. It is widely acknowledged that the Sumerian mythological accounts influenced the later cultures and religions of the region including the Hebrew one. Great sumerologian Samuel Noah Kramer and many others of his generation have written several highly respected scholarly books on the matter. Attempting to deny this fact and suggest otherwise only shows your ignorance with regards to history and mythology. But I am sure that you are only capable of arguing from an emotional and dogmatic mindset as most religious Christians do, afterall fideistic religions such as Christianity and Islam rely on axiomatic dogma as opposed to research and inquiry.

Yes, there ARE parallels. Few scholars would deny that. Christianity is far from fideistic. Indeed, the Catholic Church condemns fideism. You seem to believe that all religion is based on internal feelings, not evidence. You couldn't be more wrong.

Quote:

The previous guy had no argument. He could only compare me to the New Age SJW Acharya S and accuse me of being a troll just because I don't accept his religion!

By leaving Evangelical Christianity some years ago, I regained my sanity and rediscovered a deep sense of spiritual wellbeing. I took the Red Pill for religion so to speak.

You argue a lot like Acharya S. Your remarks about the Jews remind me of her remarks about the Freemasonic conspiracy (led by the Pope) to prevent Biblical scholars from determining that Jesus never existed. Or you could just follow the massive amount of evidence that he did. No wonder you argue like a fundamentalist. You were one.

[johhny]

(07-03-2015 07:49 PM)Lumbre Wrote:  

(07-03-2015 06:07 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

I'm on Deuteronomy right now, I took a long pause when reading 23:20:

Quote:

Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

So God wanted Jews to be central bankers and control the financial system of many nations?

Before that, there are many references to allowing the Jews to wipe out their enemies by killing children and taking wives and spoils for themselves.

I am to believe Moses, a Jew, when he said that God wanted the Jews to dominate other peoples because they were held in favor? Isn't that a bit self serving? And both Christianity and Islam accepts the God of Abraham as the one true God, meaning that the Old Testament is fact to them.

Also take a look at this parallel verse from the same Hebrew law book:

"For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee." (Deuteronomy 15:6)


Most people are in a state of slumber and fail to see the true reality. The very uncomfortable and sickening truth is that the Hebrew Bible, the so-called "Old Testament" which lies at the foundation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is actually nothing more than an ideological blueprint for the Jewish takeover of Gentile nations through covert infiltration as well as a forged religious history for the justification of themselves as an entitled "Chosen People". The true nature of Zionism, a worldly philosophy intrinsically linked to this absurd biblical concept of Jewish entitlement, is none other than the surrepticious financial and political domination of the entire world by an elect Jewish elite in accordance to the strategy layed out in the biblical blueprint. The Old Testament, whose secret doctrine is only for the Jews, is the "master program".

The Bible orders the Zionist insiders, today's powerful globalist bankers, to conquer whole nations through usurious debt. Usury is the fundamental modus operandi. They form their cartels, they loan large quantities of money out to foreign governments with high interest, they make them crumble under the strains of debt and then they covertly take control of those devastated nations. As evidenced in the Old Testament, this is the will of their warlike "god", already shown to be a xenophobic and psychopathic butcher in his own "holy" book. The same Jewish attitude, anti-Gentile rhetoric and underhanded strategies are elaborated even further in the later talmudic texts.

Then there are the "prophetic" and "apocalyptic" books of the Hebrew Bible, the infamous Ketuvim, which further outline the perverse Jewish fantasy or cunning plan of world domination through infiltration and war. The prophecized Jewish messianic age is really the Zionist ideal of a worldwide Jew-run communist slave state headed by the "New Jerusalem" in which productive Gentiles are exploited and robbed of their wealth whose property right is naturally handed over to the Jewish nation. When you read those books with a critical eye, you will become aware of the details. The would-be prophecy books say that the Jews will be scattered among the (Gentile) nations, a diaspora necessary in order for them to take financial control over them and continue their parasitic conspiracy. The final outcome is predicted to be a post-Armaggedon one-world theocracy wherein the people of Yahweh - the Jews, not the Christians - possess all the land, make all the laws and help themselves to all the wealth of the nations. It is no surprise that International Jewry has so pushed Marxist ideologies and a shift towards socialistic forms of government.

I would like to recommend that you take a look at the works of author Tony Malone of Saint Oxen Books and also the more heated blog of Christopher Jon Bjerknes for more information of this important subject. Both men share the view that the Hebrew Bible is a sort of blueprint for infiltration and conspiracy.

I am an ex-Christian. I woke up to the deception of abrahamic religion years ago. If Old Testament Judaism is the "master program", then New Testament Christianity is clearly the "slave program". Judaism is a twisted religion that teaches Jewish supremacism, delusional entitlement, anti-Gentile genocide, warmongering, usury and global domination. Conversely, Christianity is a Gentile-oriented offshoot that idealizes meakness and submission, promotes blind pacifism in the face of oppression and tyranny, denies the acquisition of wealth on Earth, rejects earthly pleasure and eudaimonia, preaches unconditional love even for those who abuse us and wish to conquer us, and teaches a mindset of self-victimhood. Therefore, Christianity is a blueprint of how to be a good docile slave. NT Christianity was always a sickly and perverse ideology that went thoroughly against the fundamental virtues of the original Pagan worldview.

Yes, the "god" of Judaism, the evil and bloodthirsty El-Yahweh-Saturn, does indeed wish for the elite Jews to establish themselves as central bankers and take control of our nations' financial systems through infiltration and usurious debt. His own scriptures express that desire clearly and for everyone to see.

If New Testament Christianity is the slave program, then why are the jews trying so hard to destroy Christianity? A slave program should be useful for them, since they rule the world. In the Marxist ideologies that jews are pushing, as you mentioned, Christianity was being persecuted and everything was done to shut it down(example Soviet Union).

[Samseau]

(07-03-2015 07:03 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Why did God in Deuteronomy allow Jews to practice usury on gentiles?

Most likely because God wanted His people to become powerful. Once they became powerful enough He sent His Son to take the Jews to the next step which was to convert the gentiles into the Word of God. The leading Jews of the time, the Sadducees and Pharisees, did not want to give up the advantages as God's only chosen people. Thus they rejected His Son and so God destroyed the old guard of the Jews.

Indeed, if you ever get to St. Paul's letters, what you'll find is that it is Paul who must drive home the important point that a man's standing in this world was not prerequisite for his standing in the next world:

Galatians 3:28:

"there is not here Jew or Greek, there is not here servant nor freeman, there is not here male and female, for all ye are one in Christ Jesus;"

This is an extremely misunderstood passage, but without going into a long analysis I just wanted to show you how things change between the OT and NT. The covenant of the OT is extended to anyone who accepts Christ, which is the entire point of the NT.

[Lumbre]

Truth Teller,

All of your "rebuttals" are just more deflectory nonsense, fallacious arguments and unrelated meaningless ramblings. You say that I argue like Acharya S, but I see that you argue like a typical Christian dogmatist, bending every possible parameter and manipulating every semantic nuance in order to bring your religious dogma more in line with reality.

Like I said before, I am an ex-Christian. I was a believer for several years. But then I left when I became appalled with the absolute barbarity of the Bible. I believe in an intellegent designer in a deistic sense, and I am a deeply spiritual person, but to equate this primordial concept with that perverse and genocidal "god" of the Old Testament is just absurd.

I find it funny how all you people can do is attack other religions and spiritual philosophies blaming everything on some blanket term of "Paganism" while at the same time you cannot show any proof for why your religion is the correct way as opposed to say Hinduism, Buddhism, Native American religion or Islam. I see that you are the real fanatic and fundamentalist.

To be honest, I find it odd and quite frankly bizarre that here I am the one who is regarded as unreasonable or immoral precisely because I refuse to accept a religion of blatant genocide ordered by and done in the name of its warlike god, animal sacrifice and the merciless destruction of innocent life, massacres of defenseless women and children commanded by Yahweh, the organized looting of foreign nations by heavenly sanction, warmongering, usury and all kinds of other crimes and immoralities. Why don't you use google to research the shameful instances of jehovitic human sacrifice in the Bible while you are at it?

It is often said that the best way to become a non-believer is to read the Bible for yourself!

So I am an unreasonable and immoral person for refusing to believe in a religion undeniably chock full of these morally abhorrant things, right? Like I said, we live in a very dark and twisted society where absurdity and cruelty are deemed "right" and I am referring to the religious nutjobs like you as much as the secular Social Justice Warriors.

It is also ridiculous how Christians believe that their religion is a solution for society's problems and that the decline of Christianity has brought about the degeneration of society. What a joke!

Believing that some self-professed Messiah was sacrificed on a cross for mankind's sins doesn't get society anywhere. It is just absurd. Such nonsense has never offered any real solution for society's problems and has only ever served to make pastors and religious institutions richer at the expense of their followers. Religious authoritarianism, particularly that of Roman Catholicism, has only spawned the Obscurantism of the Dark Age, the infamous inquisitions and years of unnecessary bloodshed and tyranny.

The best aspects of our civilization come from the classical period of the pre-Christian Pagan world. While the Hebrews were butchering foreign tribes under the pretext of religion and stoning people to death for gathering firewood on the Sabbath, and long before the sacrifice-atonement sect of the Nazarene, the ancient Greek Pagan philosophers were conceptualizing the ideal republic, setting the stage for democracy, laying the foundations for Western philosophy and science, contemplating ethics based on reason and theorizing the meaning of human happiness. The classical Pagan world has given us infinitely more than any sect of Christianity has ever given us.

You keep your Christianity and your "god" of cruelty, genocide, evil and fanaticism ... and I'll keep my Pagan philosophy, my Pagan ethics and my humanistic Pagan values.

You keep your submission to the so-called Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum and your belief in his self-sacrifice for your imaginary sins ... and I'll keep my Prometheus and his great Divine Fire of knowledge, wisdom, human ingenuity and love for human greatness.

Lumbre

[Samseau]

(07-03-2015 07:49 PM)Lumbre Wrote:  

(07-03-2015 06:07 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

I'm on Deuteronomy right now, I took a long pause when reading 23:20:

Quote:

Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.

So God wanted Jews to be central bankers and control the financial system of many nations?

Before that, there are many references to allowing the Jews to wipe out their enemies by killing children and taking wives and spoils for themselves.

I am to believe Moses, a Jew, when he said that God wanted the Jews to dominate other peoples because they were held in favor? Isn't that a bit self serving? And both Christianity and Islam accepts the God of Abraham as the one true God, meaning that the Old Testament is fact to them.

Also take a look at this parallel verse from the same Hebrew law book:

"For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee." (Deuteronomy 15:6)


Most people are in a state of slumber and fail to see the true reality. The very uncomfortable and sickening truth is that the Hebrew Bible, the so-called "Old Testament" which lies at the foundation of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is actually nothing more than an ideological blueprint for the Jewish takeover of Gentile nations through covert infiltration as well as a forged religious history for the justification of themselves as an entitled "Chosen People". The true nature of Zionism, a worldly philosophy intrinsically linked to this absurd biblical concept of Jewish entitlement, is none other than the surrepticious financial and political domination of the entire world by an elect Jewish elite in accordance to the strategy layed out in the biblical blueprint. The Old Testament, whose secret doctrine is only for the Jews, is the "master program".

Wrong. The OT's blessings were extended to anyone who accepts Christ. It is today's Talmudic Jews who believe only the Jews have standing with God.

The word "Jew" is hebrew for "chosen," and what you fail to realize is that the Jews stopped being chosen after they rejected Christ Jesus.

Therefore, the lessons of usury in the OT are there for anyone who accepts Christ to use, but, since Christ instructs us that he wants the light of Truth to be spread and not accumulation of power, mercy and not judgement or sacrifice, it follows that rather than use the privileged position as a Christian to enslave others Christians should instead convert them.

And of course, since it is illegal for a chosen (i.e. anyone who accepts Christ) to lend to someone else who is chosen, it follows that usury would be banned everywhere Christ is accepted.

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The Bible orders the Zionist insiders, today's powerful globalist bankers, to conquer whole nations through usurious debt. Usury is the fundamental modus operandi. They form their cartels, they loan large quantities of money out to foreign governments with high interest, they make them crumble under the strains of debt and then they covertly take control of those devastated nations. As evidenced in the Old Testament, this is the will of their warlike "god", already shown to be a xenophobic and psychopathic butcher in his own "holy" book. The same Jewish attitude, anti-Gentile rhetoric and underhanded strategies are elaborated even further in the later talmudic texts.

You are confused. Again, the OT's instructions to give special privileges to the chosen (aka the word "Jew" which is hebrew for chosen) were extended to all peoples after Christ came into being. So had Christ never existed then what you say would be true.

Also, yes the Talmud is disgusting but it is nothing more than heresy. Written by people in denial, they still stubbornly call themselves Jews despite the fact they lost their chosen status after rejecting the Son of God. The true Jews today are those who follow the word of God's Son.

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Then there are the "prophetic" and "apocalyptic" books of the Hebrew Bible, the infamous Ketuvim, which further outline the perverse Jewish fantasy or cunning plan of world domination through infiltration and war. The prophecized Jewish messianic age is really the Zionist ideal of a worldwide Jew-run communist slave state headed by the "New Jerusalem" in which productive Gentiles are exploited and robbed of their wealth whose property right is naturally handed over to the Jewish nation. When you read those books with a critical eye, you will become aware of the details. The would-be prophecy books say that the Jews will be scattered among the (Gentile) nations, a diaspora necessary in order for them to take financial control over them and continue their parasitic conspiracy. The final outcome is predicted to be a post-Armaggedon one-world theocracy wherein the people of Yahweh - the Jews, not the Christians - possess all the land, make all the laws and help themselves to all the wealth of the nations. It is no surprise that International Jewry has so pushed Marxist ideologies and a shift towards socialistic forms of government.

Wrong again. The people of Yahweh are those who accept His Son. This clearly seen by the fact that Christians are allowed to prosper by God while those who call themselves Jews are persecuted and reduced in number as continuous punishment from God. Modern "Jews" are extremely stubborn people who are in denial about their punishments from God.

For example, instead of realizing the old Israel was destroyed because they failed to obey God and accept Jesus, Talmudic Jews instead have doubled-down and proclaimed that Israel was destroyed BECAUSE of Jesus and that Jesus was the worst heretic of all time.

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I am an ex-Christian. I woke up to the deception of abrahamic religion years ago. If Old Testament Judaism is the "master program", then New Testament Christianity is clearly the "slave program". Judaism is a twisted religion that teaches Jewish supremacism, delusional entitlement, anti-Gentile genocide, warmongering, usury and global domination. Conversely, Christianity is a Gentile-oriented offshoot that idealizes meakness and submission, promotes blind pacifism in the face of oppression and tyranny, denies the acquisition of wealth on Earth, rejects earthly pleasure and eudaimonia, preaches unconditional love even for those who abuse us and wish to conquer us, and teaches a mindset of self-victimhood. Therefore, Christianity is a blueprint of how to be a good docile slave. NT Christianity was always a sickly and perverse ideology that went thoroughly against the fundamental virtues of the original Pagan worldview.

This is the White Nationalist atheist worldview. I have read these views already on my own and have successfully dissected them. Although tempting to follow, it is easily contradicted by the most cursory readings of the NT text.

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Judaism is a twisted religion that teaches Jewish supremacism, delusional entitlement, anti-Gentile genocide, warmongering, usury and global domination.

The original OT text as well as the Talmud are this way.

Quote:

Conversely, Christianity is a Gentile-oriented offshoot that idealizes meakness and submission, promotes blind pacifism in the face of oppression and tyranny, denies the acquisition of wealth on Earth, rejects earthly pleasure and eudaimonia, preaches unconditional love even for those who abuse us and wish to conquer us, and teaches a mindset of self-victimhood.

And this is where the argument falls apart. Christianity gets a bad rap for being too weak in White Nationalist circles, but I blame Protestantism for giving White Nationalists such absurd ideas of Christianity. Notice, White Nationalism has always come out of Protestant nations, who were rebelling from the Catholics.

The Russians, for example, have never characterized Christianity in the way you describe above because they have been Orthodox, yet Russians have always been nationalistic. Indeed no Orthodox nation has ever become home to the atheist White Nationalists (Orthodox nations are able to stay strongly nationalistic without resorting to race as a primary determinant).

To illustrate why Orthodox have never interpreted the Bible how you have described above I will go through it line by line, as someone who has been educated in the Orthodox tradition.

Quote:

Christianity is a Gentile-oriented offshoot that idealizes meekness and submission

No. This is widely misunderstood. The line, "the meek shall inherit the Earth," which comes from the sermon on the mount, does not mean Christ wants his followers to be weak. Christ is making a prediction, and not a prescription. Christ is saying that those who are weak but righteous, will someday be the ones who become strong and powerful. Christ's message is those who follow the Truth, despite persecution and hatred from others, will in the end be the ones who rule the earth.

We know from the parable of the talents that Christ wants us to be successful in this world, and we know from other passages that success is not to be merely measured in money.

Quote:

promotes blind pacifism in the face of oppression and tyranny

Not true. Christ told everyone he came to bring a sword and not peace. Christ threw the money changers out of the temple. Christ also used vulgar language. Christ was not a pussy, anything but. Christ was a man's man who kicked ass and took names. ALL Christians have a duty to protect the innocent, which is illustrated in the Evilness of how Christ was sentenced to death unjustly and yet no one defended him.

Christians are NOT allowed to be pacifists if innocent people must be protected. Conversely, when it comes to protecting yourself, one may choose not to defend oneself (turn the other cheek) but this passage is mostly interpreted in the Orthodox tradition as not letting insults and other slights turn oneself to anger. All Christians have the right to defend themselves; but it is up to them if they wish to exercise it or not.

Quote:

denies the acquisition of wealth on Earth

False again, although this is still widely promoted because of the man Christ told to sell all of his possessions (Matt 19:21). People forget, however, that those were specific instructions just for that one man, and not universal instructions to all men.

Furthermore, we know from the parable of the talents that wealth acquisition can still be okay, but it must be used righteously and not merely for bodily pleasure or further worldly gain. Hence why, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36, Matthew 16:26)

Quote:

rejects earthly pleasure and eudaimonia

If Christ rejected earthly pleasure then why did he drink wine? Also the idea that a man sins whenever he has sex with a woman (even if she is not a virgin) is a Catholic invention. See here:

http://www.rooshvforum.network/thread-47972.html

Quote:

preaches unconditional love even for those who abuse us and wish to conquer us

"Love thy enemy" does not mean you ignore the fact they are your enemy. Indeed a man can shoot another man in the face while loving and pitying him, and lamenting that he needed to kill another man in the first place.

Quote:

teaches a mindset of self-victimhood

Not true at all; Jesus explicitly instructs his followers not to worry. Luke 12 and Matthew 6. A man who believes he is constantly aggrieved by himself or others isn't being a good Christian.

Quote:

Yes, the "god" of Judaism, the evil and bloodthirsty El-Yahweh-Saturn, does indeed wish for the elite Jews to establish themselves as central bankers and take control of our nations' financial systems through infiltration and usurious debt. His own scriptures express that desire clearly and for everyone to see.

As shown above, this is true of Talmudic Jews but not Christians, and Christians who support Talmudic Jews are committing heresy.

[Lumbre]

(07-04-2015 10:44 AM)johhny Wrote:  

If New Testament Christianity is the slave program, then why are the jews trying so hard to destroy Christianity? A slave program should be useful for them, since they rule the world. In the Marxist ideologies that jews are pushing, as you mentioned, Christianity was being persecuted and everything was done to shut it down(example Soviet Union).

For the Zionist elite, and here I am referring specifically to a small insider elite and not to Jewish people in general, the programs they create or utilize have no intrinsic value to them. They know that they are all bullshit and poisonous and they understand completely that they are just useful and disposable tools.

They quite happily turn one dangerous ideology against another. They like to divide people with equally absurd opposites and bring about more chaos in the lands on which they have their sights set. It is very much like mainstream politics. When one program outlives its worth, they are happy to destroy it and replace it with another.

Christianity was successful in destroying and replacing the original Pagan European identity of the ancient world, but then it outgrew its utility. Today it is the materialistic Cultural Marxist paradigm they wish to push for the destabilization of the nations and Christianity is just some background noise convenient for a bit of controlled oposition, hence the much ridiculed Religious Right.

America is an exception. The Zionists have used the people's religious fervor and fundamentalist fanaticism to gain support for their pro-Zionist foreign wars in the Middle East. Religious America, the most pro-Israel country on Earth! The Zionists need their militant "Christian soldiers"!

[Lumbre]

Samseau,

I appreciate your effort to explain to me your point of view and at one time I would have accepted most of what you have said, but after many years of study and seeking, I do not buy into the notion that there is a distinction between biblical Jews and Talmudic Jews. The Hebrew Bible is already chock full of cruel violence and sickening immorality perpetrated by Yahweh and his people and there are many jehovitic commandments by which one can easily justify Zionism even without the Talmud. My point is that the Zionist Conspiracy has always had its roots in the most basic books of the Hebrew Bible.

As a Red Pill man, I don't see any true value of any of the Abrahamic religions be it OT Judaism, NT Christianity or Islam. I just don't care much for dogma, faith in doctrines, Bronze Age moral systems, the concept of religious sin, guilt, authoritarianism or the like.

I feel that I have always had a Pagan soul and that my stint with Christianity really made me sick and unstable for a number of years.

[Samseau]

(07-04-2015 12:22 PM)Lumbre Wrote:  

Samseau,

I appreciate your effort to explain to me your point of view and at one time I would have accepted most of what you have said, but after many years of study and seeking, I do not buy into the notion that there is a distinction between biblical Jews and Talmudic Jews. The Hebrew Bible is already chock full of cruel violence and sickening immorality perpetrated by Yahweh and his people and there are many jehovitic commandments by which one can easily justify Zionism even without the Talmud. My point is that the Zionist Conspiracy has always had its roots in the most basic books of the Hebrew Bible.

It was all repudiated with Christ. The Talmud is a heresy which denies Christ.

Quote:

As a Red Pill man, I don't see any true value of any of the Abrahamic religions be it OT Judaism, NT Christianity or Islam. I just don't care much for dogma, faith in doctrines, Bronze Age moral systems, the concept of religious sin, guilt, authoritarianism or the like.

You don't see any value in a system that created you and the country you live in? You wouldn't even be here right now without Christ. The White race probably would have ceased to exist as well back in the 1000's without Christ.

Quote:

I feel that I have always had a Pagan soul and that my stint with Christianity really made me sick and unstable for a number of years.

Pagan = do whatever you want = fag marriage, pedophilla, unlimited taxes, slut women, fat acceptence, etc.

[Truth Teller]

Pagan philosophy doesn't help you. You see, pagan philosophy also reached the conclusion of an unmoved mover, which logically would have the same attributes as the Christian God.

The claims of Christianity (and Judaism) being a Bronze Age belief system are simply wrong. Neither one arose until the Iron Age. Let's try to get history right.

[Lumbre]

(07-04-2015 02:11 PM)Truth Teller Wrote:  

Pagan philosophy doesn't help you. You see, pagan philosophy also reached the conclusion of an unmoved mover, which logically would have the same attributes as the Christian God.

The claims of Christianity (and Judaism) being a Bronze Age belief system are simply wrong. Neither one arose until the Iron Age. Let's try to get history right.

Sorry, my mistake, I meant to write Iron Age. You're right, none of them arose until a relatively late period. The majority of the Hebrew biblical scriptures were composed during the Babylonian Captivity in the mid 1st millennium and Christianity only has a history of about 2000 years!

That means that Sumerian Paganism is more ancient than Judeo-Christianity by over two millennia, Akkadian Paganism by at least a millennium, the Indian Vedic Pagan tradition by about 6 centuries and Greek Paganism by a few centuries. Hell, even Buddhism was most likely contemporaneous with biblical Judaism and is much older than Christianity!

It is evident that ancestral Paganism came long before Judaism or Christianity and that the biblical religion is actually a mere reaction to the former.

By the way, the more ancient Sumerian mythological accounts reveal some really mind-blowing stuff. They reveal that Enki, the Sumerian serpent god of wisdom, was the true creator and father of mankind, the true benefactor and enlightener of our species bestowing upon Adapa (Adam) the knowledge of godhood in the Sanctuary of Eridu (interestingly located in a region called Edin), and the true savior of mankind from the Deluge. Enki's mythological homologues include the Greek god Prometheus and of course the Serpent of Eden in Genesis. Pretty cool, eh! No wonder they never told us about the Sumerian texts in church!

The deistic Unmoved Mover of the Pagan world is nothing like the Judeo-Christian god. He doesn't order sadistic genocides and merciless massacres on Earth. He doesn't have a Chosen People or incite bloodthirsty wars on our planet. He doesn't demand sacrifice or require any plan of salvation. The Unmoved Mover of Pagan philosophy is more like the concept of Brahman, the primordial expansive creation principle, in Hindu cosmology.

Christianity never helped me. It was a totally useless philosophy. On the other hand, Pagan practices such as Yoga and meditation have helped me a lot and the improvements in my life have been abundant.

(07-04-2015 01:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(07-04-2015 12:22 PM)Lumbre Wrote:  

Samseau,

I appreciate your effort to explain to me your point of view and at one time I would have accepted most of what you have said, but after many years of study and seeking, I do not buy into the notion that there is a distinction between biblical Jews and Talmudic Jews. The Hebrew Bible is already chock full of cruel violence and sickening immorality perpetrated by Yahweh and his people and there are many jehovitic commandments by which one can easily justify Zionism even without the Talmud. My point is that the Zionist Conspiracy has always had its roots in the most basic books of the Hebrew Bible.

It was all repudiated with Christ. The Talmud is a heresy which denies Christ.

Quote:

As a Red Pill man, I don't see any true value of any of the Abrahamic religions be it OT Judaism, NT Christianity or Islam. I just don't care much for dogma, faith in doctrines, Bronze Age moral systems, the concept of religious sin, guilt, authoritarianism or the like.

You don't see any value in a system that created you and the country you live in? You wouldn't even be here right now without Christ. The White race probably would have ceased to exist as well back in the 1000's without Christ.

Quote:

I feel that I have always had a Pagan soul and that my stint with Christianity really made me sick and unstable for a number of years.

Pagan = do whatever you want = fag marriage, pedophilla, unlimited taxes, slut women, fat acceptence, etc.

I doubt that any of you know anything about Paganism other than what your Christian writers have told you.

Paganism, the ancient kind, had nothing to do with what you call "fag marriage", pedophilia, unlimited taxes, slut women or fat acceptance.

Paganism is a very broad term and can refer to numerous distinct pre-Christian religious and spiritual traditions.

Gay marriage wasn't common at all in most Pagan cultures. I have researched several ancient cultures and it seems that Nordic and Slavic Pagan societies were quite homophobic and also favored traditional marriage. Fertility was widely venerated and so heterosexuality was idealized. The only difference was that people wouldn't normally stone you to death for being a faggot unlike in Judaism.

Pedophilia - Catholicism and to a lesser extent Evangelical cults come to mind.

Taxation of followers was a common part of Judaism under the Mosaic Law and this practice continued into Christianity.

Pagan religions didn't glorify fat people, they promoted personal virtue, fortitude and accomplishment.

[SunW]

(07-04-2015 09:11 AM)N°6 Wrote:  

(07-04-2015 08:23 AM)SunW Wrote:  

(07-03-2015 07:03 PM)Roosh Wrote:  

Why did God in Deuteronomy allow Jews to practice usury on gentiles?

I'm going to assume that we agree on the definition of usury - unreasonably high interest, so 6% interest would not be considered usury, while 21% might be, and anything over 100% would fall into usury without a doubt.

I beg to disagree. For most of Christendom's history usury was considered any interest. The view within Christendom and indeed pagan antiquity was that money is a sterile medium to facilitate free exchange between producer and consumer. When something sterile begats even more sterility through compound rates, an anti-production ensues. It begins with full production not reaching the consumer despite demand until - inevitably - all production is smothered by the usurer.

Your definition has been dripped fed into the Western man since the era of the di Medici popes and now the NIV translation of the Bible has replaced the term usury with 'excessive interest'. Who publishes the NIV?

Considering that Solomon says that the borrower is a slave to the lender and God advises to owe another man nothing but love, I don't think the Bible says what you think it says at all. If anything, God wants his people to avoid borrowing because he understands the cost. But let's ignore the Bible and just look at the "earning interest" off other people's labor.

Now I laugh at the stupidity that lenders sit around doing nothing but earning interest, because how many of these idiots have ever tried to be lenders? Oh and all of you who are lending critics can try, using something like LendingClub. Most of the opinions of people who use that (lending money to others) talk about how much time it took to analyze loans, the cost of defaults, or the costs of someone prepaying early (you won't collect interest), preventing them from earning the strong return they thought. On top of that, they also had to report these earnings in taxes - and that's another complicated manner. Sure some people willing to work at it have gotten good at it and made good money, but it didn't come without work and patience in figuring things out.

I love how so many Americans have purchased this mystical 4HWW idea that there's this "job out there" that is easy and doesn't take much work, but it doesn't exist. At. All. (My favorite one is day trading, even though that takes a ton of mental work and patience). You may have to do a lot of mental work, you may have to do a lot of physical work, or you may have to do a lot of emotional work, but you are going to work. Like Mike Rowe talked to that one family therapist about why he left family therapy for plumbing while they were standing in a sewer and the guy said, "Well, I finally got tired of other people's shit."

Lending is no different - some people will pay early (little to no interest), others won't pay at all (default, you lose the principal and interest), some will pay in full, but this money must offset the others and you're still left deciding who or what next (investing is the same). Also, even if you're earning a good 5% on a loan and thinking it's all good, what happens when inflation suddenly jumps to 10%. Now the borrower is making money off you because he has a fixed loan from you - you, the lender, are getting exploited by the borrower! Likewise in Biblical days, what happens if you lend out all your wealth to earn interest, but then famine strikes? And what happens if the interest isn't enough because food is more scarce than what you would have earned in interest? Yes boys and girls, this is how economics work - lenders are not always in the advantage position.

But hey, if you and others at this forum want to take a stab at it and practice what you preach, knock yourself out and start your career with LendingClub. I mean it's so easy, right?

Some other points about why it's ethical to charge interest:

1. Money today is more valuable than money tomorrow; consider that this is also true for ideas. The first person to come up with idea often generates the most rewrads, unless he markets terribly.
2. While whiny Americans think that everything should be handed to them for free, the lender OWNS the money, not you. He is free to charge what he thinks is appropriate. Get as mad as you want; if you don't like, earn it yourself and avoid borrowing. Plenty of people do this all the time; ie: they buy homes in full cash purchases, so lenders aren't needed by everyone. So if you absolutely need something, you can either work for it (ie: sell your labor), or you can borrow - but borrowing costs just like labor costs - you lose energy with labor.
3. There are many situations in business where an idea is excellent and waiting to raise the capital to save may not be wise (or may prevent an idea from starting before competitors get it). In these cases, borrowing can be useful. Of course, here we look at borrowing for an investment vs. borrowing for consumption, which is completely different. Again, the lender has the money. He can choose to give it, or he or she can lend it. It's not your money; it's theirs.
   

[Truth Teller]

(07-04-2015 03:30 PM)Lumbre Wrote:  

Sorry, my mistake, I meant to write Iron Age. You're right, none of them arose until a relatively late period. The majority of the Hebrew biblical scriptures were composed during the Babylonian Captivity in the mid 1st millennium and Christianity only has a history of about 2000 years!

That means that Sumerian Paganism is more ancient than Judeo-Christianity by over two millennia, Akkadian Paganism by at least a millennium, the Indian Vedic Pagan tradition by about 6 centuries and Greek Paganism by a few centuries. Hell, even Buddhism was most likely contemporaneous with biblical Judaism and is much older than Christianity!

It is evident that ancestral Paganism came long before Judaism or Christianity and that the biblical religion is actually a mere reaction to the former.

By the way, the more ancient Sumerian mythological accounts reveal some really mind-blowing stuff. They reveal that Enki, the Sumerian serpent god of wisdom, was the true creator and father of mankind, the true benefactor and enlightener of our species bestowing upon Adapa (Adam) the knowledge of godhood in the Sanctuary of Eridu (interestingly located in a region called Edin), and the true savior of mankind from the Deluge. Enki's mythological homologues include the Greek god Prometheus and of course the Serpent of Eden in Genesis. Pretty cool, eh! No wonder they never told us about the Sumerian texts in church!

The deistic Unmoved Mover of the Pagan world is nothing like the Judeo-Christian god. He doesn't order sadistic genocides and merciless massacres on Earth. He doesn't have a Chosen People or incite bloodthirsty wars on our planet. He doesn't demand sacrifice or require any plan of salvation. The Unmoved Mover of Pagan philosophy is more like the concept of Brahman, the primordial expansive creation principle, in Hindu cosmology.

Christianity never helped me. It was a totally useless philosophy. On the other hand, Pagan practices such as Yoga and meditation have helped me a lot and the improvements in my life have been abundant.

As for when the Hebrew scriptures were developed, opinions vary. A lot of them certainly developed as part of the Babylonian Exile, but other parts developed earlier. The hypothetical J, E, and D sources all developed before the Babylonian Exile.

Yes, paganism came before monotheism. Again, that's not a question really in dispute. The ancient Israelites were certainly familiar with pagan religions, and, like most Middle Eastern religions of the time, co-opted some of the other myths. I wouldn't say that Biblical religion is so much a reaction to paganism, as much as I would say that Biblical religion is certainly shaped by its attempts to differentiate itself from paganism. See, for example, the commandment ordering people to not wear clothing of wool and linen. That isn't, as some people think, some sort of arbitrary commandment. The commandment is designed to prevent the people from imitating the Canaanite (i.e. pagan) practices.

The Unmoved Mover logically has the exact same characteristics as the Judeo-Christian/Islamic God. Aquinas, Maimonides, and Averroes, to name three philosophers in three separate religions, all agree on this point.

As for the usefulness of Christianity, it depends how you look at it. If you look at it, as you seem to have, as a form of moralistic, therapeutic deism, then yes, Christianity is pointless. If you look at it as a religion that holds great truths about the world and occasionally expresses them in very abstract ways, then it's incredibly useful. Meditation is not necessarily just a pagan idea, for the record.

[Truth Teller]

(07-04-2015 01:21 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

It was all repudiated with Christ. The Talmud is a heresy which denies Christ.

As a matter of interest, have you read the Talmud? The Talmud largely deals with interpretation of the Torah. Most of the Jewish denial of Christ is based on things like unrealistic expectations for the Messiah.

Quote:

Pagan = do whatever you want = fag marriage, pedophilla, unlimited taxes, slut women, fat acceptence, etc.

As I've said before on this site, we slew the old idols of Baal, Marduk, and Zeus, but we replaced them with "progress," "secularism," and "diversity."

[Lumbre]

(07-04-2015 05:47 PM)Truth Teller Wrote:  

(07-04-2015 03:30 PM)Lumbre Wrote:  

Sorry, my mistake, I meant to write Iron Age. You're right, none of them arose until a relatively late period. The majority of the Hebrew biblical scriptures were composed during the Babylonian Captivity in the mid 1st millennium and Christianity only has a history of about 2000 years!

That means that Sumerian Paganism is more ancient than Judeo-Christianity by over two millennia, Akkadian Paganism by at least a millennium, the Indian Vedic Pagan tradition by about 6 centuries and Greek Paganism by a few centuries. Hell, even Buddhism was most likely contemporaneous with biblical Judaism and is much older than Christianity!

It is evident that ancestral Paganism came long before Judaism or Christianity and that the biblical religion is actually a mere reaction to the former.

By the way, the more ancient Sumerian mythological accounts reveal some really mind-blowing stuff. They reveal that Enki, the Sumerian serpent god of wisdom, was the true creator and father of mankind, the true benefactor and enlightener of our species bestowing upon Adapa (Adam) the knowledge of godhood in the Sanctuary of Eridu (interestingly located in a region called Edin), and the true savior of mankind from the Deluge. Enki's mythological homologues include the Greek god Prometheus and of course the Serpent of Eden in Genesis. Pretty cool, eh! No wonder they never told us about the Sumerian texts in church!

The deistic Unmoved Mover of the Pagan world is nothing like the Judeo-Christian god. He doesn't order sadistic genocides and merciless massacres on Earth. He doesn't have a Chosen People or incite bloodthirsty wars on our planet. He doesn't demand sacrifice or require any plan of salvation. The Unmoved Mover of Pagan philosophy is more like the concept of Brahman, the primordial expansive creation principle, in Hindu cosmology.

Christianity never helped me. It was a totally useless philosophy. On the other hand, Pagan practices such as Yoga and meditation have helped me a lot and the improvements in my life have been abundant.

As for when the Hebrew scriptures were developed, opinions vary. A lot of them certainly developed as part of the Babylonian Exile, but other parts developed earlier. The hypothetical J, E, and D sources all developed before the Babylonian Exile.

Yes, paganism came before monotheism. Again, that's not a question really in dispute. The ancient Israelites were certainly familiar with pagan religions, and, like most Middle Eastern religions of the time, co-opted some of the other myths. I wouldn't say that Biblical religion is so much a reaction to paganism, as much as I would say that Biblical religion is certainly shaped by its attempts to differentiate itself from paganism. See, for example, the commandment ordering people to not wear clothing of wool and linen. That isn't, as some people think, some sort of arbitrary commandment. The commandment is designed to prevent the people from imitating the Canaanite (i.e. pagan) practices.

The Unmoved Mover logically has the exact same characteristics as the Judeo-Christian/Islamic God. Aquinas, Maimonides, and Averroes, to name three philosophers in three separate religions, all agree on this point.

As for the usefulness of Christianity, it depends how you look at it. If you look at it, as you seem to have, as a form of moralistic, therapeutic deism, then yes, Christianity is pointless. If you look at it as a religion that holds great truths about the world and occasionally expresses them in very abstract ways, then it's incredibly useful. Meditation is not necessarily just a pagan idea, for the record.

As I've already explained succintly, the Unmoved Mover of the ancient Pagan world is nothing like the highly interventionalist biblical god Yahweh in that he is merely an intelligent designer of nature who set everything into motion and doesn't involve himself in the affairs of the world. There is no election of a chosen people, no commandments for a certain group to invade or massacre foreign nations, no concept of a fall and no plan of salvation. Those are all purely abrahamic concepts and couldn't be any further from the classical concept of the Prime Move /First Cause. Just because some medieval Christian philosophers attempted to blend or conflate biblical theology with the classical European philosophical concept of the Unmoved Mover doesn't mean that the two concepts are the same thing. The truth is that they couldn't be anymore disimilar.

In fact, it is generally understood in biblical scholarship that Yahweh was once one god among many, the preferred deity of the Hebrew people, and that it was only much later that he was afforded the status of sole creator god. Early (pre-exilic) manuscripts of Deuteronomy such as the Song of Moses indicate that Yahweh, the Hebrew god, was originally one of 70 gods or Elohim (plural) and possibly a second-tier junior deity, one of the many deities who received an earthly inheritance from the then highest deity Elyon who was once a separate and distinct god. Later in the exilic period, the Hebrew priesthood adopted an ideology of strict monotheism, began to edit out the numerous pre-existing polytheistic references and rewrite history for their own ideological motives. In other words, the monotheistic Bible was actually a late Hebrew con-job/falsification whose motive was to raise their own tribal deity to the level of universal creator and justify their own fantasy of being the one-and-only "Chosen People" of that now promoted "king of the whole universe". So this created being El-Yahweh is lifted up to the status of Unmoved Mover on the whim of his priesthood.

You accept that the Pagan religions are much older. Good. Now one may logically ask: If all those more ancient and primordial Pagan cultures had similar mythological narratives and said pretty much similar things, then why should anybody believe this one later anomalous and reactionary Hebrew version of theology and history to be true? Logically there is no reason to believe that the many diverse polytheistic/pantheistic Pagan cultures (Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians, Canaanites, Greeks, Hindus and earlier Indo-Europeans) were all wrong and that only the much later Hebrew religion was right. The only reason that Christians can give is simply because they want to believe it that way and it is evident that they already have a strong emotional investment in their own belief system. Any reasonable person would be curious and wish to look into all the earlier Pagan traditions and philosophies, but it is clear that most Christians only close their minds to one particular system and become hellbent on slandering and attacking all other religions.

Christianity had to resort to violence in order to establish itself. That is because in it there was no worthy truth. Christian churches and mobs took it upon themselves to slay rival religious groups such as the Gnostics and destroy Pagan libraries and manuscripts be fire. They had to destroy all that stood in their way to keep their falsehood alive.

I studied the Bible and the Apocrypha for years, first as a believing Christian and then as a deconverted non-Christian. I have beheld the subject from both sides. I do not look to debunk the biblical worldview for some secular agenda like New Age author Archarya S with whom you compare me for some strange reason (kneejerk defensive emotional reaction), I simply read the biblical stories as they are and call a spade a spade.

When I read in Yahweh's people's own words that Yahweh ordered the Israelites to ransack a rival town and brutally slaughter defenseless women and children, I believe what it says. When I read that Yahweh incites horrific genocides against other nations, I accept the text at face value. When I read that Yahweh enjoys the aroma of the burning flesh of sacrificed animals and commands his people to immolate and burn multitudes of living creatures on his blood-drenched altars, I believe what I am reading. I draw my conclusions on the sickening immorality of the biblical god based on the clear and objective information that the Bible itself gives its readers. When the New Testament scriptures say that the Nazarene's brutal execution on the cross was an ultimate blood sacrifice for people's sins, a sacrifice to end all previous sacrifies, I simply hear what the doctrine is saying and conclude that by its own admission the most basic foundation of the Christian religion is a celebration of the sacrifice of a sentient being who had to shed his blood for the appeasement of the biblical god. I just ready what the Bible itself says about its god!

So that is why I can only conclude that the biblical religion and its god are immoral and evil. As a moral and sensitive being, I cannot accept such obscene wickedness and perversion. I cannot follow such religion. It is really that simple. The Bible shows Yahweh to be cruel, evil, perverse, warlike, psychopathic, bloodthirsty and genocidal, so I accept that description as it is and realize that I must distance myself as far as possible from that psychotic and perverted belief system. I don't try to make every possible excuse for the evil actions of Yahweh as Christians do, I simply look at the objective reality and accept that Yahweh is evil as the Bible makes it abundantly clear. I have no hidden agenda or anything like that; I just let the Bible do the talking and just accept things as they are.

Most human beings know instinctively that killing and steeling are wrong from an early stage of their development. Such morality is innate. Only mentally sick people like psychopaths don't understand such basic ethical values and it seems that such psychopathic people were the ones who wrote the incredibly twisted and bloodcurdling Hebrew Bible.

Christianity is completely useless. It is a really shitty and pathetic way of viewing the world. It is a doctrine which teaches that the follower must submit to its sacrificed savior Jesus and accept his bloody sacrifice on the cross in order to be free of the sin of a supposed fallen world, a pathetic and miserable cult of bloodshed for exoneration. That is just so lowly and obscene.

When I speak of Yoguic practices and meditation, I mean full-blown occultism. I mean working with the Kundalini serpent energy within, I mean tantric practices, I mean raising that serpent up through the spine and up to the crown, I mean awakening the dormant occult faculties of the mind and unlocking psychic abilities (Siddhis in yoguic terms). I mean the very practices that people like you would call "satanic". If we were in medieval Italy, you and your people would want to burn me at the stake like your religion did to Giordiano Bruno.

Upon researching the ancient mythologies, I noticed that there are two opposed mythological divine factions: One that wishes for the enlightenment of mankind (the Serpent Enki-Prometheus and his Pagan gods, the "angels" who revealed divine knowledge to mankind during the antediluvian Golden Age/Satya Yuga) and another that only wishes to impose upon humanity a policy of obscurantism and brutality (Yahweh and his "angels").

Thank you for the discussion.

Lumbre

[Samseau]

Come on Lumbre, you call that logical rigor?

Quote:

Christianity had to resort to violence in order to establish itself. That is because in it there was no worthy truth. Christian churches and mobs took it upon themselves to slay rival religious groups such as the Gnostics and destroy Pagan libraries and manuscripts be fire. They had to destroy all that stood in their way to keep their falsehood alive.

But the pagans and gnostics did the same things. And most of the time nothing more was necessary than to simply not copy down pre-existing manuscripts because it was all written down on papyrus.

Quote:

When I read in Yahweh's people's own words that Yahweh ordered the Israelites to ransack a rival town and brutally slaughter defenseless women and children, I believe what it says. When I read that Yahweh incites horrific genocides against other nations, I accept the text at face value.

1. Non-Christians did the same things.

2. How do you know those genocides weren't deserved or necessary?

Quote:

When I read that Yahweh enjoys the aroma of the burning flesh of sacrificed animals and commands his people to immolate and burn multitudes of living creatures on his blood-drenched altars, I believe what I am reading. I draw my conclusions on the sickening immorality of the biblical god based on the clear and objective information that the Bible itself gives its readers. When the New Testament scriptures say that the Nazarene's brutal execution on the cross was an ultimate blood sacrifice for people's sins, a sacrifice to end all previous sacrifies, I simply hear what the doctrine is saying and conclude that by its own admission the most basic foundation of the Christian religion is a celebration of the sacrifice of a sentient being who had to shed his blood for the appeasement of the biblical god. I just ready what the Bible itself says about its god!

And how do you know those sacrifices weren't necessary or good?

Quote:

So that is why I can only conclude that the biblical religion and its god are immoral and evil. As a moral and sensitive being, I cannot accept such obscene wickedness and perversion. I cannot follow such religion. It is really that simple. The Bible shows Yahweh to be cruel, evil, perverse, warlike, psychopathic, bloodthirsty and genocidal, so I accept that description as it is and realize that I must distance myself as far as possible from that psychotic and perverted belief system. I don't try to make every possible excuse for the evil actions of Yahweh as Christians do, I simply look at the objective reality and accept that Yahweh is evil as the Bible makes it abundantly clear. I have no hidden agenda or anything like that; I just let the Bible do the talking and just accept things as they are.

This is a non-sequitur. I cannot convince you to believe, but at least I can point out that your non-belief is as irrational as my belief.

1. You don't know if God was acting wickedly or not.

2. There is nothing that God has done that any other pagan religion hasn't done in terms of violence. And Buddhism is basically an empty philosophy of doing nothing.

3. Sacrifice is a part of all human life; parents sacrifice their time for their children, soldiers for their country, philosophers popularity for the truth, etc. To call sacrifice inherently evil makes no sense.

[Phoenix]

(07-05-2015 07:05 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

When I read that Yahweh enjoys the aroma of the burning flesh of sacrificed animals and commands his people to immolate and burn multitudes of living creatures on his blood-drenched altars, I believe what I am reading. I draw my conclusions on the sickening immorality of the biblical god based on the clear and objective information that the Bible itself gives its readers. When the New Testament scriptures say that the Nazarene's brutal execution on the cross was an ultimate blood sacrifice for people's sins, a sacrifice to end all previous sacrifices, I simply hear what the doctrine is saying and conclude that by its own admission the most basic foundation of the Christian religion is a celebration of the sacrifice of a sentient being who had to shed his blood for the appeasement of the biblical god. I just ready what the Bible itself says about its god!

And how do you know those sacrifices weren't necessary or good?

Please clarify..

[johhny]

Regarding the slaughter that Lumbre is mentioning, this is a great explanation for anyone that actually wanna understand it.

Israel was commanded by God to completely exterminate the Canaanite inhabitants of the land including men, women, and children. This has been called a primitive and barbaric act of murder perpetrated on innocent lives.

Several factors must be kept in mind in viewing this situation.
(1) There is a difference between murder and justifiable killing. Murder involves intentional and malicious hatred which leads to life-taking. On the other hand, the Bible speaks of permissible life-taking in capital punishment (Gen. 9: ), in self defense (Exod. 22:2), and in a justifiable war (Gen. 14).
(2) The Canaanites were by no means innocent. They were a people cursed of God from their very beginning (Gen. 9:25). They were a vile people who practiced the basest forms of immorality. God described their sin vividly in these words, “I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants” (Lev. 18:25).
(3) Further, the innocent people of the land were not slaughtered. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah clearly demonstrates that God would save a whole city for ten righteous people (Gen. 18:22f.). In that incident, when God could not find ten righteous people, He took the four or five righteous ones out of the place so as not to destroy them with the wicked (Gen. 19:15). On another occasion God saved some thirty-two thousand people who were morally pure (Num. 31:35). Another notable example is Rahab, whom God saved because she believed (cf. Heb. 11:31).
(4) God waited patiently for hundreds of years, giving the wicked inhabitants of Canaan time to repent (cf. 2 Peter 3:9) before He finally decided to destroy them (Gen. 15:16). When their iniquity was “full,” divine judgment fell. God’s judgment was akin to surgery for cancer or amputation of a leg as the only way to save the rest of a sick body. Just as cancer or gangrene contaminates the physical body, those elements in a society—if their evil is left to fester—will completely contaminate the rest of society.
(5) Finally, the battle confronting Israel was not simply a religious war; it was a theocratic war. Israel was directly ruled by God and the extermination was God’s direct command (cf. Exod. 23:27-30; Deut. 7:3-6; Josh. 8:24-26). No other nation either before or after Israel has been a theocracy. Thus, those commands were unique. Israel as a theocracy was an instrument of judgment in the hands of God.

(Norman L. Geisler, A Popular Survey of the Old Testament, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1977, pp. 99-100.)

[Samseau]

(07-05-2015 07:12 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(07-05-2015 07:05 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Quote:

When I read that Yahweh enjoys the aroma of the burning flesh of sacrificed animals and commands his people to immolate and burn multitudes of living creatures on his blood-drenched altars, I believe what I am reading. I draw my conclusions on the sickening immorality of the biblical god based on the clear and objective information that the Bible itself gives its readers. When the New Testament scriptures say that the Nazarene's brutal execution on the cross was an ultimate blood sacrifice for people's sins, a sacrifice to end all previous sacrifices, I simply hear what the doctrine is saying and conclude that by its own admission the most basic foundation of the Christian religion is a celebration of the sacrifice of a sentient being who had to shed his blood for the appeasement of the biblical god. I just ready what the Bible itself says about its god!

And how do you know those sacrifices weren't necessary or good?

Please clarify..

How do we know those animal sacrifices did not serve some larger purpose? That it wasn't God's way of maintaining obedience of the Jewish people and create community rituals to ensure social stability? Considering God is all powerful and all knowing, don't you think we should give him the benefit of the doubt?

That said, Jesus got rid of all the animal sacrifice stuff; hence, "God desires mercy, not sacrifice."

[johhny]

With all due respect Lumbre, for all your accusations of the Bible there is a rebuttal. Its just that you mention so many things that it would take quite some time to rebute everything you said. I am afraid that you read the Bible simply with the intention to find things to accuse the Christians, but even more likely you simply read website such as evilbible(dot)com without actually studying the scriptures yourself. Reading some quotes without context from websites such as the one I mentioned, does not actually mean that you read the bible for yourself.

Remember, every coin has two sides, and so have all the cruel things you mention from the bible.