Biblical Family Values

so this is what it looks like when you have an irreverent and irreligious atheist conference in Oklahoma Tulsa Oklahoma home of Oral Roberts University where Michelle Bachman was undereducated and where Jesus is a 900 foot tall extortionist my wife and I visited oh are you after the first free okay and if you've never been there it's kind of creepy it's a little bit like being on a campus ruled by pod people and this prompted her to read up on some of these evangelical colleges and she discovered something interesting about Bob Jones University also known as bju I got the two schools confused because I thought that BJ you was where we got oral just because I'm older doesn't mean I'm mature now although BJ you had admitted Asians and other ethnicity since their inception they didn't allow African American students until 1971 and even then they only allowed married black students why is that Bob Jones didn't want single black college students because he didn't want the races to mix at that time there were a number of creation is holding to the idea that God invented five races of people black white yellow brown and red that he put them on separate continents with the intent that they remain separate now think about what that means I know of people living in this country right now who think that white people came from Adam and Eve and there's all these other races that are separate creations and aren't related at all and I know from prior research that many different religious groups have believed this sort of thing for thousands of years but the idea that any seemingly educated official would believe that during my lifetime is rather disturbing Ken Ham who runs the young earth creationist organization Answers in Genesis even he said or he said that when he was in Australia his old church tried to teach him that but even he knew that's not really true let's pretend for a moment that it is true what would it matter if somebody's father is half Danish in Nigerian where if their mother is half Dravidian in Japanese what difference would it make if they and everyone else kept mixing like that for five or ten generations or indefinitely so what how could that possibly matter to us to our descendants or to a God so in the mid 70s when bju was finally forced to allow unmarried blacks into their classes they imposed a rule that students could be suspended for interracial dating or expelled for interracial marriage and despite this obvious racism they held these prohibitions and until around y2k now my wife has Vietnamese ancestry she's half asian half Germanic but being you know the half white part doesn't matter two rules like this when I was a little boy in the 1960s it's a long time ago I know but it's still within my lifetime a white man like myself could not legally marry anyone but a white woman I mean half white didn't count because he used to have this one drop rule referring to one drop of mixed blood so if you're half white or 3/4 white or four fifths white you're still some percentage non-white not the pure white race so we're talking about the most objectionable form of prejudice and the people who were openly anti black then are the same ones who are anti-gay now just look at BJ you as recently as 1980 Bob Jones the third stood on the steps of the White House and said that stoning homosexuals would not be a bad idea he said that would be the quickest way to solve the problem the mega church in San Antonio said that gays and atheists should be locked up in concentration camps until we die out pat robertson running the 700 club I believe it was urged he 9 t4 or there abouts urged his 30,000 some odd followers to go out and kill homosexuals where you find them he said that homosexuality causes earthquakes and that the United States has so many earthquakes because in his opinion we're according to him the u.s. is the only country that allows homosexuals to live an alternate hypothesis proposed by some Muslims is that earthquakes are actually caused by women wearing jeans or tightly fitting clothing and the problem is that there's so many of both groups of gays and sexy women in California that it's difficult to tell which group is actually causing the earthquakes there several years ago I saw a news story that Colorado is attempting to amend their state constitution to allow for religious discrimination not to prohibit it as everyone should want to do but to promote it specifically they wanted to deny housing or employment on grounds of sexual orientation and of course they only wanted to do this for strictly religious reasons now I know that the courts have recently ruled in favor of religious discrimination or discrimination on the grounds of indefensible beliefs in unsupportable nonsense but I have to say that if you cite religion as your sole justification for any action or position then you haven't given a reason and are not justified people thank you people should not claim special privilege just because they have unrealistic and unreasonable beliefs being gullible doesn't give you any advantage or make you any better than anyone else understand that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice but your religion is you're free to believe any irrational idiocy that makes you happy but your religion is an uninformed opinion not an ethnicity and should have no excuse for special exceptions from the law the news story from Colorado showed a guy who was at that time leading some Christian Coalition against the rights of homosexuals on camera he said as Christians we have a right to treat certain people differently I couldn't believe his shameless unabashed arrogance as if his imagined exceptionalism could somehow be justified prejudicial discrimination has always struck me as immoral and inexcusable and that's why it's illegal and that's why proposed bills are typically shot down when they're discriminatory simply because they are and I thought everybody understood that certainly someone pretending to represent exemplary Christian morality but not that guy not Ted Haggard you know remember Ted Haggard his story was funny once upon a time but how many times since then have way have they caught anti-gay advocates of Family Values cheating on their wives often illegally with prostitutes on drugs having gay sex or sharing a hotel room with a rental boy it happened so often now that it's almost expected anytime someone seems to protest too much according to Pew Research polls back in 2001 57% of Americans opposed to gay marriage but as of last week 57% of Americans now support gay marriage other polls show support is even higher and other nations are ahead of us last month Ireland legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and you may not have heard of this one but this week Mexico did - that's right Mexico is more progressive than our country is yet the religious right is ready to die on that hill even attempt or even threatening to leave America if gay rights are or if gay marriage is legal that's not a threat that's an empty promise just yesterday I saw that a Texas pastor is threatening to martyr himself if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality I heard that a lot now he's essentially threatening to hold his breath until he gets his way but all he fears like all he holds dear is imaginary when marriage equality is legally established nationwide these homophobic bigots aren't going anywhere because where would they go Russia some of the representatives of the Religious Right say that gays are a greater threat to our nation and communism or terrorism even though in reality homosexuality is not a threat to anyone unless you happen to be gay and a minor trapped in a deeply religious household such kids have been subjected to dangerous harmful and ineffective attempts at sexual reorientation therapy we met Delahunty Seth Andrews and I were in Australia for the unholy trinity down under tour we kept getting reports about what was going on back home for example here in Oklahoma they proposed a bill that would have ended secular marriage by requiring that all weddings be conducted by a person of faith now this was intended to keep same-sex couples from getting married by relying on the bigotry of the clergy to deny their requests this isn't was wasn't just a swipe against the gays it also struck atheists too because it meant that we would have to have a religious wedding if we were going to get married at all and if this bill had passed then humanists officiates like myself would not be able to conduct a wedding in a state because it would have to be done by somebody attached to a religious organization there are a number of religious organizations specifically interested in the issue of marriage equality and I'd like to name some of them at the top of the list is the American Family Association then the Illinois the Florida Family Association the Illinois Family Institute the Family Research Council the United family's international Catholic family and Human Rights Institute Catholic family news also known as the Catholic Family Ministries and the original incarnation of Focus on the Family what do these nine organizations have in common they all have the word family in their names they're all overtly Christian organizations all vehemently anti-gay and they are all on the nation's official list of organized hate groups to the best of my understanding bigotry intolerance and hatred are not values and but then faith isn't a virtue either and while we're at it intelligent design is not a theory creation is not science abstinence only is not sex education in the Bible is not the Word of God I saw a poster recently that said that Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war social is giving away free health care you're talking about Jesus I also read an article written by a Christian that was complaining about how far the religious right have ventured away from the original practice of Christianity back when they were pacifists renouncing worldly goods to help the poor and for the same reason I think it's funny when any Christian organization pretends to be about Family Values because Jesus did not value families jesus said do not think that I've come to bring peace on earth that came not to bring peace but a sword for I came to set a man against his father and I'm daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me and he who loves mother or father more than me is not worthy of me he also said that whoever comes to me and does not hate his mother and his father and his sister and his brothers and his children and his wife and even his own life he cannot be my disciple so maybe it's not surprising that all these Christian organizations with the word family in the name are really hail hate groups I know some Fox News followers who imagine that allowing for gay rights will somehow cost them religious liberty so I asked a few of them face to face what difference does it make to you if a gay couple gets married how does that infringe your rights in any way at all or impact you at all and the answer was in essence that gay marriage is a threat to the free expression of religion because Christians feel oppressed when they're not allowed to oppress other people they said let them have civil unions just don't call it a marriage well why not why not call it a marriage because the National Organization for Marriage says that marriage is a union of one man and one woman and it has been this throughout the history of civilization it will remain this no matter what unelected judges say except that's not true because in ancient times and in many places still today a man can have more than one wife the difference between areas where polygamy is legal and here in the West where it is not is that our women have rights keeping multiple women happy all at the same time in one relationship is like riding a bicycle on one wheel it's a great stunt and it looks cool but it's hard to maintain that balance in the long run I don't believe in marriage myself it's an arbitrary human concept with no reality beyond that it isn't always necessarily romantic it is often political even if you believe in God and swear to love one another for better or worse till death do you part none of that is assured in fact evangelicals are statistically more likely to get divorced than people with no religion in fact there's a Christian couple in Australia who are threatening to get divorced if gay marriage is legalized it doesn't matter to them that Jesus forbade divorce except on the grounds of fornication and it Jesus forbade divorcees from remarrying because that would be adultery in fact mark 10 verses 2 through 12 Luke 16:18 and first Corinthians 7 10 through 15 all prohibit divorce for any reason somehow that doesn't matter this couple nor that fornication and adultery are stoning offenses just like rape in each case both the man and the woman are to be put to death because God is an intolerant bastard I mean a righteous judge I should mention at this point that a couple weeks ago in Canada I said that masturbation was a stoning offense and I was referring at that time to Genesis 38 9 through 10 were implied that spilling your seed is a sin now Matt Dillahunty since corrected me on that and said that in that story God was punishing someone who didn't honor their word and that the Bible never said whether masturbation was a sin of course that's still a matter of interpretation because all masturbation is the product of lust and Jesus said that anyone who looks at a woman with lust in his heart has committed adultery and the very next thing he said immediately after that was if your right eye offends you pluck it out and if your right hand offends you cut it off offends you causes you to sin depends on your translation and if that's not enough Ephesians 5 3 says you can't have any hint of sexual immorality or impurity and what fun is masturbation without that first Corinthians 10:31 says if you can't give God glory for something you should not do it well sometimes I do and Romans 14:23 says everything that does not come from faith is sin that describes the whole of reality and it's a very disturbing thought for a number of reasons but bear that in mind when you read the outrageously high statistics of Christians consuming porn and cheating on their wives it doesn't matter and I should have said spouses they're my slip it doesn't matter that they're not paying attention to their own religious doctrine because marriage is not a sacred institution it's a human invention I'm married for the same reason to another atheist like Penn Jillette our is partly for tax purposes but also for rights of partnership possession deathbed presents inheritance and other benefits that civil unions just don't provide but even if we made civil unions exactly identical to marriage why can't we call it a marriage because the Bible defines a marriage as one man and one woman no it doesn't it is so irritating when everybody says that because it's so wrong first of all the Bible doesn't define marriage at all secondly if it did that's not the description that it gives the way the Bible describes marriage is creepy criminal and cruel according to the Bible anyone you cleave into more than once becomes your bride if she happens to be living with you and there's no limit on how many of them you can have so it seems to me that the Bible defines marriage as one man and however many women that man can afford to keep in his house yes it says in Genesis that a man and wife will become one flesh but that's only because a man can only use his penis on one woman at a time other arrangements are possible of course but we're talking about a time when nobody knew anything about soap or toothpaste or deodorant it was a time when procreation was more important than pleasure if the people in the Bible just wanted sex with no children or commitment hey they're shepherds they have options remember it's only adultery if the man if the woman is already married it doesn't matter if the man is married if he is she just may become another one of his wives and a man can have sex with other women who aren't his wife and that's not cheating either as long as I live with him because a man is also allowed to have concubines and a concubine is a sort of a sexual servant who serves no other purpose it has no claim to your estate your wife may not have claim to your estate either because when you die your wife might become your brother's sexual property that's how the Bible defines marriage the Bible does not prohibit multiple wives nor incest either as a matter of fact both are promoted however when your father dies your mother does not become your wife and you can't inherit any of his other wives either and the reason that the Bible gives for that is because that would be like looking up your father's skirt we're going to dabble in some divine wisdom in the sched so a man can have multiple wives and a collection of personal harlots but it can also have sex with his slaves and that's not cheating either you've heard of friends-with-benefits you can call this your property rights that's the only way that makes sense because according to the Bible all women are property and property doesn't have rights now some people equate having sex with slaves to rape because the slave doesn't have any choice but according to the Bible women don't have any choice anyway and rape can be a prelude to matrimony if you're a Bronze Age Israelite and you see some young cutie walking on escorted if you like her you want her you can have her even if she doesn't want you now if you rape a married woman and then it's a death sentence for both of you because the Bible is stupid like that but if she's not promised to someone else and you rape her and you get caught then you have to pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she's yours he may not want her back after that even his own child because an unmarried woman who wasn't a virgin was considered damaged goods back then so they had this rule that if you pop it you buy it so your victim becomes your bride and you're stuck together forever and can never get divorced so be careful who you rape that's actually the cheaper and easier way to get a bride if a man takes a wife and decides he doesn't like her if he can prove that she wasn't a virgin or if he can convince other people that she was probably not a virgin then she'll be murdered on her father's doorstep because according to the god of infinite mercy that's the moral thing to do but if she can prove that she was a virgin then she must remain married forever to the man who hates her because that's divine wisdom to that unpleasant arrangement for both of you will also cost you a hundred shekels whereas you can marry your rape victim for half the price so if you're a complete loser and you can't get any woman who appeals to you by the normal way just rape whoever you like and she's yours forever she'll always have to submit to your demands because the way the Bible defines marriage you are lord over her and there is nothing she can do about it there's nothing any of your wives can do about it nor your mistresses nor your slaves either actually your female slaves can leave but only if you neglect them we're going to be talking about religious family values we're talking about this because the Bible says you can sell your daughter as a sex slave and she can never leave unless her master refuses to breed her or feed her then she can leave penniless homeless and unprotected to wander a world where only virgins and servants have any value The Book of Proverbs repeatedly praises child-abuse saying that the bruises or blue stripes of the rod or an indication of a well-trained child in otherwise God constantly has people killing children and sometimes even eating them remember when Lotte tried to satisfy a rape mob by offering them his own virgin daughters remember when Jeff bub murdered his own child as a sacrifice to God there's four books in the Old Testament where God demands that we sacrifice our firstborn sons so the story of Abraham being ready to kill his own kid pales in comparison to what God demanded later on how's that for family values and don't think that all this Old Testament stuff didn't apply to Christians jesus said that he came to fulfill the law not to change it that not one jot or tittle of those old mosaic laws would change under him and he said that anybody who didn't follow all of those old mosaic laws would be called least in heaven he even criticized the Pharisees for not murdering disobedient children the way God commanded which reminds me there is one other way you can add to your harem prisoners of war the children you abducted when you raided their village torched their homes and murdered their families the way God's favorite people tend to do Moses ordered his men to slaughter everyone in the town of median what was outraged when they spared the women and children so he ordered that all of the males be killed among the little ones and I trust we all understand that little ones refers to children people who have not yet grown up in Hebrew tradition men are typically or legally separated from boys at 13 years old plus one day likewise women are separated from girls at 12 years plus one day the rules laid out in the Talmud are reportedly the recently written records of what had originally been an oral tradition since the time of the Pentateuch that's the five books attributed to Moses and if this is so and it offers any indication of Hebrew practice during Bible times and it's another reason not to consider the Bible to be a moral guide anyone too young for Bar Mitzvah or butt it's the are the little ones so they can we can only be talking about preteen children now being the man of God that he was Moses ordered little boys to be hacked to death in front of their mothers and mothers to be skewered on the sword in front of their daughters in what would have been a scene of senseless horror but because Moses is a prophet of a merciful God of loving forgiveness he avowed that his desert bandits could keep the preteen girls alive for themselves as long as they could be sure they were virgins now this last requirement and the means of determining that again implies only one possible purpose for keeping these terrorized little girls alive and in custody for some reason religious people have no objection to Moses killing little boys but if they're going to have sex with little girls then it becomes a moral issue and they have to come up with some excuse to explain that away every defense I've ever heard for this passage has attempted to paint the females among the little ones as if they were acceptable mature by modern standards but the new American version of the Bible refers to the daughters as girls the New Revised Standard Version refers to them as young girls the King James Version calls them women children which means little girls and Young's literal translation calls them infants in any case it's clear we're talking about emotionally disturbed and psychologically abused kids enslaved as if that were moral and kept alive only for the purity of their sex defenders of the faith also reject that there was any impure intent and keeping only virgin girls alive for yourselves any sexual innuendo was dismissed as immoral because God can't be immoral right worst of all the fact that all of these girls were so deeply and horrific ly traumatized by being raided invaded ensnared and enslaved and having their privates inspected by the very sad as we're still brutally butchering everyone they love around them that wasn't considered to be immoral instead everyone attempting to justify the divinity of these scriptures tries to justify all of this terror making up excuses as if the victims somehow deserved this as if that's even possible how immoral is that so in these Bible times how would your wives mistresses and bonded prisoners know if you were cheating on them their first clue might be that there's a strange young girl in your bed crying on bloody sheets and all your other women would just have to accept that she's the new addition to the harem and they're all in the same lot that's how the Bible defines marriage but how would demand know if any of his human chattel were cheating on him there may be many reasons but the most obvious is if he suspects that she might have gotten pregnant when he wasn't around in such a case the husband would take his wife to the priest and the priest would force her to have an abortion yes the Bible actually condones abortion and this is what God's direct endorsement and involvement for example God performed a number of abortions in Hosea 9 11 through 16 remember that the Bible is Jewish or at least the Old Testament is but that's a knock the Jewish name for the Bible is not the only ancient book of Jewish laws Jewish belief holds that the basic laws of the written Torah were given by God to Moses along with an oral tradition which was eventually written down and recorded in the Mishnah the Talmud and the Midrash if this is so then those these can be used to enhance our understanding of the Bible from the Jewish perspective now while today's right-wing Christian would tell you that life begins at conception and so any abortion at any stage done for any reason would be considered murder the Babylonian Talmud yevamot 69b says that the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day for a while after that it still isn't considered a fully living being Rashi the great 12th century commentator on the Bible in Talmud states clearly that the fetus is not a person not until it is born the pivotal rabbinic text on abortion is found in Mishnah oh ha lot 7 6 if a woman is in hard travail such that her life is in danger the child must be cut up while it is in the womb and brought out member by member since the life of the mother has priority over the life of the child but if the greater part of it was already born it may not be touched because the claim of one life cannot override the claim of another life and note that this describes a partial birth abortion and how to perform one in accordance with Hebrew religious law Jewish tradition holds that the fetus is not considered a separate a person until the head or at least most of the body has passed through the birth canal this is concordant with Mosaic law because they're both Jewish traditions believed to be of the same source Exodus 21 verses 22 and 23 illustrate how the Bible does not consider the fetus to have value equal to that of a human life there are other references to the breath of life where the movement of air is considered to be akin to a spiritual essence the traditional belief being that when a newborn takes its first breath it becomes infused with the spirit and becomes a living soul from the 40th day of conception until birth the fetus is considered to be part of the mother not a separate entity but equal to one of her limbs Sanhedrin ad B of the Talmud describes the fetus as a thigh of its mother now bear all of this in mind when you read the 5th chapter of the Book of Numbers when a man suspects a woman of infidelity he is to take her to the priest or to the tabernacle which is the tent where the God is supposed to live and the priest would gather dust from the floor and mix it with water in a bowl this is also when they brought the animals to be sacrificed so that may impact the quality of the dust being used and then he writes a curse scroll and washes the ink off into the bowl - then the husband and the priest together forced the wife to drink the cursive potion of bitterness and filth the idea is that if she's innocent and falsely accused nothing will happen but if she's guilty if she cheated on her husband then the curse will cause her belly to swell and her thigh will rot or fall away depending on which translation you read obviously we're not talking about one of her legs we already know that the unborn fetus was considered to be one of the mothers thighs and that it would be referenced like that and that's why instead of saying the I belly will swell and my thigh will fall away the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible says that the curse will cause the uterus to drop and the womb to discharge actually it says that God Himself will personally cause that to happen now there's no clear indication that the woman is pregnant at this time nor do we have any reason to believe that she is not pregnant all we have is that a woman is charged with having cheated with a man in all the prominent versions of the Bible seem to hold that she definitely had sex with a man but that she wasn't caught in the act and there are no witnesses against her so how do we know that she definitely had sex with a man and what reason would her husband have for feeling that she cheated on him and the most obvious answer to both questions is that she got pregnant when she shouldn't be this was a time before birth control when men might be away for more than a month at a time and this was also a time when a man might have many wives and concubines and may not favor all of them and this culture also made a big deal about knowing when a woman's menstrual period is there are strict prohibitions against even approaching a woman at these times so any estranged woman who skips a month or more with no bloody rags to show would be suspect this test is no more sensible or reliable or realistic than any medieval test to confirm whether someone is a witch the point is that the only way to fail this test was for the uterus to drop and the wound to discharge and the fetus to rot or fall away in other words the only way to fail this test was for the curse to cause a miscarriage and whenever someone causes a miscarriage we call that an abortion I've seen steadfast objection to this interpretation from people who ensue insisting that the woman in question could not have been pregnant at that time because they dare not admit that the Bible condones abortion they can't admit that so they have to rationalize any excuse they can to get out of it so they'll argue that it says that the innocent woman can still conceive a child at best the innocent woman might not have been pregnant and therefore literally had nothing to lose or it could have meant that the fetus survives somehow but there is nothing in this chapter to imply that the guilty woman is not pregnant nor that she could not have been pregnant when this test was applied maybe not every woman accused of adultery was pregnant but surely some of them would have been given the nature of the charges against them yet I get no answers when I posed the question of what would happen if a guilty woman did happen to be pregnant when this cursed said that it would have left her barren the only defense I have ever yet heard is that a pregnant woman would not be allowed to take this test but no such prohibition exists and nor would it even been possible back then to know for sure if she was pregnant if it's in the first couple of months or so and it also ignores the only way that anyone could fail this test if the woman cheated on her husband the fetus would be aborted that is effectively what it says remember this the next time some right-wing ideologue tells you that abortion should be treated as murder even in extreme cases like when a child is raped by her AIDS infected father or when it becomes a matter of life-threatening medical necessity remember that God says it's okay to terminate a pregnancy isn't just because you're inattentive or insecure husband feels jealous or suspicious the last line of this chapter says that the man will be guiltless but the woman will bear her inequity there is no provision wherein the woman could pass this test and be be owed any compensation or apology if she does pass she simply won't be punished any more than she already has been there is no punishment for the man who falsely accused her and no recourse for her if the roles were reversed because the way the Bible defines marriage she is his property little more than livestock and there is no equality for her obviously same-sex couples do have equality they're the same sex ideally sex should be between equals and by that I mean it should be between people of comparable financial intellectual or political strength so that one does not dominate the other marriage should be a partnership between mutually consenting adults who love each other and have equal rights and cognizance of their commitments with no double standard that's how it is for homosexual couples and that's how it is for heterosexual couples who value their families despite what the Bible says and who do better than the Bible says because the Bible is wrong about so many things in so many ways the Bible describes only the worst that a marriage can be but never defines what a marriage should be thank you so much Oh oh we can raise this you

Channel: AronRa

Views: 310,913

Rating: 4.8848295 out of 5

Keywords: Tulsa (City/Town/Village), Oklahoma, Freethought (Religion), Convention, FreeOK, William Poire, gay, marriage, equality, Monster on Sunday, Just like you, baby eater, Oral Roberts University (College/University), Bob Jones University (College/University), ORU, BJU, Cox Convention Center (Sports Facility), Bob Jones, Oral Roberts (Organization Leader), family values

Id: bldw8X5apnY

Length: 40min 52sec (2452 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 11 2015