Why do atheists bring up supposedly "bad" verses in the Old Testament when we don't follow the Old Testament?

Question

The parts in the Old Testament about killing people who work on the Sabbath or killing homosexuals are NO longer valid because Jesus died for our sins.

It was a DIFFERENT time so you cannot compare justice and morality of our time to that time, but God does let us know how to live and act in the New Testament.

In the OLD Testament, that was for JEWS who lived during a terrible time. The very FATE of the Jewish people in the time of Moses so God HAD to come up with strict laws to keep people in line.

If you lived back then and you were NOT a Jew and you worked on the Sabbath you would LIVE. If you were gay back then and you were a Jew you would LIVE just as long as you didn't act on your impulses. If you were gay back then and NOT a Jew then and you were a practicing homosexual you would LIVE.

The laws ONLY applied to Jews at THAT TIME.

God himself gave Moses these laws in verses like Leviticus 20:13 to keep people in line and also because Jesus had not yet died for our sins.

Answer 1

We find God in the Ten Commandments and our religion is found in James1: 27.

This pure religion coincides within the Ten Commandments.



Our Father's Commandments are not grievous.



It's not difficult to become a child of God.



The world can't give the joy that the Father can give to his children.

Answer 2

Great. In that case, Christians should stop dragging up the verses condemning homosexuals in order to support their views that homosexuals shouldn't be allowed to marry. Only, of course, they won't. It works both ways. If part of the Old Testament still counts, it all still counts.



"You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me"

Pardon me, but that doesn't really sound particularly lenient. And I think that the real issue is that God repeatedly showed himself to be a psychotic tyrant in the Old Testament. The fact that God condoned the tearing apart of pregnant women and rape and forced marriage of young girls doesn't magically go away just because Jesus came along and supposedly died for our sins.

Answer 3

They do not fully understand who God is, what He did, and how everything in the new testament differs from the old testament.

1 Corinthians 1:18-20 "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom if the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"

Answer 4

So by way of extension the advent tale and the flood tale are basically that, memories? And each and all of the begetting that supposedly enable's human beings hint blood lines? And what does it say approximately god that it has to coach situational ethics as rules are embodiment of ethical habit? The time Jesus supposedly ran around Israel wasn't plenty extra suited than the situations if Exodus so why the replace in rules? in reality one ought to argue the Jews have been enslaved of their very own land on condition that they have been conquered and made component of the Roman empire. So returned why the replace? If something, the Jewish regulation ought to have been extra strongly enforced to allow the Jewish human beings to keep their identities from the Romans and from something of the inhabitants around them. So your argument isn't clever. basically positioned, the guidelines in exodus and Leviticus are very strict and annoying. they are designed to set the Jewish those apart from the different peoples of the middle east. Christians desperate that they mo longer necessary to obey those rules which made it much less annoying for his or her circulate to transform others into Christianity. yet your all sinning by way of not observing them.

Answer 5

Because it was still commanded and put into law BY GOD. Proving that he is a primitive concept made up to appease the people at THAT TIME, as you said.



An omniscient God would transcend societal norms, obviously. God appealing the societal zeitgeist of the time period he was written in just shows how man-made he is.



And again, any God that - even if it was in the past - ordered the killings of innocent SPECIFICALLY, doesn't deserve worship.

Answer 6

First, you need to tell some of your brethren to quit quoting the OT if you are going to make this argument.



SOME Christians do attempt to follow the Mosaic Covenant (badly), and they claim to be just as Christian as you. Many of them also do not understand the Talmud and its laws about fair trial that moderate the Mosaic Commandments.



Second, ALL Abrahamic religions consider apostates (people who leave their religion) as worse than non-believers. More specifically, anyone who leaves the god of Abraham and chooses a different god, even if it is a different interpretation of the same god (i.e.: changing Allah for Yahweh), is considered to be the worst kind of heretic possible.

Answer 7

Because you use a passage in the Old Testament to justify hatred of homosexuals. Does it appear in the New Testament? Probably not, but as I grew up Jewish, I didn't get indoctrinated into the NT.

Answer 8

Well that's funny, 'cause Jesus said you still should follow it:



Luke 16:17

It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.



Matthew 5:18-19

Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.



Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

Answer 9

as soon as you people stop publishing the SAME lies and corruption within the texts, is when we will stop talking about them.



I suggest you read the Lamsa Bible. Directly from Aramaic to English. Read the Hebrew version of the OT - the REAL version. Compare these 2 books with the current bible and tell me it's not wrong.

Answer 10

Our basic position is that Christians say they believe in Jesus but in fact the God they really believe in is the OT God.



Jesus was all about love and peace, but Christians are all about punishment and revenge--which is the OT God through and through.



So you're the ones mixed up, not us. You speak one way but act the other.



When a Christian hangs a sign on the Pentagon that says "Blessed Are the Peacemakers", then maybe I'll believe you.

Answer 11

Sorry to be the one to inform you, but it's the Christians that constantly bring up the OT to justify their bigoted hatred & oppression (especially against gays & pagans).



Besides, when you call the Bible "infallible" and the actual "Word of God", than that refers to the entire book, not just parts of it. Either all is accurate or all is not. You either believe it all, or none. When the Bible is used to justify itself, it must either ALL be the "Word of God" or ALL not. You can't pick and choose which you believe and which parts you do not. Which parts are still valid and which parts aren't. Contradictions prove just how inaccurate it really is and therefore makes it impossible to be the "Word of God".

Answer 12

Aha! Typically Christian of you to cherry pick those parts of the bible which suit your cult's version of God.



Is this one of those verses which you ignore.



Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves. - Numbers 31:17,18

Answer 13

There are no bad verses in the Old Testament, just poorly interpreted ones.

Answer 14

Does that mean that the 10 commandments (laid down in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy) don't count for Christians, too?

Answer 15

"It was a DIFFERENT time so you cannot compare justice and morality of our time to that time..."



The same can be said of the new testament, which is 2000 years old.



You might want to share your insights with Christian preachers who say people should live according to the bible, the ENTIRE bible.

Answer 16

Really? So an omnipotent god decided to change it's mind? Perhaps you don't understand that proves your god isn't omnipotent and thereby becomes an impossiblity.

Answer 17

Thanks, but atheists who make those quotes wouldn't need to do so if there weren't Christians still quoting Sodom and Gomorrah and Lev. 18:22 and 20:13.



So give that message to other Christians, not to the atheists.

Answer 18

it's the same god according to you... why would god judge me for things i did twenty years ago when i don't do them anymore today? if i'm to held accountable for all the wrongs in my life, god should lead by example and hold himself accountable for all the wrongful killing he did and encouraged in the OT. can i arbitrarily divide up my life into two parts too? and everything bad that i did in the past, i can reason away by saying, "that was the old me. this is the new me. you can't judge the new me by the way the old me did things."

Answer 19

"It was a sin to worship other Gods, but NO ONE would stop you."



But they would stop you, and not just stop you but destroy your village and kill all your men and enslave all your women. The genocide of other cultures had become a routine practice.



Deuteronomy 7:2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them.



Deuteronomy 7:5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

Answer 20

Then why is it included in the Bible, and why do countless Christians quote the supposed good parts of it?

Answer 21

I am sorry but are you suggesting that your God rewrite his doctrines to match current to times?

Answer 22

same god--if the myth was a psychopathic killer in the OT--had his kid offed in the NT--why would you want to pay homage to such an obviously evil monster?

Answer 23

so that means I will never have to hear those verses about how atheist are fools or how all gayness is an abomination ever again? woot!

Answer 24

Because supposedly, the Bible is the 'perfect word of god'.

Answer 25

Why do atheists bring up supposedly 'bad' verses in the

Old Testament when we don't follow the Old Testament?

-Trinity doctrine has something to do with it.



The parts in the Old Testament about killing people who work on the Sabbath or killing homosexuals are NO longer valid because Jesus died for our sins.

-Psa 119:152,160 Concerning thy testimonies (statutes), I have known of old that thou hast founded them for ever. Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments (laws) endureth FOR EVER.

A human atonement doesn't end the Torah.



The laws ONLY applied to Jews at THAT TIME.

-Jer 31:27-36 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant, saith the LORD. In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a NEW COVENANT with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I WILL PUT MY LAW IN THEIR INWARD PARTS, AND WRITE IT IN THEIR HEARTS; AND WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for THEY SHALL ALL KNOW ME, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I WILL FORGIVE THEIR INIQUITY, and I WILL REMEMBER THEIR SIN NO MORE. Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.



Even with the 'new covenant', the law

doesn't end or stop being applied.



Ezekiel 18:20-28 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall NOT bear the iniquity of the father, NEITHER shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and KEEP ALL MY STATUTES, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live? But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die. Yet ye say, The way of the LORD is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?



When a righteous man turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them; for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die. Again, when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and DOETH THAT WHICH IS LAWFUL AND RIGHT, he shall save his soul alive. Because he considereth, and turneth away from all his transgressions that he hath committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die.



Jesus' death for anyone's sins is useless,

they should be responsible for themselves.



There is NOTHING in the Old Testament about restricting people who wanted to worship other gods in other religions.

-Deut 4:2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, NEITHER SHALL YE DIMINISH OUGHT FROM IT, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.

Answer 26

This is the main reason:



http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/8528/churchsignk.jpg

Answer 27

If it's no longer valid, then why keep it in the bible????

Answer 28

we don't follow any book but we know them better than most of you

Answer 29

"Anyone who adds or TAKES away from this book will be damned".

Answer 30

Isn't the old testament in the bible ? WTF making up ruls as you go along.

Answer 31

Because 'they' already 'know' and just want reaction over and over to justify their sins!!