There was a group of people who put the Bible together from a lot of different scriptures.

Since I was not there, I don't know what went on, and you don't either.

I'm sure there are many opinions on this subject.

My point is, they are only opinions. No one knows the truth of it.

No one knows the motives, agendas, etc. And no one knows if what is written in the books is truth or fiction. They can only believe or not believe, they can only have an opinion.

Truly.

The very idea that any God would hold it against people for rejecting these stories as being utterly absurd is itself an absurd notion, IMHO.

I'm not asking anyone else to reject these stories.

All I ask is that people recognize that it's unrealistic to think that any God would would be upset with people for not believing in them.

If the religion (or the scriptures themselves) imply this, then clearly they have to be wrong.

There's no way that I'm going to believe in a personified male Godhead who curses women with painful childbirth as a form of "punishment" and who would have his only begotten son nailed to a pole as an offering of "salvation" to anyone who will condone and accept that act on their behalf.

If that's what our creator is truly like, then in all honesty mg, I wouldn't feel up to worshiping him at all. On the contrary, I would be so thoroughly disgusted and disappointed that all I could do is hang my head in shame and feel sorry for both us, and our creator.

As I have said many times on these forums. Atheism would be a better picture of reality from a God who has been punishing women with painful childbirth for eons.

Just think of how utterly insane that idea even is mg.

Women who have had a dozen kids would have been 'punished' through the pain of childbirth many times over. Whilst women who were lucky enough to never marry, or who had married an impotent man, would have been spared this punishment.

Yet it is claimed in these scriptures that God has plagued women with painful childbirth as a "punishment" for Eve's "original sin".

My sister is an atheist, she also OUTSMARTED the biblical God.

She had all her babies through cesarean childbirth.

So she cheated the Hebrew God out of his asinine punishments.

Hey think of the implications of that!

A mere moral WOMAN outsmarted this male-chauvinistic Godhead.

Ive had two c sections, they arent without pain, not at all,,,lol

And yet, I sing praises all day long!

So God gets his hideous vengeance after all.

Whippy ding.

I hope not because God punishes women with painful childbirth.

I can hear it now,...


Jesus hurts them this I know
for the bible tells me so
little ones are so profane
for they are born in women's pain

Yes Jesus hurts them
Yes Jesus hurts them
Yes Jesus hurts them
For the bible tells us so

(sorry I couldn't resist)

Love Hurts....Oooooo Ooooooooooo Love Hurts.....

If you look back over the history of childbirth, God may have said women would suffer, but it's man who allowed it. For the longest time, women weren't allowed to have anything that mitigated the pain of childbirth. It's a lot of why women midwives and herbalists were forbidden to practice, because they knew the herbs to minimize and change things with regards to childbirth. It's only been recent history that that has changed.

The fact of pain during childbirth is the way human women are built, and how we stand. Bigger brains of babies don't help either, but a woman is in far less pain if she's squatting upright, being downward, rather then flat on her back. Gravity and the shape of the pelvis has much to do with it.

Well that's true.

Also, my sister didn't choose to have c-sections just to try to cheat the biblical God out of his sick demented need to punish people using physical pain as a weapon.

She really had no choice in the matter. Had it not been for C-sections she, or the baby, or both of them may have died in the birthing process. She had physical problems. Even if she had succeeded in giving birth naturally it would have been extremely painful for her far beyond what would be normal for a normally healthy woman.

So actually when we think about these superstitions about a God who "punishes" women by making childbirth painful for them, then what about the women who have extremely problems giving birth?

Are they being punished extra severely?

That's what a person would need to believe in order to continue to support these kinds of absurd superstitions of a God who punishes people using childbirth as a weapon.

CLEARLY these are just ancient superstitions.

What kind of a supposedly benevolent God would be that hideous in the first place?

These types of things simply have to be nothing more than the superstitious of men. They cannot have come from any God.

The mere fact that the bible claims that God punished women in this way is a dead give-a-way that the stories are fables based on utterly absurd superstitions.

~~~~~

I'm just trying to get people to THINK about these kinds of things.

How long are they going to continue to hold these stories up as being the infallible "Word" of some supposedly all-benevolent "God" when they contain such absurdities?

At the very BEST these ancient scriptures are riddled with contaminated superstitions. And if so, then they cannot be trusted to be the "Verbatim Infallible Word of God".

If they contain even ONE false notion, then they contain falsehoods, and nothing else in the whole cannon of stories can be trusted to be the absolute unquestionable truth.

So it's really "all or nothing" in terms of claiming that these scriptures represent the "Word of God".

I'm convinced that it can't be "ALL" therefore it's probably "Nothing".

Abra, that is all I'm trying to do too.

I can't believe some of the responses I get from so-called "rational" and "intelligent" people.

I am almost certain that there was no Yeshua ben Yosef. (Jesus.)

1 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Just felt good to put this up!

to quote bruno mars

ur amazing,,,lol

Some of Paul's most moving writings...

It may feel good, but what would any of that have to do with the topic at hand?

If you're going to hold LOVE up as the primary concept that we should revere, then clearly we should all toss the Hebrew folklore of God away.

There is nothing "Loving" about a God who would PUNISH all women of humanity with painful childbirth due to the poor choices of some supposed primordial woman.

There's no love in such an ignorant curse.

So if we're going to hold LOVE up as our standard for the highest form of divinity, etc, then the biblical fables of a God are OUT.

~~~~

Or perhaps that was your point?

That's about the only way I can see your post fitting into this topic.

You must be supporting the discrediting of the bible based on LOVE is all I can figure.

Love rules.

I say, we should hold all to this standard

if anyone says ANYTHING not true, ever in life, they should be assumed to be lying with EVERYTHING else they say

if ANY part of the american history I have learned is questioned or discredited concerning its validity,, I should toss out EVERYTHING I know of american history

we should not take any lesson from any source that can have any part of it questioned,,,,


that should work ......


learn from everything, discard nothing,,,

Yes Ms.

Very astute of you to recognize the flaw in Abra's form, which is the exact same form that underlies the word for word literal fundamentalists.

If we applied this kind of reasoning everywhere to everything, we could soon find ourselves doubting everything and being able to admit to knowing nothing. That, in and of itself, is impossible for one simple reason...

All doubt is doubting the truth of, and is grounded upon an extant belief that goes without doubt.

We must all take a stand(in thought/belief) somewhere.

It's from the Bible, you know, that thing that your discrediting.

I would say that's pretty on topic.