Is there a religion of peace on earth that does not advocate killing non-believers?

[erowe1]

...but the holy texts of those contain messages of killing non-believers.

The Bible definitely doesn't include any messages of killing nonbelievers.

Those passages you quoted are from writings that predate Christianity by many centuries. So there were no Christians or nonchristians in any sense that people after the time of Jesus have understood that. Nor have Christians historically interpreted those passages as somehow authorizing them to kill nonchristians. Yes, those passages are in the Bible, but, no they do not authorize Christians killing nonchristians, neither in their original historical intent in an ancient Israelite context (i.e. when there was no such thing as Christianity), nor in any later Christian application of the Old Testament.

 

[erowe1]

so how relevant is the OT to Christians?

Why do they oppose homosexuality if OT isn't where their laws come from?

The NT condemns homosexuality.

Also, it's not correct to say that the OT isn't in any way a source of moral laws for Christians. But it's definitely inaccurate to say that everything in the OT is.

 

[erowe1]

Romans 1:27-28

27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.


somehow, that doesn't sound like sex to me.

But, do Christians refer to the OT for moral guidance? At all? or do they pick and choose?

That passage is definitely talking about sex.

The role of the Old Testament laws in Christian ethics has been a point of debate from the earliest days of Christianity until now. There is no single view on the subject. There are different approaches, none of which are simple picking and choosing of laws to obey or not to obey arbitrarily, and none of which (at least no major ones--I can't speak for every sect) include making any OT laws into directions for Christians to kill nonchristians.

 

[Theocrat]

Is There an "Atheist" Who Can Make Sense of His Worldview?

Before all the "atheists" come on board to attack and ridicule the Bible for some of its civil sanctions in the Old Testament, they should be reminded of the religious "atheists" in history past who slaughtered millions of "non-believers" who would not swear allegiance to the "atheistic" state, like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Nero, and others.

In any case, "atheists" do not even possess an absolute and binding standard to begin to judge anything as "violent" or "peaceful" in terms of their own materialistic worldview. So any judgments from "atheists" towards any religious book in this thread is simply nonsensical and moot.

"Atheists" cannot even explain, objectively, why a religion of peace is good, in the first place. They also cannot detail why "killing non-believers" is an inherently bad thing, especially if men have no souls and are just bio-chemical reactions within their anatomy.

 

[robert68]

The Bible definitely doesn't include any messages of killing nonbelievers.

Those passages you quoted are from writings that predate Christianity by many centuries. So there were no Christians or nonchristians in any sense that people after the time of Jesus have understood that. Nor have Christians historically interpreted those passages as somehow authorizing them to kill nonchristians. Yes, those passages are in the Bible, but, no they do not authorize Christians killing nonchristians, neither in their original historical intent in an ancient Israelite context (i.e. when there was no such thing as Christianity), nor in any later Christian application of the Old Testament.

But Christianity recognizes the “God” and “Lord” that authorized/commanded all that barbarism in the OT, to have been “God”. Hence, acts are not inherently either good or bad.

 

[erowe1]

But Christianity recognizes the “God” and “Lord” that authorized/commanded all that barbarism in the OT to be “God”. There’s a very contradictory moral message.

I admit that some of the instructions that we find God giving Israel in the Old Testament create a problem that Christians have to wrestle with, especially some of the genocidal-looking ones related to conquest of the promised land. And even if they don't set some precedent that applies to Christians, it's natural to ask how God Himself ever approved of those things. I don't think there's any one way that Christians throughout history have solved that problem. But one thing they have been pretty consistent on is in not translating them into some Christian context where Christians are to kill nonchristians for their unbelief. This is true even of the earliest Jewish Christian writings in the New Testament.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Well, for one thing, there is not supposed to be a hierarchy within the church.



This is something the whore of Mystery Babylon sought to endorse and was adopted by her offspring.

There is a difference between killing and murder. Murder is the killing of someone who has not attacked you or your country or has done you no wrong. It is killing just for the sake of killing. There will always be killing in war, and in most cases it can be justified as self defense.

I'm sure there are Christian churches that don't condone war, but those churches would not exist if it had not been for the Revolutionary war. Those churches are being hypocritical.

Not necessarily. If the colonialists had seceded instead of using revolutionary tactics, the war could've been avoided. That war, in fact, set the precedent for future senseless wars for profit.

 

[WaltM]

The NT condemns homosexuality.

Also, it's not correct to say that the OT isn't in any way a source of moral laws for Christians. But it's definitely inaccurate to say that everything in the OT is.

so how do you pick and choose?

 

[WaltM]

Before all the "atheists" come on board to attack and ridicule the Bible for some of its civil sanctions in the Old Testament, they should be reminded of the religious "atheists" in history past who slaughtered millions of "non-believers" who would not swear allegiance to the "atheistic" state, like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Nero, and others.

In any case, "atheists" do not even possess an absolute and binding standard to begin to judge anything as "violent" or "peaceful" in terms of their own materialistic worldview. So any judgments from "atheists" towards any religious book in this thread is simply nonsensical and moot.

"Atheists" cannot even explain, objectively, why a religion of peace is good, in the first place. They also cannot detail why "killing non-believers" is an inherently bad thing, especially if men have no souls and are just bio-chemical reactions within their anatomy.

yes, we can make perfect sense of our worldview, or else we'd not hold it.

but we cannot make it such that you'd be convinced of it, or else we'd not be having this conversation.

 

[squarepusher]

LOL quoting scripture that was brought to us by those who burned witches and thought the world was flat....

i've read that the bible actually does mention round or circle of earth

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015.html

 

[erowe1]

so how do you pick and choose?

Like I have been saying, there's not a single answer I can give on behalf of all Christians. But there are certain points that have been pretty firm going all the way back to the earliest days of the faith. At the time of Jesus Jews generally already understood that there were distinctions in their laws, including distinctions between some laws that were more important than others, and some laws that were specifically for themselves over against others that were for all mankind.

You can see the apostles, who were all Jews, wrestling with this issue in their council in Acts 15 where they agreed that Gentile Christians were not obligated to observe their ancestral Jewish dietary laws, but they were still to adhere to Jewish laws with respect to avoidance of blood (which could either refer to violence against people or to consumption of animal blood), sexual immorality, and idolatry. When they came to that agreement, they weren't arbitrarily picking and choosing. They were addressing a question that had a rich history in Judaism already (albeit not with respect to the fledgling Christian faith specifically). And it's one that you can see hints at in the Old Testament itself. In the chapters of the Bible that recount the history of the world before God gave the law of Moses we see that there already were moral obligations he placed on all mankind. So, when it comes to Old Testament ethics, the question of a universal set of divine laws is related to the question of divine laws pre-Moses. And although the law of Moses is explicitly given to the nation of Israel, you can sometimes see in it passages that imply the existence of some laws that are not just for Israel, but where what God demands of Israel is the same as what he has always demanded of everyone (e.g. Leviticus 17-18). The group in Acts 15 of bloodshed, idolatry, and sexual immorality actually summarizes those laws pretty well, and it also serves as a pretty accurate epitome of what laws from the Old Testament get applied to Christians in the New Testament writings.

 

[WaltM]

Like I have been saying, there's not a single answer I can give on behalf of all Christians.

which is what I've been saying all along, Christians don't have a consistent way to get their morality, yet they claim their morality comes from their Bible.

 

[Pennsylvania]

Before all the "atheists" come on board to attack and ridicule the Bible for some of its civil sanctions in the Old Testament, they should be reminded of the religious "atheists" in history past who slaughtered millions of "non-believers" who would not swear allegiance to the "atheistic" state, like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Nero, and others.

In any case, "atheists" do not even possess an absolute and binding standard to begin to judge anything as "violent" or "peaceful" in terms of their own materialistic worldview. So any judgments from "atheists" towards any religious book in this thread is simply nonsensical and moot.

"Atheists" cannot even explain, objectively, why a religion of peace is good, in the first place. They also cannot detail why "killing non-believers" is an inherently bad thing, especially if men have no souls and are just bio-chemical reactions within their anatomy.

You do not have an objective basis either. God "believing" something is wrong would be just as subjective as you or I believing something is wrong. It is not absolute either, because if god chose to destroy itself, its subjective evaluation of good/evil could not outlast it.

 

[erowe1]

which is what I've been saying all along, Christians don't have a consistent way to get their morality, yet they claim their morality comes from their Bible.

I think you're equivocating the word "consistent" here. Of course not all Christians agree on the specifics of this. But that doesn't mean that any given Christian's approach is an inconsistent one, or that he's arbitrarily picking and choosing commands without any reasonable system. It just means that one not all Christians agree on what that system is. Part of this relates to another theological issue for Christians about the nature of the relationship between Israel and the Church. There are different ways of answering that question that bring with them different corollaries when it comes to applying Old Testament laws to Christians. And even at that, there's a fair amount of agreement between Christians, including when it comes to God's commands in the Old Testament about the conquest of the promised land, which on the face of them are not commands that could be transfered into Christianity, at least not in a literal way.

If someone read Genesis 22 where God commands Abraham to kill his son and concludes from it that God commands all people everywhere to kill their sons, that would be a totally unwarranted interpretation of the passage. But it seems to me that you're demanding that any Christian who claims to get his morality from the Bible needs to read the Bible that way, where commands of God given to one person or group are supposed to be read as though they were given to everyone, in disregard for what those commands themselves actually say about the context of their own applicability.

 

[WaltM]

I think you're equivocating the word "consistent" here. Of course not all Christians agree on the specifics of this.

That's all that matters to me.

But that doesn't mean that any given Christian's approach is an inconsistent one, or that he's arbitrarily picking and choosing commands without any reasonable system.

He may or may not have a constant way of choosing, but one thing for certain is his choosing isn't in agreement with all Christians, or with the whole Bible.

It just means that one not all Christians agree on what that system is.

agreed.

 

[erowe1]

That's all that matters to me.




He may or may not have a constant way of choosing, but one thing for certain is his choosing isn't in agreement with all Christians, or with the whole Bible.



agreed.

If you mean it this way, then I don't see why your last line above, where you say, "yet they claim their morality comes from their Bible," is a problem. I also don't see why you add the phrase "or with the whole Bible" here.

Among the various approaches Christians take to this question, there's at least the possibility that one of them is right, internally consistent, and consistent with the whole Bible. Whatever that approach entails, if one exists, there's no need to imagine that it would entail Christians reading Genesis 22 and thinking that God is telling them to kill their sons. Similarly, it is certainly not the case that it would have to include Christians being commanded to kill nonchristians, since there is nothing in the Bible in either testament that commands Christians to kill nonchristians.

 

[Kludge]

Surprised there isn't more love for Quakers in this thread.

They not only have a long history of pacifism but also were one of the very few groups who had serious moral qualms with slavery well before the Civil War and actively spoke against it.

Their religion is exceptionally individual and calls on members to listen to God instead of relying on an individual pastor's interpretation of the Bible (or the Pope's echoes). The abhor excess and give generously. They emphasize local leadership through example and family values without government force.

The "non-denominational" Baptist churches my grandparents started and still run all follow a very similar path regarding how people should reach the message of God, and my grandpa welcomes criticism & discussion, but they certainly aren't as open-minded as the Quakers and do have Patriotic "Support Our Troops/Country" Labor Day events, and are Evangelists. But there are a lot of similarities and when I discovered Quakerism a few years ago, instantly had great respect for them.

 

[WaltM]

If you mean it this way, then I don't see why your last line above, where you say, "yet they claim their morality comes from their Bible," is a problem.

because all and only is implied, is it not?

I also don't see why you add the phrase "or with the whole Bible" here.

If Christians were more honest in admitting the have more reasons other than the Bible, to not rape, murder, molest children, steal, I'll stop adding that qualification.

Among the various approaches Christians take to this question, there's at least the possibility that one of them is right, internally consistent, and consistent with the whole Bible.

fair enough.

Whatever that approach entails, if one exists, there's no need to imagine that it would entail Christians reading Genesis 22 and thinking that God is telling them to kill their sons.

ok.

Similarly, it is certainly not the case that it would have to include Christians being commanded to kill nonchristians, since there is nothing in the Bible in either testament that commands Christians to kill nonchristians.

But these mine enemies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. Luke 19:27

I'm no expert though.

 

[Theocrat]

What's That in the Backdrop?

yes, we can make perfect sense of our worldview, or else we'd not hold it.

but we cannot make it such that you'd be convinced of it, or else we'd not be having this conversation.

My argument is your worldview does not allow you to make any judgments against any religion which seeks to destroy those who are nonbelievers. You do make those judgments, but you do so only in terms of another worldview which is not your own.

If all there is is matter and energy in the universe (no immaterial things like God or souls), then it makes no sense for people like "atheists" to appeal to other immaterial entities like morality in order to condemn a religion that teaches all non-believers should die.

But if one wishes to conclude that morals are just the biological/chemical processes of our bodies, then that person still has no justification to condemn other groups of people whose biological/chemical processes of their bodies force them to kill nonbelievers. What a person does is just what he does, and he can't help it by reason of his anatomy. That is what the materialistic "atheist" is left with in his own worldview, logically deduced and rationally comprised.

 

[erowe1]

because all and only is implied, is it not?



If Christians were more honest in admitting the have more reasons other than the Bible, to not rape, murder, molest children, steal, I'll stop adding that qualification.

I don't think all and only is implied, and I don't think Christians deny that they have more reasons than the Bible for those things.

But these mine enemies, that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. Luke 19:27

I'm no expert though.

That's not a command for Christians to kill nonchristians.