At 5:02 AM -0800 11/28/02, Caliann the Elf wrote: > >I have yet to see the Scriptures of a major religion propose >violence and harm upon others, even those not of their religion. >The Bible does not do so. The Quran does not do so. The Talmud >does not do so. In fact, in all of them, you will find a LOTof >teachings that can be effectively translated as "Will you PLEASE be >NICE to each other? Thanks, this is your God." So, what did happen to the Amalakites, anyway? Joshua and Judges are full of stories of the Israelites being punished because they failed to kill every man, woman, child, goat, and chicken in a particular town. "The Bible" isn't all of a piece, and lots of it has perfectly horrible stuff in it, and a value system that sucks rocks. > >Religion isn't evil. Religion isn't good. Those poor books do try >to tell people to be good, but people have this uncanny knack of >seeing only what they want to see. It's not the poor book's fault. The books don't exist by themselves, they were written by human beings, often for somewhat venal reasons. Was it Jeremiah that was written to justify the new line of kings and the changes in the religious structure? Joshua and Judges were written to prove that the Israelites were entitled to the land they'd stolen from the Canaanites. The Gospels were written as propaganda to prove that Christ was the Messiah, and tell several flat out whoppers to accomplish that. -- Lydy Nickerson lydy at demesne.com lydy at lydy.com Dulciculi Aliquorum