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<p>Perhaps a better translation would be “whoever smites his father or mother shall be put to death”. NIV makes it “anyone who attacks (footnote “or kills”) his father or mother”.</p>
<p>The Hebrew word nakah translated “strike” here is not your simple toddler throwing a fit. Elsewhere in the Bible, someone who is nakahed has almost always suffered a life-threatening injury, and often is dead. David claimed his bride as a reward for nakahing Goliath, if that puts it in perspective.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure where you’re getting this idea. Here’s the passage in NLT as you referenced:</p>
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<p>Translations vary, but the situation being described here is a town that has rebelled as a whole. If only one person in the town had been worshiping them, the rest of the town would have dealt with him according to the other verse you listed.</p>
<p>Dayum you guys are doing some crazy critical thinking. I am impressed.</p>
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<p>Jesus’ words on divorce cast some light on this:</p>
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<p>Slavery was almost universal in the ancient world. However, slaves had more protection under Mosaic law than they might have had in other ancient societies. For example:</p>
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<p>Contrast the Code of Hammurabi:</p>
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<p>Are you getting these quotes from an anti-Bible site? Because this is getting beyond ridiculous. This quote from Jesus was a part of a parable He told about the need to be faithful always, and not just when you think God is watching. Here is what the servant in question had been doing two verses before:</p>
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<p>Jesus continues to state what will happen to that hypothetical slave. Not what He advocates that the master do, but what the natural consequences of the slave’s actions will be.</p>
<p>@Sithis - "Well, philosophically I agree to some extent, but pragmatically speaking, what would be the point of saying anything about anything if we assume that human observation and reasoning are not good enough to make valid assessments? "</p>
<p>Because they are good enough to make statements pertaining to 5 senses. For example, the only reason we know Gravity exists is because of our 5 senses creating the observations for it. We have a human definition of gravity.</p>
<p>But what if Gravity is actually a force of invisible donuts bouncing up & down so fast and light we can’t collide into them and think there is anything there. Perhaps these mini tiny donuts are alive and when something reaches air the donuts try to jump on top of that object trying to push it down with its weight and speed accurately enough that its not physically visible and its correct everytime,.</p>
<p>This is what I mean. Logic is just a creation of the world as we understand it.</p>
<p>Hey MosbyMarion (nice screen name reference btw) have you heard of a “ring species”? I used to be somewhat skeptical of evolution, but that really convinced me. (Sorry if this has been brought up, I have read only a fraction of the 10 million pages on religion and evolution)</p>
<p>How about this? Why DO you believe? Do not be so intolerate. There is no proof that God exists or doesn’t exist. Everyone can believe what they want.</p>
<p>Well, after looking them up on wikipedia, it turns out that I have, though I haven’t heard them called that before. As far as I can tell, it’s just a standard example of speciation, except that the geographical ranges of the resulting subgroups overlap in an interesting way.</p>
<p>Why is it so convincing to you?</p>
<p>Ah well sorry I must have misunderstood your beliefs. I thought you didn’t believe in evolution</p>
<p>I believe in the well-substantiated theories of natural selection and genetics. I don’t believe in the poorly substantiated hypothesis that this variation can explain all variation in life, starting from microbes.</p>
<p>In the ring species example given by wikipedia, I believe that all of those birds are descended from the birds originally created. The original birds had in their gene pool the potential to vary widely. Over time, natural selection led to the various extremes of this variation being expressed, with birds at the opposite ends being unable to interbreed.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that birds descend from dinosaurs, because dinosaurs did not have the neccesary genes for birdlike traits.</p>
<p>Ah, but aren’t the genes between the species at opposite ends of a ring completely incompatible? That’s only after a few thousand years… what about a few million between dinosaurs and birds? If genes can change so substantially so as to prevent breeding between two birds in a fraction of the time since the dinosaurs, why are more changes inconceivable?</p>
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And this is not a human definition of gravity? I do not see how such an explanation for gravity defies logic, although there is no empirical evidence for this explanation. I am not sure that I am understanding the point of your argument… yes, human logic is a result of human experience and whatever goes on in our brains; does this mean that it is automatically incapable of determining accurate explanations for things? Understand, that all we really require is an explanation that is accurate from our human perspective; we may never have any kind of completely “true” description of an “objective reality.”</p>
<p>Okay, I’m curious: how to explain this verse:
“If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.”
Deuteronomy 22:28-29</p>
<p>@Sithis - Exactly.</p>
<p>NOTHING IS REAL. NOTHING IS REAL. NOTHING IS REAL.</p>
<p>There is a chance something WE HUMANS might understand logically that is real, such as mathematics, BUT PHYSICS? PHYSICS??? Theres just too many possibilities to believe its real.</p>
<p>Now that I think of it, maybe perhaps mathematics isn’t real? And its just a figment of our imaginational understanding on numbers?</p>
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<p>The genes haven’t changed much at all. In the original population, there were genes for a wide variety of creatures. Due to natural selection, this large, mixed gene pool was split into multiple smaller ones.</p>
<p>Take humans for example. The human gene pool already contains genes for a very large range of heights and weights. If, for some reason, it was advantageous to be small if you lived in Cincinnati and advantageous to be large if you lived in Chicago, then over time people with more alleles for large size would tend to succeed in Chicago, and people with more alleles for small size would tend to succeed in Cincinnati. Eventually, you might have all giants in Chicago and all tiny people in Cincinnati, and it might be unlikely or even impossible for these populations to interbreed.</p>
<p>But non amount of natural selection will ever give humans wings, because the genes simply aren’t there.</p>
<p>My general understanding of natural selection is that it only works downwards. Natural selection eliminates things that are ineffective, but it doesn’t create new traits.</p>
<p>If you have a creature with information ABCDEFG in its gene pool then natural selection can create creatures with ABCD, DEFG, AAAAAAA, and GBGBGBGB, but it can’t create VWXYZ, no matter how long it continues.</p>
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<p>Maybe so, but in that case neither is the that statement.</p>
<p>Which is absurd. Therefore, I assume that things are real.</p>
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<p>That is a difficult one. The best I can understand it is that it is to cover the sometimes grey area between rape and seduction. See the laws on seduction for a correllary.</p>
<p>That was a very alien society to us. Many women would have preferred to marry the man in that situation, which is something I cannot understand. See the story of Tamar.</p>
<p>@MosbyMarion</p>
<p>Why do you assume things are real? I see your more of a human logical kind of guy.</p>
<p>Can you give me some logic to prove ‘things’ are real?</p>
<p>^ I base my assumption on negative proof. Assume ‘things’ aren’t real. You just discredited your ability to judge whether things are real or not.</p>
<p>An argument that proves that the arguer is unable to make valid arguments is unacceptable.</p>
<p>@ColumbianX: I think, therefore I am. </p>
<p>But does it matter if we’re not real? We still can feel and experience. If it’s not “real” why care about the question of its reality?</p>
<p>@MM: When A + B = Z: [Mutation</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_mutation]Mutation”>Mutation - Wikipedia)</p>