chom wrote:Former Christian here. Seems like I post about religion a lot on here, but whatever. It's interesting.JohnConstantine wrote:The problem with the Bible and the christians (one of them at least) is that some relay heavily on the Old Testament when in fact christian bible should be mainly the New Testament. you know? Christ - christian? basically Christ is the founder of christianism, the new religion for that time. There's very big difference between The Old and New, one of which (and the main one for me) is how God is portrayed. in the old one he is bassically "don't dissobey me and don't piss me off, or I'll fuck with you", whether in the new, now he calmed down considerably and it's good guy (well, except in the case of Jesus, because he still need to sacrifice himself). Another fuck up thing is that atheists pick on the christians citing what God did in the Old Testament (which is also something atheist they don't believe in). Why not pick on the jews also for that? The Old Testament was pulled out of the Tora as far as I know.
The reason nonbelievers quote the genocides, rapes and child abuse in the OT is because Christians insist that The Bible is inerrant, the perfect guide to morality, that it's "god breathed" (Yahweh does a bit of writing when he's not making planets) and that their god is omnibenevolent. The NT isn't any better, because it adds in the threat of eternal torture for non-believers and preaches an imminent apocalypse (Jesus also tells you to castrate yourself if you've got the will to in Matthew 19:12). Beliefs like that have caused and continue to cause harm, and even if an atheist's goal isn't to deconvert believers, the problems with those books need to be pointed out to the more moderate Christians and Jews so that they can try to make their religions less of a threat to society.
I'd go into it more but this isn't the topic for it (we've got a religion thread anyway). If Scott presents Moses as flawed as he is in the Pentateuch than that would be a really brave decision, and Bale will probably go full force with a character like that. He'll probably go live in a tent and become a goat herder to prepare for the part.
It's gonna be hard to top Prince Of Egypt, though. That movie's the shit, and it develops the relationship between Moses and Ramses in a much more heartfelt way than anything done in Exodus. The burning bush scene is also pretty beautiful--the use of Val Kilmer's voice (run through a filter) for both Moses and Yahweh is very subtle and interesting.
uuuhhh there was always a value system surrounding god that if you didn't follow him there'd be tough shit. As you surely know having apparently read the Bible/know about this stuff, the notion of 'eternal damnation' is one hardly explored in any of the Bible's pages.
Anyway, I hardly think all the crazy whatnot in the OT is ...'equal to the NT's anything' because it clarified and enhanced concepts of 'hell' if only barely.
Also, being a somewhat progressive traditionalist Catholic, I can tell you the vast majority of Catholics reject much of the OT as nonsense, it's only the fundamentalists that, in this day and age, seem to endorse it.
-Vader
