Leviticus 20:14 is not the Word of God

[robrecht]

I prefer playing 'pick up sticks' on Saturday.

Is that better than getting stoned?

[fm93]

Married at once (polygamously) or married successively?

I assume it's referring to polygamy, since there's no indication of any succession, and "both" implies that the marriage is to two people at once. Besides, several cases back then in which someone married in succession occurred because the wife had passed away. Obviously, both women couldn't be punished if one was already dead.

So suppose a man pushes his adolescent stepdaughter into a sexual relationship. He then asks her to marry him, and she says yes. So, should she be burnt to death? Or stoned and cremated? Or just branded?

Well, if she consented to the sexual relationship, she'd be guilty of a crime. If she didn't consent to the sexual relationship, that would mean she was raped, and only the man would be punished.

Most people consider stoning a gruesome and barbaric method of execution. Branding is a form of painful disfigurement.

Fascinating to know. But that's irrelevant, because we're not evaluating laws for today's Western society, but for an ancient Near Eastern society three thousand years ago.

Suppose there was a bill in parliament/Congress/whatever to introduce stoning as a method of capital punishment for serious crimes. Would you support or oppose this bill? What do you think God would want you to do?

Again, you're anachronizing here. The purpose of stoning back then was to force the entire society to confront a criminal and for everyone to take part in the sentencing after the condemnation. Ancient Israel was a collectivist society in which one's social identity was emphasized more than the personal identity, and stoning was a way in which the society acknowledged that they were separating an individual from the social identity. Whereas capital punishment today is usually done by a single executioner in a private room, ancient capital punishment involved many witnesses who partook in it themselves. This made capital punishment a personal affair, rather than an at-a-distance abstract issue, so the ancient version would've served as a better deterrent to future crime. But today, we live in a relatively safe individualist society, in which there are more available ways to deter crime.

[headheart]

Is that better than getting stoned?

Now there's a thought coming from one as mellow as you.

[ZackMartin]

Well, if she consented to the sexual relationship, she'd be guilty of a crime. If she didn't consent to the sexual relationship, that would mean she was raped, and only the man would be punished.

The problem we recognise in our society with incestuous (or step-incestuous) relationships, and with paedophilic relationships, is often the child "consents", in the sense of agreeing, saying yes, not resisting, etc. But we don't accept that consent as valid, because we recognise the kinds of pressure and manipulation that can be present in that situation, which makes the apparent consent non-genuine. So if his step-daughter "consents", most people today would consider that consent of questionable value. But undoubtedly, people back then had far less awareness of the psychology of sexual abuse than we do today - so I imagine if this law was followed, stepdaughters would have been executed who in today's thinking were not freely and fully and genuinely consenting to a relationship with their stepfather, just having been manipulated and pressured into doing so.

But that's irrelevant, because we're not evaluating laws for today's Western society, but for an ancient Near Eastern society three thousand years ago.

I don't believe in moral relativism. The moral laws that apply today applied equally back then. If you want to use that argument to justify this verse of the Bible, I'm sure a Muslim could use it equally well to justify many of the gruesome things in the Quran and Hadith.

Again, you're anachronizing here. The purpose of stoning back then was to force the entire society to confront a criminal and for everyone to take part in the sentencing after the condemnation. Ancient Israel was a collectivist society in which one's social identity was emphasized more than the personal identity, and stoning was a way in which the society acknowledged that they were separating an individual from the social identity. Whereas capital punishment today is usually done by a single executioner in a private room, ancient capital punishment involved many witnesses who partook in it themselves.

I'm not "anachronizing", because I believe that if it is wrong today then it is wrong then. Moral laws are not relative to your time period.

This made capital punishment a personal affair, rather than an at-a-distance abstract issue, so the ancient version would've served as a better deterrent to future crime. But today, we live in a relatively safe individualist society, in which there are more available ways to deter crime.

Does the death penalty (in modern or ancient forms) deter crime? It doesn't. There is no scientific evidence that deterrence works - a few studies have reached that conclusion, but those studies had many flaws. Facts about Deterrence and the Death Penalty

[JimL]

Conservative Christians generally subscribe to what I might call "full inspiration" - the whole of the Bible is inspired by God.

I believe in God, so I have no inherent objection to the idea of revelation or inspired scripture. And it is certainly possible to me that parts of the Bible are revelation or inspired scripture. So I can endorse the "partial inspiration" view - parts of the Bible, but not the whole of it, is inspired by God. But the remainder, is not divinely inspired, and is not the Word of God.

Let me give an example of this, with reference to a specific passage - Lev 20:14 (KJV) "And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you."

1] As I interpret it, this is essentially a prohibition on a man marrying his mother-in-law or stepdaughter, and/or sleeping with them. As a moral prohibition, it is fair enough - I'm sure both scenarios most commonly just result in people getting hurt. So I can't really object to the prohibition itself. I can see why God might want to discourage or prohibit such behaviour.

2] The penalty is a different story though. My entire life, ever since I was a child, I have always believed that capital punishment was gravely wrong. As such, I cannot accept the idea that God would endorse it. Now, some people reading this will agree with me on capital punishment, and others will disagree with me. But if you don't agree with me, let me put it this way: Surely there is something (or probably several things) you are convinced in the bottom of your heart is wrong, and always have been. Like human sacrifice, child sacrifice, widow burning, whatever it is for you. Someone comes to you and says "God has revealed a new scripture to me". You read this new scripture, and find it endorses that thing you are convinced in the bottom of your heart to be wrong. Might you not reject the claim that this scripture was from God on that basis? Would that not be a good reason to do so?

3] But even among those who support the death penalty, most would agree that capital punishment should only be reserved for the most serious crimes. Is sleeping consensually with your mother-in-law or stepdaughter wrong enough to deserve the death penalty? Very few today would say yes. So this is another reason to believe this verse is not the Word of God.

4] Executing all three people involved also seems very questionable. The verse never says that the two woman must be aware of and consent to what is going on. So if your husband sleeps with your mother-in-law, without your knowledge and consent, you are to be executed? If a man sleeps with his step-daughter, the step-daughter is to be executed? Even if she is an adult, the ability of a stepdaughter to freely consent to sexual relations with her stepfather must be questioned; it is likely she is under his long-established influence in choosing to do so. So we should execute her? This seems utterly barbaric, and clearly not the Word of God.

5] Finally, even those who accept the death penalty, who would endorse capital punishment by burning? A painful and gruesome death. This is clearly not the Word of God.

So if it is not the Word of God, what is it? I can think of only two other possibilities: the Word of Man, or the Word of Satan.

It would seem that you are suggesting that parts of the bible are inspired by God, the parts that you agree with, and parts, the parts that you disagree with, are inspired by Satan. With this in mind doesn't it seem more logical to you that the Bible wasn't inspired at all, that it was fabricated in the minds of men?

[fm93]

The problem we recognise in our society with incestuous (or step-incestuous) relationships, and with paedophilic relationships, is often the child "consents", in the sense of agreeing, saying yes, not resisting, etc. But we don't accept that consent as valid, because we recognise the kinds of pressure and manipulation that can be present in that situation, which makes the apparent consent non-genuine. So if his step-daughter "consents", most people today would consider that consent of questionable value. But undoubtedly, people back then had far less awareness of the psychology of sexual abuse than we do today - so I imagine if this law was followed, stepdaughters would have been executed who in today's thinking were not freely and fully and genuinely consenting to a relationship with their stepfather, just having been manipulated and pressured into doing so.

You can imagine all you want, but you still have no hard data to support the plausibility of those speculations. For one thing, it was usually women who watched over children, so if anything, the mother would've had more of an influence over a daughter's way of thinking than the father would've had.

I don't believe in moral relativism. The moral laws that apply today applied equally back then. If you want to use that argument to justify this verse of the Bible, I'm sure a Muslim could use it equally well to justify many of the gruesome things in the Quran and Hadith.

I'm not talking about moral relativism. I'm in fact requesting moral absolutism. All you've presented so far is that you and some other people personally think capital punishment is gruesome and barbaric. You've given no objective reason that shows why or how capital punishment is morally wrong. What you seem to be doing (declaring that something's morally wrong because you feel that it is) actually is more like moral relativism. What if everyone in the world besides you believed that, say, boiling in a pot of oil was humane and moral? You need to have objective reasons for evaluating how just or humane those laws are, not just "Ever since I was a child I've known in my heart that it's wrong" or "most people think it's barbaric."

Does the death penalty (in modern or ancient forms) deter crime? It doesn't. There is no scientific evidence that deterrence works - a few studies have reached that conclusion, but those studies had many flaws. Facts about Deterrence and the Death Penalty

Your link is laughable. It doesn't present any objective evidence that deterrence doesn't work--it just says that a bunch of criminologists think it might not work. There's still no empirical evidence that that opinion is actually true. Furthermore, it addresses only modern-day capital punishment. But I actually agree that modern-day Western capital punishment probably doesn't effectively deter--my whole point is that in the ancient Near East, it would've been effective. And from what we know about human behavior, there is good reason to think that something like stoning (in a collectivist honor-shame culture like ancient Israel) would've worked. People are more likely to avoid harmful behaviors when they directly observe the effects up close and personal--and I doubt capital punishment could've seemed any more close and personal than when the ancients had to administer it themselves. That was the whole point--certain behaviors were deemed to be threats to society, so society had to rid itself of the threats and take part in the punishing.

One of the reasons that parallels to the modern-day society don't work is that the culture is different. We're individualists. Our welfare and survival aren't so heavily contingent on the assistance and cooperation of others, and we don't favor our identity with close-knit social groups moreso than our personal identity. Thus, that which threatened society back then wouldn't be as much of a threat today, and there are safer measures to take against them. So I wouldn't advocate capital punishment for today's society, but it would've been more useful back then, which is what I've been saying.

[ZackMartin]

It would seem that you are suggesting that parts of the bible are inspired by God, the parts that you agree with, and parts, the parts that you disagree with, are inspired by Satan. With this in mind doesn't it seem more logical to you that the Bible wasn't inspired at all, that it was fabricated in the minds of men?

If God exists, and if people speak truth of God, who can say that is not revelation? It certainly could be.

[ZackMartin]

You can imagine all you want, but you still have no hard data to support the plausibility of those speculations. For one thing, it was usually women who watched over children, so if anything, the mother would've had more of an influence over a daughter's way of thinking than the father would've had.

Do you have any hard data for the idea that what I've described couldn't have happened, or didn't happen? If we don't know, we don't know; in the absence of evidence, the best course of action is to suspend judgement, and say that either could have happened.

I'm not talking about moral relativism. I'm in fact requesting moral absolutism. All you've presented so far is that you and some other people personally think capital punishment is gruesome and barbaric. You've given no objective reason that shows why or how capital punishment is morally wrong.

Reasons for the immorality of capital punishment.

1) The general rule, acknowledged by all, is that killing another human being is wrong. That is not to say that the rule is without exceptions; however, if one wishes to propose an exception, then the burden is on the proposer of the exception to justify it, not on those who reject the exception to refute it. Thus the burden is on capital punishment supporters to prove the morality of capital punishment, not on its opponents to prove its immorality.

2) The risk of executing the innocent is very hard to eliminate, and is unacceptable. While you can point to people of unquestionable guilt, no societies which have used the death penalty with any frequency have restricted themselves to only those cases.

3) "Two wrongs don't make a right". Killing murderers doesn't bring the victims back.

4) Advocates of capital punishment ignore the harm it causes to the family and friends of the condemned. Faced with one widow, they want to make two. Faced with a child without a parent, they want to take another child's parent away. Faced with a parent losing their child, they want to cause another parent to lose their child also.

5) "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". You would not want to be executed, so you should not execute others either.

6) Google "families of victims opposed to the death penalty". You will find a group of people far nobler than all the supporters of death penalty in the world put together.

7) Jesus said, Turn the other cheek. Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, wrote the following in The Satanic Bible: A Satanist practices the motto, "If a man smite thee on one cheek, smash him on the other!" Let no wrong go unredressed. Whose words do death penalty supporters follow?

7) Human justice is inherently imperfect. We should stop trying to play God, and leave justice up to God. In this life, we should simply focus on the prevention of future harm.

8) No legitimate end for society is served by the death penalty. The sole legitimate purpose of imprisonment is to keep society safe from those who are dangerous. Killing people does not make society any safer than imprisoning them does.

9) Those who claim that deterrence works have the burden of proving that (see 1). They have not done so.

10) If you support death penalty for murder, why not stop at one crime? How to draw the line between crimes deserving of death and those that aren't? You can't

11) If you support the death penalty, why stop at relatively clean and painless means such as lethal injection? Why not execute people in human-sized deep fryers, or vats of nitric acid? But if those methods are wrong as too painful, what about those who criticise lethal injection as potentially painful?

What you seem to be doing (declaring that something's morally wrong because you feel that it is) actually is more like moral relativism.

That "feeling" is called conscience. Conscience is important.

What if everyone in the world besides you believed that, say, boiling in a pot of oil was humane and moral? You need to have objective reasons for evaluating how just or humane those laws are, not just "Ever since I was a child I've known in my heart that it's wrong" or "most people think it's barbaric."

Arguments given above. But conscience is still important, and very often conscience exists prior to arguments.

Your link is laughable. It doesn't present any objective evidence that deterrence doesn't work--it just says that a bunch of criminologists think it might not work. There's still no empirical evidence that that opinion is actually true.

People who claim that deterrence works have the burden of proving their claim. You haven't done so.

And you ignore that the study wasn't just asking criminologists for their uninformed opinions, it was asking them for their opinions based on their familiarity with the many empirical studies done on this topic.

Furthermore, it addresses only modern-day capital punishment. But I actually agree that modern-day Western capital punishment probably doesn't effectively deter--my whole point is that in the ancient Near East, it would've been effective. And from what we know about human behavior, there is good reason to think that something like stoning (in a collectivist honor-shame culture like ancient Israel) would've worked. People are more likely to avoid harmful behaviors when they directly observe the effects up close and personal--and I doubt capital punishment could've seemed any more close and personal than when the ancients had to administer it themselves.

You complain about me speculating, then you start doing the exact same thing. You complain that my evidence is weak - where is yours?

That was the whole point--certain behaviors were deemed to be threats to society, so society had to rid itself of the threats and take part in the punishing.

Speculation without evidence.

One of the reasons that parallels to the modern-day society don't work is that the culture is different. We're individualists. Our welfare and survival aren't so heavily contingent on the assistance and cooperation of others, and we don't favor our identity with close-knit social groups moreso than our personal identity. Thus, that which threatened society back then wouldn't be as much of a threat today, and there are safer measures to take against them. So I wouldn't advocate capital punishment for today's society, but it would've been more useful back then, which is what I've been saying.

More speculation without evidence. To quote you, "You can imagine all you want, but you still have no hard data to support the plausibility of those speculations." If that is true of me, how is it not equally true of you?

[JimL]

If God exists, and if people speak truth of God, who can say that is not revelation? It certainly could be.

If you believe that knowledge is somehow obtained or revealed to us in a way other than through our senses, then yes it could be, but unless it is revealed to you that way, why should you believe it.

[robrecht]

If you believe that knowledge is somehow obtained or revealed to us in a way other than through our senses, then yes it could be, but unless it is revealed to you that way, why should you believe it.

You might enjoy reading the basically empiricist Aristotelian epistemology of Thomas Aquinas, even and especially with respect to the limitations of our human understanding of revelation.

[ZackMartin]

If you believe that knowledge is somehow obtained or revealed to us in a way other than through our senses, then yes it could be, but unless it is revealed to you that way, why should you believe it.

Let's say I believe I have received a revelation of sorts - that if I believe certain things are true, that could be because God has personally chosen to reveal them to me. If I then find an ancient book recounting the same ideas, is it an implausible conclusion that God chose to reveal the ideas to people back then in a similar way to which he is revealing them to me today?

[shunyadragon]

Let's say I believe I have received a revelation of sorts - that if I believe certain things are true, that could be because God has personally chosen to reveal them to me. If I then find an ancient book recounting the same ideas, is it an implausible conclusion that God chose to reveal the ideas to people back then in a similar way to which he is revealing them to me today?

An unlikely valid argument for anecdotal coincidence. Simply be the nature of us being human we can come up with similar conclusions and knowledge about anything in different cultures, times and places in the world. Humans share similar brains and experiences.

[JimL]

Let's say I believe I have received a revelation of sorts - that if I believe certain things are true, that could be because God has personally chosen to reveal them to me. If I then find an ancient book recounting the same ideas, is it an implausible conclusion that God chose to reveal the ideas to people back then in a similar way to which he is revealing them to me today?

Well, it depends upon what kind of ideas your talking about, If you are talking about some general knowledge about the natural world, lets just say that it is more plausible that you had an intuition that turned out to be correct. But intuitions are ideas formed of things already observed, already known, so there is no need to infer transcendant revelation as the source.

[ZackMartin]

An unlikely valid argument for anecdotal coincidence. Simply be the nature of us being human we can come up with similar conclusions and knowledge about anything in different cultures, times and places in the world. Humans share similar brains and experiences.

I'm starting from these assumptions: God exists. Humans have beliefs about God. Some of those beliefs will be true. God is the cause of all situations and events, so if humans have true beliefs about God, God is the cause of them having those true beliefs.

Do you accept those assumptions? I know you accept as least "God exists", but I'm not sure about the rest.

If God causes someone to have a true belief about God, does that not count as revelation?

So if my beliefs about God are true, and I didn't directly rely on anyone else's views (the Bible, or churches, or philosophers, or so on) to reach them - of course all these things influenced my views about God, but I don't think they were decisive in my believing what I believe - then God revealed them to me. And if God revealed them to me, then he could equally have revealed them to people other than me, and if I find others reporting revelations similar to my own, then if I believe my revelations are true revelations, then why should I not believe that theirs are true also.

[ZackMartin]

Well, it depends upon what kind of ideas your talking about, If you are talking about some general knowledge about the natural world, lets just say that it is more plausible that you had an intuition that turned out to be correct. But intuitions are ideas formed of things already observed, already known, so there is no need to infer transcendant revelation as the source.

I wasn't talking about "general knowledge about the natural world" though. I was talking about knowledge of God.

Of course, if you don't believe in God, "knowledge of God" might not make much sense to you. But at the same time, you can explore the potential consequences of an idea without accepting the idea itself. You can lack any belief in God, or even positively deny God's existence, yet still be able to explore what consequences would hold were that idea true.