THEWULFMAN wrote:They were lacking numbers by my standards. And more importantly, I want you to start posting the exact lines from the bible you refer to, so I can better understand what you mean.
Num 1:45-46
And all those registered of the sons of Israel according to the house of their fathers from twenty years old upward, everyone going out to the army in Israel, came to be. Yes, all those registered came to be six hundred and three thousand five hundred and fifty"
An army of 603550 when the exodus happened, this is not the women children and elders.
Considering that there are more women then men in the world and in those times only men were allowed to fight that number would at least be doubled alongside the children and elders
I hear estimates of over 2M, which if it's anything near that, then i would doubt they were lacking people, considering this is only Israel we're talking about.
FYI the following is the lack of time to verify other sources but here goes:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_percent_of_the_world_is_gayThis would "assume" that the amount of gay people in the world lies in between 0.6 to 5.4 percent
I doubt that even the highest possible percentage would have affected that stage of Israels population, considering that in many foreign countries other then Israel Homosexuality was indeed permitted.
THEWULFMAN wrote:Right, that story. Of which we only know so much about. What type of equipment did the Midianites have? How large was their army? How organized was it? Sure it's easy to think them big and powerful if they're just terrorizing the population of Israel whom are largely unarmed. Point is, that's not going to win me over.
Considering it was 135000(if memory serves) against 300 they could have been naked and won under normal circumstances(this ain't sparta Lol)
Wasn't king David in chronicles 21: 1-10 counting the fighting men not putting his trust in God and afterwards seeing how he sinned by trusting in men and not God?
Meaning again that the numbers never mathered.
THEWULFMAN wrote:Manpower is important when you deal with things like The Black Death which killed millions and millions of people. The number killed during the plague far exceeded the world population in biblical times.
True, but then did Israel meet with such plagues? they had their health laws for a reason.
It's late for me to look it up now but i recall either a book or an article with an example of a mayor who applied the jewish health laws to his town, cleaning the garbage, making sure people wouldn't "Do their busness" in public etc, with that gone so were many of the rats, meaning the flees that carried them, resulting in only having 2% of the town ill.
It ended up in said man being blaimed(as one of many) for initiating the plague seeing as his town wasn't being affected
If the health laws of the bible were applied, why would they fear this? the bible doesn't mention any mayor plagues as far as i recall
THEWULFMAN wrote:So God thinks Homosexuality is icky. Tough. That's not a good enough reason to hate it.
So the only reason why God hates homosexuality is because he thinks it's disgusting. This is exactly why I say "Question everything" because if you blindly follow the rules of your government/religion/etc, people will manipulate and you'll do things for no good reason at all.
If God truly thinks homosexuality is disgusting, then God needs to grow up. Which, in all fairness, I believe he did. God changed a lot between the Old Testement and the New Testement. He stopped being so much of a [Richard], for starters. Which is part of why I think Christianity overtook Judaism in popularity, it's a lot easier to get behind Jesus' teachings than that of the Old Testament God's.
That actually brings something to mind. If God hates homosexuality so much, why wasn't it part of the 10 Commandments? Which for the record I'm all behind, there's nothing bad in it at all and I believe it's possibly the only religious text anyone needs to really care about.
Well it doesn't mean that if more and more people start doing it, it makes it right.
The view of the world changes radically, why would God's change? why would he change for us? what's the point of a law if it's changed because everyone breaks it?
Also, if the mind on said subject would have changed why didn't it in the NT? said testament was made a few thousands of years later, things like polygamy, and being "clean" but that never did
THEWULFMAN wrote:By the way MT, I enjoy these debates. It teaches me the arguments I need to use when discussing these things and helps me learn all around. You're by and large the person whom I debate with the most.
I concur, it refreshes my memory and keeps me a bit busy
MT