Thou shalt not make graven images

Statues and images help focus the mind to worship. They inspire devotion. In this regard they're allowed. Unless you'd rather people be spiritually dead.

But that's a baptist church

It's still not.

All religions that don't allow idolatry stagnate. You need a visual symbol to invoke spiritual feelings.

Glad Catholics and the Orthyodox found a loophole because otherwise their they wouldn't have aided in the revolution of western art and aesthetics,

...

&humanities belongs in /b/ with the other argumentative retards.

>You need a visual symbol to invoke spiritual feelings.
wtf

>Baptist

It's a psychological thing, the reason seeing a landscape or clouds or the night sky feels deep and meaningful.

>Draw a fish
>Go to Hell
Woooooooow

Islam? Growing fast as fuck.

I'm not religious, but I get why people need symbols. It's a mix of beauty and symbolism that invokes certain emotions. Think about the time when you were a kid and it was Friday the 13th and you were convinced that good luck charm would work. You probably had a certain tingly sensation as your mind put emphasis on the property of the charm.

It's the same property, we are capable of emphasizing a property that isn't there on an object, we place a "spiritual" emphasis on it.

This is what a temple is, a sacred place. We build these beautiful high quality places in part as some sort of message to the divine. You go in and pretend you're psychically speaking out to another force and the temple is mentally establishes a conduit to the divine.

It's a convergent thing among almost all religions. What happened is Jews got REALLY REALLY salty over the Babylon and hated their neighbors. Praying to statues was a common thing in the area and a negative stereotype was placed on people that they were savages who literally believed the statues were their gods. So in an act of defiance they declared that idolatry was evil and that their god was great that nothing could depict him.

Then Christian came and sort of circumvented it with the cross, when Europe adopted the religion they further ignored the rage against Idolatry but really only pinning against pagans. When Islam formed it pretty much brought in back in the most aggressive way.

It's still stagnating, it's like religious cancer. Also they circumvent it with their re-purposed McTemple and Black rock.

>growing
>stagnating
What?

I'm obviously not referring to size.

To what then? You're being too vague.

>idolatry
>Catholic and Orthodox

Iconography. Idolatry is Latria given to Idols, Iconography is in the most basic, Dulia given to the memory of the likenesses in the image.

culturally. Idoltry encourages an increase in physical expressions of culture. This in turn leads to enlightenment periods which lead to great changes for the benefit of civilization. People strive the build the greatest beacons for their gods and to create more extravagant designs you need some ingenuity.

Islam fucking kills it's scholars every century or two years because they start thinking past the mindset of being a goat herder

On the other end of the spectrum, Orthodox jews are getting so annoying that even your average Israeli is starting to hate them.

That's a loophole. It's the same shit. It's like saying Catholics venerate Mary and don't worship her. Unless you can enter the mind of a catholic and see that he is focusing his prayers and spirit upon god with Mary their waving him on then you can't actually differentiate between the two.

Muslims think a SINGLE depiction of their prophet is Idolatry, the christian definition has been reduced to "statue of pagan god I don't believe in"

Who cares about culture

>Who cares about culture
Go to bed Horkheimer

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That's not even really scratching the surface.

>4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

In other words any statues, pictures, photos, images etc of any kind were banned. The Jews of Jesus' time were almost completely iconoclastic so it is fair to say he would have been as well.

>That's a loophole. It's the same shit.
So you having a photo of your dead grandma or pic related is idolatry?

>It's like saying Catholics venerate Mary and don't worship her.
Because veneration is literally the above two examples.

>Unless you can enter the mind of a catholic and see that he is focusing his prayers and spirit upon god with Mary their waving him on

That's literally what we are taught to think when praying the Rosary tho.

youtube.com/watch?v=clHQWqH09FM

What does "graven" mean? Is it just drawing?

>thou shalt not kill
God goes full Pol Pot in the OT
Christians support death penalty

>thou shalt not steal
But it's OK to take land from heathens

>thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife
Porn sells best in christian communities

Why are christians not christians?

Specifically etching.

Really, the graven image bit isn't the focal point of the commandment, the part after it is.

ty

>or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth

But this means you can't draw anything ever

Yes. That is correct.

And?

Or write anything, if you take letters and numbers to be the visual likeness of sounds...

Pretty sure onomatopoeias are allowed,don't dilute the point with silliness.

My grandmother doesn't hold spiritual significance to the cosmology we're arguing about outside of being a soul placed in one of the two or three afterlife

That pictures doesn't hold any spiritual significance either in relevance to your cosmology, though there obviously is a similarity between national symbols and religious symbols. The difference is religion often takes the role as being the epicenter of ones reality and their idea of how the universe works, it's different.

Veneration is a loophole, you're argue that god is the power source and the being is the messenger, but how is this different from Hermes and Zeus? What you've done is simply alter the nature of Idolatry to refer specifically as non-christian worship through imagery when idolatry is use of ANY graven image.

No ones buys that the emote of spiritual ritual involving Catholicisms relationship with saints and Christ is not a form of Idolatry, hence why Protestants were quick to call you out.

You aren't allowed to draw anything.
Letters are drawn representations of sounds.
Numbers are drawn representations of amounts.
Therefore numbers and letters aren't allowed.

How is it silly?

You willing to bet your immortal soul on that?

The latria-dulia distinction is unbiblical

The people that wrote the bible didn't have any concept of modern scientific understanding of sound.

I would quite happily bet my "immortal soul" for a chicken drumstick.

The joke here is the catholics think I'm some salty protestant.

They get triggered by that age old argument because the jewish parts of the bible hate something they're guilty of.

But I'm clearly not a Protestant and my point is the easement of Idolatry rules allowed for Europe to developed a superior cultural identity that improved theory society.

Outside of Lutherans most protestants are stagnating just as bad as Orthodox Jews and Muslims. They need to get over ancient desert asshurt and accept that physical embodiments of worship make a superior religion.

As long as you don't worship it it's fine. Unless you're a Muslim. Then you'll go to hell.

You don't need a modern understanding of sound to know how writing works. Namely that it is drawn sounds.

New International Version
So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

>Not mentioning the rest of the context.

"I am YHWH thy God, who have brought thee forth out of the land of Mitsráyim, out of the house of servants. Thou shalt not have other gods besides me. Thou shalt not make to thee an image, or any form that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth. Thou shalt not bow thyself down to them, nor be led to serve them; for I, YHWH thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of fathers upon sons, unto three generations and unto four, of them that hate me;"

And He Called (Leviticus) 19:4
"Do not turn unto things of nougt, and molten gods shall ye not make to yourselves; I YHWH am your God."

26:1
"Ye shall not make unto you idols, neither image, nor pillar shall ye set up for yourselves, nor sculptured stone shall ye place in your land, to bow yourselves down thereunto; for I YHWH am your God."

Clearly these commands were made with the intent to keep people from making representational idols to worship.

>easement of Idolatry rules

God approved? You sure?

Don't you know? People back then were dumb and didn't know what sound was, or how it worked.

We're far more evolved now.

You seem to be overestimating the understanding of primitives. They didn't understand "sound" as a physical "thing" that you could commit idolatry by drawing.

You are talking about people that invented the concept of a "soul" to explain breathing.

It was all magic to them.

So how do you explain the creation of writing in the first place then?

Jesus died so that means I can do whatever I want.

What? You'll need to expand on what you actually mean by that.

Listening to YHWH before he settled down and had a kid isn't a wise idea, he was just a young storm god craving foreskin and wanting to overthrow El, he didn't know any better.

Did writing come about as a way of recording spoken sounds, or did everyone just start drawing squiggles and lines and decide that the one that looks like a tent with a line through it represents "ay" for shits and giggles?

That was for a specific purpose it wasn't for worship.

>the old covenant (OT) is broken
are you an orthodox jew? who cares about the ten commandments, or the old testament - the Lord says if you love him you will (attempt to) keep his commandments, but when you fail like all shitty humans do.. all you need to do is ask for forgiveness.

But the original discussion was about idolatry as I pointed out primitives didn't understand sounds as a physical "thing" in the way we would understand it.

Saying "how did writing come about then?" is a complete non-sequitur.

I hate this about Christianity.
Jews on sinning
>Don't do it
Muslims on sinning
>Don't do it
Christians on sinning
>Just ask for forgiveness lmao

It's a small wonder the Christian world is a moral abyss.

Humanity lacks the ability to hold on to sins for more than week unless they've very severe, even ancient people knew that eventually most shit is forgiven, we don't have the attention spans or energy to care forever about whether or not someone stole something.

The goal is always to reduce issues and make it known that they are wrong, not an eternal punishment or else option.

Jews and muslims kill over the simplest shit, their mortality is degenerate.

>has no understanding of Abrahamic religions
Grow your sideburns out then and avoid wearing clothes with a wool and linen mix.

To which I ask, if they didn't see sounds as a physical thing, how did writing come about, if not as a physical way of recording a sound? They either didn't see it that way and writing spontaneously poofed into existence, or people sat down and decided that this picture means this sound and that picture means that sound.

Either way, it's still drawing, therefore forbidden.

Christian theology knows that only a few selected people can stay sinless. For the average human being that's impossible.

You don't need to fully understand something as a physical "thing" to be able to construct words about it.

>Either way, it's still drawing, therefore forbidden.

Not at all.

Nope. Just one. Jesus.

How is it not drawing? When you put a pen to paper, do the words just magically flow out and appear on the page?

You sure? Seems like mocking God is a bad idea to me.

I want you to realize that betting your soul is something you will regret saying later if you have a little of love for God left in you. Don't behave like that.

Okay, canaanite. Whatever you say. Keep reminding people why God ordered you people scrubbed off the face of the earth.

Do you think you live 1 second without sinning?

If so, you don't know what sinning is.

Yeah, I was about to add that even the saints aren't free from sin (namely the Original Sin)

Stop being a deliberately obtuse faggot for the sake of a shitty bait argument on Veeky Forums. Writing is by definition a graven image that represents an object, an abstract depiction but a depiction none the less, ergo using the type of strict reading of the commandment you suggest would mean that even writing would be forbidden.

It is not a likeness of a physical entity.

Kek.

Don't make me call the Holy Spirit a dirty little faggot.

I'll show you marys some REAL fucking sinning, yeeeeehaw! *multiple gunshots*

You don't know what a saint is.

>Jews were in fact caananites too.

Oh the ironing.

Does it say "physical entity"?

Your intellectual maturity is that of a children if you think blasphemy against God makes you feel funny or smarter.

Nope; even children know better.

And now you realize why the Law of Sin and Death drives people mad.

They made rules like women couldn't wear a ribbon in their hair in the sabbath, because that would be bearing a burden. That if you dragged a stick behind you, you were plowing a field. If a grass seed stuck to your sandal, you were harvesting grains. All violations of the sabbath.

It was a system to drive men mad, and it worked as intended. It worked so well that its best and brightest adherents were within arm's reach of their God and could not see him.

That would likely lead to a transgression, or an iniquity. You are in a constant state of sin.

What are they?

Sound was not an object for the people that wrote the Old Testament. This has nothing to do with me being obtuse whatsoever and everything to do with you being unable to grasp that the people that wrote the OT had no fucking idea what sound was.

Yeah, they weren't. Nice try though. Not all semites have the same family trees.

Yawn.

?

All born again Christians are saints; all born again Christians have been sanctified by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Only God can make a person a saint, not papists. Never papists.

3 chapters in.

Genesis 3:8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

They literally believed in the same deities, genes can be disputed though.

>using a translation to make a point about whether or not Hebrews knew about sound

The original term used was "voice"

It is growing because of birth rates, I believe Christianity is still converting the most people.

Nope. You're just a dope.

El the main canaanite god, a demon, had three demon children Ba'al, Molech and Asheroth.

YHWH did not.

The God of the Jews was never the god of the Arabs; still isn't.

I've shown you the Meshe Stele a dozen times; apparently you're incapable of reading it.

Well yeah because I don't believe in sins.