Florida couple uses Bible to justify the sexual abuse of teenage girl left in their care.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

A 21-year-old Indiana woman has accused a couple who she lived with in Port St. Lucie, FL of physically and sexually abusing her for five years and using scripture from the Christian Bible’s Old Testament to justify it. 

WPTV News reported that the accuser says that she was sent to live with Rob and Marie Johnson after the death of her mother nine years ago. The then-13-year-old was sexually abused by Rob Johnson virtually from the day she arrived in the home. 

Rob and Marie Johnson reportedly believe in Old Testament law regarding marriage, under which a man can have many wives who are ultimately his property. The girl was ordered to call Jeff “Master” and to submit to his and Marie’s sexual advances whenever they ordered her to. 

The Johnsons reportedly preyed on the young girl’s fear of being abandoned by telling her that if she wanted to be part of their family, she had to have sex with them. 

“If she did not, the threat was that she would be turned over to state custody,” Herrington said. 

Marie and Rob Johnson are charged with two felony counts of sexual assault against a child. They were arrested on Tuesday and released on bond Wednesday morning.

Isn't it great how religion can be used to justify just about every terrible thing you want to do?

And that boys and girls is why we do not base our laws on biblical teachings. 

Hey you know those camels referred to in the Old Testament? Yeah that's not possible.

Courtesy of HuffPo:  

Researchers Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef from Tel Aviv University have discovered what may be a discrepancy in the history laid out in the Bible. 

Using carbon-dating to determine the age of the oldest-known camel bones, the researchers determined that camels were first introduced to Israel around the 9th century BCE. 

The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament refers to camels as pack animals as early as the story of Abraham. Though there is no archaeological evidence of Abraham's life, many in the religious and scientific communities, including Chabad and the Associates For Biblical Research, cite the 20th century BCE as his time of birth. If the new evidence is correct, however, this suggests discrepancies between the Bible and human history as explained by science. 

The researchers scoured ancient copper production sites in the Aravah Valley, where camel bones were only present in sites active in the last third of the 10 century and the 9th century BCE. Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef write in their report: 

"[The camel bones] demonstrate a sudden appearance of camels at the site, following a major change in the organization of production in the entire region." 

This suggests that camels were introduced to the region abruptly, perhaps by Egyptians along Mediterranean trade routes. 

Dr. Robert Harris, an Associate Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, says this shouldn't come as a shock to the theological community. 

“While these findings may have been published recently, those of us on the inside have known the essential facts for a generation now," Harris conveyed to HuffPost Religion through associates at JTS. "This is just one of many anachronisms in the Bible, but these do not detract from its sanctity, because it is a spiritual source, not a historical one.”

Wait, NOT a historical source?

Did anybody tell Ken Ham that?

I mean if the mention of camels in a story that came from this region in the 9th century BCE is an impossibility doesn't that raise serious questions about how seriously we can take ANY information provided by this book?

What am I saying? If these people were not there to actually SEE that there were no camels wandering around at that time then Ham will never believe there were no camels wandering around at that time.

That is the sad state we find ourselves in today.

One side of the debate is combing the earth and stars searching for evidence of their origins. And the other already "knows" the answers to all possible questions and is refusing to look at anything new which might prove their ignorance.

I think this is pretty indicative of most Christians that argue for their religion here on IM.

However what cannot be ignored is that Jesus was a rabbi, who was in fact teaching from the Old Testament. (Or as it was referred to then, simply "The Scriptures.")

As much as modern Christians might want to move away from the primitive guidelines and fables represented in the Old Testament, they really cannot. At least not unless they want to identify Jesus as nothing more than a philosopher and remove all of his miraculous abilities and identification as the Messiah whose birth was predicted in Scripture?

I'd be cool with that. What do you say?

Comedian Lewis Black explains the Old Testament. Warning NSFW language.

Lewis Black is hands down my favorite comedian, and I have listened or watched as many of his performances as I can find.

Here Lewis is using humor in order to explain something to which I think most Fundamentalist Christians, like Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Sarah Palin should be forced to listen.

I am not sure that Lewis speaks for ALL Jewish people, but I am fairly confident that he speaks for most of the really smart ones.