OT: Bible Discussion (Split from Real World Sensitivities)

[JaghataiKhan]

again I'm not really saying ppl should stop believing

It's OK as long as they don't worship the OT God. It is like Khorne! And shed that "I don't impose my faith,but..." face, any logical,rational human being would blanch at these verses...

[lch]

Originally Posted by Tifone

I know. Many people don't actually know the religious book, it's ok of course, but what surprises me are religious people which don't know what they really believe in.
Don't misunderstand me! I talk with many people about their religion, they say they believe in the Bible and for me it is really no problem, far from being a problem, let's be friends maybe 75% of my friends are catholic btw

The problem is people who take the words of the bible literally. As for me, I know that there are chapters in the bible that I don't accept as valid, same as I don't take what's in the Qur'an as valid information. Some parts in the bible are downright crazy. I acknowledge a lot of things in the old testament and since I'm a Protestant I accept what's in the evangelists books, but I don't acknowledge some of the shorter and crazier chapters of the bible. That is from other authors, and what they wrote is their own view on things.

[thejeff]

Not to dispute you on the animal rights protesters, I have no idea what's been happening in Oxford, but what type of violent protests are we talking about? How many people have been killed? How many bombs?

I mean, if we're talking about "similar hatred and violence" to religion? How many animal liberation wars have been fought?

Nationalism, I'll be quite happy to concede to the original poster. It's all really just different ways for people to choose sides and pretend they're better than those other people so they can take their stuff. (Or for demagogues to convince them to gain a following.)

[Tifone]

Also, that nationalism is a prerogative of "secular world", sorry to say but it's just absolutely storically untrue.

Surely there were a lot of non-religious dispotic nationalist governments which committed lots of atrocities (Russia, Cambodia).

But also that two of the most terrible nationalist dictatorships of modern times, the German nazi one and the Italian fascist one (one of the first acts of Mussolini was the Patti Lateranensi, to make the Christian Catholic the religion of state), were both ruled by proven religious Duces who actually claimed many times to be acting on God's will.

This of couse proves, as SlipperyJim says, that if one wants to commit evil it can do it using religion too -it would be very false to claim Hitler and Mussolini did their crimes BECAUSE they were religious, as it is false to say so about STALIN and POL POT doing them BECAUSE they were atheists-, but it even disproves the claim that nationalism is something secular. At all.

Again, peace (sounds ridiculous maybe, but it's my sincere wish and also my best try not to seem a satanic jerk every time I debate on someone's religion )

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Tifone

Surely there were a lot of non-religious dispotic nationalist governments which committed lots of atrocities (Russia, Cambodia).

/Cough
Was it Russia or Cambodia that dropped nuclear bombs on civilians?... Or maybe they started Opium Wars after Chinese government tried to protect its citizens against drug dealers?..
/cough
Lets keep to the topic, please, which is religion.

[Tifone]

You can think that, and I think too that a perfect, all-knowing, all-believing God would not write verses so full of hate.

But I just think it's not right to claim I'm smarter than the millions (billions?) of Jews and Christians around the world, because I'm not of course.

I just hope they read their holy books with attention, and decide if it's right to follow what the religious leaders say them to do on the basis of those texts, and if they believe that the perfect God that they are worship is supposed to have written or directly inspired such things.

Peace (sorry, it's an habit now )

[licker]

The bible is pro family????

chuckle...

That's rich, verily.

Prostituting ones daughters, sacrificing ones sons, god killing all first borns, ...

Yes, how pro family that is.

The bible is not pro family in the slightest, it is pro god. It is also full of contradictions and misleading statements which can be interpreted in any number of ways, and often are for individuals own uses or personal bents. I'm sure this is neither new nor interesting to any christians though, just as christians are not new or interesting to most agnostics.

[Nikelaos]

I think it is wrong for people to pick out little qoutes to make judgements, being totally conservative here, the bible was written by several people and their scriptures were all written at different times, even the 4 gospels were written with a 30/40 year gap between each one and as such each chapter of the bible will have the individual ideas of a single individual and is insufficient in my opinion to lift an entire faith but instead the fundamentals of the entire collection of scriptures should just be followed.

i myself am a catholic but i feel sometimes it is unsafe to believe little more than there is a god and that i should live a good, honest life wether or not there is a god.

also to clarify i believe most christians take the old testament to be little more than a fable, the fundamental values are accepted but the stories aren't necesarrily taken literally as they are written in the bible.

for instance moses didn't make miracles in my opinion, it was simply scientific knowledge, everyone who has made the effort to read the bible should know that with most of moses miracles the pharoahs advisors recreated them on a smaller scale, explaining to pharoah that moses was a fake and telling him not to release the isrealites. A good example would be the parting of the sea, moses didn't really part the sea and it was more of a large inland lake than an ocean, the lake was and i believe still is connected to a tidal river and so the water level would drop with the tides revealing a landbridge, the israelites would cross and the egyptians would be cut off from them completely when the tides rose.

off course this is only an educated guess on my part but i hope it may clear some things up.

[licker]

So you just pick what you want to take literally and what you don't?

And you accept that even though there are more gospels than what are included in the bible that the others are not important/relevant to the religion?

Look, I have nothing against christians (or any religion), but it amuses me the leaps of logic many people make in trying to make their decision to believe in fairy tales palatable to themselves.

[Agema]

Originally Posted by licker

So you just pick what you want to take literally and what you don't?

And you accept that even though there are more gospels than what are included in the bible that the others are not important/relevant to the religion?

Look, I have nothing against christians (or any religion), but it amuses me the leaps of logic many people make in trying to make their decision to believe in fairy tales palatable to themselves.

I might suggest that saying you have nothing against the religious is a lot more convincing when you don't then patronisingly belittle them for illogicality and believing fairy tales.

I'm an atheist too for the record. But I have plenty of friends and family who are religious, some are smarter than me and many of their detractors, and I think all deserve better than casual mockery.

* * *

I think many atheists are a little disingenuous with "Christians pick and choose" arguments. The Bible is and always was considered a book that works on many levels. Biblical literalism - much of what causes problems in the modern world in my view - was popularised by elements of Protestantism 1500 years after Christ. Even today it is only prevalent in Protestants, and a minority at that, albeit a minority with plenty of money and will to make a disproportionately big noise about their beliefs.

Someone (Slippery Jim?) said that Jesus is the lens through which the Bible should be read. This reflects an important ideal that has existed in Christianity since its earliest day recognised by earliest Christian thinkers like Origen or St. Augustine: that not every last bit of the Bible, especially the O.T., should be carried out to the letter, or is an absolute word of God. Much of it allegorical, inaccurate interpretations by men with primitive understanding, simple historical record or whatever else.