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chowder66
(12,464 posts)
secondwind
(16,903 posts)
IrishAfricanAmerican
(4,507 posts)
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)
Ilsa
(64,516 posts)"Life ... finds a way."
IrishAfricanAmerican
(4,507 posts)Thomas Hurt
(13,992 posts)How are they supposed to maintain their faith and foist it off on others, if everyone relies on science or uses reason.
Action for action's sake, emotional knee jerk responses, dogma, censorship, and if necessary, oppression and violence, to make sure the Bible makes sense again.
lindysalsagal
(22,983 posts)At the time, it was good advice: don't eat the pork, buy from those you know, live according to laws instead of might, care for each other, feed the hungry, tend the sick. Back then it was meant to limit murder by saying you can't kill your slave, you can only beat him/her. It also said how to erect tents, and slaughter animals for offerings to "the god" (which was really dinner for the priests) and lots of other nonsense that we don't even understand.
A star in the east? hell, I don't even know which way is east, sitting here at my computer, let alone where a star should or shouldn't be in the sky!
The spherical earth revolves around the sun, seasons change because of the tilt of our planet and people get sick from mutations, viruses, bacteria and deterioration, not evil spirits.
The good never get a break, the bad never get what's coming to them, and morality is relative. Those 10 rules are still pretty good ones, and were life-changing 2000 years ago. But the rest of the voo-doo that comes with it, including hate and tribalism, is killing us.
Claire Oh Nette
(2,636 posts)never made the cognitive leap allowing them to understand nifty things like figures of speech, or metaphor, or analogy, or parable. Hence, their insistence on literalism. The "inerrant" word of God, as written in Aramaic and Greek, and translated by generations of men in to Latin, then Vulgar Latin, then the whole King James version, designed to connect James and the divine right of kings to God....
Then the million different American versions. Again, all the inerrant word.
Good one.
It's a metaphor: God is love.
hunter
(40,822 posts)... it can permeate anything, even secular culture.
Towlie
(5,580 posts)
←
That's the exchange between Pilate and Jesus where Jesus says "I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth hears my voice," and Pilate cleverly responds with the rhetorical question, "What is truth?"
It was almost like a Zen koan, and may have prompted Jesus to skeptically reconsider his own dubious claim. If he did and it was observed and recorded, that could explain why the record of the exchange is mysteriously truncated after Pilate's question.
But as far as the Bible making sense goes, yes, it does, if you read it as the imaginings of very primitive people who knew nothing of science. Their entire world was one big mystery, but if one wanted to be regarded as a wise man then one needed to come up with answers, and honestly answering questions with "I don't know" would not win one respect as a wise man, it would only prompt the questioner to walk away and look for someone who does have answers.
So even today when we have the Scientific Method of experiment, observation, evidence, peer review, and willingness to abandon or revise in light of new evidence; there remains in strong competition the Religious Method of making shit up. If it weren't for that then we might have been a millennium farther ahead than we are today.
So the only path to finding perfect sense in the Bible is to read it with a "what were they thinking" view. That will definitely lead to a more realistic understanding than if you read it with an irrational bias that it's somehow all true and that the parts that are undeniably false are really mere poetic metaphors.
kpete
(72,903 posts)for your thoughtful post speaking of truth - you nailed it:
there remains in strong competition the Religious Method of making shit up.
& so it goes..........................
calimary
(90,602 posts)
Bayard
(30,144 posts)That's the trouble. They never left.
dawg
(10,777 posts)written, said that his followers needed to follow two commandments only - to love God with all their hearts, and to love their neighbors as much as they loved themselves. Do those two things, and everything else would take care of itself.
But the religious leaders of the day didn't like what that young man had to say very much.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Matthew 5:17
dawg
(10,777 posts)“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
And that was the fulfillment. The hodgepodge of ancient "thou shalts" and "thou shat nots" were fulfilled by the teaching of the basis underpinning all the law (love for God and love for each other), and ultimately by the self-sacrificial act of the crucifiction.
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)Here's what's written:
There's a qualifier there, my dude.
Have we had our apocalypse yet? No? Then the Law still applies.
Also, it's worth noting here arguments as to whether or not the Law should be followed were still going strong at the Council of Jerusalem some twenty years after Jesus died. You'd think if the guy explicitly overturned Mosaic Law, somebody would have remembered it.
BamaRefugee
(3,899 posts)everything is obliterated, then what difference does it make??
Never got it, never will.
Celerity
(54,796 posts)
dawg
(10,777 posts)against him by the Pharisees. (For which he was eventually put to death.)
You are echoing those arguments, but it is very clear from the New Testament writings that Jesus's teachings were considered revolutionary and, to some degree, blasphemous at the time.
The early church struggled over these matters for years to come. In particular, there was much controversy over whether gentile Chrisitan men should be required to be circumcised.
But my interpretation is the long-held tradition of Christian faith from long before either of us were born. That's why Christians of all denominations eat pork, choose not to circumcise their sons, work on Saturday, and do any number of things that are technically violations of the Old Testament law but not violations of the law as fulfilled (because they aren't hurtful to others).
Act_of_Reparation
(9,116 posts)If the Pharisees felt threatened by Jesus' message, they would as a matter of course accuse him of violating some major tenet of the religion in an effort to discredit him. Their accusing him of breaking Mosaic Law doesn't mean he meant to get rid of it.
Yes, the early Church struggled with Mosaic law, which strongly suggests Jesus' position on the matter was at best unclear. Furthermore, there is no reason to suspect the outcome, decided at the Council of Jerusalem well after Jesus' death, was in any way reflective of Jesus' opinions on the matter. One could hardly be blamed for assuming the opposite, seeing as it was James the Just (a Judean Christian alleged to have been a "brother" of Christ... implying a close relationship at the very least) arguing for keeping the law.
Mariana
(15,630 posts)
TygrBright
(21,378 posts)Lunabell
(7,309 posts)He supposedly gave his beloved children free will and then when they chose to use it, he smites them all in a flood that murdered all except Noah and his family. The Abrahamic religions are ridiculous, full of holes and contradictions.
I'm glad I wised up and got out of that bullshit. I don't need fairytales to keep me moral.
packman
(16,296 posts)that's how those religious grifters make a living telling their sheep God explains everything and they are his messangers
PufPuf23
(9,918 posts)lindysalsagal
(22,983 posts)
seta1950
(972 posts)Justice matters.
(10,016 posts)Manipulation of the gullible masses for dollars and cents, pounds, shillings and PENCE. Sums it up.
ffr
(23,443 posts)Would any of it be self-evident? No. Because to take anything from either requires being taught and the need to believe in fantasy. There has to be that bridge of knowledge, especially with all the evidence we have today to the contrary.
hunter
(40,822 posts)... and I read their Bible cover-to-cover as a seven year old.
Fortunately my mom was booted out of that religion a few years later because she couldn't stay out of politics.
We all live in a world of fantasy, otherwise we'd probably all choose to extinguish ourselves because this universe is a harsh place. Survival is written in our genes.
What makes life worthwhile is that we can choose our own paths -- the intellectual vs. the anti-intellectual, responsible personal freedom vs. authoritarianism.
Faux pas
(16,511 posts)my thoughts exactly, since I was in my early 20s. 
gulliver
(14,057 posts)I often find myself longing for the days before the Macintosh
brewens
(15,359 posts)their hands after they took a shit.
Farmer-Rick
(12,773 posts)You could die from the smallest cut on your finger and they threw their unwanted newborns on the trash heap or river.
And today we are supposed to use these backwards and barbaric people's words as if they knew more than all of us.
brewens
(15,359 posts)of indoctrination and control that has been worked on from the time people could communicate effectively. Not much of it was really new at all. Even what Christians consider bizarre cults like the Minoan God king had it's version of the Ten Commandments. It just never applied to the ruling class.
Thank you Kpete
grantcart
(53,061 posts)Full disclosure: Went to Seminary but not Christian or Jewish
1) Slavery
Yes there was slavery at the time of the Old Testament. The Jews were in fact slaves at the time of the writing (During the Babylonian captivity). The Pentateuch is in fact a brilliant story of liberation from slavery written by slaves during slavery.
2) Belief in magic
Very true, belief in magic was ubiquitous but renounced in both the Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament is remarkably sparse on "miracles" and magic. One notable exception, Noah, was a child's story borrowed and not part of the Hebrew lineage. Many of the things that are taken as "miraculous" now were not when included. A couple of examples; At the time of the war with the Philistines the Jews who had occupied the cities were pushed into pastoral areas and took up shepherding and other pastoral occupations. When the conflict between Goliath and David occurred every one who had protected sheep with a sling shot knew that artillery trumped a club, like an Indian would know that an arrow would similarly defeat a slow moving behemoth. Another example: the fall of the walls of Jericho. The trumpets of Jericho didn't take down the walls, they camouflaged the digging of tunnels which is the age old strategy of breaking into a well defended city under siege (as done by Grant numerous times during the civil war). People attacking cities dug tunnels, people in cities listened to where the tunnels were being dug, drilled holes and poured hot oil on the tunnel diggers. The trumpets made the listening impossible.
Magic and magicians were despised in both the OT and NT. The fictional inclusion of the Magi in Matthew's Christmas scenario was not meant to honor the Magi but to foreshadow the spread of Christianity outside the Jewish tribes.
3) Women
Yes the bible was written under patriarchy, like every other civilization until now. It is interesting to note that the country that adheres most closely to the OT has full equality for women, the only country with mandatory military service for women and was one of the first countries to have a woman serve as Prime Minister.
4) Used God to explain everything
Ridiculous. While most of antiquity made a causal explanation placement of the stars and the calendar and critical activities like when to plant crops, the OT and NT did not use the stars or gods to explain "everything".
In fact much of the Old Testament is after Israel became a political and military power to launch tirades against the established order, which folks like Bernie Sanders emulate today.
5) One God
The ancient Abrahamic declaration of their only being one God was not just revolutionary it established the inevitable conclusion that if there was only one God then all people were part of His Creation and were equal before Him.
Again not a follower of the religions that came from the Bible but these tripe and superficial attacks on it are by people that are completely ignorant of what is in it. Most of the Bible established principles that were progressive at the time and are the foundation of our civilization today. Attacks against the Old and New Testament are based on the same prejudice as the attacks on Islam which provided us modern mathematics and the Scientific Method. Again not a follower of the prophet but I am sure glad that his followers advanced math and science when the Christian Church was burning libraries and Jews during the Spanish Inquisition.