Why is that people pretend to think that the Bible is a scientifically written book.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN DATA IN THE BIBLE.
The Bible was written based upon oral tradition (if you want to call it myths, it's still OK) which was collected by inspired authors who with the guide of the Holy Spirit were trying to convey a specific message to a specific group of people.
Now we need to take in consideration the literary styles of the time, the intended audience with it socio-cultural background at the time, and what what was the pedagogical message that the author was trying to convey or theological principle.
In order to do that we need to know some about ancient culture and language.
If we don't have any of these things what we are doing is just mere interpretations based upon in what fits best to our convenience.
For instance, the atheist wants to prove the invalidity of the Bible, thus with this bias the person reads the Bible and start running conclusions without any prior knowledge.
The one who hates christianity reads it with this bias, and again draws conclusions based upon ignorance and misconceptions.
The "christian" fundamentalist just reads verbatim, and claims ridicule things such as the whole universe was created in seven days.
The intended audience of the Bible nowadays is for those who have faith, so if a person is an atheist well I just don't get why even bother getting annoyed by the nonsense they claim the Bible is.
And for those who have faith first we need to be knowledgable of the context in which the Bible was written, thus we can apply Holy Scripture in a very personal manner, and not to judge or condemn others.
The worse case scenario is when the Bible is used for an ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM, that is when either the atheist or the fundamentalis runs out of plausible arguments to debate in a civilize manner, and they start personally attacking each other. Using terms like "brainwashed or delusional" and "son of the evil or sinner."

TLW

Pretty spot on TLW... there are a lot of so called atheists that are really more anti-[religion]. A genuine atheist would not care so much and might even have a deep and scholarly understanding of the book.

But there is also the need to push back against popular sentiment. Atheists (and to a lesser degree us Agnostics) are a distinct minority. So when arguments over whether constitutional or legal imperatives should be altered so that religious concepts can be instituted in a public forum it puts us on a defensive edge.

We have a very vocal religious-right, a president that pays lip service too his born-again back ground, and a number of recent challenges to insert creationism into the science classroom.

If that does not go unanswered then it will be more likely to happen. We also don't like when we are associated with Satanists or evil.

"Where knowledge ends, religion begins."
-- Benjamin Disraeli

The Bible has more going on spiritually than scientifically for the most part, however, there is quite a bit of physicql phenomena described and quite a few miraculous occurences. If you believe in the book the thing is that God the creator and his son and their servants have a pretty good command of physics and astronomy. They can do things like walk on water, heal people, make planets move backwards and etc. etc. etc. Not hard to do when you make the rules and have a good command of things. So, yeah, to our limited understanding it doesn't seem to be a very scientific book at all, but science may not be the entire point. I don't read the Bible to find science, I read the Bible to find God!

Oh my Dear Miguel, please listen to my words as carefully as you can. I fully understand that these are nothing more than my own personal perception. I only ask that you give them serious consideration, and nothing more. These are the answers to your questions:



Most people don't think that way. The arguments you see concerning this matter only arise from radical fundamentalists who claim that the Bible is the only true infallible word of God. They are the ones who are attempting to claim that it must be taken as the verbatim word of God. Those who argue against the fundamentalists are merely attempting to show the fundamentalists why this can't be so.



The atheists had no desire to prove anything wrong other than the outrageous claims of the fundamentalists. If it weren't for fundamentalists who insist that the Bible is the only true infallible word of God there would be no arguments.

It is the fundamentalists who claim that everyone must accept the Bible as the only true, and perfect word of God who are making all the waves. The atheist are merely reacting to the waves my friend.



I seriously doubt that any one hates Christianity. That is a fundamentalist's wet dream.

People who attempt to show fundamentalists the folly of their ways are actually quite loving people who are merely attempting to enlighten the fundamentalists that they are making fools out of humanity.

See my reply to your next quote:



Exactly. And they use their verbatim approach to judge others and to push political agendas concerning what children should be taught in schools and who should be permitted to love one another based on physical criteria rather than based on what is in their hearts. They also deny science and the intellectual pursuit of true by demanding that the 6-day or 7-day creation must be taken verbatim literally.



Because fundamentalists use their fundamentalist views to push political issues onto other people and to claim that other people are not children of God but children of Satan.

That's a pretty powerful accusation to be making on behave of the creator of this universe!

This is why non-believers are annoyed by the nonsense that the fundamentalists are claiming to be the word of God.



For those of true faith who are not fundamentalists and realize that the Bible cannot be take as verbatim perfection, they should also realize that neither can the Bible realistically be taken as the only word of God. Nor should they even expect that everything within the Bible came from God.

There is a paradox associated with thinking that the Bible is the only word of God. The fundamentalists have their point. If the Bible truly is the only book that contains God word, then surely it must be perfect. If it contains any flaws whatsoever then where do the flaws end? Is there just one flaw? Two flaws? A myriad of flaws? What should be trusted and what should not be trusted to be the true word of God if the book contains flaws?

Once is it recognized to be flawed it cannot be taken as the only true source of God's word.



It is human nature to become frustrated when communication fails.

If the Bible is to be taken allegorically and metaphorically the fundamentalists have no solid ground to argue from. Yet it is perfectly clear that much of the Bible is indeed meant to be taken as such. This is especially true in the New Testament where Jesus clearly used parables to teach concepts.

However, if we allow that the Bible is nothing more (and nothing less) that parables and metaphors that most likely do contain errors, then we no longer have any reason to believe that it should be the only source of knowledge from the Holy Spirit.

Who spoke the commandment, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me."?

The Bible wasn't even written yet when that commandment was given. Who was that God? The God of the Bible? I think not.

If the creator of this universe did indeed make such a statement he made it generically, meaning simply that he is the one and only creator. But he gave no identity to himself. On the contrary he flatly refused identity. When asked who he was he simply replied, "I am that I am". That refutes affiliation with anything other than his being. He flatly refused to be pinned down.

He then went on to further demand that no graven image of anything on earth or in heaven should be made to symbolize him.

Yet what to do Christians do? They lock him up inside a book, and carry around a graven image of a man nailed to a cross to symbolize this creator of our universe.

If we are to take the Bible as allegories and metaphors, then we must accept that God refuses to be locked up inside a book, or nailed to a cross that can be carried around as a graven image of his persona.

We must accept that God truly is who he says he is; "I am that I am".

And leave it at that.

God must have validity to all his childern. Not just to those who attempt to hoard him for their own mortal agendas.

Right here we lost it, for me that guy nailed to a cross, is the begotten Son of the true God, and therefore, He is my Lord and my God.
If that premise is not respected (even though you don't agree with it) the argument is rendered moot.

And so ends another post - when will it end - hmmm???

thnx miguel, i hope you and your god are happy forever.

That's exactly true Miguel.

That's the crux of the problem right there.

In order for the crucifixion of Jesus to have any meaning at all the entire Old Testament must be taken as the literal word of God.

This is what I had to face Miguel. Christianity is either complete and total Fundamentalism, or it is nothing.

Once I made that realization I had to make a choice. Either become a fundamentalist and support the nonsense of the Old Testament, or surrender to the fact that the story of Jesus is most likely filled with superstitious demagoguery.

I had to seriously ask myself which of these two conclusions makes the most sense to me. I chose the latter to be more reasonable. I'm not turning back now. The very idea of blood sacrifices to 'pay' for sins is a totally archaic superstition as far as I'm concerned. I don't believe that the creator of this universe every demanded any such thing of men. Clearly it wouldn't make sense that the creator of this universe would only demand this of men in the Mediterranean area. If the creator of this universe wanted this from men, he would have asked it from all men on that planet. But that didn't happen, so clearly it's just regional folklore.

The story of Jesus being the sacrificial lamb of God to pay for the sins of man by his bloodshed and death is the pinnacle of that superstition. You either believe in the whole shebang or nothing at all. Trying to water it down into a wishy-washy half-belief is meaningless IMHO.

And I've ruled out fundamentalism as being utterly absurd beyond any hope of resurrection.

So that's where I'm at with this particular picture of God. It's a no-go. I have to move on to more reasonable concepts of God. Why beat a dead horse?



Respected? What is required for "respect". Does a person need to hide their own experience with a religion in order to respect others who still believe in it?

I disagree. My experience with the religion is just as valid as anyone else's.

My conclusion is that it can't possibly be true. There is no disrespect in that. There is no disrespect in exchanging honest feelings and views.

Any religion that suppresses honesty in the pretense of demanding respect is an unworthy religion to begin with. Honesty should never be suppressed.

No one should ever be offended by the fact that someone doesn't believe in something.

However, like I said in my previous post, when people accuse other of being ungodly because of what they believe, or don't believe, then it becomes political.

You can disbelieve in Pantheism all you want. I am not offended in the least.

Tell me that I'm rejecting my creator and siding with evil forces and I'll take that as a personal insult.

That's the line that should never be crossed Miguel.

You can believe in Christianity all you want. I'm not saying that you are an evil person for doing so. I'm merely saying that I don't believe the story myself and giving the reasons why I disbelieve it. That opinion should not be taken as disrespect because no disrespect is intended.

It's just an honest view.

abra,

I agree with you in the personal nature of your observations made and concluded regarding your intellectual honesty concerning your stance on Christian thought mostly.

Where I am unclear is in how you can have any respect at all for Christianity, if in fact it is as utterly and disdainfully so nonsensical and demogogic as it is professed to be in your estimation.

I would expect you to be excessively ardent in your displeasure with the ills perpetuated ad infinitum by Christians everywhere.

I would also expect you to be vociferously clear and distinct in your adamance that no man, woman or child every become subject to such a horrific assault upon their soul, be it willingly or deceptively accomplished by invasive intrusion or unwitting cunning.

Being ambivalent in that regard is not convincing to me that you don't still harbor misgivings about your own convictions.

I understand that you desire to insulate yourself in the middle ground of life as you see it and stand rather in the temporal safety of being as non-judgemental as you can muster drawing on your own reservoir of strength and conviction , but it betrays the very adamance of your personal conviction that bibical truthes are but clever machinations cloaked and steeped in tradition and lore.

If ever romantic notions were but emotional niceties to be savored, then I can grasp your reticence to be combative to the degree that the entirety of your personal convictions appears to display to me.

But the turmoil that is apparent to me of your intended good manners towards others in need that fail to get their blinders removed on their own from the heinous violence of the confusion and despair found as the only possible fruit of scriptural truthes is alarming and very disturbing.

I would think your good manners and good will have better recourse than to decry detent as though interactiuons with others were at risk of bearing linliness and suffering of isolation, were it to become the consequence of sharing the fulness of your contempt of such a heretical and nefarious conspiracy foisted upon humanity as Christianity is depicted as being, judging as I do from your writings about it.

I am otherwise convinced, for myself.

Receiving you in your words as I do, I am compelled to believe your distaste and utter contempt for what has come to be anything but what you describe, can be anything but what it has come to represent in your life.

Such a gulf can never be bridged by this man to even begin to apologize for the bridling of your own conscience which seems to me to be compromised with so much torment in not being able to find course for the passionate adamance that you hold at bay from being unleashed in the fury of your convictions, should you fully embrace them and allow them to fully consume your being, as you profess that they have.

I would expect the warfare that would proceed from you in any such battle of wit and persuasiveness of your own convictions would also form a cognizant righteous indignation that would equal the passions depicted of Jesus Christ in opposite force.

Short of that, I am not convinced that you actually believe that which you say you do.

Jesus didn't find that loneliness and isolation bore any sway over his convictions.

He also can be said to be adamant, most profusely so, that it mattered not to him that any followed him.

He never apologized for anything he said or did.

If anything, he answered doubt with opportunity for more doubt.
\
Clearly, he disdains appeasement.

In that, I see a distinctive difference between his teachings and your own.

Maybe appeasement is the problem you are yet to overcome in your search for making your beliefs coherent to all.

It seems so to me.

Do what you will, but I am sincere in that I would like to be wrong about your judgement as being decimated by a disengenuous sense of the need for appeasing any.

Obviously, such a concern over your person has gripped me.

I like you, abra, but I don't fully know how to find the contentment with that in light of the way you vacillate and appear to be yet wrestling with yourself.

I have long since been freed from wrestling with my own convictions and know in my heart that it is because I am certain of the truth of my own cconvictions.

God did that for me, whereas I could not do that for myself.

The rest that I have entered into gives me the vantage I am sharing .

I hope you can differentiate my comments from the particuylars of my convictions and grasp the respectful nature of the coarseness of my concerns.




ps. if in fact, I have not completely misunderstood your comments about respect for others.

With all due respect Wouldee, I am not the least bit concerned with what you believe to be true about me personally.

That doesn't change my reality. All it does is show me that you don't understand it.

The fact that the Mediterranean religions have been detrimental to humanity on a global scale and continue to be detrimental to this very day is an obvious reality as far as I'm concerned.

The religion has been detrimental to my own personal life. You can claim that perhaps I just misunderstood it, but based on the way it is continually proselytized I can only say that if this is true, then everyone who's preaching it also misunderstands it.

It's a guilt-trip religion. I don't believe in a God who uses guilt-trips to try to entice people to love him. That's a manmade brainwashing tactic. It's not from God. Any God that would stoop that low would be a pathetic God anyway.

It can't be true Wouldee. It has no merit in any reasonable sense. That's my true belief. It's a totally unreasonable picture of a God. That's my conclusion Wouldee. It's just plain unreasonable.

abra.

yeah, yeah, you know I know that about your view.

Fortunate for me, I wasn't crammed and smashed and beat over the head with what I know you and others have had to endure from organized Christianity. Excuse me, churchianity.

No excuses.

I read the Holy Bible to read it. then started pressing in to what I found in it about the Holy Spirit.

Goodie for me, too bad for you.

But I am now in the club you think you hate.

But the club you hate, isn't the club I am inexorably one with, despite your protestations that the whole is a mythological pack of lies and distortions.

That being said, we both already know what time it is in that regard.

So, I will reiterate that which was my point and not succumb to ancillary digressions again. LOL

Let's face it, I am content in my role as a servant of the husbandman.LOL

Again, my invocation was for you to stand up and be as vociferously impassioned as your views depict, not as an invitation for you to remind me of your motives as though I do not know them. LOL

Seriously, abra, you might as well go full tilt boogie into your beliefs and hold nothing back.

I am invisible to any appeasements, and I am not at all any longer flexible in my pursuit of who God actually is. Haven't been for over twenty years, abra.

None of that is to the point.

I merely offered up what I see as a glaring contradiction to what I would think should grip your zeal as my apprehensions have me, even though I have no need to concern myself with whether or not I respect a person without respecting their beliefs.

Truly, I see now that you have not comprehended what I said.

This is a good thing if you do not have even the slightest cognizance of what I was saying.

Not that it would be bad if you did. LOL


Well, carry on. I can see that you are sensitive, as am I, and not as militant as I would credit you with being and exemplifying were it that your passions were as strong as I have presumed upon you.


With all due respect in kind, abra, what I think of your beliefs and how they fit you aren't the concern for me.

I do, however, see opportunistic motivations on your part that do ignore respect for those that you must know are not interested in abandoning their own hope and faith and love any day soon with bended knee to your brand of personal need .

Though tireless in your adamance, it is not entirely as passionate as I believe possible from you, at least in the sense that mutual respect and dignity towards others with the same aplomb as you would enjoy for yourself are concerned.

Apparently, you are oblivious to that sensitivity, not having grown accustomed to wearing such a humility, and again, as from my vantage point.

Which is why I say, if hedging is order, it is a half hearted way to approach the deconstruction of a perilous myth.

Certainly, abra, there are no good manners in Christians in general when your learned esteem does conclude as all as demented sots, besieged and deceived and incapable of clarity, let alone sound judgement.

So why parade around as though any respect exists in your heart for us and our contemptiblke charade?

Likewise, I am not being unreasonable, just suggesting to you that there are no constraints to heed since you have no respect for the manners of those not so inclined to adopt that which you embrace.

Well good for you.

I hope you enjoy yourself in heaven.

have a good evening abra.

I have never crossed that line, as far as I understand.
I have never call you evil for whatever your God's experience is.
I might have misused the term respect because what i meant is that since you and I have different positions in which will never agree we should respect each one's position.
I see that your problem is the reconciliation of the old with the new testament, and the horror that produces in you the sacrifice of the cross.
The Old Testament is the section of the Bible which has be read more metaphorically than anything else, and just understand that the people of God in those days understood God as warrior, that is precisely what Jesus came to change, and that is why He was so misunderstood by the Jews who were expecting a warrior messiah king who was going to deliver them from the Romans. They did not understand the real liberation that Jesus was and is offering.
Thus, Jesus came to make the Old Testament perfect that is why the speech is absolutely different.
Good James, you can keep believing as you wish, I have said too many times that my intention is never to convert anybody, specially you.
However, if you have the right to say why do you think christianity is the biggest lie in all times, I also have the right to say why I think christianity (not the fundamentalistic approach) is the biggest truth in all times (Obviously this is my point of view.)

hmm?? i will give you that miguel, that is why i dont rant on old testament god as to killing etc, his is a picture of what he is a "warrior god".

I have never crossed that line, as far as I understand.


I'm fully aware of that Miguel. And I hope that you never imagine that I think poorly of you because I don't.

We just happen to be sharing space on a religion discussion forum. If we met in person I doubt that we'd ever see religion as a conflict. I would never say anything bad about your religion unless you asked my opinion of it, or tried to push it onto me.

I don't normally go around telling people what they should think in person. In fact, about the only time I ever speak on religious issues is on this forum. Unless someone else actually brings the issue up.



And I respect your right to say that. Have I ever suggested that you should not voice that opinion? I merely responded to it with mine.

I was simply trying to explain that I've "been there". I've tried to make Christianity work without going the fundamentalist approach. I have tried to maintain the religion on a personal basis, whilst denouncing fundamentalism.

What I personally found is that it ultimately can't legitimately be supported that way.

I mean, this was a truth that I had to face myself Miguel.

I could do one of two things:

1. I could look the other way and just pretend that it could be made to work.

Or,...

2. I could face it head on and deal with it directly.

I chose the second path. If Christianity was going to work for me, I had to convince myself that I could TEACH it to others with confidence, whilst simultaneously putting down fundamentalism.

What I had to FACE. Whether I liked it or not, is that I can't be made to work that way.

And the reason ultimately is because of the blood sacrifices. AND because the Bible must be inerrant. If it's in error then which parts can be believed and which part must be discarded?

That means that I either need to believe that the entire Bible is the infallible word of God, or I must conceded that it's untrustworthy.

Well, I cannot believe that the Bible is true in every detail. In fact, I reject the vast majority of it as being utterly absurd.

What good is believing in a story about a man who died to pay for my sins when I can't even support the stories that are required for that act to have any meaning.

I had no choice but to face the dragon Miguel. If I can't teach the Bible to other people with absolute confidence, then why they hell should I pretend that I believe it myself? Who am I fooling? God?

And that very thought even made me think further. If God is real, then God most certainly has to appreciate honestly above all else. Well, if my honest feelings are the that biblical stories are utterly absurd, then this is what I must tell God.

If I have to live a lie to believe in God then the whole purpose of believing in a God in the first place falls flat on its face.

I toss the Bible in the trash can Miguel. I say to God (whatever God is), "Do with me as you like, this story is utter nonsense".

And that is my honest truth I give to God with an open heart.

If God can't handle the honest truth, then what good is truth?

And accusations that I'm rebelling against God or any other such nonsense is just that. Utter nonsense. I give God nothing but the utmost naked truth I have to offer. If truth isn't good enough for God then existence isn't worth being.

Thanks Abra, for your clear and concise posts.

JB

W. C. Fields playing poker....

(he cheats and wins)

Opponent: "Hey, I don't get it!!"
W. C. (under his breath): "I got it....and I'm gonna keep it.."

you two are so cute when agree in everything.