An athiests' take on the Bible...

[Lori_7]

MZ was right about him and so was i. he is just trying to defend everything in the bible.

he even overlooks that there are passages that condone it. people's minds can be so deceiving or self-deceiving.

i think your agenda may be squelching your discernment. do you think that's true?

 

[ULTRA]

Please cite where I specifically condoned anything the bible said.

 

[birch]

i think your agenda may be squelching your discernment. do you think that's true?

if i had an agenda, dear, i wouldn't point out that there is also moral metaphors or lessons in the bible.

you obviously do not know what an agenda is. this is how an agenda in this scenario works: one takes the positive in the bible to condone it all or they take the negative in the bible to say there is nothing worthwhile in it at all. actually, even with your constant clueless persona, it seems you are likes of an agenda. you tend to never say the bible has anything negative or immoral in it. look who's talking.

Please cite where I specifically condoned anything the bible said.

so says one who got caught. just a typical dishonest mentality.

what did you do? just skip over the ones that were evidently immoral or cruel? lol

 

[ULTRA]

if i had an agenda, dear, i wouldn't point out that there is also moral metaphors or lessons in the bible.
so says one who got caught. just a typical dishonest mentality.

what did you do? just skip over the ones that were evidently immoral or cruel? lol

Caught how? Utterly pathetic. You have no arguement whatever because it's based on a false premise. There's another word for it, Lying.

 

[birch]

Caught how? Utterly pathetic. You have no arguement whatever because it's based on a false premise. There's another word for it, Lying.

it's easy to be a dishonest person in a physically oriented world, isn't it slick?

how convenient for ya. anyways, it was evident when you demanded MZ for proof. if you were honest, you would have looked for it yourself besides you acted as an authority from your op. that is assuming you have read the entire bible. nothing in your op states or makes a comment that there are lessons that are not good in the bible too. that itself is not enough to cite you as a liar though.

you backed it up, however, by being defensive when you were questioned about the other scriptures.

 

[Lori_7]

if i had an agenda, dear, i wouldn't point out that there is also moral metaphors or lessons in the bible.

you obviously do not know what an agenda is. this is how an agenda in this scenario works: one takes the positive in the bible to condone it all or they take the negative in the bible to say there is nothing worthwhile in it at all. actually, even with your constant clueless persona, it seems you are likes of an agenda. you tend to never say the bible has anything negative or immoral in it. look who's talking.

of course the bible cites negatives and immoralities; just like those found in the real world. the problem is imo that a lot of people aren't looking to see the forrest, they just want to hide in the trees, determine boundaries, and throw rocks at each other.

 

[ULTRA]

Proof that couldn't be supplied because there wasn't any. If you're going to make claims you should at the very least be able to prove them. Otherwise they will be dismissed as the guff they are. Something you've always been known for is your inability to support any arguement without attacking someone. As I said, pathetic and lying. I laugh at your incompetence. You are a failiure in every respect.

 

[ULTRA]

Anyhow there's one back on the ignore list. So what can be said of a serious analytical assessment of the Bible?
Clearly it gets some people really worked up for some reason. Strange that for a book they're so eager to dismiss. There is a lot of stored wisdom for the getting of, if you don't take it too literally - I don't think it was ever meant to be taken as such. The whole concept of a parable is of an anacdote, a story. It's like they're saying " I've already made this or that mistake, and i've learned by it. you don't have to do the same."

I find it weird that some people feel so threatened by this..

 

[Yazata]

As a non-religeous person, I've probably studied the Bible and associated scribblings more than most. I'm reading the Dead Sea Scrolls at present.

I've got several Bibles, commentaries and some scholarly volumes about various aspects of it on my shelves and in my e-readers. But I find that as I get older, I have less and less interest in studying the Bible. It seems like a waste of time to me, in my own personal life at least. (I don't mean to imply any criticism of your interest in the book.)

We know Jesus lived, there is no doubt of that, the records left by the Romans are unambiguous.

I assume that he existed, but I don't think that I can say that with absolute certainty. The Romans didn't leave any actual records of Jesus. (There's a supposed letter by Pontius Pilate, but it's generally believed to be a medieval forgery.) What the Romans did leave behind were various remarks about the early Christians. So we know that there were people preaching some kind of Christian gospel a few decades after Jesus' death. The Romans don't seem to have typically questioned the historical Jesus' existence though. The later Jews don't seem to have questioned his existence either, though they obviously questioned his religious significance. That's basically how I look at it.

So as an athiest, what can I take from the Bible? The answer is a surprising amount. Good sense, moral guidence and social etiquette. The importance of various institutions from the courts to marriage to foreign policy.

Some of the moral lessons in the Hebrew Bible aren't ones that I would favor people listening to today. Exterminating enemies in war (killing captured populations, men, women and children, even their animals), killing daughters that have premarital sex, killing blasphemers, killing Jews who leave Judaism and any outsiders that might try to convert Jews to a different religion, and on and on.

In fact, a great deal of the tension between the Western world and Islam right now is due to traditional legalist Islam's still adhering to the kind of crude morality that Christians and Jews still pay lip service to (it's the "good book" after all), but try not to ever read, think about or follow.

But yeah, I think that some of Jesus' sermons are very good. Occasionally they're extraordinary. That leaves me with the problem of picking the good stuff out from all of the nasty bits. And that applies to Jesus personally. He lived and breathed ancient apocalyptic Jewish culture. He was all about the last days and the coming of the "kingdom". So I question how cleanly we can separate and sanitize the sagely loving Jesus from all the weird stuff. I suspect that I'd be totally repelled by the guy if I ever met him as he actually was, in real life.

I think to dismiss it out of hand without even reading it properly is a mistake - A closed mind is never conducive to the learning process, and the name "Jesus" means "Teacher", not messiah or King or son of God.

That's probably true. The Bible obviously has tremendous interest from the perspective of the history of religious ideas.

But I've reached a point in my life where I find it necessary to apply a bit of intellectual and spiritual triage, I guess. I'll never have the time or opportunity to read, think about and practice everything. In my case, the Bible might be something best left for another lifetime.

 

[birch]

Proof that couldn't be supplied because there wasn't any. If you're going to make claims you should at the very least be able to prove them. Otherwise they will be dismissed as the guff they are. Something you've always been known for is your inability to support any arguement without attacking someone. As I said, pathetic and lying. I laugh at your incompetence. You are a failiure in every respect.

Anyhow there's one back on the ignore list. So what can be said of a serious analytical assessment of the Bible?
Clearly it gets some people really worked up for some reason. Strange that for a book they're so eager to dismiss. There is a lot of stored wisdom for the getting of, if you don't take it too literally - I don't think it was ever meant to be taken as such. The whole concept of a parable is of an anacdote, a story. It's like they're saying " I've already made this or that mistake, and i've learned by it. you don't have to do the same."

I find it weird that some people feel so threatened by this..

you are such a fucking liar. i didn't dismiss it outright. this is your projection so that you can claim someone did or to condone or dismiss what is not moral in the bible. besides why don't you learn something that's quite easy. insults or lack of insults are not the determinant of whether a point is true or not. one can make a point that is erroneous without insults just the same as one can with insults. i'm on your ignore list because i call out bullshit when i see it and expect others to do the same when i do it. you find that a problem. most people let it slide or are too lenient about it. the truth is the one who is feeling threatened is you because you don't want to admit that there are suggestive or even blatantly immorality that is condoned in the bible.

you really may be a narcissist sociopath with pathological lying that you claim to be.

of course the bible cites negatives and immoralities; just like those found in the real world.

then unfortunately you are lying too. i don't think you are this stupid. you know that there are scriptures that condone immorality as well as ones that that don't.

this is the major problem with corruption in religion. people won't be honest with themselves about it. it's just arrogance or cognitive dissonance.