Silas said:
But you're not actually addressing my point. You and I do not disagree on those points! But if we're discussing the truth or falsehood of the Bible, or various bits of the Bible, you can't allow the fact that people use it in ways that are generally detrimental to other people (as people do with the Qu'ran, as people do with Das Kapital and Mein Kampf) to cloud ones judgement of the words of the text themselves, as instruments of determining their historicity.
right, but here's the thing - when talking about the truth or falsity of the bible, you have to specify which bible, as some are more "accurate" in terms of history than others. i would say that since the KJV is probably currently the most popular bible, a person who bases their beliefs on it can be characterized as believing in a nearly complete miconstruction of the events portrayed, if they even happened to begin with as portrayed by more authentic sources. however, for me, it all comes down to the fact that nothing in the bible is corroborated by third party historical documents, and all of the NT is suspect because everyone who authored any part of it had a reason to advance their own religious agenda through its stories. if you were to attmpt to determine the accuracy of the events in the bible you are forced to refer to contemporaneous histories and physical evidence. there is no mention of jesus or his apostles or anything in the former, and almost no authentic artifacts to corroborate the myth. regardless of how the bible is used to political ends, the case is that the likelihood of its central story being true is so slim as to render it basically impossible on every front.
When you say "You", do you mean you or me? This is exactly my position, Charles!
I meant people generally. sorry if that was confusing.
Do you not know any practicing Christians at all? My family are Catholic, and one of my closest friends is a die-hard Church of England guy. They're not American Evangelicals. I don't think any of them believe that non-believers will suffer eternal torment. That they adhere to a religious belief that is also adhered to by foaming-at-the-mouth hellfire-consigning nutcases is not their fault.
right, well i know some people who claim to be catholic too, but ignore any inconvenient points of doctrine and make up for it by going to confession once a year. you can hardly call a person like that an adherent to anything. i have however, come into contact with a lot of american evangelicals who i would classify as nearly psychotic in terms of their level of belief in the innerrancy of the biblical word. these people definitely believe that you will suffer eternal torment if you aren't christian. in fact, they need to believe it in order to validate the immense sacrifice that they are making in order to be counted among the faithful. i've actually been told by an old man wearing a "real men love jesus" shirt in north carolina that i would "burn in the lake of fire" because i have a lot of tattoos. yes, that's an isolated incident, but stuff like that happens to people every day in more subtle ways. and i think to myself that the only reason for it is because these people have no idea what it is they really believe in, and how twisted it has become.
i mean, what if i was a satan worshipper, but i didn't do any harm to anyone, and i didn't attned any church of satan masses, and had all due respect for other people - do you think that other people still wouldn't think i was a nutcase because i worshipped the devil?
Hey! You're two away from your thousandth post! Congrats if I don't see the big four-digit myself.
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