Atheism : Love it or Leave it?

[Zoken]

It'd be interesting to hear a literalist Christian's perspective on the claim that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of manuscripts with borrowed myths, stories and fables interwoven with history and finally collected, edited and pieced together to form what we call the Bible.

even though, that is what the Bible is.

Agreed. after a lot of thinking, I've realized that a lot of my beliefs are quite Agnostic in nature. I will finally agree with Fish-Bulb: I' CINO

 

[ShadowBoxing]

It'd be interesting to hear a literalist Christian's perspective on the claim that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of manuscripts with borrowed myths, stories and fables interwoven with history and finally collected, edited and pieced together to form what we call the Bible.

The Jews were master historians and geneologists, actually. Oddly, very little of that shows up in the Bible at all. I've always believed the Bible to be a cultural narrative. In addition, you have to understand the time and place in which it was written to fully appreciate it.

Most people take the stance, unfortunately, that people were just stupidier back then and uncivilized. In fact, I think very much the opposite. I think people, in many ways, were more keen observers of the world than we are today. You have to think that people who, for the bulk of their time on this Earth were scrapping to survive wouldn't sit down to write something useless and trivial. Certainly not a culture in exile. That just adds insult to injury. They had to have some compelling reason to do what they did. Some people will tell you it's God. I think though, it had a lot more to do with trying to preserve a group identity much like society tries to do today. Only today, in post-enlightenment times, we try to do it with philosophical and reasoned prose, ending up with documents like the Constitution and philosophies like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau governing cultures. Back then I think they found more meaning to symbol. The Bible, for my money, does an excellent job of portraying humans as they are an illustrates many of our relationships very well. It's stories also mean something, every one of them.

 

[ShadowBoxing]

It'd be interesting to hear a literalist Christian's perspective on the claim that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of manuscripts with borrowed myths, stories and fables interwoven with history and finally collected, edited and pieced together to form what we call the Bible.

even though, that is what the Bible is.

As for what a literalist would say, well maybe next time I talk to one (should be soon) I'll ask to find out, but from what I remember they say something like this:

What you believe is all well and good, but you're approaching it from a purely academic standpoint, and to fully understand it you really need to experience [the love of God] firsthand.

Or at least that's what's been said to me...

 

[Bill]

The Jews were master historians and geneologists, actually. Oddly, very little of that shows up in the Bible at all. I've always believed the Bible to be a cultural narrative. In addition, you have to understand the time and place in which it was written to fully appreciate it.

Most people take the stance, unfortunately, that people were just stupidier back then and uncivilized. In fact, I think very much the opposite. I think people, in many ways, were more keen observers of the world than we are today. You have to think that people who, for the bulk of their time on this Earth were scrapping to survive wouldn't sit down to write something useless and trivial. Certainly not a culture in exile. That just adds insult to injury. They had to have some compelling reason to do what they did. Some people will tell you it's God. I think though, it had a lot more to do with trying to preserve a group identity much like society tries to do today. Only today, in post-enlightenment times, we try to do it with philosophical and reasoned prose, ending up with documents like the Constitution and philosophies like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau governing cultures. Back then I think they found more meaning to symbol. The Bible, for my money, does an excellent job of portraying humans as they are an illustrates many of our relationships very well. It's stories also mean something, every one of them.

I suspect a "cultural narrative" was what it was originally meant to be. It has been tampered with throughout time to be useful as a religious text. I don't think it was ever meant to be a "Bible." They were writers writing their version of history seen through their eyes during their time enhanced with ancient stories and myths which Hebrew writers often did.

I don't think we'll ever truly get a grasp on the "real" collection of manuscripts. And by that I mean all of them. We have a multiple-copied, -translated, -edited, and -condensed version of what was actually written.

 

[ShadowBoxing]

I suspect a "cultural narrative" was what it was originally meant to be. It has been tampered with throughout time to be useful as a religious text. I don't think it was ever meant to be a "Bible." They were writers writing their version of history seen through their eyes during their time enhanced with ancient stories and myths which Hebrew writers often did.

I don't think we'll ever truly get a grasp on the "real" collection of manuscripts. And by that I mean all of them. We have a multiple-copied, -translated, -edited, and -condensed version of what was actually written.

Depends what you mean by "real". Jews have some very very old versions of their texts. You have to remember though they were redacted for quite some time. You're right though, at any rate, the original stories were oral tradition mostly, so it's hard to say exactly what they were.

 

[Mr Sparkle]

I suspect a "cultural narrative" was what it was originally meant to be. It has been tampered with throughout time to be useful as a religious text. I don't think it was ever meant to be a "Bible." They were writers writing their version of history seen through their eyes during their time enhanced with ancient stories and myths which Hebrew writers often did.

I don't think we'll ever truly get a grasp on the "real" collection of manuscripts. And by that I mean all of them. We have a multiple-copied, -translated, -edited, and -condensed version of what was actually written.

not to mention many adaptations made to adjust the faith and make it more palatable to pagans from the era, because back then, conversion was key, they needed numbers more than actual faith.

 

[Bill]

not to mention many adaptations made to adjust the faith and make it more palatable to pagans from the era, because back then, conversion was key, they needed numbers more than actual faith.

I have heard the change from the OT to the NT was for just that reason. Their followers were starting to lose interest because the God of the OT was too much like the Roman gods they have been worshipping. Hence, we have a more flock-friendly god that is "one of us", but not.

I've got a bibliography that covers it, I just have to get time and interest enough to get the books.

 

[squeekness]

It's like slapping the tooth fairy when she only gives you $1.

A dollar? WTH? I only ever got a quarter. Either I'm just too old now (you getting more due to inflation) or my fairy was cheap.

There are a lot of terrible people in the Bible, but the underlying philosophy is "treat your neighbor as you would yourself". I think the point the Bible tries to make, from Cain and Able to Jesus and beyond is people are far from perfect but the tradition of the Jews and Christians (and therefore of God) is stronger than the weak willed and horrible people who carry it.

This is certainly a message I can relate to. America is based on the notions of equality, justice and peace. Ironically we've been responsible for a lot of things that directly violate those principles, but the ethics and bonds of this country are stronger than the imperfect people that are entrusted with them.

To rise above, to attempt to change our fate then is the goal. Adam and Eve are made very aware of their shortcomings after eating the fruit. Perhaps this isn't a punishment, but a "moment of clarity". It's not saying this is our fate, but the burden we must overcome. We all start out behind as it were, but the greatest among us overcome by not allowing their burdens to get the better of them.

I think Abraham Lincoln put it best: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection". A sentiment much similar to the Bible. We like to think our petty differences and burdens are special, that they earn us special treatment, and because of this often we don't take the time to understand ourselves. However these principles, of both my country, the Bible and many many other philosophies based around promoting "the good" have endured despite the atrocies of this world.

It's easy and intellectually lazy to sit back and say we're screwed, because ultimately it removes one from any responsibility they have in their situation. It's hard to be the one who attempts to carry something great than oneself, to try to overcome, change the way things are to the way they ought to be. Even if you fail in this attempt, you've lived a far better life than those who have done nothing and wondered what could have been.

I agree with this post. I think those folks trying to make things better whether they are religious or not should be supported. It is better to have tried and failed than not to try at all.

Old Testament God was not one to be trifled with.

Nope, he wasn't. His kid though was a long haired hippie.

LOLs.

It'd be interesting to hear a literalist Christian's perspective on the claim that the Bible is nothing more than a collection of manuscripts with borrowed myths, stories and fables interwoven with history and finally collected, edited and pieced together to form what we call the Bible.

Interestingly enough, I was reading a book review in Biblical Archeology Review today for a book written by an Orthodox Jew. They are the Jewish equivalent of Biblical literalists. In this book, this guy tried to say that the Bible was God given and could be read literally without a problem in spite of all the archeological and scientific studies that say otherwise. His excuse was there were TWO Bibles or in this case Torahs (the Torah is the first five books of the Bible for those who don't know). Apparently there is the literary Torah and then there is this mysterious "Oral Torah" that was compiled by a council of Rabbis in the 200-300s or so. The Oral Torah dictated how the literary Torah was to be understood. It clarified it so to speak. Of course this Oral Torah has never been written down, it is still passed on from Rabbi to Rabbi I guess. This is how the Orthodox Jew could "update" a Torah reading for more modern times without actually changing the written word, something that was forbidden in Leviticus or Duetorotomy, I forget which. Anyhow, I found it interesting that the Christian who reviewed the book wasn't swayed by the guy's arguments any more than most of us here are by MovieFan's. I think it just simply cannot be done. For anyone who is interested -- MovieFan perhaps? -- the book that was reviewed was "How to Read the Bible" by James L. Kugel.

The Jews were master historians and geneologists, actually. Oddly, very little of that shows up in the Bible at all. I've always believed the Bible to be a cultural narrative. In addition, you have to understand the time and place in which it was written to fully appreciate it.

Most people take the stance, unfortunately, that people were just stupidier back then and uncivilized. In fact, I think very much the opposite. I think people, in many ways, were more keen observers of the world than we are today. You have to think that people who, for the bulk of their time on this Earth were scrapping to survive wouldn't sit down to write something useless and trivial. Certainly not a culture in exile. That just adds insult to injury. They had to have some compelling reason to do what they did. Some people will tell you it's God. I think though, it had a lot more to do with trying to preserve a group identity much like society tries to do today. Only today, in post-enlightenment times, we try to do it with philosophical and reasoned prose, ending up with documents like the Constitution and philosophies like Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau governing cultures. Back then I think they found more meaning to symbol. The Bible, for my money, does an excellent job of portraying humans as they are an illustrates many of our relationships very well. It's stories also mean something, every one of them.

See I see the Bible as "God inspired", not so much "God given" or literarily perfect. The folks who wrote it wanted to preserve their heritage and the wisdom that was contained within it. By looking at it that way, I can see the value of the book in spite of its obvious (mostly scientific) flaws. I think the Bible has its uses, mostly found in the NT (for me). Jesus had a lot of good things to say and I admire his wisdom and reasoning. I don't find the book so flawed that it has to be discarded in its entirety.

 

[Obi-Ron]

I've got a bibliography that covers it, I just have to get time and interest enough to get the books.

I'd be interested in checking that out.

 

[squeekness]

I have heard the change from the OT to the NT was for just that reason. Their followers were starting to lose interest because the God of the OT was too much like the Roman gods they have been worshipping. Hence, we have a more flock-friendly god that is "one of us", but not.

I've got a bibliography that covers it, I just have to get time and interest enough to get the books.

I've read viewpoints where it was suggested that the update or change was largely due to Jesus' point of view that the old laws that had been given to bring folks closer to God were actually being used to divide the people instead between the clean and the unclean so to speak. The unclean were made to feel so ugly before God they never felt they had a chance so why bother. Jesus was upset because that wasn't what the laws were meant for. That was part of the reason why he spent so much time with those unclean people, to let them know that they were not abandoned by God even if they had been abandoned by their churches. That if anything is one of things that impressed me most about him. You never actually see him turn anyone away. He presented folks with options and either they took them or they didn't. He certainly never beat anyone up or tried to kill anyone who disagreed with him.

 

[Bill]

I'd be interested in checking that out.

I had posted to it to someone who had asked about it. But the thread, one like this one, got deleted. I'd have to do a little research to put it together again.

The collected books covered Hebrew historical and cultural events during biblical times that would affect how and why the manuscripts that make up the Bible were written. They were basically books that put it in context, along with mentioning the inspiration for stories like the flood. The hardest part in putting it together was finding sources without an agenda.

 

[Anguissette1979]

A dollar? WTH? I only ever got a quarter. Either I'm just too old now (you getting more due to inflation) or my fairy was cheap.

I was getting $1 a tooth and that was in the early- to mid-80's

 

[Obi-Ron]

I had posted to it to someone who had asked about it. But the thread, one like this one, got deleted. I'd have to do a little research to put it together again.

Don't go to any trouble. I have a passing interest in the subject, no need to put yourself out.

 

[squeekness]

I was getting $1 a tooth and that was in the early- to mid-80's

LOL, I was getting fairy money in the early 70's. No dollars for squeeks then.

 

[Anguissette1979]

LOL, I was getting fairy money in the early 70's. No dollars for squeeks then.

Inflation FTW!

*Pokes thread

 

[Spider-Jay]

I'd leave Atheism. Not my thing.

Although, I do respect their beliefs and/or lack of belief.

As for myself, I decided to be a Christian.

I've found my life to be happier, more comfortable, and in the direction I want it to go by accepting Christ in my life.

 

[The Mighty Wind]

While I take a very atheistic view of life, anyone who feels certain that there is no such thing as a "God" is just as stupid to me as someone who places blind faith in religion.

 

[The Mighty Wind]

I've found my life to be happier, more comfortable, and in the direction I want it to go by accepting Christ in my life.

Yeah thats it, choose the one that makes your life easiest, not the one that seems truthful.

 

[Bubonic]

While I take a very atheistic view of life, anyone who feels certain that there is no such thing as a "God" is just as stupid to me as someone who places blind faith in religion.

I wouldn't say "just as stupid", as even though the atheist might be overly arrogant, s/he at least, presumably, took a lot of time to research things.
See, atheism isn't a leap of faith, maybe for some, but there daft in that case.

But I'll refrain from even calling religious people dumb, even though they might often be amazingly stubborn and certainly make dumb calls, they are often just victims of their upbringing.

 

[The Mighty Wind]

I wouldn't say "just as stupid", as even though the atheist might be overly arrogant, s/he at least, presumably, took a lot of time to research things.
See, atheism isn't a leap of faith, maybe for some, but there daft in that case.

But I'll refrain from even calling religious people dumb, even though they might often be amazingly stubborn and certainly make dumb calls, they are often just victims of their upbringing.

To say with "100% certainty" that there is no God, is making a rash judgment, severely lacking in information. It is something we can never know. We can have our theories, our opinions, but we can never know, and never produce solid evidence as to whether there is or is not, any sort of higher power.

 

[Bill]

To say with "100% certainty" that there is no God, is making a rash judgment, severely lacking in information. It is something we can never know. We can have our theories, our opinions, but we can never know, and never produce solid evidence as to whether there is or is not, any sort of higher power.

Only the gnostic atheist asserts that. Atheism doesn't, and the agnostic atheist certainly doesn't.

Are there any gnostic atheists here? I know there are a couple of gnostic theists.

 

[Anguissette1979]

Only the gnostic atheist asserts that. Atheism doesn't, and the agnostic atheist certainly doesn't.

Are there any gnostic atheists here? I know there are a couple of gnostic theists.

I believe, in the words of Richard Dawkins, that there "almost certainly is no god". My philosophy does NOT mix into the world of the spiritual (which believers may cite as my "problem") but until I see some evidence that is equally as solid/verifieable/repeatable as all the other evidence I rely on to make sense of my world then, for me, there almost certainly (like 99.9% chance) that there is no god.

 

[moraldeficiency]

This is what's known as, "Having such an open mind that your brain falls out".

There is no beautiful side to it when a man anally rapes a 3 year old boy and he dies from internal bleeding....sorry, regardless of perspective.
Are you going to sit there and say, "Well, the rapist really got a lot of pleasure out of it, so don't JUST look at the victim's side of things. "


Come. On., dude.
The reason I can think of better systems than the "Lions must eat Zebras alive in order to live" - System is because lions'll eat ME too.
And the lions are probably pretty oblivious to the "explosion of beauty" that comes when a hunter shoots them for their skin, or when they get gangrene in an infected wound and are too crippled to hunt anymore and have to starve to death.

Maybe it's known as accepting your limitations and realizing just how small and insignificant your insights truely are. Hearing the athiests and the believers go off on each other is just funny cause neither side really knows anything. It's either I don't believe in god cause I can't prove he/she exists or I do believe in god cause you can't prove he/she doesn't exist. Why wouldn't anyone even bother with this? Plus, who cares?

I like how you go right to the anal rape of a child. Really a glass is half empty type huh? Yeah I agree there's some @ucked up stuff going around which is probably only evil, but there's probably some decent acts going around that are selfless and all good. Nothing's perfect, don't whine about it, do something or shut up.

My point was that there's good and bad (but really that's only from one's own perspective) in the world and regardless of how it happened it's there so suck it up and deal with it. Whether science made us "evil" or god just likes his fun the world is what it is and why it is doesn't really matter. I wasn't defending the "beauty of life arguement" for god, just that it's just as ridiculous as any other argument for god or science.

I truely wish you were god cause obviously you could have solved all life's problems and created a perfect existence where everyone is perfectly happy and no sorrow exists. But then again, that sounds completely boring. Maybe you've just got to accept there's things you like in this world and things you don't and you'll never have any answers that truely simply your questions, maybe life isn't supposed to be perfect and messed up things happen all the time, maybe life is just hard. Could be god made it that way to test you, or maybe evolution has made it that way as part of natural selection, either way it comes about same result.

 

[Gilpesh]

Maybe it's known as accepting your limitations and realizing just how small and insignificant your insights truely are. Hearing the athiests and the believers go off on each other is just funny cause neither side really knows anything. It's either I don't believe in god cause I can't prove he/she exists or I do believe in god cause you can't prove he/she doesn't exist. Why wouldn't anyone even bother with this? Plus, who cares?

And plus this debate is going to be over come March 3, 2008. The day anyone with the right system specs on their computer can become god.

 

[Spider-Jay]

I have a question for those who are athiests:

Where did we come from?

I, as a Christian, believe in evolution. However, where did the first cell that led to all life on Earth come from?

Science tells us that everything comes from something, correct? Well how did the the first life form materialize out of nothing?

I just want to see your perspectives.