Maybe you will be the first Christian I’ve ever encountered who claims he believes in absolute morality, and then doesn’t start tapdancing when asked about stoning women for not being able to prove (after the fact) that they were virgins on their wedding day. Or stoning women for being raped within the city limits. Or stoning people for mowing their lawn or washing their car on the Sabbath.
But I doubt it.
The Christian Church originally held that view. Early Christian teachers held that lying was always wrong, no matter what, even to save someone’s life. God made the human voice solely for the purpose of declaring truth.
Later Christians came up with the idea of “mental reservation.” I could say, “No, I haven’t committed adultery” and hold in my mind the private reservation not today, anyway. However, even a little thought will show that this gives total license to tell any lie whatever, so long as one manufactures a mental reservation, no matter how stretched or contrived.
Later Christians yet came up with the idea of the “virtuous lie.” If a bunch of Nazis knock at my door and ask if I know where any Jews are, I may say, “No, I do not know this,” even though I damn well do know. The consequences of telling the truth are so evil that lying is morally justified. This is the view of nearly all Christian moralists to this day.
Ditto for stealing to feed someone who is starving. If there is no other way, the sin is not a sin any longer. If a child is sweltering in a hot car in a parking lot, it is not wrong to break open the window. If a madman with a knife is threatening my mother, it is not wrong for me to shoot him. Morals are relative, because the interplay of consequences is so very complicated.
Moral absolutes are childish. Sometime in the last two thousand years, the Christian Church began to grow up, and, as Paul said, put aside childish things.
I feel you. It can be difficult to separate out things that are abstract but true, abstract but false, concrete but true, and concrete but false. Faith is a real phenomenon. It may or may not be “supernatural” or “magical” or “divine” or whatever. It may turn out to be entirely psychological/neurological or it may turn out to have more interesting components to it. Maybe it will resemble something more like science fiction. No one has it all figured out yet. In either case though, it is a really cool, very useful, enjoyable, and quite important emergent state of mind.
It is really a shame that people have skittered off and claimed various things as belonging to one domain or another because everything belongs to all of us and there are a lot of experiences that are very worth investigating that have been dismissed by either side.
The Bible (which isn’t even actually a thing, but rather an evolving conglomeration of documents added to other documents or excised, and translated) does not own the concepts of faith, god, good, spirituality, etc. Even religion in general doesn’t. There are aspects of all of the things you value from the Bible in other spiritual systems, philosophy, science, psychology, metaphysics, secular ethics, literature, etc.
I’m here to tell you that faith is real and important, but you can have faith without believing in a literal interpretation of the bible, and you can even have faith without actively believing in the conventional depiction of God. So don’t worry, you actually can have it all. You really can discard the nonsensical and outright harmful parts of whatever religion was given to you as part of your upbringing, while keeping all of the good stuff. It is possible to live a rich spiritual life without dogma. In fact, discarding dogma makes it even richer and authentic.
I agree with both of these things.
I’m just kind of curious about this. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover and I have several copies of it. I’m not entirely sure why though - it’s like they just accumulate. Did you intentionally set out to buy new Bibles? Did they just accumulate?
I guess I’m kind of curious why you’d have more than one, intentionally.
I was just thinking about it - I suppose if they are all different versions and you wanted to compare them, that would be one reason. Is this your reason?
I thought I made it pretty clear that I’m not here to “save” anyone. Not my job. I was stating my opinion as anwer to the OP. Providing a data point, as it were. If you have made a decision not to belive as I do, for whatever reason, then more power to you. Time will surely tell, and I’m a patient man.
I did put forth a super dumbed down, insanely compressed piece of the reason for my faith. That was my mistake. I did it because some earlier posts chided “yes” voters for not elaborating. I don’t have the ability to compress a lifetime of experience and study into a one paragraph, message board ready essense of why I believe what I believe - and it was stupid to try. I would be a crappy Jack Chick writer.
I do find it interesting, though, that some people can’t simply express their opinion, but must actively try to denigrate the opinions of others. There have been some intances on both “sides” in this thread, but the preponderance here seems to be on the “no” side. There could well be a different mix in other threads. Discussing the reasons behind that phenomenon would make a wonderful Great Debate topic. I just don’t have the time.
We are not “lab rats” and Lynn is showing what is for her a very unusual display for
TREMENDOUS!!!
– understatement. 
For different versions, I have a set of e-books, with an app that allows me to zero in on a verse in several different translations. For physical Bibles, I have my grandmother’s, my mother’s, one given me as a gift by an old teacher, one given me by a door-to-door evangelist, one I bought to keep in my car, one I picked up at an estate sale. The sort of just accumulate!
It is a bit sad. Part of it is that atheism, in the U.S., is still largely a “reactive” viewpoint, involving more than just independence of religion, but opposition to it. It is met so often with hostility, it tends to become hostile. This is a really crummy way to conduct a philosophical examination of a way of thought.
In my youth, I was a very hostile anti-theist. This was because, as a youth, I got the living shit beat out of me on a grade-school playground by a gang of Christians. “You don’t believe in God?” Kick to the ribs. So, as you might imagine, that instilled an antipathy in my flesh.
It took me years to move (largely?) past that, mostly through the help of a very, very good Christian – one of the best role-models I’ve ever met – on a BBS forum very much like this one.
Love thy neighbor as thyself - Leviticus 19:18 - Old Testament, attributed to God speaking to Moses.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 1:26-27
Jesus answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
Gospel of Matthew 19:6-7
Care to try again?
Care to actually answer the question?
You ask for truths? Are mine the same as yours?
as to the OP
no, no, no no no no no no no no no no no no no nobody can do the bogaloo! Like I do.