How silly-I am not the general public. It’s really more like:
Fundies-Let’s blitz the public through television, radio and magazines ads promoting OUR WONDERFUL POTATO CHIPS THAT ARE JUST MARVELOUS AND TASTY AND POPULAR BECAUSE THERE ARE ADS ABOUT THEM EVERYWHERE!!
Non-fundie religionists-Let’s get together and talk about how rice chips are better for you. The public knows they are welcome to listen to us speak-if they show up they will certainly learn the truth.
The Public-I wants me some potato chips-They are tasty and popular! I’ve heard it everywhere!
Me-Told you so. Advertising works.
OK, I’ll chime in here. I’m not a Biblical literalist. I’m not a non-literal Christian either. I’m not any sort of Christian. I don’t believe in any sort of God, or god, or goddess, or supernatural entity of any sort. I am what you’d call an a-theist, a person who lacks belief in gods.
I don’t understand those who claim, that if you don’t believe the Bible is literally true, it has no value. The example of the Iliad is perfectly on point. I don’t believe the Illiad is literally true. Yet the Iliad still has value. Even though the characters in the Iliad would be considered horrible people by today’s values. I assume everyone here is familiar enough with the story of the Trojan War to realize that it is chock-full of murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery, slaughter, and genocide. It is a story produced by Bronze Age barbarians.
Now we ask ourselves, did the Ancient Greeks believe the Iliad was literally true? How about the guy who wrote it, I mean, there was a guy we call Homer, even if that wasn’t really his name, who compiled the existing oral tradition into one mega-poem. He almost certainly believed that Zeus and Athena were real, and he may very well have believed that the Trojan War really happened, and that the cast of characters from the Trojan War were real people. But he made up the details. And the people who sat around listening to the story as it was recited, even though they believed in the gods, didn’t believe that the story was literally true.
So why do we insist that the people who wrote the Bible believed that the Bible was literally true, that every letter was dictated by an omnipotent diety?
It is a historical fact that biblical literalism–the idea that every letter of the bible was placed there on purpose by God–is a modern idea. Bibliolatry–Bible worship–is a modern idea. Back in the middle ages, nobody except priests read the Bible. They believed in God and Jesus and the Church, not the Bible.
And of course, even modern-day Biblical literalists believe that the Bible needs interpretation, because some parts of the Bible are explicitly labeled “parable”, meaning they are a story intended to illustrate an idea, not a historical record. And some parts of the Bible don’t make sense at first glance. The notion that the Bible is a magic book that zaps God’s Will directly into your brain is a modern invention. Yeah, it’s a distressingly common notion in today’s America, yes there really are such people, and yes, they are involved in politics and so on. So what? They also have odd notions about Paul Revere ringing those bells and firing those warning shots, that doesn’t make the story of Paul Revere a meaningless story.
I would say a mundane bible isn’t worthless as a story. But it is less than worthless as a guide on how to live. People aren’t looking at it as literature (and it’s not particularly good as literature, it heavily overuses Deus ex Machina), they are looking at it as a sign of what laws and cultural rules they want to live by.
Also, very few, if any Christians think the bible is truly mundane, they think that at the least it is* divinely inspired*. Which makes the nonsense in it dangerous because it gives it an aura of authority that the Iliad doesn’t have. No one is trying to legislate shipping regulations to avoid the danger of sirens. Or was that the Odyssey? Whichever.
Is the Iliad worthless as a guide on how to live?
The thing is, the main characters in the Iliad are all rapists, killers, and robbers. Read the stories in Genesis, and you’ll see similar sorts of incidents. Does that make it worthless? Both stories were written by Bronze age barbarians who lived in a particular time and place, and both stories are timeless.
Yeah, mainstream Christians believe the Bible was divinely inspired, but that doesn’t make them Bibliolators. They aren’t trying to make it illegal to mix two types of fibers, are they? They don’t want to make it illegal to harness a donkey and an ox to the same yoke, do they? They don’t want to make tattoos illegal, do they?
:: shrugs ::
I’ll send her a link to this thread and see if she wants to respond. I am obviously not the boss of her, and the best I can possibly due is allude to things I’ve heard her say.
Is Lord of the Rings worthless as a guide to live? Should we go back to hereditary monarchy, it seems to work in LoTR.
They do want gay marriage illegal. They want pre-marital sex to have consequences. The want to remove abortion as an option. Many, if not the majority of them want to teach religious nonsense along with evolution.
Christians, as a group, want to make the country much worse. The only saving grace, is that an awful lot of Christians aren’t very dedicated to it.
[quote=“Captain_Amazing, post:37, topic:597941”]
You guys are picking at nits. Augustine was a bishop, and wrote well before the Church had the inquisition set up. (And before somebody jumps on the “thousands of years” thing, I concede I should have said “centuries.”) Besides, bishops can get away with all kinds of things that would get ordinary people in deep trouble.
You know damn well that Galileo was imprisoned and threatened by the Inquisition for contradicting even the poetic parts of the Bible, like Psalms and Ecclesiastes, that implied that the earth was stationary. And this was well before the 19th century, or whatever you’re trying to claim was the first hint that people took the Bible literally.
We’ve heard of Galileo’s troubles because he was famous; who knows how many nobodies were tortured and killed for similar “heresies.” The fact that not EVERYBODY who didn’t take the Bible literally was not punished for it doesn’t mean that they didn’t dodge a bullet.
I can answer that. It was originally written by a culture that literally didn’tcare about the difference between fact and fiction. The original writers didn’t care if you took it as literal truth, or as a parable. They didn’t even care if they had to make up a story out of whole cloth to get their point across. They only cared that you got the message. For an example, the creation story’s message: God created everything.
Yes, this. The point of the OT stories is to convey information about God and the history of the Jewish people. There’s no conflict in considering it divinely inspired, yet not a history/science textbook. The creation story: God created everything, humankind would rather do things their own way, bad things result, but God stays faithful.
Have any of the Christians posting in this thread indicated they want to do any of these things? Several major denominations ordain gay people, and bless same-sex marriages. My denomination has an official pro-choice stance. Mainline churches and Roman Catholics have no problems with evolution. You see what you want to see, though.
I think you’re seeing what you want to see. You and the people in this thread aren’t representative of Christians at large. Catholics officially have no problem with evolution, but 37% of Catholics don’t think evolution is real. 48% of Catholics and 33% of American protestants support same sex marriage.
Remember, Christianity isn’t based on evidence or reality, so it’s highly variable. Because you can say anything you want while holding a cross and call it Christianity. But in aggregate, Christianity is a net drag on society.
Exactly. I happen to believe that the Iliad is divinely inspired, and I get so tired of people who automatically assume that means I take everything in it literally.
OF COURSE I don’t believe that Zeus literally weighed fate in a balance. That’s obviously a metaphor. I do believe that Ares and Aphrodite and Hera helped their favorites among the mortals during breaks from their feasting on Olympus, but that is a completely separate issue.
Why can’t people see how rational I am?
Most people are followers, as such yes there are servants and slaves and those who control. You can see this even in young children where usually very few or one child is dictating what all the others do. This continues and the rules in scriptures still apply in a karmic sense.
And perhaps karma is the reason that it is timeless, universal laws that act on a soul/spirit level. The wisdom expressed is at a soul level and each generation of souls need to go through the similar process.
It depends on if it is of the soul/spirit and dealing with universal laws of karma or not.
Where did I claim faith was rational?
ETA: Besides, if you really did believe that, it’s really no skin off my nose. I would think it rather silly but I couldn’t prove you wrong and I’d probably just keep my opinion to myself.
Cite? Please show me a Gallup level poll showing how all Christians as a group move together and all believe the same.
Cite? How do you define a net drag? Is it the actions of all Christians? The beliefs of a few? The pandering by some? Come on - if you are going to toss out a statement like that in Great Debates - how about a real cite. You use the term “net drag”, so you have obviously considered all of the good and bad done by all Christians. I am eagerly awaiting your analysis.
[quote=“brocks, post:107, topic:597941”]
Galileo was imprisoned because the Pope didn’t like him, after many felt that the simplistic strawman side in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was a veiled reference to the Pope and his allies in the scientific debate.
I know no such thing. In fact, this claim is bullshit. It is not true. It false. It never happened. Galileo was not imprisoned because he claimed the Earth was not stationary. It never happened.
See, you were told a PARABLE about Galileo being persecuted by the Inquisition for questioning geocentrism, and you believed the parable was literally true. It wasn’t.
The reason we know of Galileo’s troubles is because he was famous, and that was because there was no reason at all for the inquisition to hound someone who wasn’t publishing books. It is simply false that in the 1500s Biblical literalism was an essential element of the Christian faith that would get you condemned by the Church if they found out about it.
Repeat that again. It is false. It is untrue. It never happened. Galileo was never punished by the Inquisition because his theories contradicted a literal reading of the Bible.
Would you like to know why Galileo was punished by the Inquisition? Or are you a Galilean literalist who won’t listen when the historical record contradicts the stories you were taught as a child?
Cite:
[QUOTE=John 21:10-11]
Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore.
[/QUOTE]
See, it’s in the Bible! A net-drag!
And since Jesus told his disciples he would make them fishers of men, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to call Christianity a net drag on society. 
I didn’t say they move together in lockstep. I said as a mass they are making the country worse. If a group of a thousand people move three meters to the right, and individual in the middle might move 2 meters to the left.
So, individual Christians may be making the world a better place, but Christianity as a unit, isn’t.
I have considered many of them. Abstinence only education, fighting against birth control, fighting against abortion, fighting SSM, fighting for DOMA, fighting to re-enact DADT, fighting to inject Creationism into schools, making people feel guilty about masturbation, making people feel guilty about sex, making people feel guilty about divorce, making people feel guilty about relationships with people of different faiths, making people distrust atheists, making people believe fantasy nonsense, and making people give up joy in the actual life they get for the pretend life after death.
And on the plus side, we’ve got… some charity for poor people. Although that’s largely a recruiting drive. So I’ll count charity for the poor as a wash.
If you can think of any actual value that Christianity brings to the world, I’m open to hearing it. But it would have to outweigh the obvious misery that it brings.
Now because you’re obviously a Christian and are reflexively rising to defend it, your particular brand of Christianity may not do any of these things (aside from the believing fantasy nonsense part), but it still creates the situation where Christians as a unit possess a ton of secular power.