But is that really the same ? Unlike the Bible, you are supposed to judge their arguments on whether or not they fit the facts or hold together logically. The Bible is largely about “it’s so because God says so”; not logic, and not facts - not even facts about whether or not God actually does want you to behave the way that Bible says. Nor did/does Plutarch or Tacitus or Moore pretend to be superhuman beings who are never wrong and know all.
To me, the Bible is a book. It’s a helluva book that has pretty much everything you could want in a best seller. It’s not (pardon the pun) gospel, though.
If it’s the word of god, then King James was god.
It’s a book. No more. No less.
No, not all. I might go to church if they read from LOTR every week.
I don’t reject it all because of one error, but neither do I blindly accept any of it. When I read non-fiction writing, I consider whether the material is well-reasoned and based on solid evidence. Do people really do this with any part of the Bible? I can’t think of any part of the Bible that would meet these criteria.
I think the point already made is pretty good: If you reject certain precepts contained in the Bible because you don’t consider them moral, then doesn’t that mean your own personal code of morality is already in place? Aren’t you judging the Bible against some external morality that already exists? So why would you need the Bible?
This appears to be a lightly sarcastic remark, causing me not to take your “no not at all” at face value. Perhaps I am misreading you, though.
-FrL-
Why do you say the Bible is largely about what you say its largely about?
-FrL-
My take on it, if you take it as divinely inspired, is that you are the one who is misinterpreting it. I’m sure that many people who have read the Bible sometimes found one section or so wasn’t ‘right’ or in conflict with others, just to learn later in life how it does fit into place.
Not that I have the entire book figured out either.
Maybe I don’t know what your viewpoint is. If you think that one can take any book and take the good points from it according to your own sense of what is morally correct, then I agree. If you think that The Bible has some special claim to be a better source of moral guidance than a number of other books then I disagree.
I think LOTR is a particularly good book that one can look at to begin discussions on morality.
I don’t think I want to get to the point where I understand why killing first born sons is justifiable.
Which proves what, exactly? I think the part in Fellowship of the Rings with Tom Bombadil is dumb and boring. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the scene later in the book where Gandalf faces down the Balrog.
By that same standard, I think the part in the Bible where Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment: that you love one another,” is pretty cool. That sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t see any point in ignoring that advice, just because another part of the same book says that homosexuality is an abomination. I can take “love one another” as a valuable idea about how to live my life while ignoring the parts that I disagree with.
But this is the core of the issue, because this is hardly the only place to find that idea, and arguably far from the best expression of it. That’s the question that keeps coming up: why the Bible in particular, above and beyond all other sources of insight and moral teaching and so forth.
This is what I was getting at in the other thread on Jesus vs. other thinkers. Jesus certainly can be interpreted to have some nice things to say (though also some pretty horrible things) but WHY act like you are interpreting your way through this morass to get to truths that can be stated plainly elsewhere, or if you LIKE obscurity, with a lot more deep artistic shading elsewhere? I get that looking through a ruddy glass and making out something beautiful is interesting, but the Bible is far from the only game in town for this sort of activity, so why the obsessive focus on the Bible once you drop the insistence that it is holy writ? Any moral message in the Bible starts out heavily weighed down by ambiguity and confusion, and is further tainted and flawed by moral atrocity that simply cannot be waved away.
Sighhhh. Some denominations believe that. Some. A few. Not, by any means, all. I wish to heavens that people would not lump all ‘christians’ together. There are over 38,000 christian sects. Thirty. Eight. Thousand. Lots of different interpretations.
Snipe1978 Ok, inspired by a post in a thread, that was inspired by a post in another thread, here is my question. And please believe me when I say it is a truly genuine question.
Because they understand that the different books were written at the time for the people of the time by the people of the time in ways that those people would understand and dealing with issues that were particular to those people.
We don’t need to worry about eating milk and meat together these days. Pig isn’t as dangerous as it used to be. We haven’t been making blood sacrifices for a long time. That’s because that was then and this is now and time changes everything.
All you need out of the whole Bible is this:
Right there Jesus himself says that those two commandments are the basis of all the rules. Follow them and you won’t go wrong. So you don’t steal stuff because that is not a loving action. You don’t lie for the same reason. Etc.
Ok, but why do you need even that? I mean, you can state it yourself just fine can’t you? And seems like there’s a heck of a lot that doesn’t cover or isn’t very clear about.
Can you keep slaves? What about abortion? Is euthanasia okay? Is letting comatose people die okay? What are the direct implications of love for actions in, say, hostile situations? Is turning the other cheek the right response in the face of, say, genocide?
I don’t think the Bible contains any special claim to be a better source of moral guidance, and I don’t think a reasonable reading of the Bible forces one to think it has any special such claim either. So to that extent, you and I agree.
But this is irrelevant to the question of the OP.
-FrL-
So “the great commandment” is all you really need, huh? Well, the example you offer, stealing, is a no-brainer.
But now, apply it to this:
The Canadian government has just seized three children from Jehovah’s witnesses who refuse to let their babies have the blood transfusions they need to save their lives. How does the commandment apply there?
How do you apply it to the abortion controversy?
To the same-sex marriage controversy?
That command attributed to Christ (if he ever said it) sounds wonderful when you first hear it, but as soon as you try to apply it to real life, you realize it is like any sweeping generalization. It is of very little use because the deviol is always in the details.
I suspect that there are very few non-literalist Christians who rely solely on the Bible as their spiritual/ethical/moral guidebook, so I don’t think your question is really relevant to this particular discussion. Christians who are willing to look at the Bible critically are not likely to have that obsessive focus with the Bible.
Of course it’s a generalization. That’s because it speaks to motive, not to action. The intent isn’t to give Christians a precise set of instructions to follow for every imaginable circumstance. The intent is to give them a way to figure out on their own how to act in any given situation. How do you apply it to the abortion controversy? You do whatever you think shows the most love towards God, and the most love towards your fellow man. How do you apply it to gay marriage? You do whatever you think shows the most love towards God and the most love towards your fellow man. Not everyone is going to come to the same conclusion about what that means in each of those situations, but that’s pretty much the whole point of the exercise.
Perfect answer. Especially the bit about The intent isn’t to give Christians a precise set of instructions to follow for every imaginable circumstance. So, Apos and Valteron, Miller’s summed it up exactly correctly.
I don’t think that really grapples with the question. What book is sitting in the pews, (usually without any partners other than hymnals and readings based on the Bible and traditional Bible belief), even in the most liberal churches? The very fact that the Bible is there at all denotes a very very special significance to that particular collection of words and claims and stories above and beyond all others, including the bits that are some of the most morally depraved ideas and commands ever conceived, all attributed to the very same God supposedly running consistently throughout the story, all mixed in and mixed up with those bits that get picked out or re-interpreted.
It’s as if a science class resolutely held onto a first edition chemistry text despite the fact that several of the experiments if made as directed will explode, and that later editions don’t have these mistakes. Would the argument that well, it says that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen (but doesn’t say in what amounts), which undeniably the truth, really explain this behavior? Would you still call it not relevant when I pointed out that there is something strange about this attachment to this particular edition?
If there are so many great re-interpretations of God’s word (including the parts where he literally writes stuff down for us to know who to kill for doing what), then why not release the definitive updated edition?
Could it have something to do with still reading the promise to deny heaven to anyone who dares do that literally enough to be afraid of it?
Well, no, not really. The response is ad hoc and arbitrary. It seems particular bizarre coming out of a text that pretty much, yeah, DOES lay out instructions to follow for every imaginable circumstance, in the same place where Jesus says that none of that has changed one iota. Including, of course, things like slavery.
If the whole exercise is really (as you and Miller seem to have divined somehow, outstripping all those other Christians who got it wrong by taking things at face value apparently) to figure out whatever you think it means, isn’t it sort of odd that this command is hidden in a text that makes that interpretation pretty odd? Don’t you think it might be, like, less confusing to just take it out and discard the rest, like Jefferson did?
Likewise, why give us this command at all? We’ll just figure it all out, right? In fact, lots of people had figured it out already before this particular utterance, though neither this utterance nor those utterances resulted in peace on earth or anything, and arguably didn’t become common parlance until very recently.