Well I guess maybe those who put it there are hoping for a smidge of discernment in those who will read it. And, indeed, there is in large numbers of the readers. You have this nice little straw man here, the imaginary person who follows the Bible ‘to the letter’. I assure you that no such person exists. Or maybe there’s one or two. Christians aren’t living by Leviticus. They’re not dashing the brains of their children’s enemies out. So you can rail all you like about these imaginary evils conducted by imaginary people. It would be more ignorance-fighting if we’d discuss actual people, though.
Usless analogy. A chemisty text is written to be a coherent whole and to instruct people on precise methodologies and theories. The Bible is none of the above. You might as well say ‘well, this bowl of jello here is exactly like a Hummer’.
I don’t know what book you’re reading but it’s not the Bible.
Again, discernment. The entire Gospel (all four books) is Jesus saying over and over again that people should love others, forgive them, etc etc. Whole thing. Not just the one phrase. But I’m guessing you’ve never read them.
If people would act on those words, sure there’d be peace. But people don’t do they? Again, we’re not robots. We aren’t hanging on puppet strings. We have choices. Sadly, we choose not to love.
This view makes nearly no sense whatsoever. You’re basically saying that there was some sort intentional design (whomever “put it there”) to saying things we are supposed to then totally discount. That doesn’t strike you as patently ridiculous on its face?
I haven’t disputed that.
You are a hypocrite. I have NOT presented this straw man at all, and yet here you are presenting a tedious straw man of what I have said.
Again, lying about what I’ve said is a terrible way to conduct an argument.
The analogy is not useless, and grand caricatures of it don’t make it so. The point of the analogy is that if it contains clearly evil and wrong commands, why not exise them? Or why not write another book that is much clearer and more direct and follow that? Why look to a book that endorses genocide and then spend time “re-evaluating” yourself out of it again when you can just read something that gets to the point without all the muck and confusion?
Good grief. Have you actually ever READ the Bible? How can you possibly claim this???
I’ve read them, studied them, and your interpretation is, frankly, just silly. That is not the only thing Jesus says over and over and its simply your opinion, which seems a real stretch in the text, that this is all the Gospels are about. It would be a very short story if he was.
Even if was, why not just pull out those parts and read them?
And so you’ve basically dodged and misrepresented pretty much everything I’ve said. Bravo.
I’m finding myself agreeing more and more with Apos. The simple fact that the book occasionally speaks about loving one another and doing good things does NOT in fact negate all of the horrible things that god has done, or commanded people to do. There has to be a line somewhere when you just keep getting more and more things that are totally bunk before you decide to toss the whole lot of ideas. Take Job for instance. I’m sorry, but if a god put me through that kind of crap just to prove to someone else that I would remain faithful to him I’d tell him to go take a hike. It’s just crazy some of the things that are endorsed by this “kind and loving” god. While I’ll agree that there are some parts of the bible that I do agree with, loving your neighbor, being forgiving, etc. There are far more parts of the bible that I just cannot bring myself to agree with. I would not think that under any circumstances a god who is loving and kind would tell a whole bunch of people to rape and kill a whole different set of people, keeping any single women for themselves to do with as they pleased. But then later in the bible, preach loving thy neighbor, do not kill, blah blah blah.
There has to be a some line drawn as to how much one can disagree with a book before you just pass it off as totally bunk. But please, keep explaining why the majority can be brushed away as “mistakes or misunderstanding” and the a small portion of it can then be justified as the “correct” word of god.
And many thanks to everyone who is posting and debating this. Again, I am not trying to get anyone upset or hurt. This is just something I care deeply about and am myself trying to figure out.
I like this better. It’s scary to entertain the thought that a huge percentage of people are fundamental Biblical literalists. I’d have to see the questions used in such a study.
Asking, “Do you think the Bible is true?” is far to vague. If someone asked me if I thought if I thought Jesus was really the son of God I could answer yes but I see the Bible as a good book written by men.
I understand what you’re saying and agree with you for the most part. We can find insight and inspiration from a number of sources. I’d also have to agree with those who say a continuing commitment to understanding and applying what Jesus described as the most important commandments relates to all our societies issues. Can we find that same mantra in other words in other religions and philosophies? I think so. Then we ask…what does that mean if anything?
In another thread discussing the cherry picking of the Bible someone suggested that perhaps people should realize that inspiration and insight springs from within. Thats why we can be deeply moved by certain passages of the Bible and skip over others. It suggests a need to change our language and thoughts about the Bible. Rather than say “The Bible inspires me” as if it is the source, or I am inspired *by the words of Jesus *" giving the power to the words, we need to say "I feel inspired, lifted up, and moved when I read “Love thy neighbor as thyself” " Bringing the focus back to what goes on within us rather than external sources.
I think it’s a stumbling block for our growth to elevate the Bible to a place that it should not hold. You’re correct. I’ve read and heard too much from Christians about the Bible being our prime source of understanding God, divining his will, and having some sort of sacred status for divine authority. There’s nothing to call it but wrong, wrong and wrong! That being said I also understand being moved by certain passages and feeling inspired when reading certain words. I wouldn’t encourage people to toss out the Bible as a whole, but to refine their thinking about what the bible is and isn’t. To consider what the real source of inspiration is and realize that we can feel that when reading other books, and experiencing other things. In fact we are doing ourselves a huge disservice to not do so.
Did this command come about as a directive from some outside source or is it an expression of our desire to figure things out? Maybe that’s why it is given voice from so many different religions. There is a long period between the wondering, the saying, the considering, and the doing.
It’s unfortunate we haven’t seen more progress than we have. That’s another subject.
Obviously some people are very moved by the story and words of Jesus. Whoops, need to take my own medicine. Make that , many people feel moved when reading the story and words of Jesus. If that is the stimulus that moves them to compassion for others then that’s them and it’s fine. It others find something else moves them that’s fine too.
Gandhi was a Hindu who admired the teachings of Jesus but not necessarily Christianity.
Own your own inspiration. What I see as bunk is not the book but certain attitudes about the book. The tradition that God somehow intended for us to have and use this one authoritative volume of life instructions is completely man made and IMO harmful. That’s the bunk that needs to be debunked.
Other than that the Bible is another work of literature which may or may not resonate for any individual. Either way is okay.
It’s tiresome dealing with people who argue from extremes. For you, it seems, one either totally accepts or totally discounts. Not the case. To understand something in context is vastly different from ‘totally discounting’ it. If you don’t understand that distinction, I’m powerless to explain it to you.
Oh! Well then if this horrid document has not resulted in hoardes of evil-doers foisting Biblical wrath upon others, what’s your problem?
Because nobody I have ever heard of thinks of them as ‘commands’ and there is no evidence that people are acting as though they are.
You are responsible for your misinterpretation. It’s like the people insisting that Harry Potter encourages people to become witches. You are as wrong as they.
Yep. Cover to cover. Just to refute the kind of hooey I’ve seen here.
I suggest you check again.
Again, because most rational humans don’t need to hide the rest of the content from themselves to prevent themselves from sacrificing their sons on altars.
Everyone has given me some great insite to my original question. But some people are drifting away from what I intended ask, or I didn’t state it quite the way I wanted to anyway. So let me see if I can clear it up a little.
What lets people believe parts of the bible, but not the whole thing? How do you decide what you do and do not want to believe? Is it just your own morals, that of your particular preacher, or something taught from somewhere else?
I find myself wondering about the whole thing. I’m not about to cast the whole thing off at the cost of my immortal soul, but there is just way to much of it that striked me as contradictive, or just wrong from my perspective. I’ve tried, I really have. But due to some deep personal expierences, and watching things around the world today, I just have to wonder. I just have to wonder about the legitimacy of the bible itself. And I do have to applaud cosmosdan for his take on this. So please, keep debating, I’m really finding all of this quite helpful and facinating at the same time.
500 years ago people used the bible to justify genocide of indians, 200 years ago they used it to justify slavery, 50 years ago they used it to justify segragation, these days they use it to oppose stem cell research, condoms for AIDs prevention, and gay marriage.
I could ask you again to try to pin down what you mean by “believe.”
Instead, I’ll say that, for me, when I read a passage (or verse, or book, or whatever) from the Bible, I don’t ask myself “Do I believe this?” so much as “How should I understand this?” and “What can I learn from this?” and “How should I respond to this?” What does it tell me about God, or about spirituality or human nature or good & evil? And (what is not necessarily the same thing) what does it tell me about what the person who wrote the passage, and/or the people depicted in the passage, believed about these things?
I am reminded of something Dr. Rieux said in another GD thread about philosophy:
Some parts of the Bible, it seems to me, are a lot better at giving us good questions than at giving us good answers.
That’s why they’re called the 10 Suggestions. :rolleyes:
Well, read it again and try to notice the directions.
To answer the OP: It is clear that the Bible is useless as a moral imperative - it seems even the believers are admitting that. How does one distinguish the parts to follow from the parts to ignore? Only by bringing ones own morality to it. There are some parts that might make you think, and some that might cause revulsion. but it is clear that no one should follow it entirely.
And calling the Bible the source of morality - either from God or from people - is absurd. It is not like no one had figured out that murder was wrong before it was written. Using the Bible as the source of morality just freezes you to the state of ethics either 2600 or 1900 years ago, depending on which books you follow.
That’s very reasonable. I have a question - how do you weight the Bible compared to say, Plato, or other moral philosophers? Do you give it special credence, or do you consider them all sources of questions and suggestions about how to approach these problems?
That’s precisely the point. They USE it for something just as you could use a screwdriver to stab someone. That doesn’t diminish the message of the Bible but the people using it.
As for the OP, I think the Bible was a book inspired by the experience of God that the respective writers of each book had. They did their best to convey that idea to their respective audiences.
My personal USE of the Bible comes from my interpretation of the message of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. All the rest of the books that validate my interpretation of it, I accept. The rest, I ignore. I ignore them in the basis that either their authors failed in their task of conveying the message or in that they meant it for a different audience that lived in a reality that doesn’t coincide with mine in that particular respect.
As time has passed, I have outgrown my need for the Bible in the same way I have outgrown my need for the multiplication tables. It is not that I am above it or differing from it but that what matters from it, is already a part of me.
My experience of God has transcended beyond the textbook and shapes itself to my modern reality in ways that the Bible couldn’t account for at the time it was written.
Take for example the issue of homosexuality. Many OT passages speak strongly against it. What intention they had in the frame of their historical reality, I don’t know. Jesus brings a new message: Love all, embrace the sinner, forgive all, no explicit repudiation of it. Several subsequent writers carried on with the dislike for it but they were missing the message.
Then modern theology tells us that there is no sin if there is no intention to sin. So that leaves me to see gays as people living a personal choice that brings no sin on them as they have no intention to commit sin by it. And even in the unlikely case they did it with the intention to commit sin (I am not even sure how that would happen, maybe going against their heterosexual orientation just to spite parents?!), I am called to love the sinner.
My christian response to homosexuality is then to embrace them and accept them as the part of my society that they are. Just as blondes and vegetarians. That doesn’t mean that I have to become one (gay, blonde or vegetarian), just that I need to accept them as choices between different goods that people are free to make.
It is not that I am a cafeteria christian and choose the passages I want to, to suit my personal beliefs. It is just that I see the Bible as a whole that carries a consistent message throughout its entirety and I choose to life by those general teachings. That there are contradictions in the text doesn’t mean there are contradictions in the spirit of the message. They are just accidents of the text.
It seems as though you are saying to the degree to which people take negative messages from the bible, the negativity is coming from the reader. On the other hand, the positive messages are coming from the text.
Couldn’t one just as easily make the opposite case? The positive messages are coming from the reader and the negative messages are coming from the text.
Or, as is my belief, it’s just a book and there is no special, inherent, word of god message embodied in it.
“Attributed to God?” The only people I know who attribute the Bible to God are the Biblical literalists, and I thought we weren’t talking about them. Liberal Christians attribute the Bible to a variety of men across several centuries who recorded their own experiences with what they perceived as God, their interpretations of those experiences, and how those experiences fit into the over all history of their people.
As to why people use the Bible at all instead of some other book, how about 'cause they like it? You may think the good ideas in the Bible have been articulated better in other sources, but that’s a matter of opinion, not independently verifiable fact. If someone likes the way Christ presented these ideas more than the way Buddha presented him, they’re probably going to be more interested in reading the Bible.
Apples and oranges. The Bible is a work of literature, not a science text. Even the parts of it that aren’t acceptable by todays moral standards are still interesting as historical/cultural artifacts. Additionally, as a work of literature, you’re dealing with personal interpretation, not absolute fact. You can’t say that one portion of the Bible is objectively wrong the way you could with a defective science textbook.
Additionally, if we take as granted that a liberal Christian thinks there’s more value in allowing individuals to make up their own mind about God and what he wants for us, editing the Bible down to just what they think is right runs counter to that ideal. If one’s emphasis is on personal conscience in their relation with God, then it’s necessary to let them read the original text unexpurgated (as much as is possible, given the history of the Bible as a text) and decide on their own what they want to keep and what they want to ignore.
See, now I’m confused, because you’re talking about parts where God “literally wrote stuff down,” but that belief is generally incompatable with the sort of Christian belief being discussed by the OP. We’re talking about Christians who “refuse” portions of the Bible. Folks who believe the Bible was “literally written by God” generally don’t refuse any part of the Bible. Or at least, they claim not too.
The Bible does have more weight for me as a Christian than do other works, though I would not expect that to be the case for someone who was not a Christian. As a Christian, I believe the Bible does have a special status among books—there is some unique sense in which the Bible is “the word of God”—though I hesitate to try to pin down exactly what that means. (There are many, many things it could mean, and I certainly do not mean that God dictated the Bible word for word.)
To a follower of Christ, the New Testament is essential as, by far, the most reliable source we have for what Jesus said and did during his earthly life, and for the beliefs and understandings of those who knew him and of the earliest communities that sprang up in response to him.
For the most part, moral philosophers such as Plato didn’t claim to have direct experience of or revelation from God. Many of the Bible’s writers and/or the people they wrote about did. And now you’re probably asking if I believe such claims, and if I’m more likely to believe such claims if they appear in the Bible than elsewhere. And to try to answer briefly, I believe in a God who can, if he so chooses, reveal himself to, or be experienced by, people, and who further can, if he so chooses, see to it that such revelations are faithfully transmitted to others, orally or in writing. And the fact of such a claim appearing in the Bible (as opposed to some other source) does give it special weight in my eyes, and I am more likely to take it seriously, but I still consider the possibility that something could have been lost in translation somewhere along the way between the supposed original revelation and my own understanding of it.
Really? There’s a part of the Bible that says what to do when the government of Canada seizes the children of a Jehovah’s Witness couple because they won’t allow them to have blood transfusions? Does it also cover cloning? How about organ donation? That’s pretty impressive. If the Bible’s got that much prescience in it, maybe I should rethink this whole “atheism” thing.
I’m not claiming that Biblical literalists “got it wrong,” exactly, although I certainly don’t agree with many of their conclusions. They’ve got their interpretation of the text, liberal Christians have their interpretation of the text, and there’s no way to show that one side is objectively right and the other is objectively wrong. I’m not attempting to show that one approach is better than the other, just to explain the liberal approach as near as I understand it.
There’s no reason to suppose all the lists of kings, etc. were completely made up.
I’m sure they were tinkered with, to exclude unpopular or deposed monarchs, but that’s true of all histories, up to and including Russian and China today.
But the core of the historical texts simply ring true.
They sound like basically true statements of fact.
The parts that sound like they were made up, of course, can be ignored.