If I defined the Word of God as a lexeme, you’d be right. But I don’t.
Hmmm… reading the whole Bible from cover to cover seems quite often (in my experience) to be something that people do merely so they can boast about having done it.
Also, I see no particular difference between, say, someone who has read the entire Bible and subsequently forgotten (or simply failed to understand, if indeed understanding is truly possible) half of what they read, and someone who has only read half of it.
Is there some magical process that takes place when, having read everything else in it, I finally struggle through and finish reading a long list of begats? Is everything I have absorbed up to that point worthless until I read the last little bit? I don’t get it.
Sentorum may not have read the Bible, but even if he had, I have had some people interpet the relationship between Jesus and John as being “unusal” as John refers to himself as the Apostle that Jesus loved. In our times that would infer a different love relationship than just friends. It is not my interpretation, but one can prove almost anything by the Bible if one so desires. People forget that there was no Bible(New testament as there is today) for nearly 320 years. It was gathered together by the church fathers under the Popes direction and they decided what was God’s word, what was inspired, etc. many writings were thrown away, such as the writings of Thomas. So, One could say the Bible is a Catholic book. (I am not a Catholic ). I have learned that many priests have not read the Bible or studied it all that much. many people take what they want from the Bible and dismiss the rest. I do not think of the Bible as the word of God, but there is a lot of good in the Bible and somethings that are not true, especially, the mustard seed as being the smallest seed. I have had good apples come from a bad tree, and have bad apples come from a good tree. These are little things,but I think if the Bible helps some one have a better life and does not hurt others their interpretation doesn’t bother me. Just do not push it on others who disagree.
Monavis
I’m curious how many people think you can sit down solo with no guidance and read the Bible cover to cover and grasp all that is in it. There are people working on PhD’s in Bible study that will readily admit they haven’t all the answers. Has anyone here read it through and understand it all? I’d love to know if it’s been done.
Side note: as a Catholic, I’d like to know where the hell all my power and influence is since it seems the Catholics are out out to destroy mankind. And we have all the power. I hate missing the important memos. :mad:
I can’t find anywhere in this thread where anybody said Catholics are out to destroy mankind and have all the power. The closest I can see is Eve’s post that Santorum, specifically, is trying to use his “religion to try and influence the way the whole country lives”, which is quite different. Defensive much?
OTOH, if you’re trying to claim the Catholic Church has no power or influence - and if you can’t understand why non-Catholics might feel threatened by it - then I think you’re seriously deluded. Nobody claims each individual member of the church has more influence than the average citizen, just like nobody would claim that a run-of-the-mill employee of RJ Reynolds has much pull in Washington. But that doesn’t mean both organizations, as political entities, don’t wield power.
:rolleyes:
Be sure to honk when you drive by, genius.
Well, I’d say that “cover to cover” implies an order from front cover to back cover. It’s nto a rock-solid inference, I grant, which is why my first response would be a clarifying one. But if I were forced to answer yes, or no, I believe ‘no’ is more accurate.
If we were talking about “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” instead of the Bible, learning the order in which one read the chapters would be highly relevant, and if someone said they read TMORM “from cover to cover” I would feel they were deceptive if I learned they skipped to the end first… not to mention feeling that they missed a significant part of the book’s impact.
And I see the entire thread has moved well past the point I made above. So, please imagine my comment was made back up there where it was relevant. 
I have no idea what this means. I understand ‘lexeme’ is a fundamental unit of language, but in this context that doesn’t make sense to me. Are you using a different definition of the word?
And what does it have to do with what I see as a contradiction, whereby you stated one should read a book in it’s entirety to deny a claim about it, yet you deny the claim of the Koran and Bible being the word of God without reading them in their entirety?
Oh, stop being ingenuous and obtuse. If you’d read my post, you’d have seen I said “can be,” not “are.” Thereby leaving out the intellectually curious and honest religious people, including those on the Board. And yes, I think people who try to cram their religion—whatever it may be—down others’ throats without having read their “holy book” are lazy and hypoctical.
DrDeth, since you insist on misunderstanding and misinterpreting my OP over and over again, no matter how often it’s explained to you, I can’t see the profit in answering you anymore.
I’m sorry, where did you read in my post that I am a particularly faithful person? I’m agnostic, and your questions aren’t really applicable to me. I consider myself a Reform Jew, but I don’t feel any strong faith that god actually exists or that Judaism is better than any other religion - it just happens to be my tradition.
Sometimes it’s fun to see just how various “famous dead guys” would view Santorum. It isn’t very flattering.
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
-William Shakespeare on religiosity and hypocrisy
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.”
- Jesus (Matthew 23:15) on religiosity and hypocrisy
“All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indugence in private.”
-Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
“This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; their worship of Me is vain, for they teach as doctrines the commandments of men. You neglect the commandment of God, in order to maintain the tradition of men.”
- Mark 7:7, on religiosity and hypocrisy
“We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”
– Abigail Adams
“The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.”
– John Adams
“The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”
– Marcus Aurelius, could be applied to the “faith based christian whatever thing”
“When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.”
- Japanese Proverb, can be applied to Santorum’s friends at Enron, Halliburton, etc.
“So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”
- Gary North, on the real “secret” agenda to use religious freedom as a tool to deny it from others.
“Actions will be judged according to their results.”
- Mohammad, the original “the proof is in the pudding”, the beauty of elegant simplicity, it sums up all of the above.
Sorry, Eve, I also think you’re off-base here too. And if the voters of Pennsylvania like this guy, there’s nothing the rest of us can do about it except give money to his opponents. I don’t know how many times I’ve defended Ted Kennedy when I lived in MA, trying to explain he’s a lot more subtle and accomplished than his public image says. Maybe it’s the same with Rick.
I did read your post actually…
Where is this “can be” that you say that I missed in your post? Don’t YOU read your own post that I responded to?
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You question how someone can be a good Jew, Muslim or Christian UNLESS they have read the relevant texts in toto. This statement has NOTHING to do with “cramming religion down someones throat”.
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You say that religious people (and no, you didn’t qualify that statement…you said “religious people”) have “a shaky grasp of reality”…and are “lazy and hypocritical”. This has NOTHING to do with “cramming religion down someones throat”.
Please explain how you left out “the intellectually curious and honest religious people, including those on the Board.” in the above two statements? Spend a bit more time doing that and a little less time calling me “ingenuous and obtuse” and you might make sense.
Terry Pratchett is dead?!? :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: 
" . . . but now I see that hypocrisy and laziness CAN ALSO BE big factors in their worldview."
Can you read it now, Bright Eyes?
. . . and since DrDeth and beagledave insist on repeatedly misreading my posts and attributing things to me I never said in their haste to defend Sen. Santorum, I bow out. I can’t debate with people who misquote me and refuse to stick to the issues.
I’ve already set you two straight several times on what I actually said and what it actually meant; if you insist on continuing to read it otherwise, there’s no way we can hold an adult, useful, interesting debate.
No he’s alive, but the quote does fit.
One of the things that annoyed me, especially when I was a practicing Catholic, was the the Church certainly does not encourage the reading of the Bible. And few Catholics will go out and do it on their own.
Good Catholics will own a Bible, but I know few who actually read it. You’re doled out incredibly short snippets in Church at Mass every week. so short that you can’t even get context. You sorta get the idea that they go along with the thrust of that day’s Mass (feast of the Holy Family, Assumption of Mary, etc.), but it’s hard to tell even that. There’s no big program of Bible study for Catholics, either. Most folks just go in and listen to the Mass. ome people don’t even do that – they just tell their rosary beads. Or snooze or something. I was appalled one week when the Priest went around during his homily after the reading and asked people what the text was about. None of them knew. Finally, in desperation, he looked at me, and I knew it.
Reading the Bible isn’t trivial. Not if you weant to understand what it’s all about. You can read it in a weekend, I suppose, but you’ll miss a heckuva lot. But the truth is that most Catholics won’t feel motivated to do even that. Santorum is just a typical example, but if you push, you’ll find he’s far from exceptional. I’ll bet Kennedy hasn’t read the whole Bible, either.
– CalMeacham, onetime Chairman of a Church Education Committee. Now an agnostic. But he’s read the Bible.
Ahhh so the hypocricy and laziness IS conditional, but the “shaky grasp of reality” applies to all religious folks, right?
Likewise…folks can’t be good Christians, Muslims or Jews unless they read their scripture in toto, right? (That’s not conditional either…right?)
Forgive me for being a bit puzzled by your broad brush strokes in some cases…and your “Oh but I only meant the mean Christians” in other cases…
:rolleyes: