Protip: Its possible to acknowledge scientific realities without diminishing your religious beliefs. In fact if your religion requires you deny reality it might be a good idea to ask why.
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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If you're cherry picking your good book according to modern scientific advancements to the point where your worship is completely heretic from the point of view of a priest from 400 years ago, and would be completely different from the theology of someone like you 400 years from now, it's time to reevaluate why you're even bothering in the first place
Is the rest of it even worth trusting
You can't know and you shouldn't care
Either live by the whole book the way they used to or drop the book and be normal
Critical bible study does not mean cherry picking in the sense that you ignore certain passages and pretend they don't exist.
There are more ways of reading the bible than "this is literally 100% word for word what god is saying and unless especially noted a literal depiction of reality."
Basically read the Bible in the context it was written in to better understand its meaning instead of taking the reactionary approach where you work backwards from what you already believe.
Yes that is what I was trying to get at. Thanks for making it precise
It's a book written at a moment in history when people believed thunder was god's anger, and you're trying to pick it apart to find out what is God's message and what is some guy's creative writing
How stupid would modern people look if we died and found out god does indeed want us to stone people for adultery and that "those who are free of sin throw the first stone" part was just a scribe's personal moral belief
There's no way to interpret, discard, or contextualize this book properly. There is no telling that god's ways aren't literally those in the ancient testament where you're supposed to leave your raped daughter to die on your doorstep
I'm an atheist, I don't try to divine "god's will" when I read the Bible critically. What I try is to understand the struggles of the people who wrote the passages.
There’s no way to interpret, discard, or contextualize this book properly.
Art is always open to reinterpretation. At this point you're telling people they can't do something and I'm just laughing cuz I already done it. Cope.
Then I'm talking about what the 1st guy was doing
Yeah but if someone thinks a different god than mine made the universe then they deserve to die so I can prove it was actually my god. Religious people for the last 50,000+ years
That's the difference. Religion has caused more pain and suffering than anything else ever, period, and I'm tired of pretending it hasn't. More than the Holocaust, more than any non religious war, more than any government. Humanity simply can't survive unless we leave religion behind.
No.
No to your no
thank you for your very helpful comment, xxxSexMan69xxx.
You are welcome
Prove it
"Convince me my argument is flawed evwn though my mind is already up and I'd dismiss any point you'd make not by a constructive counterargument but snark."
Yeah, not playing that game.
Are we in the 1400s what is this
We gonna both side the grand delusion.
There's a very similar format in saying 29 in the Gospel of Thomas which is one of the most interesting things in all antiquity IMO:
If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels.
Yet I marvel at how this great wealth has come to dwell in this poverty.
For context, this was at a time when there was a major debate in philosophy between intelligent design (Plato, theological circles) and evolution (Epicureans).
While extra-canonical, it's pretty wild to have a quote being attributed to Jesus that's not only entertaining but straight up calling the idea of the mind/spirit arising from naturalism as more amazing than arising from intelligent design.
Though its conclusion ends up a bit dissimilar from OP, in finding the mind, not physical embodiment, as the greatest wonder in the universe.
The Big Bang was discovered by a Catholic priest.
Physics and philosophy are essentially the same thing and indistinguishable: They both deal with the universe!
Nailed it.
Humility is the only virtue.
Sure but truth matters
Yeah.....but we all know evolution is what actually happened. Sorry sky Daddy.