Afraid of the Dark?Follow

It's odd that you and I would disagree? ;)

More likely, that he would agree with me.

More appropriately that it should be applied consistently in toto to both concepts. It can clearly be demonstrated that violence and bloodshed in the name of Christ is not called for, so as a justification for same the Bible is lacking. It cannot, however, be demonstrated that charity in the name of Christ is not called for, as there are volumes of exhortations to charity within the Old & New Testaments.

And volumes of violence... some of which is very much so called just by this God character.

I don't think there is a God anyway, so in my opinion it isn't. I'm trying to argue about how much room for interpretation and questioning there is for people who believe that the stuff that is said to be God's word is to be taken literally.

The Bible (both halves of it) is a collection of accounts from various people of (presumably historical) events. In some passages, people talk to God and he tells them stuff (such as the Ten Commandments). The rest is not his word, and doesn't have to be taken literally even if you take God's word literally.

In contrast, the Quran is said to be the word of God passed on to the prophet Mohammed who then wrote it down word by word, and all of it is what God said so it's harder to say "but this passage is plain wrong!" without questioning God. And then people fight over whether Ali talked to him too or didn't, which is the reason given for a lot of the conflict in the Middle East.
There's obviously still interpretation, but the way of studying the text is profoundly different because it's blasphemy to overanalyse what God said.

Presupposing a basic belief in the narrative, Man now knew the difference between good and evil, and was made aware of the concept of consequence at the fall.

I tell you what, you find me something that you think justifies violence and I'll help you see where you're wrong. Does that work for you?

Damn, I wish I could rate you up. I find it odd how so many of these "religion is evil" or "religion v. science" debates use the broad term religion, but really focus exclusively on the Abrahamic religions or, even more narrowly, only on Christianity, to make their points, but then expand their conclusions to cover "religion", by which they mean any belief in the supernatural or metaphysical at all. As if Christianity or the Abrahamic religions represent the whole broad spectrum of metaphysical spirituality.

I'm not saying the passages that aren't directly God's word are somehow supposed to be ignored completely, there is just a lot more discussion about them (beyond just reading them out and explaining the things that get lost in translation) than about stuff that really shouldn't be questioned.

I just find it interesting that these people tell you, "Well, see, these guys say that god told them to write the bible, but they're wrong. But THESE guys said that their god told them to write the Koran, and they're right." And you just believe that. It doesn't matter that the religion has long held that the bible is god's word, not just a bunch of stuff written down by a bunch of guys.

Why is one more believeable than another?

Witches and teh gays are icky?

Edit: I think I had folks say before "Oh, that's the Old Testament, which Jesus said he came to replace. So we don't ACTUALLY kill people any more. They're still immoral and will be judged, though."

And by "think" I mean "I was told" and by "people" I mean "my girlfriend's extremely conservative Southern Baptist father."

Edited, May 24th 2011 11:37am by LockeColeMA

Yes, but those are not the only "gods" out there. You continue to rail against the totalitarianism of the Abrahamic faiths, well and good. But you fail when you attempt to use these arguments to say that ALL religion/spirituality/belief in the metaphysical is evil/false/useless.

Edited, May 24th 2011 11:41am by ShadorVIII

Well, Protestants reject the Catholic Apocrypha as being nonscriptural. There were a couple New Testament scriptures Martin Luther wanted to ditch as well during the Reformation. I know James was one of them but don't recall the other(s).

Edited, May 24th 2011 10:40am by Jophiel