If you don't believe all the bible, why believe any of it?

This is for those Christians who don't believe in the literal truth of creation and the bible. But do believe and concierge them selves Christians.

How do you decide what to believe and what not to? To an atheist it looks like cherry picking what people wish were true. While ignoring the things you don't agree with. It seems to me that almost every Christian as a nearly completely different take on what all consider to absolute truth. Logically how can any truth be found when no one even agrees on the fundamentals?

ArtemisE


This is for those Christians who don't believe in the literal truth of creation and the bible. But do believe and concierge them selves Christians.

How do you decide what to believe and what not to? To an atheist it looks like cherry picking what people wish were true. While ignoring the things you don't agree with. It seems to me that almost every Christian as a nearly completely different take on what all consider to absolute truth. Logically how can any truth be found when no one even agrees on the fundamentals?

The bible is comprised of many writings by different authors across different time periods. Alot of it is metaphoric, and a lot of it doesn't translate from the original language very well. Therefore, it isn't difficult to see how some can be regarded as more or less important than the rest. Just my two cents.

reply to post by ArtemisE


My best answer to you would be that unlike atheist some Christians don't claim to know it all or think that they can.It's something we study to try and understand better .....peace

reply to post by ArtemisE


Could I just say quickly as a random observer not wishing to get too much into a debate about the whole thing, I am not a christian, dont believe in it, do not in anyway take the bible as the literal truth of the christian god. Having said that, I believe in many parts of the bible, a lot of it is to be heavily considered and is worth a read. From a historical perspective it can act as an almost fairly interesting history of early cults and how they expanded from city to city.

One of my favourtie book is Book of Judges

Abimelech ruled Shechem as a Machiavellian tyrant guilty for much bloodshed (see chapters 8 and 9). However, the last few chapters of Judges (specifically, the stories of Samson, Micah, and Gibeah) highlight the violence and anarchy of decentralized rule.[35]

Some pretty good tales of mad zealots assassinating powerful un-beleivers and bloody murder plots in that.

Just sayin is all.

Again I am not a christian, I also enjoy the magic inter-dimensional traveling wizards of the Hindu religion.

reply to post by ArtemisE


I don't call myself a Christian though as a child I did, I went to Church and Sunday school.

Having since studied many religions over many years, as well as various sciences, I have concluded that most religions are rehashed versions of other, previous religions, mostly as a means of gaining support and control of the masses, they were told they had to believe, often it was law, they didn't know any better, so they did as they were told, the original sheeple.

However, I believe ancient religions are based on archaic wisdom of the heavens, the planets, the stars, star clusters, galaxies, the Universe etc and are really just the 'ancient mysteries' of this heavenly knowledge made in to stories, essentially an illustrated version of astronomy told as stories.

That is essentially where the truth of the bible and any other religion lies, if it is demonstrating a principle of the heavens for example, an illustration of the Universe in which humanity is placed.

The fact that religions have been unscrupulously used and invented many times over by those seeking power over others and layers of untruths and lies placed therein for the purpose of deceit is obviously anathema to good cause and the truth.

Sometimes both science and religion mirror each other in theory and exclamation, this is because at the root of many religions is the essential truth of the heavens (the Universal whole) that is above the norm, and shines through no matter how many layers of egotistical power seeking have been placed upon it.

If both science and religion stopped believing each other as polar opposites and stripped back their misconceptions they would find there is a lot more common ground than presumed.

The ancients obviously knew a lot about astronomy and this is still showing in religions when the layers are peeled back and the truth is revealed.

reply to post by sine.nomine


Fair points everyone!! But how could you know that the concept of god wasn't mediforical? How do you know what authors to believe?

reply to post by ArtemisE


I agree, you either believe it or you don't. Liberal Christians like to cherry pick and it is IMO, the biggest reason for the mess of the church we see today. People like to hear the good stuff but don't like to hear that they are a hell bound sinner that has absolutly nothing to offer the creator. That they (me) are wretched, lost, and blind.

It seems like so many Christians think they are a special little snow flake and have something very valublae to offer God, (actors, and singers come to mind) when we are nothing in Gods sight but a bunch of filthy rags. Now if you just get rid of all the stuff you don't like or understand in the bible, well then, you don't really have to do a thing. You can just feel good about yourself (Oprah).

The problem is not the bible is to fantastical or unbelievable, the problem is people don't even know whats written on the pages.

reply to post by ArtemisE

Each book and author has much to add to the whole of the cannon .There are other books outside the accepted cannon that are equally helpful .I think Enoch is just one .

If believers believe that the Bible is a holy book and by the written hands of God, then I agree, they shouldn't be cherry picking whats real and whats not and accept the whole book as truth.

If they can't, well they should abide their non-belief and never ever use the bible as a source worthy of God's hand.

reply to post by Kargun


Well look, lets be honest, in a civilized society would you honestly keep the insanely dysfunctional and violent practices of a superstitious tribal folk who lived thousands of years ago?, no, you would not.

Bellor
reply to post by Kargun

 

Well look, lets be honest, in a civilized society would you honestly keep the insanely dysfunctional and violent practices of a superstitious tribal folk who lived thousands of years ago?, no, you would not.

The fact that you think we are civilized today make me wary. 6 million people in the US correction system?

Has there been a time where we had more insanely dysfunctional and violent practices then today?

Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50) 49-78,000,00 people murdered
Jozef Stalin (USSR 1932-39 only) 15,000,000 people murdered
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000 people murdered
Kim II Sung (North Korea 1948-94) 1.6 million people murdered
Tito (Yugoslavia 1945-1987) 570,000 people murdered
Suharto (Communists 1967-66) 500,000 people murdered
Ante Pavelic (Croatia 1941-45) 359,000 people murdered
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam 1953-56) 200,000 people murdered
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20) 30,000 people murdered
Adolf Hitler (Germany 1939-1945) 12,000,000 people murdered

Any Christians up on that list?

Ya we are civilized for sure.

Truth to tell, we are an ignorant lot who pretty much cherry pick our reasons for everything we do or think......
The Bible reflects the Council of Nicea view of the whole mess...pretty much constructed to hold an empire together.....

reply to post by Kargun


Look man, end of the day we can pretty much pick and choose whatever religion we like, with the information we now have thanks to the internet, people can have access to every philosophy man has ever engineered. Its really become more like role play than anything else.

We can of course now enjoy that, given our time and geographical luck, lucky for us we are not enslaved at birth the to the church anymore and lacked the capacity to read or write let alone form an opinion on something such as ethics.

Which is good, but also bad because that list you copy pasted can equaly be argued that in the absence of something such as religion, humanity can choose to be as amoral as it pleases.

ArtemisE


This is for those Christians who don't believe in the literal truth of creation and the bible. But do believe and concierge them selves Christians.

How do you decide what to believe and what not to? To an atheist it looks like cherry picking what people wish were true. While ignoring the things you don't agree with. It seems to me that almost every Christian as a nearly completely different take on what all consider to absolute truth. Logically how can any truth be found when no one even agrees on the fundamentals?

Thats all fine and dandy, but I question your understanding of the bible if you think it contains "the literal truth of creation and the bible"

Its clear if you read the first books of the bible what they are, THEY are not first hand account of creation at all.

Moses was the writer of the first books, and according to Jewish tradition (which the first books come from) It was God telling Moses the "history" of the Semitic people.

If you look at it as its supposed to be viewed, the creation account is the origin of the Jewish people, and a Parable told to Moses by God.

NOT a LITERAL account, He would not need to explain the how of it, just the WHO, as in GOD did it.

Whats a billion years to a Shepard, Whats DNA and molecular biology?

People, Both Theist and Atheist are purposefully obtuse on this matter, I think just to give something to argue about.

Any Christians up on that list?

Hitler, and probably Pavlic as well as Croatia was part of the Christian Austrio-Hungarian empire.

ArtemisE
How do you decide what to believe and what not to? To an atheist it looks like cherry picking what people wish were true. While ignoring the things you don't agree with. It seems to me that almost every Christian as a nearly completely different take on what all consider to absolute truth. Logically how can any truth be found when no one even agrees on the fundamentals?

Well, there's your problem.

The Bible is the inspired word of God meaning He inspired the men who wrote it.

inspire - to affect, guide, or arouse by divine influence

It could only be literal if God, Himself, wrote it. Since it's pretty evident He didn't, it's not.

Now, let's examine science. Science isn't any better at getting to the truth, either. Sure, science is good at telling us how the world around us works, but if you want to know why things work the way they do ... the truth about it. All science can do is offer up conjecture and theory. In truth, it's not so different from religion in that respect.

In the end, it all comes back to faith.

The really strange thing is why the atheists want to believe the Bible MUST be taken as a whole and CANNOT be assessed by its parts. Who made up that rule, anyway? A few fundamentalists and their "living word of God" aside, most anyone who actually is familiar with the Bible knows its origins are not from one place or one author, but are an amalgam of stories collected, dissected, changed, purged, and added to over time. Every chapter and verse you read was literally decided by committee. The Bible you see today is the result of political decisions made hundreds of years after the Bible was written down, that after who knows how long a period where it was an oral tradition told around campfires. There are religious passages where people are told they must "believe unto the Lord" and all that. There are narrative stories of desert tribes wandering around the, umm, desert. There are mythological stories of things that happened in the distant past, with newer religious overtones. Noah's flood is a good example of those. There are attempts at genealogical recording with all those begats.

Frankly I feel kind of sorry for those fundamentalists who take every word in the Bible literally. They are, IMO, being entirely too simplistic and missing a great deal of nuance and information in the Bible. By the same token it puzzles me why some atheists and other non-believers take essentially the same view, a simplistic and superficial one.

Of course, when you do that it's a lot easier to mock and belittle the Bible. You can look at the story of Adam & Eve or the idea (which is NOT in the Bible, btw) that the Earth was made in 4004 BC and proclaim how stupid it is. But all that shows is how naïve you are. It's like people reading Joseph Conrad or Ernest Hemingway and proclaiming the stories are stupid and a waste of time. All it really shows is how unwilling or incapable they are of understanding them. They call out such stories as stupid when they're actually calling out themselves.

I do believe the bible.
However, I also believe that the Bible is part of one. As is other religious scriptures.

Divided in language, location and text to preserve truth.

the bible

is a collection of books & stories

some can't even agree which books are really part of it ie Daniel.

reply to post by schuyler


Hey! I never developed a taste for Conrad although Hemingway was fine. I was of mixed opinion on Dickens. I loved Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities but felt Great Expectations should have been entitled Pip Meets People and Whines.