One of the things that has always bothered me about religion, at least those that rely on holy books, is that the teachings are set in stone. They are written many hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago and just left. Having read some of the things I’d written earlier in my life, I can’t believe that God, if he existed, wouldn’t want to make any changes. Let’s take the Bible as an example. We know for a fact that some of the Bible is just plain wrong. The age of the earth for example, or any number of unpleasant Bible quotes.
So we know that the Bible isn’t perfect, and I’m sure God, being a decent fictional entity, would happily admit that he got things wrong in the past and want to correct them. But how would he do it? After all, you can’t just whisper sweet nothings in a human’s ear if your invisible, we have a name for that, so what would you do?
Perhaps, you would manipulate the world to show your displeasure at certain actions you’re Children are taking. Like the Wildfires in California occuring around the same time they banned gay marriage, possibly? The problem is that those that follow a religious book are closed to any suggestion that the book may be wrong. So are they missing the signs, or choosing to ignore them? Or, as Occam’s Razor might suggest, the book has always been incorrect.
I think that saying that the thing that bothers you about religion is that the texts were written long periods of time ago is like being bothered that we don’t have Firefox 4 yet. When a religion comes it shatters longstanding social codes, and one must realize that as time goes on, the messages from God become more sophisticated. Religion is one, and it is progressive. Different messengers come at different times to different people to give them relevant teachings, and the trend will never stop. More will come. But I kinda had a question for you. I just had a few thoughts, because I never quite understood the atheist take on this. To believe that everything should be perceptible by the human mind or instruments created by the human mind is one of the greatest forms of pride (and therefore ignorance) in my opinion. It is liken to a two-dimensional being scoffing at the possible reality of a three-dimensional one which does not intersect it, demanding two-dimensional proof of the three-dimensional being’s existence. Think of it this way. The mineral has no consciousness compared to a plant, and cannot understand the reality of a plant, even though they are made of the same substance. A plant likewise, cannot hope to begin to understand the reality of the animal. The animal, cannot hope to understand the station of man. And man, though aware of spiritual reality in the same way an animal may be aware of the presence of a man, cannot hope to understand the true reality of the station above him, spiritual reality. To try and explain everything using one set of dimensions, one set of rules, one set of procedures can prove things within its own contexts. But we find that this is the problem modern quantum physics has run up against, which is why they have now come to subscribe to an eleven-dimensional (in some cases ten-dimensional) system with equations that corroborate our three-dimensional observations. How do you understand this? Thanks for listening.
“One of the things that has always bothered me about religion … is … teachings are set in stone.”
Yes and No. The Ten Commandments were literally set in stone, but in fact they are pretty commonsensical too and most ethical systems (except utilitarianism) would accept them.
However what interests me is the idea that atheists seem to have of God being a kind of super-clever version of themselves. So that if I wrote some stupid things last year, well maybe God also did a few hundred years ago. But God is by definition all-knowing. That means what it sounds like it means. God knows what you are thinking at this very moment and the entire chain of experiences and conversations that you have ever had, not to mention your genetic code etc… that brought you to that point. Such a being doesn’t make mistakes.
Fundamentalism aside, it is important to realise that the Bible is as much a human book as a divine one. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong (God inspired it). But it’s a kind of family album with a specific purpose and not a ‘catch all.’ Thus certain ‘contradictions’ within the text are apparent only. There is no attempt within the Bible to teach the age of the earth, and any prescientific attempts to add years up misreads the fact that the numbers are meant to have symbolic rather than literal value. In many cases it’s a bit like trying to read a love letter literally. Do you really “adore” your beloved? etc… the context is just as important when reading a biblical text.
I don’t believe in God because I believe in the Bible, but rather trust those who wrote it (like there is a Gospel of “Matthew” and one of “Luke” which is different in style and approach) and their message. Faith is more about trusting the person than the content. Let me turn the tables and suggest that “The problem is that those that refuse to follow a religious book is that they are closed to any suggestion that the book may be right.”
To approach a religious text with a sceptical mentality is like approaching a love letter with one. In neither case will you ever believe the writer. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to read with an open heart (I don’t mean a naive one either!) then you might well begin to fall in love yourself…
BTW… this is not Dawn, I’m John her husband.
“Does God change His mind?” Perhaps we need to, just for a moment, assume that He doesn’t always think like us (and me). I change my mind because apparently I was wrong the first time. “If” God changes His mind then He would have been wrong too huh? Does anything “suprise” God? Are the Ten Commandments there to show us we CAN’T do it?
Are they a finger pointing at “we NEED a Savior?” Was Joseph (and the coat of many colors) a picture of the Savior? He was his father’s favorite son (God…Jesus.) His brothers DID leave him for dead (sin kills.) He did become the #1 man under the Egyptian King (God…Jesus, the leaders of a nation.) Joseph DID invite his brothers over for dinner years later and truly forgive them (grace…a gift they didn’t deserve.)
Was another Old Testament story that was written hundreds of years before Christ’s arrival another picture of Jesus and His needed salvation? The blood sacrifice as an atonement for sin. Not forgiveness, just a sign that forgiveness is needed. Perfect, spotless lamb (sinless Christ) sacrificed for us.
Keep in mind that Jesus didn’t much care for the “religious” either. Every time He kind of “cracked the whip” or “made them squirm” He was talking to the religious “live up to my standards” controlling, power hungry people. We all know religion has done a lot of harm.
Above all… PLEASE DO NOT take my word for it. If you want to learn what’s in His word, you will.
Peace
Yahid – Your understanding of the world around you seems fundamentally flawed. To claim that we, as humans, may not “know” God because minerals do not “know” plants is entirely inconsequential. Does that mean that because a monkey can witness a human using a tool, and then repeat the action, your argument is defeated? Or a dog seeing its owner open a door, and then opening the door itself? And I do not claim that the human mind can perceive everything, in fact we know that the human mind cannot perceive everything. We have created tools to allow us to understand some of the forces around us that the human mind cannot perceive however.
Jonathan – I’m sorry but you fell into the trap almost all people of religion fall into at one time or another. By saying that any mention of the age of the earth in the bible is symbolic you are effectively saying that you have chosen to believe it that way. if the age of the earth was meant to be symbolic, how do *you* know that the stories of God, Jesus and the creation are not meant to by symbolic? You choose to believe some, or all, of the bible. And if you trust those that wrote it, those who encouraged slavery, beatings and other vile acts, how can you trust that their intention was to convey certain aspects of the bible in a symbolic sense and others in a literal sense? If you believe the Bible is God’s word, and you trust those who wrote it, then surely you must believe it in its entirety? Otherwise you are picking the parts of it you like, or that fit your existing views/lifestyle choices, and discarding the rest. And I’m afraid worshipping a non-existent being isn’t commonsensical.
Dawn/John – I think you have to accept one of two things. Either a) the Bible is God’s word and must be believed entirely, including the parts that have been proven to be wrong, the parts that don’t meet our current moral values (slavery, ownership of people etc.) – or – b) God wrote the bible through man but has since changed his mind about certain parts of it (of course he would have written that the earth was a few thousand years old and then gone back in time to actually make it many billions of years early, just to make it look like he didn’t know what he was doing).
The correct answer is, of course, c) The Bible was based on information available at the time it was written and based on the social moral values around at the time. It is a work of fiction. God isn’t real and Jesus was not his son.
tA – You didn’t understand what I was implying. A dog mimicking the action of a human being, or mimicking the action of another animal does not make a dog transcend his station, because he has been given the power of parody and mimicry. How is that fundamentally flawed? A dog can never be a human, because no being, in whatever form it was fashioned, even through the processes of evolution, can ever belong to the kingdom above it, and nor can it understand it.
Atheist – I’m sorry but the recognition of different genres within the Bible is not something one chooses. When Jesus says: “If your eye causes you to sin, cut it out” you don’t have to be a scripture scholar to know that it is hyperbole. Whenever the rare Christian has tried to take it literally, they have been censured by the rest of the community in no uncertain terms. However the accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus are also very clearly intended to describe historical events. If this is not manifestly clear to any reader,the fact of the apostles’ being prepared to die holding this belief is good reason.
I do get the feeling that many contributors here have no sense for poetry at all. When a Hebrew writer (in the Bible) says: “Two things do I know, three things will I tell” is it more sensible to think that they are unable to count to three, or that they are using typical Semitic poetry to emphasise a point? If you can’t yourself distinguish between poetry and prose, between allegory and history, then you will have to trust those of us who do, but it’s worth getting into Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austin, or good writers like that because it’s a lack of humanity not to be able to understand the ‘truth’ that only fiction can teach.
To take one particular point, could you point for example to anywhere in the Bible that speaks about the age of the earth? In fact, people who attempt to do this have to go through a complicated patchwork of genealogies from Adam downwards. This is laughable, and not just for us ‘moderns’ post ‘Enlightenment’. Read Origin, for example (3rd century) or any of the early Church Fathers (or even ancient Jewish commentaries for that matter).
There is no choice for the reader about the genre of a text. Thus it is not up to me to decide whether the Bible is really teaching love of neighbour or just telling some interesting story. It is vital that a critic is capable of understanding the difference between being able to read the intention of the author and belief in the author. It is possible to distinguish between reading the Bible sympathetically (ie giving credit to the human author’s intelligence) and believe that it is also God’s self-revelation. I think that even (maybe especially) atheists owe it the former, even if they must withhold the latter.
We agree that worshipping a non-existent being isn’t commonsensical.
John here again.
Atheist-
a) The Bible makes no effoert to hide sin (selfishness) the way I see it.
b) As said by Mr Baker, I don’t see anywhere that the Bible speaks of the earth’s age.
c) Take this info how you choose…
A few years ago I heard a lenghty interview with a man that had spent many years working a polygraph machine. A baseline is always needed to establish an individuals reactions to true/false statements. One question on all of his baseline questionairs was “Do you believe there is a God?” The man stated that this question has ALWAYS been answered one way… When the questionair was answered “yes” to that question, and then “yes” was answered while hooked up on the machine, the machine showed the individual was being truthful. When “no” was checked on the questionair and “no” was stated when hooked up, the machine ALWAYS indicated that the person was being untruthful. I believe “created in His image” has nothing to do with looking like Him, but instead, His imagination… He had an image of what we were created for. He’s a jealous God and demands that it’s all about Him. It’s His party, that doesn’t mean I always like it, but He IS good.
d) It has been proven that Jesus WAS a teacher that walked and talked a couple thousand years ago. Wheather He was the Christ (Masiah, Son of God) SHOULD be up for debate, we need to know… and I believe that’s the whole reason we all are on this site.
This leaves us with three choices:
1) Jesus was a lunatic, a madman, a wacko, out of His mind with all His claims.
2) He was arrogant (based on a lie, puffing oneself up for others to create an image of someone we know we’re not when we’re alone and the lights are out.)
3) “If” there is a God, and He is His son, then His statement “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one get’s to the Father but through Me” was pure love and kindness.
“I don’t see anywhere that the Bible speaks of the earth’s age.”
There’s Genealogies. Unless you accept that the people listed lived for a few hundred million years each, it’s complete and total rubbish. I’d like to refer you to Answers in Genesis for your Christian spokesperson answer to this one.
“It has been proven that Jesus WAS a teacher that walked and talked a couple thousand years ago”.
No, it hasn’t.
There isn’t ANY proof. Moreover, there isn’t any evidence for the existence of Jesus, other than the bible, whatsoever. The only “evidence” conflicts with the existence of Jesus. Like Josphephus Flavius and the, shall we say, lies that the early Church put in pretending to be him? Good one, early church.
What about the other messiahs at the time that we DO have evidence for? Horus… Krishna… all had exactly the same stories as Jesus. Born on Dec 25th, Crucified at Easter, last supper, walking on water, casting out demons, raising a guy called Lazurus (yes, it’s been done before), and dying for sins and coming back three days later and ascending into heaven.
It’s an old story.
And regarding your “Three choices” you leave us with. Leave the Alpha course material at home please. I used to be an Alpha course leader, don’t you know…. there is one other option here in the dichothamy that is not mentioned:
4) That Jesus didn’t exist at all (after all, there is no evidence for it). He was a god-man like the hundreds that proceeded him and the thousands that followed thereafter.
Well, god did make mistakes, no? Did he not decide that his creature was so utterly flawed that the only solution was to kill everyone (save Noah and his family) in a flood?
Anyhow, I love the argument that we, as humans, are incapable of understanding god’s ways. If this is true, how can we understand any of the bible? Saying humans are incapable of understanding god is a slippery slope. If he is so beyond us and our understanding, how can we truly have any idea what he intends for us? If god is not subject to human emotions and human ideals, how do we know that when the bible speaks of love, it is speaking of what we know as love? Perhaps love to god is something we cannot understand, and it’s terrible by our standards. The point here, of course, is that this argument is absurd — unless you contend that we can understand some things about god (ones that benefit you) and not others (that do not benefit you or your argument).
Asking whether certain biblical events actually happened is a very poor way of trying to grasp what is being demonstrated theologically. We have no way of knowing whether events ever took place, despite it being referred to by the gospels. Whether you accept it as a historical reality is a matter for belief and faith. Proving that Jesus could command nature, for example, would have been of no significance or importance to Matthew, Mark Luke or John. They already know as writers what they are trying to convey before they commit word to page. The impulse that drives that conveyance is not the establishment of proof but rather the communication of a truth. The issue for them as writers is how they will convey that truth; it is at that moment, prior to the first stroke of literary expression, that literature and the use of literary art becomes an essential aspect of the theological enterprise. Theology does not have the same agenda as science or modern history. It is not constructed to be a historical or scientific proof. This was not the focus of the antiquated judaic process or the greek/gentile focus. The communication of theological truth is the pupose for the literay creation of these highly complex religous works. Thus, the artistic and narrative tradition of religious storytelling comes into being; its purpose being to paint truth for us not proof. it is not the bible that is outdated it is that your understanding of theology is extremely limited, serving to validate what can only be your own agenda.
Further, on the issue about evolving ideas and social value frameworks. Consider the ten commandments. What separates the Decalogue from how value and morality is traditionally expressed and codified in culture is that in this context God himself acts as legislator. God addresses the people directly. The Law comes directly from God. Thus, the motivation to obey will not be born out of fear of reprisal or punishment but out of respect for God’s absolute authority. This elevates the law from a practical framework for social conformity and moral duty to a state of high sanctity.
Adherence to the law was and is act of religious duty; obedience made one holy whereas disobedience led to sin- a consequence of rebelling against God’s authority. The Decalogue, as it was then, is still the foundation of religious life on our planet. The symbolism of it being carved into stone by God himself underlines this reality. God doesnt evolve- we evolve, slowly and sometimes painfully.
THE bible has a lot of subliminal messages and that’s why some people read it and under stand the meaning. while other people cant it is a living book the messages are different but it is very clever way of communication so if you read it and cant understand it dont knock it,one day it may be your turn then all will be revealed.