(May 8, 2022 at 9:03 am)Ahriman Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 8:24 am)brewer Wrote: Man made god(s). Often to explain/describe/give god credit to 'supernatural' events for natural events or observations.

In the story she became a pillar if salt because they saw salt pillars in the area. No god necessary for salt pillars, but it makes a wonderful manipulation story.

Why would the authors of the Bible be interested in manipulating anyone?

Because religion is all about control!

(May 8, 2022 at 9:58 am)h311inac311 Wrote: Welcome to the forum Diogenes,

It's a little hard for me to tell exactly what you are advocating for, because on the one hand you are saying that we shouldn't take this story from Genesis literally but on the other you are offering, and defending, physical evidence as well as historical evidence from areas near Sodom and Gomorrah.

I'm trying to gain a better understanding of just what exactly you mean here. The Bible speaks to many layers of truth, historical, literal, spiritual and metaphor, just to name a few. But the book of Genesis falls under the category of history so I tend to read it in that context first, just like the Psalms are mostly poetry or music so they are heavy laden with metaphor and ought to be read as one would read poetry.


As for the bears which attacked children for telling Elisha to, "rise up you bald head" it reveals to us that when a true servant of God calls down a curse from heaven God is not slow to answer. Now God could have just given the boys a tummy ache, but instead he chose to kill 42 of them. These boys were telling a prophet to "rise up" or go to heaven already. Basically they were wishing death upon him, apparently neither God nor Elisha took that lightly. This verse always gets brought up when people are looking for indictments against YHWH but it never really bothered me that much. You shouldn't wish death upon one of God's servants, perhaps the reason why we don't take such ideas as seriously today is because we live under the New Covenant where the holy spirit is far more active here on Earth and Christians are called to love not just their neighbor but also their enemy.


Boru

Be good enough not to sign my name to your nonsensical drivel.

Boru

Green Diogenes, you believe that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah really happened and that a woman was turned into a pillar of salt, but you don't believe it was for punishment.

So what do you think was the reason God turned her into the pillar of salt? Doesn't seem like he did it to award her.

Turning someone into the pillar of salt (killing) is a damning/ punishing gesture, so I don't see what else could it be nor do you even propose.

(May 8, 2022 at 10:30 am)brewer Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 9:03 am)Ahriman Wrote: Why would the authors of the Bible be interested in manipulating anyone?

Because you would be one of their favorite/easy victims.

Yeah that doesn't answer the question.

(May 8, 2022 at 11:09 am)zebo-the-fat Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 9:03 am)Ahriman Wrote: Why would the authors of the Bible be interested in manipulating anyone?

Because religion is all about control!

If self-discipline can be counted as a form of control, then yeah.

(May 8, 2022 at 11:11 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Be good enough not to sign my name to your nonsensical drivel.

Boru

  "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."



Chris

(May 8, 2022 at 9:58 am)h311inac311 Wrote: Welcome to the forum Diogenes,

It's a little hard for me to tell exactly what you are advocating for, because on the one hand you are saying that we shouldn't take this story from Genesis literally but on the other you are offering, and defending, physical evidence as well as historical evidence from areas near Sodom and Gomorrah.

I'm trying to gain a better understanding of just what exactly you mean here. The Bible speaks to many layers of truth, historical, literal, spiritual and metaphor, just to name a few. But the book of Genesis falls under the category of history so I tend to read it in that context first, just like the Psalms are mostly poetry or music so they are heavy laden with metaphor and ought to be read as one would read poetry.


As for the bears which attacked children for telling Elisha to, "rise up you bald head" it reveals to us that when a true servant of God calls down a curse from heaven God is not slow to answer. Now God could have just given the boys a tummy ache, but instead he chose to kill 42 of them. These boys were telling a prophet to "rise up" or go to heaven already. Basically they were wishing death upon him, apparently neither God nor Elisha took that lightly. This verse always gets brought up when people are looking for indictments against YHWH but it never really bothered me that much. You shouldn't wish death upon one of God's servants, perhaps the reason why we don't take such ideas as seriously today is because we live under the New Covenant where the holy spirit is far more active here on Earth and Christians are called to love not just their neighbor but also their enemy.


Boru

I'm pointing out that what is considered the "Literal" interpretation of the Bible, is not from the Bible, but a religious narrative put on top of the Bible. 

It does seem to be difficult to understand. See how many people here are claiming that I've said things I have not, because they are only seeing the mainstream Religious narrative, and not seeing that I am not speaking from it. This is the key though. It is very difficult to get people engaged in the conversation, instead of repeating either side of the false dichotomy. 


The Literal Interpretation of the Bible says that Evolution cannot exist, because in Genesis, the vision of creation as described by Moses, uses the word 'kinds' which has the Ideological interpretation under Young Earth Creationism as "A singular unchanging form", which is of course not what it actually says. For another short example.

(May 8, 2022 at 11:22 am)Ahriman Wrote:

(May 8, 2022 at 10:30 am)brewer Wrote: Because you would be one of their favorite/easy victims.

Yeah that doesn't answer the question.

Actually it does.

(May 8, 2022 at 9:31 am)Green Diogenes Wrote: I was aware that the site was claimed to be roundly debunked, but I never saw anything other than sophistic arguments based on mockery of religion, and using individual scientist's misinterpretations to rubbish their whole dataset, in the same way YECs rubbish everything from NASA just because of fish eye lenses in launch vehicles. 

I somehow doubt that a professional explaining exactly how his own findings had been both misinterpreted and misrepresented falls into the category of sophistic arguments based on mockery of religion.  Though, I could see how, if you were that referenced professional - you might be a little pissed about it.

That said - let's just run with it.  You believe there's some ulterior motive at play, but you were aware that anyone could google the claim...for example... and they'd find exactly what I mentioned?  That the author they explicitly base their premise upon does not agree with their conclusions.

Quote:Yes, I am completely aware of these different schools of thought. I'm trying to break apart the false dichotomy between them. The entire main point of my first post in this thread is that people are locked into a 'literal' reading which is just religious myths inserted on top of the Bible, and the text itself doesn't support that view. This effectively locks a huge area of study into the realm of "anti-science nonsense" which is avoided by anyone who wants to keep hold of a career, unless they want to go into the other lucrative business of pushing Anti-science nonsense, who are not concerned with truth. 

If the text doesn't support a literalist view, then why assert such a view in your own conclusion?  That this is some description of a real event witnessed by some author in the narrative chain?  I'm sure there's alot to unpack in whatever anti-science nonsense is, and why it would be bad if much of a religious myth were locked into it...but - just to erase any worries there-  There's nothing anti-scientific about people expressing the contents of their faith through mythical or legendary narratives.  It's a thing we do, and religious beliefs are not scientific beliefs in the first place.  Not beliefs about how the world is - but about how it should be.

Or, at least, this is my understanding. That we commonly tell stories intended to lay out our vision for the world. Do you have a different understanding?

Quote:What do you mean by wholly within the context of just my own conclusion?

That is generally how you can understand religious stories, which have a lot of well documented patterns and a flexible relation to reality, yes. Understanding this is how you understand how specific "Bible Stories" and their surrounding cultural literature have been derived from a book which doesn't contain those stories.

Well, just from inside that dichotomy breaking notion.  Where, when the story tells us a woman was transormed into a pillar of salt..you think..instead, that;s a way of describing what it looks like to watch a person vaporized by an airburst.  Just inside that setup alone...how do you think that plays out?  Where something vaporizes a person close enough for someone else to see..but leaves them alive to tell the tale?  So that it's something like a witness description, rather than a creative bit of fictional extrapolation for effect?

(May 8, 2022 at 12:55 pm)Green Diogenes Wrote: The Literal Interpretation of the Bible says that Evolution cannot exist, because in Genesis, the vision of creation as described by Moses, uses the word 'kinds' which has the Ideological interpretation under Young Earth Creationism as "A singular unchanging form", which is of course not what it actually says. For another short example.

...?  Word selection is not, at all, the anachronism between a biological account of life on earth, and a biblical one.  They could have picked any word they wanted there, and it's not at all possible that any change to any one word in that huge mess of a story can salvage it with respect to biological reality.

However, if you think that could be done, I'd be very interested to see.