Uncultured swine.

(September 22, 2026 at 5:02 am)emjay Wrote: Fair enough, that's interesting in its own right... and I agree, people's interpretation of things can change/evolve over time, just as people can change/evolve over time. But using the Bible as a touchstone nonetheless has a flip side... in that in my experience of its usage by others, it's more often than not used just to 'justify' or excuse people's prejudices... homophobia for instance, even if only a line or two in the Bible references it, and any other 'line or two' is conveniently ignored etc. In that sense, its use is anything but changing/evolving over time, but rather representing a fixation/obsession/prejudice over time... and if for nothing else necessarily, they may 'hang onto' that it seems... ie whether they believe in god or not. In other words, things like homophobia continue to exist with such unending stubbornness because many people use the Bible to reflect their prejudices in the senses of 'justifying' them.. to them...  both amplifying them and acting as an anchor... or ball on a chain... however you look at it, preventing them from 'moving on' beyond it, whether they see that as a good or a bad thing. In my own case... the case of my homophobic parents... I think it's more in a 'ball on a chain' sense, in that it keeps them tied to homophobia and that without that Biblical 'justification' to them, they might well be able to move on beyond it... because they actually do believe in god, sadly, and are indeed very loving towards me in any other respect, but will never accept my homosexuality because of this 'ball on a chain'. So that's a sad case, but the flip side of the 'ball on a chain' is the 'anchor', when people are using it as a 'safe' space from which to continuously and aggressively attack... thankfully my parents aren't using it that way, so there is that, but nonetheless some people do... many people do... despite only a few lines in the Bible even mentioning it, but enough for them to fixate on, at the expense of everything else, showing the negative side of the brain's ability to read meaning into anything... in that case, the power of confirmation bias etc.

Yes, absolutely. The fact that the Bible is endlessly interpretable means that people can find in it what they want, use it to justify their prejudices, and hold onto it as confirmation. 

Your example is an important one: there are a few lines which (questionably) condemn homosexuality, and homophobes point to these as confirmation. But there are also anti-homophobe Christians who point to different lines to condemn homophobia. 

All interpretation depends on a framework of prior beliefs and experiences, and what a person gets out of it is what they bring into it. If an interpretation changes as we grow, this is due to different influences re-adjusting the framework. No doubt many Christians have become more enlightened about homosexuality in recent decades -- I wish your parents could see why that is. 

Quote:Anyway, as for me, the Bible is the last thing I'd use as a means to reflect on 'morality' and/or 'justice' as it does neither, and all it represents mainly to me, is that 'ball on a chain' keeping this world so polarised when it doesn't need to be. In other words, the world could have been a very different place now if there'd been two less assholes in the Bible for people to fixate on  ...which everyone else uses as either their anchor or a sad, ball on a chain, grounding them in or tying them to these bigoted beliefs.

Again, I'd say it depends on the interpretation of the Bible that people are using, and, unfortunately, you're right that way too many people use it to justify polarizing and unkind attitudes. 

It depends on what words in the Bible people fixate on. The whole "judge not" thing would be a good idea, probably. And the thing about loving everybody. 

When Dolly Parton died recently I saw something I'd never seen before: literally hundreds of people on Twitter were telling stories of how kind she had been to them. These were people who were not in a position to help her, even with good publicity, as many of her good deeds were not announced. If she read in the newspaper about someone who had done a good thing, she would look them up and help them in some way, without being asked. One person who worked for her briefly was transitioning but couldn't afford the top surgery, and when Dolly got wind of this she simply paid for the surgery without being asked. None of this was made public until she was gone. 

The point is that she consistently attributed this kindness to her Christian beliefs. Judging not and helping your neighbor, that kind of thing. (And I bring her up because she's famous, but I know others who have similar takes on the Bible's message. I have a niece who works with troubled children, for instance, who is the only Christian in my family -- and she is certainly NOT homophobic or cruel. Quite the opposite.) 

So there are good interpretations and bad ones. 

Quote:But as to the question of taking it literally or not, its only 'value' to me remains as a literal, metaphysical (or whatever), claim to be accepted as true or not, and obviously I do not believe it to be true, for many reasons, but given than non-belief in its actual truth, and seeing how negatively it is used by many people, either intentionally or not, why should I want to read it for any other purpose? There's nothing inspirational about it to me, even as pure fiction, if we could agree that it was that. But do you see it as a claim at all? Does it help you in any way at all, literally or non-literally come to any conclusion about whether the Christian god actually exists or not? Or could do? Because that remains the primary point as far as I'm concerned, and that has long ago been decided, that no, it does not suggest or prove in any way the existence of the Christian god, and all it does is bring more suffering to this world than needs to be here... in many ways, not just homophobia, I might add... so certainly not something to read in any inspirational or reflective sense. Buddhism for instance, is far more meaningful to me, in both of those senses, than the Bible ever could be.

I don't see any part of the Bible as an attempt to prove God's existence. It seems to be written for people or communities who already believe, and the miracle stories and things like that will provide confirmation for believers but are easily dismissed by those who don't believe. Or they are simply myths that imply a message, which the reader takes in or not.

No doubt if a person was attracted to Christianity for one reason or another, reading the Bible might influence him because he already has a positive interpretation. But again, that's more confirmation than persuasion. 

Likewise it's a commonplace among Internet atheists to say that reading the Bible is what made them stop believing, but again that's due to prior beliefs and standards of judgment telling them that it's not credible. A person who has learned a scientific/materialist worldview from his culture will easily dismiss the whole thing. When the Bible is taught like children's stories, then it's easy to dismiss it once you're not a child any more. 

Given your own experiences it's entirely understandable that you would feel no attraction to it, or inclination to use it for any reason at all. And I would never tell you that you ought to reconsider, since you have approached it thoughtfully and not simply as a hater. 

Personally I don't think the Bible adds or subtracts any credibility to the idea of believing in God. But I've never been someone who feels the need to accept or reject these things. I remain interested in reading from a distance. 

(September 22, 2026 at 4:07 pm)emjay Wrote: Wow, that's a far more in-depth analysis than mine... and makes my issues with homophobia feel like a drop in the ocean compared to all the other suffering that the Bible has led to over centuries, being as you put it, roughly speaking with square brackets, [spread by the sword]... , as well as [suppressing different interpretations, again, usually with a sword, rather than celebrating or encouraging them]... both very thought provoking and insightful ideas, so thanks for that. As for Bel, I'm curious too how he'd respond to these points, because they just take my points to a much deeper level, and in some directions I hadn't even thought of, but make perfect sense.

He won't reply, since he won't read this, because he has me on ignore.

He's doing exactly what he is accusing everybody else of: creating his own echo chamber.

It's his loss, not mine/ours, and thank you again for acknowledging my efforts

(September 23, 2026 at 4:28 am)Deesse23 Wrote:

(September 22, 2026 at 4:07 pm)emjay Wrote: Wow, that's a far more in-depth analysis than mine... and makes my issues with homophobia feel like a drop in the ocean compared to all the other suffering that the Bible has led to over centuries, being as you put it, roughly speaking with square brackets, [spread by the sword]... , as well as [suppressing different interpretations, again, usually with a sword, rather than celebrating or encouraging them]... both very thought provoking and insightful ideas, so thanks for that. As for Bel, I'm curious too how he'd respond to these points, because they just take my points to a much deeper level, and in some directions I hadn't even thought of, but make perfect sense.

He won't reply, since he won't read this, because he has me on ignore.

He's doing exactly what he is accusing everybody else of: creating his own echo chamber.

It's his loss, not mine/ours, and thank you again for acknowledging my efforts

Yeah well... maybe... possibly... probably... true, but just as on the other site, I find it really uncomfortable to be stuck in the middle of people ignoring eachother and/or people feeling uncomfortable at being ignored... but just as pointless as it turned out to be to try and intervene elsewhere to try and help the situation, I'll nonetheless try and give the same advice I did before, and that is that I'd recommend, if it's hurting you to be ignored, just to accept the situation and walk away, or try to, in peace. Even if you can't get any closure... that more peace of mind will come from that, in my opinion, and imo also in Buddhism's opinion, than endlessly and futilely chasing after that closure. At the end of the day, people have the right to ignore people, however uncomfortable it may feel to be on the receiving end of that, but imo it's much better for your peace of mind, whether short term or long term, just to try and accept it and let it go, rather than try and fight it forever. Anyway I don't know if this will be received well, just as it wasn't received well elsewhere, but in any case, I wish you all the best... and hope, for your own sake, that you could let it go, but that's just my hope... but obviously, you do you

(September 23, 2026 at 7:26 am)emjay Wrote: Yeah well... maybe... possibly... probably... true, but just as on the other site, I find it really uncomfortable to be stuck in the middle of people ignoring eachother and/or people feeling uncomfortable at being ignored...

I dont mind being ignored. I just mind reading stuff i disagree with. If you are tryign to say you feel i am interfering with your conversation, then ok. Ill shut up from now on. No hurt feelings.

(September 23, 2026 at 7:26 am)emjay Wrote: but just as pointless as it turned out to be to try and intervene elsewhere to try and help the situation, I'll nonetheless try and give the same advice I did before, and that is that I'd recommend, if it's hurting you to be ignored, just to accept the situation and walk away, or try to, in peace. Even if you can't get any closure... that more peace of mind will come from that, in my opinion, and imo also in Buddhism's opinion, than endlessly and futilely chasing after that closure. At the end of the day, people have the right to ignore people, however uncomfortable it may feel to be on the receiving end of that, but imo it's much better for your peace of mind, whether short term or long term, just to try and accept it and let it go, rather than try and fight it forever. Anyway I don't know if this will be received well, just as it wasn't received well elsewhere, but in any case, I wish you all the best... and hope, for your own sake, that you could let it go, but that's just my hope... but obviously, you do you

Like i said: Im not hurt. Everybody can take the liberty to ignore me while i take the liberty to comment on people ignoring me. Not for them, but for the audience. In what world would we live in, if all it takes to silence someone is to ignore him so he will shut up all by himself?
We live in the age of information, which unfortunately is in the process to turn in to the age of bullshit. We have an information channel (www) of unprecedented range and bandwidth, but as signal theory proves: signal-to-noise-ratio is important. Once its 1/1 the receiver can not extract information out of a received signal anymore and communication breaks down. Evidently communication breaks down because a) signal level is too low or b) noise level is too high. I refuse to cede the channel to too much noise and try to keep my signal aplitude up, thats all. Thats the least i can do (before i retire soon to my private little island and slurp on Caipirinhas all day, but thats an entire different topic).

The floor is all yours now.

(September 23, 2026 at 11:45 am)Deesse23 Wrote:

(September 23, 2026 at 7:26 am)emjay Wrote: Yeah well... maybe... possibly... probably... true, but just as on the other site, I find it really uncomfortable to be stuck in the middle of people ignoring eachother and/or people feeling uncomfortable at being ignored...

I dont mind being ignored. I just mind reading stuff i disagree with. If you are tryign to say you feel i am interfering with your conversation, then ok. Ill shut up from now on. No hurt feelings.

No, I just meant for your own sake... if it was causing mental or emotional problems... but since you've said it isn't, then just forget I said anything. So no, it's nothing to do with thinking you're interfering with me, or anything like that, but just worried that it was stressful for you or whatever, but if not, as you say, then just forget I said anything.

Quote:

(September 23, 2026 at 7:26 am)emjay Wrote: but just as pointless as it turned out to be to try and intervene elsewhere to try and help the situation, I'll nonetheless try and give the same advice I did before, and that is that I'd recommend, if it's hurting you to be ignored, just to accept the situation and walk away, or try to, in peace. Even if you can't get any closure... that more peace of mind will come from that, in my opinion, and imo also in Buddhism's opinion, than endlessly and futilely chasing after that closure. At the end of the day, people have the right to ignore people, however uncomfortable it may feel to be on the receiving end of that, but imo it's much better for your peace of mind, whether short term or long term, just to try and accept it and let it go, rather than try and fight it forever. Anyway I don't know if this will be received well, just as it wasn't received well elsewhere, but in any case, I wish you all the best... and hope, for your own sake, that you could let it go, but that's just my hope... but obviously, you do you

Like i said: Im not hurt. Everybody can take the liberty to ignore me while i take the liberty to comment on people ignoring me. Not for them, but for the audience. In what world would we live in, if all it takes to silence someone is to ignore him so he will shut up all by himself?[...]

Fair enough... I was just worried about if it was causing you emotional issues or whatever, but if it's nothing like that, as you're saying, then I'm sorry for making the wrong sorts of assumptions/speculations... and probably shouldn't have brought it up.

Quote:We live in the age of information, which unfortunately is in the process to turn in to the age of bullshit. We have an information channel (www) of unprecedented range and bandwidth, but as signal theory proves: signal-to-noise-ratio is important. Once its 1/1 the receiver can not extract information out of a received signal anymore and communication breaks down. Evidently communication breaks down because a) signal level is too low or b) noise level is too high. I refuse to cede the channel to too much noise and try to keep my signal aplitude up, thats all. Thats the least i can do (before i retire soon to my private little island and slurp on Caipirinhas all day, but thats an entire different topic).

The floor is all yours now.

Again, fair enough... I'm sorry I got involved. I don't know what else to say really. You do you, and I'm sorry I brought it up.

As for me though, I accept that he has a very different viewpoint on all this sort of stuff than most of us, but at the same time he has interesting things to say sometimes I think, and he's not homophobic, or trollish or anything, in my opinion anyway, and has been very kind to me. I know there's a lot of bad blood here on many sides, but ultimately I'd miss him if he wasn't here... and I accept the tomatoes flying in my direction for saying that, if there are any. I basically think, we could fight all day, and get nowhere, or we could just look for common ground, and perhaps learn a little more about each other in the process, little by little. So yeah, that's basically how I view it. I don't know if I'll be continuing the conversation or not, because usually I don't do that for too long anyway, but that would basically be my viewpoint in it if I did.

In the end, it doesn’t matter much how a given Christian interprets magic book. As an explanation Christianity fails on evidentiary grounds. As a religious belief it can never rise above objectionable, as any claim about how the universe ought to be is. I get that we can whittle it down and imagine a nice polite well educated -cultural- Christian. Then we’re just talking about an atheist with a beard, though. Not a Christian. Not Christianity. Not magic book.

(September 23, 2026 at 1:25 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(September 22, 2026 at 5:02 am)emjay Wrote: Fair enough, that's interesting in its own right... and I agree, people's interpretation of things can change/evolve over time, just as people can change/evolve over time. But using the Bible as a touchstone nonetheless has a flip side... in that in my experience of its usage by others, it's more often than not used just to 'justify' or excuse people's prejudices... homophobia for instance, even if only a line or two in the Bible references it, and any other 'line or two' is conveniently ignored etc. In that sense, its use is anything but changing/evolving over time, but rather representing a fixation/obsession/prejudice over time... and if for nothing else necessarily, they may 'hang onto' that it seems... ie whether they believe in god or not. In other words, things like homophobia continue to exist with such unending stubbornness because many people use the Bible to reflect their prejudices in the senses of 'justifying' them.. to them...  both amplifying them and acting as an anchor... or ball on a chain... however you look at it, preventing them from 'moving on' beyond it, whether they see that as a good or a bad thing. In my own case... the case of my homophobic parents... I think it's more in a 'ball on a chain' sense, in that it keeps them tied to homophobia and that without that Biblical 'justification' to them, they might well be able to move on beyond it... because they actually do believe in god, sadly, and are indeed very loving towards me in any other respect, but will never accept my homosexuality because of this 'ball on a chain'. So that's a sad case, but the flip side of the 'ball on a chain' is the 'anchor', when people are using it as a 'safe' space from which to continuously and aggressively attack... thankfully my parents aren't using it that way, so there is that, but nonetheless some people do... many people do... despite only a few lines in the Bible even mentioning it, but enough for them to fixate on, at the expense of everything else, showing the negative side of the brain's ability to read meaning into anything... in that case, the power of confirmation bias etc.

Yes, absolutely. The fact that the Bible is endlessly interpretable means that people can find in it what they want, use it to justify their prejudices, and hold onto it as confirmation. 

Your example is an important one: there are a few lines which (questionably) condemn homosexuality, and homophobes point to these as confirmation. But there are also anti-homophobe Christians who point to different lines to condemn homophobia. 

All interpretation depends on a framework of prior beliefs and experiences, and what a person gets out of it is what they bring into it. If an interpretation changes as we grow, this is due to different influences re-adjusting the framework. No doubt many Christians have become more enlightened about homosexuality in recent decades -- I wish your parents could see why that is.

If our case... my family's case... or at least me and my dad's case, I'd say we're both similarly literally minded... tbh just as much as I think I probably am/have  'Asperger's Syndrome', I think my dad is too, so it's always been more about 'the letter of the law' rather than 'the spirit of the law' so to speak, for both of us really I'd say, where the Bible is concerned. So even when I was a Christian (up to the age of 18), it never sat right with me to 'reinterpret' it any more positive sense, as some around me did regarding homosexuality or whatever... it was just letter of the law.... and loopholes of the law so to speak... so there was no way of getting around the fact that it condemns homosexuality in the Bible, neither for me nor my dad... not then, not now. To me, there remains no 'spirit of the law' where the Bible is concerned... it's just an arbitrary collection of rules with no logic binding them or explaining them, just the unchanging whims of a god... if it's true... which obviously, I no longer believe it to be, but even if I did go back to believing in it, that's the only way I could see it.

Quote:

Quote:Anyway, as for me, the Bible is the last thing I'd use as a means to reflect on 'morality' and/or 'justice' as it does neither, and all it represents mainly to me, is that 'ball on a chain' keeping this world so polarised when it doesn't need to be. In other words, the world could have been a very different place now if there'd been two less assholes in the Bible for people to fixate on  ...which everyone else uses as either their anchor or a sad, ball on a chain, grounding them in or tying them to these bigoted beliefs.

Again, I'd say it depends on the interpretation of the Bible that people are using, and, unfortunately, you're right that way too many people use it to justify polarizing and unkind attitudes. 

It depends on what words in the Bible people fixate on. The whole "judge not" thing would be a good idea, probably. And the thing about loving everybody. 

When Dolly Parton died recently I saw something I'd never seen before: literally hundreds of people on Twitter were telling stories of how kind she had been to them. These were people who were not in a position to help her, even with good publicity, as many of her good deeds were not announced. If she read in the newspaper about someone who had done a good thing, she would look them up and help them in some way, without being asked. One person who worked for her briefly was transitioning but couldn't afford the top surgery, and when Dolly got wind of this she simply paid for the surgery without being asked. None of this was made public until she was gone. 

The point is that she consistently attributed this kindness to her Christian beliefs. Judging not and helping your neighbor, that kind of thing. (And I bring her up because she's famous, but I know others who have similar takes on the Bible's message. I have a niece who works with troubled children, for instance, who is the only Christian in my family -- and she is certainly NOT homophobic or cruel. Quite the opposite.) 

So there are good interpretations and bad ones.

I've met many nice Christians, but I generally view them as nice despite their Christian beliefs, not because of them... that if they weren't tied down, in that ball-on-a-chain sense, by the bigotry in the Bible, how much better they could be. I love my dad for instance, very much, and after my aneurysm operation, we've never been more close, but nonetheless I still see him as tied down by this arbitrary ball-on-a-chain... and actually, in a very sad moment, for all of us, said to him after my op that 'the happiest day in my life will be the day you lose your Christian beliefs'. I love him, but I hate the ball-on-a-chain, that ties him down, completely arbitrarily, without any logic or structure, just the whims of an (unjust) god, if it exists, which it obviously doesn't, but sadly he will never likely see that. As for Dolly Parton, I think I may vaguely remember that myself, but personally I'd see that as an exception not a rule... if there was more of that, great, but there largely isn't in my view.

Quote:

Quote:But as to the question of taking it literally or not, its only 'value' to me remains as a literal, metaphysical (or whatever), claim to be accepted as true or not, and obviously I do not believe it to be true, for many reasons, but given than non-belief in its actual truth, and seeing how negatively it is used by many people, either intentionally or not, why should I want to read it for any other purpose? There's nothing inspirational about it to me, even as pure fiction, if we could agree that it was that. But do you see it as a claim at all? Does it help you in any way at all, literally or non-literally come to any conclusion about whether the Christian god actually exists or not? Or could do? Because that remains the primary point as far as I'm concerned, and that has long ago been decided, that no, it does not suggest or prove in any way the existence of the Christian god, and all it does is bring more suffering to this world than needs to be here... in many ways, not just homophobia, I might add... so certainly not something to read in any inspirational or reflective sense. Buddhism for instance, is far more meaningful to me, in both of those senses, than the Bible ever could be.

I don't see any part of the Bible as an attempt to prove God's existence. It seems to be written for people or communities who already believe, and the miracle stories and things like that will provide confirmation for believers but are easily dismissed by those who don't believe. Or they are simply myths that imply a message, which the reader takes in or not.

No doubt if a person was attracted to Christianity for one reason or another, reading the Bible might influence him because he already has a positive interpretation. But again, that's more confirmation than persuasion. 

Likewise it's a commonplace among Internet atheists to say that reading the Bible is what made them stop believing, but again that's due to prior beliefs and standards of judgment telling them that it's not credible. A person who has learned a scientific/materialist worldview from his culture will easily dismiss the whole thing. When the Bible is taught like children's stories, then it's easy to dismiss it once you're not a child any more. 

Given your own experiences it's entirely understandable that you would feel no attraction to it, or inclination to use it for any reason at all. And I would never tell you that you ought to reconsider, since you have approached it thoughtfully and not simply as a hater. 

Personally I don't think the Bible adds or subtracts any credibility to the idea of believing in God. But I've never been someone who feels the need to accept or reject these things. I remain interested in reading from a distance. 

As to this, I will say no-one is 'simply' ...'a hater'... everyone here and anywhere else has thoughtful reasons for their views about and on the Bible, so I hope you wouldn't just see that as 'haterism' so to speak. Like, I think they brought up very thoughtful points that, if I understand correctly, that though in these modern times we largely have freedom to reinterpret at will, that wasn't always the case... that largely the Christian religion and Bible was spread by force, and likewise conformity within it maintained by force (ie its persecution of 'heretics')... so that's quite different from the liberal-ish freedom people have now to read and/or interpret it more positively. Do you have any views on that at all?

But yeah, if you really don't see it as a claim per se, but rather more just confirmation for either side, and just enjoy reading it for some reason, then each to their own. Does that mean that if it's not the Bible that persuades you either way, that for you it's more the classical theology arguments, that you seem so fond of, that sway you? Or does not even that sway you... ie do you think you're ever going to actually take that leap so to speak? Or is it just about artistic or 'aesthetic' interest, reading it 'from a distance'?

Remember children, the cool thing about magic book is that people can interpret it any old way....but certainly not the way that "haters" interpret it. That would be bad.

(September 24, 2026 at 9:23 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Remember children, the cool thing about magic book is that people can interpret it any old way....but certainly not the way that "haters" interpret it. That would be bad.

They can't. Claiming that the book of Genesis is a metaphor is just fooling yourself. The existence of Adam and Eve is crucial for Christianity, but those metaphorists simply ignore it—like Belacqua, who has been told this numerous times over the years, but he just ignores it and keeps repeating his talking points like a broken record.