Lazy Atheism?

[The Grand Nudger]

(4) There was no jesus to write those things down.  He's a composite character in a work of fiction.

......what does that have to do with anything?

Other than being the factual and practical answer to all of those questions posed, nothing at all.  We tend to ask anachronistic questions when we get into these discussions.  We ask why jesus (of the bible) didn't do this or didn't do that.  Ignoring the obvious fact that actual responsibility for x cannot be validly placed on a composite character.  It's a fan-fic debate at that point.  Same with god.  Why didn't sauron do this or gandalf do that.  Conflating questions about an actual jesus, or an actual god - with questions about literary construction, tradition, the accidents of history....and in most cases specific authors or communities for which there is a readily apparent explanation that has nothing to do with jesus or gods.    

Even if we assume there was a real boy we are entirely certain that multiple other people crammed words into his mouth.  Words that spoke to them, to their communities, to the world they wished to see.  That there were differences between these communities, disputes and disagreements that would take centuries to be resolved into something like the consensus we see today..which happens to have some 30k schismatic distinctions and a rapidly growing set of new age interpretations overtaking even that.

[Ahriman]

FWIW I'm pretty sure the "real Christianity" is the one that says you should have lots of money because having lots of money will make you happy. Might as well go all the way with it.

[The Grand Nudger]

They're all real. The problem is that they're all silly, too.

[Ahriman]

They're all real.  The problem is that they're all silly, too.

Which would you say is the most trustworthy?

[The Grand Nudger]

Depends on what you want. A white christian ethnostate? You can trust that the evangelicals would do it, and you can trust that you'd be non personed in that event. If you want to provide cover for the evangelicals and their white christian project...the new age dipshits. Whenever you want to go between those two interests you can bridge through qanon christianity.

[Ahriman]

A Christian ethno state sounds fucking awful.

[Belacqua]

Sure I can accept that some parts of the Bible are allegorical, but as I've said before, I think it's clutching at straws to consider Genesis allegorical. It for instance gives the names and locations of rivers, which is just something you wouldn't do if you were speaking allegorically/metaphorically, so to me it's blatantly obvious that it's meant to be taken literally as a factual record.

I don't think historians are clear on just how much the original authors of Genesis wanted us to take literally. 

Currently the consensus seems to be that it was written down in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, while Israel and Judah were under serious threat from more powerful nations. As part of a program to strengthen and unite the Israelites and Judeans (always a fractious group) the powerful people saw it as important to give a greater structure to their history and beliefs. This included a clear origin story. 

We could compare this (loosely) to Virgil writing the Aeneid under Augustus. As you know, Augustus held national image to be very important. Giving his state a heroic, mythic origin story made the country seem more important to the gods, and more admirable to the people. It tidies up the facts that real history tends to be contingent and unglamorous. It uses lots of real locations and a few real events, and weaves them into a new propagandistic narrative.

Yet anyone at the time who was intellectual enough to read the Aeneid was also well-informed enough to know that Virgil had just made it all up. He had cobbled together existing myths and legends and given them a main character, a new telos, and a local meaning. 

On a smaller scale, we can compare the heroicized history of the US that we learned in elementary school with the rather less admirable real history. A bit of myth builds national pride. 

The Israelites and the Judeans were faced with enemies who had far older mythical traditions. We know from the Old Testament that the Israelites were constantly tempted by foreign rituals and ceremonies. Especially during the Exile, when there was a real danger of the Jewish population disappearing through assimilation into their new home, a unified set of national myths was seen as necessary. 

But again, it's not clear to me how much they really believed it. And I also suspect that literal belief in such stories was not as straightforward as it is today. In those days you could kind of accept things and take them seriously without believing that everything happened that way. For example in Plato's books, it's clear that he takes the local ceremonies seriously. ("we owe a cock to Asclepius.") At the same time, he has no trouble rewriting the myths whenever he has a point to make. He can demote Eros from a god to a daemon, and then promote him again. He can declare there are two Aphrodites, etc. etc., and nobody worries that he's being heretical. 

More importantly, we have to remember that in our time, the original intention of the authors is of very little importance. Not to get all Roland Barthes on you here, but the text is not just the text. The text is the history of the text, and all the uses it has been put to, and all the interpretations it has been given. If Genesis has been read as allegory for 17 centuries, then it's allegory. If modern people insist that it's accurate in the way that science is supposed to be accurate, then they are simply wrong. But they're also missing what's important.

[Ahriman]

What I want to know is why God would give someone (anyone) a sex drive and then make them feel ashamed of themselves when they do sexual stuff. What the fuck.....?

[The Grand Nudger]

Because the people who wrote his character were perverted kink shamers. Another mystery solved.

[Ahriman]

Because the people who wrote his character were perverted kink shamers.  Another mystery solved.

But it's not even just kink stuff that's condemned. It's pretty much any sexual activity at all.