(January 16, 2016 at 12:16 pm)robvalue Wrote: You're right yes, the Old Testament is horrific. It's the most appalling collection of atrocities I've ever seen. So much so that Christian apologists (those that argue in its defense) spend a lot of time making excuses for why it doesn't really mean what it appears to mean, or why it doesn't apply anymore.Of course, I never thought about Jesus bringing hell to the table of tales. I forgot, because Jews don't believe in hell. Purgatory for un-christened babies is the worse thing I've ever heard. But that wasn't even Jesus, that was the Catholic church continuing to make up stories years after.
The New Testament is a lot better in some ways, it is generally more peaceful, although not as much as people generally seem to think. However, Jesus brought with him the idea of Hell to Christianity, the most evil thing I could imagine. So that makes Jesus actually worse than Yahweh (Old Testament God) in my opinion. At least Yahweh generally just killed people for petty reasons, he didn't set up a system where they were tortured indefinitely after death.
The Quran and the Hadiths (the Islamic texts) are really nasty too. I don't know as much about them, but I know they tell stories about a guy who is supposed to be the hero but is actually a delusional barbarian, responsible for thousands of deaths. The books spend a lot of time making it clear that anyone outside the religion is so bad as to deserve to be sent to a "Fiery Doom" (generally considered to be Islamic Hell). The texts also provide inspiration for Jihad.
When we talk about fundamentalism, aren't we just talking about taking things literally? It seems the most logical way to interpret these book. Sure, it helps our moral to say "what it means is..", but isn't this just a sort of denial. Sure there isn't a definite right or wrong way, and no-one has the power to decide. But taking things literally, seems like the best understanding of these old, unscientific books.
