A Question for Believers and Non Believers

[Anymouse]

Anymouse, the Bible is neither an instuctional manual or a historical account. It is primarily a psychological document for the purpose of bypassing our ordinary dual mind in order to arouse the contemplative mind. It contains meanings within meanings. That is why Chazal said its value is in reading you, allowing the mind to open. If a person can contemplate beyond the superficial, the Bible has great value. its value is really for those capable of thinking for themselves in the context of awareness of the human condition within them. When read superficially, I would agree that it can also cause harm.

So you are not of the "every word of the Bible is true" crowd? But why put faith in a book which you state is not factual? Contains errors, perhaps? If there are errors, are you sufficiently omnipotent to cherry pick the errors out? Two thousand years of Christian thought have not settled that; you are claiming an awfully tenuous position if you state the Bible is not entirely true, because then you must expose the untrue parts. Which parts aren't true in your mind? Either of the creation stories in Genesis (and they are mutually exclusive), the improbable lifespans of the patriarchs, that a Roman provincial governor would turn over a known seditionist for a man which had caused the Empire no harm and had broken none of its laws, putting all species of land animal and plant on a boat only one third the size of a football field?

And if some of it is untrue, why is it a stretch for you to picture that all of it might be untrue?

"Dual mind?" Another phrase which has zero semantic meaning to me. I'll go for dual gender (as there are only two, but that is even subject to shades, even in humans), which makes for fun fertility faiths like mine, but I do not understand what you men.

If you mean "either-or" thinking, like I have epilepsy and you do not, and there are no "in-between" positions (it's black-or-white; you do have it or you don't), I would understand.

But you seem to me to apply such terms as "dual mind" and "quality" to subjective positions like religion (there are a whole series of shades of Christianity, a whole series of religious beliefs that propound all sorts of sometimes irreconcilable positions, and even several shades of atheist and agnostic). I do not see "dual mind" or either-or thinking in this.

On the question of does a particular god exist (for example, yours), one could adopt the position that a person believes that god exists, yet does not choose to worship it/him/her. You are certainly aware of such gods and goddesses as Thor and Ishtar, but you do not believe those. On those, you are atheistic, just as much as any other atheist here. The only difference between them and you is they believe in one (or three) less god/s than you.

Your lack of faith in my own faith's very dualistic concept of god/dess does not change one iota whether they exist or not. Even within my own faith, there are many opinions about the nature of deity. But we don't kill people over it; we, like the majority of atheists, derive our morals from within, not a book that teaches killing in the name of God can be the highest good to solve a problem.

But I am open to clearer terminology than the "new age" terms you are using. Are you sure you are Christian?

I suspect (but do not know) that you are also guilty of either-or thinking in your religious faith. You were either raised in it and choose to follow it, or you were converted to it from another position. But in either case, I presume you have not studied: other religions, deisim, or the atheist position from a standpoint of learning and critically comparing them to your own position to see if it stands up to your scrutiny; I suspect if you have studied them at all it is to poke holes in them. Many religions have little in common with Christianity at all. Religions are generally a solution to vexing questions that a society cannot resolve through deduction and inferrence. They are certainly not science, and societies have come to an amazing array of religious solutions which have nothing to do with each other.

A true scientific approach to any problem is to analyse all the data, and compare it to what one already has theorised (in your case, Christianity), not with a desire to punch holes in the data, but to see if it has any worth. If it does, then your theory must either accommodate it, or it becomes dogma. You will find very quickly that dogma does not fly well around here, though generally, as long as you are civil, you will be politely told why certain evidence you present is really dogma. As I am fairly sure you have not studied other religions with an eye for assimilating data and coming to a conclusion, you are guilty of pandering dogma. Won't fly in a free-thinker environment.

Anyone trying to take the foolish position of rationalising religion as science takes a fatal position for their religion. If one were to provide incontrovertible evidence that a particular religion has evidential basis, then the atheists (those that are rational, most), will simply add the data to their store. You on the other hand, will have proved your religious position to be factual, and in that instant it ceases to become religion and becomes part of the body of science. Should you ever "prove" such things as souls, Heaven, Hell, God, Jesus, &c., they are no longer religion. It would be a far more complete destruction of religious faith than anything a whole planet of atheists could do.

You would also be taking away the "believing without seeing" blessing of your New Testament. In short, you would condemn all who follow to be without that blessing, as such an empirical proof would destroy faith and make it science.

To make religion science would almost be like assuming the mantle of your faith's anti-Christ. A belief system is almost always destroyed most effectively from within. Anyone who could prove the claims of the Bible would be that anti-Christ; they would take the mystery and faith out of the religion and make it knowledge.
James