Bibe Study 2: Questionable Morality

[Rhondazvous]

There are some real moral gems in the book... there really are. But if someone actually used the Bible as an exclusive source of their morality, that would scare the shit out of me. Luckily, nobody DOES treat it as their exclusive moral guide. They use their own brains (like they ought) to figure out their basic moral principles.

The Golden rule- excellent. Forgive thy neighbor and try not to judge- excellent. There ARE good moral principles to be found in the Bible. But there are also terrible ones. Going to the high priest for a creepy abortion- foul! Judging whether a rape occured by who heard a woman cry out- foul!

If any Christians decide to address your (completely legitimate) concerns, get ready for some slippery apologetics.

Nice post, Rhonda. I found it to be quite thoughtful and thorough.

No sane Christian is actually following those verses or using it as their exclusive source of morality, though. Which is why I don't see the point in topics like these, of which there are hundreds. Yeah, the Bible says awful shit. So? What does it matter? What's the point? Is it to make Christians feel bad, or so us atheists can all just jerk each other off and say "Yeah! Fuck Christianity!" I haven't bothered to really venture into any Biblical discussions online in... a very long time, because I don't really get it. Unless it's a legitimate discussion where both sides are interested in a mature analysis of the text, which is a laughable fantasy.

Drich or someone else will come in and say you don't understand it, and then cite ten more verses that contradict the OP, then an atheist will say "what about these ones that contradict yours," then Drich will say "what about these other ones that contradict your contradictions that contradicted the OP," and then they'll both call each other names and use the caps lock.

If you don't see the point, why are you even in the christian section? There are plenty other sections: atheism, science, news, art. There's no reason for you to be here at all.

My purpose for bringing up these issues is because there are a lot of people like me who have been subjected to years of brainwashing and quasi-reason. I'm not going to sit back and let the church have the mic all to themselves.

I enjoy people like Drippy. He makes my point that Christianity is crap better than I do.

---

No sane Christian is actually following those verses or using it as their exclusive source of morality, though. 

The superfun thing about magic book is that it's a massive grab bag of shitty verses that people do follow.  We're all aware that people don't actually believe the contents are flawless, as alluded to, even christians routinely ignore this and that.  

Begs the question, though, if they have a functional understanding of right and wrong and have excluded those nasty bits.....why do they retain the others?

Most people cling to religion for emotional and social reasons. The church is very good at training people to ignore problematic verses in the bible.

I remember when I was deep in Christianity, I'd read things and questions would occur to me. Like in Genesis when god tells Cain if he does well he will be accepted or in Revelations when god pours tribulation on people and then acts surprised when they don't turn to him with love. I'd wonder why this god has so little understanding of the psychology of his creation.

But as long as I had an emotional need to believe and have a "personal relationship with Jesus"I'd sweep such troubling questions under the rug. When my emotional needs shifted I was ready to re examine these questions.