Really, when you think about it, Bible is actually a very poor source for answers. Even in the past the ancient Jews who took their answers from the Bible every time that earthquake happened, or if they suffered from drought, or if King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia invaded Judaea and exiled its people: they saw it as punishments from their God for their own sins.
Bible completely fails to recognize the possibility that perhaps the drought resulted from a volcanic eruption in another part of the world, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded in pursuit of Babylonian commercial interests and that King Cyrus had his own political reasons to favor the Jews.
While at the same time polytheists and animists had much more sober and more accurate perception of reality. Greek historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, and Chinese historians such as Sima Qian explained that wars and revolutions break out due to a plethora of political, social and economic factors. People may fall victim to a war for no fault of their own. That should be one of the telltale signs to religious people that Bible was written by primitive people (than God) when Herodotus and Thucydides understood reality much better than the authors of the Bible.
Needles to say Bible is even more useless today as are Quran and the Vedas. Bible accordingly shows no interest whatsoever in understanding the global ecology.
It is even more useless for the people of the future for they will not find the answers to any the questions pressing people in the future in the Quran or sharia law, nor in the Bible, the questions like: What will happen to the job market once artificial intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks? What will be the political impact of a massive new class of economically useless people? What will happen to relationships, families and pension funds when nanotechnology and regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty? What will happen to human society when biotechnology enables us to have designer babies, and to open unprecedented gaps between rich and poor?
And yet Islamic fundamentalists repeat the mantra that ‘Islam is the answer’ as do Christians for Christianity and that may be quite a problem if people stick to their primitive books.
Bible completely fails to recognize the possibility that perhaps the drought resulted from a volcanic eruption in another part of the world, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded in pursuit of Babylonian commercial interests and that King Cyrus had his own political reasons to favor the Jews.
While at the same time polytheists and animists had much more sober and more accurate perception of reality. Greek historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, and Chinese historians such as Sima Qian explained that wars and revolutions break out due to a plethora of political, social and economic factors. People may fall victim to a war for no fault of their own. That should be one of the telltale signs to religious people that Bible was written by primitive people (than God) when Herodotus and Thucydides understood reality much better than the authors of the Bible.
Needles to say Bible is even more useless today as are Quran and the Vedas. Bible accordingly shows no interest whatsoever in understanding the global ecology.
It is even more useless for the people of the future for they will not find the answers to any the questions pressing people in the future in the Quran or sharia law, nor in the Bible, the questions like: What will happen to the job market once artificial intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks? What will be the political impact of a massive new class of economically useless people? What will happen to relationships, families and pension funds when nanotechnology and regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty? What will happen to human society when biotechnology enables us to have designer babies, and to open unprecedented gaps between rich and poor?
And yet Islamic fundamentalists repeat the mantra that ‘Islam is the answer’ as do Christians for Christianity and that may be quite a problem if people stick to their primitive books.
