Is Allegorical Religion better than Fundamentalism?

[vulcanlogician]

I really appreciated your post, RBP. I don't agree with much of it, but that's okay. I think it comes from a place of honesty, makes proper concessions, and tries its best to be reasonable... that goes a long way with me. I felt like I should say that before I offered some counterarguments:

First of all I haven't seen any evidence that the resurrection didn't occur, so we can speculate all day long but all we have is the accounts in the bible. Since the Jewish leadership of that period attempted to discredit the resurrection they were never able to come up with the body.

You're off to a rocky start here. But I disagree with FM that this counts as antisemitism.

The problem I have with this is the same problem I have with every "for all we know, x might have occured" arguments. It's a weak argument. It says almost nothing. We have blind spots in our understanding of history and reality. You could put anything in any one of these blind spots.

The four gospels all written by different people that apparently had first hand knowledge are quite compelling. Not only the we have the apocrypha's with many more first hand accounts the life of Jesus, and of the Gnostic believers. 

Another user has already addressed how unreliable first hand accounts can be. So I won't beat a dead horse. But I share that user's concern. Also, it's possible that the Gospels have only two primary authors. "Mark" and John. Plus a team of editors that went to work adjusting them through the centuries. The first oder of business: multiply Mark into three separate Gospels, and then let the editors put their own specific spin on things.
   

The bible began as a narrative about the history of the Jewish people. To me the laws the Moses laid down were what I consider Mosaic laws, somewhat like our governments do today. That's why folks like the Muslims still murder homosexuals, thank goodness most have evolved beyond that.

What? The Jewish OT advises us to kill homosexuals. That isn't something specific to the Quran. The question isn't why Muslims kill homosexuals, it's "Why don't Christian and Jewish societies?" I think we have a clear answer in that regard: secularism.

To me the ten commandments are basic common sense laws. 

It's not common sense to acknowledge one god above all others. History is full of pagans. Nor is it common sense not to create graven images. When we get to murder and theft, that shit is common sense. You basically have like 4-5 common sense laws in there. And some could be improved upon. I want to think that if God actually wrote a law... that it couldn't possibly be improved upon by some random internet schmuck, but here we are.

The law against adultery. I will concede up front, adultery can be destructive in some circumstances. Sometimes it is done with hideous and hateful or ignorant intent. But in some marriages, it's a pressure relief valve that actually preserves marriages and the love between couples. (BTW, I'm not saying this for selfish purposes as you theists sometimes imagine. I've never been married. And if I did marry would probably never commit adultery. These are things I've recognized through life experience/ observing others.) But if that's true, adultery can be good or bad, how do we capture the spirit of forbidding the bad while allowing the good? How about, "Do not betray a person with whom you've made obligations." To me, that sounds like a better law. It covers the things the adultery law fails to, and also includes some fairly important other things.

As for the creation story, well that is problematic to say the least. 

Agreed. That could be its own thread. (And has been numerous times.)

I went through college in the late sixties, many things that were considered scientific facts have been proven incorrect. Does that mean that I consider all the books of that era worthless, of course not.  In the sixties psychologist treated homosexuality as a mental illness, today it is considered normal. 

What I find interesting most Atheist have never read the bible, and if they have it was only to find fault. That's kind of like looking at the cover of a book and calling it trash. The other side is I see many problems with the fundamentalist beliefs. 

I've read plenty of the Bible. I even like some of it. Ecclesiastes, Job, Matthew, and James, for example. I've read plenty of it, and was taught much of it growing up. You should talk to Mister Agenda and others who know it pretty well (way more than I do). They are atheists, and yet have pretty much memorized the Bible, some of them. There are quite a few of them around.

As I stated elsewhere, my theist beliefs came about by the in-depth study of what is referred to as near death experiences.

Man, I have listened ad nauseum to pretty much every nde argument out there. I have read all kinds of articles, published studies, you name it. I read like a whole Stephen King novel about the stuff just because one user CDF (the lion, RIP) suggested I needed to just to make an informed opinion on the matter. But despite my fatigue, I'm willing to give it another go-round... mostly because you seem like a sincere person who strives to make good arguments. I think the best way we could start this is in a thread where you explain what you think is the best support for ndes, and then we address the concerns from those of us who aren't unconvinced. You may want to label the thread [Serious] to keep the conversation on track.