Thoughts on Buddhism

[Abracadabra]

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Sorry, "my interpretation disagrees ergo they are wrong" doesn't cut it for me.

Hi Rhythm. Good to chat to you again.
The principle is nobody can just consider their own interpenetration to be the right one (including me). I am open to correction and so is anybody that is honest and do not wish to support their viewpoint by a few carefully selected verses, that is contrary to the argument by the writer, the purpose why he was writing, to whom he was writing, the book (Psalms is different to Romans), the Bible as a whole and the specific word used etc.

Even so (with honest discussion) there may be differences of opinion. So it will be a good idea if you agreed with the position taken in the point raised, to support it with argument.

Let me concede from the beginning that if you take "Christians" as the standard, there will be ample proof of the view expressed. That is however not the standard. The Bible is.

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There is no hope for saving the biblical picture via mere interpretations.

It's far more problematic that this.

Take the very basis for the whole tale (i.e. The fall from grace)

Gen 3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

As written, there isn't much to "interpret". It either means what it says, or we need to appeal to grossly abstract metaphors to avoid accepting that it actually says what it says in an effort to try to pretend that it says something else, (something preferably far more reasonable if we're trying to support the myths) But to do that would be nothing more than to blatantly attempt to make these fables into something they aren't.

What sense would it be to pretend to change a story so completely via highly unrelated abstract metaphors that the story we end up supporting has no relevance to the original scriptures?

Above, in Genesis 3:14 we have this God cursing a demon, (supposedly a serpent), for having beguiled Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. What does this God do to solve this problem?

Well, he curses the serpent to crawl on it's belly for the rest of its days and eat dust. Supposedly the serpent had arms and legs before this? Otherwise it wouldn't have been much of a curse to make it crawl on its belly.

I personally believe these stories originated as stories told to children to scare them into thinking that if they do bad things some "God" might curse them and turn them into a snake. Late on, it became apparent to the leaders of tribes that even adults were gullible enough to fall for these stories, and thus the "religion" was born.

But first we must ask, "Did this solve the problem?"

And the answer must necessarily be, "No it did not". We're only in the beginning of Genesis and we have a whole biblical cannon yet to go, and the evil demon continues to beguile people to this very day. So evidently this God's solution to this problem didn't even work anyway.

There's truly no reason to believe that a supposedly all-wise all-benevolent God would think that cursing someone to crawl on their belly and eat dust should be a viable solution to anything.

In other words, Genesis 3:14 demands already that we must believe that this God is crude, stupid, and basically evil going around cursing people with pathetically gross situations.

In fact, next he turns to Eve who had innocently been beguiled by this evil serpent. Eve necessarily would have needed to have been totally innocent prior to this fall from grace? Why? Well, because the story claims that Adam and Eve did not yet have the knowledge of good and evil prior to eating this fruit. So they could not have understood that it would have been 'evil' to eat it. They could only have acted in pure innocence.

Therefore, IMHO, based on the story thus far (and we're only 3 chapters into the very beginning of Genesis), it would not even make sense to punish Adam and Eve for this event at all. Clearly they would have necessarily had to have acted in a state of pure innocence to begin with if they did not yet have the knowledge of good and evil.

So this story already falls flat on it's face at the very beginning before it even gets off the ground. And no amount of "re-interpretation" could possibly save it. On the contrary to "justify" the story at this point you need to make up external excuses for it that aren't even contained within the original story. But what sense would it make to do such a foolish thing when it's supposed to be the stories you are evaluating?

If you just evaluate the stories in their own right, they fall flat on their face.

So what does this all-wise and all-benevolent God do to Eve?

Gen 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

He curses her with greatly multiplied sorrow in conception and childbirth?

That's supposed to be a wise solution to this problem?

Why is it that people feel that it somehow makes sense for a supposedly all-wise all-benevolent God to use crude ignorant and outright mean curses to solve problems?

This is like teaching people that kicking their dog is a divine means of training it.

IMHO, there is nothing wise or benevolent about cursing a woman with greatly multiplies sorrow in conception and childbirth. All that would serve to teach the woman is that this God himself is an ignorant mean jerk that doesn't have any more wisdom than a barroom drunkard.

Then he also supports male-chauvinism by condemning this woman to be the slave to her husband Adam (even thought Adam also ate the forbidden fruit too)

That's enough right there for me to flush these fables down the proverbial toilet of mythological waste materials.

I really have no reason to even bother reading any further into it at this point.

However, in truth I have. In truth, I have studied the entire cannon in detail. My observation is that it only gets far worse, and far more absurd.

There is no hope of ever salvaging the Bible as being the "Word" of a supposedly all-wise all-benevolent God. There are even places in the Bible where this God himself proclaims that he has been driven to anger and he will pour his wrath out on the people who have angered him. And his motivation is "jealously" no less! They were burning incense to other "Gods".

It's just the stupidest collection of fables on the planet. In fact, Greek mythology actually makes more sense, simply because it doesn't proclaim that Zeus is all-wise, all-benevolent, or all-perfect.

Zeus is allowed to be jerk. He can strike you dead with a lightening bolt simply because he felt like it and for no other reason.

But the biblical God is supposed to be "righteous and just" and trustworthy!

But there's no way that the Biblical God could be expected to be wise, benevolent, trustworthy, righteous, or just. The stories contradict all of those traits with every passing page.

The only way to try to attempt to justify them is to appeal to outside sources like saying "Well maybe God has reasons that we just don't know about?"

In other words, "Maybe we can imagine a different story that isn't being told by the biblical cannon."

But those kinds of arguments for justification of the cannon itself are absurd.

Just give it up. It's a collection of fables that cannot stand on their own two feet. The authors of these fables shot themselves in the foot so many times repeatedly that they have no feet left to stand on.