(January 1, 2013 at 6:00 am)Mark 13:13 Wrote:(January 1, 2013 at 1:01 am)FallentoReason Wrote: Agreed, except the problem starts when the religious assert that their holy book describes the physical world e.g. Genesis.
Let's skip ahead and agree that it's nothing more than poetry (from your posts so far, I get the feeling this might be the case). Then what is the point of it all? Doesn't it seem like you're moving away from a characteristic personal god to what seems to be a deistic god whose involvement was nothing short of... well, what science describes i.e. a natural universe which is 13.7 billion years old? Why hold onto the words of men living 2000+ years ago?
good question, but far from moving away from a personal God I would say Christian have moved even closer to a personal God. How much more personal can you get than Jesus Christ. As far as why to hold on to the musings of ancients mmmh I would suggest that although our knowledge of the Universe continues to refine the issues of Life/death, good/evil, suffering etc etc surely still occupy us today but maybe not in such an immanent way as it did them so by keeping the words we have access to their some of their thinking and can still have the opportunity to listen to them. Just because a Jungle native tells me that the sun is the chariot of the great spagetti monster in the sky does not mean if he tells me the sun sets in the east and points to where east is without a compass I wont accept he knows where east is. Also I would ask you if the words were useless why do we still have them when so much other material has disappeared?
Even Jesus stands on shaky ground if you want to try and assimilate Christianity with reality. How can it be that Jesus is redeeming the world of the sins that metaphorically entered "through one man"? What does that even mean now?
As for scripture having survived... why is it that the Greek Iliad and Odyssey, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Mayan Popol Vuh etc etc survived? According to your logic, this is some sort of proof that these gods exist.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle