(January 12, 2014 at 4:00 pm)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: But why should it follow that just because SOME of the Bible is Fubar (and I agree that it is) that the whole shooting match is equally absurd?
See, here's the thing: I doubt you'll find anyone who says the bible is completely wrong. It has some correct things in it, and it has some incorrect things in it. The occasional good moral message surfaces among the dross, as with the odd historical event.
But there's a central premise there that acts as a support pillar for the bulk of the demands the bible makes of us, and that's that there is an extant god, and this is the way he wants us to act. That premise has not been demonstrated to be true, and so as yet it deserves no belief, and without that premise being true, none of the other supposedly divine edicts are justifiably believable either. You can't have commandments from god without first having the god.
On the balance of probability right now, for this and many other reasons that have been done to death, we're safe in concluding- tentatively- that the bible is written by human hands, and is therefore as fallible as any other work. The good parts that benefit us can be extracted, and the bad parts safely ignored, as without the hand of god at work behind them, they really are just the misapprehensions of bronze age people.
I don't think the bible is an all or nothing proposition, and I can say that precisely because I'm not pinning its words to the architect of being beforehand. It's just a book; the moment you stop assuming divine authorship, the rest of it neatly slots into groups of accurate things and inaccurate things, and we have no need to bend over backwards to accommodate the inaccurate things through reinterpretation or dogma.
It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from a book written by people, that they'd get some things right, and some things wrong.
Quote:*As I typed that I heard (I think) Esquilax's voice in my head saying "why should you assume ANY of it is accurate". That's a different thread
The voice probably also told you not to rat out my telepathy power, but I guess you weren't listening.
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
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Want to see more of my writing? Check out my (safe for work!) site, Unprotected Sects!
