(January 16, 2014 at 7:06 pm)Sword of Christ Wrote: Evidence yes.Yeah, yeah. Just what I thought during my many years as a devout Christian. I realized later that I had been reading the bible, as I express it, with my mind on cruise control. You know how you drive along without really paying attention and then you see something striking or interesting, and you pay attention for a moment.
(It's a little bit dated in some ways but still perfectly viable as a revelation from the creator of the universe)
Hard concrete proof not so much as then you would remove the freedom of will aspect.
It was the experience of going to seminary which disengaged the cruise control on my mind. I had to slow down and read the bible carefully, some of it in the original languages. No, I didn't go to one of those liberal seminaries where the professors poke holes in the bible. Quite the opposite, it was an ultra-conservative seminary committed to biblical inerrancy. It was just that I finally had to pay attention to every word, not just the comforting proof texts which Christians lap up from their pastors. And I came to the conclusion which is embodied in my signature line.
Yes, the bible has some fine noble thoughts in both Old Testament and New Testament. However, they are no better than you will find in other religious traditions, and they are seriously outweighed by all the faults.
For the most part, the Old Testament is a compendium of
- ridiculous rituals practised by ignorant people in the early Iron Age, see Exodus 29:19-21
- a lot of cruel and unusual punishments, see Deut 19:20-21 & Deut 25:11-12
- one genocide after another commanded by Yahweh, see 1 Sam 15:3
The major theme of the New Testament is that the world would end shortly in that era. Jesus thought so, Paul thought so, and so did the crazed author of Revelation. This is a complex subject; it's treated in detail in the thread Poll for Christians: Are the End Times Imminent?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
