[split] Hello everyone

[Tonus]

That is a very good point you make, but you must understand that the wolf is needed to nurse the lamb [from the rich man's table], wherefore then the messianic movement takes place in Galilee that we call purgatory today (which so is where the fire is at to purify gold). <snip>

I think you misunderstand my point. The Bible is open to interpretation. Nearly every story or verse can be interpreted to mean something. They can be pulled out of context, or given a different context, in order to build a case for or against any particular "truth." Your interpretation isn't any different than anyone else's in the sense that it doesn't sound any more or less convincing to me.

When I was a Christian I believed that there was a specific interpretation that was the correct one, and that it could be proven if one spent enough time papering over the holes by pulling more quotes from one context to the next and then papering over the holes created by those changes, and so on. It built a self-sustaining system where any questions could be confidently assumed to be answerable, and the interpretation as a whole would be unassailable because you couldn't just attack one point, and attacking the whole is just impossible.

It fits in with the habit I have noticed, where many theists prefer to present to us a set of presupposed truths that they assume we are supposed to disprove. But most of the things we believe are through explanations backed by actual, personal, and repeatable experience. Not just ours, but that of others that helps to confirm what we are learning. Religion often turns this on its head, demanding that we accept certain things as true and counting our efforts to confirm them in this manner as unreliable or even wicked. And it seems to me that the reason for this is that it forbids a critical approach to the claims of truth. And for something so important, that seems utterly backwards.

The book presented to us by the supreme intellect of the universe shouldn't be so shoddily written. Nor should I be counting on such a flawed approach to understanding his book. If I'm created in god's image, then I have no choice but to reject the Bible as a work inspired by my creator.