(May 4, 2015 at 11:17 am)Hatshepsut Wrote:(May 3, 2015 at 9:36 pm)Rhondazvous Wrote: I find that people who don't believe the Bible know a lot more about it and about Christian history than those who do believe it.
I would refine your statement by dividing the believers into two groups: the "thinking" and the "ignorant." You can see the handiwork of the "ignorant" on Conservapedia. For a glimpse at how the "thinking" view things, see The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Augmented 3rd ed., Oxford U. Press, 2007. While mostly Christians, the editors don't have to buy a literal Moses authorship of the Pentateuch and they well realize that Joshua and his motionless sun & mood are a legend. They provide notes on the structure and redaction of biblical texts, and how the texts fit in with the Hebrew culture as far as this can be known.
The problem is that one you take all the supernatural stuff out of the Bible and read it as anything other than literal, you reduce it to a provincial document about ancient Jews that has not the slightest thing to do with me.
The god who allows children to be raped out of respect for the free will choice of the rapist, but punishes gay men for engaging in mutually consensual sex couldn't possibly be responsible for an intelligently designed universe.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
