Enlighten Yourselves

[Thumpalumpacus]

All I ask of you guys here, is to read a bible. For me, the bible personally enlightened me and reinforces my religion. Instead of retaining your knowledge by what you hear from Christians, actually read the scriptures that the religion is based off of.

Been there, done that, was terribly underwhelmed.

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All I ask of you guys here, is to read a bible. For me, the bible personally enlightened me and reinforces my religion. Instead of retaining your knowledge by what you hear from Christians, actually read the scriptures that the religion is based off of.

For me it was rather a lights out experience in the spiritual department when I read the bible.

Lights-out came when I hit the Begats ... talk about some sleepy material. We've got the Almighty Creator of the Universe, and he's worried about who fucked whom and sired whom else?

[Delicate]

I did read the Bible. It's a far more complex piece of literature than both Christians and atheists give it credit for.

I would be interested in your elaboration.

Well, for one, "the Bible" is not a singular book, but a collection of several works spanning around 1500 years. There's an incredible amount of cultural/temporal diversity between the various works, despite the fact that the authors all believed in Yahweh. They were written in three very different languages (Hebrew, Koine Greek and Aramaic). And there's an incredible diversity of genres between the books.

You can be an atheist and still admit that the Bible, as a collection, is a literary masterpiece. You don't have to be a theist to appreciate it as a piece of art and monument of culture.

[pocaracas]

I would be interested in your elaboration.

Well, for one, "the Bible" is not a singular book, but a collection of several works spanning around 1500 years. There's an incredible amount of cultural/temporal diversity between the various works, despite the fact that the authors all believed in Yahweh.

This is the main problem with it...
The people who wrote it, had no knowledge of any god.... they had no foresight, no insight, nothing tangible... they believed.
Like people believe nowadays, so did they believe back then.

Unless, they knew it was a con...

[abaris]

You can be an atheist and still admit that the Bible, as a collection, is a literary masterpiece. You don't have to be a theist to appreciate it as a piece of art and monument of culture.

It's interesting to get a glimpse of an otherwise not very literate society, as far as the old testament goes. But I certainly wouldn't call it a piece of art. Compared to what was written in other regions at the same time, it's a pretty poor collection with hardly any artsy value. The Iliad for example was written at approximately the same time as the OT and if you compare the prose, it's actually not a competition. Same goes for the epic of Gilgamesh, which is older by a few centuries.

[Surgenator]

You can be an atheist and still admit that the Bible, as a collection, is a literary masterpiece.

All the semi-different cultures doesn't make it a masterpiece. Are the hindu scared texts masterpieces as well? They are a collection of stories.

[DeistPaladin]

You can be an atheist and still admit that the Bible, as a collection, is a literary masterpiece. You don't have to be a theist to appreciate it as a piece of art and monument of culture.

Actually, I think it's a horrid book, even evaluated as a work of fiction. It has severe pacing problems, it's loaded down with needless detail, there's a lot of repetition, it has strange character motivations, it has a number of plot twists that are really disturbing, it isn't clear where it needs to be and don't get me started on all the Deos Es Machina. It's almost a textbook example of all the things NOT to do as an author.

It's about as bad as Vogon poetry.




Were it not regarded as the Word of God by so many people, this collection of badly written mythology would have been long forgotten.

The Bible is the second worst book I've ever read.

The first being the Koran. It makes the Bible look like Pulitzer material.

[IATIA]

You can be an atheist and still admit that the Bible, as a collection, is a literary masterpiece.

hock: Not hardly.

[KevinM1]

The bible is criminally overrated as a book. Kevin J Anderson can write more engaging stories, and he's a shitty hack.

[Lemonvariable72]

All I ask of you guys here, is to read a bible. For me, the bible personally enlightened me and reinforces my religion. Instead of retaining your knowledge by what you hear from Christians, actually read the scriptures that the religion is based off of.

I have actually tried to read the bible but in all honesty some of the story are dreadfully boring with horridly 2 dimensional characters. Not to mention the plain retarded bit like the story of the gold cafe. Ironically the better stories are the ones where god is mostly absent like say Esther and Nehemiah. The ones where God intervenes he manages to fuck things up even worse like the story of Bethesda. God solution to the woman being taken and her husband being murdered? Kill a baby
Or I mentioned the story of the gold cafe, gods solution there? Kill everyone that bowed to it, but the guy that made it? Give him a promotion. Need I go on?

[DeistPaladin]

The bible is criminally overrated as a book. Kevin J Anderson can write more engaging stories, and he's a shitty hack.

Let's not mince words. I've read Mary Sue fanfictions that are easier to digest than the stories of the Bible.