Why the "There are so many interpretations of the Bible" claim is confused

[Losty]

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[Edwardo Piet]

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[Losty]

Woah awesome! I dunno how to do custom memes like that though, oh noes

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[TheRocketSurgeon]

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Holy hell, that's hilarious!

[RoadRunner79]

To put these accusations towards God, that he will punish you just for not believing at face value a story book that is really popular, is about the most disgusting insult I can think of towards any potential actual God.

I am assuming that you are talking about Christianity. Just so you know, that is not what Scripture teaches.

[The Valkyrie]

You know, I've heard people say I've taken certain passages of the Great Book of Myths and Murder "out of context" numerous times. I've asked a few people to give me the same passages in context and it's amazing, isn't it (not really) that THEIR interpretations are usually different.

When the believers of said book can all get the story straight I *might* take them a little more seriously.

[GrandizerII]

So then how could anyone know that terminology? How could anyone make those distinctions? Again just because God knew does not mean He would burden the people he was speaking to at that time with those particular distinction. again look at the Parables Jesus taught. He used common knoweeledge to describe more complex things.

The poor people. We wouldn't want to burden ignorant people with some knowledge, do we?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

You know, I've heard people say I've taken certain passages of the Great Book of Myths and Murder "out of context" numerous times.  I've asked a few people to give me the same passages in context and it's amazing, isn't it (not really) that THEIR interpretations are usually different.

When the believers of said book can all get the story straight I *might* take them a little more seriously.

In the meantime, they'll all individually drive us batshit crazy as we try to guess which version this particular Christian will accept as "the correct interpretation of scripture", even if they're honest enough to tell us if we happen to guess their particular one out of the dozens of possibilities for almost any given passages.

And yes, what Robvalue said is exactly what scripture teaches. If I do not accept the words of this particular scripture (as opposed to, say, the Rig Vedas, Bahagavad Gita, the Qur'an, &c &c, ad infinitum), then we are bound to be tortured for not finding it any more plausible than the others that you Christians reject just as we do.

It is clear that your God is a monster, as described by your holy book. If I accept the stories that describe the genocide, slavery, and misogyny of that book, then I would be a monster for accepting it as it is written (most Christians have the decency to ignore parts that are so morally repugnant, like stoning our children for disobedience/disrespect to their parents, or murdering gays, or killing a woman who sleeps with a man who isn't her fiancee... aaaaaaaand sooooo oooooonnnnn!), and as we have discussed previously, it is just as morally repugnant to "offer a free gift" when the penalty of refusing the "free gift" is torture. Forever.

For those of us with honor and integrity, it would be better to suffer than to worship a being that says, "Accept my free love gift or be burned alive forever in the place that I created for people who defy my laws." 

For those of us with innate morality and decency, it would be better to burn alive than to support the worship of a being that wants us to submit and subjugate our own intellect for a predigested (and demonstrably wrong, by the way) version of reality, especially when that version of reality contains "divine commands" that have all the prejudices of a barbaric, desert warrior people from 3000 years ago.

For those of us who believe in real justice, not just "justice" as a synonym for punishment, the concept of eternal punishment for a temporal crime, especially when there is no way to know for certain that one version of the threat (since Islam's holy-book threats of hell are much more severe than Christianity's holy-book threats, you should probably take the Muslim Qur'an more seriously... I'm just sayin') is better than another, only to note that any threat of hell constitutes a threat and makes any such God the moral equivalent of an armed robber or rapist.

Is it free will, and free choice, to give your money to a person who says he will shoot you in the kneecaps if you choose not to give up your wallet? If not, then God is a criminal, and unworthy of worship.

Is it free will, and free choice, to submit yourself to the "free love gift" of a person with a gun who tells you, "let me love you... and tell me you love me back or else I will shoot you"? If not, then God is a rapist, and worthy of revulsion at anyone who makes excuses for such a being's behavior.

Is it free will, and free choice, to tell you that I have made a torture chamber in my basement, where I will send you if you do not choose to obey me? If not, then God is a psychopath, and anyone who volunteered to obey this being is almost as evil as he is, like the followers of Charles Manson.

We can read for ourselves what the claims of the Bible are, with regard to the nature of your "loving" God and his self-blood-sacrifice.

We do not worship muggers, rapists, or Blood Gods. We would be immoral, evil people if we followed such a being and tried to repaint this being in a way to sell to others as "kind and loving". The Christians who are decent people are decent almost exactly to the degree they manage to not be sucked in by the dogma, and simply use the faith as a prompt for their own inner goodness toward their fellow human beings while ignoring  the parts which command suppression, hatred, and domination (in prettier terms, of course) of anyone who is not part of the cult(ure) of Christian fundamentalism.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Seriously?!?! Before 1735 their were no classifications of Mammals and Avians. Those words were literally coined in the English for the first time to describe the attributes Carl linneus decided made up that particular grouping or classification of animal. Do you not understand that before then 'mammals and avian' as a classification system did not exist?

I'm not talking about the words. I'm talking about the concepts. Do you honestly think that primitive folk didn't see the differences and take note?

So then how could anyone know that terminology? How could anyone make those distinctions? Again just because God knew does not mean He would burden the people he was speaking to at that time with those particular distinction. again look at the Parables Jesus taught. He used common knoweeledge to describe more complex things.

Common knowledge includes the fact that birds lack teeth, and bats lack feathers ... forgive me pointing out the obvious, but you are certainly not getting my point.

In that time their were much simpler classifications. Creatures that flew, creatures that crawled, creatures with legs which were subdivided into hooved creatures and split toed creatures. of those classification Moses was simply subdividing them further into 'clean and unclean.' "birds" is the English word used to describe the Hebrew word for 'winged creature.' In that classification system a bat does indeed qualify as a 'winged creature.'

Yet, he is alleged to be passing on the words of God. How is it that God must limit himself to human understanding? Why cannot this godling expand it?

It's like talking to a retarded brick...

Tell us what you know about retarded bricks. I'll give you a minute or two to fetch the mirror.

You clearly don't understand my point, simple as it is.

So again to call a bat a 'winged creature' and list them along side birds is not an incorrect classification.

Because God is limited by human knowledge.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

"Hey, Mo, tell your people not to eat birds and bats."
"Birds and bats, Lord? aren't they the same?"
"Of course not, Moses. Look at a bat. Does it have a beak? How are its eyes located? Does it have feathers? What is its body shaped like? And do birds have teeth? Ears? claws on their wings?"

Does it have wings Mr. thinker? again that was the extent of their classification.

And your god is incapable of expanding their knowledge. Got it.

Again maybe to you and everyone since 1735, but what about the several thousand years and everyone who lived before? Especially when all it takes is a little friggen common sense to unlock this seeming mind blowing 'contradiction' to all those who come after.

Your filters are strong. You're clearly determined to miss my point.

You clearly don't know shit about tribal knowledge, either. You seem to think that language equals thought.

Of course, your vocabulary, or lack thereof, should give you pause before advancing that thought any further.

[Esquilax]

To put these accusations towards God, that he will punish you just for not believing at face value a story book that is really popular, is about the most disgusting insult I can think of towards any potential actual God.

I am assuming that you are talking about Christianity.  Just so you know, that is not what Scripture teaches.

You think you're the only person to tell us that? Every christian tells us that whenever what we say about the bible deviates even slightly from their (often unspoken) beliefs. Even the ones that actually believe what Rob said here; both you and the people that believe the precise reverse will tell us that the scripture doesn't teach anything other than what they believe, so somebody has to be wrong there and curiously enough, not a one of you seems interested in actually justifying why they think the scripture does or does not teach a thing, just in fiat commanding that it does or does not.

Equally interestingly, none of you are willing to be accurate with your words either; I've never heard a christian tell me "just so you know, that is not what my interpretation of the scripture teaches," despite that literally being the truth. No, you all just say "that is not what the scripture teaches," because only your interpretation of the scripture could ever possibly be what's really in the text, right? And we've all just gotta presuppose that because you said so, don't we? Because you're certainly not going to do more than just say it, are you?

It's a bit of a losing battle for us atheists, you see. We're facing demands that we take the scripture to teach strictly what a series of individual christians believe, one after the other, and more often than not those demands are mutually exclusive. You'll command that the scripture teaches one thing, Drich another, GC yet another and so on, and if we fail to pretend the bible teaches only what the christian we're talking to believes, we get haughty little asides telling us what to pretend is in the bible now, because none of you are capable of separating your interpretation from the actual body of the text, only other people's interpretations get that treatment.

But when we've got multiple christians each demanding that we pretend the bible only contains their specific beliefs when from the outside it looks as though it contains none of those sets in their entirety, the best way to proceed is not to pretend anything and to wait for you guys to actually demonstrate your damned positions, rather than just command that we ascribe to them.