Not sure what goes into creating this, but wouldn’t it be marvellous if we could created these for political parties. That would shake out the BS fruit that can grow there and give a clearer fidelity view.
The Bible would have made a better JRPG than a religion.
Apparently there are more than 400,000 variations in the Greek manuscripts that are the basis for the New Testament. Which means there are more variations then there are words in the New Testament itself.
Truly incredible that God, in their infinite wisdom, sent us this message, which we’re evidently not able to decipher.
I’d love to see one with the old and new testament references highlighted in different colors
Also the ones where Paul contradicts Jesus.
I wish they highlighted the most important contradictions, ngl I don’t care about contradictions about some old guys number of sons, some Christians admit the bible is a source, like all historical source, and the authors make some mistakes. But for example Alex O’Connor talks about how the contradiction in the gospels of whether or not Jesus went to Egypt or to a temple or something, which fulfills some Messiah prophecy, indicating Luke (Or whichever Gospel author wrote it) was intentionally lying to make Jesus seem more like the Messiah. Also an explanation of why each contradiction matters. This seems more like a boring gotcha than something to learn about.
You can kinda sum it up in: -love thy neighbour, but also kill them.
Almost as though there were multiple revolutionary changes to the underlying religious philosophy between the various books, most notably (but certainly not exclusively) between the Old and New Testaments.
Well sure, but it also says god never changes.
(Ok memeing aside: sure there’s plenty of layers and nuance to go around but that doesn’t take away that there’s still far too many people who take this book too literal, too serious and are ruining other lives by doing so. If it was treated for what it is, a piece of history, then this conversation wouldn’t be necessary)
Please tell me there are ones for the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita is not the equivalent for Bible. In fact a “Bible”, i.e. a singular holy book that governs everything - doesn’t exist in Hinduism.
I’m not sure that the OP is being exclusive, just shading what they have. Fair point though, every religion will have similar. Now I’m thinking there would be useful for every political party too. Would certainly share the trees.
Any way to make it smaller?
Alright, I’ll bite and be devil’s advocate here.
As someone who has studied the Bible fairly closely and cares about it, this is no surprise. I’ll give a few scattered points here, and you’ll also have to pardon me, as this is from the top of my head, I only have so much time to burn on this today.
#1 The Bible is not first and foremost a “historical documentary” in the modern sense. The very idea of a historical account striving for objective unbiased reality is fairly recent historically, and the Bible is meant to be a religious text that’s trying to teach you something.
I’ll give an example. At the end of most of the gospels, there’s a Roman guard, who reacts in wonder to the death of Jesus. In each account, he marvels aloud, saying something that caps off the themes of each gospel. As a reader, I don’t believe that each apostle happened to be by a different guard that happened to say the perfect thing. Maybe one apostle saw a guard in the distance with a look on his face? Maybe there was no guard at all? The historical veracity of this detail doesn’t really matter. The story is accurate in the major points, that Jesus died on a cross, etc, but the small details like this are full of embellishments and storytelling. Even in tiny details you wouldn’t expect, details like numbers have symbolic significance. Ancient Jewish readers were aware of what was happening here, and this wasn’t considered a lie or a devastating contradiction just like we don’t think modern writers are liars for using exaggeration, metaphors, and sarcasm.
#2 The Biblical authors are aware there are contradictions. For example, there’s a case where a ritual meal is originally supposed to be boiled. Later, the same meal is described as being roasted. Both of these cases are divine law given by God. I’d argue this change was because Israel was no longer fleeing through the desert, and so could prepare the meal in a slower way.
Much later in the Bible, an especially good King is described as being “so faithful that he roasts his meat in water”. It’s a Biblical author literally cracking a joke about a Biblical contradiction. These moments aren’t some shocking gotcha to any reader paying attention.
#3 The Bible contradicts itself intentionally. It’s an ancient Jewish way of teaching to have two rabbis take different stances, and argue publicly. Often, the truth of something is in the tension between two perspectives.
My favourite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes, which takes a Nietzsche-esque stance that nothing we do matters, and life is terribly unfair. Bad things happen to good people and vice versa, so simply eat, drink, and be merry. It comes right after Proverbs, which is the classic book everyone quotes from about how doing good things leads to good things. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The books directly contradict, but are both true, being kind often leads to kindness, but life is also often unfair and out of our control. The best way to explain that is to state both sides, and let the reader sit on those two ideas and ponder them.
In summary, this collection of contradictions is a great visualization, and I love it for those obstinate people who are deep in the Dunning-Kruger effect with the Bible. But for those who actually pay attention and study, this isn’t anything revelatory. When someone says the Bible is inerrant and has “no mistakes”, they (hopefully) mean that they believe it’s inspired by God, and everything in it has some value, even if they may not understand every detail. I would hope that they don’t mean that there are literally no contradictory statements, as that’s objectively untrue.
You made it worse. This is why I left Christianity. Plus it’s just a cult and/or money making machine now. If anything, the Bible makes monsters.
You made it worse. This is why I left Christianity.
You abandoned Christianity because the Bible contains jokes?
I’m fully coming around on the idea of religious education in public schools. If this gets more of you dour fuckers out of the church, perhaps we’ll see improvements.
You abandoned Christianity because the Bible contains jokes?
Where did they say that?..
Much later in the Bible, an especially good King is described as being “so faithful that he roasts his meat in water”. It’s a Biblical author literally cracking a joke about a Biblical contradiction. These moments aren’t some shocking gotcha to any reader paying attention.
This is why I left Christianity.
Yea okay but where did they say they left Christianity because the authors told jokes, specificaly?
They didn’t did they? :-)
did they say they left Christianity because the authors told jokes
Yes
No. They left Christianity because you made it worse by explaining to them the literary nature of the Bible and making them realise that the way the preachers are trying to get you to interpret stuff is not at all desirable to have a fulfilling life.
You quoted yourself not me. I did not say that.
I don’t agree with almost anything in your comment, but thank you for taking the time to write it and answering objections, it has been an interesting discussion. For what it’s worth, you have my upvote.
I can play devil’s advocate too:
1 The Bible is not first and foremost a “historical documentary” in the modern sense. The very idea of a historical account striving for objective unbiased reality is fairly recent historically, and the Bible is meant to be a religious text that’s trying to teach you something.
Yes people absolutely did write and read it as an historical account. You need to distinguish between multiple authors who did not sit in a writing room together and editors who collected the works. The reason why multiple reports were collected was to get at the truth. Long lists of names and events were included to establish historical credibility.
#2 The Biblical authors are aware there are contradictions.
Just no. Some of the authors wouldn’t even have been aware of all the other authors.
#3 The Bible contradicts itself intentionally. It’s an ancient Jewish way of teaching to have two rabbis take different stances, and argue publicly. Often, the truth of something is in the tension between two perspectives.
Yes, but using contradictions intentionally as a teaching device applies to the talmud(interpretation of the law), not to the tanach(biblical law). Contradictions in the tanach were seen as something that needs to be explained. And yes, some of them were explained, after the fact, as purposeful by theologians. But if we went to take a historically sound approach, we have to acknowledge, that they are a collection from many verbal sources separated by time and place. So it’s far more likely that these unconnected sources contradict each other precisely because no written account has existed until then.
If contradictions in teaching had been a core part of Jewish theology beforehand, they would continue in writing. There would be many Toras. But the opposite happens: With the advent of the written word, correct word-for-word transmission of the written law immediately becomes absolutely central to the religion. So the conclusion is inevitable, that contradictions came first and ideology to explain them had to follow after the fact.
Verbal traditions can be contradictory, because contradictions are harder to notice. Once the verbal tradition is frozen as words on paper, the contradictions become obvious and ideology forms around them like a pearl froms around a speck of sand in an oyster, to protect the body of the teaching from the damage.
Yes people absolutely did write and read it as an historical account. You need to distinguish between multiple authors who did not sit in a writing room together and editors who collected the works. The reason why multiple reports were collected was to get at the truth. Long lists of names and events were included to establish historical credibility.
Were you raised in a protestant country? Because this is a very protestant logic.
Sounds like normal person logic to me.
Why the F do you all need to make things about xyz religion that isn’t Christianity EVERY time? Just because we aren’t sleeping with you doesn’t mean we’re sleeping with someone else ffs.
Sounds like normal person logic to me.
Are most of the people around you raised in a protestant culture? Because that would explain a lot.
Most of the people around me fall into one of these
- Religious fanatics that believe if a baby isn’t baptised its the end of the world
- Crazy people that believe 5G is the end of us, that have 5G routers in their own homes
- People so poor they barely have clothes and food
- People with close to 0 education working minimum wage barely surviving
As opposed to what you seem to think I grew my own spine while most people in my life did all but sabotage me, besides my father, brother and a few others.
The fact that you seem to think I can’t have my own thoughts and knowledge in my head shows a lot of your own character.
Nobody taught me to think what you’re saying is dumb.
you’re defined by your environment, either by aligning to it or by rejecting it. You’re never free from it. What I’m saying is that that’s your understanding of spirituality and religion, even if you reject it, because most people around you employ that worldview. And it has very little to do with your rational side or critical thinking.
I’m someone who was raised Christian, learned a lot about the Christian Bible and its historical context, and is now very much not Christian because of that.
All of this comment feels like someone laying a lot of groundwork to justify cherry-picking opinions. It’s about as meaningful as the catch-all excuse “God works in mysterious ways” when people are confronted with the problematic parts of Christian theology.
If the Bible can’t be trusted, which it seems you agree about, then any use of it to justify hate and mistreatment is fundamentally flawed. Do you give this impassioned speech when you hear Christians use the book to justify their oppression of others? These days, particularly queer folk?
I, for one, am not particularly interested in deriving any part of my morality from the flawed “word” of a hateful murderous war god.
Do you give this impassioned speech when you hear Christians use the book to justify their oppression of others? These days, particularly queer folk?
Absolutely I do! Let’s grab that framework I described earlier, and apply it to LGBTQIA+. I’m gonna break this into two questions:
A) Is being gay a “sin”. B) Is it right to protest/harass/whatever queer people.
To start with A, let’s do a quick check of mentions of homosexuality in the Bible. There is shockingly little here. Virtually nothing. But let’s look at possibly the most popular instance to cite, in Sodom. Sodom is a horrifying Old Testament story, where an Angel disguises himself as a traveller and visits a city, being invited into a home. All the town gathers and demands the traveller be released to them, so they can rape him. Instead, the host gives them his daughter, who they rape to death. The whole town is then destroyed for its sinfulness. So this is… an unflattering association with homosexuality. But, there’s clearly a lot more going on here too. To blame this on just homosexuality is obviously a stretch.
So let’s look for other examples. As a Christian and not a Jew, Jesus is considered the highest authority, so anything he says directly should be considered very important. So does he mention it? Not even once, as far as I’m aware. Perhaps he’s just unaware? Well, looking at historical context, he’s living in the Roman Empire, which is pretty famously gay, as tumblr delights to point out. So I find it highly unlikely that Jesus wouldn’t have had opportunity to comment, and yet he never bothers, or at least the apostles never bothered to record it.
So there’s shockingly little said on the topic, and nearly nothing direct. Some will point to verses about “nature” and marriage, but that sounds to me like you’re bringing your own conclusions in first, and have already decided what those words mean, rather than looking to the text and ancient Jewish culture to define them. In cases where it’s condemned, it’s usually muddled with lots of other horrifying sins. As far as a modern gay marriage goes, with two people committed to one another in a loving relationship, I don’t see that described anywhere in the Bible, and personally don’t find much basis to take issue with it.
At the bare minimum, I think it’s crystal clear this isn’t an important issue. This isn’t terribly scientific, but just opening Bible Gateway and searching the word “homosexual” in the NIV, I get 1 result, from a letter written to Timothy where it’s mentioned in a list of “things contrary to sound doctrine”. Searching “divorce”, I get 33. “Adultery”? 45. So any church with a divorcee that can’t tolerate gays? Deeply hypocritical. There’s also 49 results for “judge not” while we’re at it.
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As for B, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at what I’ve presented above and conclude that it it’s not godly. There isn’t anything really pro-queer to be found either. And fair enough, I can understand if, say, a pastor isn’t comfortable performing a gay marriage in their church. (sidebar, it’s ridiculous that legal marriage and “Christian marriage” somehow became the same thing. The church should have no opinions on who non-Christians live with and how they’re taxed accordingly).
What I cannot understand is how you take the thin evidence presented above, and conclude it’s enough to consider it acceptable to disregard the overwhelming themes of love and acceptance, of not judging, of having grace, and conclude that this issue merits such insane and unacceptable behaviour. To do so signals in bright crimson that you’ve discarded any pretence of letting the Bible guide you, and are fully allowing your politics and feelings to drive your interpretation of the Bible. Jesus loved prostitutes and cheating tax collectors, but you’re telling me he would’ve harassed any gay he found, when he doesn’t even bother to mention the topic?
It actually pisses me off to an incredible degree, that I even have to talk about this issue, that these people mar the church constantly with such evil behaviour, and that Christianity is so deeply associated with such vehement hate and psychotic anti-human politics. I’d far rather a world of more atheists and agnostics than this type of “Christian”. At least they own their ideas rather than pretending they’re Biblical and handwaving any refutation. It’s indefensible.
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To be crystal clear, I wish the Bible gave me a clearer signal that gender is a construct, that love is love, and all of that. I have very close relationships with gay and bi people in my life. The topic is near and dear to my heart, so I’ve spent some time digging into it. I really don’t love how inconclusive and wishy washy part of this comment sounds. But I don’t want to hide that, which is why I tackled it first in this comment, before getting to the part people will like more. This is what I find studying the text, and I have to live with that to have any intellectual and spiritual honesty whatsoever.
I believe the Bible should make you uncomfortable sometimes, it should challenge you and force you to reconcile some things. If it doesn’t, you’re probably forcing your own conclusions into it rather than actually reading it. Read properly, it will ask you to be radically generous, and radically kind. It will tell you that hating someone is tantamount to murdering them, that your little “white lie” sins and habits, like gossiping, are just as serious as the sins of the people you hate most. It tells you that you’ll suffer, but that you aren’t allowed to hate your enemies, and that bad things will happen that you can’t do anything about as well as good things. It’s not a fun mirror to look at, and it should challenge you and make you uncomfortable and force you to grow.
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination,” and Leviticus 20:13
Uhh… apparently my reply to this got so long that it can’t be submitted as a single comment, so… reply chain incoming. Breaking it up where I’d originally placed “—”.
Ooh, yes, excellent, let’s talk about Old Testament law, it was remiss of me to not find this for the initial conversation. Apologies in advance, this is going to feel like a lot of avoiding the implied question, but I feel like I have to give a bunch of context around OT law in general before I reply directly, which I promise I will at the end. This is also gonna be pretty disorganized, it’s a big topic that I’m trying to summarize into a comment.
Ok, so let’s start entirely within the Old Testament, with a bit of cultural context we import into our understanding of the Bible, and that’s the idea of “statutory law”. In the modern world, a “law” is something written with extreme clarity, meant to be followed exactly. This is done so that the law can be 100% consistent across an entire massive society, even the globe.
But that’s actually a very modern concept, and isn’t how laws worked for most of human history. Instead of arguing this from OT law, let’s look at a law from the same era, the Code of Hammurabi. This law was extremely common, and went “ancient viral” in a way, according to Wikipedia, copies “were found not only in Susa but also in Babylon, Nineveh, Assur, Borsippa, Nippur, Sippar, Ur, Lars, and more”. Feel free to read the “Theories of Purpose” for far more evidence on this.
But the way this kind of law worked is that it was more like a list of examples of judgements, rather than direct legal code in the modern sense. For example, in a law like this, you couldn’t have tax lawyers, who interpret and manipulate the exact phrasing cleverly to avoid paying anything. Rather, a judge would deem you in violation of the spirit of the law and tax you accordingly. This also works in reverse, where circumstances could lessen a sentence or even leave you as innocent. In many ways, it’s an enviable system, although it’d obviously be impractical and abused in a modern context.
Second random topic, the law in the Old Testament actually doesn’t function primarily as a law. It’s part here as law, part here as narrative. Much of the law is given right before we’re shown Israel breaking that law, for example. In addition, it’s not nearly enough law for a society to function. The Old Testament only includes ~600 laws, and Jews would quickly have to infer more than 5000 laws based on the principles shown in the laws that were given.
The law was also not intended as a final state. I gave an example earlier of a law changing when it was first given before it was given again later. And Jews did debate the principles set forth in the law and push them further over time, taking concepts that were progressive in Biblical times, and making them more progressive later. Again, it’s not statutory law, it’s the principle behind it that matters more than the letter.
And the law was also intended for an ancient Jewish people, in that time. There are cases where the law doesn’t “rock the boat”, so to speak, but clearly points things in a more progressive direction than where it was, and what’s explicitly described in the law is never espoused going forward. Let me give an example, of a law that sounds horrifying. There’s a biblical law that states, if a city is taken in war, and a soldier sees a pretty woman on the battlefield, they can take her as spoils of war and bring her home and marry her. I think we can all agree this isn’t a nice thing to do. But let’s compare it to the standard of the time, where it was common to rape women in a city you’ve captured. Compared to the standard, the law now states, ok, you can kind of do this. But you must take her with you, and not violently rape her then and there. Instead, she travels in your tent, and you must bring her home after the campaign, give her a month to mourn, and marry her, guaranteeing to take care of her as your own, making her your dependent. You are also forbidden from selling her as a slave in this situation, if you decide not to marry her.
So what I see here is not a standard which I want to live by in the current day, but I see a law meeting an accepted practice of the day and saying “this has to change for the better”. The principles I believe are being espoused here is that women are not objects, and rape is not an acceptable “crime of passion”. I think a Jew studying this would infer such crazy things from this shifting of the rules as “rape is not ok” and “women need to be treated with respect”.
Ok, final diatribe on Old Testament law. A lot of it is regarding “ritual purity”. As a modern reader, familiar with germs and hygiene, I don’t think it’s wild to ask if, given I believe an all-knowing God gave this law, if a lot of these aren’t intended to prevent the spread of diseases. Let’s look at some of the things that make you ritually unclean, for which the cure for is, essentially, isolation from others, and a bath. Touching a dead human or animal, having a period, touching blood, touching someone unclean. Even the unclean animals are ones like cows and pigs, which we’ve known to give us many deadly plagues and diseases through history. This is more a suspicion than anything I’m proposing as dead-serious religious study, but I find it remarkable how good a lot of these arbitrary-seeming ritual purity laws would be at preventing plagues in a society that doesn’t properly understand germs.
Alright, finally done with an Old Testament perspective on the law. I wanted to make a case separately from an NT perspective, because I know the obvious response to an NT-focused position here is “that’s the same God you worship now, you still believe in a God that set this law for thousands of years”.
In the New Testament, Jesus takes a really interesting stance on the law. First of all, he breaks it, as the Pharisees understand it, constantly. However, he always has a Biblical argument for doing so, and consistently leaves the Pharisees befuddled and frustrated when they accuse him of this.
Additionally, as a Gentile, the NT is clear that we are not beholden to the OT law. This is a surprisingly well-discussed issue, as it seems the early church was often followed by a group of Jewish Christians that would persuade new churches that they were beholden to the law, and had to be circumcised, etc. So Paul’s letters frequently have to correct this stance, when he contacts the churches he’s planted. Even for Jews, Paul himself has a vision where he’s told to eat unclean animals, and soon after participates in a feast that sees more people brought into the church.
There’s also a really interesting moment with Jesus, when a woman is set to be stoned because she was found cheating on her husband, and is brought to Jesus. And Jesus tells the crowd gathered to stone her, “let he who is without sin, throw the first stone”. Slowly, the whole crowd leaves, and he tells the woman “If no one will condemn you, then I won’t either. Go, and sin no more.” So there’s this forgiveness and grace brought into the equation, that seems contrary to the harsh punishments described in the original Law, and made more important than that.
So so far this suggests that, hey, as Christians today we can basically ignore the Law. But Jesus actually tells us something more interesting, that he’s not here to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus believes his radical, loving philosophy is what the Law was meant to lead us to all along.
So basically, as a modern Christian, I don’t at all have to obey the Law. I can get tattoos, wear mixed fabrics, and work on Sundays all I like. But the Law is relevant. I try to study it as Jesus did, and understand it as he did, with his radically loving and gracious and kind philosophy. And I don’t always succeed, I’m not going to tell you I have a perfect understanding of every Law and its purpose, but I understand enough that I have faith that there is good explanation for the things I haven’t understood yet, and try to put the work in to understand the things in the OT that do bother me.
Also, I feel like I should add, as a modern Christian with the whole Bible before me, the Law is almost like… a failed experiment. Not that God isn’t omniscient and would be “experimenting”, but the Law clearly doesn’t work. Israel fails to follow it constantly, until the kingdom is split and both halves continue to fail until their exiles. In fact, there are some practices laid out in the laws, such as the Year of Jubilee, that we apparently don’t have historical evidence of ever having happened. The Law needed fulfilling through Christ, because we couldn’t possibly make it work, and that was always the plan for it. So no, I don’t look at modern Israel and see some platonic ideal society because they still try to follow the Law, or anything like that.
So, finally, the verse in question. First thing, I’m looking at the word “abomination” and I’m curious what that is in the original Hebrew, as that’s a loaded word. Here’s the list of everywhere that word appears in the Hebrew. The word is used here, but also in contexts such as “it would be an abomination to an Egyptian to eat with a Hebrew”, unclean animals are described as “abominations”, a sacrifice or prayer offered by a wicked person is an abomination to God, etc. There are some stronger uses of the word, such as using it for adultery or idol worship, but I’m seeing this word originates with the KJV, and I suspect its definition has drifted over time. Other translations, like the NIV choose words like “detestable” or “loathsome” for this. So definitely still not positive words, but that doesn’t read to me in the ultra-harsh way “abomination” does, and it’s also notable that unclean animals, something Paul is later encouraged to eat, is described with the same word.
Looking at this verse, I basically see 3 possible explanations for its inclusion in the Law. I’ll list them:
A) The obvious one, that homosexuality is just plainly frowned upon, and was always meant to be interpreted as wrong. Not an unreasonable reading, although point B from my previous comment still applies, protests and harassment are unjustifiable.
B) That this may be a health thing, similar to unclean animals. After all, we saw with the AIDS epidemic a health issue that swept through gay men most of all, largely because of a lack of healthcare resources that certainly wouldn’t have been around in B.C.
C) The one I personally find most likely, is that this had to do with God’s desire to see Israel and humanity grow in population. Abraham was promised descendants “as numerous in the stars in the sky”, and this is fairly close to the Genesis commission to “be fruitful and multiply” and to “fill the whole earth and subdue it”.
These days, I consider the earth to be pretty well filled, so I don’t believe those commands apply too much to us now. The Christian sects that always try to have 10+ kids strike me as weird too, I don’t feel any obligation to procreate like that.
Alright, let me wrap up here. My feelings on Biblical law are clearly complex, but to be clear, this is a good part of the case to be made that homosexuality isn’t godly, and you’re right to point it out, but still doesn’t sway me, for all the reasons I explained in my first comment on it. This is still part of what I’d described as the Bible’s “remarkable silence” on the topic of homosexuality.
A law in Leviticus is not nearly as persuasive as it would be if Jesus had spoken on the topic, for example. Or simply, more instances of the topic being directly addressed in scripture. This also still doesn’t bring much clarity about modern homosexuals in marriage, etc. There’s a lot of clear biblical disdain for casual sex, so a lot of gay culture like Grindr isn’t ever going to get a Biblical thumbs up, just like Tinder hookups don’t. So forbidding that kind of sexual activity is expected, but there are explicit examples of forbidden marriages in this list of laws about sex, such as marrying your sister, but a man marrying a man or woman marrying a woman isn’t mentioned.
But ultimately, my entire rant from the previous comment still stands. Even if Jesus had outright and directly said “any form of homosexuality, no matter how monogamous and loving, is tantamount to murder” 20+ times, the way much of the church has behaved would still be biblically unacceptable. In the sermon on the mount, the most detailed example of Jesus’s direct teaching we have, he tells us that all sins are equal. That to even look at a woman with lust, to think an angry thought about someone, is a crime worthy of death. And so we’re all equal. I’m just as sinful and “bad” as you, as any murderer, as anyone who’s done any sin you can name. So any church that picks a “pet sin” to focus on like this, whether it be sex and drugs, dungeons and dragons, rock music, or homosexuality and gender diversity, it’s done in direct contradiction to Jesus’s direct and plain teaching, in his most important and repeated message. It can be correct to call out sin in love, but this isn’t what that looks like.
I agree it’s not mentioned much, nevertheless it’s a dogma that’s used to oppress people both within and without the religious group. IIRC most of it is either Old Testament law or Pauline letters. If it’s important to you, I can try to find verses to back that up.
I find it odd that right after a comment talking about not shying away from contradictions in the bible, you deflect in this comment by focusing on what Jesus says and that an absence of mention in that is meaningful. That’s a very narrow section of the bible. It’s not even the majority of the New Testament. It’s also the only one supporting this:
overwhelming themes of love and acceptance, of not judging, of having grace, and conclude that this issue merits such insane and unacceptable behaviour
I cannot disagree more. Those are relatively minor themes of the Christian Bible. Again, really only coming through in the gospels. The Old Testament is filled to the brim with violence, oppression, sexual assault, slavery, child murder (especially by Yahweh), and loads more unsavory content. Very little love and acceptance. The New Testament has those themes in the gospels, then a lot of judgment, oppression, and dogma in the Pauline letters that informs much of modern Christian doctrine, and then some fever dreams at the end when someone got a little too into Kabbalah.
I would argue the way modern Christians use the bible is much more in the spirit of the text as a whole than what you describe for yourself. Your version is infinitely better, and we wouldn’t need to be having this argument if more people thought like you, but I think it’s just not true that the bible is a book of love and acceptance. By weight, it is much more a book of violence and hate. In line with the Canaanite war god that started the whole thing.
This is supposed to be the base of all your beliefs. So what do people even believe in!?!
That’s all well and good if you’re already working under the framework that God exists. If I’m not, why should I accept such a fallable and obviously human work as proof that God not only exists, but this specific God exists?
Some people tried to prove God through language and logic, but it’s beyond the point. The existence of God is much more easily experienced than proven.
The Bible was born as a support to create the community around which the experience of God was possible. A scenario in which a person is reading the Bible alone, thinking really hard about it, and comes out convinced of God’s existence is not what the Bible was written for or how it’s used in most forms of Christianity.
The existence of God is much more easily experienced than proven.
Replace God with aliens if you want to understand how I see these kind of statements. It’s so very clearly the creation of an evolved ape supported by assertion.
I assume you’ve never experienced the existence of God, which is a pity. Great experience. 10/10, would recommend.
I guess you’ve never experienced the existence of aliens, which makes the two experiences equivalent in their absurdity to you, but you should consider that the vast majority of people out there did experience God in a way or another.
I did. On acid. Which made me even more adeist, which basically means I don’t believe in deities and I don’t call “god” “a god”. And I don’t believe, I know that the intelligent observer exists, I just don’t give it a worship credit because worshipping is a “satanic” principle. All of the religions prove it. Universe and dimensions are too complex to dismiss the intelligence and a creation in the equation, but it doesn’t mean we are obligated to build temples to it and call it a god and make fools out of ourselves and the creation. And we did exactly that. Why? There has to be some logic in our flawness and there surely is, we just don’t understand it. I think that perfection reflects in the flawness and that our level of consciousness was needed so the force can reflect its perfection in our corruption. Paradise and hell are simple to explain, just take DMT and you will understand. Because we extract DMT as we die and death is just a trip. Will it be paradise or hell, depends on your ego and all the informations you gathered during life. So, if you, for example, killed people, DMT in combo with it will make your transition a hell. If you were NPC, you’re stuck in the “purgatory”, if you were good, you’ll be able to release the ego and DMT will create a heaven for you. What’s after that, fuck me if I know.
DMT and the Church are both technologies to access the experience of God, with very different costs. I agree on the worshipping part, in fact I’m talking about experiencing God, not worshipping. Worshipping is a way to eventually experience God, it’s not a consequence, at least within Christianity. Faith means trusting that through worshipping you will eventually have the experience of God, in a way or another.
Then if you prefer not to call it a God, that’s fine, but you miss out on the fact that countless people in the past millennia were talking about the same thing you saw on DMT. The God of Spinoza, Mulla Sadra or Plato is not necessarily a God to worship.
Good for you
Oh so you’re saying the Church’s actions speak louder than the Bible itself?
Also assuming you’re Catholic from your other comments.
So, witch burnings, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, burning Joan of Arc, selling indulgences, fighting tooth and nail against an English translation of the Bible so normal people can actually read it (and burning the translators for good measure), justifying slavery under the guise of “well we’re saving those slaves by forcing then to become Christian”, generations of science denial and suppression, and Indigenous residential schools. My what a great experience you’ve forced onto this world.
Also, if you’re so confident that experiencing God will turn someone Christian, what’s with all the hell stuff you keep pushing? Sure seems like the fear of eternal torture is your bread and butter way of getting people to believe.
I’m not Christian. I was raised culturally Catholic but never practiced or believed in the Christian God. I’ve been excomunicated for a few years too. I have no connection to the Catholic in any form (except maybe some of their money funding some political stuff I do).
The Catholic Church, understood as the community of believers, is an organization going on for thousands of years, in every corner of the world, involving a few billions of humans. Every organization of that size will have stains in its history, especially if you judge them from the perspective of late-stage modernity morals, which the Church deliberately doesn’t participate in. They have their own system, and it clashes with the rationalist mindset because both systems have a claim to universalism, with the Christian universalism creating the modern colonial-scientific universalism. They are two sides of the same coin. I make little distinction between the two, because both eventually lead to oppression. That said, nowadays the Catholic Church is positioning itself as the main leader of the anti-fascist front in the Global North.
Also little historical note: quantitatively, the vast majority of witch burnings were done by protestants, not by catholics
An almighty god can’t or won’t create an objective book for us to follow? Not worth worshipping.
The big selling point of Christianity was to move God and faith within the subject, moving away from external and ritualistic practices. Also, objectivity is a modernist perspective and it’s not an intrinsic valuable thing. Outside of rationalist bubbles in the global north, objectivity is pretty uninteresting trait to evaluate knowledge, because the knower and the known are never objective.
Thanks for spending the time to meaningfully contribute.
Hey, thanks! I really appreciate you being one of the first comments here. It’s always a bit risky to come out on the side of religion, as a lot of people have had terrible experiences with “Christians” and churches, and so understandably are pretty passionately against anything religious.
That said, I’ve always had a pretty respectful experience on Lemmy, just by really trying my best to add some value and detail. After all, a one-sided conversation is pretty boring.
Is this all rather convenient? The whole issue is that at some point someone tells you to act a certain way because God wants it, it’s written in the book; then, other times it’s not historic or whatever. The consequence is that anyone can use the Bible to justify any behavior because of the contradictions. That, and it was written by a bunch of dudes 300 years after the death of the fella on the cross.
Also, God doesn’t exist so don’t worry about it and just be kind to everyone.
Isn’t this all rather convenient?
I do my best, as someone studying it, to read it as an ancient Jewish reader would, as that’s the original, intended audience. That’s why my #2 and #3 is all about how the authors of the Bible saw contradictions and accepted them. That is absolutely more of an art than a science sometimes, but I try to remove my own perspective and desires for what I want the Bible to say as I read it, and then figure out what I want to do with that later.
The way I would personally weigh out an apparent contradiction is through study. How many times is a thing referenced? Does it contradict major themes or ideas? Is there any relevant historical context to this passage, such as it being a letter to a specific church? What’s the broader context of the passage itself, within the book and a few chapters around? Usually a “correct” answer becomes pretty clear through this process.
As for anyone justifying anything, they sure as hell can, and I’ve watched them do it. My #1 red flag, for anyone attending any church, is that any church worth its salt will encourage you to read the book yourself, ask questions, and that doubting and challenging things is encouraged. You cannot purely let someone else tell you what’s in there, because it’s a big book, and full of narratives of characters doing all sorts of things. The Bible is really meant to be understood as a whole work, and not cherry-picked passages.
It’s one book, and it isn’t even that long. You shouldn’t need to study it. Also, if a book has a ton of contradictions, then it basically says nothing.
As a whole, it’s a hateful book full of cruelty, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia. Or it’s not. It just depends where you read. Therefore, it will justify your good will to other people, or your worst instincts. Both supported by the word of God.
My favourite book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes, which takes a Nietzsche-esque stance that nothing we do matters, and life is terribly unfair. Bad things happen to good people and vice versa, so simply eat, drink, and be merry. It comes right after Proverbs, which is the classic book everyone quotes from about how doing good things leads to good things. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
There’s a highly underrated Coen Brothers movie called “A Serious Man” that lives somewhere in between Ecclesiastes and Job. A story about a guy who lives in this moral gray zone and just kinda has good and bad things happen to him. All the while, he’s struggling for meaning and direction, in a community of very religious Jews who have nothing useful to say.
If you enjoy very dry humor, it’s a lot of fun.
The reality of the Dunning-Kruger effect is my bible.
Devil’s advovate my ass. It’s a hate book that’s completely fictional, and so full of lies, utter nonsense, and just pure hate that it continues to ruin lives thousands of years after it was written by assholes.
When you just pick and choose, while ignoring the obvious hate material - that’s not a good thing. You’re becoming a part of the organization that DOES follow the hate parts.
So, pretend that you’re not part of a hate organization all you want - if you’re religious - you are. Even if you’re one of the 'good ones". Especially if you think that you’re one of the “good ones”.
I think you meant to post this to /c/dataisunreadable
You have all (almost 500) sources in the bottom half. If it’s unreadable you might be opening a thumbnail, check for the full resolution of the image.
Zoom.
I can not understand how someone can blindly believe in a book they KNOW was rewriten infinite times. They say it’s the word of god but it was also edited by all sorts of kings and popes, can we edit the word of god? How can people not think? I’m not talking about faith but this sick following of a fucking book
Hmm. This is a lot of red lines, I think I’m going to ignore everything I’m seeing and continue moving forward having done nothing to restructure my worldview.
Life is so easy when you simply sacrifice all your morals!
Can’t have low standards if there’s no floor!
The floor is in hell!
It’s a book written by hundreds of different author in a 600 years span (and collecting far older traditions) in three different languages. It’s surprising there are not more contradictions.
That’s not the problem. The problem is the abundance of assholes using selected parts of the Bible to manipulate others while conveniently ignoring other parts of the Bible that contradict them. They choose what parts they want to hear, and then act like they’re unassailable edicts that came straight from God.
Cherry pickers, every single one of them.
Oh, and that changes from day to day, minute to minute. It’s not consistent in any way. The only consistent part is their surety of existence of something that does not, and never did, exist.
The problem is the abundance of assholes using selected parts of the Bible to manipulate others while conveniently ignoring other parts of the Bible that contradict them.
This has absolutely nothing to do with contradictions or lack thereof, though. You can just as easily cherry-pick something that has no contradictions.
That’s non-sequitur.
Disagree. If the document was completely logical & self-supporting, then there’d be no need to cherry pick as anything said would be consistent with the whole. You could highlight certain aspects, but that’s not cherry-picking.
If the document was completely logical & self-supporting, then there’d be no need to cherry pick as anything said would be consistent with the whole.
You’re assuming that the entire document has a single message, which is absolutely not a given. Simple hypothetical:
If the Bible said nothing more than these things:
- Abortion is bad
- You should tithe 10% of your income to the church
- The earth is 6000 years old
And you were someone who was on board with the first two but not the third, it’d be cherry-picking to call yourself an adherent of the Bible while citing your belief/agreement in/with the first two while ignoring the third, even though none of the three things above contradict each other.
I wanna see a version that is just Old Testament. One that is just New Testament. And then versions with and without revelation.
Grey bars are new testament
Yeah. But I wanna see one without the lines coming in from the Old Testament or going out to the Old Testament. Kind of just want to see new and old separate.
I love coming across a fellow browncoat!
I am doing a weekly rewatch of the show over in !firefly@slrpnk.net if you would like to join us for something shiny.
Subbed tyy
