The Bible

[Thurisaz]

I once talked with a fundy friend at my first college about the hardening of the pharoh's heart and she said it was more a metophor for the pharoh's own stubornness despite god telling him to stop.

 

Now try to tell such a person that then, of course, it's just as much a metaphor when we read that gawd will answer any prayer et al.

[Grandpa Harley]

My lapsed but fundie ex (still believed all the crap but wasn't going to church anymore) point blank refused to believe that Revelations says that after the 1000 years the devil will be let out for a little while before he finally gets destroyed so that he can have one final stab at trying to tempt people away from God. She said to me that I was being ridiculous

 

Exactly what I meant in my previous posting with "thorough brainwashing". They get brainwashed convinced that "this is what it says, period!" and so can dismiss everything that contradicts their delusion knowledge immediately.

 

Even the text they think they're quoting...

[mwc]

My lapsed but fundie ex (still believed all the crap but wasn't going to church anymore) point blank refused to believe that Revelations says that after the 1000 years the devil will be let out for a little while before he finally gets destroyed so that he can have one final stab at trying to tempt people away from God. She said to me that I was being ridiculous

 

Exactly what I meant in my previous posting with "thorough brainwashing". They get brainwashed convinced that "this is what it says, period!" and so can dismiss everything that contradicts their delusion knowledge immediately.

 

Even the text they think they're quoting...

And even when corrected they will immediately return to quoting their imaginary version.

 

mwc

[Grandpa Harley]

Well, unlike most popular cults, the Christians have 1400 years of practice... so it's not surprising.

 

Was it Voltaire who said 'To grasp the concept of infinity, one only has to consider the breadth of human stupidity'?

[Amethyst]

Therein lies the problem. Too many brainwashed Christians believe the bible events really happened. Just look at the figures: 50%+ of Americans believe the World is only 10,000 years old.

 

I was in a church where most people literally believed it. I didn't believe in the 10,000 years old nonsense as I got older and got more education, but I still believed the other nonsense happened for years. Why? Brainwashing from birth.

[oladotun]

If all Christians read the Bible from cover to cover, most of them would not be Christians anymore. Sadly, most never take the time to do it. I read the whole thing through at 13; I was amazed at the amount of atrocities in it.

 

Don't get me started about how I felt when I really really started reading the Bible. I had just "accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior" and my high school buddies who indoctrinated me into the fold told me that if I wanted to go to heaven, i shoudl read the book every day and then I would be blessed and go to heaven once I died...At first, I was like "Ah, a love story..Okay, I'm going to really read this thing and see how much "love" I feel afterwards". Here are the conclusions that I came up with :

 

1. Any person who says that the key to living a succesful life is obeying the Bible has definitely not read it. One text says and eye for an eye, another one (from Jesus), says forgive. Which one is it? I tell you which one, the one that serves your agenda at that particular time. if your enemy hurts you, kill the shit out of them, if you hurt someone else, then bring out the "you got to forgive me" sermon.

 

2. There are so many commands in the Bible that Christians ignore. The foods you are supposed to eat becuase they supposedly make you unclean; stoning to death of a woman who is not a virgin (if her husband so chooses); doshonoring your parents can also warrant a stoning death (and it says nothing about exceptions for if they were abusive); don't wear clothes of mixed fabrics..When I first read that one I was like Uh? What does that have to do with love?

 

3. christians will justify ignoring some aspects of the Bible with the claim, we are New Testament christians, jesus eriadicated the need for the law, but then they will hop right back into the old testament when it comes to money and pick out their favorite scripture Malachi 3:10 about tithing and the many blessings you wil get if you tithe. Why? becuase they are greedy and think that tithing is some magical formula for success.

 

4. So you want to obey the Bible, Uh, I ask fundies? well never forget that sweet little passage in James 2:10 that says if you obey all of the law and vreak just one command, you are just as guilty as the persons that break the whole law. What? Don't get mad at me, it is in your Bible, so while you are casually cherry-picking which laws you want to obey like you are in some kind of buffet line, you better think long and hard, becuase even those ones you ignore demand your attention.

 

5. the level of terror and sheer destruction that is displayed in the Bible is nothing short of amazing. Don't give me any crap about Islamo-fascists being more deranged than Christians (all religion is a form of mental illness), because even a causal reading of the old testament shows how religion can be used for terror. Wipe them all out, women and children, in fact there were times when God chastised the Israelites for NOT wiping everyone out like he said. And yet, he is a gd of peace, or so I am told to believe...

 

6. All Xtains uses selective morality to justify their agenda, that is why there are so many denominations in this country, and yet I often wonder, how many of them have really read the book that they hail so much as the ultimate guide to morality and peace? xtians will tell you that salvation is a "free gift" and then bombard you with enldess rules that they themselves don't keep..All baloney

[Piprus]

You're getting the idea, oladotun, good observations.

So then, why are you still answering the question "Any gods?" with "Jesus"?

[Grandpa Harley]

You're getting the idea, oladotun, good observations.

So then, why are you still answering the question "Any gods?" with "Jesus"?

Doesn't stating that your God is called 'Jesus' actually fly in the face of Christian Orthodoxy on Trinitarian issues?

[Piprus]

You're getting the idea, oladotun, good observations.

So then, why are you still answering the question "Any gods?" with "Jesus"?

Doesn't stating that your God is called 'Jesus' actually fly in the face of Christian Orthodoxy on Trinitarian issues?

With all due respect, Grandpa, one thing at a time. My question to O was introspective.

The purpose of ExC.net is to support those who have exited, or are exiting, from xianity. Hence my question in response to O's last post.

[Grandpa Harley]

You're getting the idea, oladotun, good observations.

So then, why are you still answering the question "Any gods?" with "Jesus"?

Doesn't stating that your God is called 'Jesus' actually fly in the face of Christian Orthodoxy on Trinitarian issues?

With all due respect, Grandpa, one thing at a time. My question to O was introspective.

The purpose of ExC.net is to support those who have exited, or are exiting, from xianity. Hence my question in response to O's last post.

 

No probs... it just reminded me that it was something that's always irritated me about Christian God Botherers... they seldom have a straight idea of what their 'faith' states...

[Eccles]

Why do Christians accept the bible? Do they not know how it was compiled? They should read about the origin of Christianity. It does not have much to do with Jesus. Read the history of the Council of Nicea and how the Roman Pagan emperor Constantine I started Christianity calling it the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. It was based on Mithraism, on a Pagan God Mithras whose fables were similar to Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus is similar to the Egyptian God Horus. Mary is like Isis.

 

There is very little evidence that Jesus actually existed. There is more evidence that Apollonius of Tyana existed. Read Philostratus. The problem is that the Council of Nicea ordered the destruction of all books that show the truth about Christianity and declared them as heretical. Christianity is just another false religion based on false "gods" like the many religions of those times. Where Christianity had the advantage was being the official state religion of the Roman Empire, hence the state could persecute anyone who did not embrace Christianity. Hence the Dark Ages and later the Holy Inquisition.

[Amethyst]

Most Christians have never read about the origins of their own religion. I didn't until I deconverted. It's not something that churches want people to know, either.

[R. S. Martin]

I once talked with a fundy friend at my first college about the hardening of the pharoh's heart and she said it was more a metophor for the pharoh's own stubornness despite god telling him to stop.

But that sounds like by saying "it's a metaphor" we have forced the issue. The KJV clearly says it was "god" that hardened pharoah's heart (pharoah had no choice in the matter), not "Pharoah was stubborn". By so interpreting, we displace the responsibility of the event from god to pharoah, thus relieving the bible god of the responsibility for manifesting these horrific events upon the innocent people of Egypt.

 

The buck stops with god. God did a setup on the Egyptians. That's the tale.

 

There is no way around this. Even the NT tells it this way. See Romans 9. It as God who hardened Pharoah's heart and why did he do it? To show how strong and powerful he (god) was--he (god) could win out over the world's super-power of the day, the Egyptians with their imprenetrable unburnable unsmashable iron wagons.

[Piprus]

You're getting the idea, oladotun, good observations.

So then, why are you still answering the question "Any gods?" with "Jesus"?

Doesn't stating that your God is called 'Jesus' actually fly in the face of Christian Orthodoxy on Trinitarian issues?

With all due respect, Grandpa, one thing at a time. My question to O was introspective.

The purpose of ExC.net is to support those who have exited, or are exiting, from xianity. Hence my question in response to O's last post.

 

No probs... it just reminded me that it was something that's always irritated me about Christian God Botherers... they seldom have a straight idea of what their 'faith' states...

I can certainly relate to that.

[Eccles]

"The KJV clearly says it was "god" that hardened pharoah's heart (pharoah had no choice in the matter)".

 

Let's clear up a few matters about this. First, as we all know there was/is no "god". No Egyptologists can work out which Pharoah the Exodus tale refers to. Forget Akhenaten: wrong time. Wrong location. There are guesses like Ramses II, but only guesses. Then no accounts by the Egyptians of the alleged event have ever been found. Also Exodus was composed 1000 years after the alleged event, certainly not by somebody referred to as Moses.

[Grandpa Harley]

Ahkenaten ISN'T the wrong time. and he was in Egypt... he moved from lower Egypt to the northern end of Upper Egypt for no good reason. There were also plagues and it's 50 to 100 years before the first recognisable artefacts of that indicate something like the Israelites... unless you've got more recent info than I do. Otherwise, you make some pretty certain declarations on something that is at best approximate, and worse inductive conjecture. There is no certain disproof of the timing of reign of Ahkenaten, the posited dates of Moses and the Exodus. The God stuff, I agree with, but the bald assertions about what Archaeologists 'know' or don't depends on who you talk to. If you need Moses not to exist that's fine, but it's not proven and there is a sufficient doubt for me to say that. What I am saying is, that in there is a gap in the records that *could* accommodate the Exodus, and what has been found since the 19th C to date indicates that there was a LOT of problems in Egypt at that time. Lower Egypt was plague ridden, so the Pharoah moved, prior to that a Crown prince vanishes from the record with no sin of his death (in fact the only artefact we have of him is his cat's coffin). Monotheism was a big step... I'm not even saying Moses is Thutmose, I'm just saying it fits... after all the dating of Exodus could be out, since we've not found evidence for it at tlevels we've been looking... and that, wearing my archaeologist's head, means that we can only say with certainty it didn't happen at the earliest time we think it did, or after...