The christian bible

[currentchristian]

Precisely what I was trying to say. Among the fundamental values, seems to me, should be allowance for all views and all thoughts. No one should burn anyone's algebra book, romance story, or Bible. First the books are burned, then the people who wrote the books are burned. It's a very slippery slope.

 

-CC in MA

 

I don't think anyone here is in favor of striping anyones civil rights, but this question is a little more complicated than that.

 

Let me ask you a question, now I'm sure you are aware that the bible has at least been involved in a few atrocities over the centuries, so hypothetically speaking if you could go back into the past and prevent the book from ever existing and thus possibly stopping many of those atrocities, would you? Of course the next question is how many atrocities will the bible cause in the future.

 

Understand, I'm not interested, at this point, in weather or not the people who did these things "properly interpreted" the bible. For my part, I don't think a "proper interpretation" exists.

 

Of course this is all hypothetical because there is no way for us to simply wipe the book from our memories, but try to cut us some slack...some of us have been hurt quite a bit by Christians, and/or the religion itself.

 

Most of us came from fundamentalist backgrounds of one type or another, so we are probably a fair bit nicer to you than we would have been a few years ago, but remember, that our experiences do color our judgment, and some of us automatically see red the moment we hear the word Christian, so I would ask you not to devalue our experiences, a lot of us have good reason for our resentment.

 

I may be talking with you civilly, but you can go through my older posts and see many times I let my anger get the better of me and I would tell fundamentalists where they could shove their religion in no uncertain terms

 

You make some very good points, Kuroikaze. Our experiences do color our judgments. No doubt about that. As we grow/evolve in our views, we become less angry, less antagonistic. I think that's right. The funny thing, however, is that so often we become what we loathe, what we fight, what we are angry at. We oppose intolerance so forcefully that we become intolerant. We oppose religious oppression with such fervor that we become the oppressor. Take the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England, for example. They fled England seeking, among other things, religious freedom and liberty. And what did they do when they got here? Expelled Quakers, the religious freedom loving (Roger Williams), and a woman who had her own little home Bible study (Anne Hutchinson), et al. Very sad. We all need to guard ourselves lest we become what we are trying to escape.

 

And this brings us to history and to your question. If I could go back in time, I would eliminate that from the Bible that which is most likely to intensify human prejudice, fear, and intolerance. Absolutely. But I'd not eliminate the book itself. Maybe 10% of it. And I'd get rid of all the begats and I'd combine the four gospels into one and ...

 

Now, I'm getting carried away.

 

Thanks for your insight.

 

-CC in MA

[Kuroikaze]

You make some very good points, Kuroikaze. Our experiences do color our judgments. No doubt about that. As we grow/evolve in our views, we become less angry, less antagonistic. I think that's right. The funny thing, however, is that so often we become what we loathe, what we fight, what we are angry at. We oppose intolerance so forcefully that we become intolerant. We oppose religious oppression with such fervor that we become the oppressor. Take the Pilgrims and Puritans of New England, for example. They fled England seeking, among other things, religious freedom and liberty. And what did they do when they got here? Expelled Quakers, the religious freedom loving (Roger Williams), and a woman who had her own little home Bible study (Anne Hutchinson), et al. Very sad. We all need to guard ourselves lest we become what we are trying to escape.

 

on this I can totally agree, when fighting for things like this we always walk a fine line...and yet we must be willing to walk that line to get anywhere. I'd love to just forcefully quite people like Fred Phelps, but I know doing so could very well cause more problems than it solves in the long run.

 

And this brings us to history and to your question. If I could go back in time, I would eliminate that from the Bible that which is most likely to intensify human prejudice, fear, and intolerance. Absolutely. But I'd not eliminate the book itself. Maybe 10% of it. And I'd get rid of all the begats and I'd combine the four gospels into one and ...

 

Now, I'm getting carried away.

 

Thanks for your insight.

 

-CC in MA

 

lol, well I'd tend to think it would be more than 10%, but I guess working out the exact percentage would be somewhat pointless anyway... I never really though the genealogies were very useful myself, except as fodder for nut jobs who want to claim the earth is 6 thousand years old

[Sexton Blake]

The problem with the bible is the evil that has been done in it's name. Maybe a hundred million imprisoned, tortured or murdered by it's believers. I like the atheist's prayer: "Dear Lord, save me from your followers."

[currentchristian]

The problem with the bible is the evil that has been done in it's name. Maybe a hundred million imprisoned, tortured or murdered by it's believers. I like the atheist's prayer: "Dear Lord, save me from your followers."

 

That's not a bad prayer to pray, sad to say! Fanaticism is dangerous in all its expressions - religious, political, economic, etc. We definitely have to be on guard against fanaticism.

 

-CC

[Sexton Blake]

currentchristian. I think that is the problem with all religions. They believe that god is on their side so that if you argue with them, you are arguing with an "infallible god" so must be wrong.

 

I'm in Bangkok at present and last week was at Chatuchak, the weekend market. There was a group of christians handing out bible tracts (illegal in Thailand) and someone with a loud speaker was threatening people with hell if they did not obey Jesus and become christians (this is a 96% Buddhist country). A group of christians positively ranted at people last December in the Silom area, which is tourists and locals (reported in newspapers, Thai and English). Some christians do more damage to their own religion than atheists ever could.

[Sexton Blake]

kuroikaze. I remember going on Fred Phelp's site some years back and he had a warning telling people not to send him email letter bombs. (if only)

 

I should imagine he gets just as much hate mail from christians as from everyone else.

[currentchristian]

currentchristian. I think that is the problem with all religions. They believe that god is on their side so that if you argue with them, you are arguing with an "infallible god" so must be wrong.

 

I'm in Bangkok at present and last week was at Chatuchak, the weekend market. There was a group of christians handing out bible tracts (illegal in Thailand) and someone with a loud speaker was threatening people with hell if they did not obey Jesus and become christians (this is a 96% Buddhist country). A group of christians positively ranted at people last December in the Silom area, which is tourists and locals (reported in newspapers, Thai and English). Some christians do more damage to their own religion than atheists ever could.

 

I agree 100% with your last sentence.

 

I think it is very easy to get in our little group of Republicans or Democrats or Atheists and Christians or whatever and think that we're really a little bit superior than others. We have to be on guard against this, as it's a common human trait.

 

-CC