Does the Bible make God stupid and insecure?

steenkh said:
Why not? The rationale will always be that the previous interpretation was wrong, and it can hardly be wrong to insist on the right interpretation.

Besides, the reinterpretations often happen imperceptibly so that the believers are not aware that the interpretations have changed.
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HansMustermann said:
Well, having the right to do something, doesn't mean it's the sane thing to do.

I mean, the dude I just mentioned was also perfectly within his rights even in China to interpret the Bible as foretelling him to be God's youngest son. The part where he started having people executed, that wasn't within his rights, but the Bible reinterpretation was totally OK even in Qing dynasty China.

But was that whole thing rational?
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I was answering to the claim that changing the interpretation of some passages of the Bible was "insincere" and “unacceptable”, whether it be consciously or unconsciously. See my comment #81.
For example: Allegorically interpreting the passage of Joshua stopping the sun to make it compatible with modern heliocentrism.
This is one of the obvious changes in the beliefs of about 50% of American Christians opposed to the literal interpretation that I pointed out in my previous comment #131.

If "sane" means unreasonable, I disagree. This change seems absolutely reasonable. If "sane" means "rationally justified," I don't think so. The new belief is more modern but also unjustified for reasons other than the previous one.
The first belief was unacceptable because it clashed with facts.
The second belief is unacceptable because it is not based on objective criteria of interpretation. It is open wide to subjectivity.
 
acbytesla said:
"Intelligent Christian"? Is that something like a "good lawyer"?

Sure, there are as many different interpretations of the bible as there are people. But I have heard at least a thousand times about who is and who isn't a "true" Christian.

And what is the difference between "inspired" and the actual word of God? I get that different denominations have different ways of deciding. Did God rape Mary? Is that the actual word of god or merely inspired by God. But if God is responsible for everything, is there really a difference? Doesn't that mean that EVERYTHING ever written not just in the bible is the word of God? Should I also be worshipping Shakespeare? How about Stephen King?


Sadly the so called "Intelligent Christians" offer cover for the ass backward Christians. You know, the ones that justify saying that "homosexuality is an abortion" just after eating a barbecued pulled pork sandwich?

My problem is much of the book is hideous. How does one justify thinking that this is a book of wisdom and moral precepts when

God tells the Israelites to slaughter the Midianites and the Amalakites women and children except the girls that have not laid with a man?

or the story of Abraham where God specifically told him to gut his son Isaac and at the last moment said I was only kidding.

or Jepthah who did sacrifice his daughter to God?

Or slavery which is not only condoned but regulated?


Do I believe the story of Genesis or ignore it entirely?

And why should I care for one second what Paul said?

Or should I only care what Jesus said in the gospels?

Should I give away all my money to the poor?

I'm all for being my brother's keeper and being humble and learning to forgive. Its the rest of the damn book that makes me want to vomit and speak out against it.
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Oh, sure. I agree that there is no "true" Christianity. I said "intelligent. I suppose you've met some. These are people who feel that they cannot be Christian in a Western democracy in the same way that the Great Inquisitor was Christian. To give an example.
As to how they solve their problems with the brutality and intolerance of the Bible, we should ask them. It's quite incomprehensible to me. But I recognize that sometimes their efforts are heroic. From what I have discussed with them I can see they had some major ways of escape.

-Allegorical interpretation of "difficult" passages.
-"Redactional" passage. That is to say, not directly inspired by God, but added by the scribe, prophet, etc.
-Interpolation. If there is a contradiction is because some ulterior hand has added the wrong text.
-Low levels of inerrancy. For example, God's words are limited to moral principles or religious rules. Scribes add the rest. Therefore you don't need to believe the creation story but the ten commandments.

All this is confuse and contradictory because of the lack of objective rules of interpretation. This means open bar for all.
 
David Mo said:
If "sane" means unreasonable, I disagree. This change seems absolutely reasonable. If "sane" means "rationally justified," I don't think so. The new belief is more modern but also unjustified for reasons other than the previous one.
The first belief was unacceptable because it clashed with facts.
The second belief is unacceptable because it is not based on objective criteria of interpretation. It is open wide to subjectivity.
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I assume that that kind of lexical distinction must make sense in Spanish, because it doesn't really in English:

reasonable
adjective
  1. agreeable to reason or sound judgment; logical:
    a reasonable choice for chairman.
  2. not exceeding the limit prescribed by reason; not excessive:
    reasonable terms
  3. moderate, especially in price; not expensive
    The coat was reasonable but not cheap.
  4. endowed with reason
  5. capable of rational behavior, decision, etc.

There's a reason why "reason" is the root word of "reasonable". In fact, technically speaking "reasonable" means you can reason it, i.e., justify it by reason. It's the same derivation of a verb as "washable" means you can wash it or "detachable" means you can detach it.

Unless you mean it's not very expensive to pull a new bible interpretation out of the posterior, I don't see how something irrational can be at the same time reasonable.
 
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HansMustermann said:
I assume that that kind of lexical distinction must make sense in Spanish, because it doesn't really in English:

reasonable
adjective
  1. agreeable to reason or sound judgment; logical:
    a reasonable choice for chairman.
  2. not exceeding the limit prescribed by reason; not excessive:
    reasonable terms
  3. moderate, especially in price; not expensive
    The coat was reasonable but not cheap.
  4. endowed with reason
  5. capable of rational behavior, decision, etc.

There's a reason why "reason" is the root word of "reasonable". In fact, technically speaking "reasonable" means you can reason it, i.e., justify it by reason. It's the same derivation of a verb as "washable" means you can wash it or "detachable" means you can detach it.

Unless you mean it's not very expensive to pull a new bible interpretation out of the posterior, I don't see how something irrational can be at the same time reasonable.
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It's simpler than all that. I find it reasonable not to accept the literality of the Bible, because this interpretation contradicts data from science and common sense. This reason seems acceptable to me and no one can be accused of dishonesty. I do not find rationally justified the solutions that are habitually adopted and that I have outlined in my previous commentary. The arguments given by Christians do not seem sufficient to me.

Their attitude seems to me intellectually correct, their solutions rationally unacceptable.
 
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Well, there's a difference between
A) realizing that the Bible can't literally be true, and
B) coming up with some own unsupported BS about what it REALLY says there. E.g., and I swear this is an actual one that some nutters in the USA actually came up with, that Jesus supported gun ownership.

The former is reasonable and rational, the latter is really neither.
 
HansMustermann said:
Well, there's a difference between
A) realizing that the Bible can't literally be true, and
B) coming up with some own unsupported BS about what it REALLY says there. E.g., and I swear this is an actual one that some nutters in the USA actually came up with, that Jesus supported gun ownership.

The former is reasonable and rational, the latter is really neither.
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I would not say that efforts to give a non-literal meaning to the Bible are nothing. In another comment I have called them "heroic". That is, they are great efforts that are doomed to annihilation due to the impossibility of their enterprise. Like Greek heroes.
But just as we can admire Oedipus' efforts to escape his fate, we can admire the intellectual efforts of some Christians to achieve what cannot be done. These efforts have put into action so many intellectual faculties that one can learn from them in many ways. To avoid that path, at least. You can also learn about interpretation tools and methods that can be useful if we use them in another way.

But I'm talking about people with intellectual ability and honesty. Without those elements, the search for meaning in the Bible is what I already said: an open bar where any nonsense counts. Even the Ku Klux Klan.
 
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Of course, Jesus recommended carrying weapons. But not guns or rifles, but swords. Let President Trump know, if he lets people buy anything but swords, he goes against Jesus an he will end in the flames of the hell.

The text: Luke 22:36: He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one".
 
David Mo said:
I would not say that efforts to give a non-literal meaning to the Bible are nothing. In another comment I have called them "heroic". That is, they are great efforts that are doomed to annihilation due to the impossibility of their enterprise. Like Greek heroes.
But just as we can admire Oedipus' efforts to escape his fate, we can admire the intellectual efforts of some Christians to achieve what cannot be done. These efforts have put into action so many intellectual faculties that one can learn from them in many ways. To avoid that path, at least. You can also learn about interpretation tools and methods that can be useful if we use them in another way.

But I'm talking about people with intellectual ability and honesty. Without those elements, the search for meaning in the Bible is what I already said: an open bar where any nonsense counts. Even the Ku Klux Klan.
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Well, I'll even agree that the TRYING part is commendable. However, if the result is just rationalizing an even more unsupportable bit of nonsense, well, I'm certainly not going to admire that part.
 
David Mo said:
Of course, Jesus recommended carrying weapons. But not guns or rifles, but swords. Let President Trump know, if he lets people buy anything but swords, he goes against Jesus an he will end in the flames of the hell.

The text: Luke 22:36: He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one".
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Actually, that particular group of nutters were rewriting the parable of the strong man. The original being in Mark 3:27, but Matt and Luke have their own copy of it.

Which incidentally was not supposed to be any kind of endorsement of home defense. Jesus is accused of using Satan's power when he's casting demons out. And Jesus does a bit of brain-dead hand-waving about how oh noes, then Satan would be working against himself (as if double agents were not already a thing), and how basically he has to overpower Satan to steal Satan's stuff. Both are just begging the question, obviously.

To put it simply: the strong man in the parable is Satan, and Jesus is the burglar overpowering him. That's it. That's all it's supposed to mean.

But of course in the USA bible belt, that got taken to mean that Jesus REALLY meant that if you're armed to the teeth, nobody can take your stuff. See, he's endorsing defending your property with a shotgun :p

(But somehow even though every version of that parable says "strong man", they're not taking it as an endorsement of going to the gym. Nah, clearly what Jesus meant by "strong man" was a 300 pound redneck with 20 different firearms.:p)
 
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If we're talking Jesus and swords, though, hell, there are even better examples of that going into delusional land even during the middle ages. Take the "those that live by the sword will die by the sword" quip from Jesus, which, you'd think, couldn't be any clearer.

But already during the middle ages, it got reinterpreted as what it REALLY means is:

A) knights and nobles can only be executed by sword, or
B) you're totally exempt if you use any other weapon than a sword. E.g., why priests in the crusades were supposed to use a mace. or
C) both
 
David Mo said:
Oh, sure. I agree that there is no "true" Christianity. I said "intelligent. I suppose you've met some. These are people who feel that they cannot be Christian in a Western democracy in the same way that the Great Inquisitor was Christian. To give an example.
As to how they solve their problems with the brutality and intolerance of the Bible, we should ask them. It's quite incomprehensible to me. But I recognize that sometimes their efforts are heroic. From what I have discussed with them I can see they had some major ways of escape.

-Allegorical interpretation of "difficult" passages.
-"Redactional" passage. That is to say, not directly inspired by God, but added by the scribe, prophet, etc.
-Interpolation. If there is a contradiction is because some ulterior hand has added the wrong text.
-Low levels of inerrancy. For example, God's words are limited to moral principles or religious rules. Scribes add the rest. Therefore you don't need to believe the creation story but the ten commandments.

All this is confuse and contradictory because of the lack of objective rules of interpretation. This means open bar for all.
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There may be intelligent people that are Christians, but Intelligent and Christianity is an oxymoron. And that really was my point about the story of the god of the bible being just flat out dumb.

Personally, I don't see their attempts as heroic, but as desperate.and finally nothing more than dishonest spin.

.
 
Well, to be fair "heroic" isn't mutually exclusive with "desperate." Nor with "stupid" for that matter. In fact, many a village lost their idiot when someone got a heroism medal pinned to their coffin.
 
acbytesla said:
There may be intelligent people that are Christians, but Intelligent and Christianity is an oxymoron. And that really was my point about the story of the god of the bible being just flat out dumb.

Personally, I don't see their attempts as heroic, but as desperate.and finally nothing more than dishonest spin.
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You have a problem that is common to many atheists in this forum: you are intolerant and dishonest.

You are intolerant because you judge the intelligence of others by their results. If it matches you, he is smart, if it doesn't match, he is dumb. Intelligence often depends on the means, not the results. You have not probably read books by Paul Ricoeur or Simone Weil, but you think they are silly because they are Christian. This is intolerance.

You are also "dishonest" because you turn an intellectual problem into a moral problem. Honesty depends on the intentions of someone and you have no information about the intentions of all Christians. But you prefer to call them dishonest because it is a more shocking disqualification. To affirm what is not known in order to incline the opinion of others in your favour is dishonest.

There is no valuable atheism without tolerance and honesty .
 
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