If God, Jesus, the devil, angels, and demons were all real, we still couldn’t rely on the Christian Bible as gospal (pun intended) — it was written by humans, specifically men, who could have misunderstood or invented things. Think of it like the Snyderverse in Man of Steel: Superman is portrayed as a brooding, violent character — but that’s not his true nature. In Batman v Superman, Batman is straight-up killing people — also not his normal characterization.
So even if much of the Bible reflects real events or real beings, parts of it could still be distorted, exaggerated, or entirely made up by the people who wrote it down.
If God is real, the Bible is the worst thing to ever happen to their reputation
The best way to convert to atheism(or at least convert away from christianity) is to read the bible and take notes. The second best way is to talk with christians about controversial topics.
If you stop viewing Jesus as a deity and start viewing him as just a really nice guy, and you ignore much of the rest of that book, then I think he is a good role model.
Strangely, all of the good things he said and did are ignored by the people that worship him.
Turn the other cheek - nope, let’s blow people up in the ocean just in case they’re doing something wrong.
Love thy neighbour, the story of the good Samaritan - nope, fuck anybody that’s not rich and definitely fuck immigrants.
I’ve thought about this a bunch. The christian god being omnipotent and benevolent is contradictory to the bible and also just the state of the world. So what if there actually is some god (or multiple) but these entities are far from omnipotent, really can’t meddle all that much and maybe don’t really care in the first place.
I don’t think it’s true (even if it seems more plausible than any religion actually being completely right) but it’s just funny to me to imagine that all religions could just be the result of some higher dimensional beings playing with our planet out of boredom, and humans just ascribed far too much power to them.
If god had a name, what would we call him?
Sarah
The Bible, and the Quran, and the Vedas, and every other religious text are human attempts to describe God. None of them are going to get it quite right in every detail, but you can learn a lot by cross referencing them to see what they agree on.
They contradict each other on many aspects. So either only is from God or none of them are.
Obviously we cannot consider texts that were modified and are no longer like the originals (which we need to have for comparison) since we know parts of the text is not from God. Not knowing which part has been altered makes things worse.
Preservation is a requirement prior to even considering what the text says.
They contradict each other on many aspects.
Yes, which is why I said to compare them to see where they don’t contradict each other.
So either only is from God or none of them are.
Never said any of them were from God. They’re all from humans attempting to describe God.
This doesn’t tell you anything if they were all derived from earlier stories – which, it turns out, is actually the case. We have the earlier stories as proof, in many cases.
There are centuries of religious thought by mystics developing upon the texts inspired in part by those stories. The parts based on common ancient legends comprise a relatively small part of religious texts.
And still, if anything that’s supportive evidence. The ancient legends that pop up again and again, that survive centuries of canonical revision, probably reflect deep and spiritually apparent features of reality.
Uh… yeah?
ALL those stories are based on previous stories.
I’m really not sure what your point is.
Not really, no. A lot of the major ones, like the Flood, but there’s plenty of original content in every religion. It’s silly to suggest otherwise.
And my point is that if all these same stories keep popping up, maybe there’s some significance to them.
If God is real and we believe that God has the ability to interact with this world I don’t think it’s a stretch to think He could divinely inspire writers to write His word and to divinely inspire librarians and conservators to keep the Bible as He intended it.
Even the Bible has been slightly altered by man though. For instance, a few of the books written in Paul’s name we know now were actually written by some of people under him from within the early church.
So the sections written about women not holding authority within the church may have been put in there to centralize power and make the church have a patriarchal structure.
There’s also the different translations of the Bible which can affect the meaning for some of the text. For instance the Adam and Eve story. Adam means earth in Hebrew, it was not a name. So the person we know as Adam, was created male and then personally chose to identify as male, rather than being given his gender by God. The same for Eve as well being the first woman, although IIRC Eve was her name. Still she chose to identity as the first woman.
Yeah, and there are a bunch of different translations. I know Catholics and Orthodox Christians also include different books in the Bible. I do think it’s possible to view it as a living document. What is included/how it is translated is what is needed at the time.
