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Question: Common Sense and Biblical Updates?
I don't know where to post this, so I felt I'll probably get some bites on here.
I've been gnawing on this concept for a while now, and want to know what you guys feel about this. Christians say that God wrote the Bible. (Some say he himself didn't write it, but that he 'had' other people to write it for him, such as Moses and the other disciples). But what I don't get is that they say that God still exists to this very moment, yet the last time he 'spoke' to someone where they wrote scripture was 2000 years ago.
I do understand that if someone, such as our next door neighbor, wrote a book of scripture and said God told him/her to write it, that she/he would end up in a mental facility.
But still, why was the last time God spoke 2000 years ago? Both we atheists and some Christians who want to get away with 'sinning' state that the laws of God are outdated. Most of us wear cotton blends, a lot of us engage in premarital sex, we don't stone our deflowered daughters to death anymore.
Wouldn't the Big Man Upstairs have already updated his ancient encyclopedia? Wouldn't he talk about the history of Christianity through the Lost/Middle ages through to the present?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Roy on -
If anyone asks me if I've talked to god lately, I say "no but I did have a little chat with the Easter Bunny yesterday".
Really, if you hear anyone say they are talking to god, be very very careful with them. They are dangerous, think suicide bomber.
On the main point of this discussion, if I were god, I sure wouldn't have asked some ancient desert goat herder to write my book for me. They really don't know who wrote any of it. Much of it is a conglomeration of old traditions from that part of the world.
Jerica, I think you would really enjoy the book by Bart Ehrman called Misquoting Jesus.
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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on -
Excellent book. For those of us having eye problems, videos are available; Bart Ehrman gives a lecture at Stanford.
How the Bible was changed—Misquoting Jesus (Bart Ehrman at Stanford)
or Google for other versions.
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Permalink Reply by Roy on
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How many Christian Denominations are there?
For your pleasure, take a look at the above article from Wikipedia. Their estimate is 41,000. And why should there be so many denominations? I think it's obvious. Every Christian has their own personal invisible imaginary pretend friend and he (it's always a he) is telling each of them something different. Think about it. This is one of the reasons it's so hard to talk to them about specific things until you find out first what that individual believes. Otherwise they may just say "well, I don't believe that part". And it still makes sense to them, somehow . . . I don't know. It's hard even to find two people in the same church that believe everything exactly the same.
This quote is from the book Man Made God by Barbara G Walker
... if there were a God wishing to get a particular message across to humans, he has certainly gone about it in the most muddleheaded way imaginable.
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Permalink Reply by Kent on -
Jerica,
Don't forget the big ones from the Bible: Slavery is okay and so is human sacrifice. Those concepts may need to be updated as well. Regarding who wrote the bible, take a look at Thomas Paines book: Age of Reason. He does a great job of explaining how it was impossible that God wrote the Bible and that we really don't know who wrote it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason. Kent
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Permalink Reply by Kent on
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Jerica,
Don't forget the big ones from the Bible: Slavery is okay and so is human sacrifice. Those concepts may need to be updated as well. Regarding who wrote the bible, take a look at Thomas Paines book: Age of Reason. He does a great job of explaining how it was impossible that God wrote the Bible and that we really don't know who wrote it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason. Kent
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Permalink Reply by Joseph P on -
If you're going to bring up human sacrifice, be sure that you make it clear that you're not talking about Abraham and Isaac. You're talking about Jephthah. Judges 11. That was a completed human sacrifice, and Yahweh accepted the sacrifice.
On top of that, the argument I've heard, that Yahweh never intended Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, is complete crap. Abraham had the understanding that human sacrifice was something that Yahweh asked of people. Otherwise, he would have told Yahweh to take a hike, because his god would never ask something so evil of him, so it must be an evil spirit trying to fool him.
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Permalink Reply by Joan Denoo on
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Oh Jeez! I've read Judges 11 before, however tonight it hit me like a sledge hammer ... obedience, promises made without justification to kill someone for a victory. Disgusting.
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Permalink Reply by Madhukar Kulkarni on -
No god would have said or written something senseless that would eventually get superseeded by human intelligence. Do we today approve of killing the dependents of defeated warriors and kepp only the virgins for our use? We have a Geneva convention today to tell us how to treat war prisoners. How could a god suggest something that humans would think to be senseless? The scriptures obviously are not god's words. Only fools can believe this.
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Permalink Reply by Greg LeGore on -
Madhukar, as you and others note, nothing a god would write or provide as eternal guidance would be able to be surpassed by mere humans...clearly the texts are the uninformed writings of people uninformed by the scientific method and modern tools.
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Permalink Reply by Future on
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When you ask a fundie questions like this, they invariably will tell you about how God talks to us all the time. Just how much "all the time" is, is a good measure of how delusional that person is. There's no end to their apologetics, and hypocrisy, and intellectual dishonesty when it comes to completing the circle of logic that is their religion. My favorite question to them is, what do they think would happen if they got ten of themselves together in a prayer session and all asked God to share with them what breed of dog I am thinking of. It's a meaningless question that their god should be happy to answer, since it would only serve to solidify their faith without asking for material things or power. But you will probably won't get them to follow through with such a task, because that will just be more obtuse explanations that they will have to come up with when the experiment fails miserably and they can't all agree on a breed, which isn't even close to the one you were thinking of anyways. If you did get them to attempt it, once they have explained away the failure they will feel that much more empowered in their faith because of the experience. Classic cult thinking.
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Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on -
God spoke to me, he said, " Those who believe I talk to them are fucking nuts"
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Permalink Reply by Madhukar Kulkarni on
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I am willing to believe the believers when they say that god talks to us all the time. That is the way god learns new things from us. It would now be good for the god to rewrite and revise some writing he has done a few thousand years before. That will show that he is capable of some learning.
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