What's wrong with my belief in God and/or religion?

[John21]

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Love like a mother and kill like a father...sure.

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Say no more... you have a very primitive view of motherhood and fatherhood. But, hey, that's alright, it takes a while for civilization to take hold!

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I'll consider your points and respect your arguments, but when you say something like...[ QUOTE ]
I know I am pushing John21, but I sort of think you are blinkered or willfully ignoring the world as it is.

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...I'm going to say that my understanding of,"the world as it is," is far more accurate than yours.

[Phil153]

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The story that's one of the central pillars of Christianity; of Christ dying on the Cross for all our sins, whether literally true or not didn't seem relevant.

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This attitude is more sickening and more dangerous than fundamentalist Islam. I hope you experience the consequences of it one day.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">After internalizing that belief, I found when I read "stories" in the Bible, that's all they were - stories. But they were stories with a meaning. And more often than not, those stories when read from my new perspective and read as stories and not literal facts would elicit an emotion in me and quite often that emotion was love. </font>

Just out of curiosity, what did you get from the story where a guy takes a stranger into his house and an angry mob shows up and demands the guy hand over the stranger so they can "know him". The guy instead, offers them his daughter saying, "do what you want with her, but leave my guest alone".

What kind of "good" emotions did that story illicit from you?

[John21]

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<font color="blue">After internalizing that belief, I found when I read "stories" in the Bible, that's all they were - stories. But they were stories with a meaning. And more often than not, those stories when read from my new perspective and read as stories and not literal facts would elicit an emotion in me and quite often that emotion was love. </font>

Just out of curiosity, what did you get from the story where a guy takes a stranger into his house and an angry mob shows up and demands the guy hand over the stranger so they can "know him". The guy instead, offers them his daughter saying, "do what you want with her, but leave my guest alone".

What kind of "good" emotions did that story illicit from you?

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Like anyone would be, I was repulsed. But what your god Dawkins left out, was that the woman's body was then cut into twelve pieces and each one of those twelve pieces was then sent to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Is it really beyond your comprehension that there could be some sort of allegorical message involved here?

I really hate to spoil the whole story, but it ends with, "In those days Israel had no king, so the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."

Is there just some bizarre chance there may be a moral to this story?

[Lestat]

I don't recall this story from any of Dawkins' books, but I remember it from when I was a kid and father Gregory told it to us in CCD school! It stuck out, because someone in class asked what "know him" meant and it turned into everyone (including father Gregory) laughing.

I think the moral father Gregory somehow intended was the extent one should go to in order to not betray God. If that makes sense. I think one of the men in the story was a priest, but I'm not sure which.

My main point is that for every story in the bible I could feel all warm and fuzzy about, there were at least two or three that scared the living bejeesus out of me. I can honestly say that I never came away from a biblical story with an optimistic sense of happiness. Although I was raised Catholic, so maybe that partly explains it.

[John21]

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Although I was raised Catholic, so maybe that partly explains it.


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I have a second cousin who's cut from that "clothe," and I feel there's an unsustainable level of guilt associated with their interpretations. I don't know if you've read, "The Pilgrim's Progress," by John Buynan, but the level of guilt that seems to possess his psyche, is far beyond anything I can imagine, let alone have experienced. I accept the literal translation of "gospel" to mean the "good news," but to hear some sects tell it…

[madnak]

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Because I don't think Christianity is about love. I think it's as far from that as can be. If the marine had run up to the sniper, ripped his arms off, and spent three weeks torturing him, would you have had the same emotional reaction? How about if he did it to the guy's whole family, while he watched, just to punish him? Now we're getting close to Christianity.

No accounting for differing interpretations, I guess. But I know for a fact that I'm now (belatedly) reading about how the Christian God decided to torture thousands of innocent Egyptians to death in order to convince one pharaoh to do him lip service. And I'm only in the second part of the whole Bible. Rationalize what you want - the straight, direct fact is that God sends plagues and fires and armies to ravage entire nations when someone pisses him off. You'll never, ever convince me that's what a loving being does.

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You do need to remember that this stuff was written hundreds of years before Jesus was born. What are supposed to be the actual teachings of Christ, after whom Christianity is named, undeniably stress love for God and love for one's neighbors as the two most important principles.

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He also stresses that if you don't... He is crystal clear about the fact that he's there to cause strife. He makes statements about how unbelievers will suffer so much the people of Sodom will seem lucky in comparison. He says judge not, because no matter how harshly you judge, God will judge harder.

This is a bit off the subject, though. Last I checked, Christianity didn't throw out the Old Testament as an example of the wickedness of times past. In fact, last I checked, Jesus himself proclaimed the Old Testament to be the word of God, and therefore he can be indicted on that basis.

[madnak]

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Rationalize what you want - the straight, direct fact is that God sends plagues and fires and armies to ravage entire nations when someone pisses him off. You'll never, ever convince me that's what a loving being does.

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Attributing violent actions to an unprovable entity in a very violent era is hardly sufficient weight of a proof for a non-benevolent God, especially if you're using a centuries-old document as a valid example to construct such a proof.

You'd be working from a background with skewed data.

Assuming Jesus of Nazareth was a normal fella, maybe a little nuts, heard voices and had a talent for drawing crowds and being magnetic. Might've had a foot fetish, but let's not dwell on that one.

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Sure, but in that case there is no reason to regard God from the Old Testament as any different from Zeus from the Iliad. If the Bible is just a document written by some folks with different moral standards, and Jesus was just a flawed guy who was responsible for an influential movement, then there's little reason to criticize the ancient Hebrews or the early Christians. But there's also little reason to deify them.

Anyhow, I can deny the possibility of a benevolent God based purely on what happens in the modern era. No need for ancient manuscripts. This world is, from an idealistic perspective of justice or compassion, wholly intolerable. Only if we allow chaos and caprice into the equation can we resolve anything (which the ancient Hebrews seem to have understood, but modern Christians do not).

[madnak]

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Like anyone would be, I was repulsed. But what your god Dawkins left out, was that the woman's body was then cut into twelve pieces and each one of those twelve pieces was then sent to the twelve tribes of Israel.

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You're mixing up your stories. The twelve tribes didn't exist at that point, and Lot was heralded as the one morally pure person in the city. The only "moral" of that story was when his wife was killed for daring to look backwards as she fled.

[madnak]

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the straight, direct fact is that God sends plagues and fires and armies to ravage entire nations when someone pisses him off. You'll never, ever convince me that's what a loving being does.


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I'll haphazard a guess and say you're in the vengeful father or protective mother epoch of the Bible. So will Momma Bear send "plagues and fires and armies to ravage entire nations when someone pisses her off" or threatens her cubs?

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I thought all human beings were "her cubs," and that she was perfectly loving toward them? It seems strange that she would slaughter her cubs for getting into fights with one another, and very strange that she would slaughter her own innocent cubs in order to "get back" at the guilty ones.

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Like I implied earlier, it's a story. And like all good stories: there's a moral to the story. So what's that story tell you to do if someone faucks with your cubs? (hint: it starts with a "k" and ends with an "l".) Mamma Bear kills when someone threatens her cubs, and that's what the Bible tells you to do when someone threatens your children. You don't ask questions; you don't rationalize or pragmatize; you kill. Period.

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Yes. Nature is brutal, and you have to do what it takes to survive. This is proof of a perfectly benevolent God? I'm thinking more the opposite.