Dean Anderson

While we're admitting to past religious indiscretions:

I did all the usual stuff (go on Bible retreats, go to Bible studies, lead Bible studies, supervise youth groups, and so on). But that's not the embarrassing bit...

Whilst I was a Christian I could sometimes be found preaching on street corners with my friends, and (literally in some cases) chasing tourists down the street to press tracts on them and persuade them to come and watch free films about local history (which then turned into proseletysing sessions, of course).

Oh - and I used to be part of a creche that looked after children on the beach whilst their parents went off and did other things, and we would then preach to the kids and get them to sing songs about Jesus.

Jesus, I was such a smug and self-rightous arsehole when I was younger!

Joe Bloe

Try reading the Koran, and treating the hard parts there the same way you do the hard parts of the Bible. I'll bet you can use precisely the same techniques to come up with great explanations for them, too. In fact, I know you can, because Muslims in fact do. And it won't make the hard parts of the Koran any more really actually plausible than it makes the hard parts of the Bible.

Dreadnought

No, I haven't read the bible. I have read bits and pieces here and there of course, but not the bible in it's entirety or anything even remotely close to it. So what was your point again?

Joe Bloe

Yes. After all, who wrote all those sacred texts? And, who wrote the Book of Nature?

If an ancient book written by humans says that the world is about six thousand years old, and a rock written by "God" (whomever or whatever that may turn out to be) says that the trilobite in it lived about four hundred million years ago, who are you going to believe: "God" or man? I'm certainly not going to call God a liar; it's far more likely that the ancient writers were mistaken.

deadman_932

Hah, I was hoping someone would say that, Dreadnaught.

George: Yeah, I just finished re-reading Huxley's "The Perennial Philosophy" again a month or so ago. I have to say I find that view a helluva lot more attractive than Dave's narrow myopia.

gurugeorge

Exactly. It's the scientific, rational attitude that's the true "submission" before God's majesty. For the mind, science, for the soul, art, music, poetry and literature (or, if you absolutely must diddle God's winkie and wake Him from his slumbers, the good bits in sacred literature ).

Lugubert

Surely several hundred of sermons for me, and the Bible cover to cover once, and lots of OT and NT and Apocrypha pieces and Gnostic stuff etc. many additional times. To increase my understanding, I'm going to take more Bible Hebrew this autumn (just one semester so far), simultaneously rehearsing Classical Arabic for the Qur'an. Rather similar to me. I'm in between improving on my Sanskrit (for the Gita and other literature; the Vedas I read in translation only so far) and Punjabi (for the Sikh Shri Guru Granth Sahib). Wish I had time for Pali to bury myself in its Canon, but Chinese (for Buddhism, Confucianism and mainly Daoism) takes its toll.
I own and have downloaded and have read many of those scriptures, sometimes at least trying to concentrate on religions emerging in India.

Occam's Aftershave

Yep Dave, I was raised in a Southern Baptist family and have read the whole thing cover to cover.

How many Evolutionary science books have you actually read Dave? - and I don't mean excerpts you got off of AIG or ICR. Please list the ones you have actually read cover to cover. IIRC, you once boasted of the fact that you hadn't read any of that "Satan inspired trash", yet you still feel qualified to spout ignorance-based opinions on them.

Cheerful Charlie

I have, repeatedly, more than once. I am now on a project going through the bible looking at what the bible commands in line of morality.

Atheist: The Bible tells us God is good, but specific tales about God do nots how us a good God, but an evil, stupid, peevish god.
Theist: Maybe God does not define good your way.
Atheist: God is defined as good, that is righteous, just, merciful, loving, hating iniquity and more.
Theist: Maybe god does not understand just and merciful, righteous and loving as mere men do.
Atheist: Specifically we are to be righteous, to avoid evil. Specific
act sare, do not lie, do not oppress the porr, do not steal, help the poor and helpless, specific acts that define righteous, good et al. God claims to despise people who lie and oppress and demands we likewise despise these and act on that.

This means using a concordance to look up terms like righteous, sin, evil, good, oppress, etal, and setting up a list of all bible verses using them. Then grabbing these verses and setting up files of them,and looking to see what are really useful infinding out what God supposedly commands of us and his claims to be good and righteous.

I mean to end this little theist dodge and twist game once and for all.

Doing this has lead me to read the Bible in large chunks with a very critical eye. Its an eye opener.

Most of this stuff can be found in the psalms, proverbs, and the prophets, Deuteronomy, Exodus et al.

Why did God make David king of Israel? Because David heard of a richman in Jerusalem who stole the only sheep of a poor man and served it up to guests he was entertaining. David swore that the rich man would pay and be punished for this act. God thought this was a good man to be king for his concern.

Wish all those theiving politicians in Washington knew this tale.

I am thus reading the Bible with a reason, a project in mind. That colors how I read things. Far right religionists have gotten away from what God commands of them.

Along the way I keep finding oddities I missed the last few times around.

Why did the Israelites sacrifice their children to Moloch? Ezekial 20, because a peevish god told them to piunish them for some unnamed slight.
Say what?

25Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live;
26And I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the LORD. 27Therefore, son of man, speak unto the house of Israel, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Yet in this your fathers have blasphemed me, in that they have committed a trespass against me.

I keep finding little surprises like that, because I am looking for these things now, systematically.

Is this a just, merciful, loving god, from a firstborn Israelite infant's point of view?

I have several books of collections of biblical contradictions etc, but I have seen no books published that examin the nature of God, good, evil, sin, righteousness and how well God lives up to his own claims and commands to be righteous et al as per claims of the Bible written in the last 200 years.

How well do our modern Christians live up to God's commands? Do they even know these commands as they relate to righteouness, right actions, today? Not very well on both accounts.

So yes, I have read the bible and am doing so very deeply over the next few weeks. A work in progess and lots to go. There is some ugly stuff in here, stuff even many of the angriest atheists have missed over the years. How many knew God commanded Israelites to offer their first born to Moloch as God admits personally to Ezekiel?

Of course there is some good stuff here, again and again and again, God commands we not oppress the poor,widows and orphans. Those of us, our leaders, who are responsible for deaths of 500,000 dead Iraqi children are not exactly behaving biblically.

CC

SaguaroJen

I read it for my freshman high school English class - it was the unit right after Greek and Roman mythology. There were some nice bits but the characters were as mean and childish as the Greek and Roman gods. Sometimes they were a lot worse.

It completely baffled me to learn that some people believed the stories to actually be true. I could not understand that at all. I could understand some of the Greeks and Romans believing their myths but people in the 20th century worshiping gods and sons and virgin mothers? I had a tough time with that. Minnesotans don't believe in Paul Bunyan... do they?