pope fiction

This Star Wars analogy of yours is worthless. The difference here is that nobody has ever watched a Star Wars movie and devoted their whole life and belief system to the lifestyles of its characters. Star Was, in no way, suggests a lifestyle or belief system. The bible does.

Good points, but that doesn't apply to me. I can still appreciate religious art. However, I don't consider the bible to be artistic, or beneficial in any way to me. It has nothing of value to me. The religious nature of it isn't the sole reason that it is, in your words, crap.

Ok.

Did I say that was the only reason? I guess I don't have to post here anymore since you can read my mind.

You're right; it is hard to read the bible unbiased. Does that make me unfit to read such text? No. I've read it before and after I became agnostic/atheist. (There was a transitional phase there.) I've done my best to give it a fair chance.

I say this:And you reply with this? Who do you think you are? So I guess living as a christian for 16 years of my life and giving the bible a fair and unbiased chance yet still refusing to devote faith in it is a compelling case of baby and bathwater syndrome. O......k. [refraining from harsh, yet appropriate insult]

Uhhhh, oooook. So why exactly is the bible "crap" if I'm so mistaken?

PF

funinspace

If I were going to quibble I would ask, where do you say the alleged messiah preached? What exactly did the Roman empire add to Xianity? Either way, I never said the Hebrews created Xianity, but that is where it physically started. Paul, though a Roman citizen, called himself a Jew. His credential were probably inflated, but still Jewish. And like I said, it also included Hellenistic mixing. I wasn't trying to provide a detailed analysis of all the influences that fed into Xianity'creation. That would really pull the thread off subject. And yes the emergent Roman Xian culture used this faith system to their ends in conjunction with the political structure of Roman government. However, they didn't have overt influence until after roughly 200AD. Since current and past Xians draw from the Hebrew Bible (HB) to justify/explain elements of the NT, how could you look and Xianity without looking at the HB (ergo Hebrew culture)? But none of the above is about the argument of "there is no aspect of the Bible worth looking at, i.e. it's crap".

Either way, I asked my questions before, and they have been ignored. So if no discussion/debate is desired...se la vi'.

DK

spin

Congratulations.

I'm not your bloody guru.

Dumb. Real dumb. I asked you to do something with the Hopkins poem. Plainly you didn't. Why demonstrate what I'm talking about?


spin

Valdemar

Thank you.

No, you're nothing. You're no one's guru. As can be attested to by your responses. Do you have a point to make? Or are you only capable of insults?



Let's see, you resort to ad hominem attacks in your original response to me, you resort to ad hominem attacks now, and you wonder why I don't respond to what you're talking about? For a man who clearly has such a high opinion of his litrary abilities and edjication, wouldn't you say that's dumb? Really dumb?

spin

I love the way people responding to analogies so often don't consider exactly what the analogy is about, what the real comparison is. Go back and see what the Star Wars comment was referring to. You'll see it was about your arguing not to read the bible because of its imposing belief system. Use the force Pope Fiction.

It therefore is not the religious content for you per se. It is your personal reaction to the book, ie for personal reasons you find the bible crap. This may be like someone finding Finnegan's Wake crap.

Here you stop dealing with my response to Valdemar and go back to an earlier post.

Yes, it was in response to your apparent compartmentalisation of the purposes of literature.

It's hard for me to answer the question definitively. One needs a reason to read the bible (be that for sociology, anthropology, literary merit, history, etc), if one is not constrained to by various religious commitments. If you don't have such a reason, you may not be inclined to read it, let alone read it in an objective manner. As I said, your previous commitments may have made you unfit to read it unless you can find a reason, of the sort I've just mentioned, to read it.


Someone trying to make sense of what you say. (Remember, I don't know you, so nothing I can say to you should be taken personally.)

Glad you refrained. I don't think reading the bible as a xian for 16 years is "giving the bible a fair and unbiased chance yet still refusing to devote faith in it". (To be object means not to have taken sides on the content being analysed.) So, it appears that you've rejected xianity and you have rejected the bible with it. which seems to be the Baby and bathwater syndrome.

I have never argued that the bible is crap.


spin

spin

I was nice that time: I didn't make the comment about expensive toilet paper.

Educational progress. (Pity about the rhetorical questions though. )

You did have your opportunity to display the fact that you had learnt something in order to get a "bachelor's degree in English" and the best you can do is whinge. But that's okay. If you don't want to deal substantially with the contention that the bible is crap, nor give some idea of the parameters you use in deciding what is literature when given a difficult work which is considered a great poem, I guess you can stimulate yourself by rehearsing mild unpleasantries.

Oh, and I got a "bachelor's degree in English" out of a box of Cornflakes. Crapping on about Jacobean lit., hence my appreciation of the KJV as lit. in its own right.

Whether you see the bible "imposing a lifestyle is the 'Idea' behind the Bible" or not is not something you can easily assume and expect to be taken seriously. What makes you think that there is a single central purpose for the collection of documents under discussion?

Assuming that it is a purpose, how does that impinge on the bible being, or not being, crap? We often study the value of other people's lifestyles: it is after all the material for anthropology and sociology.


spin

redzrx

as much as the next guy but this thread is Crap!!

We must take the bible for what it is .. an ancient document. People like us lived thru the ages guided by this book as a base.(good and bad). Look at the bible as you would an egyptian hieroglyph, book of the dead or Greek mythology. Ancient people were not athiests .. everyone had a belief in some god or gods. So the Bible is a selection of short stories which people at the time believed were true and with out science and education we would probaly believe it too.
With that .. I think we should read it because western society was heavily influenced by the Bible.. take it as an ancient text and disregard the fantasy parts.


Mario

Answerer

It sure is, but WTF I had never expected a thread like this in the first place. Hope the moderators can lock up this thread before it transforms into a full scale verbal war.

spin

Not much to disagree with here.

I wouldn't consider any of the prophets, psalms, wisdom, nor much of Leviticus, Numbers or Exodus to be short stories.

Why disregard the fantasy bits? Aren't they just as revealing as the other stuff?


spin

redzrx

I meant short stories because the bible is made from a collection of books.(some are longer than others)

In regards to the fantasy bits.. It would let us know what was in the minds of the writers or the writers who added as time went on.. yes. What I meant though is the reader did not have to take them literally when if reference to the supernatural.

.. Mario