Religion is not the bible

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I'm sort of religious, but my beliefs lie outside of the bible. Now because of this, according to most Christians, I am going to burn in hell for eternity. If that's God, I will not swear my allegence there. Sometimes I wonder consider the Christian way. Unless you're a priest or a nun, you can't do it. I'm not going to believe that all people of alternate religions, and all those who don't practice religion regularly, are doomed to burn for eternity.
Should religion be about fear and guilt? At first I saw God strictly in the way he was described by other Christians. I stopped believing for a while and I was much happier that way.

Ever read the old testament? Makes no sense. And it was basically based off of people having "visions", which could easily be delusions. In genesis there are wives spawning out of nowhere. Speaking of Genesis, I'm waiting for the day someone outlives 120 years.
The point is, I am religious, but I put little credence in the bible. Is anyone else like that?

I'm exactly the same.

The bible is an interesting read but it's nothing that you should base a faith upon - the same goes for the clergy...

The best way to look for God is to look within.

[runs and ducks for cover]

You sound like a Deist. They think that whatever made the univesre made it and stepped back and allows it to run. Or is the whole unvesre. And they do not follow the bible. or cut out the middle man more 1 to whatever might be out there.

I believe you're referring to God numbering mans days to 120 years which I think means God gave man 120 years to repent while Noah preached before God destroyed them in the flood. I think someone in the city I lived in died at 126. The Bible mentions men living far longer than 120 years.

Many people misunderstand the Bible and think it's wrong or contradicts itself because they don't read it carefully and in context.

Yes it does, some people live for ridiculous amounts of time. Maybe it was all the natural food at the time?



It was written by men (regardless of how they were influenced) to suit the culture, language and thoughts at the time. Many of the deeper meanings are still relevant today, but it's not something that people should cling too as a single source of truth.

There are contradictions in it because the books were written by different people, and even different editors. They're not consistent so you have to expect contradictory statements.

If nothing else there's obvious contradictory messages when we're told not to kill and then Samson is going around dispatching people with God's blessing. There's plenty of other better examples.

I agree.

Believing in it without taking those things into account like you mentioned, and as the only "truth" can and has been dangerous, depending on the interpretation.

i like some of the teachings in the bible like love your enemy, turn the other cheek etc and my morality is mostly based on christianity but im not going to church every sunday to listen to some guy preaching. in terms of creation of universe, i believe science more than the bible.

Hi TMJ,
Firstly God burning you alive in hell for all eternity, its not a biblical teaching, it comes from religions of men who want to frighten you into joining thier religion.

In the Bible God, says, "The wages of sin is death" and "dust you are, to dust you will return".

The notion of hell from the bible comes from the fact that ouside Jerusalem was the valley of Gehhenna where the Jews would not only burn thier rubbish, but also the deead bodies of criminals, it was allways burning,
The notion of being burned rather than a religious buriel was that the person wouldnt be in the "memorial tombs" and therefore not qualify for a ressurection, not that the person would be permantly alive in flames, hence, when Jesus talks about people going to Gehenna, he is talking about them dying permantly, and not being in line for a ressurection.

The word Hell, corrisponds with the Hebrew Sheol, and the greek word Hades, it means hole in the ground, ie, the dust whilst you await the resurrection.
It has nothing to do with burning like gehenna does.

Read this scripture from Revelation
"13 And the sea gave up those dead in it, and death and Ha´des gave up those dead in them, and they were judged individually according to their deeds. 14 And death and Ha´des were hurled into the lake of fire. This means the second death, the lake of fire. 15 Furthermore, whoever was not found written in the book of life was hurled into the lake of fire. "

See how Hades, or Hell as some translations name it here, is hurled into the lake of fire?
If Hell where the lake of fire, how can it be hurled into the lake of fire?
The dead that where judged unworthy are also hurled into the lake of fire where they encounter "the second death", ie not eternal torment, but the same end of life with no resurrection that the Jews got from being hurled into the burning rubbish tip of Gehhena.



Regarding people living for 900 years, you will note it was before the flood and that after the flood lifespans went to how they are now,
The Bible discribes a sphere of water that encircled the earth, not only did this provide a great climate all around, (hence the remains of tropical rainforest being found under the polar ice cap), but it would also have shielded the earth from the harmfull effects of solar radiation.

The Bible doent say it rained hard for 40 days, it says by these means the flood came after discribing the water mantle.


Reject religions of man by all means
But unless you have a personal channel to God and Jesus, you are free to make any form of religion you like, but how will you give that form of self made worship the power to save you?

The oldest recorded man in the Bible is Methuselah who lived 969 years. Genetically, if the telomeres(end cap genes) on all cell in the body were maxed out and there were no disease, it is theoretically possible to live approximately 1000 years. Given health issues today, after telomerase is a pharmaceutical humans could only live 2-3 hundred years, but that is due to disease.

I agree it may have been the natural foods that allowed them to live longer. I think that's why some doctors recommend returning to an all natural diet of fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

I read most of the 73 books in the Bible but I couldn't find any contradictions (all I found were a few discrepancies). I don't think the Bible ever condemns killing. I think it actually requires executing murderers and some other criminals. What it condemns is murder which is unlawful killing. There's a big difference between honor killings and slaughtering innocent babies.

One should try, occasionally, to read the gospels while pretending you are hearing all the ideas for the first time, that you are only just hearing of this "Jesus guy". Pretend Christianity never happened and read the bible as you would read, say, Homer; with respect but an eye towards artistic merit and entertainment. Ye shall be shocked by what ye find.

I am just discovering my beliefs. They seem to be sprawling across several faiths.

I find that the Old Testament contains a gorgeous creation story and some of the world's most fascinating parables contained therein. However, the wrath business can wear one down after a while. It is a harsh book by a persecuted people.

I like these ideas discussed in the new testament:

1. Love your enemies
2. If struck on one cheek, offer the other
3. Give to everyone who begs
4. Judge not and you won't be judged
5. First remove the 'log' from your own eye
6. Go out as lambs among wolves
7. Carry no money, bag, or sandals.

But these in particular for example didn't originate in Christianity. Instead, from philosophical arguments by charismatic philosophers and various followers who hammered out such ideas centuries beforehand. (I like those a lot, by the way, which is why I selected them.) But they aren't based in Christianity, just collected from elsewhere by it.

Jon

I'm no Christian, but I can tell you with certainty, that not all Christians believe this. Not everyone takes a completely literal view, It would be helpful if more people actually read the damn book (oops) though.



I had the fear and guilt thing done to me. Although he realises he made a mistake it and is apologetic now, my Dad used to tell me stories about the Anti-Christ and the second coming. I've forgiven him because I know he was doing what he thought best at the time. He has to live with what he did and the consequences of it which is way more than enough punishment. Being not much more than a little kid, I was quite petrified. I even used to fear that I might turn out to be the big AC (my middle name does mean Lucifer, the angel of light after all ). This had the opposite effect to what Dad was hoping for and I steered very much in the opposite direction of theism. Till very recently, I've had an almost hatred of Christianity and theism in general. While I whole heartedly disagree with Christianity and find much of the Bible (especially the OT) to be contemptible, I have forced myself to become more tolerant and realise that not all Christians embrace such disgusting ideas. I do have a limit though. I don't appreciate people like JW's who come to your door trying to bring you into the fold. I got particularly angry one day when a fellow had an African kid with him and got him to read a passage of the Bible to me (Those people have had their native cultures destroyed enough!). It was all I could do to keep my trap shut and wish them a good day. I realise that JW's believe that they need to earn their way into heaven and that converting others is the way to go about it, but I still think it's wrong. People should be left to approach them if they are interested. It's as bad as ads on T.V.

Sorry about the rant. I can get pretty passionate at times. My point is that I've experienced some of the fear tactics used to get people into the circle first hand. It's not always pleasant.



Already come and gone mate. I'm pretty sure a bloke in the Himalayas lived to be a 137. The air pressure at such a high altitude puts less stress on the body. A good diet helps too. It's going to be a long time (if it ever happens at all) for people to live 800+ years though. Yoda is going to have bare that honour alone .

It depends, I suppose, on how you choose to read the English text, whether or not you take the trouble to research the source materials (no, there is no single "document" and often what we have are only small fragments of things -- for example, the earliest fragments of the new testament are dated to perhaps 125-150 AD from Matthew, and only cover a few sentences in a few chapters, at that) and do some of your own translations and patching together or otherwise rely upon others to do that for you without any investigation of your own, and ultimately how you sort things into 'contradictions' or 'discrepancies.'

Have you attempted to track down all extent source fragments, together with their provenances and scientific information about dating and reconstruction techniques, and do some personal work in translating the materials yourself in order to compare them with what is traditionally 'translated' into the English texts? I mean, just once or twice?

The reason I ask this is that, yes, I've had to do this. In particular, as an assignment in a theology class I took at a Catholic university (U of Portland), with the section selected by the teacher who already knew the troubles our team would discover in the course of the assignment. She was a well-educated and believing Catholic nun [I couldn't tell at first, because she wore street clothes to class, but near the end of the 2nd semester I asked her in private what she believed and that's when she told me about the fact that she was a nun], very intelligent, and she spoke fluent modern Greek and Hebrew. She had spent 6 years beforehand living and studying in a Kibbutz in Israel, and could rapidly translate older versions of Greek and Hebrew, as we soon discovered. The part she faced our small team with was Job, chapters 40-42, roughly speaking. It was an eye-opening process. The English versions I'd been earlier exposed to were rather different from what I faced doing the work, myself. If you haven't tried to do this, even once, then your opinions based upon some cursory reading of some composited English version can't really be considered well educated ones. Even after that, I wouldn't say they are. (I don't consider mine well educated, yet I've had that experience.) But at least you'd have one or two clues instead of none, at all.

About finding conflicts, some questions for you would be:

1. What parts did you take metaphorically?
2. If this verse says "there was X" and another verse says "there was Y," do you then, on your own instigation, decide that this means there is both X AND Y?
3. Do you explain things to yourself by saying, "it has to be understood in context," and then find that context through your own imagined ideas about how things were or had to have been, rather than more objective means than just your imagination?
4. Do you explain other things to yourself by saying there was just a copying error? For example, where you say to yourself that a number was meant (which you will make up on the spot so that it fits better) where an "incorrect" (according to you) number was copied down? Or, in the case of a quote, for example, where you say that the quote was just what the author _thought_ was said, but where you mysteriously are able to know better?
5. Do you excuse God by saying that it wasn't actually God, but man doing the deed, in order to absolve and purify the motives of what must otherwise be rather disgusting human motives? Or blame humans when the deed actually was at His direct or indirect hands?
6. Do you pick and choose between the old testament and the new, depending on what point you imagine is better for the circumstance under discussion, and sweep aside the rest without giving it its due? In other words, are you selective or else comprehensive in your analysis?
7. Do you find yourself often saying, "that's a miracle" or "God works in mysterious ways" as a way to dodge?

Just wondering where your standards are at...

By the way, in the process of taking some university level theology courses, I accumulated quite a few theology books. We were assigned something like 4 or 5 books a week to read and we were tested on Friday on the content, just to make sure that we'd at least skimmed them well. Over the years since, I've accumulated a variety of analyses, copies of source materials, parallels of digested texts, and so on, to help with my own studies. My formal education in this area is two semesters of theology at a good university, so it isn't comprehensive by any means. But if all you've done is "read the bible" once, and just some version you've selected more through accident than by informed design, then I don't consider that very much at all. Have you carefully considered exactly how the books (you say there are 73, but how do you know?) were included in the version you hold to? Do you realize that Catholics include some 10 books that, for example, the King James version does not? Do you thoroughly understand the history here and how these books were chosen or rejected at each stage of the game? Do you know the arguments?

I'd be happy to present you with some contradictions, by the way, if you are willing to work for your own opinions a little. Actually, I'd enjoy the excuse to go back to that wall of my library here and revisit some of it. But I'd want you to do some legwork on your own. It's actually fun, in a way. And I don't promise anything conclusive to you, just interesting to work through. You are, of course, free to decide what it all means. But having to go do some of your own research really does help inform you better about the opinion you do have.

There is, agreed. And this is an excellent area for you to investigate more thoroughly.

I might suggest you read 1 Samuel 15 (and this isn't the only place in 1 Samuel that talks about this kind of stuff) or Isaiah 13, both of which (not by any means the only examples) you might excuse by bringing in some part of excuse #5 or #6 (bringing in what you imagine the new testament might say, while completely ignoring what the old testament has actually SAID about it?)

Jon

Last edited by jonk on 12 Jan 2008, 2:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting you should suggest this. When I tried to set aside all the "voices" that arrived from being raised in a culture literally bent and twisted around these ideas, and just read some of the texts with an idea to letting it speak on its own right, one of the things that just hit me in the face was about Paul/Saul. His letters struck me singularly, in fact. (Those, that is, that we have good evidence as having come from a single writer.)

That guy was an opportunistic charlatan! I accepted the idea that he had been taken in, sick in some way (not necessarily in the way he couches it, of course), and had been helped by a Christian community. But at the time, there were a number of such small communities and they had very idealistic ideas about tending to the sick, for example, no matter who they were [there are documented stories of such Christian groups doing this in the plagues of 150AD and 250AD, despite most other groups getting scared and fleeing the area and refusing to come into close contact with the afflicted]. They represented, in other words, ... easy marks. And Paul milked them for all their worth, too. He went from community to community and would press them about how much some other community had given him [supposedly to take to Bethlehem, for example; but where I now suppose he instead just cashed in as he pleased for his own profit] and asked them to do even more. And he even went so far as to think carefully about solving problems he might face in getting the most from them -- choosing to tell them that they shouldn't wait for his next visit to set aside their valuables for him, but instead should consider carefully setting aside things periodically and saving them. Smart man, in that. He knew that if they waited for his next arrival, that they might have been too generous to others or to their own needs, and wouldn't make him as much profit as he might otherwise get if he could just convince them they needed to reserve a cache for his use as a matter of their own belief system (to de-motivate them from using the cache for their own needs or the needs of others.) If you re-read those letters again with this idea in mind, it strikes you in the face like a slap of the hand... it is so obvious.

Saul/Paul was brilliant. He fell into some community for a time, probably indeed because of some illness. The generosity of that Christian community to others, which he experienced first hand, and the time he spent there recovering gave him a great idea about how to milk them for personal wealth. And he then played the disparate Christian groups like a fiddle.

Smart man, if perhaps one rather lacking in a personal code of ethics.

Jon

I don't think that most christians would think that you are going to burn in hell. That is quite an assumption you have there
I would guess that most people in fact, who consider themselves as seriously religious, do have at least at times the same or similar doubts as you have - and that's a good sign, actually. If you read the bible you will realize that it is full of people dealing with doubts ! That dealing with doubts is in fact one of the most important topics in the bible.

Do not listen to people who tell you that you have to understand Genesis literally. I am roman catholic and I always thought that the catholic church would be conservative - well, even the catholic church says that Genesis was written as kind of a "retrospective creation myth", a creation story that grew in an already existing religious environment in view of the religious traditions. Forget about Adam and Eve and how long they lived and how many children they could have in which amount of time - Genesis is a metaphor ! A metaphor for the beginning of earth and mankind, a metaphor for the relationship of mankind and god.

Don't listen too much on people who talk about fear and guilt their entire life - because they do not understand what it is all about. Religion has always been and still is badly misused - as a reason to kill people, invade countries ( those "faithless"), to increase power (nothing gives you more power than making others a life of fear!), take advantage of others etc etc etc
In fact Christianity is a religion of peace, freedom (not in a sense as it is used as misuse again by some politicians today!), love and forgiveness. The bible is what YOU make out of it, read it, think about it, let it grow, and if there still remains a doubt somewhere, well so be it, I am very sure that you will NOT burn somewhere somewhen because of that.