Consequences

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And we should always trust the Bible/Torah because it is the most reliable source on the planet, since God inspired its work... Despite the fact that the first book of the Bible has been proven to be utter nonsense (world created in 7 days and only 4000odd years old) and the last book containing 'prophecy' that was probably written by an utter loony, how can anyone trust the other books of the Bible?

 

Wow, I didn't think this smiley would get use so quickly, but...

If you've been paying attention to some of the other threads in the Alley, one of NOG's hard-to-miss posts outlines that the Bible only lists things in order, not necessarily a set chronological timeline. The "days" are metaphorical, and the years...were figured out by someone who didn't even believe in the Bible in the first place. If you don't believe in the Word of the Bible, fine, but don't assume that everyone else with half a brain couldn't possibly take certain things on faith.

 

Have y'all ever heard of ALLEGORY? The Torah/Bible is full of the stuff, combined with a measure of history that is, as is any history, told from a very skewed perspective. Interestingly enough, archaeologists and historians are regularly finding evidence that the historical tale told in the Torah is true, if not exactly accurate.

Personally, I don't know any Jews who swallow the idea that God created the world in seven days. That's one of the pieces we take as a nice bit of literary license and move on. But as I've said before, there's still widom to be found in those pages, for those who care to look.

 

So these holy books are 'pick and choose' when it comes to historical accuracy? When something obviously isn't right it must be literary license yet there are other parts that are explained plain as day?

So certain cities were destroyed yet NOT by trumpets blazing at the walls? Battles were won yet NOT because some guy stood on a hill with his arms raised but because of numerical superiority? Moses did cross the red sea but he did it via boats and not by parting it? Is this the type of evidence they are discovering?

 

Hmm, even if some of this stuff in the Bible is historically accurate, that still doesn't help convince me that it is how God is trying to speak to me. I could write a book now that historically accurately recounted the fact that someone called George Bush was president of the USA, but that doesn't make it the undeniable Word of God to be taken as Gospel for years to come.

 

The physical act of writing the bible was done by mortals on orders from God. These writings included the laws, history, geneology, prophesies and other things that God Commanded them to write. If their history included wars, they were included. The laws may have been botched by a caste of scribes and Pharisees, but they were still their laws, and thus were recorded.

With some peoples, God explicitly told the people to make no covenent with them, and not to trust them. Basically they were told to take the land and excercise dominion over it, and any who would live there to be subject to their laws. Those who were there were not to be invited to this covenent and often there were things normal to them that were grevious sins, punishable by death under their laws. It became easier to wipe them out than to fight centuries of warfare over that land...

 

But how do you know that? Maybe they just said that, after accidentally eating some narcotic plant and having a hallucination and deciding to write a book about it. It would like a whole way of life in a thousand years time based entirely on Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

 

Re. God trying to speak to people:

Harbs, God isn't necessarily speaking through the pages of the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, any of the Hindu works that I can't spell, a Wiccan grimoire, or any other book. The Divine is wherever you find it - in the curve of your son's cheek, in a sunset over the ocean, in the accomplishment of making all your bones and muscles cooperate to bowl a perfect over. What makes YOU feel at harmony and peace with the universe? That's where you'll find God. What you hear is entirely up to you.

Re. the veracity of the Bible:

Abomination, I have never claimed that the Bible is any sort of text book. It's the chronicle of a people, and therefore it will be full of fact and spin in varying proportions, as with any history. What's kept the Bible on the best-seller list all these years isn't the chronicle itself, it's the lessons to be learned from that chronicle. A believer will find them, a skeptic won't - and that's all fine with me.

To get personal for a moment, the reason I'm a Jew is that Reform Judaism is the only organized religion I've found that embraces the vast majority of my feelings about God and spirituality and morality. I'll admit that I didn't do all that much research because after talking to the Rabbis at my synagogue, I knew I'd found what I needed. One part of that was the intellectual integrity and flexibility to apply the ancient wisdom in the Torah to the problems of the modern world. That's what works for me, and that's another beauty of Judaism - it recognizes that there are as many paths to God as there are people in the world, and that they're all valid in some way. What matters is that you find your own path, not the path itself.

With that, I'm bailing on the discussion about the Bible. I'll continue reading the thread and will contribute to other discussions, tho'.

 

So when I play with my son, I am worshipping God already? I think a child is quite miraculous. So I don't need to read the Bible and go to church and sing hymns and denounce evolution and stop using contraception to hear His Word? If so, that is great news.

 

Or Her word. After all, God is not defined by mortal means

 

Well since A. a finite being is only capable of creating something that already exists and God was the first thing to exist... or B. an infinite being is by definition both sexes....

God consists of... well both sexes (the extent on whic God is male or female depends on how finite God is of course)

 

or C: simply pure energy being neither male or female.

 

I don't think all that stuff is necessary. Honestly, I think that religion is the last place that anyone should look for God. You have to already know God on your own terms, and only then if your personal spiritual needs demand it, that's when you go out and look for a group whose forms of worship bring you closer to God.

But first, find God on your own terms. Kids are a great place to start.

 

Saying God is male or female, or both for that matter, is kind of like saying He is a plant or an animal, or both for that matter. He created all these distinctions, so He probably doesn't fit into any of them. The Bible does go out of its way to call Him a He, but that may not mean much.

On the veracity/relevance of the Bible:
Do you people actually think before you post these things? Forget who's morally bancrupt for a second, half of these arguements are LOGICALLY bancrupt. You take an act totally out of context and then criticize it on an unstated, presumed, and totally inaccurate context that has nothing to do with the real event. You take one statement(again out of context) and assume extensions of this statement that are totally contrary to the context with no support whatsoever. Are you actually trying to convince people of your point, or just that you shouldn't be allowed into logically consistent discussions?

Either you believe what the Bible says and accept the parts that speak historically as historical, or you don't believe the Bible and have no reason to even believe these things happened (since there's no archaelogical evidence of the event in question). Just don't say the Bible is wrong and you know what actually happened. You don't.

Well, then, the entire discussion is moot because God is directly controlling us all and so none of our beliefs or opinions, yours included, are original. By this logic we are all mindless puppets, including you.

 

I agree with that whole-heartedly. Trying to define what is God is an exercise in futility. It's like trying to get answer to: "What's north of the north pole?"

 

Isn't applying logic to an omnipotent deity from your human standpoint moot anyway?
An omniscient and omnipotent deity knows ahead everything about his creation (including your beliefs and opinions), how is that not controlling all?

 

Um, you might want to look up the definitions of "knowledge" and "control" in the dictionary.

 

Remember that sci-fi movie about the pre-cogs preventing crime. I've forgotten the name. Anyway, there's one scene where someone asks the main character (Tom Cruise) how he can justify putting people in jail for things they haven't done yet. He responds by rolling a glass ball towards the other person, and towards the edge, where it will fall to the ground and break. The other person catches the ball and Tom Cruise asks him why he did that. He says the ball was going to break and Tom says, "How did you know?"
The same situation can be applied here, only here a person across the room from them sees the ball fall to the ground and shatter. Person C could tell from the beginning that this would happen, but couldn't do anything about it. He knew it would happen, but he didn't control it.
In the same way, God has refused to interfere (usually) in human free will. We do what we want and face the consequences. God knows it all, and may mitigate or augment said consequences to teach us lessons, protect us, keep His promises, etc. but He doesn't control us.

 

The movie was Vanilla Sky I believe - the part you left out though was the system in place proved to be faulty in the end.

 

Can you give me an example? I'm not sure I understand.

Actually, I think the movie was Minority Report. Man, why can't this be the Movie Game (where I can never get anything right)?