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I suspect that most Christians do not take the Bible as fact. It is considered to be symbolic and metaphoric. You are supposed to look beyond the superficial meanings.
Tell that to the Southern Baptists. But duck right quick.
It's certainly a gem for some..."I'm not racist! It's science that says I'm superior!"
One thing I've learned is that race, gender and sexual orientation does not make one superior to another.
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Originally Posted by Good4Nothin
I suspect that most Christians do not take the Bible as fact. It is considered to be symbolic and metaphoric. You are supposed to look beyond the superficial meanings.
No. You don't spend it on charity really. You spend it on the hope of converting people to your religion via charitable work. Rather like the Ford Motor Company might donate one of it's cars to a charity in the hope that people will see the car and buy one from the company. What you spend $2 million a year on is not charity - but advertising.
I have seen your kind of Church first-hand and in the field, Bible in one hand and food bowl in the other. I have heard, with my own eyes' people from your kind of Church offering food to starving children with the words...'This comes from Jesus so you have to be thankful to him and believe in him. Say Thank You to Jesus now'.
It's a flounce Trans.
It is
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Oh we get what faith is well enough. It's the final stronghold of Christians that have had their arguments defeated by reason and logic. It's what they fall back on when the verifiable evidence tells them what they don't want to be true.
So tell us. What method do you use to determine what is symbolic and metaphoric and what is true. What ever it is, it doesn't seem to be working because it has resulted in some 30,000 different interpretations of what is symbolic and metaphoric and what is true. How, for example does one decide that the global flood is symbolic but the stories about Jesus are all true? It seems to most onlookers that the method one employs is simply...
'That which I like is true.'
That which I don't like is symbolic and metaphoric.'
I suspect that most Christians do not take the Bible as fact. It is considered to be symbolic and metaphoric. You are supposed to look beyond the superficial meanings.
Many Southern Baptists and other evangelicals have a VERY limited literary knowledge. Most fine literature, past and present, is considered inappropriate and heretical. So their literary understanding is very poor. Therefore, they don't even recognize when they are reading literature. Basic stuff goes over their heads.
Right. I'd forgotten that. Point taken. IF it's just done as 'Reading Literature'.
If it's done with a view to making the Bible True when they can see that it isn't, it's what we call Rewriting the Bible. I hope that you can take the point on board without my having to cast any nasturshiums upon Your intellect.
The way that some skeptics just dismiss a religious and literary text which has endured for centuries before they were alive, and will probably do so for long after, just makes them look foolish sometimes. It's inspired people in all fields of knowledge. I'm being as reasonable and logical about this as I can.
Then it is entitled to the same amount of study and respect as any other piece of literature from the Bhaghavad -Gita to Shakespeare. And perhaps a bit extra because of the influence it had on Western Civilisation - perhaps as much as Greek and Roman literature did from the renaissance onward, when the Bible rather held the West back rather than helped it on. Apart from being a valuable piece of ancient literature, it's value to us has gone. And I'm being as fair to this Book that has spawned centuries of ignorance, hate, war, persecution and resistance to progress - and is still doing so - as i know how.
Then it is entitled to the same amount of study and respect as any other piece of literature from the Bhaghavad -Gita to Shakespeare. And perhaps a bit extra because of the influence it had on Western Civilisation - perhaps as much as Greek and Roman literature did from the renaissance onward, when the Bible rather held the West back rather than helped it on. Apart from being a valuable piece of ancient literature, it's value to us has gone. And I'm being as fair to this Book that has spawned centuries of ignorance, hate, war, persecution and resistance to progress - and is still doing so - as i know how.
It has endured because it gives value and honor to the common man. The past religions seemed more like the Elite were the true gods. But Paul talks about every man having the true God inside of him. It deserves to endure for that reason.
John Crossan and his liberal Christian view, is what makes most sense to me. But I think that CS Lewis is probably even greater because, even if his own view is more liberal theistically, possibly universalist, he wrote in a way that honored even fundamentalists. And his fiction has remained popular even with nonbelievers.
He doesn't sound angry to me. He sounds dismissive of what is tantamount to fiction.
Exactly. When I say Jimmy's god is immoral, it is a short cut for the idea of Jimmy's god. I should not need to say that I do not believe in this god, just as I never say Voldermort / Sauron or Darth Vader are fictional (yet are also evil).
Jimmy does not appear to understand this.
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