Killing Your Sacred Cows since 1992

I think it bears pointing out that the Bible has been translated and re-translated so many times that taking anything in it completely literally (or taking it out of cultural context) is incredibly foolish.

Jesus also speaks allegorically quite a lot, as far as most modern theologians point out.

I think that making the blanket statement "Jesus was a dick" is just as shortsighted as any Christian trying to insinuate that you're a godless heathen who's going to hell.

I don't think any of us know the right answers to any religious quandaries, if you want to know the truth.

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I enjoy saying inflammatory things like "Jesus was a total cock" because I've had his supposedly loving and enlightened teachings shoved down my throat too many times. No more pissed-off atheist than a former fundamentalist who used to carry her Bible to school.

I'm really sick of people wanting to pick and choose the teachings they like while brushing the sick, disgusting ones under the rug, all the while telling me that it's Christians who have screwed up, but Jesus was a good guy.

I recognize the Bible has been translated many times. I'm just saying that even in his own words according to the New Testment, he's not a particularly loving or peaceful man.

I don't even think he existed; he's probably a composite based on a bunch of religious nuts of the era.

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jenx.livejournal.com

It's more interesting to me to think that he did exist and was a flawed *man*, rather than the supposedly pure 'Son of God'. That would also mean that he, like all of us, said and did some stupid things out of ignorance, lack of maturity, or inexperience.

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sure, I can dig that. But then why is he a preferred role model than anyone else you can pick out of history, like Ben Franklin or Susan B. Anthony?

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jenx.livejournal.com

Possibly because of the proliferation of Christianity - an extensive knowledge of history and its players would yield better role models, but that's too much thought for most.

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For every person who's complained about having Jesus shoved down their throats and thus feels the need to adopt a vendetta against Christianity as a whole, I can show you a Christian who's been cornered by someone who says the Bible contradicts itself all over the place and that they're blind for following a religion in the first place.

But whether Jesus was a real guy, or a nice guy, you have to admit his character has been a good influence on at least as many people as it's been a bad influence on.

I think we're ALL wrong, actually, including the human beings who wrote the Bible, because we're attempting to put words to something that defies human definition. Like Kahlil Gibran says, "Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul,' say rather, 'I have met the soul walking on my path.' For the soul walks upon all paths."

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I know you're a sincere believer and that you find peace in your beliefs and comfort in your spiritual community (at least that's my impression from reading your LJ). I really don't like offending folks like you. But may I submit to you that you would still be a good person even if you were another religion or rejected religion altogether. I think good people use religion to justify the good things they want to do and bad people use religion to justify the evil they want to do.

My family was fundamentalist and they DID and DO take the Bible literally, except in cases where it's extremely obvious that Jesus is talking in a parable (parable of the sower, for instance). So, I suppose you'd think they're foolish. I don't think they are; I just marvel at the mental gymnastics they need to do to believe everything in the Bible is literally true and at the same time to believe that God is good and Jesus was loving and peaceful. It's a real problem for them.

In some senses, I just don't get Christians who pick and choose and *don't* interpret the Bible literally. All religions have similar codes of ethics and morals, and I believe that's because they're all basic secular human ethics easily reached by logic. Why then, do you need to affiliate yourself with a particular religion/sect? Just live a good, ethical life, and leave the supernatural b.s. behind.

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I absolutely would feel the same way without it if I wasn't religious - I mean, I'm in love with an atheist who's about as likely to change his mind as I am to change mine, and he's absolutely the most ethical, enlightened person I've ever met. (If only my parents would stop getting snippy about the fact that I refuse to invite him to church, it wouldn't even be something I thought about much.)

I affiliate myself with a religion because I don't think the supernatural is all b.s. - I think there's something out there bigger than me, which I didn't always believe, but I came back to it after a few years of not being anything. When I got back to believing, I realized that people like Jesus and Martin Luther came up with some good ideas about it that get me closer to figuring it all out, and understanding it better is a way of getting more in touch with it.

I don't think it even necessarily forces my hand one way or another as far as morals go, though Jesus basically distills everything into two commandments: love God and love your neighbor, and that seems to be good advice. Beyond that I don't see it as a deontological thing, just something that it's good common sense to do, and not being nice to other people seems to be counterproductive to the greater enlightenment I'm looking for. So in a way, I agree that it seems to be a pretty universal constant with or without God.

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I don't see a problem with affiliating oneself with a particular religion. Like you, though, I have had trouble understanding why someone would choose Christianity specifically, given all its weaknesses.

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I understand picking a certain religion because of family tradition or because you feel a sense of community with those people. But I've never found a specific religion or sect whose beliefs exactly matched mine, and I'm sure that's true for most people. Thus, I can understand having a vague sense of "there's something bigger than us out there" but affiliating with a specific belief set is just a foreign concept to me.

Does that make any sense or am I just muddying the waters?

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It makes sense, and I also tend to forget (despite my own background) that people in this country don't so much "choose" Christianity as they choose to either attend church or not, or to buck tradition. I think many people are unaware of other religious options, as anything other than those things that people from other cultures do, and many others who become aware of other religions tie it to those cultures ("Israelis are Jewish, Middle Easterners are Muslim, Indians are Hindu ... it's all really one religion, with social color.").

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By the way, I never expected you read my journal very closely considering the size of your FL. So thanks for commenting, even if we end up at "Agree to Disagree" Junction.

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People say that all the time.

Here's a secret - I DON'T actually read my entire friendslist. I have a default filter that's about 25% of the sum total, that I consider "essential" reads. It happens that I like you and I like your journal, so you're on the filter. :)

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flyinglemurs.livejournal.com

Hey how do you do that? That could be really handy.

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Click the "manage" menu button, and choose "friends." It'll walk you through it.

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simianpower.livejournal.com

...you have to admit [Jesus's] character has been a good influence on at least as many people as it's been a bad influence on.

Actually, no, I don't. More atrocities have been committed in the name of Jesus than anyone else in all of time. And not all of them were thousands of years ago either.

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Would you agree that Christianity has been a good influence on some people?

When I criticize Christianity, I strive to make it clear that I'm criticizing Fundamentalist versions of it. I have little complaint with liberal Christians, except for their insistence of affiliating with a religion with such a bloody component. But I have the same opinion of, say, Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) -- as near as I can tell, except for a reckless statement years ago about Salman Rushdie, he really does live a spirituality of love and peace, but he also willingly affiliates with a religion with a significant portion of bloodlust.

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aedifica

ooh, I wanna take that quiz! But I don't quiz at work, so I'll just have to try to remember to do it later.

(You know I'm a Religious Studies major, right?)

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Yes, I think you mentioned that on your LJ recently. I think comparative religion studies are really interesting. I almost had enough credits for a religion minor.

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aedifica

Oh. Yeah, I guess I have been talking lately about going back to school. *grin*

Isn't religion fun? As well as all the other things it can be.

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Some of the ffrf's answers are biased, either willfully or out of their own ignorance. The most blatant of the part of the quiz I took was the Exodus reference to killing witches. Exodus was deliberately mistranslated by King James; the original was closer to "soothsayer" or "dream interpreter" -- which is ironic in itself, since Joseph of the Technicolor Dreamcoat was a dream interpreter, and was much loved by God.

Christianity's appeal, IMO, is in its contradictions: Since anyone can justify their beliefs (be they puritan or hedonist, judgmental or all-loving, misogynist or egalitarian) with the correct combination of verses, it's a one-size-fits-all/none religion. If you follow every single verse literally, the contradictions are undeniable.

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Oh, they're certainly biased. I kind of doubt it's ignorance since Dan Barker was a former fundamentalist preacher and they're big on their Bible reading.

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Now on another list someone who is normally a total twit know-it-all who knows nothing, but who is actually probably fairly reliable on Judaism (being from a strong Jewish background himself), is suggesting that "witch" is indeed to correct translation, based on Rabbinical study. So I think I'll defer to him and at least move my claim above into "?" territory. :)

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cabell.livejournal.com

Pretty much all mainstream historians recognize the real existence of Jesus the man; whether you believe he was the divine son of Jehovah is, of course, quite another matter. I'd recommend taking a look at the Jesus Seminar's Five Gospels, however, before according equal credibility to all statements attributed to Jesus the historical religious reformer/leader/nut (as you prefer). They're a group of Biblical scholars (certainly NOT fundamentalists), and they have a very nice system of color-coding utterances attributed to Jesus according to whether it was almost certainly something he said, something he probably said something like, probably not something he said, or definitely not anything he ever said (see: entire Gospel of John).

The book also includes the Gospel of Thomas, which is Gnostic in character and certainly a different perspective on early Christianity and its portrayals of Jesus. It features Jesus bringing clay birds to life and striking some guy dead for bumping into him on the street, which rather overshadows your canonical examples of violent Christ behavior. :p

I was not raised Christian and, in fact, grew up in Rush Limbaugh's home town, where not being Christian was heavily sanctioned by my peer group; ironically, this aroused in me an interest in the history and philosophy of Christianity. Personally, I'm pretty okay with Jesus; having met my share of crazy pagans, I feel that there is pretty much no doctrine/teaching/whathaveyou that a determined idiot cannot twist to suit their own desires.

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