NT: God impregnates a virgin with himself so that he can sacrifice himself to himself to save humanity. Agree that most of the messages of the NT are pretty positive, but the premise is a little out there.
Most religions have some out there stuff in them, that is why they are based on faith. They are not stupid or wrong, but to assert that the beliefs are not a little out there means that you must live in a much much more magical world than me.
See, this I don’t have an objection to. That’s fair, no biggy, I can live with it. But the OT stuff does get old. And just to reiterate, I’m not currently what you would consider a Christian, I just have a very strong background in the field.
My reference to the Old Testament wasn’t about it being better or more authoriative than the New Testament. It’s just that there’s a lot of stuff in there that people pick and choose from in terms of what they want to see obeyed and not obeyed. If you’re going to say that the Bible is literal truth and use scripture (i.e. old testament) to prove it, well, then you’d better be doing the whole thing, and not just the parts you like.
One reason that Leviticus is so full of this stuff is that Ancient Israel didn’t have a mandate to separate church and state, and it was all about setting down the rules for society. Some rules were about how people should interact with God; other rules were about how people should interact with each other, their spouses, slaves, animals, merchants, etc… Those sorts of “civil” kinds of rules were not really intended to be religious rules, they were just regular rules of society, mixed in with God in part as an easy justification for why one should obey them.
The New Testament seems to be about treating each other with empathy and kindness. The “burn heretics” stuff only became important once Christianity was made legal under the Roman Empire and Constantine required a doctrine. This got more influential when Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire and so obedience to authority and religious officials became part of maintaining public order.
Another interesting point - Revelations was nearly rejected by the Niocene Council when they were deciding what should be part of the official New Testament (reading it, you do have to wonder if John of Patmos maybe just had a plate of bad mushrooms that night). Without an apocalypse and judgement day as threats that priests and biships and popes could levy, you have to wonder what Christianity would be like today?
I agree, I know in the biblical studies dept at Messiah College (school I went to) we didn’t put much weight on Revelations. It was more or less added as a last minute and highly contentious gesture in the cannonization process a way to sort of wrap up the whole text. It’s verity is pretty dubious.
And yes, political figures did twist the NT by appropriating it as a method of control. But don’t confuse that with the actual content of the NT. None of the figures in the NT were political or rich or powerful or spoke towards these things. In fact, they were heavily persecutied with all of the main characters essentially being executed by the Romans and the Jewish church before it was said and done.
As far as picking through the OT, yes, I get that. But I don’t see anything wrong with that. There are still some good principals in there, but I don’t think people would get too caught up in it. It’s definitely important to keep things in perspective with the OT by realizing that it’s a reflection of the origins of a religious tribe in which religion and rule were mixed. Not necessarily a model for today.
And just to be clear, I’m all for “the gays” getting married and I don’t necessarily see that supporting that is against Christianity, although it is a bit grey.
Cover to cover. I gave it 1/5 stars on Amazon.
My comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but if you really want to dive into it I’d love nothing better. Like I said above, I love a lively online religious debate. It’s been a while actually. There are way too many atheists on the internet.
I would start by pointing out that it’s cherry picking on your part to just throw out the OT and say “just pay attention to the NT.” It’s kind of like say the Star Wars prequels never happened. They did and they were terrible. But, whatever, I don’t blame you for not wanting to defend Leviticus. Who can? After all, it’s much easier to get people to follow your religion if you throw out the silly laws like being able to own slaves. Like you said though, just a sign of the times I suppose.
So the NT is bullet proof, huh? Please elaborate. Are you talking about in terms of Jesus’ message, the rules, or “facts”? No doubt NT god is was easier to get behind than the OT god. That guy was kind of a dick. Nevertheless, the Bible is riddled with inconsistencies whether it’s the OT or the NT. That’s kind of the whole reason there are so many different views on it. If it read like an instruction manual, we’d have way fewer Christian sects. Part of the beauty of the Bible (and the sorrow) is how it can be interpreted so differently from reader to reader. That seems to be the exact opposite of “bullet proof.” So I’m honestely curious what you meant by that.
But science evolves. We don’t even use science books from 30 years ago. The whole point of science is to question it and improve upon it. Christianity is based off a 2000 year old book that in many cases is taken literally. How is that at all the same thing?
It’s really not cherry picking. I studied for a minor in Biblical Studies. Pretty much common protestant view is to view the Bible in the context in which it was written. Within that context the OT just doesn’t hold much value. You’ll rarely if ever see it popping up in contemporary protestant settings and JC himself more or less laid down the correct interpretation in the NT. The OT is largely a collection of illustrative stories and interpretations by relgious leaders at the time, and isn’t really viewed as infallible by most Christians - note the Christcentric name of the relgion - ie NT. That’s not cherry picking. The NT and OT were written separately and only combined nearly a century after Christs death and are viewed as separate by the church. It’s simply a matter choosing JC’s interpretation and discounting that of ancient religous leaders.
Go ahead, lets dig into these NT inconsistencies. I more mean the message and the rules, so lets focus there, but if you’d like to go into facts, we can journey there too. Differnet interpretations =/= inconsistencies. It means different interpretations, so lets get that straight.
Keep in mind that the NT was written by people with basic educations 20 years after JC’s death and from letters, so if you nitpick like “They said there were 3,000 people at this meeting and population census was 2,500” lets just be realistic. But if you’ve got something solid, I’d love to hear it.
Because if we’re looking at the NT, there’s not necessarily a need to evolve, but the NT was an evolution from the OT, a clarification through teachings of JC, hence the reinvention of the church. Most of these silly bible quotes thrown around are OT, before that evolution took place. I’m just saying because people misinterpeted the events around them in the OT, or lived in a different era does not discount the NT, anymore than misinterpretation of scientific phenomenon at one point does not discount modern relativity.
I agree with most of what BS has written, especially about the differences between the New and Old Testament. However, I would like some elaboration on the “bullet-proofness” of the New Testament.
And I would also like some clarification of how the Bible is riddled with inconsistencies. Yes, we know there is a difference of law and rule between the Old and New Testaments, and nobody is disputing that. But can you point to any other inconsistencies other than the obvious and already discussed? That is, can you name two passages in the New Testament that are mutually exclusive?
Yeah, BS has a fair point. I think there’s a pretty clear difference between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But they tend to read a lot of the same material.
Dude, Christianity and Islam have absolutely nothing in common.
Christians use drones, and Muslims use IED’s. It’s apples an oranges.
So what specific point are you guys debating? I can’t keep track anymore
A) Christianity is different from what the Glenn Beck crowd preaches.
B) Regardless of what Christianity is, it shouldn’t intrude on public policy.
C) Comparing knowledge of Bible (usually it’s comparing knowledge of ER or IB)
Let’s take BS’s point at face value - Christianity is a benign religion that preaches love and tolerance, that doesn’t necessarily translate into a political leader not propagating those specific religious beliefs through policy.
I wonder if Muslim parents use the, “Open wide, here comes the airplane” technique or if they just smash it in their kid’s face and make explosive noises?
Judaism and Islam seem pretty similar, Christianity theologically seems much closer to a certain animist beliefs.
I’m mostly confused about having a single interpretation of any bible version - books that were written thousands of years ago and edited throughout history. How do we even know what any of these guys meant? Unless you actually believe that God told the people what to write, how is it possible that the book is 100% consistent and non-self conflicting? It’s like the ending of Inception. Maybe there is no real answer. Everyone just looks at it in their own way.
That’s why I’m asking somebody, anybody, to give me an inconsistency within the New Testament. There are a lot of people who say, “The Bible is full of errors and inconsistencies.” But when you ask them to name one, they go blank and just say, “There are lots of them. They should be apparent to you.”
If they’re so apparent and numerous, then it should be easy for somebody to give me just one.
I don’t know enough about the bible to point out specific paragraphs. I’m just postulating. Just as one might say there is no box of porn at the center of the earth. You can’t prove that, but you could postulate that it is not there.
How did a box of porn get there?
I dropped it when I was digging my way to China as a teenager.
Hopefully you didn’t let out all the gravity.