Quote:
Originally Posted by Gnostic Christian Bishop
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vivisectus
The problem is not that the God of the Bible does not abide by his own rules. The problem is that it isn't a single document, but a compilation of documents that seem to have been written between 500 BCE to 500 ce, give or take a century or so.
You can hardly expect it to be consistent. People with vastly different agendas, social and historical backgrounds, and goals wrote it. And redacted it. And re-wrote the redaction, appending bits of older narratives to the new bits, because they wanted to borrow the authority of the older text, but now they wanted the outcome of the text to match their own goals, in a completely different society / political situation / historical setting etc.
What is surprising is that this has been common knowledge among anyone but the most amazingly uninformed for well over a century, and yet people still insist on using as a sort of operating manual for life and the world, a sort of face-value document you can just read and then draw straightforward conclusions from.
I think any thoughtful religious person would agree that you can read the Bible for inspiration, but that saying stuff like "God is/thinks/wants so and so because here there is a passage in the Bible that seems to agree" is foolhardy.
And frankly, I like that about the Bible: we all think we have read it, but it remains impossible to pin down definitively. If you are really honest, you can never use it as a authority over someone else: whatever opinion you want the Bible to justify, there is a good chance you will find it saying the exact opposite in some other part.
The Bible does not really allow for the kind of simplistic statements like "God is A because here it says B". Which is funny because it seems to be what a lot of people spend a lot of time doing with it, including the OP.
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Well put and I agree with all but your last sentence.
I write to engage with believers so I have to got on their page if I expect responses.
Most know I am a Gnostic Christian and that we Gnostic Christians and Christians are like water and oil.
There is no supernatural content to anything I believe while Christianity is based on it completely.
Regards
DL
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And yet you are doing exactly what you seem to agree the Bible just cannot be used for. That works both ways: you also cannot use it to condemn the religion it is a holy text for. All you can do is condemn specific
interpretations. You most certainly cannot make statements like the title of your post. Well, you can obviously, and you did, but it is rather silly. Especially calling it "incontrovertible proof". It is no such thing.
Nor is your belief without supernatural content: Gnostics actually
add supernatural beings: they just make up fancier names for them and keep the ones they like a bit more abstract.