Quote Originally Posted by Stemis516
im not saying the bible is perfect but if you know how to read it all the "bad things" you are refering to are ruled out

Jesus denounces the Old Testament and becomes the "New Covenant" and explains how the rules and practices of the old testament are no longer applicable.....hence why christians dont promote things like slavery or have to eat a kosher meal

and just because something isnt meant to be taken literally doesnt mean its a myth.....there are different styles of writing used throughout the bible that the reader must recognize....seriosuly, read Revelation or the Book of Daniel and take all that literally without doing any background research.....you'll get nowhere.....but just because we dont take it literally doesnt mean we cant learn from it....as long as we know the style of the writing and the circumstances surrounding the author we can better understand the text
GIVE THIS MAN A PRIZE Well said.

Seriously, from what im hearing i'd guess none of you have actually read any of the bible...

I'm not christian but i know the few christians say that the Bible is 100% accurate...it's religious language. Religious language is designed to be emotive and evoke feelings. It's supposed to convey an overall meaning and lessons on how to live. How could it possibley be totally accurate account of what happened when it was written over many years after the events.


Quote Originally Posted by Oneironaut
Well, if it's not literally true, and most of it seems to be mythological in origin, what's the point in trusting any of it at all?

Firstly, God didn't write the Bible, so if its wrong then humans are to blame. And secondly, of course some things in the bible can't be proved to have happened. But there's independant evidence that a man named Jesus, born in Nazareth, was crucified by Pontious Pilate. And if you think that scarcely 50 years later there's accounts of Christian martyrs in Rome, and 250 years after that Christianity becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire. How can you explain that unless something pretty big had happened.

Quote Originally Posted by Oneironaut
If I'm capable of going through the Bible and picking out the grossly immoral bits myself, what's the point of using the book in the first place? That means I already have a functioning morality, which I am using to judge the passages myself, and which seems to be vastly superior to the type of morality that the writers of the Bible had several thousands of years ago. It's an interesting historical document, sure, but there's little evidence that any of it is actually true and even less evidence that it is a reliable guide to morality.

If you're going to go through and cherry-pick the good bits to follow while ignoring the bad ones, you might as well use Mein Kampf as your guide to morality. You'll be throwing most of that book out the window too.
As Stemis said, Jesus himself told people to ignore the Old Testament and its crazy laws.

At the end of the day, it's a pretty good guide to morality. Sure there are some dodgy bit that don't really fit in with the world today, but think of it like this...would you really expect a book written about life today to make sense in 2000 years time. The idea is to take the lessons and apply them to the world we live in now. And whatever you may think most of us are unavoidabley effected by Christian Ethics because we live in a largely Christian society.

Wow this post took a long time. I really dont mind either way I just like theological discussion.