The God Question

In talking about the Genesis thing... does anyone, even people that think there is a God, really believe that it is supposed to be taken literally? I mean taking everything into account: the history of the world and the universe, like the fossils of dinosaurs and the light from distant stars, dating back much much longer than a few thousand years; the mountainous evidence that supports evolution over millions of years, rather than all plants and animals spontaneously appearing; and of course the fact that, if humanity started with only 2 humans, then they had children, and then.... we have a bit of a problem?

And i don't know Hebrew or anything, so correct me if i'm wrong, but i was led to believe that "seven" and "forty" in Jewish culture weren't supposed to be taken literally - they were just ways of expressing "a long time". And combine that with the fact that "day" apparently is a mistranslation of "a period of time", according to lordofhats... well, the term "seven days" really doesnt mean anything concrete any more lol.

Take it like a parable as it was originally intended... the fruit and the serpent and the garden and whatever are just metaphors for what it is really about. To me it reads as basically, the reason bad things (such as death) happen, is because humans discovered Good and Evil - they developed a higher conciousness, where they had to make their own moral decisions etc. . Maybe that is not exactly what it is - i cant adequately explain the way i read it - but i think it is anything but literal.

Basically, it seems like all religious texts are filled with parables, metaphors and hyperbole. People may honestly have believed in a God back then, but i dont think they literally believed their own stories. They were using, basically, fiction, to make their points about the human condition and the nature of God - something i would have thought people on the writing forums would have been more than familiar with lol.

Throughout time, people have misinterpreted these texts, believed the metaphors literally, so that people actually thought things like the world was created in seven days. Now though, that people are more enlightened than they were in the Dark Ages, more and more people are either seeing God for what it is - something invented by humans - or are at least able to interpret parts of the Bible as metaphors, while still believing in their message, and that there is a God.

The only important thing that as far as i know is still universally taken literally by religious folk is Jesus and his stuff - though personally i have always believed many of his "miracles" to be metaphors or exaggerations as well. And i now believe that the Resurrection is also completely metaphorical... or spiritual, to use the term religious people would probably call it.

 

He said he believed in god, not the bible. For all we know, god had no direct interference with the bible, it was written (the new testament at least) by the apostles.

 

This 6000 year thing has got me, is it really a belief? Not that I'm mocking it of course.

There are trees still alive that are older than that, I think the oldest one alive is over 10,500 years. If the biblical flood happened 5000 years ago, and it wiped out every living organism except for those on a boat, what were they doing, hiding?

As a painter, I have studied, in very, very great depth the patterns of nature, the Blueprint, if you will. There is a tapestry which bonds every living and none living thing together, not just on the planet, but beyond.
It's there, right in front of your eyes, in fact it is you. You have that Blueprint as part of your body make-up, it's in your clothes, in the plant on your window-sill, and it's in the window-sill. I discovered how to represent it in painting.

One could say, that God, or whomever, or whatever you choose to believe in created that Blueprint and set it in motion.

GOOD! I'm glad that happened because it would be very boring if it hadn't.
(ooo There's that 'O' again!)

One thing I don't get is how quotes, word of mouth, storytelling and downright sheer force of belief can lead to pretty much all the wars and mass attrocities that humans have blighted themselves with.

Some things can be proved, that life is beautiful, is doesn't have to be forced or explained, is just is.

Unfortunately, that's not enough for some.

I wrote a short story on all of this in General fiction, it's called 'The Value of Value', it's based on someone who is born with their inner eyes already open, and who does not believe that being forced, is the way forward, that if you are left to your own devices, you see the correct path. If you choose to that is.

 

@Silver Random:
from your perspective you are taking the Bible as a collection of stories written by humans for their religion.
most chrisitians (or rather most chrisitians i know of, including me), yes we take the Bible literally for what it says - including the fact that all animals and plants just appear like that and that all mankind started with 2 humans. it is to us also the history of mankind and prophecies (The Old Testament), and the Gospels, letters and revelations (The New Testament).
you see, you treat the Bible as a collection of stories and analogy and i treat the Bible as a book of literal truth, that is why we won't be able to come to an agreement.

thanks Acglaphotis for explaining.

@Rippa Mate
in fact, if you want to say who penned down the Bible, it was done by humans. Moses wrote the first 5 books of the Bible, the rest were written by prophets and the apostles and some other people God chose.

but you have to know if God did not pen down the Bible personally did not mean He had no hand in it. say for example, if you are the boss and you want a proposal done, even though you do not type the document on your own did not mean the proposal was not written according to your will.

if you believe in God but not the Bible, then can i assume you are thinking that what the Bible says about God is false? if that is the case then all christians would be using a false document to study the laws and the word of the real God. that would be a rather big contradiction isn't it. if you are God, would you even allow that to happen?

this would be same argument as the dinosaurs.

so, is the blueprint a link or are we made up of the blueprint, or both? sorry, but i don't see any link between myself and say, a chair. and the only thing that made up the chair and me which both of us have in common are the elements? carbon, hydrogen, oxygen... etc

war in the name of religion to me is just a load of hypocritical bullsh*t...(is this word banned?)

i agree. but that is because i am living a blessed life, and not in the middle of a warzone, or starving to death, or living in an abused home or having experienced any personal tragedy. to those who had gone through that, or is in the process of going through all this sufferings, and think life is still beautiful... i really really respect you.

 

Personally, I don't think there is one. The bible only has few sots where it suggests some entity of chaos attempting to overthrow order exists. The Devil so to speak is only an actually present character in the Quaran, which is where I think Christians got the idea as the current idea of Satan first appeared in europe in the 14-15th Century during the wars with the turks and after the Crusades and during the reconquesta, all periods of time where the christian west was extremely involved in dealing with the Muslims.

Now, there is in a way a being called Satan. Satan as a word means "Accuser" and in the book of Job, there is a member of God's court called The Satan, who accuses Job of not being as good as he seems, and thus starts the whole tale of how God sets out to prove to the Accuser that Job is as good as he seems. In this case, Satan is a position not a person, and he holds a place in the Court of Heaven as a kind of prosecutor.

I don't really think there is a devil as I've never found in the bible where there is one. There are certainly beings of chaos and evil such as demons but I've never been able to see how there is outright stated that they have a leader of some sort. Even in John where it says there is a "King of Lies" I don't see how that's evidence of some polar opposite of god. He could just be one of the powerful demons mentioned in Jude.

I take it semi-literally. Do I think god created the world and all that stuff. Yep. Do I think he did it in seven periods/eras, I'm iffy. Now I don't really see how the story disproves or is disproven by evolution or science or anything. It's such a vague account that I think it's as much a statement of fact as it is a fable. The point of Adam and Eve's tale is A. God created the world from nothingness. B. He created man and gave him free will. and C. Man ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and there we are. Once someone gets that whether or not the story is literal is irrelevant. We get the point of the story so the specifics of how god put the first bird together with legos by attaching section a to section b with a twisty block isn't really all that important.

I don't know about the seven and forty thing but they are numbers used a lot in the bible. Day is a mistranslation for "period" or "era" but honestly I don't think it matters. God is a being who would supposedly exist outside of space and time as we have it, so measures of time are irrelevant and the mention in the story is most likely part of some symbology as seven was a holy number for ancient Hebrews.

And if it's not fiction? People use fables and metaphor to tell stories all the time but are the morals and ideas behind those fictions fictitious? It's perfectly possible for god to exist and for his book to use fable and metaphor to discuss him (and supposedly not every aspect of the bible's stories are fictitious. Deuteronomy, Numbers, and Exodus all contains aspects of historical fact, as do many other books).

The apostles wrote none of the books of the bible. They were likely all dead by the time it was being written and it was the second generation christians who put it all together almost immediately afterwards. Personally I do believe in god and that the bible is his instructions manual. I go for the divine inspiration theory where yes humans wrote the books but the invisible hand of fate so to speak was guiding their words.

Moses wrote no book of the bible. Neither did any prophets or apostles. All the books were compiled second hand by observers of these men or by priests who collected all the information they could and put it together. There are four sources of information in the old testament (The commoner source, the Priestly Source, the Deuturonomic source, and royal source). The current way we have the book is the result of multiple compilations of related material by different authors by the Jewish priest caste to try and standardize their religious text at around 1000 BC. Later books after that were most likely written by one or two authors at the same time and then added to the already existing books.

Don't make me pull out my history book again! I can disprove the "religion is the cause of all the worst wars and atrocities" stuff a thousand different ways to sunday. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who paid attention in history class .

 

You most certainly are not. I would like to extend a large, figurative bitchslap to all the people who keep saying "all war is caused by religion, lol!!!11!1one!!1eleven" and other such dross. Wars are caused by people. Fair enough they may blame it on religion, but in the end it's all about power really. Take the conflicts in the twentieth century. They were all about power and greed, and not a single one was due to religion. Most were ideology, actually.

Blaming war on religion is, in my opinion, the refuge of the uneducated, or just plain ignorant.

 

Well it's either literal or it's not. If believed literally, the things were created one after the other over seven "days". Science most definately does disprove the story - evolution shows the gradual process over millions of years of organisms evolving through natural selection. So assuming you accept evolution, then things were absolutely not created separately, one after the other, over seven days.

As for the point of the tale, i think i mentioned that later in my post... although the "eat the fruit" i dont think is literal either. If you're saying you think the story isn't literally what they believed happened, but was written to express that message... then that is exactly what i said in the post.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here... a metaphorical story or a fable is basically fiction. The "morals and ideas behind those fictions" are like the themes. A novel written with a strong theme is still fiction.

Some parts of the Bible are pure fiction, written to be symbolic of things they believed were real. Other parts based on real events. Other parts are based on real events but highly exaggerated.

Obviously. I never said it wasn't. I even said

. Which is exactly what you said. Basically seems like you are just saying exactly the same thing as me except saying it as an argument to what i said . Only difference is, you think that their belief in God was right, and that there is a God, and i think they were wrong.

I was just saying that i dont think parts of the Bible should, or were intended to, be taken literally. It is perfectly possible that even though it uses fables and metaphors to discuss God, he isn't actually ficticious himself. Even if the Bible was a complete work of fiction, with no basis in reality whatsoever, that wouldnt prove God doesnt exist (nothing ever does, of course... )

 

I paid attention in history class.
Not ALL, but a good deal of wars were, or acts of violence. What about the Crusades?

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade

 

Your bog-standard power-based wars. Sure, they were blamed on religion, but the actual religious elements are more based around power over people, that actual theological doctrine. The whole idea of conquering Jerusalem was to strengthen the position of the medieval church over the nations of the age. And I'll be the first to admit that in the middle ages, the church could hardly have missed the mark more if they fired in the wrong direction. It was a power based institution, using religion to control people. That doesn't mean religion is bad, before someone attacks me with that like a caveman weilding a club. It just means that like all things involving masses of people, it can be abused and corrupted. The actual theology is a seperate entity to organised religion (which I'm going to make an enemy out of a lot of people by saying is more or less irrelevant, since religion is a personal thing. The only point to the church, in my opinion, is to describe a body of people whose beliefs are along the same lines, and who offer each other support- not as a governmental or whatever-the-hell-kinda body it has been used as in the past.).

In short, the crusades were, in my opinion, just another example of people getting it completely, totally ****ing wrong (which is a talent of ours), and using something which should be holy and peaceful as an of control and violence (another talent of ours...).

 

Sure, history is open to interpretation, and your point of view is the manipulation by oppressors. But facts are what they are, and skewing them to your view doesn't negate the fact that religous groups exeuted the wars in the name of their theology. I mean no offense, but I must speak my mind.

 

There are religious wars I make no attempt to say there are but in the grand scheme they tend to be small and regional. The greatest most bloody events in history are not the cause of religion but the cause of lust for power (which is ironically what the crusades boiled down too). The reason the crusades started was not religious. The Byzantine Empire was crumbling and after the Schism of Christianity, the west had trouble trading because trade had to go through Constantinople and Greece first to reach Europe.

The Pope didn't want to fight the muslims he wanted to take over Constantinople to get a better position in trade. Later, this was extended into an excuse to move into the middle east through the "holy land" and take control of other vital ports such as Acre and land based trade routes (Jerusalem and Damascus). The entire tone of the war may have been religious but it's objective were not. Religion was a proxy not an actual cause.

I direct you to one of my early posts. In the list of violent wars (ordered by highest death toll) you have to go down to #11 to find one remotely connected to religion, and anyone who knows the history of the Thirty Years War knows it was religious at first and then shifted to power grubbing in it's last 2/3.

People need to stop making the claim that religion causes war because it really doesn't. It can be used as a proxy like just about anything else but all wars are politically, economically, and culturally oriented and though a percentage can be connected to religion in truth religion is never the primary cause. I hate distortions of history, and any historian down to the most atheist one in existence will probably agree with me. Religion is not a cause of war (Even the current War on Terror isn't really religious if you know the history of muslim extremism. It's much more similar to nationalism than to religion in it's behavior, methodology, and execution). Where was religion in the World Wars? The Cold War Conflicts? The Napoleonic Wars? There was none. These wars were a direct result of political and economic differences infused by cultural nationalism. How about the Punic Wars? The Wars of the Frontier? Alexander the Great's Conquests? There was no religion again.

You can count the number of large scale conflicts with any real connection to religion on your hands (The Crusades (which I've already mentioned really weren't that religious), The Thirty Years War, The Teutonic Wars, The French Wars of Religion, early Showa Era of Japan, The Muslim Conquest, and the Reconquista. You can throw in the Yellow Turban Rebellion if you like but it really was a boarder line between an actual war and a simple small scale rebellion).

 

Thats all I really wanted to say, that religon does cause some war. I would never say it causes all war, or even a large portion of it. But I think that in this thread the voice of my beliefs was a bit absent in the area, and it needed to be said that religon does cause violence. No way around it, it has caused violence. In the grand scheme of things, its not a big portion, but its there and it should be represented so.

 

Name a major war.

 

Better idea. Rather than baiting us to give you a war, provide one yourself.

 

World War One - nationalism and imperialism.
World War Two - nationalism, german expansionism, leftover rubbish from World War One.
Vietnam War - ideology.
Korean War - ideology.

There are four of the largest wars in the twentieth century. None of which were caused by religion.

 

Because then his point would fall flat on its face. Which it has anyway.

 

Banzai...when encouraging us to keep this thread civil, I would expect the same from you...
this should be a civil thread discussing person points of view, and yet you seem to be taking it very personally and taking things as "points"...not just a discussion but a "point" is usually in debate, which this is not
I'm sorry but I would expect moderators to follow the rules they lay down

 

My apologies if I have caused any offence. It just struck me as a pointless post, to post only the potential set up for an argument which has not materialised. As lordofhats has said, it would have made more sense for him to present his argument.

 

I apologise for goading, but I do have a point to prove here.

Quote by me.

I did not say that religion causes wars. I say that

Which I connotate to religion.

People have the ability to steer other people's views toward committing attrocity.

Hitler had the ability to steer people's views in the direction of his correctness; a significant tool he used, was his famous speeches.

Vietnam war : This is the right thing to do for your country.
Korean war : This is the right thing to do for your country.

People that say, "Believe me, I am correct, now go kill."

I'm not questioning religion, please read back if you think I am.

I am saying that :

Religion plays just one hand in the poker game of destruction.

Name a war.

 

Following on from tarnished's comment, I feel I have become a bit too involved in this discussion, and if I've offended anyone, then I apologise. I intend to bow out of the discussion, and return to the role of sentinel.

 

And that, is how wars are avoided.

I too, bow out of this discussion.

 

This thread is NOT about proving anything. It is for the purpose of sharing the diversity of beliefs held by members.

Please keep the tone friendly and non-provocative, and remember that due to the volatile nature of the subject matter, this is a zero-tolerance thread.

 

Actually, I do believe in the bible, it is where the basis of my belief comes from...

...its just my interpretation is different, i believe that where it mentions the Satan or the devil it usually refers to the human conscience. i think you'll find that the bible was written in the hebrew and greek way before the english version. In these translations you'll find that the words "the devil" or "satan" have an entirely different meaning.
"Satan" in hebrew actually translates to be adversary or accuser as lord of hats has stated below.
'The devil" has also been misinterpreted, while there are various greek words that have been tranlated to the one "devil" the common greek word used; "diabolos," comes to mean "false accuser" or "slanderer"
Further, the words "the devil" never occur in the old testament. AND, never once did god warn anyone against the devil or satan meaning God never did say he exsisted.
As for the New Testiment, there are alot of mentionings of the Devil and Satan, yet as i've stated above i believe these encounters (you may remember jesus in the wilderness) to be of the mind and conscience, jesus was tempted by his own desire. Which gets me back to the quote (which i have expanded):

'Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God", for god cannot be tempted with evil , and he himself tempts noone. But each person is tempted when he is lured by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings death.' - James 1:13-15

So if it is true that one of the major causes of sin is a person devil, why does this passage from James make no mention of the fact? Further the first 8 chapters of Romans where Paul is explaining the origin of sin and death and the redeeming work of Christ make no mention of the devil or satan.
I could back it up with furthur quotes but i think the point is made. Sin comes from our own desire therefore there is no point in having a devil or satan.

I believe i have a valid argument.

I was going to reply but my thoughts were exhumed above

 

allow me to quote you from the Bible that Satan do exist. and Satan, or the devil by no means is the mind/conscience/desire.

from the above passage we can conclude that Satan was from heaven, and he lost the war and thus also lost his place in heaven. the passage also says that Satan leads the whole world astray - from which we can conclude also he is the reason for sin.

your argument thus would not be valid because our mind/desires/conscience was never in heaven before and our mind/desires/conscience had never fought with the angels.

allow me to quote you another passage:

as we can see, the passage tells us that Satan is once again not our desires/conscience/mind. say for example if Job's desire/conscience/mind is Satan, why would he ask the Lord to give himself pain when the Lord had praised Job? there would be no reason to suffer when he was in luxury, to give himself a reason to curse God when God was looking at him with favor.

and just mere thought alone on a human side would not be enough to destroy Job's property and family, (Job suffered a first loss of his family and property before that) and caused his body such pain.

and so i conclude Satan do exist in the form of a fallen angel and who is the cause of sin.

 

Not really that convincing honestly. This can easily be a back reference to earlier parts of the bible, where the Serpent of Chaos is a major theme (the leviathan, or the serpent of eden). The Serpent is an embodiment that represents chaos, and is intended to give an enemy that can be visualized, as the concept of chaos is not easy to visualize in the mind. We can know what it is and does but it's hard to visualize it. The objective of the idea of the devil is not to portray a real thing, merely an embodiment of a force.

In this verse it's entirely possible that satan is merely being used to portray the element of chaos rather than an actual being, as it's well regarded that the Numbered Beast is a physical embodiment of chaos known as the anti-christ (while jesus is the physical embodiment of order). It's not a direct evidence that satan is an actual being. Satan does not exist in this sense. He is just a personification.

Further the idea that satan is a fallen angel is not in the bible. This is derived from a series of mistranslation in Ezekiel, and he is only portrayed as an actual being in the Quaran in the muslim version of genesis. In the christian bible, satan is never really used as representing a actual being as he is used to refer to a concept or embodiment of chaos. He is rather used for allegory and symbology to collectively symbolize chaos.

The battle which is mentioned is more likely the Gregori rebellion mentioned in Enoch which is also mentioned offhandedly in some parts of the old testament. In this the personification that is satan is used to represent the force of chaos that drove the Gregori as a collective group to abandon god. The Demons in this war aren't lead by a entity. They are lead by force which is their king as it rules their existences, and that force is personified as the devil.

I already mentioned this passage in Job. This Satan is completely separate from the devil concept. It is inconceivable that after satan would be cast down from heaven that he would ever be let back in. It makes no sense. That's of course pointless as it's unlikely he was an angel as the only evidence to support that is a known mistranslation. This satan is likely an angel with a position in the heavenly court who's purpose is to ascertain the worthiness of human beings. Its a separate use of a word in a separate time period. This Satan is probably a member of the Gregori (Either before the Gregori rebellion, or as a member of the group of angels that replaced the rebels who became the demons who tempt men).

If he is not a member of the Gregori, he is probably just another angel (albeit one who appears to have some negative agendas). This same version of Satan is mentioned a few times in the old testament but not in the new. This one appears to be an agent acting under god's authority in that he's described as being unable to do anything without permission, and is subject to Michael's authority as the leader of the heavenly courts (In the book of Daniel, and in Chronicles). He's not a separate entity that we see the devil as. He is a member of heaven with the expressed purpose of assessing the worthiness of souls (which can explain what I would call a rather negative attitude that would make him one hell of a buzz kill at parties). It's unlikely he represents the devil prior to any supposed fall from grace, as according to that theory Lucifer or Samael, was a Seraphim, and the most powerful being and existence after god, which should make him more powerful than Michael, so it makes little sense for these two beings called Satan to be equivalent as one is clearly subject to Michael's authority as much as gods.

This issue eventually boils down to interpretation. I don't see the evidence for there being an actual being who is the devil. I see him as a personification of everything that god is against, and a personification of everything evil chaotic in human beings.