If God, Jesus, the devil, angels, and demons were all real, we still couldn’t rely on the Christian Bible as gospal (pun intended) — it was written by humans, specifically men, who could have misunderstood or invented things. Think of it like the Snyderverse in Man of Steel: Superman is portrayed as a brooding, violent character — but that’s not his true nature. In Batman v Superman, Batman is straight-up killing people — also not his normal characterization.
So even if much of the Bible reflects real events or real beings, parts of it could still be distorted, exaggerated, or entirely made up by the people who wrote it down.
I’ve thought about this a bunch. The christian god being omnipotent and benevolent is contradictory to the bible and also just the state of the world. So what if there actually is some god (or multiple) but these entities are far from omnipotent, really can’t meddle all that much and maybe don’t really care in the first place.
I don’t think it’s true (even if it seems more plausible than any religion actually being completely right) but it’s just funny to me to imagine that all religions could just be the result of some higher dimensional beings playing with our planet out of boredom, and humans just ascribed far too much power to them.
If God is real, and he is responsible for the incidents in the Bible, and the stories of those incidents are actually accurate…
then God is a vicious monster.
If you stop viewing Jesus as a deity and start viewing him as just a really nice guy, and you ignore much of the rest of that book, then I think he is a good role model.
Strangely, all of the good things he said and did are ignored by the people that worship him.
Turn the other cheek - nope, let’s blow people up in the ocean just in case they’re doing something wrong.
Love thy neighbour, the story of the good Samaritan - nope, fuck anybody that’s not rich and definitely fuck immigrants.
Every play a game of telephone when you were in grade school? That’s basically how reliable any religious text is. Even if it were originally written with the exact words of God, it certainly isn’t what it contains now. My favorite thing about the bible is when people specifically say “King James version” because they are admitting it has been altered.
If god was real, couldn’t they have zapped anyone telling lies about them? Since that didn’t happen (as far as I know) then either they are not lies, god does not care or god does not exist. We are no closer to an answer.
The Bible has almost nothing to do with Yahweh. Dude had a wife and belonged in a pantheon of gods before some cult started worshiping only him. And now we have dumb-fuck cultists mutilating childrens genitalia running around being the shittiest of people.
If God is real, the Bible is the worst thing to ever happen to their reputation
The best way to convert to atheism(or at least convert away from christianity) is to read the bible and take notes. The second best way is to talk with christians about controversial topics.
An even scarier thought is that the Bible could actually be making them seem way better than they are in reality.
That is terrifying
Idk it’s one of the most popular and influential religions, so it kinda got ol Yahu a boost most other deities haven’t. Probably one of the only effectual things made by committee in history.
Kinda shows how messed up humans are though doesn’t it?
Some gnostic Christian sects took their Zoroastrian roots a little more seriously than mainstream Christianity and argued that the God of the old testament is actually the demiurge.
The demiurge is an evil / misguided shadow of the true God caused by Sophia (the concept of pure wisdom) attempting to reproduce without the male half of her syzygy. As a result, the demiurge was created and dragged her out of heaven when he fell and tried to recreate heaven with the bits of her soul he still had. Humans on earth are just the little bits of Sophia’s soul tapped in the shadow of heaven that he made. Eventually they will reach gnosis (similar to the Buddhist Nirvana) and ascend back out of the kenoma (shadow heaven) and back into the pleroma (true heaven). Jesus (who was also the serpent in the garden of eden) is the male half of Sophia’s syzygy who came to earth for the second time to awaken the sparks of her soul so they can ascend.
I’m simplifying some things and smoothing the narrative to make sense since the reason Gnosticism never did as well as mainstream Christianity is the lack of a consistent narrative with which to create in-groups and out-groups to wage holy wars over, so the ones that did wiped them out. And for example I do consider myself gnostic but I mostly stay away from the metaphysical stuff other than in ways that they represent concepts important to a healthy life like mediation. I hope you enjoyed reading though!
Yeah it’s hard to imagine a more petty and pathetic incel of a god than the one described in the Bible. Genocides entire populations because they don’t love him enough. Nevermind the quintillions of planets and star systems and galaxies other than the rock we live on, it’s the most recent bipedal primate on Earth that he needs affection from, on pain of eternal torment in a place he had to have created himself for that purpose. Even sent his own kid to get tacked to a board so we could be forgiven for not being deferential enough to him, even though he could have just said “meh you’re forgiven”. Or, you know, grew the fuck up and got over himself. Who was he saving us from with his infanticidal sacrifice? HIM! The daft bitch was in debt to himself and had to off his kid in a brutal and humiliating fashion to wipe the slate clean.
And on top of that, he won’t just appear and confirm his existence, which would make everyone fall in line instantly. Instead, we have to infer his existence and base our entire lives on that inference, and the only manual we have to do so was written by dick-mutilating Bronze Age numbnuts who didn’t know shit about fuck.
Similar idea to how the Dao works in Daoism. “The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao”
Information can be imparted.
Understanding needs to be created within.
I thought the consensus was god is Alanis Morrisette? Did we revert that?
I thought it was George Burns.
I was thinking more jack stratton
If God is real and we believe that God has the ability to interact with this world I don’t think it’s a stretch to think He could divinely inspire writers to write His word and to divinely inspire librarians and conservators to keep the Bible as He intended it.
If that’s what he’s doing, he apparently decided to divinely inspire 6-7 major textual families of the Bible instead.
6🤷🏻♂️7!!!
I realized my mistake too late. Oh well, let the Genª have some fun.
My kids hate it when I learn new slang! 😂
Even the Bible has been slightly altered by man though. For instance, a few of the books written in Paul’s name we know now were actually written by some of people under him from within the early church.
So the sections written about women not holding authority within the church may have been put in there to centralize power and make the church have a patriarchal structure.
There’s also the different translations of the Bible which can affect the meaning for some of the text. For instance the Adam and Eve story. Adam means earth in Hebrew, it was not a name. So the person we know as Adam, was created male and then personally chose to identify as male, rather than being given his gender by God. The same for Eve as well being the first woman, although IIRC Eve was her name. Still she chose to identity as the first woman.
The bible is… woke???
And it’s been woke the whole time! Lol
Yeah, and there are a bunch of different translations. I know Catholics and Orthodox Christians also include different books in the Bible. I do think it’s possible to view it as a living document. What is included/how it is translated is what is needed at the time.
That makes a lot of sense; I’m curious now what are some of the big differences between the Orthodox and Catholic versions of the Bible. I agree that the Bible can be viewed as a living document. Personally I believe more books could have been added on over the past 2,000 years.
That makes sense as well. Take the King James Version for example which removed references of criticism about the monarchy and papal authority. Although surprisingly was still centered on presenting the Bible without a religious or political lean one way or another.
If you’re interested, there is actually a sequal to the bible called the quran. I haven’t examined it enough to give some examples unfortunately, but I know they share some same characters and stories. What I can’t stand about the bible is Paul’s writings and I wish they would be under more scrutiny.
The book of enoch is also worth a read. Imo its the most interesting part of christian mythos.
Thanks for the tip!
I think it could be worth doing a class on the text of the Quran at some point. I’m aware of some small things such as a deeper focus on the rituals of prayer and worship, but I’m not aware of the specifics of the text.
They really should be, those writings attributed to Paul really go off base from what Jesus was teaching.
Surah 3 (chapter of quran) discusses the birth if Jesus and the the prophets before, who were given Torah and the other revelations. As I’ve understood they are considered true and from the same divine source, however have been muddied over time and hence the last and complete revelation is needed and given via the prophet Mohammed.
Then after his death, people were divided between whether to follow his divine bloodline (Shia) or his way of life (Sunnah) and they tried to capture all information about his life and teachings which were not in Quran (Hadith). The 5 daily prayers for example are not explicitly mentioned in the quran.
Slightly?
Adam, was created male
then personally chose to identify as male,
How do you get from A to B?
Adam was made XY sex. Adam then chose to be male. Sorry for the confusion there.
The Bible, and the Quran, and the Vedas, and every other religious text are human attempts to describe God. None of them are going to get it quite right in every detail, but you can learn a lot by cross referencing them to see what they agree on.
They contradict each other on many aspects. So either only is from God or none of them are.
Obviously we cannot consider texts that were modified and are no longer like the originals (which we need to have for comparison) since we know parts of the text is not from God. Not knowing which part has been altered makes things worse.
Preservation is a requirement prior to even considering what the text says.
They contradict each other on many aspects.
Yes, which is why I said to compare them to see where they don’t contradict each other.
So either only is from God or none of them are.
Never said any of them were from God. They’re all from humans attempting to describe God.
This doesn’t tell you anything if they were all derived from earlier stories – which, it turns out, is actually the case. We have the earlier stories as proof, in many cases.
There are centuries of religious thought by mystics developing upon the texts inspired in part by those stories. The parts based on common ancient legends comprise a relatively small part of religious texts.
And still, if anything that’s supportive evidence. The ancient legends that pop up again and again, that survive centuries of canonical revision, probably reflect deep and spiritually apparent features of reality.
The idea is the God guided the men who translated the Bible from various languages and decided what books to include. Got the answer from a Christian regarding the Council of Nicaea, seen it online as well.
This is true of the Christian God – but also trivially true of any other conceptual deity which may exist. There have been thousands of God-figures discussed by mankind in its history, and if a god exists, none of those discussed may be the real God. (This strikes me as a kind of inverted version of the famous “Pascal’s Wager”)
