Stephen Fry on meeting God ...

SOON I've always been sceptical about your biblical posts but really???
Adam's rib? Creation in 7 days? Maybe Noah's Ark? Doubts about evolution?
Have you never considered that these myths are indeed metaphors ?
They were devised to explain the apparently inexplicable to simple people who couldn't grasp big philosophical concepts.
The writers - who might be seen as the equivalent of tribal elders - did this to help them understand their teachings.
When you have GC's will you discuss these stories as literal truth?
If so, you'll have trouble squaring your ideas with what's taught in most schools.
Are you ok with fundamentalists teaching creationism?
I suppose it's acceptable now for free schools in England to do that!

God wants this, God wants that, judgement will be made when we die....none of this makes any sense to me, and never will.

Fear of hell fire and damnation has scared too many children and believers for far too long. It was all made up to control people, and I'm proud of our society that fewer and fewer people believer all that illogicality.

I can understand the need to imagine a judgement day - we'd all like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot etc to account for their crimes. but the only accounting for crimes that happens, is in the worldwide everlasting disgust at their crimes. Their heritage is condemnation and contempt.

Meanwhile many atheists continue to lead good, moral and ethical lives, proving you don't need a god to be good.

I've just read through this post for the first time since I posted last February, I'm ashamed to say. Its subject is of prime importance to me and I'm grateful for all the insight. I particularly want to say thank you for the kind and sympathetic messages to me concerning the death of my daughter. It's now six months ago, not three weeks, but the shock and grief persist.

daisy it's good that you did come back to this thread. So sorry. x

Daisy I was unaware that you have also had the tragedy of losing your daughter,I can empathise with your shock and grief,you are amongst people who can support you and if it helps you can pm me,if you would like too

Lily - I have always found that argument a spurious one.

No-one here has suggested that religion is to blame for all the evil in the world, just that there is a danger with fundamentalists who interpret their religion in a way that is a threat to others, from generations of control and guilt to terrorist acts. There is no question that many people (mostly men I am afraid) have used their interpretation of their religion as an excuse to control others, and a way to consolidate paternalism and evil acts.

I have a huge concern about people who read their scriptures literally, even dear soon, who clearly regards this as entirely benign. I am sure that she would never use her religion for evil purposes, but many do, but the encouragement not to think but just believe is a retrograde attitude whoever it emanates from.

Daisy - I have been wondering how things have been going for you. Six months is such a short time in the process of grieving which never truly goes away - but a sense of acceptance and an ability to remember the good times will hopefully begin to take over as time goes by. It has been a terrible blow for you and my heart goes out to you.

Mishap said: "......but the encouragement not to think but just believe is a retrograde attitude whoever it emanates from. "

I couldn't agree more. I once talked to a faithful Mormon and asked her why the evidence against that church and their beliefs, which was hard to ignore, didn't worry her. She said they are encouraged never to read anything that might challenge their beliefs. I know it was not very nice of me, but I couldn't help asking her how she withstood the temptation to read such evidence. She just said she did't want to.

I pulled my horns in at that point, realising that the church was her social life. She believed because she wanted to.

But I do read things that challenge my own beliefs, i.e. political beliefs. I feel you have to know the good and bad of anything that you support, so that you make the right decisions.

There are people who feel able to deal with challenging discussion or material and others who don't. There are people who keep on asking questions and people who don't. GN is evidence of that.

I just dont see carrying on reading something, when it gets to the point of disagreeing with what is written in the bible.

You don't even think it just possible that God could have revealed something extra to people AFTER all the knowledge and advice in the books of the bible had been written?

That he could have decided that humans had found out so much more about everything since then that they could be ready to understand a bit more about how all started and how all things work together?

That they were no longer ignorant goat-herds in tents looking up at the stars in the night sky in wonder, but had travelled up there to see the earth from outside, and had beheld the other side of the moon?

That they had looked inside themselves and knew how a child was created and how its characteristics were passed on from many generations past, how the characteristics of a creature changed over many many thousands of generations so that it became something else entirely?

That they have found out that there are absolutely no human remains for most of the time that animal bones were left in undisturbed layers in the fossil rocks, varying as the layers get nearer to the present day?

Revealing extra physical stuff is fine.

Where science and the Bible clash, we all know that scientists can disagree with themselves and other scientists next week, and they dont have any problem with that.

When scientists clash, they go back and have another look to see whether they can replicate their findings with the knowledge of someone's different interpretation and the new evidence that has been found.

There is no new evidence that everything that exists was created perfect in one go in seven days, plenty of evidence that it took hundreds of millions of years and lots of changes.

The seven days bit is in the Old Testament, right at the start of Genesis, a long long time before Jesus was born, when no-one knew anything at all about the history of the universe. A lot has been revealed discovered since then.

Thank you Grannyknot, downtoearth and Mishap.

soontobe said:

"I just dont see carrying on reading something, when it gets to the point of disagreeing with what is written in the bible."

But that is exactly when you should keep on reading. If you can't stand contradictions to the bible, you can't have a good overview of what makes sense, and what should be ignored. Because, there is so very much that MUST be ignored in the bible, especially the OT.

As for me, I'm not too fond of Paul either, and as for Revelations - what on earth was the writer taking??? The gospels tell different versions too. So that nobbles the NT as well, but then - I gave it all away years ago.

There are bits I like - such as the parable of the good Samaritan.

I meant, in case it is not clear, I dont carry on reading something from somehwhere other than the Bible, if it carrys on disagreeing with that is in the Bible.

I agree with you, that that which is in the Bible needs to have an overview. Very much so.
But I have been to services for 50 years, so I do know some of it by now!

I don't carry on reading something from somewhere other than the Bible if it carries on disagreeing with what is in the Bible

Have I got this right?
I find it hard to believe that you close your mind to scientific material, philosophical thinking or archaeological and historical research if it doesn't tally with what has to be an anecdotal version of how the world was viewed thousands of years ago??

The concepts and principles underlying much of it, especially the NT may(is) be very relevant today, but the "factual" content cannot possibly be taken literally.

On another thread you ask "What is a Christian fundamentalist?"
You have answered your own question.

Yes I am a christian fundamentalist according to the link. The first part, not the second part.

To me, if you throw out some of the Bible, you throw out all of it. I have always believed that. I still believe that. I dont find it a problem at all.

Have to agree to differ then.

Happy to agree to differ.

But then you have to define what you mean by the Bible.

Old Testament?
"Eye for an eye " sacrificing goats and all that? Genesis, Creation? All those "begats"? Methuselah????
New Testament?
Gospels? (Anecdotal)
Epistles?
St Paul, women should shut up and know their place (boo) but a little wine is good for the stomach (hurray) . Some teetotal fundamentalists claim they can justify that by saying he meant you should rub it on (!)
Revelation?
What was St John on?
The Apocrypha?
It is not a book but a collection of myths, legends, documents (?) assembled, translated, interpreted, altered, adjusted over centuries.

I am not a teetotal fundamentalist.
The Bible is clear on a little wine is good for the stomach and other ailments bit. So that is what I do.

Not the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha does not fit the OT, the NT and Revelation. It looks like it does a bit until you have a good read of it. Hence why you will not find the Apocrypha in Protestant worship places.

I accept the book of Revelation too. I accept it all.

It is not really worth expending time on this, so I don't know why so many heads are being bruised against the brick wall. It is of no use at all pointing out to someone wearing a blindfold that where there are contradictions in descriptions, the way to clarify them is to take another look at them.

But we still try.

If you look at accounts of facts and events from the side as well as the front, you see them in 3D, not as the cardboard cutouts they seem as represented by the person who recorded them. Yes, I know you will say that "the Bible is divinely inspired", but the people who wrote down what that inspiration had shown them were human beings, and they only understood their visions in the light of what they knew and could understand.

Principles of behaviour and standards - yes, they would understand those. "Love God and obey" - yes, they would understand that.

But millions of years of prehistory passing before humans existed, millions before that without animals, without fish, insects, trees, grass - all quite outside their conception. so in the writing of whatever vision they saw or imagined, it became "days".

And what is the exact meaning of the word which has been translated in and out of several languages as "days"? I have heard that it is much as we would say "In my day we did it like this . . ." which does NOT mean that we did it like this for 24 hours. Any linguistic experts out there?

The reason you don't find the Apocrypha and many other writings from the early Christian church in the bible is because the people who controlled the church in the early days (men of course) wanted to make sure that only the writings that fitted their own agenda were shared with the congregation. What you are reading is a version of stories that the protestant church inherited from the catholic church. I'm never sure how it can be interpreted as the word of god having passed through so many different hands.

I understand the "passing through many hands" bit. As it happens, one of my cousins is a Bible translator. She speaks many languages, and so translates across them.

God is not going to let His Bible become not God inspired.
He is God after all!