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The biggest issue with the Bible compared to similar ethics oriented literature is that it doesn't do a good job of providing explanations for why things are im

The biggest issue with the Bible compared to similar ethics oriented literature is that it doesn't do a good job of providing explanations for why things are immoral. This makes it very difficult to correct the mistakes that the authors made and update them to the modern era. The best example of this is probably the kosher rules in the Old Testament that banned shellfish. Those rules might have made a lot of sense back when they were first written (back when seafood was very risky due to poor refrigeration), but are probably not very useful now. The issue is that because the Bible doesn't explain that reasoning, it's not possible to easily update those rules to adapt to modern food safety techniques.

xyzelement 5y ago
I'm not going to do this concept justice because it takes a while to get into this mindset but I'll try to share what I can. Something people get out of religion is that not everything can be understood. I believe this to be intellectually true - whether because creation cannot understand the more complex creator, or because we simply evolved to understand what we need to survive but there's no reason to think we can see objective truth (see Kant's Critique of Pure reason) Religion embodies this humility (recognition that I can't understand it all) To use your example, we follow kosher laws not because they make sense to us but because they are commandments of a higher power which we are too humble to know better than. The fact that some of these commandments also "make practical sense" almost undermines that point. Ie - just because pork is now USDA-inspected doesn't empower is to decide "oh we know better than G-d" I have grown from an atheist to someone who tried to embody the above, but it works even if you treat it as a pure metaphor for recognizing that some things are beyond us.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  > Religion embodies this humility (recognition that I can't understand it all) Isn't believing that you have the absolute word of God in your hands the opposite of humility?
- Cogito 5y ago
  The idea that a higher power would care if we ate shellfish, but is ok with us beating our slaves (as long as they don't die straight away), is really hard to rationalise. The humble position, when faced with something you don't know, is to say "I don't know." Too often the religious position seems to be "I can't know, therefore I will believe something someone else has told me" which seems entirely non-humble to me.

xyzelement 5y ago

I'm not going to do this concept justice because it takes a while to get into this mindset but I'll try to share what I can. Something people get out of religion is that not everything can be understood. I believe this to be intellectually true - whether because creation cannot understand the more complex creator, or because we simply evolved to understand what we need to survive but there's no reason to think we can see objective truth (see Kant's Critique of Pure reason) Religion embodies this humility (recognition that I can't understand it all) To use your example, we follow kosher laws not because they make sense to us but because they are commandments of a higher power which we are too humble to know better than. The fact that some of these commandments also "make practical sense" almost undermines that point. Ie - just because pork is now USDA-inspected doesn't empower is to decide "oh we know better than G-d" I have grown from an atheist to someone who tried to embody the above, but it works even if you treat it as a pure metaphor for recognizing that some things are beyond us.

lalaland1125 5y ago
> Religion embodies this humility (recognition that I can't understand it all) Isn't believing that you have the absolute word of God in your hands the opposite of humility?
Cogito 5y ago
The idea that a higher power would care if we ate shellfish, but is ok with us beating our slaves (as long as they don't die straight away), is really hard to rationalise. The humble position, when faced with something you don't know, is to say "I don't know." Too often the religious position seems to be "I can't know, therefore I will believe something someone else has told me" which seems entirely non-humble to me.