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I hope one day humanity will look at the Bible and Quran as some important epic sagas with many interesting historical facts... and that's it.

enriquto 5y ago
Be the change you want to see in the world! Today you can already see the world as you describe. A byproduct of this interpretation is that you get to see all people who sincerely believe in religion as sad, over-the-top fanatics of whatever saga they follow. If you are able to avoid falling in your own self-righteousness, there's no drawbacks to this.
- trasz 5y ago
  I don't think most people would have any problem with people following their particular universum. What people do have a problem with is that many people are using their religious beliefs to justify hurting others, and as it is now, the laws are extremely lenient towards this kind of behaviour.
dotancohen 5y ago
I actually see many of the lessons of the Old Testament (I don't know about the sequels, didn't read them) to be as relevant today as they were when written. You have to take the books in the context of the time in which they were written. They didn't have the same standards of Source Needed as the Wikipedia generation is used to, but attributing the requirement to love your neighbor as being the spoken word of the creator himself, was good enough to get the point across. It is still the basis of Western society today, even if it has been reencoded into more specific laws with more specific punishments for non-compliance. Your comment is like hoping that Turing's work will one day be regarded for historical interest only, because it was not written considering the features of today's latest Javascript framework.
- darkwater 5y ago
  Without going down the philosophical rabbit hole if religions steered the moral or the other way round, I always like to think that, just as simple tales help explaining and introducing children to more complicated concepts, but when you grow older you don't need those anymore, the same applies to religions and humanity. At some point in history of human societies, religions were/are a good way to move society forward (think of the strict food regulations imposed by some religions, they were for actual public safety due to the hygienic conditions of the society) but eventually they are not needed anymore as global knowledge advances and we now know what causes lightnings and thunders, we don't need a super-human explanation to grasp it or justify them.
  - prometheus76 5y ago
    Knowing what causes lightning has no bearing on how one should treat one's neighbor. You can use science to make a rocket, but science has no comment on whether you should point it towards the Moon, or towards a neighboring country. Assuming we're "smarter" than our ancestors because we can make nuclear bombs and iphones is a pretty simplistic take, and completely ignores the traditional worldview that brings meaning to the Bible and to ancient stories. Looking back at traditional writing from a modern viewpoint and dismissing what you read because it doesn't fit your modern expectations is really robbing you of the opportunity to participate in what it meant to be truly human for most of human history.
    - darkwater 5y ago
      I think you are missing my point completely, as I said in other messages the content of the Bible on the cultural, philosophical and historical level is very important. My biggest issue, implicit in my initial comment, is that we as humanity should grow up and stop needing a mythical figure like a "God Almighty" to care about our neighbor. Also we don't need a god that tells us that, for example, homosexuality is bad or that pork or crab should not be eaten.
      - dotancohen 5y ago
        I neither agree nor disagree with your point. To understand your point better, in your view of neighbourly care, why should I personally care about my neighbor? If he has an X-Box and I want an X-Box, why shouldn't I just take his? What is the axiom upon which you base your moral code?
- loudmax 5y ago
  The issue is that a lot of people even today are biblical literalists and they look to the holy books for justification for whatever beliefs they hold in the first place. So you can absorb "love thy neighbor" if that's what you're looking for, but you can also absorb "hate the foreigner" if that's more your inclination. Also, the universe is 6000 years old and don't eat shellfish.
  - francisofascii 5y ago
    Yes, that is an issue, but people misinterpreting or misusing will always be an issue whenever you create something. That should not invalidate the goodness and wonderfulness of the thing created.
    - Notanothertoo 5y ago
      The problem with the Bible is that it's so unclear and contradictory, the reader is able to cobble vastly different theological perspectives together. Hence thousands of denominations who do not get along and historically were violent towards each other. The church up until recent history was a violent institution of power.
- bencollier49 5y ago
  One of the reasons for the Old Testament's inclusion in Bible is to put the New Testament in context. The whole point of the New Testament is that it's a (pretty profound) development from the old one.
- phonypc 5y ago
  Eh... "Love your neighbor as yourself" in the context of Leviticus doesn't really have the same meaning as the modern interpretation. It's more like "Love your Israelite neighbour, such that God will continue to favor the Israelites and drive/exterminate your larger scale, non-Israelite neighbors from Canaan."
Guessnotgauss 5y ago
I get what your trying to say, that they are consistent of stories and moral tales, but the Quran dosent go into many details. Its mostly references to the stories with a few details. It is self described as a clear warning rather. If you read the english translation then the beauty of the language is completely lost on you, and also much of the meaning. Especially if you are coming from an English only background. If there is a day when no one believes in the religon, the beauty of language will be how it is remembered. Arabs have very strong oral traditions.
hprotagonist 5y ago
"My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally." --John Dominic Crossan
- darkwater 5y ago
  Actual human laws based on those "symbolic stories" existed since many, many years before the XX century. And as I said, I think that the Bible and other religious books should be studied as part of human history and they give a good view of the ideas, opinions, people and societies that generated them. And that is very valuable! But they are no reason to keep believing in any "God Almighty", let alone considering a book a proof of its existence. But we are probably at very least a couple of centuries from that, if we will ever get there.
  - hprotagonist 5y ago
    It's worth noting that none of the many authors of the various texts that now constitute the bible would have considered their texts 1. to be part of "the bible" at all (or, indeed, know that any such idea existed) or 2. to constitute "proof" of existence of any particular deity. anachronistic thinking is tricky and will bite you.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure you're wrong about 2. The book of John is a clear counterexample.
      - hprotagonist 5y ago
        Reaching for the sabians is a bit of a stretch! anyway, my point is that you and i think of “proof” from an implicit or explicit metaphysical background that simply did not exist in the first century. Far more important to the authors of the constituent works that are now codified into bibles was an exploration of the nature of god, and what that should tell us about how to live well, simply given as an axiom that god exists (or, that god is that by which existence is itself able to be, but let’s not get too fancy!) Genesis, for example, is not really concerned about “how” the world came to be; it is very, very concerned with grappling with what the right ways to participate in creation are.
bobthechef 5y ago
"According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church." [0] [0] http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/115.htm http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/115.htm
bencollier49 5y ago
Without trying to be snarky, in my opinion that's a rather naive view of the Bible, in particular. The book forms a coherent whole with vast layers of meaning, story, interpretation and self-reference. Unfortunately the biblical literalists of some evangelical movements don't do it justice, and they get considerably more airtime than the people who take longer to explain things.
- darkwater 5y ago
  So, you don't really think there is an invisible, almighty, sentient being that rules everything in the known universe, with a varying over time definition of "known"? And what would be the "naive view"? Assuming that the Bible is stating that such a being exists?
  - bencollier49 5y ago
    The Bible is an account, written over thousands of years, of people's attempts to understand God. Parts of it are impenetrable unless you're on that journey yourself. What goes wrong is when people cherry-pick bits of it out of context: Shellfish, sexual mores, etc.
    - RhysU 5y ago
      In a time without modern refrigeration, they may have been onto something with the shellfish.
      - whythre 5y ago
        Or the avoidance of pork- it’s distressingly easy to pick up parasites from consuming pork.
        phonypc 5y ago
        Only if you feed the pigs carrion and under cook it. There was a big trichinosis issue in the mid-20th century, which is when some people speculated on its connection to religious pork taboos, but nobody really takes that idea seriously any more.
orang2tang 5y ago
And then there will be nothing on earth greater or more worthy of fear than big daddy government :). Sounds like utopia to me! lmao
tsol 5y ago
If I say I one day hope atheism is just an interesting footnote in history, would I get the same response as your statement?

enriquto 5y ago

Be the change you want to see in the world! Today you can already see the world as you describe. A byproduct of this interpretation is that you get to see all people who sincerely believe in religion as sad, over-the-top fanatics of whatever saga they follow. If you are able to avoid falling in your own self-righteousness, there's no drawbacks to this.

trasz 5y ago
I don't think most people would have any problem with people following their particular universum. What people do have a problem with is that many people are using their religious beliefs to justify hurting others, and as it is now, the laws are extremely lenient towards this kind of behaviour.

dotancohen 5y ago

I actually see many of the lessons of the Old Testament (I don't know about the sequels, didn't read them) to be as relevant today as they were when written. You have to take the books in the context of the time in which they were written. They didn't have the same standards of Source Needed as the Wikipedia generation is used to, but attributing the requirement to love your neighbor as being the spoken word of the creator himself, was good enough to get the point across. It is still the basis of Western society today, even if it has been reencoded into more specific laws with more specific punishments for non-compliance. Your comment is like hoping that Turing's work will one day be regarded for historical interest only, because it was not written considering the features of today's latest Javascript framework.

darkwater 5y ago
Without going down the philosophical rabbit hole if religions steered the moral or the other way round, I always like to think that, just as simple tales help explaining and introducing children to more complicated concepts, but when you grow older you don't need those anymore, the same applies to religions and humanity. At some point in history of human societies, religions were/are a good way to move society forward (think of the strict food regulations imposed by some religions, they were for actual public safety due to the hygienic conditions of the society) but eventually they are not needed anymore as global knowledge advances and we now know what causes lightnings and thunders, we don't need a super-human explanation to grasp it or justify them.
- prometheus76 5y ago
  Knowing what causes lightning has no bearing on how one should treat one's neighbor. You can use science to make a rocket, but science has no comment on whether you should point it towards the Moon, or towards a neighboring country. Assuming we're "smarter" than our ancestors because we can make nuclear bombs and iphones is a pretty simplistic take, and completely ignores the traditional worldview that brings meaning to the Bible and to ancient stories. Looking back at traditional writing from a modern viewpoint and dismissing what you read because it doesn't fit your modern expectations is really robbing you of the opportunity to participate in what it meant to be truly human for most of human history.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    I think you are missing my point completely, as I said in other messages the content of the Bible on the cultural, philosophical and historical level is very important. My biggest issue, implicit in my initial comment, is that we as humanity should grow up and stop needing a mythical figure like a "God Almighty" to care about our neighbor. Also we don't need a god that tells us that, for example, homosexuality is bad or that pork or crab should not be eaten.
    - dotancohen 5y ago
      I neither agree nor disagree with your point. To understand your point better, in your view of neighbourly care, why should I personally care about my neighbor? If he has an X-Box and I want an X-Box, why shouldn't I just take his? What is the axiom upon which you base your moral code?
loudmax 5y ago
The issue is that a lot of people even today are biblical literalists and they look to the holy books for justification for whatever beliefs they hold in the first place. So you can absorb "love thy neighbor" if that's what you're looking for, but you can also absorb "hate the foreigner" if that's more your inclination. Also, the universe is 6000 years old and don't eat shellfish.
- francisofascii 5y ago
  Yes, that is an issue, but people misinterpreting or misusing will always be an issue whenever you create something. That should not invalidate the goodness and wonderfulness of the thing created.
  - Notanothertoo 5y ago
    The problem with the Bible is that it's so unclear and contradictory, the reader is able to cobble vastly different theological perspectives together. Hence thousands of denominations who do not get along and historically were violent towards each other. The church up until recent history was a violent institution of power.
bencollier49 5y ago
One of the reasons for the Old Testament's inclusion in Bible is to put the New Testament in context. The whole point of the New Testament is that it's a (pretty profound) development from the old one.
phonypc 5y ago
Eh... "Love your neighbor as yourself" in the context of Leviticus doesn't really have the same meaning as the modern interpretation. It's more like "Love your Israelite neighbour, such that God will continue to favor the Israelites and drive/exterminate your larger scale, non-Israelite neighbors from Canaan."

Guessnotgauss 5y ago

I get what your trying to say, that they are consistent of stories and moral tales, but the Quran dosent go into many details. Its mostly references to the stories with a few details. It is self described as a clear warning rather. If you read the english translation then the beauty of the language is completely lost on you, and also much of the meaning. Especially if you are coming from an English only background. If there is a day when no one believes in the religon, the beauty of language will be how it is remembered. Arabs have very strong oral traditions.

hprotagonist 5y ago

"My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally." --John Dominic Crossan

darkwater 5y ago
Actual human laws based on those "symbolic stories" existed since many, many years before the XX century. And as I said, I think that the Bible and other religious books should be studied as part of human history and they give a good view of the ideas, opinions, people and societies that generated them. And that is very valuable! But they are no reason to keep believing in any "God Almighty", let alone considering a book a proof of its existence. But we are probably at very least a couple of centuries from that, if we will ever get there.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  It's worth noting that none of the many authors of the various texts that now constitute the bible would have considered their texts 1. to be part of "the bible" at all (or, indeed, know that any such idea existed) or 2. to constitute "proof" of existence of any particular deity. anachronistic thinking is tricky and will bite you.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure you're wrong about 2. The book of John is a clear counterexample.
    - hprotagonist 5y ago
      Reaching for the sabians is a bit of a stretch! anyway, my point is that you and i think of “proof” from an implicit or explicit metaphysical background that simply did not exist in the first century. Far more important to the authors of the constituent works that are now codified into bibles was an exploration of the nature of god, and what that should tell us about how to live well, simply given as an axiom that god exists (or, that god is that by which existence is itself able to be, but let’s not get too fancy!) Genesis, for example, is not really concerned about “how” the world came to be; it is very, very concerned with grappling with what the right ways to participate in creation are.

bobthechef 5y ago

"According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church." [0] [0] http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/115.htm http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/115.htm

bencollier49 5y ago

Without trying to be snarky, in my opinion that's a rather naive view of the Bible, in particular. The book forms a coherent whole with vast layers of meaning, story, interpretation and self-reference. Unfortunately the biblical literalists of some evangelical movements don't do it justice, and they get considerably more airtime than the people who take longer to explain things.

darkwater 5y ago
So, you don't really think there is an invisible, almighty, sentient being that rules everything in the known universe, with a varying over time definition of "known"? And what would be the "naive view"? Assuming that the Bible is stating that such a being exists?
- bencollier49 5y ago
  The Bible is an account, written over thousands of years, of people's attempts to understand God. Parts of it are impenetrable unless you're on that journey yourself. What goes wrong is when people cherry-pick bits of it out of context: Shellfish, sexual mores, etc.
  - RhysU 5y ago
    In a time without modern refrigeration, they may have been onto something with the shellfish.
    - whythre 5y ago
      Or the avoidance of pork- it’s distressingly easy to pick up parasites from consuming pork.
      - phonypc 5y ago
        Only if you feed the pigs carrion and under cook it. There was a big trichinosis issue in the mid-20th century, which is when some people speculated on its connection to religious pork taboos, but nobody really takes that idea seriously any more.

orang2tang 5y ago

And then there will be nothing on earth greater or more worthy of fear than big daddy government :). Sounds like utopia to me! lmao

tsol 5y ago

If I say I one day hope atheism is just an interesting footnote in history, would I get the same response as your statement?