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It’s more a matter of finding a church that’s a good fit for you than “organized religion” as a whole. There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Chri

It’s more a matter of finding a church that’s a good fit for you than “organized religion” as a whole. There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Christian that’s not supported by the Bible at all. It’s just something they were told and repeated. There’s also a lot that non-Christians claim about Christians which also has no basis. The internet amplifies the controversial falsehood without requiring that retractions be published (and circulated) at the same level. This leads to a lot of crazy talk. The only filter anyone has for this stuff is to actually read the Bible to know what is in there. Otherwise you’ll have no basis for questioning the weird things that people tell you. I even started a blog of interesting things I’ve come across when reading just to try to encourage people to read it themselves. As somebody who grew up in church, became agnostic, then atheist and am now a devout Christian again I think there’s a lot of people like yourself who may be able to relate. My most recent post was creating an “is it Christian?” litmus test. https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-test https://www.readnotmisled.org/p/the-is-it-christian-litmus-t...

mgh2 4y ago
Maybe cross reference religious claims with the scientific method Ex: https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf8095812 https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale...
- brightball 4y ago
  Cross references like that article are sort of the basis for a lot of what I'm talking about. You're citing it as an examination of using the scientific method on religious, but it's making religious claims that don't exist with metrics that it's made up. To but it mildly, nothing in this article holds water. Simple points: The article discusses belief in free will while using the basis of it to cite societal outcomes from hard work creating wealth or success. This is a regular topic, but it has no basis at all in Christianity. I certainly can't speak for all religions. Free will: You are responsible for making your own choices and decisions. Reality: Your circumstances will sometimes force you to make choices that you don't want to make to survive. If you read the Bible, you will find pretty quickly that it repeatedly reinforces contentment, humility, charity, love and above all else: faith. It does not equate any of these with material wealth aside from the prosperity of Israel itself. Every person has the free will to be thankful for what they have. They have the free will to have faith in God. They have the free will to love their neighbors and to be kind. They have the free will to give of themselves, whether it be their time and skills or their money. Reading the Bible is eye opening specifically because you get beaten over the head with themes that are discussed over and over, through centuries while your eyes are also opened to topics that are barely mentioned at all yet amplified in culture to attempt to make a point. Free will is ultimately a big part of the discussion of what people often call God's plan. It's where questions like "why do bad things happen to good people?" come from...because the Bible never says bad things aren't going to happen. There's also never a point where it describes God as some type of puppet master who is in constant control of every detail that happens in the world. What you do see, is God periodically intervening. If you read, you'll eventually notice a pattern to the circumstances where God intervenes. That revelation is best left for people to discover themselves.
  - mgh2 4y ago
    > Yet copious studies from science, economics, mathematics, and theology seem to point by consilience, to the impossibility of free will. I am not sure you went through all the references (links), the evidence collected is substantial - the article itself is too short to explain them all.
notpachet 4y ago
> There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Christian that’s not supported by the Bible at all. I think this may be too reductionist. The Bible contradicts itself on a lot of topics (ie, the age-old dichotomy between the fire-and-brimstone Old Testament God vs the turn-the-other-cheek New Testament teachings). It's hard to reconcile God telling the Israelites to murder the women and children of Canaan with "love thy neighbor as thyself" unless you adopt a pretty cold-hearted standard for who your neighbors are. That's the problem with religious fundamentalism: there's text available to support all sorts of terrible stuff.
- brightball 4y ago
  That's why reading in its entirety is pretty important. Context matters. There's a lot of violence in the Bible, just as there in in the world today.
  - notpachet 4y ago
    > There's a lot of violence in the Bible, just as there in in the world today. You make it sound like there's no causal link here. But a lot of the violence and bigotry in the world today is being explicitly propped up by religious texts. Many people crave certainty and a black-and-white moral fundamentalism, and there are sizable passages of the Bible that cater directly to that. My point is that there's a difference between "the Bible doesn't support it" and saying, "Hey, if you take it in its entirety, and throw out the problematic bits, and apply a Gaussian filter, and average it all out, well... then it no longer supports it in spirit..." So, again, going back to your original post: > There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Christian that’s not supported by the Bible at all. It’s just something they were told and repeated. That's not the problem. The problem is that a lot of it IS literally supported by the Bible, if one doesn't do that complicated Gaussian blur beforehand to paper over the problematic parts.
    - brightball 4y ago
      It's not though. Your explanation seems to be that if something "exists in the Bible" it is "supported by the Bible". Correct me if I'm wrong in that of course, but that is how what you wrote reads to me. As causal links go, what causes are you suggesting? I don't want to attempt to put words in your mouth here, but your references are too abstract to discuss so far. I will touch on this though: > You make it sound like there's no causal link here. But a lot of the violence and bigotry in the world today is being explicitly propped up by religious texts. Many people crave certainty and a black-and-white moral fundamentalism, and there are sizable passages of the Bible that cater directly to that. Violence and bigotry is a part of human nature. There's plenty of it that isn't propped up by religious texts at all that's most based in raw tribalism. Sure, there are people who attempt to claim that their views are Biblically based...but they simply aren't. It makes people feel like they have something to hide behind. At least not if a person is going to attempt any level of logical consistency. Most likely a single verse or passage was selected and then used as some sort of justification.
anonporridge 4y ago
Meh. As someone who's read the Bible in its entirety, it's so full of contradictions and unclear complexities that you can make a good case for any number of incompatible interpretations. The Bible is interesting for historical context, and has many useful stories and lessons that I still get value from, but so does the Tao Te Ching and the Quran. It's a good piece of work for a person's spirituality practice, but it is far from sufficient on its own. And on its own, it can be (and many times has been) used to justify some absolutely appalling shit.
- superb-owl 4y ago
  > it's so full of contradictions and unclear complexities that you can make a good case for any number of incompatible interpretations I think this is exactly what makes the Bible such a powerful and popular book! Intelligent, charismatic people can easily use the Bible (which has implicit authority as the "Word of God" in many people's minds) to convince people to move in a particular direction. This makes it a very powerful tool.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    I completely agree. The lack of clear and objective messaging means it's easy to reinterpret as the civilization changes to suit the rulers' needs, not the other way around. If it had unambiguous messaging, it probably would have been abandoned to the historical archives long ago since the rules no longer make sense. Which is exactly why it's a garbage foundation for ethical reasoning. Fine accessory. Garbage foundation. This is important to understand, because the truth of ethics is that it is not objective. It's subjective. It's a constant conversation we have with each about how we want to interact. And as soon as you elevate a holy book to be unquestionably followed by faith, you've killed the conversation. And once you've killed the conversation, the only way to resolve disagreements thereafter is violence.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Well, we all know what power does…
- beltsazar 4y ago
acjohnson55 4y ago
I did read the Bible myself, which was one of the things that led to my final break with organized Christianity. It was a very useful exercise, and one that led me to see a huge contradiction between the ministry of Jesus--which was very critical of power and legalism over humanitarianism--and the reality of hundreds of years and dozens of variations of organized Christianity. That caused me to question why I should consider the Bible as any more special than anyone else's religious book. From my perspective, it hasn't led to the creation of an exemplary Christian community at global scale. Rather, it has created a bunch of bickering, expansionist sects that are self-assured in their own righteousness of thought. My Christian upbringing gave me a humanitarian foundation, but it's largely secular influences that have pushed me beyond the points in which peoples' biblical interpretations come into conflict with humanitarian goals. But the thing is, as the Catholics recognize, the Bible didn't come to us as an monolithic whole. Its composition has changed over the centuries as books have fallen in and out of favor. Much of this is part of Catholic history, which is a big part of why they don't prioritize it over the leadership of the episcopate. They see the apostolic succession as the place where spiritual authority and orthodox practice derive from. And then I became really interested in the origins of the Abrahamic religions. The podcast History In The Bible (https://www.historyinthebible.com/ https://www.historyinthebible.com/) and the book In The Shadow of the Sword (https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Sword-Birth-Global-Empire/dp/0307473651 https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Sword-Birth-Global-Empire/dp/0...) have been really fascinating in understanding secular theories of how these religions arose from their historical contexts. Secular historians argue that the core of these religions existed in largely orally transmitted forms, until they were adopted as state ideology in multiethnic polities (first the Kingdom of Judah, then the Roman Empire, then the Caliphate). Or in the case of Rabbinical Judaism, a way to knit together a people dispersed between empires, who had had their old religion decapitated with the destruction of the Second Temple. (I hope I have represented these theories in a way that is not offensive to adherents of these religions.) Today, I'm intrigued by Christian history and, to some extent, Christian thought, but I don't feel any particular need to believe in Christian theology. I'm not exactly an atheist. More like an agnostic theist.
- aestetix 4y ago
  > But the thing is, as the Catholics recognize, the Bible didn't come to us as an monolithic whole. Its composition has changed over the centuries as books have fallen in and out of favor. Can you give examples of books added and removed from the Bible that Catholics would recognize, after it was formalized? This is a very strange claim to me.
StuffMaster 4y ago
>The only filter anyone has for this stuff is to actually read the Bible to know what is in there. Otherwise you’ll have no basis for questioning the weird things that people tell you. True, but this is also how fundamentalism/evangelacism/etc came about. You have to choose what to believe regardless of how you read it. Many Americans believe the earth is 6000 years old, which they derived from the bible.

mgh2 4y ago

Maybe cross reference religious claims with the scientific method Ex: https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale-4fecf8095812 https://trendguardian.medium.com/free-will-a-rich-fairy-tale...

brightball 4y ago
Cross references like that article are sort of the basis for a lot of what I'm talking about. You're citing it as an examination of using the scientific method on religious, but it's making religious claims that don't exist with metrics that it's made up. To but it mildly, nothing in this article holds water. Simple points: The article discusses belief in free will while using the basis of it to cite societal outcomes from hard work creating wealth or success. This is a regular topic, but it has no basis at all in Christianity. I certainly can't speak for all religions. Free will: You are responsible for making your own choices and decisions. Reality: Your circumstances will sometimes force you to make choices that you don't want to make to survive. If you read the Bible, you will find pretty quickly that it repeatedly reinforces contentment, humility, charity, love and above all else: faith. It does not equate any of these with material wealth aside from the prosperity of Israel itself. Every person has the free will to be thankful for what they have. They have the free will to have faith in God. They have the free will to love their neighbors and to be kind. They have the free will to give of themselves, whether it be their time and skills or their money. Reading the Bible is eye opening specifically because you get beaten over the head with themes that are discussed over and over, through centuries while your eyes are also opened to topics that are barely mentioned at all yet amplified in culture to attempt to make a point. Free will is ultimately a big part of the discussion of what people often call God's plan. It's where questions like "why do bad things happen to good people?" come from...because the Bible never says bad things aren't going to happen. There's also never a point where it describes God as some type of puppet master who is in constant control of every detail that happens in the world. What you do see, is God periodically intervening. If you read, you'll eventually notice a pattern to the circumstances where God intervenes. That revelation is best left for people to discover themselves.
- mgh2 4y ago
  > Yet copious studies from science, economics, mathematics, and theology seem to point by consilience, to the impossibility of free will. I am not sure you went through all the references (links), the evidence collected is substantial - the article itself is too short to explain them all.

notpachet 4y ago

> There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Christian that’s not supported by the Bible at all. I think this may be too reductionist. The Bible contradicts itself on a lot of topics (ie, the age-old dichotomy between the fire-and-brimstone Old Testament God vs the turn-the-other-cheek New Testament teachings). It's hard to reconcile God telling the Israelites to murder the women and children of Canaan with "love thy neighbor as thyself" unless you adopt a pretty cold-hearted standard for who your neighbors are. That's the problem with religious fundamentalism: there's text available to support all sorts of terrible stuff.

brightball 4y ago
That's why reading in its entirety is pretty important. Context matters. There's a lot of violence in the Bible, just as there in in the world today.
- notpachet 4y ago
  > There's a lot of violence in the Bible, just as there in in the world today. You make it sound like there's no causal link here. But a lot of the violence and bigotry in the world today is being explicitly propped up by religious texts. Many people crave certainty and a black-and-white moral fundamentalism, and there are sizable passages of the Bible that cater directly to that. My point is that there's a difference between "the Bible doesn't support it" and saying, "Hey, if you take it in its entirety, and throw out the problematic bits, and apply a Gaussian filter, and average it all out, well... then it no longer supports it in spirit..." So, again, going back to your original post: > There’s a lot that comes from people who claim to be Christian that’s not supported by the Bible at all. It’s just something they were told and repeated. That's not the problem. The problem is that a lot of it IS literally supported by the Bible, if one doesn't do that complicated Gaussian blur beforehand to paper over the problematic parts.
  - brightball 4y ago
    It's not though. Your explanation seems to be that if something "exists in the Bible" it is "supported by the Bible". Correct me if I'm wrong in that of course, but that is how what you wrote reads to me. As causal links go, what causes are you suggesting? I don't want to attempt to put words in your mouth here, but your references are too abstract to discuss so far. I will touch on this though: > You make it sound like there's no causal link here. But a lot of the violence and bigotry in the world today is being explicitly propped up by religious texts. Many people crave certainty and a black-and-white moral fundamentalism, and there are sizable passages of the Bible that cater directly to that. Violence and bigotry is a part of human nature. There's plenty of it that isn't propped up by religious texts at all that's most based in raw tribalism. Sure, there are people who attempt to claim that their views are Biblically based...but they simply aren't. It makes people feel like they have something to hide behind. At least not if a person is going to attempt any level of logical consistency. Most likely a single verse or passage was selected and then used as some sort of justification.

anonporridge 4y ago

Meh. As someone who's read the Bible in its entirety, it's so full of contradictions and unclear complexities that you can make a good case for any number of incompatible interpretations. The Bible is interesting for historical context, and has many useful stories and lessons that I still get value from, but so does the Tao Te Ching and the Quran. It's a good piece of work for a person's spirituality practice, but it is far from sufficient on its own. And on its own, it can be (and many times has been) used to justify some absolutely appalling shit.

superb-owl 4y ago
> it's so full of contradictions and unclear complexities that you can make a good case for any number of incompatible interpretations I think this is exactly what makes the Bible such a powerful and popular book! Intelligent, charismatic people can easily use the Bible (which has implicit authority as the "Word of God" in many people's minds) to convince people to move in a particular direction. This makes it a very powerful tool.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  I completely agree. The lack of clear and objective messaging means it's easy to reinterpret as the civilization changes to suit the rulers' needs, not the other way around. If it had unambiguous messaging, it probably would have been abandoned to the historical archives long ago since the rules no longer make sense. Which is exactly why it's a garbage foundation for ethical reasoning. Fine accessory. Garbage foundation. This is important to understand, because the truth of ethics is that it is not objective. It's subjective. It's a constant conversation we have with each about how we want to interact. And as soon as you elevate a holy book to be unquestionably followed by faith, you've killed the conversation. And once you've killed the conversation, the only way to resolve disagreements thereafter is violence.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Well, we all know what power does…
beltsazar 4y ago

acjohnson55 4y ago

I did read the Bible myself, which was one of the things that led to my final break with organized Christianity. It was a very useful exercise, and one that led me to see a huge contradiction between the ministry of Jesus--which was very critical of power and legalism over humanitarianism--and the reality of hundreds of years and dozens of variations of organized Christianity. That caused me to question why I should consider the Bible as any more special than anyone else's religious book. From my perspective, it hasn't led to the creation of an exemplary Christian community at global scale. Rather, it has created a bunch of bickering, expansionist sects that are self-assured in their own righteousness of thought. My Christian upbringing gave me a humanitarian foundation, but it's largely secular influences that have pushed me beyond the points in which peoples' biblical interpretations come into conflict with humanitarian goals. But the thing is, as the Catholics recognize, the Bible didn't come to us as an monolithic whole. Its composition has changed over the centuries as books have fallen in and out of favor. Much of this is part of Catholic history, which is a big part of why they don't prioritize it over the leadership of the episcopate. They see the apostolic succession as the place where spiritual authority and orthodox practice derive from. And then I became really interested in the origins of the Abrahamic religions. The podcast History In The Bible (https://www.historyinthebible.com/ https://www.historyinthebible.com/) and the book In The Shadow of the Sword (https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Sword-Birth-Global-Empire/dp/0307473651 https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Sword-Birth-Global-Empire/dp/0...) have been really fascinating in understanding secular theories of how these religions arose from their historical contexts. Secular historians argue that the core of these religions existed in largely orally transmitted forms, until they were adopted as state ideology in multiethnic polities (first the Kingdom of Judah, then the Roman Empire, then the Caliphate). Or in the case of Rabbinical Judaism, a way to knit together a people dispersed between empires, who had had their old religion decapitated with the destruction of the Second Temple. (I hope I have represented these theories in a way that is not offensive to adherents of these religions.) Today, I'm intrigued by Christian history and, to some extent, Christian thought, but I don't feel any particular need to believe in Christian theology. I'm not exactly an atheist. More like an agnostic theist.

aestetix 4y ago
> But the thing is, as the Catholics recognize, the Bible didn't come to us as an monolithic whole. Its composition has changed over the centuries as books have fallen in and out of favor. Can you give examples of books added and removed from the Bible that Catholics would recognize, after it was formalized? This is a very strange claim to me.

StuffMaster 4y ago

>The only filter anyone has for this stuff is to actually read the Bible to know what is in there. Otherwise you’ll have no basis for questioning the weird things that people tell you. True, but this is also how fundamentalism/evangelacism/etc came about. You have to choose what to believe regardless of how you read it. Many Americans believe the earth is 6000 years old, which they derived from the bible.