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Ok this is going off-topic and getting complicated, but I'll try to give a helpful response. :) First of all, if you're looking at the bible and trying to under

by nickd2001 4y ago

Ok this is going off-topic and getting complicated, but I'll try to give a helpful response. :) First of all, if you're looking at the bible and trying to understand where Christians are coming from, (or make sense of our apparently nonsensical religion, if you want to look at it like that ;) ), if I were you I'd forget about the Old Testament for now and look at the New Testament first. Going direct to the Old Testament, without the benefit of anyone knowledgeable to explain it, whether a sensible person from within a church or by reading some decent theology books, is likely to give you all sorts of inaccurate notions about God. The idea that he smites people down and calls others to do so, is an example. It seems to say that in the Old Testament, because, as I said, the authors lacked full understanding, but later Jesus cleared this up. Of course its a problem that there are some Christians today who believe precisely that, because they too have a messed up understanding IMHO. Which is why the Catholic church despite its many faults has something better - 2000 yrs of attempting to think about this. As for God letting us do bad stuff to each other and babies dying of AIDS etc, these are valid Qs and extremely difficult to answer. Many Christians wrestle with these till their dying day. The failure to be able to answer them easily doesn't in itself invalidate the religion though IMHO. If you have no religion, you are left with other. "worse", unanswered Qs e:g what's even the point of our existence. The church teaches that God gives us free will, and that if we follow Jesus' teachings to look after each other everything will be OK. Dealing with cancer, disabilities etc in a world where people look after and devote resources to caring for people in that situation is different from a world where people don't give a ** about others' suffering. Also we are taught that God feels our suffering too, he suffers with us. As for God torturing his own kid to death, Catholics believe in the trinity, that Jesus was God in human form, therefore he suffered himself. It wasn't God that did the torturing, it was humans that did that. He allowed people to do that, in order to "take the hit" , basically accept punishment himself for our failings so that we get to be forgiven. Which is an amazing act of self-sacrifice and a demonstration of how much God actually cares about us. Well, that's what I believe anyway. :). You're welcome to tell me you're sure its complete nonsense. All I would suggest in return is to keep an open mind. :)

Eisenstein 4y ago
Oh, I went to Church every Sunday and I went to Catholic school. I know all this stuff. I am telling you what actually makes sense to me. None of the stuff that Church tradition passes down makes any sense at all unless you look at it from the perspective of Paul. He took a pauper's religion with a dead leader and went around spreading it, completely forming it in his own way in order to cater to spread and politics (no circumcision needed! eat pork, it's fine...). Basically, The Church == Paul, and Paul never met Jesus. If you want to say that 'The Old Testament' is 'people's misunderstanding of things back in the day', then you can also say that 'The New Testament' is a do-over with Paul incorporating as much stuff as possible to appeal to the people of his time. Jesus never wrote a word of it. If anything could be 'from the mouth of God' it is the Old Testament, and it is the only thing that actually seems to have any logic to it. The NT stuff is just nonsense because it all comes down to if God is all powerful then he is CHOOSING not to act in certain ways which make him IMMORAL and therefore God cannot be the basis of a good morality. Take that for what you want, but if you read it with any rationality it has to be that way. Now, if you want to be Christian for all the good things it espouses -- great! But don't try to convince me that it isn't nonsense.
- nickd2001 4y ago
  Ok, didn't realise you already came for a Catholic background. :) Well.... I'm not sure where you get that the church == Paul. My understanding was NT was the result of many eye-witnesses, take the gospels for example, 4 authors, right? Paul's letters play a major part that's true. Not sure where the pauper's religion comes from? Never heard that myself. There were rich and poor alike . Joseph of Arimathea was rich wasn't he? I don't see how you justify the claim that OT is "from the mouth of God" more than NT? As for God choosing not to act, what I always understood about that was that humans choosing to be good by their own free will was the ultimate goal, the "holy grail" so to speak. If God intervened when we did bad things then we wouldn't have free will. This must be extremely hard to take if you're in Ukraine right now getting bombed thinking "Come on God why aren't you stopping this". My understanding is, in the context of this life just being a "dress rehearsal" for what is to come after death, that it makes some kind of sense. I heard it said, that trying to work out what God is up to is for us like watching someone sewing and looking at all the messy threads on the underneath, with little clue what the end result will be. Someone could be making something amazing, but if all you ever see along the way is a mess of threads, you could question that they're making anything at all, then one day, there it is in all its glory. Thought experiment for you - would you be happier in a world where God kept intervening and stopping people being mean to each other? Would that make people be better? Would they have any way of learning to be better to each other if God always stepped in? Alternatively, is building a world one day, presumably not in this world. where humans all decide of their own free will to act justly and kindly to each other, a goal worthy of putting up with a lot of s** with along the way? Granted, if you're on the receiving end of evil in the meantime it must be extremely hard to take, but then we're told God shares that suffering and is present during it.... Basically, it seems to me Christianity throws up all manner of difficult almost impossible Qs but that to me doesn't negate it and I can't really see an alternative viewpoint without even more problems. All the best :)

Eisenstein 4y ago

Oh, I went to Church every Sunday and I went to Catholic school. I know all this stuff. I am telling you what actually makes sense to me. None of the stuff that Church tradition passes down makes any sense at all unless you look at it from the perspective of Paul. He took a pauper's religion with a dead leader and went around spreading it, completely forming it in his own way in order to cater to spread and politics (no circumcision needed! eat pork, it's fine...). Basically, The Church == Paul, and Paul never met Jesus. If you want to say that 'The Old Testament' is 'people's misunderstanding of things back in the day', then you can also say that 'The New Testament' is a do-over with Paul incorporating as much stuff as possible to appeal to the people of his time. Jesus never wrote a word of it. If anything could be 'from the mouth of God' it is the Old Testament, and it is the only thing that actually seems to have any logic to it. The NT stuff is just nonsense because it all comes down to if God is all powerful then he is CHOOSING not to act in certain ways which make him IMMORAL and therefore God cannot be the basis of a good morality. Take that for what you want, but if you read it with any rationality it has to be that way. Now, if you want to be Christian for all the good things it espouses -- great! But don't try to convince me that it isn't nonsense.

nickd2001 4y ago
Ok, didn't realise you already came for a Catholic background. :) Well.... I'm not sure where you get that the church == Paul. My understanding was NT was the result of many eye-witnesses, take the gospels for example, 4 authors, right? Paul's letters play a major part that's true. Not sure where the pauper's religion comes from? Never heard that myself. There were rich and poor alike . Joseph of Arimathea was rich wasn't he? I don't see how you justify the claim that OT is "from the mouth of God" more than NT? As for God choosing not to act, what I always understood about that was that humans choosing to be good by their own free will was the ultimate goal, the "holy grail" so to speak. If God intervened when we did bad things then we wouldn't have free will. This must be extremely hard to take if you're in Ukraine right now getting bombed thinking "Come on God why aren't you stopping this". My understanding is, in the context of this life just being a "dress rehearsal" for what is to come after death, that it makes some kind of sense. I heard it said, that trying to work out what God is up to is for us like watching someone sewing and looking at all the messy threads on the underneath, with little clue what the end result will be. Someone could be making something amazing, but if all you ever see along the way is a mess of threads, you could question that they're making anything at all, then one day, there it is in all its glory. Thought experiment for you - would you be happier in a world where God kept intervening and stopping people being mean to each other? Would that make people be better? Would they have any way of learning to be better to each other if God always stepped in? Alternatively, is building a world one day, presumably not in this world. where humans all decide of their own free will to act justly and kindly to each other, a goal worthy of putting up with a lot of s** with along the way? Granted, if you're on the receiving end of evil in the meantime it must be extremely hard to take, but then we're told God shares that suffering and is present during it.... Basically, it seems to me Christianity throws up all manner of difficult almost impossible Qs but that to me doesn't negate it and I can't really see an alternative viewpoint without even more problems. All the best :)