Most atheists have never read the bible

[McCulloch]

Most atheists have never read the bible and so I believe that if they had, the basics would be the same. Clearly they do not speak as if they have this knowledge.

I throw down the gauntlet. Faith has made a positive claim. Either back up this claim with evidence or withdraw it.

On a less confrontational note, do atheists reject religion and God because they are ignorant of religion as many staunch religionists claim?

[OnceConvinced]

At the time I was convinced it was real (thus my forum name "OnceConvinced). I've tried to explain this to you before, but you seem determined to misunderstand and misrepresent me.

Oh I understand exactly what you are saying...you had some feelings that you thought was God....now you realize they were false feelings....

Much much more than that. That may be your experiences as a Christian but mine were a lot more profound.

[Cephus]

I am, and I think I've been pretty upfront about that from the beginning.

Then I hope you can understand why we aren't "connecting" on a lot of issues. It's hard to talk about a subject when you're using "apples" to refer to "oranges".

But I AM following the religion.

I suppose that's a problem with Judaism that it's not just a religion, it can refer to a lot of different things, depending on who you talk to. For some, it's a culture, for some it's a race, for some it's a religion, for some it's a combination of things. For some, if your mother wasn't a Jew, you can never become one, for some, you can convert regardless of your background.

I identify myself as Jewish not because of my theology--NO ONE does that--but because of my membership in the community, my partaking of the culture, and my respect for the tradition.

Oh, I beg to differ, an ex-girlfriend's father, way, way back in the day, converted to Judiasm to please his wife's family and he didn't give a damn about the culture or tradition, I doubt he even really believed, at least not by the time I knew him, he might have 20+ years earlier when he converted. And he was Chinese to boot.

No. Law handed down by the first MEN to attempt to write it down in that culture. That appears to have been the attitude of those who overruled it, and that of course makes perfect sense.

No, Law handed down to Moses by God on stone tablets, unless you want to assume the while Mt. Sinai story is a load of crap. See, that's the problem with liberal theology, you pick and choose what you want to accept as real, anything that doesn't make sense to you, you just claim never happened.

Why must it be either-or? Wholly literal and authoritative, or else wholly irrelevant?

Because you're picking and choosing which parts are literal and which parts are not without a rational basis for doing so. You claim that the Jews are God's chosen people, then you reject the only source you have that says that. You take the whole reason for having the religion in the first place and throw it away, then cling to the religion as part of the culture and tradition, yet the culture and religion are historically based on taking the Torah seriously.

Make up your mind.

LOL! There are other reasons to think God didn't write the Bible, even if one believes in Him.

If the Bible never existed at all, there would be no reason to think that the specific God described in the Bible existed because there would be nowhere that his attributes were recorded. You might be able to make the case that some god might exist, but not the specific Judeo-Christian version.

Of course, but not just me. Generations of scholars, rabbis and sages have done that, over centuries of discussion and debate, and never lightly. What else should they have done?

I'm not arguing that it hasn't been done, certainly anyone who tried to follow all the contradictory laws in the Bible would go insane and be put away doing so. I'm saying that if you really, honestly take this religion seriously and look at it rationally, then picking and choosing should be something that seriously disturbs you. Rationalizing how you can take some parts of the "Word of God" more seriously than others should be problematic to someone who seriously believes.

In terms of Judaism as a whole, the question is a bit silly, tantamount to "Why don't you abolish Judaism, commit cultural suicide, and cease to exist as a people?"

No, in that case the question is, why do you, as a people, continue to frame your entire cultural existence around a lie?

Maybe more to the point you're asking about, I have always had a certain internal certainty that God, or something like Him, exists, which I could no more deny than the certainty I have that I have shoes on; but I held that simultaneously with the intellectual knowledge that that certainty might be illusory and that I didn't know for sure. This peculiar stance of "I believe it, but I can't say it's a fact" has been with me all my life.

See, that's really the issue and since you admit it's purely subjective, it's really something that you can believe as you wish. You have no certainty because you have nothing upon which to base that certainty. You have belief and it's a belief based on desire and emotion, not fact. That's certainly not something upon which to base a claim of truth.

I also tried on the atheist position, but found I was just as unable to drop my sense of the transcendent as an integral part of how I saw the world and experienced the internal world inside my head. It wasn't so much denying that the God of Christianity existed--that was easy, since I didn't believe in that God anyway, and never had--but denying that there was anything at all other than the concrete world of facts and objects and events was harder. That didn't fit me either.

Atheism isn't something you try on, it's something that you're convinced of because of the utter lack of evidence for any other position. Seriously, it sounds like you're more interested in community and a sense of belonging than you are in any religion, you've only adopted the Jewish religion so you can fit into the Jewish community that expects it.

Maybe God, like Number, exists in the human mind only, but like "One," is part of reality for all that.

Which just makes God a useful concept and tool, invented by humans, that has no importance in reality. Isn't it easier to just accept reality as it comes and use the tools we've invented to explore it?

If it fits your own settled and frankly rather smug convictions to label all this an emotional clinging to obviously false ideas and a primitive notion of God as Grandpa in the Sky, I suppose that's your right; but it doesn't feel or think like that to me, and I have to live in my head, not yours.

We all do, there's no guilt involved in that. However, we're responsible to ourselves for the ideas in our heads and the rationale that we use to justify them. Some people don't care if they believe lies, in fact they revel in it. Others, like myself, find it extremely important to only accept the factual truth and reject anything for which insufficient evidence exists.

My life and thought would be much easier if I were, and I would probably still be a fundamentalist. That's a nice, secure, comfortable and certain place to be, where you have all the answers and nothing to think about; but the price of admission is your mind, and that I was not willing to pay. Atheism's price was another part of my mind, and I won't pay that one either.

You're looking for comfort and certainty, but that's not how reality works. We don't know everything, we will probably never know everything and every question that we answer just poses more questions. That's really why we get all of these religions, people want to know this monolithic, eternal *TRUTH* and the fact is, it doesn't exist. Inventing stories to make you feel better about the uncomfortable parts of reality doesn't change the uncomfortable parts of reality. Believing that you have an afterlife doesn't change the fact that you're going to die. Believing in an all-powerful God that watches over you doesn't change the fact that you're weak and powerless. All these things do is mask the very real issues we all face, it's self-deception in the face of reality. Unfortunately, the most comforting lie in the world is still a lie and the most uncomfortable truth is still the truth. Some of us choose truth over comfort.

Whether or not God factually exists is a boardgame I don't care to play, but it seems to me that debating whether other forms of belief are rational is worthwhile too, and that's what we're doing.

But ultimately, that's what it all comes down to. The crazy guy on the corner with his hand in his shirt who claims he's Napoleon might think he's rational and worthwhile too, but it all comes down to whether or not he's really Napoleon. If he's not, then all of his claims come tumbling down. If there is no God, whether you're talking about Judiasm or Christianity or any religion, then it's all just a bunch of guys who came up with a bunch of rules, nothing more, nothing less. They may be good rules, but they're still human rules and bowing down before some imaginary friend or claiming to be the chosen people of an invisible father figure or praying to the dude in the sky is all a waste of time, no matter how good it might make you feel.

[earl]

Cephas stated,"If there is no God....praying to the dude in the sky is al a waste of time".
Also ,"they're still human rules..."
How do you know who is the author or not the author of these so called human rules you speak of?
Can one connect authorship to the golden rule?

Is the author a credible believable entity?

[Cephus]

Cephas stated,"If there is no God....praying to the dude in the sky is al a waste of time".
Also ,"they're still human rules..."
How do you know who is the author or not the author of these so called human rules you speak of?
Can one connect authorship to the golden rule?

Is the author a credible believable entity?

First off, it's Cephus, not Cephas.

Secondly, we know someone wrote it, these things don't just appear out of thin air. We have no evidence whatsoever, nor any reason to think that any god(s) are real, therefore the only possible candidate we have is a human. We know that humans write things, we have many examples of humans doing such things, including making rules, therefore we can reasonably conclude that a human did it.

Which human is up for debate, but I don't suspect it matters much.

[earl]

Cephus,
I agree that words are symbols copied from audible dialects creating thought patterns where by one may communicate information to another.
This is elementary but what do you call evidence and may you give enlightenment as to why multitudes upon multitudes ,year after year for two thousand years travel to a land where they may experience where at one time not so long ago a person of interest who they believe is God in human form ,wearing human made shoes stood,walked and spoke the golden rule?
Are these millions of travelers confused ?
From your statement I see that you have restricted 'reasoning 'to your standard of what is within reason and what is not and others who think unclearly cannot execute proper reason as you do,thus you state that only man is responsible for the golden rule because of you have not discovered evidence.
Can you positively conclude that no one has had a spiritual experience just because you have not had one?
Is it true that evidence within the self is self evident?

[cnorman18]

I am, and I think I've been pretty upfront about that from the beginning.

Then I hope you can understand why we aren't "connecting" on a lot of issues. It's hard to talk about a subject when you're using "apples" to refer to "oranges".

It's even harder when you don't recognize the existence of "apples" and insist that we may only talk about "oranges," "apples" being a different mode of belief. Not only my own, personal belief; you are refusing to regard modern Judaism itself as an authentic religion.

From what you are saying here, literalist fundamentalism is the only non-hypocritical kind of belief there is, and it's false. I don't argue with the second part of that, but I do have a problem with the first

But I AM following the religion.

I suppose that's a problem with Judaism that it's not just a religion, it can refer to a lot of different things, depending on who you talk to. For some, it's a culture, for some it's a race, for some it's a religion, for some it's a combination of things.

I would say that it's a combination of things for everyone. That's the nature of Judaism. Different people can emphasize different aspects, but no one denies the others.

(Except one; Jews are not and never have been a "race." as you yourself pointed out, one can be ethnically Chinese and still be a Jew. I know it's not your meaning or intention, but in general, only antisemites take the idea of a "Jewish race" seriously.)

For some, if your mother wasn't a Jew, you can never become one...

There are, or may be, individual Jews who think that; but, simply put, they are wrong. All branches of Judaism accept converts, though the standards and procedures may differ. That principle was laid down in Jewish law long before Judaism split into branches, and none have departed from it.

for some, you can convert regardless of your background.

No, that is true for all branches.

I identify myself as Jewish not because of my theology--NO ONE does that--but because of my membership in the community, my partaking of the culture, and my respect for the tradition.

Oh, I beg to differ, an ex-girlfriend's father, way, way back in the day, converted to Judiasm to please his wife's family and he didn't give a damn about the culture or tradition, I doubt he even really believed, at least not by the time I knew him, he might have 20+ years earlier when he converted. And he was Chinese to boot.

By converting, regardless of the sincerity of his belief, and marrying a Jew in a Jewish ceremony, he joined the community whether he gave a damn about it or not. You actually have proven here what I said; one is not a Jew by reason of one's theology.

One may believe precisely the same as an Orthodox Jew, but one is not Jewish till one goes through the process and the ritual procedures; and if one goes through the process and the procedures, then one becomes authentically a Jew even if one does not believe as other Jews do. When I went before the Bet Din, the rabbinical court, my personal theological beliefs were not examined. My commitment to the community was, and I can assure you that the same was true for your ex-girlfriend's father.

Whether or not one is a Jew is not determined by theology. Judaism just isn't like other religions in that regard. Some say it may not even be accurate to speak of Judaism only as a "religion" for that very reason.

In point of fact, at the time of my own conversion, I did hold a rather literalist view of the Torah; I thought that it was given to Moses directly from God, and all that. My rabbi told me, during our private study sessions that were part of the process, that that kind of belief certainly fell within the spectrum of beliefs held by Conservative Jews, but that it was more characteristic of the Orthodox. We discussed whether I ought to drop my efforts to convert into the Conservative branch and go Orthodox instead. I'm rather glad I didn't, because my beliefs have since moved to the other end of that spectrum. Still, I remain a Conservative Jew, and my personal beliefs now are still among those held by other Conservative Jews.

You may, certainly, question a belief in God in any form as being a false, deluded, whatever, belief; but when you say, as you have several times here, that I am not really a Jew because of my own personal theology, you are simply and factually wrong.

No. Law handed down by the first MEN to attempt to write it down in that culture. That appears to have been the attitude of those who overruled it, and that of course makes perfect sense.

No, Law handed down to Moses by God on stone tablets, unless you want to assume the whole Mt. Sinai story is a load of crap. See, that's the problem with liberal theology, you pick and choose what you want to accept as real, anything that doesn't make sense to you, you just claim never happened.

So, once again, it's literalism (false) or hypocrisy (not a real religion, but a dodge). More on that in a moment.

Why must it be either-or? Wholly literal and authoritative, or else wholly irrelevant?

Because you're picking and choosing which parts are literal and which parts are not without a rational basis for doing so. You claim that the Jews are God's chosen people, then you reject the only source you have that says that. You take the whole reason for having the religion in the first place and throw it away, then cling to the religion as part of the culture and tradition, yet the culture and religion are historically based on taking the Torah seriously.

Make up your mind.

I don't have to.

First, the Bible's literal truth is not so much rejected in liberal Judaism as held to be irrelevant, as I have showed you. It doesn't matter if the stories are true or not. Many modern Jews, perhaps most, don't bother to think about that question. It's of no importance. If you can't get your head around that, it's not my problem.

Second, the process of determining what lessons or principles can be drawn from those accounts is extremely rational. The discussions in the Talmud and since, up till the present day, are based on logic and rational thought. The tradition is considered on its own, and origins are not considered relevant.

Consider this; if there are contradictions of principle within the Torah, as there are, the question of origins doesn't help resolve them. What remains but rationality? The question of origins, then, is not only of no religious importance, it is of no practical importance either.

The Bible is not "the whole reason for having the religion in the first place"; God is. The Bible is not God, nor is it the reason we believe in God. Again, if you can't get your head around that, it's no problem of mine.

And neither have we "thrown it away"; we still study it as a part, even the earliest written part, of our tradition. Not reading the Book literally is not the same as discarding it, and the proposition that it is, which you have repeatedly maintained here, is a false dichotomy.

You said, "the culture and religion are historically based on taking the Torah seriously." That is correct; but "seriously" and "literally" are not the same thing, and you seem to be having quite a lot of trouble with that.

Of course, but not just me. Generations of scholars, rabbis and sages have done that, over centuries of discussion and debate, and never lightly. What else should they have done?

I'm not arguing that it hasn't been done, certainly anyone who tried to follow all the contradictory laws in the Bible would go insane and be put away doing so. I'm saying that if you really, honestly take this religion seriously and look at it rationally, then picking and choosing should be something that seriously disturbs you.

It occurs to me to ask: Exactly what are we supposed to be "picking and choosing"? What parts of the Bible do you think Jews DO take literally as a matter of theological importance?

I can think of none. Some parts of the Bible appear to be presented as historical, e.g., events that allegedly occurred before, during and after the reigns of David and Solomon; but the importance there is historical, not theological.

To go to the heart of the matter, when Jewish scholars discuss the Ten Commandments, the focus is on the laws themselves, not where they came from. Some may believe that they were inscribed on stone by the finger of God; others, that they were derived from other ancient codes and covenants, like the Code of Hammurabi.

That difference of opinion just isn't relevant. The question never comes up. That is not the focus of discussion, and it doesn't matter.

Rationalizing how you can take some parts of the "Word of God" more seriously than others should be problematic to someone who seriously believes.

Why?

I defy you to show me ANY book where some parts are not taken more seriously than others. Any nonfiction book will contain some passages that are generally accepted and noncontroversial, and others that are more apt to be debated. Any novel will contain parts that are there merely to establish setting and mood, and others that are concerned with character and plot.

I suspect that once again you are conflating "seriously" with "literally," where the latter just isn't a concern.

See, that's really the issue and since you admit it's purely subjective, it's really something that you can believe as you wish. You have no certainty because you have nothing upon which to base that certainty. You have belief and it's a belief based on desire and emotion, not fact. That's certainly not something upon which to base a claim of truth.

Quibbles aside, all that is precisely why I explicitly and consistently DON'T make a "claim of truth."

Atheism isn't something you try on, it's something that you're convinced of because of the utter lack of evidence for any other position.

And I would ask the same question that atheists quite rightly, ask theists who insist that one can only understand if one has "faith": How do I begin to believe something something that I don't, to wit, that concrete reality is all there is?

Seriously, it sounds like you're more interested in community and a sense of belonging than you are in any religion, you've only adopted the Jewish religion so you can fit into the Jewish community that expects it.

You're mindreading again. Fitting into the Jewish community is something that has been difficult for me, and it certainly isn't the reason I became a Jew. I converted because the Jewish approach to matters of faith, ethics and the belief in God was precisely congruent to my own. Freedom of thought, a non-doctrinaire approach to theology, and the principle that the nature and content of belief is not of primary importance anyway--all concepts that you seem to have difficulty reconciling with your definition of "religion."

Maybe God, like Number, exists in the human mind only, but like "One," is part of reality for all that.

Which just makes God a useful concept and tool, invented by humans, that has no importance in reality. Isn't it easier to just accept reality as it comes and use the tools we've invented to explore it?

I admit that when we get to my personal ideas here, as opposed to the precepts and approach of Judaism, I'm on less firm ground; but two thoughts occur to me here.

(1) Doesn't mathematics have "importance in reality"?

(2) If you admit that the God-concept is a "useful tool," what's wrong with using that tool to explore reality too? I would submit that it has been pretty useful over the last few millenia. I'm not one to deny that religion has had some pretty negative effects on humankind, but I don't think the effects have been entirely negative. For starters, it's a commonplace today that religion isn't a prerequisite for ethics, but that idea wasn't quite so obvious one or two or three thousand years ago. Many if the ideas we call "civilized" today, in fact, originated in Judaism. Thomas Cahill's The Gifts of the Jews makes a pretty strong case for that, and he isn't even Jewish nor speaking of religious ideas.

You're looking for comfort and certainty, but that's not how reality works.

I thought I made it clear that comfort and certainty were not my concerns. As I said, if they were, I would have remained a fundamentalist for life instead of for only a few months.

Once again; you are ascribing motivations to me that I just don't have.

We don't know everything, we will probably never know everything and every question that we answer just poses more questions.

You seem to be very certain indeed about the answers to some of them.

That's really why we get all of these religions, people want to know this monolithic, eternal *TRUTH* and the fact is, it doesn't exist.

If one wants a "monolithic, eternal *TRUTH*," Judaism certainly isn't the place to find it.

Inventing stories to make you feel better about the uncomfortable parts of reality doesn't change the uncomfortable parts of reality.

No, but reading stories--and even inventing them--can certainly help us explore and understand those uncomfortable parts. What else is a good book for?

Believing that you have an afterlife doesn't change the fact that you're going to die.

Agreed. But Jews don't teach that as a formal part of the religion; we don't claim to know.

Believing in an all-powerful God that watches over you doesn't change the fact that you're weak and powerless.

Jews especially don't believe that. The Holocaust pretty much blew any such thinking out of Judaism a couple of generations back, and the persecution of Jews over the centuries hadn't left much of it around in the first place.

All these things do is mask the very real issues we all face, it's self-deception in the face of reality.

Are all the precepts of every religion wholly false? Do they never deal with "very real issues," as opposed to masking them? I would submit that the very real and deep involvement of Jews, for explicitly religious reasons, in the American Civil Rights movement, not to mention the primarily religious opposition to slavery in Europe, argues otherwise.

It's one thing to argue that belief in God, per se, is wholly false. It's quite another to argue that religious belief has always and everywhere been useless, pointless and without positive aspect or effect. One may say that all of those effects "could have been" obtained without religion; but the objective, factual truth of the matter is that they weren't.

Unfortunately, the most comforting lie in the world is still a lie and the most uncomfortable truth is still the truth. Some of us choose truth over comfort.

I really think that characterizing religion as a "lie" is rather overstating the case, even your case. I would think, even from your own point of view, that the proper and appropriate term would be "mistake."

A "lie" is a knowing and deliberate statement of falsehood. Who lied?

The writers of the Bible certainly didn't. They were recording oral traditions and legends as they had heard them. As I said in the OP of the "Unanswered Challenge" and "Another Scriptural" threads, I think they did so in full knowledge that that was the nature of what they were writing.

Everything you say here, from beginning to end, is based on the sure and certain knowledge that there is no God. I have no such knowledge, and given my personal and subjective perceptions that move me to think that there is, or at least might be, I am still waiting for someone to move beyond "no evidence" and show me that as a proven fact.

In any case, I think we're done here. You are most certainly entitled to your opinions on the truth and value of religion in general, and as I've said from the start, I have no way to prove you wrong.

But on the subject of what a religion, i.e. Judaism, legitimately is or can be, what it must teach, and how it must teach it, I will not only say you are wrong, but incredibly arrogant. Jews are under no obligation to approach the nature and attributes of God, the nature and importance of Scripture, what it means to be a Jew, or anything else, in the same manner as other religions, or in any way dictated by anyone, even another Jew.

Judaism, as it is believed and practiced and understood by Jews, clearly does not fit your conception of what a religion ought to be.

That's reality. Deal with it--as you insist that humans are required to do.

[Cephus]

This is elementary but what do you call evidence and may you give enlightenment as to why multitudes upon multitudes ,year after year for two thousand years travel to a land where they may experience where at one time not so long ago a person of interest who they believe is God in human form ,wearing human made shoes stood,walked and spoke the golden rule?

Same reason millions upon millions of people travel, year after year, to Disneyland to spend time with Mickey Mouse. They deem it to be of personal importance. Just because lots of people do it doesn't mean that it's true, you're just using the logical fallacy argumentum ad populum.

Are these millions of travelers confused ?

I wouldn't know about their clarity, I don't see how their beliefs in Jesus have anything to do with confusion. Regardless of what they believe, the factual existence of Jesus or any of the things the Bible claims he did have not been proven.

Five times a day, millions of Muslims bow down toward Mecca. Are they confused?

Can you positively conclude that no one has had a spiritual experience just because you have not had one?

No but I can conclude that no one has ever demonstrated objectively that they have had a valid spiritual experience. Lots of drunks have seen pink elephants, doesn't mean pink elephants are real.

Is it true that evidence within the self is self evident?

It's true that personal experience may convince the individual and that pretty much every religion on the planet has people who claim personal experience of the divine. Doesn't make any of them real or valid.

[Cephus]

It's even harder when you don't recognize the existence of "apples" and insist that we may only talk about "oranges," "apples" being a different mode of belief. Not only my own, personal belief; you are refusing to regard modern Judaism itself as an authentic religion.

No, I'm not refusing to regard it as anything, I'm just pointing out that when words are used in a non-standard way, confusion occurs. There's a reason words have meanings and when you start changing the meanings, maybe it's a good idea to start changing the words as well.

From what you are saying here, literalist fundamentalism is the only non-hypocritical kind of belief there is, and it's false.

Oh hell no. I don't think there's a non-hypocritical kind of belief, period and literalist fundamentalism is about as far from non-hypocrisy as you can get. I'm just pointing out how inherently problematic it is to take a "holy book" and then pick and choose which parts you want to consider holy and which parts you don't. That's fine if you want to consider the Bible a book that ancient people wrote and nothing more, but if you're going to consider it divine, how do you determine which parts are divine and which are not? I'm just trying to examine the practice logically.

I would say that it's a combination of things for everyone. That's the nature of Judaism. Different people can emphasize different aspects, but no one denies the others.

So secular Jews don't deny the religious aspect? I don't think so.

(Except one; Jews are not and never have been a "race." as you yourself pointed out, one can be ethnically Chinese and still be a Jew. I know it's not your meaning or intention, but in general, only antisemites take the idea of a "Jewish race" seriously.)

Well, in the sense that there's a genetic component, a lot of traditional Jews think that if your mother was a Jew, then you're a Jew too. Certainly, the word "semitic" refers ethnologically to a specific group of related people that includes the Jews.

By converting, regardless of the sincerity of his belief, and marrying a Jew in a Jewish ceremony, he joined the community whether he gave a damn about it or not.

More a matter of the community declares him a member than he is actually one. Lots of religions do the same thing, if you're ever baptized, you're a member for life whether you ever go back or not and it's damned hard to get out of it. Most of them do it because it makes the membership numbers look good.

You may, certainly, question a belief in God in any form as being a false, deluded, whatever, belief; but when you say, as you have several times here, that I am not really a Jew because of my own personal theology, you are simply and factually wrong.

That's because I'm looking at Judiasm solely as a religion (we are, after all, on a forum for debating religion) and you're looking at it as a cultural thing. According to you, you could be Hitler and worship Satan, but as long as you were accepted as a Jew, you'd still be a Jew.

First, the Bible's literal truth is not so much rejected in liberal Judaism as held to be irrelevant, as I have showed you.

I don't see that it can possibly be irrelevant. Yes, you have shown that you can draw moral lessons from it regardless of it's factual truth and I agree with you, but when it comes right down to it, the religious claims within it have to be considered or you might as well be reading Harry Potter. What's the point of believing you're "God's chosen people" if there's no God?

Many modern Jews, perhaps most, don't bother to think about that question. It's of no importance. If you can't get your head around that, it's not my problem.

More a matter of they choose to ignore the question because it's problematic. Fundamentalist Chrisitans ignore clear contradictions in the Bible because they can't rationally explain them away, therefore they simply pretend they don't exist. That's a problem with religion in general, it pretends that theological problems aren't important. They *ARE* important and all the pretending otherwise doesn't change the fact.

Second, the process of determining what lessons or principles can be drawn from those accounts is extremely rational.

I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion since different people can read the same passage and come to different conclusions. How is a Jewish reading more rational than a Christian reading or a Muslim reading or an atheist reading?

Consider this; if there are contradictions of principle within the Torah, as there are, the question of origins doesn't help resolve them. What remains but rationality? The question of origins, then, is not only of no religious importance, it is of no practical importance either.

It is not rational to take a book that is supposedly divine in origin and just toss away the parts you don't like or can't reconcile. If the book is not supposedly divine, then why bother living by it at all? Beyond that, why bother having a religion at all, why bother with the tradition and the ceremony and the ritual, if it's just a book? It's not rational to base a religion on a non-religious book.

The Bible is not "the whole reason for having the religion in the first place"; God is. The Bible is not God, nor is it the reason we believe in God. Again, if you can't get your head around that, it's no problem of mine.

But without the Bible, you have no God. The Bible is the only "accurate" description of God you have, if you decide the Bible is wrong, then why isn't everything you believe about God wrong as well? It's like saying Harry Potter is real, but all the books by J.K. Rowling are wrong. Outside of those books, Harry Potter has no meaning. The only way to learn about Harry Potter is to read the books. If you reject the books, then there is no Harry Potter. Just like if you reject the Bible, there is no God.

You keep saying it's not your problem but it is. I'm pointing out logical problems with your religion and you're pretending it's not your problem. If you're just going to ignore the real problems that your beliefs pose, then why bother talking about it?

[Jerada Davidhefter]

I personally believe that, having the read the bible, it should be used as atheist propaganda, due to its innate fallacies and overall incredulity. I've read the bible, and I've read the Origin of Species, and I've read the Cat in the Hat, and out of those three, the Bible made the least sense.

For instance, the book of Job always provokes a certain jubilant feeling in me- just to witness such suicide of divinity gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I rather enjoy how all of these "sheep" are not in any way discouraged by their dictator's cruelty and callousness. The theologians take this book as a test of Job's faith, while, in reality, it is the mere childishness of a supernatural dictator, a celestial "nuh-uh" to his adversary, or counterpart, in the subterranean kingdom of hell.

If you'd like to present me with a passage of the bible that has not been proven contradictory (and, please, be sure that it is of significance, not some description of a bronze-age, middle-eastern city) I'd be happy to further said discussion.

[Cephus]

I personally believe that, having the read the bible, it should be used as atheist propaganda, due to its innate fallacies and overall incredulity.

As I've said many times, if more Christians would read the Bible, there would be fewer Christians. The kind of mental gymnastics people have to go through to make sense of *ANY* of it is absolutely mind blowing.