There is an interesting article in a recent episode of Time. It is an excerpt from a new book. The book is about how god changes from "Kill your neighbor" to "Love your neighbor" (to back again on occasion!) thruout the texts of the Old Testament, New Testament, & Koran, and he links all of these changes to historical events happening when the various pieces of these religious texts were being written.
Bottomline for him is when it was a "zero-sum" situation (in order for 1 to win, the other must lose), then god was real big on killing those who were not like you, but when the situation changed & working w/ your neighbors was a win-win scenario, then god got kindler & gentler. I might have to hunt this book down on Half.com sometime..
Oh, & let me go ahead & post the specifics here in case you are interested:
Robert Wright: The Evolution of God Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.
Well between you, me and the lamp post, I've always believed that the bible was mainly written to accommodate whatever the latest motivations were. I have always had a hard time believing that it wasn't a book written in a bar by 40 different people :) Much like King James "altered" certain parts to work for his reign, I think others have done the same.
I think it is definitely the work of a whole lot of authors, & it is certainly not a book to be taken literally, but is sories or parables for people to learn from.
People have to realize that the jews were a wandering, nomadic people at the time of the Old Testament, and so it spoke to their wilder spirits.
From what I glean from the article, the end result the fellow was hoping people to glean from the book is that our religions are not so different & that all of them went thru its violent stages as well as its peaceful ones.
I think people's lives would be much happier if it were used as a loose guidebook as opposed to "the word of God" as it were. All of those lovely religions teach the morals by which we are supposed to live and they are all the same in every book really. Don't be an ass. Good moral really :D
Bottomline for him is when it was a "zero-sum" situation (in order for 1 to win, the other must lose), then god was real big on killing those who were not like you, but when the situation changed & working w/ your neighbors was a win-win scenario, then god got kindler & gentler. I might have to hunt this book down on Half.com sometime..
Oh, & let me go ahead & post the specifics here in case you are interested:
Robert Wright: The Evolution of God
Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.
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People have to realize that the jews were a wandering, nomadic people at the time of the Old Testament, and so it spoke to their wilder spirits.
From what I glean from the article, the end result the fellow was hoping people to glean from the book is that our religions are not so different & that all of them went thru its violent stages as well as its peaceful ones.
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