I was going to go on some long, blathering rant. But I thought of a snide comment, and the snide comment made me consider a serious point.
The snide comment was "Doesn't the Bible say it's okay to bang your daughter if your wife is sterile?" And I imagined asking Pat Robertson if he advocated this, and if not, why not, if it's in the Bible. And his answer would probably be "Because times have changed and it's reprehensible to us today."
Well, if the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and this part of it is nevertheless subject to reflection and interpretation in the context of our present society, why not the other parts so many people find contentious?
But the deeper point is that the faithful simply do not see a contradiction here. The Bible just is whatever they see it as; their interpretation is God's intent. Well, how do you reason with that? That's not Christianity, that's the human mind.
And while thinking about it, I wondered if you can get through to them. In someone else's journal, I'm talking about art and the distinction between technique and content, and the person I'm talking to just doesn't see what I'm writing, even though it's right there in front of them. They choose to believe I'm saying some other thing, in spite of the actual words.
I'm done now. -:) I just wanted to adjust it to a level of drama-exposure with which I was comfortable. Too much chance of it being discovered on postvixen by people I'd really rather not talk with about this.
That's exactly what turned me, personally, off of Christianity. I looked at the arguments I was making to defend the faith, and I realized that I was taking my conclusion and working backward. I knew what I wanted needed to believe, and all I had to do was connect the dots to get there. The last straw was realizing that, if I really wanted to, I could do the same thing to defend just about anything. I looked hard at myself and thought, "If you had been born in, say, Japan, could you not see yourself just easily making a very similar argument in favor of Buddhism?" I could not tell myself with any certainty that the answer was no. Ever since then, I've been very, very skeptical of people who think that merely having an answer for everything constitutes a real defense of their beliefs.
The snide comment was "Doesn't the Bible say it's okay to bang your daughter if your wife is sterile?" And I imagined asking Pat Robertson if he advocated this, and if not, why not, if it's in the Bible. And his answer would probably be "Because times have changed and it's reprehensible to us today."
Well, if the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and this part of it is nevertheless subject to reflection and interpretation in the context of our present society, why not the other parts so many people find contentious?
But the deeper point is that the faithful simply do not see a contradiction here. The Bible just is whatever they see it as; their interpretation is God's intent. Well, how do you reason with that? That's not Christianity, that's the human mind.
And while thinking about it, I wondered if you can get through to them. In someone else's journal, I'm talking about art and the distinction between technique and content, and the person I'm talking to just doesn't see what I'm writing, even though it's right there in front of them. They choose to believe I'm saying some other thing, in spite of the actual words.
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