 | Yeah if you are reading the bible solely so you can point out all of the plotholes and inconsistencies in it, then you are completely missing the point. It was never meant to be one perfectly consistent narrative that is 100% literal fact no questions asked from beginning to end despite what some fundies may say. It's a collection of historical events; myths that formed the basis of ancient Israelite beliefs; documents of the oral tradition, culture, and beliefs of these same people; editorials and letters of early Christians; and overall, it's a collection of a vast amount of historical evidence from several different times periods that illustrate how Judaism and Christianity began, changed, and grew over time. Reading the Bible just to nitpick it and prove every little thing that could possibly be false is like spending years at an archaeological dig unearthing several pieces of evidence from a long dead culture, and instead of trying to piece the evidence together to get a clearer picture of what that culture may have been like and when it existed, you instead spend your time degrading it because the piece of writing you found was obviously biased, completely out in left field, and contradicted another piece of evidence found in the same dig. Do you see people writing thesis' and essays that nitpick other historical works of literature for being inaccurate? No because that is not the point.
Granted that yes, in essence the "original" bible does not really exist and all we have today are translations of translations of translations of rewritings that eventually became the King James Bible that was then translated endlessly again, but the bible is still a collection of cultural and historical artifacts that offer insight into an earlier time among a particular group of people.
Also, I believe that it is necessary for religions to change and grow over time, and that by changing and growing, overall, humanity gets a little closer to the truth. After all, it is only by questioning things that we are able to improve at all. The Bible is not the end all be all of Judaism/Christianity. It is one resource that shows how both religions have evolved over time due to MANY factors, and how they continue to evolve (and divide) today. For instance, many beliefs of various forms of modern Christianity come not from the bible, but were ingrained over time from works of literature such as The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. However, these works were inspired by Christianity itself, challenged things, and ended up setting a precedent for Christianity thereafter. Art imitates life and life imitates art. It's in the same way that a 1930s Coca-Cola ad led to our modern day image of Santa-Claus. It doesn't matter today if that wasn't how Santa-Claus was originally perceived, because now it is an ingrained part of our culture. In the same way, it does not matter if certain Christian viewpoints are not actually in the Bible, because Christianity has evolved to include those concepts over time from other sources, and when you remember that the Bible itself is nothing more than a collection of sources anyway, is that really such a hard concept to grasp?
Granted I am one of the people who essentially became agnostic after I actually bothered to READ the Bible, but I am very interested now in studying it for what it is, and it still hasn't convinced me that religion/Christianity in general is complete BS, and I don't believe that faith is something that can be rationally proven or dis-proven by skeptically analyzing it to death. It is one of those things where you are going to find exactly what you set out to find. If you are determined to prove the Bible false, then you will find it false. If you are determined to believe without a shadow of a doubt, you will find that everything in the Bible is true. Let's just say that I prefer to take a middle ground, but in order to do that, I can neither completely denounce, nor completely believe everything in it. I rely on common sense and proven facts to help me determine my interpretation and what I believe, but at the same time, in order to be truly objective, I have to be open minded to the possibility that it is all true, or at the very least, that it holds fundamental truths, or involves things that we cannot rationally understand. Considering that all we have is a translation of a translation of a translation that was handed down over several generations before even being written down and then passed over several more generations, I'd say that any interpretation of it is possible, and the only people who are complete bullshit are those who claim that their interpretation is the only one. Yes this includes atheists/agnostics too who I swear some of them can be as bad as fundies when it comes to unrealistic close-minded dogma.
Tl;dr: Don't worry, somehow I got into an essay regarding my own religious views. Also Dogma sucks, and people who constantly point out the flaws and nitpicks in the bible while completely ignoring everything else about it are just as bad and people who believe it as 100% completely literal fact.
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