The LEGO guide to stoning & other Biblical stories

[Flip McWho]

Aussies don't really bash the Kiwis, since they really can't be arsed to care about those sheep-****ers...

Thats true. Mostly it's kiwis bashing aussies. Aussies are almost like the rest of you peoples. New Zealand? Is that a part of Australia?

[Drake Tungsten]

New Zealand? Is that a part of Australia?

It is, isn't it?

[Flip McWho]

Course it isn't. We lead some major changes in this world and are worthy of the recognition that we deserve.

[Skanky Burns]

Recognition?

[Kuciwalker]

That is because you are predisposed to hate the Bible. If you looked at the Bible with an open mind, you would understand it better.

I was raised Catholic, realized that the bible was spouting a bunch of unsupported crap, and decided I was an atheist.

[Flip McWho]

Hmmmm maybe i shoulda said we deserve recognition cause of these things.

[GePap]

The catholic version on the Bible, that its a bunch of nice stories, many of them alegorical, there to teach valuable religious lessons is fine by me. cause the doctrenarian view that every single world must be true strains all credibility.

I love the Brick Testament- the one about eye for an eye is very good.

[Enigma_Nova]

Re: The LEGO guide to stoning & other Biblical stories

The thing I can’t grasp, and hopefully someone can shed some light on, is how so many people can still take the Bible seriously?

It's some part of the human psyche that can be programmed.
Of course we all have that bit (and hence have learned to tie our shoelaces), but some people don't like to debug as much as others.

Believe it or not (I didn't at first) people can assimilate stuff without thinking about it - quite fascinating, I must say.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by gamenaught


But I did have an open mind. I grew up as a Christian and was a believer.

Then I started reading the many parts of the Bible that ministers and Sunday school teachers never seem to preach or teach. The very thing that made me realize that Christianity was absurd was the Bible itself.

And as Mark Twain said:

"It is not the things in the Bible I don't understand that bother me, it's the things in the Bible that I do understand that bother me."

Could you give me specific examples of what you consider absurd? That way I would know exactly what you are referring to.

I am a Christian. I am also well educated, having earned a M.S. in physics. I have studied most of the Bible, and I don't know of any part of the Bible that is absurd beyond belief.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by gamenaught


But I did have an open mind. I grew up as a Christian and was a believer.

Then I started reading the many parts of the Bible that ministers and Sunday school teachers never seem to preach or teach. The very thing that made me realize that Christianity was absurd was the Bible itself.

And as Mark Twain said:

"It is not the things in the Bible I don't understand that bother me, it's the things in the Bible that I do understand that bother me."

And many of those things reflect tribal customs and social mores from nearly 3,000 years ago. It would be surprising if they made any sense in a modern context, but there is more to the Bible than strict literal interpretation of the Old Testament.

[Kuciwalker]

I see Christianity as a nice way of preaching some moral values, but it is ABSURD to attach any objective truth to it (besides some limited historical stuff).

[gamenaught]

Could you give me specific examples of what you consider absurd? That way I would know exactly what you are referring to.

Things like perverted justice: infinite torture for finite sins, infinite torture for simply not believing something, punishing innocent children and the yet-to-born for sins committed by their ancestors. Bizarre rules. Huge numbers of contradictions. A “loving” God slaughtering people left and right. Blind faith as a virtue. The list goes on and on, many of them featured on the thebricktestament website, many of them debated endlessly on these boards, a zillion that can be Googled.

But my question isn’t how these things can be explained. I have already read the extremely contorted rationalizations of the apologetics.

Instead, my curiosity has more to do with the psychological defense mechanisms that so many people employ to preserve their fairy tale beliefs against overwhelming logic.

I can understand normal, everyday rationalizations but most of those are low-involvement, unchallenged conclusions. And I understand how people can really, really want to believe something. But what I can’t grasp, is how people can hold onto those beliefs despite massive logic and evidence to the contrary.

Enigma may be onto something with his programming analogies. Some people do seem to have a Write-Once memory with no debugger, spam filter, or virus checker.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Just another day at the office for Yahweh

[gamenaught]

Just another day at the office for Yahweh

or -

"Jesus Saves. But not before his morning coffee."

[Enigma_Nova]

Well I'm not without my own belief foibles.
I have Ego in my head and Vanity in my veins; It's always a matter not of whether it is true, but whether it helps you to believe it.

As a general rule it helps to believe what's true, because working on correct information you arrive at correct conclusions, and making decisions is vital to every human's survival.
Of course there are other motives for belief.

Let's list some of my beliefs which I believe are dubious:
1. There exists a system of corruption:
Ignorance / Conformism / Role models, the combination inspires (causes?) people to form a teeming hive of humanity that unfortunately values impulsive stupidity more than it does deep thought.
2. I have / am deep thought (or at least the antipode to system mentioned above)
3. There is conflict between these two factions, my faction needs to win in order to help the human condition.

So why believe something which you know to be false?
My motivation here lies in giving myself a motive and a purpose to my existence (ironically it's to undermine the purpose and remove the existence of others but anyway...)
It's also seated in my emotional reactions as a youngster, thinking for myself and trying to explain the antagony I experienced from those around me.

So it's a practical belief, in that it gives me motivation, and an emotional belief i.e. based on feelings not facts.
But before you try to assign a fundy beleif into either of these two boxes...
There are also Social beliefs, beliefs held to cause one to be part of a collective. These, often formed by peers or in childood, are presumed truths also.
There's a 4th, I call it an Experential (or Chaotic) belief. Simply put if experience supports it you believe it.
I call it chaotic because seeing a glowing orb travel across the sky is a motive for believing both the Earth is turning and Apollo is dragging it around in his chariot.
In addition to this, there is a Logical belief.

Chances are that I've missed others as well, and that these beliefs are not disjoint, so take this with a grain of salt.
There are many motivations for beliefs, including:
1. Logic
2. Feelings
3. Experience
4. Psychosomatic (practical)
5. Social motivations

The human mind tends to believe things (this process is called 'learning'), and may be proof of our lack of enlightenment. It takes time and effort to reshuffle beliefs, and if a belief is a foundation (like for example my #2 belief there) it could take days to re-evaluate.

Why do we believe?
How and what do we believe?
Should we believe?
Those are some interesting questions, but perhaps not possible to answer definately. You can answer them from your perceptions and values - your own beliefs - but that just forms a circular argument.

These are some of my thoughts on the matter. You can believe me, or not believe me. It is your choice. But here are some things to think about; Decide your own beleif
Or if you are truly wise, you may decide to hold no belief at all.