I do have to laugh at the zealots as they do pick and choose what bits of the bible they live their lives by. It’s almost as if they heard someone else say something and took it as gospel without doing their own research.
I have picked up a copy of the bible, with the aim of understanding it to be able to have an informed discussion on religious arguments.
It’s difficult to have a discussion. Since the bible is contradictory they can always find something to wiggle around. You are trying to combat a deadly combo of little education, low intelligence, and proud ignorance. You don’t have a chance
The real play is to dismiss it as the book of fiction it is, and as an adult I refuse to live by laws created from fan fic
The bible is clearly not a single book, it’s a collection of writings by different authors hundreds of years apart. Of course it’s contradictory. Also, not everything in there is equal in terms of importance. The 10 commandments are pretty high up there in terms of importance, but even they were supplanted by the teachings of Jesus (which can be summarized as “love one another”).
Bigots usually find their justification in Leviticus, which is a minor book explaining rules for the Hebrew society in like 1000 BC. That’s the only place where homosexuality is mentioned, for example. But then, it also says women in their period have to sleep in a separate tent.
Anyway, if you research it properly, you’ll see that stuff like hating gays is actually a worse sin than being gay. I haven’t researched abortion specifically, but even if you consider it a sin, all the hate around it is a worse sin anyway. Jesus said that heaven is happier with a sinner who repents than with someone who never sinned anyway.
I’m not really religious, but I was raised in a religious family that actually follows that philosophy (love one another).
In various parts of the bible, unborn children range from being an object owned by the father to which any damage to the goods must be repaid with currency; to God himself aborting them.
Good luck. I did Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through high school with ‘religion’ classes every semester. I wouldn’t say my knowledge of the Bible is encyclopedic, but I do think it’s better than the average Christian. The more I learned of the Bible, the more I hated Christianity but not really because of what was in the Bible. The Old Testament is on another level, but most modern Christians claim to forgo that part in favor of the New Testament and Jesus’s teachings. The biblical representation of Jesus was an awesome dude, and he would despise what the Catholic church has become. He’d be all up in those mega churches whipping people left and right lol.
However, my main point in this comment is to say good luck, because the people you will be arguing against will be much less informed than you are but will believe they know everything and they WILL NOT argue with you in good faith.
That’s delightful.
I do have to laugh at the zealots as they do pick and choose what bits of the bible they live their lives by. It’s almost as if they heard someone else say something and took it as gospel without doing their own research.
I have picked up a copy of the bible, with the aim of understanding it to be able to have an informed discussion on religious arguments.
It’s difficult to have a discussion. Since the bible is contradictory they can always find something to wiggle around. You are trying to combat a deadly combo of little education, low intelligence, and proud ignorance. You don’t have a chance
The real play is to dismiss it as the book of fiction it is, and as an adult I refuse to live by laws created from fan fic
The bible is clearly not a single book, it’s a collection of writings by different authors hundreds of years apart. Of course it’s contradictory. Also, not everything in there is equal in terms of importance. The 10 commandments are pretty high up there in terms of importance, but even they were supplanted by the teachings of Jesus (which can be summarized as “love one another”).
Bigots usually find their justification in Leviticus, which is a minor book explaining rules for the Hebrew society in like 1000 BC. That’s the only place where homosexuality is mentioned, for example. But then, it also says women in their period have to sleep in a separate tent.
Anyway, if you research it properly, you’ll see that stuff like hating gays is actually a worse sin than being gay. I haven’t researched abortion specifically, but even if you consider it a sin, all the hate around it is a worse sin anyway. Jesus said that heaven is happier with a sinner who repents than with someone who never sinned anyway.
I’m not really religious, but I was raised in a religious family that actually follows that philosophy (love one another).
In various parts of the bible, unborn children range from being an object owned by the father to which any damage to the goods must be repaid with currency; to God himself aborting them.
Good luck. I did Catholic school from kindergarten all the way through high school with ‘religion’ classes every semester. I wouldn’t say my knowledge of the Bible is encyclopedic, but I do think it’s better than the average Christian. The more I learned of the Bible, the more I hated Christianity but not really because of what was in the Bible. The Old Testament is on another level, but most modern Christians claim to forgo that part in favor of the New Testament and Jesus’s teachings. The biblical representation of Jesus was an awesome dude, and he would despise what the Catholic church has become. He’d be all up in those mega churches whipping people left and right lol.
However, my main point in this comment is to say good luck, because the people you will be arguing against will be much less informed than you are but will believe they know everything and they WILL NOT argue with you in good faith.
Jesus would be an AnSoc while being really let down with a good chunk of AnSocs