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How should Atheists view the Bible and other religious texts?

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Humanist_Activist Donating Member (603 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:05 PM
Original message
How should Atheists view the Bible and other religious texts?
I see the accusation that atheists treat the Bible like fundamentalists do and I would say that, to a certain extent this is true, but only under specific circumstances. The Bible is an interesting work, a combination of oral history, written history, myths and legends, political treatise, poetry, etc. It illustrates the development of the Israelite religion from Polytheism to Monolatrist Polytheism and finally to Monotheism.

What I take from the Bible now that I didn't before I lost my faith is actually an understanding of how the concept of god was developed, and I was able to research the historical veracity of many of its claims, some are accurate(siege of Jerusalem), and some are not(enslavement of Hebrews by Egypt), and almost all have some type of mythic element, either talking about the actions of gods or the actions of prophets that are supernatural. Compared to other myths and legends, both in the Middle East and elsewhere, I didn't see much difference between them and the Bible.

It would be easy enough to do something similar to what Thomas Jefferson did, and remove the mythical elements, the morally questionable ones, and, with new evidence, the historically inaccurate ones, and come up with a book that is nothing more than a historical account of the ancient Hebrews. But I'm digressing a bit, but this is basically my view of the Bible.

But this isn't how I treat it when debating Christians or Jews who quote from the same book, its one thing to quote something that can be backed up by evidence, its something else to quote something you like and claim its some type of objective truth. The problem is this, lack of evidence, when atheists accuse Christians and others of cherry picking from the Bible, its not the cherry picking itself that's the problem, its the lack of evidence for the cherry picking we have a problem with.

To give an example, Isaac Newton is considered a great scientist, discovered the laws of motion, optics, and the first laws on gravity, he was also an alchemist and wanted to discover the Philosopher's stone. So scientists may study his Principia Mathematica, but don't seriously study what alchemical writings have survived over the years except when it may provide incite into his state of mind(he suffered a breakdown when studying alchemy), or to better illuminate on his beliefs. Does this mean that his work on laws of motion, optics and gravity are wrong? Well, technically yes, when they aren't accurate in making predictions, but not in all cases(we have Einstein's theories as backup). The point is that even scientists and scholars cherry pick, but for only because the evidence is lacking on the works they ignore, sure they are read, but its not like any modern chemist is looking to create the Philosopher's Stone. Indeed, at this point, there's no need to, you could turn lead into gold, it just takes a LOT of energy and time to do so, smash the right atoms together and you can have a result of gold atoms being created in the process. Way to expensive to be practical, but its not magic.

OK, I digressed again, so, everyone cherry picks, but that's no reason to criticize someone by itself, its cherry picking for subjective reasons, with no evidence for the cherry picking, that is the problem. When a Christian quotes from the Bible about anything, they should be prepared for the floodgates to open, because we can quote from it too, and because of the way the Bible is constructed, as, more or less, a muddled mess of some verified history combined with unverified mythology, atheists do not have the luxury of subjectivity, there is no guide to how to interpret the Bible correctly, whatever that means, so we are forced to treat the entire book more or less the same, similar to fundamentalists, but for a different reason. We don't think the Bible itself is true, no more so than any other mythology, so seeing people pick out a part of the Bible as true, especially when there's no evidence for it, is grating to say the least.

Again, the problem is subjectivity, from what I have observed of Christians and others, they take away from the Bible only the things they already believe about their version of Jesus and/or god, this is as true of Liberal Christians as it is of Fundamentalists. The problem is there is very little evidence to support this perspective, Jesus may certainly have existed, but we have little idea as to what he actually said and what he didn't actually say, there's no verifiable way to determine that without new archeological evidence. In addition, the supernatural aspects of his life, and of the life of the many prophets and others in the Bible are almost certainly mythical. The same is true about Yahweh himself(or themselves). I have yet to find one theist of any sort who believes in a god they disagree with on anything, the only conclusion to draw from this is that the gods they believe in aren't real, but rather a reflection of their own beliefs.
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sinkingfeeling Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:12 PM
Response to Original message
1. Like another book.
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Humanist_Activist Donating Member (603 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:16 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Depends on the type of book, a book of the time, certainly...
It should be treated in a similar way to the Enûma Eliš and other similar works, but not like a textbook on Algebra, or a History book.
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Angry Dragon Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:22 PM
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3. So are you saying there is no god??
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trotsky Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:27 PM
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4. The answer is clear to me from reading this forum.
Liberal believers insist that we should view the bible exactly like they do. They are just as certain of their interpretation as Fred Phelps, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, and Rick Perry are of theirs.
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laconicsax Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 10:40 PM
Response to Reply #4
16. Exactly.
I'll even bet that fundamentalists like Robertson would say of atheists that we read the Bible with the same eyes as liberal Christians who pick and choose what verses they follow.
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demosincebirth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:34 PM
Response to Original message
5. I really don't care how they view it.
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Kalidurga Donating Member (627 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:39 PM
Response to Reply #5
6. Pulp Fiction
only not as well written.
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stopbush Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:54 PM
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7. It's a work of historical fiction, a Bronze-Aged "Gone With The Wind," if you will.
It's set in an historical era and includes any number of actual historic figures (Herod, Pilate,etc) to give it historic verisimilitude as an offset to it's many fictional archetypes (Moses, King David, Jesus, et al). God gets tossed in to legitimize the genocide of the OT and the anti-intellectualism of the NT.

It's certainly not a book that offers a compelling moral or ethical standard by which to run ones life. Plus, it absolutely sucks as a history lesson.
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rug Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 01:57 PM
Response to Original message
8. You sound ambivalent.
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EC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 02:02 PM
Response to Original message
9. I view them as folk lore.
Handed down by ancestors.
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Meshuga Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 09:24 PM
Response to Reply #9
15. I view it in the same way.
And hiding the embarrassing stuff makes no sense. The good, the bad, and the ugly in biblical passages give us an idea of how people contemporaneous to when some of the stuff was written (and people from the region the passages were written) viewed the world.
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Tesha Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 02:25 PM
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10. As anthropologically-interesting fiction/folk tales. (NT)
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cleanhippie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-13-11 12:29 PM
Response to Reply #10
18. +1
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ProgressiveProfessor Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 05:25 PM
Response to Original message
11. Any way the want except for the Koran
Some sacrileges are more important than others.
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Exultant Democracy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 08:06 PM
Response to Original message
12. In it's place in our rich species rich history of mythology. Myths are important
learning about them, what they are, how to recognize them and what they tell us about ourselves or the cultures that they come from.
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digonswine Donating Member (463 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 08:08 PM
Response to Original message
13. To nitpick-
Newton's physics can indeed make very accurate predictions. On our size scale-they do quite well indeed.
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cleanhippie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-08-11 09:19 PM
Response to Original message
14. As just another work of fiction.
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CJvR Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-09-11 08:23 AM
Response to Original message
17. I view it...
Edited on Tue Aug-09-11 08:23 AM by CJvR
...as a very poorly written Silmarillion.

I actually read the Silmarillion first and then I thought I would give the Bible a shot. The one unescapable conclution from that experiment was that the Bible makes a whole lot more sense if you cast Jahve as Melkor. A really bad ancient fiction.
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Curmudgeoness Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-13-11 04:50 PM
Response to Original message
19. I have never thought much about how I view the bible, but
I do view it as myth. I also think there is some historical relevance, although much of that is skewed to the views of the writers.

I love when people quote the bible, since for every quote, there is a quote that says basically the opposite. It can be great fun and games if you encounter one of these people who have some standard quotes to throw around.

Me, I like to quote from Steve Martin's The Jerk. "This is shit, and this is shine-ola, now you know the difference."
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