So dull. Reddit tier, cringe, cope, seethe. Ways to avoid actually saying something of value.
Anyway, what exactly are we supposed to believe? Truly believe the stories? What does that even mean? I've seen it come up before with Christians and a Mohammedan.
Anyway, what exactly are we supposed to believe? Truly believe the stories? What does that even mean? I've seen it come up before with Christians and a Mohammedan.
Having a bunch of stories is one thing. But being obliged to "truly believe" them is a very Christian projection onto pagans. There are different types of stories. It would be downright retarded to take them all as true in some historical sense.
I made a whole thread on an example of this. Is this story meant to be history? I highly doubt it. It has no particular value as history, but that does not make it "untrue" either. It is a very clear model of how things are. And of course I believe it.
If you press Christians on their own stories, you will find that many of them(now and historically) do not "truly believe". The Bible says Yahweh threw rocks down on the Israelites' enemies to crush them. See if they believe that. Does anyone believe the Sun stopped for Joshua?
The Bible also says that Jacob made striped sheep by letting the sheep mate in front of a striped stick. This was part of a scheme to trick his uncle(who was also cheating him, to be fair) who promised him any (rare) striped sheep born among the flocks as payment. Anyone believe?
The Bible also has Yahweh directly responsible for weather in a way that is not fashionable among Christians now. Even references the storehouses for hail and rain, when bragging to Job. He is called "rider on the clouds", too, with a thundering voice.
Will anyone try to argue with me that eating the host will choke a liar, and therefore priests being tried only need to eat the wafer and be found innocent? That is what was done in the middle ages. Or that the "ordeal of bitter water" ought to be applied for suspected adultery?
There are numerous Christian writers of some fame from the past that did not believe many of the Bible stories. They resorted to allegorical readings of them. I don't discount this entirely but to me it looks like a whole lot of cope, considering they denied this option to pagans
Second, nothing about most of the Bible stories indicates fable to me. A lot of it is obviously written as actual history(or pseudo-history). Like when Joshua crushed all his enemies, that only has value if you think it literally happened. It ends with Israel claiming the land.
It has no importance without some relation to Israelite tribes actually settling the land of Canaan. A huge amount of the Bible is devoted to a land grant and how to hold on to that land grant.
And if you want to see actual cope(by that word's definition) look at the prophecies about the restoration of Jerusalem after its conquest by Babylon that dominate a lot of the Bible. They didn't come true in any of the ways they were supposed to.
The Book of Daniel is a literal cope for this too. Jerusalem was never supposed to be attacked again, and Israel was supposed to rule the nations. Yahweh was going to come and write his law on the hearts of every Jew, after the exile was done. This never happened.
Instead we see the Jews fearful of the Samaritans, dominated by the Persians then the Greeks. Jerusalem was sacked by Ptolemy. Then by Pompey. According to Jeremiah there was supposed to be 70 years of exile before the prophecies came true. Didn't happen.
Then the Book of Daniel comes along, and in it Daniel is told by the angel Michael "Oh, 70 years. You all got that wrong, it was actually 70 times 7 years(490)." Yeah, sure. We see this in the New Testament too, over the failed return of Jesus in the timeframe originally given.
We see how the idea of the imminent end of the world is gradually downplayed, then dropped. The excuses in the New Testament for why it hadn't happened: God is waiting for more gentiles to convert first, kind of a time extension. Or God's timetable is different...
Or God is giving a bit of time for believers to shape up, or else. Again, this is the very definition of coping with something that failed and was difficult to justify.
When I look at a story(many of which are or originated as poetry) I ask myself what its purpose was. What did the hearers of the story get out of it? Why would this story be told? One reason is "because that's how it happened" but there's plenty of other reasons that can overlap.
It's possible that everything Homer said literally happened. Or maybe some of it, but not all. And other stories as well, including the Poetic Edda. I am not certain why it is I am not allowed by this Christian to believe them, literally or otherwise.
I think what they mean to say is that we can't believe them because the stories are often miraculous and full of some implausible things(to say the least). And often operating on an almost dreamlike internal logic.
Did Numa Pompilius REALLY talk to gods and frame the Roman cultic and legal system based on those conversations? I think so. If I am not allowed to believe that, why give credence to the belief that Moses spoke to Yahweh? Seems arbitrary to me.
The one who is like an atheist is the Christian that says things like the quote tweet. That type of arbitrary skepticism is pretty much what led to Enlightenment(and later) religious skepticism.
"In our modern age no one could believe THAT." May as well join hands with atheists if you think so. Why believe in mumbo jumbo like souls, or angels, or demons, while you are at it. If you can't swallow poison and live like Mark 16 says, why think you are even a true believer?
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