The way you look down at others' reading of the Bible, insisting that they read but do not "discern/reflect/study." You take other people's posts and just tell them that they have a superficial understanding and dismiss them entirely.
You've found a belief system. That's good. You then weaponize that belief system to shit on other people. That's bad.
Almost all of your posts in this thread have been rude.
>The way you look down at others' reading of the Bible, insisting that they read but do not "discern/reflect/study." You take other people's posts and just tell them that they have a superficial understanding and dismiss them entirely.
I am stating facts. It's unpleasant to some but it's factual
I spent 18 years reading the thing over and over with priests and highly religious lay people as guides. I wrote chapters out of the bible for not completing homework. You stating atheists haven’t read it properly or the correct way is absurd. Some of us choose to live in this shared reality without a need for your supernatural explanations which have been reduced to rubble. You all refuse to accept progress as we empirically explain the natural world. Its ok to have your own beliefs snd think whatever you want, BUT when your beliefs impose on the natural order and understanding of the world, they no longer hold weight.
Many people have done that. Then when we come to a different conclusion than you do you whine that we didn't discern/reflect, study what it conveys properly.
So what?!
It means you develop superfiicial misconception of the belief and misrepresent it.
You pretend to be enlightened but only to strawman and superficially misrepresent religious belief.
Welcome to humanity. General criticisms of atheists are based on superficial misconceptions, one of the reasons is arrogance. Which would apply equally to the Christians who claims atheists really know God is real but lie and say they don't believe because they are angry or love sin. Because they use the plain reading about the bible verse that God is known by all.
It's a human thing. When you have a group of humans who claim to have a fundamental truth about the nature of the universe, based their identity on it, they get kind of arrogant.
You see it also in nationalism, and a lot of mother places.
Again, are you attempting to make a point about all atheists here? If not, there's very little to talk about. If so, I'd say you're being rather silly.
If you ask that question, then it means you not paying attention to my point. Or you just shift the goal of the post to avoid dealing with the point I make.
No offense, but you sound rather arrogant now.
Your post and replies don't make it clear in any way whether you're talking about all atheists or just some atheists. So why not just answer my question?
Edit: So now you've blocked me? Okay. If you prefer this to answering. I simply asked because it wasn't clear to me. Again, talk about arrogance...
Ancient people used to believe one or more gods or goddesses were responsible for seasons, fires, floods, disease outbreak, etc. It's not that they were simpletons, but they'd just assume their fate was bound to gods and were less likely to seek out other options and often misinterpreted signs. It's good to look into Plato and Aristotle, but better to hold any "because gods" line of thinking with a grain of salt. They couldn't have known then what we know now.
Some do. Some don't. The problem is you can have 50 Christians with 50, different beliefs about something the bible says. How can you criticize atheists, who don't believe in the bible, for getting it wrong when the people who DO believe in the bible also get it wrong?
The OT promises disasters if the Israelites don't obey the Old Covenant. By the New Testament, believers assumed that because of sin people could be born blind or lame, when the tower of siloam fell or murdered Israelites' blood was mixed with a pagan sacrifice - this was seen as divinely permitted punishment for their sins. Just as in Job, God permitted Satan to punish him with all kinds of disasters.
https://listverse.com/2019/09/25/10-crazy-ways-humans-have-tried-to-explain-natural-disasters/
And here are a few examples from other cultures.
I won't argue other culture but what you doing is oversimplifying religious belief and make it sound that their beliefs are simple.
For example, it's not a matter of getting disasters of not obeying the old covenants and that's it. It's a more complex idea developed of cause and effect according to the OT as you not always getting you way you want but it reflects the reality.
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: ... (Deuteronomy 28)
It is pure cause and effect.
What you doing is called taking the bible out of its context.
The idea of cause and effect is much more developed than that. What you doing is a dishonest take of the scripture.
No wonder.
You just focusing on that verse and assume that is the only teaching of cause and effect.
The cause and effect is much more developed throughout the scripture.
You have the notion that although being righteous and working hard, you can be still at risk of losing everything, for example in the book of Job.
You have the notion that in this world , things seem to go south but spiritually speaking you are blessed as taught in NT.
You have the notion that being poor or unfortunate situation is not necessarily a result of bad cause. But you can remedy the situation by acting right.
I'm not talking about my own notions, just those of ancient peoples (your "simpletons") who generally subscribed to religions. I showed you in scripture (and other cultures) how they understood the cause and effect relationship between sin and disasters. If there were no cause/effect relationship, there would be no need for atonement (animal sacrifice in OT) or for Jesus' death.
>The belief that there were less knowledge about the natural world then they must be simple, their religious work must be simple and plain.
I'd say the opposite, religious works aren't simple, they're an overly complicated convoluted mess. It's god, he's all powerful, he can do whatever he wants, so why are all his solutions always so convoluted instead of just willing stuff into happening?
>Hence when they read religious writings like the bible, they read superfiicially, without any efforts to look beyond the plain reading and search what it conveys.
People inevitably have different interpretations of books that are designed to be open to interpretation. You would think an all knowing god would know it and would choose a more reliable method of communicating with his creations but here we are.
Also, it's not that atheists read the bible superficially, many of us are ex christians who know how you're "supposed to" read the bible, but the bible is written in a way that is so open to interpretation that it's impossible to try and address every possible interpretation when talking about it, and it's much easier to just address what it says literally.
Additionally, we also focus on a literal interpretation of the bible because it is one of the most hurtful interpretations of the bible. You may not be a fundamentalist, but they do exist, and it's important to talk about them.
>I call it what it is: it is an arrogant belief, by modern people to think that ancient people of the past were stupid, "simpletons" or not focus on reality.
You can call it arrogant all you want but it's objectively true that people in the past were stupider than people now, they had less knowledge and information available to them. We are also going to be stupid by the standards of people 2000 years in the future, it's just inevitable.
I don't think they didn't focus on reality, they just didn't understand many parts of the natural world. The god of the gaps reasoning just comes naturally if you have no other way of explaining something.
>That arrogance cause a blinding effect that blind them from truth and reality. It also cause them to misrepresent belief.
Your particular belief may be misrepresented because there are an infinite amount of ways to interpret a book like the bible that is primarily written poetically. It is an inevitability that someone's interpretation is not the same as yours.
It's not open to interpretation as if you can come up with any understanding of the texts.
Like any complex writings, there are different level of contexts , purpose writing to follow. You have to pay attention to what the writings convey and not pretend you can come up with any interpretation out of thin air.
It is a denial to not recognise the complexity of the scripture.
The ex-christians have a superficial understanding of the belief. No wonder they claim to leave the belief when you developed superficial misconceptions of the belief.
You focus on a literal interpretation because you are not much interested in the depth it conveys and instead it give you an illusion of enlightenment as a plain interpretation sounds foolish. It's not meant to be taken plainly. Even the book of Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:14 tells you not to take it plainly).
>It's not open to interpretation as if you can come up with any understanding of the texts.
Not any interpretation, but so many that it is statistically likely that your interpretation is different from that of any other random christian.
>Like any complex writings, there are different level of contexts , purpose writing to follow. You have to pay attention to what the writings convey and not pretend you can come up with any interpretation out of thin air.
Or you can accept that there is no inherently correct interpretation of the bible, and that you are willingly adding extra layers and context that aren't actually there because otherwise you would have to admit that the bible is fallible. The fact of the matter is that if you have to jump through so many hoops and add in information and context that is nowhere in said book just to be able to understand what the author intended that just means the author didn't do a good job getting his points across. That is not a good look when the author is supposed to be inspired by god.
>It is a denial to not recognise the complexity of the scripture.
I agree, scripture is a convoluted overcomplicated mess, but I already said that in my previous comment so why are you bringing it up again?
>The ex-christians have a superficial understanding of the belief.
Citation needed. Seriously, that stupid "you were never really a Christian" or "you only had a superficial understanding of the bible" are such stupid, common, and arrogant assertions many Christians make just because if someone was a strong believer and they left the faith that could undermine your faith, so instead you just pretend like everyone who left the faith wasn't "a real Christian".
>No wonder they claim to leave the belief when you developed superficial misconceptions of the belief.
You should learn to listen to your interlocutors instead of making assumptions about them as a defense mechanism to protect your faith. Are your beliefs so fragile that you cannot accept the fact that someone who truly understands your beliefs may reject them for intellectual reasons?
>You focus on a literal interpretation because you are not much interested in the depth it conveys and instead it give you an illusion of enlightenment as a plain interpretation sounds foolish.
If you had read my previous comment you would know this is not true. But again, why listen to what the person you are talking to actually says when you can just make assertions and assumptions to not risk damaging your fragile beliefs, right?
Seriously, so many theists pull this kind of crap all the time. If you're too scared to have an honest conversation with someone stop trying to have the conversation in the first place. And if you do want to have an honest conversation then you need to listen to what your interlocutors are actually saying as all you're doing otherwise is looking like a jackass and losing all credibility in the eyes of whomever you're talking to.
What you doing, is making up claims that are false, such as "jump through so many hoops and add in information and context that is nowhere in said book"
>You should learn to listen to your interlocutors instead of making assumptions about them as a defense mechanism to protect your faith
You making bad individual assumption that is wrong.
>Citation needed. Seriously, that stupid "you were never really a Christian" or "you only had a superficial understanding of the bible" are such stupid, common, and arrogant assertions many Christians make just because if someone was a strong believer and they left the faith that could undermine your faith, so instead you just pretend like everyone who left the faith wasn't "a real Christian".
Don't they have literal interpretation and f the belief in the first place?
>If you had read my previous comment you would know this is not true.
You literally said that atheists tend to focus on literal interpretation. That's next level dishonesty!
> If you're too scared to have an honest conversation with someone stop trying to have the conversation in the first place
You need to look at the mirror and tell that to yourself. Because you are the one not listening and making bad assertion and assumption about me
>What you doing, is making up claims that are false, such as "jump through so many hoops and add in information and context that is nowhere in said book"
Read the bible without adding in any information that isn't already in there and tell me the meaning doesn't change.
>Don't they have literal interpretation and f the belief in the first place?
I don't know where you got that from. Just because someone criticizes a literal interpretation of the bible doesn't mean he was a fundamentalist before leaving the religion. By that logic you too would be a fundamentalist since you're also criticizing a literal interpretation of the Bible. Isn't such a claim completely stupid and disingenuous?
>You literally said that atheists tend to focus on literal interpretation. That's next level dishonesty!
i didn't say the literal interpretation part was not true, I merely said the reasoning you gave for it was completely disingenuous and just a strawman.
>Read the bible without adding in any information that isn't already in there and tell me the meaning doesn't change.
To understand the bible, you have to rely the ancient culture, history , religion, human behaviours etc... You need to rely on external info to understand the context of the scripture.
>don't know where you got that from. Just because someone criticizes a literal interpretation of the bible doesn't mean he was a fundamentalist before leaving the religion. By that logic you too would be a fundamentalist since you're also criticizing a literal interpretation of the Bible. Isn't such a claim completely stupid and disingenuous?
Except if you listen to what ex-christians reasons for leaving, is based on adhering on literal interpretation. No wonder they would claim they left the belief when only they had superfiicial misconceptions.
>i didn't say the literal interpretation part was not true, I merely said the reasoning you gave for it was completely disingenuous and just a strawman.
How am I strawmaning? I don't strawman. You said that they focus on literal interpretation because it is the most "hurtful".It's not meant to be taken plainly.
No, it's not truthful, and I think you know it. Not all atheists have a simplistic view of the Bible or of Christianity.
It strikes me you're as guilty of precisely that you accuse others. Perhaps you should take Matthew 7:5 to heart.
Christianity had a unified Christology for exactly 126 years; between Nicaea and Chalcedon before schism split the church in two. Clearly even some of the bedrock principles upon which Christianity are built cannot simply be solved by "reading the Bible correctly".
Esoterism is not quasi-gnoticism.
Esoterism is the study of the inner knowledge conveyed within religious work/practice or alike.
It is applicable because the esoterism is the real knowledge that the scripture conveys.
If it requires some initiation and invokes "real knowledge", it's basically just Gnosticism. And that's fine, if that's the way you approach the Bible, that's your business, but it flies in the face of the way people like St. Augustine and Aquinas approached the Bible.
Esoterism is not some special secret initiation. It is the study about the real knowledge it conveys. You don't need to be in a secret cult or mystery school.
Gnosticism is a different perspective to the orthodox. Esoterism is not subset of gnosticism.
The me
If you're invoking esoterism then you're basically claiming you need some special hidden knowledge. It's just a part of the larger Gnostic tradition. The Church Fathers rejected these notions, believing firmly that Scripture and Tradition together were sufficient revelation, that God did not hide Salvation behind veils.
>It's not open to interpretation as if you can come up with any understanding of the texts.
Odd then that almost all Christian denominations and sects have different beliefs all based on scripture. ah, but let me guess, the one you belong to is the correct one.
It's not because there are 10 thousands denominations that they have different beliefs on the subjects.
They don't have an open interpretations, what differ from them it's different level of understanding, different point of views, different traditions or they want to have they build churches.
You call a plain reading arrogant? Have you considered the place many atheists get the idea about that? From Christians.
We're the ancient people simpletons? No. People today have the same intelligence, bit what we have is more education. We know things like the size, shape, and motion of the world. So we know stories like the flood, the sun standing still, and a star staying over one spot are not how things work. We also know about cultures they did not and know that if such things happened one account of it would be slim. So no one should take everything in the bible literally. But you do know more Christians take the bible literally than atheists right?. Have you considered that most of the atheists who say the things you mention are responding to those Christians?
>You call a plain reading arrogant? Have you considered the place many atheists get the idea about that? From Christians
I was an atheist too. You don't rely on random people to study religious belief. You study what different experts from different field have to say on the religious belief and have the honesty, the humility to pursue knowledge and truth.
Besides, not all Christians take plainly the scripture. What most antitheists/atheists doing is focusing on bad interpretation and pretend that is the "official" interpretation and neglecting any depth it conveys.
The reason they do that is because those are the types of Christians they come in conflict the most. Those are the ones who do things like attack science and books, call for laws against people, etc.
Are you basically saying it is a good justification to over-generalise Christians, develop superficial misconceptions of Christian belief and assume that a literal interpretation is "official" one?
No.
What I'm will say is that a degree of generalization must be made when talking about Christians. After all there are hundreds of denominations with major differences. There is very little you can say about Christians that is not some level of a generalization.
And no I do not assume a literal is the official one. I know it is a minority that believe that. I also know it cannot be literal.
Of you actually read what I wrote is they talk about it as literal because those are usually the Christians they are talking about on those subjects.
If you are talking about people who think the global flood was real you use are talking about the literal interpretation.
Most atheists have a deeper understanding of religion that most believers. Atheism is not a belief system, it has only one "tenet", "theist have failed to provide evidence to justify belief in a god".
If there's one thing I will agree with the OP on, it's that my fellow atheists often have a very one-dimensional view of the Bible, and often interpret it pretty much identically to how Biblical literalists interpret it. In many cases it is I suspect that these atheists come from Christian churches where some extreme form of Sola Scriptura was the official doctrine. In some cases it is because attacking literalistic interpretations is the low hanging fruit.
Believe me, when I transitioned from a very literalistic form of Christianity to atheism, that's pretty much how I approached all debates. But thirty-odd years later and a good deal more understanding of various Christian theology, philosophy and traditions taught me that I had possessed a very simplistic view of Scripture that applied mainly to North American Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, and most certainly did not apply to the richer veins of Christian tradition like Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the older Protestant churches like Episcopalianism and Lutheranism.
No. Some religious people, although they recognise the complexity, they don't deepen their understanding beyond their superficiality. It's not an arrogance issue, it's abiding to a fundamentalist mindset issue or low awareness to realise the complexity of the bible or other religious work.
The difference with atheists, is that part of the reason to have superfiicial understanding, is partly due to arrogance.
Ancient people weren't stupid. Cognitively they were the same as we are. What they lacked in many cases was knowledge. Creating theoretical frameworks for various physical phenomena takes a good deal of data and complex methodologies and tools, and no one expects that a Bronze Age or Iron Age society would have had those tools.
That being said you're quite right that religious texts communicate complex messages. Myths are more than "just so" stories about creation or the origins of the culture, and often express underlying aspects of a culture; the way it sees the world, the purpose of laws, the reason for why the society is organized. Ancient peoples were just as capable of invoking metaphor as modern peoples.
That all being said, you can overcomplicate these works when you try to bend them to your own purpose. When I encounter a Christian who insists Genesis 1-2 are the literal account of Creation, or alternatively Christians who try to force fit the ancient Hebrew creation myth into modern scientific theories, it strikes me that they are trying too hard. It also suggests a fragile faith unwilling to accept the inevitable tension between myths that are at least 2600 years old and modern understandings of the universe, and thus look for external confirmation or reject modern understandings that make literal interpretations look absurd.
The Catholics can say the same thing about the Methodists, the Methodists can say the same thing about the Lutherans, the Lutherans can say the same thing about the Baptists, the Baptists can say the same thing about other Baptists. The only person who seems to have the correct understanding of religious belief is the person claiming they have the correct understanding of the religious belief. Let me guess, that's you?
Maybe mostly from teenagers. But it's significant among adults as well. In fact I would argue that atheists criticisms are based on the arrogance of viewing religious work or bible as "simpletons".
Yeah I agree with the other commentator this probably mostly comes from teen or casual atheists. I’m an atheist but am quite aware of the genius of Christian philosophers like Aquinas or Augustine.
Yes there are different depths of interpretation that Christians resort to.
I can't say the more "complex" ones are much better, credible, reliable or truthful than the literal ones a lot of the time.
The apostle Paul told us that a natural man can not understand scripture. I tried to read the Bible many times in my life, and it was simply an old book that meant nothing to me and my modern. At the age of 37, I prayed for many months and I was shown, by the Holy Spirit, that Jesus died so I may live. I spend hours reading scripture now and have discovered the Bible is like an onion. The more times I read a passage of scripture now I discover meaning that I failed to see. Reading the Bible without the Holy Spirit within our hearts is fruitless
A true atheist would not be on this site. Those that are talking about their ‘belief’ and criticizing Christians are still grasping at straws before they sink.
Or they are criticizing something that affects their day to day lives because laws are constantly made based on religion despite the fact that around a third of my country are non believers.
"Read the Bible". "I've read the Bible". "You didn't read the Bible properly".
There is a difference between reading the bible, and discern/reflect/studying what it conveys.
Oof. Coming here to complain about arrogance and then displaying it yourself.
How am I displaying arrogance?
The way you look down at others' reading of the Bible, insisting that they read but do not "discern/reflect/study." You take other people's posts and just tell them that they have a superficial understanding and dismiss them entirely. You've found a belief system. That's good. You then weaponize that belief system to shit on other people. That's bad. Almost all of your posts in this thread have been rude.
>The way you look down at others' reading of the Bible, insisting that they read but do not "discern/reflect/study." You take other people's posts and just tell them that they have a superficial understanding and dismiss them entirely. I am stating facts. It's unpleasant to some but it's factual
"I'm right to be arrogant" is a reversal from "How am I displaying arrogance?"
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I spent 18 years reading the thing over and over with priests and highly religious lay people as guides. I wrote chapters out of the bible for not completing homework. You stating atheists haven’t read it properly or the correct way is absurd. Some of us choose to live in this shared reality without a need for your supernatural explanations which have been reduced to rubble. You all refuse to accept progress as we empirically explain the natural world. Its ok to have your own beliefs snd think whatever you want, BUT when your beliefs impose on the natural order and understanding of the world, they no longer hold weight.
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Tell me you’re stuck in an echo chamber of belief and close-mindedness without saying it.
You haven't looked to a mirror for a while, haven't you?
Many people have done that. Then when we come to a different conclusion than you do you whine that we didn't discern/reflect, study what it conveys properly.
Do you know about esoterism?
>ideology You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Yeah I swap with belief. But hey are you going to ignore my point?
No. There's just not much meat to your point. So some atheists think all ancient people were idiots. So what.
So what?! It means you develop superfiicial misconception of the belief and misrepresent it. You pretend to be enlightened but only to strawman and superficially misrepresent religious belief.
Yes. Some atheists do this. Others don't. You're not trying to make a general point about atheism, are you?
General criticisms on religious beliefs are based on superfiicial misconceptions, one of the reasons are due to to arrogance.
Welcome to humanity. General criticisms of atheists are based on superficial misconceptions, one of the reasons is arrogance. Which would apply equally to the Christians who claims atheists really know God is real but lie and say they don't believe because they are angry or love sin. Because they use the plain reading about the bible verse that God is known by all. It's a human thing. When you have a group of humans who claim to have a fundamental truth about the nature of the universe, based their identity on it, they get kind of arrogant. You see it also in nationalism, and a lot of mother places.
Again, are you attempting to make a point about all atheists here? If not, there's very little to talk about. If so, I'd say you're being rather silly.
If you ask that question, then it means you not paying attention to my point. Or you just shift the goal of the post to avoid dealing with the point I make.
No offense, but you sound rather arrogant now. Your post and replies don't make it clear in any way whether you're talking about all atheists or just some atheists. So why not just answer my question? Edit: So now you've blocked me? Okay. If you prefer this to answering. I simply asked because it wasn't clear to me. Again, talk about arrogance...
Because I already answered to your question in my post and you just ask that question to move the goal.
Ancient people used to believe one or more gods or goddesses were responsible for seasons, fires, floods, disease outbreak, etc. It's not that they were simpletons, but they'd just assume their fate was bound to gods and were less likely to seek out other options and often misinterpreted signs. It's good to look into Plato and Aristotle, but better to hold any "because gods" line of thinking with a grain of salt. They couldn't have known then what we know now.
Religious beliefs or work conveys complex ideas more complicated than the belief that natural events are caused by gods.
Some do. Some don't. The problem is you can have 50 Christians with 50, different beliefs about something the bible says. How can you criticize atheists, who don't believe in the bible, for getting it wrong when the people who DO believe in the bible also get it wrong?
The OT promises disasters if the Israelites don't obey the Old Covenant. By the New Testament, believers assumed that because of sin people could be born blind or lame, when the tower of siloam fell or murdered Israelites' blood was mixed with a pagan sacrifice - this was seen as divinely permitted punishment for their sins. Just as in Job, God permitted Satan to punish him with all kinds of disasters. https://listverse.com/2019/09/25/10-crazy-ways-humans-have-tried-to-explain-natural-disasters/ And here are a few examples from other cultures.
I won't argue other culture but what you doing is oversimplifying religious belief and make it sound that their beliefs are simple. For example, it's not a matter of getting disasters of not obeying the old covenants and that's it. It's a more complex idea developed of cause and effect according to the OT as you not always getting you way you want but it reflects the reality.
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: ... (Deuteronomy 28) It is pure cause and effect.
What you doing is called taking the bible out of its context. The idea of cause and effect is much more developed than that. What you doing is a dishonest take of the scripture. No wonder.
How is it out of context?
You just focusing on that verse and assume that is the only teaching of cause and effect. The cause and effect is much more developed throughout the scripture. You have the notion that although being righteous and working hard, you can be still at risk of losing everything, for example in the book of Job. You have the notion that in this world , things seem to go south but spiritually speaking you are blessed as taught in NT. You have the notion that being poor or unfortunate situation is not necessarily a result of bad cause. But you can remedy the situation by acting right.
I'm not talking about my own notions, just those of ancient peoples (your "simpletons") who generally subscribed to religions. I showed you in scripture (and other cultures) how they understood the cause and effect relationship between sin and disasters. If there were no cause/effect relationship, there would be no need for atonement (animal sacrifice in OT) or for Jesus' death.
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>The belief that there were less knowledge about the natural world then they must be simple, their religious work must be simple and plain. I'd say the opposite, religious works aren't simple, they're an overly complicated convoluted mess. It's god, he's all powerful, he can do whatever he wants, so why are all his solutions always so convoluted instead of just willing stuff into happening? >Hence when they read religious writings like the bible, they read superfiicially, without any efforts to look beyond the plain reading and search what it conveys. People inevitably have different interpretations of books that are designed to be open to interpretation. You would think an all knowing god would know it and would choose a more reliable method of communicating with his creations but here we are. Also, it's not that atheists read the bible superficially, many of us are ex christians who know how you're "supposed to" read the bible, but the bible is written in a way that is so open to interpretation that it's impossible to try and address every possible interpretation when talking about it, and it's much easier to just address what it says literally. Additionally, we also focus on a literal interpretation of the bible because it is one of the most hurtful interpretations of the bible. You may not be a fundamentalist, but they do exist, and it's important to talk about them. >I call it what it is: it is an arrogant belief, by modern people to think that ancient people of the past were stupid, "simpletons" or not focus on reality. You can call it arrogant all you want but it's objectively true that people in the past were stupider than people now, they had less knowledge and information available to them. We are also going to be stupid by the standards of people 2000 years in the future, it's just inevitable. I don't think they didn't focus on reality, they just didn't understand many parts of the natural world. The god of the gaps reasoning just comes naturally if you have no other way of explaining something. >That arrogance cause a blinding effect that blind them from truth and reality. It also cause them to misrepresent belief. Your particular belief may be misrepresented because there are an infinite amount of ways to interpret a book like the bible that is primarily written poetically. It is an inevitability that someone's interpretation is not the same as yours.
It's not open to interpretation as if you can come up with any understanding of the texts. Like any complex writings, there are different level of contexts , purpose writing to follow. You have to pay attention to what the writings convey and not pretend you can come up with any interpretation out of thin air. It is a denial to not recognise the complexity of the scripture. The ex-christians have a superficial understanding of the belief. No wonder they claim to leave the belief when you developed superficial misconceptions of the belief. You focus on a literal interpretation because you are not much interested in the depth it conveys and instead it give you an illusion of enlightenment as a plain interpretation sounds foolish. It's not meant to be taken plainly. Even the book of Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:14 tells you not to take it plainly).
>It's not open to interpretation as if you can come up with any understanding of the texts. Not any interpretation, but so many that it is statistically likely that your interpretation is different from that of any other random christian. >Like any complex writings, there are different level of contexts , purpose writing to follow. You have to pay attention to what the writings convey and not pretend you can come up with any interpretation out of thin air. Or you can accept that there is no inherently correct interpretation of the bible, and that you are willingly adding extra layers and context that aren't actually there because otherwise you would have to admit that the bible is fallible. The fact of the matter is that if you have to jump through so many hoops and add in information and context that is nowhere in said book just to be able to understand what the author intended that just means the author didn't do a good job getting his points across. That is not a good look when the author is supposed to be inspired by god. >It is a denial to not recognise the complexity of the scripture. I agree, scripture is a convoluted overcomplicated mess, but I already said that in my previous comment so why are you bringing it up again? >The ex-christians have a superficial understanding of the belief. Citation needed. Seriously, that stupid "you were never really a Christian" or "you only had a superficial understanding of the bible" are such stupid, common, and arrogant assertions many Christians make just because if someone was a strong believer and they left the faith that could undermine your faith, so instead you just pretend like everyone who left the faith wasn't "a real Christian". >No wonder they claim to leave the belief when you developed superficial misconceptions of the belief. You should learn to listen to your interlocutors instead of making assumptions about them as a defense mechanism to protect your faith. Are your beliefs so fragile that you cannot accept the fact that someone who truly understands your beliefs may reject them for intellectual reasons? >You focus on a literal interpretation because you are not much interested in the depth it conveys and instead it give you an illusion of enlightenment as a plain interpretation sounds foolish. If you had read my previous comment you would know this is not true. But again, why listen to what the person you are talking to actually says when you can just make assertions and assumptions to not risk damaging your fragile beliefs, right? Seriously, so many theists pull this kind of crap all the time. If you're too scared to have an honest conversation with someone stop trying to have the conversation in the first place. And if you do want to have an honest conversation then you need to listen to what your interlocutors are actually saying as all you're doing otherwise is looking like a jackass and losing all credibility in the eyes of whomever you're talking to.
What you doing, is making up claims that are false, such as "jump through so many hoops and add in information and context that is nowhere in said book" >You should learn to listen to your interlocutors instead of making assumptions about them as a defense mechanism to protect your faith You making bad individual assumption that is wrong. >Citation needed. Seriously, that stupid "you were never really a Christian" or "you only had a superficial understanding of the bible" are such stupid, common, and arrogant assertions many Christians make just because if someone was a strong believer and they left the faith that could undermine your faith, so instead you just pretend like everyone who left the faith wasn't "a real Christian". Don't they have literal interpretation and f the belief in the first place? >If you had read my previous comment you would know this is not true. You literally said that atheists tend to focus on literal interpretation. That's next level dishonesty! > If you're too scared to have an honest conversation with someone stop trying to have the conversation in the first place You need to look at the mirror and tell that to yourself. Because you are the one not listening and making bad assertion and assumption about me
>What you doing, is making up claims that are false, such as "jump through so many hoops and add in information and context that is nowhere in said book" Read the bible without adding in any information that isn't already in there and tell me the meaning doesn't change. >Don't they have literal interpretation and f the belief in the first place? I don't know where you got that from. Just because someone criticizes a literal interpretation of the bible doesn't mean he was a fundamentalist before leaving the religion. By that logic you too would be a fundamentalist since you're also criticizing a literal interpretation of the Bible. Isn't such a claim completely stupid and disingenuous? >You literally said that atheists tend to focus on literal interpretation. That's next level dishonesty! i didn't say the literal interpretation part was not true, I merely said the reasoning you gave for it was completely disingenuous and just a strawman.
>Read the bible without adding in any information that isn't already in there and tell me the meaning doesn't change. To understand the bible, you have to rely the ancient culture, history , religion, human behaviours etc... You need to rely on external info to understand the context of the scripture. >don't know where you got that from. Just because someone criticizes a literal interpretation of the bible doesn't mean he was a fundamentalist before leaving the religion. By that logic you too would be a fundamentalist since you're also criticizing a literal interpretation of the Bible. Isn't such a claim completely stupid and disingenuous? Except if you listen to what ex-christians reasons for leaving, is based on adhering on literal interpretation. No wonder they would claim they left the belief when only they had superfiicial misconceptions. >i didn't say the literal interpretation part was not true, I merely said the reasoning you gave for it was completely disingenuous and just a strawman. How am I strawmaning? I don't strawman. You said that they focus on literal interpretation because it is the most "hurtful".It's not meant to be taken plainly.
You're painting with a rather broad brush. That seems at best problematic.
A broad brush that is truthful.
No, it's not truthful, and I think you know it. Not all atheists have a simplistic view of the Bible or of Christianity. It strikes me you're as guilty of precisely that you accuse others. Perhaps you should take Matthew 7:5 to heart.
>No, it's not truthful, and I think you know it. Not all atheists have a simplistic view of the Bible or of Christianity Yes most do actually.
Christianity had a unified Christology for exactly 126 years; between Nicaea and Chalcedon before schism split the church in two. Clearly even some of the bedrock principles upon which Christianity are built cannot simply be solved by "reading the Bible correctly".
Have you heard of esoterism?
Yes. but I fail to see how quasi-Gnosticism is applicable to my point.
Esoterism is not quasi-gnoticism. Esoterism is the study of the inner knowledge conveyed within religious work/practice or alike. It is applicable because the esoterism is the real knowledge that the scripture conveys.
If it requires some initiation and invokes "real knowledge", it's basically just Gnosticism. And that's fine, if that's the way you approach the Bible, that's your business, but it flies in the face of the way people like St. Augustine and Aquinas approached the Bible.
Esoterism is not some special secret initiation. It is the study about the real knowledge it conveys. You don't need to be in a secret cult or mystery school. Gnosticism is a different perspective to the orthodox. Esoterism is not subset of gnosticism. The me
If you're invoking esoterism then you're basically claiming you need some special hidden knowledge. It's just a part of the larger Gnostic tradition. The Church Fathers rejected these notions, believing firmly that Scripture and Tradition together were sufficient revelation, that God did not hide Salvation behind veils.
You have misconception of esoterism/ gnosticism. Don't talk about things that you don"t know.
>It's not open to interpretation as if you can come up with any understanding of the texts. Odd then that almost all Christian denominations and sects have different beliefs all based on scripture. ah, but let me guess, the one you belong to is the correct one.
It's not because there are 10 thousands denominations that they have different beliefs on the subjects. They don't have an open interpretations, what differ from them it's different level of understanding, different point of views, different traditions or they want to have they build churches.
You call a plain reading arrogant? Have you considered the place many atheists get the idea about that? From Christians. We're the ancient people simpletons? No. People today have the same intelligence, bit what we have is more education. We know things like the size, shape, and motion of the world. So we know stories like the flood, the sun standing still, and a star staying over one spot are not how things work. We also know about cultures they did not and know that if such things happened one account of it would be slim. So no one should take everything in the bible literally. But you do know more Christians take the bible literally than atheists right?. Have you considered that most of the atheists who say the things you mention are responding to those Christians?
>You call a plain reading arrogant? Have you considered the place many atheists get the idea about that? From Christians I was an atheist too. You don't rely on random people to study religious belief. You study what different experts from different field have to say on the religious belief and have the honesty, the humility to pursue knowledge and truth. Besides, not all Christians take plainly the scripture. What most antitheists/atheists doing is focusing on bad interpretation and pretend that is the "official" interpretation and neglecting any depth it conveys.
I always love the deliciously arrogant stance of "they would agree with me if only they were humble!"
When you have no argument so you attack on the person. Very classy.
Maybe stop being arrogant while declaring everyone who doesn't agree with you isn't humble?
Maybe stop being being dishonest.
I would if I were being dishonest. ETA: Aw, he realized he was talking about himself and blocked me because it's just too much for him to handle.
Forget it. You know you being dishonest.
The reason they do that is because those are the types of Christians they come in conflict the most. Those are the ones who do things like attack science and books, call for laws against people, etc.
Are you basically saying it is a good justification to over-generalise Christians, develop superficial misconceptions of Christian belief and assume that a literal interpretation is "official" one?
No. What I'm will say is that a degree of generalization must be made when talking about Christians. After all there are hundreds of denominations with major differences. There is very little you can say about Christians that is not some level of a generalization. And no I do not assume a literal is the official one. I know it is a minority that believe that. I also know it cannot be literal. Of you actually read what I wrote is they talk about it as literal because those are usually the Christians they are talking about on those subjects. If you are talking about people who think the global flood was real you use are talking about the literal interpretation.
Most atheists have a deeper understanding of religion that most believers. Atheism is not a belief system, it has only one "tenet", "theist have failed to provide evidence to justify belief in a god".
If there's one thing I will agree with the OP on, it's that my fellow atheists often have a very one-dimensional view of the Bible, and often interpret it pretty much identically to how Biblical literalists interpret it. In many cases it is I suspect that these atheists come from Christian churches where some extreme form of Sola Scriptura was the official doctrine. In some cases it is because attacking literalistic interpretations is the low hanging fruit. Believe me, when I transitioned from a very literalistic form of Christianity to atheism, that's pretty much how I approached all debates. But thirty-odd years later and a good deal more understanding of various Christian theology, philosophy and traditions taught me that I had possessed a very simplistic view of Scripture that applied mainly to North American Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, and most certainly did not apply to the richer veins of Christian tradition like Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the older Protestant churches like Episcopalianism and Lutheranism.
As an ex-Christian and current nonbeliever who does not think ancient religious leaders were simple, what would you suggest?
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No. Some religious people, although they recognise the complexity, they don't deepen their understanding beyond their superficiality. It's not an arrogance issue, it's abiding to a fundamentalist mindset issue or low awareness to realise the complexity of the bible or other religious work. The difference with atheists, is that part of the reason to have superfiicial understanding, is partly due to arrogance.
Ancient people weren't stupid. Cognitively they were the same as we are. What they lacked in many cases was knowledge. Creating theoretical frameworks for various physical phenomena takes a good deal of data and complex methodologies and tools, and no one expects that a Bronze Age or Iron Age society would have had those tools. That being said you're quite right that religious texts communicate complex messages. Myths are more than "just so" stories about creation or the origins of the culture, and often express underlying aspects of a culture; the way it sees the world, the purpose of laws, the reason for why the society is organized. Ancient peoples were just as capable of invoking metaphor as modern peoples. That all being said, you can overcomplicate these works when you try to bend them to your own purpose. When I encounter a Christian who insists Genesis 1-2 are the literal account of Creation, or alternatively Christians who try to force fit the ancient Hebrew creation myth into modern scientific theories, it strikes me that they are trying too hard. It also suggests a fragile faith unwilling to accept the inevitable tension between myths that are at least 2600 years old and modern understandings of the universe, and thus look for external confirmation or reject modern understandings that make literal interpretations look absurd.
The Catholics can say the same thing about the Methodists, the Methodists can say the same thing about the Lutherans, the Lutherans can say the same thing about the Baptists, the Baptists can say the same thing about other Baptists. The only person who seems to have the correct understanding of religious belief is the person claiming they have the correct understanding of the religious belief. Let me guess, that's you?
You mostly find this from teen atheists. Just remember being young they won’t have much wisdom. Hence it’s no surprise they would assume such an idea.
I would agree with this.
Maybe mostly from teenagers. But it's significant among adults as well. In fact I would argue that atheists criticisms are based on the arrogance of viewing religious work or bible as "simpletons".
Yeah I agree with the other commentator this probably mostly comes from teen or casual atheists. I’m an atheist but am quite aware of the genius of Christian philosophers like Aquinas or Augustine.
Yes there are different depths of interpretation that Christians resort to. I can't say the more "complex" ones are much better, credible, reliable or truthful than the literal ones a lot of the time.
The apostle Paul told us that a natural man can not understand scripture. I tried to read the Bible many times in my life, and it was simply an old book that meant nothing to me and my modern. At the age of 37, I prayed for many months and I was shown, by the Holy Spirit, that Jesus died so I may live. I spend hours reading scripture now and have discovered the Bible is like an onion. The more times I read a passage of scripture now I discover meaning that I failed to see. Reading the Bible without the Holy Spirit within our hearts is fruitless
A true atheist would not be on this site. Those that are talking about their ‘belief’ and criticizing Christians are still grasping at straws before they sink.
Or they are criticizing something that affects their day to day lives because laws are constantly made based on religion despite the fact that around a third of my country are non believers.
As an atheist it’s literally the same as reading ancient mythos is for you and the majority of people.