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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 1:47pm

The Bible is not a children's book, is probably unsuitable for children [There's all sorts of ucky sex & violence in it, kids!!!]

Kids get the ucky stuff early anyway, a lot of 'em, fed through a "bubble tea" admixture of fairy tales and TV shows (any difference?).

In one cartoon I like, another cosmic fairy tale, Eve was "of ribs" (mirroring Adam's) because she was a ship, a protective container for her crew of semi-naked apes.

Flipped over on land, the vessel's ribs became overhead eaves, the boat a shelter -- a common ancient technique. 

As a seaworthy vessel Eve knew the world was round, a closed system in that sense, if not in the thermodynamic sense (the Sun pumps in energy by the tera-watt daily). Her knowing that is represented by said Apple though any round fruit will do. 

This was the secret knowledge, the "verboten math" that a landlubber Adam was maybe not supposed to regain (religions can be inhibiting, we all know that).  The very activity of thinking is a "connect the dots" activity, and that's best done in "systems" (in the round).  Eve would restore Adam's Promethean powers, his fire, his mojo.  She needed a true partner.

However the Genesis era pundits were not necessarily keen on having their Eden area Tigris-Euphrates peasants knowing much of anything about more ancient dragon religions further east ("Far East").  Such global perspective would undermine their own authority as the purported direct descendants of Middle Earth's first couple, the primal pair. Demonizing the serpent seemed expedient.

Humans tell themselves they belong in Eden, some blissful land of zero headaches or challenges, nothing much to do except kick back and name stuff.  The fact that life is hard and not so blissful translates to "punishment" and "we must be evil" in their inferiority conditioning fairy tales. 

The opportunity to terraform a planet and make it another of God's kingdoms, seems rather lost on these poor creatures.  They make it a Planet of the Apes instead, choc-o-block with overly-helpless over-specialists.

We see the same human petulance in the Babel story:  humans don't want to inherit a ball-shape Planet, and would rather "climb back to God" by some spiral staircase, if that's really a possibility (the Bible suggests it might be). 

They're reluctant travelers aboard their new Spaceship Earth. Yet God is saying "there's no going back". 

Ditto in Eden:  the destiny of the Adam Family was to see the world, get out more.  Eden was too sequestered, a holding pen while Man matured. 

We the humans call it "Original Sin" or "the Fall" but that's because we're self-damning and moralistic by nature.  I see no persuasive evidence that God is as much of a moron as the Bible makes Him out to be.

Humans are not always the best storytellers, as any self-respecting Angel will attest.  Humans tell each other to "believe the Bible word-for-word" and if you really believe in it hard enough (wrinkled forehead, clenched fists) you'll get to Heaven. That's very typical of humans, to behave like that.  Out of compassion, God sent his Son to speak in parables, an attempt to shake them loose from their infernal literacy.  We see how that went.

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 2:10pm

...God sent his Son to speak in parables, an attempt to shake them loose from their infernal literacy.  We see how that went.

I probably should have said "infernal illiteracy", meaning their addiction to literalness, which actually interferes with their literacy.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 4:18pm

When you say, "I see no persuasive evidence that God is as much of a moron as the Bible makes Him out to be" -- I see no persuasive evidence that the authors of the Bible were as inept and clueless as you make them out to be.

There were things they were interested in & good at; navigation and astronomy were not in their repetoire; but they understood the writing and use of stories far better than most modern readers, particularly modern readers burdened with academic literary theories. The idea that they interpreted everything literally, like ancient Fundamentalists... simply misrepresents their whole culture. Neither, of course, were they Science-fundies of the sort so prevalent in recent centuries.

The clenched fists are supposed to be shaken in the general direction of Heaven; God understands.

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 4:32pm

I see no persuasive evidence that the authors of the Bible were as inept and clueless as you make them out to be.

This could become a long discussion, wherein I go through the litany of favorite evidence of Theo's lack of character.  Safe to say, Theo has His anti-fans.  

That's a different meaning of "Atheist":  you believe in Him, you just find Him egregiously petty and vengeful. But maybe that's forgiven once we realize the Bible is by blaspheming sinners.  Let's not hold the word of Man against God.

The Gnostic tradition is full of this kinda stuff, about Earth being the domain of a minor God, really full of Himself, or sometimes a She, remorseful over this experiment-gone-wrong -- depends whom ya read.  

Of course it's all heresy, this Gnostic stuff, but in this day and age we don't look to "Church Fathers" to circumscribe our reading.  Quakerism is not about sticking to only-censor-approved readings.

As I mentioned above, I don't blame God for finding humans vexing.  I imagine He'd vastly prefer to see Himself resting, on the 7th Day, vs. being cast in some soap opera involving semi-naked apes.  He finds atheists endearing for that reason:  they don't involve Him so directly in their Earthly shenanigans.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 5:01pm

Any depiction of God which renders Him 'petty and vengeful' comes under the heading of 'projection.' People frequently project unsavory qualities on God, on each other -- and particularly on each other's images of God. The assumption that other people 'just don't get it' is a particularly insidious way of not getting it.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 5:14pm

People make mental models of each other's thinking, emotional reactions, behavior, as an aid to knowing when to smile, duck, or just await developments. The assumption that what gets 'projected' on a projectee has to come from the person doing the projecting is probably unwarranted -- Stuff gets added to the mental model because of experience with people acting in ways we can't account for otherwise. But sometimes we really do need to enlarge the model, assume for a change that people are not dumb, mean well, know more than we give them credit for...(?)

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 5:31pm

Exactly, which is what the Bible is: projections (Thessalonians 12:11-12).  

Remember Plato's Cave: we watch the flickering images of our all-too-human imaginations; we don't turn around to see the source, as we're the source (that inner light is quite bright).

I'd rather treat the Bible as a compendium of projections than as some cheesy idol to superstitiously swear oaths upon.  I think ol' George would back me up on that.  A lot of Christians though, expect you to get weak in the knees and fall to the ground, because that's what religion is all about for them:  kowtowing to some big daddy know-it-all patriarch. Talk about projections!

Forrest Curo said:

Any depiction of God which renders Him 'petty and vengeful' comes under the heading of 'projection.' People frequently project unsavory qualities on God, on each other -- and particularly on each other's images of God. The assumption that other people 'just don't get it' is a particularly insidious way of not getting it.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 6:18pm

Look, I've got no way of knowing how many Christians think of the Bible is a big bloomin idol for learning the One Right Way of kowtowing to 'some big daddy know-it-all patriarch.' I don't think that matters; the issue ought to be: "Is there something there helpful for working out how and why things be the way they bees, and how we can best deal with it?"

Granted we get a great many cautionary examples of how and why people persistently screw it up -- kicking God upstairs & out of their hair, where they try to use Him to intimidate their uppity neighbors while neglecting those inconvenient "weightier matters of the Law: justice and mercy and faithfulness."

Given that people still haven't quite given up such habits... maybe we aren't done with the text yet.

Think of it (helpfully?) as an effort to recount-&-illustrate the long process of development and negotiation in which God and we are working to kludge together a workable Divine/human interface -- that Our Father isn't so much basking in the kowtows as simply trying to balance the human desire for autonomy against our need to treat ourselves & our surrondings with due reverence,

before our ongoing project of 'terriforming the Earth' simply helliforms it in our twisted image...(?)

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 9:25pm

I'm not in favor of dispensing with Bible study.  Lets continue mining said book for wisdom, by all means, other Holy Books too.

The Bible is early hypertext, intricately cross-referenced and widely consulted, another "go to" source with which to build culture. The stories have staying power, especially once liberated from the weight of conveying literal truths, apparent factoids.

Read it a lot, and keep connecting the dots.  Such a compendium of projections deserves our close attention. 

Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that by diving into the Bible, you're somehow signing away your basic sanity in exchange for some "must be true" history channel programming. No need to be foolish about one's Religious Education.

Preachers in their bully pulpits don't ask you what the Bible means, they tell you.  I'm saying you're free, whomever you may be, to Question Authority.  To some, that's a radical assertion, which is why I think it bears repeating.

Many of us who've grown up as Quakers have maybe never had much exposure to the kind of authoritarianism that passes for Christianity in some necks of the woods. Lucky us, right?

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Permalink Reply by David McKay on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 10:14pm

Just don't fall into the trap of thinking that by diving into the Bible, you're somehow signing away your basic sanity in exchange for some "must be true" history channel programming.

Do you have any reason to believe anybody here falls into this particular trap? Or any one person known to you at all for that matter?

Seems like a gross distortion even of the self-professed fundamentalists I've met.

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 10:30pm

Hi David, not sure what you mean by "anybody here" as "here" is ambiguous in world-readable media. 

I'm out there in Twitter-verse linking back to QuakerQuaker sometimes, who knows who follows my links, right?

Also Facebook.

I sometimes go by what I see on television when it comes to what some of the issues are.

I saw this news story on CBS when it actually aired. 

They're telling me a lot of people are falling into that trap, are they wrong?

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/noahs-ark-exhibit-sparks-debate-of-bi...

It's on NBC as well:

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/absolutely-wrong-bill-n...

Just a bad dream?  Are we gonna wake up soon?

Kirby

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 28, 2016 at 11:36pm

As Stephen Gaskin said a few decades back, ~"We got a lot of people falling for fake religions because there's a widespread need for the real kind."

It's one thing to 'question' authority, quite another to announce "Neener, neener, it can't make me respect it!"

I find the Hand of God at work in the writing of 'Frog and Toad' books sometimes. Nothing in this world is accidental.

When you've got an anthology that people have read and misread for centuries, usually finding whatever light they could adsorb for the time through that book, maybe you're premature in assuming too automatically that everything they see in it is a crock.

"A fool sees not the same tree as a wise man sees." [Blake, 'Proverbs of Hell', _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_]

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