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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 30, 2016 at 11:25am

My contribution to the subject has been to register appreciation for the Bible as a compendium of projections (useful, like an album collection), and to circle the Tower of Babel story especially, as important to my thinking. Like some other authors, I connect that unfinished tower to that pyramid on the dollar bill. 

I'm fine with "In God We Trust" as long as the Masons get to say it with equal gusto, given their contribution etc.  As a Quaker, I'm not one to pick fights with Masons.  We of Multnomah Meeting shared a parking lot for years, until they sold the building to Mazamas (with whom we now share it).  Convenient, that we use it at different times.  Having parking can make a big difference to the life of a Meeting.

You say my contribution is a "harsh & irrational attack on the Bible" (aside to readers:  don't take his word for it).  You're not the only one who likes to fulminate and use QuakerQuaker to let off steam.  May we call you Reverend Neener then? I know a Reverend Onan Canobite, Church of Subgenius (gnostic, a mock church).  You could be a Rev too, with your own nick, your own shtick.

The Bible is a book, an inanimate object.  Maybe it's back-lit when we read it, like the monks liked it, like on the Web.  Maybe it's read to a child by loving parents, whom you claim were abusive, the Bible not being a children's book in your humble opinion -- poor parents just doing their best, feeding people on the streets, and all that GoodStuff, why attack them so harshly?

I know the Bible is important, here to stay, and my "opinion" of it, like my opinion of Mt. Everest, is a little bit beside the point. What I want is a nuanced relationship with the Bible and the stories in it.

However, I don't wanna be force fed (who does?) any off-the-shelf interpretations by mortal men, especially men, especially revs on the telly. I might go to some imams for more insights some days, who knows?   The Persians aren't nuke-heads at least, add 20 IQ + EI points right off the bat.  Ibrahim over at Right To Dream Too (sleeping shelter on W Burnside) is a cool guy, know him through AFSC work as well.

https://flic.kr/p/rXna3j  (entrance to R2D2 prototype village)

From reading the newspapers, and magazines, I conclude this North American nation's media has a radically immature read on the Persians, and yet their Holy Bible could help them with that.  They could grow up more. Why not?  In God we trust right?  So why all the nukes?  Anthropology hat on.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 30, 2016 at 4:32pm

Clearly we're off our collective gourds.  And as you say, the Bible is more honored than read, more read than critically considered.

My take on the tower story is that we've collectively climbed pretty high, imagining that we're almost there (and by our own efforts) -- & that it might have been more merciful to get us down before the foundations began to groan so.

Then again, the Big AllThis can always find us in the trash afterwards, brush us off, imagine another interesting world to chew up together.

But to be 'nuanced' about the Bible (or human beings, for that matter) -- It happens a lot better if one starts from "what didn't they get wrong?"

Jesus, for example. If you stop imagining him as someone who made sense, talking to people in a culture that was no more (or less) crazy than ours, but interpreted everything in a far less individual, far more collective way -- then you can get past Those Bad Televangelists and get some hints of a no-fault, harm-reduction Divinity At Work. Again, not one seeing matters the same way we do.

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 8th mo. 30, 2016 at 5:24pm

Oops ... I meant, "If you start imagining him as..." Infallibility doesn't seem to have arrived, so far. So please forgive us our typos. Also our badmouthing, warranted or otherwise.

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Permalink Reply by Kirby Urner on 8th mo. 30, 2016 at 5:47pm

Kirby Urner said:

Like some other authors, I connect that unfinished tower to that pyramid on the dollar bill. 

I'm fine with "In God We Trust" as long as the Masons get to say it with equal gusto, given their contribution etc. 

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