What are some reasons to not read the bible or be a Christian or Catholic?

There are no reasons not to read the Bible. There are plenty of reasons to take it with a grain of salt, since a great deal of it was written when the human condition was entirely different from the way it is now.

There’s no reason not to read the bible, but there are several reasons not to believe in it and/or not to follow its rules. Two off the top of my head:
Many claims of the bible have proven to be untrue.
I’m not about to stone people to death for their sins.

I appreciate the delicate response you got from @susanc.

It’s not a matter that one must not believe the words or messages if the bible. It’s one of our oldest historical books of human experience and ethics. It’s influence is far reaching and will most likely touch all of us almost daily for the rest of our lives. Much of our culture in the west has been adapted from the cultures that considered the bible a worthwhile guide for civilization… For example, think about how many popculture references you’ve heard about the book 1984. You’ve heard it in so many movies and stuff and you’ve even seen it referenced in politics. Despite being a book of fiction, it carries real and valuable messages. The bible is the same way. It has a lot of messages that have become popular for most of humanity and it has stories that people can relate to and understand and benefit from regardless of whether the stories are fictional or not.

That said, it is old. It is an old human book with lots of concepts that we have been able of rule out as being applicable, factual, or best for civilization.

And to answer the question more directly: One such theme, a major one, that just isnt practical or believable is that determining truth is a simple matter of deciding whether a thing is true or not; Commonly referred to as “blind faith.” The world is a little bit more material than that, it turns out. The bible seems to suggest (despite conflicting passages) that you simply have to believe by choice. Well, evidently this is totally impossible. Belief isn’t something anyone can do freely without evidentiary coercion. So.. poo-poo to that.

The bible is full of statements and conclusions which, when examined carefully, cannot be corroborated by good evidence. They would have made great hypotheses, but they were stated as fact. Unfortunately, too many of them cannot be substantiated.

Too many bible claims lack demonstrability for it to be considered a book of dependable facts.

Reading the Bible often leads to Atheism/Agnosticism as there are things in there that would disgust any decent person. The only way to not be totally repulsed is to have some blissful ignorance of what the Bible really says. Of course, you could read it and dismiss parts of it, but that would call into question how truly Christian you are. Or you could believe it all and become an intolerant potential killer.

In that respect, I am glad that most Christians are at least somewhat ignorant of the actual text of the Bible. Most are decent people who draw strength from their faith; they don’t deserve a crisis of conscience.

I suppose the only thing I would add to the great answers above, is that the Bible you would read is probably so far removed from the original text and possibly from the original meaning, as it has been translated and interpreted in each translation so many times. It will most likely be the version upon which today’s Christian church base their current beliefs and moral structure though, and is insightful for that. I say the Christian church rather than Christians as individuals for the very reason @jerv points out above.

Being born into a much older religion that does not require obedience to any text or religious authority, and whose philosophy makes sense to you.

Because it’s an old, outdated work of fiction/political propaganda.

Mainstream Christianity clashes with what I’ve read concerning the secular research of the afterlife including:

1. Beliefs, including the belief that we accept that a certain Savior died for our sins or the belief in a God does not determine where we’ll end up after ‘death’.
2. Atheists and other nontheists are not hindered from entering the more pleasant spheres of the afterlife since it is our deeds on earth which determine where we’ll end up, along with our motivations for our actions. We are our own saviors so to speak.
3. Homosexuals are not hindered from attaining enlightment either upon physical death.
4. There are many spheres in the ‘afterlife’, ranging from hellish to earthlike to blissful.
5. Reincarnation likely has some truth to it, but not in the single soul many lives concept.
6. There is what one could call ‘hell’ or the void in the afterlife, but it is not eternal nor made of hellfire. The accounts of hell that I’ve researched about usually speak of the void as being a very dark and cold place devoid of love. An entity can remain there for eons of time, but can also choose to advance towards the light.
7. Playing with the occult can be very dangerous since this frequently brings you in contact with lower evil entities who are closer to the earthplane than loving spirits are.
8. There is no judging God who punishes us. After this life is up most will receive a life review and then the destination of that spirit is determined by its behavior while alive. We send ourselves to where we’ll end up, or the sphere which our spirit could survive in so to speak. A hateful spirit would perish in the light of God, so the purpose of the void is to actually save that entity. I’m rather surprised that more religious folks don’t research this material so readily available through books and the Internet. I went from being Catholic to Protestant, to hardcore sceptical atheist to the position I’m in now.

There are many more reasons, and I don’t have rigid views on this but these are the accounts from many secular researchers of the afterlife including the likes of Doyle, Findlay, Barrett, Crookes, Lodge, Stevenson, Meyers just to name a few. I’ve found that many religions have a degree of truth to them but that no single religion is the truth.

Science?

I found the Bible to be boring, filled with archaic language that was hard to understand and really meaningless to me. Christianity and Catholicism offered me nothing. You really have to be born into them for it to make sense.

You have to see these things as culture. So you might as well ask why be American? Well, because you were born in the United States. Christianity has exactly as much logic. It’s a matter of chance.

It is extremely contradictory and hard to read, often boring.

I have gay friends and if God doesn’t like it, but we are not supposed to judge each other, what is the appropriate way to treat your gay friends? Satan is supposed to be negator of good, so to me anyone hating on gays for being their authentic selves openly are driven more by Satan than God. Many hardline Christians feel they are specifically told in scripture that being gay is bad and unnatural and of Satan, so is it okay to treat a whole group of people poorly because of a book written so long ago?

It’s difficult and there are certainly more issues involved but this one bothers me the most and has for a little while. Christians thinking God authorizes them to hate gays has to be one of the worst interpretations of God’s love ever. :( My gay Christian friends seem to have resolved it for themselves, but I need to ask them how exactly.

As so many others have said, there is no reason not to read the Bible. It does contain a collection of human wisdom. To accept it as the absolute truth written perfectly by the guidance of an omniscient, omnipotent creator God shows a distinct lack of critical thinking, though.

If you are going to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of an all-knowing God, you must accept that the following 10 absurdities are all absolutely true.
1     The Earth wasn’t formed 4.54 billion years ago as a massive wealth of scientific evidence tells us it was, but about 6,000 years ago as the begats would indicate.
2     The Earth is the center of the solar system. The Sun, Moon, planets and stars are little lights fixed in a dome above it and their motion is due to the dome revolving around a fixed Earth.
3     Humans really lived with dinosaurs, but they somehow found them so unremarkable as to never write a word about them, preferring to mention only animals we know today.
4     During Noah’s time, 40 days of rain was sufficient to raise the sea level over 5 miles (8 kilometers) till the waters covered the top of mount Everest.
5     Noah was able to gather together 30 million species of animals plus enough food for all of them and save them aboard a wooden ship which, based on the biblical description, was woefully undersized for that amount of loading, but was already far too big to actually float without being instantly crushed by the water pressure of the water it would displace. According to the biblical measurement in cubits, it would have been the size of a modern supertanker. A wooden ships that large cannot float. It would have had to have been built of steel. But the Bible is quite clear on it being made of wood.
6     Slavery is perfectly OK.
7     If a man rapes a virgin, he has to marry her so he can go on abusing her for the rest of her life.
8     Anyone found committing adultery, homosexual acts, wearing Perma-Press clothing (mixed fibers), planting a flower garden with mixed seeds, or eating at Red Lobster (eating seafood without fin or scale) is to be stoned to death for the hideousness of their crime.
9     It’s OK to invade someone else’s land, enslave all the women, bash the babies heads on stones, kill all the men and take all their stuff, but only when God (whom you can’t hear talk) says to do it.
10   A man can marry as many wives as he wants and also have large stables of concubines. Women are just property.

Personally, I think it’s far more likely that in the distant past, primitive man, unable to make any sense of the powerful forces of nature, came up with a mythical sky daddy to explain what he was otherwise unable to explain. He was unaware, at that point, that explaining one mystery with an even more fantastic mystery actually explains nothing.

I personally feel like there is no reason not to read the Bible.

Being Christian or Catholic is different, and I personally think that’s a different story. That has to do with religion and your upbringing and experience with or lack of experience with religion. Sometimes these experiences can be good or not so good.

I see religion as a type of community that people can feel welcomed. And their church is their place of worship. But whos to say that God isn’t just as happy if I light a few candles in His name on special days and read passages from the Bible in my house which I have deemed in a sense a house of God.

God gave us choice, if He is a constant part of my life I’m sure that is good enough enough for Him regardless of lack of religion.

The way the question is posed has two assumptions that are contradictory.

Reading the Bible has nothing to do with your opinions on sex, sexual preference/attraction, or feminism. One can’t judge a book on those issues until one has read the book.

Agreeing with a particular belief system does depend on your own beliefs, and because of that, many don’t agree or follow the religious doctrines you describe.

But some of us do know of compassionate churches that take a Christian view of approving or not condemning the seeming contradictions to modern thought.

You were born in a place where that’s not a book of the ‘right religion’ and therefore, no one considers it important or anything in it important. That’s a reason for lots of people on this planet.

Something none of us are talking about here, which seems funny to me, is that the “Bible” consists of an older book of stories and rules which comprise the Talmud or Old Testament. This is the holy book of Judaism. Following that is what we refer to as the complete Christian “Bible” is the New Testament, consisting of stories and rules laid down after the period of Jesus: storytelling about His work and meanings. I smile to notice that I unconsciously typed a capital “H” on the “His” here out of habit; it comes from the tradition that Jesus was God just like God Himself.
Anyway, the question was about the Bible and its relationship to Christianity and Catholicism, and for some reason I feel compelled to note that these are three related but entirely distinct sets of ideas. There are lots of forms of Christianity that postdated Catholicism. In fact, I guess, all of them.
Just sayin.

Because it’s unecessary to live an exemplary life.

Some people are kind and compassionate and useful and decent and productive and wise without ever having cracked open the Christian Bible or by being a Christian or by subscribing to any other religion.

There are good and bad people who read the Bible that are Christians. There are good and bad people who don’t read the bible that are not Christians.

It just doesn’t matter.

Also, what is good, correct and useful to one person or group of people, is bad, wrong and useless to another person or group of people. Hence United States politics, not to mention all of the competing religions and cultures in the world.

Well I think this is a good start as to why you should believe.

@ETpro I see your disbelief and raise you an etiological story and another explanation!  I believe etiology can describe #2, 4 & 5 in your list.  Similar to the story of Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt.  I believe this is an etiological story meant to explain the existence of the salt pillars which ironically look like human formations it also provides a moral lesson.

Also, many people believe that sodomy in Bible terms refers to sexual acts that are not related to procreation, that is not true.  Sodomy: A History of a Christian Biblical Myth

Next: Slavery in the Bible is NOT what you believe it to be like in modern times.  This quote comes from a website called beginningandend.com

“Kidnapping a person in the Bible for any reason, but especially for slavery was a capital offense punishable by death: And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.

“This is a major and fundamental difference between the two systems. At this point all comparisons end.  African slavery was based on the kidnapping of millions of Africans from their homeland, forcing them to travel to another continent and work under inhumane, abusive conditions until death. In ancient Israel any “master” who tried to steal another human being was a sinner who could be killed for that offense.
This is confirmed once again in the New Testament in 1 Timothy 1 when the Apostle lists various types of sinners that have no place in the Kingdom of God:”

Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,  For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine  
1 Timothy 1:9–10

“So right along with murders, those who profane god and liars are listed “menstealers”, another term for “slave traders.” So by this standard any slave trader, master or participant in the African slave trade, which was done wholly on the basis of kidnapping, would have no justification for their sins in the Bible. It would be impossible to carry out the African slave trade rightly following the Bible.”

So if you need some sort of “proof”, see here and below is an excerpt from the mentioned website.

“Late in the 19th century, archaeologists in Madaba, Jordan, discovered an ancient map in the form of a mosaic under the floor of the church of St. George, only thirty miles from Jerusalem. The map contains a specific reference to the ancient city of Zoar, the destination of Lot when he fled the destruction of Sodom. The map offers powerful evidence the city once existed.
Excavation of gravesites at a location suspected to be one of the two cities found mass graves containing as many as twenty thousand people. Scientific research of ice cores performed at the Ohio State University indicate a worldwide cataclysmic event took place in 3123 BC that could well have been the result of an air burst asteroid strike as suspected occurred in Kofels.”

@nofurbelowsbatgirl You are making my argument for me. The story of Lot’s wife is not presented as ethology. It is presented as the divine and perfect truth dictated to accurate scribes by an omniscient and omnipotent God. Recognizing that it is actually just primitive man trying to explain natural occurrences he could not, at that time, understand is exactly my point.

You’re right that the sin of Sodom is not being welcoming to strangers. Homosexuality had not, at that point, been condemned as a sin punishable by stoning to death. But the Torah is very clear on God condemning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction because their sins had offended Heaven itself. Trying to explain that away with ethology is simply saying what I said, the Bible is not the inerrant word of God but the words of primitive tribesmen trying to make sense of a world they had no way of understanding.

@ETpro well not really. I think you may have misunderstood me. I do not mean ethology as in the study of human behavior. I mean etiology factors. Definition: ETIOLOGICAL FACTORS Those factors that encourage or cause a particular outcome, for example addiction to hard drugs is a factor that can lead people into prostitution or criminal behaviour; being raised in a violent home is a factor that can lead to violent behaviour or being victimized by violence.
I suppose I should of clarified by saying “factor” instead of story I apologize.

Anyhow all I mean is that back then it was their only logical way to explain things that were unknown, which nowadays in the future of science and great explanations to you may seem absurd.

Dammit! My earlier post should’ve read:

Well I think this is a good start as to why you should n’t believe.

According to the bible, the Israelites enjoyed military success, pillaging, and generations of peace as a direct result of their favor with god. Aka. Their superior luck above all their competitors.. Then when they lost their favor with god (aka, their luck) the Romans gave them a thrashing.

This tradition of worshiping luck continues today. Believers always talk about how good times in life are blessings from god while bad times are either punishments, brought on by waning faith, or generally times to pray more and dance for rain.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl You are still making my point. We are reading the writings of people back then. An omniscient, omnipotent creator who wrote all the laws of the universe would have labored under no such misapprehensions.

And as to slavery, the slavery that captured nations faces was no cakewalk. Even those falling into slavery through adverse financial conditions were not free. They were owned.

@ETpro I merely offered up another explanation. I do not think I’m making your point.

An omniscient, omnipotent creator who wrote all the laws of the universe would have labored under no such misapprehensions.

Do you absolutely know that statement to be a true fact?

And he would absolutely not be guiding people back then with fallacy, since back then their resources to science were slim to none.

Evolution my dear Watson.

We go to school in grades and successions of years for a reason. If we were all born “all knowing” then God wouldn’t need to exist.

The only reason not to read and not to believe in the bible is when someone is not capable of reading a complex text in a non-literal way.

Main reason: You are a Christian and wish to remain so.

Other than that, no good reason, really. Just as there’s no good reason not to read anything at all, save a lack of desire to do so.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl If you are unable to grasp why you are making my point for me, then carry on. Yes, men were primitive then, but that did not mean that an all-knowing God was completely impotent to inform them. What part of omnipotence do you fail to grasp?

@ETpro Don’t be all self righteous and sanctimonious with me!

I grasp your view and to be polite about it that’s your opinion. Albeit, I was only trying to give a more greater explanation regardless of making your point or not. I understand I am making the point in contrast to your comment, about the times being different and how they explained things differently back then, so on that we agree.

Sometimes if I am tired which is most of the time lol my writing is not the greatest and I do not clarify things properly. Also my bipolar gets my mind and my comments wandering, so please forgive me. In my last comment I said: “I do not think I’m making your point.” I did not mean that about how people in primitive times perceived things. I meant that I was not making your point about how an “omnipotent creator who wrote all the laws of the universe would have labored under no such misapprehensions.” In my tired mind I was challenging that opinion of yours and not the fact that we obviously both agree that primitive people gave different explanations for unexplained phenomenon, but then again it happens still today, God is unexplained as we know it and yet there are many different explanations about Him today. There are also many other things unexplained today and that is what leads me into the rest of my answer below which is my actual point to begin with.

And that is why I do not agree that “primitive man, unable to make any sense of the powerful forces of nature, came up with a mythical sky daddy to explain what he was otherwise unable to explain. He was unaware, at that point, that explaining one mystery with an even more fantastic mystery actually explains nothing.”

If you read the bible and can understand it I do not believe it to be a mystery that explains nothing, in fact, the Bible is a piece of history and the story of Lots wife turning into a pillar of salt actually explains that in their terms. It gives us accounts of what the geographical, political and moral world was like back then.

Next,

You say:“but that did not mean that an all-knowing God was completely impotent to inform them.”

This is what I think, you are making a statement that is in all senses of the word a statement in your opinion that is speaking for what God could or should have done so in your own words we are then not “explaining one mystery with an even more fantastic mystery actually explains nothing.”

And by all means yes by being an all knowing God He could of told people back then and if that’s what you needed to hear that yes he could of told people but he didn’t then I suppose that answer will suffice to fit your agenda and so your answer is validated, BUT now that you challenged me with failing to grasp omnipotence, I wanted to challenge that and add my OWN opinion and that maybe He didn’t follow what your rules are to be an “all knowing” God because, like or lump it, maybe He had different plans than you and being all knowing well He just gets to make whatever choices that He wants so He can plan a future the way He wants it.

I’m not sure why you think that an all knowing God holding higher power needs to do anything just because you have decided that it is the right thing to do?
Frankly the only one not being able to grasp here is you.

”...but that did not mean that an all-knowing God was completely impotent to inform them.” That right there is the flaw in your argument, because that is you making my point for me.

/grabs popcorn

@jerv Hey!! I know my mom makes great popcorn but give that back, in the name of God! lol

I’ll share the popcorn, but don’t even think of touching my Raisinets :p

@jerv Just enjoy the popcorn. The discussion between me and @nofurbelowsbatgirl is clearly going nowhere and is obviously creating ill will. I’m bowing out. I’ve said my piece. And she’s certainly free to believe what she wishes.

@ETpro I truly apologize if I caused you any discomfort. I meant absolutely no ill will towards you in my comment nor do I feel any ill will towards you. I think you are a great person with a great opinion and that’s why I challenged some parts of it I suppose.

/me attempts to resist pointing out that a god who wanted modern humans to believe in the divinity of its holy text could just as easily have added some tiny hint that let us know without a shadow of a doubt that it was aware of our impending existence. Something like a list of the stock market codes for Google, Apple, Microsoft, and a few others would have worked, and been a complete mystery to the bronze-age farmers.

Oops. failed.

Basically, since we as yet have no empirical evidence of a supernatural deity, I see a few options:

- God is concerned about us believing in it, but is unwilling or unable to obviate itself to us

- God is not at all concerned with our belief in it and thus has no incentive to obviate itself to us

- God is not there.

or correct science. would have been a good starter.

I’d even settle for the correct calculation for pi.

And that ^^^ my dear friends is supposedly what eating from the tree of knowledge has done to us.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl I don’t understand your comment. Can you clarify?

@glacial according to the bible, eating from the tree of knowledge has made us extremely aware of things that once we were not aware of.And with so much knowledge in the world we have created more problems and more questions to some things we may never have the answer to. That’s all I meant. :)

@nofurbelowsbatgirl Ah. Ok, thanks – I didn’t get that from what you said.

Personally, I think it’s always better to have knowledge, even if it comes at a cost (Yes, really. Always.). But I don’t believe that humanity was ever given a literal choice like this. And I don’t think that questioning biblical assumptions makes life more complicated; I think it actually makes life simpler, because it means not having to believe multiple contradictory statements at the same time. But that’s just me.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl

I hope I never settle for ignorance because it’s “easier”. That’s how people end up with STDs.

@Seek_Kolinahr Well we didn’t settle for ignorance, we were given a choice and man chose knowledge.

This is the way it was supposed to be.

And I’m sorry but people do not always end up with STD’s because they are ignorant. Getting an STD isn’t just about being ignorant, in the nicest way I can possibly say it, frankly I find your statement ignorant, lack of education, monetary, accidental, job hazard all play factors as well.

The only way to truly protect yourself is abstinence and even then sometimes that is not fool proof, so if you are not abstinent then I guess your ignorant, because I have a very good friend who is well educated and was not ignorant to STD’s and because of a faulty condom now lives with HIV.

re: Tree of knowledge.. There isn’t good enough evidence to suggest that that story ever actually occurred in human history. All we know is that the story exists.

Lack of evidence = Good reason not to believe it’s real.

re: Lack of evidence = Good reason not to believe it’s real.

That’s not a real good reason, after all Gobekli Tepe stands tall and predates Stonehenge 6000yrs. And still there may be evidence you can look at, but there are still unanswered questions so that shows us that evidence isn’t always the answer because even though Gobekli Tepe is there and shows us evidence that way, no one knows how such a “primitive” civilization did something so amazing. And if they could do stuff like that why couldn’t things in the Bible be the truth, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not true or never happened.

Such as:

“Each T-shaped pillar varies between 40 to 60 tonnes, leaving us scratching our heads as to how on earth they accomplished such a monumental feat. In a time when even simple hand tools were hard to come by, how did they get these stone blocks there, and how did they erect them? With no settlement or society to speak of, with farming still a far cry away, in a world of only roaming hunter-gatherers, the complexity and developed blueprints of these temples represented another enigma for archeologists. Do we have to change our vision of how and when civilized human history began? The plot thickens …”

@nofurbelowsbatgirl While the Gobekli Tepe may be real, there is no provable theory of how they came to be; no proof that any backstory behind them is actually true. If I told you that they were the fossilized droppings of an invisible pink unicorn, my claim would have just as much truth to it.

@jerv, exactly.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl said: “even though Gobekli Tepe is there and shows us evidence that way, no one knows how such a “primitive” civilization did something so amazing. And if they could do stuff like that why couldn’t things in the Bible be the truth, just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not true or never happened.”

The existence of Goekli Tepe is evidence that physical work and organization was required and used at that site very early in human history. Perhaps earlier than was thought to be the case. But there’s nothing paranormal or magical implied as a result of that. It’s just human effort and ingenuity. Pretty easy concepts to grasp. Totally probable. Hope we learn more.

On the other hand, the Bible story of the tree of knowledge is not comparable at all. The Bible’s story of the tree of knowledge is about a paranormal, magical tree that provides miraculous insight to humans who eat its fruit. There is no credible evidence to suggest that such a thing could ever exist or has ever existed in human history… except in the land of fantasy and creative story telling and metaphor. There’s lots of evidence that humans have creatively made shit up for thousands of years..

Also, the evidence suggests that Gobekli Tepe predates the Bible’s account of when man came into existence.

Lack of education = ignorance. By definition.

I’m sorry to hear about your friend but that is completely unrelated to our conversation.

The earth is not six thousand years old. Deal with it. Adam and Eve never existed. And I have a hard time taking seriously any adult who believes these stories literally.

It’s ok. Based on lurve alone I am outnumbered here. I on the other hand am not going to go with the most popular answer. I am not going to agree just to be popular or to get “lurve”. I am different I always have been and I always will be. My opinion is entirely my own, and I have walked this earth always as an outcast and I always will.

@Seek_Kolinahr You are right the earth is not six thousand years old. And quite literally a tree of knowledge may not of stood, but I do believe ironically that while yes you may all think “she’s crazy for her beliefs”, but it is I who should be challenging you because more than 20 comments ago you all highly agreed with @ETpro who I ironically also agreed with. The actual “tree of knowledge” may not of existed again we agree but and in the words of @ETpro you are making my argument for me, because the stories in the Bible can be explained by etiology, & not only has @ETpro explained that,—which based on lurve you all agreed but also I’ve already given that same explanation.

If we were to disappear tomorrow, please tell me what you think a new race would think of our “writings”? Paranormal encounters, UFO encounters the unexplained? Do you think we are the first to ever have the unexplainable in our lives?

And @jerv you are making my point ” there is no provable theory of how they came to be; no proof that any backstory behind them is actually true. If I told you that they were the fossilized droppings of an invisible pink unicorn, my claim would have just as much truth to it.” and @ninjacolin you are also just making my point. If “It’s just human effort and ingenuity. Pretty easy concepts to grasp. Totally probable.”

Then please oh educated ones let us all in on how it was accomplished so we can close the door on one of the worlds biggest secrets since the archeologists don’t even have a clue how so called “primitive” people accomplished something so modern without the use of the supernatural, because for all intense purposes that is a theory that us modern people have come up with as an explanation, maybe we aren’t so different than the biblical times after all.

So as you can see without the aid of science answers to the unexplained can vary and have vast differences in them to a point they can and have sounded like fairy tales, but like a modern day rumor, it does not mean it didn’t happen, the actual truth may be totally different from what it is thought to be, or it may not be a rumor and may actually hold truth and is just beyond our capability of comprehension.

And then again it may not be true at all but @Seek_Kolinahr I find it funny that you can judge me when you yourself have admitted to once being a believer, if I do recall correctly, but then again it’s hard to keep track.

If you can’t come up with new arguments then I suggest let’s not argue for the sake of arguing. Because this entire argument is not based on the idea of how or why something may or may not have of occurred it’s about the fact that someone chooses to believe differently about how it may or may not have come to be.

BTW @Seek_Kolinahr I’m sorry to hear about your friend but that is completely unrelated to our conversation.
Lol. Then there was no need at all to bring up STD’s and ignorance. Sorry but the ignorance theory is bullshit and my bff is walking proof.

Yep. I was once. A believer. Hardcore, young earth creationist.

Then as an adult, I started using my critical thinking and realised some stuff didn’t make sense. It seems like minutiae, but one of the first ones was the fact that Jericho was discovered and the dates didn’t match the bible. So either the science was wrong or the bible was wrong. Then that cask containing the guy who everyone thought was Jesus’s brother showed up. And the christians wanted to use the same science that ‘didn’t prove Jericho’ to prove this cask was real.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s the reek of hypocrisy.

So I gave up biblical literal truth LONG before I gave up religion.

See, the thing is that the fact that science says ‘i don’t know’ doesn’t give your god a place to hide. The gaps get smaller every day, and the hiding places becoming few. Science and Christianity are not equal. One thrives on proof and inquiry, the other on tautology and mind control. The best part is, science doesn’t even have to show up to the fight to win.

Now that I’m not typing from a phone…

“There is an archaeological wonder for which we have no explanation, therefore god” is not an argument. It proves nothing other than the fact that we don’t know how that archaeological wonder happened. Yet. Or maybe we’ll never know. Just as we’ll never know how a map that shows Antarctica’s coastline was found to have been drawn 300 years before Antarctica was officially discovered.

Of course, we have hypotheses: the map has an iffy coastline that connects to South America. So the writer of the map may have been guessing there’s a continent down there to “match” the land mass of the Northern Hemisphere. Will we ever know? Probably not. But since the same map also shows entirely mythological islands that have never existed, we can hardly take it as a definitive source of information about the knowledge of the globe circa 1500s China.

Will we ever know how Machu Picchu was developed with such amazing engineering without ever developing the wheel on a scale beyond children’s toys? Probably not. But then, the people who built the city-mountain didn’t have cable, so it’s not like they had anything to distract them from their task. Again, we can hypothesise hundreds of people pushing rocks up inclined planes, then moving the rocks into place with wooden poles (many of the stones have indents that could have held knobs or poles which were later sanded down).

One of my favourites is a hypothesis I saw presented by a grad student claiming that the Stonehenge rocks may have been moved using stone ball bearings set in ridged logs. Apparently a lot of fist-sized stone balls have been found between Stonehenge and it’s likely quarry. Unfortunately he didn’t have access to the correct hard wood on a scale large enough for the experiment, and the softer, more accessible wood failed to support the weight of the boulders. Still, I think it’s an interesting hypothesis.

And hella more interesting than “I don’t know, therefore God”.

lurve isn’t a “shut up the opposition” request. Don’t worry. It just means a comment was appreciated by a reader. But you can imagine how some who might side with you have avoided this thread all together. Don’t take offense.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl said: “Do you think we are the first to ever have the unexplainable in our lives?”

Really, we have lots of unexplainable in our lives, but we have lots of previously unexplained questions that now have reasonable explanations to them. There’s a trend and you might find it a little disheartening but it’s real: 100% of the answers we’ve been able to find have been non-paranormal. If we were to discover something that seemed truly magical in nature tomorrow, either by some obvious intelligent other species or by a god or spirit creature.. it would be the first ever.

That’s evidence in itself about the kinds of things that are out there. It means, those kinds of paranormal explanations are not only rare in the historical sciences but entirely lacking to date.

We’ve discovered fire and we’ve discovered crop circles but we haven’t EVER not even once discovered magic. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring but it doesn’t seem likely that it will be the hand of God.. you know.. since it’s never happened before… in the past 6 billion years to the best of our VERY RIGOROUS research.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl Science and history are what those who don’t have religious faith believe in. Scientists who have religious beliefs see science as a means to understand the complex universe that God made; those without faith omit God but still seek answers.

Now, if you wish this conversation to maintain a respectful tone, please stop proselytizing. You are free to state your beliefs and question our lack, but please be nice about it; you’re coming across as rather condescending. Let me be the snarliest one here.

Science: No ghosts, sorry.

@jerv OK. Im on my phone at work on my break. And this will be the last comment I leave on this question.

Condescending? Ok. Trying to convert you?? Lmao. That’s the most hilarious shit I’ve ever heard. I’m bipolar, I’m naturally condescending, it’s part of the mental illness, so I’m sorry I can’t stop.

If I’m “converting” anyone that’s those peoples problems, not mine. If you think I’m trying to convert people, that is laughable because I can come up with a better speech if thats what you want me to really do and actually do some converting, as soon as I’m having a high instead of being depressed I will take on that role and then you can say I’m trying to convert people, because at that point I may even be like the best church preacher you’ve ever heard, but as of today the doctor just highly medicated me on mood stabilizers so I doubt you’ll hear that side.

Your last comment is derogatory, arrogant and patronizing. If you don’t like what I’ve said flag it. All I’ve done is try to explain my argument, go back to eating my mothers popcorn. Ok.

BTW, I’m not going to follow this question any longer. AhhhmaZING!!! Condescending!! WOW. I’m actually astounded!
If you look back at my other comments you’ll even see I have thrown in a compliment.

@ninjacolin “100% of the answers we’ve been able to find have been non-paranormal.”
Your still making my argument. Things in the Bible have been explained with etiological answers.
In case you missed it
ETIOLOGICAL FACTOR:
Those factors that encourage or cause a particular outcome, for example addiction to hard drugs is a factor that can lead people into prostitution or criminal behaviour; being raised in a violent home is a factor that can lead to violent behaviour or being victimized by violence.

And Lot watching his wife turn into a pillar of salt is not paranormal, but merely a primitive explanation for the appearance of the salt looking like a person.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl can you provide some information about condescension being a part of being bipolar? I have never heard of this before. I am sure there are some bipolar people who are condescending but I am surprised to hear you say your condescending behaviour is a direct result of your mental health problem. What percentage of bipolar people are also condescending and can you link some evidence?

@nofurbelowsbatgirl I’ll wade back in at this late date since I seem to be part of the discussion, present or not. Perhaps I was inarticulate to start, and can explain more clearly my assertion that your appeal to primitive man’s ability to express himself was “making my argument for me”. If you were talking about any literary work of antiquity that was purported to be nothing more than a literary work of antiquity, you would be absolutely right, and I would agree with you instantly. But you are talking about a work that Christians claim to be the inspired and perfect word of God, an omnipotent and omniscient being who was, and is, and will be forevermore. Claiming the lapses in accuracy in that sort of book are due to humans from antiquity putting things in terms they could comprehend is claiming that this omnipotent, omniscient God couldn’t control what his own servants wrote. They couldn’t hear him any more than we hear his voice ringing down out of the clouds today.

@ETpro And that is why I am Agnostic.

The most condescending person I know is my bipolar friend, D. But he’s an asshole. I tell him that regularly to his face. It makes him laugh because he knows he is, but I’m one of the few who will actually tell him.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl responded to me privately but I have said I would prefer she respond to my question here. The statement was made here and I think the response to my public question should be made here.

@wundayatta We are not our disorders. An asshole is an asshole regardless of and independent from their mental health. Trust me on that one.

@Bellatrix and @jerv While the word condescending is not used as a category of the illness nor to a medical term, we can sure get delusional, have feelings of grandiose, irritated and agitated for example. So perhaps @nofurbelowsbatgirl was referring to a behavior as a result of that? As was @wundayatta. I was called arrogant or belligerent at these times. While I agree that we are not our disorders, we certainly have certain behaviors that stand out from people who are not Bipolar. Or are different.

@Bellatrix just a question? is it OK to say when someone has PM’d you? I thought private messages were private? I just find that interesting, but you are the mod, you can correct me on that comment if you wish?

I can type that someone pm’d me. I didn’t post the comment here. I asked a public question and there has been no public response. So, mod or not, I can let people know there has been a response to my question and I have requested the person to post it here.

@Shippy Sure, so long as you don’t reveal the content of the PM.

The link between science and the Bible is one that has been studied for decades and it is always the case that it proves some parts and disproves others. (for example the Jericho dates that were mentioned earlier)

As I said in another question, one thing we are taught in archaeology is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence meaning that just because there is no evidence of it does not mean it didn’t exist and it encourages you to keep an open mind and in science you need to do that because so many scientific theories have been shot down and always will be.

As an aside, there is of course the theory that there was an Adam and Eve figure (mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosome Adam) so even though it may not have been exactly as it said in the Bible, there is still an individual that we are all descended from both patrilineally and matrilineally and if science had closed shop and just dismissed the idea of no Adam and Eve, then their studies and research would never have unveiled these two figures from our distant past.

@jerv People keep saying they aren’t their disorders, and that still doesn’t make sense to me. If we’re sick, then it is part of us. You can’t say you’re not sick. You are. So saying you have a disorder but you are not the disorder seems sort of silly to me. Who is telling you you are your disorder? You’re a human being. You’re not your disorder, but you are sick and that has a big impact on you.

If someone is an asshole, then trust me @jerv. Bipolar disorder can make you into a real super double strength asshole. If you’re a condescending person, bipolar disorder can make you into a really majorly condescending person.

You can’t tear the effect of the disorder away from the person. They are inextricably linked. You are who you are. You are who you are with bipolar, only doubly so.

So what? You’re still a person. You’re still responsible for your behavior. You’re still responsible for your impact on the world. Having a disorder doesn’t give you a free pass, and I don’t see anyone asking for a free pass. I know I’m not. There is no reason why anyone should be allowed to get away with being condescending because they are bipolar. That’s one of the more stupid ideas I’ve ever heard.

But if people want to excuse me from my major excesses because I have a brain chemistry disorder, that’s on them. I’m not asking you to do that. No one is being forced to take leave of their senses.

It’s up to you to decide whether you want to be extra nice to people with bipolar disorder, or not. I recommend not. We have our charms. And there are many reasons to like us. But being rude is not something you should condone. I love it when people put my friend in his place. Maybe one day he’ll learn he isn’t getting away with it and that being nice might be a better policy.

Thank you @wundayatta.

@wundayatta Yes true. Don’t forget so called regular people are rude. And all the things you mentioned. Not sure what their excuse is ?

@Shippy My point is that rude is rude and is unacceptable no matter who does it. Someone can say they are rude because they suffer from bipolar disorder, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay attention to it. I go to a meeting of bipolar folks every two weeks or so, and in a room full of twenty people, there is one rude person. And he gets everyone pissed off at him. That’s the way he is. It’s not the bipolar; it’s him.

I don’t care about excuses. I care about how you treat people. You can offer all the excuses you want, but to me, it doesn’t matter. Courtesy is courtesy. Either you do it, or you don’t.

If I’m not courteous, it’s because I either made a mistake or I did it on purpose. It’s not because I’m bipolar. I am discourteous when people have been rude to me, or when I think people are being stupid on purpose. I could be wrong about my perceptions, but that’s what is going on.

Anyone who says they are rude because they are bipolar is not going to be given any slack by me, and I hope by no one else. You can be bipolar and courteous and nice at the same time. Yes, we do get irritable and impatient and paranoid at times, and we might act rude because of those things, but when we are normal again, we should apologize and try to fix it. We weren’t trying to hurt people on purpose, and it may be difficult for us to control ourselves at times, but that is different from being condescending, which, to me, is a deliberate sleight of other people.

@wundayatta Yes agreed. I have said all along that we should face the same consequences as everyone else.

I know though when I suffer mania I could say things in a bad way as opposed to when I’m not. I am not sure if I should be excused then? Or some how make people aware that at certain times my thinking is not reasonable or congruent?