"Why Liberals Should Read the Bible"

[StellaBlue]

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/132/story_13272_1.html

Why Liberals Should Read the Bible
The Bible doesn't go away if we don't read it. Others just tell us what it says.

By John A. Buehrens

Today many otherwise well-informed, intelligent people--religious liberals, seekers after wisdom and justice, even skeptics and the news media--often speak as though the Bible says and means only what fundamentalists say it says and means.

This shows not only a lack of understanding but also a failure of maturity and wisdom. Those who reject or neglect the Bible fail to recognize that to "throw the Bible out" because others have turned it into an idol, or because you don't accept what you take to be the conventional understanding of its teachings, doesn't mean that it ever goes away. Rather, it simply means that it ends up only in the hands and on the lips of others--often reactionary others--where it can and will be used against you.

How did we happen to give away our right to question religious authority and to interpret the Bible for ourselves?

(snip)

[GOPFighter]

1. I agree!

I keep a copy of the Bible (a Jerry Fallwell edition that my parents gave me for xmas years ago) in my bedroom next to my Calvin and Hobbes books. It's the edition that has Jesus' words highlighted in red and I'm convinced few fundamentalists have ever read his words. Also, parts of the Old Testament are highly entertaining (especially the incest stories), but C&H contains far more wisdom! (fresh meat for the trolls! Bwahahahahaha!)

[BiggJawn]

2. Uh, Mr. Buehrens? (raising hand)

Just HOW do you think I arrived at my deciscion to become an Athiest in the FIRST place?

The inference here is that because I don't LOVE that twisted book of lies, I haven't READ it.
I rejected the bible (and it's religion) because of all the convoluted contradictions, stories cobbled up out earlier recorded myths, and the principal character's psychotic need to be adored constantly under therat of enternal bad shit happening to you.

Yeah, we read it, we study it, we reject it, then people like Buehrens tell us we "misunderstood" it.

[Az]

3. Was talking with an atheist friend the other day

I was asking how she came by her atheism and talk turned to her mother. She had been raised Lutheran but they stopped going to church when her grandmother died.

Her mother remained a nonpracticing believer until her daughter handed her a bible and told her to read it. That was the straw that broke the proverbial back. After she read the bible she declared herself an agnostic and has been sliding steadily into fullfledged atheism ever since.

[Warpy]

17. My Irish Catholic mother had the same reaction

when she finally sat down in her early 60s and read it cover to cover, begats and all. She was astounded that she had spent so many years mired in superstition over selective readings of it from priest after priest. That was it for her.

I'd counter this guy with the notion that only selective reading of that book to reinforce one's already held prejudices can confirm faith. Reading all of it tends to destroy it, if the reader is intelligent enough to realize how self contradictory it is in some places and how utterly vicious it is in others.

I still regard it as an important book because it forms the mythic basis of much of our culture. Other than that, it's a Bowdlerized history of a people moving from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled, agrarian one, followed by a mythologized history of a man who tried to change the worst of it and the attempts by another man (Paul) to undo much of that.

[LisaLynne]

4. Reading it was what made both ...

me and my sister "throw it out". But, yes, I do wish "religious liberals" would throw more of Jesus' words back in the fundamentalists faces. If that's the point of the article. Actually ... I'm not entirely sure what the point of that article was ...

[StellaBlue]

5. haha

I wasn't, either - that's why I posted it. tee hee hee

[NMMNG]

6. It amuses me that people assume that Liberals don't read the Bible

Much of the time Liberals and Atheists know more about the Bible than the Fundies, because they've read it--actually read it. The Fundies, on the other hand, have only read the parts they are concerned with--the clobber verses, and other vile, hateful passages that let them condone what they are doing to others in Jebus' name.

[trotsky]

8. Ramen to that.

Like others have said, reading the bible - thoroughly - is what put me on the path to atheism. All the bad crap in there I knew couldn't be the word of a god, and all the good stuff to be found was already proposed by human philosophers or leaders centuries earlier.

One of my favorite things to do is throw bible verses back at fundies, and considering how ill-prepared they are for most of them, it's quite clear how poorly THEY know their bible.

[JNelson6563]

9. Exactly

I love to stun the fundies by knowing the bible better than they do.

:toast:

Julie

[Midwest_Doc]

7. You Just Don't Get It!

I have read the bible - cover to cover - and find it interesting and somewhat amusing.

No interpretation of the bible will, however, make me a believer.

I find the teachings of the old testament vicious, cruel, vindictive and arbitrary ; and the teachings of the new testament an impediment to the full development of human potential.

[devinsgram]

16. Yes, there are two different Gods in the bible.

A mean nasty one in the old testament and a loving kind one in the new testament. Reminds me of that old game show on TV, "I've Got A Secret". For you youngsters out there, this was a game show where a Panel would try to guess which one of three contestants was telling the truth about who they were. So will the real God, please stand up.

[geniph]

10. Where do they get OFF

assuming I've never read that particular book of fables? How thoroughly arrogant. I've done quite a lot of study of comparative religions, and have read that peculiar batch of screeds cover to cover, and even some of the deleted books of it.

My husband's father was a Pentecostal minister, self-taught, and very well-versed (pun intended) in the Bible. My husband can damn near quote the fool thing. That doesn't mean he buys into most of it anymore.

Apparently, people think if we just read it, our "eyes will be opened." Then again, quite a number of the fundy fruitbats appear to never have actually read it themselves - they just use it to thump on.

[Az]

11. Of course they do

Its perfectly natural. People believe things because they believe they are true. Furthermore it's a natural tendency for people to assume others think in ways similar to themself. It comes from how we come to know of other identities. We essentially project our sense of existance on other animate bodies. Thus for the most part people create other identities in their mind with their own mind as a template.

From this it is natural to assume that if only others could see the truth they have found they would naturally agree with them. Their mind came to see them as true. They are hard pressed to understand why another mind would not be affected in the same way.

[progressoid]

12. Hey John, been there, done that. ...nt

[lazarus]

13. I've not only read the Bible

(including winning Bible drills at Christian summer camps in high school, etc.), I've read the Book of Mormon and their other scriptures, the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants.

I found a copy of the D&C from the '40s. Interestingly, the words of the Prophet Joseph Smith had changed. Hmm.....

[onager]

14. Sword drills?

Get yer minds out of the gutter...

When we had Bible drills at my SoB church, they were called "Sword Drills." The "sword" was the Buy-bull, and it was used for various competitions involving Bible verses: be the first to find, identify, etc. I won a bunch of them, too.

It always offends me when some asshat assumes that my atheism flows from not reading the Bible.

And oh yes, reading it sure opened my eyes. Just not the way it was supposed to.

I can even relate my atheism to a verse from one of the most famous old hymns...

I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see.

[lazarus]

15. My atheist quote is in Corinthians

I Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

It's out of context, but these people use verses out of context all the time, so why not?

Hey, let's have a thread on this!

Yeah, sword drills. I knew that sucker backwards and forwards. I particularly liked the obscure books towards the end of the OT. They're kinda like the presidents of the 19th century nobody knows. :-)

[neebob]

18. I don't read books by modern authors I don't believe or agree with

so why should I read the Bible? I've read enough of it and know enough about its history to feel pretty good about rejecting it, and I'm not the least bit interested in talking about it with anyone who thinks it's more than a book of old stories compiled for the purpose of controlling people. I know it won't go away, so there's not much point in wanting it to. And if it gets used against me, well, that just proves the book is not the problem.

[Lowell]

19. Life is too short to waste on fiction

I was forced to read that crap early in life and totally rejected it. There are just too many bibles out there. Chirstian, jewish, buddhist ad nauseum. Freedom from religion is very liberating.