The Bible is like a person- torture it enough and you can get it to say anything

[NJmaverick]

while nodding off last night this profound (at least in my opinion) comment was made on a Nat Geo program by a Scientist disputing the idea that the Grand Canyon was made by the great flood. I think it's a perfect explanation for the religious right.

[madmax]

1. I for one am definately going to keep that in mind.

Would make a great bumper sticker, too.

[ZombieHorde]

2. I don't know anybody who follows what Holy Bible says, be they on the left or right.

People just claim the stuff they like is true and the stuff they don't like is metaphor. People like to think their politics are backed by some super wise deity.

[RandomThoughts]

5. And God gives us free will and a heart and mind.

All riddles have something in common, they get people to think. So if holy texts have to be thought on, it also shows the person and what that person stands for.


For instance, the line that says people should come to God as a child, I think is about not being arrogant and thinking a person knows everything, and that people learn also. Also it seems to be about unconditional love.

That is an interpretation I have, I can find flaws in people that think they are parents and other people are children, they lose the ability to learn. How many of you have learned from a child because he has a different view of things. And more importantly claiming to be the parent, can make a person just advocate the ideas that person is best at, not what is best, it adds bias. If people learn from each other, and think and feel, trying not to be arrogant, then they can learn talents other people have, and share the ones they have.

And finding those flaws in people, and with thinking on that verse, I can find those flaws in me, and at times try to be like that child trying to learn and love, while also trying to share thoughts. But more importantly it is nice to find people that have succeeded to overcome those flaws in an area. That way others people can show you have the same flaws too, then those that overcome those things can show you how to overcome them yourself, if you think and feel they are flaws.

I think that verse is about not being arrogant, and also about having love. Is that what it says? Maybe, Maybe not, but it shows how I think on it, and what more can I do but think and feel on such thoughts.


The superman song for example, I know there are many things there, but it helps me when I worry about my own security or place, when I am in that struggle of want. So again I can find what is good, and that can give me comfort. And it also shows life is not in vain.

[NJmaverick]

13. true

[Lindsay]

3. Exquisite

snark.

[ananda]

4. A biblical chiasmus from GBS

"No man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says;
he is always convinced that it says what he means."

GBS — From a Saturday Review article, April 6, 1895.

[rug]

6. Chiasmus. Great word. Thanks.

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. I love it when I find a word I have to look up.

And it refers to a rhetorical device I use regularly (well, occasionally) in my writing, never knowing there was a word for it.

[rug]

12. I was thinking the other day that the Kennedys used this device a lot.

Ask not what you country can do for you but what you can do for your country, etc.

Obama uses it a lot to. We must be as careful getting out as we were getting in, etc.

But until this post I didn't know what that device was called.

[NJmaverick]

15. Very nice

[RaleighNCDUer]

7. That is a great quote -

any chance you can remember who said it?

[NJmaverick]

10. That's my problem I was nodding off so I had my eyes closed. It was

a NatGeo show on last night in which they were searching for scientific evidence of the great flood and Noah's ark (just the sort of boring show to put one to sleep). I wish I had his name but by the time I perked up and opened my eyes his name was off the screen and I didn't pay attention to it before he made that great quote.

[Courtesy Flush]

8. I love the Grand Canyon theory

If the whole world was flooded, why isn't the whole world criss-crossed with canyons? I live in the Mississippi River Delta, where floods have built up the soil. Same applies in other flood plains. If water can cut through miles of rock in 40 days, why hasn't the river washed away all of North America in the last thousand years?

[NJmaverick]

11. Believe it or not there is a fundamentalist who offers tours and will happily

point out all the proof of that theory. :crazy:

[Old Troop]

14. Oh bravo. I taught Western Religion and had a student who was

only interested in Revelation. I tried to explain that it was metaphorical at best, but she insisted that it was completely descriptive. Nothing would change her mind, including the rest of the New Testament.

[trotsky]

16. Well, not exactly.

It doesn't take much "torturing" of the bible to read some pretty nasty, evil crap in there.

[spryszak]

17. The Bible is like a person

Googled the phrase because I was trying to find out who said it too and ended up here! It was actually a Catholic priest who said it and he was saying that the intention of the Bible wasn't to be a science book or a history book or a book on anthropology. Then he said the quote. I thought it was brilliant as well, and it's not so unusual to have a theist make an argument for science. Not all theists are literalists, thank God (see wut I did there?). Anyway, alas, I can't find his name either. Will have to check the rerun.