Holy crap! I had no idea this crap was in the bible. I thought it was full of love and that sorta thing, but what the heck? No wonder the neocons are trying to blow up everything. Scary, very scary.
The more I read this site the more convinced I become that the bible is nothing more than a form of social control for the uneducated masses back in the day. It reads like a "here's how to survive" manual sometimes, with some crazy stuff tossed in for good measure.
I mean look at this, this, and this.
All from Deuteronomy. Let's look at some other parts of the bible.
From Psalms. My favorite: 'God will laugh at the heathen as he kills them'
From Revelation.
And on and on and on.
Oh, and don't forget to take a look at the Book of Mormon or the Quran while you are there. All social control, baby.
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I am not that familiar with the book of Deuteronomy and it's story, so let me read it before I comment too,too much.
As you know, there are many ways to interpret the Bible, literally,figuratively, historically, conveniently, and so on. And then there is always the historical editing when the King James Version came into existance, which has always been a source of great skeptcism and contoversy.
And, one must remember when reading the Old Testiment that it "is" mostly an historical account, fully accurate or not. I occasionally like to parallel it to the beginning of "The Hobbit." But, one cannot assume that "all" statements in the Bible can transcend time w/out alteration or without at least an appreciation for the time and society it originated in.
At this moment, I simply see the book as an historical account of the Isralites war as they attempted to take/ retake their land, written in a period style. Whether God actually said to do those terrible things, or rather a more self justified and poetic style of recounting a period of war in the Middle East, you decide.
And, of course the Bible is a form of social control. You'd be foolish to think otherwise. Religion is a form of social control. I suppose it's whether you subscribe to the control and/ or who you believe has the ability to manipulate it.
Government has rules and I choose whether to recognize and obey them, to think of them as guidelines and act on my own decision, or choose to disregard them and accept any consequences.That doesn't necessarily mean they "control" me.
Although the US seperated Church and State, weren't they, upon conception of government, the same thing or at least strongly intertwined? ( Greek and Roman culture) The uniting of the 2 most powerful social controls. In Asia, are they not still? I do not know.
As for the Bible, in general, I think many people take excerpts and manipulate them to mean what they desire at the time, including some/ many highly visable religious leaders to justify their own agenda. To believe in God and support the notion of free will can be complicated, especially to those of Orthodox faith.
If all men have free will, why is it deemed appropriate and encouraged in the church for any man to freely accept the thoughts or views of another man before, or without, exercising his own thought? And, I do not know where it was stated certain men would be more holy than others and who among men is capable of passing or appointing such judgement - although the Old Testiment would be the place to find it, I'm sure. It is this sort of political hierarchy, overly present and exercised in the Catholic church but not exclusive to it, that presents a problem for me.
I always thought many "extreme" religious folk took the analogy of "sheep" way too far. But as we discussed before, if you remove yourself from any decision making process, you, supposedly, also remove yourself from any "fallout" related to participating in making those decisions, besides skirting the weight of considering multiple perspectives. Who needs to think when someone else has done it for you? I suppose that elimination of fault or responsibilty to think is highly attractive to many. Hence, non- confrontational, highly passive people :-).... less risk and work.
Hmm, not sure what all that had to do w/ Deut. specifically, but those are some thoughts.
Discuss.
And, I bet many didn't know that the Song of Solomon is a rather explicit love/sex tale.
The editor/writer of that book was the Hugh Heffner of the day.
Sweet...discussion. Maybe we can get some of the lurkers in on this. :)
I more or less agree with what you said, since we have had this discussion before. Like many things, I believe the Bible, Koran, Book of Morman, etc etc can be used as a set of guidelines, but as soon as you start taking them more literally you get into trouble. You start to put the decision making power in others' hands, like you described. And sometimes, those others have quite the ego. Of course, I'm not sure how you could not have an ego if you have that many people hanging on your every word. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, right?
On top of all that is something else I find quite interesting. Apparently, there were many more canons written then the ones that made it into the Bible, including a few written by women. They had some sort of pow wow to figure out what should go in there and discarded the rest. I've always been very curious to know what was in those other canon's. In fact, and I can't find it now, there is some evidence of other canon's that were not included. Man, I wish I could find that stupid link.
For the record, I think that majority of relogious people are good people and have a good head on their shoulders. I don't have anything against them and I'm sometimes envious that they found something that they can believe in. The problem I have is with those people that leverage these beliefs for personal gain or those who don't even bother to question their beliefs. Those are the people I rail against because I think they are a danger to themselves and to the US, particularly when they gain power (Rick Santorum anybody?). Jack ass.
http://www.silentjoe.com/2005/06/hell-doesnt-exist/
I firmly believe close to the same. Most religious books are all taken out of context and made holy. Once we, as a people, break these chains, we can be truly free. :)
I've never fully gone through the bible, but I went to a private Christian academy school until I hit high school, so I'm pretty familiar with the bible and I've read through all of the Book of Mormon.
2 Nephi is a drag, really, but after that, it takes off and gets pretty interesting.
I always thought the Bible, the story itself, is pretty interesting. I think when it starts to be taken literally is when you run into trouble though.
Did you go to a public high school? How different was it from the private school?
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