Quote:
Originally Posted by levite
While I sympathize, I think that it's too easy to either blame lack of reading the books or call religion a failure in general.
Guys like these douchebags can read the Bible all day long and still never comprehend a word they read. Bible is complex, and infinitely nuanced, and, in general, no friend to people looking for simplistic attitudes and lowest-common-denominator platitudes. It is inevitable that people like this-- full of hatred, of fear, of ignorance-- will find the religious position and the textual reading that is the most oversimplified, the most archaic, the best for channeling and sublimating their own fears and ignorance, and the least helpful to an actual search for spiritual advancement and closeness to God.
Religion has power. And like any power, it can be abused. And like nearly all of the most powerful things, it is abused frequently, with horrible results, and usually at the expense of precisely those people its inventors were trying to protect and aid.
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On the other hand, perhaps it is people like you who say that the Bible is
"complex, infinitely nueanced, and in general, no friend to people looking for simplistic attitudes and lowest-common-denominator platitudes" that are reading too much into something that is meant to be simple and easily understood. Have you considered that your position on the bible being a great work of delicate, spiritual art might not be the intended purpose of the scriptures as originally written? They are history and instructions from Jehova, my friend. . .nothing more, at least when speaking of the Old Testament. They are simplicity defined.
The followers of Jehova's peace-loving bastard son are the ones who caused most of the problems by pretty much writing their own rules over the ones that already existed. . .but who are you going to listen to, my friend? The owner of the plantation, or his whiny overseer of a son? When you go to someone's house to borrow their lawn mower, do you ask the man of the house, or the teenager with the iPod? Who owns the lawn mower? Who owns the Earth. . .Jehova or Jesus? Will you let the rules of the son supercede those of the Father?
Amen