FoolThemAll

Definitions change all the time. There are no inherently accurate word usages, just ones that better correspond to the most popular usages of the day.

But if the Bible's using the word in a different way than that listed in the dictionary, then referencing the dictionary is a mistake. The dictionary isn't necessarily helpful here.

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shakran

The definition of "slavery" has not changed until some in this thread attempted to change it. There is a difference between slavery and indentured servitude.



in that case perhaps it's using a different definition of the word "lie" and therefore to "lie with another man as with one's wife" might not mean sex at all, meaning the bible does not in fact condemn homosexuality.

While we're at it, let's just redefine "god" to be whatever we want as well. For the last 2 millenia people have been redefining and changing the bible to fit whatever they want to do, why not continue the trend?

FoolThemAll

Sure, that's possible as far as I know. I think I remember a GLBT website arguing something like that. (But I'm not the one to ask, I've limited knowledge on the subject.)

It's not a matter of redefining to one's liking, it's a matter of redefining to fit how the word was used in those times. Maybe there's more than one valid interpretation. As far as I know, slavery back then could've possibly included indentured servitude. And obviously it wasn't in english, so slavery/slaves weren't even the exact words used. Burden of proof's certainly on the one making the claim - assuming that I haven't misinterpreted IL's arguments - but I think there's some misunderstanding due to differing definitions. A little effort can easily demolish such a roadblock.

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Willravel

That's an interesting thought that never occoured to me. As I remember, the NKJ bible was completed in 1982 and the NIV bible was completed in 1985. The definition of slavery has not changed since then. I can only conclude that when the word slavery is used in the bible I read, it is meant to convey the same definition that can be read in our dictionaries.

Infinite_Loser

I didn't just, as you would like to put it, decide to up and change the definition of slavery. Rather, I attempted to show that the broad generalization you made concerning the Bible and slavery was, indeed, false.

Fact: We know that God rarely, if ever, commanded the Israelites to go out and make slaves out of their neighbours.

Fact: We know that slavery during Biblical times was more economical than racial, as many people willingly sold themselves to another to pay off debts or to provide for their families.

As I'm sure you're well aware, people have dedicated their entire lives to studying the Bible and other such religious texts. The idea that we have of slavery today is a far cry from the Biblical institution of slavery. Funny thing... As time progresses the meaning of words change, so it's sometimes hard to ascertain a words true meaning-- Hence why we have hermeneutics. Through the use of hermeneutics, we're able to determine the meaning behind just about any ancient text (Though some are harder than others).

Which is why we have hermeneutics and exegesis of the Scripture. There are literally thousands of articles written on the subject, and I've been over this argument before. We could most certainly go down this road again, if you like

Go for it. There are already thousands of different interpretations of the word "God". I'm pretty sure one more couldn't hurt!

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Ourcrazymodern?

Hey y'all! I read this whole thread, and came to nowhere. There is no logic in faith but faith has a certain "tilted" logic to it. God came out of primitive fears and hopes is what I believe. Good luck to the "reverend" Falwell & may he burn in the Hell of his choosing. (Did I say that out loud?)

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FoolThemAll

Or the translations in 82/85 were flawed. I remember hearing that one version of the bible actually uses the word 'homosexuality', even though the term is a recent invention and often/usually is used to refer to the characteristic, not the choice. Translations deserve a skeptical eye, especially translations of highly debated books like the Bible.

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Willravel

What about the translation of "walks on water"? What if it was actually "walks by water"?

Either the bible is 100% true or it's not. If it is, then science and reason are a silly game being controled by an omnipotent super-being. If it's not, then why only question the meaning of the word "slavery"? Why not question why Jesus has all the common characteristics of mythological figuires that preceded him?

FoolThemAll

Sure, why not? I won't stand in your way.

But questioning whether slavery meant the same thing back then isn't the same as questioning whether the bible's 100% true. You give the choice of a fallible bible or "slavery is okay", but you're ignoring at least two other possibilities: fallible translations and fallible interpreters.

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Willravel

But Christians swear that the bible is 100% true and correct. Fallible translations and interpreters makes the bible fallible. If the word slavery appears in the bible and is wrong, then part of the bible is wrong, which negates the perfect bible theory.

filtherton

Some christians do. A whole lot of christians don't for a whole lot of different reasons.

The problem with arguing with one person about a topic that is really a composite of many different perspectives is that you don't actually get a good idea of what is actually going on. It's like arguing with one black person about what it means to be black. One person's opinion and experiences cannot possibly describe the opinion and experiences of a large group of people.

FoolThemAll

If the word slavery appears in a translation of the bible and is wrong, the translation is bad. Not necessarily that part of the original text. If I translated the original text of The Will to Power into english in a way that advocated anti-semitism, that's my fault, not Nietzsche's.

And while a bad interpretation could possibly reflect upon the work being interpreted, it could also be entirely the fault of the interpreter.

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shakran

And the Christians who do are cherrypicking the ideas they like out of the bible while saying those they don't (slavery for one) are mistranslated or inaccurate. If we're going to play that game, then we have to admit that we have absolutely no clue what's out there, what created all of creation, and most frighteningly, what will happen to us (assuming we don't just cease to exist) when we die. If you admit that the bible CAN have inaccuracies, then you have no way of knowing where those inaccuracies are, and therefore you don't really KNOW anything about anything that's in the bible. And if you don't know anything that's in the bible, it's rather stupid to use it to justify or condemn anything, isn't it.

filtherton

Why stop with the bible? We know that science is inaccurate. Any scientist who is honest will tell you that all science is justs an approximation based on experiment. Science does get things flat-out wrong. If we admit that science can be wrong, then we have no way of knowing where it is wrong, and therefore we don't really KNOW anything about anything. And if we don't know anything about anything then it's rather stupid to use anything to justify anything.

Besides that, the bible was written by people, presumably on behalf of god, or about their experiences with god, or whatever. The important thing is that is was written by people who most likely didn't have the whole story when it comes to god's divine plan. It's not exactly like god was holding their hand while they wrote, and it is probable that they added their own perspective a bit too.

As someone who make his living in the journalism trade you must be aware that the broad context in which you exist shapes the information you convey, regardless of who is telling you to share that information. I don't see how there is anything wrong with trying to examine the bible while taking into account the context in which it was written.

There is also a certain portion of christians who believe that god is still a relevant force in the world beyond just being embodied in a really old book. Shit, the pope speaks on behalf of god for the vast majority of catholics everywhere and he can change dogma at will. The notion that everything god ever needed to say to humanity was written in a book that's already a couple thousand years old seems a bit off to me.

shakran

Nice try, but this one's gonna fail. In the first place, you mentioned the most important part of my counter argument already. Science is honest, religion is not. If there's an error or an inaccuracy that science discovers, that fact is made known. Religion simply chalks it off as "god's plan" or some other such nonsense.

Then there's the small fact that while it's true that bleeding-edge science often finds that its theories are inaccurate, that doesn't change the established scientific dogma. What I mean by that is, whether exotic theoretical physics concepts like string theory or multiple parallel universes are or are not true, the established science (for example, the theory of gravity) will in all likelihood not change. If scientists conclude that string theory, for example, is not a valid theory, we will not suddenly float away from the planet.

Additionally science is peer-reviewed. That is, there's automatic error checking and continuing discovery built in to science. Science by definition questions itself constantly. By contrast, the bible is the bible, there's nothing to back it up, and we're simply expected to believe it because it says we should. I see a significant difference between science and the bible here, don't you?

Fourth, again using the theory of gravity, we are not simply told that gravity exists and we must believe in it because some guy we never met (Newton) SAID it's true. We are provided with mountains of concrete evidence of its existance. We fall, things drop, we don't fly off the planet, etc. We have absolutely no concrete evidence of god, Jesus's divinity, or any other religious idea. None. At all. All we've got is this book that swears it's telling the truth.

Now, given the choice between well established scientific theories which have a lot of evidence to back them up, or a book that swears it's telling the truth, which will you pick? I'll give you something to chew on before you answer: there's also a book out there that swears it's telling the truth, and describes alien autopsies performed at Area 51. There's another book out there that swears it's telling the truth that says Bigfoot roams North America throwing rocks at innocent hikers. And there's yet another book that swears it's telling the truth that says black people are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than white people.




Exactly my point. The bible is a bunch of claims made by men who 1) didn't have any secondary source to confirm what they were saying (who was up there with Moses on Mt. Sinai? Correct, nobody) and 2) stood to gain quite a bit if they could convince people that a wrathful god wanted the masses to listen to them (hey guys, God just gave me a bunch of rules and he sent ME down to tell you about them, and if you don't listen up he'll set you on fire forever).

Of course there's nothing wrong with that. Where we have the problem is when we start using the bible to justify whatever we want to do, despite the fact that we have no evidence to back the bible up. You mentioned my journalism career - one tenet of journalism is that you never go to press with only one source. Watergate could have been written in the first couple of weeks, except that the Washington Post needed more than just one guy telling them the president was a crook. By the same token, using one source and only one source to justify things like making discriminatory laws (no gay marriage), etc, is irresponsible. Examine the bible all you want, but don't expect everyone to believe what you say about it just because the bible says it's real.


And who can offer not one shred of physical evidence to back this up.

Or perhaps the pope speaks on behalf of himself and his organization and is able to change dogma because people BELIEVE he speaks on behalf of an all powerful being who can torture them forever if they piss him off.

Well yes, to me too, but the trouble is that we don't exactly have fireside chats with God now do we, and so it's rather difficult to decide what exactly god is, if he is anything at all.

What this all boils down to is that, barring solid evidence that god exists and is our master and wants us to do certain things, we should not impose those beliefs on others. If Falwell wants to avoid gay relationships, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with that. That's his personal choice.

If he wants to impose his anti-gay morality on gay couples who are not in any way harming Falwell, we have a problem. Obviously the gay couple do not believe that what they want to do is wrong, and since God has been so oddly silent these past two millenia, it is not possible for any person to say whether Falwell is right, or the gay couple is right, as far as whether homosexuality is wrong or not. Therefore, to attempt to use your personal religion to force someone else to behave the way your morals dictate that you behave is an indefensible action. In short, if it's not hurting anyone else, people should be able to do it without having to worry about some jackass using a 2,000 year old unproven book to stop them.

filtherton

I don't think that we need another science vs. religion thread. With that being said, science is not a silver bullet. Science is just what we can sense and it has nothing to say about spiritual matters beyond a shrug and a mumble. There is no reason one must pick science or religion. Science and religion can complement each other quite nicely seeing how neither one should have any sort of relevance in the evaluation of the validity of the other.

I don't know how many people took part in writing the various different things that got collected together and called the bible. I do know that it was more than two. Whether people stood to benefit from writing that shit down depends on the person. You should look up Job and see what an enticing image of god it makes.

I personally wouldn't use the bible to justify all the things i do, but i don't think it is any more unreasonable to use the bible to justify your actions that it is to use any other sort of code of ethics. I also don't think that you are very realistic in your demands for evidence. It would seem that your idea of what constitutes evidence would effectively eliminate a whole lot of recorded history from any sort of relevance.

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Nobody knows except the pope and he isn't saying anything.

I think that many people who are faithful feel like they talk to god all the time. Not that they could ever prove it.

Well, falwell thinks he's right. I think he's a douchebag, and i agree that it is against the spirit of our country to attempt to prohibit certain activities that aren't innately harmful to nonconsenting parties. None of this is to say that i think that nothing in the bible has any relevance to what is going on today.

Your position seems to be that nobody has any reasonable justification for finding any kind of specific motivational content in the bible because no one has the "right" interpretation of what the bible means. I disagree.

shakran

Nope, my position is, don't use the bible as an excuse to persecute people you don't like. If you don't want to have a homosexual wedding, that's fine. Don't. But don't forbid other people to do it using the bible as your reason. Find a REAL reason if you want to outlaw it - namely, one that shows how gay marriage hurts others who are not in the marriage. And since two guys getting married isn't going to hurt anyone, don't forbid them to do it.

My other position is, if you're going to live by the bible, then live by the whole bible. Don't cherrypick the ideas you want to live by and then try to force other people to live by the same carefully selected ideas. This whole gay marriage debate could be ended if the "religious" side would follow the advice of their own book and "judge not lest ye be judged." But for some strange reason that's not a very commonly followed mandate, even though it's in the bible. I would postulate that it's not followed very much because it's a lot more fun to judge everybody else and to believe yourself to be superior.

filtherton

Really? I guess when you said this:

You threw me off.

I think that people have every right to cherrypick whatever they want from the bible as long as they have some sort of justification beyond "well, i do like this part" for your cherrypicking. That's basically the process by which one makes sense of the world. You take in information, you decide what is relevant, and you disregard the rest. It isn't always an intellectually honest process, but it is pretty standard.

I think you're mistaken if you think that religious thought is the only thing standing in the way of legal gay marriage. Right here on the tfp there have been 100+ post threads on that very subject without religion coming up at all. People don't need religion to justify their disfavor towards gay marriage. They can use perspectives based on interpretations of economics, biology and sociology. Despite being more "honest" than religion, these disciplines are easily commandeered for the purpose of denying gays the right to marry. Do you think the fact that certain sociological theories can be used to justify the continued denial of gay rights should mean that any argument based on sociological theory is automatically unfounded?

shakran

I'm not sure why. I specifically said at the end of that paragraph that it's stupid to use the bible to justify *or condemn* anything.


People have the right to do whatever they want regarding religion, provided that what they want to do does not trample the rights of others. If you want to only read every 3rd word in the bible and call THAT the truth, that's OK by me. I really don't care. If you start trying to force ME to acknowledge it as the truth, or start trying to pass laws limiting MY freedom based on this truth that YOU believe, that's where we start having issues.

It's not the only thing, but it's a very big thing.

That's fine because an honest debate can ensue from an argument based on those branches of thought. Additionally if you think the majority of those opposed to gay marriage feel that way for anything BUT religious convictions, you are mistaken.


No. You seem to be trying to get me to admit that I feel that anything which is the opposite of what I want is automatically unfounded. That isn't true, however. What I AM saying is that if you want to ban gay marriage, you'd better have a damn good reason for it, and you'd better be able to back it up. Even a selfish and morally bankrupt reason such as "well I don't want gays to have the same tax advantages as everyone else does when they marry" is better than "the invisible man in the sky told me not to do it."

filtherton

Shakran, this is becoming a waste of time.

So when you said that you think that the mere existence of a part of the bible that is open to intepretation effectively negates all of christianity all you were really saying is that using the bible to justify the denial of gay marriage is wrong?

Okay, i guess i see how that could've been confusing for me.

In an ideal world, probably. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world. The world we do live in is full of people who disagree about different things for reasons that somebody, somewhere thinks are stupid. Most people are not open to changing their deeply held beliefs based unless the shit seriously hits the fan. Some people are willing to question their beliefs if given the right information in the right way.

If you want people of the biblical persuasion to think thoughtfully about what you're saying (provided they are in the minority of humanity that is open to questioning their fundamental beliefs) you must first come up with something more compelling than, "Your holy book contains information of questionable veracity therefore everything in it is unreliable and insufficient for any sort of proper decisionmaking." Why? Because it is a pretty obvious critique of the bible for anyone who would be open to the thought of questioning their beliefs. Probably they've already thought of it and asked their pastor and have been told either a)that the bible is the word of god and that questioning it's accuracy means going to hell, or b) that the bible is a historical document and, as with all historical documents, requires a certain knowledge of context to make proper sense of it. A pastor giving answer b might also make the questioner aware of the idea that there is some stuff in the bible (like genesis) that most likely didn't actually happen.

I think answer a often ends up bringing about the watershed moment where a person either becomes a blind follower or an athiest. Answer b is more compelling, and also more honest. It's also a good reason why your critique of the bible is pretty much useless as a means of changing the mind of a christian.

Do you have two independent sources to back up that claim? I've never seen statistics concerning the justifications given for opposing gay marriage by percentage.

Honest debate can ensue from arguments based on religion just as easily as it can ensue from arguments based on vague notions of what science says. All honest debate requires is that the people involved must share mutual respect and must have open minds; these things are often nowhere to be found when the subject of religion comes up.

Well, i've known you a while through this board and i must say that you generally seem to come across like you're pretty convinced that any idea opposite yours is unfounded.

What i'm saying is that just because the bible isn't necessarily a completely consistent and coherent piece of work doesn't mean that it is automatically a worthless source of information and motivation. See how we aren't really even talking about the same thing?

All this debate about gay marriage is irrelevant to my role in this thread and i won't talk about it anymore. I could frankly care less about your standards for what does and does not constitute a sufficient reason to ban gay marriage. Unless you're on the supreme court it doesn't matter to me.

I'm still trying to figure out why i am arguing about christianity and gay marriage with you when the only reason i said anything in this thread was to point out that will was making inaccurate assumptions about the role of the bible in christianity.

Ourcrazymodern?

"You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can't FoolThemAll.

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