Here's another metaphor for you to consider:  Cherry picking

While I can't remember chapter and verse, why didn't Jesus tell the woman at the well, or theadultress he savedfrom stoning to go at once to have a female circumcision done?

Peter, who knew the teachings of Jesus better than any other, doesn't cut out his tongue after he denies Christ.

Jesus forgives a multitude of sins in the Gospels, but never enforces a literal interpretation of this saying, a pretty clear indicator it's a metaphrical, not a literal teaching.

How's them cherries?

Back to this unresolvable conundrum.  I don't know that the bible  is useful as a reference for objective proof. I tend to agree with you that it can be interpreted in whatever manner the reader chooses. So the opening poster should first find somebody that believes the quoted passage is literal and then ask why they still have their hands and eyes.

I see this passage as a mtaphor. To see the "kindom of heaven" (find peace, bliss, whatever,) we must deny the flesh. In modern terms it means to me simply not to let our lives be governed by "the flesh" but rather our higher nature (rationality?) 

Huh? I thought the question was which parts of the bible are literal and which are metaphorical. Clearly, taking the entire contents of the bible as literal is madness. But some things seem rather straight foward. "Thou shalt not steal" seems like a pretty literal thing. 

I don't believe there is a fully objective standard that would tell us passage A is literal while passage B is metaphorical. On the other hand, "what feels right" is pretty damn shallow. The bible is not a text book written against a body of empirically derived evidence. And even I have some standard which I apply when deciding what might be literal or not. Things that obviously contradict reality as I perceive it are either metaphorical or mythical. Things that contradict common sense (like plucking out your eye) fall into a grey area. My spin on it is that most of what Jesus said was either in the form of parables or taking about some "spiritual" matter. Analogs to the material world were used to illustrate something not necessarily materialistic. The bible will never be logically consistent. So while there is no objective measure for deciding metaphor or literal, I think it can be approached with a certain amount of intellectual honesty. I think the promary (and valid) objection that atheists have is that claiming the bible is "absolute truth" forces those that believe this into an intellectually dishonest position. Which in turn leads to arbitrary compartmentalization of internal contradictions.

I really doubt that you are confused. You feign confusion as a rhetorical device.

And you are wrong. There are plenty of people that take it seriously.

Also, I do not believe the bible is the unvarnished word of god. 

I suppose my question on this issue would be:

Which teacher's interpretation of an imperfect book transcribed by imperfect people from an allegedly perfect being's words is the one true interpretation?

Or must I wear rose-colored jesus glasses that edit out things like slaughtering pigs with evil spirits and marital advice from an unmarried ne'er do well?

Why must I trust the counsel on interpersonal relationships from men who were betrayed by their friends and followers?

I will certainly agree that there are many places where parables are to be metaphorically applied. However, that does not excuse the specific one mentioned by the OP. 

I'm afraid that the usage and depiction of these violent acts in the parables does lend credence to the arguments presented.

So on one hand, you admit our understanding of reality is more sophisticated than 2000 years ago and on the other hand you expect that those that put "gods word" to paper to have had done so perfectly? The problem is not the text, but rather the blind adherence to a flawed document.

Ok first of all. this cartoon (above)

Laughed my ass off! funniest thing i've seen in ages. And the resembelance is uncanny!!!

Second

Theists: By what measure do you decide which parts of the bible are meant to be taken literally and which are to be interpretted as metaphor?

In the words of Han solo "thats the real trick isn't it."

Personally i use something i'd call " the holy spirit" which you would call "a figment of your imagination", "your concience" or possibly "looking for it to say what you want it to say". Take your pick.

Some bits are pretty obvious hyperbole. Some are less clear. Its all very open to misinterpretation. However lets assume for a second that you guys are right and i'm wrong and that there is no God. In that case the thing i call the HS is nothing more than my construct of what i think a benevolent God is. And there are worse things to live by than what you think would be a perfect standard. If i'm right then of course its much simpler. Thats not the pascal wager, i'm not talking about getting to heaven here, i'm talking about how you LIVE as a christian (or not).

So yes. There is cherry picking on my part. But its not entirely cynical or unguided. And whilst you can find bits of the bible to support some nasty stuff its much easier (at least in the NT) to find bits of good sound advice for a happy life.

It realy is simple mate.... If the bible is THE WORD OF GOD.. Then you can not cherry pick what to follow out of it and what to follow.

IF you do that then you have absolutly no credibility. It makes you and all others who use the bible as means of PROOF of jesus and god existance hypocrits.

While i am sure you will not agree with me on this, That doesn't make it any less true.

Mehh..

Yeah. You're right. God, in his infinite wisdom, could have made any text he wanted. In fact, he could have put something in there about quantum mechanics... he could have taken hold of the writer's hand and written in a language not yet invented, describing subatomic particles in intricate detail which wouldn't be understandable for a couple thousand years. (Believe me, if the Bible had something in it about Georgia beating Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl in 2007, I'd stand a lot better chance of believing it, too...)

The point is, he's god. He could have come up with any number of really clever ways to make his text understandable -- and perfectly logical. That way, those of us who are deluded into thinking that logic is um... logical... would have an outside chance of believing. Instead, he wrote in exactly the same style of language, with exactly the same scientific misunderstandings, errant philosophy, and misogynist attitude of the people he was divinely inspiring.

And we shouldn't fault him for that because if he'd actually made the text so miraculous that it was unmistakable supernatural, us morons wouldn't even believe it.

You're very smart.

Yeah. It's too much to expect the creator of the known universe to have a chapter marked "AD 1," one marked "AD 1000," one marked, "AD 2000" with instructions like, "Do not open until then, or I'll smite you," and then smite anybody who opened it early.

Now that would impress the hell out of me. Literally. I'd be a Christian if only God had been a little less like the people who wrote the bible for him.

You're right again. When we're dealing with something as important as the souls of billions of people, it's good that he didn't explain what he wanted. Better to let people interpret it on their own feelings. That way, more will go to hell and he'll be able to brag about how "just and righteous" he is.  After all, he couldn't be just and righteous without sending a few heathens to eternal torment for being logical.

No offense, it's not up to the level of post modernist bollocks.

1. Ok.. If you do not use the bible as evidence of god/jesus etc What exactily do you use ? Because other then the bible there isn't a damn thing. And the bible does a piss poor job of even doing that.  

I don't. I don't think there is any evidence. I think that it is a catagory error to think in terms of evidence. You can't prove any of christianity empirically.

2. Ether it is the word of god or it isn't .. You can not claim it is the word of god and then pick and choose what to follow in it. It would be like me saying I agree with X book entirly but i am not going to follow what it says on page 12-15 because i don't want to.

You presume much about what i "claim". When did i say that i agree with the book entirely? I did'nt. Where does it say in the bible that it all has to be applied at all times? It does'nt.

3.  "Who said its All got to be followed?" <<  WOW... Once again .. If it is the word of god........................... THAT IS WHO .. 

LOL

Nope. Does'nt follow.

Just wow.. that last statement is just... Wow..... (me shaking my head in disgust at the ignorance)  

LUINPM (Laugh until i nearly piss myself)

So let me get this right. You are NOT a christian, and don't claim to be. But then you assume that you know the correct way to read / interpret the "holy book" of my religion and can tell me i'm ignorant for not doing it in the way you think i should?

Thats confusing. I'm accused of being a "bad christian" by other christians all the time. Never had it from an atheist before!

I'll say it again. IF god inspired the writing of the bible, nowhere does he say it is ALL relevant to EVERYBODY in ALL circumstances. In fact he goes to some lengths to make it clear that its NOT and that much of what was written in the OT is not relevant any more. So HE does'nt tell me its all got to be followed. I don't think it's all got to be followed, the only person who does is YOU and you're not a Christian!

You seem to be creating a straw man here. You are creating a standard (that all christians should  follow all the bible all the time) then pulling it apart (because we don't).

Cheers

The ignorant one.

  Jesus said NO, to abe, so they killed him ....

Just as the greedy rulers would kill YOU

XIANS, just don't get it , so buried in that corrupted  Bible , where that Jesus school wrote nothing much that got into that Bible devil book ....

They gnostics just knew , like you , they were atheists, ONE with GOD!

I am an atheist for Jesus ....  yeah to that Jesus of ONE , fuck god af abe .... of separation shit crap of Devil LIES ......   

erm.....Indeed i can not prove any part of Christianity nor according to you can you..... It is nice to finally hear a believer admit that there is absolutely no evidence for god or jesus. (The only so called evidence of the existence of jesus or a god is the bible)

So it is nice that you admit that nothing can prove it ..

I'm surprised you're surprised. But no i don't think the bible can be justified by evidence (certainly not by anyone who knows what "evidence" actually means). And proof is an even bigger word.

I suspect something though...... I have been going under the assumption that you are a believer in the Christian/catholic god/jesus.

Is this fact ? Or are you a Muslim or budist or something else..

Because your statements do not fit with the standered Christian /catholic rhetoric.

No you're assumption is quite correct. I am a Christian and a beleiver in the christian God, and in jesus as more than a jewish rabble rouser. I might be considered a "non standard" christian though.

It comes down to evidence because without evidence you can not or should not believe anything.

Now thats a very large and interesting statement. I wonder how many things you beleive that either are not based on evidence or are based on evidence you have not seen!

A study of cognitive psychology reveals (using evidence;-&gt that much of what we take for logical brain function is based more or heuristics and hard wired cognitive illusions. We all do it.

Science mate... Is based on evidence..

True. But in the wide gaps between the evidence it also uses models.

Religion is not based on ANY evidence.

And true. But there are many things in life which we take as true or experiance as pleasureable which are not based on evidence or are not properly understood or explained by evidence.

This does not compute..... It is irrational and  illogical..

That is because my brain (like yours), is not a computer. It may be logical on SOME level if you understand neurophysiology to a degree we are not even close to yet, but its certainly not on a superficial level (ie the level we are aware of as "rational" thought. )

I contend that beleiving in things which are not scientifically measureably / provable is a part of being human.

Eg.

Do you listen to music?

Why?

Do you beleive cheeseburgers taste good?

Where is the evidence?

Now the cheeseburger analogy is flawed because if we were being scientific all you could say that the taste of cheeseburgers stimulates a pleasure response in YOUR brain under standard test conditions rather than that they taste good objectivally. However if i came to visit and told you i'd never had one you would probably say something along the lines of "cheeseburgers are tasty, you should try one!" Thus being both irrational and yet relevant and useful. Because we do live as rational beings but as sloppy biological systems riddled with built in inconsistancies, strange emotional drives driven by complex chemical cocktails and hard wired heuristic patterns.

This just does not make sense to me........

Thats ok. It does'nt always make sense to me either. I suspect the difference is that i don't consider myself or indeed anyone who is fully sane to be "rational" most of the time! Oh we can think in a rational way (although not so well as we think) but thats a different thing, much like a computer trying to function in a "human" way.

Thus i would never try to "sell" religion to someone as being "proven" or "supported by evidence" or even "objectively as i see it". The most i would ever say is "it tastes good to me". However it is no less real for this.

Arrgh!  Can we lose the retina-devouring red font?

Many of us are ex-Christians here.

As devoted Christians we invested our lives into our faith . It's much like a divorce in that there are raw emotions due to a sense of betrayal. To lose a belief system that once provided comfort and guidance is no small issue....why would you expect us to be impassive ?

Besides, losing our faith doesn't mean that we forfeit the right to express strong emotions.

Are you one of those that claims your god created logic yet exists outside it? If not, it doesn't apply to you.

If it applies to you, where does your God live? "Sky father" seems to be the best description for most theists. 

Funny how there's so much that we do that is governed by the rules of logic. If we were truly outside of (not bound by) logic we could do pretty much whatever we wished.

Other than that, great dodge.

Does the lack of material existence hold for whatever it is you call God also (your god doesn't exist)? Or is your God somehow an exception? 

Arrgh!  Can we lose the retina-devouring red font?

Better? 

My Standard answer to this question again - It's all metaphorical, and from the perspective of someone several thousand years and hundreds of cultures removed from the existence the literature refers to it can never be anything but. Everything written is coloured by the perception and idiosyncracy of the writer, wether it be a dotted and crossed perfectly recorded historical account or a work of fiction it is equally colloquial and the best a reader can do is relate analogously to the context.

 As much as cherry picking is maligned, what's a person to do to avoid it short of mind-reading anyway? Reading is cherry picking by nature, the conscious mind accepts what it can understand; what has some correspondence with an arrangement of existing information, does it not? The real problem with cherry picking IMO arises after you accept mindfully what you can informatically relate to, it happens when that acceptance is never questioned or tested by the reader when the reader confuses that initial and natural stroking of the ego with the end of wisdom. 

You of course know, I agree with you on this.

Proving this wrong is unnecessary and delinquent IMO, if you'll excuse a little cornyness I think that those decisions are a positive refelction on your personal integrity. I would rather, if you were genuinely interested, direct you to where you might find more interesting and promising theological mysteries to consider. 

So my question is this, what justification does a theist use to call an atheist immoral, and still allow himself to cherry pick his way through the bible?

 For a theist to call an atheist immoral because of their beleifs is not logically defensible. Equally for an atheist to call a theist arrogant because of their beleifs is not logically defensible.

Somebodies beleif (or lack thereof) cannot be used as a tool to characterize that person. Sure there are arrogant christians and ammoral atheists. There are also amoral christians and arrogant atheists. That does'nt mean they are all that way. What an insult to the rich and broad tapestry of the human psyche that would be. 

 I will say that although you could probably find bits of the bible to justify most "personal moral codes" you would struggle to avoid the themes which come up repeatedly in the NT. Be nice to one another. Don't be judgemental. Look after those less fortunate. That kind of thing.

Anyone who claims that they do not bring their personal prejudice to reading anything (including the bible) is deluded. However some people do honestly seek to adhere to some of the clearer themes of the bible. 

I tend to find most (though by no means all)of the verses which i would describe as open to abuse or misinterpretation are in the OT and in Revalation. It is rare that i will "discount" or "ignore" something in the Gospels for eg.

Regards

Seeker

Thats certainly a view. Not one i'd agree with but a valid one nonetheless.

It is quite true that there are many biblical passages which are contradictory. It is also true that there are many which are not and which many christians hold in common.

My personal view is that the Bible has done more good than harm. But that is just my own observations of myself and those of my immediate aquaintance. I'm sure my experiance is not universal.

I am pleasantly suprised to hear such an honest assessment of biblical errancy from what I assume is a Christian theist.

 You assume correctly.

 I think that there is a degree of moral cowardice which goes on in terms of how we (theists AND atheists alike) analyse our own beleifs. It can be observed in how passionatly people defend their core beleifs, beleifs which the person on some level fears would not stand against close scrutiny.

 If you are minded to indulge in a little cognitive psychology it can be explained by the use of heuristics (mental short cuts or subroutines). When we do this (and we all do) it renders the thought process inaccessable to correction or analysis (because they was no process, we jumped straight to the end). Because the brain does not see the heuristic or accept that it started with the conclusion it tends to build in the process backwards and the reasoning is often more than a bit shaky. As such it tends to be defended more by emotion than logic. You can usually tell by how angry someone gets when their beleif is challenged.  

It is not entirly unlike the gunslinger fallacy where somebody fires six shots at a barn wall, walks over to the wall, draws a circle around the biggest grouping and says "i was aiming there".

I'm glad you feel that the intellectual gap between our views is not so wide. Perhaps there IS room for intellegent discussion somewhere in that gap.

Regards

seeker

PS i much prefer your new avatar, the old one gave me a headache!