Plato's Playground
That sounds very much more like human insructions than ones coming from God.
I believe that the Bible has been misused in it's purpose to pass on information about God. I think it has been changed, added on too, taken away from from the very beginning and certainly at each translation. In my humble opinion I think it's a gross and dangerous assumption that God wants us to put to death homosexuals AND the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites and all the other 'ites' mentioned. I'm fairly certain the realm of existence that is God's is way beyond discrimination of that type. It's humans that use it. It's humans who wrote it. Some with good intentions and some to manipulate. The King James Version is like the Readers Digest version of a Novel. It's really very sad seeing as a lot of people take it so literally.
such a nasty trick cervantes, actually QUOTING the bible. you must be an academic of some stripe, using source material instead of dr. frist's strange interpretation. modern fundamentalists use the "pick and chose" method of biblical citation. any of them who eat shellfish are going straight to hell. and, as we have pointed out ad nauseum, what's with christians insisting on old testament crap that their putative savior renounced?
JSK, one reason I posted that is because I heard one of those dissident Episcopal priests explaining why he had to join the schismatic movement opposed to the ordination of Bishop Robinson. He said, it was because the Bible condemns homosexuality and the Bible is the guide to our beliefs as Christians, essentially. It was obvious to me that either he had never read the Bible, or he was a hypocrite.
Also, of course, the people who now control this country proclaim, frequently and loudly, that the Bible is the "inerrant word of God." Again, people who believe that ought to read it. I have.
I personally believe the only real Word of God was back "in the beginning". As in "first there was The Word. The Word was God, God was in THE WORD and THE Word was in God." All this is a result of the vibration from that one and only word. All the way to the electrons, protons, quarks, fractals. Our bodies (I like to think of my body as my spacesuit) and all we see are the continuing manipulations of these tiny quarks by us for our own ends (thus 'free-will). We (who are the essence of 'The Word') live in our spacesuits while we explore this reality. Life is us in our spacesuits. If we break our suits and can't fix them quickly enough life (we, the breath of God or the soul what ever we call our true selves) merges back into The Word (the vibration) which is God of which 'we' are a part thus our ability to be Godlike. What we chose to do with this life is the important part. I don't know how important it really is to judge each other. We each have individual paths to take. There are laws of balance that take care of all things at some point. We all pay for our way here in some form or other. We can chose to keep repeating the same things over and over until we 'get it' or we can chose to move on and see what else there is in God's realm. Do I think this is all Divine? Yes. Do I think science can prove this. Yes. If not today then it is very close. It is in this way I think science can be divine and like religion and religion can be like science. If not today then it is very close. The part I like to ponder is where 'The Word' originated. This is a simplistic version of what I believe God is. I wouldn't give too much power over to the Bible. It's mostly history. Most use it to to justify themselves or to find comfort. I say it's all about finding out the origin of 'The Word'. To truly know God.
What do you believe?
Well, to begin with, if we are going to talk about God we need to define the term. At this point, it's not clear to me what you mean by it, so I can't exactly answer you.
However, I personally see no need for the term at all. The universe is what it is. We're finding out more about it all the time, but there will no doubt always be more to know. If we were one day to discover that some sort of intelligent entity created the universe, or that a powerful sentient entity is involved in shaping its fate, so be it. But there is no evidence as yet to support such a belief. On the other hand, the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God most certainly does not exist. That's part of what I think.
jsk, what you describe has much in common with Buddhist belief. It's nice to find the connections, rather than the divisions.
On the subject of Biblical Living, I found this site via a Eric Meyers' CSS listserve (well, I wouldn't have found it otherwise!):
http://www.rosecreekvillage.com/
These are folks who are very interested in living Biblically, but they have a whole different slant on the subject than do the neo-cons. While I'm squarely in the "don't believe in a Judeo-Christian-Islamic (or any other, including Buddhist) God" camp, I can imagine feeling welcome in this community. Of course, these aren't the sort of people who claw, backstab, shoot, bomb and eviscerate their way to power, so their voice will always be hard to pick out in the fundie din.
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