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Edited on Mon Oct-25-10 05:10 AM by Cleobulus
claiming its "allegory" solves nothing when the stories and books in question have questionable morals and reduces said stories to folklore, myth, legend, and fairy tales. Hell, the first problem is with Genesis, and it gets a hell of a lot worse from there.
I was never raised to take the Bible literally, so I don't really understand that mindset, the Bible was, to me being raised Catholic, the place where we are to draw inspiration, ethical teachings, and history of the Israelites.
Nevertheless, on actually reading the Bible, it still lead to my unbelief in God, for various reasons, the primary one is the conflict I had between the Bible's stories "morals" and our modern enlightenment era, modern ethical construct that forms most of the basis of what we call "western values/culture". None of the Bible stories talk about the inherent value of human life, freedom, liberty, or even decency, no, not even Jesus talks about these modern, post-enlightenment virtues. Indeed, quite a bit of the Bible is devoted to actually denigrated humans as beings that fell from grace, to put it mildly, so much so that God supposedly killed every man, woman, and child but for one family because God was angry.
Of course, Catholics and other Christian denominations don't Noah's story literally, its allegory, myth, a fairy tale, but one that is supposed to teach us something, isn't that right? So what is the moral lesson buried within that story, I don't see one, outside of not pissing off God.
Given another example, the story of Lot's family, and again a mass destruction by God of, in this case some cities, with Lot's family being the only one saved due to his "virtue". I put that in quotes, because the story itself is rather grotesque. The man God thought virtuous offered his daughters to a crowd to be gang raped rather than giving up two angels to the same fate. After they flee, God smites down Lot's wife for looking back at the destruction wrought, turning her to salt. Then, his daughters, thinking they are the last humans on Earth or some shit, get their father drunk and rape him in turn. I guess turnabout is fair play, but seriously, what the fuck is the point of this story. What the hell does Lot symbolize? Virtue? Hardly, he was an asshole, going so far as to lie to a crowd that his daughters were virgins to make them more palatable to be raped by the angry crowd.
Let's examine this further, an allegory is a rhetorical device used to convey a meaning using symbolism and cannot be taken literally, a kind of extended metaphor. Fine, I get that, but from the two stories above, what meaning are we to take from them?
This is also leads to another problem, since things aren't taken literally, what's the symbolism, and what isn't? To put it simply, why aren't the stories written allegorically? The Bible isn't obvious in this, the the most obvious reason is because the original writers, particularly of the Old Testament, intended for the stories to be taken, at the very least, as being true recounting of events, even if not word for word accurate.
For example, what does God symbolize? He features quite prominently in many of these stories, his actions recorded as he intervenes in human affairs quite often. In addition, if we can't take characters like Lot or Noah as actual historical persons, but symbols of something(again, buried), then why treat God as real either?
Of course, just as other authors, both ancient and modern have done, the various authors of the Bible have used historical characters in many of their stories, but most of them are mundane humans that we were able to verify through independent evidence.
These types of questions definitely cracked my faith in God, for why treat that character as real, no matter how many times he's mentioned in the Bible? If some stories are fictional morality tales, and others aren't, then why believe any of them are accurately recounted in the Bible?
There's also the problems with the Commandments, all 618 of them or so, its more than 10 folks! Are these to be taken allegorically? When God commands how his people are to treat slaves, where they can acquire or buy them, and how severely they can be beaten, what are we to take from these types of instructions? Same for the numerous other commandments, many of which we would find abhorrent or as war crimes today, but were lauded as virtues back in the days of the Bible authors.
And the arrival of Jesus didn't really help matters, yes he talked about caring for the poor, but he also said slaves should obey masters for they will receive a reward in heaven, not exactly something I would teach my kids as a virtue. He also talked about breaking up families, and other insidious things that we see acted out but some Christians to this very day. The idea that Faith takes precedence over family is extremely evil. Not to mention the plucking out of eyes and other shit that makes absolutely no sense, in other words is stupid, even if allegorical, as if lust were a bad thing. Seriously, without lust, humans wouldn't be around, what is up with the anti-lust vibe from the Bible?
I think I've gone on long enough, but even taking the Bible as nothing more than historical literature with an ethical outlook we should follow makes as much sense as taking the Novel "A Clockwork Orange" and using Alex as model for good behavior.
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