Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I'm not saying religion can only have absolutes. I'm saying that as it's 
> written in the Bible, it's pretty absolute.

  Yes. Take one single verse, remove it from the rest of the book, and
state that single verse, all by itself, is absolute, without even
understanding the context in which it has been written.

  Why is the concept of a principle being written over a larger span of
literature so difficult to understand or accept?
  You have to take *everything* that is written about the subject. You can't
take one single verse, rip it off, and take that as the absolute truth.
It's no different from taking individual words from the Bible and creating
sentences with them.

> And one would hope that the 
> creator of the universe and the font from which all morality flows would 
> be capable of making his desires clear to those who believe in him. 

  If someone doesn't *want* to understand, or *wants* to understand it
in the wrong way, he will do exactly that, no matter how it is written.

> Especially given the kind of punishments JHVH seems to dole out to those 
> who piss him off.

  Right. Just look at the punishments without even trying to understand
the reasons behind, and then declare that they are unfair and make no
sense.

> >   Just because you don't understand what it means doesn't necessarily
> > mean that it's not logical or fair in the original context.

> Ah, so now God's message is context-dependent?

  How could it not be context-dependent?

  A message is given by someone to someone else for some purpose or
reason. Of course you have to know who is giving the message, who is
the recipient of the message, why the message is being given and what
is it that the message is trying to say. All this depends on context.
The meaning of the message can totally change depending, for example,
on who wrote the message and to who.

  For example, if a message has been written to all priests, does that
mean that the message is intended for non-priests? Or if a message is
written for women, does that mean the message is intended for men? Or
if a message is written for a *certain* woman, does that mean the
message is for *all* women or *all* people? If a message is written
in the context of laws for times of war, does that mean the message
is intended to be used when there's no war? If a message is written
in the context of being used in a religious ceremony, does that mean
it should be used in other contexts too?

  Of course messages are always context-dependent.

> Sounds like God is 
> getting weaker and weaker with every excuse.

  What excuse? How is God getting weaker if he gives messages to certain
people in certain situations? What else should he do in your opinion?

> Of course, if you read the Bible as fictional literature with 
> allegorical suggestions about some good ways to think about the world, 
> and you use your own brains to determine what parts you want to accept, 
> and you don't insist that because it's written in the Bible that your 
> conclusions about that stuff are better than mine, then sure, maybe it's 
> a decent place to look for inspiration. Better than more modern works? 
> That's a different question.

  Or maybe if you try to understand the message instead of trying
deliberately to misunderstand it to attack people.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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