Why? Is there no point in believing in love and forgiveness and self-sacrifice? There's a story told by Buddhists about a young man who gave his body to a starving eagle, so that the eagle could feed its young. I think very few people believe this story is literally true, but that does not mean they don't believe in the IDEAS of the story--love of others above oneself. Isn't THAT the point of most religions? The rest is details...
There's a story told by JRR Tolkien that covers lots of ideas of good v evil, of self-sacrifice etc. One desn't need religion to read such stories and one doesn't need to turn such stories into religion in order to appreciate them and let them enrich one's life. Although, of course, some people do feel the need to try to have Jedi recognised as a religion because
Star Wars inspired them so greatly, but I'd suggest that they're just daft geeks.
I would, however, disagree about the 'point' of religions. The 'point' of most religions in other words, the aim is to fit oneself for the hereafter; to please one's maker. The
Bible, for instance, says that: "by grace are ye saved through faith" not by being good and doing good works (Paul makes this clear) but by believing that Christ died for your sins and that, in believing in that and in repenting for those sins, you get eternal life in Heaven. I assume that simply being nice to others isn't actually the major criteria for a heavenly future for Jews or Muslims either, although it is at least part of religions that believe in reincarnation.
There's a difference between a god INSPIRING the book and a god WRITING the book. Some Christians believe that God wrote it himself, others believe that mere mortals wrote it, INSPIRED by their faith. Interpreting the bible, or any holy book, is not about picking and choosing, it's about looking to see the meaning beneath the details.
There is a difference, indeed. But how does one judge which bits are divinely inspired and which not? In
Leviticus, for instance, it says that women who are menstruating are unclean, and that at the end of their period, they're to take two pigeons to their priest so that he will sacrifice the birds to make the woman clean again. Attitudes change. No-one with half a ounce of education would call a menstruating woman 'unclean' today, let alone expect her to sacrifice birds to 'cleanse' herself afterward. Who decided that that change had occurred? And why? Because, as we became more civilised we realised that that was not civilised or rational behaviour?
Interpretation is fundamental to theology, and has been for centuries. Theological debate, a plurality of views, is the essence of the study of religion. I don't see how it conflicts with an all-knowing god. Just because their god knows everything doesn't mean the followers know everything as well.
Vital indeed and it changes according to progress and civilisation. Women's rights, for instance, are hardly well served in the
Bible and it hasn't been a history of organised religion campaigning for such that have secured them (at least in theory) in the West at least.
If any holy book is open to interpretation because of the suspect nature of those who wrote it, then how can one any better trust those who interpret it? What's to say that their interpretation and understanding is not as flawed as the original writers?
And if god is genuinely divine, genuinely all-powerful, all-knowing and all-seeing, then wouldn't it be a rather bad joke to sit in Heaven and watch as people struggle to interpret his word and possibly do the wrong thing because they listened to someone intpret the holy book wrongly? If god is that all-powerful, all-knowing and all-seeing, then why not just make it perfectly clear to everyone what he means? Otherwise, one might conclude that this god simply enjoys watching people trip up in their efforts to be good and faithful followers.
Why is it better, why is it more honest, to blindly accept a text than to try to interpret it?
I didn't say that it was better. I was merely attempting to point out that, if one believes in a god and one believes that that god inspired a divine book and that book is holy, then if one picks and chooses what bits of said holy book one abides by, it suggests that one thinks that god is actually not really perfect and didn't really know what he was doing at the time.
Or one could assume that it was relative that instructions in
Leviticus, for instance, don't all need to be followed now because times have changed and they were only really relevant for the days when the book was written. For instance, are all boys born to Christian parents circumcised now? I doubt it there'd be no medical point, but hygiene when the
Bible was written might have made it sensible.
As a slight aside, if god is so clever, why create man with a foreskin and them immediately order the parents to lop it off? It doesn't say much for rational thinking, does it?
