Title: James Carville explains everything about Mike Johnson Source:
[None] URL Source:[None] Published:Nov 12, 2023 Author:James Carville Post Date:2023-11-12 23:48:41 by A K A Stone Keywords:None Views:3864 Comments:48
Above is a video on the subject you were talking about. I know it's a long video. If you don't have time to watch it I understand.
I would ask if you believe the Bible to be the word of God do you think a reasonable to believe the earth is thousands and not billions of years old? If you don't why not?
Certainly a very aged world and universe conflicts with an exacting literal read of the Bible. And since I think the world is very old, that inevitably diminishes in my mind any belief that the old parts of the Bible convey scientific truths about the origins of the world. Both beliefs cannot be right.
This does not mean that I reject the Bible in totality. I think that the things nearer in time, when people were there watching, the New Testament specifically, are likely to be more accurate than creation stories about times when literally no one was there to see. Those things I take as the true belief of very ancient people, that don't work as scientific truth, but that still work as metaphors - yes, God made it all, yes, the world existed before the rise of man, yes, man passed from being innocent animals into sapient beings, and got themselves twisted morally in the process (no, humans getting twisted did not cause death to enter the world), etc.
When I read the Bible, I disregard most of the law of Moses. Kill people for working on the Sabbath? Kill people for eating pork or shellfish or mixing fabrics? Kill people for having sex? Kill people for witchcraft? Beat your slaves with a rod no bigger than your thumb, and if they die after two days, you are not responsible? Kill all of the children in various wars? Take the young women as sex slaves? No. No. No. No. And no. This is frank barbarism, and unacceptable. The Christians say that Jesus did away with some of these rules (Jesus says that not a jot nor a tittle of the law would pass away, that he was there to fulfill the law, not to destroy it). Muslims still uphold most of it. Jews, well they claim it while ignoring everything but the silly and easy-to-keep parts. (No bacon.). Obviously I don't think that these are the words of God. And since in Malachi God says that he never changes, I don't believe that either. The Old Testament is history, but the things that God demands in it are, in many cases, completely immoral. I reject that God.
Jesus is better, but it depends on WHICH Jesus. Each of the Gospels and Revelation has a Jesus who is different, and Paul's Jesus is unrecognizable when compared to Mark's.
In summation, I don't give the Bible the authority you do. I don't think it is infallible or inerrant. I think it's a record. Of course, the Church hasn't been a great paragon of moral virtue either, with all of the burnings and the stake for crazy things like witchcraft, and all of the power and dominance. Lately, I have been unimpressed by the pedophilia of Catholic priests, and by all of the crazy snake-handling Protestants who oppose things like higher education or cancer treatments.
You don't like the way I look at the Bible, at the Church, and at what we know about God. To you, this means that I don't believe in God, because God and the Bible are inextricably linked in your mind. I don't believe much in the Bible, that's true, and I cast a very jaundiced eye at the churches because of all the bad they have done historically and continue to do today. I believe firmly in God, and take Jesus at his word when he says he will send the Holy Spirit to us. To me, the final authority on these things is not what Jesus is said to have said a couple of thousand years ago - I don't know for sure what he said, because I have five conflicting accounts (I personally think that Mark is closest to the truth, because of its age and other things I won't go into here), it's not what the Church or churches say (they are all over the place, and violent, and venal, and petty), and it's certainly not the Bible. It's what the Holy Spirit says to me right here, right now. THAT is right and true. In this respect, I suppose I am more like a Quaker than anything else. But the Quakers have a stupid dogma of absolute pacificism, and the Holy Spirit tells me that absolute pacificism does not work in a world where the wolves are at the door, and won't be killed with kindness.
I know you don't believe any of this. I don't like it when you level the accusation that I don't believe in Jesus or God because I don't believe as you do about a book. This is simply not true at all. But I also know that you think it is true. So I could get mad about it, or I could just shrug my shoulders at it and let you be you. As I get older, I try to do the latter.
