Are You Religious?

[BitBuster]

The Bible is not a reliable scientific document.

However, it was never INTENDED to be a scientific document. The idea of science (at least in our known history) is newer than the Bible, so of course that was not the intent. The Bible is a compilation of tradition, eyewitness accounts, preaching and poetry. It is supposed to encompass the faith, not define science.

I get that. However, given that it's allegedly the word of God, and given that God was bound to know that science was going to eventually have a greater place in society, it might have been nice to throw in a few mentions of science...heck, a few suggestions re: medicine, mathematics, etc. might have been useful in a practical sense, not to mention a means of giving more validity to the text.

I know that there are plenty of people out there who insist that you have to take everything in the Bible literally or you have to throw the whole thing out. That's INSANE. Okay, not insane, but also not logically valid. If there's a little mold on your cheese you don't have to throw it all out. [That's a terrible analogy, but you get what I mean.]

But see, with the moldy cheese, it's easy to tell which parts are "bad" and which are "good" (unless you're dealing with pepper jack). When it comes to a text which describes things that you can't prove either way, you don't have that luxury. Sure, you can "cut out" the parts that are obviously untrue, but what about the rest>

In case you aren't aware of this, the Roman Catholic bible has more books in it than the protestant bible. Protestants don't consider those books to be inspired, so they just pulled them out. The bible is not one big, monolithic work. If you don't understand this, you don't understand the history of the faith (and most people don't.)

...and then you get into conspiracy theories and the Dead Sea Scrolls and various translations, etc.

Why do religious people tend to think they need to convince other people that what they think is the only thing that can be right?

I believe it's because some people interpret the Bible in such a means that they feel obligated, as Christians, to spread the "word of God."

As an extension of this, what gives religions the right to discriminate against and hate people and in doing so say things and commit actions that no other group would be able to get away with?

Our own compliance gives them that right. We let them "get away" with it.

Dispicable actions are dispicable no matter what, and should not be acceptable or allowed no matter what the excuse is or whos word they say or think they're trying to fufill.

But what makes an action good or bad? Some people would say that abortion is wrong. Some would say that it's not.

Heck, some people think that 9/11 was not a despicable action. We, of course, think that it was. But then we (as a community, as a whole) don't have quite the same revulsion when it's us doing the killing.

I remember the way people partied in the streets when Bin Laden was killed. I was sickened, not because I had any real sympathy for the man, but because I don't think that the death of another human being is ever anything to be celebrated. Was it despicable to kill him? Well, I think we'd be getting into a capital punishment argument here...let's just say that I don't believe in the death penalty under any circumstances.