PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
But Christianity isn't one religion but thousands, and Islam has much the same tendency, Buddhism exists in various traditions and sub-traditions, Hinduism has its major and a great many minor deities, and so on round the world.
Which one gets to prescribe religion for schools? What about the Wiccans, the Satanists (LeVey and other kinds), the Norse and Greek revivalists, the multifarious traditions of the Great Spirit, the Rainbow Serpent, and so on?
There never was a Genesis Creation or an Adam or Eve or talking snake or Noah or Tower of Babel or Nephalim or a talking donkey or Job, or Moses, on and on. And there may or may not have been an historical Jesus, and if there was, which, if any, of the bible's five or more was he, and regardless, he did no more miracles than Pilate did.
I have been over the sequence for the first Genesis account. It
accords with that of science - and as for life being on the "land"
first, that is now the agreement as of 2018.
I don't accept the second account - it's been slipped in there,
and seems highly allegorical.
We can't answer yea or nay for many of the spiritual claims
the bible makes - that's faith, like we have faith in the ultimate
questions of existence that "science will one day figure out."
But the background to these claims is quite solid - ie the Bronze
Age culture, the monarchs, nations, empires etc..Most were
not believed going back 120 years.
If there was no historic Jesus then its remarkable as to how
his church swept through the Roman empire. The account of
the Jews as symbols of God's symbol of redemption, promised
land, God's people, sold into slavery, called out of the nations etc
is remarkable and can't be written off.
So yes, there's Depth to the bible. The one thing I find interesting
is that this book demands something of its reader - not a belief
but a life. Those "Christians" who created thousands of churches
don't detract from the fact there is ONE Christianity - that which
Jesus gave. His doctrine and life are honored in the breach - and
given lip service by people who find it too simple, too humbling
and too hard to live by.