Cherry picking the Bible

[Munch]

From my perspective that is what every religious person does.

I really shouldn't be speaking on behalf of Christians. My understanding of them is sketchy at best.

Well all I mean is from the most unassuming christian to the most hate filled gay stoning despot, every one of them who uses the bible as their mantle are all on the same boat, and can all, in their insanity, justify their beliefs from it as they take the scripture as ammo. The only thing you can hope for when you meet a christian, is that they are sane enough people, and not someone looking for a group to discriminate and harm before of how he/she was raised to believe thats how its done.

[Termin]

 The fact that some Christians cheery pick from the bible is proof enough to demonstrate that there is no objective morality.

[GSOgymrat]

The fact that some Christians cheery pick from the bible is proof enough to demonstrate that there is no objective morality.

I'm not sure that is the case. If the Christian God is real and Grand Poobah of morality the cherry pickers could 1) be acting immorally by not following the Bible verbatim or 2) being doing exactly what God wanted by acting in the manner of Jesus and their conscience. It could be the literalist Christians are acting immorally, especially since the Christian God isn't big on clarity, consistency or communication. Whether a Christian is doing God's will is supposedly up to God to decide, but objective morality would still exist.

Of course being an atheist I need not give a thought to all this flapdoodle. As the saying goes...

[1liesalot]

If God didn't expect people to take the bible literally, why the fuck do we keep being told that he does expect that. And if the text so outrageously misrepresented his true character, why hasn't he popped down to earth again in a burning bush to tell us to change the bits where he comes across as a bit of a brainless old psychopath with fetishes.

[Hydra009]

I don't mind cherry picking per se.  Jefferson famously removed much of the Bible and kept the parts that he liked.

The thing that really pisses me off is to simultaneously cherry pick and say that this stuff is inerrant.  If it's inerrant, why the need to cut anything out?

I do think theists should be encouraged to be more rational and get rid of the more egregiously horrible stuff.  But sweeping this stuff under the rug and then trying to pass the religion off as some progressive, enlightened thing when it never was anything of the sort and then expecting us to go along with that...words can't describe how dishonest that is and how bad it would be for us to approve of.

We don't need fantasies more in tune with modernity, we need less fantasies altogether.

[Sal1981]

Cherry-picking just demonstrates that their ultimate guidance for cherry-picking in the first place doesn't come from their "holy" texts.

[Termin]

  What bothers me about the cherry picking is they never acknowledge the fact that while they are selecting the best parts , it does not mean that everyone else will.

[Mike Cl]

  What bothers me about the cherry picking is they never acknowledge the fact that while they are selecting the best parts , it does not mean that everyone else will.

Yeah, I see this as a huge problem.  The cherry pickers will never acknowledge that they are doing that.  They will insist that the way they see it was the way it was meant to be seen--if only you could lift those damn scales from your  eyes and heart.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Each person constructs their own religion from the available mass of information they have presented to them. This is one reason people usually have the religion of their relatives. It also explains the ability to shift religions, they simply reset their religiousness and draw from a new pool of beliefs. Rejecting material they're not comfortable with makes it possible to construct a belief system that works for them. 

[Baruch]

Tis a matter of control.  If the Pope does the cherry picking, and can get all the cardinals in line, who get all the bishops in line, who get all the priests in line, who get all the lay people in line ... then you got the Middle Ages.  The problem was, literacy and printing destroyed all this, even if there had been no Protestants around protesting.  The problem with cherry picking is letting individual lay people do it on their own ... the system was never set up for this.  Of course in Judaism and Islam, we do the same thing.  So there is a problem with authority ... y'all are just not cool with every Christian playing Pope.  And you probably wouldn't care for an authoritarian system either.  When every citizen is king ... you have anarchy.  That is why democracy doesn't work, not even in a nuclear family.  My Dad was an R and my Mom was a D ... and they cancelled each other out!  When you have democracy plus violence ... you have mob rule.  When you have authoritarianism plus violence ... you have patriotism.