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Comment by throwaway5959 | Hacker News Reader

Not a textbook but when I actually read the Bible I realized it was total nonsense and left religion.

I had exactly the opposite reaction, though I came in thinking it all be fire and brimstone. Genesis is a wonderful take on the attitude one should adopt toward the natural world. Regardless of what our scientific understanding of nature is (today’s will certainly look weird 3000 years from now), we know to behold it is good.

Can you point to something specific or was it more an overall sort of rejection of the contents? An old or new testament thing?

LOL, Genesis had enough bullshit in it that I was questioning things immediately. Somewhere in there it says that the stars were created after earth. And then there's Noah and the flood with the completely impossible repopulating the earth with a single family and a single pair of each animal. Exactly how did 2 buffalo's get to the middle east? Of course, the answer would be that god magicked them there - but then I thought - where's the magic now? Why hasn't anyone recorded actual evidence of a miracle?

FWIW, the modern Catholic church's official stance is that Genesis should not be taken literally, and Catholics make up about half of the world's Christians. I think biblical literalism is mostly an American Evangelical thing.

FYI the church fathers explicitly say it should be taken literally. I don't know what's "modern church" does the faith change according to developments of science? Then it has never been true. Saying that as a christian.

Who are "the church fathers"?

> does the faith change according to developments of science?

What's the alternative? When science and faith disagree you have to either adapt your faith or reject science, and going against science tends to be a battle against truth in the long term. Science isn't always right but its long-term results can hardly be argued against.

Most experiments in science rely on correlation in controlled environment. To prove something entirely true you'd have to control all variables in the universe. As for theoretical science well a lot of it is just a choice of faith. Just listened to Wolfram in his first interview with Lex Fridman, like he said some things about evolution we'll never be able to prove. He also said evolution is kind of a religion itself which I'd agree with. If you can 100% invalidate some religion why should it change? What's the purpose for it to exist - to satisfy some spiritual need like any other material need? The pupose of church was to hold the truth in it's absolute form. If that's not the case you're merely a support group, a social club/community.

Even better, well, take everything literally except for the parts that are provably wrong. If one part is not true, then any or all parts may not be true. And since there's almost no evidence for anything miraculous in the Bible then AFAIK it's all untrue until proven otherwise. I should mention I was a deacon when I was in my 20s, so it's not like I was raised atheist.

> I should mention I was a deacon when I was in my 20s, so it's not like I was raised atheist.

Interesting, thanks for the explanation. Were you a deacon before you started reading Genesis more skeptically or how did that happen for you? Feel free not to respond, of course. I'm interested in stories of de/conversion; I don't mean to probe where you'd rather not say.

Yeah, when I became a deacon I started reading the bible way more, with the thought that I could provide helpful/supportive quotes to people like some others can. I really don't understand how anyone can read it and not become skeptical.

It's not about scientific truth. I would avoid the word truth altogether in the context of religion. You are so out in left field that you are playing a whole different game. That is your interpretation is "not even wrong" due to your pressupposing that the style and purpose of the mode of communication is one of precision and truth.

Evangelicals tend to see things in a similarly anachronistic (seeing traditional communication through a modern lens) way and it seems to have become near-ubiqitous. The mistake is only recently becoming understood. Ultimately it was a necessary mistake to make.

> FWIW, the modern Catholic church's official stance is that Genesis should not be taken literally

The non-literal interpretation of the Bible is not modern: (Saint) Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) wrote about not taking it literally.

* https://spectrummagazine.org/article/news/2010/01/30/augusti...

* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/243740

Literalism is actually emerged as a significant thing in the 18th Century; its not specifically American or Fundamentalist/Evangelical, but it is definitely a fairly recent Protestant thing that is most prominent in the Fundamentalist/Evangelical space.

Any religion is effectively just a collection of someone else's stories.

I wonder how many Christians there are that haven’t actually read the entire Bible. Like from Genesis through Revelations. It would be super interesting to know the statistic.

The priest reads pieces and tells you what to think. Now stand up. Then it tells you a Christ story. Now sit down. Now some other bullshit full of mind bending content. Stand up again.

Had me in the first half.

Try reading the Bible again after watching Jordan Peterson's the Biblical series. You'll thank me later.

It will seem even more of a joke

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