Unfortunately, Mr J is unable to speak for himself so I have taken it upon myself to defend him. I’m going to prove to you he exists and that he loves us all.
The first thing I want to mention is how he created the Earth and everything in it in six days, about six thousand years ago. Or possibly not. It’s might’ve been billion years ago and it might have taken a very long time. Mr J would like to keep his options open.
In any case, he eventually created human beings, either on the sixth day or billions of years later. He quite probably controlled evolution to get to them, killing off billions of other creatures along the way just so humans could emerge. Some might say this was pretty heartless but it’s the only way natural selection could produce Mr J’s favoured creation. All a bit hit and miss, but Mr J knew what he was doing. I read it in a Richard Dawkins book some time.
Anyway, once humans appeared they managed to upset Mr J in some silly, insignificant way, so that he had to come up with a whole series of complicated plans to bring them into line.
The first plan was, admittedly, not all that great. It was necessary though. He drowned the lot of them, every man, woman and child, except for one old drunkard and his family. Needless to say the humans that came along after them weren’t any better than the ones who’d come before. No surprise there! Mr J rightly blamed the humans themselves for the shortcomings he’d built into them. That and the demons with their boss, Satan, whom he’d thoughtfully made right back at the start of the six days. Or maybe it was during the billions of years when he was creating everything by process.
Er… moving swiftly on, his second plan was that he’d just concentrate on one special group. He picked, for reasons best known to himself, a small, nomadic desert tribe. He demanded of those who had them that they should slice the tops off their penises. Weird, I know, but other tribes were doing it and Mr J thought if it was good enough for them and their fertility deities then it was good enough for his besties too. They also had to obey all 613 of the rules he would make up as he went along. This was to set a moral example to his Chosen People so naturally included instructions on how to beat their slaves, how to stone people to death and how to massacre their neighbours. Needless to say, despite how reasonable Mr J’s terms were, the useless humans couldn’t manage to comply with them. He was more than pissed. He let other tribes brutalise them, had them turn on each other and sent them into exile. But still they didn’t learn. You might think he’d have done better offering some encouragement, a little bit of positive enforcement, but you’d be wrong. Mr J always knows best.
The time rolled round for another half-arsed plan. This time Mr J sent a Figment Of His Imagination down to the Earth so the friends for whom he’d set such a good example while punishing them endlessly, could engineer his death. Or maybe it was the Romans who did it. Whatever, the story got around that after his execution this Figment had come back to life, which meant all sort of marvellous things would happen, including a complete reboot of the Earth. The old deal with its dick-docking and interminable lists of rules was over. There was a new deal now: believe it and you’d live forever: don’t and you’d boil forever in a fiery pit while demons tortured you for eternity.
Soon after this (because a thousand years is like a day to him), Mr J became something of a recluse. He removed himself from time and space – no more walking in gardens and masquerading as a burning bush – he would become… transcendent! He also announced, in a revelation to some churchy types, that he wanted, henceforth, to identify as a threesome. He insisted he be called ‘Daddy’, ‘Sonny’ and ‘Friendly Ghost’ all at the same time. It was a mystery why he…
Hang on. I just can’t go on with this. I mean, I know I’m supposed to be defending Mr J but when you see it written down like this, none of it makes sense. None at all. It’s rubbish and if this is what Mr J is all about, he can’t be defended. Not by anyone with half a brain anyway, and I like to think I have at least that. Mr J will just have to defend himself or, failing that, get someone without any critical faculties at all to do it for him.
rejectingjesus, 
Yep, when you really start thinking about it, even for a moment, I really hope your bullshit detector is working.
So many defective bullshit detectors…
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None of it makes sense because none of it makes sense, and it is so far from the story of the Bible that corrections seems impossible.
If that is how you really understood the Bible, it is no wonder you found it unbelievable.
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Thank God for that. But of course it makes sense. It’s all from the magic book and your own nonsensical remarks. If you like, I can add chapter and verse just for you.
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“how he created the Earth and everything in it in six days, about six thousand years ago. Or possibly not. It might’ve been billion years ago and it might have taken a very long time.”
How does that not make sense, Don?
The Bible says god created everything in six days, and you say he used evolution, which takes millions of years.
Neil’s just repeating what you have written here.
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Neil is using what was Bishop Usshur’s timeline. Pretty much only dyed in the wool KJV only Fundamentalist hold that opinion today, But it does seem to suit Neil’s argument. Most Bible scholars today believe that Genesis 1 is a literary piece that requires literary analysis to understand. In other words, it is not a 19th or 20th century style scientific description of creation.
I agree.
That does not mean it has nothing to say to us. The bottom line of the pericope is that God created everything. The six days were a framework on which the author presented that truth. They were not six consecutive 24-hour days. I myself think that they are a way of saying that on a particular day that part of creation was finished. They do happen to generally follow what science tells us about the development of the earth and life upon it. But I don’t think that was their primary message.
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Are you saying no ‘real’ Christians today believe in a literal six day creation 6,000 years ago? The KJV mob, you mentioned and then there’s Young Earth creationists and of course Ken Ham. In fact, 40% of American Christians believe in a young Earth: https://news.gallup.com/poll/261680/americans-believe-creationism.aspx
You dismiss all of these (which is what you do in most of your arguments) and assert instead that ‘Bible scholars’ think differently.
Do you think the creators of Genesis thought it a metaphorical ‘literary piece’? Or did they believe they were relating the actual creation? I know you’ll know which, having Mr J to advise you.
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I am not saying no real Christian believes in a six-day creation. Believing in a six-day creation is not a litmus test.
I seriously question the claims of young earth creationists.
I think modern Bible scholars have a better understanding of the genre of Genesis 1
I do think the creators of Genesis 1 thought it a metaphorical piece.
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Interesting that SO MANY can see the Bible stories in SO MANY ways but yet it’s all true and directed by a Big Guy in the Sky.
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The Bible (its various books) were written over a period of perhaps 1400 years and in various genre (edit).
…In an almost miraculous way the Bible survived and touch many billions of people. Somehow the message remains intact. I would say it is a God thing.
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I’ve edited another long submission from Don. I hope he cut and pasted it from one of the many other times he’s made the same point. I refer him to the responses he received on those occasions.
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In an almost miraculous way the Bible survived … Miraculous? Hardly. More like the superstitious and ignorant believed that fairy tales could come true and were too scared to test it.
Even today folks like you are too afraid to admit it’s all hokum and nonsense.
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To quote Neil Degrasse Tyson:
“If you knew nothing about science, and you read the Bible, the Old Testament, which in Genesis is an account of nature, that’s what that is. If I say to you, “give me your description of the natural world, based only on this, you would say the world was created in 6 days, and that stars are just little points of light, much lesser than the sun, and that in fact, they can fall out of the sky. One of the signs of the second coming is that the stars will fall out of the sky and land on earth.
So even to write that means you don’t know what these things are. You have no concept of what the actual universe is. So everybody who tried to make proclamations about the physical universe based on bible passages GOT THE WRONG ANSWER.
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If I say to you, “give me your description of the natural world, based only on this
Yes. If you read it as a 21st century scientific description (I hope Dr. Tyson doesn’t) that would be your conclusion. But it would also be stupid. It would be like reading poetry as if it was a front page story in the local paper. Read it in the genre in which it was written.
One of the signs of the second coming is that the stars will fall out of the sky and land on earth.
This was written from the perspective of an ordinary observer on earth, not a cosmologist. To an ordinary observer the Perseids meteor shower looks like stars falling.
This kind of stupidity from an obviously intelligent and super-educated person suggests that perhaps there is a missing piece in his education and he needs a few courses in literature. He might start with Robert Frost who wrote “poetically” about the natural world.
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Dr. Tyson strikes me as a petulant science student standing in the middle of his college library and complaining that this library is entirely too full of **Literature**. Really! There is more to life than science.
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That’s him dismissed then.
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Dismissed as an interpreting of the Bible.
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Dismissed as not making any sense at all.
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I am sure that your quote of Dr. Tyson does not capture his more nuanced reading of ancient literature, or at least I am reasonably sure. But if you take that quote as representative, it is stupid. You as a lecturer of literature must know that.
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What are you on about? I didn’t quote Tyson and I don’t take what he said as ‘representative’ (of what?) Nonetheless, he makes a reasonable point: Genesis gets it wrong.
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You know, you frequently call into question my capabilities as a lecturer in literature. I dont mind; I’ve been retired now for 11 years so haven’t actually lectured for some time.
However, it’s a cheap shot, coming from someone whose comments grow increasingly incoherent. I’ll simply say I recognise fantasy literature when I see it and the Magic Book, however ‘nuanced’ one’s reading of it, is most definitely of that genre.
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You mean like worshipping and praying to (and defending the existence of) some entity that is said to live somewhere “out there”?
Yeah, right.
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Don:
“Yes. If you read it as a 21st century scientific description (I hope Dr. Tyson doesn’t) that would be your conclusion. But it would also be stupid.”
No, you’ve missed the point:
For 2,000 years people have been reading this AS TRUE!
They didn’t have the scientific method to tell them that genesis is all bullshit, THEY BELIEVED IT AS TRUTH REVEALED FROM GOD.
YOU are making the mistake of reading it from a 21st century perspective.
So, for 2,000 years, you’re telling me that when people read genesis, they all thought, “oh, what a lovely metaphor”?
I have xtian friends that absolutely believe in the literal words…today!
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For 2,000 years people have been reading this AS TRUE!
I think you need to read some of then early church fathers. Origen didn’t Augustine didn’t. But all this misses the point. You look for some kind of scientif-like statement. Most Christians look for the message. Spoiler alert! The message is not how long creation took.
I know; I have Christian friends who “absolutely believe in the literal words too. But you know what, it doesn’t matter. They are still getting the message: God created it all. Do you?
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I quoted Tyson…here’s the rest of his commentary:
“So what happened was, when science discovers things, and you want to stay religious, or you want to continue to believe that the Bible is unerring, what you would say is, let me go back to the Bible and re-interpret it…oh, they didn’t mean that literally, they meant that figuratively…all of this came after science showed that this is not how things unfolded. “
This is from a conversation, which is why it sounds as rough as it does.
Here’s you Don:
“ I myself think that they are a way of saying that on a particular day that part of creation was finished. They do happen to generally follow what science tells us about the development of the earth and life upon it”
You see how you said “generally follow”?
You’re doing it now.
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As I said, long before science had anything to say about the development of the earth or the cosmos, Origen and St. Augustine had a different take on Genesis 1. Maybe others also. Bottom line, interpreting Genesis 1 as something other than 6 twenty-four hour days is not a new thing. And it didn’t seem like there was a great push back.
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Don:
“I think modern Bible scholars have a better understanding of the genre of Genesis 1
I do think the creators of Genesis 1 thought it a metaphorical piece.”
What about Genesis 2 and 3…metaphor also?
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I think Genesis 2-3 is a single piece and is styled as a history/allegory. It is also one of the most perceptive stories in all ancient literature as far as human nature is concerned.
Humans are story telling people. We love them. For many ages stories (along with rituals) were the means of keeping a tribe’s history and communicating cultural values to the next generation. They still are, btw. They were highly stylized and literary often using poetry or poetical features like parallelism and chiasms because poetry is more easily remembered. These were oral cultures. They often had a plot as an organizational plan. Often ancient stories follow the same plot lines as modern stories. And they can be classified as epics, hero stories, rags to riches, etc. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180525-every-story-in-the-world-has-one-of-these-six-basic-plots
So dismissing stories as a legitimate vehicle for communicating truth or factual information is foolish.
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“ He demanded of those who had them that they should slice the tops off their penises.”
This is one of the weirdest customs of religions that I’ve ever heard…I still don’t know why, and neither do any xtians that I ask.
And it’s not an illogical to say “if we do it to boys, we may as well do it to girls!”
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It was a practice not confined to the Hebrews.
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As mentioned in my post.
Interestingly, other tribes who practised circumcision worshipped fertility gods. What does this tell us about early versions of YHWH?
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Read what the Bible says. There is no sense of a fertility god cult in the worship of Yahweh.
But that other tribes worshipped fertility gods is not surprising. Almost every ancient religion included some fertility god. Fertility was a big deal.
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Don: ‘Read what the Bible says. There is no sense of a fertility god cult in the worship of Yahweh.’
Except for the ‘big deal’ made of circumcision. A practice inherited from the ancient Canaanite fertility cult of Asherah?
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The question cannot be the answer. You asked if circumcision indicated a fertility cult. Then you say yes it does with no more evidence than that. So, show me the money. Show me more evidence from how circumcision was spoken of in the Hebrew texts.
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You will have to find a site of an entirely different nature if you want to discuss circumcision. This is most definitely not that kind of site so just cut it out.
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Neil:
I saw what you did there!
Don:
“The question cannot be the answer. You asked if circumcision indicated a fertility cult. Then you say yes it does with no more evidence than that. So, show me the money.”
So, if not a fertility thing, then why did god command it?
For what purpose?
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That answer is found in the scripture. It was a sign of the putting of the flesh, and is a symbol for putting off fleshly appetites. The point is that our lives must not be ruled by those, whether sex or hunger or pleasure.
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The important thing is that The Answer™ to the allegorical Fall of a metaphorical First Couple of a fictive Creation is the Absolutely Real Human/God Sacrifice of a Godman Avatar in 1st century Palestine.
An allegorical Fall demands nothing less.
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Absolutely.
Except, except: the only thing in the Bible that’s not allegorical/metaphorical/symbolic is the death and resurrection of a supernatural being.
Right, Don?
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How about this?
Don is painting himself into a metaphorical corner with this analysis.
Y’all are absolutely right…if this is all metaphor, why did Jesus have to die?
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If you haven’t seen the stars fall, tonight would be a good time. The Taurid meteor showers.
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Meteors are not stars.
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Of course not. But they look like stars. We even have called them “falling stars”.
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According to some observers they’re also like diamonds and teatrays. However, they are neither diamonds nor tea trays. These are what is known as similes.
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Ha ha…don’s sinking into the metaphorical abyss.
All of a sudden, we’re arguing for a literal interpretation of scriptures, and Don’s going all symbolic on us.
So was it a meteor that guided the wise men, Don?
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Meteors move quickly. I don’t know what the star was just that it was significant to men whose lives were spent studying the stars. That is what the magi were. For those who didn’t spend their lives in that pursuit, they probably would not have noticed anything significant.
Much of scripture is the kind of literature in which metaphor and other kinds of figurative language is common. That is especially so in the case of the primeval stories of Genesis. It was the way people communicated things that were important in their experiences. It is like totem poles in the Pacific Northwest. They symbolized something. That it seems odd to you means you are out of touch with the literary character of ancient literature.
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Matt 2:1-12:
Verse 9:
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.
Do you see this?
It literally says the star went ahead of them until it stopped.
How do you interpret this?
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