There is indeed ignorance and evil in the Bible. It was written by men struggling to keep a power structure in place, or to establish a new one (Paul).
But there is stand alone wisdom in the Bible as well. It doesn’t matter if Moses, or Jesus said it, or if it was attributed to God or even the Devil himself. The Truth is the Truth.
It is good that the Bible reiterates the Golden Rule, but it didn’t originate with the Bible. It’s elegant simplicity led to it being independently included in several other religions and proclaimed by other philosophers. But I believe the greatest example of wisdom in the Bible, whether it’s source was actually Jesus or not, is:
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?–Mar 8:36
Is this an argument against capitalism, profit or wealth. Of course not. And it doesn’t even need to appeal to a reward in an afterlife. It says that our soul, our character and personality, who we are and what we think of ourselves deep down, is rotten and self flagellating, if what we gain is by the subversion of the rights of others. We all have an internal nagging conscience, and it is the undeniable light of Truth. The harder we try to ignore it, the stronger our self-hatred becomes.
To paraphrase Hamlet’s analogous question to the gravedigger:
“How long does it take bodies to decompose.”
“It depends on how corrupt they were to begin with.”
I think it would be very unlikely for their NOT to be any wisdom in the Bible. I mean, leaving it as a matter of personal interpretation for a moment, what kind of psycho would you have to be to grow up in a culture immersed in hundreds or thousands of years of Christian influence, and then upon reading the source, not find any teachings you wind up agreeable to?
The reason I posted this was to maybe advocate for not going overboard and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Many people do believe the Bible it total trash. Just another way for me to push the concept of Truth.
I’d love to see Mr. Pain Full to explain exactly why having a rotten and self flagellating nature is a bad thing. (Let alone describing how we would judge something as “rotten” to begin with…)
Seriously, what WILL it economically profit a man to gain the entire world but lose something (a soul) that he doesn’t even believe he has to begin with?
Seems to me like the consistent non-Christian wouldn’t have any problem at all “gaining” the world.
But hey…consistency isn’t something I’ve come to expect from you unbelievers.
What we believe, is often not equivalent with the Truth.
Minions have tried.
Which brings me to another bit of wisdom, to wit: “Cast no ye pearls before swine”. Unbelievers in revealed religion are among the most logically consistent among us in my never to be humble opinion.
