If God was real (just go with it), then how he's portrayed in the Bible might not even be how he actually is.

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Grimreaper@sopuli.xyz⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩

If God, Jesus, the devil, angels, and demons were all real, we still couldn’t rely on the Christian Bible as gospal (pun intended) — it was written by humans, specifically men, who could have misunderstood or invented things. Think of it like the Snyderverse in Man of Steel: Superman is portrayed as a brooding, violent character — but that’s not his true nature. In Batman v Superman, Batman is straight-up killing people — also not his normal characterization.

So even if much of the Bible reflects real events or real beings, parts of it could still be distorted, exaggerated, or entirely made up by the people who wrote it down.

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FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If God is real, the Bible is the worst thing to ever happen to their reputation

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- KoboldCoterie@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  An even scarier thought is that the Bible could actually be making them seem way better than they are in reality.
  
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  - FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    That is terrifying
    
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- Scubus@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The best way to convert to atheism(or at least convert away from christianity) is to read the bible and take notes. The second best way is to talk with christians about controversial topics.
  
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- agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Idk it’s one of the most popular and influential religions, so it kinda got ol Yahu a boost most other deities haven’t. Probably one of the only effectual things made by committee in history.
  
  Kinda shows how messed up humans are though doesn’t it?
  
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agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The Bible, and the Quran, and the Vedas, and every other religious text are human attempts to describe God. None of them are going to get it quite right in every detail, but you can learn a lot by cross referencing them to see what they agree on.

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- Flyswat@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  They contradict each other on many aspects. So either only is from God or none of them are.
  
  Obviously we cannot consider texts that were modified and are no longer like the originals (which we need to have for comparison) since we know parts of the text is not from God. Not knowing which part has been altered makes things worse.
  
  Preservation is a requirement prior to even considering what the text says.
  
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  - agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    They contradict each other on many aspects.
    
    Yes, which is why I said to compare them to see where they don’t contact each other.
    
    So either only is from God or none of them are.
    
    Never said any of them were from God. They’re all from humans attempting to describe God.
    
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Apytele@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Some gnostic Christian sects took their Zoroastrian roots a little more seriously than mainstream Christianity and argued that the God of the old testament is actually the demiurge.

The demiurge is an evil / misguided shadow of the true God caused by Sophia (the concept of pure wisdom) attempting to reproduce without the male half of her syzygy. As a result, the demiurge was created and dragged her out of heaven when he fell and tried to recreate heaven with the bits of her soul he still had. Humans on earth are just the little bits of Sophia’s soul tapped in the shadow of heaven that he made. Eventually they will reach gnosis (similar to the Buddhist Nirvana) and ascend back out of the kenoma (shadow heaven) and back into the pleroma (true heaven). Jesus (who was also the serpent in the garden of eden) is the male half of Sophia’s syzygy who came to earth for the second time to awaken the sparks of her soul so they can ascend.

I’m simplifying some things and smoothing the narrative to make sense since the reason Gnosticism never did as well as mainstream Christianity is the lack of a consistent narrative with which to create in-groups and out-groups to wage holy wars over, so the ones that did wiped them out. And for example I do consider myself gnostic but I mostly stay away from the metaphysical stuff other than in ways that they represent concepts important to a healthy life like mediation. I hope you enjoyed reading though!

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How_do_I_computah@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If God is real and we believe that God has the ability to interact with this world I don’t think it’s a stretch to think He could divinely inspire writers to write His word and to divinely inspire librarians and conservators to keep the Bible as He intended it.

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- folkrav@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  If that’s what he’s doing, he apparently decided to divinely inspire 6-7 major textual families of the Bible instead.
  
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  - Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    6🤷🏻‍♂️7!!!
    
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- frostedtrailblazer@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Even the Bible has been slightly altered by man though. For instance, a few of the books written in Paul’s name we know now were actually written by some of people under him from within the early church.
  
  So the sections written about women not holding authority within the church may have been put in there to centralize power and make the church have a patriarchal structure.
  
  There’s also the different translations of the Bible which can affect the meaning for some of the text. For instance the Adam and Eve story. Adam means earth in Hebrew, it was not a name. So the person we know as Adam, was created male and then personally chose to identify as male, rather than being given his gender by God. The same for Eve as well being the first woman, although IIRC Eve was her name. Still she chose to identity as the first woman.
  
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  - usernameusername@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The bible is… woke???
    
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  - How_do_I_computah@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah, and there are a bunch of different translations. I know Catholics and Orthodox Christians also include different books in the Bible. I do think it’s possible to view it as a living document. What is included/how it is translated is what is needed at the time.
    
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  - spittingimage@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Adam, was created male
    
    then personally chose to identify as male,
    
    How do you get from A to B?
    
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techwooded@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Similar idea to how the Dao works in Daoism. “The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao”

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- ulterno@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Information can be imparted.
  Understanding needs to be created within.
  
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58008@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah it’s hard to imagine a more petty and pathetic incel of a god than the one described in the Bible. Genocides entire populations because they don’t love him enough. Nevermind the quintillions of planets and star systems and galaxies other than the rock we live on, it’s the most recent bipedal primate on Earth that he needs affection from, on pain of eternal torment in a place he had to have created himself for that purpose. Even sent his own kid to get tacked to a board so we could be forgiven for not being deferential enough to him, even though he could have just said “meh you’re forgiven”. Or, you know, grew the fuck up and got over himself. Who was he saving us from with his infanticidal sacrifice? HIM! The daft bitch was in debt to himself and had to off his kid in a brutal and humiliating fashion to wipe the slate clean.

And on top of that, he won’t just appear and confirm his existence, which would make everyone fall in line instantly. Instead, we have to infer his existence and base our entire lives on that inference, and the only manual we have to do so was written by dick-mutilating Bronze Age numbnuts who didn’t know shit about fuck.

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Greddan@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The Bible has almost nothing to do with Yahweh. Dude had a wife and belonged in a pantheon of gods before some cult started worshiping only him. And now we have dumb-fuck cultists mutilating childrens genitalia running around being the shittiest of people.

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LwL@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’ve thought about this a bunch. The christian god being omnipotent and benevolent is contradictory to the bible and also just the state of the world. So what if there actually is some god (or multiple) but these entities are far from omnipotent, really can’t meddle all that much and maybe don’t really care in the first place.

I don’t think it’s true (even if it seems more plausible than any religion actually being completely right) but it’s just funny to me to imagine that all religions could just be the result of some higher dimensional beings playing with our planet out of boredom, and humans just ascribed far too much power to them.

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canofcam@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If you stop viewing Jesus as a deity and start viewing him as just a really nice guy, and you ignore much of the rest of that book, then I think he is a good role model.

Strangely, all of the good things he said and did are ignored by the people that worship him.

Turn the other cheek - nope, let’s blow people up in the ocean just in case they’re doing something wrong.

Love thy neighbour, the story of the good Samaritan - nope, fuck anybody that’s not rich and definitely fuck immigrants.

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verdi@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I thought the consensus was god is Alanis Morrisette? Did we revert that?

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- Pat_Riot@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I thought it was George Burns.
  
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  - ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I was thinking more jack stratton
    
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shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The idea is the God guided the men who translated the Bible from various languages and decided what books to include. Got the answer from a Christian regarding the Council of Nicaea, seen it online as well.

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BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If God is real, and he is responsible for the incidents in the Bible, and the stories of those incidents are actually accurate…

then God is a vicious monster.

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DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Every play a game of telephone when you were in grade school? That’s basically how reliable any religious text is. Even if it were originally written with the exact words of God, it certainly isn’t what it contains now. My favorite thing about the bible is when people specifically say “King James version” because they are admitting it has been altered.

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Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If god was real, couldn’t they have zapped anyone telling lies about them? Since that didn’t happen (as far as I know) then either they are not lies, god does not care or god does not exist. We are no closer to an answer.

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MrShankles@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Humans are inherently born with sin. Humans wrote and interpreted the Bible. The Bible inherently has sin written within it

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circuitfarmer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
This is true of the Christian God – but also trivially true of any other conceptual deity which may exist. There have been thousands of God-figures discussed by mankind in its history, and if a god exists, none of those discussed may be the real God. (This strikes me as a kind of inverted version of the famous “Pascal’s Wager”)

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klemptor@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If god had a name, what would we call him?

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