akuma587 said:
EXACTLY I actually wrote about this in a paper comparing the flood myths of different cultures (what you quoted was right after the flood myth, and in a Sumerian flood myth one of the Sumerian gods does the same thing after the flood occurs, he sets a maximum age limit for humans). I think the Bible has a lot of profound things to say, but way too many people think they are an authority on the Bible. Likewise, they love to pick and choose the parts of the Bible they "believe in" for arbitrary reasons. Why are they eating pork! The Old Testament says you can't do it! But wait, Jesus said you could. But they forget that Jesus didn't even consider persecuting gays an issue as his message was much broader than that. But what do you know! They hate gay people! Its one thing if you are consistent, if you have done your homework on the Bible and are intimately familiar with the historical formation of the Bible and which books of the Bible scholars hold in higher regard than others. Most people don't even know that a lot of books were excluded from the New and Old Testament, some of which the Catholics still include in their Bible. People love to think they are an expert on religion even if they don't even read their Bible. Its obscene.
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I have no idea if I am right, but I have my theory. Sme religious people think of gay vs staright as "us vs them". I think that Old testemant vs now is more "us vs them". The advice to not eat pork, not to drink milk with dinner ect was directed at old testemant people and how to live their life; pork was likely to get people isck, and if people spilled milk on their wooden bowls it would become infected and the pople eating on those wooden bowls/plates would eventually die.
I think God sent Jesus to tell people again how to live their life as society advanced, and since Jesus is the latest we have heard from God we should follow that. Also, the Old Testament is so old that it could have been mis translated or have some other problem, so I don't take it literally and instead think, "how can I apply the MESSAGE of this passage to my modern life?" If I can't, I igrnoe the passage.
I don't really know how Mohammed is supposed to fit into Christianity, but it seems highly pluasable that God used Mohammed as a messanger to effectivly spread Chrisitanity to another region of the world, so in essense Islam and Christianity are different flavors of the same thing. I don't really know and I don't think I'll be able to find out, but thats my thought. I don't see why Jews and Crhsitsans and Muslims want to fight each other; we all belive in the same God, we have just been taught different things about him.
Religious wars don't really make sense to me. If someone is following the wrong religion in your opinion and is doomed to go to hell, why not let them die and go to hell? I could see trying to convert them, but why start a war and try to kill them, risking your own life in the process? Makes no sense. Crusades I understand, but even that is a little strange.
