Up Front: How About Now?
196 Responses
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Sacha, in reply to
"Outside, Harris!"
teeshirt
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I was drummed out of bible class* at an early age (9 or 10) for asking, "But aren't these just metaphors?" about the loaves-and-fishes stories and such I was being told.
* the only place of social intercourse (with a very faint hope that it might lead to the other kind) growing up in South Taranaki in the 1950s.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Mine were more along the ‘questioning the internal logic’ lines:
“If Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, made directly by God, and they had Cain and Abel, and Cain slew Abel, who did Cain marry?”
edit gods but my speeling is atrocious today
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
I was drummed out of bible class* at an early age (9 or 10) for asking, “But aren’t these just metaphors?” about the loaves-and-fishes stories and such I was being told.
I dunno if anyone's run into Kiwi Camp, which is a school-holidays-and-school-camps place north of Wellington, but I really hacked off a few people there on a three-day horse camp when I was twelve by asking questions like "What happens to people who live and die without meeting missionaries?". Given that they'd already hacked me off by sitting me down and telling me that women shouldn't have the vote, I felt this was fair.
(They were also ACT supporters. The party's inexplicable lack of attraction to women voters may have some explanation there...)
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
“If Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, made directly by God, and they had Cain and Abel, and Cain slew Abel, who did Cain marry?”
Actually, I think you'll find that even in Sunday school at least a third son is mentioned, Seth, but Adam had other sons and daughters (as per Genesis). The daughters are not mentioned by name except in apocryphal texts, but then that's the patriarchy for you.
So Cain either married a sister or a niece (ie one of Seth's daughters).
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nzlemming, in reply to
So Cain either married a sister or a niece (ie one of Seth's daughters).
That was pretty much my point in asking the priests the question, but they would always sling me out before I got to "So, the human race is based on incest, then?"
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
That was pretty much my point in asking the priests the question, but they would always sling me out before I got to “So, the human race is based on incest, then?”
Oooh, oooh, I know this one: incest was totes OK back then, because Adam and Eve were created perfect and didn't have any terrible mutations to be brought out by inbreeding. Or, alternatively: there were a bunch of other people created, it's just the Bible forgets to mention them because they're not that important.
Never underestimate the capacity of literalists to bullshit creatively. Just...don't.
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Islander, in reply to
Lilith? The OT Lilith? Where's she in all this?
(The Presbytarian bible school that my mother sent two of us to (after my father died) politely asked her to remove us because 'they're questioning the teacher. All the time.' I suppose a couple of kids, 10 & 11, who'd had their world turned upside down over the past 18th months were a leetle less than inclined to accept 'because
the bible says so'...especially when its more blatant stupidities were illustrated and supposed to be coloured in - camel? Through the eye of a fucking needle*? Get real!)
*Yes, I did become aware of apologetic exogesis later. Still unconvincing. -
giovanni tiso, in reply to
but they would always sling me out before I got to “So, the human race is based on incest, then?”
Well, of course it is. And probably survived at various times in human history via various degrees of inbreeding. I fail to see the problem there.
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Islander, in reply to
Such almost certainly concentrated survival traits - some of 'em quite nasty...
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
*Yes, I did become aware of apologetic exogesis later. Still unconvincing.
I think it's a wonderfully poetic image, me. And the first time I was told that it was supposedly a mistranslation for getting a tow-rope through the eye of a needle, or that (worse) the eye of a needle was actually a gate in Jerusalem, I was quite disappointed. But then apparently that's not the case - Jesus really said camel through the eye of a needle, updating an older Talmudic aphorism (which crammed an elephant in there).
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Islander, in reply to
Excellent to learn!
Us poetic literalists can still appreciate etc. etc. - but not when the thing was illustrated ( and badly.) -
Lucy Stewart, in reply to
Lilith? The OT Lilith? Where’s she in all this?
I’ve mostly absorbed Bible apologetics of the Independent Baptist variety. They don’t hold with all that apocryphal stuff. It’s practically pagan.
But then apparently that’s not the case – Jesus really said camel through the eye of a needle, updating an older Talmudic aphorism (which crammed an elephant in there).
I seem to recall hearing – and am fully prepared to be corrected on this – that pretty much all the neat aphorisms attributed to Jesus in the Bible are just updated versions of previously-existing pieces of wisdom. Kind of like how Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde between them apparently had the nineteenth century’s entire allotment of witty remarks, only, er, more religious.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I seem to recall hearing – and am fully prepared to be corrected on this – that pretty much all the neat aphorisms attributed to Jesus in the Bible are just updated versions of previously-existing pieces of wisdom.
An anti-Christian polemic by Piergiorgio Odifreddi I read is full of examples of this, although why that ought to lessen our opinion of JC (as the author clearly thought it should) is beyond me.
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Islander, in reply to
Quoting from the past = excellent acknowledgement of ancestral storytelling/evidence. Even if done by later scribes...
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Ah, the days of arguing with Bible teachers, or whatever they were called back then. I was banned from Sunday school after being told off for arguing with the teacher and coming back with the excuse that "Jesus argued with the priests in the temple so I'm like Jesus"
Not a popular boy was I.
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Islander, in reply to
Ah, the days of arguing with Bible teachers, or whatever they were called back then.
Presbys didnt actually like the term 'Sunday school teachers' way back then...
There seems to be a few of us who can say 'Kicked Out Of Indoctrination Course" eh? Pity it's not a good acronym...
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
turn tablist...
“Jesus argued with the priests in the temple so I’m like Jesus” Not a popular boy was I.
How'd ya go with those moneylenders, then?
get it off yer chest...If Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, made directly by God
I thought that was just gentile ribbing...
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I was prepared to make it the one and only firm veto power I'd ever use, if it came to that. It didn't, which is great because ultimatums suck arse.
Yeah, well I vetoed, and we're currently about two or three weeks away from a judge deciding for us. Which feels stupid, but here we are.
My daughter keeps piping up from her car seat with things she's been taught about god. Today she told me she loved god more than everyone because god was everywhere and everything. I wish it was illegal to indoctrinate kids like that :(
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bmk, in reply to
My daughter keeps piping up from her car seat with things she’s been taught about god. Today she told me she loved god more than everyone because god was everywhere and everything. I wish it was illegal to indoctrinate kids like that :(
Man that sucks so much.. I had religious parents when I was young and I always doubted the existence of this 'God' character. I remember expressing my doubts to my mother who told me that the doubts were the devil inside my head and I was evil if I listened to them.
So my mother has been clearly instructed that if she mentions god to my kids she will lose the right to see them. I am just grateful that my ex is an agnostic. Would be horrible to be in your situation.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Doesn't that bring to mind the Parsons kids from 1984?
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Lilith __, in reply to
Lilith? The OT Lilith? Where’s she in all this?
I think Lilith is only mentioned in one of the Apocrypha, as Adam's first wife, made from the earth along with him. As I recall, he divorced her for being too uppity, and replaced her with Eve, who was subservient by design.
Her origins apparently go further back into Mesopotamian and Indo-European mythology.
One of my reference books says the name means "lily" and derives from the Sumero-Babylonian word lilu , meaning lotus. Her obvious connection with sexuality and fertility is no doubt what makes her demonic in Hebrew mythology.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
I know what you did last Sumer...*
Her obvious connection with sexuality and fertility is no doubt what makes her demonic in Hebrew mythology.
Well, that and the killing of neonates (newborn children) used to annoy them as well...
A mantle piece...
I guess the being made from earth thang could explain the Lith part of the name - as in lithosphere...Something to reflect on...
What's more Lilith and/or Lamia can possess women by entering them, through mirrors! A nifty trick...Cleanliness is next to godliness...
I'd stick with the Lotus connection it has more Elan and what's more it's self cleaning:- )
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Lilith __, in reply to
Ian can I just say…I don’t know what you have for breakfast, but I’m pretty sure you could patent it! ;-) [Lithosphere, indeed!]
Regarding the transition from Mesopotamian goddess to Hebrew demon: it’s amazing how old stories and images never seem to get thrown away, just reused for new purposes.
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Jeremy Andrew, in reply to
I wish it was illegal to indoctrinate kids like that :(
As I saw quoted on the intenets somewhere recently:
Religion is like a penis:
Its ok to have one,
Its ok to be proud of it,
But don't bring it out in public,
And don't try and shove it down my kids' throats.
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