Easter Questions

[ksst]

I personally love a good story, and bible stories are certainly some of the best. I mean, take the story of Solomon and the two women claiming the same baby. Jim, in Huckleberry Finn, tells an excellent version of that story. Thanks to Samuel Clemons/Mark Twain, another of the world's great story tellers.

And the story of the birth of the baby Jesus. Belief or no, I find it a powerful and moving story. I told it to my kids, the little heathens.

As far as literally believing the bible, this was not what I was taught even in Sunday school. I went to a fairly liberal Methodist church for a while, as a kid, and they have a more loose than strict interpretation. Some of the sects that are very literal just confuse me as there are so many contradictions in the bible how do you even know which one to take seriously? Not to mention that is has been retranslated and handed down over the intervening years, and must be something like the old game of telephone in some spots.

[Thorne]

I personally love a good story, and bible stories are certainly some of the best.

I agree, there are some good stories. Just like Mother Goose, or the Brothers Grimm. They're sometimes interesting moral tales. But they're not gospel!

there are so many contradictions in the bible how do you even know which one to take seriously? Not to mention that is has been retranslated and handed down over the intervening years, and must be something like the old game of telephone in some spots.

This is one of the major bones of contention in the atheist community. How are you supposed to know which parts of the Bible are literally true, which parts have to be interpreted properly and which parts are basic garbage? With thousands of different sects having their own ideas of this, how can anyone claim they know exactly what God wants from us? We have to rely on men and women who claim that they are "instruments of the Lord". Yeah, right! As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between Pat Robertson claiming that God tells him what to say and some bum on the street saying the same thing, is that the bum on the street winds up in an asylum. Ol' Pat winds up with a couple of million of other peoples' hard-earned dollars.