Originally posted by Nellinator
I believed in Satan before I believed in God. My life was confusing, depressing, and hopeless. I decided to start reading the Bible and suddenly life made more sense because I realized that what the Bible said about how to live was right. Life became easier, I was happier, joy started to enter my life, I dropped bad habits, prosperity started to come along, etc. I realized that without the Bible I would still be in the dark, and since I knew that the Bible was God's word I figured that anyone to be so right about life, he must be real. Therefore, I chose to believe in God and continue to believe in his word because following it has never led me astray.
I was raised to believe that I should always think for myself, that I should discern fantasy from reality, that violence is not something that should be glorified, and that God is greater than our ability to describe in words or to limit with ideas. For these reasons, I do not accept the Bible as a unique authority on God or any other subject. That does not mean that I dismiss it entirely, however.
To begin with, I will not accept anything just because it is written in the Bible. As far as I am concerned the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament from the Christian point of view) is a collection of the tribal legends, historical records, and religious writings of the ancient Hebrews. I am a modern man - not an ancient Hebrew. Therefore, my entire worldview is informed by scientific data and cultural assumptions that are extremely far removed from those of the ancient Hebrews. Unlike them, just to name a few examples, I am convinced that this universe is billions of years old; that life as it now appears on Earth is part of an ongoing process of evolution; that different languages and dialects developed over time; that it is not an abomination to eat pork, shrimp, or lobster, or to mix beef and dairy products; that slavery is immoral; that it is immoral to execute disrespectful children; and that one is never justified in committing genocide or ethnic cleansing. The ancient Hebrews, however, were ignorant of modern astrophysics, ignorant of geology, ignorant of the fossil record and carbon dating, they believed that all of the existing language groups originated from God's curse at the tower of Babel, they believed that it is an abomination to eat certain kinds of foods or to prepare foods in certain ways, they believed that disrespect to God or one's parent's is a capital offense, they practiced slavery, and they believed that God had commanded them to kill every man, woman, and child in certain towns during the conquest of the promised land (in other cases the men and boys were killed and the woman and girls enslaved). So, for scientific and moral reasons I do not view the Bible as an authority.
The Bible also relates stories wherein a donkey speaks to its master, a flood covers the entire world and all life on earth today is descended from only the animals aboard Noah's ark, a woman turns into a pillar of salt, people are lifted up bodily into the heavens never to return, the sun stands still in the sky, and finally a man physically comes back from the dead and proceeds to walk through walls and ascend bodily into the heavens. I am leaving out a lot of other miraculous tales that are either logistically impossible, or which could be explained in a more rational way. The point is that the reality I live in does not operate that way, and I have never been given any good reason to believe that any of these things happened in real life other than the testimony of the ancient Hebrews who (as I said) had a prescientific mythical worldview; and the testimony of a small sect of Judaism which became the nucleus of a minor mystery religion in the Roman Empire, which eventually became the official religion of that empire, which then become the reigning religious ideology of various European nation-states. I must say that I require objective, empirical, and verifiable and irrefutable evidence before I throw common sense out the window and accept that any of these things happened in real life.
I also cannot accept the Biblical God's use of violence, terror, and threats to get people to do what He wants. This includes Joshua's conquest of the promised land, the behavior of the Judges, Jesus and St. Paul's threats of eternal damnation for those who do not believe, and finally the Armageddon promised in the Book of Revelations. Jesus even says at one point that he comes not to bring peace but a sword to divide families against one another (Matthew 10:34). It seems to me that the violence and threats of violence in the Bible are nothing more than a very human way of abdicating responsibility and laying all of our very human shortcomings at God's door. I do not accept the Biblical portrait of a God who commands, condones, and makes use of violence and terror. I do not believe that everything that could be said about such an infinite reality as God has been said in the Bible.
"Don't believe in anything simply because you heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
But after observation and analysis, you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept and live up to it ." --The Buddha Sakyamuni