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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Am I the only one thatis  truly horrified by the human sacrifice theme that runs through the Bible?  God created us, didn't like how we turned out, created a perfect one of us, and then set him up as human sacrifice?  And that is supposed to be inspiring?  It makes absolutely no sense.

And souls?  That also makes no sense at all.  Dualism is something you are supposed to get over as you mature.  There can't be this many people out there that don't understand how the brain functions, there just can't.[/quote]

I think the Bible has been translated and rewritten and translated and misinterpreted so many times that we miss the forrest because of the trees.  The Christian Bible is full of beautiful metaphors, poetry, and parables.  It's pretty obvious that most of it was never meant to be interpreted literally.  There is no "Hell" mentioned in the Bible.  The PPs who keep posting about eternal damnation and hell need to spend a little time researching the words  Sheol, Hades and Gehenna.  *Hint - None of them mean "Hell".  At least not as Christians define it.  [b]The Bible we read today was translated and pieced together by powerful leaders who had every reason to want people to live in fear.[/b]

God (Creator, I Am, Love, Universe,  Light, Allah, ...whatever your word for your Creator is) created us in perfect love.  God is love and is incapable of creating anything but good.  We have free will.  Humans make mistakes, sometimes horrible mistakes.  But we were born good.  Jesus came into our world as an example of God's love.  He was the divine expression of God here on earth.  And we are supposed to try to be the same.  That's the goal of Christianity - to become "Christ-like".  Jesus' death was meant to demonstrate absolute pure, sacrificial love.  God didn't force him to give up his life - Jesus chose that path.  It's inspiring in that even when faced with torture and certain death, Jesus remained centered in God.  He retained that God consciousness or enlightenment or awakeness....or whatever term you want to use.  God used Jesus to communicate His love for us.  How else could he have done that?

Do you really think Johah was swallowed by a whale?  I think most people see that as a story of faith very much the same way we teach our children the story of the boy who cried wolf.  Jesus spoke in parables all the time.  Genesis is full of beautiful symbolic poetry about the creation of our world.  The stories in the Bible makes sense when they are read with an awareness of cultural and historical context.  And most importantly, when they are read using a little logic.  [/quote]

It seems like some form of this is still going on.  Now, it's less a matter of leaders wanting people to live in fear (though there's still some of that) and more a matter of trying to make the Bible more palatable to a more sophisticated audience in order to maintain the enterprise of organized religion.   
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