A non-religious explanation of the Bible?

If your an atheist/agnostic, who do you believe wrote the Bible?

I simply don't see how any philosopher(s) could have comprehended and written the various aspects of human life in BC times before half the world was even explored. Also the future predictions about the world and the end of times (Which if not true disprove Christianity).

But then what if there's a different explanation altogether. Could an extraterrestrial race have seeded the information in humans?
If your not willing to accept that a deity exists, then IMHO no human being could have possessed such understanding as found in any religious texts; Torah, Bible etc?

reply to post by depleteduranium92


I believe it was written by the people it was meant to be written by.

However alterations were quite common I believe, here's my thread about it if you're interested www.abovetopsecret.com...

At this time, I have no doubt that the bible shares individuals perspectives and interpretations that were passed on orally. I believe that as such it has been distorted by others perpectives through interpretations. When looking at the bible, or any other historic written records, we often perceive it through the eyes of modern insight, thus, we may read more into it besides what was originally implied. I think that man's perceptions have translated these historical records into being more than they ever were. In a few hundred years, we will still be perceiving these as miraculously knowledgeable, not because of what they knew, but as to what we perceive they knew. Make sense?

I'm agnostic and just recently I have been looking in to religion, learning more about the Bible, etc.

The best explanation I have heard is that it's a collection of historical accounts, personal accounts and poetry. That's a bit simplified, but you get the picture.

I once did an interview with adjensen for a radio program on ATS Live Radio. He does a great job of addressing my uneducated agnostic questions and I invite you to listen to it. It tackles issues just like this.

ATSLIVERADIO- LoudMouth

I believe it's Season 1, episode 8 and 9.

reply to post by depleteduranium92

I simply don't see how any philosopher(s) could have comprehended and written the various aspects of human life in BC times before half the world was even explored.

Well for one, the old testament was written in "BC times" -- approximately 1400 B.C. to approximately 400 B.C. by normal humans.
IMO what was written about the many past Thousands of years before 1400 B.C. is myth, folktales, oral traditions and beliefs taken from other "religions" and myths.

It doesn't talk about the world that was not explored. It is about a relatively small area of the world.

It evolved over a very long period of time. There are bits and pieces taken from older religions and superstitious beliefs.


I'll give you an analogy. Say you can write a book or a movie, and you can plagiarize to your heart's content. Just put together the best parts of every movie you've ever seen. There are no limits, include Darth Vader, Jesus, Forrest Gump, Santa Clause, 101 Dalmations, etc. You get the idea. There's a lot of good plot points in your noggin. Now, you have 10 lifetimes to write it, and hundreds of assistants. By the time you're done, nobody will remember the stories from which you borrowed. That would be one heck of a story!

reply to post by depleteduranium92

who do you believe wrote the Bible?

Who do you think decided that the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jasher, or The Jubilees should have been omitted from our Old Testament? Who finally decided that the Book of Revelation should be included in the New Testament? Why did it take 1000 years to finally add the story of the adulteress to the book of John? Why was the Gospel of Thomas deliberately omitted? Why doesn't St Paul ever quote Jesus? Why are known forgeries, such as some of the Pauline letters, allowed to stand?

depleteduranium92
If your an atheist/agnostic, who do you believe wrote the Bible?

The same way the Brothers Grimm complied their fairytale collection by using old folk legends and turn them into plausible and easy to read stories.

reply to post by depleteduranium92

I think that's a from of oxymoron. If you don't believe in God, you wont put any credence or belief in any "religious" text, Bible, Koran or Torah to begin with.

reply to post by depleteduranium92


My take on the bible is that it is two separate works that never should have been put together.

The old testament was a collection of stories. Tales that had been passed down from generation to generation, which later became the cornerstone of the Jewish faith.

Hundreds of years later, the new testament came along. Written long after Christ was already dead. This book was both a collection of stories and a collection of prophecies and visions. Such as the resurrection of Christ. That part of the bible was based on a vision that Paul the Apostle had while travelling along the road to Damascus. He had admittedly never met Christ, so how he was able to identify the person being resurrected is beyond me.

The entire book of revelations is just a story someone made up. A prophecy that far too many Christians tend to hold up as fact, for some reason. Always looking for signs that could theoretically be interpreted to match parts of the book and proclaiming that the end is nigh.

reply to post by depleteduranium92


You make a simple and obvious yet rarely noticed point IMO.
No matter how people here try to dispel it. It's also very solid.

SnF

reply to post by depleteduranium92


I don't intend to "stomp on anyone's 'beliefs'" in what I'm about to write, but this is how I see it:

my parent's weren't religious at all and at the best of times they might have gotten "philosophical" but never in a preachy sense (besides instructing me in basic etiquette and morality) but I just really had no sense of "religion" in my family.. however my friends were a different story and (because they were my friends and you are supposed to share their interests) i would go to church with them in elementary school and these people were ABSOLUTELY religious and "spoke in tongues" and the lot of it..

now, i really couldn't see the bible and Christ (and 'God') through the same lens as they could but i did see it at interesting because the philosophy of Christianity was basically synonymous with what i learned at home..

I vividly remember being in their church and when they would mention "the father" i would imagine MY father's face because i had no analog for an entirely incorporeal God haha.. I adopted the philosophy (as you might notice in my signature) pretty early on: "you can't teach anyone anything they don't already know" (though i didn't exactly phrase it that way at the time haha)

So, to skip over my life story, i just wanted to say that from my perspective, the bible, the torah, the kabbalah, the book of enoch, the vedas, and every other mythology is describing a very real and profound truth that EVERYONE can benefit from...

..IF it can be understood in the context it emerged from, and integrated into the whole of an individual's understanding..

if a person is stuck looking at the world through ONE mythology (or philosophy), it's like only watching black and white movies, or ONLY driving Hondas, or something equally compulsive..

if people could just open themselves to the Truths that are SHARED between Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Gnostic Christianity, Islam, Discordianism, and The Church of The Subgenius, I can almost guarantee that life will be far too interesting and entertaining to really suffer in the same way that those who think "most of the world is going to hell" might suffer on a daily basis..

I don't claim to have reached some "enlightened state of mind" or implying that i know a "better" path than anyone reading these words, but in the same breath: I'm speaking from experience

depleteduranium92
If your an atheist/agnostic, who do you believe wrote the Bible?

Human beings wrote the bible.. but like any human being, they were influenced by their surroundings and upbringing, as well as their own observations, dreams, and experiences. i don't think the information in the Bible necessitates an extraterrestrial explanation, but like i said.. what they relayed is a product of their environment (in part) and could be only the tip of the ice-berg as far as what they ACTUALLY understood, or how they applied this knowledge.. and this could include extra-terrestrials.. or inner-terrestrials..?

I simply don't see how any philosopher(s) could have comprehended and written the various aspects of human life in BC times before half the world was even explored. Also the future predictions about the world and the end of times (Which if not true disprove Christianity).

see.. we don't really know that SOME cultures hadn't explored the ENTIRE world, in a very ancient time.. i mean, can anyone explain how cultures in South America, Asia, Russia, Egypt, UNDERWATER, etc, built pyramids and coincidentally share certain cultural and mythological traits? I'm no fan of the History Channel or any of those crappy documentaries, but just from what i know from a basic college and Wikipedia-education leaves me with a lot of questions unanswered.

If your not willing to accept that a deity exists, then IMHO no human being could have possessed such understanding as found in any religious texts; Torah, Bible etc?

again, perhaps the environment itself is the key to understanding the source of this knowledge and this also seems pretty consistent between most religious texts.. (the knowledge is simply "packaged" differently..) At the core of many philosophies and religions, i get the message:

if we could just consider our environment (your house, your work, your state, your country, your continent, your culture, your Earth.. your Universe..?) as a piece of ourselves, instead of separate from ourselves, then maybe.. just maybe..

We might all be on the same "page" in the story of humanity..

I think it relates a lot to the version told in The Lacerta Files. If you analyze it from that perspective, it starts having some sense. It could explain why the serpent is pictured as an evil being, or the whole
>hell(evil) = underground
>heaven(good) = sky
point of view.

In my opinion, the Bible holds a lot of knowledge about our past, but everyone took it way too literal.

Just my 2 cents.