Were There Certain Bible Events That U Used 2 Question As Really Happening?

by minimus 22 Replies latest jw friends

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  watson

  Inspiration by shroom?
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  jws

  Unbelievably, no. But now that I've got the blinders off, things like the Genesis account now sound so much like ancient fables.

  I suppose people either have faith in God and in miracles he can produce or they don't. An all-powerful God should be able to have pretty much anything happen, including talking donkeys.

  I used to believe anything could have happened if the Bible said it did. But so much of it just doesn't make sense anymore. Like the flood. There would have had to have been SO MANY minor miracles that had to happen to make it all work. It would have been a lot of work to bring all of the animals to the ark and then make sure all of the millions of fish were OK after mixing salt and clear water. Wouldn't it have been way easier to send an angel to kill the bad people like he supposedly did with Egypt's firstborn?
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  MissingLink

  Hercules, I mean Samson's exploits.
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  stillajwexelder

  Sorry I meant Ass - not donkey
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  JimmyPage

  Hercules, I mean Samson's exploits

  I don't care who you are, that right there is funny.
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  I quit!

  The talking snake in Genesis 3:1. Once I left the witnesses it became obvious to me that scriptures like this went to be taken literally.
• 

  ozziepost

  The seven bowls of Revelation ~ those pesky resolutions!
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  I quit!

  Daniel in the lions den, the story Sampson. These always seem to me to be stories written to teach a lesson
• 

  rmt1

  The highest energy expenditure post-creation miracle was Joshua and the sun standing still. Get the earth to stop rotating, now hold it (Bacardi), now start up again. If all God did was to hold the crust of the earth still while the core and mantle continued to rotate beneath, then that's probably why we will be having earthquakes in one place after another. The next highest energy-intensive miracle was the parting of the Red Sea. This one can be plausibly accounted for by local tectonic activity that caused a tiny tsunami - it drew the water away, then threw it back.
  
  Miracles are a form of taxation, and a security badge swiped by believers when encountering other believers so they know who is who, and who is with them, and who is worthy of being in their graces. If you believe in a low-level miracle, you get access to a set of goods offered by the tribe/denomination. In JW terms, if you believe that God created all, you get low-level acknowledgment and encouragement. As you move up to successively harder-to-believe, more inscrutable and erudite miracles, like God caught up Elijah in a whirlwind or Jonah survived three days and nights in a shark, or Jesus' fishes kept spontaneously replacing themselves, then you get higher levels of access. You might get invited over as a good associate for a meal. Later you get trust, and possibly invested responsibilities. (I omit the obvious main taxation and indicator of group investment, field service.) Miracles are also an evolutionary display of cognitive load capacity. If I can believe something so incredible as God caused a virgin to spontaneously conceive, and still get by physically in terms of fitness, then (in evolutionary terms) belief in that miracle, which should by all physics render me less fit, is actually an indicator of excess or reserve cognitive capacity. In a complete vacuum, with no other co-believers to observe your stake in a particular miracle, there is no particular advantage to believing in that miracle, other than the hope itself that God might redirect a miracle to you. Hope is another evolutionary adaptation related to but separate from belief in miracles.
  
  google "evolution of religion" fitness belief display
• 

  minimus

  Oz, those resolutions were unbelievable! But they weren't Bible events, really, right?