LogFAQs > #982051185

Nintendo_Porn posted...

GF is very spiritual, and this has come up in discussion, so was curious to hear thoughts here as you guys can offer a nice perspective when we stay civil as us two did.

What does this mean? Is she religious and you aren't? Because if so, you might be in for some bad times. If you are both religious but have strongly different religious views, it still might be bad news bears.

By the phrasing of your topic title, it seems like you are starting with the base assumption that the Bible is trustworthy or authoritative to some degree, but that people might have later corrupted its purity for their own ends. I went on a deep dive years ago studying scholarship surrounding the Bible, and I can't for the life of me imagine why a person who hadn't been indoctrinated in Christianity early in life, or who found the promise of eternal life through Jesus compelling would think the Bible was an authority on anything about life or the supernatural. Even if the Bible were a straightforward and in some sense authoritative historical text (it isn't, and the reasons are so much more numerous than what you listed), a book telling you a man performed miracles 2,000 years ago and will give you eternal life when you die isn't very compelling.

But actually, the Bible doesn't matter much for many modern Christians. A lot of people go to church for the social aspect and have some vague notion that they are good people, that God loves them, and that they'll see their loved ones in a pleasant afterlife. They then graft any other convictions they might have about life or the supernatural onto God and the Bible. More attentive and interested folks will pay attention to the sermon and care about what the pastor is saying, but probably still won't read the Bible, or if they do, it will be in a church study group where they talk their way around odd passages or just ignore them. The next level up would be reading the Bible personally with a devotional of some kind, but those do the same kinds of things a church study group would do.

The highest level is someone who cares enough to want to know what the Bible really says and why. Like, not just what your denomination says, but how the Bible got made, what the historical record tells us about the ancient world, etc. Lots of people who go down this rabbit hole become atheists or agnostics.

I happen to be agnostic on the concept of God, and wholly negative about the Bible itself being true.