Give us a better story then. Or point at one that produces Hope and Faith in you, when you have experienced suffering.

All religious text give us story, imagery and ritual.

Why?

Because they are the tools available to produce Faith.

Faith in those suffering, that tomorrow will be a better day.

The tools evolve and change. New tools are discovered. Yet with all the tooling and knowledge we still have, producing Faith and Hope in those suffering still is very much a non-trivial problem. We fuck it up all the time because of how hard the problem is.

To not look at religious text, all religious text, is to not look deeply at what attempts people have made - with the tools of story, imagery and ritual - to produce Faith in those who need it.

I was no big fan of religion growing up. But the older you get the more ppl who stumble, will knock at your door looking for hope/energy/faith etc. And no one taught me how to generate it in others.

So I did the usual stuff of giving them cash, shelter, listening, sending them to a shrink etc etc. And where that doesn't work out or fails in spectacular ways, thats when a good story is all you have left.

So keep looking for a good one.

Harry Potter. It sets a great example of friendship and love and teaches faith in better tomorrows - and does a better job at that than the bible. It also does not teach magical bullshit as if it was real and does not tell people how to behave or what is right or wrong.

Just point at the story you like. No need for any attacks. If its a better story and it helps people it's all good. When they come at you with their story show them your story. Tell them how it has helped you. You will make a bigger impression.

People need stories. Elon Musk needs some story about Mars. Zuckerberg clings to some story about how the world needs Facebook etc etc. What is important is you offer a better story if you find they are clinging to the wrong ones.

Explain further?

I'm sure there are many passages that people can point to in the Bible that can be quite fairly charged with being unhelpful or morally objectionable - for example those that relate to what fathers should do to daughters who act out in particular ways, or about homosexuality.

Of course you can reasonably argue that it is not so much the words themselves that cause harm, but the way that they are wielded by people. You can say similar things about all sort of words or things people wield - from the US constitution through to assault rifles, and such assertions are to various degrees sensible or ridiculous.

Others might point out other important passages in the bible that encourage peace, or kindness, or other good virtue. Of course these passages might also be wielded in more or less virtuous ways - there are many acts done in kindness that are not kindly received for example.

Personally I'm not a big fan of the Bible, but I'm not sure it is intrinsically a bad object. I think that the claims of knowledge and systems of power created around it are highly concerning and that power in all forms provides the opportunity for abuse, the manifestations we are far too well acquainted with today.

take Galileo Galilei as an example. And all the people after him that were robbed of his potential further inventions.

Learn to read or google stuff like "spanish inquisition"

Surely you must know what the Christians teach people? That many perfectly normal and good things are wrong, that normal human acts are sins (and how they behave to the "sinners" - even from their own), the way they teach it to children, etc?

I do. Christians I've known simply teach faith in Jesus, expressed through baptism, repentance and actions of love.

> the way they teach it to children

They teach the same to children too.. I hope. But , of course there will be deception and the bible clearly states that too. Thankfully, It provides a solutions.

> That many perfectly normal and good things are wrong, that normal human acts are sins

Can you share examples?

People are falliable. My self included. Probably best to read the foundations of the bible itself and then judge. Its like coding. Surely the person who started with the foundations is much more equipped to handle the framework or library in comparison to the person with no foundations and just jumping straight into a framework haha.

There is a theory that much of what we think are universal human values such as morality or justice or democracy comes from the book. Indeed many would support the idea that all utopian movements such as the The French Revolution or Communism have their philosophical roots in the book and Christianity.

Humanism and the notion of Progress, could be based on the Christian idea that we are morally autonomous beings and completely different from other animals and that the idea that progress is towards something better is fundamentally Christian. Ironically, much of modern atheism has assumptions about human beings which base themselves on Christian philosophy.

Many would say that you do take advice from such a book even if you don't know that's where the advice you value originates.

I beg to differ. I don't believe in God and see him as a man made concept, but I do believe it is possible to have ethics and morality outside of religion.

Proof of this is that there are many cultures, historical and present day that do not share this book or any other and that do possess ethics and morality, besides the obvious counter example of atheists.

> I beg to differ.

I think the point was not that ethics and morality are impossible without religion, at least not exactly. I think the questions were a little different, e.g., where did the ideas come from?

If the question is did morality and ethics come from religion or preceded it then I would bet on morality and ethics coming first and religion growing out of those a precursor to a legal system. Note that a lot of religious morality and ethics is framed as 'law'.

> If the question is did morality and ethics come from religion or preceded it then I would bet on morality and ethics coming first and religion growing out of those a precursor to a legal system. Note that a lot of religious morality and ethics is framed as 'law'.

I guess there's also something about this connection that's bugging me, and I don't know exactly what; sorry for the response that's indulging my questions and maybe paying less attention to your statements. I'm trying to edit, but I have to go to dinner.

If ethics and morality predate religion, it's hard to understand precisely why religion exists, at least if religion were reducible to its practice. (I don't take you to mean this, FWIW.)

Functionally, I suppose one might argue that religion is about justification--justifying the ability to execute judgment, for example, by infusing one's authority with divine imprimatur. This doesn't really sit well with me despite straightforward examples, because it doesn't explain why anyone would go along with this. Religion requires some kind of belief, and why would people buy into it? One needn't have religion to solidify political power, although that is the basic pattern prior to the 20th century. If it's mostly about power, how does one explain Christianity before Constantine? (It's an example I'm familiar with, but I don't know that it's unique.)

At the same time, religion is not all law, either. Law is about proscription (thou shalt not) and prescription (when thou doest, here's your punishment), an eye for an eye (not an arm and an eye for an eye). On the other hand, when someone says "Do good to those who hate you and bless those who curse you," that is ... not the same. It's not even entirely clear on the face of it that this is a good idea? Why is it better to do this?

Well, let's take those stone tablets that Mozes brought down from the mountain. What do you think are the chances they would have made it as far as they did if he said: "look guys, here is some stuff I chiseled into a bunch of tablets while I was up on the mountain" vs "this is the word of god"? It's an appeal to authority if there ever was one and by placing the authority in a spot where it can not be directly queried for verification it can literally develop a life of its own, like any good meme on social media today.

Check out how eager people are to follow and propagate anonymous stuff that happens to coincide with their worldview.

> Well, let's take those stone tablets that Mozes brought down from the mountain.

Yeah, that's one of those obvious examples I was thinking of before, but upon reflection I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to view this as a link in the evolution of ethics and morality into religion. No one is going to follow a ceremonial law as intricate as the one in the Torah unless they already believe in a god or gods.[1]

The utility of religion for control goes almost without saying, but this is a different matter than explaining the religious impulse: control is asserted from the outside, but faith happens from the inside. If it were purely a matter of covering civil laws with a patina of divine approval, the ceremonial aspects of the Torah make little sense. Hammurabi, for example, doesn't bother with them, despite claiming divine authority for handing down his rules.

[1] As an aside, the Old Testament can be read as a failed experiment in establishing monotheistic worship to Israel. If Moses intended to consolidate his authority, or his family's authority, by identifying their ancient god with Yahweh, it's hard to argue that he succeeded.

I thought the scientific consensus is that Moses is most probably a legendary figure