If you accept that a religious text isn't meant to be taken

>>9404226
Insight into cognitive biases and how to exploit them for fun and profit, of course.

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>>9404251

>>9404251
wtf?! I hate bible now

>>9404226
To use it as a flawed human instrument designed to somehow communicate with and make sense of the supernatural.

>>9404226
The bible is historically accurate, why wouldn't you take it seriously?

>>9404226
>the point of the text
>pure fantasy

Why would you ascribe modern notions of genre to a religious text thousands of years old? That's just idiotic.

Religious texts usually contain legal systems, genealogies, moral teachings, prophecy, poetry, and many other genres. Their "point", or purpose, is to unify a people by setting their history in written form, so that it can be passed and studied by future generations. It's the same with the Iliad, for example. Right now you wouldn't even dare to question its purpose, because we read it as poetry, but back in Archaic and Ancient Greece, before it got written down, it was meant to remind people of a (supposed) historical event, as a genealogy, and as a theogony.

The same holds true for the Hebrew Bible or the Quran. Don't filter it through your modern perceptions, because your understanding of the text will be biased. And even if you do, to say that they are "just a possible set of moral guidelines and otherwise just pure fantasy" shows a deep misunderstanding and ignorance of the history and purpose of religious texts in general.

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>>9404271

>>9404276
>Religious texts usually contain legal systems, genealogies, moral teachings, prophecy, poetry, and many other genres

Also creation myths.

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>>9404226
To understand the meaning in the metaphors and riddles within when you apply them to your own life.

>>9404226
>texts cannot be read allegorically
I fucking hate Westerners holy shit

When I read a religious text, or even a fantastic report of historical events like The Iliad I realize that I have no idea of knowing for sure, based on personal experience, that what is described couldn't have possibly happened. I feel like there could've been events that border on the extreme in our shared human past; I know that there are things that have happened in the past that cannot be explained, and that would totally boggle my mind. Why limit what those extremes are? Any absurd example described in poetry, whether religious or not, could have been a reality for someone. I could not deny any possibility.

Literal meaning is barely relevant in general and yields the lowest possible information from most texts.

>>9404364
>year of our lord and saviour 2017
>still dont know that nietzsche didnt actually kill god he was hastily preparing he lords funeral arrangements and catering bc he knew enlightenmentrationalfags were gonna take a gang hit out on him

>>9404537
>tl;dr: Its bullshit but I believe it

>>9404571
>bullshit
I guess. If that's how you would prefer to see it. But there are things that I can read from ancient societies that were absolutely known to be truth for them. I know that some of these truths remain consistent throughout the ages (e.g. Cicero's "De Officiis" and Ovid's "Ars Amatoria") so why rule out that there isn't truth in the depiction of gods and their interactions with man? I chose the adjective "fantastic" for a reason. It means things that are arriving from the imagination, which I find to be a powerful, and ultimately 'true' experience, last as truths to those who are willing to receive them as so.

>>9404565
this is a good analogy

>>9404226
The Bible has 73 books. Each book has its own meaning and within them there are real events meant be taken literally and metaphors.
In the book of Genesis for example it's taken as literal that there were two first humans, man and woman, that man is the protector and woman the heart and that God created everything, but it obviously didn't last for 7 days and he didn't rest because he's omnipotent and timeless.

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>>9404226
>If you accept that a religious text isn't meant to be taken literally
What is the literal meaning?

>The Church is the bride of Christ
What does it mean?
>Your body is the temple of God
What does it mean?

Songs and poems, how literal are they?

>>9404824
If they aren't literal and clear (read:'don't go over my head') then they're meaningless. Only my numbers are beautiful...

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> it was well that the spiritual meaning should be concealed; but, on the other hand, if this meaning had been so hidden as not to appear at all, it could not have served as a proof of the Messiah. What then was done? In a crowd of passages it has been hidden under the temporal meaning, and in a few been clearly revealed; besides that, the time and the state of the world have been so clearly foretold that it is clearer than the sun. And in some places this spiritual meaning is so clearly expressed that it would require a blindness, like that which the flesh imposes on the spirit when it is subdued by it, not to recognise it.

>See, then, what has been the prudence of God. This meaning is concealed under another in an infinite number of passages, and in some, though rarely, it is revealed; but yet so that the passages in which it is concealed are equivocal and can suit both meanings; whereas the passages where it is disclosed are unequivocal and can only suit the spiritual meaning.

>So that this cannot lead us into error and could only be misunderstood by so carnal a people.

>>9405945
>it was well that the spiritual meaning should be concealed
But why?

>>9404273
The memes; the outrageous, unbridled memes.

A book happens to contain information about events that actually happened, obviously Jesus is divine and the son of the one true God, also giants, unicorns, and dragons are all real and coincidentally the people who wrote the v1 edition happen to be God's chosen children still despite a retcon in the second act.

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>>9405976
>They had to deal with a carnal people and to render them the depositary of the spiritual covenant. To give faith to the Messiah, it was necessary there should have been precedent prophesies, and that these should be conveyed by persons above suspicion, diligent, faithful, unusually zealous, and known to all the world.

>To accomplish all this, God chose this carnal people, to whom He entrusted the prophecies which foretell the Messiah as a deliverer and as a dispenser of those carnal goods which this people loved. And thus they have had an extraordinary passion for their prophets and, in sight of the whole world, have had charge of these books which foretell their Messiah, assuring all nations that He should come and in the way foretold in the books, which they held open to the whole world. Yet this people, deceived by the poor and ignominious advent of the Messiah, have been His most cruel enemies. So that they, the people least open to suspicion in the world of favouring us, the most strict and most zealous that can be named for their law and their prophets, have kept the books incorrupt. Hence those who have rejected and crucified Jesus Christ, who has been to them an offence, are those who have charge of the books which testify of Him, and state that He will be an offence and rejected. Therefore they have shown it was He by rejecting Him, and He has been alike proved both by the righteous Jews who received Him and by the unrighteous who rejected Him, both facts having been foretold.

>Wherefore the prophecies have a hidden and spiritual meaning to which this people were hostile, under the carnal meaning which they loved. If the spiritual meaning had been revealed, they would not have loved it, and, unable to bear it, they would not have been zealous of the preservation of their books and their ceremonies; and if they had loved these spiritual promises, and had preserved them incorrupt till the time of the Messiah, their testimony would have had no force, because they had been his friends.

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they have meaning within the language game of religion

>>9405996
Oh. Because of the jews, as usual.

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>>9404226
As Above, So Below

Just read it as a literary or cultural text, just like any other. You don't have to believe with an author to get something from him, even if you only learn how he sees things.

>>9404226
Because you pray and get a warm fuzzy feeling, so all critical thinking can go out the window.

>>9406086
>critical thinking is good because it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling