Facts About the Bible and Religion 

Love the article. I too share a dislike of close-minded religious zealots. I try to reason with them. I ask them to explain. When they fail, I smile and say that I cannot argue with faith. For one, faith is something personal, and nothing I say will change that, nor should it. I can only hope that a logical person thinks very hard about what they believe in and if in the end they choose faith, I find I cannot begrudge them that choice. For another, in order to have a real argument and get anywhere with it, one needs to make statements, backed up by proof which is based on logic, experience, or empirical evidence. Since faith is backed by none of these three things, arguing against the phrase "Because I believe" or "Because that's what the Bible says" is fruitless.

As to your mention of evolution and the general Christian urge to reject the theory, I understand your frustrations. But to be honest, I never understood how evolution and creationism couldn't coexist as neither theory disproves, or indeed, even contends with the other. Of course, in order for evolution and creationism to get along, one has to have a loose interpretation (my favorite kind of interpretation) of the Bible. God built the world in seven days. Which came first, the world, or the day? A "day" as defined by human standards is the journey the sun takes across the sky from east to west, on average about twelve hours (depending on daylight savings and solstices). So if there was no earth, and there was no sun, how could there be a "day" by human standards?

This idea leads me to believe that most of the Bible is indeed metaphorical. I tell my hardcore religious friends that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and omniscient. God knows more than we do. God, in Himself, could generally be a metaphor for some grand, divine force. In truth, we know very little of what God is, because the human mind is so far beneath Him and His wisdom. Thus I see the Bible like one of those children's storybooks you read to your kids to teach them lessons about things that are much more complicated than they could ever understand, at their age and mental capacity. I'm sure if God told the literal story of how the universe was created, it would be far too complex for our tiny brains to comprehend.

I find God in the anomalies of science. In the perfect spiral of a sunflower. In the mysterious center of a black hole. In the endless amount of space that surrounds us. In my opinion as an agnostic, THAT is God.

Wow. OK, that turned into a God-rant. I apologize gravely, but am too lazy to edit, and feel it needed to be said, but probably not here. Still, my initial point (that I digressed largely from) is that too many people take very absolute views on religion. The non-religious say that the religious put too much stock in faith. The religious say that the non-religious are blasphemers who haven't seen the light.

My point: Can't we all just get along?

I've found a happy medium. I'm not into organized religion in general because of the reasons you stated.

By the way, I liked what you said about the King James Bible. I didn't think about that.

Nice. I don't like it when I have religion pushed on me by so called friends, but my best friend is the perfect example of a person who can believe in God and go to church regularly who doesn't feel the need to press their faith onto me. I see religion as more of a guide book to how you can live your life.

All religions essentially have the same basic lesson of knowing whats right and whats wrong, and that as long as you do whats right you will have a happy life.

So why subscribe to one particular religion?

And it always makes me giggle when I mention to Protestants that their religion was made by a man who wanted to divorce his wife!

I honor knowledge and all that, being in and out of college. But there are times when many people do need to have extra help in hard times.
It is true there are some open sides in the Bible but haven't you ever considered that God feels we don't need to know certain things until He feels it is time for us to know?

Proverbs 3:5 & 6 "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." KJV

Sure, doubt gets you an education. But there's only so much that life can teach us.
Religion is just a label people wanted to have, but I just have my faith in God and Jesus.