Freethinker (General)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, December 05, 2010, 04:11 (5101 days ago) @ David Turell

If you want to get into specific details though, please be a tad more specific in your question. But I would ask that you please focus the questions on the Bible text and not a specific religion. I don't really care about nor pander to the various religious groups, and am in fact quite thoroughly disgusted with them.
> 
> Your last paragraph indicates some degree of irritation in my questioning. I meant in no way to be annoying. My background in the NT is essentially gospel related, and I am appreciative of your explanations of the value you receive from all of the NT. I constantly struggle with the prejudical reasoning I have: the Gospels were written from heresay 60-80 years after the fact. The one contemporaneous comment about a living Jesus in Josephus' writings appears to be a forgery. Like you I have always felt that a Jesus-like person lived and taught. But immaculate conception with a virgin sounds like a miraculous fairy tale invented to convert non-believers to a religion of Jesus, because his teachings alone weren't converting the non-believers. But his teachings are marvelous, and I try to live as he suggested in his life. Thank you for showing me a glimpse of the values in the NT, beyond the Gospels, from which my prejudice has blocked me.-
I am not annoyed with your questioning. I just don't want to get involved in trying to defend ideals like the Trinity, immaculate conception, and prophecies and such again. They are too subjective and some of them I disagree with and don't want to feel the need to argue for them regardless of my personal views. There is also the fact that there are simply too many 'branch' religions for any one person to be able to even remotely keep up with all the disparate and often minute differences between them that are often not based on the actual text of the bible, but on some other political, moral, or philosophical grounds. My interest is in the Bible, and other religious texts, not in the various bickering groups that sprang up from them.