Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor
Can you give a heathen some examples, as I've read them all and have not shared that experience.
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I'm not sure what you're getting at with "give a heathen," since by what is likely your own definition, I'm a heathen as well. It has nothing to do with whether you're a religious individual or not. It has to do with textual interpretation and looking at what's written not as empirical truth any more than you would look at The Brothers Karazamov as empirical truth. You're not religious. I'm not religious. Get over the fact (for the sake of this discussion I'm putting down here, anyway) that others view the book as literal truth, we both know it's likely not, and there's a good chance the men that originally wrote them didn't view it that way either.
Instead, taken, read, and viewed as a collection of (non-empirical) myths like many other collections of myths, its stories can be interpreted a multitude of different ways, many of which can give you new, or old, insights into your own life, your own thoughts, or the world around you. I don't really need to give specific examples of this do I? How many different ways has the myth of Abraham and Isaac been interpreted? The greatest gift of literature, in my opinion, is the things we can learn about ourselves and our own personal places in the world through interpretation and thought that aren't easily quantifiable.
At face value, of course, it's nonsense, because as a religious person, or as a person that argues with religious people, we're used to viewing it as somehow fact, or claimed as somehow fact. As a person that doesn't believe the existence of God is very likely, however, we have the luxury of reading these books as something other than them being literal fact, and, personally, I'm sick of arguing with people over religion. So, instead of reading them with the intention of looking to form arguments against those that believe them to be actual representations of actual acts, or reading them with a subconscious feeling of "these can't be true!", it
is actually possible to read them like the aforementioned Brothers Karazamov, or the myths that came before (and inspired them) or after them, and enjoy them as such. We can acknowledge them as being fanciful works that have inspired millions of people, as being important parts of the historical record, and being able to be read a multitude of different ways to gain a multitude of different emotions and questions and answers (again, not empirical truths, for the most part).
Being an Atheist, Agnostic, Ignostic (like me), or whatever other brand of "heathen" there is out there doesn't mean you need to dislike everything about religion (and that isn't specifically aimed at you, but some of the avowed atheists, etc., out there that make it a point to despise religion and all it has ever spawned). Maybe that's because I subscribe more to Daniel Dennett. I like Christmas carols, I like the sound of the muezzin, I love religious architecture, and I think the Bible can be a great read, even if Christians are by and large massively annoying. Doesn't have anything to do with being a heathen or not, though.