It seems that your definition of philosophy is different than mine, which is why we're having issues. I don't regard reading the Bible and believing it as philosophy, but you seem to.
If you use reason and logic, then you use philosophy. Maybe you don't, I don't know. But I can't imagine that scenario.
And have you never asked yourself WHY you believe the bible as absolute truth?
Reading the book, and saying "These facts are true" is completely different than saying, "I wonder what this could possibly mean?"
But how did you conclude that "these facts are true"? Don't you have to understand what things mean in order to "believe" in them, or apply them to your life?
You're making something incredibly simple and twisting it into something introspective and mystical. Which is what most Christians do, by the way, and which is why the Christian church as a whole is a mess.
Incredibly simple? We're talking about a collection of massively varied writings, with different authors, writing styles, intents, and time periods, among other things. Inspired by God or not, you're delusional if you think that any honest person can just sit down and immediately understand what they read. It's a popular idea among Christians who don't want to give too much consideration to things, but it's obviously and demonstrably false.
If you're a strict biblical "literalist" (can't remember the term, sorry
), which I get the feeling you might be, it's easy for things to seem simpler, but there are much bigger problems with that view that are probably beyond the scope of this thread. Not that we're not far beyond it already.
Anyway, there are a lot of reasons Christianity is a mess. People thinking "too much" is not one of them.
You base a lot of your ideas around the fact that there are so many methods and views on interpreting Scripture. So many people come to so many different conclusions. But you know why? It's because they took something out of something simple that wasn't there in the first place. If you approach the Bible with a believing heart, interpreting the Bible as meaning what it says, and saying what it means (in other words, literally, then yes, you will run into problems, but not nearly to the extent of a Roman Catholic, for example.
See above. Of course people over-analyze things, but "under-analysis" and a demonizing of knowledge and reason is a much bigger problem.
-J
Topic: Water baptism--required for salvation? (Read 19702 times)
