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Since we're starting to derail the offended thread I decided to make this thread.
So, how do you interpret some religious beliefs?
I honestly never liked the idea of rapture. It always struck me as a extremist thing to believe that we will fly to space and live with god forever as the non believing peasents get thrown into hell for eternity.

I hate people that say that "you can't cherry-pick the rules" of your religion.
Yes. You. Can.

For example, in Christianity, do you have to believe that "gays are evil" to believe that Jesus is the son of God? No. They are separate beliefs. It's not impossible to ignore a rule and still believe the main idea of a religion.

Also, do you even have to follow the rules of a religion to be able to believe the main idea of it? Isn't it possible to believe everything in a religious book and purposely not follow the rules?

Plus, a lot of people use the excuse that since the Abrahamic god is mean and since there are mean things in the Bible/Torah/Qur'an, he doesn't exist. I'm sorry to say this, but there is a possibility that a mean god exists.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that if people didn't "cherry-pick" the rules of their religion, religions like Universal Unitarianism, or even Protestant Christianity, would not exist.

@Squigly's
So do you not believe in heaven/hell and salvation through Christ? Jesus clearly says in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Sin is what separates you from God and Jesus is the one who cleanses you of your sins, if you are not cleansed of your sins you cannot stand before God, the bible is very clear about this (Romans 6:23, John 3:16, John 17:3)

@Bionic Kraken
No. You. Can't.

There's a difference in a core belief and a command. It's one thing to believe that Christ is the son of God and that he died for mankind, it's another thing to follow commandments that were given (whether you agree with them or not). When you "cherry-pick" rules how do you decide which rules to keep and which to throw away? what makes one rule more significant than the other? are you just choosing the ones you agree with because the other ones make you uncomfortable? You end up choosing what suits your specific beliefs as opposed to what's actually written in the bible. Secondly, Protestant Christianity doesn't "Cherry-Pick" rules it does the exact opposite, The Catholic Church was corrupt at the time of the reformation and it was performing acts not condoned by the bible specifically it was the selling of indulgences that sent Martin Luther over the edge. Furthermore many catholic beliefs and holidays were based on pagan ones and merged with Christianity when Europe/Rome was converted/served the purposes of the church and as such these beliefs are nowhere to be found in the bible. As for whether or not God condemns homosexuality, Professor Wikipedia says it's a matter of debate (in the New Testament at least) due to cultural and linguistic issues.

@Starscream No, I'm agnostic. Though this is one of things I've always never understood. Yes the bible states that people who don't accept jesus and god are not cleasend of their sins but honestly that makes no sense. There many who don't believe and are still righteous and pure and yet they're still going to hell? Thats just stupid if you think about it.

Agnostic here.
While I think that physical god is not possible, I have an other interpretation. I see God as an invisible force that is controlling the universe. I think it is way more plausible theory.

I do not believe creationism at all.

You assume that people enter heaven based on their works. By doing this you're basically saying salvation can be obtained by doing good deeds to outweigh the bad deeds you've already done, but just because you've done good things in you're life doesn't mean you never did wrong. No one is good enough to go to heaven based on works alone because you can't remove you're sins. The point of belief in The Lord Jesus Christ is that he is the only one who can take away those sins, which is why he said in John 14:6 "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Why wouldn't you be able to pick what you believe?
I mean, it's up to you whether you believe something, right?

Maybe one person believes in most christian things, but not that gays go to hell.

This is coming from an atheist who knows pretty much no christians, so maybe I'm missing something, Starscream.

@Ticklechap

Let me tell you, a lawbook is given to you and if you break any of these laws you'll punished in hellfire. That is a mindset a religious person is supposed to have.

@Ticklechap
Because if its a law given by God then you have no authority to choose which laws to obey and not to obey, I can't pick and choose laws set by the government just because I disagree with them.

@Eurofighter
Not even close, Christians sin all the time and a major belief of Christianity is that all humans are sinners. It doesn’t matter if you break the laws as long as you have forgiveness.

Righteous and pure by their definition, basically any one who doesn't follow their code of ethics, and subscribes to the belief religion goes to hell.
But that's in the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Mormonism, Islam, Judaism)
I know that some religions don't even believe in hell, heaven or an afterlife at all.

Well, fair enough, but still, it's not just a matter of to obey or not to obey. I can imagine some people believing in only part of what the bible says.

Laws given by god are different than laws given by a goverment. The laws given by a goverment are without a doubt there, and without a doubt given by the goverment. God's laws aren't that grounded, and thus I can see people not believing in them, as a result of not agreeing with them (I mean, there's a whole bunch of religions out there, after all).

Then again, don't a lot of people use faith as something to hold on to and as a moral compass? And not something they literally believe in? Most people I know that are christian see it that way, at least.

You can mold that to how it fits you, personally, right? Still don't see what's wrong with that.

If you look at my first post on the "what offends you" thread you'll see me vaguely mention of historical events. I can only speak for the Qur'an when i say that not only do you need narrational context but also historical context, as there are some verses that mention war against disbelievers.

Here is a classic example:
Qur'an 2:191 : "And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al- Haram until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers." Translator: Sahih International.

The context is the persecution (beating and assassination attempt levels of persecution) of Muhammad (SAW) thus declaring war against the Meccans and Quraishis. If you see people say "The Qur'an is violent" because of these 109 verses, then it is because of these historical events that made them be produced. If you want to learn about the history you can search up on google about the relationship between Mohammad(SAW) and the Meccans on Google.

And if you want cringe-worthy levels of disinformation you can go on Wikiislam.

@Starscream

You gotta remember that so little of religious doctrine can really be taken literally that expecting people to cherry pick nothing is just asking for trouble

The bible wasn't written by J.K Rowling. It's a mish-mash of letters repeatedly translated and re-translated from the words of Bronze Age people who had a very VERY different way of describing things in text from the way we do now, not to mention a worldview that's grossly incompatable with modern society after 2000 years.

How can you expect people not to come up with varying interpretation? Unless you know the writing culture of ancient Hebrews at the time, it's difficult to for say for certain what those guys were really talking about. Particularly on such impressive stories like "7 day creation", "towers of fire", "parting waters", "burning bushes".

For all we know, the prophets wrote that stuff while high on Mnt. Sinai shrooms. Not even biblical scholars can work this shit out. So what can Joe Average do? He's gotta take the texts with a grain of salt and only apply the intended spiritual messages rather than the stated history

This leaves religious text VERY open to interpretation IMO. I think Religion is fluid and dynamic. It can change, and it should change. I expect religion to adapt itself to the solid facts that science establishes. Otherwise you get people who try to adapt science around what religion establishes! We don't want that

So I don't fault people for cherry picking parts of religious text or coming up with their own ideas of what texts mean, so long as it's reasonable of course!

Obviously I don't appreciate people cherry picking "eye for an eye" and ignoring "shall not kill" so they can go on a Jihad

But ignoring "made in 7 days" to cherry pick "love they neighbor" is okay. If they wanna just say "7 days is only metaphorical since science indicates otherwise", good! That's progress!.

What I'm getting at is that you can demand and expect people to cherry pick nothing and assume everything as one solid piece of unwavering literal canon but that gets you even more ridiculous bullshit: like people saying that shaving is a sin and stoning (with real rocks) is okay.

There's parts of the Bible that you can say came from God and then there's the crap that was obviously just in there because it was acceptable for that very specific time period, but by no means acceptable today! Again you can't expect people not to cherry pick out the parts that our modern age clearly renders moot. The shaving rules, the rules on how to sow seeds and how to weave garmets are all good examples of this. Please by all means cherry pick those away to the garbage

I also think Protestant Christians have all the liberty in the world to cherry pick out the parts in the old testament that…say for example: support slavery or violent retribution. Not to mention the parts that the New Testament retconned for a good reason

This is the sort of thing I think Bionic Kraken is hinting at

[edit] wait a second…

After re-reading your posts a bit more, I realize I might be on a different subject. I'm talking more about how people interpret recorded biblical history.

You're talking more about interpreting what the biblical messages are.

I'd agree with you that the actual intended messages of the religion is something that's up to churches and religious leaders to set straight and not something induvidual people should be allowed to make up on their own

And also the very reason I stopped going to church.

My friend got kicked out of a church for telling the pastor off after he said that gays were "evil".

And also the very reason I stopped going to church.

I've always identified as Christian, but my parents never took me to church regularly, and I never got in the habit of going. I never got why, until I got older and realized that ninety percent of pastors are packing an agenda. I don't identify with any particular denomination of Christianity, anyway, so there aren't many churches for me to go to.

As for my interpretations, I'll expound a bit on mine. Hold on to your butt, because you'll almost definitely disagree with one or more of them.

-The Old Testament is at least mostly fictional, and totally irrelevant to modern-day Christians. ITs laws are mostly invalidated by the new covenant in the New Testament, and its tales are fairly often contradictory to later parts of the Bible – why would a forgiving God smite most of the world's populations multiple times? The answer is that He didn't; such tales in the bible were simply myths, created to keep ancient peoples in line.

-Hell does not exist, at least in the form most people picture it in. The few time the Bible describes eternal punishment, it's the fate of Satan and his associates specifically. Humans either receive "eternal life" or undergo a "second death," This implies that unsaved souls simply cease to exist.

Revelations is allegorical; the end of the world will not happen exactly as described. Should be self-explanatory.

@BSoD
Yeah you and I were on different subjects, like you said you were more about the history of bibilical texts and I was talking more about what is said in the texts. One thing I strongly disagree with you on is that you said:

I’d agree with you that the actual intended messages of the religion is something that’s up to churches and religious leaders to set straight and not something induvidual people should be allowed to make up on their own

A person should not let a another person be responsible for their relationship with God, and every believer should read the bible and find their own interpretation. Letting "leaders" decide what a religious text means is the thing cults are made of, and it comes between you and your relationship with God.

Psalms 1:2 says: "But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers" The faithful are supposed to study the bible and meditate on what it says, and think about the analogy it gives: "like a tree tree firmly planted by streams of water" a tree planted on water will never face drought and always gives fruit.

I expect religion to adapt itself to the solid facts that science establishes. Otherwise you get people who try to adapt science around what religion establishes!

I'm not a complete literalist so I I agree on this too. The bible isn't a science book and it never claims to be, it was written 1900 years ago and modern science really only dates back a few centuries.

As for what I mean by cherry-picking rules I'll give an example. If God say "thou shalt not commit adultery" and then in the same book he says "thou shalt not covet", it would be just ridiculous to say "well I can follow the first rule but I don't see how the second is necessary" if you believe an all knowing almighty creator just gave that rule who are you to second guess him? To spout out another verse: 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."

"Catholic" here.

I use quotations because the extent of my literal interperetation of the bible boils down to there being a god and jesus being his son. To me the tales and exploits within it are, for the most part, metaphors used to teach people good morals. I don't think gays are evil (a very close family member of mine is gay), I don't think non-Christians are auto-banhammered to hell, and I don't think it's necessary to go to church all the time to follow the faith.

The tldr version of this is my interpretation is that there's a god, and the bible's a guideline for being a good person.

@starscream

A person should not let a another person be responsible for their relationship with God, and every believer should read the bible and find their own interpretation. Letting “leaders” decide what a religious text means is the thing cults are made of, and it comes between you and your relationship with God.

I guess I misunderstood you. When you said that you cannot cherry pick the rules, I thought you were talking about making your own induvidual interpretation of the rules. Or rather applying your own opinion on what it means. As opposed to going by what is generally understood and agreed by all the biblical experts

I find that people who "choose the rules they agree with because the other ones make them uncomfortable" are applying their own personal interpretation of the text that suits them. Which I thought is what you are arguing against

Then again we must be on different subjects again. You seem to be talking about an individuals personal relationship with God which is of course a personal thing and frankly not up to debate. I'm talking about how the laws of the religion are agreed upon by the practitioner.

While the relationship with God comes down to the induvidual, following the rules in the religion requires some solidarity

And cults are made when people follow 'the man' rather than the actual religion