How I use the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary

[Ahanu]

and read the bible with a new light that improves my thought processes and attitudes....yup, I sure can, as can anyone who chooses.

Then why read the Bible? I am better off with a self-help book that draws on a wealth of modern information.

 

[Thomas]

Too funny, of course.

Ridicule away, but the statement is scientifically, empirically, demonstrably true.

... no I don't expect to change their minds ...

Well, save your breath then!

But if the book can be labeled for what it is ...

Ah, there's the rub!

Labelled according to whom? You would never accept my labelling, I can't accept your labelling, neither of us like his labelling and all three of us have problems with hers ... and so it goes.

And still ... despite the labelling, people will construe it to mean exactly what they want.

+++

As soon as the American constitution allowed freedom of religious expression, you opened the door to exactly this sort of thing. The literalist problem is one you've created for yourself. A particularly form of Americanism has inflicted it on the Book. The Book was there before America, and it will be there when America (in its current form) has gone, so I see no reason to alter the book to accommodate the illiterati.

In fact, this rather indicates why freedom of religious expression was always a bad idea!

The Roman Catholic Church has published 'The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church' which has been available for the past 25 years and, if read and digested, would sort out the kind of problems you encounter ... again, I'm sure the people that really need it would never bother to read it, and dismiss it's content if they did.

 

[wil]

Labelled according to whom? You would never accept my labelling

Give it a shot! Are you going to label it 100% fact that should be taken as literal truth? I think not. I think I'd more likely accept your label than I would lacking any.

Religions need a warning label, states are yet again passing bogus laws based on their interpretation of the bible.

 

[wil]

The Roman Catholic Church has published 'The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church' which has been available for the past 25 years and, if read and digested, would sort out the kind of problems you encounter ...

Yeah, that was decades after we both became disenchanted with what we grew up hearing and centuries too late, and has a distribution of what less than a tenth of percent of the catholic faithful?