Newsgroups: alt.angst
Subject: Re: Bible Angsti..Once apon a time...Male female RELATION*
From: nexus@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Arseny Nikolaev Markov)
Date: 27 Jul 1992 18:37:40 -0500
Organization: Kansas State University
Keywords: sam
NNTP-Posting-Host: matt.ksu.ksu.edu

tcarsten@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Teresa C D Carstensen) writes:

>In article <1992Jul26.221003.19519@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> zrubek@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (ZRUBEK PETER F) writes:
>>
>>

>

>It's very easy to believe if you already tend to be angst-filled, since it
>does such a wonderful job of reinforcing angst.  It starts off by telling us
>that God is going to hold everyone responsible for the actions of their
>ancient ancestors, as if we had any control over what Adam and Eve did.  And
>what they did strikes me as a relatively piddly crime.  It's not like they 
>tortured and murdered someone.  If God didn't want them
>to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, he shouldn't have put it where they could
>reach it.  Really, the average parent of a 2-year-old has more sense than that.
>Or he should have just made them so that they would be immune to its effects.
>At any rate, after a few millenia, he decides that maybe, just maybe, he was
>being a little too harsh.  But does he just say, you were naughty but I forgive
>you?  Noooooo.   He makes Christ be tortured to death to atone for it so that 
>we can all develop a nasty guilt complex over it.  So basically, according to
>the Bible, God is a sadist.  If that doesn't cause angst, I don't know what 
>would.


Since the existence of the Bible, a lot is written on different views
and interpretations of its text from monchs and scholars lived in the
ancient Roman Empire and Bysanthium, a thread continued through the
Middle Ages till nowadays. All this shows that the text is at least
questionable and highly metaphoric. It's not just the story of Susan and
John (or Teresa and John). The cultural difference between the
environment in which the book has been created and modern times is too
significant to prophanize the Bible in the way Teresa or John do.
The question is not whether the Bible is a work of fiction or not, but
because its existence has influenced the development of human history
so much, what's its actual meaning. As I said in the beginning, a lot
of people with much more scholastic and cultural knowledge have pondered
and still debate on this question. The Bible is not a story per se. If
it was, people wouldn't come back to it to delude their angsts and it
wouldn't be called a "Holy" Bible. I do not want to get in discussion of
the actual historic or moral or cognitive(philosophic) value of the
Bible. My point is that to prophanize it's much easier than to ask
questions and think.

>I've always wondered about the extreme difference in the way that God and Christ
>treated people.  It reminds me of the good cop-bad cop scam that police use to
>get suspects to cooperate.  The first one tries to intimidate the suspect, then
>the second one is nice to him.  Wierd.     

The only thing I can say to that is too much good cop/bad cop movies and
lots of comic books (or maybe John/Sara stories). But no wonder... This
is the U.S. of A.


>TC  
>-- 
>tcarsten@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu         

the NEXUS.
           "If you tell people that they think, they'll love you,
       but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."
                                          M. van Swaay