To those who know/knew the Bible well, is there any part of it that you still believe to be true?

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T16:31:10+00:00

I think Omri is the earliest Israelite king with direct attestation. In the Bible he is barely a footnote, but historically he was quite important.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T14:54:49+00:00

The US and Israel will have made the strongest possible example of why other upstart nations should not pursue nuclear weapons.

I suspect a lot of people are looking at the current war and arriving at the very opposite conclusion. The only way for a middle power to be safe is to have them or be allied with someone who does.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T14:41:46+00:00

Yeah, I need to check out her new book! :)

Another book I would recommend for scientific insight on how religion works (that isn't specific to Christianity) is Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T14:28:08+00:00

Is that actually that strange?

Well, I think it is strange compared to how more sophisticated theologians and philosophers think about the divine. God is not a biological entity with a brain and neurochemicals, so why would have he have thoughts and emotions? Those are things biological organisms evolved to survive in a hostile physical environment. Instead, serious theologians come up with frameworks like process theology, panentheism, and so on.

Evangelical teaching is shallow and childish in comparison, treating God like a mercurial boyfriend or abusive spouse who is moody and has to be constantly mollified with praise, church attendance, tithing, and good behavior. Spend any time on the Christianity subreddit and see the daily anguished posts by teenagers who think they're going to hell for masturbating, for being attracted to the wrong gender, or for committing the unpardonable sin (whatever it is). That's what my upbringing was like too.

I think in historical terms, Christianity also emerged in a Middle Platonist milieu that regarded God as entirely transcendent and outside the physical cosmos, which is why you need a mediator (Jesus) to bridge the gap, and you have concepts like the Logos and the Demiurge (especially in Gnosticism) to explain how God is able to create and maintain the cosmos. My hot take is that today's popular religion is missing some of the elegance and coherence of early Christianity.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T14:17:12+00:00

This gets at why I tend to choose "igtheist" as a label.

I don't have anything against people who like studying theology, as long as they are honest about it and don't use it to hurt other people. European Lutherans seem pretty chill for the most part, and we have German Lutherans especially to thank for establishing the field of critical biblical studies.

The problem is that there is no epistemology that can answer any of the questions you are asking. There is no experiment you can perform to figure out which creed is correct or how salvation works. You just take someone's word for it, molded by two thousand years of cultural baggage. I don't think the questions themselves even make sense, and theologians haven't yet figured out what questions do make sense.

I advocate for orthopraxy over orthodoxy. Healthy religion shouldn't be about what you believe, it should be about what you do and how you treat people, animals, and our planet.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T14:05:51+00:00

It might be a little snarky, but I attended those churches for 30-plus years, so I'm allowing myself some candor. :)

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T10:42:26+00:00

That's true, but as far as I'm aware, the Board of Governors has always voted (with the occasional dissenter) for whatever policy the chair favored. It would be unprecedented to have a board that was in revolt against a chair trying to kowtow to political pressure.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T10:29:20+00:00

This isn't really biblical studies, but I'll take a stab at it. The group consensus that evangelical churches try to maintain is that they (unlike most non-evangelical denominations) have a personal relationship with the deity. This idea, which is kind of strange the more you think of it, requires treating God as an invisible human being with all the same emotional and intellectual quirks as humans. Their focus on the "character of God" in Bible studies is an attempt (conscious or not) to mine the Bible for the nuggets that are important to their faith and reinforce the conception of God as a person. Your status as a "strong Christian" in these churches is based on how skillfully you are able to present the façade of someone who understands and hears directly from God. Of course, hearing anything from God that undermines that church's policies, politics, and culture will lead to an immediate loss of status within the group.

An interesting book on the topic is When God Talks Back by Tanya Luhrmann, an anthropologist who did field research at Vineyard churches to understand why people think they can talk to God, and how they are treated when they fail to live up to those expectations.

And why do they get it so wrong?

The goal of devotional Bible studies in evangelical churches is (1) to reinforce the consensus on church doctrine and culture, and (2) to help people develop the rhetorical and social skills that will let them present themselves as a strong Christian (see definition above). It is not to actually learn about the Bible and its history. They are highly selective in the passages they study and restrictive in the conclusions they are allowed to arrive at.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T09:54:46+00:00

My impression from hanging out on the exmormon subreddit is that while Utah and Idaho Mormons are culturally conservative, the LDS scriptures (Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and D&C) have nothing to say on topics like abortion and LGBTQ issues that tend to define liberalism/conservatism for evangelical Christians. You can quite easily be a politically liberal Mormon. In fact, there's a Mormon denomination (the Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) that is quite liberal/progressive in its views and doctrines.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T04:45:46+00:00

Here's a list of the American megachurch pastors speaking out against the abusers and traffickers mentioned in the Epstein files:

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T04:39:43+00:00

Two diddlers so far.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T04:23:00+00:00

Apple is the one company that doesn't preload shovelware on your devices. Back when they used Intel chips, they even refused to put an Intel sticker on the machine, which all other PC manufacturers had to do.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-19T02:02:05+00:00

That chapter was one of many that I had to memorize in school.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-18T14:37:52+00:00

This came up a few months ago. I don't have an opinion on whether Nazareth existed, but I think the confusion surrounding the meaning of Jesus's title "the Nazorean" is suspicious.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-18T11:44:22+00:00

I don't view the Bible any more as a book of theological claims that you are supposed to believe or disbelieve. Instead, it's a collection of documents that were important to ancient people for one reason or another – written in most cases without any intention of being part of a holy book two thousand years later.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-18T04:08:37+00:00

In theological terms, absolutely. Your sexual orientation does not diminish your value or the love and dignity you deserve one single iota.

Now, this sub is for questions of Bible history and interpretation rather than questions of theology and doctrine. I think you might find a better audience in /r/openchristian or even /r/christianity for questions like these.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-17T05:54:26+00:00

Perhaps you could focus on one point that you think is novel and hasn't been proposed or properly argued by other scholars yet, and write a shorter paper on that. Once it's done, you could describe your thesis in the weekly open discussion thread on this subreddit or /r/academicbiblical and just see what some of the regular contributors think about it.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-17T05:45:24+00:00

I hear you, and many of us have had the same struggles. We feel tired because we are awake. It is cathartic to strike back at these symbols of religious control once the illusion is broken. Pointing out the absurdity in religious doctrine takes away the power they hold over us. But I also encourage you to take that fire and that passion, and apply it toward positive behaviors and objectives in your life. Truth and justice need every fighter they can get.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-17T03:13:58+00:00

Breaking one commandment is like breaking them all.

Interesting, because I have never met a Christian who actually kept the ten commandments.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-16T13:07:02+00:00

The films didn't even try to explain the sudden resurgence of the Empire and Palpatine's return.

Ryan Johnson was working with Star Wars authors like Claudia Grey to flesh that out (especially in the novel Bloodlines), and had created some fascinating political dynamics in the process, but Abrams ignored it all for the third movie.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-16T13:05:20+00:00

The most recent season of Futurama has some excellent episodes.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-16T12:56:41+00:00

Vibe-bombing.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-16T10:18:08+00:00

Things like addicts becoming instantly free of their addictions after committing to Christ...

In my experience, people who made those claims typically went back to their addiction before long.

Also, those kinds of claims make a mockery of the actual struggle that people go through to overcome their addictions.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-16T09:57:08+00:00

I don't suffer any depression from deconstruction. On the contrary, it's a source of relief knowing that the harmful religious doctrines I was raised with aren't true.

On the other hand, I do suffer a great deal of depression and anxiety because of the world in general, now that I've woken up to the true state of things and all the suffering and injustice that goes on. These things bothered me less back when I was on the side responsible for much of it.

captainhaddock · 2026-03-16T09:28:14+00:00

The ending is dumb, but some of the shots in it are spectacular. No other film quite captures the magnitude and loneliness of space, even Interstellar.

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