Director Roger Nygard traveled the world asking theologians, scientists, skeptics, and everyday people 85 tough questions to try to understand The Nature of Existence! Now that he’s asked the experts, it’s YOUR TURN! To offer your own insights on today’s question, “How do we accept a holy book that positively portrays unacceptable behaviors like slavery, incest, murder, etc.?”, Leave a Reply below!
“We” don’t. Some people do though. Why do they do it? You might as well ask why religious people believe in all kinds of absurd and impossible things like magic, psychic powers, devils, angels, virgin birth, living after death, and so on.
People believe these things mainly because of tradition, parental pressure, and an unwillingness of abandon errors when they are attached to positive ideas parental love and approval, friendships, a commitment not to lie, steal, and kill. They think somehow that if they stop believing in their religious dogma then they will be shunned by their religious friends and family (perhaps a justified fear) and that they will have to start lying, stealing, and murdering if they stop believing that virgins can give birth or that people can come back from death, etc. Some also fear some kind of supernatural retribution if they stop believing, whether being struck by a lightning bolt in this life or burning in hell in the next life. The bottom line is that these are mostly irrational fears.
You obviously won’t accept it, if it does not agree with you. Even rape, incest, murder in one form or another are judgements made by people in a society who have different concepts of living a life dependent on their understanding of what is important to them. In one society it may be freedom of speech; in another, silence; a way to enlightenment and acceptance.
The common explanation is that these point of views are based on the situation of that particular time, place and social/political context. (I say, well, then it doesn’t apply to us living in 21st century right? Good bye!)For example, regarding Slavery, the excuse is that God didn’t want to impose an immediate ban on slavery right away. It would have had created social and financial unrest otherwise! He is all knowing and all merciful bla bla bla…
Look at the modern era concept of patriotism. It is ok to kill innocent people to steal their oil to run ‘our’ civilization! Those who do it we consider them hero. (To better put, “why our oil is under their sand?”) Likewise, all monotheist religion in the world was centered on narrow territorial and communal interest. Neighbour in “Love thy neighbour” message in old testament are not any one living next door, but anyone from our ‘klan’ living next door. Therefore the metaphor ‘promised land’ as heaven is taken on face value to justify grabbing enemy’s land.
Unfortunately, people always face trouble to accept a passive deist God who doesn’t interfere in every trivial aspect of mortal man. The crooks take this advantage and twist the message of the prophets (To me just extraordinary thinker with above average higher intelligence, may be some rare genetical condition which enhances the superhuman traits dormant in them) to suit their vested interest. (Watch ‘Agora’ movie)
[...] the holy-book(s) literally true? What is the origin of the holy book(s)? How do we accept a holy book that positively portrays unacceptable behaviors like slavery, incest, m… Can we take what we like about a religion/belief system and make our own version and throw out the [...]
Vast emptiness, nothing holy.
Really- tribal scriptures recounting the violent doings of the actors and the punishing violence of their deities, have nothing particularly holy about them. Unless one thinks a dysfunctional vision of a violent punishing murderous authoritarian cosmos is holy…..
Power was the signifier in the early religions. Power to smite the enemies, power to be smitten. The deity was the merely the most powerful actor in a universe of conflict, subjugation, spiritual slavery, and subservience.
Read the Avatamsaka Scripture….dark brutal power is replaced by the search for wisdom in a marvelous nigh-incomprehensible bright universe. If the species has produced a contender for a truly holy book, that would be it that.
Unless we aren’t paying sufficient attention to such details, or we exercise selective memory, or have somewhat faulty standards, or we are simply sociopaths, we don’t.
This is something for theologians and those who interpret their holy books literally to justify to the rest of us.
My facts on any holy book is, they do not encurage any sort of harm to nature. But as I said, the facts are diffrent from person to person.