Reply #59: Interisting...my atheism pre dates my interest. [View All]

And I did not start with the bible but with eastern mysticism, shaman ism, and Native religions.
It was later that I took up the bible....and I have read it all...
But not with the closed eye of trying to prove my own belief system...but with the purpose in mind of understand the story....something I attribute to my previous study.
And that is what is missed when you are trying to de construct some idea that is strange or somehow threating....the story.

And I did take the time to read your links...so indulge me when I give my observations about this.
What is lost in this is the story...and one thinks that all you need to do to obscure some story that transmits a dangerous (to you) idea is to de construct it and show that someone made it all up...prove it fiction or show plagiarism and no one will take it seriously...especialy in the scholarly world of academia.

But for me I prefer to see it all as history...and I do not question the motives or accuracy of the of the author....in fact it does not matter at all who wrote it or why....Just as I do not care why Steinbeck wrote "The Grapes of Wrath" or care at all that ir was fiction....it has history and a dangerous idea that I happen to like.
And so I see all literature in that light...because in all of it there is truth, history and dangerous ideas.