User blog:Swordzmanp236/Getting Religion

I'm going to say it point-blank: religion is a tough subject to grasp. No matter how many ways you slice it, someone's always right, wrong, or just plain offended. Based on this, religion is a subject best avoided.

Now, I will grant that we all have our differing opinions on the subject. I respect that. But lately, something's stuck in my craw, and it unfortunately has to do with religion. Namely, I am floored by how many people seem to know very little on the subject. As a student of the Holy Bible and an observer of many people with different religions, let me try to explain. These people just don't get it. Pages have been altered or removed based solely on one person's religious stance. Worse yet, the words often come out wrong.

You can point to Vladimir Lenin and his assertion that "religion is the opium of the people," meant to placate them. Or you can subscribe to Stephen Hawking's atheistic understanding of science. You can even choose to live in the deep faith of a Joan of Arc or a Moses, or you can fall somewhere in the middle.

But no matter what you do, get it right. If you're going to cite the Bible or its relatives in the Torah, Talmud, and Qur'an, I suggest picking a version and sticking with it in your citations. Not only that, but the wiser among us must also take into account the period and context in which his choice was written, as even similar words mean different things across generations. After almost 2,000 years of holy script evolution, the original texts are nowhere to be found. Everything that we modern humans know of Abrahamic faith is based on a copy of a copy of another copy of still another copy of an imperfect thing created by the same imperfect humans of the distant past. Words are lost. We'll never know what was really said. As proof, I offer these: And the beat of life surely goes on...
 * Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:4b-4) is believed to be a common man's effort to explain how humanity came to be with a God that was intimate with the things He was to create, how He formed humanity to be like Himself, and how evil came into this world and broke the implicit connection between God and Man over several generations. Many allege that "Satan wuz here" in the guise of that serpent what done 'em in, but truly, many who have studied the Bible now hold that Satsn was a construct born several dozen years after Genesis was written, at a time when dualist Persians made contact with the Jews. These "Zoroastrians" believed that humanity was at the mercy of two equal yet opposing forces; further, one could not exist without the other.  The Jews imported this duality into their faith, and called God's opposition "the accuser" —Satan.
 * The Commandments givem unto Moses (Ex. 20 and following) closely resemble a common contract in ancient times. They weren't likely hard and fast rules as the KJV seems to present them, but God laid out all these common-sense suggestions regarding conduct that the Jews were to follow. Scholars believe that the position of negation operators in Hebrew gives not the impression of an outright command. When framed in the context of the entire contract (which begins with "I am Yahveh, your God, who...."), it helps to think of each successive statement likr this: "Because you are My chosen people, you therefore have the understanding that you will/won't [do a thing to a fellow man, or to Me] while in relation to Me. Consequences will happen when these rules aren't followed, but those who do follow can expect good things in return. That's My promise to you, and I'll put it in writing." He's not forcing us to sign. We have to make that choice to sign at each decision we make. To be sure, even the godless possess moral character within themselves, but will they bring it forth?