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No

Only Judeism

Only Islam

Yes to both Judeism and Islam

[Leafsnail]

If someone wants to pick-and-choose and only follow the good parts of the Bible, I will support them entirely in that.

I prefer "God wouldn't tell us to kill people who had gay sex. The ancient guy who wrote this down snuck in his homophobia." over all the ridiculous rationalization people do to justify the passage while not justifying homophobia.

I do agree, but that would require you to concede that the Bible is not the word of God.  That's not palatable for a lot of Christians because it undermines the basis of the rest of their faith.

[Helgoland]

Catholics do that! Well, kinda - the teachings of the Church take priority over what's in the bible. AFAIK the pope could totally create an eleventh commandment.

[scrdest]

Catholics do that! Well, kinda - the teachings of the Church take priority over what's in the bible. AFAIK the pope could totally create an eleventh commandment.

They DID - they're the so-called Church Commandments. They simply are not part of the Divine Commandments, which lists only the stuff Moses got, so they are usually mentioned separately.

[Sheb]

Well, yes and no. Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Church, and the pope can use it to add stuff Catholics are supposed to believe, such as the Assumption of Mary that was decreed to be an article of faith in 1950. But it doesn't trump the Bible, it's seen as extra things you're supposed to believe in. So the Pope cannot just add an 11th commandment in Genesis, but he could decree that not wearing pink pants is an article of faith of the Catholic church.

And again, most Catholics just ignore that kind of silliness coming from the Vatican.

[scrdest]

Well, yes and no. Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Church, and the pope can use it to add stuff Catholics are supposed to believe, such as the Assumption of Mary that was decreed to be an article of faith in 1950. But it doesn't trump the Bible, it's seen as extra things you're supposed to believe in. So the Pope cannot just add an 11th commandment in Genesis, but he could decree that not wearing pink pants is an article of faith of the Catholic church.

And again, most Catholics just ignore that kind of silliness coming from the Vatican.

Papal infallibility only applies to things spoken ex cathedra (the idea being that God wouldn't let him say something wrong in such a situation).

[Sheb]

Yeah, of course, it would be all kind of silly otherwise.

[Phmcw]

The apostles and elders, your brothers,

To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia:

Greetings.

24 We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. 25 So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— 26 men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. 28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.

Farewell.

They state explicitely that it's for simplicity's sake, though, so I guess it's the bare minimum.

[Sheb]

Yeah, basically the debate at the time was whether newly converted gentiles should follow Judaic law. Since that law was so constraining, they decided to create a 'lite' version for the gentiles as a commercial move. And that's why Christian eats pork, and don't follow most of the silly OT stuff.

[Phmcw]

Yeah, basically the debate at the time was whether newly converted gentiles should follow Judaic law. Since that law was so constraining, they decided to create a 'lite' version for the gentiles as a commercial move. And that's why Christian eats pork, and don't follow most of the silly OT stuff.

That doesn't strike me as the spirit of the law : when they were in full control of Europe, surely they could have spared a ram or ten.

[Sheb]

But it seemed good to the Holy Spirit (aka God), not to burden Christian of non-Jewish origin with these laws. So why sacrifice?

Also, a bit earlier in the Acts, Paul get a vision from god showing him all the animals of creation and telling him they're ok to eat. Does anyone knows why they decided to prevent us from eating blood a bit further away?

[Frumple]

But it doesn't trump the Bible, it's seen as extra things you're supposed to believe in. So the Pope cannot just add an 11th commandment in Genesis, but he could decree that not wearing pink pants is an article of faith of the Catholic church.

Huh. Wasn't it the catholic church that shifted (or claimed to, anyway) the day of the sabbath around in a display of hilarious authority abuse?*  Wasn't that fairly explicitly trumping the bible, or...? Just kinda' skimmed that bit a little while ago, so I don't remember the particulars, but... yeah.

*And possibly damning a great many people

[penguinofhonor]

If someone wants to pick-and-choose and only follow the good parts of the Bible, I will support them entirely in that.

I prefer "God wouldn't tell us to kill people who had gay sex. The ancient guy who wrote this down snuck in his homophobia." over all the ridiculous rationalization people do to justify the passage while not justifying homophobia.

I do agree, but that would require you to concede that the Bible is not the word of God.  That's not palatable for a lot of Christians because it undermines the basis of the rest of their faith.

I don't know how many there are, but there seem to be a decent number of (mainly younger) Christians who think like this. My hope is that their numbers are growing.

[Orange Wizard]

Wait, why is that a good thing? I mean, literal word of God has a few issues (let's start with Genesis, shall we?) and the historical inaccuracies are a thing. But what's the point of a Christian who believes the whole book was written entirely by a bunch of random priests or whatever?

[Telgin]

I guess it makes it easier to both reconcile problems in the Bible and also make it easier to justify not following some of the less palatable commands and requirements.  If God didn't say it and only some guy 2,000 years ago, who cares if you do what he says?

I prefer it to people who think the Bible is literally God's word and infallible, such that everything in it is perfect and must be accurate and followed to the letter.  Around these parts that also seems to include a requirement that you only read the King James version, since anything else is vile heresy that was written by some nut trying to change God's word.  Sometimes I wonder if people think the original Bible texts were written in early modern English...

[Orange Wizard]

Yeah, the literal/totally infallible in every respect thing is pretty silly. But saying it was written by some guy two thousand years ago removes any reason to believe the book. I know that the logic is kinda circular to begin with... but why would someone trust anything in the Bible if they didn't believe it was (at least) inspired by God?