I'm an atheist. I don't like to call myself that at times, given the political affiliations of people who call themselves atheist. As I've thought about it, and done a bit of research on. I've grown to like the bible and respect the things it stands for.
When taken metaphorically, the bible can teach a lot of great lessons. Not a lot of fellow non-believers can get their head around this concept. That doesn't mean I think Genesis was the way I think the world was created. It doesn't mean I think the world was created in 6 days. What it means is that when you think about the intentions behind the stories, you can find important lessons, which could have saved your life in the pre-industrial age. To see an example of this, you could interpret the "forbidden fruit" to mean not to eat wild food for example. It's not a bad lesson at all, considering there's natural food that would kill you. Using the bible as a way to convey this message, you can then educate people to not eat wild fruit, therefore saving lives. That's just one way of thinking about it, but that within itself means that the stories in the bible aren't intrinsically incorrect.
In order to get people to comply with the lessons in the bible, the concept of Hell and eternal damnation is quite smart. If there were no consequences for your actions, then what do you have to lose? Having "eternal" consequences would make you think twice about doing something. Is it really worth doing something in exchange to going to hell once you die? Nihilists, or anarchists would complain about this being a way to simply control people. But what within itself is bad about that? Society is what it is. It's hierarchical, there's an order, and in order to keep harmony you need to have rules to which people obey. Every sane and rational people view even basic laws as a necessity. That means even some need for complying is needed.
Nothing is in totality. What this means is that the bible isn't absolutely wrong, as some so-called atheist intellectuals would say. That within itself is wrong. There's bound to be information that is wrong and information that is correct. Something that is absolutely correct that the Christian faith believes in is the 7 deadly sins. To say the Christian faith and the bible is absolutely wrong would mean that you would have to render basic concepts like "don't be fat and greedy" as something that is wrong. If you're truly objective, you have to accept that some information in the bible is correct while some beliefs that you have are wrong.
For political reasons, the Christian faith can be a great uniter of communities as well. In an era of what seems to be selfishness, what is the harm in actually getting involved in religion? As an atheist, I would have no qualms about going to church or doing charity on behalf of a church. What do you have to lose? The idea of God in a literal sense maybe incorrect, but should that spoil other aspects of religion?
Not only is uniting communities important, bringing back the nuclear family is also of key concern. Especially in black communities. Why not use the bible as a core for keeping minority families together? Like everything else, there is a need for order, so why not use the bible to this effect? This would not only help communities, but it would help enrich black families and allow them to go much further in life if they were to follow basic lessons in the bible like waiting for sex until you're married.
Those are just my thoughts.
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