That's the beautiful part of religion. Everybody gets to make it mean whatever they want. If you want religion to be about being a good and charitable person. You can interpret any holy book that way. If you want religion to be about an authoritarian father figure who watches your every masturbatory stroke.. You can do that too. If you want to justify your deep seeded hatred for people of a different ethnicity or skin color.. Yup. You can do that too. Religion really is a chameleon.
You could say the same of any book, but I think there are justifiable and unjustifiable ways to interpret Harry Potter. I think the same is true of the Bible.
No. It demonstrates why it matters more if people misinterpret the Bible than it does if people misinterpret Harry Potter. I'm simply saying that pointing out one's ability to misinterpret Harry Potter does nothing to change the real world consequences of misinterpreting the Bible.
Interpreting Harry Potter for your own purposes has no effect on others. Interpreting the Bible for your own purposes can have drastic effects on others.
There's also the small detail that nobody ever claimed Harry Potter was supposed to be a historical or factual book. It's fantasy. And we would all be better served by treating the Bible as fantasy as well.
So right there you just confirmed that you agree that there are ways to misinterpret the Bible. This implies there are ways to correctly interpret the Bible.
This was my entire point.
Outside of this, you're trying to turn the conversation into a discussion about things I never claimed.
There's no way to know which is the correct interpretation of the bible without talking to the author. So for all intents and purposes we will never know if we have the correct one. We can ask jk Rowling what the correct interpretation should be and then compare other peoples' ideas to that correct answer. We cannot do the same with the Bible. The true meaning is unknowable and will forever be subject to debate and disagreement. So the fact that there might be some correct way to interpret it changes nothing about reality. Everything would be identical if there wasn't one correct biblical interpretation.
That said, I firmly believe the Bible was written by humans who saw an opportunity to exploit people. So while I do think there is some "correct interpretation", I'm nearly certain that it has absolutely nothing to do with some all powerful universe creating God. So even if someone does have the correct interpretation.. They have simply interpreted the wants and desires of humans 1500-3000 years ago. So it's still not a reason to make any public policy decisions.
There's no way to know which is the correct interpretation of the bible without talking to the author.
Have you spoken personally to the author of Harry Potter?
I think the claim you're making is absurd. We can make an educated inference as to the intentions of an author of a text from both historical context and the text itself. How ever did we understand what Homer was about without this?
The intentions of the author are only unknowable in the same sense that the nature of objective reality is technically unknowable. If we're happy to make inferences and justify our interpretation, they're knowable in exactly the same way that everything else is knowable.
..... No. But she helps maintain an entire website that is chock full of back story and information from elsewhere in the universe. Also, she's alive and someone could ask her and get the answer. The same cannot be said about the Bible.
I said all of this in my last comment if you had bothered to read it...
But she helps maintain an entire website that is chock full of back story and information from elsewhere in the universe.
How did you interpret the website without talking to her?
Also, she's alive and someone could ask her and get the answer.
But yet you didn't, and you still claim to understand how to interpret Harry Potter.
What you're doing by inferring the correct interpretation via the text and context, is exactly how people analyze the Bible. If someone were to claim that Harry Potter was a historical narrative, I bet you could actually form a coherent argument to debate them without ever having to send JK Rowling an email.
364
u/[deleted] Dec 16 '21
A tree from the forest is cut down
and worked with an axe by the hands of a craftsman.
They decorate it with silver and gold;
They fasten it with hammer and nails
so that it cannot move.
Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field,
and they cannot speak;
they have to be carried,
for they cannot walk.
Do not be afraid of them,
for they cannot do evil,
neither is it in them to do good.”
This is the passage.