There was a book on black holes by Stephen Hawking I found pretty interesting.

Oh... you mean holy not holey!

I don’t take any of it literally, but all ancient mythology and art is a fascinating reflection of human nature, to me. The fact that virtually all cultures that have ever existed, up to and including the present time, have produced religious artifacts and behaviors tells another fascinating story about our biological and evolutionary nature.

I like all the pages. They are very useful in my life. I use them to start fires, line the bird cage and sometimes, I can't find TP.........

Well, there's always Jesus's saying "Suffer little children to come unto me." Some priests have taken that literally.

As an atheist since age 13, I did not join Agnostic.com to discuss religion. Far from it. I want to get away from talking and arguing about religion.

That's why I post funny stories and hiking adventures.

Under the Learn tab, above, click on "About Us."

[agnostic.com]

I like the story of the three Norns. who lived at the roots of Yggdrasil, the world tree. Urd, one of them would keep the tree watered, All of them Urd, Verdandi and Skuld
(one is Urd (Old Norse Urðr, “The Past,” and a common word for fate in and of itself), the second Verdandi (Old Norse Verðandi, “What Is Presently Coming into Being ) and the third Skuld (Old Norse Skuld, “What Shall Be)

These three women were the most powerful beings in the Norse universe, feared by all the gods and humans. They spun and wove and cut off the strand of life for every being. All that power, yet they also watered the tree and fed the squirrel that lived in Yggdrasil. I like that! I relate to that, much more than to the nailed desert god.

I like the naughty bits of the bible. Song of Solomon 4.16 says Awake, north wind! Rise up, south wind! Blow on my garden and spread its fragrance all around. Come into your garden, my love; taste its finest fruits.
sigh...........If I had a lover, I suppose I'd have to do some pruning first.

The Bhagvad Gita from the Mahabharata is a brilliant piece of literature

Too many topics to handle here, but seriously ... palm readers and the Bible agree? <<sigh>>

According to that work of fiction known as the New Testament, the character named Jesus is not always a "decent bloke." He told his disciples directly what he was about and who they should love more: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
Matthew 10:34-37 (NIV)

Now tell me, do those sound like the words of a decent bloke, or a freaking narcissist? Gentle Jesus meek and mild my ass!

I forgot. I like the first half. It levels my desk perfectly.

I liked all that begatting in the Old Testament. Those folks fucked like bunny rabbits. Of course they didn't have cable.

I find all religious/mythology etc very interesting. Parts of the new testament are beautifully written.

The parts where they talk about some really fantastic crap, like dragons and angels and such. It reminds me of Lord of the Rings and Beowulf and similar stories sans plot or character development.

It's hard for me to take anything in the Bible seriously. As good a bloke as he may have been, I question if he even existed.

"We seldom stray far from the topic of religion on this site." I am sorry to say is not really true, it is a consequence of having specialist groups that they remove most of the members other interests from the front page, leaving only the single common interest behind. To find out how wide the site is you really have to delve into the groups, though sadly since the site is small it means that many of them are under active.

There are portions of the Song of Songs I love...

[answering-christianity.com]

Honestly, the book is an interesting read. You really can't understand religion until you understand the religion's texts.
Which is why Xtians get it SO wrong LOL!

I like the Sermon on the Mount. It lays a foundation for good ethics. Whittling the Bible down to a single verse, the best foundation for ethics is to "love your neighbor as yourself." I would add a note of caution, though: The ethical verses are surrounded by mythology, so one must be careful in choosing what to embrace and what to discard.

"The future is written in our hands" says to me that our actions -- what we do with our hands -- determine the future. Palm reading has nothing to do with it.

I could not care less about religions or gods, the less time we waste on those, the better. Tiime is precious and unrecoverable.

I have found that the old testament pages make better kindling than the new testament. Probably because it is older.

There are lots of very good things in many religious texts, the New Testament and the teachings of Christ are on the whole most admirable, and if that was the sum total of Christianity it would indeed be a template for life, except that we have the horrific apocalyptic tales in the last book of the NT...Revelations! The NT has another small problem it comes with a lot of other baggage doesn’t it? The magic of the trinity and the concept of an afterlife stretches the credulity along with the virgin birth and the miracles. Worse than that though, is it’s association with the Old Testament and all it’s horrors. As non-believers we realise that it’s impossible to pick out the good bits and disregard the rest, although that is exactly what many believers do. There are many better secular works of philosophy and morality if we feel the need to improve our understanding of the human condition. As for reading anything in the bible and taking the words literally, only the very gullible or the severely delusional evangelicals do that!

I love science fiction and comics. I'm talking DC, Marvel, Walking Dead, etc. My passion would for fantasy fiction would never have developed if I had not read the Bible. Great stories. Talking animals, guiding clouds, burning bushes, people dissolving into heaps of salt, magic, demons, and visitors from heaven. Then there is Revelations. Awesome! Supernatural work! John had mad visions.

I like the parts about being kind and taking care of one another. I also agree that JC soundds like a decent guy for the most part.

The four Gospels of the New Testament, shorn of their supernatural claims, are quite good. They show the value of compassion, self-sacrifice, empathy, and promote values that would be good from any source. Between the Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would have done unto you, and the parable of Jesus and the adulteress, Let him who is without sin throw the first stone, for example, we see empathy and self-examination along with forgiveness.
"Woman, where are they accusers?"
"Lord, I know not."
"Then go and sin no more."

Another virtue that Jesus demonstrated was humility. He never aggrandized himself, never demanded money from his followers, didn't live like a king while they barely got by. (Sound familiar, Joel Osteen, Pope Francis, and all you other 'church leaders'?) He washed the feet of those he taught, healed lepers, and even visited the most hated man in one town, the tax collector Zacchaeus.

THESE are the value that anyone who seriously claims to follow the teachings of Jesus must follow or they are Christians in name only. So few manage it because they pick and choose instead of taking the whole of the philosophy or choose to use the brutal, primitive Old Testament to justify their actions.

The story of Job is nothing but allegory, but for me it illustrates an important point. If a person is deeply in awe of nature, is appreciative and enrapt by reverence, then no amount of bodily suffering can lessen that reverence. Bodily suffering was in a minor subcategory in Job’s world view—just part of the natural course of events and of little significance.