Is it God who is the sociopath, or the people who compiled the Book in God’s name? Oh the psychology! Oh the blasphemy!

Socio, psycho and tyrrant!

Wait til the God Squad gets a hold of this one…we’ll be right in the shit, ha

@SamandMax You seem very opinionated about this one. Are you part of the “God Squad”?

He’s been on his own for far too long. He has a grandiose sense of self, shows lack of empathy and remorse and is unreliable. He can be manipulative and impulsive and lacks a realistic life plan. He has tried to live life as a normal human being but it didn’t end well. He needs counselling.

Takes one to know one OMG! so it must be true!

There are so many different approaches to the interpretation of Biblical accounts of G_d. No conclusion on this subject will satisfy even a small subset of people.

No more than Man is a deity-o-path.

I think he’s a cycle-path, let’s ride all over his feelings :¬)

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal
I think some of the interpretations people wrote down and call the Bible are crazy. If God exist he, she, it sees everything. People are the problem.
A God would love all decent humans. Religion should not divide us, cause hate, war or barbaric actions.

No. God is a comedian and has created the perfect comedy sketch.
If you aren’t strong on improv. you’re outta the show.
Jokes on us, yes it is. lol

Where in the Bible does it say that “all sins are equal in the eyes of God”? I thought I was pretty familiar with the Bible, but I can’t recall anything to that effect.

@thorninmud This is from the KJV of the Bible. James Chapter 2:8–11:

8If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well:

9 But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.

10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

11 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.

Now of course as most things in the Bible this can be translated in different ways. That’s just my interpretation of it.

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal Ah, I see. That’s not how I read that passage, but luckily I’m not in a position of having to stand up for the bible, so have it your way.

More to the substance of your question, though, even with your reading this seems like a false equivalency. The sociopath isn’t a sociopath because he can’t differentiate the gravity of various offenses; he’s a sociopath because he has no sense of wrong at all. If anything, this Bible passage is saying quite the opposite about God.

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal No. I am not part of the “God Squad”, furthermore I don’t much care for a big-assed book that contradicts itself. Several times over.

God is everything!

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, the bible has various etiological explanations. People should stop taking the scriptures for what they think they mean in modern day language.

I second @wundayatta, “God is everything!”

Yeah, but I don’t think you mean that ironically, as I do, @nofurbelowsbatgirl.

Is God a sociopath? ahahaha… what god?

No.

God is an obsessive compulsive with multiple personality disorder.

@wundayatta Actually, I might of meant it the same way, because while I was quoting you and saying that “God is everything!” (people tend to think I am some sort of Christian but I am not, I do choose to believe in God, but I will admit I don’t really follow any certain rules or religion.)

My opinion is that yes He can be a sociopath, He can be evil, He can be good, He can be a saint, He can lack empathy and He can have empathy.

We are all made in His image so what does that tell us?
That’s all I meant. But,maybe I am wrong and that’s not what you meant. :/ LOL!

I believe there is likely some type of intelligent creative force or supreme Mind, but I don’t buy the nonsensical religious interpretations of It. Many people, including homosexuals, nontheists, etc have reported to having experienced an incredibly loving light and feeling of acceptence upon having a near death experience. We have free will don’t forget, so maybe we should be blaming ourselves for being sociopaths.

@thorninmud I’m glad you don’t feel like you are in a position to stand up for God, because the last thing I wanted to do was get into a long, extended biblical debate. I’m kind of apathetic when it comes to religion as long as people don’t try to shove it down my throat and tell me I’m wrong.

As far as a sociopath goes, I stand corrected. I know that sociopaths can’t tell right from wrong, period. But while that’s true that means that everything someone does is on the same level to them. I was mostly being silly with this question while at the same time trying to incite some interesting conversations to see how the human mind works.

Thanks for your input.

@SamandMax Ok, just checking. I agree the Bible is a “big-assed book that contradicts itself” and I’m not much of a fan of it either.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl You raise an interesting point, but if we shouldn’t try to imagine what the scriptures mean in modern day language, then why read it all. If you read something without processing a meaning then you are just looking at a bunch of words or to break it down further, a bunch of symbols. To read without putting meaning to what you’re reading isn’t reading it’s just “looking” at a bunch of pages.

I’m not a Christian, but most of my understanding of what a god is comes from a Christian culture. I thought Christians say god is everywhere and in everything and maybe they even say that god is everything.

Of course, if god is everywhere and in everything than he is in bad things as well as good things. He doesn’t discriminate. He love all. Including sociopaths.

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal Well people could read it and look for a deeper meaning. Or there is the option not to read it at all.
I believe the bible tells us history. Kind of like if we dropped off the face of the earth and a new race found our history, they would be stuck putting the peices together. I wonder what they would think of some of our unexplainable things that we have actually caught on tape and have explained as certain anomolies.

I like to read the bible to look for the deeper meaning. I’ve always been a searcher of types.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl But my point is, if you are trying to put a meaning to it and you’re not using modern day language, how are you processing the information without putting a modern day language to it. Are you fluent in old, dead languages?

The point is we think with images and words. When we are thinking with words we are using language to do that. The only language I know is modern. Most people don’t know dead languages, that’s why they’re dead and that’s why they have to imagine what the scriptures mean in modern day language, because that’s the language they know. Because that’s the language they use. Without a translation of some sort, words are nothing more than sounds

Sounds are what animals and our bodily functions make. I’d like to think a historical piece of literature (love it or hate it) such as The Bible is comprised of more than just animal sounds and flatulence.

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal Sure, that’s why there is a liitle place called a church or a little thing called religion, or even experts who can interpret things like dead languages, and that is why we as a modern day society came up with the explanation of Etiology.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl Do you even read The Bible? And if so do you have a copy written in a dead language so you don’t accidentally defile it by translating it into a modern day language? That would be oh so tragic.

By the way the “little place” you refer to as church, I’ve was forced to go to for the first 17 years of my life and I have been to several. I have never been to one that preaches in a dead language. You must live in a really cool town. What church preaches in a dead language; I need to see this.

It’s kind of strange you are saying we should stop trying to think of what they (scriptures) mean in a modern day language and one of the ways you can do this is through Etiology, but the link you sent me to explain what Etiology is, explained it in modern day English. Are you sure that our modern language didn’t misinterpret what Etiology is?

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal
First I’m sorry you had to be dragged against your will to a place where you obviously didn’t agree and maybe you didn’t even understand what it was about, it is a lot. I dont think that is fair for parents to do, I don’t agree with it. I think children should be told about God and experience religion, and then if they want to go afterwards that’s their choice.

I really think you are missing the point of what I’m trying to say. Yes I have read the bible and one thing I love doing is trying to intrepret what ot actually means, not what I think it means. Words and descriptions a long time ago had different meanings, that is what I’m trying to say.

I gave you the explanation of what etiology actually means. Some of the scriptures have a bigger meaning. This article here explains it much better than I ever could.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl I appreciate the article and maybe when I have time I will sit down and try to read the whole thing. I do agree that words did have many different things back then. Like the word dumb, didn’t mean stupid, ass didn’t mean butt, etc. But the thing that doesn’t make sense is you try “to interpret what it actually means”, not what you “think it means”. Well if you know what it means, then you don’t have to interpret it, but if you don’t know what it means, your interpretation is what you think it means.

If you don’t know something, you think it and if you do know something there’s no need in trying to interpret it. I have a feeling we can go round and round until the end of time on this. I think you understand me and I think I understand you but our ways of thinking seem to be on an entirely different brain wave. One (brain wave) is not superior to the other, just different.

I appreciate your empathy in me having to go to church against my will, but eventually when I would start showing up to church drunk and/or high and would fall asleep in the coat room and would be awakened at the end of the service when people would come and get their coats, it became to embarrassing for my father to make me go anymore.

If what “classic Christianity” teaches is true and the Bible is the word of God, I believe all we can do is think of what the scriptures mean. There is no way we could think on the same level as God and truly interpret what he meant when he said something.

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal I really dont understand what your trying to get at anymore. I find everything your saying contradictory and confusing.

Again, I’m sorry about how your family treated you.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl

This really has nothing to do with how my family treated me.

I’ll make this as simple as possible. You say you love to interpret what the Bible actually means. Well an interpretation is “to explain or tell the meaning of : present in understandable terms”, which I think could certainly qualify as translating it into a modern day language. Any interpretation is merely just what one gets from what was said. It all depends on who reads or hears it. Two (or more) different people can hear/read the exact same thing and get an entirely different interpretation. So your interpretation isn’t necessarily, “what it actually means”, it’s what it means to you.

So when you say you like to interpret what the Bible actually means, not what you think it means, that is a contradiction.

Who says that the ever changing description of God in the Bible depicted God accurately? We will always have to rely on our beliefs. I reject any image of an evil God. I believe in a loving God.

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal Well if I’ve said the sentence in the wrong way then thats my fault, and I apologize.

You basically just stated you knew what I meant.

I’m not really sure what’s happened because I apologized about how your family treated you, and then you have to basically back hand me with your response to my apology about how ”This really has nothing to do with how my family treated me.” You could of said nothing but you brought it up, so back hand me because you want a pity party and I gave you pity that I thought you deserved. And then not to mention we have to go on and on about the bible and me interpreting it in a certain way when this also has absolutley nothing with God being a sociopath…but you are ok to talk about that part. I find the context of the conversation after my initial comment about etiology confusing and off topic.

People today read a scripture and assume it might mean exactly what it says, but then that would mean things happened that were out of this world. For example the story of Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt is an etiological story.

I like to study this type of stuff and learn more about it, therefore I feel like I am understanding more about what they meant in biblical times, and to me the bible is not a book about “magical” things that could never happen but a history of our planet at that time with explainable things that naturally happen that people back then had no scientific explanation for and could not otherwise explain.

I really hope this clarifies enough for you what I mean about “interpreting” the scriptures.

Surprising how complicated people are making the answer when really all that’s needed is to say “God is.”

If you don’t take it on face value, it covers a lot of ground.

@nofurbelowsbatgirl I apologize if I made you feel you were “back handed.” I really meant nothing by it. That’s something I really hate about the internet is you can’t see facial expression and you can’t hear tone. I’m not looking for a pity party (by mentioning how long I was being forced to go to church), I was just merely trying to let you know that I am pretty well versed (no pun intended) in the Bible and christian beliefs in general.

As far as having a conversation that has ”absolutely nothing” to do with God being a sociopath, that’s the glory of the social section, I don’t have to stay on topic. I do believe a lot of the things that happen in the Bible are “out of this world” and are merely parables. But I also believe that sometimes miracles do happen and that sometimes science can’t explain it, because sometimes I believe that a higher power (good or bad) has intervened in some way.

While I don’t believe a lot of what’s written in the Bible, I do find some of it quite fascinating, and I, like you, like to try to figure out the metaphors. You have now explained yourself quite well on what you mean by “interpreting” the scriptures and I appreciate that.

@Self_Consuming_Cannibal Thank you for the apology. I agree about the internet.

I think each comment on the internet is a personal interpretation, maybe like the bible scriptures.

Maybe we are on similar pages about the whole thing.

About the “backhanded” thing, I just felt that while you state you were adhering to the social section rules what gives you the right to say I’m off topic for social when you brought the entire thing up, I was just going along with it. If I sounded harsh it wasn’t meant to be.

But anyway, I’m done talking about it. “Is God a sociopath?” I answered that awhile ago. o_O