I hope the interesting people that participated in this discussion are still reading.
I don’t quite understand what you are referencing to by “Traditional Christian” reading of the Bible? Perhaps you mean interpretation? There is no interpretation of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity as Orthodox Christian is not free to believe whatever he wants to believe or interpret the Holy Scripture in whatever way strikes his fancy. Nor are bishops free to teach whatever they want. All are called to accept and live by the apostolic tradition, which has been handed down uncorrupt from the first century until today.
You can't prove it's not corrupted. Religious organisations of any kind are run by men, holy books written by men (in the physical sense), theology discussed by men. In all these processes, errors were made.
When Christ ascended to heaven, He did not leave behind a system of philosophy or a school. He left His Church, which was a concrete, historical community there in Jerusalem. From Jerusalem, the Christian Gospel spread throughout the known world, and local Churches were created. This principle can be summarized by the following phrase: no unity of life without unity of faith. Where is the proof? Alas… Ours is a generation which seeks after signs and wonders (cf. Matthew 12:39)… Many concepts that are included in Christian dogma are impossible for non believer to comprehend or come to terms with. Bible is not a collection of books. Such statement is a gross oversimplification, it is rather a divinely inspired compendium recorded by handful of people, however all of these works are authored by God.
"authored by god" is vague, but anyway if you meant people wrote in the Bible exactly what God said to them through miracles and such, that's not something you can prove. Without the existence of God, the Bible or any other holy book could exist as it is in the world we know.
We know what was meant in the Bible because of the history and Apostolic succession, the body of knowledge passed down from one Holy Father to the other and unto the flock. When you say that one may interpret the Bible in his own way it is a fallacy because Christianity is not a set of rules that one may follow on one’s own. It is a life which can only be lived in community, in the Church that Christ Himself founded.
Okay fair enough, but then why is the Bible so important and why is everything in your reading of the Bible true ?
To a non believer, it may be hard to accept the fact that some things in life don’t need to be validated in order to be true.
That just depends on whether you prefer to seek truth or be happy that you found "it" and stop searching.
Love requires no validation it’s just is
Love is a complex phenomenon in the brain that we share with a range of other animals, it is validated already.
, so is faith, as it has no known measure and its essence cannot be captured and studied in a laboratory.
It depends on what you mean by faith. Faith as in believing in something that you can't prove is everywhere in human society. Faith as in cult, rituals and community activites has observable effects on our well-being and this is true for any ritual, even completely agnostic. Faith as in the effects of believing in a given religion such as self-confidence or distorted morals (widest known being the typical "killing infidels isn't bad") is shared by all religions too. My point is, there is nothing special about your faith in particular.
religion is a dogma in purest sense of this word-a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.To you possibilities and odds are infinite, to me the possibility is certain and finite first the cessation of physical life and then possibility becomes two fold either isolation from God and eventual destruction of one’s soul or an eternal life in his presence, Christian makes this judgment on the basis of neither abstract theories nor his own limited, individual experience, but upon the corporate experience of the Church.
But then why are all other religious people that were bred in other parts of the world not right too ? They made their judgment based on the corporate experience of their own "church".
The foundation of everything the Church believes and teaches is the fact that God is not some impersonal essence or philosophical principle, but the Father Who exists in an eternal communion of love with His Son and His Spirit and Who speaks to those whom He has created face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend (Exodus 33:11).
To me, your faith is much more about humans than about God.
Also
Mocking someone for their belief in god is very ignorant
Of what ?
and narrow-minded
You can have an open mind about jumping out of the window and consider it seriously but still not do it because you have perfectly good reasons not to do it. I'd say mocking isn't narrow-minded nor ignorant but rather shows a lack of empathy, deserved or not.
Your fanatical atheist attitude
What is this. Mocking people over their beliefs is fanatical now ? People can believe whatever they want, I've yet to see any atheist ever trying to "convert" someone. Any religion is arbitrary, deal with it. Something arbitrary cannot be considered equivalent to something that is not, or held to the same standards. How fanatical do I look like if I start getting offended by people mocking me for my belief in the rose unicorn behind the moon, and arguing that it should be taught in schools as a valid alternative to its non-existence ?
