I quoted your entire post. 
True.
The stories surrounding it were false.
No dead animals in the sky. No gods or spirits involved.
YET a system of worship and superstition based on false reasoning emerge that dictated their day to day activities to “ensure fill in the blanks of their particular god ideas”.
THIS area of basing one’s worldview and real world actions on UN-evidenced superstition and “supernatural” events is where I draw a line.
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Also @Tia_Thompson there is a little arrow in the quote box you can click that will bring you to the entirety of the block quote.
Thank you so much for your help!
@Whitefire13 I agree with you. What do you think of Spinoza’s concept of God?
Never heard of it. I’ll look it up a write my thoughts 
.
Okay, so I can only tell you my approach to the Bible when I first decided to read it for the first time without bias.
When I decided to do that I read it like I would read, The Odyssey. Before that I didn’t look at the Bible as historical at all.
From there I decided to start looking up the places and people when I came across them
I did like you said and thought I don’t know what this is really an investigated it.
I learned about the place,the people, and the culture of a place before I learned the religious significance.
If you will humor me for another moment: read about Nineveh without thinking about the story of Jonah.
Tell me what you think about it whenever you get the chance.
@Whitefire13 Thank you!
This could be a fun exercise. OK - lets play but today will be riddled with necessary distractions (especially this afternoon - shopping for sustenance and a b’day for my middle kid).
So I gathered this so far, and stopped:
Firstly - he’s dead. But his writing lives on… lol.
Also, he was alive in the late 1650-1700s. His understanding of the world will obviously be limited by scientific explanation (compared to today).
I relate to his disfellowshipping experience from his religious community.
Firstly, he defines god via this reasoning - “By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself”; “By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence”; “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.”
So he defined god…not an unusually approach for mere mortal man. His definition in no way brings about the validity of a deity however to an audience of already supposition god believers it does lay a foundation for his later words.
Propositions 1-15 Proposition 1: A substance is prior in nature to its affections.
Proposition 2: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. (In other words, if two substances differ in nature, then they have nothing in common).
Proposition 3: If things have nothing in common with one another, one of them cannot be the cause of the other.
Proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished from one another, either by a difference in the attributes [i.e., the natures or essences] of the substances or by a difference in their affections [i.e., their accidental properties].
Proposition 5: In nature, there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.
Proposition 6: One substance cannot be produced by another substance.
Proposition 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.
Proposition 8: Every substance is necessarily infinite.
Proposition 9: The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it.
Proposition 10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself.
Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. (The proof of this proposition consists simply in the classic “ontological proof for God’s existence”. Spinoza writes that “if you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist. Therefore, by axiom 7 [‘If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence’], his essence does not involve existence. But this, by proposition 7, is absurd. Therefore, God necessarily exists, q.e.d.”)
Proposition 12: No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided.
Proposition 13: A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible.
Proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.
NOW I will stop 
Off the top of my head I can already argue and dismantle his logic… can you?
This is an important question.
Find at least 3 scientific falsehoods within the 15.
You don’t even have to examine logical fallacy- just today’s scientific realities.
Have fun.
@Whitefire13 Thanks. My middle child’s birthday is on the 12th–so I feel you on being busy.
Well yes, it does from time to time, almost incidentally.
However, many believers accept they Torah*** is myth and not intended to be taken seriously. Some places mentioned actually existed. EG Jericho. The claims made about them are not so easy to establish. EG Jericho being destroyed by Joshua
The same goes for the New Testament, but the claim based on places, such as Nazareth and Bethlehem tend to be pretty tortuous. Trying for example justify calling Jesus the Mashiach. Doesn’t work.****
As for the authorship of the Gospels;. No one knows. It is pretty clear that they were written from 60 to 70ce . That the first book is called Mark and that all of the other authors copied a lot from him. We know for fact that the gospels contradict each other. One of the most glaring examples is the difference between versions of Jesus’ resurrection.
The Epistles of Paul are allegedly accounts of visions (hallucinations) Paul had. Scholars agree that at least three epistles (The Pastoral) are forgeries and there are doubts about others.
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*** Also called the Petateuch, the first five books of the New Testament. They kind of overlap, and contain all 613 commandment which make up Mosaic Law. They are claimed by many to have been written by Moses. A stunning task, seeing that Moses’ death is recorded in Deuteronomy 34 .Even more stunning when one realises Moses probably did not exist.
****if one bothers to read Jewish prophecy it becomes immediately apparent that Jesus could not possibly have been the Messiah. EG He will be a warrior king in the tradition of David and he will not be divine.–There’s a bit of a list, but I think those two are enough.
Interesting. I always took the places in the bible to be “real”. I figured since the writers were middle eastern they would at least know the lay of their land and some historical content.
Edited to add: I’m not sure what you want me to get out of it - reading about Nineveh and the lands and the change of names of nations and such. Many of the posters can vouch that this area of forensic history is not my cup of tea. Others are much more fascinated and deeper knowledge.
Like Boomer (cranky pants) above - fuck he knows some shit about history.
OK first definition he gives. My guess, he’s defining his use of “substance”.
He says “what is in itself” and “conceived through itself”.
So, first off - I’m no fucking “deep thinker” or philosopher - not as though I can’t go there - BUT mostly I see no point to it.
When you read his definition (language of old English aside) think about what he is saying.
Is wetness conceived before the assembly of H20? Wetness exists as a thinking agent just waiting for an opportunity to express itself?
No wait -
Perhaps the “substance” is just a re-labelled god and it itself expresses itself via reality in all forms?
Laughable. It is just a relabelling of what was observable (to him at that time in history). OR is this “substance” separate from it’s properties? If it is this, then how is this demonstrable, even in 1700 - or is this just an assumption on his and his peer’s part?
Notable he must have lived just on the cutting edge of the Age of Reason.
Ohhhh what comes first -
The “conception” or the “self”… is conceived through itself
Hey! Perhaps if he had been born in our day-and-age he would have been drawn to quantum physics.
Found this:
Boyle, a contemporary of Spinoza, and some science (back in the day). They debated via letters.
Very kind of you to say.
But please do not mistake a fairly skilled dilettante with a real scholar.
Plus, presuppositional religious scholars don’t usually set a very high bar .
I suggest that you learned from committed theists. Try reading this.
http://www.umich.edu/~proflame/neh/arch.htm
@Whitefire13 I just thought you might find the article interesting. I know I did. I always thought of Ninevah as a fictional place even when I became a believer just because I didn’t believe it when told to me as a child.
This is how I color my readings of the Bible. I look up the places, the people, their practices, their stelae, and inscriptions. I find it truly and fascinating. You have to be interested in history to want to engage in this subject at all. You have to know history to know whether something’s historical or not right?
@Whitefire13 You mentioned becoming disillusioned with your church. Several other members have echoed similar sentiments. Do you or anyone else want to say what the turning point that made you decide to step away from faith?
Relax, its my experience that on most sites if this is not happening you aren’t doing it right. 
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