Well if you actually have read the bible, you'll know that it's not man who wrote it.
Anyone can claim their words are the words of God. Doesn't change the fact that the words are their own regardless of whether those words were written today or 2000 years ago.
IMO, God does not require someone to write a book to express his will. That is already inherent in every person, and every religion reflects the same central concepts: murder is bad, live with honour and strive to be a good person, work hard, seek happiness, etc.
Mankind does not need a book to tell it these things. Religion, and the tools it uses, are made by man and very often exist to control other men. Indeed, Mankind's two greatest religions have been used to justify wars and atrocities on a scale without comparison. Inevitably you will see rich and powerful men seeking to become richer and more powerful are the ones behind it all.
Actually I know exactly what I'm talking about. It just makes no sense to me how the new testament can over ride the old testament. The old testament is harsh so did god just all of a sudden soften up with the new testament? or is it just written by man to soften up the old testament?
And yes I was sinbinned a while ago, but I don't see what that has to do with anything. And there is a app for that: It's called the ignore button.
See this is the kind of BS you keep spouting. The ignore button in your CP settings are FOR YOU! Not anyone else. You can't tell someone to put you on ignore. You can't stop people from posting on a forum, and most definitely you can't stop them from constructively criticizing you when you post in the ridiculous. One day you may understand this, and for your sake and the minds of everyone on this forum, I hope it's soon.
As for the Bible, as very wise man sent me a book on prophecy... Soon I will enlighten you all!
Last edited by To Be Quite Honest; 07-08-2010 at 05:20 PM.
__________________
"For thousands of years humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable." - Carl Sagan Freedom consonant with responsibility.
when a business man/woman dictates a letter to his assistant, is it the business person's words in the letter or is it the assistant's words? Sure the assistant is 'penning' it, but it's the business person's thoughts and words.
when a business man/woman dictates a letter to his assistant, is it the business person's words in the letter or is it the assistant's words? Sure the assistant is 'penning' it, but it's the business person's thoughts and words.
The assistant doesn't typical change the words or put the words into their own writing style.
when a business man/woman dictates a letter to his assistant, is it the business person's words in the letter or is it the assistant's words? Sure the assistant is 'penning' it, but it's the business person's thoughts and words.
Assuming the "business man" dictated in the first place, how accurate do you think his message would be after it's gone through generations of edits, translations, revisions, retractions, removals, additions...
You ever play that game "Pass it On" when you were a kid?
Any man can write a bible that people will follow....
Joseph Smith
L. Ron Hubbard
Charles Taze Russell
It just takes a few followers to create a religion
What we know about the Christian Bible?
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and some Aramaic
The New Testament was written in Greek with some Aramaic
No original manuscript of any book in the Bible has survived intact
The books of the New Testament are not listed in chronological order
Several books referenced in the Old Testament are missing
There is a list of books which have been omitted from both the Old Testament and the New Testament for various reasons. These books are called the Apocrypha
when a business man/woman dictates a letter to his assistant, is it the business person's words in the letter or is it the assistant's words? Sure the assistant is 'penning' it, but it's the business person's thoughts and words.
So a God came up with the bible, seriously, thats the best an all knowing, all powerful and often petty God can come up with.
The 10 commandments? A 5yr old can come up with 10 good ones, I mean the first few for a jealous god.
when a business man/woman dictates a letter to his assistant, is it the business person's words in the letter or is it the assistant's words? Sure the assistant is 'penning' it, but it's the business person's thoughts and words.
__________________ Allskonar fyrir Aumingja!!
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Christian apologists/apologeticists just need to accept and explain that the Biblical canon is a haphazard work by commitee, with input and changes by hundreds of authors, word of mouth transcribers, and whose books were picked, chosen, and even thrown out by councils of people living in the dark ages with a dark age education and cultural mentality which in and of itself was over one or two millenia separated from the culture and region that spawned these works in the first place. It is a work compiled over thousands of years and a product of the specific culture of the times. Holding every word, ordinance, or cultural story as divinely inspired and chosen and eternally applicable will only cause you complications and contradictions with the modern day living out of the religion in a vastly much more liberalized and intellectual world. If you are a thinking person, either religious or not, there must be massive amounts of cognitive dissonance going on in your brain to try to rationalize any literal interpretation. Trying to apply it to your daily life in a world and culture 3000 years apart is even more absurb. It's also absurd to say that something is justified or advocated to be practiced in modern day living by a religion because of an occurance of it within the Bible.
Islam needs to understand this as well and get out of the dark ages of brutality and oppression, unfortunately, the Qur'an and other works in the Islamic canon (Sunnah, Hadith, Fiqh, Sharia, etc.) is even more literally enshrined in their religion when most of them are again word of mouth cultural remembrances or a record of cultural law for a specific group from 1500 years ago.
Stoning for adultery is nothing more than cultural barbarism stemming from our neolithic cave-man intincts regarding violence, domination over the female sex, and community/tribe order.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 07-08-2010 at 08:05 PM.
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Well if you actually have read the bible, you'll know that it's not man who wrote it.
If there was a god I'm pretty sure he would be smart enough not to write fairy tales to adults.
Quote:
Originally Posted by normtwofinger
From experience, I can say that I feel the bible is a good thing to have in your life.
I hear this alot but so far have never had it explained...please do!
Quote:
Originally Posted by normtwofinger
I know the meaning of life
Do you know the meaning of mine?
Quote:
Originally Posted by normtwofinger
I know why we are here
So do I, but I would love to hear your version.
Quote:
Originally Posted by normtwofinger
I know what happens to us when we die
Assuming I'm talking to a human being how could you possibly know this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by normtwofinger
I know what is going to happen to this world in the future.
Everybody knows this, about 5 billion years from now the Sun will become a red giant and engulf the earth...don't worry we'll be dead long before the flames.
Oh wait! your not talking far future, you read Nostradamus!
Quote:
Originally Posted by normtwofinger
I have completeness in my life. Can you say the same?
Very much so...thank you for asking.
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Tom Collins: I gather you're not terribly fond of the Bible.
Joseph Campbell: Not at all! It's the most over-advertised book in the world. It's very pretentious to claim it to be the word of God, or accept it as such and perpetuate this tribal mythology, justifying all kinds of violence to people who are not members of the tribe.
The thing I see about the Bible that's unfortunate is that it's a tribally circumscribed mythology. It deals with a certain people at a certain time. The Christians magnified it to include them. It then turns this society against all others, whereas the condition of the world today is that this particular society that's presented in the Bible isn't even the most important. This thing is like a dead weight. It's pulling us back because it belongs to an earlier period. We can't break loose and move into a modern theology.
One of the great promises of mythology is, with what social group do you identify? How about the planet? To say that the members of this particular social group are the elite of God's world is a good way to keep that group together, but look at the consequences! I think that what might be called the sanctified chauvinism of the Bible is one of the curses of the planet today.
Joseph: the imagery that has to be used in order to tell what can't be told, symbolic imagery, is then understood or interpreted not symbolically but factually, empirically. It's a natural thing, but that's the whole problem with Western religion. All of the symbols are interpreted as if they were historical references. They're not. And if they are, then so what?
Any man can write a bible that people will follow....
Joseph Smith
L. Ron Hubbard
Charles Taze Russell
It just takes a few followers to create a religion
What we know about the Christian Bible?
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and some Aramaic
The New Testament was written in Greek with some Aramaic
No original manuscript of any book in the Bible has survived intact
The books of the New Testament are not listed in chronological order
Several books referenced in the Old Testament are missing
There is a list of books which have been omitted from both the Old Testament and the New Testament for various reasons. These books are called the Apocrypha
Christian apologists/apologeticists just need to accept and explain that the Biblical canon is a haphazard work by commitee, with input and changes by hundreds of authors, word of mouth transcribers, and whose books were picked, chosen, and even thrown out by councils of people living in the dark ages with a dark age education and cultural mentality which in and of itself was over one or two millenia separated from the culture and region that spawned these works in the first place. It is a work compiled over thousands of years and a product of the specific culture of the times. Holding every word, ordinance, or cultural story as divinely inspired and chosen and eternally applicable will only cause you complications and contradictions with the modern day living out of the religion in a vastly much more liberalized and intellectual world. If you are a thinking person, either religious or not, there must be massive amounts of cognitive dissonance going on in your brain to try to rationalize any literal interpretation.
Most people don't know this though.. I mean pastors are taught it at seminary, but when they get to churches they seem to teach mostly from a devotional point of view, they don't touch anything that the past 300 years of Biblical scholarship has worked out.
So most don't have any cognitive dissonance, because they haven't read the gospels horizontally, or struggled with the discrepancies, or know that many of the books were written fraudulently (many of the Pauline letters weren't authored by Paul), etc etc. As far as they know the Bible is inerrant because they haven't seen any different.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
