Summations Only

Okay, so no evidence of God's authorship. And the only evidence of authorship we have is by men. In fact, the only evidence we have for authorship of anything, let alone the Bible, is by men. We have no evidence of anyone but men ever writing anything. This is another topic, and I already granted the existence of God for the sake of this discussion. I don't at all think scientists have figured everything out. What I do think is that scientists have evidence for what they*have* figured out. No one's questioning your faith. If you want to believe something on faith, that's your business. The question is why anyone else should accept your belief that is based only upon faith. You believe the Bible was written by God. Great, go ahead and believe that, I don't care. But why should anyone else believe that? If faith is all you got, then all the world's religion got that, so your belief that your sacred scribblings are written by your God have no greater claim on truth than the equivalent claims of the adherents of any other religion. This is off topic, but "creation science" is a contradiction in terms. They are science denialists. Because their beliefs are based upon faith instead of evidence, creation science, like religion, is divided into many different beliefs. That's fine by me. And even though you don't believe in periods at the end of the last sentence of a paragraph, I do, and I even have evidence that that's correct. The point is that if you don't have evidence for something, why are you arguing for it? Go off and get some ammunition, then come back.--Percy

Okay, he's only sometimes an evil monster. That he's also sometimes loving and compassionate, how does that make his character "very different"? Seems more like a very abusive parent. "Oh, did I murder all of mankind except your family? I am just so sorry. I promise to never do it again, and I promise to be kind and loving from now on." Until the next blow up, of course.You're just in love with what you believe. Doesn't matter what it is. If you believe it, you love it and think it is good. The facts don't seem to matter. You gotta take a step back and take a look at what the Bible really says about God, this time not ignoring or rationalizing the bad stuff. Some things *are* evil and immoral, even when a god does them.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

*Especially* when a god does them, since he's omnipotent, infinitely wise, and has naff all excuse.

Mainstream science has figured out everything?Pull the other one, mate. It's got bells on.Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

Science is basically a matter of one step forward and two steps back; every question we answer provokes two more questions. That's why science-minded people tend to be leery of any claims that a book has all the answers.I used to have as my signature, "People who have all the answers usually don't understand the questions." That's the problem with the Bible.

What part of killing gays, dashing babies against rocks and having rape victims marry their rapist is not evil?

Ossat writes:

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I'm sorry but I don't really think you know that much about the Bible.

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Apparently he knows more about the Bible than you do, since you are apparently unaware that God killed the first-born of Egypt. This was after God had hardened the heart of Pharoah so he wouldn't let Moses and his people go.

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You may be able to quote every single passage but if you cannot find anything good your knowledge is vain.

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I'm sure you mean his knowledge is "in vain", but no matter. The Bible has some few valuable inferences in it, but there is so much murder and mayhem, it's hard to get to the occasional good or life-affirming statement.

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You can quote many texts where God appears as a cruel being, let's say He is.

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Okay, then He's a monster and totally unworthy of worship, and if the the Bible is inerrant that is the only reasonable inference.

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Let's say He has wanted all those people dead, but He also died Himself for the whole world.

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It doesn't change a thing. A deity who proclaims everyone in the world is a sinner, based on rules He created, sacrifices himself to himself, to remove the sins that he determined were sins, when He knew all along that these sins were going to happen and could have prevented them in the first place sounds perverse.

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Even if you don't believe, if you think God is just a fictional character, don't you think He has much more good than evil when sacrificing Himself to save everybody?

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No, it's immoral, and unconscionable. It's immoral to punish anyone, let alone sacrifice them, for the guilt (if there ever was any guilt) of others, let alone the so-called "original sin", punishing the children for the sins of the father. You yourself recognize how immoral this kind of action is, because if you saw it you'd try to stop it.

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Suppose, again within the context of a Bible as a fictional story, that all that people who died under God's law were saved from a much worse fate if they lived a little bit more.

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You mean the people who were killed by God, then their lives were taken from them without due process of law, and He is guilty of murder. What legitimate authority does God have that He can take someone's life..? Would it be okay for me to kill an infant so that there would be no chance they could become a sinner, and be guaranteed to go to Heaven..? This kind of thinking is depraved.

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They died, but at the end God died Himself to save them.

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Which is immoral. No, according to the story Jesus had a bad afternoon, after which he temporarily left this plane of existence, only to become the ruler of the universe, for all time. A sacrifice implies that something is given up permanently, not as a short term loan. What exactly did Jesus give up..? Didn't he return according to the story so his apostles could meet him..? So he didn't die after all. What exactly was sacrificed..? The suffering of Jesus pales by comparison to the suffering of human beings every day, and they don't get to be the ruler of the universe afterwards.

Thank you for this, MFFJM2.Your answers are very forceful, but up to the point.Really needed to be expressed as a result of the ridiculous 'arguments' made by many religious people. You expressed the logic behind your arguments against reliogionism very eloquently this way. Destroying the crazy nonsense lots of religious people use as 'arguments' and yet they pretend to be 'logical'.Mind if I used them (with referencing you here, of course)?Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Feel free.

The bible is the composition of ancient texts translated by modern men and perhaps with errors. Many ancient texts were left outside of the bible. As far as what the Bible says, yes, is the word of the Gods. Ancient scribes serving for them were instructed to write in clay tablets.

Nope. I sometimes wish it were so... but it's not.
They were only mistaken.How do I know? Because believing in God doesn't make a difference.
I mean, it does make a difference to an individual... that's not what I'm talking about.
(Not believing in God also makes a difference to an individual... so it's not really proof of anything one way or another).What I'm talking about is that if you take a-big-group-of-people-who-believe-in-God and compare them with a-big-group-of-people-who-don't-believe-in-God... there's no difference between them.And if God exists, He would make a difference. At least for something. Otherwise, He wouldn't be "God" by any definition humans have ever used.

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The Bible is not inerrant, it is most definitely the words of men.
This is shown beyond the shadow of a doubt merely because of the non-significance of any group of Bible believers.

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Take any general group of Bible believers...
They are not special.
They are not happier.
They are not richer.
They are not more loved.
They are not more loving.

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They're just the same as everybody else.

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That's why the Bible isn't inspired.
If it was inspired, there should be some sort of discernible difference to be found.

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Message 11

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"believe" is the key word you have used. To Believe or to not Believe, is directly related to ignorance. Lack of knowledge. You either know or do not know to make a point.The ancient texts were never written in "belief". The were written in knowledge of what was going on in those days which by the way, were bizarre times. Unimaginable and incomprehensible for the vast majority of average mortals. Hence the "disbelief"

How do you know the intentions of the authors?Why did Ian Fleming write Casino Royale? Did he need the money? Was he trying to prove he could write as well as Tolstoy? Did he do it on a bet? I'm sure he told people why he did it in interviews, etc. but how do we know he was telling the truth? He was a fiction writer, after all. How do we know that anything he said wasn't fiction?And if we can't tell the intentions of somebody in our own lifetime, how much harder is it to tell the intentions of somebody thousands of years ago?

Based on your logic, perhaps then there was a global conspiracy thousands of years ago to write the same fictional story all over the world. The mayans depicted the same deities depicted in mesopotamia, as the ones in ancient India and Peru. What technology they used to communicate and create this story to later confuse humans? thats a total mystery.Also based on your logic, why should we believe that Washington and the founding fathers really existed? yes theres a bunch of people who would say "I'm a direct descendant" how can they prove that and why should I believe it? just because everybody believes the story means is truth and I am forced to believe it too?Bottom line, why in the world ancients civilizations would base their existence in writing our origins the best they could to pass it onto us other than the truth?

Could you provide more detail on this? Which deities are the same? How does this relate to the topic of the Bible?