Who Made God?

Thank you for proving my point.

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The Bible is God's word, it's full of references to supernatural things the unbelieving "scholars" can't be honest about.

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You say that but you don’t offer an ounce of support.Come on Faith. Come up with real examples where you actually know what you’re talking about. If you have any - it’s not something you’re known for.

Faith, you're back to one liners again that say nothing.How did anything I posted prove your point?You need to stop simply making silly assertions and actually provide support for your position. Remember, it's easy on this board to actually follow a conversation to see that you are actually never providing anything in the way of support or evidence.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin

Yes, one liners are about right for the occasion I'd say.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I really don't think there is anything but massive ignorance of early Christian communities when people assume that there was some uncritical acceptance of a sacred body of scripture that is in any way anything near what is in today's Roman Catholic & Protestant Bibles.There was nothing but complete total questioning, AMONG EARLY CHRISTIANS, of what was accurate history.Only a sliver even came remotely close to having a "Holy Bible" that even slightly resembles the one today.The closest parallel (to what is around today) I have seen is the 2nd century European Christian's 4 Gospel use from around 150 A.D. on. (Not that the Roman Catholic/Greek Orthodox represented anywhere near all European Christians)But the Jewish Christians seemed to only see Matthew as historically accurate. And there is no evidence of the Gospel of John ever being seen, by Jewish Christians, as anything remotely accurate.But the Gospel use is just one issue.(One other important, but by no means ONLY, part to "The Bible" is that the Modern Bible has letters of Paul that were also accepted by ancient Roman Catholics/Greek Orthodox as scripture but no earlier than 100 A.D. and perhaps not until the second half of the 2nd century)

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the modern scholars are predominantly unbelievers. They should not be allowed to say anything about the Bible. Theoretically they should be able to be objective but it turns out in reality they can't.

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Why worry about them then?So what is stopping modern Christians from looking at what the early Christian communities believed?Why not worry about the early Christian communities?Just because the Roman Catholics (and Greek Orthodox) slaughtered the others doesn't mean you have to ignore the other communities and then, in turn, follow the winners (winners being the state/world-power wielding writers of history).

You seem to make up the whole history on your own. Why would there have been all that questioning? Believers were hungry to learn about their new religion.As I understand it there were thousands of churches that had been planted all over the Middle East and into Europe. I don't know in what sense you mean "communities" but the believers usually gathered at a particular location for meetings, or maybe more than one location. Where a synagogue was converted -- Paul always preached first at the synagogues in any town, the synagogue would be the gathering place, but often it was people's houses. They had pastors and elders, and a bishop over a region.They would have had the Old Testament first, but then the books and letters of the New Testament were passed to all these churches as they were able to have them copied. It would take time to accumulate the whole set but eventually most or all of these church groups did possess them. These congregations heard them all read in the assembly many times, and they formed their opinions about which were inspired and which weren't. The various councils took note of those regarded as inspired by all the churches uuntil eventually a coherent collection emerged that was deemed canonical by the council tally sheet. Over time those regarded as inspired became the largest collection and formed the basis for later determinations of canonicity. Seems like a perfectly natural way for the Bible to develop.Nothing you've said makes any sense to me. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Even Martin Luther didn't accept "The Bible" to be untainted.Your attack on "modern scholars" and specifically their questioning the historical accuracy of parts of "The Bible" is based on you assuming that the worship of a book was somehow the only thing on the spiritual menu for all Christians.Outside of Roman Catholic & Greek Orthodox state dictates, it wasn't even true in the 4th century body of Christian believers.And you don't seem to understand that Christian's views then were very different from what you see as "Christian views" today.The issue is "The Bible".

I'm aware of the differences in canon collections and of Luther's objection to the letter of James. There have always been limited areas of disagreement. So what? I don't have the opinion you attribute to me. I object to UNBELIEVING scholars which so many here rely on. What's that got to do with your complaints?Christian views were NOT so different in the early years, I've read a lot of the early church writers and their views have come down to us as part of the Christian doctrinal legacy.

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The various councils took note of those regarded as inspired by all the churches uuntil eventually a coherent collection emerged that was deemed canonical by the council tally sheet. Over time those regarded as inspired became the largest collection and formed the basis for later determinations of canonicity. Seems like a perfectly natural way for the Bible to develop.

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Except many churches had members that not only weren't invited to cast a vote and thus be on the "tally sheet", but they were seen as folks who needed to be killed.You always want to look at the Roman Empire Councils, and ignore the actual body count of Christians. (I have seen lots of examples - via quotes by Church Fathers - of the majority having theological and related historical views that differ from the Roman state Councils)(dead bodies of men can't talk but they did exist and they form part of the collective whole)Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

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I object to UNBELIEVING scholars which so many here rely on. What's that got to do with your complaints?

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I noticed that you said that a prominent scholar was not a believer, but a poster showed that he was a believer in a bodily resurrection.That aside, I will get to my point.You aren't being consistent when you seem to obsess over modern scholars while ignoring the Christian views.I suppose your attack will either be that somebody is brain-washed by either "heresy" or "modern scholars".You want to have it both ways, and you seem to focus exclusively on one or the other at any given time.Luther wasn't a "heretic" to you, right?He didn't see himself as attacking God when he questioned scripture in "The Bible".(and He didn't just reject the Epistle of James, but several other books in "The Bible")

Look at the quotes surrounding the specific verses in Jerome's landmark Bible.Jerome said that the Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew (called the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" )was viewed by most as the original Gospel of Matthew while he had to use the Greek "Gospel according to Matthew" for his Vulgate translation.Jerome seemed to be saying that the text we now label Mark 16:9-20 was not in the vast majority of Mark manuscripts (though his quotation of Eusebius might not imply agreement, but it still documents what the majority of Bible's contained) while he was forced to include those last 12 verses in his Latin Bible.Jerome invented the term "Apocrypha" as derision at the books he had to translate and include in his Vulgate. He rejected the Apocrypha but the Catholic Church accepted it.MY POINT.My point is that the majority of early Christian "Bibles" differed for all of the first 3 Christian centuries and most of the 4th.(Scholars notice some of the same things)Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

Then I read the posts.Anyway, what I immediately thought of was that there would have to be:the existence of dirt before the bricksrock before the dirtthe very existence of elements before the rockquarks and leptons before the actual elements (like Hydrogen)(Before that there were the quantum fluctuations)We always get to the issue of "what came before the (Big) Bang?"Then the issue can often (?) include already existing universes. (but, I suppose, in a completely different sphere and not in anything that had to do with our universe's "space"?)There was a process where everything existing in our universe (and all of the other universes if they exist) once did not exist.There was at one time an unlimited nothingness of absolutely nothing.That is logical.(If one really thinks, then it is very illogical to assume that ANYTHING ever existed at all)How nothing became something can't be understood AT ALL.Really, not at all.Not one tiny bit.(Some can philosophize that "nature abhors a vacuum therefore this 'unlimited nothingness' somehow, by virtue of being unlimited, amounted to an 'unlimited something' and thus (was indeed) 'something' by (being) nothing and a process got underway where SOMETHING is always going on")It is simpler to think of there being perhaps unlimited universes existing outside our universe but they all would have needed to be absolutely non-existent at one time too.Some sort of evolutionary (not biological! COSMOLOGICAL!) process led to whatever existed.The more simple or elementary was the start and then the "building block" process happened and then things got more developed and advanced.There would be a trillion steps in the process (actually trillions or google-plex illions of steps times many more illions) and that is before quarks and leptons could ever exist in any universe, including our own. Before any particle could exist and fluctuate.We know that "dirt" in our universe must have existed before our bricks did and the elements must have existed before the rock that made dirt could form.If there was a "dirt maker" in our universe then he could have come before the dirt and especially before the bricks.But an advanced Creator would have had a step in the trillion step (plus!) process in some other universe. The step that commenced with an advanced being would have come somewhere along the way, and the less advanced would have preceded him. Perhaps the birth/dawn/origin of our advanced being (our creator) was around step 500,000 in the 1 trillion step process. It would not have been among the early stages.We are back to trying to understand physics and cosmological evolution.Just like the early Christians (for example) knew. There was lots of cosmological speculation among the "Gnostics" for example.Carl Sagan said that we can save a step in the process of understanding how we all got here by skipping the step that involved the creator because it sidesteps the ultimate questions. We will always get back to the ultimate questions even if we say "God did it" because we will always be back to "where did he come from?".Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

Think.If ever there was a time when there was absolutely nothing, it would be impossible for there to have ever been something after that point.

I have never figured out why, but I just about never understand a word you are saying. What you say about me is far far from anything I recognize.

As a wise hillbilly used to say, "When he tells you howdy, he's told you everything he knows."