does it sound wierd that i am a christian and i dont believe the bible? i just think that it has been translated, and interpreted in so many different ways, so many times that if it was once accurate, there is no way that it can be now. and even after that there is the fact that it was written by man and not by god itself. i mean face it, the bible didnt just fall out of the sky. and even if you say, "God wrote the bible through great people like moses, and john." it still wouldnt make any sense, because there are many people today who have said that god tries and speak through them, but then we label them as "cults". it just to me like it is basically like believeing a stephen king novel.
nice..... i remember that one time in sunday school they were trying to teach us not to gossip. so we played this game were one of us whispers something in the person next to use's ear(is that correct english?) and when it get all the way to the end the last person yells it and it is all messed up and nothing close to the original. and even at like ten yrs. old i realized that that was a great example of what the bible was totally.
Well I've already dumped on The Bible once tonight (http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1680464&postcount=4) and since I'm not 100% sure God doesn't exist I don't want to piss him off too bad. But this is one of the main reasons people will not or can not accept Christianity. At least when they change the Theory of Evolution they have a sound scientific explanation why they do so, and not because a king somewhere comes into power and decides the story line doesn't suit his tastes. Second-hand information, apparent hallucinations, dreams, maybe even an innocent fairy tale to pass the time could very well be the sources which contributed to the writing of The Holy Book. I find it hard to accept anyone as powerful as God Almighty would bother to write us out an instruction manual, only to let us mistranslate and hack it into whatever we believe it should be. Maybe there's a duplicate of the original on Mars?
Each person involved with religious writings has put their own twist on it. No matter how big or small that twist might be, that does not mean that a spiritual entity or force hasn't been trying to get through to us. Through history there have been groups of nonconformists who have seperated themselves from the rest of society. They did this into order to find real truth. I believe that this truth can be found in 98% purity in a Dead Sea Scroll called the Damascus Document. The Damascus Document was written by nonconformist Jewish sect at around 100 B.C. I do not like repeating myself, but read my posts psychedelic drug pushers, The Axis Of Evil That Bush Did Not Talk About, and other threads of mine at this forum. And read through my website. Later.
Rain in the mountains creates the head of the river, and that is where the water belongs. It flows a long, long way through different terrains, and whereever it is found, that is where it belongs. Finally, it flows into the river, and some will claim it is no longer what it used to be - but, its every change and all the force that carried it forward was for the single end that it may be exactly what it is exactly where it is exactly when it is. The Bible has come down through the ages to 'us', not to those before us. It has come down to us as it was always meant to be. In its present state, it is ours; it is us. Once the rivier was the river; now it is the ocean. Some day in the future it will again be the rain.
Anyone ever read 'the case for Christ' by Lee Strobel? It's about the gospels, the non-biblical gospels, and Jesus. It talsk about what science can say about it and how trustworthy it is. Jesus is being researched in this book in the same way as in a court, with all those different areas of science (psychology, archeology etc.). Yes, it is subjective, and yes, it does defend christianity, but it gives the arguments and reasonings into the hands of the reader and challenges him-her to search on and think about it.
well what about these hallucinations, divine messages, or whatever? you tell me. if i woke up tomorrow and said that this man came to me in a dream and told me that we have to live this way or when you die he will sodomize you for all eternity, would you believe me? or would you just send me to a mental facility? and as for the river thing,are you saying that the ruless are constantly changing? that they are thier so people can change them to how they fit them to how they better suit the time? if so, then why is it there in the first place?
No. I'd bring you to a bar and have you tell your dream to my friends. Rules are for kids to make them feel Good about 'following' or 'breaking' rules until they know the truth. For your soul. Rules are pleasurable or fun to follow and break....
Rules are for kids to make them feel Good about 'following' or 'breaking' rules until they know the truth. Kharakov 'If you follow all the rules, you miss all the fun.' Katherine Hepburn She was such a rebel.... and one of my favorite celebs, if not my favorite. A M60 machine gun is an excellent motivator, until you remove it. Just the same, threats of damnation help keep kids alive despite themselves, and then later may or may not still be believed as they learn more. I can see that parents would use artistic license when cautioning young ones to behave. Cuz I said so isn't as compelling as cuz the devil is gonna come and getcha and you'll be tortured forever and ever. I was 11 when I decided that hellfire, the devil, etc. were not real. Before that, I was scared of Ol' Nick. Some of the so called myths in various ancient religious texts are turning out to have a basis in fact. Some others are more likely just poetic licence, to keep the readers interest up. that is just my take on it.
Interesting metaphor, Daniel, the idea that the Bible is a "living" tradition...but I don't buy it. I mean, if this is THE rulebook for mankind, how can it keep changing at the whims of editors, scribes, kings, and popes? Just because some translator goofed, the whole thing changes it's meaning, but is still the "ONE AND ONLY WAY"? There may very well be some spiritual truth in there, but I think a lot is distorted, a lot is metaphor (missed by most people who read literally), a lot is propoganda that had context and meaning when it was written but now makes very little sense, and some is just the tribal myths and stories of Bronze Age Jews. God doesn't live in a book. Thus, one does not need a book to know God. Especially not a book so perverted by human ego for so many centuries
Indeed God doesn't live in a book. But God could tell people to write His words in a book, couldn't he? And if then people bend His word in wrong interpretations, that His word is still His word, isn't it? Doesn't change anything about that.
As in one does not need education to learn to read - is that it TrippinBTM? There is power that is greater than all your dredged up editors, scribes, kings, and Popes. The Bible is a living growing thing; if you do not grow with it, you are left behind in all your doubt and second guessing. The Bible has come down to us in a context that is right for us. If you only see the print, you miss out on the underlying spirit that is your's and mine.
logchopper, In the absence of believing in the Bible, what then is one left with? The objective would be to understand the world on one's own terms, to find truth for oneself. But can it be done in a society which is vying for your mind?, which is teaching you how to think from earliest childhood? In the absence of a moral society, what precepts can one anchor one's life on? I'm agreeing with your position. But does your propensity to not believe also extend to everything else in the world? Or are you more likely to just agree with what you find pleasing? Life is full of things we don't agree with, so just seeing the world as agreeing with our inner view is what is called "Maya," or illusion. We all do it; our prior experience forces us to take an antithetical position. But is such a position, honest? Is a pleasure / pain response really valid? If one has a bad experience with a woman, does he give up women and try men? Does being in a car crash force one to give up driving? If that were the case, then getting a hangover would cause people to stop drinking. The difference between the Bible and the Stephen King novel is that one cannot use the novel as a guide to guage one's life against, it is not existential. Or as Joseph Campbell said, it provides no myth to hold as ideals to live up to. In the absence of ideals, what is one to believe? When you were young and the teacher said that anyone can grow up to be president, did you laugh at the absurdity being pontificated? It's only now that you've worked hard all your life that you see the lie that "if one works hard one will be successful." But when that aphorism was spouted, did you contend?
I read this book, in fact reading this book is what set me off on my own little reaserch quest for the last 4 months (which included my starting to post in this forum). At first I was really impressed by some of the info in the book, really got me looking at christianity in a way I never had before, but after cross-referencing some other sources and re-reading it it started to look like a sham to me; The author claims to have written this book as a skeptic who became a believer by the time he was finished with it, but on my second take it seemed to me that he (the author) was asking his research subjects just the kind of questions proponents of christianity would want him to ask, and excepting incomplete and insuffient answers. In court this would be called leading the witness. Then, on reading the intro, I found that Strobel never even interviewed any of the experts he claimed to have interveiwed in his book (says so himself, read the intro in your copy) he had just read books, papers and essays by selected pro-christian scholars and wrote his book as semi-fiction-- a fictious story about a skeptical journalist that travels around the world interveiwing christian scholars in order to subject christianity to modern legal, sceintific analysis--to make it more interesting. My guess is he was counting on the fact that most people don't cross reference or read intros. The book is very heavely slanted in favor of christianity. If you dig a little deeper into christian history and theology you'll see what I mean.
Yeah, my dad wanted me to read it, but I just got a feeling about it that it was as you say, Naykid. Glad I didn't waste my time. Besides, it's not important to me, in my way of understanding. Christ was like the Buddha, showing the way for the rest of us, not a personal savior for everyone. We can be like Christ (or the buddha) but it's up to us to do the work.
