# The mind is a terrible thing



## Mrtoadswildride (Jun 26, 2011)

As a former believer I had a nagging question that came to me when my brain fully developed from adolescence. If god is all knowing, that being the past, present and future. What is the point in it all ? Its like watching a movie you've already seen.


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## bullethead (Jun 26, 2011)

The only things he was missing was a desire to be praised and worshiped, so he created beings for that sole purpose.


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## gtparts (Jun 26, 2011)

Mrtoadswildride said:


> As a former believer I had a nagging question that came to me when my brain fully developed from adolescence. If god is all knowing, that being the past, present and future. What is the point in it all ? Its like watching a movie you've already seen.



From whose perspective?


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## Huntinfool (Jun 27, 2011)

Mrtoadswildride said:


> As a former believer I had a nagging question that came to me when my brain fully developed from adolescence. If god is all knowing, that being the past, present and future. What is the point in it all ? Its like watching a movie you've already seen.



Except, that YOU haven't already seen it.


If you insist on viewing it like that, then it's really more like being a character in a movie that the director has already made.  But instead of a script, he's given you guidelines to follow as you improv your lines.

However, instead of a paycheck, your compensation is either really really bad or really really great.  It all depends on how well you follow the guidelines and how committed you are to the director.


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## bullethead (Jun 27, 2011)

Huntinfool said:


> Except, that YOU haven't already seen it.
> 
> 
> If you insist on viewing it like that, then it's really more like being a character in a movie that the director has already made.  But instead of a script, he's given you guidelines to follow as you improv your lines.
> ...



Amusement for God. Having never been created we would not have ever had the need to know how it turns out.


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## stringmusic (Jun 27, 2011)

bullethead said:


> Amusement for God. Having never been created we would not have ever had the need to know how it turns out.



Not ever existing, now that would have been neat!.......


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## bullethead (Jun 27, 2011)

We are an ant farm experiment. Put us together, let a small group know the rules, and sit back and see what happens.


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## kmckinnie (Jun 27, 2011)

I like watching reruns! No problem!


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## Mrtoadswildride (Jul 26, 2011)

If god created us out of a desire to be praised and worshiped, being all knowing, he would have already known he would be praised and worshiped. Doing something knowing the outcome already seems below an entity of such power.


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## Mrtoadswildride (Jul 26, 2011)

Maybe ya'll are right. Maybe God just wanted to take a millenium off and watch a rerun


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## 1gr8bldr (Jul 27, 2011)

Let's simplify this as much as possible in hopes to see a picture. We were created to live like Adam. Imagine the life he was banished from. The goal is that when we are born again into the "second Adam", we will oneday enjoy this "relationship in paradise'


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## realbowhunter (Aug 24, 2011)

i tellyou what why dont you skate through life and ask god when you stand before him and tell him that this is all stupid and c where it gets ya you thinkin too deep let it go and make the best of all of it


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## jason4445 (Aug 25, 2011)

There are two particular instances in the Bible that shows that God is not all knowing, although indeed knows more than us, and also that God made at least one mistake.

In Genesis God make light, and oceans and such and saw that it was good.  Seems to me that if God was all knowing at the time he would have known it was good before he created it - he would not have to seen it was good to know it was good.

The second one is the flood where afterwards God decided he would never kill man in that fashion again.   Obviously God did not know before hand that killing by a flood was a bad thing until after he did it and also it seems by admitting he would not do something again God admitted to making a mistake.  Another thing in the Noah story that makes one wonder about God being all knowing is he first ordered Noah to take all animals two by two, and then changed his mind and told Noah to take the clean animals seven by five and the unclean two by two.  Then Noah ignored this and took the animals two by two.  If God is all knowing why did he order one thing and change his mind later, and then not get annoyed at the most perfect man on earth at the time for ignoring his order.


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## Huntinfool (Aug 25, 2011)

> in genesis god make light, and oceans and such and saw that it was good. Seems to me that if god was all knowing at the time he would have known it was good before he created it - he would not have to seen it was good to know it was good.
> 
> The second one is the flood where afterwards god decided he would never kill man in that fashion again. Obviously god did not know before hand that killing by a flood was a bad thing until after he did it and also it seems by admitting he would not do something again god admitted to making a mistake. Another thing in the noah story that makes one wonder about god being all knowing is he first ordered noah to take all animals two by two, and then changed his mind and told noah to take the clean animals seven by five and the unclean two by two. Then noah ignored this and took the animals two by two. If god is all knowing why did he order one thing and change his mind later, and then not get annoyed at the most perfect man on earth at the time for ignoring his order.



....riiiiiiiiiggggghhhhht.


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## BANDERSNATCH (Aug 25, 2011)

and God didn't know if Abraham would actually try to kill Isaac or not....


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## Huntinfool (Aug 25, 2011)

It's not worth it man.  Walk away....slowly.


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## pbradley (Aug 25, 2011)

BANDERSNATCH said:


> and God didn't know if Abraham would actually try to kill Isaac or not....



God knew, but maybe Abraham didn't. Maybe Abraham needed the experience that comes from that event that built a closer relationship with God through complete faith and trust in God. We can only surmise what Abraham learned about himself from the experience.


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## tween_the_banks (Aug 25, 2011)

Let Abraham try it in today's times and he'll be under the prison.
If a God were to tell me to kill my daughter, I'd look up, spit in the air, and enjoy my time on earth with my daughter free of religion.
Not trying to ruffle any feathers, I respect religious people and their views.
But when gods go to telling people to kill their children, I tend to load my guns and hide mine...
The Abraham story really and always has bothered me. Even as a kid when I was brought up in church.


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## Huntinfool (Aug 25, 2011)

> Let Abraham try it in today's times and he'll be under the prison.
> If a God were to tell me to kill my daughter, I'd look up, spit in the air, and enjoy my time on earth with my daughter free of religion.
> Not trying to ruffle any feathers, I respect religious people and their views.
> But when gods go to telling people to kill their children, I tend to load my guns and hide mine...
> The Abraham story really and always has bothered me. Even as a kid when I was brought up in church.



I guess you missed the whole "provision" and "mercy" part of that story, huh?

You know he didn't actually kill his son....right?


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## BANDERSNATCH (Aug 25, 2011)

or Abraham's prophecy that "God would provide HIMSELF a lamb"   (Christ)   

One of many prophecies about Christ.    

Nope...no problem with the Abraham story here!   Attaboy, Abraham!


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## tween_the_banks (Aug 25, 2011)

I do know that he didn't. But he tried to...


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## tween_the_banks (Aug 25, 2011)

Please tell me no one on here would kill their children if their God told them to.
This is where religion really rubs me the wrong way.
No offense to anyone on here.


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## BANDERSNATCH (Aug 25, 2011)

Hmmmm     good question, tween...

I'm sure I'd disappoint God if He asked that of me.


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## tween_the_banks (Aug 25, 2011)

BANDERSNATCH said:


> Hmmmm     good question, tween...
> 
> I'm sure I'd disappoint God if He asked that of me.



Thank you. I don't think God would send a follower to he11 for refusing to kill a child. I don't think that falls under an unforgivable sin.


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## Huntinfool (Aug 25, 2011)

> Please tell me no one on here would kill their children if their God told them to.
> This is where religion really rubs me the wrong way.
> No offense to anyone on here.



He won't....blood sacrifice is no longer required.  There was a guy on a cross that finalized that.


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## Huntinfool (Aug 25, 2011)

> I don't think God would send a follower to he11 for refusing to kill a child. I don't think that falls under an unforgivable sin.



See my post above.  He won't ask you to do it.  Bottom line, though, defying God is indeed a sin...and yes...you go to the hot place for that.

BUT...no worries...he won't ask you to kill your child.  Ready to sign up now?


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## tween_the_banks (Aug 25, 2011)

Huntinfool said:


> See my post above.  He won't ask you to do it.  Bottom line, though, defying God is indeed a sin...and yes...you go to the hot place for that.
> 
> BUT...no worries...he won't ask you to kill your child.  Ready to sign up now?



Lol, you're good. Thanks for the offer, but Ancient Alien theory has my money right now


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## Huntinfool (Aug 25, 2011)

Fair enough.  We already have visual evidence in this thread.  So you may be barking up the right tree after all!


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## atlashunter (Sep 14, 2011)

That he even instructed Abraham to kill his son and that Abraham agreed to do it tells you what you need to know about the morality of the god of the bible and the people of the Bronze Age middle east. This wasn't the last time a show of faith was made to god by killing ones child. This is a religion not only rooted in scapegoating by blood sacrifice but by human sacrifice. It really is vile.


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## ambush80 (Sep 14, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> That he even instructed Abraham to kill his son and that Abraham agreed to do it tells you what you need to know about the morality of the god of the bible and the people of the Bronze Age middle east. This wasn't the last time a show of faith was made to god by killing ones child. This is a religion not only rooted in scapegoating by blood sacrifice but by human sacrifice. It really is vile.




Trust and obey. 'Cuz there's no other way.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

I wonder if Christians would still take good away from this story if Abraham had been ordered to rape his son and then stopped just before committing the act?


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> That he even instructed Abraham to kill his son and that Abraham agreed to do it tells you what you need to know about the morality of the god of the bible and the people of the Bronze Age middle east. This wasn't the last time a show of faith was made to god by killing ones child. This is a religion not only rooted in scapegoating by blood sacrifice but by human sacrifice. It really is vile.



People were following many "gods" at that time, giving any kind if sacrifice to each one anytime they needed something or were in fear of a particular god. Example, it hasn't rained in a month, we need to make a sacrifice to the rain god because we have made him angry.

IMO, in the story of Abraham the One true God, simply displayed He was unlike the other "gods" that these sacrifices were being made to.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> I wonder if Christians would still take good away from this story if Abraham had been ordered to rape his son and then stopped just before committing the act?



But He didn't.

Are you implying that rape is worse than a killing?


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

Oh and welcome back to the A/A/A forum Atlas, where the heck ya been? Besides the political forum


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## TripleXBullies (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> People were following many "gods" at that time, giving any kind if sacrifice to each one anytime they needed something or were in fear of a particular god. Example, it hasn't rained in a month, we need to make a sacrifice to the rain god because we have made him angry.
> 
> IMO, in the story of Abraham the One true God, simply displayed He was unlike the other "gods" that these sacrifices were being made to.



Why? The other gods really needed the sacrifices?


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

TripleXBullies said:


> Why? The other gods really needed the sacrifices?



There are no other gods.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> People were following many "gods" at that time, giving any kind if sacrifice to each one anytime they needed something or were in fear of a particular god. Example, it hasn't rained in a month, we need to make a sacrifice to the rain god because we have made him angry.
> 
> IMO, in the story of Abraham the One true God, simply displayed He was unlike the other "gods" that these sacrifices were being made to.



Actually the OT demonstrates that the god of the bible is exactly like those other gods. He demanded and accepted blood sacrifice both before and after Abraham. Look if he was really different and trying to demonstrate that difference you don't do it with some sick test to see if someone will murder for you. All you have to do is say, "I'm willing to forgive those who repent and turn from their ways. I don't have a bloodlust like your other gods."




stringmusic said:


> But He didn't.
> 
> Are you implying that rape is worse than a killing?



No I'm saying that both are evil acts and it is evil to instruct others to commit evil. And the point of the story isn't only that God made a test out of an instruction to carry out an evil act but Abraham accepted that instruction without question and went about carrying it out. Is that really something to be looked on as a good thing???




stringmusic said:


> Oh and welcome back to the A/A/A forum Atlas, where the heck ya been? Besides the political forum



Thanks! Good to be back.


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## TripleXBullies (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> There are no other gods.



I figured, but you said he was different from the other ones.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> It really is vile.




......until you get to the NT.  There are various opinions on OT teachings (a good thread recently about Job in the SD&S).

It is only vile if you focus and take literally the vile aspects.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> Are you implying that rape is worse than a killing?



....in that scenario, yes.  No doubt.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Actually the OT demonstrates that the god of the bible is exactly like those other gods. He demanded and accepted blood sacrifice both before and after Abraham. Look if he was really different and trying to demonstrate that difference you don't do it with some sick test *to see if someone will murder for you*. All you have to do is say, "I'm willing to forgive those who repent and turn from their ways. I don't have a bloodlust like your other gods."



God didn't have to see anything, He was helping Abraham to see.  

There are times in the OT where a figure would make a blood sacrifice to God in which God never accepted or demanded it.


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## ambush80 (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> But He didn't.
> 
> Are you implying that rape is worse than a killing?





JB0704 said:


> ....in that scenario, yes.  No doubt.



If raping your son is worse than killing him, what implications does that have in regards to the crucifixion? By that I mean that people often talk about what a tremendous sacrifice it was to allow oneself to be crucified.  Is there and even more horrible fate than crucifixion?  Would the sacrifice be even that much greater?


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## StriperAddict (Sep 15, 2011)

There is no greater sacrifice than God becoming man and taking on the sins of the whole world.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

TripleXBullies said:


> I figured, but you said he was different from the other ones.



Thats why I put the quotations around the word "gods"


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> There are times in the OT where a figure would make a blood sacrifice to God in which God never accepted or demanded it.



Such as?


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Such as?



Jephthah sacrificing his daughter in the book of Judges is one.

Jeremiah 7:31 "And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> ......until you get to the NT.  There are various opinions on OT teachings (a good thread recently about Job in the SD&S).
> 
> It is only vile if you focus and take literally the vile aspects.



The NT is the culmination of the blood lust expressed in the OT. The "ultimate" blood sacrifice of the most innocent human that ever lived. Still vile.

And with the NT and gentle Jesus meek and mild we get the introduction of burning and eternal torment, another revolting idea of infinite punishment for finite offenses no matter how great or small.


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## TripleXBullies (Sep 15, 2011)

StriperAddict said:


> There is no greater sacrifice than God becoming man and taking on the sins of the whole world.



For a few minutes.. If we don't take that "sacrificie" we go to he11 for eternity... Jesus was there for a little while, now, he's golden. He had no eternal separation from god. He didn't get the chance to know what it was like to want water for eternity and not get a drop. But somehow, my eternal he11 are for my own sins but his sacrifice for everyone's lasted for a little bit.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

ambush80 said:


> If raping your son is worse than killing him



I think most fathers would agree.



ambush80 said:


> what implications does that have in regards to the crucifixion? By that I mean that people often talk about what a tremendous sacrifice it was to allow oneself to be crucified.  Is there and even more horrible fate than crucifixion?  Would the sacrifice be even that much greater?



The crucifixion is what it is.  There have been worse deaths.  I am sure there could have been more suffering.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> The NT is the culmination of the blood lust expressed in the OT. The "ultimate" blood sacrifice of the most innocent human that ever lived. Still vile.
> 
> And with the NT and gentle Jesus meek and mild we get the introduction of Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ---- and eternal torment, another revolting idea of infinite punishment for finite offenses no matter how great or small.



....again, there is much debate on the concept of he11, what it is, is it literal, etc.

I hear you on the crucifixion.  But, Jesus was not killed by God.  He was killed by religious zealots.  That is the difference between the OT stuff and the NT stuff.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

ambush80 said:


> If raping your son is worse than killing him, what implications does that have in regards to the crucifixion? By that I mean that people often talk about what a tremendous sacrifice it was to allow oneself to be crucified.  Is there and even more horrible fate than crucifixion? * Would the sacrifice be even that much greater?*



The degree of pain from the crucifixtion was not what made the sacrifice of Jesus what it was. It was a sacrifice of Holy, unblemished blood. So I would answer no, they could have killed Him in a "more horrible" way, but I don't believe that would have made a difference.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> Jephthah sacrificing his daughter in the book of Judges is one.



The story of Jephthah doesn't exactly help your case. Let's take a closer look.



> 29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came on Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites. 30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, 31 whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
> 
> 32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands. 33 He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.
> 
> ...



A few questions... When Jephthah made his vow did God know that it would be his daughter? Why did God fulfill his part of the deal? Why did he not reject the vow? Why did he not reject the sacrifice?




stringmusic said:


> Jeremiah 7:31 "And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.



This was hundreds of years after Jephthah.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

It doesn't sound to me like God had anything to do with the vow, I did not read where it was confirmed.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> The degree of pain from the crucifixtion was not what made the sacrifice of Jesus what it was. It was a sacrifice of Holy, unblemished blood. So I would answer no, they could have killed Him in a "more horrible" way, but I don't believe that would have made a difference.



Conversely he could have been killed in a much less gruesome way and that also wouldn't have made any difference so then the question becomes why the need for such a gruesome death? You sure wouldn't get the impression from christians that such suffering was a pointless exercise. But you touch on a more important fundamental idea here and that is the punishment of the innocent for the misdeeds of the guilty. Is that justice? Is that moral? Imagine a courtroom where a murderer has been convicted and the judge says "You deserve death but I'm going to have mercy and spare you. And as punishment for your crime I'm going to see that my son is murdered." Does that sound like a perfect plan to you? Oh and by the way that doesn't only apply to the murderer it also applies to the guy convicted of jaywalking. And if this does make sense to you keep one more thing in mind. Jesus didn't take on the actual sentence doled out to sinners. The sentence (according to Christianity) isn't simply death or death and three days in burning, it's eternal death and eternal burning. So even if we were to accept the idea that it is moral and just to use the innocent as a scapegoat for the guilty, that isn't even what happened with crucifixion and resurrection.

At some point you have to say the whole thing is a load of bull.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> It doesn't sound to me like God had anything to do with the vow, I did not read where it was confirmed.



Imagine you prayed to God and promised to go to church every Sunday for the rest of your life if God would reveal to you the winning lottery numbers. He reveals them to you and you win the lottery. Would you say that God hadn't confirmed your vow? Would you say he had nothing to do with the vow?


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> The story of Jephthah doesn't exactly help your case. Let's take a closer look.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I didn't mean to put the two quotes together as one, the Jeremiah quote was meant to show God doesn't choose for people to sacrifice their children.

I would 100% agree with JB0704 in post #53. God fulfilled His part of the deal because that is what God does, Jephthah made a seperate deal with God that God never accepted.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Conversely he could have been killed in a much less gruesome way and that also wouldn't have made any difference so then the question becomes why the need for such a gruesome death?


Crucifixion was the choice of death by the Romans. It was also the way the Jewish leaders wanted Him killed.



> You sure wouldn't get the impression from christians that such suffering was a pointless exercise. But you touch on a more important fundamental idea here and that is the punishment of the innocent for the misdeeds of the guilty. Is that justice? Is that moral? Imagine a courtroom where a murderer has been convicted and the judge says "You deserve death but I'm going to have mercy and spare you. And as punishment for your crime I'm going to see that my son is murdered." Does that sound like a perfect plan to you? Oh and by the way that doesn't only apply to the murderer it also applies to the guy convicted of jaywalking. And if this does make sense to you keep one more thing in mind. Jesus didn't take on the actual sentence doled out to sinners. The sentence (according to Christianity) isn't simply death or death and three days in burning, it's eternal death and eternal burning. So even if we were to accept the idea that it is moral and just to use the innocent as a scapegoat for the guilty, that isn't even what happened with crucifixion and resurrection.


This entire post tells me that you really don't understand what Jesus actually did and why He did it. I don't mean to knock you, you make some good points that are, at times, hard to argue, but your understanding of the cross, resurrection and assention and why it happened is lacking IMO. 

The Judge in the case you gave above has ZERO authority to make a judgement call like the one you asserted.

As far a Jesus not being doled out the same punishment as sinners after taking on the sins of the world I would say that He abolished those sins through the sacrifice. A perfect and Holy sacrifice to the Lord, He carried those sins, but did not keep them.



> At some point you have to say the whole thing is a load of bull.


No I don't I know you are but what am I?


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Imagine you prayed to God and promised to go to church every Sunday for the rest of your life if God would reveal to you the winning lottery numbers. He reveals them to you and you win the lottery. Would you say that God hadn't confirmed your vow? Would you say he had nothing to do with the vow?



I wouldn't make such a vow, or believe such a result. Much like Jeptha, that would just be dumb.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> I would 100% agree with JB0704 in post #53. God fulfilled His part of the deal because that is what God does, Jephthah made a seperate deal with God that God never accepted.



It doesn't say God never accepted it. Neither of you have answered my questions. Did God know what the outcome would be before he fulfilled his part of the deal and if he didn't agree to that outcome then why did he fulfill his part? He didn't have to. He chose to. Why? You say it's because that is what God does. The bible is full of examples of God keeping his end of a bargain only when people keep their end. How many times on this forum have we been told that God doesn't answer every prayer? Just because you ask something and make a bargain with him doesn't commit him to granting your wish, right? Yet he fulfilled Jephthah's wish in light of the promise with the foreknowledge of the outcome. The bible is also full of God rebuking people for all manner of petty misdeeds. Yet he doesn't do it in this case. So it's quite a stretch to say he didn't agree to the deal. His actions say that he did agree.


Let me offer another analogy. You tell me that if I give you my handgun you are going to kill someone. I know with 100% certainty that you will do this. I say nothing and hand you the gun and then you go commit the murder while I watch you do it with arms folded. Did I have any part in the murder?


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> I wouldn't make such a vow, or believe such a result. Much like Jeptha, that would just be dumb.



That wasn't the question. But you know that don't you?


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> That wasn't the question. But you know that don't you?



Yep


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Did God know what the outcome would be before he fulfilled his part of the deal and if he didn't agree to that outcome then why did he fulfill his part?



Flawed premise.  God had no end of the deal.  Jeptha was an idiot (IMHO)for making such a vow.




atlashunter said:


> He didn't have to. He chose to. Why? You say it's because that is what God does. The bible is full of examples of God keeping his end of a bargain only when people keep their end. How many times on this forum have we been told that God doesn't answer every prayer? Just because you ask something and make a bargain with him doesn't commit him to granting your wish, right? Yet he fulfilled Jephthah's wish in light of the promise with the foreknowledge of the outcome. The bible is also full of God rebuking people for all manner of petty misdeeds. Yet he doesn't do it in this case. So it's quite a stretch to say he didn't agree to the deal. His actions say that he did agree.



Well, if you believe the future is knowable......then we get into all sorts of good debate, and I will end up arguing more with the Christians than you.




atlashunter said:


> Let me offer another analogy. You tell me that if I give you my handgun you are going to kill someone. I know with 100% certainty that you will do this. I say nothing and hand you the gun and then you go commit the murder while I watch you do it with arms folded. Did I have any part in the murder?



Did God really deliver the enemy because of Jeptha's vow?  Is that what it says?  One could also argue, if Job is taken literally, that Satan delivered them because he wanted Jeptha's daughter dead.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> It doesn't say God never accepted it.


It doesn't say that He did either.



> Did God know what the outcome would be before he fulfilled his part of the deal


Yes


> and if he didn't agree to that outcome then why did he fulfill his part?


He fulfilled His part because He doesn't lie, Jephthah stupid vow was not part of the deal. I am going to go back to free will with Jephthah , he chose to make the vow, which had nothing to do with God, and he chose to carry out that vow...... on his own.



> He didn't have to. He chose to. Why? You say it's because that is what God does. The bible is full of examples of God keeping his end of a bargain only when people keep their end. How many times on this forum have we been told that God doesn't answer every prayer?* Just because you ask something and make a bargain with him doesn't commit him to granting your wish, right? *Yet he fulfilled Jephthah's wish in light of the promise with the foreknowledge of the outcome. The bible is also full of God rebuking people for all manner of petty misdeeds. Yet he doesn't do it in this case. So it's quite a stretch to say he didn't agree to the deal. His actions say that he did agree.


God does not bound Himself to making the same decision everytime in every situation.



> Let me offer another analogy. You tell me that if I give you my handgun you are going to kill someone. I know with 100% certainty that you will do this. I say nothing and hand you the gun and then you go commit the murder while I watch you do it with arms folded. Did I have any part in the murder?



Did the guy that sold you the gun have a part in the murder? He knew with 100% certianty that the gun could kill someone.


----------



## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> Crucifixion was the choice of death by the Romans. It was also the way the Jewish leaders wanted Him killed.



Again you miss the point. Then as now, one could die many different ways. He could have been stabbed or hung or slipped on a banana peel, all less gruesome than crucifixion and according to you the outcome would have been the same. So the question remains why did he have to be killed in such a horrific manner and why do Christians make such a big deal of the manner in which he was killed if it holds no relevance? Could it be that the guilt factor is greater to say "this man was tortured and nailed to a cross for you!" than to say "this man tripped and hit his head on a rock for you!"?




stringmusic said:


> This entire post tells me that you really don't understand what Jesus actually did and why He did it. I don't mean to knock you, you make some good points that are, at times, hard to argue, but your understanding of the cross, resurrection and assention and why it happened is lacking IMO.



I understand it. I just don't agree with the principle behind it. Personal responsibility... Proportionality of punishment to crime... These principles stand in direct odds with the underlying foundations of christianity.




stringmusic said:


> The Judge in the case you gave above has ZERO authority to make a judgement call like the one you asserted.



Is that your only objection? It's not the judgment that is hosed but just a question of the judges authority?




stringmusic said:


> As far a Jesus not being doled out the same punishment as sinners after taking on the sins of the world I would say that He abolished those sins through the sacrifice. A perfect and Holy sacrifice to the Lord, He carried those sins, but did not keep them.



But aren't we told that he paid the price for our sins? Isn't that the whole idea of blood sacrifice? If he didn't pay the price for sin but abolished sin then how can there still be sin?


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> Flawed premise.  God had no end of the deal.  Jeptha was an idiot (IMHO)for making such a vow.



Not true. Look if God had said to Jephthah, "I'll have no part in this." and simply turned and walked away and Jephthah managed to defeat his enemies without God's help then you could say God had no end in the deal. According to the story God didn't do that. God did absolutely nothing to reject the offer and intervened on Jephthah's behalf knowing that it would result in a human sacrifice.

Again going back to my analogy, if he revealed to you the winning lottery numbers you would consider him having taken you up on your offer and obligated to fulfill your end of the bargain.




JB0704 said:


> Did God really deliver the enemy because of Jeptha's vow?  Is that what it says?  One could also argue, if Job is taken literally, that Satan delivered them because he wanted Jeptha's daughter dead.



Yeah you can argue that but you'll be arguing against your own scripture. It explicitly states that God gave him victory, not Satan.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Again you miss the point. Then as now, one could die many different ways. He could have been stabbed or hung or slipped on a banana peel, all less gruesome than crucifixion and according to you the outcome would have been the same. So the question remains why did he have to be killed in such a horrific manner and why do Christians make such a big deal of the manner in which he was killed if it holds no relevance? Could it be that the guilt factor is greater to say "this man was tortured and nailed to a cross for you!" than to say "this man tripped and hit his head on a rock for you!"?


And I am still missing the point. The way He died was according to OT scripture.




> Is that your only objection? It's not the judgment that is hosed but just a question of the judges authority?


No, but I can't type out everything that I can think of in every post. There is to much too talk about, maybe I can get me one of them contraptions that lets me talk and the words come up on the screen. ...... oh, and I am also at work if anyone can believe that.






> But aren't we told that he paid the price for our sins? Isn't that the whole idea of blood sacrifice? If he didn't pay the price for sin but abolished sin then how can there still be sin?


He abolished the sin that He took on at the time and payed the price of our sins, which we could not do ourselves, through the sacrifice so that there is a way out of that sin in the future.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> It doesn't say that He did either.



No but it is implied by God giving him victory. I offer you the same lottery analogy.




stringmusic said:


> Yes



Then that eliminates the possibility that he made the choice to grant Jephthah victory without knowing it would mean a human sacrifice to him. Doesn't it strike you as a little odd that a deity that is concerned about whether or not people eat shellfish or how they conduct a census would be opposed to human sacrifice yet grant a request with a human sacrifice being offered in return and do nothing and say nothing to stop it? Does that really make sense to you? Be honest.




stringmusic said:


> He fulfilled His part because He doesn't lie, Jephthah stupid vow was not part of the deal. I am going to go back to free will with Jephthah , he chose to make the vow, which had nothing to do with God, and he chose to carry out that vow...... on his own.



How would he have been lying by not granting Jephthah victory?




stringmusic said:


> God does not bound Himself to making the same decision everytime in every situation.



Exactly. He wasn't bound to fulfill the request. He chose to. And he chose to with full understanding that fulfilling it would result in a human sacrifice being made to him. So why did he make that choice if he objected to the human sacrifice? And where is the indication in this story that he objected? There is NONE.




stringmusic said:


> Did the guy that sold you the gun have a part in the murder? He knew with 100% certianty that the gun could kill someone.



If I told the guy that I was going to kill someone with it and he was omniscient and knew with 100% certainty not only that I could but that I would do what I said, then yes he is also culpable.


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## BANDERSNATCH (Sep 15, 2011)

I have a daughter....    That would suck.    My vow would have never included people.....personally.   it may have included the "whatever walks through the door" but never a "whoever".

I would have not let her walk out, too!   I'd have sent someone ahead of me and told them, "No one come outside when I arrive!!!"


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> And I am still missing the point. The way He died was according to OT scripture.



That still doesn't answer the question of why such a gruesome killing if it held no relevance to the final outcome.





stringmusic said:


> He abolished the sin that He took on at the time and payed the price of our sins, which we could not do ourselves, through the sacrifice so that there is a way out of that sin in the future.



Thank you! This takes us right back to what I originally said. You say he paid the price. What is that price? Eternal death and eternal torment in the hot place. That is supposedly the price if someone dies a heathen non-believer right? Leaving aside all the problems with that assertion, is that the price he paid? No.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Then that eliminates the possibility that he made the choice to grant Jephthah victory without knowing it would mean a human sacrifice to him. Doesn't it strike you as a little odd that a deity that is concerned about whether or not people eat shellfish or how they conduct a census would be opposed to human sacrifice yet grant a request with a human sacrifice being offered in return and do nothing and say nothing to stop it? Does that really make sense to you? Be honest.



God is not concerned about people eating shellfish, those were laws given to a certian people in a certian time period for good reasons.

Again God did not accept the sacrifice, Jephthah made it on his own. 



> How would he have been lying by not granting Jephthah victory?


Gods part of the plan was to grant Jephthah victory, not accept Jephthahs sacrifice. If God would have not granted the victory, He would have lied to Jephthah.






> And where is the indication in this story that he objected? There is NONE.


If God would have accepted Jephthahs vow, it would probably been somewhere in the story IMO.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

BANDERSNATCH said:


> I have a daughter....    That would suck.    My vow would have never included people.....personally.   it may have included the "whatever walks through the door" but never a "whoever".
> 
> I would have not let her walk out, too!   I'd have sent someone ahead of me and told them, "No one come outside when I arrive!!!"



If someone made such a vow to you what would be the moral thing to do?


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Not true. Look if God had said to Jephthah, "I'll have no part in this." and simply turned and walked away and Jephthah managed to defeat his enemies without God's help then you could say God had no end in the deal. According to the story God didn't do that. God did absolutely nothing to reject the offer and intervened on Jephthah's behalf knowing that it would result in a human sacrifice.



That doesn't mean the Lord had anything to do with the vow.  That is on Jeptha's hands.  Who knows the reason why the enemy was delivered.  Jeptha may have offerred to assault a chicken, or do a rain dance, or anything else.  It does not mean God is "in" on the deal.



atlashunter said:


> Again going back to my analogy, if he revealed to you the winning lottery numbers you would consider him having taken you up on your offer and obligated to fulfill your end of the bargain.



Short of a talking donkey standing beside a burning bush, I would not believe God had revealed the winning numbers.  But, if it was a talking donkey beside a burning bush telling me the winning numbers, that still doesn't imply it was because of my offer.  The story gives no evidence that the enemy is delivered because of the offer, it does not give the reason for the victory.






atlashunter said:


> Yeah you can argue that but you'll be arguing against your own scripture. It explicitly states that God gave him victory, not Satan.



You are correct, but it doesn't say how or why.  There could have been all kinds of circumstances not related, which is why I threw that one out there, the least plausible.


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## stringmusic (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> That still doesn't answer the question of why such a gruesome killing if it held no relevance to the final outcome.


You would have to ask the Romans and Jews this question. Or you could ask God.




Headed to lunch, catch up with ya'll in about a hour, and I will try my hand at your other question.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> God is not concerned about people eating shellfish, those were laws given to a certian people in a certian time period for good reasons.
> 
> Again God did not accept the sacrifice, Jephthah made it on his own.



Well it concerned him enough to make a rule about it. But if you don't like that one how about working on a certain day of the week?

His actions and lack of intervention to save Jephthah's daughter indicate otherwise.




stringmusic said:


> Gods part of the plan was to grant Jephthah victory, not accept Jephthahs sacrifice. If God would have not granted the victory, He would have lied to Jephthah.



1. Where does it say God promised Jephthah victory in this battle?

2. God already prior to this had a history of not fulfilling promises he had made when people showed themselves unworthy of the promises he made.




stringmusic said:


> If God would have accepted Jephthahs vow, it would probably been somewhere in the story IMO.



It's right here:

32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands. 33 He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon. 


Here is another question for you. If Jephthah was a man of God and if God objected to his making a human sacrifice why didn't he know that? Was it just not important enough to God to let him know?

And how in the world could you possibly think God would object to a follower making a blood sacrifice of their child when you believe that God did that very thing with his own son?


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> That doesn't mean the Lord had anything to do with the vow.  That is on Jeptha's hands.  Who knows the reason why the enemy was delivered.  Jeptha may have offerred to assault a chicken, or do a rain dance, or anything else.  It does not mean God is "in" on the deal.



Let me try another analogy with you. Suppose you have an employee that you intend to give a promotion but they don't know it. They come to you pleading for the promotion and promise to slaughter their child for you if you will give them the promotion. You say "Congrats! You got the promotion!". They go home and kill the kid. Do you really think your defense in court will hold up that you never agreed to the deal and were already planning to promote them?

Again, BE HONEST. I know it's challenging but give it a try.




JB0704 said:


> Short of a talking donkey standing beside a burning bush, I would not believe God had revealed the winning numbers.  But, if it was a talking donkey beside a burning bush telling me the winning numbers, that still doesn't imply it was because of my offer.  The story gives no evidence that the enemy is delivered because of the offer, it does not give the reason for the victory.



Sure. And the talking donkey didn't tell you he was giving you these numbers in response to your prayer. It's just a coincidence that he showed up after you made your prayer and it's just a coincidence that the scriptures where Jephthah makes his vow is immediately followed by God granting his request.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> You would have to ask the Romans and Jews this question. Or you could ask God.



I'm asking you why Christians make such a big deal over the manner in which Jesus died if it holds no relevance.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

This is what drives me nuts about religious people. Their absolute refusal to take an honest look at their scriptures. I don't think even when I was a Christian that I would have bent and twisted so hard to deny what was staring me square in the face. That's probably why I'm not one anymore.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> how about working on a certain day of the week?



eh, Jesus didn't like that one either....



atlashunter said:


> and the LORD gave them into his hands.



....but, why?


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> This is what drives me nuts about religious people. Their absolute refusal to take an honest look at their scriptures. I don't think even when I was a Christian that I would have bent and twisted so hard to deny what was staring me square in the face. That's probably why I'm not one anymore.



You have yet to point out where the victory was a result of the sacrifice.  Not sure who is refusing to look at what here.  I just don't come to the same conclusion that you do when I read that story.  

I think it is more of a tale of one man's idiocy, than of God's supremacy.  No bending or twisting here.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Again, BE HONEST. I know it's challenging but give it a try.



Lets try to avoid insulting one another.  I have never been dishonest in any discussion with you.






atlashunter said:


> Let me try another analogy with you. Suppose you have an employee that you intend to give a promotion but they don't know it. They come to you pleading for the promotion and promise to slaughter their child for you if you will give them the promotion. You say "Congrats! You got the promotion!". They go home and kill the kid. Do you really think your defense in court will hold up that you never agreed to the deal and were already planning to promote them?



Ok, sure, but are you really comparing apples to apples here.  This context assumes the universe revolves around Jeptha.  There were probably folks on the other side pleading to God for victory as well.




atlashunter said:


> Sure. And the talking donkey didn't tell you he was giving you these numbers in response to your prayer. It's just a coincidence that he showed up after you made your prayer and it's just a coincidence that the scriptures where Jephthah makes his vow is immediately followed by God granting his request.



Refer to above quote, this assumes the universe is all about me.  What if God wanted me to have the numbers so I would buy a fishing boat ffrom a man who desperately needed the money to save his house and feed his kids?


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## TripleXBullies (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> Lets try to avoid insulting one another.  I have never been dishonest in any discussion with you.



I think it has more to do with being honest to yourself. REALLY put yourself in the situation.. in your head.


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## TripleXBullies (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> It's right here:
> 
> 32 Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the LORD gave them into his hands. 33 He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.
> 
> ...




What I see here is that he asked for it with a vow. God gave it to him. That INFERS that it was because of the vow. For that not to seem apparent it would have to be explicitly stated.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> ....but, why?



Why did you promote that employee after he promised to kill his child if you would promote him? Of course in the hypothetical we know that you had other reasons but you are still culpable by granting the request and doing nothing to stop the murder. In the case of Jephthah we have God granting the request after it is made with no indication that he had any other reason for doing so. Could he have? Sure. Then again he may not have. There is no reason given to think he had any other motive and the fact that he showed no concern and took no action to spare the daughter from this act indicates that he was at best indifferent and at worst complicit.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

TripleXBullies said:


> What I see here is that he asked for it with a vow. God gave it to him. That INFERS that it was because of the vow. For that not to seem apparent it would have to be explicitly stated.



3xb, this is also the problem with religion.  People "infer" things which are not "black and white" to derive a message which they then claim is "from God."  Have a look through the SD&S and you will see a lot of this.

I try to avoid inferring anything.  I know this book was not written for me alone, or just my culture.  It has many applications which can come from many angles.  This is why I think the story is more of a warning to folks who make stupid vows, than a "God granted him his wish" kind-of thing.  I am not ducking or dodging anything, I am just stating what I see.

Also, I am not typically on the side of the religious, so my perspectives are not going to line up with what is traditionally taught.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Why did you promote that employee after he promised to kill his child if you would promote him? Of course in the hypothetical we know that you had other reasons but you are still culpable by granting the request and doing nothing to stop the murder. In the case of Jephthah we have God granting the request after it is made with no indication that he had any other reason for doing so. Could he have? Sure. Then again he may not have. There is no reason given to think he had any other motive and the fact that he showed no concern and took no action to spare the daughter from this act indicates that he was at best indifferent and at worst complicit.



In your scenario, I would be guilty, and if this is the case with Jeptha, so is God.  I just don't think we are seeing the same thing.

Look at it from a different angle, you could also argue that by giving him victory he failed to save the enemy who are also "God's children." So God failed to save a whole army to spare one girl?  Instead God killed both? There are 1,000,000 ways of looking at things.  

I don't see the hand of God at play in the story like you do.  Otherwise, it would be as it always should have been.  I think it is a tale of a guy who was so desperate he made a stupid vow, then, unforgiveably, kept it.  Who knows what hand God played and why, we do know that there was a lot more at play than just one man and his daughter.


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## TripleXBullies (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> 3xb, this is also the problem with religion.  People "infer" things which are not "black and white" to derive a message which they then claim is "from God."  Have a look through the SD&S and you will see a lot of this.
> 
> I try to avoid inferring anything.  I know this book was not written for me alone, or just my culture.  It has many applications which can come from many angles.  This is why I think the story is more of a warning to folks who make stupid vows, than a "God granted him his wish" kind-of thing.  I am not ducking or dodging anything, I am just stating what I see.
> 
> Also, I am not typically on the side of the religious, so my perspectives are not going to line up with what is traditionally taught.



This is very true. As I see one inference, I've been preached many other inferences that seem much less likely or obvious to me.


----------



## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> Lets try to avoid insulting one another.  I have never been dishonest in any discussion with you.



Poor choice of words. How about intellectual honesty? The only reason you are trying to avoid the obvious is because you don't like what it implies about your god. In no other comparable scenario would you be so restrained in connecting the dots and you know it. That is why you initially avoided answering the lottery analogy question.




JB0704 said:


> Ok, sure, but are you really comparing apples to apples here.  This context assumes the universe revolves around Jeptha.  There were probably folks on the other side pleading to God for victory as well.



So what if there were? I'm not assuming the universe revolves around your employee or anyone else. Throw in other employees begging for a promotion if you want. That does nothing to change your culpability in the scenario.


----------



## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> In your scenario, I would be guilty, and if this is the case with Jeptha, so is God.  I just don't think we are seeing the same thing.
> 
> Look at it from a different angle, you could also argue that by giving him victory he failed to save the enemy who are also "God's children." So God failed to save a whole army to spare one girl?  Instead God killed both? There are 1,000,000 ways of looking at things.
> 
> I don't see the hand of God at play in the story like you do.  Otherwise, it would be as it always should have been.  I think it is a tale of a guy who was so desperate he made a stupid vow, then, unforgiveably, kept it.  Who knows what hand God played and why, we do know that there was a lot more at play than just one man and his daughter.



Was God restricted to a choice between giving victory and accepting a human sacrifice or not giving victory to spare the girl? If not then what is your point? Yes there are many ways of looking at this and likewise many choices that God could have made. He chose to grant Jephthah victory after he made his vow and he chose to do nothing to spare his daughter.

The question I asked several posts back about why a man of God like Jephthah would think it acceptable to God to sacrifice his daughter remains unanswered. He knew not to eat shellfish and not to do any work on the sabbath. Yet God never told him not to kill his daughter. Kind of incriminating don't you think?


----------



## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Poor choice of words. How about intellectual honesty? The only reason you are trying to avoid the obvious is because you don't like what it implies about your god. In no other comparable scenario would you be so restrained in connecting the dots and you know it. That is why you initially avoided answering the lottery analogy question.



You assume much here Atlas.  Read some of the debates I have with "Christians" before you determine my perspective.

I am avoiding your obvious. Or, should I be a little more clear......

I am not convinced this is a story "from God."  It could be a biased historical narrative about a battle, where everything was in the context of "God of the Jews against the world," where God is given a role he did not necessarily play.  "God delivered them," might have been the author's way of saying "he won," much like modern Christians always say "God willing," and as such giving the credit for all that is good to God.

Just like Job, I believe the moral of the story could be very different than what is percieved when we look at it in a black and white context.  

Just because you see something, doesn't mean it is "plain as day."

Could you now at least admit that the moral of the story could possibly be "don't make stupid vows."  And not "Jeptha was good for keeping his vow," as you see it....


----------



## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Yet God never told him not to kill his daughter. Kind of incriminating don't you think?



It's one of the 10 commandments.  Much like the vow, it says more about Jeptha's character than God's.


----------



## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> He chose to grant Jephthah victory after he made his vow and he chose to do nothing to spare his daughter.



And he did nothing to spare the enemy, or the 20 towns, or everybody who has ever died, etc. etc.

The victory is not necessarily tied to the vow.  Who knows why Jeptha won?  I recognize that you see it that way because it incriminates God.


----------



## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> Could you now at least admit that the moral of the story could possibly be "don't make stupid vows."  And not "Jeptha was good for keeping his vow," as you see it....



You could draw any number of lessons from the stories of the bible. Whether or not that was the intended lesson of the original author we don't know. What we do know is what the story says and what it says doesn't paint God in a very good light, intended or not.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> It's one of the 10 commandments.  Much like the vow, it says more about Jeptha's character than God's.



Which commandment? You aren't suggesting that the commandment not to kill was absolute and all inclusive are you?


----------



## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> And he did nothing to spare the enemy, or the 20 towns, or everybody who has ever died, etc. etc.
> 
> The victory is not necessarily tied to the vow.  Who knows why Jeptha won?  I recognize that you see it that way because it incriminates God.



The scripture says Jephthah won because God gave him the victory.

Now lets go back to the employee analogy. Maybe your reason for giving the promotion was good performance and had nothing to do with the employee's promise. If you give that promotion after being made the promise you know that you have given the employee the impression that you fulfilled the employees request and thereby obligated them to keep their oath. That was clearly Jephthah's understanding. If you give them that understanding, knowing the outcome, and do nothing to stop it, then you've got blood on your hands. At that point it no longer matters what your original reason for the promotion may have been.


----------



## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Which commandment? You aren't suggesting that the commandment not to kill was absolute and all inclusive are you?



From my perspective, I believe the commandment was in reference to murder.  Which is what Jeptha committed when he killed his daughter.  All inclusive or not, he broke it.

I don't necessarily believe war is murder, so I don't see it as all inclusive.


----------



## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> The scripture says Jephthah won because God gave him the victory.
> 
> Now lets go back to the employee analogy. Maybe your reason for giving the promotion was good performance and had nothing to do with the employee's promise. If you give that promotion after being made the promise you know that you have given the employee the impression that you fulfilled the employees request and thereby obligated them to keep their oath. That was clearly Jephthah's understanding. If you give them that understanding, knowing the outcome, and do nothing to stop it, then you've got blood on your hands. At that point it no longer matters what your original reason for the promotion may have been.



Again, in this scenario, I absolutely agree.  

But, I don't think a man is capable of tieing God's hands with a vow. For instance, I cannot say I will burn down my house if I survive my evening commute, then blame God when I get home safely and burn down my house.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> From my perspective, I believe the commandment was in reference to murder.  Which is what Jeptha committed when he killed his daughter.  All inclusive or not, he broke it.
> 
> I don't necessarily believe war is murder, so I don't see it as all inclusive.



Jephthah didn't see a sacrifice to God as murder and neither did his daughter.


----------



## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Jephthah didn't see a sacrifice to God as murder and neither did his daughter.



I would see that as his and her stupidity.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> Again, in this scenario, I absolutely agree.
> 
> But, I don't think a man is capable of tieing God's hands with a vow. For instance, I cannot say I will burn down my house if I survive my evening commute, then blame God when I get home safely and burn down my house.



Well that scenario I think pretty well described the Jephthah story. Let's flip it around and make it a ransom. Jephthah tells God grant me my wish or I'll murder my daughter. That is more akin to your scenario. I agree that refusing to submit to an ultimatum doesn't make one guilty of the outcome. But when someone's life is on the line don't you think there is at least a moral obligation to let the murderer know you disapprove if that is all it would take to spare the life? It's one thing to sit back with folded arms and do nothing while someone does something stupid. Being aware and able to stop an evil act at no cost or danger to one's self and doing nothing I think is at a minimum morally questionable. The difference I see in this story is that God actually took a positive action that set the wheels in motion with the fore knowledge of what would happen and did absolutely nothing to prevent the evil act from being done for him. And keep in mind this is an act that he commanded of Abraham AND ENGAGED IN HIMSELF. In that context it's pretty tough to say this is an activity he disapproved of and had no part in.


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## atlashunter (Sep 15, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> I would see that as his and her stupidity.



So would I. I see a lot of things people do in the name of appeasing a deity as stupid.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> Well that scenario I think pretty well described the Jephthah story. Let's flip it around and make it a ransom. Jephthah tells God grant me my wish or I'll murder my daughter. That is more akin to your scenario. I agree that refusing to submit to an ultimatum doesn't make one guilty of the outcome. But when someone's life is on the line don't you think there is at least a moral obligation to let the murderer know you disapprove if that is all it would take to spare the life? It's one thing to sit back with folded arms and do nothing while someone does something stupid. Being aware and able to stop an evil act at no cost or danger to one's self I think is at a minimum morally questionable. The difference I see in this story is that God actually took a positive action that set the wheels in motion with the fore knowledge of what would happen and did absolutely nothing to prevent the evil act from being done for him. And keep in mind this is an act that he commanded of Abraham AND ENGAGED IN HIMSELF. In that context it's pretty tough to say this is an activity he disapproved of and had no part in.



Let's leave Abraham for another day.  That is a story I have not quite wrapped my head around yet.

There is a whole lot of stuff in the NT about peace, love, unity, etc. and a call to end sacrifice.  If Jesus was God, then God is all about compassion and grace. So, to believe like I do, you have to assume that Jesus is a more accurate picture of God's nature than what can be determined from the OT.  That is just me though.  Maybe some of the "real Christians" on here will give you a better debate.

Also, I don't believe God micro manages the universe.  That changes my whole perspective on the Jeptha story.


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## JB0704 (Sep 15, 2011)

atlashunter said:


> So would I. I see a lot of things people do in the name of appeasing a deity as stupid.



We can agree on that.


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## Asath (Oct 16, 2011)

But we stray from the ‘all knowing God’ portion of the OP, and keep going back to the Bible as the source of itself.  Yet that is hardly the case.  Believers can pretend, variously, that the book on their shelf (that they have never actually read) is either the actual, literal word of their God, or the ‘inspired’ words of men that were dictated by their God – but making the case that even a tiny bit of this is actually true is fully impossible.

Oddly enough, belief itself has far outrun what the book actually says, and one would have to think that is simply compensating for the failures, because it would be cynical to think that our religious leaders are capable of bold-faced lies.  For example:

Nearly every ‘Christian’ will stand and profess their belief in the ‘Blessed Trinity.’  But no such notion is mentioned even once in all of the ‘New Testament.’  And it wasn’t until the second century that the term ‘trinitas’ was even contrived, and that term was coined by the theologian Tertullian of Africa – the same Tertullian (Tertullianus) who bestowed the name ‘Novum Testamentum’ upon the few emerging ‘scriptures.’  And it was, again, more than two hundred years after the death of this ‘Christ’ before the emerging Church fully formulated and decreed the concept of a ‘Trinity,’ at the first Council of Nicea.  Most concepts of a ‘Trinity’ can be traced to a subsequent work of another African, the very eloquent Numidian intellectual Augustine’s ‘De Trinitate.’  

One would think that an ‘all-knowing God,’ whether speaking directly and literally, or indirectly through certain, hand-picked humans who were thus ‘inspired’, wouldn’t have left such a vital part of the current dogma of Christian Belief out of His most important Book.  But He did.  Apparently the whole ‘Blessed Trinity’ thing was left for a couple of African fellas to figure out a couple of hundred years later.  

Nor, to start at the very beginning of the lies of the monotheistic religions, does the very third word of this Bible support a single subsequent translation or manifestation.  In the Hebrew language, the masculine plural is distinguished from the masculine singular by the extension ‘-im,’ the letters yod, mem soffit.  So, in the original, the third word in Genesis is not ‘God.’  It is ‘Gods.’ This is not a mistake, since it is repeated thirty-three times in the first chapter of Genesis alone.  This has always been translated, from the earliest Vulgate, in the singular.  There is a reason for that.  But not every translator caught on to the trick, so we get stuff like this from the Adam and Eve story – ‘Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil.”  As one of us.  

The all-knowing, unerring God can’t even ‘inspire’ three Gospel writers, dozens to hundreds of years after the event, to agree on the crucifixion story and the last words of the Christ.  One says, “Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit.”  Another says, “ –(consummatum est) – it is finished.”  This sort of thing doesn’t inspire trust.

An ‘all-knowing’ God is not only an impossibility on every level, but the ‘Book’ that was purportedly offered as evidence of such a being falls far short of the mark, as the debate over just this one story reveals.  It doesn’t even say, or even imply much of what modern-day believers harangue the rest of us with, which tends to reveal their own agenda more than they feel comfortable with . . .


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## JB0704 (Oct 17, 2011)

Asath said:


> Nearly every ‘Christian’ will stand and profess their belief in the ‘Blessed Trinity.’ .



Your entire statement is based on this premise, so.....




Asath said:


> we get stuff like this from the Adam and Eve story – ‘Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil.”  As one of us. .



.....makes more sense when taken into consideration.  However. I do not take Genesis literally, just thought I would point out the most apparent flaw in your well articulated case.

It is impossible to accept the Bible, literally, figuratively, or otherwise unless you accept the premise (God).


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## centerpin fan (Oct 17, 2011)

Asath said:


> But we stray from the ‘all knowing God’ portion of the OP, and keep going back to the Bible as the source of itself.  Yet that is hardly the case.  Believers can pretend, variously, that the book on their shelf (that they have never actually read) is either the actual, literal word of their God, or the ‘inspired’ words of men that were dictated by their God – but making the case that even a tiny bit of this is actually true is fully impossible.
> 
> Oddly enough, belief itself has far outrun what the book actually says, and one would have to think that is simply compensating for the failures, because it would be cynical to think that our religious leaders are capable of bold-faced lies.  For example:
> 
> ...




Regarding the Trinity, the Bible is not a textbook on systematic theology.  It is the record of God and His dealings with humanity.  The word “trinity” is not in the Bible, but the concept of God existing in three Divine Persons is.  When St. Athanasius defended the Trinity at Nicea, he quoted scripture (as did Arius), but he also appealed to the ancient hymns and liturgies of the church to demonstrate what the church had always believed.

As for the Bible itself, I just don’t think you guys get this:  Christianity was not founded on a book.  _Islam_ was founded on a book.  Christianity was founded on _Christ_.  Yes, He is the star of that book, but a vibrant, growing church existed decades before the first word of the New Testament was written.


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## Huntinfool (Oct 17, 2011)

The best objection to "trinity" is that the actual word is not in the text?  That's it?  Best you've got on that one, huh?

The three parts of the trinity are most assuredly mentioned and the relationship between them clarified repeatedly.  The trinity is in there.  The word "trinity" is not.  You are correct....congratulations.


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## BANDERSNATCH (Oct 17, 2011)

the word 'rapture' isn't there, either, but the event is described.    

semantics.


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## Asath (Oct 19, 2011)

Oddly enough, it really doesn’t say anything about a rapture, at least as is commonly bandied about, so add that one to the list of ‘all-knowing’ omissions.  Another glaring omission (and you have to love this one) is that not once in all of the OT and NT is religion mentioned.  Not once, from Genesis to Revelation.

     And no, there is no concept of trinity except as an extension of rationalized interpretations, as valid as saying that by using Elohim in Genesis rather than Eloi, the authors were thus referring to such a tripartite being.  It is sort of a stretch of the imagination.

     But what of this all-knowing God we started out with?  Setting aside the fact that the Jesus of the story was a Jewish Rabbi, and thus well-schooled in the OT, it is also a fact that a number of Buddhist missionaries were active in the area during his ‘ministry,’ and that a number of the ‘teachings’ of this Rabbi bear remarkable resemblance to Buddhist thought.  And, as many here have commented concerning their personal convictions, a large part of the message was that the true spirit was to be found within.  Ex nihilo et ad nihilo – out of nothing and to nothing.

     The Bible speaks only of salvation and the opposite, but in that statement lies the truth – out of nothing and to nothing – and this truth has been scraped from the ‘Scripture’ by the worldly ‘Church’ for a single, self-serving reason:  if the one true Church is within, then there is no need for a Church outside of ourselves, except to serve those who have made an industry out of it. (The Bible IS fairly filled with admonitions to pay-up to the various ‘leaders,’ which refreshingly hasn’t changed a bit.)

     Going further, if the proposed God is actually within all of us, as many maintain, then what need do we have of any ‘God’ that is outside of us?  Is the God within me sufficient, or do I need yours as well?  And if the God that is within all of us is all the same God, then what the heck is anyone arguing about?  Except, of course, that when you follow the arguments out this far, the absurdity of all of the arguments in favor of a God are revealed, and folks hate to admit that they’ve been hoodwinked for most of their lives.

     Even further, when one sets out to oppose belief systems with each other, championing one while condemning another, it takes but a moment to realize that the ‘belief’ or ‘religion’ that one holds is little more than a birthmark, signifying only the time and place of one’s birth.  Had you been born in a different country, or in a different era (hello, reincarnationists), your religion would be radically different than it is. 

     An ‘all-knowing’ being would be far ahead of these apparent holes in the various arguments, and would already have provided a satisfactory answer.  But there isn’t one.

     The whole mess of monotheistic religion, all three branches (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), trace their origins to the proposed and assumed God of Abraham, and all have their roots in the same five early books of this Bible.  Look at what has happened from there . . .

     All-Knowing?  Be serious. The translator as self-serving traitor, is all we see in reality, and the sacrifices of the many to serve the interest of the few, no different than any dictatorial system, based entirely on lies, treason, illusions, and misknowings.  God, unfortunately, is now and has always been a synonym for mammon, wherein you are exhorted from the Beginning to render that which is worshipped (your goods and freedom) unto those who covet that expression of your devotion (the religious leaders) upon the threat of peril to your temporal and potentially extemporal life.  So, not quite all-knowing, but one heck of a good trick . . .


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## centerpin fan (Oct 19, 2011)

Asath said:


> Believers can pretend, variously, that the book on their shelf (that they have never actually read) ...



Have you ever read the Bible?  The more you post, the more I doubt it.  Take this, for example:




Asath said:


> Another glaring omission (and you have to love this one) is that not once in all of the OT and NT is religion mentioned.  Not once, from Genesis to Revelation.



Just off the top of my head, I thought of James 1:26-27:


_If anyone among you think he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless.  Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this:  to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world._


... and twenty seconds in the concordance turned up this passage:


_These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh._

-- Col. 2:23


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## Asath (Oct 20, 2011)

Guess it depends on your Bible . . . I get something entirely different in Col. 2:23 even in the KJV, and only get those words from James in the KJV and in none of the other versions on my personal bookshelf . . .

Perhaps you see the dilemma.  How can there be more than one version if not to please more than one master?  In the Vulgate, which is as close as one will ever get to Constantine's forcible revision, before everyone subsequent began monkeying with that already corrupted text, there is no mention of the word.  But if someone added it to their own version, then I guess THAT version is now the one True Word of the all-knowing God . . .

So it isn't merely a matter of reading the Bible anymore, now is it?  It is a matter of just whose version of the Bible you are reading.  And that fact, unfortunately, makes the case.


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## Asath (Oct 20, 2011)

I kept digging through the bookshelf, and I finally found both the James and Colossians cites you made together in one version: the Gideons.

But I guess that still illustrates the overall point.  How can there be an 'all-knowing' being who left you folks with so many conflicting versions of the knowledge you all claim to hold?


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## JB0704 (Oct 21, 2011)

Asath said:


> But I guess that still illustrates the overall point.  How can there be an 'all-knowing' being who left you folks with so many conflicting versions of the knowledge you all claim to hold?



Eh, he left it with men.  Between scribes adding stuff to match their perspective, and multiple translations by folks who believe differently, which will naturally cause translation to read a specific way, you are going to have a little confusion.

Look at the big picture, don't get bogged down in the little stuff.  It makes sense, but like I always say, you have to accept the premise first.


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## centerpin fan (Oct 21, 2011)

Asath said:


> In the Vulgate, which is as close as one will ever get to Constantine's forcible revision, before everyone subsequent began monkeying with that already corrupted text, there is no mention of the word.



Here's James 1 in the Vulgate:


26 Si quis autem putat se religiosum esse, non refrenans linguam suam, sed seducens cor suum, hujus vana est religio.

27 Religio munda et immaculata apud Deum et Patrem, hæc est: visitare pupillos et viduas in tribulatione eorum, et immaculatum se custodire ab hoc sæculo.


... and Leviticus 16:31:


sabbatum enim requietionis est et adfligetis animas vestras religione perpetua


... and Esther 9:27:


quaeque sustinuerint et quae deinceps inmutata sint suscepere Iudaei super se et semen suum et super cunctos qui religioni eorum voluerint copulari ut nulli liceat duos hos dies absque sollemnitate transigere quam scriptura testatur et certa expetunt tempora annis sibi iugiter succedentibus


... and Colossians 2:18:


nemo vos seducat volens in humilitate et religione angelorum quae non vidit ambulans frustra inflatus sensu carnis suae


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## centerpin fan (Oct 21, 2011)

Asath said:


> I kept digging through the bookshelf, and I finally found both the James and Colossians cites you made together in one version: the Gideons.



There is no "Gideons' version".  They are not Bible translators.  They take existing translations, put their name on the cover, and pass them out.

I think they use the KJV as their standard version, but I have a couple of their NT's in the NIV.


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## centerpin fan (Oct 21, 2011)

Asath said:


> Guess it depends on your Bible . . . I get something entirely different in Col. 2:23 even in the KJV, and only get those words from James in the KJV and in none of the other versions on my personal bookshelf . . .



The KJV, NKJV, NASB, ESV, and NIV all use "religion" in James 1.

The NKJV, NASB, and ESV use "religion" in Colossians 2.

Those are the only versions I checked.


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## centerpin fan (Oct 21, 2011)

Asath said:


> But if someone added it to their own version, then I guess THAT version is now the one True Word of the all-knowing God . . .
> 
> So it isn't merely a matter of reading the Bible anymore, now is it?  It is a matter of just whose version of the Bible you are reading.  And that fact, unfortunately, makes the case.



You're reading too much into the word "version".  It's not like there's one version where Jesus is savior of the world and another version where he's the tight end for the 1972 Dolphins.

They're _translations_.  There will always be differences in translations.


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## Asath (Oct 25, 2011)

The OT was written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with a few instances of Biblical Aramaic, and the majority view is that the books which were later collected and called the NT were largely written in Koine Greek.  

The major languages spoken by both Jews and Greeks at the time and place of Jesus were Aramaic and Koine Greek, and to a small extent a  dialect of Mishnaic Hebrew. It is generally agreed by most scholars that the historical Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic.

The problem is that words in one language do not always translate into another language.  This is especially a problem for folks who spend a lot of time parsing every word of their holy books in search of definitive 'Gotchas.'

In this case, 'emunah' was the Biblical Hebrew word for 'faith,' and has been most often mistranslated into the word 'religion'.   Similar problems exist in the translations from Koine Greek, where a number of words of similar meaning or implication have been consistently mistranslated.  However, according to Fred L. Horton, Kenneth G. Hoglund, and Mary F. Foskett of Wake Forest University, along with a long list of distinguished language and bible scholars, "No precise equivalent to our English word "religion" occurs in the Christian scripture. "

This may or may not be a problem, depending on how you look at it.  The equivalencies of the word 'faith' have been most often mistranslated as 'religion,' and one wonders if faith and religion can be considered to mean the same thing.  One can see how this could be a problem, especially for those who were eager to capitalize on 'faith' and make a living from it, since faith, in the abstract, is an individual pursuit and does not necessarily lead to the tithing of one's stuff to the self-anointed leaders.  A cynical person might conclude that many of these 'mistranslations' may not have been wholly accidental.


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## centerpin fan (Oct 26, 2011)

You keep moving the goal posts.  First, you say "religion" is not in the Bible.  Then, you say it's not in _the Vulgate_.  Then, you say this:




Asath said:


> ... according to Fred L. Horton, Kenneth G. Hoglund, and Mary F. Foskett of Wake Forest University, along with a long list of distinguished language and bible scholars, "No precise equivalent to our English word "religion" occurs in the Christian scripture. "




There may not be a "precise equivalent", but it's close enough so that "religion" is used not only in the Vulgate, but in most popular English translations.  





Asath said:


> In this case, 'emunah' was the Biblical Hebrew word for 'faith,' and has been most often mistranslated into the word 'religion'.




... but "emunah" is not used in either the Leviticus or Esther passages I quoted above in post 113.


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## Asath (Nov 11, 2011)

Once again, Vulgate means 'common language,' and there are and have been any number of versions that have been called by this name as well.  So congratulations, you have found yet another mistranslation somewhere, this one apparently in latin, which has escaped my attention.

So, since this point is going to be nit-picked to death at the expense of the discussion, allow me to back-pedal -- for any and all of you believer types who happen to own a mistranslation or outright rewriting of the questionably original version of your holy book that contains the word 'religion,' then the word 'religion' is actually in the book.  For those of you who do not own such a version, or who adhere tothe actual language(s) in which this book was written, then the word 'religion' is not actually in the book.

In both cases, your book is true in all regards, so don't get worried.  

Even the parts that are completely different from each other.  And the parts that contradict each other even within the same version.  And the parts that are gruesomely violent.  And the parts that are completely impossible.  And the parts that impart lessons of highly questionable morality.  All true.  The parts you wish to view as metaphorical are, and the parts you wish to view as literal similarly are.  All interpretations are equally true, as are all extensions, rationalizations, explanations, mistranslations, and justifications.  The words don't matter -- because it is all as true as you, personally, believe it to be.  That is the truth for everyone who believes, and extends to anything and everything they believe, not just 
the several hundred versions of this particular book.

That is the actual point.

If you believe in Sasquatch, then it it hardly my place to talk you out of it.  It is true because you 'believe' it to be.  

The fact that it is completely impossible for everything that everyone wants to believe to be equally true all at the same time and all in the same world is something the various believers will need to settle among themselves.  The rest of us are getting weary of being bogged down in your factional disputes. And to be quite honest, until you all quit with the strident, smug bullying with your 'Word of God' nonsense, and get down to demonstrating, you'll continue to be marginalized, as modern society is doing to you with ever increasing impatience for your tactics.  

Be serious.  Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are the only monotheistic belief systems.  They disagree with each other and even among themselves quite violently.  And all three of them claim to originate from the self-same 'God' of Abraham. What possible authority, given this simple fact, can any of you dare to assert over others?  All of the claims of all of the sects, factions, branches and denominations are equally hollow and ridiculous in the face of your own wholesale disbelief in your own belief systems.  If anyone actually believed in this 'God of Abraham,' and if such a god had actually ever existed and had actually spoken, then there could hardly be a whit of disageement about it, now could there?  In the beginning was 
the word, truly, and the word was -- nonsense.       

If one wishes to be immune to truth and facts, and deal entirely in interpretations and intangibles, well . . . that is a game that everyone can play -- my personal interpretation, for example, is that it is rather odd and more than a bit perverse for a major belief system to adopt the image of an execution as its most sacred icon.  

Perhaps this bit was the result of a mistranslation also, but kneeling in front of a cross, symbolically, is no different than kneeling in front of a gallows, and it makes for a worrying image.

And, once again, the word 'religion' does not appear except as a deliberate mistranslation in any of the 'original' writings of this farce.  One word is not as good as another when one is seeking to bully all of mankind over to your own point of view, and no words can take the place of facts.  And the fact is that all the words in existence cannot create a 'God' who simply does not exist.  (I say so with all due respect to the Sasquatch, Loch Ness Monster, and UFO fans, among others -- sorry fellas -- the popularity of a delusion does not demonstrate the fact of the delusion.)


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## bullethead (Nov 12, 2011)

Post Of The Year!


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## centerpin fan (Nov 12, 2011)

Asath said:


> Once again, Vulgate means 'common language,' and there are and have been any number of versions that have been called by this name as well.  So congratulations, you have found yet another mistranslation somewhere, this one apparently in latin, which has escaped my attention.



You're killin' me.  

This is the second or third time you've brought up the Vulgate, and you obviously don't even know what it is.  What do you mean "apparently in Latin"?  It is THE Latin translation, done by St. Jerome in the 4th century.  Yes, the name "Vulgate" means "common language", but when people use the term, they're not talking about the KJV or any other "common language" Bible.  They're talking about one version and one version only:  St. Jerome's Latin translation.




Asath said:


> And, once again, the word 'religion' does not appear except as a deliberate mistranslation in any of the 'original' writings of this farce.  One word is not as good as another when one is seeking to bully all of mankind over to your own point of view, and no words can take the place of facts.



You just won't let that go, will you? 

Are you a Greek/Hebrew scholar?  What English word should the translators have used rather than "religion"?


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## centerpin fan (Nov 12, 2011)

Asath said:


> And, once again, the word 'religion' does not appear except as a deliberate mistranslation in any of the 'original' writings of this farce.  One word is not as good as another when one is seeking to bully all of mankind over to your own point of view, and no words can take the place of facts.  And the fact is that all the words in existence cannot create a 'God' who simply does not exist.  (I say so with all due respect to the Sasquatch, Loch Ness Monster, and UFO fans, among others -- sorry fellas -- the popularity of a delusion does not demonstrate the fact of the delusion.)



From what I've seen, your grasp of the facts is pretty poor.


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## gordon 2 (Nov 12, 2011)

Why do post in this forum go to the hundreds as a usual?

Oh! and opinions trump facts East of Eden and always have.


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## ted_BSR (Nov 13, 2011)

#124 You melt your cheese the way you want, I'll melt my the way I want. You can call it fondue, or dip, or queso, in the end, it is all melted cheese.


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## Asath (Nov 14, 2011)

One more time, just for the fun of it -- Even if you were to get your hands on Jerome's original, hand written version, and could understand even a word of it, that particular writing would bear almost no resemblence to later versions, notably, but not limited to -- Alcuin's revision of 801; Lanfranc's revision of 1089; Stephen, Abbot of Citeaux's revision of 1134; Cardinal Nicolas' revision of 1150; Gutenberg's first printing in 1456; the Louvain Theologies as developed from 1547 through 1583; Sixtus V's revision; and Franciscus Toletus' revision of that revision in 1598.

And this was before everyone and their brother started translating things into their own languages -- and let's be serious here -- Old Latin didn't have enough words or expressive symbolic content to find equivalency in English, Spanish, Serbian, Bengali, Chinese, Hindustani, Russian and Swedish (again, among dozens of others) all at the same time.  EVERYONE has a different version.  That is what 'vulgate' means, after all.

The word in question, most accurately rendered by scholars, was 'faith.'  Not a bad word in and of itself.  But a far cry from the word 'religion.' Even the official Vatican history warns: "From an early day the text of the Vulgate began to suffer corruptions."

And the reason that it matters is because those who sow and sell superstitions, snake oil, and fear for their own personal gain have no other stock-in-trade than words.  They have no actual truth or product or reality that they can place in front of the customers, and can offer only thundering oratory and slick, well-crafted words to try to convince people to give up their freedoms and wealth to the orators.  The fact that every one of these words that the various cults employ has the effect of snowing and deliberately misleading huge numbers of people causes each of those words to be called into question.  If a corporation tried this sort of misinformation campaign to separate people from their money they'd be held criminally liable.

Words, no matter where they are written, are not facts.  Words are not actions.  Words represent, but the word 'apple' cannot be made into a pie.  When the object, fact, concept, idea, action, or specific real truth a word acts as a referent for cannot be shown to exist, then there is only one word that applies:  Fraud.


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## bullethead (Nov 14, 2011)

You are in a ZONE!!!!!


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## centerpin fan (Nov 14, 2011)

Asath said:


> One more time, just for the fun of it -- Even if you were to get your hands on Jerome's original, hand written version, and could understand even a word of it, that particular writing would bear almost no resemblence to later versions, notably, but not limited to -- Alcuin's revision of 801; Lanfranc's revision of 1089; Stephen, Abbot of Citeaux's revision of 1134; Cardinal Nicolas' revision of 1150; Gutenberg's first printing in 1456; the Louvain Theologies as developed from 1547 through 1583; Sixtus V's revision; and Franciscus Toletus' revision of that revision in 1598.



Of course there are differences, but church doctrines don't change with each revision.  The KJV of today looks very different from the KJV of 1611.  The NIV is different from the KJV, and the NASB is different from the ESV.  The message remains the same, though.




Asath said:


> And this was before everyone and their brother started translating things into their own languages -- and let's be serious here -- Old Latin didn't have enough words or expressive symbolic content to find equivalency in English, Spanish, Serbian, Bengali, Chinese, Hindustani, Russian and Swedish (again, among dozens of others) all at the same time.  EVERYONE has a different version.  That is what 'vulgate' means, after all.



As I said before, you're reading too much into the word "version".  Everyone has a different _translation_.  There is a difference.




Asath said:


> The word in question, most accurately rendered by scholars, was 'faith.'  Not a bad word in and of itself.  But a far cry from the word 'religion.'



What word are you talking about?  What verse?  OT or NT?  Different words are used in different passages.  "Pistis" is Greek for "faith", and it is not the word used in the James 1.  




Asath said:


> And the reason that it matters is because those who sow and sell superstitions, snake oil, and fear for their own personal gain have no other stock-in-trade than words.  They have no actual truth or product or reality that they can place in front of the customers, and can offer only thundering oratory and slick, well-crafted words to try to convince people to give up their freedoms and wealth to the orators.  The fact that every one of these words that the various cults employ has the effect of snowing and deliberately misleading huge numbers of people causes each of those words to be called into question.  If a corporation tried this sort of misinformation campaign to separate people from their money they'd be held criminally liable.



Good grief.


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## centerpin fan (Nov 14, 2011)

bullethead said:


> You are in a ZONE!!!!!




He certainly is:


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## centerpin fan (Nov 14, 2011)

Asath said:


> One more time, just for the fun of it -- Even if you were to get your hands on Jerome's original, hand written version, and could understand even a word of it, that particular writing would bear almost no resemblence to later versions, notably, but not limited to -- Alcuin's revision of 801; Lanfranc's revision of 1089; Stephen, Abbot of Citeaux's revision of 1134; Cardinal Nicolas' revision of 1150; Gutenberg's first printing in 1456; the Louvain Theologies as developed from 1547 through 1583; Sixtus V's revision; and Franciscus Toletus' revision of that revision in 1598.
> 
> And this was before everyone and their brother started translating things into their own languages -- and let's be serious here -- Old Latin didn't have enough words or expressive symbolic content to find equivalency in English, Spanish, Serbian, Bengali, Chinese, Hindustani, Russian and Swedish (again, among dozens of others) all at the same time.  EVERYONE has a different version.  That is what 'vulgate' means, after all.
> 
> ...




All this and not even a "thanks" for explaining what the Vulgate is.


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## Greaserbilly (Nov 15, 2011)

centerpin fan said:


> All this and not even a "thanks" for explaining what the Vulgate is.



Anyone with even 1/10 of a clue about how the Bible was assembled, how the NT was originally written, the number of differences between any two versions of the Greek manuscripts, the fact that the Roman Catholic church burned many of their originals (after all, we have the Vulgate), demanded that parts of their Vulgate be back-ported into the Greek texts, etc. would be less interested in figuring out how to pick the fly droppings out of the pepper and more in simply loving his neighbor and trusting in God.

The Koine Greek was written as a wall of text. SOMETHINGAKINTOTHISWITHOUTANYPUNCTUATIONORACCENTSORANYWAYOFTELLINGWHERESENTENCESAREMEANTTOBEGINANDEND...

So tell, me, is GODISNOWHERE "God is nowhere" or "God is now here?" the interpretation thereof is as much theology as it is translation, because in many places the number of meanings for any given stream of text is not one.


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## stringmusic (Nov 15, 2011)

centerpin fan said:


> He certainly is:


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## bullethead (Nov 15, 2011)

Greaserbilly said:


> Anyone with even 1/10 of a clue about how the Bible was assembled, how the NT was originally written, the number of differences between any two versions of the Greek manuscripts, the fact that the Roman Catholic church burned many of their originals (after all, we have the Vulgate), demanded that parts of their Vulgate be back-ported into the Greek texts, etc. would be less interested in figuring out how to pick the fly droppings out of the pepper and more in simply loving his neighbor and trusting in God.
> 
> The Koine Greek was written as a wall of text. SOMETHINGAKINTOTHISWITHOUTANYPUNCTUATIONORACCENTSORANYWAYOFTELLINGWHERESENTENCESAREMEANTTOBEGINANDEND...
> 
> So tell, me, is GODISNOWHERE "God is nowhere" or "God is now here?" the interpretation thereof is as much theology as it is translation, because in many places the number of meanings for any given stream of text is not one.



Is that combination of words (GODISNOWHERE) in the original anywhere? Would it look anything like that in it's original language? What letters are before and after it? or is that a modern spin on words to make your point?

Maybe it means Go Di Snow Here?? betterbeonyourwaysoyoudontgetcaughtinthestorm.......


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## centerpin fan (Nov 15, 2011)

I agree that this:



Greaserbilly said:


> ... simply loving his neighbor and trusting in God.



... is what's important.




Greaserbilly said:


> So tell, me, is GODISNOWHERE "God is nowhere" or "God is now here?" the interpretation thereof is as much theology as it is translation, because in many places the number of meanings for any given stream of text is not one.



What verse in scripture reads "GODISNOWHERE"?


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## Asath (Nov 15, 2011)

I had a feeling that we might walk off of one cliff only to encounter another built of the same stubborn rock . . . 

The Church doesn’t change with each revision????  Really?

Then why did they, each and all, bother revising?

If the Church (please read the word ‘Church’ here to be synonymous with the word ‘religion’) remained exactly the same with each revision of the one true Holy Book that is the true and unerring Word, then why is the Church so much different now than it was originally?  And how in the name of Ernest can there be so very many different ones? If the Church, and the message of same, has remained the same, then what exactly did the Protestant Reformation accomplish?

And if the message is the same, across all of the centuries, then why are the religions (Churches) (with notable exceptions) no longer killing folks who dare to say that the sun does not revolve around the earth?  Why are most of them no longer stoning ‘sinners’?  Be serious.  Clearly the ‘message’ is not the same. Reality keeps on being updated, and they have to keep reacting solely in order to survive.

And let us be quite clear about the niggling difference between a ‘version’ and a ‘translation,’ in the context we are using here.  Meanings are changed dramatically by the choice of words (which is what the entire Protestant movement was all about, if you will recall), and once everyone decided that they could provide their own words to reinforce their own interpretations, and started, then, trying to enforce their own words as factual, all differences between a ‘translation’ and a ‘version’ went out the window.  As I pointed out several posts ago, if you believe the words you, personally, have read to be true, then they are.  To you.  If someone else reads a different set of words (translation?  version?) and believes those words to be equally true, then you have what we see – a quagmire of disparate cults all arguing over the same thing.  One person’s translation error becomes the official ‘version’ for millions, and we all see that truth all around us, so the distinction between a translation and a version is that, for all practical purposes so far as this bible is concerned, there isn’t one.  EVERYONE, in every language, and often in the same language, has a different set of words attributed to the same source.  

This problem doesn’t even begin to address the deeper problem in structural linguistics, wherein the sign, signifier, and signified assigned to any abstract symbol (such as a word) is of needs filtered individually, and the same symbol may not necessarily connote the same meaning to each observer.  

As Nicholas Colas observed, “Human nature, as it turns out, is a veritable minefield of biases and distortions that push rational thought through emotional screens to the point where clearheaded thinking can mutate into irrational outcomes.”  Consider any mass movement, and the clear reality of the mob mentality throughout history and it is easy to see that Mr. Colas’ observation holds water.

I will thank you for explaining what the Vulgate isn’t, since I have an English language  copy on my shelf which is certainly not what the St. Jerome of myth and legend may or may not have written.  And unless you have a copy of the original and can translate it in context then you also have no idea what the ‘Vulgate’ is or was.  Your enlightenment is always welcome, however.

And nice try with the bluff, but we were not speaking of the Greek word for anything at all, but rather the mistranslation of the original Biblical Hebrew.  The fact that the Greeks were among the first to create the mistranslation is well noted.  Citing an error as a factual source is rather odd, but demonstrates the point I’ve been trying to make.

And, gentlemen, I thank you for the repeated insults, and the suggestions that I am in the ‘Twilight Zone’ and all the like, but I believe that it is you who walked into the ‘Atheist’ forum, not any of us who sought you out.  I did not insult you, or resort to suggestions that you are somehow unhinged for thinking as you do.  I did not accuse you of lacking a grasp of the facts, though you have not yet wielded a defensible one – you hurled that insult yourselves.  I will thank you to conduct yourselves as intellectuals and as gentlemen rather than as a one-man inquisition.  Be aware that your own tactics paint your entire sect in an unfavorable light, and one they are well known for. 

And I agree with Greaserbilly that the Koine Greek is a dense and difficult bit of garlic to sort out, and it confounds even those who have devoted their entire careers to the study of it.  But are we going to then argue that Martin Luther had a stroke of inspiration, and got it right all by himself, thus setting those darned Catholics straight?  Or that just because it is dense and difficult to decipher it must then be an accurate translation of the Old Hebrew?  Or that because of all of these things it must prove the existence of God?  Or are we once again dismissing the point in favor of derailing thoughts into only our own siding?  Doesn’t much matter which, or whose, words you use.  All you argue over is just whose nonsense is the most historically or linguistically accurate nonsense.  Not a bit of it, at any time, in any language, has a bit of credible truth to back it up.  You might as well translate a Harry Potter book into Urdu, then into Cyrillic, and then get on with arguing over which is the proper sentence structure.  It is fiction.   

Once more we devolve into an argument over words, since that is all you guys have.  We can play semantic games all day long, and as you see, I’m happy to play, but you’ll still never be able to put a face to your names and actually demonstrate that the ‘apple’ you have a name for can be eaten.  And, speaking for myself, I find no nourishment in the theoretical possibility of provender.  I prefer things that are real.  If something cannot be shown to exist, then it has no real authority to command my attention. 

God did not make words, and words cannot make God.


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## bullethead (Nov 15, 2011)

Where's the High Five emoticon? Bravo.


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## centerpin fan (Nov 15, 2011)

Gee, you're verbose.  For the sake of expediency, I'll leave your post in black and I'll reply in blue.


I had a feeling that we might walk off of one cliff only to encounter another built of the same stubborn rock . . . 

The Church doesn’t change with each revision????  Really?  Yes, really.

Then why did they, each and all, bother revising?  Because languages change.  The English spoken in 1611 is not the English that is spoken today.

If the Church (please read the word ‘Church’ here to be synonymous with the word ‘religion’) ...  That's mistake #1.  They are not synonymous, but I'll play along.

... remained exactly the same with each revision of the one true Holy Book that is the true and unerring Word, then why is the Church so much different now than it was originally?  My church follows the Nicene Creed.  Most churches of today follow it or something similar, like the Apostles' Creed.  My church uses the exact same Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom that he used in Constantinople about 1,600 years ago.  And how in the name of Ernest can there be so very many different ones? Easy.  They took the same book and interpreted certain things differently.  If the Church, and the message of same, has remained the same, then what exactly did the Protestant Reformation accomplish?  Much division.

And if the message is the same, across all of the centuries, then why are the religions (Churches) (with notable exceptions) no longer killing folks who dare to say that the sun does not revolve around the earth?  You're talking about a time when there was very little difference between the church and the state.  Add to that the fact that the government in those cases was almost always a monarchy.  Why are most of them no longer stoning ‘sinners’?  Nowhere in the NT are Christians told to stone sinners.  Sinners were stoned in the OT.  Ask a Jew why they no longer do that.  Be serious.  Clearly the ‘message’ is not the same. Reality keeps on being updated, and they have to keep reacting solely in order to survive.

And let us be quite clear about the niggling difference between a ‘version’ and a ‘translation,’ in the context we are using here.  Meanings are changed dramatically by the choice of words (which is what the entire Protestant movement was all about, if you will recall), and once everyone decided that they could provide their own words to reinforce their own interpretations, and started, then, trying to enforce their own words as factual, all differences between a ‘translation’ and a ‘version’ went out the window.  As I pointed out several posts ago, if you believe the words you, personally, have read to be true, then they are.  To you.  If someone else reads a different set of words (translation?  version?) and believes those words to be equally true, then you have what we see – a quagmire of disparate cults all arguing over the same thing.  One person’s translation error becomes the official ‘version’ for millions, and we all see that truth all around us, so the distinction between a translation and a version is that, for all practical purposes so far as this bible is concerned, there isn’t one.  EVERYONE, in every language, and often in the same language, has a different set of words attributed to the same source.  What is the official Presbyterian Bible?  The official Baptist Bible?  The official Methodist Bible?  Very few churches have "official" versions.  You make it sound like every group that came out of the Reformation rewrote the Greek and Hebrew text to suit themselves.  It just didn't happen.  I have read from the following versions:  KJV, NKJV, NASB, NIV, JB, GNB, and Berkeley.  IMO, there's very little difference between them.

This problem doesn’t even begin to address the deeper problem in structural linguistics, wherein the sign, signifier, and signified assigned to any abstract symbol (such as a word) is of needs filtered individually, and the same symbol may not necessarily connote the same meaning to each observer.  The translators of all the major versions are very capable, and they do an excellent job.  

As Nicholas Colas observed, “Human nature, as it turns out, is a veritable minefield of biases and distortions that push rational thought through emotional screens to the point where clearheaded thinking can mutate into irrational outcomes.”  Consider any mass movement, and the clear reality of the mob mentality throughout history and it is easy to see that Mr. Colas’ observation holds water.

I will thank you for explaining what the Vulgate isn’t, since I have an English language  copy on my shelf ... yet you were shocked that the original was in Latin, and you had no idea who Jerome was or when he wrote it.  

... which is certainly not what the St. Jerome of myth and legend may or may not have written.  And unless you have a copy of the original and can translate it in context then you also have no idea what the ‘Vulgate’ is or was.  Your enlightenment is always welcome, however.

And nice try with the bluff, but we were not speaking of the Greek word for anything at all, but rather the mistranslation of the original Biblical Hebrew.  You didn't make it clear what you were talking about.  I quoted both Old and NT passages that used the word "religion", and you seemed unfamiliar with all of them.  The fact that the Greeks were among the first to create the mistranslation is well noted.  Are you talking about the NT or the Septuagint?  (Do I need to explain what the Septuagint is?)  Citing an error as a factual source is rather odd, but demonstrates the point I’ve been trying to make.

And, gentlemen, I thank you for the repeated insults, and the suggestions that I am in the ‘Twilight Zone’ and all the like, but I believe that it is you who walked into the ‘Atheist’ forum, not any of us who sought you out.  I did not insult you, or resort to suggestions that you are somehow unhinged for thinking as you do.  Again, not true.  In your very first post in this thread (#103), you mentioned that the Bibles on our shelves were unread.  Did you mean that as a complement?   Or were you implying that Christians are brain dead automatons who just sit around and take marching orders from Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart?  Then, you displayed an ignorance of the Bible that may have set a new standard.  I did not accuse you of lacking a grasp of the facts, though you have not yet wielded a defensible one – you hurled that insult yourselves.  I will thank you to conduct yourselves as intellectuals and as gentlemen rather than as a one-man inquisition.  Be aware that your own tactics paint your entire sect in an unfavorable light, and one they are well known for. 

And I agree with Greaserbilly that the Koine Greek is a dense and difficult bit of garlic to sort out, and it confounds even those who have devoted their entire careers to the study of it.  No, Koine Greek is a common form of Greek.  When I was in college, one Greek professor used the gospel of John as his basic text because he believed students could pick it up easier than much of the classical Greek.   But are we going to then argue that Martin Luther had a stroke of inspiration, and got it right all by himself, thus setting those darned Catholics straight?  Or that just because it is dense and difficult to decipher it must then be an accurate translation of the Old Hebrew?  Or that because of all of these things it must prove the existence of God?  Or are we once again dismissing the point in favor of derailing thoughts into only our own siding?  Doesn’t much matter which, or whose, words you use.  All you argue over is just whose nonsense is the most historically or linguistically accurate nonsense.  Not a bit of it, at any time, in any language, has a bit of credible truth to back it up.  You might as well translate a Harry Potter book into Urdu, then into Cyrillic, and then get on with arguing over which is the proper sentence structure.  It is fiction.   

Once more we devolve into an argument over words, since that is all you guys have.  We can play semantic games all day long, and as you see, I’m happy to play, ... You've been losing -- badly.

... but you’ll still never be able to put a face to your names and actually demonstrate that the ‘apple’ you have a name for can be eaten.  And, speaking for myself, I find no nourishment in the theoretical possibility of provender.  I prefer things that are real.  If something cannot be shown to exist, then it has no real authority to command my attention. 

God did not make words, and words cannot make God.


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## Greaserbilly (Nov 16, 2011)

bullethead said:


> Is that combination of words (GODISNOWHERE) in the original anywhere? Would it look anything like that in it's original language? What letters are before and after it? or is that a modern spin on words to make your point?
> 
> Maybe it means Go Di Snow Here?? betterbeonyourwaysoyoudontgetcaughtinthestorm.......



No, obviously GODISNOWHERE doesn't appear in the Koine Greek. Those "words" are English. But I'm not going to drag out a koine Greek string and point out where a word break and/or a sentence break can make a HUGE difference in the interpretation of a sentence.

I took a string of characters that could be parsed two ways - one of which is theist, one totally atheist, as an example.
And that IS a challenge for a Greek translator, because we don't even know where words begin or end, never mind what words belong in which sentence.

If you're interested in some of the issues with the Greek texts, find a book called "Misquoting Jesus" which is a not too scholarly treatise. You may disagree with his worldview, but it is illuminating to see how two translators have parsed exactly the same text and come up with two different theologies as a result.



> Not a bit of it, at any time, in any language, has a bit of credible truth to back it up. You might as well translate a Harry Potter book into Urdu, then into Cyrillic, and then get on with arguing over which is the proper sentence structure.



That's actually been done. In trying to figure out some aspects of the Greek, we've gone to other language sources (same region/timeframe) and backtranslated. And in one famous case, some of the Vulgate was backtranslated into the Greek as a result of what was in essence a lost bet.

You're going to have to disambiguate "version"

Are you referring to a known original document, given that there are many, MANY differences in various copies of the old manuscripts?

Are you referring to a version/parsing of a given document, in which in one place someone broke the string one way, and in the other another? (using my made up example GOD IS NOW HERE vs GOD IS NO WHERE or even GODI SNOW HERE?)

Are you referring to newer English translations that try and shore up a given theology, give more insight into the original languages?

As for why people once taught the Earth was flat, well, that was their attempt to stitch together metaphors and such to build a literal cosmology.


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## Greaserbilly (Nov 16, 2011)

> No, Koine Greek is a common form of Greek. When I was in college, one Greek professor used the gospel of John as his basic text because he believed students could pick it up easier than much of the classical Greek.



Yup. It was the common man's Greek - the lingua franca of much of the world at the time. 

Where I was going with difficulties is 1) one cannot argue semantically about specific words in an English translation (as I am guilty of having done in the past years ago) because the English translation doesn't necessarily give you sufficient ammo with which to do so. And 2) scriptio continua. Wow. That's also a problem.


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## Asath (Nov 17, 2011)

There isn't much that is ambiguous about the word 'version.'  

Synonyms include interpretation, rendition, style, account, and, yes, translation.

But in a context that is entirely word-specific, and has no verifiability other than arguments over the words themselves, it ends up striking one that it matters not a fig whether I call something a 'duck' or a 'goose,' since nobody actually saw anything at all.  The KJV is now only 400 years old.  400.  That is how recently this particular revision came into being.

St. Jerome is said to have lived roughly from 370 to 420 A.D.  That puts about 1,191 years between St. Jerome and the KJV.  A good long stretch, that is to say. So if we guess that he might have been, say, 30 years old when he decided to rewrite the whole bible, that would put him about 400 years after the most important of the NT events he labors to describe and illuminate.  400 years.  

400 years ago, from today, was 1611.  Anyone wish to step forward and narrate in the first person, with unerring authority, the events of that one year alone?  Re-writing a whole bible must have taken quite some scholarly investigation, one would think, and perhaps all of the libraries and published documents and easy access to information that was available in 400 A.D. made that task a snap for this St. Jerome fella, so he had every original document he might need right at his fingertips.  No doubt he was intimately versed in all of the various languages involved as well, what with the ready availability of international travel at the time, and all of the langauge schools and self-help tapes popping up all around.  Probably he just Googled the necessary gaps and had the manuscript at the publisher before his deadline, sent by parcel post with a return receipt from the local Post Office . . .  And no wonder the finished work took off as a popular phenomenon -- a mere thousand years or so later someone figured out how to print enough copies for folks to actually read. Several hundred years after that, quite a few people actually learned how to read.  It was a best-seller waiting to happen.  Right? 

Placed in the proper context of 400 A.D or so, and with an understanding of the times, and with an understanding of the sheer magnitude of the undertaking even in modern times, one is forced to a simple conclusion -- nonsense.  Just the same, given the wholesale, and very successful revisions and updating of previous fictions we see coming out of Hollywood today, it seems credible that a new version of an old tale is easier to swallow whole than a new version of a fact.  Who was there to witness Batman's original car, after all?  The new version is just as good as the old one, and maybe better . . . 

Unfortunately this sort of 'historical' revisionism isn't so easy with genuine truth, so when some fools started rabble-rousing, and bandying about the idea that the Sun didn't really revolve around the Earth, and dangerously heretical ideas like that, those individuals had to be disposed of.  Belief is the antithesis of truth, and has always been.  We have a history of cherishing our fictions and rejecting our facts.  Often in a provenly murderous fashion.

The problem here isn't an endless game of faux-scholarly analysis of words and languages and all the like, designed only to distract everyone, the problem is that the central point is political and (like all politics) fictional.  Religion is nothing more than control-minded politics, designed entirely to get the unwashed, ignorant masses to snap to the demands of the self-anointed ruling classes.  It has never been anything different.  Much of the motivation behind the 'religious' leaders has been proper and well-intentioned.  People are self-interested, barbaric beings, and left without something to fear civilization crumbles into chaos in mere moments.  Many of us 'unsaved' heretics knew that already.  Much of the motivation behind the 'religious' leaders has not been quite so altuistic and benign, and religions have authored some of history's worst tragedies.  Which side of that debate one lands on is a matter of personal interpretation ('Your' version of belief), but the facts are inarguable, and the actual history is clear.

Whether one word is equivalent to another in this that or the other language is little more than a mental exercise that avoids the point -- not a single one of the stories holds a molecule of water as factual.  The fact that the original Old Hebrew version of Genesis clearly uses the plural 'Eloi' a number of times in the first chapter alone is the stuff of intellectual debate, but avoids the idea that there cannot, nor has there ever actually been either a singular 'god' nor a plural 'gods.'  Fighting over the exact meanings of ancient superstitions seems as absurd to the rest of us as arguments over the skin color of the aliens from outer space or the nature and habits of ghosts.  We're sort of happy that it gives you something to do with your extra time, but we'll thank you to keep that brand of nonsense out of our legislatures.  

We have enough real, factual, earthly problems to deal with, and keeping your ancient superstitions confined to your little cult headquarters rather than continually confronting the rest of us with it and demanding with increasing violence that we agree only with you would be considered a sign that the self-described mercy and tolerance and wisdom of the various monotheistic religious sects is actually true, rather than the thinly-veiled intolerance and arrogantly expansionist oppression it actually represents in practice.  Your religions aim to conquer, by whatever means necessary, not to peacefully co-exist, and your histories and modern day practices demonstrate that more than any words you can ever create.

If you want to win, bring us facts, not bluster and filibuster.  Is your god so shy that he cannot reveal himself, except through your own descriptions?  If so, then by describing you take on the persona of that described, and deign to speak in the stead of your god, which seems to violate your own proscriptions.  Shall we believe only you, because you believe?


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## bullethead (Nov 18, 2011)

You've hit for the cycle now.


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## 1gr8bldr (Nov 18, 2011)

Asath said:


> There isn't much that is ambiguous about the word 'version.'
> 
> Synonyms include interpretation, rendition, style, account, and, yes, translation.
> 
> ...



 Hello Asath, I'm always intrigued by the fact that some unbelieving posters know so much about biblical things. How is it that you know things such as the KJ argument. What motivates someone to learn about that which they don't believe? Could you shed some light on this?


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## centerpin fan (Nov 18, 2011)

1gr8bldr said:


> How is it that you know things such as the KJ argument.



What is the "KJ argument"?  I've read Asaph's post, but I'm still not sure what his point is.


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## 1gr8bldr (Nov 18, 2011)

centerpin fan said:


> What is the "KJ argument"?  I've read Asaph's post, but I'm still not sure what his point is.


 He indicated indirectly his knowledge of the argument of the "inspiration" of the KJ argument. That was just an example that I used. I do not wish to go there. Its interesting that many who post here are well informed. I'm not interested in science, so why would I spend large amounts of time learning about it. There must be those who enjoy the study of religion without acepting it as truthful???


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## centerpin fan (Nov 18, 2011)

Again, I'll just leave your post in black, and I'll reply in blue (for the most part.)


There isn't much that is ambiguous about the word 'version.'  

Synonyms include interpretation, rendition, style, account, and, yes, translation.

But in a context that is entirely word-specific, and has no verifiability other than arguments over the words themselves, it ends up striking one that it matters not a fig whether I call something a 'duck' or a 'goose,' since nobody actually saw anything at all.  The KJV is now only 400 years old.  400.  Yes, it is.  So?  That is how recently this particular revision came into being.


St. Jerome is said to have lived roughly from 370 to 420 A.D.  That puts about 1,191 years between St. Jerome and the KJV.  A good long stretch, that is to say. Your math skills are impeccable.  So?

So if we guess that he might have been, say, 30 years old when he decided to rewrite the whole bible, that would put him about 400 years after the most important of the NT events he labors to describe and illuminate.  400 years.  He didn’t “rewrite” the whole Bible.  He translated it from the original languages which were written EARLIER.  In some cases, he just updated previous Latin translations.

400 years ago, from today, was 1611.  Anyone wish to step forward and narrate in the first person, with unerring authority, the events of that one year alone?  Re-writing a whole bible must have taken quite some scholarly investigation, one would think, and perhaps all of the libraries and published documents and easy access to information that was available in 400 A.D. made that task a snap for this St. Jerome fella, so he had every original document he might need right at his fingertips.  No doubt he was intimately versed in all of the various languages involved as well,  As a matter of fact he was, which is why the Pope chose him to do it.  The papal stamp of approval gave him access to the best libraries of the day.

... what with the ready availability of international travel at the time, and all of the langauge schools and self-help tapes popping up all around.  Probably he just Googled the necessary gaps and had the manuscript at the publisher before his deadline, sent by parcel post with a return receipt from the local Post Office . . .  Believe it or not, there were reputable scholars, academics and historians before Google.  If that is your standard, we need to throw out most of written human history.

And no wonder the finished work took off as a popular phenomenon -- a mere thousand years or so later someone figured out how to print enough copies for folks to actually read. Several hundred years after that, quite a few people actually learned how to read.  It was a best-seller waiting to happen.  Right?

Placed in the proper context of 400 A.D or so, and with an understanding of the times, and with an understanding of the sheer magnitude of the undertaking even in modern times, one is forced to a simple conclusion -- nonsense.  That is your conclusion and, from what you’ve written, it is based on a pretty spotty knowledge of church history and the history of the Bible.  Just the same, given the wholesale, and very successful revisions and updating of previous fictions we see coming out of Hollywood today, it seems credible that a new version of an old tale is easier to swallow whole than a new version of a fact.  Who was there to witness Batman's original car, after all?  The new version is just as good as the old one, and maybe better . . .   Humor me for a minute.  Exactly what was the “old version” and how did it differ from the “new version” we have today?  I’ve asked this question before and have never gotten an answer.  Maybe you’ll be the first.





Asath said:


> Unfortunately this sort of 'historical' revisionism isn't so easy with genuine truth, so when some fools started rabble-rousing, and bandying about the idea that the Sun didn't really revolve around the Earth, and dangerously heretical ideas like that, those individuals had to be disposed of.  Belief is the antithesis of truth, and has always been.  We have a history of cherishing our fictions and rejecting our facts.  Often in a provenly murderous fashion.
> 
> The problem here isn't an endless game of faux-scholarly analysis of words and languages and all the like, designed only to distract everyone, the problem is that the central point is political and (like all politics) fictional.  Religion is nothing more than control-minded politics, designed entirely to get the unwashed, ignorant masses to snap to the demands of the self-anointed ruling classes.  It has never been anything different.  Much of the motivation behind the 'religious' leaders has been proper and well-intentioned.  People are self-interested, barbaric beings, and left without something to fear civilization crumbles into chaos in mere moments.  Many of us 'unsaved' heretics knew that already.  Much of the motivation behind the 'religious' leaders has not been quite so altuistic and benign, and religions have authored some of history's worst tragedies.  Which side of that debate one lands on is a matter of personal interpretation ('Your' version of belief), but the facts are inarguable, and the actual history is clear.
> 
> ...



This should be clearly labeled as "editorial comment".  If you believe it, fine.  I do not.




Asath said:


> If you want to win, bring us facts, not bluster and filibuster.



Interesting that you would accuse someone else of filibustering.


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## Asath (Nov 22, 2011)

For my own part, I’ll join centerpin in not knowing just what the ‘KJ argument’ might be.  It is brought up that if there were not reputable scholars, academics and historians before Google, then we might as well throw out most of written history.  Well, yeah.  We can throw most of it out after Google too.

First of all because there weren’t any such comprehensively schooled authors.  And there still aren’t, in the sense that no one at all can actually assert with authority the totality of the events of 1611, 1511, 1411, the year zero, or 33 B.C.  It can’t be done.  The further from modern times the ‘historical’ event is, the more fragmentary and incomplete the evidence and the more speculative the interpretations become.  But that is just fact and pragmatism and truth (ask any historian), to which religions seem immune.

The KJV seems to be one of the most widely promulgated and widely believed of the various monotheistic religious books out there, but this particular version of this particular book is only 400 years old, as I mentioned.  Insofar as the sheer scope of the story it purports to verify with the words contained therein, this is the blink of an eye historically.  The problems with such things are rife, as anyone might readily see --  Do they mean to say that King James ratified an ‘official’ new translation of everything, down to the OT?  So far as the OT goes, the other two monotheistic religions seem to disagree.  And this alone is a problem.  Holding aside the NT for a moment, all three of the monotheistic practices claim to arise from the same source, and it cannot be considered credible that each has branched off into sectarian squabbles if the Word of God was clearly laid down someplace or another.  Doesn’t matter where.  Doesn’t matter how.  Doesn’t matter by whom.  Doesn’t even matter in which language (though it does seem odd that a single God ought to speak in so very many tongues).  If such Word was, in fact, conveyed, it would be pretty clear.  We’re talking about one’s conception of GOD here.  God the Creator.  It can’t be asserted that a God of any sort would be unable to make itself clear.

But that is precisely what seems to have occurred, and that is what is disputed.  By people.  Over words.  St. Jerome translated the Bible from the original languages?  Really?  In about 400 A.D.?  About 125 years after Constantine ordered just about everything that didn’t agree with his own interpretations destroyed?  But the Pope (largely installed by Constantine) had copies of all that stuff hidden in the best libraries of the day?  And gave them to Jerome?  And there were original copies of the Pentateuch laying about, and this Jerome fella was also versed in faithfully interpreting these ancient dialects in their original meanings?  Interpreting being the operative word here.  But, to be fair, Constantine and his inquisitors were only destroying anything other than his approved parts of the NT, which is what he was writing.  Jerome largely left the OT alone, but certainly had no original copies of that either.  And as far as the NT goes, the earliest known ‘Gospel’ was written somewhere between 70 and 100 years after the events it pretends to describe, making it perfectly fair to ask any participant here to pick up a pen and faithfully describe the events of 1911 from personal memory and expect to be taken so seriously that a religion will spring up around them.  Nonsense.   

So, what happened to the Books of Nicodemus, Laodicians, Clement I and II, Barnabas, Polycarp, and many others which were discovered (hidden from the purging) much later?
They weren’t in the library at the time, of course.  This tends to belie a ‘translation’ from the ‘originals’ as well.  One cannot translate that which was thought to no longer exist.

What then, in all cases, in all versions, and in all disputes is being tossed about and argued?  The Word of God?  The original writings?  The One True Path?  No.  The words of men.  Written, edited, translated, mistranslated, and rewritten time and again by men.  God seems to have neglected to have learned how to write, and the historical Jesus seems to be lacking in that skill as well – the man seems not to have written a single word of his own.  Much is made of that fact, in interpretations, but the fact itself remains.

1gr8bldr wondered why a non-believer would bother to learn more about belief systems than the believers seem to know -- that is simpler to answer:  medical researchers largely do not themselves have the diseases they seek to cure.  Believers seek to direct my behavior and force it to conform to their beliefs, while I do no such thing to them.  I don’t remember passing a law enforcing that God doesn’t want us to buy beer on Sunday.  Once their ‘belief’ crosses the line onto my reality and my legislature and my courthouse it is both my right and my responsibility to resist oppression that is authored in the name of fiction.  I have no such problems with facts, but similar to environmentalists, believers in anything at all seem immune to truth, and assert that everyone must think as they do, simply because they say so.  They have no provable standing for that assertion, and I view it as little more than political bullying.  Organized religions are a pervasive and cancerous influence on everything, and one can only cure a disease by first understanding it.


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## TheBishop (Nov 23, 2011)

Asath said:


> 1gr8bldr wondered why a non-believer would bother to learn more about belief systems than the believers seem to know -- that is simpler to answer:  medical researchers largely do not themselves have the diseases they seek to cure.  Believers seek to direct my behavior and force it to conform to their beliefs, while I do no such thing to them.  I don’t remember passing a law enforcing that God doesn’t want us to buy beer on Sunday.  Once their ‘belief’ crosses the line onto my reality and my legislature and my courthouse it is both my right and my responsibility to resist oppression that is authored in the name of fiction.  I have no such problems with facts, but similar to environmentalists, believers in anything at all seem immune to truth, and assert that everyone must think as they do, simply because they say so.  They have no provable standing for that assertion, and I view it as little more than political bullying.  Organized religions are a pervasive and cancerous influence on everything, and one can only cure a disease by first understanding it.



I think you just won by slaughter rule.


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## stringmusic (Nov 23, 2011)

TheBishop said:


> I think you just won by slaughter rule.



What exactly did he win? He got asked a question and gave a really long answer, do long answers impress you that much?

Would he have still won by the slaughter rule if he would have said "Theology is interesting to me"?


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## stringmusic (Nov 23, 2011)

Asath said:


> Organized religions are a pervasive and cancerous influence on everything, and one can only cure a disease by first understanding it.



On everything? Everything? No, no, you couldn't have meant everything? Right?


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## centerpin fan (Nov 23, 2011)

TheBishop said:


> I think you just won by slaughter rule.



I'm glad somebody's impressed by this mess.  

I'm working on a response to Asath.  Gimme some time.  It's not easy wading through his posts.  Fortunately, I've got my waders out in the truck.


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## TheBishop (Nov 23, 2011)

stringmusic said:


> What exactly did he win? He got asked a question and gave a really long answer, do long answers impress you that much?
> 
> No its not the length but the logic, something you seem unable to follow.  Interesting you think so little of me that you think I am impressed only by big words and long posts. I am not as simply minded as to be blinded by words alone.
> 
> Would he have still won by the slaughter rule if he would have said "Theology is interesting to me"?



Not to me he wouldn't.  He said exactly the reason we should seek more knowledge in general, to combat oppression.  It is those that question that can only truely be free, and those that don't shall forever be  manipulated.


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## stringmusic (Nov 23, 2011)

TheBishop said:


> No its not the length but the logic, something you seem unable to follow. Interesting you think so little of me that you think I am impressed only by big words and long posts. I am not as simply minded as to be blinded by words alone.


I was just joking with ya Bishop, thats why the  is there, but thanks for the shot about my logic.

Have a good thanksgiving!


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## centerpin fan (Nov 23, 2011)

You know the drill:  you in black, me in blue.

Here's the short answer to much of your post:  ignore the Dan Brown conspiracy stuff and read actual church history.  I'll try to expand below.

First of all because there weren’t any such comprehensively schooled authors.  Oh, please.   And there still aren’t, in the sense that no one at all can actually assert with authority the totality of the events of 1611, 1511, 1411, the year zero, or 33 B.C.  It can’t be done.  The further from modern times the ‘historical’ event is, the more fragmentary and incomplete the evidence and the more speculative the interpretations become.  The entire NT we have today was completed by about 100 AD.  There was at least one apostle still alive at that time (John), and there were some of their disciples still alive (Polycarp, for example.)  But that is just fact and pragmatism and truth (ask any historian), to which religions seem immune.  

The KJV seems to be one of the most widely promulgated and widely believed of the various monotheistic religious books out there, but this particular version of this particular book is only 400 years old, as I mentioned.  But it's a translation of very old copies of the original Greek and Hebrew.  What is hard to understand about that?  Insofar as the sheer scope of the story it purports to verify with the words contained therein, this is the blink of an eye historically.  The problems with such things are rife, as anyone might readily see --  Do they mean to say that King James ratified an ‘official’ new translation of everything, down to the OT?  Yes, that's exactly what they did, and that's exactly what the translators of the NKJV, NASB, NIV, ESV, etc. did.  So far as the OT goes, the other two monotheistic religions seem to disagree.  And this alone is a problem.  Holding aside the NT for a moment, all three of the monotheistic practices claim to arise from the same source, and it cannot be considered credible that each has branched off into sectarian squabbles if the Word of God was clearly laid down someplace or another.  Why not?  Islam is based on the Koran, a book shorter than the NT, and it has many divisions. Doesn’t matter where.  Doesn’t matter how.  Doesn’t matter by whom.  Doesn’t even matter in which language (though it does seem odd that a single God ought to speak in so very many tongues).  If such Word was, in fact, conveyed, it would be pretty clear.  We’re talking about one’s conception of GOD here.  God the Creator.  It can’t be asserted that a God of any sort would be unable to make itself clear.  

But that is precisely what seems to have occurred, and that is what is disputed.  By people.  Over words.  St. Jerome translated the Bible from the original languages?  Really?  Yes, really.  In about 400 A.D.?  About 125 years after Constantine ordered just about everything that didn’t agree with his own interpretations destroyed?  Good grief, not Constantine again.  I'll ask it again:  what doctrine of the church did Constantine change?  I've heard this "Constantine rewrote the Bible to suit himself" line so many times, it's pitiful.  Nobody ever cites specifics, though.  What teaching of the early church did Constantine add to or take away?  I've asked that question many times in many different threads, and I'm still waiting for an answer.  Give it your best shot.  But the Pope (largely installed by Constantine) had copies of all that stuff hidden in the best libraries of the day?  And gave them to Jerome?  And there were original copies of the Pentateuch laying about, and this Jerome fella was also versed in faithfully interpreting these ancient dialects in their original meanings?  I don't want to shock you, but there are people alive today who can read Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic.  Why is it so difficult to believe Jerome could as well?   Interpreting being the operative word here.  But, to be fair, Constantine and his inquisitors were only destroying anything other than his approved parts of the NT, which is what he was writing.  Jerome largely left the OT alone, but certainly had no original copies of that either.  As for the OT, even if he had nothing else, he had the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.  It had been in use for several hundred years. And as far as the NT goes, the earliest known ‘Gospel’ was written somewhere between 70 and 100 years after the events it pretends to describe, making it perfectly fair to ask any participant here to pick up a pen and faithfully describe the events of 1911 from personal memory and expect to be taken so seriously that a religion will spring up around them.  Nonsense.  "Nonsense" correctly describes much of your post.  You've been so busy reading the Dan Brown conspiracy stuff, you've neglected the important writings:  the ante-Nicene fathers.  "Ante-Nicene" means "before Nicea".  Their collected works fill ten volumes and about 6,000 pages.   In all their writings, they quote the NT extensively, so extensively that you could almost reproduce the entire NT with them.  And here's the kicker:  when they quote a NT passage, it's almost identical to that same passage in any modern version of the Bible.  Now how is that possible if Constantine rewrote the entire Bible? 

So, what happened to the Books of Nicodemus, Laodicians, Clement I and II, Barnabas, Polycarp, and many others which were discovered (hidden from the purging) much later?  They were never considered scripture by the early church.They weren’t in the library at the time, of course.  This tends to belie a ‘translation’ from the ‘originals’ as well.  One cannot translate that which was thought to no longer exist.

What then, in all cases, in all versions, and in all disputes is being tossed about and argued?  The Word of God?  The original writings?  The One True Path?  No.  The words of men.  Written, edited, translated, mistranslated, and rewritten time and again by men.  You're reading too much conspiracy theory into what actually happened.  No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us.  We just take exception with your assertion that Constantine started the "rewrite ball" rolling, and others have followed in his footsteps.  God seems to have neglected to have learned how to write, and the historical Jesus seems to be lacking in that skill as well – the man seems not to have written a single word of his own.  Much is made of that fact, in interpretations, but the fact itself remains.


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## Asath (Nov 24, 2011)

“It is those that question that can only truely be free, and those that don't shall forever be manipulated.”

Well said sir.

Some seem to ‘believe’ that refuting on a point-by-point basis actually constitutes a connected argument, a logical sequence, and sufficient cause .  But when the refutation contradicts itself internally it becomes a mockery of itself, and devolves into insults, which I’m sure was not intended. (BTW, I never bothered reading Dan Brown – twisting the few things that actually can be known into an even more complex fiction – solely for personal gain – seemed too close to the source of the problem for my taste . . . )  Adding more fictions, asserted as fact, completes the deal:

“The entire NT we have today was completed by about 100 AD.”   Not a chance.  That statement is so easily falsified that it can’t rise to the response trigger.

And this: “There was at least one apostle still alive at that time (John), and there were some of their disciples still alive (Polycarp, for example.)”  Really?  You have evidence that, first, there really was a ‘John’ (or some close translation of that name which did not exist in the time and place in question), and that this person lived well over 100 years in an age when the average life-span was about 40 years, and that this person was not only able to write, but did so?  Sir, you have a huge scoop on your hands, and one that has escaped all of the biblical scholars and researchers.  I would suggest that you present this evidence and publish it immediately.  You’ll be rich.

 But the real fun is here – let us start at the end – “No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us.”  Indeed.  So Christians argue, to the contrary, that god wrote the words himself?  That seems rather difficult to demonstrate.

Just previous to this, referring to the rather large number of writings that were forcibly not included in any of the ‘authorized’ versions, we have this justification: “They were never considered scripture by the early church.”  Here we see the immediate transfer of authority from the writers and believers themselves to the ‘early church,’ which is perhaps somehow an authority that existed and acted outside of men. Perhaps the ‘early church’ was a static, authoritarian, alien being?   So, already, the ‘scripture’ has become a judgment call – if the ‘early church’ didn’t deem it worthwhile, then it wasn’t actually the Word.  So who, exactly, is this ‘early church’?  Not people, of course.  Nor an already established institution composed of people.  So what was it?

Perhaps they were this crowd – “ . . . you've neglected the important writings: the ante-Nicene fathers. "Ante-Nicene" means "before Nicea".”  Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but if this group of ‘fathers’ and their writings were so influential, one must ask several questions – the first one being how they managed to ‘quote’ so literally and extensively from a work that was still in progress, historically; second, how they could have become the ‘anti-Nicene’ anything if their writings pre-date the Council of Constantine; and third, why this particular group might have been already arguing over a Word of God that has already been asserted to be something that men were not used to transmit?  If this Word was already there, then why all the bother?

This sort of backs itself into the previous statement: “What teaching of the early church did Constantine add to or take away? I've asked that question many times in many different threads, and I'm still waiting for an answer. Give it your best shot.”  Well, you already answered that one yourself, just out of the gate:  “(Polycarp, for example.)”  You can also add to that the writings of everyone I mentioned above, and add Magnesians, Trallians, Philadelphians, Hermas I through III, Smyrnaeans, and a few more . . .  But, again, these are the writings of mere men, and the assertion was made right up front that, – “No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us,” so the writings actually included in this most holy of books cannot be the work of men by that standard.  Thus whatever Constantine did or did not do cannot matter to a believer, since these words you read in your own version originated from Above. So is the question rhetorical, or merely defensive?    

And in that light, why would that thing about John living a hundred and some-odd years matter?  Whose words are they?  If John wasn’t transmitting the Word, then why does a single thought be wasted on defending what he is purported to have written in the first place?  If men didn’t transmit the words, then who cares about the men said to have written them? What’s all the fuss about this Moses fella, if he didn’t ‘transmit’?

And finally, concerning the branching of sectarian squabbles:  “Why not? Islam is based on the Koran, a book shorter than the NT, and it has many divisions.”   Yes, Islam is actually centered on the Koran, just as Christianity is centered on the NT, and Judaism is centered on the OT.  But one needs to learn only a single thing to realize that this ‘holy book,’ too, is based entirely on the OT.  The supposed and entirely invented God of Abraham underpins Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  All three begin at the same source.  But they have divisions amongst, between, and within themselves that cannot be resolved even through centuries of wholesale and horrific bloodshed concerning these differences.  All of this bloodshed was authored by the writers of these many words in so few books. 

None of it can be supported, especially when this god that is being asserted seems not to have ever appeared and actually written His Own Book.   In any language.  Unless or until that moment arrives, I’m afraid that there is only one reasonable conclusion.

There is a conspiracy, to be sure, but it is certainly the believers who hold the pen, and only the believers who seek to oppress.

(And what does it matter if it was Constantine, which it was, or Martin Luther, which it also was, or King James, which it also was?  The revision hit parade never stops.)


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## centerpin fan (Nov 24, 2011)

First things first ... you aren't Diogenes with a new name, are you?  Come back to haunt us?  There are definite similarities between you two:

1) Epic-length posts,

2) Lots of Bible/church history references with little evidence of actually having read any of them,

3) A fixation on Constantine that borders on the pathological,

4) Not using the quote function but just using quotation marks instead, and

5) Often posting late at night or very early in the morning.  


“It is those that question that can only truely be free, and those that don't shall forever be manipulated.”

Well said sir.

Some seem to ‘believe’ that refuting on a point-by-point basis actually constitutes a connected argument, a logical sequence, and sufficient cause .  I'm sorry you don't like my methodology, but the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.  If you cut your posts down from "Lord of the Rings" length to a more manageable size, I'd respond differently.  But when the refutation contradicts itself internally it becomes a mockery of itself, and devolves into insults, which I’m sure was not intended. (BTW, I never bothered reading Dan Brown – Neither have I, but I know it like the back of my hand.  Maybe I should have said you've read the stuff that he plagiarized.  The info is all over the internet, and it permeates the popular culture. 

... twisting the few things that actually can be known into an even more complex fiction – solely for personal gain – seemed too close to the source of the problem for my taste . . . )  Adding more fictions, asserted as fact, completes the deal:

“The entire NT we have today was completed by about 100 AD.”   Not a chance.  That statement is so easily falsified that it can’t rise to the response trigger.  I'll rephrase since you seem to have mistook my meaning:  the last book of the NT (Revelation) was written around 100 AD.  The other books are generally dated from the mid 50's/early 60's up to the end of the 1st century. 

And this: “There was at least one apostle still alive at that time (John), and there were some of their disciples still alive (Polycarp, for example.)”  Really?  You have evidence that, first, there really was a ‘John’ (or some close translation of that name which did not exist in the time and place in question), and that this person lived well over 100 years in an age when the average life-span was about 40 years, and that this person was not only able to write, but did so?  Sir, you have a huge scoop on your hands, and one that has escaped all of the biblical scholars and researchers.  It hasn't escaped the Biblical scholars.  It's just escaped you.  That fact could be remedied by simply reading the materials that you dismiss out of hand.  To produce an average age of 40, you'll have some dying very young and some dying very old.  It wasn't "Logan's Run".  They just didn't drop dead once they hit the magic number of 40.  

I'm not sure how old John was when he died.  It depend on when he wrote Revelation.  (I've seen it dated as early as 90 AD and as late as 110 AD.)  As for Polycarp, he says "Eighty and six years have I served him ..." which means he lived to at least 86.    I would suggest that you present this evidence and publish it immediately.  You’ll be rich.

 But the real fun is here – let us start at the end – “No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us.”  Indeed.  So Christians argue, to the contrary, that god wrote the words himself?  That seems rather difficult to demonstrate.  I left out a word.  I'll restate:  God used men to transmit His word to us.  No Christian will deny that.

Just previous to this, referring to the rather large number of writings that were forcibly not included in any of the ‘authorized’ versions, we have this justification: “They were never considered scripture by the early church.”  Here we see the immediate transfer of authority from the writers and believers themselves to the ‘early church,’ which is perhaps somehow an authority that existed and acted outside of men. The writers and believers ARE the early church, the "ekklesia" in Greek, the "called out".  Read the Bible.  Who do you think Paul is referring to when he writes "church"?Perhaps the ‘early church’ was a static, authoritarian, alien being?   So, already, the ‘scripture’ has become a judgment call – if the ‘early church’ didn’t deem it worthwhile, then it wasn’t actually the Word.  The early church knew the authors and their disciples.  They knew what was "legit" and what was not.  For the church to accept any writing as scripture, it had to be authored by an apostle (or someone very close to one, such as Luke) and it had to be from the 1st century.  That's why many "gospels" were never accepted by the church.  So who, exactly, is this ‘early church’?  Not people, of course.  Nor an already established institution composed of people.  So what was it?  

Perhaps they were this crowd – “ . . . you've neglected the important writings: the ante-Nicene fathers. "Ante-Nicene" means "before Nicea".”  Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but if this group of ‘fathers’ and their writings were so influential, one must ask several questions – the first one being how they managed to ‘quote’ so literally and extensively from a work that was still in progress, historically; As I said before ... the NT was completed by about 100 AD.  No, you could not walk down to the local Christain bookstore and buy a copy.  The writings of the apostles were well known, however.  The ante-Nicene period is generally dated from 100 AD to 325 AD and included lots of smart people like Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen.

... second, how they could have become the ‘anti-Nicene’ anything if their writings pre-date the Council of Constantine; Good grief.  By definition, ante-Nicene predates the Council of Constantine (held at Nicea.)  (Postscript:  I just noticed you wrote "anti-Nicene", not "ante-Nicene".  There is a difference.  "Anti" means "against" or "opposite".  "Ante" means "before".  Therefore, the ante-Nicene fathers lived before Nicea.  They weren't against Nicea.)

... and third, why this particular group might have been already arguing over a Word of God that has already been asserted to be something that men were not used to transmit?  If this Word was already there, then why all the bother?  What arguments are you talking about?  There was very little disagreement on what was included in the NT.  Yes, there were some, but they are in the minority.

This sort of backs itself into the previous statement: “What teaching of the early church did Constantine add to or take away? I've asked that question many times in many different threads, and I'm still waiting for an answer. Give it your best shot.”  Well, you already answered that one yourself, just out of the gate:  “(Polycarp, for example.)”   Polycarp did not consider his writings to be scripture, and neither did the rest of the church.

You can also add to that the writings of everyone I mentioned above, and add Magnesians, Trallians, Philadelphians, Hermas I through III, Smyrnaeans, and a few more . . .  Now, you're just throwing out letters from St. Ignatius (for the most part.)  Have you actually read any of them or is that the result of a quick Google search?  Since I have read them, I can tell you that, like Polycarp, he did not consider them to be scripture and neither did the early church.   They were letters to various churches he wrote on the way to his martyrdom.

But, again, these are the writings of mere men, and the assertion was made right up front that, – “No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us,” so the writings actually included in this most holy of books cannot be the work of men by that standard.  Thus whatever Constantine did or did not do cannot matter to a believer, since these words you read in your own version originated from Above. So is the question rhetorical, or merely defensive? The question is unanswered, once again.   

And in that light, why would that thing about John living a hundred and some-odd years matter?  Whose words are they?  If John wasn’t transmitting the Word, then why does a single thought be wasted on defending what he is purported to have written in the first place?  If men didn’t transmit the words, then who cares about the men said to have written them? What’s all the fuss about this Moses fella, if he didn’t ‘transmit’?  See above.

And finally, concerning the branching of sectarian squabbles:  “Why not? Islam is based on the Koran, a book shorter than the NT, and it has many divisions.”   Yes, Islam is actually centered on the Koran, just as Christianity is centered on the NT, and Judaism is centered on the OT.  But one needs to learn only a single thing to realize that this ‘holy book,’ too, is based entirely on the OT.  The supposed and entirely invented God of Abraham underpins Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  All three begin at the same source.  We can at least agree on that. But they have divisions amongst, between, and within themselves that cannot be resolved even through centuries of wholesale and horrific bloodshed concerning these differences.  All of this bloodshed was authored by the writers of these many words in so few books. 

None of it can be supported, especially when this god that is being asserted seems not to have ever appeared and actually written His Own Book.   In any language.  Unless or until that moment arrives, I’m afraid that there is only one reasonable conclusion.

There is a conspiracy, to be sure, but it is certainly the believers who hold the pen, and only the believers who seek to oppress.

(And what does it matter if it was Constantine, which it was, or Martin Luther, which it also was, or King James, which it also was?  The revision hit parade never stops.)

To this last bit, I really don't have much to add that I haven't already said in previous posts.


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## bullethead (Nov 24, 2011)

> No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us.



No Christian could argue anything other than that because it is all there is holding up the entire religion. No god ever writes anything, talks to anyone, makes an appearance or shows in a way that is universally understood to every being on the planet. SOOOO, a bunch of stories have to be written(obviously by man because something  so powerful to create everything ever cannot write it down) in order to "create" at set of beliefs/rules/laws.

Take a group of children and tell them that when they die there is nothing and you will see them melt in the reality of it all. Then after you feel bad make up some story about a happy place where everyone goes and it is so much better than what we have now that we will be better off. Then when they start asking more questions about the place and head honcho just keep adding to the story with answers that fit the questions. Any that do not fit, chalk it up as something beyond man's comprehension and only a supreme version of "us" can understand. Whatever helps ya get through life.....


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## Asath (Nov 27, 2011)

I appreciate the comparison with Diogenes, and have long wondered why his voice suddenly disappeared.  If you feel that I mimic his methods, it is simply because I read nearly all of his posts, and agreed with his reasons and reasoning.  I don’t think I’m quite up to that standard, but I’m flattered to be included in such company.  

Complex questions often require long explanations, and if one can accuse: “ . . . ignore the Dan Brown conspiracy stuff and read actual church history,” and then in the next post assert: “(BTW, I never bothered reading Dan Brown) – “Neither have I, but I know it like the back of my hand,”  then I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.  You are genuinely able to assert an intimate knowledge of something you will admit to having never read?  I find that a little bit confusing . . .  But not really. 

Perhaps reading the long version, though, might avoid leaping to conclusions.  My point in mentioning that I didn’t read Dan Brown was meant to illuminate my lack of qualification to therefore comment on what he may or may not have said.  If I read your own context correctly, your mentioning that you also haven’t read Dan Brown is being used as an assertion of your qualification to comment on the contents of the book you proudly have not read.  You know it like the back of your hand because you haven’t read it?  Honestly?

Assertions as to dating, similarly, must be compared to the actual dating of the earliest known fragments – simply ‘knowing’ that something was written by a certain date is a far reach from demonstrating that to be true.  And in truth, the earliest know fragment of the new testament is a small bit of the Gospel of John, reliably dated at about 125 CE.  Portions of Matthew, Luke, and Revelations have been found that reliably date from 150 to 175 CE.  The rest runs from 200 to 350 or later.  So whoever decided that Revelations ought to be the last Book and Matthew the first was clearly exercising a bit of editorial license -- nearly all of what they put in between was written much later by all indications, and none of it was written, by any plausible argument, by anyone who was actually alive when it happened.  But the point remains that the works of Jerome, who lived in the fourth century, includes the Gospel of Mary, which he attributed to Matthew, and which was not included.  Contemporaries of Jerome, including Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis; and Austin also mention a Gospel under this name.  Who took this out of his writings?   This one, and many, many others.  There is no short version of this sort of thing, since the list can go on for dozens of pages concerning the revision, new revisions, re-revisions, and deletions authored by the various people over the many years.  You cannot use the Bible as a source of itself and a verification of itself, and then argue authorship.  The two positions are mutually exclusive. Either it is a self-contained ‘Holy’ truth in a single volume, or it was written, compiled, and approved by men.  It cannot be both.

AND, all of this niggling nonsense fails to address, yet again, the actual point – if the ‘scholars’ of 2,000 years from now fail to exactly and accurately date all of the Disney stories and Grimm’s fairy tales, or get them in the right order, it still won’t make any of them true.  Bogging everyone down in the scientific method of the dating and historical verifications still won’t make the stories true, and springing up a rich and powerful Cult of Cinderella will still be Dopey.  The Church of Bambi won’t gain any credibility by verifying the date and authorship of the story.   

This is what makes these stories true to the cultists: ““No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us.”  That was the statement.  Clear as a bell.  One post later: “I left out a word. I'll restate: God used men to transmit His word to us. No Christian will deny that.”  Mystifying.  Completely different statements.  But if the new statement is the right one, then how does that one refute the truth that all of the writings are the words of men?  Made by men, compiled by men, and endlessly revised by men for only the purposes of men?  The first one didn’t, so it was immediately revised into the converse of itself, which also fails to prove the point being made.  But the ability of believers to change words, statements, assertions, and tactics with alacrity, and stand behind all of them simultaneously is the definition of belief.  Facts need proof, and can only change with a genuine counter-proof.  Beliefs are true (to believers) by assertion, and cannot be disproved. They’ll simply change the standards.      

“The writers and believers ARE the early church, the "ekklesia" in Greek, the "called out". Read the Bible.”  I did.  That is how I know that the ‘early church’ was men, as you just said – ‘the writers and believers.’  So if the ‘writers and believers’ in this book actually believed their own writings and beliefs, and made an ‘early church’ out of it, then that would seem to make my point.  People, all of them.  Not a single god with a pen in hand amongst them, and not a single witness to the divine events they purport to describe.  (Aside from John of Patmos, whose hallucinations were of such vividness that he actually may have been wherever he imagined himself to be . . and who was of such singular nutball quality that he was exiled from society and forced to write his rantings on an island far from actual civilization.)

I’m quite aware, as well, of what the ‘ante-‘ prefix denotes, and hope you will pardon my hasty misspelling.  But stick with me here – the assertion is made by many that we have before us the Word of God.  When challenged on that, the next assertion many make is, well, okay, it is the ‘God Inspired’ Word.  Then, when challenged on that, the position further erodes to, well, okay, it is the Word as Approved by the ‘Church Fathers.’  Then when challenged on that position it continues to erode and folks start trotting out ancient  authorities who may or may not have existed and who may have been writing cautionary folk tales for children.  Wouldn’t it strike one as a bit odd that the few extant writings (read – the ones that weren’t order destroyed) of the ‘pre-Nicene Fathers’ so neatly and compactly ratify the post-Nicea outcome?  Or are we simply making convenient, cherry-picked, and once again assumptive knowledge from something that is so well and popularly known that we don’t need to bother actually reading it?  After all, actually reading even Dan Brown is a lot of work, and since one already knows what it says without reading it, that is quite enough to be able to make hard conclusions and accuse others of a lack of knowledge  . . . 

That is Religion and religious history in a nutshell . . . Believers, largely, readily admit that they don’t even read or understand the actual basis of their own beliefs, but they don’t care, and assert that their beliefs are true simply because they say so.  For the rest of us, this has been a tragic mistake.


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## centerpin fan (Nov 28, 2011)

I appreciate the comparison with Diogenes, and have long wondered why his voice suddenly disappeared. If you feel that I mimic his methods, it is simply because I read nearly all of his posts, and agreed with his reasons and reasoning. I don’t think I’m quite up to that standard, but I’m flattered to be included in such company.  It was not a compliment.  Diogenes confused verbosity with insight.  He was amusing, though.  I’m still laughing about the time he used a Mormon site as a source.

Complex questions often require long explanations, and if one can accuse: “ . . . ignore the Dan Brown conspiracy stuff and read actual church history,” and then in the next post assert: “(BTW, I never bothered reading Dan Brown) – “Neither have I, but I know it like the back of my hand,” then I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. You are genuinely able to assert an intimate knowledge of something you will admit to having never read? I find that a little bit confusing . . . But not really. 

Perhaps reading the long version, though, might avoid leaping to conclusions. My point in mentioning that I didn’t read Dan Brown was meant to illuminate my lack of qualification to therefore comment on what he may or may not have said. If I read your own context correctly, your mentioning that you also haven’t read Dan Brown is being used as an assertion of your qualification to comment on the contents of the book you proudly have not read. You know it like the back of your hand because you haven’t read it?  Honestly?   Honestly.  A few years ago, Peter Jackson directed a new version of _King Kong_.  Having seen the original 1933 classic and the 1976 remake many times, I didn’t have to watch Jackson’s version to know the plot included a giant ape grabbing Anne Darrow, climbing to the top of the Empire State Building with her, and then being shot by planes armed with machine guns.  That is the story.  Likewise, I don’t have to read Dan Brown to understand a story that’s been around for ages (most notably in _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_, whose authors sued Brown for plagiarism.)  BTW, if you’re interested, skip Dan Brown and read _Foucault’s Pendulum_ by Umberto Eco.  As one reviewer noted, _Foucault_ is the book Dan Brown wished he had the talent to write.  

Assertions as to dating, similarly, must be compared to the actual dating of the earliest known fragments – simply ‘knowing’ that something was written by a certain date is a far reach from demonstrating that to be true. And in truth, the earliest know fragment of the new testament is a small bit of the Gospel of John, reliably dated at about 125 CE. Portions of Matthew, Luke, and Revelations have been found that reliably date from 150 to 175 CE. The rest runs from 200 to 350 or later.   Dating the earliest known fragments tells you one thing:  when that copy was written.  It doesn’t tell you when the original was written.  If I flew to Germany tomorrow, went to a yard sale, and found a copy of _Mein Kampf_, that does not mean that _Mein Kampf_ was written in 2011.  For estimated dates of the original NT writings, see here: 

http://www.errantskeptics.org/DatingNT.htm

… and here:

http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=233

So whoever decided that Revelations ought to be the last Book and Matthew the first was clearly exercising a bit of editorial license -- nearly all of what they put in between was written much later by all indications, and none of it was written, by any plausible argument, by anyone who was actually alive when it happened. But the point remains that the works of Jerome, who lived in the fourth century, includes the Gospel of Mary, which he attributed to Matthew, and which was not included. Contemporaries of Jerome, including Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis; and Austin also mention a Gospel under this name. Who took this out of his writings? Nobody took it out.  It was never included in the first place.  I’ve said this before in other threads, but it bears repeating:

St. Irenaeus, writing in the 2nd century, stated that there were …. four gospels.

Tertullian, writing in the late 2nd/early 3rd centuries, stated that there were …. four gospels.

Tatian (2nd century) wrote the Diatessaron, which was a harmony of the … four gospels.

Origen, possibly the greatest intellect of his day, wrote in the 3rd century that there were …. four gospels.

This one, and many, many others. There is no short version of this sort of thing, since the list can go on for dozens of pages concerning the revision, new revisions, re-revisions, and deletions authored by the various people over the many years. It can only go on for dozens of pages if you ignore facts such as those I just listed.  You cannot use the Bible as a source of itself and a verification of itself, and then argue authorship. The two positions are mutually exclusive. Either it is a self-contained ‘Holy’ truth in a single volume, or it was written, compiled, and approved by men. It cannot be both.

AND, all of this niggling nonsense fails to address, yet again, the actual point – if the ‘scholars’ of 2,000 years from now fail to exactly and accurately date all of the Disney stories and Grimm’s fairy tales, or get them in the right order, it still won’t make any of them true.  Bogging everyone down in the scientific method of the dating and historical verifications still won’t make the stories true, and springing up a rich and powerful Cult of Cinderella will still be Dopey. The Church of Bambi won’t gain any credibility by verifying the date and authorship of the story.  Then why bring up the dates at all?  I didn’t start this mess.  I’m just correcting you.

This is what makes these stories true to the cultists: ““No Christian will argue that God used men to transmit His word to us.” That was the statement. Clear as a bell. One post later: “I left out a word. I'll restate: God used men to transmit His word to us. No Christian will deny that.” Mystifying. Completely different statements.  Yes, adding a negative tends to do that.  But if the new statement is the right one, then how does that one refute the truth that all of the writings are the words of men? I’m not trying to refute that.  I believe God used men to transmit His word to us.  I can’t say it any plainer than that.   Made by men, compiled by men, and endlessly revised by men for only the purposes of men? Not “endlessly revised”.  The identity of Jesus does not change with each new Bible translation.  The first one didn’t, so it was immediately revised into the converse of itself, which also fails to prove the point being made. But the ability of believers to change words, statements, assertions, and tactics with alacrity, and stand behind all of them simultaneously is the definition of belief. Facts need proof, and can only change with a genuine counter-proof. Beliefs are true (to believers) by assertion, and cannot be disproved. They’ll simply change the standard.   As do you.  Check out my post # 118.

“The writers and believers ARE the early church, the "ekklesia" in Greek, the "called out". Read the Bible.” I did. That is how I know that the ‘early church’ was men, as you just said – ‘the writers and believers.’ So if the ‘writers and believers’ in this book actually believed their own writings and beliefs, and made an ‘early church’ out of it, then that would seem to make my point. People, all of them. Not a single god with a pen in hand amongst them, and not a single witness to the divine events they purport to describe. Wrong.  (Aside from John of Patmos, whose hallucinations were of such vividness that he actually may have been wherever he imagined himself to be . . and who was of such singular nutball quality that he was exiled from society and forced to write his rantings on an island far from actual civilization.)

I’m quite aware, as well, of what the ‘ante-‘ prefix denotes …  You could’ve fooled me.  … and hope you will pardon my hasty misspelling. You didn’t just misspell it.  You got the meaning wrong entirely.  Here’s your original quote:



Asath said:


> how they could have become the ‘anti-Nicene’ anything if their writings pre-date the Council of Constantine



So what you meant to say was “how they could have become the ‘before-Nicene’ anything if their writings pre-date the Council of Constantine”?  Please.

… But stick with me here – the assertion is made by many that we have before us the Word of God. When challenged on that, the next assertion many make is, well, okay, it is the ‘God Inspired’ Word. Then, when challenged on that, the position further erodes to, well, okay, it is the Word as Approved by the ‘Church Fathers.’ Then when challenged on that position it continues to erode and folks start trotting out ancient authorities who may or may not have existed and who may have been writing cautionary folk tales for children. Wouldn’t it strike one as a bit odd that the few extant writings … Few?  Ten volumes containing 6,000 pages is a “few”?

… (read – the ones that weren’t order destroyed) of the ‘pre-Nicene Fathers’ so neatly and compactly ratify the post-Nicea outcome? Obviously, it was due to a massive conspiracy perpetrated by Constantine.    And what exactly was “the post-Nicea outcome”?  What doctrine of the faith did he change to suit his nefarious purposes?  Or are we simply making convenient, cherry-picked, and once again assumptive knowledge from something that is so well and popularly known that we don’t need to bother actually reading it? After all, actually reading even Dan Brown is a lot of work, and since one already knows what it says without reading it, that is quite enough to be able to make hard conclusions and accuse others of a lack of knowledge . . 

That is Religion and religious history in a nutshell . . . Believers, largely, readily admit that they don’t even read or understand the actual basis of their own beliefs, but they don’t care, and assert that their beliefs are true simply because they say so. Pot, meet kettle. For the rest of us, this has been a tragic mistake.


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## Asath (Dec 8, 2011)

“Or take those who live alone with a dog.  They speak to him all day long; first they try to understand the dog, then they swear the dog understands them, he’s shy, he’s jealous, he’s hypersensitive; next they’re teasing him, making scenes, until they’re sure he’s become just like them, human, and they’re proud of it, but the fact is they’ve become just like him: they have become canine.”
		-Umberto Eco; ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’

“Incidentally, if the normal condition were nothingness, and we were only a luckless transitory excrescence, the ontological argument would also collapse. It would not be worth arguing that, if it is possible to think id cujus nihil majus cogitari possit (that is, possessed of all perfections), since part of this being’s due should also be the perfection that is existence, the very fact that God is thinking proves that He exists.  Of all the confutations of the ontological argument, the most energetic seems to be expressed by the question “Who says that existence is a perfection?”  Once it is admitted that absolute purity consists of Nonbeing, the greatest perfection of God would consist of His nonexistence.  Thinking of Him (being able to think of Him) as existing would be the effect of our shortcomings, capable of sullying with the attribution of being what has the supreme right and incredible good fortune not to exist.”
		-Umberto Eco; ‘Kant and the Platypus’

“Man somehow feels that he is infinite, or rather that he is capable of desiring in an unlimited fashion; he desires everything, we might say.  But he realizes that he is incapable of achieving what he desires, and therefore he must prefigure an Other (who possesses to an optimum degree what he most desires), to whom he delegates the job of bridging the gap between what is desired and what can be done.” 
-Umberto Eco; (paraphrasing Feuerbach); ‘Travels in Hyperreality’ 

"...the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life."
		 -Umberto Eco; ‘The Island of the Day Before’ 


Thanks for bringing up Eco.  I have nine of his books, and have read a few more, but never thought I’d have a chance to use any of that here . . .

Now, I could easily spend a few paragraphs defending my misspelling and the ready misinterpretation that spawned.  The statement stands, though poorly worded in that context.  But the thought remains – the ‘collected’ writings of these ante-Nicene ‘fathers’ were not collected and published until the late 1800’s.  Perhaps they ought to have been better known as the post-Nicene fathers, since the writings contained therein are among the few that were not ordered destroyed.  Similar to modern times, cherry-picking the few bits one agrees with, and disposing of the rest, is hardly a new idea.  This sort of thing is why we have tried to get rid of Emperors to begin with, and why we now try to do away with the remnants of their extra-political control mechanisms currently known as religions.

There is not now nor will there ever be a singular human, whether a Pope or an Emperor or a Pharaoh or a King, nor will there ever be a collection of humans oddly assembled over several centuries and suddenly decreed to be the ‘Fathers’ of anything at all, that will be able to assert from a position of authority the patently absurd.  It might be that the only truth that all of human history has to teach us is that the vast majority of humans have always been wrong.  

If you wish to actually take this up, point by point, in an adult and intellectual manner, I’d recommend dispensing with the insults, and actually spending some time reading critically, rather than looking only for confirmations of already revealed biases in third party sources.  Desiring is not learning, after all.


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## Drowntaff (Dec 8, 2011)

Doesn't matter, I don't know what's going to happen so that keeps my curiosity for life going.


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## centerpin fan (Dec 8, 2011)

At least we can agree on Eco.  I just picked up _The Prague Cemetery_.  Looking forward to reading it.


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## Asath (Dec 11, 2011)

I haven’t bought that one yet.  I understand, from the reviews, that it promises, in the form of a novel, to finally synthesize his view of things into an understandable form.  The man is 80 years old, after all, and still teaching.  But ‘understandable’ is also a relative term, since the novels have only been the narrative and rather experimental expression of a lifetime of learning and thinking that is often (in his non-fiction writings) so dense and beyond common comprehension that one’s brain ends up bruised even in the third re-reading of it.  

As a semiologist and philosopher, he uses words and symbolic expression with the accuracy of a surgeon, and as an historian and classical scholar he seldom stumbles.  Without a grounding in Roland Barthes, Italo Calvino, Noam Chomsky, and, in the modern age, Steven Pinker, among many others (Pettit springs immediately to mind)  it is nearly impossible to decipher the real meaning of a single sentence.  For Eco, it is all just a fun game of challenging us to keep up.  I’ll readily admit that I often fail that test.  

I’ve read every bit of ‘The Semiotic Challenge’ five times, and I’m still struck cold when I run into lines from Eco like this: “As they are optative possibilia, these individual things might also (successively) not exist: but references to possibilia can be made.  Is it possible to make references to impossibilia or, in any event, to inconceivable objects?”  Ten years I’ve been banging my head against that one (from ‘Kant and the Platypus’), and the question itself is so filled with danger that it almost can’t be answered.

On the surface, he asks one to make a distinction, which is necessarily personal, between what is possible and what is not.  But then it gets ugly, as you parse the thought – what really is the possible?  Allowing references to the possible forces one to define just what is possible.  I’ve never seen a unicorn, or an elf, or a Sasquatch, or a UFO, but are those things among the possibilia?  Or are they among the ‘optative possibilia,’ which might exist, and be referred to as though they do, with no evidence of same?  They might not exist, he suggests, but they also might.  So common discourse seems to allow references to things that may not exist, but that folks might include among the ‘possible.’

But what of the impossible?  And here he merely asks the question, and leaves it to the reader to answer – Can one (legitimately) make reference to the inconceivable?  And here the question becomes less simple, and becomes rather murky – If one’s definition of something is that it cannot be understood, that thing fails the test of the ‘possibilia.’  If something is ‘inconceivable,’ then it is.  Not conceivable.  It would be rather odd to begin to assign attributes and characteristics to something that one cannot include among the conceivable.   Defining anything at all as ‘beyond our understanding’ makes that thing inconceivable, and delegitimizes any reference to that thing by the simple lack of an operative (optative) definition.  If something IS simply by declaration, and cannot be demonstrated in any other way, then it is almost a sure thing that that thing is not.  Existence tends to require existence.  

I won’t include myself among those who are advancing the upper echelons of rational thinking, nor dare to assert that I know one hundredth of what Eco knows, but that doesn’t prevent me from continuing to learn and think on my own, separate from what self-interested ‘preachers’ would like me to swallow.  Possible.  Impossible.  They are opposite propositions, and allow for no middle ground.


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## mtnwoman (Dec 11, 2011)

1gr8bldr said:


> Let's simplify this as much as possible in hopes to see a picture. We were created to live like Adam. Imagine the life he was banished from. The goal is that when we are born again into the "second Adam", we will oneday enjoy this "relationship in paradise'



OMGosh, I pray so, my one and only love has been gone for 35 years, a marine in vietnam....he was either killed in a hunting accident or suicide, all I know was he had a 22 in his right eye, from a dropped and 'misfired'  gun.  I pray Lord, let me come to peace with this great loss....or be united...and I believe/hope we will be.


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## ambush80 (Dec 11, 2011)

Asath said:


> I haven’t bought that one yet.  I understand, from the reviews, that it promises, in the form of a novel, to finally synthesize his view of things into an understandable form.  The man is 80 years old, after all, and still teaching.  But ‘understandable’ is also a relative term, since the novels have only been the narrative and rather experimental expression of a lifetime of learning and thinking that is often (in his non-fiction writings) so dense and beyond common comprehension that one’s brain ends up bruised even in the third re-reading of it.
> 
> As a semiologist and philosopher, he uses words and symbolic expression with the accuracy of a surgeon, and as an historian and classical scholar he seldom stumbles.  Without a grounding in Roland Barthes, Italo Calvino, Noam Chomsky, and, in the modern age, Steven Pinker, among many others (Pettit springs immediately to mind)  it is nearly impossible to decipher the real meaning of a single sentence.  For Eco, it is all just a fun game of challenging us to keep up.  I’ll readily admit that I often fail that test.
> 
> ...



Durnd' it all if that just don't make sense.  

Does Eco mean that the existence of unicorns, since they can be imagined in terms that we can understand, is more plausible than the existence of God? And could God move into the same realm of plausibility as unicorns if we limit his supernatural powers to only the things that we might be able to conceive of?


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## Asath (Dec 11, 2011)

I don’t think, in context, that he was referring to the question of gods specifically, but as you noticed that extension of the thought is easily made.  In the quote at hand, the word ‘optative’ takes on the original Greek meaning of ‘wishful.’  So a distinction is made between wishful possibilities which, though nonexistent, do actually have a plausible, understandable set of definitions that are within the bounds of the known possibilia, and wishful possibilities that do not have any such links to what is known as possible.

So I suppose, in that context, a unicorn is certainly more possible than a god, since no one yet has suggested that a unicorn was able to simply blink the universe into being on a whim.  A unicorn, or an elf, or a little green man from Mars is imagined as fanciful, but subject to the laws of the universe as we know them, and all such imaginings are similarly constructed within the bounds of what we think is possible.  This type of imaginative construction does not actually make those things exist, but teases many into believing that they might due to their connection to known reality.  

And if one delves into the history of gods, it is easy to see that polytheistic systems had this part already figured out.  Each of their gods had a limited and defined role (as well as a defined physical description), linked to an earthly concern, and the limits themselves made the gods more plausible to the masses.  When the idea of invisible higher powers was consolidated into a singular, all-knowing, all-powerful presence, the connection with the possible was severed.  Suddenly people were asked to abandon the older gods, who were decidedly odd but at least conceivable, in favor of an abstract singular that defies any reasonable explanation.  So, yes, gods were once conceivable simply because their powers were limited.  

What any of this might mean, on a practical level, is anyone’s coin toss, since it still amounts to arguing over whether King Kong could beat Godzilla in a fair fight – all of it is fiction and has always been.  But still it tends to help the thought process if one can begin to make distinctions, and in the known universe King Kong is possible, while God is not.  It is far easier to believe in the possible.


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## ambush80 (Dec 11, 2011)

Asath said:


> I don’t think, in context, that he was referring to the question of gods specifically, but as you noticed that extension of the thought is easily made.  In the quote at hand, the word ‘optative’ takes on the original Greek meaning of ‘wishful.’  So a distinction is made between wishful possibilities which, though nonexistent, do actually have a plausible, understandable set of definitions that are within the bounds of the known possibilia, and wishful possibilities that do not have any such links to what is known as possible.
> 
> So I suppose, in that context, a unicorn is certainly more possible than a god, since no one yet has suggested that a unicorn was able to simply blink the universe into being on a whim.  A unicorn, or an elf, or a little green man from Mars is imagined as fanciful, but subject to the laws of the universe as we know them, and all such imaginings are similarly constructed within the bounds of what we think is possible.  This type of imaginative construction does not actually make those things exist, but teases many into believing that they might due to their connection to known reality.
> 
> ...



Amen.


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## JB0704 (Dec 12, 2011)

Asath said:


> ...... in the known universe King Kong is possible, while God is not.  It is far easier to believe in the possible.



How so?


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## ambush80 (Dec 12, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> How so?




See post #161.

I believe the essence of the argument is that if you assign "unimaginable" qualities to a thing then that makes the thing impossible; part of the Impossibilia.


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## Four (Dec 12, 2011)

ambush80 said:


> See post #161.
> 
> I believe the essence of the argument is that if you assign "unimaginable" qualities to a thing then that makes the thing impossible; part of the Impossibilia.



Yuup, paradoxes don't exist in the real world, so when you assign quantities to a concept that are paradoxical, you know that concept isn't in the real world (doesn't exist)

its like saying there exists a jabberwalky, that is a square circle. a square circle is a paradox, it doesnt exist!


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## ambush80 (Dec 12, 2011)

Four said:


> Yuup, paradoxes don't exist in the real world, so when you assign quantities to a concept that are paradoxical, you know that concept isn't in the real world (doesn't exist)
> 
> its like saying there exists a jabberwalky, that is a square circle. a square circle is a paradox, it doesnt exist!



A square circle is just nonsense.  I think a better example would be to say that "something that can travel faster than you can imagine" can't  exist because it's undefined.  More plausible would be to say that something can travel 500trillion times faster than the speed of light, but as stated before, that would be like discussing King Kong fighting Godzilla which is still more believable than the God of the Bible fighting the God of the Koran, even though they are the same god.


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## JB0704 (Dec 12, 2011)

ambush80 said:


> See post #161.
> 
> I believe the essence of the argument is that if you assign "unimaginable" qualities to a thing then that makes the thing impossible; part of the Impossibilia.




Ok, I read #161, and follow somewhat. One thing is that I can't accept that unimaginable is impossible because somebody says so, can you?  And the inverse, are things possible only when they are imaginable?

....or am I missing something here?


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## ambush80 (Dec 12, 2011)

JB0704 said:


> Ok, I read #161, and follow somewhat. One thing is that I can't accept that unimaginable is impossible because somebody says so, can you?  And the inverse, are things possible only when they are imaginable?
> 
> ....or am I missing something here?



I think it's saying that something bigger, faster, hotter, colder or stinkier etc.  than anyone can imagine can't exist because it defies definition.  Its one thing to say that Jesus can fly 500 billion miles per hour and another thing to say that he can fly faster than one can imagine.  

Maybe Asath will come back and help explain it.


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## centerpin fan (Dec 12, 2011)

ambush80 said:


> ... that would be like discussing King Kong fighting Godzilla ...



Godzilla would kick butt:


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## Asath (Dec 12, 2011)

Long post, again.  (sorry.)

This is a rough one, among many others, and as I said I’ve been banging my own head against the thought for years and I’m no closer to an answer.  But it makes sense on a level that is difficult to articulate.

Let’s look at it this way—a fish does not consider water to be a philosophical problem.  Born in water, raised in water, knowing nothing other than water, the only problem it might encounter is a lack of water.  To a fish, land is impossible.  

We’re a bit more developed (well, some of us are, anyway), and we have things like the Hubble Space Telescope, which has clearly demonstrated that there isn’t really a Heaven just above the clouds, which was the operative definition of the unknown when all of these ‘holy’ writings were authored.  Back then, the sky itself was a philosophical problem, because nobody understood what it was.  Back then, when this stuff was first written, the existence of anything above the clouds that wasn’t God was impossible.  

They had the same fears and curiosities we have, but they had no means of alleviating those fears with anything other than fanciful stories of ‘gods.’  Worked for them.  Worked even better for the rulers, for whom fear among the masses was their only operative means of maintaining power.  You will notice, again, that the rulers were not crazy, so the ‘gods’ were multiple.  They knew darned well that a number of ‘gods’ with a number of limited responsibilities was easy to explain and easy to exploit.  Polytheism made sense to most people of the time.  A Sun God, a Moon God, a Volcano God, a God of War, a God of Peace . . . it made the perfect balance, to keep people off-guard and still alleviate their fears.  Trust us, they said, and worship and sacrifice as we tell you, and we’ll take care of the rest . . . 

It was plausible in limited doses.  Then these rabble-rousing monotheists came along, knowing darned well that there were not ‘Gods’ of everything under the sun, and they tossed the whole established order on its head by proposing a SINGLE source.  ONE God.  This was a revolutionary idea.  On the one hand, it rather simplified things for the masses, since they no longer had to offer up their goods to the rulers on a weekly basis simply to appease one god or another.  They had begun to realize that this wasn’t working out so well for them in terms of outcomes.  On the other hand, consolidating all of the gods they had grown up with into a single entity took some getting used to.  Most of them resisted.  Predictably, this resistance was met at sword-point.

The consolidation of all of the traditional gods into a singular only made it easier for the rulers.  It rather left out the idea of credulity.  Remember, that the people (the masses) were the ones who had been pressed into service by the rulers to build things like the pyramids and the various Temples of Aphrodite along the way.  All of the notable monuments to the egos of the ruling class had that one thing in common, regardless of denomination.  Folks were a bit sick of that, and when they were offered an alternative they bought it hook, line and sinker.  A new ruling class was thus established, separate from lineage and independent of governance.  But no different, it turns out.

So right there, historically, hinges the distinction --  it was never a question of, ‘Does God Exist?,’ since that question was, and remains the furthest from peoples minds.  The question has always been, and also remains, ‘Who Gets To Be In Charge?’  

The existence of gods has always been impossible, and we know that instinctively.  So do the ‘religious’ leaders, and they have always known that.  The impossible is simply that, and we need not spend much time debating it, though we seem unable to stop.  The question of religions is no different than the question of nationality and the question of politics – “Who Gets To Rule?”  That is all it has ever been, and all it will ever be.  All else is just so many words and so many self-serving justifications.  EVERY sect believes they are right.  That in and of itself is impossible.

So I think the point the man was trying to make was actually quite simple – once one eliminates the impossible, only the truth remains.  We can entertain ourselves with nonsense stories that are perhaps plausible, but we know just as well that there is no King Kong or Santa Claus, no matter how instructive we think the lessons are to children.


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## mtnwoman (Dec 13, 2011)

Asath said:


> So I think the point the man was trying to make was actually quite simple – once one eliminates the impossible, only the truth remains.  We can entertain ourselves with nonsense stories that are perhaps plausible, but we know just as well that there is no King Kong or Santa Claus, no matter how instructive we think the lessons are to children.



There is a king kong, that giant comes into my life a lot and I have to slay that giant. God gives me the tool to do that. A sling, a rock, a prayer, whatever. 

Santa Claus, nonsense?.....my daddy was my santa claus, I watched him stress over getting all his children a gift at Christmas, me being the oldest, I watched him. He taught me tenderness, and faithfulness in a God I could not see. He taught my brother to play guitar, my brother that walked around holding a play guitar at 3 yrs old. He went to my youngest brothers t ball up to little league games when he (my dad) was 60 yrs old...every game. There is a santa claus for everyone, mine is gone and I miss him.

When I can't move something in my home, I live alone and 60, I say God please help me to slay this giant and give me a clue/tool to move this or do that.  And I always work it out, except for a few times here or there and then God sends someone to help me.

Imaginary? Not to me.


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