Do you really think that God is so stupid as to inspire something as poorly written and so badly misunderstood & misinterpreted as the Bible to convey his message?  Really?  Think about it & remember, the Bible states that God is the beginning & the end, that God knows the past and the future.  If this is true, that god is all knowing & knows the past and the future:\n\nWould God be so stupid as to inspire a book so poorly written, so mistranslated (over 120 versions and translations) that after 2000 years, less than 30% of all the people on earth buy into the crap written in it?  Ted Turner can commmunicate a message better than God can!\n\nWould God also be so silly as to put into motion a series of events, KNOWING THE FUTURE, knowing that he'd have to mass-murder everyone on earth with a flood and start over? What's the point?\n\nFree will?  God ALREADY KNOWS THE OUTCOME.  Already knows who acts on free will, who sins & who goes to hell. Why send people here first,then to H or Hell?
204709
Joshua.  People like you crack me up.  Really!  You argue about biblical-specific entries and events as if they were factual and undeniable.  "written 4000 years ago"  On what?  Notebook paper?  Do you have some copies of those 4000 year old writings?  Do you have some secret text that nobody else has ever seen?  Are you on heroin or acid?  What's your trip?  None of the authors of the NT witnessed the alleged resurrection.  No matter how you stretch it, there are no actual accounts of it.  Most of the NT was created and written in 320AD under the direction of Constantine the Great, and its puirpose was NOT for historic accuracy.  Its purpose was to create a doctrine at the Council of Nicea that all factions of religious doctrine could agree upon and pull everyone together.  Why does it appear that there only a few people that post here regularly who actually know this?  Is your only source of "history" the Bible itself?  Are you crazy enough to use the Bible to prove the Bible?  Talk about illogic!\n\nThe original poster is correct -- if the notion of god portrayed in the bible is accurate, then there is no need for "free will" -- God already knows how things turn out.  He already knows who chooses free will and who doesn't choose free will, how they act, and who the sinners are and who goes to hell.  He already knows the choices people made in the past and what they'll make in the future.  He already knows how things will turn.  Already been there.  Outside of the time line?  Fine, state it however you wish.  It's still the same.  He's all knowing.  He knows how the "souls" will turn out. There's no need for a test on earth.\n\nThe question is not flawed at all.  Your assumption that the Bible is incontrovertible is flawed, and your statements of biblical myths as assertion are ridiculous.  It is one of hundreds of unprovable myths on this whole planet, full of fatal flaws, like the one this question raises.
286925
First of all, to think with all the human intervention, that the Bible should have not only survived, but survived as CLOSE to what Jehovah probably intended is amazing in and of itself. With Jehovah using human secretaries with human, inadvertent errors, and to have said all those years ago that the earth "hung upon nothing at all" and that it was "a circle above which God dwells"; that the destruction of major peoples and cities and the lives of Kings and other leaders could be so well chronicled; that our entire way of keeping record of time changed because of the life of a man foretold in this book...is awe-inspiring to me. People can reject the Bible if they want, but they should at least have th intellectual honesty to admit that at the very LEAST, it is a reliable historical and scientific document!\n\n I am appalled at the people who will dismiss the entire book because of the small discrepencies myself! Or the folks who will down anothers interpretation because they don't agree with it. If God thinks we are doing our utmost to please HIM, do you think he will care how we pronounced a name, or whether or not we got an area of the Bible incorrect on a map?  I sure hope he remembers in the end that, after all, I AM human!! I have a friend who's name I can't pronounce to her liking even after knowing her for nearly 35 years!! My tongue just will not wrap itself around the pronunciation she prefers. Does that make me not her friend? Does that mean she never wants to be around me? Nope!! It simply makes me less learned than I wish I were! I'm thinking God will be as understanding about such mistakes, as long as I have not purposely offended anyone while I was here; murdered anyone, stolen, lied; etc...  But for me to completely reject the entire book because I can't agree on semantics, is not only ignorant, but dangerous spiritually!
74155
Along with other portions of Genesis, this is why the ultra conservative literal believers are so mistaken. The Bible is the Word of God, written by man and divinely inspired. Is it 100% word for word true? yeah right! The insistance on literal, the world was created in 6 days, belief of every word is just silly. Do you really think God would be so self-limited. A much bigger concept.\n\nI don't believe people have the least clue as to the answer to your question. My analogy for heaven is a movie house. When I get there God is going to roll the film and I'll understand it all then.\n\nAs a Christian, I believe the Bible to be a tool for contemplation and spiritual support. I believe it's historical information presented to glorify God and teach people about a broad, diverse and complex being/force/spirit/whatever. \n\nI believe that when Jesus said no one knows God except through me the meaning was clearly not about his physical person. I believe Jesus goes by Mohammed and Buddha and Krishna and Gaea in other religions.
570617
I've read quite a bit of it, and the more I read the more I realize how utterly bogus it is when taken literally.\n\nOh, and I think "jackiedj8952" ment to say you needed to have your ears poisoned and be brainwashed by a preacher or someone. That's what she ment by "spiritual ears". \n\nShe's right in a way, you first need someone to tell you that this book is perfect in everyway and if you don't believe in it you will go to hell, because without that it'll just be another book of fantasy and make believe.\n\nI encourage christians to be honest with themselves and go here to give your ex-christian testimony:\n\nhttp://exchristian.net/
657834
Quote: "You do realize that not everything in the cosmos is logical, yes?"\n\nAbsolutely. But answering these questions with "God created such and such" goes no further in explaining them. In fact, it simply muddies the waters more by pretending to know the unknowable.\n\nQuote: "Do you think it's wise to arbitrarily mythologize every faith?"\n\nLet's face it, most religions have wrapped themselves in myth far more than we could ever do by offering up fables and patently ridiculous stories. These stories, by the way, suddenly ceased to happen around the same time that science became prominent enough to refute them. \n\nQuote: "The truth is there, but it's not always elegant, and it's not always what we wish it were."\n\nJust briefly, take a look at how science approaches a problem and then how religion does it? Do you see a difference? Science STUDIES a problem, it pursues it from different angles and attempts to understand through hueristic methods. In the end, science pursues truth. Religion simply assumes that it already knows.\n\nEdit: To ChrimsonCarrots below: The Bible has credentials? What credentials? These people were NOT historians with an eye on detail and accuracy. Gospel itself means "good news". The goal was to push the idea of Christianity into a positive light and to perpetuate it. If I remember correctly, the story of the crucifiction is told within four books of the bible, Mathew, Luke, Mark, and Paul, the earliest of which was written AT LEAST forty years AFTER the crucifiction. Are you suggestiing that this is reliable and accurate information?
504777
Ah ...the soft-shoe routine you can get from people who believe in the "inerrant" Bible - when a text clearly states something so awful that it must be re-re-reinterpreted.\n\nSo .. a word from our sponsor:\nIsiah 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and CREATE EVIL: I the LORD do all these things."\n\nAnd now let's hear the various (laughable) renditions of what "evil" means "in this context," or "the actual Hebrew means something totally different." - obviously it couldn't just mean "evil," .... could it? \n\nThere is no one answer to your question. Current theology, in a vain attempt at sidestepping the mystical trend that produced the citation above, holds that God did NOT do what He says He did, or that it's a "mystery to be revealed in the end to us all."
604201
It is very sad. Anyone who does a good amount of reading on ethics will know better. Christians tend to not read good books. They just accept the beliefs they were raised with and stick to them out of loyalty, fear, and familiarity. A lot of people don't like to think that what their parents taught them was wrong. A lot of people also have a very hard time dealing with mortality without a belief in a Heaven and benevolent god waiting for them. The truth is, we really just do not know what happens. There could be a deeper purpose to our being here. There could of been an intelligence behind what is. I would never say there definitely is or is not. On the same token though I can see the works or man from a mile away. The Bible wreaks of man, and all his fears. It's far too obvious that a god had nothing to do with what's in that book. I can can spot it just like I can spot the hand writing of a three year old. It's a shame others have such a hard time seeing this. I think this goes beyond their intelligence or lack thereof. It comes from a much deeper emotional issue. To lose faith in God would be akin to losing meaning to everything and that would leave them horribly broken and lost. It's too bad they can't see the other alternatives. One can lead a very spiritual life without placing belief in ridiculous claims.
194269
Contrary to what a lot of Englightened people on here will have you think, the Bible isn't just for scholars or spinners. If it is true, the Bible is God's Word to man, then I think it is safe to take the book at face value assuming that most people were quite illiterate at the time of its first use. \n\nGod would not make his only word to man undicipherable to all, save the rich intellects of the world. This seems like the biggest, most obvious trap, out there! The rich have the key to salvation, but of course they do! The rich Europeans, to take it even further and make it better! Give me a flippin break. This is getting stupid.\n\nThis is one of the major "flaws" in the entire idea of the Bible being God's Word. Does God not know that most people on Earth are hardly literate, can't understand Hebrew or Aramic, and by inspiring a 3,000 plus page text, he has put the salvation of nearly everyone on earth in the hands of a very few who can actually READ who came from Europe and were bent on ruling the world at all cost??! Impossible for God to do such a thing to 90% of the rest of his own creation!\n\nSo, read the Bible just as it comes to you. Yes, God asked God why he forsakened himself. That is the surface interpretation, no spin. Unless your parents could afford to send you to private school, where they teach you how to spin, I mean interpret the Bible, or unless you were born into Christianity where there are churches all around you that teach these spin techniques, you would never know that when you read page 2,198 in the Bible, that it is ACTUALLY refering to page 1,328 which REALLY means what page 498 said in the third paragraph referring to page 20.\n\nThe logical or face understanding of the text, is that God called out to himself(strange indeed), in a manner that seemed  much like begging of himself to help himself. It's ridiculous.
394440
Exactly my friend....Exactly....Sadly Christians will never understand full what they are talking about....they can easily write off any other story ever written about Gods or things like that...but when it comes to what they believe it has to be real and true! Mucho props to you!
64888
The ignorance and utter cluelessness of some of the people responding to this question is absolutely amazing. For one thing, I've noticed that Jehovah's Witnesses' teachings can be backed up completely by the Bible, whether I use my King James Version or read through their New World Translation. \n\nTheir activity of going from door-to-door in talking to other people about the good news of God's Kingdom and what it will do for mankind is A COMMAND FROM CHRIST to true Christians. How many of you nutcases, and I'm speaking of FairyNanook, Jeffo, and Tabi, obey Jesus' command to go and preach to people? I bet not a single one of you, and I bet none of your churches teach that it's necessary, either. \n\nI found the fact that FairyNanook and Tabi made such ignorant and blatantly stupid comments against the activity of the Jehovah's Witnesses to be highly offensive, as I also find it offensive that they call themselves Christians. \n\nJesus Christ himself taught people about God's Kingdom and he showed them on a very small scale by his miraculous healings and the truths that he taught that it is God's Kingdom that will bring an end, very shortly, to the painful suffering of people today. How exactly is it wrong, Tabi, that Jehovah's Witnesses do the same thing? They help people to see the benefits that are soon to come to this earth when things like AIDS (as you mentioned) are wiped out forever? What exactly is so awful that the Witnesses teach people that the Kingdom will do this? \n\nMy goodness, you people really need a clue. "Only saved by Grace".....sure, that's a teaching in a Christian church, but certainly not a TRUE Christian church. Try calling yourself a Christian when you actually start obeying Christ by preaching to others.\n\n----------------------------------------\n\nLooks to me like FairyNanook isn't very Bible-smart. Here, you go Oh Very Spiritually Blind One: "Indeed, as the body without spirit is dead, so also FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD." (James 2:26) You can claim to have all the faith in the world, honey, but without the works to back up those claims, you're just talking into the wind. And while you're at it, I suggest you review the preaching assignment that Christ commanded his followers to engage in. The example was that they were to town to town, village to village, and DOOR TO DOOR. \n\nAnd doing so "for points"? Where in the world did you get that nonsense from? Jehovah's Witnesses do what they out of obedience to Jesus Christ, for one thing. They do it out of love for neighbor for another, and they do it because if they didn't, they would be considered bloodguilty before God. Your thoughts are seriously out of whack and you should be very concerned with the amount of ignorance you display here. \n\nIf you can't recognize that, then YOUR entire way of thinking is what is truly twisted and in deep error. I'm sure you think you teach or know truth, but honey, by your very own words, you're admitting to being one of Satan's blinded drones.\n\n-------------------------------------------------\n\nFinally! She admits that she doesn't have the slightest idea what she's talking about. She's happy to be blinded to the truths that are so clearly brought out in God's Word, the Bible. Perhaps we should all pray that her lack of spiritual understanding and her veil of Biblical ignorance be lifted, as what she thinks she knows now is only doing her more harm than anything else. \n\nAnd if anyone wants ACCURATE and TRUTHFUL information on what Jehovah's Witnesses teach and why......you would wisely steer clear of the trash sites she listed and go right to the official source:\n\n-------------------------------------------------\n\nThe ridiculousness of your comments, honey, is a very clear admission on your part (whether you think so or not). \n\n"Going to the Watchtower website wi
192646
You have a lot of questions here, so I'll do my best:  \n\nWhy did God flood the world?\n  The story goes that God was angered at the wickedness of mankind and sent the flood to wipe the slate clean.  Noah and his family were spaerd because of Noah's righteousness.\n\nWhy does he kill everybody?\n  I'm just going to assume that this is part of the flood question, and therefore see above.\n\nWhy did he destroy Soddom and goomorrah(sic)? \n  For much the same reason as the great flood.  These were two cities destroyed for their sins.  What these sins were isn't fully explained, but we can assume they were heinous.\n\nWhy does he kill people in Pakistan and New Orleans?\n  He doesn't.  Natural disasters occur and people die.  That is a tragedy, but it is not God's fault.  God doesn't cause natural disasters, they just happen.  It's a part of life.\n\nWhy does he allow Hitler to kill 6 million people and he goes to heaven because he is Cristian(sic).... And Anne Frank does not because she is Jew?\n  Ok, God gave mankind free will.  Free will is the ability to decide our own paths.  It is our choice to be good or evil, not God's.  If God interfered, it would no longer be free will.  Hitler does not go to heaven.  Merely being Christian is not enough, especially considering that Hitler committed suicide, which prevents you from going to heaven.  I don't believe that there is any doctrine that says Jews cannot go to heaven.\n\nHe is a racist and a homophobe!!! Why do people like God when he is sooooooooo nasty!\n  God isn't racist and homophobic.  Some people who interpret God are, and they spread a message of hate and intolerance.  To many people, however, God is a being of comfort and forgiveness.  Peace and tolerance.  Bear in mind that the Bible was written by men, and men are flawed.  The church is run by men.  We will never be perfect, but we try to do teh best we can.\n\n\nI hope this helps.
33963
Thank You, asking me that question...finally someone who begins to think. -\n\nwhat would such a God do with all that criminals and Idiots millions of ill and sic people, after a short life of only 70 - 80 years in so called Heaven? - And nobody will get a second Chance, to repair what he has done on Earth ? That must be a complete Idiot of a God, people probably Christians are believing in. And on the latest day all the cadavers are coming out of the earth to sit on the right side of god...what a scenario from a Horror movie...\n\nThank God it is different.\nWe are living to learn and to grow in our consciousness. Millions of lives, in different Cultures, different sex, different skin coulours, different religions, we are coming again and a agin till we are perfect.
253662
Let me give you something to think about. \n\nAccording to the Bible, God is all knowing, right? \n\nWhen he told Adam & Eve, "Do whatever you want, but don't eat fruit from that tree," he knew that Adam & Eve would be snacking on that fruit in due time. How do I know this? God is all knowing. \n\nSo, if God is all knowing, and he knew they'd eat from the tree, why was he so ticked off? HE KNEW THEY'D EAT FROM THE TREE.\n\nEither God is one angry, irrational, and illogical being, or he's not all knowing. If he's not all knowing, what other flaws does he have? \n\nConsider the Garden of Eden as allegory, and that changes the dynamic of the question. Given a choice between a blissful but ignorant life, or a difficult but knowledgeable life, I'd choose knowledge. However, I would really kick myself for not staying dumb and happy. Human nature, what can you do? \n\n(The Matrix movies are a great example of choosing Eden or choosing reality. Overall, I think humans want to know the truth of things.)
180738
In one way, Bible is God's letter of introduction. He described His character through the Bible so that people may know Him. I don't think that He would allow His character to be misrepresented by wrong translations, cause it is His character we, people, can rely on (among other things). If God is omnipotent, I am sure He could and can find a way to prevent some catastrophic errors to appear in the Bible which would lead its readers into wrong assumptions and beliefs.
653713
No. god decided to contradict himself by taking away free will for a bit, so he could get the humans to write his book for him.\nAnd of course, that's ignoring all the inconsistancies in the new testament, like made up prophesies and the evidence to support that the old testament was actually copied from ancient Sumerian stone tablets...\n\n:)\n\nTY, shawny  :D
25981
Many Christians, Jews and Muslims believe that God authored the bible. They believe in the inerrantacy of the bible because it is claimed to be inspired by God himself. If the bible is inerrant, without error, then they reason that  the bible must be literally true. The problem for them then is to interpret the bible so any inconsistancies can be explained within the entire bible when read as a whole continuous work. The bible was written by 40 or more individuals over perhaps 1500 years. Reading it as a whole continuous work inspired by God, does not leave room for the evolution of religious thought not to mention the evolution of the Universe and Mankind. This is "Group Think' on a global scale. I am not saying that the bible is not inspired by God, but it should be read in literary form not literal form. In the area of ethics and morals I believe the bible is more literal in nature. God communicates directly with his creation through Science, there is no middle man. Scripture has man in the middle, communicating ideas with his own limited understanding of the world. When fundamentalists are confronted with the science of evolution, they just do not believe it. Some will try to find ways to expain the Universe so it is in agreement with the bible. Examples would be that radioisotope dating is wrong or the Universe was created to look billions of years old when it is less than 10,000 years old. It does seem ridiculous to reasonable people.
664664
HAHA I can see what your getting at. This isnt a battle that you can win. Neither can I. I'm christian but a relaxed one. People have their opinions and who am i to tell them different. I dont beleive everything I hear. I beleive things that i know however. And I dont know for sure that a god even exist. I guess thats the whole concept to a religious faith alone. People tend to take the bible TOO literal. Then things begin getting mixed up. I am a scientist as well, some things in the bible just dont make sense. But if you read a book that offered a way for you to live in a sunny nice beach, and youve lived in the projects all of your life...and all you had to do has follow the books teaching...would you take it? I'm sure you see what i'm getting at as well.