there is nothing on this earth, doctrine or material or natural which cant and hasnt been able to be misused by man

this is not cause for us to throw any of it out because these same things are also often used for the GOOD and BENEFIT of man(and in most cases, more often than not)


even buddhism implies a cause and effect to life, and some might take such a 'kharma' to an extent as to believe the harm they do others is justified because it is what the victim sowed for themself

yet Im sure those who find in buddhism something redeeming, would argue that that is not at all what the doctrine refers to

wouldnt be any different, wouldnt mean people dont INTERPRET it to justify terrible things which happen, but it also wouldnt be cause for me to ask 'buddhists' to discard their faith , their religion, or the spirituality that speaks to them,,,

I went ahead and ran through this thread and it seems to me like all of the questions and comments raised could be answered by your first post. I'm not sure why people would continue to make the same kinds of statement without doing research. That kind of thinking doesn't make sense to me. There are things that are so clear once studied. For me personally I wouldn't even make a comment if I had no knowledge of the root past saying I don't know.

I think it has to do with the topic that I'm addressing.

I wouldn't have much respect for "Jesus" if he truly was an all-powerful Holy Spirit who can do anything, yet he chose to just sit back and watch tens of thousands of innocent women being tortured and burned alive in HIS NAME.

The typical "excuse" that is given is that God or Jesus cannot interfere with the free will of men. But that's hogwash because this God intervened in the affairs of mankind many times over in these stories. Jesus himself appears to Saul to convert him into Paul. Yet he supposedly did nothing at all to try to convince the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum to abandon their evil actions.

There would be no excuse for this at all, IMHO.

You can't have Jesus going around doing TRIVIAL things and then have him totally ignore the majorly important things.

Same is true of the Holocaust. If Jesus could appear before Saul to convince him to become Paul, then he could have appeared to Hitler as well.

If God could speak to a bunch of totally insignificant commoners from a cloud to say, "This is my beloved son in whom I'm well please".

Then he could have just as easily spoken from a cloud to nip the Malleus Maleficarum in the bud, or the Nazi Holocaust.

There's no excuse for these supposed deities of the Bible if they were real. If they had any real spiritual power, then they are nothing but jerks.

The only way that Jesus could have any respect from me is if he was indeed a mortal man just like the rest of us. As an all-powerful God he's worthless.

Yes, I would indeed hate Jesus if he could have nipped those evil things in the bud and did NOTHING to even try. Absolutely.

There would be absolutely no reason to worship such a pathetic God.

So we're far better off if the stories are false, because if they are true then the God they describe would not be worthy of anyone's worship.

I know the religion is false.

This is why we should all 'hate' it, and try to rid the world of it. Just like we all 'hate' cancer and would like to rid the world of cancer.

Cancer is a disease of the flesh.

Christianity is a disease of the spirit.

We should all work to eradicate it via education and empathy for all that is truly Good and Righteous.

The sooner we renounce Christianity as nothing more than Hebrew Mythology, the sooner we can begin working toward convincing the Muslims to do the same thing with their version of this Abrahamic Religion with it's jealous God.

We're never going to rid the world of these religious cancers until we start to recognize them for what they truly are.

Christianity only needs to be 'renounced' by those for whom it doesnt work

for the rest of us, it remains our choice to believe what we choose to(like everyone else does)

Recognition starts with a mirror...


Next, one must recognize between benign and malignant...


It's time to rebuke all demons Ab, they are nothing more than liars...


Once you eliminate the cause of your so-called "cancers", your tumors will heal...



I thank Yahweh for my gifts. One of which allows me to spot a lie a mile away. And yes, those demons ARE liars....



So, sit down on that bench, let's reason together

If only you could see the lies you have been fed Peter......

Oh, but I can... they even have little pictures of the liars next to 'em....




You just soooooo silly, me thinks it's quite amuzing. LOL!

Reason?

I'm sorry Peter, but from my perspective there is simply nothing "reasonable" about a supposed benevolent "God" who would be associated with blood sacrifices and drowning people out, etc.

I thank "God" for life too Peter. Life is beautiful.

But that doesn't mean that I need to worship fables of Zeus.

Nor does it mean that I need to worship fables of Yahweh.

Separate "God" from religious fables and I'll be glad to consider the concept.

The only thing I know is that if there is a "God" surely that God would be a better person than myself. The biblical description of "God" simply doesn't meet that criteria.

That's all I know to say.

And THAT, is truth. A God who is no better than we are, and acts in ways we do, if not worse than we do, is a false God indeed.

A 62 year old Science teacher Buddhist / Taoist never married. Hmmmm.

And what does that have to do with anything??

I wonder if Yahweh sits back and laughs at all of the naked apes in the world???

Tell me Abracadabra, are you a religious man?

Tell me about the history of your religion?

What is the book you study?

Do you study in the original language?

How did it get translated into English?

I've answered your questions, will you start answering mine?

Kleisto

I looked at your profile and Abracadabra's cause I want to know who I'm talking to.

"I'd like to consider myself a caring and kind person, and I try to help people as much as I can, may even want to make a living of it. I believe in God....but I don't believe in man's idea of God so much anymore, ask if you wanna know more about that."

Abracadabra said my personal views mean nothing to him. If that's the case he shouldn't waist my time and his time asking me questions about my personal views. He obviously just likes to argue and tell people what they believe without even getting to know them. I've never heard of a Buddhist attacking people like he does. I'll probably copy his posts and send them to a Buddhist friend of mine and see if this is the manor that Buddhist conduct themselves.

So what I would like to know about you is, if you believe in God, what is it you believe and what is the historical background to it.

I'm not yanking you guy's chain, I really want to know because I'm reading a lot of anger in your threads and I want to know where that is coming from and why is it directed the way it is. I almost see the steam raising off the pages when I read you guys and honestly I don't see, if you both believe in God, why isn't there a lot more love coming out.

IT isnt a very useful truth though, unless 'better' were a definable, measurable thing.

My God is complete, more complete than I can grasp with a JUSTICE that is also complete. Justice isnt always nice, but it is , by nature, what is 'fair'.


Now, that some consider the spiritual consequences and history that of things that are 'unfair' is true

it is also true that others do not

but those TRUTHS are very subjective ones and up to the individual to decide for themself.

Can you at least admit your own truth is subjective too? Just because I don't believe what you do, doesn't mean I'm wrong cause such and such says I am.

yes , I fall in the 'others do not' category

my statement included those in each category, including myself

they are SUBJECTIVE standards , based upon individual experiences and interpretations

on an earth with BILLIONS , there will be large groups in agreement of those interpretations and with similar experiences, that is to be expected

to discard any interpretations that dont do exactly what we think should be done would not solve anything, but to take people freedom of choice away,, which I Think is one of the arguments non christians use against the biblical belief in God in the first place


I have no issue with anyones spiritual/religious belief, nor do I wish to restrain them from their belief,,,,I only hope that those beliefs somehow embellish and enrich their lives and , wherever possible, encourage them to embellish and enrich the lives of others,,,

I'm not gonna tell anyone they can't believe something if they wish to, for that is their choice no matter what. But having said that, if I can open someone's eyes to the lies that have been told about God, to make one think a bit about what they believe in, I'm not going to shy away from doing so either.

I think, ironically, most christians agree with you..and the debate continues,,,

Are you so superficial that you jump to conclusions about people based on a few check-boxes on a dating forum?

Besides, this isn't about me, or you. It's about religious myths and the affects they have on humanity as a whole.




I'm a spiritual person and have always been a spiritual person.

Religion is man-made.




I was born and raised as a Free Methodist Protestant. Several of my uncles were preachers. Most of my extended family were very strong believers in the biblical picture of God and Jesus. There were some exceptions. Some of my smartest uncles were atheists, and ironically they were recognized without question to be the smartest members of the family.

The uncles who were preachers would often discuss biblical matters and often disagree on various interpretations of things.

Being a naive child who wanted to do what is RIGHT I turned to God myself and accepted Jesus into my life. I started reading the bible in the hopes of discovering the TRUTH. After all, if the preachers themselves were having trouble agreeing on things maybe I could find the answers in the Bible and help them to better understand the Bible.

I BELIEVED because I was taught to believe, that the Bible contains answers for everything. As it turns out that itself is a big fat lie. The bible does not contain answers to most of my question, on the contrary the more I read the bible the more unanswered question I found myself with.

It's no wonder the preachers can't agree with each other. The bible is extremely vague, highly contradicting, and even utterly absurd in places.



Spiritual answers are not to be found in books.

I've found the best books are those written by men who actually think. Mostly scientists. In fact, it quickly came to my attention that the most brilliant men in all of humanity have rejected the bible as being absurd and mostly like just cultural myths. These include people like Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, Stephan Hawking, and the list goes on and on.

So I find myself in great company.



The original language of what?

Some of the rumors and superstitions that were eventually incorporated into what we today refer to as the "biblical cannon"?

No, I don't even bother with that nonsense anymore. I've learned enough about it it to know that it has no worthy merit.



There's a video course on that put out by the Teachings company, you can Google them if you are interested in looking it up.

I was actually thinking about buying that course just out of curiosity, but fortunately the outline syllabus was all I needed to read. The translations that we now call the "Bible" actually evolved over battles between the early 'Christians and Jews'. The Christians held out that Jesus was the divine son of God, and the Jews rejected that conclusion.

The early "Christians" continued to build their case as they created these stories via editing until they evolved to become the stories we know today. So it's clear to me how they came to be and that they have no divine authority.

Of course, I'm not going just by that one syllabus, but clearly the Teaching Company Course basically supports the conclusions that I was already aware of from previous knowledge.



You're too concerned with trying to address the PERSON.

You're attempting to find ways to belittle or discredit "Abracadabra", thus allowing you to simply "wave him off" as being uneducated or whatever.

I'm actually quite flattered by your choice of tactics. It only goes to show that you can't address the issues that I actually bring up and thus you feel a desperate need to try to change the focus toward a personal level of "Credentials".

I don't need any "credentials", the topics I address should be available to anyone based on pure common sense. This is true because I address the common sense issues.

Talking about "Original Scriptures" etc, is a moot point, unless you are going to claim that the biblical story is WILDLY DIFFERENT from the King James Version of the religion.

If that's your position then you're basically renouncing King James Christianity too.

Perhaps, in your interpretations Jesus isn't even the "only begotten son" of God. I have no clue what distorted version of the religion you might be referring to.

The Christianity that I object to is basically the Christianity that is based on the King James Version of the Bible.

1. God requires blood sacrifices before he can forgive sins.
2. God instructs people, "Thou Shalt Not Kill".
3. God instructs his favored people to mass murder heathens.
4. God doesn't play "favorites".
5. God is UNCHANGING in his ways.
6. God drowns out all sinners save for Noah and his family.
7. All sins are equal, and no man is without sin! What about Noah?
8. God is UNCHANGING in his ways.
9. God changes his mind about drowning out sinners and makes a rainbow.
10. God now sends his only begotten son to put forth a NEW COVENANT
11. God is UNCHANGING in his ways. (except when he makes a New Covenant)
12. Jesus rejects the ways of God as taught in the Old Testament.
13. Jesus rejects the judging of others to be "sinners".
14. Jesus rejects that stoning to death of "sinners"/
15. Jesus rejects an eye for an eye, and teaches to turn the other cheek.
16. Jesus changes everything.
17. God is UNCHANGING in his ways.

~~~~

So what's your agenda mg?

You're going to try to back-track into ancient obscure languages in the hopes of trying to untangle this mass of contradictions and make a viable story out of this?

Moreover, do you honestly expect anyone to believe that "God's Word" was actually LOST to obscurity and translations over the course of time?

~~~~

And FINALLY, let's assume that you are indeed correct.

~~~~

Let's assume that somewhere in the lost halls of history there exit interpretations of these original stories that fly in the face of the King James Version of the Bible and somehow justify or change many of these blatant contradictions and absurdities.

Could any truly righteous God blame anyone for not believing in the current modern distortion of these stories?

Obviously not. In fact, he would be PROUD of anyone who rejects them as being the absurdities that they are.

So even if you're speculations are correct, all you are doing is confirming that my rejection of the modern distortions of the these ancient texts is indeed justified.

You'll have to write your own version of the bible based on your interpretations of the ancient texts that you feel are important and should be included.

When you have achieved that goal let me know, I'll read your bible and let you know that I think.

Until then all you're doing is suggesting that the King James Bible is wrong and that there are better interpretations to be had from some "supposed" original scriptures.

Most people would even expect you to "validate" the authenticity of any ancient original scriptures that you might reference. You'd probably get into tons of arguments with people over your interpretations of those scriptures as well. Especially seeing since you yourself would need to be translating them into English.

Personally I couldn't care less about any of that. Just write up your version of what you believe to be the "Word of God". I'll read it, and decide on its own merit whether or not I feel it is likely to be the thoughts and actions of a genuinely all-wise supreme being.

That's the ONLY criteria that I require.

I don't care where you got your sources. They could have come to you in a dream for all I care. If they make sense to me I'll grant that they may very well have come from a divine source. Or at the very least I might agree with your ideals concerning what "God" should be like.

On the other hand, if it doesn't sound divine to me, I'll pass it off as being unworthy of further consideration.

That's as simple as it gets.

I don't care whether it comes from you, or the ancient Hebrews, or the ancient Greeks, or the ancient mystics.

The source of information is totally irrelevant to me. Whether or not the information makes any SENSE is all that's meaningful to me.

Ironically even the Hebrew scriptures often say that you can tell a source by it's fruit. That's one principle I will agree with!

If it smells good it might be good.

But if it smells rotten then it probably is rotten.