The bible

This thread is a response to the long dead thread

http://www.kh-vids.net/showthread.php?t=99152
And a follow up to http://www.kh-vids.net/showthread.php?t=88683)


The bible is the number one selling, book. How it has sold so many copies is beyond my comprehension.
I believe that the book is one of the most immoral books I have ever read. The main charecter of the book is even worse.
Here is what I think about the God of Abraham:

Ex.
(Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
What kind of lunitic would make a rape victim marry her rappist?

(Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)
If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife

(Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)
If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever.


What do you think about the bible?

 

Well satan was an angel...God banished him to hell for falling in love with god if I do recall...To be honest whats wrong with hell anyway? If there was a god would you really want to be under his rules for eternity or go to hell and be free? And as to how the bible has sold so many times...well there are the edited versions that make it seem ok...then there is churches replacing the ones people rip to shreds or burn (seen this happen waaaaaay too many times)

 

I find the of hell idiotic in a way. If there was a hell it should not be eternall, but temporary. Kind of like a punishment. I mean the idea of the punishment is to make a person better; hell on the other hand is just torture.

 

You say that but if someone asked me what was so bad about helll...I honestly couldn't answer...But seriously I never heard anything more threatening than "Or you'll go to hell" I mean it seems almost like a place to ditch the peoeple god doesnt want

 

Yeah, burning for all eternity definitely isn't that bad.

 

I don't recall it actually stating anywhere where it states you burn for eternity

 

God seems a bit of a prick "You know I'm having a bad day...Yo Noah take your wife take 2 of each animal and get on a boat imma kill everything else" and then jesus is all like "Now its water..."*quickly slips wine from the bottle in his sleeve* "Now it's wine what a miracle!"

 

Well...

Due to my own spiritual beliefs, I can't sit here and try to justify Christianity for anyone, but I do know that Hell has been stressed as eternal.


There has actually been debate on whether it's eternal (some people say "for ever and ever") or if there's an end to the punishment ("for ages and ages").

If it was temporary, the question was to figure out if those people will then be sent to Heaven or if they will suffer a "second death," the death of their souls. Since I've never been to Hell nor Heaven, I can't answer this, but the other side says whether it's temporary or eternal, "for ages and ages" doesn't sound like just a few dozen years of suffering to me.

 

I laugh at the way these quotes are not in our school bibles...or in the church bibles around here...or even in the library...very rare to come across an accurate biblle 'round these parts these days. They just don't seem to want to tell us god is an ******* if he exists at all...I might it's a pile of bull if he doesnt the amount of sacrifices that have been made in his name...I beleive in the bible somewhere it says you must sacrifice your irst son on the night of a full moon

 

Never heard that one before...My best friend is a satanist in a christian family...She usually knows what she's talking about.

 

Which type of Satanist? The ones that actually worship Satan or the ones that believe that they're their own god? I don't remember the exact name.

 

Reminds me of the story of Zeus and his father. Zeus's father was afraid that his offspring would become more powerful than him so he swalloed his children as soon as they came out of the womb. Zeus was hidden away on earth so that one day he could defeat his father, and free his siblings, which he did.

 

I think the Bible is the best selling book of all time, as they like to say, because it's printed and churches buy it and give them out to people galore whether they want them or not.

I remember that it was actually the Bible itself that made me become not a Christian, since I read the thing from page to page when I was around 12. It horrified me more than the Edgar Allan Poe books I was reading also at the time. I had nightmares of Judgment Day where I would be standing on a mountain and just watching massive destruction happen to all around me, while I seemed impervious to it and was going to head on somewhere better... and it was just not what I could accept. The cruelty and barbaric crimes in the Bible just made me angry and some things just made no real sense at all.

I know plenty of decent Christian people, but when they try to say that the zealot, fundamentalist morons aren't Christian, I have to disagree with them. I can point in the Bible to what they use as source material and have to admit that at least they are following a good portion of the religion which has a deity that was selfish, cared so much as to what people did there are rules on waking up from a wet dream and being impure, punished us for minor crimes for thousands of years that he could have canceled from happening with his all powerful knowledge, and inducing people into wars, permitting rapes, murders of children, the degradation of women, telling people what to eat... yeah, I could go on. As much as the nicer Christians try to say they are true Christians, I'm afraid they can't use that phrase with effects they hope for. They too can pull out rules, albeit more 'docile' phrases from mainly the New Testament, while skipping over the droves of heinous quotes from both the Old and New Testament. Many don't even read the Bible to know what is actually in there and go off of old Sunday school lessons or children's stories.

I won't go into how some people use the Bible as total truth and pick it apart for the fallacy it is to me, including historically, but I will say I really don't have to either. I can understand the desire to believe in something greater than us out there that controls things, but if there was such a being, I could only hope it would be a better being than the one in the Bible and that humans just flubbed story time up to fit their needs. The Bible in itself is full of discrepancies and it can easily be proven by taking two Bibles and setting them down side by side. Then read the accounts of each disciple on such things as even Jesus's crucifixion. The book is wrought with mistakes throughout it.

As it stands, I consider the Bible to have about as much truth to it as I do tales of Zeus, Odin, Horus, Mithras, Mab, Gilgamesh, Nabu, Marduk, etc. There are some good and bad parts to it and things to take away from it. There are historic places and people mentioned, just as there are with the other named deities, but the events that transpired are mostly untrue. Despite the fact it made me not really like Christianity (no, that doesn't mean I dislike people who are followers of it), I do think people should be able to read it and I would encourage them to so that they can think on things and come up with their own conclusions. I also would encourage them to read other books too on different religions to see similarities and differences. It's not a 'horrible' book as the Bible does tell us of a time when people did in fact think slavery was a fine thing, women were seen as soulless and had to be subservient to men, killing in the name of a god was peachy. It gives us a glimpse into how the minds of man worked back then and in that way, it is a historic document.

 

Actually, Satan left on his own will. He still goes to Heaven and talks to God occasionally (Story of Job). He was never banished to Hell, in fact he's never been there. He will go there eventually according to prophecy, but as now Hell is completely empty.

I've been reading the Bible a lot lately, and while I do enjoy it, I do find a lot of the things in there a bit repulsive and kind of scary. Like the story of Jacob and Esau... Jacob tricked his father into giving him the birthright and blessing that was supposed to go to Esau, and God REWARDED him for it. Many of the things God does just seems unfair. But I'm still a Christian nonetheless.

 

It's all a matter of perspective and assumption if you ask me. If no one can ever attest to what hell is like who's to say that it's just one way.

Also the bible is a popular because it goes hand in hand with the popularity of the religion and it's variants.

 

Actually many inconsistencies can be found in the New Testament and there are immoral things as well.

Jesus stated, according to his disciples, that he stood behind all of the 10 Commandments and rules of Yahweh. The difference was he knew men couldn't follow all those rules but they should really try but in the end, did it matter anyway because God knew people were failures and so he sent Jesus to die for them anyway which is God..doing a blood sacrifice.. yeah.

Jesus condoned slavery and even said slaves should not fight for freedom but instead accept servitude and do their best to win their spot in heaven. Jesus condoned that women should shaddap and not have opinions out in public but only voice them to her husband at home. Mistreatment and violence was still condoned in the New Testament, just hidden under a softer tone of voice by enamored disciples who couldn't even get their stories straight on what happened as they romanticized the adventures of Yeshua. It may have been a bit gentler, but it still meant that slaves were just dandy and women had no rights outside of what the husband or father permitted and certainly not to do crap in public. Jesus also wanted to divide sons and daughters from parents etc. Families to fight and for him to be placed first in their hearts above all and that if you truly believed in him, you would abandon your family for God. There's some pretty messed up things in the NT too even if there aren't massive floods that drown out a buttload of people.

 

Although there is the part about burning in hell forever if you do not accept Jesus Christ into your heart. Even if your a good person, but don't accept Jesus, you burn. I think that in itself is pretty screwed up.

e_o
Er, thanks?

It is still used today as a sense of morals even though the bible is a faulty, immoral, poorly translated, and a inconsistant piece of work.
In the scientific field information is updated daily in order to improve the lives of others. For example it was once thought that yelling at a person with bible chants would repel the OCD demon. With comparitive testing man has found out that medicine, and therapy was a more effective way of treating OCD than screaming.
The bible however has undergone little change, and thus has not "adapted" to modren times. Even if the bible were to be updated noone can undue the millions that it has tortured on a stake, for example the witch hunts of Salem, the Crusades, and of course the dark ages.
The point of the matter is the Bible is declared to be the word of God by the bible, and if the word of God is to pillage, and plunder then I shall not worship him; even if he is real.

According to 3 of my ex churches it actually is a part of the New Testament. Otherwise it would say New Testement II.
Why do they call it new and old testement anyway? They are both old.
Maybe Testement I, and then Testement II would be better. That way you could make a Testement III and have a trilogy.

 

That's the His Dark Materials trilogy - a work of fiction, not a pre-20th centuary text which is what the Bible is (that's the politicaly correct genre of the Bible and other books like it). Or Satanism.

The catholic (catholic as in the whole community - not the denomination) church remade the bible officialy to remove controversy about which version to use. They split the Bible into two sections the Old Testament (all the chapters that were considered relative to the history of the Jews before Jesus) and the New Testament (all the chapters that were considered relative to the development of the Christian religion). The Bible has been reformed in the past, so if they add another testamant in the future they may rename them...

Those are facts, now down to the opinion stuff - the place where all this controversy exists.
The general argument seems to be that the Bible is inconsistant. And too old.

When reading the Bible you have to consider a couple of things.

The first is that most of the chapters do have very old origins. Keep this in mind. In B.C. 300 religion was a major part of society. Religion defined society pretty much. Deuteronomy was a bad example for JedininjaZC to pick I think. It's just rules for people to follow in a time where slavery was acceptable, throwing stones at someone untill they are dead is a common source of punishment and rapists were forced to marry their victims if they were not married before. The Bible was writen by man. Deuteronomy is a chapter covering the rules of society in the past, so that the future readers can better understand what's going on with society at that time. These rules were made, interpreted and written down by man. In Repliku's argument the fact that Jesus supports slavery, women have little rights and people should abandon their families for him. If you are campaigning for Prime Minister, you usualy want the people you talk to to be on your side, right? Jesus and later his disciples were talking to people who were used to a society where they supported these ideas about women's rights and slavery. He was talking about something that was very controversial and so he had to make the others trust him without being controversial in his actions with regards to what he said when it comes to his message. About placing God above the family you have - when the Bible talks about this they mean that you should have God as your number one thing in your life. According to the priest who I was talking to this after his sermon, it doesn't mean bump your family down and leave them behind - it means that if you decide to fully follow God and lay down your life for God even moreso than your would with your family you are a true disiciple. Because of your faith, your relationship between you and the things you placed God in front of is enhanced even more than your relationship you had with them before.

Secondly, it is a bit inconsistent. People say that in the Old Testament God is a wratful God - people are put into exile, floods happen, plauges all this smiting. And in the New Testament Jesus is like "Hey you have to do this in order to be forgiven." The reasoning behind this is that a lot of people broke rules/commandments that God had told them not to. In order to tell them that they were doing something wrong he sent them a message of punishment - one that they shouldn't mistake. But still people weren't doing things how he would like them to be. So he sent a part of him down to Earth as a different approach. This was intended so that God could tell them what they needed to do or not do in order for them to follow him.

With these things in mind, The Bible seems that it doesn't fit into today's society. However you should consider that the strength of Christianity isn't the words of some guy 2000 years ago, but the sermons made to the people regarding these words. These sermons explain what it means today. Sure you can bring up Deuteronomy. Bring up Jesus' support of slavery even. But the fact that the ideas behind those writings were important back then does not have much to do with today. They are not important. What's important is the message the Bible brings, and how it is conveyed. Because of people's interpretations of what someone says in a sermon where they link the important stuff to today people buy a copy of the Bible to see for themselves what's going on. Anyone can talk about the things we view in today's society as bad, but the actual important stuff generates the building blocks to faith in what a Christian believes.

That's what the Bible is to me. Foundations. Some of them are rotten, some are older than life. But my faith is built upon the foundations that are relevant.