The Bible

For those not already fully aware of the dishonest charlatan usfan's tactics:

This will always be his response, no matter what evidence is presented to him.

This should not be surprising. When you are willing to adopt the existence of magical hoo-ha, then there is no longer any such thing as "evidence". There is no causality...no "if A, then B". Presenting evidence or rational argument to such a person is folly.

 

A bold and valid post USFAN!....... Now come the haters. It's like moths to a flame.
I will say this....if the Bible is not inspired by God then this whole life we live is but a "fantasy" and there is no purpose.

 

Which is an absurd statement and only serves to cast your magical beliefs in an absurd light.

 

You know why this whole conversation exists Mamasaid???? Because you imagined it! You are a Creator! A god unto yourself! That is why you can attack other peoples faith and get off scott free!

 

And much more rational and kind than, and in possession of far superior morality to, the vile, nauseating gods described on the Bible.

And I can attack your goofy faith without consequences because I live in a country where secular ideas like classical liberalism and scientific enlightenment mostly prevail over magical religious nonsense. 500 years ago, I would have had a very valid concern that you and usfan would tattle to the local shaman and have me stoned in the public square. There are places in the world today where this would happen. And you two would do this all while clutching precisely the same book of bronze age fairy tales to which you stake yourselves now.

Try to always remember this very important fact.

 

It is magical that you are here by chance and the odds of that being true put you somewhere in a Disney fantasy world that you control with Tinkerbell in your backpocket
riding in a herd of unicorns on the yellowbrick road to OZ.

 

This from the first page in the thread..

I WELCOME, any textual criticisms, questions, misunderstandings, and honest conflicts with the biblical texts. ..just be civil about it..

 

I want to see the exact quote where Jefferson thought the Bible was dung as you said. You just make stuff up. Do you even consider how many revere the Bible today in spite of the fact there have been haters and mockers like yourself since the time of Job??? (Job is the oldest book of the Bible for your info.)

 

This is nonsensical....

Which you do not know, could not calculate, and could not make a valid argument for constraining...

On the other hand, it stands to reason that life exists in the universe all over the place. The odds of it happening are pretty high, by every valid argument. While the odds of any snowflake having a certain shape may be low, that does not inform us on the odds of snowflakes forming. You are suffering from a deficit in reason due to buying into a fallacy commonly called "hoyles fallacy", a specious, useless bit of reasoning by which the probability of any event can be forced to approach zero.

 

This is a very important part of understanding the source and history of the bible. I hope to get into this soon, so we have a grasp of HOW this collection of books came to be. I will not insist on Divine Authorship, in this analysis, but will follow the HUMAN side of its history, which is the only evidentiary analysis possible. I find the historical analysis of canonization to be fascinating, and i will try to relay the facts accurately.

From wiki:
A biblical canon or canon of scripture is a set of texts (or "books") which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture. The English word "canon" comes from the Greek κανών, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick".

This is a decent timeline of the events and people in the bible. More details later..

 

Scientific enlightenment?? Ha ha ha youve got to be kidding! What...are we headed for an ice age, or are we warming? No...it's climate change!! Just like it's been doing forever! Don't tell me, bacon ad eggs are bad for you. Oh wait, no their not! The evolution of science!

 

^ The devolution of the English language.

 

He didn't think the entire Bible was dung. He thought most of it was dung but that there were same extraordinary diamonds inside as well. As for what he thought of as diamonds, he literally cut out the parts he didn't like and left those behind. You can easily find copies of the Jefferson Bible today.

"In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."

"But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man."

Yes, I'm aware of the age of Job and the number of people who revere the Bible is irrelevant to the discussion of the Bible's truth or morality. Many people revere the Quran in spite of what the critics have to say about it. Does that make the Quran true or a good source of ethics? No, of course not.

The Bible has some very good messages and some very good morals. It also has some very bad messages and very bad morals. Which is what we should expect from a book written by many fallible men. I appreciate when the Bible teaches the Golden Rule. I condemn it when it violates that rule.

Any faith that has a problem with those priorities needs to do some serious soul searching.

 

Ask a 9 year old, they learn the answer in elementary school. But don't offer to take his science quiz...you will fail...badly...

 

To be specific: he liked Jesus's preached moral code, and rejected the entire rest of the Bible as utter, magical nonsense.

 

I recall reading something about how he believed in God, but believed he was a physical being. Sort of a strange branch of deism. He certainly rejected the supernatural in general.

 

Well, his kind of deism is just default, agnostic atheism anyway.

 

The Quran is the "Other Book of Mormon'.... a spin off by those that wish to pick and choose. Jefferson could have done that but he did keep good company. In his last days I think he began to think more like his nemesis, John Adams. In his youth, General Washington, a true man of God, tended to keep Jefferson at arms length due to his arrogance of picking and choosing what ought to be in the Holy Scriptures. What you call the Golden Rule is the "2nd commandment" that Jesus gave. The 1st being "you should love the Lord your God with all your strength, soul and mind". You'd probably like to skip that one too.

 

No, I believe in and understand Climate change very well. It was warm enough to work in a t-shirt this morning but by afternoon I wore a flannel and a parka. You better stay away from those 9 year olds. They spell trouble for you.

 

Which idea, itself, was found in Hinduism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism , and Buddhism long before that.

Why wouldn't I? I don't need a dictator.

 

You clearly do not, and you should probably stop talking about it now.

 

Don't give me that humanistic non-sense. Jesus said Himself, "think not that I came to do away with the law, but to fulfill it." Jesus taught from Isaiah and spoke fondly of Moses. When you start to pick and choose, you fail utterly. Either you accept the teachings of Jesus as they have been revealed through His Word, or you reject them entirely.

 

No, of course not...you have yourself.

 

Go complain to Jefferson, it is precisely what he said and meant.

 

That's right! Now you're getting it. No dictators, no delusions of living forever, no surrender to some sky daddy. It's really very nice.