h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So do you believe the bible is wrong or evil???

I think that the bible is some truth and some wrong, i think it has been added to and changed over the years. As for evil maybe it is alittle in some places but these I believe are the bits that have been added to it.

I think that their is still some truth in the bible and that it is still a book of religion, just that its message has been corrupted by man. As such I disagree with the whole Jesus is God thing and trinity, as well as all the porn and stuff init.

hmmm... yes. I can see where you are coming from.
I personally think the bible is very unrealistic although many disogree. For an example the devil.

for Jesus not to be God then the whole bible is wrong. the begginning points to Jesus right from genesis 3 and the end is all about his life and what it means for us.

ok, think about it with an open mind, their is no where where Jesus openly says worship me, or that i am God. The whole consept of Jesus being god is never found in the vocabulary of Jesus, but rather by distoring what has been said to suit that belief, plus as I already said large portions of the bible has been changed over time meaning the original message is not their.

But Jesus did tell 12 men to follow him and preach about him so he must of in a sense been asking them to worship him.

Er no. follow what he said and pass on his message is what he ment. Besides which that is not openly saying Iam god worship me is it hmmm?

The message being to love the farther (God) and to live for the sake of the farther, and to please the farther by following the message spoken by Jesus that was given him from God.

Oh... i understand now. Thanks.

no worries

Jesus does say he is the "I Am" which is in old testament speak God

I presume your referring to "Before Abraham was I am" (John 8:58) where Jesus used the words, "I am", and since these same words were used by God to describe Himself to the people in the Old Testament, Jesus is wrongfully presumed to be claiming that he is God.

But firstly does existing before Abraham prove that someone is God? The answer has to be no, because the bible has God saying this about Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)

Now if Jeremiah was around before he was born then by the same definition that Jesus is god due to the fact that he was around before Jesus himself and Abraham was born, then Jeremiah must also be God.

Also the reason it is believed wrongly by Christians that Jesus is saying he is God is becasue God says "I am what I am." (Exodus 3:14) and so saying 'I am' is akin to saying that one is God.

But the problem is that the Greek translation for the hebrew words 'I am' in the Exodus verse is HO ON where as the Greek translation of the hebrew spoken by Jesus is EGO EIMI which does not have the same meaning as HO ON, so why did Jesus use different Hebrew words to say that 'he is god' that was used in the exodus verse? simple, he was not saying that he is God.

Now their are many verse which show that God is above Jesus, and that Jesus is just a messanger for instance:

" "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work." (John 4:34)

and

"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. "He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and anyone who receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward." (Matthew 10:39-41)


The Christian responce to this is "Then why did the Jews try to kill him then, if he was not saying he was god?"
To which the answer is given in the bible:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matthew 23:37)

Which quite clearly shows that even proclaiming to be a prophet or messenger of God is enough to get you killed by the Jews back then, meaning that they tried to kill jesus because he said he was a prophet not because he said he was god.


If you want more proof then go here:

http://www.answering-christianity.com/iam.htm

Patcholi,
I have noted your comment that you read the Bible when you were a little girl.
You will have to forgive me, as I have been missing from this discussion for some time (work commitments).
Can I assume your reading was part of Bible study or Sunday school?
The Bible is not intended to be read like a novel (as some try to do).
You can liken the Bible to spiritual nourishment for the soul and mind.
Rather than look at literal meaning - read the Bible is "bits". Read, reflect and ask yourself "what is God saying to me?".
Try it. Especially as we are in the season of Advent - It is a time of renewal for Christians as we await the birth of Christ.

to totally believe in something written by others concerning ur entire life is totally redicuolus.do u believe in the devil?would that be such an impossibility to believe he wouldnt interfere with the writings of a text that would become a basis for an entire race?
u all are crazy
btw for any that dont like my typing skills
its not the message but the answer that counts
think of the God he must have an opposite?yes no maybe
hmm everything in our world has one.
well whether u believe in God or not or the devil believe in human failings the abilty to tell a story from 1 person to the next with no outside or personal embeleshment(not sure spelling but u get drift)
try it one day tell a long story like a paragraph and get 10 ppl to repeat without hearing the other see what happens at the end now try doing that with as much info as the bible has hmmmmmmmm....no errors i find that impossible!

Matt

Couldn't agree more. I was reading the bible last summer - not as a believer, nor to pick fault, but just for the "cultural history" thing - and at random picked the Israelite conquest of Canaan. The tales of god-endorsed rape and genocide sickened me - God actually tells off the Israelites for not being vicious enough.

For Christians to argue "oh that's the old testament, that was overturned by Jesus" is absurd. Firstly, Jesus is quoted as saying that "not one iota" of the law is to be overturned - and the law is more than just the commandments. Secondly, if what the Israelites did then was wrong, as I believe, it was the **same god** telling them to do it that the christians believe in. Did god have a change of heart? Is he now a reformed character - vengeful and spiteful and cruel in the past but now trying to make amends?

Much of the "good stuff" in the New Testament can be found in Greek philosophy, Buddhism and Confucianism, all of which predate the story of Jesus (who has no contemporary accounts to say he really existed, by the way, other than 3rd century forgeries).

Modern Christians tend, as you say, to ignore the most offensive stuff in the bible but it's still there and the bible is either "the word of god" and therefore all of it should be accepted - including the horrific, or it's a cultural artifact, made by man, which we should be able to cherry-pick for moral messages without accepting the abrahamic god at all.

Well, a Christian like me would say that Jesus did inaugurate a new covenant (testament) - and he was doing it even as he made that statement about "not one iota". It comes from the Gospel of St Matthew, in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), where Jesus set out the new rule of behaviour for a Christian, just as Moses had given the old law from another mountain.

Much of this discourse is taken up with the 8 Beatitudes (echoes of the 10 Commandments) and the interiorisation of the Law ("You have heard it said... but I say to you..."). This is the point about "not one iota": the standards of outward behaviour are applied to inward thoughts.

A short time after in this Gospel Jesus is described as choosing 12 apostles as a new foundation, just as there were 12 tribes of Israel, the people of the old covenant. During the last supper he speaks about the blood (i.e. his own) of the new covenant. Matthew of all the New Testament writers really makes a point of the new covenant throughout. Among other things, his Gospel is divided up by five discourses, echoing the five books of the Pentateuch.

A long post... and that's just the easiest point covered! This is of course very much a Christian point of view.

Andrew S

You haven't actually dealt with the problem I raised about "the new covenant" - that much of what god is said to have instructed in the old testament is actually immoral. Even if there was a new covenant, it would mean that god had 'reformed', turned over a new leaf, decided not to be so immoral as he used to be.

It's the same god in the old testament as in the new.

It's true, I only dealt with the first point. Well, it was the easier one to deal with!

The second objection, your main one, is harder, but I would say it is the same God, but a different covenant. The rules did change, not because God changed his mind but because God revealed himself step by step, first as the one God, then as infinitely powerful, then as completely just, and then (this is the New Testament) as completely loving - one could go further, but the point is that revelation went step by step.

Jesus alludes to this gradual revelation in the matter of divorce even as he forbids it, saying that Moses permitted it because of his hearer's hardness of heart. So some of what went on in the old covenant would be impossible under the new - not that Christians have always exactly shone either.

The destruction of the Canaanites seems incomprehensible and savage, but it needs to be seen in this context. Israel was told to destroy them and the Ammonites completely to avoid being contaminated by worship of Moloch, who demanded human (child) sacrifice, and the fertility rites of Baal - which, however, survived long enough to present a real challenge later on.

I suppose they were a direct threat to the chosen people and their faith, and indirectly to the development of God's revelation. The paradox would then be, that if the Canaanites had not been destroyed so utterly, we might not now be so certain, three thousand years later, that such behaviour is immoral, to accept the term you used, for us to emulate now. In summary, the timing is important.

To quote: "The paradox would then be, that if the Canaanites had not been destroyed so utterly, we might not now be so certain, three thousand years later, that such behaviour is immoral, to accept the term you used, for us to emulate now. In summary, the timing is important."

Ever heard "history is written by the winners"? Of course the Israelites claimed their behaviour was right. Attila the Hun and Ghengis Khan thought they were perfectly entitled to behave as they did. Read the old testament. It is full of arbitrary and absurd rules and "ethics" (although I hesitate to use the word of them) alongside the barbarous treatment of the invaded countries, as well as rules legitamising slavery and rape. Don't eat shellfish. Don't wear clothes of more than one cloth. Raising animals is more praiseworthy than raising crops. All perfectly understandable if you take an anthropological view of the Israelites as a warlike nomadic tribe of invaders trying to codify their unruly squabbles but pretty difficult to reconcile with 'god's chosen people', instructed by him to be better than all other peoples.

Hello jd... What, again?

As regards the Mosaic Law, let's not overlook the possibility that God made allowance for elements of the already existing culture of the people in the Covenant he made with them, and that the Law reflects this in some ways. This was over one thousand years BC, and some rules or behavioural norms might well look surprising thirty centuries later, cf. Hammurabi or Herodotus, or even Homer. Dietary customs likewise.

The Israelites didn't always claim their actions were correct. The Old Testament is full of avowedly awful behaviour, and the prophets are forever condemning it and making the link with the eventual ruin of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

As you said earlier, in the special case of the invasion of the land of Canaan, the Old Testament accounts say that the Israelites were acting under God's instructions. But I don't think there was any "of course" about it, in the light of the condemnations on other occasions. Perhaps it was because the Canaanites were a threat to the survival of the Covenant itself.

I *hate* this argument. Either it was ok to commit murder genocide and baby killing or it wasn't. God can do ANYTHING (by definition), so he didn't need the Israelites to commit vile crimes to ensure the continuation of the covenant.

It's a simple either/or.

Either
a) it's ok to commit crimes against humanity providing you believe/claim god told you to do it
or
b) it's not ok under any circumstances.

In the case of (b), either god is immoral or he doesn't exist and was invented to justify the standard behaviour of uncivilised invaders.

The bible contains all sorts of immorality instructed by god, and laws that make no sense and yet it is still claimed to be an instruction manual for humanity *for all time*. Once you start saying you can disregard sections (i.e. you can now wear clothes of more than one cloth), there is no meaningful instruction to be gained.

Use the "golden rule" and rationality to judge ethics - superstition needn't ever be considered.