alot of different perspectives here,,, here is mine,, the commandments say to have no other GODS before God, but the commandments are meant for MEN and not for God, just as man is not to have domain over another mans life, but God does,

Jesus was given responsibility over the fate of mans soul, as a consequence of him accepting that responsibility , he was also given authority


this authority does not make him a God though, anymore than the vice president is the president,,,,,he is instead, the step that saved my soul and the step I have to take to reach the Lord,,

Brilliant!! And thanks!! This is precious for me, to glean all this insight in sight in this site.

Thou (humans) are not forbidden to put a man or a woman before God. A different God is not good to put there, an idol is not, either, But a any number of any combination of men, women and children, can be bravely placed before God, and we won't hear a word about it from Him.

Cool.

Hold, hold. I refuse to take the blame because you can't type.

I reads them as I sees them. I haven't got all the goddamned apostrophies memorized that occur in the Bible.

If you make a mistake, don't blame me, please, for creating an argument on that mistake. I am innocent.

It's like playing the game "mastermind", and putting the wrong coloured pegs down, and then blaming the other guy for not being able to guess the code, when you in fact have mislead him by the wrong clues, and in this case, our case, the wrong spelling.

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Fine. You say "we're all God's."

It still leaves umpteen of my objections unanswered, and you are pouncing around and carrying the symbol of your victory that you could only gain by making a mistake in your own text.

I laugh at you for that.

Good point. We must not take the words of the Bible literally. So what is the alternative? How should we take these words? Interpretatively? Yes? Interpreted by whom? Whose interpretation we like , or whose interpretation is true?

We must go for the truth, no, because we truly want to do what God planned for us to do, no?

So we go for the truth, but the only way to go for the truth is to follow the interpretation that is true. How do we know which interpretation is true? We must each decide for ourselves, no? So how do we do that? We already are so stupid that we must follow others' interpretation, that was needed because the Bible is not literal. So others are smarter than us, granted, they interpreted the Bible for us, granted, several different interpreters interpreted very serious and decisive parts completely differently, and now we face the dilemma: Which interpretation to follow, of a number of available choices? We have no clue, but we still must choose.

So we choose randomly. The next Christian to me chose randomly too, and we go to different Churches. We follow slightly different rules, we arrange our lives perhaps hugely differently from each other's (Mormons are Christians, too), and that's all done on what we have earlier chosen from the available choices, the choices of different interpretations, which we did mindlessly, since the Bible does not talk to us, it talks in mysterious language.

I resent this. The most serious problem with interpreting the Texts is that one set of interpretation will allow that another set of interpretation is just as valid; and since we have to interpret and make sense of descriptions of reality which are completely impossible, it is valid to make any interpretation that make sense of it, if that's the criteria.

If the Mormons interpret the Bible that men can have many wives, and the Roman Catholics, that a man can only have one wife, and the protestants that men and women can have multiple non-concurrent marriages, then I can't argue with any of them, since an interpretation was involved, and obviously it lead to three different truths.

So the interpretation route is not very viable, either. Instead of facing and impossible logical conundrum, or an impossible physical reality, now we face contradicting truths, each being true, each different, which is the same basic problem as the Text before interpretation.

I reject any teaching of the Bible based on Interpretation. If the Bible can't be understood without interpretation, I reject the Bible. And if the Bible can't be rejected, then I reject the way people read the Bible. Not the way they interpret it, but how they read it.

People read the Bible with the very-very basic assumptions that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniphiliac, omniscient, omni this and omni that. Bible readers also immediately assume that God's moral code cast upon man is identical to the moral code that he follows.

There are three basic sets of assumptions that are possibly wrong, because there is no evidence, and sometimes contrary evidence, to them in the Bible:
1. The emotional qualities of God, His true set of motivating forces.
2. The guiding moral principles that guide God's behavior against his emotional and logical will.
3. The qualities of God, things that are his basic nature, aside from His motivational emotions and aside from his inner moral guidance. Such may include his talents, his capacity to act or to think, etc.

I am stating without any joking, that man can't read the bible first and foremostly because the Bible cannot be read while at the same time we have a God of the Bible in mind in a condition that we made for him, and which condition and specifications are not His whatsoever, or his with very little probability.

If we assume that God is a liar, He is not good, if we accept that he is a mean and jealous God, as stated in the Ten Commandments, if we accept him as a terrible, sadistic child abuser, then the Bible all of a sudden will start to make sense.

Until then, sorry, you guys can keep interpreting and believing and arguing all you want; until you guys reshape your mental image of God's qualities, you will not be able to make sense of the Bible; you won't be able to smooth over the contradictions in it and you won't be able to create uniform interpretations (which is the basic and self-evident sign that the interpretation might be true. Multiplicity of different explanations over the one and same issue renders all but one of the explanations necessarily false, while not diminishing the likelyhood that ALL explanations are false.

Kudos to everything you said in your post Wux.






That's all these Abrahamic religions amount to. Nothing more than people arguing over various interpretations of ancient folklore that ultimately makes no sense.

The Christians continually refer to the "King James Bible" as though it reprsents some sort of absolute authority. Yet that very cannon itself is truly nothing more than just another interpretation. Moreover, even the Christians can't agree on what that version means. That's why we have Catholics, and the myriad of diverse and protesting protestants. Protestanism is really nothing more than a protest against the Catholic interpretations. Of course the protestants also protest against each others interpretations as well, as Wux points out in his post.

I simply take Protestanism seriously and protest in my own way.

When I read the King James Bible these are my conclusions:

The Old Testament describes a "God" that is totally inconsistent, and clearly not divine. Therefore it is my Protestant conclusion that the OT is nothing more than the made-up ramblings of men. Men who clearly tried to use an idea of God to support their male-chauvinist social ideals, as well as using God as an excuse to get the peopel to murder anyone who disagrees with them, in God's name. (i.e. heathens)

The New Testament describes a man who appears to me to have been rejecting the teachings that had been written in the Old Testament and instead replace them with values that appear to me to be basically identical to the values the Buddha taught.

So from my perspective Jesus appears to have been a Jew who learned and taught the ways of Mahayana Buddhism. The Biblical story even loans itself to this idea very well since it has Jesus completely missing from the story from the time he was about 12 until he was about 30. That's more than enough time for Jesus to have traveled to India and become a Mahayana Buddhist Monk.

He then returned home, tried to teach people to love each other instead of judging each other as the OT had taught them to do. He was eventually crucified for his opinions and that started a bunch of rumors about who he was and what his purpose was. And that started a lot of controversy that challenged the Old Religion.

The men who actually WROTE the New Testament clearly had an agenda to tell their own story of Jesus in a fashion that could be used to prop up their old authority using Jesus as a scape goat.

But they don't fool me. I can even see through their very own writings that Jesus in no way supported their agenda.

So that's my Protestant Protest. And it's also my interpretation of the "Bible". The first part (the OT) is nothing but the made-up opinions of man. And the second part (the NT) is nothing more than an attempt to use Jesus to prop up the very moral values that Jesus himself clearly rejected.

That's my Protestant Conclusion.

And therefore it should be just as valid as any other form of Protestanism. It's my interpretation of these historical writings.

Just for the record, on the apostrophe thing,...

The King James Bible has Jesus saying the following:


John.10:34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

There is no possessive apostrophe being used here. Moreover, it would even make sense within the context of this verse to claim that this is what was meant.

Jesus was being accused of claiming to be "God", so as a defense to that what sense would it make to say, "I have I not said that ye belong to God?" That would hardly be a defense to the accusation.

The only thing that even makes sense is that Jesus was clearly saying that he doesn't think of himself as being god anymore than he thinks of every individual to be a god.

Jesus was a Buddhist Pantheist. That's the only thing that makes any sense.

Exactly. And if you think about we truely are God's. We can kill life and make life. We can destroy anything and everything on this planet, and we can bring forth everything and anything on this planet. Our father said that he has given us dominion over everything on this planet, which would then make us a "god" to everything on this planet.

I think you missed my point,, which was that MAN is not to place anyone in higher regard than God, which Christians I know do not. However, there was ONE which GOD gave authority to(as opposed to men) , the ONE who accepted the responsibility for our souls, which is different than placing him BEFORE God.

For that ONE , in whose watch GOD placed us under( again, not placed there by the Christians), a different standards is set than for any other GOD or any man/woman, just as a different standard is set regarding mans place in a mans life and Gods place in it. Jesus is the PATH to the LORD, because GOD made it so, not because man does.

and being the path (BETWEEN) me and God , does not place him before God anymore than coming in second in a race would place me ahead of the winner.

I thought Jesus was the LORD.

So we're supposed to follow Jesus' example?

What are we supposed to do then, follow his example and get ourselves crucified for blaspheme?

What examples has Jesus actually given us to follow? Supposedly he never married and never had any childern. Is that an example we should follow?

Clearly it would be impossible for most people to follow the example of Jesus' actual life. At the very best all we could hope to do is to follow his moral standards.

But therein lies the folly.

Jesus actually taught the very same moral standards as Buddha had taught over 500 years earlier. In fact, many other humans have taught similar moral values throughout all of history. Even the Wiccans basically sum it all up by simply saying, "Do as you wish, but harm none".

All of this is in quite blatant conflict with the teachings of the Old Testament that had demanded that we continually poke our nose into the business of others passing judgements on them in the name of God.

The problem is that the teachings of Jesus were neither unique, nor where they in harmony with the previous teachings attributed to Yahweh (the God of which Jesus was supposed to be the Only Begotten Son of)

There's just too many contraditions in this picture for me to accept that it holds any mean. Buddha, as a mere mortal man, would have beaten God to the punch, teaching these morals 500 years before Jesus was even born.

At the very best all we can see here is that the rest of the world (i.e. the Indians of India) were already in harmony with god's wishes, and it was only the Hebrews who were having a falling out with God.

Personally I believe that my heritage actually goes back to India, not to Israel. So the whole Hebrew thing probably has nothing to do with me or my clan.

"Clearly it would be impossible for most people to follow the example of Jesus' actual life. At the very best all we could hope to do is to follow his moral standards"
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It is not impossible to follow the example of Jesus' actual life. Yes of course we can't do it "EXACTLY" what Jesus did in his life because we don't live there nor in that time. But we can relate how he did things in his life to how we live our life.
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I thought Jesus was the LORD.
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Yes Jesus is the lord, Jesus is the lord of lords the king of kings.
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Jesus actually taught the very same moral standards as Buddha had taught over 500 years earlier. In fact, many other humans have taught similar moral values throughout all of history. Even the Wiccans basically sum it all up by simply saying, "Do as you wish, but harm none".

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Yes other teachings of other people do give moral grounds. But that's not the real point of how we are to live our lives. As christians we don't burn offerings, we don't do anything along those lines. Our sacrafice is how we live our lives. We live our lives for God, Jesus, and all the people in the world. That is why we are to love others as we love ourselves. Basically saying if you see someone in need help them, because if you were in that same need you would do the same for yourself.
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All of this is in quite blatant conflict with the teachings of the Old Testament that had demanded that we continually poke our nose into the business of others passing judgements on them in the name of God.

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Yes in the old testiment times we were judged on earth for our actions. But that is one thing Jesus came to fullfill. Now that Jesus has walked the earth and felt the pain, love, joy, ect of this world and can relate he is now the judge of us all.

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There's just too many contraditions in this picture for me to accept that it holds any mean. Buddha, as a mere mortal man, would have beaten God to the punch, teaching these morals 500 years before Jesus was even born.
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Again there is NO CONTRADICTIONS when you look at specifically what they are talking about. Yes their is what you would call contradictions between the old and new testament, but that is because the old testament was fullfilled and we were given a new law to live by.

Jesus did not teach to do as you wish. I Am not sure why you interpret his words that way. There are no problems here for me. It is BEST to lead a life like Jesus, that is why it is the MODEL, but there will be shortcomings and differences from the model because the model was the begotten son of God and we are sons and daughters of men. It is not an EXACT science , just as I strive to be like my mother but I will never be the EXACT copy of her because I live in a different time, different environment, circumstances,,,etc,,,

We were told to be fruitful, we were told it is BEST to have ONE Mate than to be consumed by lust throughout life. Jesus was here for a short time, and his purpose was not to be fruitful. These things are pretty clear to me,, although I understand that others will interpret things differently.

But that very notion right there is a contradiction twice over.

It's a contradiction to the Old Testament because the Old Testament claimed that God is unchanging. To change what he expects from humans and how he deals with sin is a MAJOR change. Especially with respect to a JUDGEMENTAL Godhead.

This very idea files in the face of what the gospels have Jesus supposedly saying:

Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

If Jesus came to change the laws then why not just be up front about it and say that this is indeed what he is doing.

Beating around the bush by saying things that totally conflict with the idea that he is bringing "new laws" that supercede the "old laws" simply don't fit in with the story.

You'd have to make up your own version of the Bible and toss out these verses as being rejected from your cannon.

In short, you can't have your cake and eat it to.

You have Jesus being both God, and not God.

You have Jesus saying both, he came to change the rules, and not change the rules.

It's no wonder at all that Christianity is the most fragmented and divisive religion on Earth. The doctrine upon which it is based is totally inconsistent and undependable. Even the people who call themselves "Chrsitians" can't agree on what it means.

Yes very good. The laws he was refering to though was what we call the new testament, the laws Jesus taught. The laws of the old testament was again FULLFILLED Just as he said Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Nottice till all be fullfilled....... everything in the old testament was fulfilled and then we were given the new testament, and again all the laws hold power till all be fulfilled.

This is a christian nation the way it is a nation of opportunity,,,they are catch phrases which supposedly apply to a MAJORITY of people but not to all people in the country. christianity and opportunity are both advertisements to attract people to come and contribute to the american economy.

Well, we certainly don't need Jesus to tell us these things. At least I don't. Also, like I say, this is no different from the teachings of Buddha and many others.

There would also be absolutely no need for God to have Jesus nailed to a pole just to teach a few extremely simple moral values that should be obvious to most reasonable people.

Finally, if God wanted to teach mankind these kinds of morals why didn't he just stick to that theme from the very beginning of time?

Why change midstream?

And more importantly, why PRETEND to not be changing?


Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

I would have far more respect for a God who at least confesses outright what his plans are. He should have told the TRUTH and said, "Yes I've come to change the laws and form a new covenant with man"

Can't we at least expect God to be HONEST about his intentions?

As the Jews point out, everything in the Old Testament was not fufilled, and still hasn't even been fulfilled to this very day.

Thus if we accept your interpretation we should still be stoning heathens and sinners to death to this very day.

God is honest, it is man who has changed and along with that , his faith and interpretation of Gods word,,,

There would also be absolutely no need for God to have Jesus nailed to a pole just to teach a few extremely simple moral values that should be obvious to most reasonable people
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Jesus wasn't crucified to teach us anything. Jesus was crucified for the salvation of the world. To bring an end to sacraficing animals and things of that nature in search of salvation. Jesus was the ULTIMATE sacrafice, giving his life up so that we all can have ever lasting life and the gift of heaven. That's the reason right there why Jesus was crucified, it was a sacrafice for us all to be forgiven of our sins and trespasses.

According to Isaiah God was already full of burnt offerings even in the Old Testament.


Isa.1
[11] To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.

So the idea that Jesus somehow represents the "ultimate sacrifice" to end all sacrificial offerings is not consistent with the entire cannon of stories that we have come to call the "Bible".

So this is why I don't buy into the idea of Jesus being the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

I tend to agree with Isaiah and feel that God never delighted in blood sacrifices in the first place.

This is what happens when we try to build a single large mythology from putting together lots of unrealted little tales. They're bound to conflict with each other in a myriad of ways.

still no contradiction. Jesus is the one talking here. Not God. This just goes along with Jesus being the ultimate sacrafice to end people sacraficing animals and things.