How do you know the person that runs your country is the person that is portrayed as the president? How do you know we have been into outer space? How do you know we've ever walked on the moon? How do you know ANYTHING except by trusting the men who tell you? Other then the little things of course that you can find out for yourself. But as in the bigger things that you are not personally involved with.

And what motives could they have had to write what's written in the bible? They weren't the government so it couldn't be for just using for mass population control to maintain a low level of crime or anything of such.

No it's not. If you tell your child not to do such and such or else you won't get to go to that party on Saturday. And they disobey you and you didn't give them a second chance, are you a cruel parent? If you want forgiveness why not seek it now? Why wait?

So?

The Biblical fables are designed to support religious bigotry.

No news there.

Absolutely.

There are far better pictures of spirituality to be had.

Eastern Mysticism deals with these concepts on a far wiser level.

Ah but that's not quite true......from what I have heard the Piso family wrote the entire New Testament. So.....that theory doesn't work either.

But we're talking ETERNAL burning and fire here. That's entirely different then any punishment even a loving parent down here would do to their kid.

The bible is a collection of books. The book of Job, the book of Matthew, the book of Mark, ect. Not one person wrote them all nor just one family. They are a collection of books written through a spread of time. Yes the Piso family might have made the bible as we know, but they were not the ones that wrote what is written in the bible.

Yeah, so you're saying you want second, third, or maybe a fourth chance? If one had another chance, why would they not just do as they wished the first time? They could go around mass murdering, and or many other things with the mind set ah well I'll just do better my next chance.

That right there is why we get one chance. For if people had other chances they would be prone to use all the chances they could and do as they wish on as many as they could. Just as they do on this one chance we do have.

It's absolutely true that the Bible could have been written by anyone and for any number of reasons.

I think most scholars and clergy agree that Matthew and Luke, are actually nothing more than re-tellings of the writings of Mark. And the book of John had a slightly different take on it.

So it's all clearly hearsay, even if it's nothing but rumors.

It doesn't matter to me whether it was written by religious zealots who actually believed in the rumors they were writing about, or whether it was written by people who had an agenda to create an entirely fictional scenario.

It's clear to me that it's not the word of any supreme being, and that's really all I need to know. The bible is clearly the works of men, and not the word of any god.

I'm as certain about this as I can possibly be.

And if I'm wrong, then God is pathetic anyway.

So let's all hope that I'm right.

And, of course, I'm certainly not alone. There are many people who have arrived at the same conclusions I have, not the least of which are people like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and many others. Some of the most brilliant minds in all of humanity.

None of them were convinced that there is anything divine about these stories.

As Carl Sagan pointed out so eloquently, "The Stage is far too big for the plot".

If the creator of this universe were concerned only with the fate of humans, why bother creating a universe with over hundreds of billions of billions of galaxies. It's just silly.

It's a religion that's way out-dated anyway.

It was originally based on the idea that the world was the center of creation, and we know now that this idea was way wrong. The universe is profoundly vast, far beyond human's ability to even comprehend.

You're acting as if I'm saying we can just do anything we want here. I'm not saying this at all. There are still consequences built in to life on this earth, and if we choose to do wrong or separate ourselves from God, we do suffer, but only down here. We all have choices to make, but it shouldn't effect our afterlife, I mean upon seeing God we'd all think different about things, and yet.....you're gonna tell me that He's gonna just damn people anyway? That's not my God, the God I am coming to know is much more loving then that.

That's entirely what this life is for. This life is to be lived and we will be rewarded for how we lived our lives. It's not an after life kinda thing. You live your life and upon how you live your life is how you will be rewarded. If you do your life obediently and how it's to be done then you won't loose it, you'll continue to live. If you mistreat your life you will loose it for you obviously do not deserve the life you were given nor were you grateful for it, so why should you keep it if you aren't grateful for it? Again there's no "after" life. We either will loose this life for mistreating it or we will keep it and continue on with it.

Again though this is the fear thing with religion. To keep you controlled to how they want you to think, they create this set of rules, laws and beliefs that you must uphold to, dangling that carrot of salvation over you as a means to achieve it.

It's really not that hard to see if you would loose yourself of all these preconceived notions about what God is. And what about all these other religions who claim to have truth? Are none of them valid at all? Why? Cause some book says so? God cannot be limited to a book.

God isn't limited to a book. God can not be found in a book, God can not be found in a building, God can only be found if you whole heartedly seek him. I know God, I do not know him from a book. If you speak to God and whole heartedly listen with your heart he will speak to you.

Ok but.......when you claim God's truth is only really found in one book and all others are incorrect basically, does that still not put God into a box?

Again, God is not found in the bible, he is not found in a book. God can be found anywhere and everywhere. The bible is merely history and the laws given to us from God. If 5 people seen you do something and they wrote it down. But did not know your intentions or you personally so therefore have not talked to you. But one other person knew you, had talked to you, and knew your intentions of the action of which was witnessed. So with the other knowledge not being known those 4 other people's writings would not be the same as that 1 that knew you. Therefore is what has happened with the other religions. They see these things happen but do not know of the actual cause so naturally they make presumptions of these actions in there writings. So again those other 4 would not have the story correct for they had not spoke with you. This can be related to religions. Again they see these things happen but have not spoke with the one whom made these things happen that way so naturally they make there own presumptions of what happened.

No one can prove to you God, no one can show you God. That only comes from within you and your diligent search for him if you truly wish to find out. Not what you wish for God to be like, but truly seek for God and who God is. God will reveal himself to you if you do this. Draw nigh to me and I will draw nigh unto thee as our father has told us.

Truly.

Christianity isn't about supporting any God. On the contrary, it's entirely about supporting religious bigotry. It's really the anti-thesis of God and all that is divine.

I have "Saved" Jesus from this horrible religion.

In my picture of these ancient myths Jesus was a victim of this religion. He most certainly wasn't responsible for creating it.

He was crucified because of this hateful religion.

Just like Stephen Weinberg says, "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things, but it takes religion to get good people to do bad things."

It was indeed this very religion that was used to incite a mob into having him crucified on the grounds of blaspheme.

It was the moral values, commandments, and directives of the God of the Old Testament that made the crucifixion of Jesus as a blasphemer possible.

There is absolutely not one bad thing Christians do or are doing if they are obeying the word of God. Not one thing. We are to love ALL and take care of ALL. We don't just love our brothers and sisters in Christ and make sure they are ok in life. We are to love ALL.

Well, I feel differently. But I guess that all depends on who the "Christians" are. I feel that the purpose of the New Testament authors was to create religious bigotry using Jesus as a scapegoat, and unfortunately they succeeded.

As far as I'm concerned, to use the Hebrew scriptures to judge the relationship that others have with God is already a bad thing. To even suggest to someone that their lifestyle is not approved of by God is a bad thing, because you're basically claiming to know the mind of God via a particular doctrine of YOUR CHOICE. And you even confess that it is indeed a CHOICE that you have personally made. In fact, you even accuse other people of NOT CHOOSING to worship the same dogma and imply that in making that CHOICE they are choosing to turn away from God.

That's a judgment against them concerning their relationship with God. And that's a bad thing, IMHO.

It's also a bad thing IMHO, to teach people that religion and scientific knowledge are on the same footing of pure "faith". As far as I'm concerned, not only is that a bad thing to teach people, but it's also an outright lie, or at the very best an extreme display of ignorance that can only be incited by religious dogma.

Just like I said, "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things, but it takes religion to get good people to do bad things."

Renouncing genuine knowledge and truth in favor of supporting religious mythologies that incite religious bigotry and support ignorance is a bad thing, IMHO.

First you have to believe in the imaginary to fear it.

Threats of harm show manly ignorance anyway.