Those crazy creationists

[DavyR]

Snakey, I've never heard of the epic of Gilgamesh and I guarantee that most other people have never heard of it either

 

I expect a lot of people who watched the excellent tv drama mini series "Occupation" recently did wonder how that Iraqi doctor bird seemed to know all about a 70s jazz fusion band from Canterbury...

[snakey1]

Snakey, I've never heard of the epic of Gilgamesh and I guarantee that most other people have never heard of it either but you have all heard of the Bible, and worms even knows how many Bibles are in his house. Looking at Wiki and others, the book by Mao takes second place, I am afraid!

Try Googling the most popular book ever or the best selling book ever.

Just to make things a little easier for you KB as you've never heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh(tut tut the state of south african education eh) how about the Iliad by homer and the Odyssey surely you heard of them (both still in publication and both predate the bible, trumped again I'm afraid). as for mao's little red book Wiki (one of your favourite sources) states and i'll quote here "The most printed book in the twentieth century, Quotations had an estimated 5 to 6.5 billion copies printed during Mao's attempt to transform Chinese society. " and if you care to look here you'll find that although the bible is physically higher up on the list the approximate sales are roughly the same (and even if the bible has sold more, as it should have as it has been in circulation for a far longer time, the fact that maos book was only published for 12 years yet it has such huge sales figures for such a short period make it a hell of a lot more impressive than the bible),hell for sales figures The Sun sells approx 3 million copies a day, which just goes to show large sales don't guarantee honesty or quality(although page 3 in it is IMO far better than page 3 of the bible)

Edited August 12, 2009 by snakey1

[Alan Stubbs]

Take the P guys.

When were your books written? Are they still in the bookshops?

 

 

The Bible has come down 2000 years and is STILL the No1 book in the world!!

 

 

I'm not taking the P, John.

 

I'm using your own logic to make a point. The point being that substantive evidence for the events in the bible are a bit thin on the ground. Parables are, by definition stories used to make a point, so things like the virgins at the wedding (how many were virgins afterwards?) and the prodigal son were stories told to illustrate, not facts.

 

When Noah was supposedly on his Araratian cruise, strangely, the surrounding civilisations seem to have been faring pretty well. Poses a creditbility issue on Noah and his pre-Attenburgh tendencies, don't you think?

[Alan Stubbs]

As an aside, I had a copy of the thoughts of Chairman Mao, as a tenager. Insid, for a laugh, I wrote 'To Alan, With love from Uncle Mao'.

 

My father was in the RAF and as a result of some muppet seeing it in our house, my father lost his security clearance for 24 hours!

[kleinboet]

Alan, I have said that the OT shows what the laws and lives were (I think everything was dour in those days!), however everything changed, hence the NT.

I, for one, would love to know the truth about what really happened in those years that Jesus was alive. some of the the miracles he did (water into wine e.g.) are open to ridicule (we simply don't know) however the story of the money changers in the temple ring true, Lazarus can be put down to coincidence but there are just too many articles written in the NT to not justify the fact that something of importance happened.

 

As an aside, we don't appear to learn from our mistakes. Look at the Sharia laws in a lot of countries where they still stone adulterers, kill non-virgins ( the still show the nuptial sheet to all in the temple to show the blood stains!), chop off the hand of a thief etc.

I don't condone crime, but to try and stop it with sheer brutality is going over the top!

Edited August 12, 2009 by kleinboet

[Emma two]

When were your books written? Are they still in the bookshops?

 

 

The Bible has come down 2000 years and is STILL the No1 book in the world!!

 

Yes, the series of books I used as an example are still in print and are in the shops.

 

We tend to read the Bible through the lens of modernity. This is to say, we read the Bible as a book. Not only do we tend to think of it as a single book, but we also read the Bible as if it came from a world of texts, books, and authors. We read the it from our own perspective, that of a highly literate world. Yet, it was written before there were books in the form we recognise. Pages bound between two covers could only come about following the invention of the codex, which features leaves of pages with text on both sides. Replacing scrolls by the codex. This was the significant technological development in the history of writing. Codices appeared in the first century C.E. yet only became common by the fourth century when it seems likely that the bible as a book as we know it first appeared. What is significant and conveniently understated in claims by those like KB's, is that not only is the modern bible unlikely to be 2000 years old, but that in any case up until relatively recently the wider population or Europe was illiterate and therefore unable to read the bloody thing anyway. For most of those 2000 years reading and writing was the business of...guesss who? no not the nobles, but the priesthood, who passed on their interpretation of the bible in the way superstitious and self serving men do.

So to suggest that the bible as being as widely read as the books of modern best selling authors with their eager literate readers is wholly misleading.

Were the bible to be published as a new book now, it would cause outrage, controversy and be on legal shakey ground, encouraging and in some part demanding intanticide, genocide, murder and promotes hate crimes against several groups.

Edited August 13, 2009 by Emma two

[corydoras]

Cory, I don't understand? I said that SOMETHING must of happened some 2000 years ago for the scribes to go to all that trouble to record a version of what happened. It must have been important as you have stories like Sampson and Delilah, David and Goliath, Moses etc. - Yet they take a back seat. I am not trying to ram religion down anyones throat, all I am saying is there is too much evidence of the actual existence of named people in the Bible, for people to say that the book is "made up".

Be careful of making claims like that KB, for the same claims can also be used to throw doubt on the historicity of Jesus. In the bible it says that Jesus was born in Judea at the time of the reign of King Herod ( a real nice chap), but we know from Josephus that King Herod died before Jesus was born.

 

I something really big really happened 2000 years ago, why did they wait 250-300 years before they started writing about it?

 

It's not impossible to change my mind on the existence of God KB. I never accepts anything as absolutely proven or dis-proven. You can change my mind if you present evidence to show me that I am wrong. That's the difference between sceptics and religious people. Sceptics doubt everything and are happy to uncover evidence that proves them wrong about something. Religious people take their beliefs as absolutely true and reject any evidence to the contrary.

 

If you want to change my mind, all you need to do is present evidence, real evidence that I am wrong.

Edited August 12, 2009 by corydoras

[chesters1]

the bibles myths are probably far older than the bible its self ,the Egyptian horus myths are probably it source ,infact some parts of the bible are very close to Egyptian myth.

if you bung in a few myths from whats now iraq (Mesopotamia) and the bit between the tigris and euphrates where "civilisation " is supposed to have started then another huge chunk is filled in.

 

theres even thoughts our (the uk) law is based on sharia law (happy googling ).

 

as i said before christian belief is based on jewish belief and whilst modern moslem belief also is based on jewish belief (infact in most cases identical to it) all ofcourse come from the same general area .our tame Ahmadiyya muslems (google sheephatch) believe jesus didnt die on the cross so everyone hates them ,not real moslems you see

they split off ofcourse not because theres suddenly a difference of religeous thought but that the leaders suddenly find they are losing their power so splinter into different groups (and are still) so the leaders of that particular group have their crazy power thing and ofcourse their puffed up with their own sense of importance stature (aided and abetted by the mentally frail who believe them)

 

whilst the main characters of the bible are unreal the settings are ,probably a good thing as the nomads who started it all off (verbally) needed fixed points to anchor it on ,if it had been some geezer based on venus then it wouldnt have stuck in the mind ,later the scam artists saw a buck or 2 in it and weaved the present version.

 

the bible is an old travelogue book with "characters" chucked in to make it sell a "rough guide"

of Egypt and its surrounds..

 

the bibles conclusions are :

god is not a nice person

herod wouldn't be first choice for a babysitter

you can live in deserts for years

war gets you anything

if your neighbour has an ass dont covert it

jesus was perhaps a criminal who spent 30 years in prison (just as good a reason as any i'v seen) perhaps ass coveting was in his genetic makup?

Galilee fishermen are crap

if you want to get rich bugger everyone and get your wife turned into an extremely valuable commodity (who says crime doesn't pay?)

 

 

thats about it all the rest is common sense now but probably to those throat slashing ,animal burning,sister shagging prehistoric travellers probably needed to keep them to heel.

Edited August 13, 2009 by chesters1

[Alan Stubbs]

the bibles conclusions are :

herod wouldn't be first choice for a babysitter

 

if your neighbour has an ass dont covert it

 

Galilee fishermen are crap

 

if you want to get rich bugger everyone and get your wife turned into an extremely valuable commodity (who says crime doesn't pay?)

 

 

Herod... was he the role model for Ian brady and Myrah Hindley?

 

I couldn't possibly covet my neighbour's ass....I've only ever tried women and they're good enough for me, thanks!

 

I learned my fishing skills in Galilee

 

My wife was an extremely valuable commodity...you should see what she extorted when I got divorced.

 

OK, I get the drift, the Bible is a source of inspiration.

[Vagabond]

Parables are, by definition stories used to make a point, so things like the virgins at the wedding and the prodigal son were stories told to illustrate.

 

Did you deliberately choose these two contradictory parables, Alan?

 

The virgins who forgot their oil, and had to go out for more, came back to find the doors locked, and they were excluded from the wedding feast (ie excluded from "the Kingdom of Heaven") Matthew Chapter 25 verses 1-12

 

By contrast Luke Chapter 15, verses 11-32 Tells of a chap who wasted his money in "riotous living", comes home and gets the best part of the fatted calf. His brother didn't even get an invite to the feast but found out when he came home from work.

 

Parables? Well, here is my take. The choice is to be at the feast with a proven drunkard who has already hogged most of the food - or to be outside with five foolish and forgetful virgins who might easily be persuaded into further indiscretions.