The apocryphal nature of religious texts

First topic message reminder :

Probably a better discussion if we limit this predominantly to contemporary monotheism, but all three are open for discussion. We're looking for obviously spurious claims or claims that are demonstrably false when compared to what evidence we have, or claims that contradict other claims in other parts of the relevant book.

Beyond that we can broaden the discussion to include traditional dogma or doctrine, whether it is still accepted or has been rejected by the credulous.  We can also use the discussion to analyse why we think the posted quotes are a barrier to credulity,  or conversely why we don't find them a barrier to accepting they are a message from a deity.

I'll start with a contradiction.

John 1:18
No man hath seen god at any time.

Exodus 33:11

And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to a friend.

As one example.

Greatest I am,
I have two children and if it came to me or them it would always be me to suffer.

God was aware that he could save Jesus and the test was if Jesus was up to the mark sa a dutyful son.

We cannot think in the terms that reside in God's domain and are therefore unable to understand all the implications.

polyglide wrote:Greatest I am,
                   I have two children and if it came to me or them it would always be me to suffer.

                   God was aware that he could save Jesus and the test was if Jesus was up to the mark sa a dutyful son.

                   We cannot think in the terms that reside in God's domain and are therefore unable to understand all the implications.

What a cop out.

You follow a God who you would not emulate and cannot respect and hide behind your test the son idiocy knowing full well that the son and the father are one and the father would know that the son would pass the test.

That is full blown hypocrisy my friend.

We all do as much as we can in seeking knowledge. The problem for unfortunate Christians is the perception of the terms knowledge and truth.

The idea of Jesus dying for us was created to produce a sense of indebtedness that the population is supposed to feel.

The idea of the fall was created to have people interpret the scripture in a way that makes them think that seeking knowledge is a sin.

This makes it easier for Christians to pushed to become unthinking sheeple that can be easily manipulated, --- just as the re-writers of the bible and interpretation biased preachers want.

Christianity can thus profit from fear and indebtedness in this manner.

In the end, knowledge and truth are for our own enlightenment. Seeking untruth is a form of transgression and that is what priests and imams try to produce. Priests and imams are quite skilled in helping people lie to themselves.

Conditioning that some would call indoctrination or brainwashing when pushed to it's present extreme.

Strange that our own governments give tax credits and exemptions to organizations that basically spend their time lying to people. You and I subsidize this legalized fraud by paying the tax shortfall.

We are thus all paying for priests and imams to lie to the gullible and vulnerable.

There ought to be a law against that.

=============

Poly.

You get to revue an O.P. I have going elsewhere that speaks to you accepting immoral tenets.

Christians are more moral than God. So why do you worship him?

The Bible contains many instances that show God doing things that no moral human would do.

For instance.

If you had God’s power, you would not use Genocide against man and beast on the earth. Jesus said he came to cure those in need, not kill them, so you would cure those in Noah’s day and would not kill them all.

In Egypt, you would not harden Pharaoh’s heart but would leave it soft and let him let the Jews go. You would not punish the first born for what their parents did. If anything, you would punish the guilty and not the innocent.

To the many other instances where God ordered massacres of babies, you would not as your better morals would make you care or cure and not kill.

I have been speaking to many Christians and Muslims over the last few years and have noted that many grudgingly agree that God is rather barbaric but that they forgive him for all his less savory decisions and usually say they do so because God can do whatever he likes to us because he created us.

Christians and Muslim thus recognize their better morals. That being the case, why have you Christians and Muslims chosen to follow a God whose morals are inferior to your own?

Religions are supposed to be all about morals yet you seem to ignore that yours are better than God’s. Why do you do so?

Regards
DL



Regards
DL

Greatest I am,
As usual I do understand your opinion and at face value you have a major point or points.

The way I look at matters is as follows:-

Satan is the one who is in control of world affairs at the moment.

God will only intefere and has only ever interfered when his people have been threatened by means unacceptable to God under the terms he has allowed Satan to turn mankind against him, or when his instructions towards the same ends have been ignored.

regards.

polyglide wrote:Greatest I am,
                   As usual I do understand your opinion and at face value you have a major point or points.

                   The way I look at matters is as follows:-

                    Satan is the one who is in control of world affairs at the moment.

                   God will only intefere and has only ever interfered  when his people have been threatened by means unacceptable to God under the terms he has allowed Satan to turn mankind against him, or when his instructions towards the same ends have been ignored.

                                             regards.          

Again you cop out and go and hypocritically hide behind the supernatural where no one can follow.

If Satan is in control of the earth as you claim, then he is he one who had the bible written as is. Right?

You follow immoral tenets and beliefs thanks to you being able to hide in the supernatural. Shame on you.

We are about done my friend.

I do not have the patience od some here and do not suffer your ilk well.

You have sold your soul to Satan and that hurts me to watch you deteriorate into immoral thinking.

Regards
DL


If you're answering the most recent message on a thread, there is no need to copy/paste it. Is that such a difficult request to understand?
Ivan

polyglide wrote: Satan is the one who is in control of world affairs at the moment.  

If an omnipotent deity existed then such a being could only be in charge if that deity chose to let it, and if such a deity was also omniscient then ti would do so knowing the result would be ubiquitous suffering, and would demonstrably not be benevolent, quite the opposite in fact.

I see no acknowledgement of you error here polyglide? Or acceptance that your bible claims quite unequivocally that your benevolent deity tortured and killed a baby? Why is that?

Polyglide wrote:
only God knows if the baby suffered,  it is not beyond God's capabilities to make matters appear as such to teach people a lesson.

Dr Cooper wrote:We all know, it's written plainly in the biblical text
12.15 The LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick. 12.16
Finally, after the baby suffered for seven days, God killed him.
On the seventh day, that the child died. 12.18

Ivan


If you're answering the most recent message on a thread, there is no need to copy/paste it. Is that such a difficult request to understand?
Ivan
headbang

This is the first request is it not?

So why the prickly attitude?

Regards
DL

Greatest I am. Firstly, if you wish to send a personal message or complaint to anyone on this forum - staff or ordinary member – kindly use the personal messaging system, not a discussion thread. Secondly, that was not the first request to you, but the third one in the space of 24 hours:-

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t408p480-religion-gay-artists-and-homophobia#67707

Furthermore, I would be grateful if, before recycling discussions from Amazon or elsewhere, you would check to see if your message really requires a new thread or could be added to an existing one. We have over 700 threads already, and our aim is to avoid unnecessary duplication and to ensure that the forum is easy to use.

It might also be helpful if you would familiarise yourself with the contents of these threads:-

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t18-posting-rules

https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t645-staff-notices-for-members

Thank you for your co-operation.

polyglide wrote: God will only intefere and has only ever interfered  when his people have been threatened by means unacceptable to God

13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

Then there's the previous example of God torturing and killing an innocent baby. Of course there was Jonah, a devout man who never relinquished his faith, and his reward was to see his family killed off and himself persecuted as part of a bet between god and Satan. Murdering the first born male child of every family in an entire city. These are just a few of course. If such a deity really existed I think professor Dawkins tongue in cheek description in The God Delusion was pretty accurate:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Dr, Sheldon,
Then I gather you do not believe in God.

polyglide wrote:Dr, Sheldon,
                Then I gather you do not believe in God.  

I don't use faith or belief to determine the veracity of anything. 

You're as much of an atheist as I am with just one deity from thousands that humans have invented making the difference.

As for the Abrahamic deity, it has always struck me as a sadistic narcissistic megalomaniac. So even if there were some evidence it existed I'd be inclined to have nothing to do with it.

Dr, Shedlon,
I believe in God, there is no possible way in which you can deny his existance, you believe in something that is, by calculation, an impossibility.

I've no need to deny anything if the claim can't be supported by any proper evidencevidence,  and is based on demonstrably erroneous claims and blind faith.

I'm a little surprised that after being told so many times you still can't grasp that not being able to calculate something is not evidence,  anymore than not knowing something is evidence. This is called argumentum ad ignorantiam.

I notice this latest obfuscation still doesn't accept or acknowledge your error in claiming your deity didn't torture and murder a baby, according to your own bible. 

Why is that?

Dr, Sheldon,
I did not deny anything, I pointed out there must have been a very pertinant reason for God to do anything, that which appears to us as anything may be altered in any way by God.

Wtf has any of that to do with anything in my post? 

Read it again. 

by Dr Sheldon Cooper PhD Yesterday at 10:15 am

I've no need to deny anything if the claim can't be supported by any proper evidencevidence,  and is based on demonstrably erroneous claims and blind faith.

I'm a little surprised that after being told so many times you still can't grasp that not being able to calculate something is not evidence,  anymore than not knowing something is evidence. This is called argumentum ad ignorantiam.

I notice this latest obfuscation still doesn't accept or acknowledge your error in claiming your deity didn't torture and murder a baby, according to your own bible. 

Why is that?

You denied your deity had tortured and murdered an innocent baby. Even after the biblical text was quoted with a link and book chapter and vs provided. 

I have to ask polyglide,  in a public forum of this type do you seriously belive such persistent duplicity and dishonesty will go unnoticed?

Dr, Sheldon,
Do you actually read my replies.

Anything God does is for a good reason and for the benifit of mankind.

I never denied anything, I explained that if God appeared to torture anyone or anything it would be for a good reason and to the benifit in the end of mankind.

Anyone with common sense would realise that you cannot take the Bible in a literal sense in many cases, this is self evident in the last book of the Bible, the times in which the Bible was written over many years were not the same as today and when considering certain matters this has to be taken into account.

'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33436021

(Tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.
Christian notation.)

Dr, Sheldon,
Do you actually read my replies.

Anything God does is for a good reason and for the benifit of mankind.

Yes god help me I have that misfortune. 

Only a sick amoral sadist would torture and kill a baby.

Only a moron with an equally sadistic and amoral nature would suggest it was "for the good" of anything.

oftenwrong wrote:'Oldest' Koran fragments found in Birmingham University
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33436021

(Tests provide a range of dates, showing that, with a probability of more than 95%, the parchment was from between 568 and 645.
Christian notation.)

 Plagiarism is very much the hallmark of religious texts. Anthropology suggests that these shared myths were important to the overall narrative of a people, and even a paradigm shift in religion needed the stability of the old religious myths.

Polyglide wrote:Anyone with common sense would realise that you cannot take the Bible in a literal sense in many cases, 

Anyone with any common sense would realise why as well. They'd also realise how absurd it is to try and subjectively cherry pick the bits they like. Then claim to be 100% certain they were right and everyone else wrong. 

Any self awareness coming any time soon?

Polyglide wrote:the times in which the Bible was written over many years were not the same as today and when considering certain matters this has to be taken into account. 

Not if the message is from an omnipotent omniscient deity.  Then such a claim becomes absurdly risible.

Our local public library denies having anything on its shelves by an omnipotent omniscient deity. That's a shame - could have resolved many arguments and misunderstandings.

Indeed, though it's reassuring that a public service doesn't pretend just to placate the gullible and the overly credulous.  

However even though I suspect you were being slightly facetious you raise an interestingpoint. As such a deity could of course settle all conjecture on any point it chose instantly. Yet religious wars and persecutions have played out over thousands of years while it apparently remained mute on even the most important religious contentions.. 

Can this be any more of a coincidence than the rules and deities people settle on precisely reflecting their own opinions and those of the culture they happen to be born into? 

Or anymore of a coincidence than God emerging to chat to every other self styled prophet when ignorance and superstition were ubiquitous but news cameras and scientific methods of objective testing non existent?

When I read that last paragraph back I'm almost embarrassed to put a question mark after it. If only the faithful had some sense of doubt.

Greatest I am,

Of course God did not write anything, so the library is correct, try the library having nothing that God, to a Christian inspired.

Is that in English? My meagre linguistic skills can't decipher it I'm afraid. Why are you responding to Oftenwrong as GIA?

Perhaps he's talking in tongues? This kind of babbling incoherent gibberish is quite popular amongst some of the overly credulous. 

To be fair it's not much more confusing than the tome in question.

Dr, Shedldon,
I was replying to oftenwrong who stated that there was nothing in the library by an omnipotent omniscient diety, I agree, God did not write the Bible, man did, I know you are a little dense but I thouhgt not that dense. God inspired the Bible writings.

Try reading what is put for a change.

You know I'm a little dense. I can't tell you what a slight that is from a "genius" who thinks "short commings" is intelligible English. 

I know you were responding to Oftenwrong that's why I said precisely that in my post. Again your grasp of the written word is laid bare. You did however address your astonishingly idiotic response to GIA. Hence my asking why you'd done this when you were responding to Oftenwrong. 

Is your inability to ever accept an error the root cause of your latest childish tantrum and name calling, or can we put this one down to illiteracy?

Dr, Sheldon,
You can call the truth whatever you want.

You can,that doesn't of course make it true. As your laughable lies about science and dictionary definitions amply validate. Even with the hilarity of you jamming the word fact into your idiotic claims.

Who is Stephen Hawkin?

Dr, Sheldon,
I have replied to this on another post.

I know, I still haven't heard of him. Who is he?

Why did you address GIA in your response to Oftenwrong? Why are you claiming the bible isn't a message from an omnipotent deity but written by humans?

Dr, Sheldon,
I never said the Bible was not a message from God.

What I said it was inspired by God but written by man.

Why is it errant nonsense then? How do you know it was inspired by a deity, you weren't there after all. Many other religious tomes claim this as well.

If the message is corrupt you can't accurately know what it originally meant. Yet you're hilariously claimed to be 100% certain in an earlier post. Are you directly linked to God somehow and everyone who disagrees with you is not?

polyglide wrote:Dr, Shedldon,
                  I was replying to oftenwrong who stated that there was nothing in the library by an omnipotent omniscient diety, I agree, God did not write the Bible, man did, I know you are a little dense but I thouhgt not that dense. God inspired the Bible writings.

                 Try reading what is put for a change.

Poly

True that the bible was written by men.

Remember that Satan has dominion here and therefore is responsible for the bible you believe in.

What was that power God gave Satan?

Regards
DL

Since the thread title is about the apocryphal or errant nature of Scripture any admission that it is man made solves this problem. It does not however allow for omniscience or omnipotence to be involved as that would axiomatically mean either a perfect message or a willfully duplicitous deity.

Dr, Shedlon,
I have stated several times that the Bible cannot be taken literally, the last book in the Bible clearly indicates this.

It is therefore understandable to feel that the whole Bible is the same and one has to seek the truth from the information given.

I have stated previously, as far as I am concerned present day man/woman has no need to refer to the Old Testamant because it was not written for their information, the birth of Jesus and thereafter is all that present day Christians need be concerned about.

polyglide wrote:Dr, Shedlon,
                I have stated several times that the Bible cannot be taken literally, the last book in the Bible clearly indicates this.

                It is therefore understandable to feel that the whole Bible is the same and one has to seek the truth from the information given.

                I have stated previously, as far as I am concerned present day man/woman has no need to refer to the Old Testamant because it was not written for their information, the birth of Jesus and thereafter is all that present day Christians need be concerned about.

Yet Jesus endorsed the no divorce rule from the O.T.

If as you say, you cannot and should not read the bible literally, how do you end up believing in a literal Jesus?

Regards
DL

Polyglide wrote:[size=48]Dr, Shedlon,[/size]
[size=48]I have stated several times that the Bible cannot be taken literally, the last book in the Bible clearly indicates this.[/size]

Unless it condemns gay people it seems, then a very literal interpretation is fine. 

It can't be taken literally because it is filled with palpably absurd fictions, and demonstrably erroneous claims. Why would a being that can literally do anything, your own words, require an irrational, fallible and erroneous  human interpretation of its message? Why not single it out as unequivocally from a an omnipotent omniscient deity? 

Nothing in any religious tome offers anything that couldn't be entirely human in origin.

As I said in my previous post....

[size=49]It does not however allow for omniscience or omnipotence to be involved as that would axiomatically mean either a perfect message or a willfully duplicitous deity.[/size]

Dr, Shedlon,
Nothing in any religious tome offers anything that couldn't be entirely human in origin.

You mean like mankind themselves for instance???????.