OT: What's your religeon?

[Electrum]

Colonel said:
I believe little if any of what I have heard is in the bible-never read it,...

On one hand, I understand a person Not beliving the Bible based on the actions & conduct on those who "Claim" to believe it. I personally am appalled by such mis-representation.
On the other hand, it is somewhat surprising on how many people make such strong statements on a book they have never read. If one takes the time to seriously read & look into the Bible, you find that, though it is not a science book, where it touches on science, it is in perfect harmony with established scientific fact. The same holds true for other areas, as in history & geography. It soon moves to amazement when it comes to examining Biblical prophecy to historical events.
It doesn't make sense to dismiss it without first examining the evidence.

[Iansidious]

Wonderfully said, brother.

[Traskelion]

I am, as Narf said that he is also of(back in Page 1), of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or more known as the Mormon Church. Though we are wary of that term.

Also, although I by no means intend to start a debate, I look at Thermodyne's post and am certain that he did not actually look closely into religions. It's called organization! "Maintaining a power base" my a$*

Anyhow, as far my outlook on religion, I don't agree with bits and pieces of other religions, but am taught to respect them, and the good individuals who compose them.

[DarkHorse]

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Universe is attempting to create God through evolution, and maybe a little osmosis.

Actually I just like saying 'osmosis'.

[DarkHorse]

Wait, I have another theory. God actually looks like a dolphin, and the Dolphin race is getting really annoyed that we keep evolving faster than they do. That, and the stupid fishing net thing.

Maybe I'm just a secular hedonist. I'm a religion of one!

[Traskelion]

>"I'm a religion of one!"

Yeah......and I bet you'll never figure out why.....
(Unless you actually DO believe these, in which case I'm sorry)

[dogscoff]

On the other hand, it is somewhat surprising on how many people make such strong statements on a book they have never read. ...
It doesn't make sense to dismiss it without first examining the evidence.

I've never read the bible either, but we were forced to read or listen to bits at school, and to watch really poorly-animated bible stories, and to take part in nativity plays and all that, so large chunks of the stories (if not the actual text) are at least familiar to me and to most people I know. The stories and such that I was told appear to be a more-or-less random entanglement of mythology and ancient history.

The idea that every word in the Bible is the actual word of God is absurd to me- you have to admit that Man has a habit of putting words into God's mouth, and to me the bible is nothing more than the end result of two or three thousand years of that: Most of the Old Testament was carried by nothing more than word-of-mouth for centuries before it was ever put into writing, and various political spins were woven into it by different people along the way. Then you have the New Testament, which was written by loads of very different people over several centuries and has also been re-written/ re-translated with "spin" throughout that time by those who have used it to advance their own viewpoints/ justify their own actions. <snip listing of various barbarisms carried out in the name of Christ over the Last two Millenia> More to the point though, the bible- in particular the New Testament- has been interwoven with mythologies from other religions (to ease conVersion from other those religions throughout the ages) so that you have to wonder how much of it there is left that could actually have anything to do with the true story/ teachings of Christ. Quite a lot, probably, but how do you know which bits are which? It just throws into doubt the reliability of the whole thing.

And of course that's all assuming you can get past the "yes, there is a God" belief that is fundamental to the entire process, which to be honest makes the whole thing a non-starter for me.

Finally there's the fact that the bible doesn't seem to carry any single, clear message: Some people use it to promote universal peace and acceptance, others to justify bigotry and murder, even in this day and age. Those are the extremes of the spectrum, be it seems that every possible permutation in-between is accomodated somewhere. They can't all be right. What's the point in basing your faith on a book that can mean anything you want it to mean? I might as well not bother with the book and do whatever I want anyway. (Which is pretty much what I have done.)

[Rasorow]

DarkHorse said:
I have a sneaking suspicion that the Universe is attempting to create God through evolution, and maybe a little osmosis.

Actually I just like saying 'osmosis'.

That's a real interesting thought. Could the Universe itself be trying to create God? Just as the universe was condensed into the <gross understandment> compact ball of energy and matter, then expanded, could life which started with the simplest of forms, progressed through intelligent species, now be trying to fulfill the vacuum of emptiness created by the lack of a higher order? Could the eventual fulfillment of a higher order being be the "event" that begins the contraction of the universe and the devolvment of life?

Rasorow

[deccan]

Electrum said:
If one takes the time to seriously read & look into the Bible, you find that, though it is not a science book, where it touches on science, it is in perfect harmony with established scientific fact. The same holds true for other areas, as in history & geography. It soon moves to amazement when it comes to examining Biblical prophecy to historical events.

Since no one has come forward to the dispute this, I am going to do so.

You are quite correct that strong, unqualified statements concerning the Bible should not be made without having first made a serious attempt at studying the subject first-hand. Now, let me say that I have read the Bible, cover to cover, several different Versions of it in fact. On the hand, and while this may or may not be true for you, I believe that while many theists do, understandably, have first-hand knowledge of their religious canon, they have relatively little knowledge of the origins of that canon, and the process by which it came into their hands.

There are a lot of Bible-bashing sites on the internet, and I once ran one myself. I won't point you to them since I find that most of them are too partisan, focus too much on nitpicking and try too hard to grasp at tenuous straws. However, I will rely on Wikipedia, which being a community, open-to-everyone effort, should be a much more neutral, qualified, source of information.

First of all, Biblical canon looks at the various different "books" that compose the "Bible" and explains which are canon to which religious denominations and how they became canon to that denomination. The point here is that at various different points in history, different Groups of people had to gather around in a meeting and sit down to decide what God supposedly did say, and what he did not say.

Next, The Bible and history examines whether or not the Bible is actually scientifically and historically correct as you claim.

In any case, some quotes from the Wikipedia page here:

On Genesis:

The Biblical creation tale, up to and including the deluge are not a subject of dispute in the scientific community. They are generally regarded as a myth. The arguments raised come cosmology, geology, evolution (in particular fossil evidence), and textual analysis of the Bible itself, showing similarity to other mythologies.

On Jews living in Egypt:

The number of Israelites stated in the Bible, 600,000, cannot be taken at face value, as this number is thought to exceed the total Egyptian population at the time. A common suggestion is that the word "thousand" should be interpreted here as meaning "family", which gives a figure much more compatible with the historical record.

On Joshua:

The historicity of the book of Joshua is today strongly suspected, as archeological research found no evidence of a massive population increase in Canaan during this time period. At this time the land had a population of between 50,000 and 100,000. Kathleen Kenyon excavated in Jericho from 1952-1958, using improved methods of stratigraphy, and found many details which would seem to conform to the Biblical account of the conquest of Jericho, but she determined that the siege took place 150 years too early for it to have been the city Joshua's army destroyed. She dated the city by the absence of a type of imported pottery common to the era around 1400 B.C. She concluded, as had Sellin and Watzinger before her that the Biblical account of the conquest of Jericho was untenable.

For anyone interested in a detailed account of scientific errors committed in the Bible or scientifically unsound teachings perpetuated by Christian denominations throughout history, Whitehead's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom is an old but still very useful read that is now in the public domain.

Finally, Wikipedia has a page on Alleged inconsistencies in the Bible which details some of the inconsistencies within the Bible itself.

Now, I note that you do not claim that the Bible is wholly inerrant, "merely" that it has proven to be correct on an impressive number of matters. How much "correctness" should be regarded as being truly "impressive" is a really subjective matter of course. For example, I might say that the "Dao De Jing" is impressive, simply by virtue that it contains a large number of self-evident "truisms".

In the case of the Bible, personally, as I believe that it was written purely by men without divine knowledge, I would still expect these men to be reasonably intelligent, knowledgeable and relatively well-travelled, persons, and that the accuracy and correctness of their work to reflect that ability. Consequently, in order to seriously claim that the Bible is "impressive" above and beyond that standard, would require that the Bible include information that could not be known at that time and incur a far higher burden of evidence.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

As a quick reply, I've heard that creation, as described in the bible, is simaliar to many other stories of creation. I'll just point out that the order described in the bible fits the order described by the location of fossils, as it was described in my textbooks.

The arguement that the biblical creation must be false because it is simaliar to many others is a falicy(sp?), if such a congruence exists (I havn't read other religeons religeous texts, yet), it is evidence of some sort of historical congruence or origin point and hardly evidence of falsety(sp?).