It was a joke. Note the smilie.

I don't know who decides... and it really wouldn't make any difference if it were the norm for 'to' to be used instead of 'too' or 'there' instead of 'their' since we have no problem interpreting the meaning in spoken language.

We could go a whole step further and convert writing to it's just phonetics. Though that is the original intention for writing. You'd have to remove all influences from the written language and rebuild it. The english language does need a revamp to be honest. We need English2.0 which gets rid of redundant letters and combinations of letters. No silent letters, no combinations of letters which sound like another letter (e.g. ph-).

Well this is very off topic now

My "Nah..." was more of a [blank stare for several minutes...no, wait for it....wait for it....big surprise look, then]"Nah..."[/with scrunched up face and moving head side to side]

But yeah, I think we've all but officially derailed this thread...oh well.

Statistically speaking, just what do you think the odds are of your religion being true?

Just curious.

That's a matter of a person's faith, which you can't really measure.

Depends on how you look at. I don't associate myself with any specific relgious sect. I consider myself an independent student. So, personally, I think my odds are pretty great considering my belief system.

The break down of my belief system is something like this (and please read the wording very carefully...there are a lot of inferences in the way I word or phrase things to keep my sentences simple and compact. Feel free to ask me to elaborate on specific points):

I believe in one God per the wording of the first commandment.
As such, it is my belief that none of the relgions that teach a religion containing one supreme god to be any more false then any of the others that teach the same.

I believe that the Bible was designed and intended to be used as a tool for teaching.
It is not a historical record in the strictist sense (though it does have elements of historical facts within it). It uses stories to teach lessons and even repeats some stories to add emphesis.

I belive that Church and other religious institutions are intended to be places of learning and sharing ideas.
For instance, in the Christian faith, most churches preach that you must attend every service. This, however, isn't supported by any scripture.

I believe that many evangelist and front liners for various religions give the term "religion" a bad image.
And they really do. Which is why I try to distinguish myself from associating my beliefs with their's directly (even though they may be similar on many levels).

Here's something that many people miss. If a God created the universe, don't you think He'd be able to preserve His scriptures?

Being able to do something and actually doing it are two different things.

I'm going to side with Avenger on this one. It actually a wide accepted fact that there have been alternations to the scripture of the Bible. This is above and beyond the errors that occur from translating from one language to the next in which, in many cases, there is no exact 'language equilvant' of.

So, in actuallity, it's not that people 'miss' the idea you suggested, it's that is out of pure ignorance that people believe such a thing. The Bible is not literal. The purpose and intent have been pretty well preserved, but an exact tranlation from God to paper? Sorry, but that's why Genisis & Revelations contain so much imagery.

Here's something else that most people miss. Jesus did not start the religion now known as Christianity. Nor did he advocate any one particular religion. Just something to think about...

That's something that amazes me. There are people who get pissed of when you tell them that Jesus was Jewish even though it is 100% true (if you believe there was a Jesus in any sense at all).

Actually you can measure it. You just divide 1 by the number of religions there and you'll get the likelihood that you've chosen the correct religion, assuming there is one.

You missed my post entirely...

As far as Jesus goes, it's pretty silly not to even acknowledge that there was a man by the name of Jesus that lived over 2000 years ago. Especially when he's acknowledged to of existed by at least three different religions. That's above and beyond the other historical documents that mention his name. Whether or not he was the son of God, I'll leave up to you to decide. But there's not denying that he existed.

Avenger, that's culturalization for you. I was watching a history channel show on Jesus and they took a skull of someone that lived around the same time as Jesus. This skull was believed to have average features compared to othere Jews at the time. They then applied artificial (clay) muscle and skin layers to the skull. The result was something much different then the face we see in western culture meant to represent what Jesus looked like. If you've seen the Passion of Christ, the features looked more like that of Peter's.

Besides the fact that he said the only way to Heaven is through him. It's kind of an around-the-way way of saying it.

What? There is no evidence he existed.
It should be easy to prove he existed. However... The only people to write about him are the writers of the bible gospels. No writers from the time he was supposedly alive mention him. Writings about him (other than the gospels) only start appearing ~100 years after his supposed birth.

Even the gospels are questionable. Paul, for example. In all of his writings he never says he met or even saw Jesus himself.

There are no eye-witness writings of Jesus, despite there being a libraries worth of text from the time Jesus was alive. You'd think with Jesus doing so much miraculous stuff he'd get talked about. He apparently touched thousands of lives yet nobody thought to write about him.

Not to mention his massive similarites with Hercules, Mirthra, Horus/Osiris and Krishna amongst others.

No, I'd say there is more evidence to support that jesus was a fictional character than to support him being a real person.

Do you believe George Washington was a U.S. President? Do you believe that John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln? Do you believe that Julius Caesar was a Roman Emperor? Do you believe that there was a War of 1812?

I can't PROVE any of these things. Any evidence I might find could have been fabricated by people who, for their own reasons, want me to believe that these things have occurred. I've never seen the body of George Washington, and even if I did, I wouldn't know it was him. Records can be changed, falsified, etc. Certainly the events I've just asked about may make interesting stories, but are they just stories?

(I do like your rhetorical sytle, though, bonus points there. For added effect, you should suffix every post with, "FAIRY TALES!" )

The difference is that hundreds of people all wrote about those people and their stories all pretty much line up.

History is simply the perception of the people who record it, and the interpretation or opinion of the people who repeat it.

Or the differences could be human error.

I can easily point you to hundreds of Christian writers. Keep trying.

And in case you say there are so many conflicting views, I can also easy point you to the fields of interprative history and historical revisionism.

From the time he was supposedly around? Thats the difference. There are hundreds of accounts of George Washington from the time he was alive. There are none of Jesus from the time he was supposedly alive.

Except that Christianity had not yet been created. So what "religion" would people have to have been in the time up to and between his death and the creation of the Christian religion? Exactly my point.

When you declare yourself a demigod, I think you've created a new religion and you now belong to it.

That's not quite the way it worked. Jesus came along and started preaching about a merciful God who everyone could have a personal relationship with through prayer, which was quite counter to the Jewish way of doing things at the time. And, despite what Jesus was doing, he was still Jewish. Christianity didn't come along until he as dead.

You're still not getting it...

Jesus didn't come to tell us there is only one true religion and you must belong to it to get to Heaven. To think that, is a very inacurate assumption. Jesus stated that he came to fulfill the Old Testiment. Now, as I've hinted at before, look at the wording of the first commandment very carefully.

'Thou shall have no other god before Me!'

There's two words at the end of that commandment that raises a really interesting question. Well that's queer. Why weren't those two words just left off? I mean, if we took the Christian and Jewish inturpretation of that commandment to mean 'You shall have only one God!' then what gives? This is why I believe that no religion is any more wrong then the next. Almost every religion follows that first commandment. Even the religions with multiple gods generally have one supreme God that raigns over them all.

So, a more accurate interpretation of the Commandment would be, 'You shall have no other god above/over me!' because that's what it's really saying.

Additionally, almost every other religion have similier rules set in place that fall within the boundries set by the ten commandments. Which is yet another reason why I believe that those religions are no more wrong then any of the others.

Now, let's look at the statment that Jesus made of '...you can only get to Heaven through me.' Naturally, your first impression would be that you have to believe in him, that he died on the cross for you sins, that...wait a second. He hadn't died on the cross yet. Maybe, just maybe, what he meant was, 'you can only get to Heaven through my teachings.' Meaning, by following the moral and ethical examples that Jesus gave us through his teachings.

Again, something to think about...

There's a world of difference between believing that a guy started a war, and that a guy walked on water. There's a reason that we don't believe that there was a goose who was a mother that talked and told stories. Because they defy everything we know about the real world. They're fairy tails.

And I'm perfectly ok with being heartless and dismissing people's beliefs when they believe that any higher sentient being cares about their money problems, and that everything that happens to them is a gift from that "God." We tend to call this "Losing touch with reality." You can call me arrogant, but I'm not going to spare compassion for someone's faith in impossible things.

To believe that the bible is a collection of imagery as recorded by the poets who witnessed christ and needed a way to portray his messages, then I can afford some respect, even if I still deny the whole son of God thing.

It wasn't translated until ~1500. We still have the original Greek and Hebrew. The Bible is a collection of writings by the apostles (to whom it was given the knowledge and authority to lead the church and teach doctrines) that people had been using till then. The Bible was established at the council of Nicea to get rid of the heresies and weirdness, (If you thing the nuts today who get scared of the number 666 are bad, try living back then. One of the churches actually turned Christianity into some sort of excuse to have sex often and creatively, to the extent that is grossed every one else out, and in ancient times that would have taken some seriosu doing.) Anyhow, The Greek Bible as set forth at Nicea was preserved by Monks who were very careful to get it right. If they had been corrupted and changed like the Book of Mormon has, the reformation would never have happened.




That's just the way Jews talked. Why else would God punish people for worshiping idols, and why would he say that he is a jealous God. It means quite literally, no other Gods.

It's not hard to believe such things if you believe in God. If you don't it's not really believable because it's not possible given the world we live in.

I think that anyone who believes that the Bible is a literal translation of what happened is a sheep who can't think for themselves. Everything was passed down orally for too long, and it was all recorded years after the fact to be factually accurate.

I'm actually going to agree here. This is primarily a Christian (protestant) belief. The days of the Old Testiment are over. God longer takes part in physically stirring the outcome of situations or (worse) helping people to gain fortune. Prayer is largely misused by the Christian faith.



Except, again, a lot of things do not translate exactly from one language to the next. Some things have no equilivant at all. To further compound things, some languanges can say one thing and mean something else. For instance, they may mention a person's name, when they actually mean the persons deeds (how they've lived their life, etc). So I don't care how careful you want to pretend the monks were, it's not going to be preserved perfectly. What HAS preserved pretty well, is the intent and meaning of the Bible.



He punished them for making idols of Him and/or making idols of other gods and worshiping them above Him.

And I challenge you to find where He said that He was a jealous God.

Also, the Bible was translated from a language, two or three times, from languages that no one actively spoke at the time of the translation. Sure, we can do a pretty good job of translating ancient Greek now, but we'll never have a 100% knowledge of the language, or the slang, catch phrases of the time etc. Parts of meanings are bound to be lost over time because of this.

Yes.



Fiction.

Exactly. Thank you, Freelancer.

"And so every religion is wrong."

Exodus 20:5
5"(A)You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a (B)jealous God, (C)visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,

Oh wow, this is also the passage where it turns out that god isn't exactly the model of compassion and forgiveness. Extending punishment 3 or 4 generations?

damn, that three or four generations thing happens all the frickin' time in the bible. God is a moron.

I think you misunderstand. In particular, you're applying an incorrect deffinition to the word 'jealous'. Not to mention that by "them" he was refering to idols (graven images, etc. see Exodus 20:4). This is the correct definition of jealous as used in that context:

jeal·ous adj.

5. Intolerant of disloyalty or infidelity; autocratic: a jealous God.

Curtesy of dictionary.com

There's a difference between intolerance and being "Fearful or wary of being supplanted". What God was getting at was that he didn't want people having holy objects that are worldly. Such as a stone or a statue. In this way, no one would ever be able to "steal" your faith or worship in Him. Also, this free's you up to be able to bow or humble yourself before Him no matter where you are.

i hope you all die

Such a bothering going on.

Isn't a good portion of the Bible writted by people who didn't even witness these events? Like writing stories passed down? I thought a handful of the accounts of Jesus's actions were not written by his disciples, but people who passed along the tales.

Yes. The Gospels were written at least 50 years after Jesus died from stories that were passed down orally.

Actually, I don't think that's entirely true. I'm pretty sure that letters that Paul wrote were used (quoted) in the Gospels. Though I could be mistaken and thinking of something else.