Yes, it would be great to be a mermaid except for the sharks. “But dont laugh there are really mermaids out there, on other worlds that sometimes swim in our oceans” And I am not cookoooooo........ daerone!!
Haweye Quoted
Quote:Of course Alan, you are just talking of a book. No more, no less. Its just a book. The Bible is so full of hate and power. Smote, kill, destroy, rape,.....(I wonder if those who wrote it has little man syndrome?)I remember the first time i read Treasure Island. It did change me somewhat inside. Of course, it was just a book. It was a far better read than the Bible to me. Both were wrote to invoke emotion. Both very successful. I still prefer treasure Island.
Hawkeye old fella
Yes I know, I know I know, but there are some truths in it such as God is love God is light, so perhaps e should not generalize. I take you point it is a book and one hell of a book to understand thus me starting this thread. Perhaps you should reread what I originally posted, if you have sorry.
Now on your point of view (I hope you enjoy the following critque of the bible)
Fables in the bible
Fables in the Bible
The stories in the "Old Testament" are totally unbelievable, I am amazed that I was taught for so many years by people who should have known better that these were actual historical events. It is so obvious now that these are myths and fables, with no more historical accuracy than the stories found in sci-fi. I can't believe grown up people still believe in these myths, and worse still teach them to impressionable young minds. Let's take a look at a few of the more ludicrous stories.
Creation and the Fall
Ok, so nobody apart from a few fanatics seriously believes the world was created in 6 days as described in Genesis. But even if you maintain that the 6 days represent 6 ages, there are still ridiculous paradoxes that stand out. For example:
• Genesis Plants are made on the third day, without the sun to drive the process of photosynthesis.
• All creatures are apparently created as herbivores (Genesis ch1 v30). So what happened to the dinosaurs?
There are countless others - the Genesis account doesn't even remotely match what science tells us about the origins of the earth, however much you try to twist it to fit the facts.
Noah's Ark
This is basically a reworking of the much older "Epic of Gilgamesh". The idea that there was a worldwide flood is completely unsupported by any kind of evidence. After building the ark, God gave Noah 7 days warning of the flood. There are somewhere between 8 million and 10 million species inhabiting the earth (not including the 30 million different types of insect). Since there was a male and a female of each species on the ark, Noah had just one week to collect polar bears from the North Pole, lions from Africa, spiders from South America and tigers from India and the Far East.
Even assuming he could travel around the world at the speed of light, there would have to be an average of 30 animals per second going through the ark's single door. How did the cone beetle survive the year at sea, bearing in mind it can only survive on a particular type of tree only found in California?
Another ridiculous idea is that God created the rainbow as a sign that he would never again wipe out humanity in a global catastrophe. Are we expected to believe that light behaved differently a few thousand years ago when passing through raindrops? Only the incredibly naive can surely believe this!?
The "worldwide flood" somehow seems to have missed out the Chinese and other civilisations that were around at the same time, since they have no record of it.
Finally, the whole idea was to rid the wicked people from the world. Did it work?
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel myth is ludicrous - the idea that the entire world spoke a single language until God became angry at their attempt to build a skyscraper and cursed them all with different languages. Where is the evidence for a worldwide language? All ancient cultures evolved their own languages separately, there was most likely some kind of cross-pollenation as people moved around, but there is more evidence for the existence of Bigfoot than a single common language.
Joshua and the Sun
Joshua 10:12-14: It was on the day when the Lord gave up the Amorites into the hands of the children of Israel that Joshua said to the Lord, before the eyes of Israel, Sun, be at rest over Gibeon; and you, O moon, in the valley of Aijalon. And the sun was at rest and the moon kept its place till the nation had given punishment to their attackers. (Is it not recorded in the book of Jashar?) So the sun kept its place in the middle of the heavens, and was waiting, and did not go down, for the space of a day. And there was no day like that, before it or after it, when the Lord gave ear to the voice of a man; for the Lord was fighting for Israel.
Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? Not only does this imply that the Sun orbits the Earth, but even if it happened as described and the earth stopped moving to give the appearance of the Sun standing still, the gravitational effects would be devastating. Funny that there is no record of such an incredible celestial event in the records of all the other civilisations that were present at the same time. And what on earth is the "Book of Jashar"? Finally, I was once taught in Sunday School that a NASA supercomputer had found Joshua's "missing day" whilst compiling a history of time - this is an urban myth and has been thoroughly debunked, nobody has ever owned up to running such a program.
Yahweh defeated by "chariots of iron"
Judges 1:19 Yahweh was with Judah; and drove out the inhabitants of the hill country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.
So Almighty God, who creates universes at the blink of an eye, was defeated by a tribe because they had chariots of iron? Isn't it insulting to ascribe this claptrap to the Source of everything?
The genealogy of Jesus
Take a look at the two separate genealogies of Jesus as described in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Well, actually you aren't supposed to, as 1 Timothy 1:4 says that you must "Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies". There are only 4 names that actually match.
Conclusion
Incredibly, I was taught as a child that all of these stories were true and happened as described in the Bible. I cannot believe that the people who taught me such outrageous fables didn't have the common sense to see that this is all absolute nonsense. In my opinion people who claim that the Bible is enerrant and everything happened as stated should have their heads examined.
Thomas Paine writing in "The Age of Reason" makes the perfectly good point that the Bible is full of utterly irrelevant stories that add absolutely nothing of value: When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so, (and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.
This really tickles my sense of humor " oh!! man or woman" I find it very very fanny, dont you guys?
alan
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