Is the sun shrinking? No

[eMTee]

I would love it if some supreme being came to me in person and said "Hi, I'm 'God'. I exist, watch me turn the moon into green cheese and take you there to talk..." then proceded to lay out the entire structure of Life, the universe, and everything.

The time will come that God will come to you face to face, and you will not have any question about it, but rather say to yourself " He is God, and he does exist" as you watch him Judge the just and the unjust, he will then come to you and say " Now why did you not believe?", speachlessly standing, as the whold universe engulfs itself into nothing.

[GAHD]

{you will} say to yourself " He is God, and he does exist"

No, I'm a little too cocky for that; I'd probably talk to it and make some wise crack about the platipus or ask what the question for 42 is.

 

The time will come that God will come to you face to face, and you will not have any question about it

Coming back from my humour bent; can you proove with absolute certainty that it *will* come? Don't pull out your tome, that's made by human hands and thus is not proof enough for me.

 

You can have Faith, faith, dusty paper, whatever; I simply don't beleive it. I Require personal experience, and I can honestly say that anything remotely divine has yet to come anywhere close to me.

 

*If* that day comes I might be having hot tea with Lucifer/Melbogia/Whaatever, but it has yet to come and I severly doubt it will so I simply don't worry about it. Maby it's my loss but that's a choice I make every day when I decide to keep breathing.

[Boerseun]

Few emotions are as strong as self-delusion.

 

Few experiences creates such a strong impression upon an individual as an hallucination (not drug-induced, mind you - hallucinations happen to almost every person at some stage in their lives. It might have something to do with the wiring in our brains, but seeing as we can't predict when a normal non-drugged person will experience an hallucination, it's very difficult to test it in a lab - so we have to induce it chemically)

 

If you are a serious believer, and you have this deep urge to see Jesus at McDonalds, you probably will - and you will rant and rave and tell people about your 'meeting' Jesus. The sad thing is, nobody shared your 'vision', and you'll either get called a saint (Roman Catholics) or you'll be named a crackpot (reality's a *****).

 

Are there still any science threads around here? It seems every thread gets hijacked and turned into a religious discussion.

[GAHD]

everything in it's place

[TeleMad]

The time will come that God will come to you face to face ...

 

Oh really. And your evidence that this will occur? Some old book filled with stories written by ignorant and superstitious people and then mistranslated half a dozen times?

 

eMTee: .... as you watch him Judge the just and the unjust ...

 

Will God judge himself? He was unjust in his treatment of Job's servants and family, which He gave the thumbs up for Satan to kill. I guess God is going to hell too.

 

eMTee: he will then come to you and say " Now why did you not believe?"

 

Because I'm not ignorant, because I'm not superstitious, because I don't live in the 0th century, because science has shown that there is no need for you, and because the Bible shows us that if you were real then you'd evil.

[C1ay]

Some old book filled with stories written by ignorant and superstitious people and then mistranslated half a dozen times?

half a dozen? I figured it was probably at least several dozen times if not a hundred or more.

[eMTee]

So be your desisions.

[Boerseun]

So be your desisions.

...Huh?

[nkt]

half a dozen? I figured it was probably at least several dozen times if not a hundred or more.

This could be an interesting topic! Since every copy was made by a person copying the original, did they know to copy from the first copy, not the copy of the copy? Did they translate it properly? Was it peer reviewed? Did the translation person translate it back to check it still had the same contexts? Who decided which of the bits to edit out? And which whole books to remove?

 

A lot of the "errors" are intentional, I think, like the editing out of the female disciples, the removal of Jesus' wife (or the twisting into her being a prostitute) and the scratching out of Jesus' older brother (which surely shags the "virgin birth" idea otherwise!).

 

Other bits, like some of the parables and miracles were almost certainly twisted a little here and there by accident, either to make it sound better, or because there were not really words for things like "resurrection".

 

For an interesting result, click on this Google link http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=resurection and tell me that the church translators were less fallible before the internet?!?

[eMTee]

Well, let's look at the book of Isaiah, that just so happens bo be word for word, regardless of the hundreds of translations that took place.

 

Well, let's look at the book of Isaiah, that just so happens bo be word for word, regardless of the hundreds of translations that took place.

 

A lot of the "errors" are intentional, I think, like the editing out of the female disciples, the removal of Jesus' wife (or the twisting into her being a prostitute) and the scratching out of Jesus' older brother (which surely shags the "virgin birth" idea otherwise!).

 

Are you saying that the early Bible had all these in it, and the people slowly edited them out?

 

I don't recall ever hearing about Jesus having female disciples, or Jesus ever having a wife. Jesus had brothers..and that fact does not shag the virgon birth in the least.

[nkt]

Well, let's look at the book of Isaiah, that just so happens bo be word for word, regardless of the hundreds of translations that took place.

How can you know that? It's not in the original Aramaic or Hebrew, is it? So at least two translations took place, firstly into Latin, then into English.

 

Are you saying that the early Bible had all these in it, and the people slowly edited them out?

 

I don't recall ever hearing about Jesus having female disciples, or Jesus ever having a wife. Jesus had brothers..and that fact does not shag the virgon birth in the least.

I know that some of the books were supressed quite hard in the early days of the church, to support the misogynistic world view supported by the Church (Why else would God always be portrayed as a man? {And a white man, at that!} Why are there no strong female characters in the Bible?)

 

As for Jesus' older brother not messing up the idea of a virgin birth... Well, I'm not sure it's my place to explain that!

 

I find it odd that Jesus' wife got tuned out, though. I mean, he was what, 30 when he got stitched up and nailed to the cross? He would have been married a long time before that, back then. Especially since the average lifespan was all of 45 years. Why get married if the Son of God didn't even bother? And what about the celibate Catholic priests, living like God's Son? Really rather odd, because if no sex was God's will, why the ban on contraception? And why would sex be both pleasurable AND essential?

[C1ay]

Well, let's look at the book of Isaiah, that just so happens bo be word for word, regardless of the hundreds of translations that took place.

Prove it. The rules here clearly state, "Statements like "I just know that this is the way it is" (especially when religion is being discussed) are considered ignorant and might be deleted."

[Erasmus00]

Why are there no strong female characters in the Bible?

 

There are actually quite a few. The judge and prophet Deborah for instance.

 

As for Jesus' older brother not messing up the idea of a virgin birth... Well, I'm not sure it's my place to explain that!

 

None of the "heretical" gospels we have so far recovered outright state that Jesus had an OLDER brother. James could be older or younger then Jesus, depending on your reading, and certainly a younger brother wouldn't pose a threat to a virgin birth.

 

I find it odd that Jesus' wife got tuned out, though. I mean, he was what, 30 when he got stitched up and nailed to the cross? He would have been married a long time before that, back then. Especially since the average lifespan was all of 45 years. Why get married if the Son of God didn't even bother? And what about the celibate Catholic priests, living like God's Son? Really rather odd, because if no sex was God's will, why the ban on contraception? And why would sex be both pleasurable AND essential?

 

First, the expected lifespan could be well in advance of 45. Unfortunately classicists fail to distinguish between average and expected lifespan, and the high infant mortality rate skews things rather badly.

 

Also, Jesus (judging by his preaching) was a mystic and an ascetic, and probably would have joined one of the many ascetic groups of his day. This certainly would have prevented him a wife.

 

As for your assault on Catholic doctrine and dogma, that is another issue. The reason priests don't marry probably goes back to the same ascetic groups that thrived in Jesus time (such as the group at Qumran, where the dead sea scrolls were found). Most of these groups died off (probably having to do with an inability to produce new followers), but have forever left us with the legacy of the body being bad, the mind being holy.

-Will

[eMTee]

James was younger than Jesus..the opinion that Mary was not a virgin before the birth of Christ is a rumor that was started by people that wanted that to be.

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls are to my understanding the oldest copies of the Old Testement we have today, and the book of Isaiah was found practicly word for word with the translations we have today. (give or take a few minor word changes, but not meaning changes)

 

(if you are correct about it not being in the original language)Even if the Dead Sea Scrolls where not the original language, it stands as proof.

[Erasmus00]

James was younger than Jesus..the opinion that Mary was not a virgin before the birth of Christ is a rumor that was started by people that wanted that to be.

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls are to my understanding the oldest copies of the Old Testement we have today, and the book of Isaiah was found practicly word for word with the translations we have today. (give or take a few minor word changes, but not meaning changes)

 

(if you are correct about it not being in the original language)Even if the Dead Sea Scrolls where not the original language, it stands as proof.

 

There have been arguments made by biblical scholars in the past that James was older then Jesus. I believe Epiphanius first made the argument (he might not be first) in the fourth century.

 

As to the dead sea scrolls, they are indeed quite old, some of the scrolls dating to third century BC. And the book differs in a handful of places with the Leningrad Codex, on which many of the modern translations are based. Wether or not it effects the meaning depends on how literal you want to be. The Aleppo codex might also differ a bit from the Leningrad and the Qumran scrolls, (certain Rabbinic scholars seem to have indicated so) but we don't have enough of it to know for sure. However, your claim was that this book was word for word the same, which simply isn't true. Also, I have a feeling you don't read hebrew, which would mean that you can't possibly have a word for word knowledge, as there are some hebrew words that can't be readily brought into English, and also because there are some hebrew words whose meanings have simply been lost (such as the word used to describe Joseph's coat, sometimes translated as "many colors" because its a nice lyrical translation. King James was good like that)

-Will

[Erasmus00]

This could be an interesting topic! Since every copy was made by a person copying the original, did they know to copy from the first copy, not the copy of the copy? Did they translate it properly? Was it peer reviewed? Did the translation person translate it back to check it still had the same contexts? Who decided which of the bits to edit out? And which whole books to remove?

 

A lot of the "errors" are intentional, I think, like the editing out of the female disciples, the removal of Jesus' wife (or the twisting into her being a prostitute) and the scratching out of Jesus' older brother (which surely shags the "virgin birth" idea otherwise!).

 

You know, the copying process and translation process are topics easily researched.

 

The hebrew scriptures were originally only copied, not translated, as everyone needing to deal with it spoke and read hebrew. Much of the books that became the torah seem to have been compiled quite early on, and remained in roughly the same form from the first surviving copies to today. This is probably because of the strict religious significance given to copying. Any mistakes made, and the document must be ceremonially buried, because scratch outs and edits not allowed. The Leningrad and Aleppo codexes are what I believe most modern translations are based on.

 

As to the new testament, around the time of the early church, there was an outpouring of pamphlets documenting sort of the life and times of Jesus. Because the church wasn't centralized, there was no orthodox version of the new testament untill much later. These were written in Greek, largely, as sort of the lingua franca of the time. The decision as to which of these gospels were canonical was made slowly over time by several different church communities. The Muratorian council from the second centuray AD may have been the first council to put forth criteria to judge scripture. It wasn't untill AD 200 that a general consensus seems to have emerged, putting the four gospels, Acts, Pauls letters etc. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria was the first to list in print all of these books in the year 367 AD. The church didn't make take official action untill 1546 AD.

 

Anyway, there wasn't one person or group of people making these decisions, but rather a much more democratic process as the church hadn't been so centralized yet. It therefore seems unlikely that a male dominated hierarchy could have consistantly censored the things you claim.

-Will

[Eilizsia]

Bumped up