What would be real interesting is if you came to gaychurch to fellowship and pray for others instead of try to make everyone unbelievers. Now "That" would really be interesting!

I guess you will continue to post anti Christian messages until you feel sure you have saved everyone from the Scriptures you are claiming are a lie.

Pyro, I feel so sorry for you that you have strayed so far into the outer reaches of who knows where, but life has a way of bringing us all back to center when reality sets in. You know you said don't insult you, but you have no fear of offending believers here at all. I wonder why you stay if you are no longer a believer and you know people come here for support and fellowship? This is a church of sorts and a body of believers. His body.

Perhaps it might be more liberal here because this is a message board, but you would stand up in a real church of Jesus Christ once with your theories and then you would be politely escorted to the door. Hope you find a place to fellowship with people that believe as yourself, but I'm sure it's not here Pyro.

"By what authority do you call the Bible the Word of God? for this is the first point to be settled. It is not your calling it so that makes it so, any more than the Mahometans calling the Koran the Word of God makes the Koran to be so. The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books that now compose what is called the New Testament to be the Word of God. This was done by yeas and nays, as we now vote a law.

"The Pharisees of the second temple, after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose the Old Testament, and this is all the authority there is, which to me is no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they were, and I think more so, because, as they made a living by their religion, they had a self-interest in the vote they gave.

"You may have an opinion that a man is inspired, but you cannot prove it, nor can you have any proof of it yourself, because you cannot see into his mind in order to know how he comes by his thoughts; and the same is the case with the word revelation. There can be no evidence of such a thing, for you can no more prove revelation than you can prove what another man dreams of, neither can he prove it himself.

"It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say, the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet, do you believe that too? No.

"Why not? Because, you will say, you do not believe it; and so because you do, and because you don't is all the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving except that you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know Moses was not an impostor?

"For my own part, I believe that all are impostors who pretend to hold verbal communication with the Deity. It is the way by which the world has been imposed upon; but if you think otherwise you have the same right to your opinion that I have to mine, and must answer for it in the same manner. But all this does not settle the point, whether the Bible be the Word of God, or not. It is therefore necessary to go a step further. The case then is: -

"You form your opinion of God from the account given of Him in the Bible; and I form my opinion of the Bible from the wisdom and goodness of God manifested in the structure of the universe, and in all works of creation. The result in these two cases will be, that you, by taking the Bible for your standard, will have a bad opinion of God; and I, by taking God for my standard, shall have a bad opinion of the Bible.

"The Bible represents God to be a changeable, passionate, vindictive being; making a world and then drowning it, afterwards repenting of what he had done, and promising not to do so again. Setting one nation to cut the throats of another, and stopping the course of the sun till the butchery should be done. But the works of God in the creation preach to us another doctrine. In that vast volume we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable, passionate, vindictive God; everything we there behold impresses us with a contrary idea - that of unchangeableness and of eternal order, harmony, and goodness.

"The sun and the seasons return at their appointed time, and everything in the creation claims that God is unchangeable. Now, which am I to believe, a book that any impostor might make and call the Word of God, or the creation itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible says one thing, and the creation says the contrary. The Bible represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the creation proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.

"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. That bloodthirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (I Sam. xv. 3) `Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'

"That Samuel or some other impostor might say this, is what, at this distance of time, can neither be proved nor disproved, but in my opinion it is blasphemy to say, or to believe, that God said it. All our ideas of the justice and goodness of God revolt at the impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

"What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amalekites appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites, four hundred years before, according to the account in Exodus xvii. (but which has the appearance of fable from the magical account it gives of Moses holding up his hands), had opposed the Israelites coming into their country, and this the Amalekites had a right to do, because the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the invaders of Mexico. This opposition by the Amalekites, at that time, is given as a reason, that the men, women, infants and sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses, that were born four hundred years afterward, should be put to death; and to complete the horror, Samuel hewed Agag, the chief of the Amalekites, in pieces, as you would hew a stick of wood. I will bestow a few observations on this case.

"In the first place, nobody knows who the author, or writer, of the book of Samuel was, and, therefore, the fact itself has no other proof than anonymous or hearsay evidence, which is no evidence at all. In the second place, this anonymous book says, that this slaughter was done by the express command of God: but all our ideas of the justice and goodness of God give the lie to the book, and as I never will believe any book that ascribes cruelty and injustice to God, I therefore reject the Bible as unworthy of credit.

"As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the Bible is not the Word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary; but I know you can give me none, except that you were educated to believe the Bible; and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the Koran, it is evident that education makes all the difference, and that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case.

"You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or from the New.

"When you have examined the Bible with the attention that I have done (for I do not think you know much about it), and permit yourself to have just ideas of God, you will most probably believe as I do. But I wish you to know that this answer to your letter is not written for the purpose of changing your opinion. It is written to satisfy you, and some other friends whom I esteem, that my disbelief of the Bible is founded on a pure and religious belief in God; for in my opinion the Bible is a gross libel against the justice and goodness of God, in almost every part of it."

"I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all these matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us hereafter."

-Thomas Paine

Again,

You are basing what Thomas Paine says as your Faith. Do you at all see something twisted about who you place your faith in? You are willing to accept writings of anyone you have never met and have no real proof they even exist now or existed, and yet you are willing to believe anything and everyone over the Bible as God's revealed word to man.

Yes,
you are indeed in the hands of the Creator and He will do with you as He promised in His Word.

Should one really believe the Bible is the word of God? Let's consider the origin of the Bible...

"The Bible was not handed to mankind by God, nor was it dictated to human stenographers by God. It has nothing to do with God. In actuality, the Bible was VOTED to be the word of God by a group of men during the 4th century.

According to Professor John Crossan of Biblical Studies at DePaul University the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337 CE), who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, needed a single canon to be agreed upon by the Christian leaders to help him unify the remains of the Roman Empire. Until this time the various Christian leaders could not decide which books would be considered "holy" and thus "the word of God" and which ones would be excluded and not considered the word of God.

Emperor Constantine, who was Roman Emperor from 306 CE until his death in 337 CE, used what motivates many to action - MONEY! He offered the various Church leaders money to agree upon a single canon that would be used by all Christians as the word of God. The Church leaders gathered together at the Council of Nicaea and voted the "word of God" into existence. The Christian Bible was not voted on at the Council of Nicaea, per se. The Church leaders didn't finish editing the "holy" scriptures until the Council of Trent when the Catholic Church pronounced the Canon closed. However, it seems the real approving editor of the Bible was not God but Constantine! One can easily argue that the first Christian Bible was commissioned, paid for, inspected and approved by a pagan emperor for church use.

Constantine ordered and financed 50 parchment copies of the new "holy scriptures." It seems with the financial element added to the picture, the Church fathers were able to overcome their differences and finally agree which "holy" books would stay and which would go.

Compare the man-made origins of Christianity and its various dogmas to the simplicity of Deism. Deism is belief in God based only on reason and the creation itself. It makes no claim to false "revelations" as all of the "revealed" religions do. To Deists, proof of the Designer is in the design.

To quote Thomas Paine, "Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts alone. This is Deism. But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another part, called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits. . . "

"We can know God only through His works. We cannot have a conception of any one attribute but by following some principle that leads to it. We have only a confused idea of His power, if we have not the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have no idea of His wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face."

- Robert L. Johnson

Pyro,

I guess you feel the need to preach continually others writings and the arrogance to believe you alone are right and all the believers down the corridors of time are wrong, but long after we are both dust Jesus will still be Lord, will still be on the Throne of the Heavens and will always be lifted up and honored even by the rocks and stones themselves which will cry out, which seem to have more wisdom than yourself.

I find it ironic that you feel discussing the history of the Bible is considered "preaching". I guess if the history of the Bible wasn't so disturbing, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

You say you are a Christian and the Bible is God's word. Do you really believe that? Which parts do you actually believe to be God's?

First of all, there is no original copy of any scripture anywhere. Secondly of all the copies we do have, no two copies we have are exactly alike.

Do you still believe everything in the Bible to be true???
There are too many discrepancies and too many contradictions, (which you have chosen to ignore).

For anyone to believe that God could create the universe with such absolute precision, but fail to get a simple book written without any errors, is an insult to the true Creator of the universe.

I have posted facts and asked questions that you have dismissed, because you cannot answer.
Because you have no answer, you attack me for pointing out the facts.

I'm not sure I understand "the arrogance to believe you alone are right and all the believers down the corridors of time are wrong"... I've quoted several people, dating from the present and going all the way back to the 1st century!! Our founding Fathers themselves, did NOT believe as you do. Research the beliefs of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ben Franklin... along with one the most intelligent men to ever live- Albert Einstein, who had this to say about the Bible: "Thus I came...to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true....Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience...an attitude which has never left me."

He's then later quoted as saying this, "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God."

The true God gave us the ability to reason. Religion gave us blind ignorance called Faith.


"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are opening a new road." -Voltaire


THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN BY THE SAME PEOPLE WHO SAID THE EARTH WAS FLAT.

I never believed that the Bible was dictated by God to his chosen scribes. What makes it the Word of God is that it chronicles one small nation's journey with the transcendent, in a way unparalleled to any other piece of writing anywhere else on this planet. One of the things which prove the Bible true to me (true not necessarily in the historical, but certainly in intellectual and spiritual sense - which is far more important) is the fact that the Bible doesn't try to hide anything. All the Biblical characters that you mentioned were written about as they really were: human, tortured, puzzled, confused, mistaken, grieving, wrong, fallen, sinful. It's a true account of our human nature. It doesn't portray an idealistic picture of the world, God or the human nature, but it fully mirrors it. And that testifies to its integrity and truthfulness.

The reason why we don't know about who the actual authors of certain Biblical texts were, is the fact that some of them are so ancient, that they predate the alphabet and were originally circulated in an oral culture, before the writing was even invented. Think about the astonishingly rich oral folk culture of the Native Americans. It's impossible to establish who first came up with a certain folk story or a legend, but that is entirely beside the point. What matters is the final product: whether the text speaks to people, whether there is some spiritual lesson or message that can help people live more wholesome, healthier, better lives. And the Bible has certainly done a very good job at that.

I agree with you: the true God did indeed give us the ability to reason. So, reason! Don't take everything at face value. Read the Bible, analyze it, contextualize it, find a good commentary, explore it. The scientists you mentioned rebelled against a literal reading of the Bible, but please note that they were all men of deep spiritual and religious conviction - very much rooted in the same Judaeo-Christian values and notions that you now reject. If you knew more about the people like Ben Franklin or Einstein, you would realize that they're not on the same page with you at all. Because, unlike you, they didn't throw the baby with the bathwater. They engaged with their unbelief, struggled with it, wrestled it, much like Jacob wrestling with God, while you simply want to give it all up and discredit any merit of a life lived in faith. I'm sorry to say that I don't think it will take you very far.