no, you tell me.

"you seem to be making a God of your own choosing, by eliminating any scriptures that disagree with what you feel is silly."

that is a funny thing for a protestant to say. what happened to six chapters in the bible? where is Maccabees?

ok i think i understand what you are getting at. i think. (please clarify if im offbase here).

your main point is that how the hell can anyone say with authority what should and should not be included in the bible? because, after all, part of the bible says that all scripture is God-breathed (in timothy somewhere)... which is a catch-22 that Christians use to say the bible is infallible.

so macabees (or however you spell it) is just a tiny question mark in a sea of confusion.

who had the authority to:
1) decide to add some OT books to the torah, but not include others?
2) decide which gospels to include, while excluding other accounts?
3) decide to include this loony pauls letters to specific congregations as equal parts of the bible?
4) have a difference of like 7 books (BOOKS, not chapters) between the catholic and protestant bibles?
5) while saying that any additions since the nicene convention (or whatever that meeting was called in the 300 or 400s) would not be allowed in the 'canon'? i.e. all the mormon additions are completely loony.

theres a HUGE issue here, because as far as what is in the bible today, it was decided upon by human beings who lived in 300/400 c.e. and good god, who knows what biases they all carried.


....


at least i think thats what your point is happy? tbh, you are coming off as a bit been-there-done-that in the way you are attacking the bible. on the one hand, you seem to be throwing out broad statements that imply the entire bible shouldnt be trusted at all, and is a bit loony, but then on the other hand you seem to really want to use the bible to justify homosexuality. but, why care what the bible says?

maybe its just the miscommunication that is inherent when we come to discussion issues over the internet... but i feel as though you have the mentality of "hey guys, trust me, i was a solid catholic for 18 years, and i KNOW what batshit they believe in, and believe me, it is batshit." which, sure, i can understand that stance if you are someone who has experienced a shit ton of experience in your lifetime, compared to an audience of naive children. perhaps chloe and dete are a bit more naive than me, but cmon man, im every bit as old and experienced as you, so dont get all condescending. this is a discussion, where we are both open to listening and trying to understand each others viewpoints.

"seek first to understand, then to be understood."

so ill stfu now and try to understand more where you are coming from.

and btw, my favorite question by far in this thread is thrax's conundrum of why would God send a flood that would kill babies/kids.

a christian who has not been through any kind of tragedy/hardship would prolly start quoting the book of Job, and how none of us deserve to demand answers from God. but that would be one hardhearted unsympathetic christian i would think. i would love to hear a viewpoint from some christian parents who have lost infants to cancer or something. or like one of my wifes friends who brought her first baby to full-term only to have it die because the umbilical cord choked it 1 day before she went into natural labor.

and thats just one baby. were talking about ten thousands of babies and children. ye gods, how can a Christian explain that? honestly, i cant.

Isn't it hubris to assign human traits to the divine? Compassion, vengence etc...

I mean the bible is mans interpretation of the divine shouldn't that allow for discussion of the changes in society and culture of humanity over 4000 years?

What was deemed immoral in the time of the romans by Jesus and his Apostles would be in response to a corrupt society where the elite abused their power and participated in activites of hedonism because they could.

Homosexuality was condemn along with orgies and other activities because it was viewed as a practice of the corrupt elite that were oppressing the common folk.

To say that sexual liberation of modern times is the same as the hedonism of Greek and Roman times is false. Procreation isn't the main focus of families anymore, modern society and culture has changed from where we were millenia ago. Also as a intellectual exercise, if homosexuality is genetic isn't it part of God's plan?

I refuse to accept the Bible as the direct word of a God, it was written by man and man is fallible, our ears hear what we want because out brain makes it so. To mean it is human arrogance to assume to know what type of plan or life the divine would want humans to live. The human race is incredibly diverse and adaptive and from that alone would suggest that there is not one right way to live. Simple moral compacts develop in all successful societies and most of those revolve around some form of love thy neighbor, unless he steals your cows then go kill his sons and rape his women, but yeah you get the idea.

In conclusion I believe the divinity of religious texts to be a false hold, they are mans attempt to understand the natural and supernatural world, to help explain how and why things happen, but again they are written by man and imperfect. To assign any human traits to any divine power is hubris, in the end it is obvious that any God(s) really don't care what happens, we are here to fend and prosper or fail on our own. Using faith to gain strength to succeed is comendable, using faith to harm is evil.

God does not care, but you should.

yeah, you're pretty right on there monte.

my point is...you can take the Bible as two ways.

1. the literal word for infallible word of god.

or

2. metaphorically.

now, the people that subscribe to #1, i just kind of back away slowly from because if you believe its the word for word infallible word of god you have to believe in things like samson killing 1000 philistines with a donkey jaw and talking fig trees and donkeys.

if you subscribe to #2, now you have to pick someone to translate it for you or do it yourself and figure out which parts are literal and which are not. you have chosen Martin Luther's take on it. and yes, he removed six books from the bible basically....because he felt like it.

that sounds sacrilegious to many, but not to me. at the council of nicea, it was a bunch of people who never met jesus putting in books "the Bible" and leaving out books "the Apocrpha" hundreds of years after Jesus died.

if christians believed Jesus wrote the Bible (and why didn't he btw) i could understand a higher level of confidence in it. but it was written by a bunch of fallible humans with sometimes obvious biases...biases which are still being used today to discriminate against groups of people.

yeah, you're pretty right on there monte.

my point is...you can take the Bible as two ways.

1. the literal word for infallible word of god.

or

2. metaphorically.

now, the people that subscribe to #1, i just kind of back away slowly from because if you believe its the word for word infallible word of god you have to believe in things like samson killing 1000 philistines with a donkey jaw and talking fig trees and donkeys.

if you subscribe to #2, now you have to pick someone to translate it for you or do it yourself and figure out which parts are literal and which are not. you have chosen Martin Luther's take on it. and yes, he removed six books from the bible basically....because he felt like it.

that sounds sacrilegious to many, but not to me. at the council of nicea, it was a bunch of people who never met jesus putting in books "the Bible" and leaving out books "the Apocrpha" hundreds of years after Jesus died.

if christians believed Jesus wrote the Bible (and why didn't he btw) i could understand a higher level of confidence in it. but it was written by a bunch of fallible humans with sometimes obvious biases...biases which are still being used today to discriminate against groups of people.

"if christians believed Jesus wrote the Bible (and why didn't he btw)"

bc half of it was already in place before he was born

lol das.

okay. "new testament" not "bible"

carpenters can't write?

to be a prick and take yet another biblical quote, 'in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God.'

i.e. christians believe that jesus was around before he was physically born in that stable with macaulay culkin.

good points, sam and happy.

jpc and i started to get into the whole homosexuality topic, and i forget why that stopped... i think cus at some point you realize that being right isnt worth sacrificing your relationship with someone else. <3 jpc. (no homo)

can someone point me to the papers that show evidence that homosexuality is indeed genetic? i understand there is a biological argument too, something to do with the cross-sectional area of some portion of the brain (at least thats what i learned in college 10 years ago)... but i wasnt convinced of what was cause and what was effect. id be interested to read at least the abstracts of any papers yall can point me to.