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Sintacks
New Member
4 Posts |
 Posted - 08/11/2004 : 20:35:40
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Ten modern christian myths:
#1. Hell is a hot, fiery place.
No, that's the lake of fire. And anyway, it's symbolic, as in a spiritual fire.
#2. The church will be raptured before the "tribulation."
This one is possibly the most ludicrous of all. Look at the 'Left Behind' series. It's sad to see such ignorance.
#3. One may simply ask for forgiveness.
Look how much damage this myth has done. How many churches conduct a silly "come get saved" service?
#4. The bible is the "word of God."
Nope. The word of God is whatever God says. The bible is simply a collection of inspired books.
#5. The devil is responsible for our problems, sufferings, etc.
Wrong. It is God who is responsible. (Yes, even in the book of Job.)
#6. Once saved, always saved.
One must be scripturally slow-witted to believe this.
Yet it remains prevalent.
#7. The Pharisees were evil, ungodly men.
Wrong. The Pharisees were devout.
#8. The bible is inerrant, infallible, etc.
No way! People can't make something perfect. That would be an insult to God. It's been modified, canonized, etc.
#9. "The Great Commission" is for everyone.
Nonsense. Not everyone is sent to preach. Many conditions are to be considered when reading that verse.
#10. We should ask ourselves "What Would Jesus Do?"
Not necessarily. This is straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.
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Tavion
New Member
9 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2004 : 21:53:25 [Permalink]
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| i would like to ask you to explain several of your, uh, answers, to these so called myths, it seems as though you believe in God, but not what he says, can you please explain how you are so sure you are right what you base these <for lack of a better word> answers on? #5's answer, well, heck, all of them if you please |
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Tavion
New Member
9 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2004 : 22:15:30 [Permalink]
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| <this is in response to #5>The way you speak, you sound as though you do indeed believe in God, if so, do you believe he created us? and if you believe that, do you not also believe that he gave us free will? so, if we are making our own choices, is it not our fault that bad things happen? if you ask why doesnt God stop us from making these choices? then what shows greater love? forcing someone to do something and having them get tired of it and start hating you for it? or giving them a choice, even helping, guiding explaining the best ways, you see, we humans make bad choices it isnt God's fault or the devil's<though i am sure he certainly tempts us> but it is man's own fault that sin and bad things have entered the world, <now this is about #4> if it is simply inspired books, where did the inspiration come from if not God? go through the Bible and check it, you will find that the prophecies made hundreds and thousands of years before Jesus's birth remain true with the ones that are records of his birth, where else can you find such perfection? you say man cant make something perfect so where did it come from if not God? do some research, if memory serves, the original transcripts of the bible are still preserved and that is what the bibles of today are copied from, it hasnt been changed, and yet it is perfect, interesting, i will allow for number 1, i have never been to hell, all i know is that it is eternal seperation from God, what could be worse? number 2 not all people who attend church are saved through Christ, many people pretend |
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Tavion
New Member
9 Posts |
Posted - 08/11/2004 : 22:19:00 [Permalink]
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| and i ran out of room on that one, lol, not to mention it is 12:20 in the morning, i am going to bed, ill post some more tomorrow |
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tomk80
SFN Regular
Netherlands
1278 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2004 : 06:00:29 [Permalink]
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Hi Tavion, welcome to skepticfriends.
quote:
Originally posted by Tavion
<this is in response to #5>The way you speak, you sound as though you do indeed believe in God, if so, do you believe he created us? and if you believe that, do you not also believe that he gave us free will? so, if we are making our own choices, is it not our fault that bad things happen?
But wasn't Job choosing to live a righteous life. Nonetheless, God made a little bet with the devil and allowed the devil to put Job through a test. So in stead of protecting someone who is righteous, God sends trouble his way, big time. So no, it was not Jobs fault bad things happened.
quote:
if you ask why doesnt God stop us from making these choices? then what shows greater love? forcing someone to do something and having them get tired of it and start hating you for it? or giving them a choice, even helping, guiding explaining the best ways, you see, we humans make bad choices it isnt God's fault or the devil's<though i am sure he certainly tempts us> but it is man's own fault that sin and bad things have entered the world,
I have a hard time seeing cancer as being your own fault (some forms, yes, but a lot of them not). Where not just talking about the results of your own actions, but general suffering which in many cases is not something you can do anything about.
quote:
<now this is about #4> if it is simply inspired books, where did the inspiration come from if not God?
Inspired by God is something different from being the literal word of God.
quote:
go through the Bible and check it, you will find that the prophecies made hundreds and thousands of years before Jesus's birth remain true with the ones that are records of his birth, where else can you find such perfection? you say man cant make something perfect so where did it come from if not God?
Don't know enough about it here.
quote:
do some research, if memory serves, the original transcripts of the bible are still preserved and that is what the bibles of today are copied from, it hasnt been changed, and yet it is perfect, interesting,
Last time I checked, records for this were far from perfect. Maybe someone else has a better overview however.
quote:
i will allow for number 1, i have never been to hell, all i know is that it is eternal seperation from God, what could be worse? number 2 not all people who attend church are saved through Christ, many people pretend
Number two didn't look at whether people were saved or not, but at the rapture. Maybe you misread that one. His point was not who is going to be saved, but whether the rapture will ever happen or not. |
Tom
`Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, `if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
-Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Caroll- |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Tavion
New Member
9 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2004 : 20:43:12 [Permalink]
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| first, id like to say thanks for the welcome, and thank you for replying in that way, it was very calm and collected, thanks, ok, now then your right on one thing God did let the devil have control over Job to prove his point, but he didnt send the trouble his way, the devil chose to give Job trouble, God didnt make him do it, and as for cancer and other general suffering, that is still mans fault, God created a perfect world, meaning no work, and no sin, and no sickness, we goofed that up, <well we didnt start the goofing up, Adam and Eve did, but we seem to continue the tradition> as for if you believe that the Bible is the word of God or not, well, I think that is going to have to be a question of faith, as for the perfection of the scripture, I mean that what the prophets of the Old testament said is not contradicted by the new testament even though they where separated by hundreds of years. I am sorry if I am not addressing all of your statements, but I am going off of memory right this moment and am writing this in Word, dial up internet and I am expecting a call so I cant get on right now, as to what you said, but I would like to ask a question, first let me say that ya, I was raised in a Christian home, so I have always had teachings about the Bible around me, but even though that much is true, I have questioned the creation of man, and wondered a bit about evolution, in the end I came to the conclusion that it is much easier for me to believe that we where created by an all-powerful being than we all evolved from basically nothing, I mean, lets go with big bang, lots of gas and material collided or something made a big boom and we have a rough version of earth, volcanoes and such yes? Well, my first question is: where did the stuff some from to begin with? Ok, that's the first question, next, have you ever noticed how truly complex life on this planet is? I mean, just look at a human body, it is amazingly complex, then you can look at how environment and animals and everything interact, it is a very delicate balance, if you remove one property of it, say you take away light, or water, or the bugs, or the grass, or the birds, or preditor animals on the ground, or plant eaters, well remove any one factor, and the rest will fail, and you want me to believe that, even with the odds stacked at trillions maybe even bigger numbers than that, with odds like that, I am to believe that our world came to live in such perfect harmony? And if there is actual evolution, why haven't we seen cases of it now days? What , did monkeys decide that only a certain number of them got to become humans? Why aren't they still evolving? We have had recorded history for long enough that surely something should have evolved even a small amount by now, I will accept adaptation, you can adapt to something new, but to become a whole new species? I doubt that. Anyway, just some of my own doubts going in the other way than what most of the doubts are on here. And who knows? Maybe you all believe in God, but why choose to believe that he is cruel? Why be such a downer? Why imagine that someone who made such a beautiful planet is bad to us? If we all followed the writings of the bible, even if you didn't believe in God, but if where all to follow those writings and teachings for a good life, wouldn't life be better? So if those “inspired books” are inspired by God, isn't he really trying to help us get out of pain? Anyway, that's all I have for right now, and I am betting part of it doesn't really even apply to those reading it, but I had to get it out. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/12/2004 : 22:26:56 [Permalink]
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Tavion... if it hasn't been said yet...
please use some basic gramatical structure. Sentences, paragraphs, ect..
It's impossible to read your posts the way you are doing them. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2004 : 01:05:48 [Permalink]
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Welcome Tavion & Sintacks!
quote:
Originally posted by Tavion
go through the Bible and check it, you will find that the prophecies made hundreds and thousands of years before Jesus's birth remain true with the ones that are records of his birth,
Fine, present them. (Prophecies about Jesus birth that is, not the birth of some one named Imanuel.)
quote:
do some research, if memory serves, the original transcripts of the bible are still preserved and that is what the bibles of today are copied from, it hasnt been changed, and yet it is perfect,
Which original transcript are these?
Are you saying that the bible hasn't been translated (= changed)?
Which aspects of the bible is perfect?
The bible comes in diferent versions and translations, which one is the perfect one and why?
Have you really done any research or have you been told/read this? |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2004 : 02:16:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Tavion
as for cancer and other general suffering, that is still mans fault, God created a perfect world, meaning no work, and no sin, and no sickness, we goofed that up, <well we didnt start the goofing up, Adam and Eve did, but we seem to continue the tradition>
How do you get this message from man will toil and woman will have painful childbirths?
quote:
Genesis 3-16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
Genesis 3-17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
And how do these two verses fit with real life? I asked you in the other thread to tell me how anesthesia fits this verse. And why would rich and poor not correlate with religiousness? I doubt that Bill Gate's kids are going to toil much.
quote:
as for the perfection of the scripture, I mean that what the prophets of the Old testament said is not contradicted by the new testament even though they where separated by hundreds of years.
Try this web site for contradictions in the Bible.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html
quote:
I have questioned the creation of man, and wondered a bit about evolution, in the end I came to the conclusion that it is much easier for me to believe that we where created by an all-powerful being than we all evolved from basically nothing, I mean, lets go with big bang, lots of gas and material collided or something made a big boom and we have a rough version of earth, volcanoes and such yes? Well, my first question is: where did the stuff some from to begin with?
It amounts to either saying we don't yet know how the Universe came into existence except that it started with a singularity and expanded OR saying god made it which doesn't explain anything in greater depth. We have evidence for the big bang theory, there is no evidence for a god theory and neither tells us what came before. What came before the big bang? Where did god come from? Either of these can be answered by saying it was always there or we don't know. Neither is a more complete explanation.
quote:
have you ever noticed how truly complex life on this planet is? I mean, just look at a human body, it is amazingly complex, then you can look at how environment and animals and everything interact, it is a very delicate balance, if you remove one property of it, say you take away light, or water, or the bugs, or the grass, or the birds, or preditor animals on the ground, or plant eaters, well remove any one factor, and the rest will fail,
This is just not factually correct. Life exists without sunlight on the sea floor near volcanic vents. Many bacteria will not grow in the presence of oxygen, they are called anaerobes. There are plenty of isl |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/16/2004 : 22:22:54 [Permalink]
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There are numerous examples of very recent species evolution. Take, for example, the london subway mosquito. (damn if I can find the link....) No longer able to interbreed with their surface counterparts. A new species evolved to live in the tunnels, within very recent time.
As I said, there are many examples of this, usually occuring in species with very short generation times. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2004 : 00:15:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
And if there is actual evolution, why haven't we seen cases of it now days?b What , did monkeys decide that only a certain number of them got to become humans? Why aren't they still evolving? We have had recorded history for long enough that surely something should have evolved even a small amount by now, I will accept adaptation, you can adapt to something new, but to ecome a whole new species? I doubt that.
I see this as just having no idea what evolution really is, so maybe a brief explaination is in order. Evolution is genetic changes in species that build up over time. These changes are sometimes slow and normally deal with the mean of the species. They can also be very rapid, but I'm fairly certian that in the case of primapes evolving into humans, it is long. How evolution works is through natural selection, the most likely to survive, survive. Mutations or a diverse gene pool lead (as well as many other mechanisms) lead to strong differences in the one species. If enivormental conditions make it so that only part of the species survive, you have a change in the mean population. Doing this over and over again will lead to a very different species.
You also don't have to believe in anything, a change in species due to a mutation in the genes has been observed:
"In the genus Tragopogon (a plant genus consisting mostly of diploids), two new species (T. mirus and T. miscellus) have evolved within the past 50-60 years. The new species are allopolyploid descendants of two separate diploid parent species.
Here is how this speciation occurred. The new species were formed when one diploid species fertilised a different diploid species and produced a tetraploid offspring. This tetraploid offspring could not fertilize or be fertilised by either of its two parent species types. It is reproductively isolated, the very definition of a species." - http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/factfaq.htm
Also, another point I would like to clear up, life does not decide to undergo evolution. It is an automatic process (think of it like your heart beating). Evolution also does not have a goal (http://www.skeptictank.org/evolgoal.htm), it does not lead in a direction, nor does it have a purpose. Its simply whatever is able to survive, does so and passes on its traits to the next generation.
Everything is still evolving, but many things that change you just don't see (microscopic level). Also, because mutations are random (not truely random, but thats for a different topic), randomly changing the DNA is most likely going to have bad effects. But don't forget that it can have good one. Due to genetic mutations, Sickle Cell is now a natural defense against Molaria in Africa.
And your last part touches on the whole micro and macro evolution debate. You say that things can adapt, I'm guessing you mean things like a giraffes neck getting longers etc. This is saying that the DNA can change, but only so much. To suggest so, one would be also suggesting that there is some sort of biological, chemical, or physical limit that the DNA can change before it must stop changing. This limit has never been found, and as much as we know about DNA, I would imagine it would have been found already if it were to exist. My question is why are no Creationists or others who disbelieve in evolution searching for it? It would certainly show that the lineage of species is false, thus negating evolution. The answer is simple, it doesn't exist. I can say that because as cited in my example before, new species have developed from others. |
Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov |
| Edited by - Ricky on 08/17/2004 00:16:53 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2004 : 02:31:41 [Permalink]
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| I fear we may have chased Tavion away. I wish he/she would have stuck around and responded to these revelations. Perhaps he/she still will. |
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SciFi Chick
Skeptic Friend
USA
99 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2004 : 06:16:43 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
I fear we may have chased Tavion away. I wish he/she would have stuck around and responded to these revelations. Perhaps he/she still will.
When I was exploring, I used to run away for months at a time to digest what I'd read.
We should never give up when someone wanders in here. And I would also bet there are lurkers reading as well. |
"There is no 'I' in TEAM, but there is an 'M' and an 'E'." -Carson
"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud."
-Sophocles |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2004 : 08:26:51 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Tavion
do some research, if memory serves, the original transcripts of the bible are still preserved and that is what the bibles of today are copied from, it hasnt been changed, and yet it is perfect...
Hi Tavion. Again, pleaseonpleaseohplease use proper punctuation and paragraphs. It really is impossible to read what you write. (Or is that the point?)
Anyhow, regarding the above, you are, well, wrong.
There is no such thing as "the original transcripts" of the Bible. The earliest manuscripts of various biblical "books" (e.g. Isaiah or Psalms) are found in the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). There are scores of good books about the scrolls, their history, and their content (see, e.g. this book by Prof. James Vanderkam), so I won't bother going into too much deail about them here.
However, such manuscripts clearly show that the preservation from ca. the first century of this era to the Masoretic text (MT) of the eleventh century from which the modern translations of the Bible came was not "perfect." Indeed, the scrolls suggest that in many cases where the MT disagrees with the Greek Septuagent, the Greek version was correct; it was the MT that made the error.
Most of the differences are minor spelling erros that do not have much impact on the meaning of a word or sentence. However, there are some more glaring mistakes, such as the DSS adding an new paragraph to 1 Sam 10 after verse 27.
No one knows what other passages may have been lost from the "original" writings ca. the 6th or 7th century BCE, however.
Personally, I imagine somewhere some scribe forgot to copy the line that went "The following is a work of fiction. Any resenblance to people or events is entirely coincedental."  |
| Edited by - Cuneiformist on 08/17/2004 08:28:52 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 08/17/2004 : 08:40:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Tavion
do some research, if memory serves, the original transcripts of the bible are still preserved and that is what the bibles of today are copied from, it hasnt been changed, and yet it is perfect...
Just sitting here thinking about this it stuck me that you don't even need all that blah blah that I mentioned in my above post. Just look in your Bible. Ever notice who at the bottom of the page you'll see "footnotes" (or marginalia) like "The Greek adds 'such-and-such'" or "MT lacks 'this-and-that'"?
Those are all examples of where the various textual traditions don't agree. Again, the meaning doesn't usually change much , but it does show that there is no "perfect preservation" from the original manuscripts (whatever those are)... |
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