Is there a god?

[PlagueOfLocust]

Darc Requiem said:

PlagueOfLocust said:

You could line up 100 what to get that result, monkeys? Anyone with half a brain can copy down something word for word. Your analogy only works when the message is passed on verbally. And if you think the Bible had an entirely different message at first and got warped through the translation of careless people, what the hell are the chances that the Bible would still be as coherent as it is? There would be no defending the Bible at all if it was as flawed as you're suggesting it is due to translation. Would so many people be so moved by an incoherent text?

Again, notice that I'd never have to argue that the message of any other book translated between languages got warped beyond its original meaning. No other book seems to scare people based solely on its message the way the Bible does, which is funny since it's a message of peace and love. That's because, if the Bible is true, it changes everything - and for some reason it's frighteningly difficult to disprove.

And the Crusades (and other violence done by "Christians") is a paper-thin argument against Christianity; you can't point out the actions of certain Christians that don't follow the lessons of the Bible and then suggest that the Bible causes war. And if religion causes war, maybe that's because knowing the true meaning of life is just that important. (I would suggest that having a different religion, just like having a different skin tone or different anything, is another excuse for one group to hate another. That doesn't make religion bad; it makes prejudice bad, and prejudice is not a Bible-lesson.)

Lastly, don't get mad at people trying to share the Bible with you. Gee, what assholes; they care about your soul.

Edit - Oh, and you mention that a good deal of the Bible was written down after the fact. Uh... duh? What, if it's not a journal someone wrote in every night you don't accept it? Most historical texts are written after the fact; the Bible is written more closely following the events within it than most other historical texts, so if anything it's more reliable.

First of all I was not arguing against Christianity. I simply stating, factually, that Christianity isn't immune to violence as well. Its not the peaceful religion, in practice, that MrStickBall as making it out to be. The Crusades was just a commonly known example which is why I choose it. Are you contending that the Crusades weren't started by European Christians? A lot things work in theory but not in practice. Religion is just one of those things. People defend their religion with a fervor not seen on many other issues. Religious leaders use that loyalty to in their best interests. Not in the interest of the religions followers. I'm not even going to go into the different factions of Christianity that were formed for inane reasons or because of simple disagreements.

As for the accuracy of the Bible, you know what I'm wrong in all the thousands of years of reprinting and retranslation the Bible is exactly the way it was when first copied down. You are right. Besides we all know people live their lives by a random persons personal journal. I mean people die over personal journals everyday right? They fight over the meaning of the passage "It took a while for me to go to the store today" in a personal journal.  I mean even if I wrote my journal discussing my summer vaction from my junior year of High School last week, people would fly of the handle and get offended at the idea that it wasn't word for word accurate despite being written 11 years after the fact.

Is it that Christianity isn't immune to violence, or that people aren't? "People defend," "Religious leaders use," notice your word choices? People are the culprits, not the philosophy. You need to understand how to define "Christianity" for your argument; "Christianity" is not "all actions commited by people who call themselves Christians" - it is "the Bible's teachings put into practice." Christianity works wonderfully in practice; the Bible addresses the individual person reading it and shows them how to live well. It's people who aren't actually putting those words into practice that cause problems.

Some organized religion has given Christianity a bad name, such that people have trouble separating what the Bible says you should do from what different denominations do. Catholicism, for one, makes it seem like everyone needs to follow a set of rules in order to be forgiven/saved. What does the Bible say? Believe in Jesus and accept him and you're saved. Pray and you are forgiven. The candles, robes and all that are just someone imposing their rules on you, and yes you should not be happy about that (unless you enjoy those rules; technically there's nothing wrong with them, they just aren't necessary going strictly by the Bible). That's why I attend a non-denominational church, which does not try to add anything extra to the Bible's teachings.

About the Bible's accuracy, no, I was wrong. The Bible was reprinted so many times that typos and misspellings and random words galore got fed into the text, and it happened so many times that these mistakes ended up coming full circle and making sense in the more recent copies. Look, bottom line: the Bible is not incoherent or inconsistent anywhere. Therefore, arguing that the text got messed up in translation is rediculous, because changes caused by those kinds of mistakes would have to have lead to incoherence. The Bible really does claim what it claims, and always has. Now that that's straight, either believe it or don't. There is no excuse. No one would make this argument against any other historical text.

Don't go by what your college professors told you. Hell, try reading the Bible in an attempt to disprove it; for some weird reason many critics become Christians doing just that.

And your bit about journals is borderline incoherent. Are you suggesting that the implications of some Joe-shmoes journal is not important to anyone, and therefore neither is the Bible? If not, maybe you misread something I wrote, because you're not making sense. The only reason I brought up journals was because you seemed to think that it was a rare occurence that historical events were recorded AFTER they happened and not before or during.