ToraTiger said: Fireforgey said: cunger said: oldschoolfool said: a bunch of different people wrote the bible. Who wrote all the other fake religious books. lol That's not actually true. The Quran was basically just written by Muhammad.  Nobody in their right mind would suggest that God wrote the bible that's actually quite laughable. It is well known who wrote the books of the bible in fact many of the books are named after the person who wrote them in other cases information about who wrote them has been passed down over time. Did you realise that it's possible for all religions to be made up and also for God to exist?  It is my personaly belief that yes a greater power exists and that the world makes less sense without a greater power than with. Religions have mostly been about humans reaching out to God rather than God reaching out to humans. It's possible for all religion to have a degree of validity. Yes yes, it was just basically written by Mohamed.  So, a book with Scientific facts no one in that century had a right to know.  Written in a style no one in that age nor in any any other couldn't match.  A book that talks about the origins of the Jewish and Christian religions bringing them back to the way they were before they were changed, fixing the mistakes and contradictions in them at the same time.  A book that shows and understanding of the world far greater than anything else out there at the time.    ALL of that was written by an illiterate merchant who had no formal education or training of any kind.  So, Mohamed knew Hebrew to read the Torah, read the bible, AND THEN translated them both, altered them, changed the style (I emphasise the style because it is truly the greatest-For the sake of argument one of the greatest instead of the greatest-written works of all time) to a style that is COMPLETELY different from his own (an insane amount of his quotes are preserved perfectly till now) all of that in his free time.   I'm not going to sit and convince you why I beleive the Muslim religion is true, however, when there are experts that doubt that Shakespear wrote his plays (look it up, it's weird) Why do people just disregard the Quran saying, oh yeah he wrote it, when the impossibility of it is astounding?     For the sake of the OP......Ouch, I I don't even know what to say to a person like that....The part that confused me the most was when she asked us to think about it.  I think thinking kind of defeats her purpose. ^This.  Me and my father have studied all major religions and though we believe that truth lies in both the Bible and Torah (Sorta) The Quran is viewed as the definitve version of the holy book.  Not to mention all the reference to ancient languages that couldn't have possibly been known.  (The discovery of the Rosetta stone was centuries afterwards) And as a Muslim, I believe that God exists in all of us, even in the ancient Greeks and roman with their satirical beliefs .

The Quran also very clearly states that sea water and  regular water cannot mix. 

With today's science we know beyond all doubt that this is not true.

So either muhammad made it up or god did not know. So which is it?

cunger said: oldschoolfool said: a bunch of different people wrote the bible. Who wrote all the other fake religious books. lol That's not actually true. The Quran was basically just written by Muhammad.  Nobody in their right mind would suggest that God wrote the bible that's actually quite laughable. It is well known who wrote the books of the bible in fact many of the books are named after the person who wrote them in other cases information about who wrote them has been passed down over time. Did you realise that it's possible for all religions to be made up and also for God to exist?  It is my personaly belief that yes a greater power exists and that the world makes less sense without a greater power than with. Religions have mostly been about humans reaching out to God rather than God reaching out to humans. It's possible for all religion to have a degree of validity.

 wow Mohammed  wrote the Quran? then yes there has to be a divine power when analphabet canwrite a book...

DaRev said: I honestly don't understand how intelligent people don't believe 'God wrote the Bible'. Like there's some dude or group of dudes out somewhere just thinking up crazy stuff trying to control people, but not ever revealing their identity or group or ever taking the credit, but letting other people like the Church get all the credit o_O If I wrote the Bible you sure as hell bet I would want the credit and all the royalties! It just doesn't make any sense, to believe that some man or group wrote the bible.

Maybe you're being sarcastic... it's so hard to tell, so often. I'm going to assume you're being serious.

The Old Testament was a transcription of well-known oral Jewish tradition - the "authors" weren't the creators of the stories, just the ones who wrote them down.

The New Testament's books have their authors names, in many cases, attached. And I need to point out that "the Church" didn't exist until something like 400 AD.

Anyway, how do you know that the authors of the various books didn't originally put their names on the books, but when it got compiled by the Church, they removed the authors' names?

If aliens aren't real, who made all the crop circles?

If elves arnt real who makes Oreos?

If Mario isn't real, what goes down pipes?

I take it these people have never had one course in Biblical Criticism at the University level or they'd know that the Documentary hypothesis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis   ) or at least some modern revisions of it) are excepted by the vast majority of scholars that have looked at The Bible. It is as highly accepted in its field of scholarship as Darwin is in Biology.
And no the Biblical books weren't written by the people that tradition ascribes them to. It's been known for hundreds of years that Moses didn't write the Torah, that David didn't write Psalms and that most of the New Testament writings weren't written by the people whose names they bear. They were just given those titles by other, later writers trying to attach some air of authenticity to their works.

DaRev said: I honestly don't understand how intelligent people don't believe 'God wrote the Bible'. Like there's some dude or group of dudes out somewhere just thinking up crazy stuff trying to control people, but not ever revealing their identity or group or ever taking the credit, but letting other people like the Church get all the credit o_O If I wrote the Bible you sure as hell bet I would want the credit and all the royalties! It just doesn't make any sense, to believe that some man or group wrote the bible.

Well considering the fact that there's plenty of different bibles from contradicting religions, it is obvious that most of those bibles are false, and were written by people, not the supposed God of their religion. That is proof of Bibles being written by man (unless you believe all bibles from all religions are somehow true). As for why anyone would "waste their time" writing a Bible....well, it's quite easy to see the value of large populations of people willingly placing absolute faith and obedience into a specific system of behaviors and attitudes.

Maybe they were written for the lulz. Maybe it's to control people through fear. Maybe they really did believe that stuff and were lunatics. Many possibilities.

Tagging for later.