Translated does not always mean that they change it. The Catholics never changed the Bible because they were afraid that God would send them to hell(which is not true, but he would sure be pissed), but just told people additional beliefs. The Bible hasn't changed at all. It has been written different ways because for little kids to understand it and for people and different languages, etc. It's not like evolution, which has changed at least 100 times.

Oh, if you haven't noticed yet. I am a Protestant,

Presbyterian

The bible was made from many disparaging scriptures, thus some were deemed "blasphemous", others were significantly altered and a few were left intact. Either way, there were significant changes to the authors original intent. Oh, and all this happened hundreds of years after Christ's death, after Christianity itself had changed radically.

Someone said something about the Bible as a historical text. Anyway, the Bible is the only source of many "historical" events, like the Jews exodus from Egypt. With an event as major as that, you would expect some corroborating sources to exist, but they dont. Not even jewish or egyptian records of such an event exist.

During the renissance, handing out loans was considered a sin by the catholic church. Now, you may argue that the text remained the same, but the fact of the matter is the interpretaion of the bible has changed frequently, and radically. You may claim this is human failing, but if this is the devine word of god than there should be no room for misunderstanding.

Anyway, the bible can be read however you want, because its soo ambiguous. Beyond that, there are many instances of scripture promoting violence, slavery, as seen in these examples;

"hile the Israelites were camped at Acacia, some of the men defiled themselves by sleeping with the local Moabite women. These women invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, and soon the Israelites were feasting with them and worshiping the gods of Moab. Before long Israel was joining in the worship of Baal of Peor, causing the LORD's anger to blaze against his people. The LORD issued the following command to Moses: "Seize all the ringleaders and execute them before the LORD in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn away from the people of Israel." So Moses ordered Israel's judges to execute everyone who had joined in worshiping Baal of Peor. Just then one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman into the camp, right before the eyes of Moses and all the people, as they were weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle. When Phinehas son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up and left the assembly. Then he took a spear and rushed after the man into his tent. Phinehas thrust the spear all the way through the man's body and into the woman's stomach. So the plague against the Israelites was stopped, but not before 24,000 people had died." (Numbers 25:1-9 NLT)

"When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment." (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

@Wareagle; 1. Science has demonstratable proof and mountains of evidence, where as all religions have very little of either. Believing in science requires the same amount of faith as trusting the news since both have cold, hard, irrefutable facts.

2. The concept of evolution has remained intact since Darwin first developed it. The only thing thats changed is evolutions mechanics, which change as our understanding of science becomes better. By contrast, Chrisitanity has remained rigid, with people trying to use pseudoscience to explain things like "young earth", ect. Basically, science is fluid and adapts as our understanding of this world increases whereas religion remains rigid and tries to conform understanding to its ancient scripture.

Catholics dont praise their religion, they mourn it and anyone that says they are a devote christian, presbyterian jew etc etc and has not studied any other religion are only dooming themselves and are closed minded and they have a much worse fate. I can only explain so much and help so much. You need to be open minded and a free thinker.

I did not appreciate being raised catholic, having religion shoved down my throat. People that practice any religion need to be tolerant.
a typical christian will swear their faith up and down, til the end, which is fine, I love christ, but I am not christian, I do believe in being christ like, also following buddha being kind, so that does not make me a christian, I cant stand when so called christians say they never judge anyone, yet they do, repeatedly, and say their rleigion is all and mighty.
Stop being closed minded! I do not have anything against christians. Start asking questions and start reading other bibles, and scriptures from various religions. We teach our children from birth that, what ever religion we worship is the correct one, Wrong, its called free will, and you christians, sas you put itsay.oh you have to go to church
No you do not, 2 people praying together is a church, Remember the bible talks against organized religion and leading the flock astray,

Our creator gave us free will. I have run ins constantly with..so called christians saying I am going to hell because I do not go to their church, or I believe in teachings of other people as well,

How about everyone does me a favor, Please read other religions(you wont go to hell) and study, history, science and art. take in spirituality, and see what kind of a better person you are.
You might see that wars might be ended, after all how many people on this post are one sided, when I tell people to be open minded, Trust me god will not kill you......why trust me? I am a voice who will not give you my documented proof right?
Kind of like you.....believing in a god you have no proof,

its called faith, yet when I have seen proof, you deny it adn email me and say prove it, when I give you the links, and some info, what then.
Why must we all need picture proof or be skeptic??
It is because you are scared
there are only 2 emotions, fear, and love Think about it, why do you think wars happen.....fear.
try and be more positive, The bible says love thy neighbor, yet if the neighbor is not of our religion we ignore and say they are bad right??? Bad teachings, Hipocracy is rampant in 98% in all churches, how many of you know someone that is a druggie, adulteress or what ever, and they go to church as a crutch??

Im done goodnight!

@sieanr - The historical events referenced only in the Bible have either never been proven false or have been proven true as new historical evidence arises. The absence of other texts to back up the occurence of these events does not mean they didn't happen. When even one of the events can be proven never to have happened, then you've got something to talk about there.

I don't agree that the Bible is ambiguous. It's not poetry. Read it; the message is clear. You can take a lot of different lessons from it as long as you're reading it correctly, but only by misreading it are you going to create your own meanings. And the books of primary concern are in the New Testament.

Your quotes from the Bible about violence and slavery are from the Old Testament. That's under the old law, when God expected mankind to know Him and what He commanded better, and his judgement was swift and hard. Under the new covanent we are extended much more mercy since a much larger measure of faith is required from us. And the bit about slavery seems to be promoting fair treatment of servants ("servants" is the word used in the King James Version). Servants were an aspect of society for most of history. Interestingly enough, the passage immediately following your quote: "He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death." And later: "He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death." -Exodus 21: 12 & 16

About science and evolution: science does not deal in facts. Science deals in guesses, and the testing thereof. We call those hypotheses, since that has a nice ring to it. It does not prove, it suggests. When you use a process that only checks things that can be physically measured, of course the process is going to seem more reliable; it handles the small stuff. Science seems more reliable because it is useless in measuring anything that cannot be seen, and is therefore never used to measure such things. If you don't believe anything but what can be proven, you're only limiting youself.

And how convenient that evolution changes as we go along and "learn more." Oh we weren't wrong, we just didn't know certain things. Same thing. Yes the concept remained the same; that's not impressive at all. And Darwin himself believed in God; his theory was speculation. He said that, if in 20 years the idea hadn't been shown true, it should be abandoned. But it meant so much to people not to have to feel responsible to a higher power that they clung to it, making changes and changes and still having so many gaping holes that really shouldn't exist in a concept born from a field of study that doesn't extend itself beyond what can be measured.

You're right, though. Christianity has remained rigid; maybe that's because the truth doesn't need to be changed.

A comment about the idea of being "open-minded." You should be willing to investigate new ideas, but being open-minded without any sort of filter is going to let any idea in, including bad ones. There's a limit. Investigate, but only accept what is acceptable, not just anything you run into.

And you can't uphold the idea that two religions are both true when they each make conflicting claims. Polytheism and monotheism can in no way both be right; one has to be wrong if both aren't. You have to pick one or none. You don't get credit for thinking they're all just dandy. Look at the ego in that logic: "I accept all religions, but don't care about the particulars where they conflict with each other. I've got it figured out better than everyone that believes in only one of the religions I accept; hence, I don't respect any of those people, or their religions."

Choose one or choose none, but do choose.

Why I think it's a weakness of the human mind:

It's easier to get on when you're sad if you believe your (good) actions will redeem you, or someone up there will compensate you for your goodness. It's easier when you think people dies when god says so , or that bad people would be punished somewhere sometime. I honestly don't think this would happen. No one would compensate me for my deeds, in exception of creating a good ambient for those who surround to me (wich is enough compensation for me). I was raised catholic, and now, being an atheist, I think I am more respectful to other people than before.

I think its a weakness because it's fact that masses of religious people are more easily moved towards an interested position (this is an spanglish phrase... sorry). Here in spain, priests move people towards right winged ideas pretty often in their speeches (in fact, the terrorism we have here, the vasque problem and the terrorist band ETA is relationed with church, with vasque church, whose interests are well konwn). And, in fact, in this country, many religious people is clearly racist (not more than than in america tough, in wich I have seen by myself that whites don't shake hands with blacks in church, and neither of them shake hands with latin-american people) . Here, non-religious people tend to be more tolerant (I have met pretty open minded nun's though) So well, religion is in my opinion so corrupted (by humans) I won't believe in nothing but science. I just hate how many countries use religion to convince it's inhabitants to go to war. I suppose muslims would agree with me, because when they where in al-andalus (spain 7 hundred years ago), they where tolerant (there where chiristians and jews in spain apart from them) and they supported arts & science more than any other culture. In fact, christians where brutal in comparison (One popular phrase that years was "The only difference between a noble christian and a muslim is you can smell the christian one before he reaches you" xD). So, those who claim to kill infidels are only corrupting that what says in the holy scriptures. I think many of the muslim leaders use koran to force people to do things I honestly don't believe the koran says (I have read a little, a free translation of the koran... and I don't see nothing about going to war or kill people).

The same case for america... "God save america"... LOL.... If there's a god he or she will "save" worthy american people... not america as a whole, that's for sure...(as there are many that deserve hell for genocides, as in avery country of course) as he will do with the rest of the people (and hey, if I am worthy, he would save me even if I don't believe in him, because he is fair, and knows that actions are more effective than praying ¿aren't they?)

When you can't exaplin everything, god will, so It's easier to live. It's more much easy to think that you are actually someone, not only a buch of protons and electrons recombined. But, even in this case we'll be immortal too, as our particles will create other things, they would not be destroyed, because I said before, life is only a definition. When I die, nature will re-absorb me, and my body will serve to continue the cycle of the so called "life".

My point is, people who calls himself a real crhistian or muslim or jew or whatever, only needes his conviction, not church. And, well, I think there are so few truly faithfull people... as the majority of those so called religious are religious only to pray god to forgive his sins and justify ther actions...

This pure conviction is not greater than mine or any other atheist who has is own moral code.

One problem comes know. True christians or true musilms don't say anything when religion is used and perverted to achieve thing (or at least I don't see them... my friends said "this is not good", but won't move a finger against it). They let them do it. Atheists won't. If I was crhistian, muslim or jew, and I really LOVE my religion, I would be horrified of what my country does in the name of the "true god", and I would try to fight that instead of looking another way.

 although you can never absolutely prove something 100% there is overwhelming evidence for both evolution and the big band theory. there is no evidence for god at all, so how can you say that "of course there is a god". if a scientist came up with a theory which had no evidence he would get laughed at.

 I'm going to disagree with this.  If a scientist finds himself relying on faith.  Or as in science they call it a hypothesys.  He does all he can to test and disprove it.  Wh he is thoroughly convince his hypothesys is correct, he publishes a paper including a repeatable experiment.  This allows all of the scientific community to test his theory so they don't have to rely on faith.  

  Faith is useless in science because it is not testable. 

I just wanted to commend you on this post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANdMYNldd3c