The Bible; Divinely Inspired?

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Do you believe the Bible is Divinely inspired

Yes; it is the literal word of God	2%	[ 1 ]
No; it is a complete and utter fabrication	17%	[ 7 ]
Yes; it is divinely inspired but interpreted by humans and therefore imperfect	10%	[ 4 ]
Yes; but much has been lost in translation and interference but in essence it is true	14%	[ 6 ]
No; it is just a vague and loose record of Middle Eastern history with some interesting embellishments	57%	[ 24 ]

Total votes : 42

greenblue
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20 Jan 2009, 5:12 pm

slowmutant wrote:

See, I'm not so keen on proving to the world that what I believe is only belief worth having. The last thing I will ever do on WP is evangelize. I don't believe in evangelism.

Funny thing is that some unbelievers seem to suggest and perhaps even evangelize (which is somethng that could be debated) that their belief is the only belief worth having.

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slowmutant
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20 Jan 2009, 5:15 pm

greenblue wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

See, I'm not so keen on proving to the world that what I believe is only belief worth having. The last thing I will ever do on WP is evangelize. I don't believe in evangelism.

Funny thing is that some unbelievers seem to suggest and perhaps even evangelize (which is somethng that could be debated) that their belief is the only belief worth having.

Like Richard Dawkins? :wink:

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20 Jan 2009, 5:22 pm

Dussel wrote:

anna-banana wrote:

I think another question to ask is- who inspired the founders of Christianity to choose which scripts were to form parts of the Bible and which were to be tossed away and labeled apocrypha?

The current list of books was compiled at the time of First Council of Nicaea and First Council of Constantinople, when the dogma of the double nature of Christ and others were defined. I assume the current list is just the collection of books which fit into the dogma, whilst others (Gospel of Peter of Thomas) were kicked out, because those did not confirm with the unified teachings. The unification was needed, because Christianity became state religion and so the unified teaching was basis for the unified realm and church.

So it stayed till the 16th century (and later).

You're all brain and no heart. Many Aspies are like that.

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20 Jan 2009, 6:17 pm

slowmutant wrote:

Dussel wrote:

anna-banana wrote:

I think another question to ask is- who inspired the founders of Christianity to choose which scripts were to form parts of the Bible and which were to be tossed away and labeled apocrypha?

The current list of books was compiled at the time of First Council of Nicaea and First Council of Constantinople, when the dogma of the double nature of Christ and others were defined. I assume the current list is just the collection of books which fit into the dogma, whilst others (Gospel of Peter of Thomas) were kicked out, because those did not confirm with the unified teachings. The unification was needed, because Christianity became state religion and so the unified teaching was basis for the unified realm and church.

So it stayed till the 16th century (and later).

You're all brain and no heart. Many Aspies are like that.

... which does not alter the fact that he's correct.

People who can think for themselves are anathema to Christian dogma, especially if they ask too many questions.

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slowmutant
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20 Jan 2009, 6:20 pm

Quote:

which does not alter the fact that he's correct.

Beside the point. It is not good to be all brain and no heart because there is more to life than knowledge.

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20 Jan 2009, 6:24 pm

slowmutant wrote:

Quote:

which does not alter the fact that he's correct.

Beside the point. It is not good to be all brain and no heart because there is more to life than knowledge.

Of course it's beside the point because it stands in stark contrast to what the point is - that Religion is the be-all and do-all of human existance. :roll:

And yes, there is more to life than knowledge; there is also acting upon that knowledge, without also inventing a mysterious sky-fearie that pre-determines our every thought and action.

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20 Jan 2009, 11:17 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Dussel wrote:

There is nothing out which can be only "experienced". Everything is measurable and follows the rules of physics, described in the language of mathematics.

Sure there is, experiential facts. If I feel angry, no machine can grasp this simply because the feeling of anger is essentially different from the physical facts underpinning anger.

Anger is an physical fact: It nothing more than a physical state of the brain, a state the brain sometime adopts under certain circumstances.

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. If we suppose that all phenomenal facts are reducible to neurological facts, we do not prove that there are not non-material truths, only cause problems for the possibility of knowing these facts.

The is no hint for the existence of something like "non-material truths". it is there safe to assume with great certainty that there is nothing more.

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20 Jan 2009, 11:27 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Dussel wrote:

think I would start here with analysing permutation pattern of the Fourier-Analysis of the sound waves and would than look into similarities of brain activities (a very first idea to look into this more exactly).

Ah, the issue is that your approach won't really reach his desired problem. "The value" is not a psychological fact, or a physical fact, but rather a reference to something more like an ethical fact, which science, by it's nature, cannot speak on. It can talk about the possible ways that ethical opinions could form and where they currently seem to emerge from in the brain, but the factuality of ethical claims lies in philosophical fields such as ethics and metaethics.

At the end philosophy, ethics, religion are nothing more than complex function of our brains, which are basically hyper-complex machines.

It is perhaps for some not nice to realize, that our "Ego", "Free Will", etc. is at end nothing more than product of neurological network which was able to discover and handle his own existence, but it is just the case.

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21 Jan 2009, 12:36 am

slowmutant wrote:

Quote:

which does not alter the fact that he's correct.

Beside the point. It is not good to be all brain and no heart because there is more to life than knowledge.

Except if you refuse to accept the evidence of the brain and continue believing from the heart. This leads to stagnation and prevents humanity from moving forward.

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21 Jan 2009, 12:46 am

Orwell wrote:

In First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12, the Apostle Paul wrote:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

We see the Word of God dimly, in a mirror. We see it as a reflection through the prophets and the apostles, not face-to-face with the direct Word of God. We have only an imperfect knowledge of the Lord.

What I find interesting there have been no additions to the bible in nearly 2000 years, anyone who maintains that they have a message from god is nowadays labeled a nutjob so why do we still believe the prophets from this era? I also find it strange that such a powerful entity as god would go to the trouble of sending humanity a muddy message.

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21 Jan 2009, 12:47 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

slowmutant wrote:

Quote:

which does not alter the fact that he's correct.

Beside the point. It is not good to be all brain and no heart because there is more to life than knowledge.

Except if you refuse to accept the evidence of the brain and continue believing from the heart. This leads to stagnation and prevents humanity from moving forward.

But it also leads to a large number of ignorant, non-thinking laborers to build your temples, roads, and palaces, and to use as spear fodder for your crusading armies while their wives and daughters serve as your concubines!

And what could possibly be wrong with that?

:wink:

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21 Jan 2009, 1:25 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

Orwell wrote:

In First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12, the Apostle Paul wrote:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

The message is perfect. It's the medium that's imperfect. I believe in the inerrancy of the message, but not that of the medium. And if the message has survived 2000 years despite being perceived through a mirror darkly, I'd say that is a testament to its veracity.

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21 Jan 2009, 1:41 am

slowmutant wrote:

Strange - The "almighty creator of the universe", able to define the laws of Quantum Mechanics and to construct such a complex entity like the human brain is not able to create a perfect medium for his most important message? But the full collection of the juicy poems of Catullus, approx. of the same age, survived without any alterations and perfectly?

Hard to understand under the premises of an "almighty creator of the universe" ...

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21 Jan 2009, 1:57 am

Quote:

not able to create a perfect medium

Man, his faculties and tendencies is the "imperfect medium" to which I refer. Even if given a perfect message from a perfect being, man's imperfections make it impossible for him to recieve that perfect message perfectly.

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21 Jan 2009, 2:23 am

DentArthurDent wrote:

Orwell wrote:

In First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12, the Apostle Paul wrote:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

you would actually need to read the last chapter to understand why there have been no new additions to the Bible. And it also explains why half of the books where rejected from the cannon.

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DentArthurDent
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21 Jan 2009, 4:07 am

slowmutant wrote:

Quote:

not able to create a perfect medium

didn't he create us in his image, surely god could dumb it down a bit so that we fully got the message as intended. the excuses used to explain religion makes me laugh. I remember one guy who is tee total due to his religion. I challenged that as one of the major miracles of Jesus was to turn water into wine surely then it was permissible to drink alcohol, his response: "it was non alcoholic wine" my response "no wonder they stuck him on a cross"

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