Sandram75

thank you Faydwyn for all the info. I'll agree my teacher could have given more accurate info.

and to mplltt: I did check out your posts but wasn't clear on what points you were trying to make. Anyway, here are 4 questions I have...

1.) Would you drink clean water or polluted water?

2.) Which do you prefer: a Democracy, Communism, or a Dictatorship?

3.) What monetary systems have "In God We Trust" on their currency/coins?

4.) Do we have a free will? yes or no?

If the majority of people reading this are like-minded then you probably had an answer for each of the questions. I truly believe we have a choice to either believe in God or to not believe in God. I am not taking the Bible word for word but am trying to apply the teachings of Jesus [found mostly in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John] to live a life that I have respect for. I enjoy the freedom to choose my own religious belief. My choice is believing in God.

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mplltt

I am glad that you have chosen to question me rather than to just outright spatter with statements like I'm mental or just stupid or I don't accept or know anything about Christ or God or that I am vague. So thankyou for your questions. Usually I take water drinking for granted, just because I am American. But that doesn't change the fact that:

"Every organ, every tissue, and all of the approximate 100 trillion cells in our body completely depend upon the reaction of enzymes and their "energy factor", or "life-force". Nutrition cannot be explained without describing the very important and necessary parts that enzymes play." Reference: "What really are enzymes?" FAQ. 2006. Fit For Life. 01 Oct. 2006 <http://www.fitforlife.com/faqs.html>.

"Simply stated, nutrition is the body's ability to consume the 45 known nutrients in their proper amounts; digest these nutrients; absorb these nutrients; carry these nutrients into the cells; metabolize these nutrients; and eliminate the waste...Enzymes are responsible for digestion, absorption, transporting, metabolizing, and eliminating the waste of these nutrients." Reference: "What is meant by nutrition?" Enzymes FAQ Page. 2006. Survival Enterprises. 01 Oct. 2006 <http://www.se1.us/health/enzymes/enzymes_faq.html>.

It is implied then that in impoverished areas people needing those enzyme levels in order to break down water waste are different, in so doing people there drink, " polluted water. Yet they still are alive. Forgive me for being American and wishing that everywhere people should have clean water.

Ok, question 2 says what government do I prefer. My question to you is, why do I only get 3 choices? I live in a Democracy.

Yeah so. I can buy with other currency the same or better quality products, made in other nations while staying in those nations. Now, this statement should not raise red flags in head about my signature (look at the bottom). I am a test engineer and I don't believe in political struggle in order to make currency. Currency is only a way to move one thing from one place to another. You have to start really far away and move closer and closer until you get right down to molecules. What keeps the lights on, anyway?

#4: "To each his own"

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Thank you, I am impressed that you are forgiving enough to approach this line of reasoning.

mplltt

What are the immutable dreams of life? Who makes immutable dreams? Of which do people dream to believe that strength is immutable? What are the abilities for a person to attain a strength in order to provide dreams that are immutable? What is the immutable strength? What are the abilities of a person to have the ananymous power to become immutable? What laws in our country prevent this? What human would allow these physical laws to be broken in the name of narcocism? What is immutable return? What are the ways to prevent you from missmatching? What are the abilities for a person to remove and dissassociate and return again? Who has the ability to dissassociate and return with dreams to make you happy? Where are these people from? What makes you think that this will ever happen again? What is the lie about drugs and religion? What blinds people to remember they are experienced only and not able to teach? What is the ability to have art turn to tar? What is the loss that is made in believing that people are lost forever and when they control too much, the switch is made to turn you off and dreams are now created and destroyed by people on earth? Possibly earthly angels? Would they, being born on earth, be earthly angels in order to create dreams that we can all relate to? Is programming really a paranoid story about illuminatti? What are your fears about illuminatti? Who is the illuminatti? Why do you still sit and feel a pain in your lower bone structure right below your sternum? What is your name? You are now assimilated? Welcome to Agnosticism.

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Thank you, I am impressed that you are forgiving enough to approach this line of reasoning.

mplltt

I always asked my teacher what sin he had and if it was periodic or not. What's the diff? Sometimes I still wonder

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Thank you, I am impressed that you are forgiving enough to approach this line of reasoning.

MickinEngland

Question - Has the Bible been edited and tidied up and falsified over the centuries by various translating bodies eager to push their own agenda?

If you answer "yes", the next question is - "But why do some people say the Bible is full of flaws and inconsistencies, why haven't they all been edited out to make the Bible look good?"

mplltt

Interesting. One professor at ASU said that religion changes with new interpretation (REL321). Biblical fanatics will tell you that each protestant church (maybe even Anglican) only stick to one bible translation. I have gone to churches that use more than one translation, huge churches. But what are we talking about here? Is it who's right? or is it What's right? "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." Said Darwin. But what is it that drives us? "One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy. " Said Aristotle. Why can't we just be happy with science, let the bible change and let our sense of monkey's determine our ignorance. You can read my post about Bonobos to get a closer look.

--have you ever heard of an artist, painter named "Jin"?

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Thank you, I am impressed that you are forgiving enough to approach this line of reasoning.

MickinEngland

Huh, what do professors know? -
Jesus said:- "I thank you Father for hiding these things from the wise and learned,and for revealing them to little children"(Matt 11:25-27)

Anyway the basic message stays the same in all interpretations -
"Hungry and you fed me,
Thirsty and you gave me drink,
A stranger and you took me in,
Naked and you clothed me,
ill and you tended me,
In prison and you visited me.
When you did this to others,
you did it to me.
You're my friends if you follow me, I don't call you servants, I call you friends" - Jesus of Nazareth

lemmex

I'd like to start out with this flaw. As you know the bible contains a number of dublets. What was Jesus's view about divorce. If you read the bible Jesus says two things on the subject. Compare the passages of Matthew 5:32 and 19:9. Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11-12 all on the subject. Jesus makes two statements. When may a person divorce. Matthew says a husband may if the wife commits adultery (and so long as he doesn't marry another divorced woman he doesn't commit adultry), But Matthew 19, Mark and Luke close that loophole by saying all do. But it's Luke and Mark that say there is no exception, a person may not period. So when is divorce allowed. Remember this is what Jesus said in each case. Did Jesus say oops, I need to clarify what I meant to say before. A second one is the old one between Matthew 2:1 and Luke 2:2 that have Jesus born at differenct times. Another is the one about Herod killing the childern under 2 to kill Jesus, the event never happened. These are the NT, it the OT of course are the two different stories of Genesis and Noah. It is less important to know there are flaws as to understand what they mean. You must also be aware that the Bible has had most conflicts edited out over the centuries but still a few remain if you really want to deal with them. From here we can jump to more serious problems the Bilbe has been used to justifiy actions over the centeries. I hope you realize flaws do exist but have nothing to do with God but us.

MickinEngland

Prove it ;)

lemmex

Mick, I'm talking about early manuscripts up to the time it was finalized and you’re right to catch me in error. One we take for granted. But I think anything that contributed to its making can be included in classification. I also include changes in interpretation among change, and direct changes made by the early Church and tradition (things we have come to believe that may be different then what was originally believed.). I’m going to exclude anything not canonized not included in our Bible. True most early biblical material has be lost to time forever and most debate is based on pieces of parchment found that show differences. True we don't know the whole story then.

The oldest complete copy of the Bible we have dates to the 3rd or 4th century AD. So we have 300-400 window at least. For example we know the early Jewish Christians believed Jesus was messiah but not divine. Pagan Christians came to believe both. I mean change abounded at this time.

We didn’t have a Bible until some years after the death of Christ and there was no single source we have today. The Bible was in oral form first and the stories were regional. This alone would lead to changes as stories were told and retold over the years. You know it’s impossible to keep stories consistently over time. When they were finally collected years later they were written and circulated individually. There was no single Bible.

Obviously we're talking about the written one today and I’m not implying editing occurs today. We’re past that time. But I don’t think you mean when they first wrote our Bible they got it right in a single shot. Any author will tell you, they have go through a process. You write a draft, read what you’ve done, edit it, reread, reedit before the final product. Even the KJV used today was written because there were other translations at that time and the church considered these heretical banning them. Also, we know the bible we use was written in Greek and there’s absolutely no way the original words could be the same or have the same meaning, they’d have to be changed. For example the name Jesus. In his lifetime Jesus’s name was not Jesus. Look at the Old Testament story of Cain and Able. The OT legitimately can be said to be the only part of our Bible that came from original Hebrew. Christians believe Cain and Able were real people. But names were used verus people. Name usage was not the same as today. The actual names were Kayin and Hebel. Kayin meant to “get or smith/metal worker” and Hebel meant “breath/vapor”. The names were symbolic representations of events not people.

Partly, what I’m saying Mick is, I wish they’d have left the actual Bible along and passed it down to us exactly as it was first written. I don't need to be told what someone think it says. They never should have changed the first one. The first edit we have is the rearrangement of the order of the OT and the additional of Book of Daniel as a prophet. There's a reason of that. What I'm saying I disagree with that and I don't care it equaled 7 or 6 or anything.

When I say edit, I mean we would do that to make it as perfect as we could and eliminate major conflicts among the manuscripts. The changes would have been made to harmonize the final Bible. Look at Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. Now if I pull out my Bible today, it says, “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord do all these things. The word evil has since been removed. I’m going to assume your Bible doesn’t have the word either. Now I have to assume this was conscious as our concept of evil changed. God can’t be seen having anything to do with evil only Satan can.

The earliest draft of the Gospel of Mark ends with the discovery of the empty tomb, the resurrection was added later. In the earliest manuscript of the Book of Romans there was no chapter 16. So this could mean an idea was added or refined or something was completed. We course only catch glimpses of changes and don’t know what’s behind them only scholars know. Of course Mick, the better the edits the less aware we would be anyway. Now, is there a conspiracy of 100% change or that there’s another Bible locked away somewhere. I’m not saying that. We have to accept common sense that changes would be made up to some point. Some changes would be conscious and some merely mistakes. Reflect on social values for example. Look at what Jesus says about divorce. First divorce is not allowed and then it’s conditional. This change was a change in social value put into our Bible. There a part in the Bible that talks about women in relation to their husbands and society and they are included as property but then in another time excluded. I mean we can see changes. The Bible is a crafted document and writing it would not have been taken lightly and controversy ended only when it was canonized. I really do wish I could compare our Bible to the first or near first we have. I regret I don’t trust man as much as you do.

Now there are other reasons why I believe change has happened but that is more personal. I’ve actually been trying to find an exact literal translation of the first Bible because I want to know if differences do exist, if any. If anyone knows where I get look at one, let me know. Please don’t say the Vatican.