How well do you believe the Bible?

[Windwalker]

It might be worth noting that archeology has referred to these texts as well and with their help, did locate a few locations for dig sites. And, I know that there is one that is using these texts to try to locate the Garden of Eden. Personally, I don't think he's going to have any luck since it seems that mankind is never to be able to return there.

[Slimland]

The bible as we know it {the Canonized} is not the whole thing.. That is putting God in the box that certain men wanted him to be..
What WindWalker is talking about it the uncanonized version, that has all the writings including the apocrypha. All of this including other beliefs and mythos are just like there predecessor the sumerian mythos.

Abraham cam from Ur, which was in Sumeria Maybe he was the only one to still hear the Annanuki. I really don't know, but I do know that God does not belong in a box, I myself spent many years holding Him in there for my own ideal of him. But have come to realize that God is just to big for that box, and most Christians will not adhere to the Truth cause it don't fit in there box of God.

God does what he wants, he is not bound by Law, but at times has been know to subject himself to his law. If he where bound by a Law of His own, it would be not to deny himself. Thus he cannot Sin for that is the root of Sin is unbelief.
I myself question God all the time, becuase I tend to lean on my own understanding. I do not see the use or the whole picture of why it has to be this way or that. When God can just do it the way it should be..
You say free will is the reason why! There is no free will!! when it boils down to it.

Yeah we have free will to choose or not, but not without consiquences. WHat kind of free will is that? It is not! That is saying do this or die. He has unconditional love, but with conditions. THat is contradictory. But we are the horse drawn to the carrot that dangles in front of us. and we call that faith and hope. And maybe one day the love of god might let you have that carrot, as long as you give up you free will, then he will love you unconditionaly with his conditions..

That is religion in a nutshell. That is the bassis of amost all beliefs including Christianity..
I see God totally diffrent than those, but that is for another time.

Slimland

[BlooMoose]

So, you see... I did not make any of it up.

And, Bloo... If you follow the link in my previous post, you'll see that it refers to them living in caves.

I never thought you made anything up, WW...I have not studied up enough on any of it. I don't think living in a cave makes a caveman, though. I figured there were other people on the earth along with Adam and Eve. I am not trying to oppose here. I find all the information presented very interesting. I will go to that link!

[Windwalker]

There is another site that gives a full reading of "THE FIRST BOOK OF ADAM", "SECOND BOOK OF ADAM", "THIRD BOOK OF ADAM", "FIRST BOOK OF ENOS", etc. I've been looking for it, but with no success. Slim and I had a short exchange and I think I sent him that link too. Don't remember. You could spend the next 3 weeks reading it and still not get done.

[Windwalker]

I never thought you made anything up, WW...I have not studied up enough on any of it. I don't think living in a cave makes a caveman, though. I figured there were other people on the earth along with Adam and Eve. I am not trying to oppose here. I find all the information presented very interesting. I will go to that link!

We tend to think of Neanderthal as a cave man, but the fact is that Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon both had working societies. They didn't simply communicate with a series of grunts, but had a language and writing. Since Homo-Sapien did not come on the scene until 6,000 BC, any text priior to that would have come from Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal, or both.

I had been looking to see if there was a correlation between the end of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, and the Great Flood. According to the Bible (and those who interpret it), the Flood occured about 2345 BC. Archeology states that it happened 500 years earlier, which would make it 2845 BC. But, so far, the evidence suggests that Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon both died out when Homo-Sapien came along. It would stand to reason that we (Homo-Sapien) are a product of the two. And, the Flood would have insured that we, via Gilgamesh, survived while the rest would have perished in the flood. The dates do not match, but then again... I'm very certain that all the evidence is not in yet.

In the end, both MUST coincide. You can not have an earth created by GOD that has already existed. The constants of nuclear decay do not change. The rate at which daughter elements are formed do not change. So, calculating the age of something beyond carbon-dating is still quite accurate.

Obviously, GOD, being a perfect Being, is also not wrong. As originally written, the Inspired Word of GOD would have to have been accurate in it's original form, and in the understanding and terminalogy at the time. So, the wild-card here is Man. After how many times it has had to be translated, and copied, man has introduced errors, either by not being able to copy word for word, or by misunderstanding terms used in a previous language and text.

In the end (and many of us may not be around by then ), I believe science will not refute the Bible, but instead, it will uphold the Bible. But, errors introduced by man will stand corrected.

[golfhobo]

The bible as we know it {the Canonized} is not the whole thing.. That is putting God in the box that certain men wanted him to be..

What WindWalker is talking about it the uncanonized version, that has all the writings including the apocrypha. All of this including other beliefs and mythos are just like there predecessor the sumerian mythos.

Slimland

A simple point of debate, Slim....

As we discussed once (with my Dad's help,) the Apocrypha and other books were not "cannonized" because they simply didn't rise to the level of "certification" that the other books did.

This is NOT "putting GOD in a box." It is, if anything, putting MAN'S writings in a box.

ANYONE could have written anything they wanted, and claimed it was "inspired" or truthful.

The books that are included in the Holy Bible are the ones that could be "certified" as being true to gospel, and inspired by God (and mostly written by his apostles.) If the Catholics are good at ANYTHING.... it is research and authentication!

This does not mean that I wouldn't find something interesting in the Apocrypha.... IF I ever took the time to read it. I am only saying that I don't find that the "cannonized" version of the Bible necessarily puts GOD in a box.

I think those who rely on "other writings" are searching for something they can't FIND in the Bible. I have no problem with that. I like to read Plato and Socrates.

In general though, I agree with you that MAN can never understand the enormity of GOD.... IF there is such a being.

In truth, however.... I believe that ALL history is "revisionist." ALL writings are perspectively biased. ALL "theories" are just that.

Anyone who lives their life based on what they were TOLD to believe, has already surrendered FREE WILL.... and risks losing at least SOME part of their potential.

[Windwalker]

The fact that I take more than a passing interest in archeology does not mean I do not believe the Bible. However, I find it interesting that the Bible refers to Nephilim as "The Sons of GOD", and says that they were evil. Before he died, Sadam referred to the United States as "the Great Serpent of SHATAIN".

"And, there were giants upon the earth in those days".

While Neanderthal was only about 4 1/2 to 5 feet tall, Cro-Magnon was between 8 and 9 feet tall. I believe they would have qualified as "giants". While Neanderthal was shorter, he was also stocky and strong. Cro-magnon, on the other hand was slender, and more agile. From everything I've read in the Bible (and in nearly every version of the Bible), the unions between the Sons of GOD and the daughters of man was not approved of. My guess is that there may have been a number of confrontations between them. However, Neanderthal would have been throwing stones, and had wooden spears that didn't leave their hands. They would have had to be next to their oponent and jabbed them with it. Cro-magnon, on the other hand, had throwing spears, and a device that the butt of the spear would rest in, and when thrown, would add distance to it. Clearly, Cro-magnon would have had superior weapons in any confrontation.

TO THE "VICTOR" GO THE SPOILS...

If Cro-magnon came away victorious from any confrontation with Neanderthal, what spoils would he have been interested in? Cro-magnon already had more advanced weapons and tools, so most of the spoils of Neanderthal would have been left behind, except perhaps, for the skins, and the women. When I look at later societies, such as Egyptian, or Roman, those spoils were made slaves, not wives. However, man's instinct being what it is, the Neanderthal women may also have been sex slaves.

When MacArthor said "I WILL RETURN", he evacuated, but left a number of nurses behind. They were raped repeatedly by the Japanese Army.

When Africans were brought here as slaves, the movie "ROOTS" only showed one woman being forced into sex with her master, but if the truth be known, I'll bet many of them were, and many of them, repeatedly, and many also got pregnant that way.

It is quite possible that births among Neanderthal Women with Cro-magnon men outnumbered the births of Cro-magnon women with their Cro-Magnon husbands.

Speculation: If you cross a small dog with a St Bernard, you get a dog that's somewhere in between in size, and looks. If you cross Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal, you get Homo-Sapien???

Something else that I found interesting:

Who Were the Nephilim?
Another logical interpretation for the ''Sons of God'' is they were other created men. It is largely assumed that Adam and Eve were the only humans created in the beginning, but the Bible does not describe every person on earth, nor even everyone that was important to God. Only key individuals or situations are included within the text, and we can not say with certainty that God only created one pair of humans.

There is also a fable, or myth (what ever you might want to call it) about "Lilith" being created the same time as Adam. Although, the way the story goes, it sounds a bit far-fetched, they say that since it has survived through time till now, it may have some value. Supposedly, she was able to speak GOD's true name, rise up into the air, and fly to anywhere she wanted to go. Makes me wonder why Adam could not do the same. Did his tongue get tangled up in his eye teeth?

But, archeology does bare out things in the Bible. Cro-magnon was tall, and for anyone up to 6 feet tall, would be thought of as giants. (I admit, I would really like meeting a Cro-magnon woman. Someone else's turn to get a crick in their neck from looking down into my eyes.)

Referring to them a evil would sound a lot like what happened during King Author's Crusades into the Holy Land. In the eyes of Islam, they represented the Devil. Even today, anyone with blue eyes carries the mark of the Devil. (And, that includes me. Naima's father would like to have killed me.)

I believe what we are reading in the Bible is the Neanderthal version of it all.

The genetic variation at the microcephalin gene, a critical regulator of brain size whose loss-of-function by damaging mutations may also cause primary microcephaly, is claimed to be the most compelling evidence of admixture thus far. One type of the gene, dubbed haplogroup D having an exceptionally high worldwide frequency (~70%), was shown to have a remarkably young coalescence age to its most recent common ancestor ~37,000 years ago. The remaining types (non-D) coalesce to ~990,000 years ago, while the separation time between D and non-D was estimated at ~1,100,000 years ago. An evolutionary advance was assumed, even though positive selection was never as all-decisive as to wipe out the remaining 30% of non-D haplogroups (in which case no introgression could have been suggested) and as for now, a measurable genetic advance has not been attested.[6]
Both the worldwide frequency distribution of the D allele, exceptionally high outside of Africa but low in sub-Saharan Africa (29%) that suggests involvement of an archaic Eurasian population, and current estimates of the divergence time between modern humans and Neanderthals based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), are in favor of the Neanderthal lineage as the most likely archaic Homo population from which introgression into the modern human gene pool took place. [7][8]
The case for fertile reproduction was recently revived by studies that claim signs of admixture (introgression), finding unusually deep genealogies in highly divergent clades (genetic branches). However, most of the times this feature can be explained by balancing selection. For instance, estimates on the gene for red hair vary from 20,000 to 100,000 years ago[9][10], though there is no compelling evidence to assume red hair didn't coexist with other hair colours all along within one and the same population. Moreover, Lalueza-Fox and colleagues found a different variant of the same gene in their Neanderthal samples, that similarly disabled a protein to the same effect

Considering that in that era, there was no "social code of conduct", laws regarding sexual offenses, the victor in any confrontation would have been free to do as he pleased. However, it seems that Cro-magnon lead a hard life. Evidence has been found that a few survived with vertibrae in the neck fused from injury, and it is believed that their society took care of the injured. Is it possible that Neanderthal didn't go quietly after all?

What I have not been able to find is the origin of Cro-magnon. Were they actually an off-shoot of Neanderthal? Or were they another evolutionary branch.

[Syncrosonix]

penn & teller: the bible is BS

there are three parts to the episode. that is the first one. the points brought up in the episode are pretty much the same that i've brought up in the past, and back in high school.

[Windwalker]

penn & teller: the bible is BS

there are three parts to the episode. that is the first one. the points brought up in the episode are pretty much the same that i've brought up in the past, and back in high school.

I see that "penn & teller" describe it as "bullcrap". That would be just a bit less than accurate. The fact that archeology uses both it and the Quran to locate sites for digs says that it is a actually a fairly accurate record of history. Biased, perhaps, but a record none the less, with discriptions of locations and events. Whether they have anything to do with GOD is something you have to make up in your own mind.

[Syncrosonix]

i think we all go to bababooeyland after we die.

[Windwalker]

Just noticed something, and I'm wondering if anyone else has ever noticed it.

Different Bibles seem to have slightly different information. Not exactly different, but sort of "rounding things off".

Cain was born within the first 100 years after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden. Then Abel, and then Seth. After Cain murdered Abel, he told GOD he was afraid someone would kill him. Who??? Adam? Eve? Seth wasn't even a gleem in his daddy's eye yet. So, who? But, GOD put a mark upon him. It seems that mark was inherited by his line of descent.

Before the flood, Noah already had two wives that were "seed of Seth". GOD told him to take another woman for a wife, that was "seed of Cain". "For she is a righteous woman and tries to serve GOD, though she does carry the mark of Cain. GOD did not want the "seed of Cain" to vanish from the earth because of the coming flood. And, she became the mother of Ham.

Then, not long after the flood, Cain appears in time to get murdered himself. Now, I'm not nearly as interested in just how Cain survived the flood without the aid of Noah and his Ark, but if you would, check my "cyphering"...

Cain - Born about 39,950 BC... Give or take about 50 years or so...
Date of the flood - about November 11, 2345 (according to Biblical "experts")
Or...
Date of the flood - about 2845 (according to science.)

So, what I'd like to know... Just how large a birthday cake did they have to have for him for the last year before he was killed in order to fit 26,000 PLUS candles on it????

If no one in the early years of the Bible lived to reach 1,000 years, how did he live to be a ripe, old, rikkety, age of more than 26,000 years???

[ssoutlaw]

While it's true that other animals communicate, they use sounds and "BODY LANGUAGE" to get the message across. Even dogs do that. But, man is the only one that, to date, is able to articulate speech. Even dolphins include body language in their communications. But, I'm not a geneticist, so I have to accept what I read and hear about it. From everything I've heard and read, man is the only one that carries the gene that gives us the power of speech.

My brother has a parrot that has a 100 word vocabulary...lol You can more than understand every word!

[Windwalker]

My brother has a parrot that has a 100 word vocabulary...lol You can more than understand every word!

And, has the bird been check to see if it has or doesn't have that "speech gene"?

[GMAN]

It seems that when someone attempts to disprove something in the Bible they wind up proving it.

[Twilight Flyer]

Interesting point about the parrot. I had a friend a while back that had an African Gray. Ash had a vocabularly of 500+ words...simply a phenominal bird. And Grays are also one of the smartest birds in the world. They are intelligent and capable of thought processes. There is a famous one named Einstein that has a vocabulary of well over a thousand words...I've seen a couple videos of it. You can probably YouTube her.

But I'll give you a couple of examples of Ash's ability to communicate.

Ash had free run of the house, wings were not clipped, and my friend had a regular habit of taking him for walks around the neighborhood when Ash riding on his shoulder. Because of their closeness, Ash had developed quite the personality. He would terrorize the cats (they had 4...2 inside and 2 outside) and he was flat out a smart-*****.

His sudden response one day to one of Dallas' wife's friends...a large lady that had the habit of doing a sing-song "pretty bird" routine whenever she came over was..."f*** you, lady, I'm a chicken!" Sure, Dallas had taught him that, but full sentences were common with this bird. I thought I was going to die that day when I head that one.

I remember playing cards in the dining room one night and Ash was making a ruckus in the other room, hollering at one of the cats. Dallas yelled out to Ash that if he didn't shut up, he was going to turn him into chicken soup. Ash came walking (yes, he walked all over the house) into the room, clucking like a chicken. Dallas never taught him that, but thinks his wife did.

Ash would hide behind doors to scare cats when they walked by, he tormented the outside cats when they came up to the door, he did absolutely everything that one would think required intelligent thought to come up with.

The point is, God didn't make "dumb" animals. And while it was man that taught Ash to speak, it was Ash's intelligence that enabled him to communicate with man's speech.

[GMAN]

The point is, God didn't make "dumb" animals. And while it was man that taught Ash to speak, it was Ash's intelligence that enabled him to communicate with man's speech.

Good point, Twilight Flyer.

[ssoutlaw]

And, has the bird been check to see if it has or doesn't have that "speech gene"?

Better late than never...lol
Cant tell you anything about a speech gene!!! All I can tell you is the parrot talks, and can answer some simple questions!!!.....lol Much like most truck drivers....lol

[ssoutlaw]

It seems that when someone attempts to disprove something in the Bible they wind up proving it.

I believe you are right!!!!

[Windwalker]

GMAN[/b]]It seems that when someone attempts to disprove something in the Bible they wind up proving it.

I believe you are right!!!!

Well, I did not start this thread to try to disprove the Bible (if that's what it looked like). But, we do tend to take the writings of the Bible, word-for-word, and when looking at the errors in translation that we are able to trace, we need to consider the number of times it may have been translated since the very first "inspired words" were written. How many more errors in translation were introduced before the earliest records we are able to locate? So far, the oldest records we have are the "Dead-Sea Scrolls". Yet, man was created around 40,000 BC and surely, there would have been records between then and 150 to 70 BC when the scrolls are believed to have been written. But, where are they? It would seem that most did not survive the ravages of time. And, Creation is an excellent example.

Between Archeology, anthropology, and paleanthology, many of the events given to us by the Bible have been proven to be reasonably accurate. Yet, the seven days of creation, that we are told lasted a whole seven days, have been proven inaccurate. That is, unless you take each day of Creation as a relative period of time, rather than a hard and fast rule of our 24 hour days. And, that "relative period of time" would seem to be supported even more by the events in Exodus. All natural events that occurred with IMPECCABLE TIMING. For a GOD that is so able to use natural events to impress HIS will on the earth and it's inhabitants, to simply snap his fingers to create something would be a bit out of character for him. Instead, it would seem far more within his character to have guided evolution over a period of time to create his masterpieces.

We also seem to assume that when GOD created man, man looked just like us. This too, does not seem to hold up to the test of science. There is no evidence of our species, "HOMO-SAPIEN, SAPIEN" before 6,000 BC. The earliest evidence of Homo Sapien, Cro-Magnon, is a fossil found that dates back to 37,000 BC, and they are thought to have showed up on the earth about 40,000 BC, and it's an interesting coincidence that GOD created the earth around that same time. Prior to that, Archaic Homo Sapien reigned on the earth form 180,000 to about 30,000 BC. According to mtDNA, Homo Sapien split off from Archaic Homo Sapien about 170,000 BC, yet, there is no surviving evidence of them from 170,000 to 37,000 BC.

The Bible talks about the "Sons of GOD" and the "daughters of man". Fallen Angels? Really? I have a feeling this is not entirely accurate either. During WWII, the Allies won the war because "GOD was on our side". The Hebrews were GOD's chosen people. Homo Sapien was far more advanced than any other species on earth. Want to bet... "Sons of GOD". And, Archaic Homo Sapien would have been the source of "the daughters of man". The Bible also talks about "TAKING for wives, all that they would". There was no negotiation, or permission granted. The women were simply taken. Homo Sapien was far superior to Archaic Homo Sapien and would have been capable of doing just that.

Physically, Archaic Homo Sapien was not capable of throwing a spear or a rock. Skeletal Structure did not permit them to do so. Homo Sapien, on the other hand most certainly was. Science is at a loss to explain the disappearance of Archaic Homo Sapien, yet that passage in the Bible would suggest that they were hunted into extinction for the women. Again, science is not able to prove or disprove whether there were any off-spring between the two species, but the Bible says there were. mtDNA suggests there was not, but science also admits that there could have been a shift in the mtDNA, and only cellular DNA will answer that. It stands to reason that any off-spring between Homo Sapien and Archaic Homo Sapien would have been absorbed into Homo Sapien society, and that shift in mtDNA would have happened. And, at this point, science does not have the technology to extract cellular DNA from a fossil, so theories abound, and mine is as good as the next.

My whole point is not to say that the Bible is wrong, and there is no GOD. But, our understanding of the Bible is flawed, and most likely due to errors in translation. And, there were 39,630 years in which those errors would have happened, and in just the last 2,000 years of the new testament, there are thousands of differences between the two oldest complete Bibles in the world. Now, extend that ratio back another 39,000 years, and what are you left with? Considering how much of the Bible has been proven by science, the Bible is not an invalid record. Even though, science and theology do not agree on the date of the flood, they both do agree that it did happen. And, while the Bible would have us believe that the great flood was universal, it seems that a small outpost of Cro-Magnon did survive the flood without the aid of Noah and his ark, on the Canary Islands, until the 15th century. There is also no mention of a flood in their mythology. And, the fact that science does not discard the Bible would suggest that we do not either. But, where any other record is amended when proven wrong, the Bible is not. That may be our biggest error with regard to the Bible.

[Useless]

The Bible is a largely fictional tome with some elements of truth. While there are certain elements which can be supported through the sciences, there were no talking snakes, talking / burning bushes, or talking donkeys.
While it does have some truth to certain parts of it, and while there are some things to be gained from studying it, it was largely co-opted by man for the purpose of empowering the few to reign and rule over the masses.