Quote from drunkdecoy

In the year 4007
The harry potter books will be the new bible.

We all know this is true 😀

Quote from totalanime

My simple arguement/opinion:

God and religion are ideas created to

1. explain the unexplainable
2. set a moral standard which would organize the society

However, now that the "unexplainable" are slowly becoming logical, the ideas start to be questioned. That's where society is today. 😀

The most logical thing I've heard in this thread yet 😀

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This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your signature to help him gain world domination!
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WOW, i really should get my ex-bestfriend into this forum....
hes the admin of the biggest ethaistic site in the middle east (17)..
he really should make an english version to his site....
well if enyone understands hebrew, or has common sense for understanding without reading... http://www.planetnana.co.il/atheist90
he has alot of english qoutes and a humor section..
(btw to get into the index page, click on the right button with "כניסה" on it..)
http://www.planetnana.co.il/atheist90/humor.html this is the link for the humor section, it has links for jokes and comix, some of it in english (everything after this point:"הומור אתאיסטי באנגלית" is in english)

the best security guard, EVER.

Ah a manga site.. It deserves a reply with a comic/manga.
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9493/1181577313416vl1.jpg

With so many contradictions of the bible I don't see how anyone can believe that garbage.
For instance:
*"Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him,"

• Corinthians 11:15*
  [img]http://www.geocities.com/metacrock2000/Jesus_pages/jesus-n-med.jpg[/img]

oooooooo 😕 I am male and now I am stuffed my hair half way down my back and still going. 😀 😛

love and peace

Quote from adliss

oooooooo 😕 I am male and now I am stuffed my hair half way down my back and still going. 😀 😛

My hair is all the way down to my ass and yes I'm male.

I don’t believe in God, it’s all a load of crap to me and people who believe in a God are either gullible or just need something to believe in to get them though the day or though live.

[img]http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/374/nhk1rs01od4.png[/img]

Quote from Loli

Ah a manga site.. It deserves a reply with a comic/manga.
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9493/1181577313416vl1.jpg

With so many contradictions of the bible I don't see how anyone can believe that garbage.
For instance:
*"Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him,"

• Corinthians 11:15*
  [img]http://www.geocities.com/metacrock2000/Jesus_pages/jesus-n-med.jpg[/img]

Very interesting quote, do you happen to know the historical context in which this statement is made? Back in Corinth when Paul was writing this letter, the sign for a male prostitute was having long hair. So he's basically saying don't be a prostitute. Corinth wasn't exactly one of the best churches, that Paul ever ministered to, but he still loved them and wanted whats best for them.

A lot of men in ancient times have long hair.....Like China for example. I'm not talking about the pony tail, those came in later centuries. At earlier times, they had long hair.

[color=green]Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?
[/color]

[color=red]Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0[/color]

That may be true, but, Paul is writing to the Corinthians not to ancient China, or ancient something else. If you don't understand the context of this verse than your not going to understand what the verse is saying. And just like Loli and many others, if you take the verse isolate it from the rest of the text you can make the Bible say anything you want. In this case you can make the Bible say "God hates long hair." Is that true? No. 😀

Quote from Zubz313

That may be true, but, Paul is writing to the Corinthians not to ancient China, or ancient something else. If you don't understand the context of this verse than your not going to understand what the verse is saying. And just like Loli and many others, if you take the verse isolate it from the rest of the text you can make the Bible say anything you want. In this case you can make the Bible say "God hates long hair." Is that true? No. 😀

But Jesus had long hair.

[color=green]Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?
[/color]

[color=red]Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0[/color]

Quote from Zubz313

That may be true, but, Paul is writing to the Corinthians not to ancient China, or ancient something else. If you don't understand the context of this verse than your not going to understand what the verse is saying. And just like Loli and many others, if you take the verse isolate it from the rest of the text you can make the Bible say anything you want. In this case you can make the Bible say "God hates long hair." Is that true? No. 😀

Other than that, you can "interpret" the bible any way you want. You can take any quote and still make your point with it.

It is not as though God has one slip of the tongue that might be misinterpreted as condoning slavery - there are at least ten places in the Bible where God openly, unashamedly and absolutely endorses slavery. God does not "sort of hint" that he might dislike women - God displays open animosity toward women in his words and deeds. God not only likes animal sacrifice -- he demands it, and gives explicit instructions for how it is to be done. God does not kill one or two children -- God openly massacres millions of children and admits it in writing.

This is the God of the Bible. This is the God that Christians worship.

But what if you need still more proof? If so, then here is a question: Why, when you read the Bible, are you not left in awe? Why doesn't a book written by God leave you with a sense of wonder and amazement? If you are reading a book written by the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving creator of the universe, wouldn't you expect to be stunned by the brilliance, the clarity and the wisdom of the author? Would you not expect each new page to intoxicate you with its incredible prose and its spectacular insight?

Instead, opening the Bible inevitably creates a feeling of dumbfoundment. Have you ever noticed that? Instead of brilliance, much of the Bible contains nonsense. You can open the Bible to almost any page and find nonsense instead of wisdom. Here are several examples:

**Judges Chapter 4 **
But Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died.

**Genesis Chapter 19 **
Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. Let's get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father."

**Genesis Chapter 38 **
Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord 's sight; so he put him to death also.

**Judges Chapter 3 **
Ehud then approached him [the fat king] while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his summer palace and said, "I have a message from God for you." As the king rose from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. Even the handle sank in after the blade, which came out his back. Ehud did not pull the sword out, and the fat closed in over it. Then Ehud went out to the porch; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

**Judges Chapter 19 **
But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, "Get up; let's go." But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home.
When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it said, "Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!"

**Joshua Chapter 10 **
When they had brought these kings to Joshua, he summoned all the men of Israel and said to the army commanders who had come with him, "Come here and put your feet on the necks of these kings." So they came forward and placed their feet on their necks.
Joshua said to them, "Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Be strong and courageous. This is what the Lord will do to all the enemies you are going to fight." Then Joshua struck and killed the kings and hung them on five trees, and they were left hanging on the trees until evening.

**1 Samuel Chapter 31 **
Saul said to his armor-bearer, "Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me." But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him.

**Numbers Chapter 31 **
Moses was angry with the officers of the army-the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds-who returned from the battle. "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord 's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

**Deuteronomy Chapter 25 **
If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.
There are two things to notice in these quotes. First, they are all disgusting. Second, they all tell stories about men and women doing things that are utterly and completely irrelevant. Why do you care about a woman killing a man with a tent peg, or a man cutting up his concubine and mailing her body parts around? Do you care about Moses telling his soldiers, "kill everyone, but save the virgins for yourselves"? If God is going to take the time to write a book that will last for millennia, why fill it with such useless material?

Another problem with the Bible is that it frequently contradicts the Standard Model of God. Here is an example from Leviticus 21:17:

Say to Aaron, None of your descendants throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, a man blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or a man who has an injured foot or an injured hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a defect in his sight or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles; no man of the descendants of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the LORD's offerings by fire; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the bread of his God. He may eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy and of the holy things, but he shall not come near the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries; for I am the LORD who sanctify them.
Doesn't it seem odd for an all-loving God to discriminate against people with handicaps and genetic problems?

Here is another example. In the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 21:18, the Bible says:

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard." Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Doesn't that seem to contradict the sixth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill"? And doesn't it seem just a tad harsh? If we applied this sort of philosophy today (as Christians should, since they proclaim the Bible and the Ten Commandments to be God's infallible word), millions of our teenagers would need to be stoned to death.

Here is another example. On the day Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, he discovers that the Israelites have created a golden calf. To punish the people, Moses gathers a group of men and takes the following action in the book of Exodus, Chapter 32:

"Then he [Moses] said to them, "This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' " The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.
So... one minute we have God carving into stone, "Thou shalt not kill." Then the next minute we have God telling each man to strap a sword to his side and lay waste to thousands. Wouldn't you expect the almighty ruler of the universe to be slightly more consistent than this? 3,000 dead people is a lot of commandment breaking.

Some Christians try to find an out for all of this irrelevance and contradiction by saying, "Well, I don't believe the Old Testament. God sent Jesus to cancel it out." But that really is not the case. If God wrote the Bible, then God fully intended for the Bible -- the entire Bible -- to be a timeless book. In Isaiah 40:8 God says, "The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand for ever." In Matthew 5:18 Jesus says, "For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." When Jesus says "the law" what he is talking about is all of the laws that God lays down in the Old Testament. Those laws include everything that God says about slavery, misogyny, animal sacrifice, stoning teenagers, cutting off hands and all the rest.

Here is an experiment for you to try. Pick up any handy Bible. Open the book to a random page. Read it. You tell me -- is this a book that amazes you?

Be honest with yourself. Does the Bible strike you as a book filled with brilliance, or with nonsense?

Think about what you are reading.

What do I mean when I say, "think about what you are reading?" Let's use Leviticus 15, as an example. The passage is discussing "discharge." Why doesn't God in Leviticus 15 say:
"There are 47 different types of abnormal discharges that I have inflicted on the human body when I created it. They are, in order of frequency of occurrence: 1) Discharge from an infected skin lesion, normally caused by some sort of cut or puncture wound. What is happening here is a bacterial infection. First off, whenever you get a cut or puncture wound, you should wash it carefully with an antiseptic solution to kill the bacteria, and then cover the wound with a sterile dressing to keep bacteria out. Also, make sure that your tetanus vaccination is up to date. These steps will prevent 98.7% of all infections. But if the wound does become infected, what you should do is incise and drain the wound. This will be painful, but it is important because if you allow the pus to build up..."

God should know all of this stuff -- according to Christians he is all-knowing. When reading Leviticus 15, any normal human being asks questions like these:
Why didn't God transcribe a useful medical guide into the Bible for these primitive people, rather than transcribing rituals that accomplish nothing?
Why doesn't God explain how to manufacture antiseptic solutions, sterile dressings, tetanus vaccines and antibiotic creams?
Even better, why not explain how to build a Star Trek Tricorder to instantly heal the wound?
Even better, why didn't God design the human immune system to prevent all infections in the first place and eliminate the discharges completely? Why would God intentionally inflict human beings with all of these different types of abnormal discharges?
Extending on these ideas, why doesn't God use the Bible to explain metallurgy, chemistry, biology, physics, manufacturing, mathematics, medicine, engineering, etc. to these primitive people so they can dramatically accelerate their development?

Why, in other words, is the Bible so useless? Why does the author of the Bible, who is supposed to be God, who is supposed to be all-knowing, know so little? Why is the knowledge of the author limited to the knowledge of the primitive men who wrote the book? If you think about what you are reading in the Bible in the context of an all-knowing God who supposedly wrote it, none of it makes any sense. But if you think about the Bible as being a book written by primitive men like you would find in the remote regions of Afghanistan today, it makes complete sense.

After reading the Bible passages, what is your common sense telling you about the Bible? Do these passages from the Bible match up with your view of what an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful being would write down in his book? Does it make sense to you that a book created by an all-knowing God would contain so much nonsense? Are you left agape as you read the Bible, or are you dumbfounded by its utter stupidity?

Weigh the evidence. Does it seem more likely that the Bible was written by God, or by a bunch of primitive men?

It is easy to prove to yourself that God did not write the Bible. We can do it in the following way.

I challenge you to go on national TV with me. We are going to go on a major, nationally broadcast show with a major host like Oprah, Larry King, Bill O'Reilly, etc.

Here's all that you have to do. You are going to read for 30 minutes from the New International Version or the New American Standard Version (your choice) of the Bible. This should be a dream come true for you -- here you will have the chance to spread the power of God's word directly to the nation.

There is only one thing that I ask. I want you to let me choose the verses that you will read.

Would you take the challenge? Of course not. If I pick the passages, I can make you look like a total idiot on national television. I can have you read verses about slavery, misogyny, animal sacrifice, child massacre, sliced up concubines, tent pegs and all the rest. No one in their right mind would take this challenge.

This is how we know, without a doubt, that God did not write the Bible. If an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing creator of the universe actually wrote this book, it would not be filled with so much idiocy. Slavery, misogyny and child-massacre are abominations and we all know it. The reason why the Bible contains this material is because primitive men wrote the Bible, not God.

If the Bible really were the error-free word of an all-powerful God, it would be profound, meaningful, timeless, fascinating, and enlightening both at the spiritual level and at the technological level. It would tell us things that we did not already know. It would stun us with the brilliance of the author. We would look at the words in the Bible in awe.

Instead it is clear that God had nothing to do with the Bible. Simply open the book up and read it. The Bible is the work of primitive men who lived 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, without a hint of guidance from the "all-knowing creator of the universe." The previous content clearly demonstrate that beyond the shadow of any doubt.

If you are a Christian, this leaves you with two choices:
You can continue to proclaim that the Bible is the Word of God. You do that knowing that it is a lie. Quite clearly an all-knowing, all-loving God cannot also advocate slavery. Nor can he be sexist.

You can make a rational decision based on clear evidence: you can reject the Bible. You can accept that the Bible is the work of primitive men and is therefore completely irrelevant to us today. You can reject the Bible's authority, and you can reject all the people who claim that the Bible is a message from God.
Once you accept that the Bible is a book written by primitive men rather than God, it is a very powerful realization. It has many implications:
The Bible claims that Jesus is the Son of God. Now that you know that the Bible is the work of men rather than God, you can see reality -- Jesus was a man like anyone else.

Both Christianity and Judaism are invalid as religions, having lost the Bible as a theological foundation.

The Bible can no longer be used under "God's authority" as a tool of oppression. For example, take the Bible's position on women. In 1 Corinthians the Bible says: "As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." That's about as oppressive as you can get. Or look at the way the Bible discusses homosexuals. Leviticus 20:13 states: "If a man lies with a male as a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them." Conservative Christians are quite fond of these passages, and use them whenever they wish to justify their prejudice against women and homosexuals. They do so, in their minds, with God's blessing. Since it is quite obvious that the Bible is not the word of God, we can see that people who quote these verses are simple bigots rather than God's messengers. The next time you hear people try to marginalize or degrade anyone using the Bible, you are able to completely ignore them.

The Bible's story of creation is irrelevant, so we can completely ignore "creationists" and the proponents of "intelligent design". God did not create human beings as described in the Bible -- the entire creation story is a mythological legend written by primitive men. The concept of "original sin" and the concept of mankind's divine creation are invalid.

You have no soul and there is no eternal life after death.

An amazing 59% of the American population believes that the Bible's book of Revelation will actually come true. Now it is easy to see that the Book of Revelation is a work of pure fiction.

And so on…
The Bible clearly is not the word of God. The slavery passages in provide more than enough evidence to prove that. When you think about it and truly let that fact sink in, the full implications are enormous. Once you eliminate the Bible, it is amazing what you eliminate with it.

As intelligent people, what do we do with the Christians -- millions of them -- who insist that the Bible is the word of God? Let me answer that question with another question: What do we do with people who believe in astrology? You know the people I am talking about -- they believe in horoscopes, and they believe that the alignment of the planets affects our lives on earth today. What do we do with them? We ignore them. We do not take them seriously. We exclude them from reasonable public discourse and debate.

If a presidential candidate were to stand up and say, "the alignment of the planets indicates that in foreign policy, we should follow a path that…," or if he/she were to end a speech with "Jupiter bless America," we would not vote for this candidate.

People who believe in the Bible are in the same boat. Why would we listen to anyone who believes in slavery, hates women and supports a God who is a flagrant baby-killer? Do we want people like that holding public office, sitting on our courts, running our corporations or teaching our children?

The Bible is clearly the work of primitive men, many of whom were insane. Anyone with common sense can see that. Exodus 21:20-21 alone is enough to prove it. When people insist that the Bible is the word of God, we should ignore them and exclude them from public discourse. It's a free wolrd, and people have a right to their superstitions in the privacy of their own homes. But no one is required to take them seriously in a public forum.

I can't believe this thread is still going, Loli i give you the longest post award XD

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Quote from ranmaru

I can't believe this thread is still going, Loli i give you the longest post award XD

Seriously 😐 ...this is never gonna end 🤢

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This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your signature to help him gain world domination!
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Well no one can contradict me so it SHOULD end. Unless opinions beat facts

(American legal system or just Americans in general)

@ Loli

Well, like I've told many people over the course of this thread, I'm not looking for a fight or a debate. If your looking for God, I'll tell you what I know. Well, I'll be honest, I didn't read the entirety of your post, but I think I got the general idea of your argument. Please correct me if I'm mistaken. There was a post while back, that made the similar style argument that your making, with God endorsing slavery and sexism. A pretty accurate reply was made by a fellow member, Varna. He is not a believer so hopefully his statement will hold a little bit more weight with you than mine would. He basically said the old Testament was a lot of stories, that depicted the nature of fallen man. So just because a story talks about slavery or beating women or murder or rape or you name it doesn't mean that God encourages that. In fact if you look through the Bible I think you'll find such actions very counter to the nature of God.

Just as a suggestion when you make a point with the hopes of educating people i wouldn't make a post with a gagillion different arguments, its very hard to follow and I think the majority of the people would skim it anyway. And I definitely agree with you, you can make scripture say anything you want, if you show people only the verse and don't explain anything else, I'm sure the mere shock of seeing the word slavery or women being silenced would encourage people to see things at face value. But if you're interested in finding God, I'll leave an invite on the table, pick it up if you ever feel so inclined. I don't know much about the Old testament to give you an accurate representation but I have the basics in doctrine so if you ever feel disatisfied with anyone of my answers I'd ask someone that's been to seminary and that has the context to go along with the text.

Quote from Zubz313

@ Loli

Well, like I've told many people over the course of this thread, I'm not looking for a fight or a debate. If your looking for God, I'll tell you what I know. Well, I'll be honest, I didn't read the entirety of your post, but I think I got the general idea of your argument. Please correct me if I'm mistaken. There was a post while back, that made the similar style argument that your making, with God endorsing slavery and sexism. A pretty accurate reply was made by a fellow member, Varna. He is not a believer so hopefully his statement will hold a little bit more weight with you than mine would. He basically said the old Testament was a lot of stories, that depicted the nature of fallen man. So just because a story talks about slavery or beating women or murder or rape or you name it doesn't mean that God encourages that. In fact if you look through the Bible I think you'll find such actions very counter to the nature of God.

Just as a suggestion when you make a point with the hopes of educating people i wouldn't make a post with a gagillion different arguments, its very hard to follow and I think the majority of the people would skim it anyway. And I definitely agree with you, you can make scripture say anything you want, if you show people only the verse and don't explain anything else, I'm sure the mere shock of seeing the word slavery or women being silenced would encourage people to see things at face value. But if you're interested in finding God, I'll leave an invite on the table, pick it up if you ever feel so inclined. I don't know much about the Old testament to give you an accurate representation but I have the basics in doctrine so if you ever feel disatisfied with anyone of my answers I'd ask someone that's been to seminary and that has the context to go along with the text.

I'm surpised that an intellectual like you would continue to believe. So you're agreeing with me but still choose to believe?