Attempting to answer this question with a variant of proclaiming its inviolate sanctity denies its history. Following is a basic overview of the Bible's revision history. In the 1st century, as Christianity was being established, Church Fathers began compiling Gospel accounts and letters of the apostles into a collection which eventually became known as the New Testament. Once combined with the Hebrew scriptures which comprise the old testament, we begin to see the formation of the collection of manuscripts that have been translated, edited and sometimes omitted on its path to becoming the Bible we have today. From these manuscripts several fledgling versions of the Bible emerged. At the end of the 4th century Pope Damasus I asked Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (St. Jerome) to assemble a "go to" Latin version of the bible, translating from existing Greek and Hebrew manuscripts wherever necessary. Though not intended to be an editorial process, this translational effort did in fact serve as the first major revision of the Bible, producing what historians refer to today as The Latin Vulgate. This became the first widely used version of the Bible usurping the validity of all other previous versions. Because the Bible only existed in Latin and no copies of it were owned by laymen at this time, from the 4th century going forward the church of Rome hierarchy informed the masses of both what was contained within the Bible and what it all meant. This situation existed until the late 14th century when an Englishman, John Wycliff, working with the Latin Vulgate exclusively and with the help of colleagues and assistants produced the first English contemporary vernacular version of the Bible. (circa 1382) Over the next two centuries a number of derivative and/or parallell English language revisions appeared, including but not limited to: the Bishops Bible, Tyndale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, Whitchurch's, the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible. The next great revision of the Bible took place at the behest of England's King James I and was conducted by a nominated committee of almost 50 men, divided into 6 teams who worked on the project from 1604 to 1611. This work again underwent significant revision in 1629 and 1638. Following is a partial list of derivative works or significant revisions that have taken place since the time of King James I [table="width: 600, align: left"] [tr] [td] Challoner Webster's Young's Literal Revised Darby Joseph Smith Quaker American Standard Rotherham's Emphasized Ferrar Fenton Worrell New Testament Knox Basic English Revised Standard Anchor New World New English Bible New American Standard Good News Jerusalem New American Living[/td] [td] New International New Century Bethel New King James New Jerusalem Recovery New Revised Standard Revised English Contemporary English The Message Clear Word New Life 21st Century King James Third Millennium New International Reader's New International Inclusive Language God's Word New Living Complete Jewish Bible International Standard Holman Christian Standard[/td] [td] World English English Standard Today's New International New English Translation (NET Bible) New English Translation of the Septuagint Orthodox Study Bible The Voice Common English Bible WGC Illustrated Apostolic Bible Polyglot Open English Bible Eastern Orthodox Bible New American Bible Revised Edition Lexham English Bible[/td] [/tr] [/table]
That is the underlying and inescapable implication but I have also found that many of those who are literal interpreters either deny this history or are ignorant of it.
I don't know if that is a good parallel but I feel we can certainly say that the most important milestone for our understanding of living things was Darwin's theory of evolution.
I ment that it's all smoke and mirrors,, and that it does not matter what name your local deity goes by. That the real and only truth about our existence can be found in the book noted above,, the world will be a better place when we can dispense with deities.
I completely agree. If we live long enough to see the day when religious beliefs are marginalized and rational thought is predominant in our daily lives, it can only be a vast improvement over how our species has conducted itself so far.
While I believe that is true, I suspect a more accurate description may be slightly better, or marginally better. I watch people interact on subjects entirely outside the scope of deism or religion and I see every bit as much ignorance and vitriol as I do in any religious argument, with the same zeal and starry eyed true belief in things for which there is only marginal evidence, if any at all. Lets also not forget one of the greatest butchers of the last 100 years was the atheist Joseph Stalin. Idolatry remains part of every western culture, with women throwing themselves at musicians and fainting at Obama speeches. When god is officially pronounced dead by most people on this planet, we will still be only slightly ahead of the apes. More knowledgeable and informed for certain, but in every other way, the same scared, cruel and primitive bastards we have always been.
Joseph Stalin's beliefs or lack of,, are irrelevant, the true fact is that he was just a nut job... And there is a long list of nut jobs, some long gone, some still around, that were/are responsible for a lot of hurt. As for women throwing themselves at musicians, when we were still living in caves, they would throw themselves at the guy with the biggest club, or who caught the most goats. This is just a fact of life, and is hardwired into our DNA, and rightly so,, the guy that catches the most goats should have more mates.. This is also noted in the book two posts up.. It's not really Idolatry it's just as Charles Darwin predicted, it's part of our evolution process.
You left out "some still to be born long after god is dead". Other than that, I can certainly agree that Stalin's lack of belief in a deity was not a primary factor in his murderous brutality, and the godless nature of his minions not a factor in their willingness to carry out his orders. That was the point of my post. I have a hard time comparing a skinny musician, strung out on drugs to the guy with the biggest club in the caveman era. His seed is probably not the best, nor the most likely to survive, not to mention most musicians wind up poor. Perhaps the evolutionary principal at play here is a bit more like the Asch conformity experiment, where people will declare black to be white, up to be down, large to be small, or any other untrue thing to fit in with their group, for fear the group turn on them and they become isolated from the herd. We see this behavior playing out today even among the most godless and educated groups of people on this planet. Something else to consider. Deities were created for purely Darwinian reasons.
Elaborating a bit more on this: I take this to mean that the world would be a better place if we can ever reach a point where an imaginary divine authority is no longer used as justification for discriminatory, aggressive or criminal actions. History provides us with countless examples of humans performing atrocious actions while believing that they were fulfilling the will of their chosen deity. Again, I agree completely.
We are on a path,, and the rules were set long before we crawled on to dry land with our still webbed feet, and our tails dragging behind us.. We must learn to deal with local deities,, we must see them for what they are, obstacles on our collective path,, set there by zealots to pull us backwards.. we must not let them.. Some day,, not far away,, some smart guy is going to get the warp engine figured out,, and we will be bumping into even more local deities. We will need to know how to deal with them,, just look at the trouble our own ones caused,, never mind new flavored ones... Again, they will be blocking our path..
I'd say we can learn a lot from Democratic Kampuchea in how to deal with deists. The People's Republic of China also set a shining example in it's dealing with those wrong headed Tibetans and their silly backward religion. Our future is bright and those who oppose us must be dealt with in order to make the world a better place. Interesting factoid. The large majority of terrorist acts within the boundaries of the United States in the last decade have been committed by godless left wing zealots who felt they were making the world a better place.
I like my Bible the way it is , unrevised for 2000 years . The fact that every fraking nutjob of a leader changed the Bible to suit hie needs is one of the main things that's wrong with Christianity .
I quite like those backward Tibetans they live at the top of the world,, it's a big job just getting or out of there, They bother nobody, Their religion is a non reach out keep it in house kind. And China would pack up and head off home, if it wasn't for all the minerals that the mountains in Tibet are packed with. The religions I worry about are the reach out kind, the must convert to or die ones.. The kind that might send a man like Cortez out to nearly wipe out a whole continent, it was no accident that he left a sick man behind in every village he and his men passed through. The kind that think that their GOD gave them Palestine even though the Palestinians were already living there.. The kind that fly planes into tall buildings or put a bounty on the head of some poor novelist. Them Ones.. We can leave the poor dalai lama alone,, he doesn't even have a phone, or CNN
You mean its possible for a pack of atheists to violate a pack of religious folks basic human rights and dignity for wrong headed thinking, or to take what they have for the good of the collective? Say its not so! I'm sure that has never happened in history, ever! Well, I cant disagree with you there, except for the fact Cortez is long dead and the days of christian church based imperialism are more than a century old. Oh, and the fact region of Palestine was divided up by Britain with the approval of the UN in the wake of WWII, not by GOD, or pixies, or the flying spaghetti monster. But outside of those few points of fact, I could not agree more. It does seem like a change of tact for you though, where just a few posts ago, you were talking about dealing with all local deities. You are willing to cut the Tibetans some slack, I cant help but wonder if you would be willing to cut one or two of the others some slack as well. Perhaps the Wicca and their silly worship of deities in nature? I realize girls dancing naked around a bond fire in a celebration of fertility may piss some people off, but I for one vote to let these people cling to their backward ways. There are also a myriad of Christians that live nearby my house, though I couldn't tell you whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Born Again, or what have you. Perhaps a little of everything? I suspect I am duty bound to go harass them about their idiotic beliefs for the good the collective, in spite of the fact they are actually reasonably good neighbors, and they never pester me about their faith. Maybe I should hand out pamphlets that say "Atheist Zone: No worshipping, gospel music, prayer, or discussion of fictitious god characters"
Congratulations you won the "I shat my pants during history class" prize , get a history book and read it . Those who you call palestinians are nothing more the offspring of arab jihadist invaders . So do explain how they where "living there" before Mo ?
Yes cut the Tibetans some slack, and there is also some lost tribes in the amazon rainforest that belive some kind of tree god,, we can cut them some slack also. Oh.. and Britain divided up my country also, there was 13 million of us when they arrived and when we got rid of them from most of our land after a 1000 year occupation there was only 3 million of us left. (They kept a small bit of our land, but they can have it). But there good neighbors now, and I am very happy to live next to them, they have slightly different religion then us, but they keep to themselfs and let us watch some of their TV channels.
Just because Palestinians speak Arabic does not mean they are from Saudi Arabia.The Egyptians speak Arabic, but they are most certainly not from Saudi Arabia. Palestinians were Christians and Jews before Muslims captured Palestine in 637. They later converted to Islam and started speaking Arabic. The British withdrew from Palestine on 1 August 1948. They did not divide Palestine. A group of dimwits used the "holy bible" to rob the Palestinians of their land. The bible is a dangerous book and it needs to be revised.
So UN resolution 181 is just a figment of everyone's collective imagination except yours? I suppose you are technically right, as Arab rejection of the partition left the Jews to do what Britain would not, but the legal partition of Palestine was briefly a fact. Ignoring 181, it would be better to simply describe the West Bank as portion of land Jordan lost to Israel in the war of 1967. You might want to have a chat with Mr. Abbass as well, as he is using resolution 181 as the legal basis for recognition of the Palestinian state. It seems he believes the division of Palestine happened, while you do not. Abbas surprised Enrique Zimmerman, who interviewed the PA president for Channel 2, by confessing that the Arabs' refusal to accept the partition decision was a mistake that he is trying to rectify. Don't worry. I'm sure that should he manage to get the frothing mouths in Hamas under control, and actually reach a peace agreement with Israel, the fine Palestinian people will simply vote into power some newer more radical terrorist organization willing to oppose any agreement for peace that leaves Isreal in tact.