Religion: a comfort blanket for the weak?

[Tlicious]

I'm religouse, but one flaw ive found in the bible is, well of course you know the beginning with adam and eve, 2 humans started the whole earths population, but if there were only 2 humans then where did all of these other races of people come from? It's really starting to bug me

[Funk Doctor]

Simple: it's a bunch of crock.

[Caro]

-From the well read and scholarly Sacha.

It's not a crock of shit. Neither is it the holy word of God incarnate IMO, but it is revelatory of how a culture conceives the divine, and is therefore worth studying. Saying "it's a crock of shit" when you have never studied it is premature and an opinion that you don't really have the knowledge to back up.

Love Caro

PS My dad brought up an interesting point the last time I debated him about the validity of the Bible. He said that for thousands of years, the Bible was hand copied in Hebrew, a language that has no vowels in the alphabet and no spaces between words. He said that there is phenomenal accuracy in these manuscripts; that no other text has been as faithfully hand-reproduced and maintained with as few transcription errors as the Torah. That such error-free transcription over thousands of years (have you ever tried to hand-copy even one page, in English? Errors are a common occurance) can only point to Divine inspiration. If God is big enough to create the Universe, the sun and the stars and all of infinity, why shouldn't he be powerful enough to have His book written down the way He wanted it?

Now, I've always maintained, due to the ethically questionable material in the Old Testament, that it was invented by the priestly class of hebrews, that it was revelatory of their conception of God, but hardly the work of God himself. My dad's argument is rather hard to overcome - something I hadn't considred. They certainly didn't teach me about the supernatural qualities of perfectly copied manuscripts over thousands of years here at my Jesuit university. Another reason, according to my dad, to be wary of the intelectuals.

[Funk Doctor]

Evolution backs me up.

Creation = BS
Adam & Eve = BS

Of course you're free to believe what you want. Just don't try and sell that religion bull to me. Won't work.

And why can't the all-powerful God intervene in today's fucked up world? You'd think he has more important shit to do then to make sure his book gets copied right.

"He's testing our faith." is not a valid answer.

[CardHore]

ok i hate to follow a post like that up with this. But how can you believe in God etc. when the bible is so inconsistent with modern day knowledge of the world. Forinstance what are dinosaur bones doing in the ground if they arent mentions in the bible? (i asume because of the whole adam and eve thing) and saying the devil put them there will not work. Now i know this is a really stupid post as i dont have much knowledge of this topic but i dont believe in religion at all because it has been proved wrong many times by discoverys etc

i bet that reads as a load of bolocks to any with half a brain that knows about this topic but hey least i tried.

[Funk Doctor]

Actually God put those bones there to test our faith.

[Caro]

Concerning evolution and the Bible:

The bible doesn't necessarily contradict with evolution. The creation story must be read for what it is: a story. It is a story about forming order from chaos, and in stylistic respects, it mirrors older Mesopotamian creation stories. Anyway (I'm all stoned now, but I shall try and continue) the Hebrew creation account says that God formed the earth in 6 days. What is a day to God? Couldn't it be millions of years? Many Christians believe that God created us through evolution. It was a lot harder for the Christians of several hundred years ago to accept what science was telling them about the true nature of exisitence and to reconcile truth with their faith. Truth and faith have nothing to do with one another!

I believe that God is the creative force which started existence, the force behind the "big bang" if you will. I do not believe in the Hebrew God of the Old testament, the one who favors a certain group of people over other groups and sanctions their violence. After reading and studying a fair amount of it, I can appreciate the history and interpretation of God by those people, which has been enormously influential in every sector of human institution worldwide. I believe in the transformative figure of Jesus; the differences that He brought to faith and humanity are agreeable to my reasoning. Yet I do not practice religion or consider myself religious.

"God" hasn't been proven wrong by science; science (and the science of literary criticism) have instead proved that the Hebrew theological record of their past (the Old testament) should not be taken so literally: it's revelatory of God, but it's not God.

[CardHore]

Firstly in reply to the top of that post, there are many things you can twist. Forinstance saying that a day to god could be any length of time. thats just to convinient. My view of religion is it is only there to make our life seem meaningful. Religion has been proved wrong to many times by science for me to even consider otherwise.

now the second part i agree on. God to me is the force that made the whole 'big bang' happen. Because i believe that there is a limit to chance. So many things would have had to have happened at the same time to make the 'big bang' happen, and i believe that 'god' was behind this.

This does not mean i believe in religion (when is say religion i mean the worshiping of a god/gods) as im not into the whole worshiping something that will never physically effect me.

if that made sense reply to it please

[weedguru tom]

in my eyes like aristotle said, god is the prime mover, i agree. it was the first thing to start the rest of the universe movin` and science have told us how the big bang happernd. but i dont remember how lol

[Funk Doctor]

Scientists have evidence that the Big Bang as we know it was only the last in a series of perhaps millions of bangs. After studying various radio waves in space, they have devised a theory that the universe is like a balloon, expanding as much as possible, then deflating and then expanding again.

[El_Bristow]

Scientists have evidence that the Big Bang as we know it was only the last in a series of perhaps millions of bangs. After studying various radio waves in space, they have devised a theory that the universe is like a balloon, expanding as much as possible, then deflating and then expanding again.

- sounds like the lungs of a stoner lol

i have a respect for the buhdist way of life, but the idea of a god or an afterlife never really caught on with me. i used to beleive in something, but from the age of 10 i had depression till 20 kinda just stopped beleving during that time. i saw the suffering of the world and the despair that any god must have felt to live in a universe that it created itself...