i dont think anyone can disagree with that

overall i totally agree BUT i'd say that the need to be right has been the backbone of social and cultural progression rather than actual human progression.

Just a question here...
Existence of Jesus aside, do you trust more in the bible's ability to teach your children morality, or your own?

I can agree with this.

My own. I think one has a healthier outlook on things when they learn for themselves what it means to hold morals. I believe one does this by first knowing right from wrong and then trial and error. Making mistakes and learning the hard way (to me) is the best method. I honestly don't ever want to say "it's not right to kill because the bible says so" but when they have bible based questions from what they heard in church or Sunday school I will say something along the lines of "these are stories designed to give examples of right from wrong". Man I hated Sunday School... I may need to talk this over with the fiancee again :)

Yeah that makes alot of sense. You can't just impose your beliefs on people they got to learn things for themselves. And plus, that way, it just feels more real instead of just following somethin' that you don't fully understand and all. I think it's safe to say we've all been guilty of that at one time or another and, for me at least, it just doesn't feel like it's right. I guess it just depends on who you are.

I hate the idea that it's wrong to kill just because the bible says so .. there are perfectly good reasons why one should not kill and that's one of'em, yet it seems for some, it's the only one they wanna teach .. :p

Yeah, if you don't truly understand why you are or aren't doing something you simply aren't thinking. I heard a great quote the other day that sums it all up "the opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity".

there are times when it's necessary to kill, like when you are in danger of being killed. I think as a general rule of thumb it's good to not go around killing people for the hell of it but if I have a kid that plans on doing that I don't think the bible or myself will help much in the way of morals. Some people are just plain ****ed in the head.

yes some people are plain ****ed in the head but there are ways that that could be changed their stupid ****. someone could try to help them out or maybe if they find faith they could work their craziness out. and i dont consider the bible morals for me really just a guideline on rules to live by. and standards of humanity.

What would be the difference, then, between the bible and a well-respected human of our time deciding to eradicate the current bible and writing his own bible that contained all the moral guidelines in context with our current society?

Without paying mind to the obvious backlash from the religious community, would the rest of us welcome that action?

Just wondering about different peoples perspectives on how necessary the bible currently is in a non-religious context.

in non-religious context the bible would just be a guide on how one should live their life I would imagine. If you want to think of it on that level there are tons of current day "bibles" out in bookstores everywhere.

I don't need the bible to tell me to be a straight male who never shaves or eats shellfish.

i'm an atheist. i have morals. that seems to be an impossible paradox in the christian world because in as their regime and beleifs have evolved they seem to still think that the only reason to be a good person is that great milk shake pool in the sky and to not buring the fires of hell.

i love jesus and try and follow his teachings as best as i can. he is not god. that is retarded.

even ghandi has been quoted "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians
. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

in conclusion everything you know is wrong, there is no good or bad. humans created those things to control the very narrow scope of what we know to be true. there is only energy and matter and speculation.

If there's no good or bad then how can you quote Ghandi and treat it like Christians are any less moral than you? Selective relativism isn't relativism at all.

that's incorrect. there most definitely is a good or bad. they just don't directly correlate with right and wrong.

wow my mouth is full of words i didn't say.

Hooray. You all are still arguing about something that we will never completely agree on. I'm going to go read my teen bible now.

I'm about 60 pages behind in this discussion, so I'm sure my point as been addressed repeatedly, but you quote from the Book of Genesis, which is not exclusively a Christian story.

Genesis is the first book of the Jewish Torah, the most sacred writings in Judaism). The Torah was canonized into part of the Christian Bible per the Council of Nicea. Islam also recognizes the Torah as sacred writings.

These stories are extremely old myths (thousands of years old as they were probably written around 1400 B.C.) that were used to explain the "creation." Judaism believes that Moses wrote these books with divine inspiration from G-D, but ultimately they are moral stories that had relevancy to their time period.

It is harder to take these stories literally now because firstly, they have been translated from the original ancient Hebrew language many times over and secondly, the stories will subtly change through time - I don't believe the forbidden fruit was introduces as an apple until the 17th century.

Nobody claims the fruit was an apple. They just needed something fruity looking for visual reenactment.

I love apples. They're delicious

if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

Do you know anything about evolution?

no, that's why i asked the question.

well then...

unlike video games where an upgrade (read: evolution) takes place not everything gets auto-updated to the new tech. old video games depicted this more accurately where you could still have 1st tier units and final tier units on the same battlefield.

basically, just because something evolves from something else doesn't mean that the original species goes extinct or immediately adapts itself into the new species. we're talking about a process that theoretically spans thousands of years after all, it seems logical that the overlap would last for centuries, no?

i'm sure someone with a proper biological background (Tore..........) would be able to provide a more scientific explanation.

It's about divergence and speciation. Not all higher apes became humans. Imagine millions of years back, there would be a common ancestor of orangutans, gorillas, humans, chimpanzees and bonobos ..

http://info.mcmaster.ca/~mlou/lts/im...pe_species.jpg

That common ancestor was at the very bottom. When it reached the first fork up the phylogenetic tree, that means that the species then became two species where one branched out and started evolving to what we know today as orangutans. Moving one more fork up on the tree, the species that would become gorillas diverged. This means that going back millions of years on that tree, f.ex to 6 million years ago, there were only 3 species on this chart - orangutans, gorillas and the common ancestor of humans and chimps/bonobos. Make a bigger tree and go back and you could find the common ancestor between humans and cats. Even further back, humans and birds - humans and fish and so on.

There are many factors in speciation. The most obvious and perhaps easiest way to imagine it happen is if you have one ancestor species and it spreads over a large area, then some of them become geographically isolated from others of it's species. Just imagine one population at one side of a chasm or a mountain and another population on the other side. The environmental conditions are not the same on both and the populations can't interbreed, so over time they both adapt to the conditions on their respective side and as a result, diverge and become two separate species.

In truth, there are many things that could add to speciation (doesn't have to be by isolation of populations which is called allopatric speciation) and it's a hot topic still being studied by evolutionary scientist.

Feel free to ask if there's anything else you'd like to know.

that makes sense. Thanks.

Yeah I don't think this topic is even worth arguing, no one is going to change their mind (unless they actually realise which side they truely belong on, which is rare).

Go the teen bible! I have one from primary school that I still use. It's got random artwork in it that's a bit childish but the content itself is pretty standard.

I cant believe someone actually posted that

It's really sad that any of this has anything to do with religion.

Maybe we could talk about the scientific probability of the hand of God scooping up some dirt and fashioning a man out of it?

Tell that Florida!

I think it's a valid question when pondering this sorta stuff.

There's probably a lot of people who don't know the answer to that question, simple though it may seem. I prefer it when people ask rather than pretend knowledge and just argue against something they don't really know anything about.

and that's one to grow on!

I attended church last Sunday and must say it was an interesting sermon. While dissecting all of my former knowledge and trying to piece it all together in a way I can truly understand the priest (coincidentally) made an analogy to "understanding something completely" to understanding the workings of a car. One must take it apart and analyze its individual contents and then try to put it back together again until it works. I guess if after one takes religion apart piece by piece and can truly put it back together and it works for them in their life then it makes sense for them to maintain their faith. At least that's how I came to perceive it, he may have been just talking about the teachings of Jesus but my mind chose to see it in that way since I am pondering so much these days.

I've tried to understand religion in that sense - by taking apart the pieces. Religions are made up by many thoughts or "ideas". The idea there is a god, the idea there is a hell, the idea that you can gain supernatural powers over things you normally have no control of, the idea that you'll get rewarded if you live "right", the idea that you should mission, the idea that you should alienate and exclude those who are not part of or leave your faith.

Christianity (broadly speaking) has all these ideas and more :

• There's a god
• There's a hell you and others go to if you don't live life according to what's "right"
• There's a heaven which is a reward for living your life according to the religion
• You can gain power over things you normally have no power over - for example by prayers or healing
• You should convert others (mission)
• Extremists and particularly isolist groups use alienation/exclusion as a way to keep people in the fold

These are not just found in christianity. They're just some of very few ideas that can be used to make up any religion - like parts of a car might add to making a working vehicle. What I've come to conclude is that religions evolve and change over time, adopting or creating new ideas and abolishing others. It's an adaptive process and for a religion to be successful, it has to contain ideas that either appeal to people (ex. heaven/healing) or scare people into beliving/motivate them to converting others whom they care about for their "own good" (ex. hell/mission).

When you analyse the above "parts", you'll start to understand they're highly successful ideas that make up many religions and it makes sense that they have all "evolved" independently of eachother many times. They make religions competitive. If we wipe the slate clean and make everyone forget and then let religions form again, these ideas are sure to reappear, wether true or made up.

It's part us - what we need, what we fear and what we strive for - and part consequence because competition between religions will result in a selection or "favour" for ideas in that religion which recruits more followers and makes it more competivite against others.

In other words, religions will appear wether or not they are actually true. Most followers of religions have to agree with me on that simply by looking at how many religions there are out there.

I doubt that's the point the priest wanted to make though ;)

Ha! no, I doubt that's what the priest was talking about (good post btw). I think people should dabble in multiple religions in their lifetimes if they choose to be religious. It's like only going to McDonald's all your life without ever giving Wendy's a shot. Imagine running into a KFC and blowing it up because Burger King is the only true fast food joint? Seriously, I think it should be as simple as taking the parts of each religion you personally agree with and living by that. People would be much happier and I'm sure God would understand because essentially everybody is sorta praying to the same God anyway (atleast I think). I realize the entire system would collapse if anything logical was entered into it, but I can dream can't I?

i dont think people that are Chrisitans would want to "dabble" in Buddhism

Well tbh NOONE on Earth knows whether there is a Heaven or a Hell, But some people need Faith in there lives to go on through out the day. That's all religion has to rely on, it's Faith. Without that your defeating the purpose of religion. Whether there is a God or not I believe some people need/have Faith to live there lives

I hope there is a God........cuz I don't want to die and nothing happens

cuz then there is no point in living and having memories if you can't carry them with u

And this is why the belief of Religion was even thought of...But there is no way to prove it at this time

There's no point in living if you don't go existig after you're dead .. so the whole point of life is that you'll remember it in the afterlife? Life only has worth from the perspective of being dead? There's no point in existing if you're not gonna do it forever?

I don't really get that logic and neither do I believe in an afterlife. That whole point of view seems rather bleak and depressing by my standards :p

Jesus said "The kingdom of heaven is within you" as well as "seek ye' first the kingdom of heaven and all things will be added unto you". Between these 2 statements I can hold a genuine belief that the message Jesus was expounding was really more in lign with that of eastern philosophy than of the Judaic theology that the gospel is associated with. There is more than a small amount of incongruency between Jesus' teachings and that of the OT, Thei messages are almost mutually exclusive in all areas. But because "Christian" theology relies on certain prophetical connecting links between the two, what would otherwise be considered blatant goes largely unnoticed.