If this is "faith", none for me please

[Litespeed]

I am never amazed at how gullible people can be

[nomadpete]

Nah. It doesn't bear thinking about.

[nomadpete]

[nomadpete]

 

 

Not as cultured as Stephen Fry, but is more funny.

[Jerry_Atrick]

It is a great video.. 

[facthunter]

Why would GOD need Money?   MAN INVENTS HIS GOD to suit his own requirements. Nev

[onetrack]

It's impossible to separate Americans from Money and God, in that order. They will make out they worship an omnipotent God, but the Almighty Dollar is what they really worship - along with The Gun, of course. And they believe God gave them both to the Americans, so Americans could be the dominant culture in the world, subjugating any nation they decide they want under their control.

Then they regularly espouse the American "Freedom" mantra - which of course, means, to have American Freedom, you have to worship Money, Guns, and God, in that order.

Of course, lawyers receive a great deal of worship and adulation in the American System, too. Especially when they transfer mind-boggling sums of American dollars to the plaintiffs.

[facthunter]

The POWER of LAW  is replaced by the LAW of POWER.   Nev

[nomadpete]

Whenever I was feeling all alone, stuck in some isolated grubby motel, away from the comforts of home......

I'd rummage through the bedside drawer for anything to read. Alas, the only thing I ever found was a Gideon's Bible. 

In desperation I'd open it in hope of finding some mental stimulation beyond what the local TV repeater offered.

 

The first pages hold nice, uplifting positive affamations.... then there is The Old Testament. Wow. Lots of heavy rather unscientific stuff about laws controlling what animals shall be sacrificed for what occasions, & when it is time to stone women to death, etc, etc. 

I guess later on the eight commandments made life easier for the common man (person). 

 

All too depressing - small wonder there is so much suicide in the bush. 

 

Maybe the book is due for revision again....

 

Question - is Scripture teaching fact?

Whose Scripture? What revision number?

Does it come with a change log and was it stored in a code repository so we can track document changes back to confirm the original author(s)?

[facthunter]

Plenty of sects out there, making up their OWN version of God's word.. If you want clarity and freedom of thought give it a MISS. No one can handle the GUILT.  Nev

[old man emu]

4 hours ago, nomadpete said:

is Scripture teaching fact?

Yes; No, and Maybe.

 

The first thing to acknowledge is that the ancient Hebrews were nomadic sheep herders. Their culture would have been a simple one which one could fairly equate to cultures like Aborigines, Indigenous Americans (North and South continents). Their religeous philosophy was without doubt an amalgam of those of the more advanced Mesopotamian cultures. In fact, if one compares the Biblical stories of creation with the creation stories of those advanced cultures, one can imagine that a lot of cut and paste took place. So, in respect of religious philosophies, one could conclude that the Scritpture is not factual.

 

Then we move onto the historical content of the Scriptures. Many accounts in the Scripture relate to events which the Hebrews lived through. In recent times, the application of scientific principles in the area of archeology has produced physical and documentary evidence of a lot of the accounts in the Scripture. One can frequently see from that evidence that events did in fact occur, but their causes were misinterpreted by a people whose scientific knowledge of the forces of Nature was not as correct s ours. Therefore, with the recounting of evetns over generations, the fact were coated with additions that made the story more exciting, but still contained a kernel of truth. That is a common thing in cultures that do not have a written literature. I am pretty sure that I have experienced that in a story of the Aborigines of the Wollongong area of NSW. The story explains how some small islands just off the coast came to be. Basically they are supposed to be canoes that some people stole and saild to the Wollongong coast from the east. It is easy to think that the kernel of truth in this story is the inundation of the Eastern Australian coastal plains after the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago. Aborigines living futher to teh east may well have been forced westwards by rising sea levels flodding those plains.

 

So, are the Scriptures historically factual? Maybe, but there is a lot of padding around the kernel of truth.

 

So what about the Scriptures being the Word of God? They are definitely a blueprint for living a life in a community. All the leaders of the community, those with the power to rule the lives of others, have to do to ensure the masses comply is to set up a system where compliance with the dictates of the rulers means a trouble-free life for the individual. First invent an all-powerful deity whose commands are relayed by the powerful in the group. Then dress the system with ceremony and was to express praise to this deity. After that create a set of rules which have to be followed both to appease the deity and to separate the followers of the deity from non-followers.

 

So, are the Scriptures a statement of religious fact? Yes, if the facts relate to the rules of the particular religion, but NO if one does not believe in the existence of a deity. Are the religous facts of the Scriptures of any use to a non-believer? If a non-believer accepts that rules for social cohesion arising from the Sriptures are sensible and useful to lead a trouble-free life, then the Scripture are of use.