So basically then the bible that so many people follow so devoutly is a big bunch of ball-bags?

Well that would be for each devotee to decide for themselves. All I have pointed out is that no god has ever taken pen to paper.

All bibles are a recounting in some form or other & are written by men.

But as I said No god has ever taken pen to paper.

All religious based scriptures were written by man.

Men who claimed to be inspired by a god but men none the less

Men who were hearing voices in their heads?

Some did claim that to be the case. Otherwise how did folks like Moses get instructions...

10 commandments etc.Remember too these things were usually attained by fasting or "going alone into the wilderness" etc.

Even today such people exist dont they?

They call them channeler's.

It is not what I believe in personally....But again illustrates

what I am saying about men writing scriptures not gods

"Oh, it's a metaphor" is a common argument that I have heard. Although after using such an argument many creationists still then try to discredit the theory of evolution, for example. Why?

It must be a metaphor. There would be no other way for God to explain things to people who were walking around thousands of years ago. Imagine trying to explain the Internet to someone from 300 years ago. Then imagine trying to explain the Big Bang Theory to someone 3000 years ago. I imagine that even God has limited patience and decided that breaking creation up into something the primitives could understand - 7 days, "let there be light" - was the best way to go.

I also imagine that if mankind is still around in 2000 years and has continually progressed then much of what we consider fact today (courtesy of the likes of Hawking) will seem like childish fairy tales in the year 2311.

But let's be honest...this is a cop out by religion, and not even a good one. According to this argument these are all metaphors because the ancients didn't understand the technology as we do today. But yet, in the same breath, they say we are supposed to accept the relevance of these ancient texts on our lives today. But put yourself in the position of an omnipotent being millenia ago. If you know that these texts are still going to be in use when the technology does become available, why not try and include something in your teachings so that future generations can know that you really did understand.

What would that be? Well, math of course. Imagine if E=mc^2 had been written in the text of the Bible. Now, nobody would have had the slightest clue what it meant at the time, but behold 2000 years later Einstein suddenly arrives at this exact equation and sits in stunned silence. "God in heaven!" he cries, "It's all true." It's clear and simple and unequivocal. There is no room for error here. Whoever this Bible was about was truly an advanced being. It wasn't simply all made up tripe. There is not a need to explain it to the ancients. After all isn't that what we keep hearing prophecy is supposed to be? So why would anyone make it so vague that you can't possible understand it? Unless of course, it is because you're a fraud and are trying to make something that can be interpreted to mean anything.

By using mathematics, you can record a completely unambiguous prophecy, with absolutely no risk of contaminating history...because the math already exists. And when you finally understand what it means, you would already have understood it even without the confirmation. You can speak to each generation through increasingly advanced mathematics, and know that it will be recognized when the population is ready to grasp it.

Anyone who was truly a an omnipotent being and wanted his word accepted millenia later would have recognized this. Therefore, one can only conclude that either 1) religious texts like the Bible were not the words of an advanced being, or 2) the texts were not meant to be relevant to us today. Either way, it argues strongly to me that the Bible and other ancient relics should be relegated to history museums.

There were completely logical and noninvasive ways to place unambiguous messages in a text if its purpose was to be used for thousands of years. Since this was not done, one can only conclude it was not meant to be relevant today, and trying to find that relevance in it is a human conception, not a spiritual one.

And why would god need a book to teach us anyway? He could just make us born with the knowledge.

I should have been a bit smarter, and realised that any post supporting religion will be wilfully misunderstood. I shall know better next time!

I hate to be a pedant but you're talking about Christianity - not religion. It doesn't happen so much any more but it used to drive me wild when I went into a bookshop and found that the shelf labelled 'religion' only had books on Christianity on it. If you wanted a book on Buddhism or Shinto you had to go to the shelf labelled 'New Age' or 'Strange Foreign Nonsense'.

Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion (I've had serious-minded Buddhist monks agree with me on this). What is practised generally in Thailand is a form of animism with a Buddhist veneer. I haven't seen any posts advocating Shinto, Islam, Hinduism or the rest.

I should have been a bit smarter, and realised that any post supporting religion will be wilfully misunderstood. I shall know better next time!

I hate to be a pedant but you're talking about Christianity - not religion. It doesn't happen so much any more but it used to drive me wild when I went into a bookshop and found that the shelf labelled 'religion' only had books on Christianity on it. If you wanted a book on Buddhism or Shinto you had to go to the shelf labelled 'New Age' or 'Strange Foreign Nonsense'.

Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion (I've had serious-minded Buddhist monks agree with me on this). What is practised generally in Thailand is a form of animism with a Buddhist veneer. I haven't seen any posts advocating Shinto, Islam, Hinduism or the rest.

You miss my point entirely. I was pointing that in that post that you're conflating the word 'religion' with the word 'Christianity' as though Christianity is the only religion. That's why I gave the bookshelf example.

Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion...

Correct.

I find it difficult to accept Buddhism is not a religion when they pray to gods in their temples.

In Thailand.

Granted

I've only seen Thai Buddhist temples.

As has been said before, Thai "Buddhism" is actually a mixture of different religions.

Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion (I've had serious-minded Buddhist monks agree with me on this). What is practised generally in Thailand is a form of animism with a Buddhist veneer. I haven't seen any posts advocating Shinto, Islam, Hinduism or the rest.

I would consider Buddhism a religion as much as any of the others you mentioned.

More philosophically presented? .....sure & nice that way as it does not demand blind faith as many religions do.

Religion is basically the following of teachings usually set forth in that religions

bible. Again a bible being an accounting of experiences or the passing on of information/teachings.

The Catholic/Christian bibles being the teachings of Christ for instance ( New Testament). The various Buddhist versions the teachings of Buddha.

As for advocating Hinduism.....I do not advocate any religion but will say the Hindu Bible is the most enjoyable to read IMHO. The Bhagavad-Gita (**western version so again maybe translation lost some things?)

Is laid out very nicely. Basically the conversations between Krishna & Arjuna as Arjuna struggles with life's questions...I would only suggest not reading the purports at the bottom of the pages. Just my opinion but better to read & come to your own understandings than have someone tell you on each page what the conversation meant.

At times in history times the church actually removed passages that they did not agree with.

For instance around 550 AD reincarnation references were removed from the bible at the Council meeting of the Catholic Church in Constantinople. That was as you say to twist things for their own benefit & solidify church control.

This is untrue. The Council at Constantinople spoke out against belief in reincarnation, but it could not change texts which already existed. The New Testament as we now have it relies on a 4th century MS called the Codex Sinaiticus, corrected where necessary through the normal processes of textual criticism by reference to MSS of the 4th and later centuries, where these represent a different textual tradition. Early fragments do exist (from Oxyrhynchus), but generally they present a worse text than Sinaiticus. This is a question of textual criticism, not of religious belief. The Greek text we now have, which I have on my bookshelf, is probably better than by far the majority of texts available to early Christians.

Translation is another question, and, I agree, a difficult one. We have commentary dating back to the 2nd century, and the Latin Vulgate translation as a cross-check, though. The King James Version, which someone mentioned, contains errors of translation, but none, I think, which have doctrinal implications. Modern translations, such as the New English Bible, are as near accuracy as we can ever get. There still remain problems with certain individual words, such as 'love' or 'charity', translated from the Greek 'agape'. It probably means something like an enhanced version of a feeling of fellowship towards others (if that makes it any clearer).

---snipped to save space----

Very good post isanbirder

We will agree to disagree

I say very good because it speaks to the exact subject we are currently discussing.

You & I have formulated some beliefs based on what we have read.... things written by men....As I said many times gods have never taken pen to paper.

At times these things were translated/transcribed & again were open to interpretation.

Men are fallible that is a fact & as such we have to accept that fact may influence what they have written.

(for clarity when I say men I mean humans)

Decades ago I was part of the Theosophical Society. At that time I had full access to the Henry Olcott Library.

This was back when everything they had was available. Both exoteric & esoteric scriptures/texts.

I read & read & formulated my ideas/beliefs based on what I felt was true. I did not read one religion I read many.

I found many common threads underlying most.

Just as you have read & formulated beliefs on what struck you as truth.

In that regard it can be said we have wisdom but no knowledge.

One can be gained via the routes we took & the other cannot be gained except by knowing

To that end I guess someday we will all know if what we believed to be wisdom was true or not.

I think for the most part it is good to wonder & question.

Thanks

---snipped to save space----

Very good post isanbirder

We will agree to disagree

I say very good because it speaks to the exact subject we are currently discussing.

You & I have formulated some beliefs based on what we have read.... things written by men....As I said many times gods have never taken pen to paper.

At times these things were translated/transcribed & again were open to interpretation.

Men are fallible that is a fact & as such we have to accept that fact may influence what they have written.

(for clarity when I say men I mean humans)

Decades ago I was part of the Theosophical Society. At that time I had full access to the Henry Olcott Library.

This was back when everything they had was available. Both exoteric & esoteric scriptures/texts.

I read & read & formulated my ideas/beliefs based on what I felt was true. I did not read one religion I read many.

I found many common threads underlying most.

Just as you have read & formulated beliefs on what struck you as truth.

In that regard it can be said we have wisdom but no knowledge.

One can be gained via the routes we took & the other cannot be gained except by knowing

To that end I guess someday we will all know if what we believed to be wisdom was true or not.

I think for the most part it is good to wonder & question.

Thanks

+1

The Greek text we now have, which I have on my bookshelf, is probably better than by far the majority of texts available to early Christians.

Better?

The Greek text we now have, which I have on my bookshelf, is probably better than by far the majority of texts available to early Christians.

Better?

Yes, better. You clearly don't know much about how texts were transmitted before the era of printing. Imagine if you have a text, you copy it word by word, then someone copies your copy, and so on twenty or thirty times, how close will the final copy be to the original? Now, by using modern textual criticism techniques, we can usually get near to, if not exactly, the original text. Such techniques were not available to the ancients.

So by better you mean closer to the original?

So by better you mean closer to the original?

Yes.

At times in history times the church actually removed passages that they did not agree with.

For instance around 550 AD reincarnation references were removed from the bible at the Council meeting of the Catholic Church in Constantinople. That was as you say to twist things for their own benefit & solidify church control.

This is untrue. The Council at Constantinople spoke out against belief in reincarnation, but it could not change texts which already existed. The New Testament as we now have it relies on a 4th century MS called the Codex Sinaiticus, corrected where necessary through the normal processes of textual criticism by reference to MSS of the 4th and later centuries, where these represent a different textual tradition. Early fragments do exist (from Oxyrhynchus), but generally they present a worse text than Sinaiticus. This is a question of textual criticism, not of religious belief. The Greek text we now have, which I have on my bookshelf, is probably better than by far the majority of texts available to early Christians.

Translation is another question, and, I agree, a difficult one. We have commentary dating back to the 2nd century, and the Latin Vulgate translation as a cross-check, though. The King James Version, which someone mentioned, contains errors of translation, but none, I think, which have doctrinal implications. Modern translations, such as the New English Bible, are as near accuracy as we can ever get. There still remain problems with certain individual words, such as 'love' or 'charity', translated from the Greek 'agape'. It probably means something like an enhanced version of a feeling of fellowship towards others (if that makes it any clearer).

Out of curiosity, have you actually read any of the Gnostic gospels that were found at Nag Hammadi? These ideas were rejected by the Council of Nicea, who instead chose to sanction the traditional ideas that we know today. Since many of these clearly predate the 4th Century AD, by your own logic they should be given higher consideration than your text. (Note: I do not say these ideas were edited from the text you espouse. I say that they were contemporary and parallel with the text you have, yet religious organizations of the time elected to label them as heresy, burn them and not give them equal standing for political reasons.)

You make a statement "they present a worse text". Worse by whose judgement and in what way? Granted I can't read Coptic, so I have to rely on English translations, but I actually have read them and it seems to me it completely arbitrary to assign validity to certain gospels that support your position and discount any that say something different. Neither one seems more compelling than the other to me.

Personally, I don't find any of the Christian stories compelling in any way. The entire early church appears to be nothing more than various people adopting pagan myths to coerce others into joining their group in order to increase their own importance. The whole virgin birth/resurrection myth is just too close to the Egyption god Isis for me to believe it. If you were trying to convert Egyptians to your religion you'd need a god who could do what theirs did. Similarly with the Gnostic gospels. If you were trying to convert the Hindus your stories would look like the Gnostic gospels. This explanation is just too logical for me to believe there was actually yet another god who rose from the dead, but was somehow different from all the previous gods that did the same thing.

So we will never agree on most things as I believe all the gospels are works of fiction. However, I did date a Jehova's Witness for a while...she was really cute, and men do stupid things when in the presence of beautiful women...so I enjoy the opportunity to engage in a discussion which I know at the outset has no possibility of resolution.

The post you refer to was purely about textual criticism of the New Testament, not about the Christian faith. The same general principles have been applied to the text as I would apply to a text of, say, Cicero or Plato. In that context, the NT text we have is the best possible text we can arrive at, i.e. the nearest to what was originally written.

But surely the faith is based in the text. If the text is made up, where does that then leave the faith?

The post you refer to was purely about textual criticism of the New Testament, not about the Christian faith. The same general principles have been applied to the text as I would apply to a text of, say, Cicero or Plato. In that context, the NT text we have is the best possible text we can arrive at, i.e. the nearest to what was originally written.

OK, my apologies for misunderstanding. I clearly wasn't reading carefully, and having reread your statements, many of my questions make little sense in context.

But it still raises the following question for discussion: why did the church around the 4th century AD decide this particular text was going to be the official New Testament?

I think it is the most interesting question you can ask when discussing any of the Christian religions. In particular, it is important for the question of what happens when we die, as the results of the two belief systems are so completely different, yet both claim to derive from the same person in the name of Jesus.

The Gnostic gospels (the same ones that have been misrepresented in the fictional story the Da Vinci Code) are contemporary with the New Testament text you cite (later than some of the very earliest texts, but not by much), but they are very different in substance. These were likely prepared by early church followers who were trying to convert those of Hindu faith instead of the pagans in Egypt, a task which logically required a different set of stories due to the different basic beliefs of the congregation. And if one can be considered heresey because the stories were apparently adapted for the task at hand, why shouldn't the other set of stories be considered equally suspicious?

If someone is going to accept that the early church acted properly in labelling the Gnostic gospels as heresey, and therefore give credence to the New Testament as it stands today in whatever form, it is important to understand their reasoning for doing this.

Does anyone have any insights into this?

I can understand you might like an insight into why one of the early Councils decided as it did, but I don't think you're going to get one. As a Catholic, I believe that the apostles were given a guarantee by Christ that they would not go wrong on the central principles of the Church. Before anyone leaps to criticise that, I would say that it is a very restricted guarantee, covering only such central beliefs as the Incarnation and the Resurrection. In my opinion, it does not include any of the beliefs about the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the cultus of the saints; indeed the only belief which is supposed to be covered by Papal Infallibility is the Bodily Assumption, and this is questionable. I know many Catholics would disagree with me on this!

I have only read quotations from the Gnostic texts and from the Gospel of Thomas, so I'm not in a position to discuss these.

My understanding of the decisions at the Council of Nicea was that they were mainly discussing whether the Godhead was singular or tripartite and that a decision was made, all texts referring / supporting the opposite view were rejected and that there was therefore a schism within the Christian church - West going one way, East going the other.

The rejected texts were collected in an apochrypha, which exists, but is forbidden reading to those who agree with the Nicean verdict.

(Maybe that's simpler than the discussions above, and maybe it's less accurate, but then I'm no scholar of this matter, which was politics much more than religion)

My understanding of the decisions at the Council of Nicea was that they were mainly discussing whether the Godhead was singular or tripartite and that a decision was made, all texts referring / supporting the opposite view were rejected and that there was therefore a schism within the Christian church - West going one way, East going the other.

The rejected texts were collected in an apochrypha, which exists, but is forbidden reading to those who agree with the Nicean verdict.

(Maybe that's simpler than the discussions above, and maybe it's less accurate, but then I'm no scholar of this matter, which was politics much more than religion)

The Council of Nicaea was called in 325 to deal with the Arian heresy. It has nothing to do with the canon of the New Testament.

The Council of Carthage in 397 finalised the canon of the New Testament, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it was more or less agreed in the 2nd century.

The separation of the Orthodox Church from the Catholic Church started with the separation of the Eastern from the Western Empire, and was not final until 1054, with the dispute over the filioque clause.

The Apocrypha consists of books rejected from the Old Testament (Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Esdras, Maccabees etc). The so-called New Testament apocrypha consists of books which were rejected by the early Church for a variety of reasons, and has never been "collected" (whatever that means here).

Yes, the Arian heresy was about the Trinity - whether God was on his own at the top of the tree, the unique Godhead, or whether Christ and the Holy Spirit were a part of God, not made by God.

This was at a time when Christianity was trying to become the state religion of the remainder of the Roman Empire, ruled by Constantine (at that time a non-Christian) from Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Constantine was listening to the bishops and quite well-intentioned towards their aims, but he wanted to know that the church was unanimous in it's beliefs. Arius was a bump in the road, claiming that God was unique and was the only one to be worshipped. To worship Christ was a blasphemy - he was not God.

He got thrown out, sent to exile and unity reigned.

Constantine is thought to have converted to Christianity on his death-bed, but I have yet to discover any sure confirmation.

Again - the split with the Eastern Church - as you say - the 'filioque' clause.

Used in the Nicene Creed as the Holy Sprirt coming from God and the son (latin 'filioque') and the Eastern Church does not accept this.

So my dates and such were wrong, but my basic understanding of the problem is OK (?).

Again - the split with the Eastern Church - as you say - the 'filioque' clause.

Used in the Nicene Creed as the Holy Sprirt coming from God and the son (latin 'filioque') and the Eastern Church does not accept this.

So my dates and such were wrong, but my basic understanding of the problem is OK (?).

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to as 'the problem'.

If you're a Christian, you have Christ's guarantee to Peter that the central principles of the church would not be allowed to be falsified. It's common sense really; if the faith is as important as we think it is, it makes sense to have some kind of 'failsafe' system. The principles have been maintained by the Catholic Church, but things started to go wrong elsewhere in the Reformation... when various groups broke away from the Church, and split, and split, leading to the proliferation of sects which we have now. A Catholic c. 1500 might be saying, "I told you so".

The Reformation was badly needed for other reasons, and indeed the Catholic Church did reform itself (though not enough) at the Council of Trent in 1563-4.

If you're not a Christian, all this will seem a lot of nonsense! At some stage, faith (or lack of same) has to enter into the equation.

Again - the split with the Eastern Church - as you say - the 'filioque' clause.

Used in the Nicene Creed as the Holy Sprirt coming from God and the son (latin 'filioque') and the Eastern Church does not accept this.

So my dates and such were wrong, but my basic understanding of the problem is OK (?).

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to as 'the problem'.

I don't see how it could be any clearer. One group was saying one thing while another group was saying something else, which was a problem.

And for me, it still is a problem and yet another gaping whole in the legitimacy of the whole thing.

Again - the split with the Eastern Church - as you say - the 'filioque' clause.

Used in the Nicene Creed as the Holy Sprirt coming from God and the son (latin 'filioque') and the Eastern Church does not accept this.

So my dates and such were wrong, but my basic understanding of the problem is OK (?).

I'm not quite sure what you're referring to as 'the problem'.

I don't see how it could be any clearer. One group was saying one thing while another group was saying something else, which was a problem.

And for me, it still is a problem and yet another gaping whole in the legitimacy of the whole thing.

Just because two sides can't agree doesn't make the entire issue illegitimate. Unless maybe BOTH sides are wrong.