I don't normally get involved in religion or politics because the threads tend to get long and nowhere very fast.
However, I can say a few things about the Bible:
1) The Old Testament was passed down word of mouth for a very very long time before it was even written. There are bound to be embellishments and discrepancies contained therein.
2) The oldest COPIES (there are no originals) of the New Testament date to around 100AD. All these copies are different, and most were embellished by the scribes. For example, there is a current debate whether Jesus even said "let he without sin cast the first stone". This was added by scribes later.
3) The council of Nicea (is that right?) chose which books to include in the Old Testament and Torah. The Church (presumably catholic) chose which books to include in the New Testament. The Greek Orthodox version is different than the "Vatican" version as far as I know.
4) Countless texts that did not agree with the Church's view of Christ were banned from the Bible (see history channel "Banned from the Bible" and other type shows and books).
In my life I've had several "Born Again Christians" try to tell me that the Bible is the word of God. Period. IMHO, the Bible is the word of MAN who may or may not have "talked" with God. In the modern era, it is often said that "If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you are crazy". So was Moses, Jesus, Muhammed, etc, etc, crazy? Spend 40 years in the desert and I sometimes wonder.
The same is true for the Noble Qu'ran. There were several copies, and after Muhammed's death, his followers settled on one single copy and ordered the rest to be burned. The Catholic Church has done the same, although some texts were discovered in the last 40-50 years or so that conflict with the "established" text of the Bible. Previous to the modern age, they were either destroyed or banned from the Bible.
So this leads me to another question: Was the Bible created by God or by Man through God, or was it created by the Church who already had a set of beliefs and left out, banned or modified anything that contradicted their doctrine?
PS I was babptized a Christian (Protestant). My years of exploration in science, astrophysics and cosmology have eroded my faith that the Bible should be taken verbatim. However, I do believe in some sort of higher power, just for the fact that the Universe did not just "happen". Bring in string and M-Theory, and 10-11 dimensions, it gets a bit more complicated. Some current views are that this universe was created by two M-branes touching.
Whether we humans will be privy to this Higher Power and Understanding after we die, or if we will merely cease to exist is speculation. I have hope in the former, and despair in the latter.
The fact is: we will never know. So we live our lives as best we can with our own set of beliefs. I often wish I could have blind and unquestioning faith in God (and Jesus) as outlined in the Bible, but because of the aforementioned problems and history of the Bible itself, I cannot. I can only have hope and try to live a good life, which no matter how bad it is, is still in my belief a gift and a hidden purpose that maybe someday I will understand.
OK so how many of you fell asleep at my ramblings?
Children, this is what happens to hockey players, druggies, and Hillary Clinton.
