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Although regarding neutrons, some people speculate that the Ark of the Covenant was radioactive since plagues of tumors followed it. and people who looked into it quickly died.

Raiders of the Lost Ark explained it better, and without appealing to hocus-pocus such as gravity and radioactivity.

Although regarding neutrons, some people speculate that the Ark of the Covenant was radioactive since plagues of tumors followed it. and people who looked into it quickly died.

Raiders of the Lost Ark explained it better, and without appealing to hocus-pocus such as gravity and radioactivity.

It doesn't talk about gravity either.
Although regarding neutrons, some people speculate that the Ark of the Covenant was radioactive since plagues of tumors followed it. and people who looked into it quickly died.

It doesn't talk about gravity either.
Although regarding neutrons, some people speculate that the Ark of the Covenant was radioactive since plagues of tumors followed it. and people who looked into it quickly died.

"7 days, the making of Earth".

"By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work."

God made people talk different. Duh.

There's also this: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2016:49-50&version=NIV

49 Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

So if any arrogant, overfed and selfish person thinks he's doing OK just because he's not doing "detestable things", he should think again.

That Lot was considered righteous compared to the rest of those in Sodom might be an indication how bad things were. From what I read, Lot doesn't seem to be an extremely righteous person.

You should inform him that according to the bible God doesn't lie:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus+1%3A2&version=NIV

Science is demonstrable, repeatable and self-correcting. Most importantly: Science Delivers. Not understanding the intricacies doesn't make it "faith". Faith is an idea with no evidence to back it up no matter how adept the 'experts'. Even more important, the 'experts' often don't agree on even the basics. Witness all the various religions and factions thereof.

Sad how off your understanding f the word "faith" is. The Bible's definition: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." {Heb 11:1, NASB}

Dictionary.com's rendering #1, #4, #6, #7: "confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability." "belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty." "the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith." "the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles."

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

(Emphasis added)

It is always good to look at the context of any Bible quote:

15 "If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector."

Matthew 18:15-17

Here, the church is being used as a social body to try to encourage a sinner to stop sinning. It has very little to do with the relationship between God and man and more to do with the relationships between people.

I thought Satan came from the Roman mythology -- Christianity has always adapted to the locals

Read Job to learn about Satan's role in Judaism. He's kind of like a heavenly prosecutor who decided that he'll exact punishment while searching for evidence. "I bet you hid drugs in your Ming vase" *smash* "I bet you hid drugs in your couch cushions!" *slash* "I bet you hid drugs in your dog" *slash*

Two every unclean animal. The birds and the clean animals went on to the ark fourteen by fourteen. (Seven pairs). Apparently.

[citation needed]

A Christian could as easily claim that since mass killing is against the teaching of Christ, the crazy Christian killers weren't really Christians.

By definition, a Christian is one who follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. Since Jesus Christ taught to turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, bless those that curse you, and love unconditionally, then those "Christians" are acting outside of what their faith tells them to do. Does that make them not Christians? How far outside of Christ's teachings do we go before we aren't Christians? Only God knows the answer to that, but I think it's safe to say that mass-killing of innocents puts one over the limit.

By contrast, the Quran tells the Muslim to do just that. So Muslims are doing exactly what their faith tells them to do.

Compare with the statement from Jesus himself.

The jewish tribes could not empty a bottle in a river and kill off an entire ecosystem 100 km downstream.

Nah. That only took one guy...

money is not fairly distributed and needs to be taken from those who have too much regardless of how hard they work for it and given to those who have none regardless of how little they work for it

...I'm pretty sure that was Jesus.

I think you misremembered that parable... the master took all the money away from the guy who had the least and gave it to the guy who had already received the most.

Mt. 25:24-30

So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.

So the principle is somewhat more like "money needs to be taken from those who are lazy regardless of how little they have and given to the people who work hard for it regardless of how much money they have already."

I was going to point out the danger of quoting a couple of verses from the Bible without establishing context, but even taken on its own, Mark 10:29-30 isn't advocating the sort of disconnect being discussed.

Try reading it in its context: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2010:17-31&version=MSG

(using a modern paraphrase, The Message, because it gets the point across in everyday language. If that bothers you and you want a more literal translation, try this: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2010:17-31&version=NIV)

I was going to point out the danger of quoting a couple of verses from the Bible without establishing context, but even taken on its own, Mark 10:29-30 isn't advocating the sort of disconnect being discussed.

Try reading it in its context: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2010:17-31&version=MSG

(using a modern paraphrase, The Message, because it gets the point across in everyday language. If that bothers you and you want a more literal translation, try this: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2010:17-31&version=NIV)

> The Bible actually clearly states you are to confess sin directly to God, not to man.

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16 NIV, emphasis added).

That says the direct opposite of what you're saying, unless you believe that "each other" somehow refers to God? But then the rest of the verse would make no sense whatsoever. I guess you could just discard the entire book of James, though, but you can hardly call such a position "Biblical."

I checked the other translations, too, including Young's Literal Translation and the original Koine Greek text. The same message appears everywhere.

I do not know of any Scripture to support your position. If there is any, please quote it.

> The Bible actually clearly states you are to confess sin directly to God, not to man.

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16 NIV, emphasis added).

That says the direct opposite of what you're saying, unless you believe that "each other" somehow refers to God? But then the rest of the verse would make no sense whatsoever. I guess you could just discard the entire book of James, though, but you can hardly call such a position "Biblical."

I checked the other translations, too, including Young's Literal Translation and the original Koine Greek text. The same message appears everywhere.

I do not know of any Scripture to support your position. If there is any, please quote it.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.
- John 20:21-23 (NIV)
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2020:21-23&version=NIV

Biblical passage conferring the power to forgive or retain sins to the apostles.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.
- John 20:21-23 (NIV)
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2020:21-23&version=NIV

Biblical passage conferring the power to forgive or retain sins to the apostles.

One or two cherry-picked verses doesn't make up for the thousands of pages of complete junk.

eg. What have you got to say about Exodus 34?

nb. Pay particular attention to verse 28 - nowhere else in the Bible does it say, "These are the Ten Commandments".

And some will not believe even if someone rises from the dead.

I weep for anyone who allows corrupt humans to destroy your ability to believe in a loving God.

Your attempt to tie a rotten penal system to Christianity is tenuous at best.

1. The death penalty for "sin(crime)" pre-dates the birth of Christ -- cf. The Old Testament
2. A truly Christian response to sin would be: "Hmm, so you say you've repented? Ok then, on your way. Oh ... and sin no more!" -- cf. John 8:10-11

Your attempt to tie a rotten penal system to Christianity is tenuous at best.

1. The death penalty for "sin(crime)" pre-dates the birth of Christ -- cf. The Old Testament
2. A truly Christian response to sin would be: "Hmm, so you say you've repented? Ok then, on your way. Oh ... and sin no more!" -- cf. John 8:10-11

That's not love, that's jealousy.

So why is it not fair for me to say (regarding the inquisition) thats not Christianity, its opression? My ENTIRE point is that, just because an action is done in the name of an idea, does NOT mean it is in line with that idea or justified through it. Many things have been done in the name of democracy that are not democratic; many things have been done in the name of justice that are not just.

By contrast, it's trivial to justify an atrocity directly from a religious text.

Not without making rather serious errors of judgement and interpretation. The historical writings were NOT examples-- modern Christians are NOT OT Israel.

It's where God actually commands mass genocide

I dont really ask you to understand this, but Ill try to explain. If we start with the proposition, "The Bible is truth from God", then it is easy to reach conclusion A, that God is the only truly capable judge, and that he is within His "right" to judge wicked people. If you accept those two, then it is not hard to see why it would be OK for God to judge canaanites for their wickedness through the Israelites, much in the same way several hundred years later he would judge the Israelites through the Babylonians, and the Babylonians through the Assyrians.

The mistake you are making is that, in arguing against my position, you start with the premise "well, the main thing you believe in (Biblical truth) is wrong; therefore God is not just; therefore he has no right to judge people; therefore doing so proves that the Bible is false; therefore God is not just...." which is circular logic. If you want to argue that God cannot be just and use the Bible as evidence, then you must start with the proposition "If the Bible is true...". If you wish to prove that the Bible is false, you must start a whole separate line of reasoning.

First, I don't think I claimed that there's no proof the New Testament was written in the first century, but I am curious what form that proof takes.

Check the Wikipedia articles (which are generally NOT biased in my favor here-- they mostly lean towards the "christianity is bunk" side); I doubt you will find more than a very few books which are held with any seriousness to be written later than 120AD. Not being a historian or a student of Koine Greek, I cant go down the list of proof myself, except to say that church fathers at least as far back as 150AD seemed to be familiar with a number of the NT texts.

Second, that's an implication, not a statement, and there is a not-insignificant subset of Baptists who are also young-earth Creationists.

You may be correct, but I havent seen any statistics on that. Seemed a rather bold statement regardless.

Jesus says nothing against the old law, and when asked, says "Not one stroke of a letter will disappear from the Law..."

Lets not take things out of context or misquote them, please. The full quote ends with "until all is accomplished", the context being his fulfillment of the law through his life ( full passage).

Haven't done that..... (etc)

That wasnt quite directed at you, but simply to say that for all the flak Christians get for being non-reasoning idiots, we certainly get hit with a number of unbelievably fallacious arguments, strawmen, unfounded assertions, etc. Some fairness in that regard would be appreciated.

and my beliefs were starting to sound absurd, even to me.

Depending on how you define absurd, you must believe absurd things whether you are athiest or Christian. IIRC Stephen Hawking recently stated that there was no need for God, that the universe simply "popped in" from nowhere; personally, I find that, and the inherent contradiction of the laws of thermodynamics inherent in its alternative (perpetual crunch-bang-expansion cycle) to be unbelievable myself.

Verse 1 of Genesis says that on the first day, God created the heavens (i.e., the planets and stars) and the earth. The rest of the creation account merely refines and enriches the existing matter (for the most part).

Regarding your second question: even Jesus couldn't heal everywhere he went. In some places, he refused to do miracles because of lack of faith. Other times, it simply wasn't his will to heal (although I'm sure that isn't the answer you're looking for). One must ask why Paul would instruct Timothy to take some wine for his stomach (when he simply could have prayed for healing):
http://bible.cc/1_timothy/5-23.htm

Also, Paul himself had a 'thorn in the flesh' which God refused to take away:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+12:7-10&version=NIV

Unfortunately, God is rather a bit more mysterious and doesn't fit very well into mathematical formulas as we'd like; but he is God after all; i.e., Sovereign Lord over Creation.

If you use the same currency (and other stuff) the Government establishes, why the big objection to having to paying the tax? [1]

I have objections to the manner in which the government spends tax monies. To start with, there's all the corporate welfare Uncle Sam gives the military-industrial complex.

[1] Reference: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022:17-21&version=NIV [biblegateway.com]

Dude, did you just quote the fucking Bible on Slashdot? My only response to that is that unlike Augustus, Gaius Julius Caesar got his rightful due: a knife in the back.

I'm one of those crazy people who thinks that taxation is extortion and that a government is a protection racket whose button men wear camouflage.

If you use the same currency (and other stuff) the Government establishes, why the big objection to having to paying the tax? [1]

After all if they really want to tax you they can always create more of the currency and "tax" you via inflation. There have been trillions of US dollars created since 2008. And since many in the rest of the world (including countries) hold net positive US dollars, they have similarly been taxed whether they realize it or not.

[1] Reference: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2022:17-21&version=NIV

Not without a lot of baseless guesswork, they don't.

Revelation 13:16-17

It (the beast/the antichrist together with the false prophet) also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

Sounds pretty clear to me. You'll find that christians will most likely happily go to their death before agreeing to an implanted RFID (or similar) chip used to facilitate buying and selling.

I think this misses the larger point in part. I'm a geek, and a coder, and a Mormon too. There is a much more fundamental philosophy held by the Mormons, for which the practice of proxy baptisms, is easily the most sensational lightning rod of amusement/ridicule/fillin-your-adjective here.

The philosophy is founded in a belief/concern regarding Malachi 4:6.

"And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."

It plays very prominently, repeatedly, in the original Joseph Smith experience. You may disagree with them on the details, but the ultimate goal is to get families, across generations coupled more tightly. It plays out in their emphasis on strong families, emphasis on cross-generation relationships, doctrine about life-after-death, various ordinances/rites which reinforce. Genealogy is far from just "get your dead relatives dunked", it's really about getting to know your forefathers, getting to appreciate them.

Ok, here you go: Jude 1:7: "In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire."

I see a list there. Maybe this was typical of the "detestable things" they did?

Actually, the sin of Sodom is made very clear in the Bible, in Ezekiel 16:49-50:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

They did not help the poor and needy. Nothing to do with sex, gay or otherwise. I wrote something about this a few years ago.

by Armstrong.

MENSA pushes the
~INTELLECT is the whole of INTELLIGENCE~
B.S.

People who've moved-on beyond that shallow prejudice,
who've actually earned some of the other kinds of intelligence,
know that their scheme is so profoundly distortive of worth
as to be diseased propaganda.

As for whether I've the right to such opinion:
according to their tests, I outclass most of MENSA.

They don't measure genius,
they measure their-scheme-skill: intellect-mechanism.

Only.

Brought up to idolize their prejudice,
I pity it & hold it in distaste, now,
and am healthier for it.

Work-through ( rather than merely reading )
"The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" ( Betty Edwards, Ph.D )
to do the exercises that get one into a kind of knowing IQ doesn't & can't even know.
( it's called right-brain dominance for a reason:
get a mic preamp, some silver/silver-chloride electrodes, some wire-glue,
and MacGuyver up a 2-channel EEG,
and you'll be able to see shifts in your brain's overall function,
with your own eyes )

Read "7 Kinds of Smart, 2nd edition" by Armstrong,
for the understanding that there are multiple fundamentally-different intelligences,
and pretending that only 1 counts, could possibly be valid, is ignorant prejudice.
( how could Michelangelo be considered "genius"??? he wasn't ... MENSA! )

Read "The Alphabet Versus The Goddess" by Leonard Schlain ( M.D.? ),
to see how words-centric prejudice is consistently followed by holocausting

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%2020:16-17&version=AMP
for the first recorded holocaust, that we know about...

A Russian pointed out that it's partly a defect in the English language:
"genius" has been hijacked by the MENSA committee, so it no longer means creative, or wholistic.

They've separate words for "talent" and "genius", and use them accordingly,
but our allowing the IQ twits to redefine "genius" FROM creative TO intellect,
is like us geeks allowing Microsoft to redefine "PC" to mean MS-Windows.

Incompetent accommodation.

Cheers.

I don't believe in it, but the Rapture is in the New Testament of the Bible.

The primary passage used to support this idea is 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, in which Paul cites "the word of the Lord" about the return of Jesus to gather his saints.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Thessalonians+4&version=NIV

"According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words."

That's from Paul's Letters, so it dates from at least 52 CE

"Oh, okay, so let me see if I have this straight: Today, they're too poor to buy fish, but tomorrow, they're magically going to have the money to pay for our fish? Is Jesus handing out coins too?"

Not exactly, you have to fish for them: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+17%3A24-27&version=NIV :)

BTW, seems to me Jesus likes "audience participation".

Some kid had to sacrifice his lunch (I think he got kind of got it back though ) for the feeding of the five thousand: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%206:5-6:15&version=NIV

Turning water to wine - people had to fill up the jars first.

"Oh, okay, so let me see if I have this straight: Today, they're too poor to buy fish, but tomorrow, they're magically going to have the money to pay for our fish? Is Jesus handing out coins too?"

Not exactly, you have to fish for them: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+17%3A24-27&version=NIV :)

BTW, seems to me Jesus likes "audience participation".

Some kid had to sacrifice his lunch (I think he got kind of got it back though ) for the feeding of the five thousand: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%206:5-6:15&version=NIV

Turning water to wine - people had to fill up the jars first.

As we all know, pi = 3.

It says so in the Bible. 1 Kings 7:23 (NIV):

"He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it."

(Yeah, this is what I like to throw at folks who claim the entire Bible is literally correct. 1 Kings 7 describes Solomon's Palace in otherwise precise language not unlike most patents. There's no reason to believe that it's fudging the numbers. So why didn't God tell his Chosen People, or at least their king, about pi?)

Obviously, you did not get your BBA / MBA from a strict Christian University, and there are quite a few of those around. They teach that its not a sin to make money, what you focus on is conducting your business in a fair and ethical way, and don't engage in practices that hinder your faith.

In this summery, however, the problem is that the investor is 1) ignorant of what he is investing in, 2) obviously doesn't share their views, and, probably most importantly, 3) is trying to find a way to make money off of something that places like http://www.biblegateway.com/ http://www.e-sword.net/ and others, give away for free. I mean, let's face it, Bible.com isn't exactly a Microsoft, no matter how badly the investor wants to think it is.

You have to admit, the punishments were effective.

If you actually read the Old Testament -- not just skim a few parts like most people do -- you'll find that the punishments weren't really as bad as people often assume. Yes, there were a lot of harsh consequences spelled out in Torah...but there were a lot of remediations available, too. Check out the requirements to make restitution in Exodus 22: "If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep." (v. 1), "If the stolen animal is found alive in [the thief's] possession—whether ox or donkey or sheep—he must pay back double." (v. 4), "If a man gives his neighbor silver or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the neighbor's house, the thief, if he is caught, must pay back double." (v. 7). I could go on, but you get the idea: if you wrong someone else, you must pay them back for the inconvenience with enough interest to provide incentive not to do that again, but it's hardly the "lop off an appendage or two" that Archangel Michael (/. user, not THE Archangel Michael, lol) seems to favor.

"For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." 1 Tim 6: 10 NASB.

Lets get this right before I mod myself redundant

No - a more accurate translation is: "the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil" 1 Tim 6:10.

In case you're wondering the discrepancy, its NIV vs KJB

Here are the links if someone cares:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+6%3A9-10&version=NIV

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%206:9-10&version=KJV

In case you're wondering the discrepancy, its NIV vs KJB

Here are the links if someone cares:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Timothy+6%3A9-10&version=NIV

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%206:9-10&version=KJV

I really don't want to read the new version:

"And God was like 'Moses, dude, you totally need to kill your son.' And Moses was all "WTF?" but then he goes "Meh, F it." So God's all "LOL, dude you were totally gonna do it. I pranked you good!'"

That actually exists. (Okay, not really, but it's sort of the same idea.)

He didn't give birth to him. He is a mud man duh. Made out of dirt then God gave him CPR. check your bible before you start talking nonsense.

God gave them Car Plate Recognition? Or the Canadian Pacific Railway? Or a Common-Pool Resource? Or the Critique of Pure Reason?

He didn't give birth to him. He is a mud man duh. Made out of dirt then God gave him CPR. check your bible before you start talking nonsense.

Friend of Venus doesn't really have the same ring to it.

Lucifer doesn't mean devil, it means Venus (the planet) when seen in the morning. It literally means "light bringer". The greeks knew it as phosphoros.

The only place you'll find it in a bible (unless you have one of the lame post-KJV translations) is the book of Isaiah. Babylonian rulers (and Egyptian, and Sumerian, and...) tended to think of themselves as gods. So one that had held the jews captive in the old testament liked to refer to himself as the morning star, and the jews were mocking him for it as they left.

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!