Dead Sea Scrolls To Go Digital On Internet

mernil writes to mention that the Dead Sea Scrolls are headed for the internet. The Israel Antiquities Authority, custodians of the scrolls, plan on digitizing the 900 fragments to make them available to the public via the internet. Unfortunately they are claiming the project will take somewhere in the neighborhood of two years to complete.

Comments

Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

These may be the oldest fairy tales on the net when the project is complete.

Re:Wow!

[jellomizer]

Religious text is different from fairy tales. fairy tales could be a subset of the text where say a fictional story is used to illustrate a point. However for the most part most of the religious texts are attempts to keep historical records thousands of years ago.

A large meteor hits and destroys your city, that must be God striking down the sinners. As a guy who was just banished from the city survived and saw the destruction, he gets to make the details.

A merchant dealing with livestock builds himself a boat for easier trading with other cities. Luckally enough survived a food that covered the visible landmass. Whiping out thousands of people. It must of been God flooding the entire earth and his livestock and his wife and kids are whats left of the animal population. He survives so he can make the story.

Religious Texts do offer a good historical perspective if you read them with the fact that they have been translated many times, passed by word of mouth for a longer time. Truth = Beauty Art = Beauty so Artistic alterations have been placed it to make it easier to remember and pass on. Adding a few more lessons here and there... So when reading them many of the facts are right however the moral of the story has been changed.

Fairy tales are ficion just to prove the point. Religious Documents are the best history we have for the time.

Re:Wow!

[ndansmith]

These may be the oldest fairy tales on the net when the project is complete.

You can at least the following genres among the fragments: Poetry, wisdom, legal code, historical narrative, genealogy, myth/fable, prophetic writing, construction schematics, census, apocalypse/vision.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

that big 'food' makes me hungry :)

Re:Wow!

[JeanPaulBob]

Religious Texts do offer a good historical perspective if you read them with the fact that they have been translated many times, passed by word of mouth for a longer time.

Almost.

Religious texts have rarely been "translated many times", that I know of. That is, they haven't come down to us through a long sequence of translation from one language to another. (They may have been translated many times in the sense that Harry Potter has been translated many times, of course. The question is whether we still have manuscripts in the original language.)

The manuscripts have, however, often been copied many times, introducing textual variants. Such that if we have few manuscripts, we're less confident in the exact wording of the originals. (And if we only have a small number of manuscripts that were under the control of a central religious authority, then all bets are off.) But then if we have many manuscripts, we can become extremely confident in the original wording, through the wonderful world of textual criticism.

That does leave open the possibility of significant change during times of oral transmission. (Though there are limits there, too. Suppose that we only had orally-transmitted knowledge of the JFK assassination. We couldn't be too confident in some details of the events, but if the story is widely-disseminated & widely-known, that would tend to restrict the changes that would occur.)

Re:Wow!

[fluffman86]

Religious Texts do offer a good historical perspective if you read them with the fact that they have been translated many times, passed by word of mouth for a longer time.

As for the older stuff that you mentioned (Creation, Flood, Destruction of Sodom, perhaps), I suppose that these stories would indeed either need to be passed by word of mouth or else given by direct inspiration from God.

Most of the later stuff in the Old Testament (really everything except for Genesis and parts of Exodus), though, was written down from the beginning.

Leviticus, for example, is recorded Ceremonial, Religious, Moral, and even Secular Law. This was VERY highly regarded and as such copied extremely carefully. In other words, when a priest or scribe was charged with copying a scroll, he was not allowed to copy line-by-line or word-by-word. Instead, he was required to copy letter-by-letter. All of the other scrolls were held in the same regard--they all either dealt with essentially History, Prophecy, or Law.

The scribes had some VERY strict laws on how to copy, which means that today, of the stuff that remains, there are fewer discrepancies among texts than with copies of any other ancient text.

I saw statistic once that compared Homer's Odyssey with the Old Testament. The OT is significantly longer and has more copies remaining. Statistically, that would mean there is a higher chance of error while copying as well as a higher chance of discrepancies among the surviving texts. This, however, is not the case. Homer's shorter work actually contains many more errors overall--not just per line, but over the course of a shorter book.

How you choose to interpret the Bible is up to you. But at least let it be said that the Bible was properly copied.

Re:Wow!

[fluffman86]

A few other interesting tidbits on OT scribes:

*If a scribe made an error while copying, he had to completely start over on that page. He was not allowed to blot out a word and rewrite it.

*When a scribe completed a page, it was checked against his original. Every line was counted to ensure that each line had the same number of characters, and each page the same number of lines.

*When a scribe came across the name of God, the vowel symbols were never written, leaving (a transliterated) YHVH.

*Even though the scribe was writing the full name of God, he was still required to ceremonially wash his hands and break his stylus before continuing.

Pretty cool, huh? :)

Re:Wow!

[Brigadier]

*ducks* as evangelicals brandish pitch forks and rocks.

Re:Wow!

[fishthegeek]

Oral traditions are exceedingly reliable historical references. As the clan/tribe/village gathered to hear a story told it would be the same story that they had heard told from birth like their fathers and mothers.

Any error, addition or omission would have been corrected immediately.

If any geek arose to tell the story of Star Wars and claimed that Obi Wan said "Tashi Station, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany" they would be flamed, flogged and their geek card would be confiscated. It was in the writing that things broke down because for most of human history most of the humans couldn't read but they could all talk and listen.

Re:Wow!

[Asterra]

This is a bit off topic, but also a bit on-topic. Can anyone recommend a book or books which tackle the old testament form precisely this point of view? Ie, a scholarly mode of conversation. And very definitely NOT religious. Example: There are books which talk about the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Obviously these are not written by people who believe in said book, or whose faith is ancient Egyptian. They are scholarly pursuits. That's what I'm after. No religious agenda whatsoever; no patina of faith tainting things. Just a discussion of the passages and what they're likely to mean, and their historical context. A pie in the sky book, for me, would be one which focuses on the geographical aspect of the stories in the old testament (yet simultaneously avoids the aforementioned patina of faith), taking the reader from place to place and outlining the probable contemporary locations of events past, whether said events are reckoned to be fact or myth.

Re:Wow!

[A440Hz]

Interestingly enough, the Isaiah Scroll from the DSS contains almost all of Isaiah 53. Its consistency with the Masoretic Text (Medieval time period) is amazing, so much so that people have cried "foul"-- there must be some fraud or conspiracy in place to have documents 1000 years apart match that well. No proof of any such hanky panky has ever been produced.

Re:Wow!

[barocco]

Luckally enough survived a food that covered the visible landmass. Whiping out thousands of people.

Holy (pun intended), I wonder if you wrote that Old Testament when drunk?

Re:Wow!

[kurtis25]

Beats being the oldest fairy on the net.

Re:Wow!

[sir fer]

Religious texts have rarely been "translated many times", that I know of.

therein lies your error. Do your research. The bible is mostly, if not completely, fiction.

Re:Wow!

[sir fer]

Oral tradition = chinese whispers = kids telephone game = highly distorted.

Re:Wow!

[fluffman86]

Not a book, but the History Channel has several series about the OT, including explanations of miracles and battle tactics. As a logical, somewhat-scientific, forward-thinking Christian, let me say that they are really quite good.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are only the best history we have because religious organizations like the Catholic church sought to control reading and writing to prevent others from dispersing information that deviated from their official version. They went out of their way to persecute and murder those who did not believe what they told you to believe. They tried to destroy anything that would threaten their power. And don't think for a second they changed their ways because they realized what they were doing was wrong, they changed to survive. If they could rebuild their power to the point where they could burn nonbelievers at the stake they would.

Re:Wow!

[fluffman86]

found an Amazon link of the Bible Battles show...it's really really good.

http://www.amazon.com/Bible-Battles-History-Channel/dp/B000T28PHY

Re:Wow!

[fishthegeek]

Oral tradition != telephone game. The telephone game occurs after just a few minutes with a small group of people. Oral tradition is a large group activity over many generations so your initial comparison is wildly off base. As my Star Wars example indicates, someone will fix a mistake in oral tradition.

Citation

Re:Wow!

[DMUTPeregrine]

These are all current rules for Torah scribes.
Blotting out ink on sheepskin parchment really doesn't work. The Torah scrolls are works of art, having messy blots all over would rather ruin that.
All words in the Torah are written without vowels. Hebrew pretty much never uses vowels, except for teaching children. The "name of god" is also written as Yid Yid and "Hashem" (The Name) in various texts, though the Torah mostly uses Yid Hay Vav Hay.

Re:Wow!

[davester666]

"Oral traditions are exceedingly reliable historical references. As the clan/tribe/village gathered to hear a story told it would be the same story that they had heard told from birth like their fathers and mothers.

Any error, addition or omission would have been corrected immediately."

I have to call BS on this. People's memories are not great at remembering if something is EXACTLY the same, even if they hear what should be the same story over and over [other than people with Eidetic memory]. Did the person add a new sentence, forget an old one, or both? Did they use a different noun, verb, adverb, adjective?

And for any significant oral history, it would be told by a village elder [someone 'important' to the tribe/group/village], right? Who is going to put their arm up in the middle of the recitation of one of these tales and say "hey, you forgot this part, or it should be like this"?

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

A merchant dealing with livestock builds himself a boat for easier trading with other cities. Luckally enough survived a food that covered the visible landmass. Whiping out thousands of people.

Your Bible sounds way more cool than mine. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.

Re:Wow!

[fishthegeek]

See my other post for one citation. We are not talking about ONE person or even fifty. We're talking about a village or an entire population of an area. Considerably different eh? Star Wars was created over thirty years ago and just like my example SOMEONE would correct it for me because most all of us have seen it and KNOW it. You can call BS until DNF is released but you're still wrong.

It wasn't just the village elder telling the stories at all. It was a group project, usually done with rhythmic devices or mnemonic devices as a group activity. EVERYONE in the village would raise their arm if the story went off.

Re:Wow!

[JeanPaulBob]

You didn't read my post, did you? I said, "if the story is widely-disseminated & widely-known, that would tend to restrict the changes that would occur." The telephone game is all about the message being passed on from one person to another person, in secret.

Imagine the telephone game where people aren't whispering--where every person in the room can hear every step of the transmission. That would cause the reliability of transmission to skyrocket, don't you think?

Of course, real-life oral transmission would be somewhere between regular Telephone Game and my modified version. There are lots of variables--how widely the story is told, how often, how important it is to the culture, whether they care about faithful transmission or regard it as flexible, etc. And smaller details will be more variable than larger details.

Re:Wow!

[davester666]

I did read your original 'Wow' post. That post:

Oral traditions are exceedingly reliable historical references. As the clan/tribe/village gathered to hear a story told it would be the same story that they had heard told from birth like their fathers and mothers.

Any error, addition or omission would have been corrected immediately.

If any geek arose to tell the story of Star Wars and claimed that Obi Wan said "Tashi Station, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villany" they would be flamed, flogged and their geek card would be confiscated. It was in the writing that things broke down because for most of human history most of the humans couldn't read but they could all talk and listen.

First, you describe telling a story, which is typically a one to many proposition, not some kind of mass chant/recital. I would argue that 'history' would be more likely to be told as a story than as some kind of group song, just because the story told by an individual can be so much longer and detailed than a song [different people forget/misremember different parts that kind of thing].

As for the star-wars geek reference, that is a totally different matter. Taking a relatively small portion of the general popular that is passionate about a specific, limited subject, will of course be more likely to object to a statement made by one of the other members of the group when they speak. But I would say if they were in setting where say, George Lucas was telling a story about the history of Star Wars even to that same population, it would take a very ballsy geek to put their hand up and say "You're wrong."

Now, how likely is it for a group of the same size, with the story told by George Lucas, but with the group being the general population, many of which are not particularly passionate about Star Wars, for someone to object to George if he changes the story slightly.

Re:Wow!

[fishthegeek]

Telling a story isn't a networking protocol. The listeners are engaged intimately, it's the stories of their families, heroes, fathers etc. The listeners were active in the process and in some cases they (vikings for example) did vocally participate. We're not talking about a bed time tale we're talking about cultures that value their histories and stories highly. I would argue that for something as important as the history of your culture and family you would have incredible pressure to get it right. Hell I can still recite all 16 IRQ's and their devices circa 1998!

As far as Star Wars is concerned it is a perfect example. When a given population (Slashdot) has a story (Star Wars) that is culturally important and valued no matter which person get's it wrong it will get corrected hastily. Slashdot is arguably a very small population somewhat analogous to a village. Look at the flamefest that happens still when someone says that "Greedo shot at Han first!"

It doesn't take anyone balsy to make sure that the story is right. Think like a 4500 year old guy that has an ancestor that did something cool. When someone else is telling that ancestors story and gets it wrong it becomes an issue of family honor.

Re:Wow!

[davester666]

It's not about getting the story wrong [x killed y instead of y killed x]. It's nuancing the story slightly differently, either on purpose or unintentionally. Or even village politics, like the current village elder doesn't like one subgroup of the village and doesn't tell the whole story [just leaves out part of it, or minimizes the role a group had in some story]. It's like the telephone game, only over a much longer time span, with a little more overlap [think grandparents recite tales to their children and grandchildren]. Just using words that are nuanced slightly differently [murdered vs killed vs died] can totally throw off the meaning of the story, while being difficult for someone to object to [as mentally, you may mentally transpose the two when you hear the second version].

As for the flamefests, those typically become a "I'm right", "No, I'm right". And that's with two people who actually witnessed the event [seen the movie]. In a tribal group, what do you do, vote on which version is 'correct'?

Re:Wow!

[aliquis]

Which is why I modded this story fairytale useless bullshit.

Feel free to disagree, but as long as someone spread and belive in this kind of stuff there will be a couple of fanatics fucking things up. And no, I'm not talking about a couple few which bomb themself on a bus, I'm talking millions of people who belives it enough to make those other people actually beliving, consider and doing it.

And then it doesn't matter what kinds of christians it is (because it always seem to be them, I don't see many buddist hating whatever non-beliver?)
Whatever christians people are here (protestants?), catolics, jews, islamists, whatever, freaks all of them.

The sooner people say fuck religion and leaves this bullshit the better.

Just consider in how many countries the religion is the law.

I guess religious freedom is one step, atleast it doesn't force one religion on everyone, the next step should probably be to forbid all kinds of religion, atleast as long as it tries to control people. If you choose a non-harmful way of living then fine, good for you, and us.

(And I know this can be read as me speaking against myself since I see to hate religious people so much, I don't, I hate morons of all kinds.)

Re:Wow!

[aliquis]

Valid point I guess, thought there are plenty of stupid fucks which belives all those tales as the truth, just as they are written, which is the bad thing so why spread that bullshit?

If not spreading them makes us lose a story about a guy with a boat and some animals on it who cares? He's long gone and dead, if he ever existed.

Re:Wow!

[fishthegeek]

I think we might be splitting hairs now and that probably isn't going to accomplish anything. I think that we might be throwing the baby out with the bath water. The historical accuracy of the oral tradition was originally where this started and even in your example with changes in nuance the story does essentially bear historical truth.

These people weren't just telling stories but they were expressing their lives and identities, I contend that they did so with the utmost care because those things were important to them. In a tribal group the whole of the group determines the rightness or wrongness of a telling. Given that when two people see an event there is normally a 10% to 12% difference in the story anyway I suppose that there is some sort of amalgam of the two that ends up being cannon. In the end I think that the historical facts of an event would continue to be accurate even with nuances. For those peoples there was just too much at stake to allow for anything less.

Re:Wow!

[quanticle]

The problem with your example is that the original source still exists. In other words, anyone who doubts the oral tradition can still go back to the movie and see what Obi Wan really said. But, with historical events, that's not really an option, is it? Lets say that all copies of "Star Wars" were destroyed. At this point, a geek could say, "Well, I believe Obi-Wan said, 'Tashi Station...'," and, without access to the original source, the argument would turn into a game of he-said-she-said.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is quite simply ... wrong. If you actually read some books on textual criticism, the monks who were "required" to translate letter by letter didn't. Sometimes, they changed entire passages just because they didn't like they way something read, or to discredit a rival theological position. Just compare the T.R. to some of the Greek versions and some of the stories are rather different.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

...the argument would turn into a game of he-said-she-said.

I beg to differ. I think he-said-he-said is a far more likely outcome.

**ducks**

Re:Wow!

[jrumney]

I think the OP meant copied many times in the sense of the King James bible being an English translation of the Latin bible used by the Vatican, which was itself a translation of documents that were originally written in Greek, some of which were translations of older Hebrew texts. Given his background as a carpenter's son in Galilee, Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic.

Re:Wow!

[WgT2]

His example is valid in that the original would not have to be accessed in order to elicit corrections from those who have already heard, and thus are familiar with, the story.

Your scenario of 'all' copies of Star Wars being destroyed is erroneous in that a movie is not an oral tradition: where multiple generations would hear the same story repeated - with multiple generations being present at once - which would provide for greater accuracy (among cultures that value(d) accuracy).

Re:Wow!

[JeanPaulBob]

Yes, that's probably what he meant. It's precisely the myth I was correcting.

The King James wasn't translated from the Latin text (called the Vulgate). It was translated from Greek manuscripts of the New Testament (the compilation is called the Textus Receptus) and from the Hebrew text of the Old Testament (called the Masoretic text). (Note: They also translated the Apocrypha--Jewish literature from between the Old and New Testaments--and those were translated from the Greek translation of the Hebrew (which is called the Septuagint), as you said.

Yes, Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic, at least most of the time. So when the Gospels record the words of Jesus, they are translations of his words. But the apostles spoke Greek, too, and that's what the letters of the New Testament were written in--and that's what the Gospels were written in. (Though I believe there's speculation--speculation, mind you--about an Aramaic original of Matthew.)

So no, the Bible does not come to use through a chain of translation from language to language. We have the Greek & Hebrew.

Re:Wow!

[AnotherUsername]

The original Star Wars vs. the Special Edition Star Wars? A bit of a retelling. Those who saw the original have their whole thing about Han vs. Greedo shooting first. However, those of the younger viewers who have only seen the Special Edition will probably not care that a little bit was changed. And say, perhaps, in 30 years, someone remakes the films again. But they change a little more. Sure, those who saw the Special Edition will object, but those who have only seen the new version, with the latest in special effects, as well as having the latest popular actors and actresses, will probably like the new version, assuming they even watch the originals. Don't believe me? How many have seen the original Ocean's 11? And have many have seen the new Ocean's 11? And so, the story changes. Small changes throughout history can make much more change than a big change at one point in history. Kinda like the boiling frogs argument.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

"However for the most part most of the religious texts are attempts to keep historical records thousands of years ago."

"Religious Documents are the best history we have for the time."

It's 5:00 a.m. where I am, and I can still tell those statements are bullshit. And the examples you gave were made up by you when you made the post. You have no evidence for those conjectures.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your trouble is related to the fact that the fanatics get all the bad press... and this leads to you becoming a fanatic yourself:

I guess religious freedom is one step, atleast it doesn't force one religion on everyone, the next step should probably be to forbid all kinds of religion, atleast as long as it tries to control people.

How is this not repeating the very same offense of your targeted enemy?

Re:Wow!

[Molochi]

Son: Dad, why is the sky blue?

Dad: It's reflecting the ocean.

20 years pass.

Grandson: Dad, why is the sky blue?

Son: A wise man once told me that it is a reflection of the sea.

Religion is an extension of this conversation.

Re:Wow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this is an example of the very first version control system - regarding the code as Holy. I'd say that a good many apps would be a lot better off if they used this principle in addition to modern source control. If FireFox had stuck to the intent of the original code, it would probably be much better for it today. Certainly, we would not have the eschatology-defining Antichrist called the Awesome Bar to cope with or root out.

Re:Wow!

[Raenex]

Oral traditions are exceedingly reliable historical references.

You've got to be kidding me. People lie. They don't see everything that happened. They misremember things. Details are left out. Embellishments occur. Context is missing. Prejudices abound.

Even in the modern era where there are reporters and cameras everywhere, finding out the truth is a shaky proposition. Have you ever read a story in a newspaper that you had inside knowledge of? Was it accurate? Did it tell the whole story?

Now you're going to claim that stories from 1,000s of years ago that were orally handed down before reaching book form are a good historical reference? Absolutely delusional.

Re:Wow!

[fishthegeek]

Uhmmm yes. That is exactly what I'm claiming. We're not talking about witnesses that happened to think they see a car accident. We're talking about histories that have been repeated very often by many generations simultaneously over the course of many hundreds of years.

By the way the science is in here and THAT is what is backing me up.

Re:Wow!

[Raenex]

By the way the science is in here and THAT is what is backing me up.

[citation needed]

Re:Wow!

[quanticle]

Right, but my issue still stands - if a "heretic" can claim enough followers, he can start his own competing narrative, distorting the oral tradition.

Lets get beyond hypothetical scenarios. What real oral traditions have been accepted as historical truth? I mean, we don't really believe that Jason planted "dragons teeth" and fought the army that they sprouted into. We don't really believe that Theseus fought a half-man half-bull in a labyrinth. We recognize that these stories are allegories for real events, but, without any sort of written record, we have no idea what those events are. Tell me, is there any oral tradition that can tell us the truth of a historical event?

Re:Wow!

[WgT2]

Tell me, is there any oral tradition that can tell us the truth of a historical event?

Wha? Jason didn't... do... that?

I have to admin that that's a good challenge. I hadn't really thought about the content oral traditions seem to deal with. I don't think the veracity of the content changes the model's potential (or known record) for consistency.

It has to be said that Biblical Archeology has been working very hard at finding the factual history of the Bible - which has portions that began as oral traditions.

Take Noah's flood: all oral traditions has a story about a(n important) flood. There is global geological evidence that is attributed to the flood (by those who believe it is historical).

Take the story of Abraham: his story was first passed on orally. Factual? Depends on what you believe. Did Sodom and Gomorrah exist? Inquiring archaeologists want to know.

If one believes the Bible, then yes, there are oral traditions of historical facts.

2 years is too long

[gregbot9000]

If they were smart they would have tied this release in with the Evangelion rebuild series.

Re:2 years is too long

[philspear]

To be fair, 2 years is probably less time than it took them to be transcribed initially. So after however many hundreds/thousands of years, we should be grateful that technology has advanced to a point where it takes 2 years instead of 10. Maybe by 2500 it will only take 1 year to transcribe them.

Re:2 years is too long

[eln]

Clearly if it's going to be 50% faster in a mere 492 years, our best bet is to wait until then to transcribe them rather than wasting our precious time now.

Re:2 years is too long

[hxftw]

Great idea. That way, nothing will ever get done.

Re:2 years is too long

[pb4wLoFang]

To be fair, 2 years is probably less time than it took them to be transcribed initially. So after however many hundreds/thousands of years, we should be grateful that technology has advanced to a point where it takes 2 years instead of 10. Maybe by 2500 it will only take 1 year to transcribe them.

However I imagine it would have taken the original authors far longer to transcribe them and then also make them available globally...

Re:2 years is too long

[ElizabethGreene]

If you have time, it's worth looking at the Codex Sinaiticus site to read what digitizing a collection like this is like. The Sinaiticus is nearly a 600 years newer than the dead sea scrolls, and printed on a more durable material. This isn't your simple kodak easy-share digitizing.

It's interesting to compare this discussion with the "How to store digital pictures for 25 years" question on Ask slashdot.

-ellie

(I'll take my historical document carved into a bronze tablet.)

Re:2 years is too long

[rubberglove]

If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute.

Re:2 years is too long

[Requiem18th]

Meh' the transcription has been available fansubbed a week after official release...

Edifying

[COMON$]

So now are we going to get a bunch of jokes on how it takes 2 years to have good 'fakes' made? In my experience Sandlotters aren't typically very tolerant of Christian philosophy, or events.

As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released. Debates will be much more entertaining and edifying, with some good old material to validate certain arguments and invalidate others.

Regardless of your Religious background, the dead sea scrolls are very important and to have them readily available for those who speak the language is exciting for many reasons.

2 Years though, at least this shows you how seriously people take preserving historical documents like this.

My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with. How are we going to be able to validate the good copies from the publicly tampered ones? From a technical standpoint is there anyway to protect things like this so the average Jo knows which is real and which is not?

Re:Edifying

[grub]

As a Rational Christian

Where's the -1, Oxymoron mod when you need it?

Re:Edifying

[Kjella]

My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with. How are we going to be able to validate the good copies from the publicly tampered ones? From a technical standpoint is there anyway to protect things like this so the average Jo knows which is real and which is not?

Ummm... as if it was more difficult when they were *not* on the net? Now you can just claim it says something else, in the future you have to do a pretty good photoshop job on it. And in any case, maybe like with all other information getting it from a source you trust?

Re:Edifying

[COMON$]

Oops Slashdotters got switched to sandlotters by my spell check, I guess that is what I get for using a different dictionary than my usual custom one...oh well enjoy.

Re:Edifying

[DogDude]

My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with. How are we going to be able to validate the good copies from the publicly tampered ones?

So what? You're talking about a religion that has had its primary texts re-written countless times over the centuries, already. Nobody today can point at any kind of original "Bible". Whether or not these are "accurate" is pretty irrelevant, even if you're somebody who is Christian/Jewish.

Re:Edifying

[Ironsides]

Somehow, I doubt it is that hard to find copies. I came across photograph copies in my College Library the other day.

Re:Edifying

[geekoid]

"Rational Christian"
WTH does that mean?

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released. Debates will be much more entertaining and edifying, with some good old material to validate certain arguments and invalidate others.

Rational as in you do believe that the bible is the word of god, but you don't think it should be taken seriously? Why spell it with capitals. Dead sea scrolls are just a different viewpoint on a man that never existed. The bible is a very good piece of fiction and no westerner should ever deny that it is woven into our history. We do have a future ahaid of us however.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh gnoes! U insulted Teh Jezuz!!! Now his worshippers will have to mod you down.
Judgmental cunts.. Oh wait, they aren't supposed to judge.
 
  fuck jesus

Re:Edifying

[geekoid]

Yeah, his concern is pretty lame.
There will still have the originals.

Re:Edifying

[grub]

I came across photograph copies in my College Library the other day

Did you wipe them off and apologize to the librarian?

Re:Edifying

[COMON$]

As opposed to the bible thumping corner screamers that believe whatever they are told. Believe it or not, there is a subset of us Christians who came to faith because it made sense. We tend to be ashamed of the Christians that are most often portrayed in the media. We can typically defend our belief with reason and solid premises rather than some strong emotional tie to it.

Re:Edifying

[ndansmith]

So what? You're talking about a religion that has had its primary texts re-written countless times over the centuries, already. Nobody today can point at any kind of original "Bible". Whether or not these are "accurate" is pretty irrelevant, even if you're somebody who is Christian/Jewish.

Perhaps you should read up on textual criticism.

Re:Edifying

[ndansmith]

My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with. How are we going to be able to validate the good copies from the publicly tampered ones? From a technical standpoint is there anyway to protect things like this so the average Jo knows which is real and which is not?

The average Jo also does not know how to read ancient Hebrew, so perhaps we should not be too concerned about him. If people want the real thing, they can always go to the source, and cryptographic hashes could be provided to validate photos hosted on other sites.

Re:Edifying

[jeiler]

My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with.

Digital watermarking, digital signatures, heck, even a CRC checksum will go a long way to preventing forgeries. And if I'm not mistaken, these things will be on an "official" website somewhere, so if fakes start circulating it will be easy to point to the original.

And I quite agree as to the importance--as a non-Christian who studies ANE culture, this is an exciting and important step.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that an oxymoron? If he can be expressed as a ratio of two integers, then so be it.

Ass.

Re:Edifying

[canUbeleiveIT]

So what? You're talking about a religion that has had its primary texts re-written countless times over the centuries, already. Nobody today can point at any kind of original "Bible". Whether or not these are "accurate" is pretty irrelevant, even if you're somebody who is Christian/Jewish.

Did you really say that? Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document? You don't have to share the beliefs of the writers of it to understand that this is an immensely important piece of history.

While you're at it, why don't you take a ball peen hammer to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel since it contains religious thought. Or perhaps make it your life's work to erase any remnant of the works of William Blake since he was apparently a Christian.

It think that this is why many look at hostile agnostics and atheists and see people who are just as irrational as the religious folks that they seem to hate so much.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, there is a subset of us Christians who came to faith because it made sense.
 
  Made sense like this does?
 
You're the same as the others. Believing in the same invisible superbeings but, somehow, you're better, right?
 
One delusional kook is no better than the other.

Re:Edifying

[jellomizer]

Yea just like moral atheist... (Hey you started it)

Re:Edifying

[jcgf]

We can typically defend our belief with reason and solid premises rather than some strong emotional tie to it.

Feel free to begin anytime. I'm willing to bet that you can't.

Re:Edifying

[ArcSecond]

The Dead Sea Scrolls are roughly contemporary with the life of Jesus of Nazareth (sometime before 100 CE). Big J (who I have no trouble believing is an actual historical person, godhood notwithstanding) and his teachings don't appear in them, because they were separated and parallel offshoot of Judaic religious tradition.

So to summarize, Dead Sea Scrolls != New Testament. Thanks for coming out.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

We can typically defend our belief with reason and solid premises rather than some strong emotional tie to it.

Then please do so. I would like to read such a defense. As long as it is not some form of the watchmaker argument or any of the other standards that have been knocked down time and again.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to share the beliefs of the writers of it to understand that this is an immensely important piece of history.

It's not important for anything other than an old curiosity. I'd wipe my ass with it on camera just to see the reaction of the religious nuts.

Re:Edifying

[geekoid]

That mean your less irrational. Not rational.

There really isn't anything rational in Christianity.
I'd like to see some solid premises and reason that applies to an act of blind faith.

Re:Edifying

[Adriax]

Actually no, they're digitizing the originals using the same technique predicted by the movie tron. That's why it's taking 2 years, they've not quite perfected the technology.

Re:Edifying

[BobMcD]

I'm not sure who modded him Funny, but I agree with his statement.

Some examples:

1) I do not believe in the literal global flood. There's just too much common sense to the contrary, and I haven't personally witnessed anything that makes me believe it may have happened. I don't go in for the 6000 year creation story, or 900-year-old mothers, or any of this nonsense. I'm quite certain that these exist in the Bible as a matter of human error rather than God's will that we all believe in a super-human history.

2) I do believe that the teachings of Christ himself (emphasis on himself, and not extrapolations upon what he said) can be followed to leading a very good life. By any definition of 'good' you want to use. I fail to see how 'love thy neighbor' does one wrong, as just one example. I DO NOT believe that a great deal of what Paul (formerly Saul) wrote and taught would have actually been Christ's own words. I do not find it reasonable that God would hate all homosexuals, again as a single example.

3) God may in fact NOT be a grey-bearded dude on a cloud. He may well not be a 'he', as I can see little need for reproduction, ergo genitalia. I am certain that some benevolence has an impact on my life (prayers have been answered, etc), but would be willing to entertain a wide variety of opinions as to what exactly is causing this. I call it 'God', but if you want to call it 'Allah', 'Spaghetti Monster', or some other thing, I can't really dispute you. If you want to claim that nothing of this nature has ever had an impact on your own life, that's cool too. Sad, but perfectly reasonable.

4) However, I do find that claiming that it is impossible for such a religion to be correct, even by if accident, is quite unreasonable indeed.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting...a retaliation. How does that match up with your "morality"?

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Sandlotters aren't typically very tolerant of Christian philosophy, or events.

/.'rs mock superstition, regardless of creed.

As a Rational Christian,

You believe in an imaginary playmate.

the dead sea scrolls are very important

Absolutely. The study of mythology is very important to understanding who we are.

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

So now are we going to get a bunch of jokes on how it takes 2 years to have good 'fakes' made?

Nobody I'm aware of is claiming the Dead Sea Scrolls are not ancient documents.

As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released.

Why? The Dead Sea Scrolls really say nothing, at least nothing positive, about Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain copies of some Old Testament works and works related to the Essenes, a Jewish Zealot group that vaguely resembled Christianity in some ways. If anything, the Dead Sea Scrolls weaken the arguments of orthodox Christianity by demonstrating that Christians were influenced by other Jewish reform movements as much as (or more) than Jesus.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are of enormous importance to Jews as they contain the oldest know copies of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament). But for the most part, the copies of the Torah in the DSS strictly conform to the current translations of the Torah.

Regardless of your Religious background, the dead sea scrolls are very important

I'm not sure why Hindus, Jains, Budhists, Taoists, Native Americans, Neopagans, etc. should care.

2 Years though, at least this shows you how seriously people take preserving historical documents like this.

It's more likely due to he massive egos and arguments surrounding the DSS, and archeology in general. To this day, over 60 years since their discovery, not all of the DSS have been published.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Military intelligence is working on it.

Re:Edifying

[BobMcD]

The most amusing part of this, to me at least, is that YOU are also not supposed to judge. No one is, because it isn't a smart thing to do.

Say what you want, but Christ was a pretty bright guy. It is really pretty hard to find fault in the basic tenants of his message. Certainly there are numerous examples of humans behaving as humans do and labeling it with a religion named after him, but this has little impact on the actual message itself.

I can see why you might resent Christians. I resent a handful myself. I cannot, however, understand how you would bear such ill will towards the epitome of a good person.

Oh wait, you're trolling. Oh, well never mind then. Sorry about that...

Re:Edifying

[Maxo-Texas]

There is supernatural being to forgive a non-believer for bad things they do.

In the spirit of Obama, let's agree that there are extremists in every group but most of us are in the reasonable middle. A reasonable (rational) christian can have faith but not feel obliged to impose it on everyone else. Atheists can be moral, amoral, and immoral-- and so can christians (and anyone of any faith). The point being that HUMANS are moral, amoral, and immoral.

In fact, the same human can be amoral (very young), moral (young and idealistic), amoral/immoral (now young and hedonistic), and then return to being moral (mature), and then fall into immorality (corrupted by money or fail to deal with the wounds of childhood), and go back to being moral.

And.. it is really the extremely rare human who starts off moral, remains moral, and lives a long life without being immoral or amoral at some point.

Re:Edifying

[the_womble]

an act of blind faith.

Rational faith is not blind. It is based on experience or reason.

Furthermore faith is not synonymous with belief. You could believe in God's existence without having faith in him (although vice-versa would obviously not make sense).

Re:Edifying

[BobMcD]

Belief in the deity is only one fraction of the meaning of Christianity.

Christian means 'like Christ', which is generally accepted as trying to have the insight into life and humanity that he did.

How on earth is that not rational??

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document?

Did you really say that? Christianity is ENTIRELY based on the testimony recorded in early Christian texts and the teachings of early Church fathers. If you invalidate early Christian texts, you invalidate Christianity. Much the same is true of Judaism.

Christians tend to attribute psychotic hatred and irrationality to anyone who says "Christianity is nonsense" because it clashes so strongly with their point of view.

Atheists are not talking about smashing the Sistine Chapel, burning the books of William Blake, or killing modern "Christian rock" stars. Find me some quotes or news accounts. You will find people who attack religious art (like Michelangelo's David). They're all religious nuts, who find any depiction of religious figures sinful.

Re:Edifying

[sm62704]

So now are we going to get a bunch of jokes on how it takes 2 years to have good 'fakes' made?

I welcome the jokes; humor and laughter is the only thing unique to our species.

As a Rational Christian, I am excited about this material being released

As am I, but it will be as enlightening to me as watching "Passion of the Christ" with subtitles turned off.

Re:Edifying

[Rostin]

You're talking about a religion that has had its primary texts re-written countless times over the centuries, already.

You should try reading a little less Dan Brown and a little more actual scholarship. There is certainly debate about the actual origins of the biblical text - whether, for example, the gospels represent mostly eyewitness accounts or are just a written version of oral traditions that circulated for decades in the early church. But there is very little dispute about the fact that the text as we have it today differs little from the original.

Re:Edifying

[jellomizer]

The size of the Multi-verse (as physics assume now that the universe is only a subset of multi-verse. Is infinite so the probability that any particular event that isn't happening an infinite number of time is 0. So however we exist so there forth we couldn't have come here from probable chance of events. So the concept of a God who in some way willed the circumstances of what exists is just a good answer to the paradox of Math as anything else.

Then there is pascals rational.
There are these possibility.
No God
Angry God (you dammed no matter what)
Neutral God (No heaven or hell but God exists)
Picky God (save those who follow the correct way of life)
Loving God (you are in heaven no matter what)

If No God if you are Right about being No God nothing is gained or loss in the universal scale you are just a series of chain of events.

Angry God you will lose no matter what if you are right or wrong the same event will happen.

Neutral God does care if you beleve in it or not still no effect of your destiny

Picky God If you follow the ideals of No God, Angry God, Neutral God, and Loving God you are loosing you chances of living the way Picky God wants you to live. By choosing a religion you at least may hedge your bets of doing what picky God wants you to do.

Loving God. You will gain no matter what.

So the Picky God is a good idea for a belief structure to follow. While it may not be correct you have a better probability for the afterlife.

The rest of the choice will either increase your negative effect or just be neutral.

Then there is the infinite complexity of the universe. As scientist study the universe in big and small more the more complex it gets and the more questions that come up. If we are an just a scientific process then I would suspect the Universe at some point should really start explaining itself and get simpler when gets smaller but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Also there is question of Prove to me that there is No God. If I can't prove to you that there is a God, I haven't disproved the existence of God. So either I will need to find a better proof of God or find a way to Disprove God. Otherwise the concept is unproven either way so If you believe in God or Not is outside the realm of science. The best I have defuncts the literal translations of religions but not the core parts of the faith itself.

Re:Edifying

[CowboyBob500]

Because there is little to no evidence that he even existed. You may just as easily say you want to be "like King Arthur" since there is just about the same level evidence of his existence. Most rational people would say that wanting to achieve the "insight into life and humanity" that King Arthur had is a one way ticket straight to the nuthouse...

Bob

Re:Edifying

[yfarren]

Wow. Yet another ignorant boor ranting against religion, and while demonstrably WRONG, getting modded by other ignorants.

Listen, there are a LOT of reasons to criticize religion. Take your pick. Hateful violent groups, both internally and externally. In many cases religions encourage people to turn away from knowledge and discovery. Blah blah blah. There are many fruitful, and many flame-ish discussions you can have about religions. But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.

So, for instance, there are fairly minor differences (generally several letters different) in the First 5 books of Moses, between the Bible that the Ethiopian Jews, and the rest of the Jews had, in spite of these groups having virtually no contact for several thousand years.

Now, the Ethiopians had in their cannon several books the rest of the Jewish world has as Apocrypha (I.E. they largely ignored). And, they did not have many later books, or traditions of the rest of the Jewish world.

Different groups have been funny about how they pick and choose which books get INTO (or taken out of) their cannons.

And there are a whole mess of interesting things that come up when a religion starts TRANSLATING texts.

But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong. And wrong from a hateful disposition (assumed from tone) really doesn't belong in an exchange of knowledge. Propaganda? Sure, but an educated conversation? No. Shame on you, and anyone modding you up. If you want to decry the wrongs of religion, there really are enough out there to pick on. Disseminating untruths is really unnecessary.

Re:Edifying

[sm62704]

there is a subset of us Christians who came to faith because it made sense

There is another subset who came to faith by being baptized in blood. Some people won't accept witness or any other proof.

We tend to be ashamed of the Christians that are most often portrayed in the media.

Never trust a preacher who wears a five thousand dollar suit. Pat Robertson has converted more Christians to athiesm than all the slashdot athiests combined. He is one of the "wolves in sheep's clothing" Christ warned you about; so is Bush. They worship not God, but mammon. Their church is the bank and their priest is the economist. These people believe that priceless==worthless. Beware of them.

Re:Edifying

[BobMcD]

So then Buddhism is somehow more rational because this person is verified to exist? Would it be more rational to follow the teachings of Tom Cruise because I like the color if his hair?

Whether or not the person actually existed isn't really all that questionable. You can deny it, if you wish, but if he did not exist then we're looking at a vast conspiracy. He even appears in the Koran, for example.

I'd also challenge your statement that practicing the principles of Camelot isn't so nutty as you're making it out to be. Remember the Round Table? Turns out that's not a bad idea.

Focus more on the concept, less on the person.

Re:Edifying

[Kenrod]

Is it rational to mask your disgust with a display faux befuddlement? If you're going to take time out of your busy day to poke Christians with a stick, you could at least make a rational argument.

But I guess you don't have to because at Slashdot your "point" is an accepted meme by the majority of readers. Which further makes me wonder "why bother?". Maybe you're just a bigot who can't tolerate those who aren't like you.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of your Religious background, the dead sea scrolls are very important

I'm not sure why Hindus, Jains, Budhists, Taoists, Native Americans, Neopagans, etc. should care.

I'm an atheist, and even I find these important from a historical perspective. I mean, aren't these, like, some of, if not THE, oldest writings in the world?

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's so delusional, then why does your ass pucker inwards every time you contemplate the possibility that Heaven and Hell exist, and to which one you would be going?

Your hostility is just you trying to quiet that uneasy feeling that you have because it might just really be true.

Re:Edifying

[sm62704]

While you're at it, why don't you take a ball peen hammer to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel since it contains religious thought.

Sadly, there are those here who would do just that. Fanaticism knows no bounds. There are religious fanatics even among the fanatical athiests.

Re:Edifying

[Wellington Grey]

As a Rational Christian

I think you misunderstand the essential nature of religion.

Re:Edifying

[Butisol]

Would you accept circular reasoning?

Re:Edifying

[Abreu]

+1 Insightful

Being a Christian is considered to be a life-long endeavour, not something you "just become". ...of course there's the whole "by grace alone, not by deeds" thing, but thats a whole 'nother debate.

Re:Edifying

[serviscope_minor]

Then there is pascals rational.

(ITYM wager) Well, how do you expect to get to Valhalla if you worship the false god Jehova? You may as well worship a frost giant. Thor would be a much better choice, if you don't want to end up in Hel.

Re:Edifying

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, all religious reasoning is circular. It is a kind of proof of religiosity. Of course, it all goes back to Circ, the original Greek religious wizard. Her name also lives on in the Dutch (and Scottish) word 'Kerk' which is Dutch for Church, which also means Circ. So the sad joke is that the very word 'Church' admits to circular reasoning - sigh...

Re:Edifying

[AioKits]

Being Pagan and of German descent, this idea intrigues me... Course, I've always preferred Inari myself...

Re:Edifying

[empaler]

Let's just get this over with and invoke Godwin;

The papal state helped Hitler. How's that for morals?

(And no, this is not a serious argument, but neither was yours)

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the "Giving God" that gives you 17 acres in heaven? I heard that from someone the other day. Man, I thought, souls must take up a lot of space in the after life for God to be so frugal allocating it out in infinite vastness that must be heaven, lol.

Re:Edifying

[jellomizer]

This is hedging your bets of the Picky God/god. I am not debating any faith just a religion in general. Picking a religion where there is/are picky God/god(s) are still the best probable action to choose. There is still the chance of going the Picky God Rout that you will choose the wrong way of life however you are better going that route then choosing the others.

Re:Edifying

[trenien]

You do realize that if you use "god(s)" to explain the universe, you haven't explained anything.

You're only pushing the explaination one step back...

Re:Edifying

[empaler]

While you're at it, why don't you take a ball peen hammer to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel since it contains religious thought. Or perhaps make it your life's work to erase any remnant of the works of William Blake since he was apparently a Christian.

Easy on the passive-aggressive straw man arguments - you might get hurt.

Re:Edifying

[empaler]

That's Pascal's Wager , for reference.

Re:Edifying

[kungfugleek]

I've read a little from this site: Christian Thinktank and it seems to have some decent info. A little long-winded, tho. I'm sure there are others.

Should probably emphasize gp's point that it's a defense based on reasonable (solid) premises. If you're looking for air-tight proof that cannot possibly be denied, you won't find it I don't think. I haven't, at least.

Re:Edifying

[CODiNE]

I do not find it reasonable that God would hate all homosexuals, again as a single example.

I don't find that particular concept anywhere in the Bible, but I'm sure you know that homosexuality as a sin was definitely not invented by Paul. It's mentioned several times explicitly in the Mosaic law. Again it's mentioned in 1 Co. 6:9-11. You'll notice in verse 11 it speaks of those who WERE practicers of such things such as homosexuality. So clearly there's no special hatred reserved for homosexuals, it's simply a sin such as any other. When someone accuses the Bible of being anti-homosexual I usually point out that it's equally against heterosexual fornicators and that neither sin is worse than the other.

Perhaps you were only stating that Bible thumpers claim God hates homosexuals and not that you thought it was an actual Bible teaching that was in error.

Re:Edifying

[canUbeleiveIT]

Did you really say that? Christianity is ENTIRELY based on the testimony recorded in early Christian texts and the teachings of early Church fathers. If you invalidate early Christian texts, you invalidate Christianity. Much the same is true of Judaism.

That would seem to me to be more of a reason that it is historically significant, rather than less. And more of a reason that it should be available.

Christians tend to attribute psychotic hatred and irrationality to anyone who says "Christianity is nonsense" because it clashes so strongly with their point of view.

Atheists are not talking about smashing the Sistine Chapel, burning the books of William Blake, or killing modern "Christian rock" stars. Find me some quotes or news accounts. You will find people who attack religious art (like Michelangelo's David). They're all religious nuts, who find any depiction of religious figures sinful.

While you're using a mighty broad brush, these things that you say are all at least partially true but I just don't see how they pertain to the importance or historicity of the Dead Sea Scrolls or, for that matter, to what I wrote.

I never said that atheists were doing anything of the kind, I was merely following the logical out-workings of the original post's line of reasoning, which placed the DSSs in the category of worthlessness due to their religious nature.

Re:Edifying

[JeanPaulBob]

There really isn't anything rational in Christianity.

The power of your reasoning overwhelms me.

I'd like to see some solid premises and reason that applies to an act of blind faith.

Pop-culture assumptions aside, "faith" does not mean "acceptance of something as true without adequate evidence". I have faith in a modern airline's ability to give me a flight that will land safely. (I don't have faith that they'll get me there on time, mind you.) That faith is a trust in something I regard as reliable. My faith may be more or less well-grounded--the more that I've researched a given airline's reliability, the more well-grounded my faith will be.

Keep in mind that in the Bible, the disciples of Jesus are said to have "faith". The disciples, who were ostensibly first-hand witnesses of quite a lot. (And the Faith Hall of Fame in Hebrews 11 includes multiple Old Testament people who were first-hand witnesses of spectacular demonstrations of God. And you might check out the evidenciary-style appeals of the apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Corinth, 1 Cor. 15.) In the worldview presented by the Bible, faith does not mean confidence that ignores evidence & reason.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the bible thumping corner screamers that believe whatever they are told. Believe it or not, there is a subset of us Christians who came to faith because it made sense. We tend to be ashamed of the Christians that are most often portrayed in the media. We can typically defend our belief with reason and solid premises rather than some strong emotional tie to it.

So - what is it that the DSS is supposed to elucidate or explain or chronicle? It seems like it's all been kept a great secret, as if the thoughts and revelations contained in them would tear the fabric of belief.

Personally, I find it fascinating that the world's three major (showing my prejudice) religions are based upon concepts and traditions passed down between nomadic tribes scraping out a subsistence level of existence in the desert as outcasts and "barbarians", as compared to the Babylonians, Eqyptians and Greeks, who all had a vibrant and structured societal culture that was not monotheist but rather symbolic in it's polytheism. Democracy is a concept borne out of the aggregation of people into cities and states, while nomadic tribes adhered to a rigid hierarchy based largely on a more primitive, power-based, coercive form of government, often focused on familial descendency.

Western thought is infused with a subcultural undercurrent that rewards a familial hierarchy over democratic principles - while we play lip service to egalitarianism in modern society.

Re:Edifying

[JeanPaulBob]

Sorry, faith is synonymous with belief. In NT Greek, anyway, "faith" and "to believe" and "belief" all translate the same word group. The AC above was right in his reply, when he said "it is presumptuous of you to expect that the rest of us would automatically know what that means."

Re:Edifying

[kungfugleek]

Out of curiosity -- serious, I'm not trying to troll. I've always wanted to ask, though. What's the rationale for atheism? And maybe more interesting, what's the end result as it applies to one's life?

Yeah, I'm assuming you're atheist. Apologies if I'm wrong.

Re:Edifying

[Joe Tie.]

Really? The picky gods seem in general to hate worshiping other gods more than they hate not being themselves worshiped. Agnosticism would seem a safer bet if fear of retribution is the motivation, given how many thousands of picky gods there are. Christianity seems a bad bet in general anyway. Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that the very oldest religions would have a more valid claim to authenticity than the newer ones? Besides that, Enki kicks ass.

Re:Edifying

[mcbutterbuns]

Judgement itself is not sinful, Christ warns that if you judge someone, you'll get measure in the same manner. Its more of a very strong warning and less of a command.

For one who truly believes, they'll take it to heart. For someone who uses their belief for selfish motives, they'll abuse it.

Matthew 7:1-2

Re:Edifying

[jellomizer]

Well if you accept a definition of God as have always existed. Science shows that the Universe hasn't always existed however if God has always exited then there is no point of going a step back as God created time and existed beyond time there forth there is no step back.

The hard part about the debate it the use of infinity as a variable, making it hard to come with a 100% convincing argument however you can make a rational argument. Just not one that can convince everyone. People can make a rational argument or a rational idea without being correct.

The point of the exercise isn't to prove that there is a God with 0% margin of error. But to show that you can come with a logical rational explanation of God, without thumping a 2000 year old textbook.

Re:Edifying

[mantar]

Ancient Hebrew DRM.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

"I do not believe in the literal global flood."

As the one true faith of God, the Fundamental Christians, you are going straight to Hell because you have doubted the Lord's holly and sacred book. And if you don't believe me, ask anyone in my congregation.

Re:Edifying

[BobMcD]

Perhaps you were only stating that Bible thumpers claim God hates homosexuals and not that you thought it was an actual Bible teaching that was in error.

That.

To state it more clearly, I realize that there is a Biblical (Old Testament) basis for the position, but I highly doubt that Christ would have ever said that it was a sin. A lot of what Christ came to say was basically that the religion had strayed too far into tradition, and was getting off-message.

And as to why I don't care much for Paul, see the entire book of Romans...

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really meant that, you wouldn't "bet that you can't"

so, obviously you're just an ignorant athiest/agnostic who really has no basis for his beliefs other than the hate for "religion"

It's funny that a lot of the scholars, historians, scientists that try and disprove the bible end up believing.

There must be some reason that happens?

Re:Edifying

[jellomizer]

This was moderated down not because it was off topic (As it was a response to a modded up challange) but because it proved a point that someone didn't want to hear. Just like Religious Fundies Athiest want to bring down oposing ideas as it would force them to think of things differently. Nothing has changed in the universe.

Re:Edifying

[Arthur Grumbine]

I've always thought that placing books into cannons was the least likely way to ensure their integrity over time...

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

"there is a subset of us Christians who came to faith because it made sense"
How can any religion make sense when its holy book contradicts itself. For instance the bible has two different creation stories and Christians try to ignore this fact.

What happens if the dead sea scrolls contradict the bible as well will you simply ignore them as well.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it fascinating that there is no physical evidence that Yeshua/Jesus even existed. Yet we have these scrolls, and we have artifacts from older times, and bones and teeth and imprints of tissue from animals centuries before the Roman Occupation of Judea.

People will believe whatever they want to believe, including ghosts, martians and tantric sex.

Re:Edifying

[canUbeleiveIT]

Easy on the passive-aggressive straw man arguments - you might get hurt.

It may have been a straw man, but it is hardly passive-aggressive. It's usually best to know terms before you use them.

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[Asterra]

Well, Chief.. how about the Book of Judas? It's one of those tattered scrolls. So tell me.. are you tolerant of that discovery, or a hypocrite?

Re:Edifying

[Arthur Grumbine]

Although it was not personally held by him, Godel had an argument that was based purely on reason. How much do I win for the bet? Oh...you were just being insulting...

Re:Edifying

[serviscope_minor]

By the way, the norse Hel isn't the same as the Christian Hell. The land of Hel (Helheim) is the lowest level of the world, and encompasses Niflheim (the land of ice) and Muspell (the land of fire) both of which predate the world (they're part of the creation myth and therefore can't really be part of the world), and is ruled over by Hel (except for Muspellheim which is ruled by Surt, with a flaming sword :-). The middle bid isn't all fire and brimstone torture. I think the dead kind of wander around.

But you can't hedge your bets either way. The probablity of being right is so small, and the penalty of being wrong is unknown. Given Ockham's razor, I see no point in picking any of them.

Re:Edifying

[kimvette]

This is wonderful. If you can read modern square-script Hebrew it's simple to learn Paleo-Hebrew as it is very similar, other than that the glyphs themselves changed (a yod is still a yod, a vav is still a vav, so if you learn the paleo-hebrew glyphs you can read the manuscripts which are in paleo hebrew). This will be great because it will give us direct access to high-quality scans of early scripts of leviticus and other manuscripts from the tenach (old testament). With these going online showing proof of Yeshua (Jesus) having fulfilled the messianic prophecies, it becomes much harder to deny who the creator is, and it underscores the authenticity of the Bible in general.

I encourage you to learn Hebrew - once you start learning it and dig into the tenach in its original language and read it within its original Jewish context (modern mainstream Christianity is extremely warped by removing the Jewish context and the syncretism -- which is patently ridiculous considering that Yeshua is the messiah; the King of the Jews and the redeemer) it takes on a whole new level. You learn the meanings of names ( ×(TM)ש××, or Yeshua, is "savior" or "Yahuah/YHVH is my savior" referencing Yahuah/YHVH, or it could mean "I am your deliverer" since 'Yah" is "I"). Other names are equally fascinating and it is amazing how many lived up to the meanings of their names.

Re:Edifying

[CowboyBob500]

Seems like we kind of agree.

Focus more on the concept, less on the person.

At that point it ceases to become a religion and turns into a philosophy, which I'd actually argue Buddhism and Arhurianism to be as well. It's the faith part that's irrational, the philosophy part is perfectly rational. Believing in Jesus Christ the son of God is as irrational as believing in King Arthur the son of God (The latter would get you sent to the nuthouse, but not the former. Why?)

However, philosophically agreeing with the teachings of Jesus Christ is perfectly rational as is philosophically agreeing with the teachings of King Arthur.

So, are you rational or not?

Bob

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that chivalry is dead?

Seeking to live a life with the morals, ideals or philosophies of anyone real or fictional is by no means a "one way ticket straigth to the nuthouse" On the contrary, it's the most common way that we instill and pass on values - It's why we have Superman with his "Truth, Justice and The American Way."

Maybe saying you want to walk on water, cast out demons and resurrect people from the dead may get you the title of nutter... But wanting to acheive the insight and humanity of Christ is by no means irrational - and is in fact admired by most of the world. e.g. Mother Teresa

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[trenien]

Define "always".

If you admit the presence of a god/goddess/spagheti monster creator of the universe, how could you know whether said being has an infinite existence. By definition its existence predates that of the universe, but it doesn't mean it has no beginning.

Saying it's always been is a supplementary strech.

Hence you only pushed back your need for an explanation that much further back

Re:Edifying

[BobMcD]

Believing in Jesus Christ the son of God is as irrational as believing in King Arthur the son of God

So, are you rational or not?

Ah, now this is a very well constructed argument.

I am willing to concede that Christ may not have been the 'son' of God, in a rational sense, because as I have stated before, I do not believe that God possesses a penis, semen, or any of the required biology used to produce a son.

I am also willing to entertain the possibility that he was literally sent to Earth with a purpose. A destiny, if that suits you better. This seems reasonable, seeing the impact of his life, and considering that he believed it himself.

I guess I just don't go in for the 'because the Bible said so' arguments enough to fall into the irrational category.

That doesn't mean, however, that I don't believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God, because the preponderance of evidence tells me that his claims were as reasonable as one could expect them ever to be.

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[thetagger]

Well, I'm an atheist and I will agree. Jesus does get dogmatic in weird ways here and there (and I will assume that's mostly the writers of the gospel's voice rather than Jesus), but he sounds very reasonable. What doesn't sound reasonable in the Bible is that "God" guy. Too many times he is an asshole and he isn't fair. I can't find a bridge between that thug and his son, so I am assuming the whole thing is bullshit because that's what sounds more reasonable. (And this considering that, on a purely abstract sense, I find the idea of "a god" far more reasonable than the extremely elaborate justification for the story of how Jesus came to exist.)

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[JeanPaulBob]

To state it more clearly, I realize that there is a Biblical (Old Testament) basis for the position, but I highly doubt that Christ would have ever said that it was a sin.

I'm curious: Why? Other than personal incredulity.

Would you agree that people sometimes do need "moral education"? That something might not seem bad to me--because of mistaken assumptions or distorted sensibilities on my part? In that situation, wouldn't my own appeal that "I houghly doubt that Christ would have said that ___ was a sin" be as meaningful as your own?

(That said, I also want to say that I'm sickened by the hatred of homosexuals that some people spew forth. And I think there are major problems with people who think that gay people are the worst of all sinners--I mean, "boastful" and "disobedient to parents" are grouped with homosexuality in Romans 1!)

On Paul: I'm also curious--why do you think people like Peter & the other apostles didn't repudiate Paul's distortions, if that's what they were? Do you think that they did, but were silenced somehow?

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[Bemopolis]

I don't find that particular concept anywhere in the Bible, but I'm sure you know that homosexuality as a sin was definitely not invented by Paul. It's mentioned several times explicitly in the Mosaic law.

And even that was based on a transcription error. Originally in Exodus it read that God hates the gOys.

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[fishthegeek]

There IS rationality to Christianity. You are a little arrogant in stating that you think that it can't be defended. It's very tedious to try to do this here but I'm willing to give it a go. More than likely I'll get flamed to the point where I can't address every response but if you are serious about wanting to know WHY there is rationality to Christianity simply ask or at the least state your objections.

Honestly I don't not want to convert you to Christianity and won't proselytize you because you have to live your own life and work out your own beliefs and you can do that without my help. But my religion and faith are real, defendable, and not without merit.

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[BobMcD]

I have the same issues you, in the realm of 'thug vs son'. My take on it is that God's message to us started out as one of love, got warped along the way, and Jesus came to reiterate it. The thug you see is the justification for what humanity did to the message over the course of several thousand years, or what-have-you.

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[rickb928]

I don't so much "look at hostile agnostics and atheists and see people who are just as irrational as the religious folks that they seem to hate so much" any more.

I see people who say that believing in something that is unprovable is wrong. And they want you to believe in that, or them.

Yes, that's what they are asking you to do; either something they are asking you NOT to do (believe), or to just believe them rather than someone or something else.

We might as well have the argument over the entire issue, rather than over part of it.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a Rational Christian"......

we at the Oxford Dictionary would like to thank you for this excellent example of an oxymoron.

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[kimvette]

Crap. I guess I can't type yivret on /.?

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[Coraon]

My problem with Christianity, and why I turned to paganism is simple; it assumes morality and spirituality are the same thing and as such tries to set rules for good behavior as a path to the divine. The problem with this is that whenever you set hard and fast rules you get what all geeks have seen when gaming...rules lawyering. We know the type, munchkins who manage to take a game a ruin it for the rest by abusing the rules to their advantage. Well, those people grow up and when they get involved it faith they become things like bible thumper's, born again's, and Jihadits. My faith has but one guidline, do whatever you want but whatever you do will come back at you 3 times as much. It means I am responsible for my actions (and bad spelling, sorry guys) and I will be called to answer for them in the here and now. That is why I follow my faith, I don't believe it's for everyone but I do believe in it for me. Also I think this is pretty cool, I love it whenever a book it put online free to read.

Re:Edifying

[JeanPaulBob]

Well, Chief.. how about the Book of Judas? It's one of those tattered scrolls. So tell me.. are you tolerant of that discovery, or a hypocrite?

What kind of "intolerance" are you expecting from him?

It's a manuscript of a Gnostic gospel that we already knew about. Some writers from the early church mentioned that this composition had been written. It is historically quite interesting to now have the contents of that work.

You act as though you expect Christians to put our hands over our ears and shout "I can't hear you", just because this manuscript exists. As though its very existence should shatter the Christian worldview. As though "someone at some point in early history wrote some things about Jesus that differ from what the accepted NT canon says about Jesus" is somehow shocking or unexpected for a Christian.

Re:Edifying

[rickb928]

There are only two serious flaws in your argument:

1. Jesus said He is the Son of God. You will have to refute Jesus' own description of Himself, or challenge the writings that make that statement and the authors thereof. You are, you know, challenging the veracity of men who went to their deaths to defend that point. They may have been lying, but read Romans 5:7 and consider that. Several died for Jesus' name.

2. God, if He is what and who He claims to be, need not be fair or even just, though he claims to be. As Creator, we are His do with as He pleases. Looking around, He has pretty much left us alone to do as we wish, wouldn't you agree? Reading the Old Testament, God pretty regularly (if not always) declared why He caused disaster or punishment on Man. You may not believe God is who He says He is, and that's fine. But to then challenge His actions according to your interpretation of who and what you think He should be isn't intellectually honest, to me. Dismiss God as not real, I can tolerate that as your opinion. Try to redefine God according to your standards, that doesn't work for me. You and I do not get to decide 'who' God is.

And if you "find the idea of "a god" far more reasonable than the extremely elaborate justification for the story of how Jesus came to exist", I'm interested. If God does exist, and He is who HE says HE is, what's so hard about sending His son as He did? God as Creator can do pretty much anything. A virgin birth is trivial, compared to creating the Universe. Picking and choosing the attributes of God or Jesus leads you down the road of intellectual dishonesty. Don't be lukewarm. Be a believer or not, but don't pick out the parts you like and toss the rest you have a difficult time with. Challenge. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 - "Test everything. Hold on to the good."

I'll leave it to you to discern what is good.

And if you want to dismiss the Bible as hopelessly inaccurate, I can tolerate that as your opinion as well. But doing so leaves you with nothing to base your judgement of what or who God is, since you've dismissed what is considered by His followers as His word. Remember, if God is who He says He is, he could change the Bible to be what He wanted it to be. It is what it is, and He has allowed it. Christians should remember that He may indeed have left it imperfect. We should stop nitpicking the details and focus on the truth.

While I would love to convince you of the truth of Jesus as our Saviour, I'm really just trying to convince you to be either fully atheist or not. Don't get trapped in the middle, thinking Jesus was a 'great teacher' but dismissing some of His own words. If you need to deny Jesus' own claim to being God's Son, you need to pretty much ignore His other words too. He's either right or wrong.

And I'm grateful that I will some day be able to examine and understand the Dead Sea scrolls, with the help of many many scholars. So far as I know, as we research more the Bible is upheld as correct, and is confirmed as accurate historically. We may never settle every issue, but that isn't necessary for me. For you, that I can't be the judge of.

Please accept my offer of blessing in His name.

Re:Edifying

[BobMcD]

Why? Other than personal incredulity.

I find nothing about homosexuality particularly sinful. We're talking here about a man loving another man (or woman/woman, etc.) The ability to produce a child isn't really as important as two people living a life in one another's care and being happy. The notion of a wholesome gay relationship may seem odd, but it really would fit the Christian ideal in many ways.

Promiscuity, on the other hand would be on the 'bad' list. It causes all sorts of human problems that are easily avoided by just a tiny bit of commitment.

So, in this context, unless 'homosexuality' is synonymous with 'promiscuous homosexuality', there isn't really anything Christian about rejecting it. And I highly doubt they are considered to be necessarily synonymous in the biblical context, otherwise it would be redundant.

Would you agree that people sometimes do need "moral education"?

I'm not quite certain what your definition of "moral education" would be, so I don't know for certain whether I agree. Education is great, but for me, concepts are crucial. "Because I said so" never ever ever cuts it in my world. All the things Christ teaches have a foundation in profound insight into humanity. They have a reason that is clear and obvious behind them, and this is why they ring so very true. "Don't be gay" just doesn't fit, because it begs the immediate question, "why not?"

This isn't unique to Christianity, by the way. The Ten Commandments have the same sort of truth to them. This is another topic, but apply the same "is the reason why immediately obvious" logic...

On Paul: I'm also curious--why do you think people like Peter & the other apostles didn't repudiate Paul's distortions, if that's what they were? Do you think that they did, but were silenced somehow?

There were, if I recall correctly, something like fifteen or twenty people's lives that were profoundly impacted by Christ being on Earth. Eleven of these were Apostles who basically lived in his presence for years. So yes, there almost certainly were more accounts of Christ's life. Remember, though, that the record shows that most of these were rejected. Christians were killed in throngs, and Apostles were martyred. Their messages absolutely were 'silenced'.

Also, it is at least somewhat likely that they merely didn't impact a much more powerful religion. "Go ye into all the world" would have met great resistance in most places at that time, as the message is quite counter-establishment. Remember the image of Christ in the Temple, kicking ass and taking names over the businesslike corruption of the church? This wouldn't have sat too well with those made wealthy by those religions.

So yes, there were other accounts and yes, they are probably lost to us for natural reasons, but this is only half of the problem.

Paul, formerly Saul, was one of those guys who's task it was to crush the Christian message. He did not walk with Christ as the others did. His accounts are all second-hand, and all of his writings appear (by all accounts) to be hundreds of years too late to have actually witnessed what he claims to be an expert on. Much of what he says runs deeply contrary to the simple Christian message of love, understanding, and forgiveness. Much of it hearkens back to the Old Testament, which makes sense because this is what Saul grew up with...

Why is it in our Bible? Because it was the message that reached the Romans. As in the same Romans of the Roman Catholic Church. Because the influence and impact of the Roman Empire designed what would become modern Europe these people were Christian, rather than Jewish or any other religion. Paul's additions to the message were part of the package from the moment they were canonized. The Gospel of Saint Thomas, not so much.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

I find it fascinating that you have been modded "troll" for what is essentially the truth. All the members of the Jesus fan-club must be as sensitive as they are stupid.

here && here are 2 of the best sites on the issue that I have seen .I was raised as a Catholic but have never been very susceptible to brainwashing or cultism. It is still amazing to me that people believe their own set of fairy tales (e.g. Xtianity) but will scoff and mock those of others (Islam, Roman Mythology etc), when they are, in fact, essentially the same thing.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

fucking hell, the only reason that the bible is an "immensely important piece of history" is that it allowed a christian minority to murder in the realm of 100 million people in the name of a non-existent "God". Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems, is a fairy-tale of convenience.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

There are religious fanatics even among the fanatical athiests.

Atheist would be A-religious by definition and extremist Atheists would definitely be in the minority by a long shot (IIRC Athiests make up ~1% of the USA population

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ a pretty bright guy? More like a non-existent guy.

There is ample data out and available about the content of the scrolls. Why do you think they were kept secret for so long? Do the research, and you'll find that they contain many stories attributed to Christ in the bible, but written a hundred years or so before he was supposedly born. Not only that, but there's no mention of a "jesus christ" in the scrolls at all. None.

Jesus life and stories are a derivative, updated version of the story of Joseph from the old testament, which is a romanticized re-telling of the life of Joser, one of the first egyptian pharos and possibly the first to claim to be "the son of god". Do your research if this is truly important to you. Also, see if you can find the connection between the end of every christian prayer - Amen, and the last part of the name of the most famous pharos, tutankhamen. Here's a hint - "the light, the truth, the son of god" (the Sun God, not the christian god).

And while you're at it, read the Book of the Dead (Ari's version - the most complete one we have) If you're at all familiar with the bible, the similarities between it and many parts of the Egyptian book of the dead is striking. Yes, there are lots of differences, but so too are there lots, and lots of differences between Christianity today and that practiced by Charlemaigne, and his version than Constantine's, etc. etc. etc.

All in all, if you haven't really done any critical research into the history of this stuff, then you're really only believing what you've been told by someone else, who probably believes just what he was told, and so on...

What does it all mean? I believe the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger said it best:
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

Perhaps the public's access to the scrolls will shed some light on the history of these barbaric religions.

Re:Edifying

[stephanruby]

"Rational Christian" WTH does that mean?

It must be a new code word to mean a Scientific Christian (i.e. Scientologist).

Every body is taking cues from the Republicans these days. You take a concept/label you stand for that has received some bad press, and then you rename it so that it sounds like it means the complete opposite of what it really is: the clean air act, no child left behind, compassionate conservatives, intelligent design, creation theory, and now a "rational christian".

Re:Edifying

[Ortega-Starfire]

Quite well, in fact.

Re:Edifying

[jd]

I agree that it's very important to put the text online. The best way to minimize the risk of tampering is if the originators publish a public key, and a digital signature for each photograph uploaded. Any signature that can't be verified by the official key is an unofficial signature. Any picture for which there is no signature or where the signature doesn't match up to the picture is an indication of tampering (even if benign). It only minimizes the risk, but it goes a long way towards helping.

Next, there are many documents already online (the early version of the New Testament broken into fragments after World War 2 and kept in several nations, for example, which might be a palimpset - the photographs indicate it but the researchers refused to answer any questions regarding the document) and many that I'd like to see online. However, these resources are scattered and hard to use in any kind of comparitive or structured way. Better coordination by the projects and better navigation between them would be greatly beneficial.

The Mandaeans (surviving direct descendents of those Nazarenes who followed John the Baptist, according to both their traditions and genetic studies) have published some of their texts online, but it's confusing and again very hard to compare with this other literature, as they've provided straight ASCII text only. I can't find quality documents on the early beliefs of the Falasha (the claimed descendents of King Solomon who migrated to Ethiopia during Solomon's reign). Although neither are technically "Christian", I am a firm believer in understanding some of the context the Old Testament and New Testament writers may have assumed we'd know but which has not been preserved over the course of history. We'll never know everything. The Old Testament makes references to books that do not appear to have survived and to historic events probably never recorded. The more we can understand how they saw things, the more we can be sure which translation, where ambiguities exist and there are lots, were intended. We can also do better at distinguishing between cultural beliefs, Rabinical law and "revealed" law - these are not clear and many religious arguments have centered around which should be taken as which.

From a historical perspective, better connections between texts can help improve our understanding of how the religion changed over time and - back to that context thing - why. Analysis of the texts appear to indicate that some modern books are the synthesis of seperate, distinct books, but without a better way of mining the texts, you will NEVER be able to see how, when or why, or be able to reliably check other documents for similar merging or editing. Some documents have also been subject to forks (yes, that's not a problem unique to open source software) within the Judeo-Christian amalgam but also between Judeo-Christian beliefs and other religions. Unless you can mine the data efficiently and between all these distinct text, how can anyone be expected to know which is the vanilla branch, why the fork happened, or which adheres closest to the "requirement specification" the text was supposed to serve?

(If you're a believer in revealed religion, then the requirement is that it meets the needs and goals of the revealing power. If you are not, or are but believe that text was based on social beliefs only, then the requirement is whether the text met the goals of those social beliefs.)

As things stand, almost all the information could could possibly want exists. Somewhere. But unless you have a dedicated army of translators, photographers, researchers and theologans, plus the computing power of Google and the Top500 combined, I do not see how anyone could sensibly claim to be able to make actual use of what's there or reliably provide clear limits on what missing information could have provided or know which texts were in-period "fakes" (where "genuine" refers to the requirements and the source, not to the accuracy of a specific belief).

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

Haha my (and probably the AC's) ass doesn't pucker at all because I know both of those places you mention DO NOT EVEN EXIST and if God is the kind of sanctimonious wanker portrayed in the Bible then I don't really care for "his" heaven or his company.

But to be fair, there are levels of delusion which people can have and still be safe to the community at large. I mean, the friendly neighbourhood kook is not in the same league of psychopathy as, say, the current president of the United States of Amerika

Re:Edifying

[elgatozorbas]

Did you really say that? Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document?

Because it might not be a 2000 year old document but a 1700 year old engineered document.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

Prove there is no god? Fuck off you lazy zealot, the burden of proof lays with the claimant.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

as physics assume now that the universe is only a subset of multi-verse
This is very far from a universally-accepted scientific theory. Within the scientific community alternative one-universe theories remain strong.

the paradox of Math
You have not demonstrated a paradox. Your "if the universe is infinite" argument suggests that humanity as-we-know-it not only can exist naturally, but should exist just-as-naturally in plenty of other universes as well.

Then there is pascals rational
What about the crazy God who only sends you to hell if you believe in him? What about the named-god who only lets you into heaven if you get his name right? I could go on, but the bottom line is that "Pascal's Wager" (as it is properly called) makes its case by arbitrarily restricting the number of possibilities, and as such has no bearing on reality.

If we are an just a scientific process then I would suspect the Universe at some point should really start explaining itself and get simpler when gets smaller but that doesn't seem to be the case.
So we haven't achieved total understanding of the universe yet. That says nothing at all about the existence of a creator. This logical fallacy is known as "ignoratio elenchi," or "mistaken proof." You proved something other than what you set out to prove.

Also there is question of Prove to me that there is No God.
This logical fallacy is known as "ad ignorantium." The inability to disprove something is not automatically proof, nor is the inability to prove automatic disproof. If you can't prove either way, then you can't conclude either way....which leaves you still holding the bag if you are trying to provide a rational proof.

The arguments you are presenting clearly do not come from someone who has studied logic in depth. The irrationalities abound. I can see how these may sound rational to others who have not studied logic in depth, but to those of us who have, these arguments are just silly.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

Science does not show that the Universe hasn't always existed. Certain interpretations lead to that rather debatable conclusion. Do some astrophysics and you will see how tenuous the threads are which hold up the modern consensus of astrophysical theory. The Big Bang is just creationism in disguise. I mean how could a Universal black hole expand beyond its own event horizon? Maybe "God" did it? Puleeze

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

You'll find that most atheists (and good scientists) just want to bring down FALSE ideas and concepts. These ideas MIGHT be in opposition to what someone says but that ain't necessarily so.

Re:Edifying

[Petrushka]

Perhaps you should read up on textual criticism.

I don't know what the equivalent book for transmission of religious texts would be, but for secular texts I recommend Scribes and scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature by Reynolds and Wilson. Getting a little out of date in some respects but still a remarkably fun read. (Surprisingly fun, if you're not normally into that kind of thing.)

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[DogDude]

Did you really say that? Since when does the validity of a particular religious belief have anything to do with the relevance of a 2000-year-old document? You don't have to share the beliefs of the writers of it to understand that this is an immensely important piece of history.

It's hokum based on hokum. It's the equivalent to finding a second edition of a Harry Potter book in a thousand years. Big friggin' deal. The subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls is most certainly religion, which makes them useful solely from an academic theological standpoint.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

Rational faith is not blind. It is based on experience or reason.

And/or faulty logic and false premises. Nobody has provable experience of "god" and any technique which uses reason without a shred of empirical evidence or data is spurious at best

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[rtechie]

I mean, aren't these, like, some of, if not THE, oldest writings in the world?

Not even close. You could spend your entire life reading Greek and Chinese documents 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. The oldest writing comes from the Chinese, followed by the Sumerians and Babylonians.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

what about the almost complete lack of historical evidence of Jesus' existence OUTSIDE of religious scripture? I mean if Jesus did all he is purported to have done and was such a threat to the Roman empire, I would have thought that at least ONE historian of the time would have noted it down.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

Aw c'mon, just because Paul was a woman-hating psychopath and almost never mentions the details of Jesus' supposed life...don't be like that you hateful atheist..

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[Anonymous Coward]

Atheists are not talking about smashing the Sistine Chapel, burning the books of William Blake, or killing modern "Christian rock" stars.

Many are, or at least come off that way.

If you invalidate early Christian texts, you invalidate Christianity. Much the same is true of Judaism.

Somehow this hasn't stopped Scientology or Mormonism.

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

never said that atheists were doing anything of the kind, I was merely following the logical out-workings of the original post's line of reasoning, which placed the DSSs in the category of worthlessness due to their religious nature.

The OP, DogDude, was not trying to say that the documents were "worthless", but that Christian FAITH really isn't based on the authenticity of the ancient documents. Whether they are fake or real is far less important that whether or not they are consistent with existing Christian "tradition".

If Christian tradition says that Jesus was the son of God it doesn't matter that the Gospels and numerous other early Christian texts describe Joseph as his father. Modern Christians utterly rejected the revelations in the Nag Hammadi texts that revealed the suppressed views of Gnostic Christians, who predated "orthodox" Christians. Christians have totally ignored the revelations of the Dead Sea Scrolls which show that, at best, Jesus ripped off John the Baptist (and confirm that John the Baptist was a MUCH more important figure than Jesus).

Christians aren't fazed by these revelations because their faith was never really based on the Bible to begin with. It is based on highly effective indoctrination as children.

Re:Edifying

[flyingfsck]

Godel's argument basically says that god is everything - god is the universe and everything in it. I don't agree with that, but if you want to believe that you and I, the planets and stars, are all part of your god - fine - whatever gets you through the night, but I'm happy with the name 'universe' instead of 'god'.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

If I had points I would mod you up. Our rulers tell us we are free and democratic but that is clearly not the case. Seems like lip service is about all we can expect.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

With these going online showing proof of Yeshua (Jesus) having fulfilled the messianic prophecies, it becomes much harder to deny who the creator is, and it underscores the authenticity of the Bible in general.

What we would need to authenticate the existence of Jesus is an historical source OUTSIDE of scripture. Circular reasoning just does not cut it in terms of proof.

Re:Edifying

[JeanPaulBob]

I'm heading home from work, and have only skimmed your post at the moment. But one thing caught my eye, and I want to ask you about it:

His accounts are all second-hand, and all of his writings appear (by all accounts) to be hundreds of years too late to have actually witnessed what he claims to be an expert on.

What on earth are you talking about?

I don't know of a single document of the NT that is thought to be written "hundreds of years" after Christ--even ignoring scholars who are also theological conservatives. Can you name any scholars who date Paul's letters the way you do? And if you do go there, you are no longer talking about "Paul"--you are talking about someone far later, writing under Paul's name.

By the way, your ideas about "the Romans" and "the Roman Empire's" influence on Christian canon runs into some, ah, rather significant historical problems when we look at the actual acceptance of the various books of the canon by Christians. Long before the early 300s, when Constantine ended Christian persecution and introduced any affiliation of Christianity with the Roman Empire--long before any central, unified power structure in Christianity existed, let alone had the un-persecuted freedom to try to exert control--the books of our NT canon were generally accepted by Christians.

You cannot explain the acceptance of Paul by any kind of theory involving the power of the Roman Empire; he is accepted as an apostle of Christ in the earliest records we possess. Nor does any theory you've presented explain why apostles who were close to Jesus and walked with him--like Peter--accepted this man who had previously been attempting to crush the Christian message; in your thinking, Paul went from trying to crush Christianity to trying to distort it, but you have not explained why you think that Peter went along with that distortion. Why did he accept Paul?

As for "Much of what he says runs deeply contrary to the simple Christian message of love, understanding, and forgiveness," I must admit to being a bit bewildered. I'm used to having discussions with people who regard Paul as radically overturning OT Law, and saying that Paul invented the idea of salvation by faith apart from works. The doctrine of forgiveness that he teaches is too antinomian for some people. I'm not even sure that Paul talks more about judgment than Christ does in the four gospels! And I don't know how you can read his loving, caring, pastoral interaction with the churches in his epistles, and come away with your perspective--read through the closing section of each letter, or read the overall tone of his writing to the very-messed-up church at Corinth.

Re:Edifying

[sir fer]

Maybe you're just a bigot who can't tolerate those who aren't like you.

Sounds like he'd make a good christian

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm, where did you get the idea that he
was a threat to the roman empire?

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

From a technical standpoint is there anyway to protect things like this so the average Jo knows which is real and which is not?

Easy. The real ones are pieces of priceless parchment and papyrus kept in a vault. The copies are visible on your heathen interwebs.

Oh, you meant proof that the *scans* are authentic? Sorry, if Alyssa Milano can't make it happen, it isn't possible.

From HeathenPedia:

High resolution images of all discovered material are not available online. However, they can be purchased in inexpensive multi-volumes - on disc media or in book form - or viewed in certain university libraries.

According to Computer Weekly (16th Nov 2007), a team from King's College London is to advise the Israeli Antiquities Authority, who are planning to digitize the scrolls. On 27th Aug 2008 an Israeli internet news agency YNET announced that the project is under way[4]. The scrolls are planned to be made available to the public via Internet. The project is to include infra-red scanning of the scrolls which is said to expose additional details, not visible in the regular light.

And now the joke:
2 years? Hah, my Automatic Document Feeder can do 900 sheets in 10 minutes flat, staple and collate!

But seriously folks, I've digitized 400+ year old unique documents for Universities. I can scarcely imagine how much more work this is going to be... wish them luck.

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

But, one of the things they have a very good track record on is maintaining the integrity of their key books.

Which religions are you thinking of? The only really good example is the Book of Mormon. Most other religious have periodically revised their religious texts.

But to just say that religions have had their primary texts re-written many times? Well that is just wrong.

Some religions, sure. Judaism in particular. The Torah was re-written around 500BC to remove polytheistic references (as the Jews converted to monotheism) and to either re-wrote Genesis and Exodus to make Egyptians the bad guys (due to recent wars with them), or just made the story up at that time.

The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew and Luke) were revised, most scholars believe they were based on an earlier document called "Q". John is in many ways a revision of the narrative in Mark. Now, that's not "many times", but they were revised.

Re:Edifying

[mccabem]

FYI, you're talking only of the post-State Religion phase of Christianity.

Forget not that pre-State Religion Christianity was one of many sects of Judaism (could be said there were "many Christianities" at the time) that were nearly all eliminated with prejudice by Rome. This changed marginally when Constantine couldn't deny the popularity of the movement anymore and co-opted it. Maybe the first instance of Embrace, Extend and Extinguish in recorded history.

-Matt

Re:Edifying

[canUbeleiveIT]

It's hokum based on hokum. It's the equivalent to finding a second edition of a Harry Potter book in a thousand years. Big friggin' deal.

Right, cause there are so many 2000-year-old manuscripts lying around. Why just last week, I found a few of them under a tarp in our barn.

The subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls is most certainly religion, which makes them useful solely from an academic theological standpoint.

You know, I think that you have convinced me--they're just a bunch of old scraps of paper blathering on about some crap that nobody's interested in anyway. They couldn't possibly be of any interest to linguists, historians or anthropologists. I'm hungry, what do you say that we to use them to start up the barbecue grill?

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

The earth is round. I made it round.

Just because he agrees with one thing he says, doesn't mean he has to agree with everything.

You said you were trying to convince him to be "fully atheist" or not. Why is it not possible for an atheist to respect the tenants of a person, irregardless of who he says his father is/was?

I think you're just a little blinded by your faith. I do admire you for your effort not to sound like a complete idiot and asshole.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

And I was already beginning to doubt my sense of humor.

Re:Edifying

[CODiNE]

I understand that view. If you're going to go with the position that the gospels have possibly been tampered with and are not an accurate reflection of what Christ actually said then yes you can make all sorts of guesses of what Jesus really believed. If you believe that they really are an accurate record of things he's said, then it really looks like he was in full support of the Mosaic law as known in his day. Matthew 5:17-19 for example. It's sort of like the Gnostics, they claim that the Old Testament god was a fraud and that Jesus secretly revealed this knowledge, yet how do they explain Jesus constantly quoting the Hebrew scriptures, which are supposedly evil, and praising the God of those scriptures? If the Hebrew scriptures were false, then he wasn't the messiah, if they're true then their religion has no basis. Jesus' authority completely depends on the Hebrew scriptures so you can't really separate him from them. Jesus obviously didn't comment on every single item in the Mosaic law, but as the above scripture shows he was in support of it. It would certainly be an odd scripture for Christians to later insert into Jesus' teachings.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

if God is the kind of sanctimonious wanker portrayed in the Bible then I don't really care for "his" heaven or his company.

That's the great thing about God: if that's what you want, then that's what you get.

But as for you acting as if you don't believe that He exists, you know good and well that you would plead with Him if your life were in danger. Like all others who hate God, there is something wrong that you're doing that you love too much to lose. It is always this way with us. Since this is Slashdot, it's probably not womanizing or stealing, most likely nothing more than pornography and masturbation. If it weren't wrong then why do you feel wrong afterwards?

The thing about it is that He would happily forgive you for anything, even if you continued to struggle with it for the rest of your life. But you will not accept His forgiveness because that would mean that you have to accept that you are wrong. Such a problem for smart/moral people.

One of the main fallacies with your thinking is that God is some kind of Cosmic Killjoy, demanding some strict and capricious observance of rules. And yet, the "rules" are to serve you, not Him. I realize that there is little chance that you will respond to this with anything but condescension, but God is not your enemy. You may be His, but He does not regard you that way.

I only ask you to do one thing when you read this: take 30 seconds to sincerely ask God to reveal Himself to you. If He truly doesn't exist, what could possibly be the harm? If He does exist, what could be the harm? And if you won't do it, why not? Are you afraid that he will answer?

Re:Edifying

[bigstrat2003]

Nobody has provable experience of "god"

This is irrelevant. Nobody has provable evidence that I had a dream about driving through my home town in a car last night, either. It is still quite true. For your own personal belief in something, evidence that won't convince anyone but yourself is perfectly acceptable and rational, as long as you aren't ignoring conflicting evidence.

Since there's no evidence to disprove God, you don't have to worry about that aspect, and as long as you have some evidence to suggest to you that God exists, your belief can be perfectly rational.

Sorry, Christians. I disagree with your beliefs, but I despise how your beliefs are treated on this site. It's low, immature, and uncalled-for, and for what it's worth, just know that not all atheists/agnostics are as juvenile as some slashdotter atheists/agnostics are.

Re:Edifying

[grub]

That's the great thing about God: if that's what you want, then that's what you get.

Funny, the atheist gets what he wants (nothing after death) and the religious nuts get the same thing. Not quite what they wanted, is it?

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'm not so sure that the DSS weakens orthodox Christianity in any way. Jesus was aware of the Essenes and he mentions that the way of the Essenes was not his way.

For example, Jesus' eating with the sinners and publicans was an overt act aimed at the Pharisees and the Essenes who believed in strict ritual purity.

The fact that the DSS exist does not in and of itself prove that Christianity borrowed from other reform movements. In fact the DSS helps to highlight the fact that Jesus was blatantly living and doing things in opposition to the beliefs of the Essenes and others. We now know this altogether more fully because of the DSS.

If one reads the New Testament with an eye toward Jesus' awareness of and response to other reform groups, one would see that Jesus was both aware and in opposition to them.

therockbottoms.blogspot.com
therockbottoms@gmail.com

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

John the Baptist would disagree with you. He saw his cousin Jesus as the one he had been sent to prepare the way for; The son of the living God.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

This was moderated down ... because it proved a point that someone didn't want to hear.

Or maybe because the poster's logic is laughable. He did present some nice examples of the "ignoratio elenchi" and "ad ignorantium" fallacies, though.

More detail here

Re:Edifying

[Artifakt]

So, you believe your spelling mistakes will come back to you, threefold? That's a safe bet for Slashdot.

Re:Edifying

[BPPG]

Did you really say that? Christianity is ENTIRELY based on the testimony recorded in early Christian texts and the teachings of early Church fathers...

Christianity is based on interpretations of ancient documents and teachings. If it were as simple as you make it sound, there wouldn't be so many different christian denominations. There has to be much discourse over what invalidates those texts, and how the gospel is still relevant in our modern world. Also, whether certain things were intended to be taken literally, or as parable/metaphors a la Brothers Grimm.

For example, the amount Christians in the world that actually believe that Earth is only 600 years old are a tiny minority, and usually have nothing to do with the Holy See.

Re:Edifying

[jrumney]

I'm not sure why Hindus, Jains, Budhists, Taoists, Native Americans, Neopagans, etc. should care.

They should care for the same reason that many Western Christians cared when the Taliban went around demolishing all the ancient Buddhist statues. It is an important part of human history, whether you believe in the religion or not.

Re:Edifying

[jrumney]

He's either right or wrong.

So if you are wrong once, then you are always wrong? This is the type of thinking that gives fundamentalist Christians a bad name. Of course its possible to respect Jesus as a great teacher and leader without buying into the whole Christian mythology surrounding him. Muslims do, and so do a lot of athiests.

Re:Edifying

[UnknownSoldier]

> the fact that the text as we have it today differs little from the original.

Oh please.

- Gen 1:1 The creation myth comes from the Summerians
- Gen 8:1 The flood comes from the Summerian story of Gilgamesh
- The 10 Commandments come from the Egyption Book of the Dead
- Psalms shows many parallels with the Vedic Hyms
- John 1:1 "Logos" comes from the "Pagan" Greeks (Plato)
- In 1707, John Mill demonstrated 30,000 various readings from 80 manuscripts
- Regarding the Codex Bezae, Dr. Vincent Taylor writes that: "It is characterized by a series of remarkable omissions in Luke, especially in chapters XXII and XXIV, and by many striking additions and variations in the Acts"
- Adam Clarke Commentary on 1 John 5:7 states that: "But it is likely this verse is not genuine. It is wanting in every manuscript of this letter written before the invention of printing, one excepted, the Codex Montfortii, in Trinity College, Dublin: the others which omit this verse amount to one hundred and twelve. It is missing in both the Syriac, all the Arabic, Aethiopic, the Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian, Slavonian, etc., in a word, in all the ancient versions but the Vulgate; and even of this version many of the most ancient and correct MSS. have it not. It is wanting also in all the ancient Greek fathers; and in most even of the Latin".

I could go own, but I'll let this article on Biblical Corruption provide with more references.

And I'm not even going to get into the fact that "The Book of Enoch" was the 3rd most popuplar book found in the Dead Sea Scrolls -- which starts the debate of WHO decides what even is scripture?

Originals my ass.

ALL the religions have their strenghts and weaknesses, but originality is not their strength.

--
You will never understand what happens during Life if you don't even understand what happens after Death.

Re:Edifying

[UnknownSoldier]

> Science shows that the Universe hasn't always existed

If energy can not be created or destroyed, then the universe has always existed in one form or another.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

The last 2 - 3 weeks seem to have a very noticeable increase of "Off-topic" mods. Not to have a tinfoil hat, but I wonder if someone has a lot of sock puppets and is intentionally sabotaging the moderation system. Hopefully they will get nailed in Meta-mod.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the biggest impact the dead sea scrolls had was personally as an atheist when I read them I found this in the book of Isaiah - who wrote this 400 years before Christ.
-"He was pierced for our transgressions and bruised for our inequities and the punishment that brought us peace was upon him". The scrolls are dated to 2000 years ago - the same time Jesus was born and crucified. It put to rest my theory that the Gospel that God died to atone for mens sins was a human concoction.
I understand that it may not convince some other atheists, but I think there is a really strong case. We filter knowledge through our prejudices - but I think its important for knowledge to exist still. Some how we may overcome our prejudices.

Re:Edifying

[pikine]

The only one difference with people living today, and the people who lived during the period of Old Testament, is that we are living under God's grace, which is really undeserved favor from God to sacrifice Himself for our wrong doing. Otherwise human's sinful nature has not changed much over time. Although you're living with the privilege of grace, you appear to be rejecting grace because you think it is unfair to those who didn't enjoy it. That seems silly to me.

Re:Edifying

[pikine]

Sumerian is polytheistic, and there is no way polytheism can inspire monotheism. Why have only one God who exclaims himself exclusively when you can have many? Again, the Book of the Dead is clearly polytheistic, but the First Commandment is what? "You shall have no other gods before me."

Consider the bible as other people's testimony about God. Even if you discredit the bible as being corrupted, there are still many living people who will testify about God to you.

Re:Edifying

[Floydius]

It's more likely due to he massive egos and arguments surrounding the DSS, and archeology in general. To this day, over 60 years since their discovery, not all of the DSS have been published.

You wouldn't slap the DDS on a pioneer scanner any more than you would the U.S. Constitution. (Although both are widely ignored by groups who claim to follow them.) The documents are old and fragile, despite how well they have been preserved. I suspect they will take forever to scan for the same reasons that valuable paintings take forever to restore.

Also, as a student of ancient hebrew, I find this very exciting. The scripting on the DDS is not like the script you will find on a copy of the ancient hebrew texts in print. For one, you won't find vowel pointings. You also won't find any sort of sentence markers, and there is no system of capital and lower case letters as would be found in english or greek (though the koine greek codices were in all caps without any spacing or punctuation as well).

The reason the DDS are relevant for Christians is because Jewish history is inextricably linked to Jesus of Nazareth.

Re:Edifying

[pikine]

We tend to be ashamed of the Christians that are most often portrayed in the media.

More ashamed of some people who claim to be Christians to accomplish their political propaganda, like war in Iraq.

Re:Edifying

[BTWR]

The Torah was re-written around 500BC to remove polytheistic references (as the Jews converted to monotheism) and to either re-wrote Genesis and Exodus to make Egyptians the bad guys (due to recent wars with them), or just made the story up at that time.

Complete guess. I have a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and we learn many theories about bible origin. That theory is completely theoretical and has absolutely no proof whatsoever. It does have a few clever essays written about it by a few professors, but then again there are hundreds of other theories that are also written by Ivy League professors.

The only way to prove your so-called "fact" that the Torahwas changed in 500BCE is to show me a Torah from 550BCE and then compare it. Oh wait, how convenient that there are no Torahs from that era. But there is one from about 2000 years ago, and it differs a few letters from the current Torah. I'd say emperical evidence at least shows your idea to be "speculation" and nowhere near "fact."

Re:Edifying

[Ihmhi]

I don't believe in any sort of religious philosophy, but I do respect the wisdom of Jesus' teachings.

Now if only all of the people who purported to be Christians actually read and followed them. |=

Re:Edifying

[Hanyin]

1. Jesus said He is the Son of God. You will have to refute Jesus' own description of Himself, or challenge the writings that make that statement and the authors thereof.

I'm not going to start a discussion on God, but I am going to tell you how I interpret your first point. I believe that Jesus is the son of God in the way that we are all children of God. As with everything else in life, your example is subject to interpretation and as such it's possible for different people to read the same passage and a garner different meaning from it.

Re:Edifying

[JavaRob]

The moral teachings we have (in various forms, and having been interpreted and rewritten to varying degrees) are separate from the person of Jesus himself, whatever we can actually know about it.

Those ideas can obviously be evaluated separately from any kind of religious belief.

I'm an atheist, but I certainly wouldn't discard and/or ignore concepts that have been part of human morality in various ways since even before Jesus' time.

Don't get trapped in the middle, thinking Jesus was a 'great teacher' but dismissing some of His own words. If you need to deny Jesus' own claim to being God's Son, you need to pretty much ignore His other words too. He's either right or wrong.

Nonsense. He was a human being. We're all right about some things & wrong about others.

I'd agree with you about people who are quasi-religious but never take the time or effort to actually think it through (and realize what they're doing when they're cherry-picking what to believe in)... but my push is just that they go ahead and discard the superstition so they can focus in a clear-headed way on actual morality, separated from whether some ethereal being might be miffed because they ate some specific meat on whatever day of the week.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that the ten commandments were the sins. Anything else may fall under the "advice" or "recommendation" category, but it is not a violation of God's law. Thus, homosexuality is not a sin.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, the atheist gets what he wants (nothing after death) and the religious nuts get the same thing. Not quite what they wanted, is it?

The fact of the matter is that there is no eternal upside to atheism.

• Atheist is correct - Nothing in eternity (neutral outcome)
• Atheist is incorrect - Eternal Torment (negative outcome)
• Believer is correct - Eternity in Paradise (positive outcome)
• Believer is incorrect - Nothing in eternity (neutral outcome)

The really great thing about being a believer is that if you are correct, you will live to know the truth. Not so for the atheist.

• Atheist is correct - Is dead and will never know the truth
• Atheist is incorrect - Is in Hell, will know he's wrong
• Believer is correct - Is in Heaven, will know the truth
• Believer is incorrect - Is dead and will never consciously know he's wrong

In other words, the best that the atheist can hope for is that, as the saying goes, is that "life sucks and then you die." Of course, so many of us are willing to trade eternity in Paradise for whatever sin that we are in love with. That's why there is so much hostility towards believers--they just won't let us enjoy the slow ride to Hell in the plausible-deniability of our feigned ignorance. What, are you really expecting that you're going to arrive at Judgment Day and pretend to the Creator of all things that you just didn't know? Answer this question: if you were to believe in God, what would have to change in your life? That is the thing that you are trading eternity for. Will it really be worth it in the end?

God knows what's in your heart, even when you have suppressed it so much that you barely know yourself. But you know enough. In those quiet moments, when you're not posturing for other people, when you're not pursuing the great sin-love of your life, when you're truly honest with yourself, you know that there is something more to life than what you're admitting.

In any event, you have a choice to make when you read this. You can admit that you're powerless in the face of eternity and accept God's help or you can suppress the rising tide of the Holy Spirit as you have done so many other times. What choice will you make?

I ask the same of you that I asked of the other /.er: take 30 seconds to sincerely ask God to reveal Himself to you. If He truly doesn't exist, what could possibly be the harm? If He does exist, what could be the harm? And if you won't do it, why not? Are you afraid that he will answer?

Re:Edifying

[Digital End]

Oh wait, you're trolling.

Is that your official judgement?

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

he said RATIONAL christan!

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

There are only two serious flaws in your argument:

1. Jesus said He is the Son of God. You will have to refute Jesus' own description of Himself, or challenge the writings that make that statement and the authors thereof.

Not really. You'll have to prove that they're true in the first place, which you can't do. No one's been able to do it.

You are, you know, challenging the veracity of men who went to their deaths to defend that point.

So what? How is that even relevent? Dying for something doesn't make you right, or what you died for real. People die for stupid reasons all the time.

As Creator, we are His do with as He pleases.

That's an idiotic thing to say. I could extend the same logic to my child and declare that I can do pretty much whatever I wanted with her, since I was one of the only two people on the planet who had any hand at all in creating her.

Oh, wait - the Bible agrees with me on that one! I can even sell her into slavery!

But to then challenge His actions according to your interpretation of who and what you think He should be isn't intellectually honest, to me.

Atheists don't challenge your god; they challenge *you*. So far as they're concerned your god is nothing more than a myth, so all good or ill done in the same of your myth is your responsibility to shoulder.

Dismiss God as not real, I can tolerate that as your opinion. Try to redefine God according to your standards, that doesn't work for me.

And here's where you become an arrogant prick. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but we no longer live in the Middle Ages. It doesn't matter for shit what you can or cannot "tolerate", because there isn't fuck-all you can do about what we say or don't say. Your 'tolerance' isn't required.

You and I do not get to decide 'who' God is.

Again with the arrogant horseshit. Since I don't believe in your god, I can decide whatever the hell I like. You don't get a vote on that. Suck it up and deal with it, because in 21st century America you don't get any other option.

And thank the gods for that.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

Sumerian is polytheistic, and there is no way polytheism can inspire monotheism.

Of course it can. All you need is for one of those gods to get a priesthood significantly more powerful than the others and you've set the stage for that priesthood wiping out the competition.

Consider the bible as other people's testimony about God. Even if you discredit the bible as being corrupted, there are still many living people who will testify about God to you.

Sadly, this is true. People just won't shut the fuck up when it comes to their pet religion. It'd be a better world by far if the first commandment went something along the lines of "leave thy neighbor alone and mind thy owned damned business".

Re:Edifying

[Tangent128]

Never trust a preacher who wears a five thousand dollar suit. Pat Robertson has converted more Christians to athiesm than all the slashdot athiests combined. He is one of the "wolves in sheep's clothing" Christ warned you about; so is Bush. They worship not God, but mammon. Their church is the bank and their priest is the economist. These people believe that priceless==worthless. Beware of them.

Quoted for truth. And lack of modpoints today.

Re:Edifying

[jellomizer]

But there isn't any good evidence to prove that there isn't a god. So the debate comes down to I don't believe in God so you will need to prove it to me. And I believe in God so you will need to prove to me that he doesn't. This isn't good science it is chest thumping to prove that one side is more right then the other. There are just as rational reasons to believe in god as they are to not. However part of the problem is the definition of God makes it hard. A being of Infinanity. When you try to explain Infinity you are stuck with circular logic and most Math breaks down as Infinity does funny things in math. And can only be handled in Discrete Math. Which is normally taught in a college level often as an elective subject for Math and Computer Science (at least for the Discrete Math course that handles infinity) So that makes it much harder for your argument. As Atheists aren't always as smart and scientific as they think. (many are backdoor scientist, NO NOT ALL OF THEM THERE ARE A LOT OF WELL EDUCATED ATHIEST AS WELL, who science is based on High School Science teachers bitching on how the church limited science during a period where it was trying to hold onto its power)

Saying a Logical Rational Expression of why they believe in God is Wrong just because you think it is wrong. Science is about listening to the idea and trying to prove or disprove the idea. Just saying it is wrong without giving good evidence is just stupid human chest thumping.

Re:Edifying

[Raenex]

Yea just like moral atheist...

Who has more moral standing? Somebody whose morals are based on what was written in a 2000 year old book, which itself was assembled by committee, and then translated and interpreted through the ages, dictated to followers as the irrefutable word of God...

Or somebody who works it out from experience, common themes, and reasoning?

Re:Edifying

[Artifakt]

It always amazed me how many people learned to quote "judge not, lest ye be judged..." but never noticed they were quoting only half a sentence ("... and as ye have judged others."). You're right, it isn't smart to judge, at least without considering very carefully how the same standard you are using would sting if it was applied to you or people you like. A lot of 'walk a mile in the other guy's shoes first' type philosophy underlies this, and yet it's amazing how many people don't pick up on it. Fair judgment is hard, it has potentially horrific consequences if abused, and we should all dread having to make judgments on what must always be, for humans, less than complete data.
 

Re:Edifying

[Raenex]

This was moderated down not because it was off topic (As it was a response to a modded up challange) but because it proved a point that someone didn't want to hear.

If anything, it should have been moderated down as Overrated or just not plain moderated at all. Your post was written extremely poorly (grammar-wise), full of muddled thinking and hand-wavy claims about physics and what it "proves" about God.

Arguing in favor of Pascal's Wager? Come on, man, apologetics have given that one up long ago.

Re:Edifying

[Raenex]

Sorry, Christians. I disagree with your beliefs, but I despise how your beliefs are treated on this site. It's low, immature, and uncalled-for

Are you surprised that a site dedicated to technology and science is hostile to religious beliefs? There are plenty of well-reasoned comments to go along with the more immature ones.

Re:Edifying

[pikine]

Of course it can. All you need is for one of those gods to get a priesthood significantly more powerful than the others and you've set the stage for that priesthood wiping out the competition.

If God is able to wipe out other gods, then that apparently shows He is the one true God. That still doesn't say anything about polytheism inspiring monotheism. Throughout history, every champion in some chronic competition recedes to a new champion after him. That is not the case for the Christian-Judeo God.

Sadly, this is true. People just won't shut the fuck up when it comes to their pet religion.

Then I'll pray that God breaks you until you're willing to listen.

Re:Edifying

[bigstrat2003]

Are you surprised that a site dedicated to technology and science is hostile to religious beliefs?

Actually, yeah. I like technology and science as much as anyone else here, but I'm not hostile to religious beliefs. I just disagree and leave it at that.

There are plenty of well-reasoned comments to go along with the more immature ones.

They exist, but are in the minority. That's what I'm mourning.

Re:Edifying

[Raenex]

I just disagree and leave it at that.

It's like saying 2+2=5, or insisting that the earth is flat. It's frustration on people putting warning stickers on science books. Religious dogma is the exact opposite of science. So yeah, there's going to be a backlash if you express religious beliefs here, and expecting different is unrealistic.

Re:Edifying

[bigstrat2003]

The difference between religion and those things is that religion is not demonstrably false. Some religions' teachings may be (evolution vs creation), but religion itself is not. So, not only do people have no business lashing out against religion because it's immature, they have no business doing so because it isn't demonstrably false.

And I don't think it's at all unrealistic to expect religion to get treated with a modicum of respect. I disagree with a great many things that people I know have said, but I don't start tearing into them at every opportunity for it. I expect mature, civil behavior. This isn't a very high expectation, to be honest, and the fact that some very vocal members of this community can't live up to it says a lot about them.

Re:Edifying

[Raenex]

The difference between religion and those things is that religion is not demonstrably false.

I'll grant that it's not as obvious, but there are a vast number of holes in religion.

So, not only do people have no business lashing out against religion because it's immature, they have no business doing so because it isn't demonstrably false.

Missing the biggest argument, that religion encourages dogma, which is the exact opposite of science.

And I don't think it's at all unrealistic to expect religion to get treated with a modicum of respect.

No more respect than the RIAA, Microsoft, or Bush/Republicans get. This is Slashdot.

Re:Edifying

[rickb928]

This is where it gets difficult.

Yes, you can respect the wisdom of Jesus' teachings, but which ones?

Love, caring, do your brothers and sisters no wrong, ok. Pretty simple.

Put your faith in Him and worship His father, God?
Spread this good news to others?

You see, Jesus did teach wisdom - love, compassion, forgiveness, and more. But He also taught that He was the Way, the Truth, and the Light. He taught that He was the Son of God, sent to propitiate for the sins of the world. I suspect you are not going to want to believe in all of His teachings. Am I right? So if you're looking for some good words and good ideas for life, Jesus has much for you, and more. If you're looking for a teacher, Jesus and many others would very much like some of your time. If you're looking for the answer to Life's most difficult questions, are you really going to pick and choose the answers you like? That isn't even scientific.

I encourage you to follow the teachings as much as you can. Indeed, to read His word as much as you can. I pray that you'll get it, all of it.

I'm not sure this sounds as kind as I want it to be, but I'm trying to be honest. Picking the answers to the questions of life is not always the right thing to do. Sometimes, you must choose the truth, even when it's not comfortable, easy, or even makes sense. I don't intend to offend you, but I know that sometimes the truth is offensive. If this is one of those times, I'm disappointed, but not in you.

ps: you wrote:

"Now if only all of the people who purported to be Christians actually read and followed them. "

Why just pick on Christians? How about:

"Now if only all of the people actually read and followed them. "

There. Fixed that for ya.

It's a common accusation to find fault in a movement, belief, or 'religion' by the wayward followers. Should we judge a way of life by those who fail at it? Or in the words of a Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias points out "that you cannot judge a philosophy by its
abuse." Yet, I agree with your accusation, many Christians don't act like Christians, not even remotely. This isn't much different from many other faiths and beliefs, but I do understand why Christians are so readily and repeatedly chastised for it. You're right. I don't like it, but you're right.

Re:Edifying

[rickb928]

You wrote, in part:

"Of course its possible to respect Jesus as a great teacher and leader..."

What was He leader of? And do you respect what He led?

See, this is where I do indeed get a little (maybe more) frustrated. You claim it is possible to respect Jesus as a leader, but to reject His way... Hmm... This is where I'm lost for words. Unless you mean that you respect Jesus' method and effectiveness as a leader, seperate from His actual message and purpose.

Just doesn't seem right to me, and yet I do the same thing, considering some of the popular leaders I respect for their abilities, and disagree with their purposes. Ultimately, I don't take advice from them, no matter how clever or skilled they are. It's the message...

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

md5sum ?

Re:Edifying

[sfsp]

Which religions are you thinking of? The only really good example is the Book of Mormon. Most other religious have periodically revised their religious texts.

I'm sorry, but the Book of Mormon as originally published in 1820 has been drastically edited since that time. There are over 3000 documentable changes between the originally published edition and the current one, some of which go far beyond typographical errors and stylistic adjustments. In fact, all of the Standard Works of the LDS church (BoM, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) have been revised since their original publications.

Some religions, sure. Judaism in particular. The Torah was re-written around 500BC to remove polytheistic references (as the Jews converted to monotheism) and to either re-wrote Genesis and Exodus to make Egyptians the bad guys (due to recent wars with them), or just made the story up at that time.

While I agree there is evidence to suggest some of these assertions, there is other evidence to suggest that these documents are what they claim to be: essentially contemporaneous accounts of historical events.

As an example, until recently critical thought concerning the Hebrew invasion of Canaan after the Exodus is that it could not have happened before about 1200 BC, while the internal dating seems to support a date around 1400 BC. But there exist copies of letters from the Egyptian governors of Canaan, requesting assistance from the Pharoah, to combat an invasion of the Habiru tribes around 1400 BC. The story apparently was NOT "made up at that time", and the internal dating appears to have been correct after all.

In short, you seem to assume that the "experts" are in consensus regarding the provenance of the text. That assumption is wrong.

The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew and Luke) were revised, most scholars believe they were based on an earlier document called "Q". John is in many ways a revision of the narrative in Mark. Now, that's not "many times", but they were revised.

First, the Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They cover much the same ground in much the same way, with Matthew and Luke apparently drawing material from Mark and all three possibly referencing a hypothetical document called "Q". "Q" is supposedly a collection of sayings of Jesus, but no such early collection has ever been found.

John is separate from the Synoptics, and while some parallel passages exist, John includes mostly primary material which is not found in the other three. It is NOT a revision of Mark, although Matthew and Luke could be described that way.

While translations of the Bible are frequently revised, they are not being revised in the sense you seem to understand in your first paragraph. Those who perform Biblical translation do not rely on the most recent copy of the text, but the OLDEST copy of the text. Ideally, every translation would start with the documented, autograph copy the text, handwritten by John, Paul, Matthew, Ezra or Moses. (I am speaking hyperbolically-I am not interested in starting another thread about who wrote what. But I firmly believe that William Shakespeare actually wrote William Shakespeare's plays.) Since those autograph documents are unavailable, translators use the best that they have.

This is why the Dead Sea Scrolls (desperately trying to swerve back onto topic!!) were so important. When they were found, they were the oldest known extant Jewish copies of the majority of the Judaic scripture by about 1000 years. This is because of the impact of the Masoretic tradition on the transcription of the scripture. The Masoretes had involved rituals for copying of scripture, some based on their reverence for the name of God, and some designed to act as a checksum of each column, page, and book, so that when they had finished, they could say, "This is a PERFECT copy of the original." Since it was a perfect copy, the old, worn copy would usually be buried with h

Re:Edifying

[sm62704]

That's true, but athiests make up far more than 1% of the slashdot population. Make a pro-Christian or pro-Muslim comment here and you will see more rabid, fanatical athiests than you would imagine.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're missing the point here.

Jesus' words and actions show that he knew (or believed) that he was the Son of God - and that this was the fundamental point of his entire ministry and message.

Being 'wrong' about that is more of an outright lie or deception (or level of insanity). If he lied about that, what else did he lie about? Why take anything else he says seriously?

If you received good advice from a certifiably insane person or someone you knew was deliberately trying to deceive everyone, would you still take it?

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

John the Baptist and Jesus we not related. Perversely, you make this claim based on the genealogies of the Gospels which purport to show that Jesus was descended from King David through JOSEPH. John the Baptist was also supposedly a descendant of David, which makes them "cousins". Except that Jesus supposedly had a virgin birth which means that he DIDN'T descend from David which means that he and John weren't "cousins".

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

Jesus was aware of the Essenes and he mentions that the way of the Essenes was not his way.

The Essenes were completely unknown before the discovery of the DSS. I challenge you to find one citation, by any author anywhere, that mentions the Essenes BY NAME before the 1930s.

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

The documents are old and fragile, despite how well they have been preserved. I suspect they will take forever to scan for the same reasons that valuable paintings take forever to restore.

You really think it would take over 60 years?

It doesn't matter, you're just wrong. For most of the past 60 years, very little work has been done. Most of the work is done in fits and starts. The largest book was translated in less than 2 years when people actually were allowed to work on it.

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

That theory is completely theoretical and has absolutely no proof whatsoever.

The "proof" is that Cyrus the Great was a follower of Zoroaster and conquered Judea during this period.

Are you going to argue that the Jews were always monotheistic? They had to transition for polytheism at some point and Cyrus the Great seems the most likely catalyst.

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

I'm sorry, but the Book of Mormon as originally published in 1820 has been drastically edited since that time. There are over 3000 documentable changes between the originally published edition and the current one, some of which go far beyond typographical errors and stylistic adjustments. In fact, all of the Standard Works of the LDS church (BoM, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price) have been revised since their original publications.

My understanding was that the BoM was largely unchanged from it's original publication. I stand corrected.

But there exist copies of letters from the Egyptian governors of Canaan, requesting assistance from the Pharoah, to combat an invasion of the Habiru tribes around 1400 BC.

"Habiru" probably did not refer to a specific tribe or group but was the Egyptian equivalent of "barbarians". The letter you refer to has nothing to do with Jews or Exodus.

And even if it did, how does that letter support the Exodus? It DOESN'T. Nobody doubts that the Jews lived in Canaan or that at various points Canaan was an Egyptian territory. What people doubt is the Exodus narrative. The "Jews", as a distinct tribe, were never slaves in Egypt. They never left Egypt en masse. They didn't wander through the Sinai for 40 years. They almost certainly didn't conquer Canaan and massacre the existing population.

First, the Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They cover much the same ground in much the same way, with Matthew and Luke apparently drawing material from Mark and all three possibly referencing a hypothetical document called "Q". "Q" is supposedly a collection of sayings of Jesus, but no such early collection has ever been found.

Most scholars consider Mark independent from "Q". You're the first I've heard say that Mark was based on "Q".

John is separate from the Synoptics, and while some parallel passages exist, John includes mostly primary material which is not found in the other three. It is NOT a revision of Mark, although Matthew and Luke could be described that way.

John clearly embellishes elements of Mark and the Synoptics and it definitely came later, so it's appropriate to call it a revision. John is where the virgin birth and other Hellenistic elements of the Jesus story are introduced.

There are other issues surrounding the Judeo-Christian scriptures, such as the process of selection of canonical books, and interpretation of the meaning of the text. But the text we have today can be trusted to be essentially the same as the original.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Some elements of the Gospels, like the genealogies of Jesus and the Hellenistic elements of John, seem pretty tacked-on to me.

Since we know without a shadow of a doubt that early Christian copyists were forgers (see Testimonium Flavianum) we really can't rule anything out.

Re:Edifying

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think that just because the painting of the Sistine Chapel is a 'religous' scene that it contains religious thought? He had a great understanding of the human body and posture, some day, the real meaning will come out.

Re:Edifying

[tabrnaker]

1) Jesus also said he was the son of man, and that we are all the sons of god and all equal. This, of course, is the part that the church loves to gloss over as they shove their construction of the trinity down your throat.

The creator isn't the sole property of the christian church you know?

Believe me, i love the bible, it's a little more cryptic than the other spiritual texts, but has exactly the same message, in fact, it makes you work harder to uncover the jewels within. Be still and know that you are god.

Unfortunately the 'new testament' is what the church created and shovels into people, and while similar, has subtle differences that disempower people to discover their true spirituality.

I suggest you read the bible, with open mind and heart, leave the church doctrine at the door.

Re:Edifying

[rickb928]

I appreciate your response, and your encouragement to read the Bible with an open mind.

I read daily, from both Old and New Testaments. While it is also often glossed over, Jesus taught that He came in fulfillment of the Old Testament, as it was understood then, and had not come to undo any part of the Law, which the Septuagint expresses.

Ultimately, I think I understand your rejection of the Christian Bible, as it is generally constructed, as a rejection of it as written by men, therefore suspect if not entirely flawed. This is senseless for a single reason:

If God is indeed who HE says He is, then He has the power to make the Bible be what He wants. Indeed, it is precisely what He wants it to be, as He has the power to make it different if He chooses.

Now, if you don't believe in God, then you can similarly dismiss the Bible as unreliable and inaccurate. But if you don't believe in God, what use is the Bible to you other than as a story to be entertained with?

It was such for me for most of my life.

But one of the fundamentals of my faith has become to understand that God is indeed God, and He is in control. Or so I believe. In that light, it is up to me to understand that and Him, as best I can.

Just as a small point, Jesus also said "he was the son of man, and that we are all the sons of god (sic)". Equal? Equally important to God and Jesus. You may want to consider the figurative speech used in the Bible, were we are described as 'Sons of God' in reference to being the product of His creation. A strict reading of this implies women are somehow outside that, which is NOT true in the least. A better phrase might be to see us as all 'His children'. But Jesus was confirmed by God as "My Son, with whom I am well pleased". In the singular. Even David is described as a man 'after God's heart'. And that with his flaws and all.

It is not I who tries so hard to make the Bible, Christianity, Jesus, and God so one-dimensional I think. Your arguments seem intent on making Christianity as thin as possible, flattened into something so simple and one-dimensional that it has no variation, no room to accomodate, no space within.

"leave church doctrine at the door". I've found that I am required to become a five-point Calvinist. Which church is that? Instead of hearing your arguments as offering illumination and growth, I hear you trying to chop down anything to do with God, though I suspect you don't agree with that assessment. Again, how do you define a philosophy by its abuse? Indeed, do you 'get' to define a philosophy if you aren't a practitioner, at least, or a believer?

Sorry. I think you were trying to offend me, and I get defensive. I shouldn't.

One last thing. The Trinity is not a construction of Man. It is expressed by Jesus, as He is spoken of by God as the Son of God, Jesus being the Son, and promising to send the Spirit. Read carefully. Many of the most important passages in the Bible are small and unremarkable at first. Over time, you may stumble over one and realize for the first time how important it is. Keep reading...!

Re:Edifying

[tabrnaker]

What you hear has to do with how you are listening.

Your arguement is based not on god, but on your definition of god.

I'm not trying to make christianity flat, you've done that all by yourself. The body of christ is the roundness, and it has become separated from the church. hmm, just as prophesied in the bible? Perhaps god is testing his children? Jesus said 'test me and i will not be found wanting'. Those who always look outside for god will always be found wanting.

Yes, the trinity is a construction, let us say a possible explanation for Jesus' words. I am my father's son, and following my fathers example i bring inspiration to those who thirst/desire it. When you understand the spirit, you will understand the falseness of the trinity. I'm not saying it's a deliberate falseness, it's quite evident that the spirituality separated from the church quite early on, and it may just be a construction of ignorance.

I'm loosely paraphrasing as it's been decades, and frankly i find other spiritual texts much easier to read. Father doesn't use me on just anybody, so maybe you're ready for more?

Re:Edifying

[rtechie]

You will have to refute Jesus' own description of Himself, or challenge the writings that make that statement and the authors thereof.

No he doesn't. The burden of evidence is on the claimant and the more extraordinary the claim, the more evidence is needed.

If I claimed that I saw a black cat in my backyard, you would probably take my word for it as it's an ordinary claim.

If I claimed that I saw a black spaceship from Alpha Centauri in my backyard you would probably be much more skeptical.

Claiming that a 1st century Jewish peasant is the still-living incarnation of the Creator of the Universe is pretty extraordinary. Where is your evidence?

You are, you know, challenging the veracity of men who went to their deaths to defend that point.

Jim Jones proved that you can talk people into anything. And I could point to lots of other martyrs from lots of other religions as well.

But to then challenge His actions according to your interpretation of who and what you think He should be isn't intellectually honest, to me.

"God works in mysterious ways" isn't much of an argument. Theists always put forward this argument to explain why their god acts in a nonsensical fashion.

Fine, I'll concede this "argument". Given this reality, that humans can't adequately understand God's will, what is the point in trying to conform at all? For example, what is the point of the Christian prohibition against homosexuality if we KNOW (according to you) that we can't trust that interpretation of God's will? Shouldn't we logically discount ALL teachings by ALL prophets as they're inherently unreliable?

You don't get to have it both ways. Either God is mysterious and the teachings he transmits to prophets are unreliable OR God CAN communicate clearly and his teachings SHOULD be consistent and understandable.

Be a believer or not, but don't pick out the parts you like and toss the rest you have a difficult time with.

"Picking the parts you like" is the very definition of Christianity. Do you know anything about the development of the Canon?

Re:Edifying

[rickb928]

"You will have to refute Jesus' own description of Himself, or challenge the writings that make that statement and the authors thereof.

No he doesn't. The burden of evidence is on the claimant and the more extraordinary the claim, the more evidence is needed."

Refute:
1 : to prove wrong by argument or evidence : show to be false or erroneous.
2 : to deny the truth or accuracy of.

Seems to me you and he both could use the word 'refute' in the second sense. It was in that sense I used it...

I hate to pass over martydom so quickly, but it's fairly obvious to me, and this next point is much more interesting.

""God works in mysterious ways" isn't much of an argument. Theists always put forward this argument to explain why their god acts in a nonsensical fashion."

Just so we're clear here, most of God's ways couldn't possibly make much sense to us. Our frame of reference is severely limited in comparison. But He does tells us some of His intentions.

"You don't get to have it both ways. Either God is mysterious and the teachings he transmits to prophets are unreliable OR God CAN communicate clearly and his teachings SHOULD be consistent and understandable."

Did I say that God's teachings to the prophets are unreliable? I apologize if I left you with that impression. I don't believe that. Though God is indeed mysterious, see my point before.

Sometimes I get the impression that many skeptics, and many naysayers, choose the points they make carefully. I try to choose mine as well, but I end up accepting the totality of Christ, difficult and all. Trying to make sense of Him from a worldly perspective is pointless. He is foolish to the wise.

Re:Edifying

[BTWR]

Yes. The Jews were always monotheistic, although nice try in trying to maintain a fringe theory as mainstream. And the "proof" you'll try and toss out (like Yahweh's female counterpart, etc) were all random breakwaway sects. It's akin to saying the USA was a communist nation in the 1950, and cite evidence of communist party members as proof of this. Oh, and when you do produce "proof" such, please cite some references (web pages need not be cited. Just cite some authors. Thanks).

Re:Edifying

[sfsp]

"Habiru" probably did not refer to a specific tribe or group but was the Egyptian equivalent of "barbarians". The letter you refer to has nothing to do with Jews or Exodus.

And even if it did, how does that letter support the Exodus? It DOESN'T. Nobody doubts that the Jews lived in Canaan or that at various points Canaan was an Egyptian territory. What people doubt is the Exodus narrative. The "Jews", as a distinct tribe, were never slaves in Egypt. They never left Egypt en masse. They didn't wander through the Sinai for 40 years. They almost certainly didn't conquer Canaan and massacre the existing population.

You are making assertions of consensus where it does not exist. The Habiru may or may not be equivalent to the Hebrews; it certainly INCLUDED them. The Habiru CERTAINLY worked in Egypt; there are carvings and other documentation of them. The Habiru CERTAINLY fought in Canaan, in a time contemporaneous to the account in Joshua. To say that THOSE Habiru were CERTAINLY not THESE Habiru is unsupportable.

Also, referring to them collectively as "Jews" is really only accurate after the Babylonian exile, when the tribe of Judah was the primary one to return to Israel.

Most scholars consider Mark independent from "Q". You're the first I've heard say that Mark was based on "Q".

Since we don't have Q to compare, I speculate. There's no evidence either way, which is why I said "possibly".

John is where the virgin birth and other Hellenistic elements of the Jesus story are introduced.

Certainly John is the most Hellenistic. However, both Matthew (1:23) and Luke (1:26) include the detail of the virgin birth--John is more concerned with the pre-existence of Christ, and doesn't treat the birth at all.

Since we know without a shadow of a doubt that early Christian copyists were forgers (see Testimonium Flavianum) we really can't rule anything out.

You're painting with a very broad brush here. The Testimonium Flavianum may demonstrate that ONE early copyist was a forger, but most copyists COPIED. The New Testament is A) The BEST-attested work of antiquity, with over 30,000 manuscripts and fragments, and B) only 40 lines of the text (.25%) being in any question. The copyists did a good job.

Compare this with the second-place contender, Homer's Iliad, which has A) "only" 643 manuscripts and fragments, and B) has 764 lines in question (over 5%).

Nobody questions the textual integrity of the Iliad. The textual integrity of the New Testament is BETTER.

Whether you question the content or not is immaterial. The DOCUMENTS have been accurately transmitted.

Thank you for this stimulating discussion. If you are interested in continuing outside Slash comments, follow my userID (sfsp) to get my homepage address, where you can find my email address.

Patience

[Anonymous Coward]

You've waited this long ... what's another two years?

What we need is for Google to develop an actual, physical spider that goes out and searches hard copies of documents for indexing.

Re:Patience

[barocco]

You mean librarians should have free food and personal massages at work?

DNF team is devastated

[Anonymous Coward]

Their last ray of hope was of at least beating the release date of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Re:DNF team is devastated

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously.... DNF is going to be released next year. Worth the wait? Eh. But it is fucking awesome.

NICE! I love....

[buanzo]

I love FICTION!

Re:NICE! I love....

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, I like a stiff cock up my ass.

--
GNU/Buanzo Consulting - We are a pretty nice Linux Consulting company!

+1 Informative

[Anonymous Coward]

The Democratic party is the party of kikes and niggers.

Be a Republican and put those dogs in their place.

Translation?

[steeljaw]

TFA did not mention whether or not the scrolls would be translated into other languages, it would be interesting to read them in english.

Re:Translation?

[Eudial]

Honestly, anything... even interpretive dance would be more useful than reading them untranslated for Joe Sixpack.

Re:Translation?

[Whorhay]

I don't know if translations would really be worth it without them being very large collaborative works. The issues of translating anything into another language are I think widely known. And are only complicated in instances like this where the source material is so old. Ones own religious views and such are bound to slant any project like this.

Re:Translation?

[Fallingcow]

Wikitranslation?

Re:Translation?

[ndansmith]

TFA did not mention whether or not the scrolls would be translated into other languages, it would be interesting to read them in english.

This is not the first time the scrolls have been published. There are also translations available in numerous languages. What is significant here is that all of the fragments will be digitized and put online.

Re:Translation?

[rukcus]

That won't really help much either. The scrolls are in Aramiac. I still haven't seen a digital translator that works from Hebrew -> English. Good luck on making any sense from the scans. It sounds a lot like da Vinci's journals. They may be nice to look at, but the Layperson cannot understand them.

Re:Translation?

[Pearson]

I thought they had been digitized years ago to facilitate searches for similar characters, so that translation would be easier. What happened to all that work?

Re:Translation?

[ndansmith]

Not sure, but I know that these images will be shot in infrared, which makes the scrolls easier to read (according to the CNN article). So it seems that the new digitization process is the main impetus for the new work.

Must... Resist... Gah!

[HiggsBison]

Oh, those old things.

Dead Sea Scrolls were proprietary for decades

[davidwr]

Access to the Dead Sea Scrolls was carefully guarded for decades. Think proprietary database formats.

Back in the '80s or '90s, a scholar published a very detailed index. It was so detailed that other scholars were able to reverse-engineer the text of the scrolls, breaking the data monopoly for those scholars who were only interested in the text on the scrolls rather than the scrolls themselves.

Since then, the keepers of the scrolls have been much more, what is the work I'm looking for, open.

Confucius say

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Confucius say "Now we can find out if the People's Front of Judea are a bunch of splitters."

Re:Confucius say

[Anonymous Coward]

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

Re:Confucius say

[kungfugleek]

You're thinking of the Judean People's Front.

Re:Confucius say

[JudeanPeople'sFront]

Splitters!

front page?

[apodyopsis]

will they include the front page?

you know, the bit that goes "to my darking Wendy, all names and places in this book are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to real.."

Re:front page?

[Poohsticks]

"to my darking Wendy.."

Yeah my wife has been making my days dark since I married her, but I don't think I would make a book dedication to her.

Oh wait! you meant darling Wendy

Nevermind.

infighting over "first publication"

[peter303]

Not much has gotten published and many of the original scholars have died.

I'm guessing it was more professional jealously rather than some "secret revelation invalidating Christianity or Judiasm" that caused the delay.

They aren't paper

[Thelasko]

Unfortunately they are claiming the project will take somewhere in the neighborhood of two years to complete.

Why will it take two years? Part of the problem is because they aren't made of paper. One of them is made of copper, and most of them are made of parchament, which is much more difficult to work with. Especially considering the age.

Re:They aren't paper

[kabdib]

Yeah. What's the MIME type for copper?

Re:They aren't paper

[grahamd0]

application/cu+chisel

Re:They aren't paper

[Roberticus]

Suggestion: Deadsea-captcha.

Re:They aren't paper

[pz]

Unfortunately they are claiming the project will take somewhere in the neighborhood of two years to complete.

Why will it take two years? Part of the problem is because they aren't made of paper. One of them is made of copper, and most of them are made of parchament, which is much more difficult to work with. Especially considering the age.

My reaction to reading that it will take two years was: DAMN THAT'S FAST!

These are fragments of documents, not full scrolls. And there are what, thousands of fragments? They ought to be handled in clean-room conditions (don't know if they will be). They are extremely fragile. Anyone who damages them will suffer the ire of thousands upon millions of people. Since any manipulation runs risk of damage, presumably you want to ensure that it gets done right the first time. That means lots of logistical planning, test scans on simulated documents, training, etc. At least that's what it would mean if someone who knows what they're doing is in charge. Two years? If they had said ten years, I'd have been impressed.

Google Scholar

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute. Didn't Google already put every document ever written on the internet?

The abridged Dead Sea Scrolls

[thermian]

'The Romans are bad'
'So are any Jews who don't do what we do'
'We don't like women'
'Why is is so hard to get a damn bath around here'

Re:The abridged Dead Sea Scrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

burma shave.

Re:The abridged Dead Sea Scrolls

[Eli Gottlieb]

'Why is is so hard to get a damn bath around here'

Because you Zealot morons are bathing in Yam ha'Melach, the Dead Sea!

Re:The abridged Dead Sea Scrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Essenes were bathing fanatics.

Re:The abridged Dead Sea Scrolls

[thermian]

Actually, Essenes were bathing fanatics.

I know, thats why the joke, they had to build huge viaducts to ensure their water supply.

Considering they ar already available

[geekoid]

on dvd, I don't understand why it takes two year to put them on the web. Are they adding something? do they need to redo it?

Re:Considering they ar already available

[just_another_sean]

on dvd, I don't understand why it takes two year to put them on the web. Are they adding something? do they need to redo it?

*citation needed*

Re:Considering they ar already available

[bill_mcgonigle]

*citation needed*

Does the first google result for 'dead sea scrolls dvd-rom' seem insufficient?

Re:Considering they ar already available

[just_another_sean]

*citation needed*

Does the first google result for 'dead sea scrolls dvd-rom' seem insufficient?

Utterly.

Dead sea confetti...

[flyingfsck]

These scrolls are so fragmented, it is more like confetti or corn flakes, than scrolls. However, I wonder whether a computer aided puzzle solver could put them together better. Not that it matters much, the Church has never had a problem with writing new fairy tales. The old ones don't really matter.

Microsoft...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Dead Sea Scrolls Live!* *Subscription required.

Copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

No public domain translation of the Gospel of Judas, the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Qumran texts, etc exists, i'm afraid that the translations will be copyrighted, i'm not interested until these translation are made public.

That, and money/power/academic politics

[davidwr]

By restricting access to only those who paid for access with cash, "friendly" academic papers, or reciprocal access arrangements, those who had control stood to gain from their monopoly.

Of course, since science is never for sale *sarcasm*, I wouldn't waste time looking for cash payments. It's much more likely that favorable access was granted to those who were more likely to publish results favorable to those who controlled the access.

This favoritism can even happen unintentionally - it's human nature to favor our friends, and human nature to be friends with those who think like we do.

But will they run on linux?

[vistahator]

Just wondering...

so what does it mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore faith is not synonymous with belief. You could believe in God's existence without having faith in him (although vice-versa would obviously not make sense).

So what is "faith" in this context? You are directly contradiction the common-use meaning of the word, which is ok if you are employing a more technical meaning. However, it is presumptuous of you to expect that the rest of us would automatically know what that means.

Normally, "faith" is used to imply some kind of trust when evidence is lacking. It could be trust that a given (otherwise unsupported) belief is true, or trust in the virtues of a person...such as believing that he will follow through on a promise or some such.

So, "faith in God" in the common senses could imply that one believes he exists, as described, without evidence (an arguably irrational position), or it could mean that one trusts the virtues of God, which would imply belief in God's existence. Either way, the end result is the same: belief in the existence of something despite a lack of compelling evidence.

So...are you saying that "faith" doesn't mean either of those things as you use it? Could you please give a very precise explanation of what "faith" does mean, and why it is different than what I have presented?

Re:so what does it mean?

[g2devi]

That's not actually how it's used in the Bible.

To quote James 2-19, Demons have this sort of faith but they're not welcomed by God: http://net.bible.org/passage.php?search=Jas%202:18-19&passage=Jas%202:18-19

It's actually not how it's used most often in real life. Simply put, faith means trust.

Let's assume you're married but it could equally be applied in other close relationships.
* Do you have faith in your wife?
* Are you faithful to her?
* If you close your eyes and fall backwards towards you wife, do you have faith that your wife will at least try to stop you from falling?
* If she says or does something that hurt you, do you still have faith in *her* or do you immediately assume the worst about her?
* If your wife were to try something new that she has no experience in, but you've seen that she's fantastic at improvising, so you have faith that she'll succeed?

On the flip side, if your parents tell you "I have faith that you will win the basket ball game" but you see them betting on the other team, do they really trust you?

> So, "faith in God" in the common senses could imply that one believes he exists, as described, without evidence (an arguably irrational position)

True, it is arguable, which in simple terms means, debatable. Ferocious former Atheist, Anthony Flew (credited for the "Invisible Gardener" parable outlining how stupid believers in God were), switched to Deism (the God of Einstein, Spinoza, Plato, Einstein, and Darwin) precisely because he determined that it was a more rational explanation of the universe and all that there is in it than Atheism.

None of these people are stupid. They looked at the evidence....all the evidence. Granted, there isn't a single piece of evidence that shows God's existence, but the bulk of it tells you that he's there.

It's no different in real life. Getting back to the wife analogy, *why* would you have faith in her? If you give any single situation to prove your point, I could just as easily argue that your interpretation is wrong. However, if you give the sum total of all your experiences, you can build a credible case.

Anyway, here's a question to ponder. Assume that the universe and everything in it is pure matter caught in a cause and effect chain. Essentially pure materialism. You are essentially a bag of marbles held together by natural forces caught in a causal chain that fully determines every move you make. A chair or a rock is no different....you're just composed of different atoms and are configured in different ways, but ultimately, everything is just a bag of causal marbles.

If you truly believe in pure materialism, you must accept the following:
a) There is no difference between you and a chair. What you perceive as life is just an illusion.
b) There is no fundamental difference between breaking your legs and breaking a chair's legs or smashing you to death or smashing a chair to pieces. All you're doing is breaking a few bonds and rearranging the configuration of atoms.
c) All atoms in your body get replaced every decade, so there is nothing that defines who you are other than your overall appearance and even that changes with time. Ultimately, *you* don't exist.
c) There is no such thing as free will....just atoms caught in a causal chain. Evangelical Atheists are thus wasting their time trying to convince anyone, but then again they can't help it, so there's no problem.
d) A consequence of all the above is Humanism or other morality has no foundation in pure materialism and it's actually pretty arrogant to be a Humanist because why are human's more valuable than chairs or rats? If you expand goal of humanism to reduce the total amount of suffering in the world (whatever "suffering" means in materialistic terms),wouldn't it make more sense to sterilize all humans so that animals might flourish in a hundred or so years?
e) Knowledge is irrelevant. What is kno

Re:so what does it mean?

[iangoldby]

I think you've answered your own question:

It [failth] could be ... trust in the virtues of a person...such as believing that he will follow through on a promise or some such.

Leave religion completely aside for a moment and ask yourelf what you meant last time you said you had faith in someone. If you are anything like me, you meant that you trusted them to deliver on what they had promised, and you trusted them to do that because of past personal experience with them, or perhaps a testimonial of them from someone else that you trust. Whatever it was, it almost certainly was based on some reason, and almost certainly was not just a shot in the dark.

For me, this is a pretty good definition of faith when applied to Christianity and God. The problem with this definition is as you say that it doesn't really correspond with the common use of the word when applied to religion, a use which has become completely divorced from the meaning I've described above and has come to mean something blind, irrational.

I'm not sure whether anything can be done about this, apart from patient explanation like I've tried here.

Re:so what does it mean?

[kohaku]

> ... you must accept the following:

Why must I? Do you find it impossible to admit that you might not know the answers to some of those questions? In any case, why is it more rational to believe that an omnipotent being outside the universe controls everything? Surely it's just as valid an argument to say that the universe is a simulation inside some alien computer, after all, both theories are entirely untestable.

Regarding point f:
> Living is irrelevant. Why is continuing to keep the configuration of molecules in your body important?

The answer is simple: These molecules are arranged in such a way that they will attempt to preserve their order. In other terms, Humans are genetically predisposed towards self-preservation.

As for "Living is irrelevant", It's my personal belief that that's correct: Fear of death is not evidence of an afterlife. Even if I were certain that life was irrelevant I wouldn't kill myself. One only has a single chance at life (from this point of view, anyway) so why waste it?

Re:so what does it mean?

[Artifakt]

Paul, in his letters to the church in Corinth, made a lengthy argument about faith. He pointed out for example, that some of the opposition were saying (my paraphrase) "You can see how disease, aging and death destroy a person's body, and if they have these soul things you Christians claim, those are destroyed too." Paul said (again paraphrased): "But you have seen counter-examples, known people who suffered from age and disease, but sometimes they showed increasing wisdom, dedication, determination or compassion in the process. You have evidence that the soul can sometimes grow even as the body withers, and because of that evidence, you should keep to your faith.". Anyone is welcome to read that part of the New Testament and see if what I have just said is accurate.
      A lot (not all, but a lot) of the New Testament use of the word faith is actually like that. Rather than belief without evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence, it is much more often used to describe sticking to a belief where there is rational evidence, but it may be either ambiguous, or the arguments on both sides are highly emotional and may influence the Christian regardless of their logical foundation. (And I would assure you that most Christians have significant emotive fear of death regardless of their intellectual position, as do most non-Christians). I'm not nearly as up on the Old Testament, so I couldn't say just how the word 'faith' is used there in various books.
       

Off-topic post (sorta)

[lena_10326]

I'm convinced all religions are the result of chieftain ancestors who suffered from OCD.

OCD => useless rituals performed to prevent bad things from happening.

Religion => useless rituals performed prevent bad things from happening.

Now.. for the on-topic portion. This has to be a good thing. Access to Earth maps and astronomy images have yielded new discoveries by amateurs. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/08/07/space.discovery/index.html?eref=ib_topstories The same should happen here.

Time To Recycle

[nick_davison]

I saw them when they were in San Diego, a few months back. They're all musty and falling apart anyway. I say digitize them and then recycle the paper in to something more useful to people today... like a Vista how-to guide. Everyone wins.

Premise

[nick_davison]

Then I'm willing to bet you don't know what a premise is.

â"verb (used with object) to assume, either explicitly or implicitly, (a proposition) as a premise for a conclusion.

â"verb (used without object) to state or assume a premise.

A premise doesn't have to be accurate. It has to simply be an assumed foundation for an argument.

They can absolutely defend their belief with rock solid premises. For example:

If was assume God exists.
And we assume God smites those who don't believe in him.
(the premise)

Then it makes a lot of sense to believe.
(a very accurate statement IF the assumptions that form the premise are true)

Just one missing datum

[Nom du Keyboard]

It would be nice if the article also gave the web-link where these will be found as they get them online.

rationale for atheism

[Brain-Fu]

What's the rationale for atheism?

Inasmuch as the scientific method is concerned, the presumption of a controlling intelligence eliminates the need for some categories of investigation, which ultimately inhibits progress.

For example, if you ask, "why does a person get sick?" and one answers "because God wills it, either as a punishment for sin or as a test of faith." You have eliminated the incentive to investigate into things like bacteria, the immune system, and so on.

By beginning with the premise that there is no controlling intelligence, and that there is some kind of underlying mechanism behind all observable phenomena, you preserve the incentive to formulate hypothesis and test them. Of course, many of the hypotheses will still be wrong, but the process of testing them is what yields the understanding we need to improve our lives.

So, scientifically speaking, atheism is the most useful assumption for maximizing our efforts at perusing knowledge.

On a more personal level, agnosticism is more logically "safe" than atheism. Though many consider that the assertion of the non-existence of an entity for which no demonstrative test can be devised is more well-founded than the assertion of the existence of said entity...logically this is still just a variant of the "ad ignorantium" fallacy. It is clear that where no test can be formulated *either way,* the only warranted conclusion is no conclusion at all. "I don't know if God exists, and I won't know until we can cook up some definitive tests" is the most logically sound response to questions of the ontological status of the divine.

Re:rationale for atheism

[kungfugleek]

Actually, I think there are some fairly prominent christians that do begin with the premise that there is no controlling intelligence, but that there is an intelligence that is in control. Sounds funny. The difference, as I understand it, being a God who forcefully controls every action and it's outcome (I think Calvinist is the term - though that's usually used in a free-will/predestination debate - maybe Christian Scientists fall into this category?), as opposed to a God who has set things up to run pretty smoothly and intervenes when necessary (I'm not sure what they're called -- Anti-Calvinists?).

Anyway, I think I understand your point. Atheism drives scientific progress because someone who believes in an intelligent controller will just say, "It's God. What ya gonna do?"

But I'm not sure I buy it. Two things come to mind:

I think historically a lot of prominent scientists have been believers of some sort, if not full-on christians. Maybe not most -- I wouldn't know percentages. But I don't think it was historically very rare. If believers in an intelligent controller (BIAICs?) automatically would throw up their hands and not do anything to try to improve their lives, then BIAIC-scientists would be unheard of. Because of that, it doesn't seem like being a BIAIC encourages a person to give up on trying to learn, understand, or investigate. In fact, for some modern-day biochemists who believe, I've heard them say that it deepens their appreciation for the wisdom, intelligence, and creativity of God when they learn more about the universe.

Second, what's to stop an atheist from saying, "It's just luck. What ya gonna do?" I'm pretty sure you'll find people of any belief (or anti-belief?) system finding some kind of excuse to be lazy. The BIAIC's have a convenient excuse if they want to abuse it, but I don't think anyone's who's seriously committed to doing nothing will let a measly little belief system (or lack thereof) stop them.

I think you made an interesting argument, though. It does bring up another question, however (and still, I just really want to know): what motivates the atheist to strive for progress anyway? Fame? Pride? A legacy? Some altruistic motive for the betterment of humanity? Why would any of those things have significance for the atheist if he honestly believes that nothing of his mind or personality will survive his own death?

(Sorry if we're getting off-topic here... hopefully some of this may end up answering the claim of irrationality that was brought up a few posts ago.)

Re:rationale for atheism

[williamhb]

Inasmuch as the scientific method is concerned, the presumption of a controlling intelligence eliminates the need for some categories of investigation, which ultimately inhibits progress. For example, if you ask, "why does a person get sick?" and one answers "because God wills it, either as a punishment for sin or as a test of faith." You have eliminated the incentive to investigate into things like bacteria, the immune system, and so on. By beginning with the premise that there is no controlling intelligence, and that there is some kind of underlying mechanism behind all observable phenomena, you preserve the incentive to formulate hypothesis and test them. Of course, many of the hypotheses will still be wrong, but the process of testing them is what yields the understanding we need to improve our lives. So, scientifically speaking, atheism is the most useful assumption for maximizing our efforts at perusing knowledge.

Speaking as a practicing scientist, your explanation is incorrect. Science does not begin with the premise of atheism -- it is simply a convention of science that experimental results are not attributed to divine forces. That is quite different -- God could stand next to a scientist, wave to him while he performs an experiment, walk on a handy bit of water, and the scientist's paper would still not discuss God or attribute anything to him even though the scientist would be quite convinced that yes he does exist.

Though many consider that the assertion of the non-existence of an entity for which no demonstrative test can be devised is more well-founded than the assertion of the existence of said entity...logically this is still just a variant of the "ad ignorantium" fallacy. It is clear that where no test can be formulated *either way,* the only warranted conclusion is no conclusion at all. "I don't know if God exists, and I won't know until we can cook up some definitive tests" is the most logically sound response to questions of the ontological status of the divine.

Philosophically, many have pointed out over the centuries that there is an ongoing test: your own existence. From a first person perspective, far from needing evidence to prove there is anything more than physical reality, it's actually rather tough to prove there is a physical reality at all and not just a spiritual one. ("How can I prove the world is not a dream" -- independent experiments don't help because I might have dreamt both of them.) The spiritual/mental side however is proved with a simple "I am". We make the small assumption that since others externally appear to behave in a similar manner to ourselves that internally they have a similar experience of existence -- ie, they also "I am". This assumption implies that we are not ourselves "creating the universe", and the assumption that there must be a third party that "creates" the universe for us to "I am" in follows as being likely. (It's the creation/choice of the rules, rather than the matter, that is important at this step -- eg, "why is our universe not, say, like Conway's game of Life?".) Finding documentary evidence that that third party said hello, and concurred that he did indeed bless this set of mathematical rules to actually "exist" (in the sense that you can "I am" in them), whereas other sets of possible rules do not, then, isn't that surprising.

Re:rationale for atheism

[Raenex]

Atheism drives scientific progress because someone who believes in an intelligent controller will just say, "It's God. What ya gonna do?"

The order isn't right. The scientific method leads one to atheism, not that atheism drives the scientific method. Once you start seeing how questions become answered and progress is made by thinking scientifically, and then you apply that scientific thinking to religious beliefs, atheism naturally appears.

I'll give you a personal story. As a child playing outside I noticed some wind, followed by shadow. I figured the wind was blowing the light away. Of course I eventually figured out it was the clouds covering up the sun. Cause and effect. Repeat this process over and over with new experiences, and throw in models, prediction, and testing, and wow, the world seems so much clearer.

Also as I child I was told about God. This was not a natural concept. I didn't understand how this invisible man could be nowhere and everywhere.

So why do you believe in God, if you do? Is it because that's what you were taught as a child? Why did your parents believe in it? A rational explanation for me is that religion is no different than mythology -- stories and explanations created by man and handed down through time. No different than Zeus throwing lightning bolts or my idea that the wind caused shadows.

An atheist just believes in one less religion than you.

I think historically a lot of prominent scientists have been believers of some sort, if not full-on christians.

Historically, it hasn't been very acceptable to profess non-belief. It was the kind of thing that could get you killed. Nowadays, I think you'll find scientists as a group less likely to believe than the average population.

In fact, for some modern-day biochemists who believe, I've heard them say that it deepens their appreciation for the wisdom, intelligence, and creativity of God when they learn more about the universe.

You can do science and have belief. Clearly many do. What most believing scientists do is to compartmentalize the two. Personally, I think these scientists are just fooling themselves, but whatever, as long as they don't corrupt their scientific work I don't care what they believe about religion.

what motivates the atheist to strive for progress anyway? [...] Why would any of those things have significance for the atheist if he honestly believes that nothing of his mind or personality will survive his own death?

You have to do something with your life. What's the alternative, to kill yourself? We're all born with the will to live and other motivations. People who do science have a love of discovery. It's also human nature to want something to carry on after you die, even if logically it all seems futile.

Re:rationale for atheism

[kungfugleek]

and then you apply that scientific thinking to religious beliefs, atheism naturally appears.

I'm not sure about that. Science is the perfect tool for understanding everything that can be observed by our five senses, and extensions of those senses. But it's useless for studying something that cannot be empirically demonstrated. I think where we might agree (and maybe this is what you meant) is that a lifetime spent focused on the application of the scientific method would tend to make one fall into thinking that there is no other source of knowledge. And, as you said, the person would try to apply the scientific method to religion and would come up with the philosophical equivalent of a null pointer exception. And since they aren't used to coming to conclusions without science, they default to atheism.

It's also human nature to want something to carry on after you die, even if logically it all seems futile.

Then wouldn't that be irrational, by definition? But I think I have a bigger question:

You have to do something with your life.

I'm not convinced of that, for an atheist. Yes, we start out with a will to live, but when we get better at thinking, we start asking "What's the point?" I think that's when the will to live can take a back seat if we want it to.

I think you were right: the alternative is to kill yourself. And that's what gets me. I just don't see what keeps people (hard-core atheists, mostly) from doing exactly that. If it's all ultimately futile, then why bother with it? You came from nothing, you'll be nothing, just like everyone else; none of it matters. And believing that nothing matters can have significant consequences, if that belief is really fully lived out.

I think it's what Shakespeare said, "The dread of something after death." Which leads me to think that there are, in fact, very very few true atheists. But I guess you'll never know if someone's a real atheist until they're faced with their own death. And you could say that same thing for christians.

Yes, I believe in God. And, as /.ers love to point out, I cannot prove that he exists any more than anyone could disprove it. But I do believe that, after all the arguments, all the philosophy, all the reasoning, all the evidence, and all the speculation, reasonably intelligent people can choose either path without sacrificing their intellectual integrity. I chose to believe.

I want to mention that, when I say that to someone, they automatically assume I mean God as they think of him. Past experience shows that there are significant differences. But to be honest, I'm not sure how I'd summarize it.

Your question about if I believe it just because that's what I was taught is a valid one. If I had never been taught about God, I can't be sure about what I would believe. I think I'd still believe in something, but it'd probably be a lot more vague than the beliefs I have now. I could be wrong, of course. It's highly speculative.

I can say that I certainly don't swallow every teaching whole. My beliefs about God, creation, and just about everything have changed since I left my home church and they continue to change as I learn more. I've changed to the extent that I now share relatively few beliefs with the people I grew up with.

So, why? At the risk of over-simplifying things, and to be totally honest, I believe because I want to. And I know that's not enough to convince anyone to convert or anything, but I'm not trying to do that anyway. As for why I want to believe? To be honest, sometimes I don't, but that's pretty rare. The big selling point to me to believe in God (the Judeo-Christian God, to narrow it down a little -- but not completely) is that it means we are significant to something greater than ourselves, that we have intrinsic value that transcends or lives, that we are loved by an omnipotent

Re:rationale for atheism

[Raenex]

But it's useless for studying something that cannot be empirically demonstrated.

I think all religious teachings can be reasoned about. In fact, you did so yourself in your post, numerous times.

And, as you said, the person would try to apply the scientific method to religion and would come up with the philosophical equivalent of a null pointer exception.

Why don't you believe in Zeus? Is it a null-pointer exception, or because of reasoning? If somebody claimed to be the prophet of God, how would you judge their claims? Would you apply reasoning?

Yes, we start out with a will to live, but when we get better at thinking, we start asking "What's the point?" I think that's when the will to live can take a back seat if we want it to.

Sure, and people kill themselves. However the ingrained will to live is an extremely strong one, even when everything is going wrong.

Which leads me to think that there are, in fact, very very few true atheists.

The world isn't black and white. Lots of people who consider themselves Christians have varying degrees of doubt and uncertainty. As for me, I firmly believe that nobody on this planet has any knowledge of the divine, except that which we can all experience -- that is, if you look at the world and wonder, maybe you think there's a creator and a purpose.

I do look at the world and wonder -- I think we pretty much all do. Everything in my experience points to death being the end. If there's a purpose to this world, or my existence, I don't see any sign of it. However, rationally, I can't rule out the possibility of some kind of divine power, but it's not something that brings me hope or carries me through the day. It's just an intellectual possibility, if you see what I mean.

But I do believe that, after all the arguments, all the philosophy, all the reasoning, all the evidence, and all the speculation, reasonably intelligent people can choose either path without sacrificing their intellectual integrity. I chose to believe.

Depends on what you believe and why. When faced with this question in my teen years, I realized it would be easier to just believe, and I kind of wanted to, but I knew I would be lying to myself just to make life easier. That's motivation. As for the "what", if somebody intellectually accepts something like Christianity and The Bible as divine knowledge, I cannot reconcile that at all with intellectual integrity. That's just latching on to what they were raised to believe in.

If I didn't have that belief, I'd find the "alternative" we talked about above very appealing, every day, especially when everything's going wrong.

I think you mean appalling, not appealing :) I'll be honest: Life would be a whole lot easier if I had religion. And sometimes I feel guilty about tearing into what people believe. If somebody has inner peace it doesn't bring me joy to destroy it. However, I can't accept what I consider mythology as truth, and when religion is discussed I will vigorously dispute it.

Re:rationale for atheism

[kungfugleek]

But it's useless for studying something that cannot be empirically demonstrated.

I think all religious teachings can be reasoned about. In fact, you did so yourself in your post, numerous times.

I was referring to the scientific method, not to reason in general.

And, as you said, the person would try to apply the scientific method to religion and would come up with the philosophical equivalent of a null pointer exception.

Why don't you believe in Zeus? Is it a null-pointer exception, or because of reasoning? If somebody claimed to be the prophet of God, how would you judge their claims? Would you apply reasoning?

Of course I'd apply reason. Never heard a reasonable argument for the existence of Zeus. If someone claimed to be a prophet of God, they'd have their work cut out for them to prove it to me.

Which leads me to think that there are, in fact, very very few true atheists.

The world isn't black and white. Lots of people who consider themselves Christians have varying degrees of doubt and uncertainty. As for me, I firmly believe that nobody on this planet has any knowledge of the divine, except that which we can all experience -- that is, if you look at the world and wonder, maybe you think there's a creator and a purpose.

I do look at the world and wonder -- I think we pretty much all do. Everything in my experience points to death being the end. If there's a purpose to this world, or my existence, I don't see any sign of it. However, rationally, I can't rule out the possibility of some kind of divine power, but it's not something that brings me hope or carries me through the day. It's just an intellectual possibility, if you see what I mean.

Yup.

But I do believe that, after all the arguments, all the philosophy, all the reasoning, all the evidence, and all the speculation, reasonably intelligent people can choose either path without sacrificing their intellectual integrity. I chose to believe.

Depends on what you believe and why. When faced with this question in my teen years, I realized it would be easier to just believe, and I kind of wanted to, but I knew I would be lying to myself just to make life easier. That's motivation.

Sometimes believing does make life easier. Sometimes not. In America, believers have a fairly easy time of it. The most we face as far as persecution is a little harassment and little inconveniences (a student in my home town got a zero on his art assignment because he included a cross in the picture, and the teacher, who kept a Buddha displayed in her room, said that religious symbols don't belong in a public school). But it's nothing too bothersome. In other countries it is quite a different story.

As for the "what", if somebody intellectually accepts something like Christianity and The Bible as divine knowledge, I cannot reconcile that at all with intellectual integrity. That's just latching on to what they were raised to believe in.

Well, there's no doubt that a lot of people believe just because they were raised to. But that doesn't cover everybody. Some have actually come to the conclusion that God exists by using their reason.

If I didn't have that belief, I'd find the "alternative" we talked about above very appealing, every day, especially when everything's going wrong.

I think you mean appalling, not appealing :) I'll be honest: Life would be a whole lot easier if I had religion. And sometimes I feel guilty about tearing into what people believe. If somebody has inner peace it doesn't bring me joy to destroy it. However, I can't accept what I consider mythology as truth, and when religion is discussed I will vigorously dispute it.

Actually, I did mean appealing. Why go through the junk of life when there's no ultimate payoff?

Re:rationale for atheism

[Raenex]

I was referring to the scientific method, not to reason in general.

A big part of the scientific method is reasoning. Of course there is no "God" experiment you can run in the lab, but you can gather evidence. When the evidence points to mythology, then I don't call it a "null pointer exception".

Some have actually come to the conclusion that God exists by using their reason.

I've never seen a strong case based on reasoning. The strongest I've seen is the watchmaker argument, but that one doesn't go very far.

Actually, I did mean appealing. Why go through the junk of life when there's no ultimate payoff?

Ok, I misinterpreted what you said. I see you mean suicide would be an appealing option if you didn't have belief. But while you might give it more consideration, it's a hell of a thing to commit yourself to.

Absolute fail.

[WNight]

FAIL. There are nine-thousand picky gods. Which do you want to bet on?

Re:Absolute fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

FAIL. There are nine-thousand picky gods. Which do you want to bet on?

Really -- try and list all the universe-creating gods you can think of. I will be very impressed if you get past five. While there have been historically plenty of anthropomorphisations of things like thunder, carrying the sun in a chariot, etc, there have been very few different claimed gods that actually are claimed to have created the entire universe.

Re:Absolute fail.

[WNight]

So it's a picky pantheon with a non-personified creator aspect. Every different belief system requires the universe to be created, and presumably those gods wouldn't bother with much of an afterlife for non-believers (if not torture them as the more gruesome gods do).

For that matter though, the xian god, for example, does not give you a free pass just because you haven't heard of him - neither would most other gods if they ended up being the right one. Are you SURE none of those other gods is the creator and just didn't bother to widely publicize the fact? Perhaps Russel's Teapot created the universe for something to look at and happily grants eternal life to all who ask it - in person.

But what value is simple static eternal life? You need to think of the rewards. With some gods entire lifetimes of good deeds are required to move up a bit as a mortal, for others you get boatloads of eternal virgins for simply murdering people.

You mean...

[billcopc]

We might finally have an opportunity to understand why the catholic church had to kill so many people over the past two millenia ?

---I---CAN'T---WAIT---!

carbon dating

[Anonymous Coward]

My big concern is over the principle that once these are made publicly digitally available, they will be easily tampered with.

Carbon dating and radioactive isotopes.

marriage

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see some solid premises and reason that applies to an act of blind faith.

Ask any married coupled.

Warranted Belief

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'd like to see some solid premises and reason that applies to an act of blind faith.

Start reading about a concept called 'rational warrant', then. Christians created the philosophy of science before it went and divorced itself from us.

Atheists can also be decent people...

[Joce640k]

There's nothing special about Christ's basic message - "be good to people". Plenty of complete Atheists are also decent chaps.

OTOH I never saw a news story about a bunch of Atheists invading a country or The Atheists bombing The Agnostics. The Christians have been doing it as long as they've existed. One of the central themes of America today is righteous Christianity vs. Islam.

I'm firmly with Richard Dawkins on this. Religion is the root of all the big evils in this world. You don't need a fierce god threatening you to behave properly and the world would be a lot better off without it.

Re:Atheists can also be decent people...

[Artifakt]

You do know the Soviet Union was officially Atheist? You never saw a news story about them invading anyone? Or how about Pol Pot? Set up a government that was officially, militantly Atheist, killed over 2 million people, particularly over 700,000 who's official 'crime worthy of death' was 'clinging to religions ideology', as written on the orders sentencing them?
      I guess nobody ever told you, but in the 20th century, the score for Mass murders, genocides, pomgroms, etc ran (roughly) All Religious governments 21 Million, All Atheist governments 91 Million. Your vaunted Atheists beat the religious groups roughly 4.5 to 1.

Bzzt

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

The oldest writing comes from the Chinese, followed by the Sumerians and Babylonians.

Bzzt. The advent of a writing system coincides with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to count ones property, whether it be parcels of land, animals or measures of grain or to transfer that property to another individual or another settlement. The first evidence for this is with incised "counting tokens" from about 9,000 years ago in the neolithic fertile crescent.

Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop. One of the earliest examples was found in the excavations of Uruk in Mesopotamia at a level representing the time of the crystallization of the Sumerian culture.

What you might be thinking of is the Jiahu symbols, markings on prehistoric artifacts found in Jiahu, a neolithic Peiligang culture site found in Henan, China. Dated to 6600 BC, most doubt that the markings represent systematic writing at all and believe that they were simply used as pictures. The earliest evidence for a corpus of writing in the oracle bone script dates much later to the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 â" 1046 BC).

It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing appeared around 2000 BC, as a representation of language developed for Semitic slaves in Egypt by Egyptians (see History of the alphabet). Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design.

Whats with the spate of "China did it first" posts around here lately?

Communism is religion by another name....

[Joce640k]

The whole of Russia was adorned with large pictures/statues of the god Lenin, etc.

Re:Communism is religion by another name....

[Raenex]

You lost. Admit it. Ideology != religion, especially an ideology that states religion is bullshit.

I'm an atheist, and I hate the non-thinking dogma religion encourages, but religion is not the root of all the big evils, and atheism is no cure. Men fight over power, ideas, resources, territory. Sometimes religion is involved, but it's certainly no requirement. War happens even among non-human species.

Re:Communism is religion by another name....

[Artifakt]

So, if it does great evil evil, you just redefine it to be a religion, and ergo, all religions produce great evil. Circular reasoning. Atheists are always good by your definition, so any time an atheist does evil, you throw him out of the club.

      You know, if I pointed to infamous Christians such as Geoffrey Amhurst (who gave smallpox loaded blankets to the Amerinds) and said they weren't real Christians, I'd be called a hypocrite for trying to include only the 'good' ones.

Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

You completely ignore the value of public domain: these stories are in the public domain. The people of the tribe hear it over and over from they "wise man". But you forget that people get bored very easily and furthermore are susceptible to authority. So if the wise man chooses to modify the story a bit to illustrate better the "important" points of the story (or even just to "spice it up" a little) most people won't mind - why should they, being illiterate and not having a "true grasp" of the gospel question their tribe's authority? Now see this effect taking place generation after generation, spread over several tribes and cultures and you will see many different stories, with certain peculiar similarities tough.
 
This is exactly how myths are created - most people don't care about little deviations from the version they know as long as they can agree with it - especially if there is no written (or filmed) reference they can check anytime they want.

This is not true

[celtic_hackr]

The entire Dead sea scroll collection was published several years ago. I have a complete copy of every dead sea scroll, along with photographs of them. There are several such books by various authors.

Your statement is no longer true. While your history is accurate, your here and now knowledge needs work. There was also a lot of incompetence and inability to plan/manage causing issues. It's a fascinating, if sad story.

That's not the issue.

[celtic_hackr]

The problem is that the documents are so fragile they must remain encased in the protective frames they are in and cannot endure any length of time being exposed to light. Copies have been made of all the scrolls and those are probably the ones that will be used in the digitizing.

Some copies are incredibly dark, and difficult to read even by trained expert archaeological specialists.

I further assume they mean digitizing the collection into searchable text and I know of no expert software that can decipher ancient Jewish text written in a hundred separate handwritings and of mostly terrible condition. This is a hugely difficult undertaking. I think they are overly optimistic in what they think they can accomplish. I would say this task may be more on the order of five to ten years, unless they have lots of volunteers helping with the work. But where they are going to get large numbers of human transcribers with intimate knowledge of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic is beyond me.

Although they already "know" what all the texts say and there are numerous copies of the words in PC readable format and all of the documents have had photographs done and are also in PC readable format. So unless they just mean they want to put pictures of the texts up, I'm not sure what they plan to accomplish, nor why it can't be done tomorrow.

Or I could scan in and put on line my copy of
"The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English"
By Geza Vermes,1997 Penguin Books 648pp. Of course, I'd probably get in trouble for that since you know it's gonna be under copyright protection until it's as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls are now (given the current mindset of the corporate sponsored Congress).

Bzzt to you

[celtic_hackr]

Writing was not a necessity of civilization. Take for example Catal Hyuck which was continuously occupied for millenia before a writing system. Many American cultures had no writing systems, and they were'nt all hunter gatherer societies. Who says a writing system has to be alphabetic? Are you saying the current Japanese and Chinese languages don't qualify as written language?

Don't forget!

[celtic_hackr]

In the Multiverse you keep what you kill.

-Riddick IV:16.11-12

You fail it

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Writing was not a necessity of civilization. Take for example Catal Hyuck which was continuously occupied for millenia before a writing system. Many American cultures had no writing systems, and they were'nt all hunter gatherer societies. Who says a writing system has to be alphabetic? Are you saying the current Japanese and Chinese languages don't qualify as written language?

Eh I was pointing out that the oldest writing wasn't Chinese, I'm not sure where you are wandering off to, but you seem to be answering a bunch of points I didn't make.

What we have from that era in China doesn't qualify as a written language any more than the counting tokens from 9000 years ago found in the fertile crescent. And while we're on the subject, hieroglyphs aren't alphabetic either, although they certainly count as writing.

Re:You fail it

[celtic_hackr]

Ok, you're going to make me quote you, fine.

Bzzt. The advent of a writing system coincides with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to ...

My very first sentence in my previous reply pointed out your error. Which you don't seem to have picked up on. My point was and is that permanent communities didn't necessitate a need for a writing system as you claim.

I'm not a linguist, nor do I follow all of the latest discoveries in the field. I have however studied linguistics. I was not commenting on the China first writing claim. Counting tokens don't qualify as writing, by the way, any more than cave drawings by Neanderthals do.

Of course hieroglyphs are writing, along with pictographs. I'm not the one who was trying to set the bar for writing at the alphabet level. If it is capable of communicating spoken language in a written form then it is writing, even pictographs. In conmclusion I'll add that writing systems almost certainly existed long before we have found any record of them. We only have them once they made it to more permanent forms such as clay.