I don't think the problem was that the Pharisees were looking for signs, I think it was that the Pharisees had already closed their minds to Jesus (By this time Jesus had already performed many miracles, but the Pharisees said it was by the devil's power instead of God's.). Jesus even hinted that "they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead", but even so still gave them that sign (dying and raising from the dead), and they weren't convinced.
Also, Thomas doubted, and Jesus didn't condemn him, but gave him the proof that he needed to believe.
I think for many of the verses you're thinking about, it's not blind faith that's expected, nor wanting proof that's sinful, but that they're rejecting proof -- they've already made up their mind about what's right and won't consider other evidence.
On the other hand, 1 Thessalonians 5:21 says: "Test everything. Hold on to the good." I think we can all agree with that.
Actually, at least regarding Christianity, trust and faith and belief are the same thing. They're all translated from the same word "pistis". What you're talking about is "blind faith", or "blind trust" (which many people do have, but my point is just that that's not the only type of faith there is). So while what you say is true for some people, I'd submit that there are also people whose faith is very similar to the trust relationship you've described -- trusting scientists because what they've said/written before has proved true, and trusting God because what he's said/written before has proved true.
What is more trustworthy is another topic altogether, but I think the trust/faith/belief people put in either is often more similar than you've described.
Actually, at least regarding Christianity, trust and faith and belief are the same thing. They're all translated from the same word "pistis". What you're talking about is "blind faith", or "blind trust", which describes the "without verification" part (otherwise the phrase "blind faith" would be redundant).
Of course, nowadays, a lot of people conflate "faith" with "blind faith", (it's one of those changing meaning things) so it's hard to tell what people mean unless you clarify it. I would like to propose we use "blind faith" to be clear, but I feel like that's similar to fighting the "hacker/cracker" battle. Or the "literally-means-literally -- literally!" battle. Sigh.
I understand your feelings toward people who want things removed, but I don't think Sirfrummel is expressing that. It sounded like he's just expressing his reaction to the game, and why others might feel the same way -- without mentioning what he thinks should be done about it. Sounds like he's just adding perspective, which is always good.
I have to disagree that "pro-choice" and "anti-choice" are perfectly neutral and descriptive. "Pro-choice" focuses on the choice part. "Pro-life" focuses on the life part. Those things are what they stand for. Just as "Pro-choice" doesn't stand for death or abortion, "Pro-life" doesn't stand for anti-choice.
"Pro-choice" / "Pro-life" may not be perfectly neutral and descriptive, but I would have to say that it's more neutral and descriptive of what they stand for than "Pro-choice" / "Anti-choice".
Skype might be good enough, because you can set it to auto-start, and you can set it to auto-accept calls (so you can initiate the calls from your end) and I think you can set it to auto-start in full-screen. That way, once you have it all set up, the most they'll have to do is turn on the physical power, and you'll be able to initiate the connection from your end.
"...it would probably be faster, cheaper, and ultimately more satisfying if we could just assassinate spamming assholes like PharmaMaster/Eran Reshef."
Eran Reshef is the CEO of Blue Security, according to the article: "Earlier this week, Blue Security's CEO, Eran Reshef, said a Russian spammer operating under the name PharmaMaster orchestrated a string of attacks this week that disabled its site and sent threatening messages to its users."
Sorry; what I meant by that statement was that usually when people say to have faith in God, they don't mean to believe he exists; they mean to trust in Him (i.e. 1st definition at http://www.answers.com/faith&r=67). Surely, if someone has faith in God, he also believe God exists.
I think we are discussing different definitions of the word "faith"; yours sounds more like definition #2, which very well could be blind. However, the first sense of the word is built on observation.
I only wanted to address this idea of faith, since I seem to see it rather often. I think this viewpoint is wrong, and to teach someone to have blind faith is to teach him to have no faith, since faith is built on experience (e.g. having faith your friend will come through because he always has).
I keep seeing this idea come up, and I wanted to address it:
Faith must be based on observation, or it is blind. When we say we have faith in God, it is because we have observed God's consistency in being faithful to His promises. It is like having faith in your parents, or having faith in your children. It does not mean believing that he exists.
So, true faith is based on observation, otherwise it is illogical to have it.
That ctrl+T thing really confuses me. I mean, I'll get used to it, but I don't understand why ctrl+T opens a new Tab, but ctrl+W doesn't open a new Window (it closes the tab). In Opera, fortunately, you can ctrl+Z to get that tab back, but in Firefox, I lose the page. Isn't this a intuitive/consistent UI issue?
(Note: not trying to turn this into a FF vs Opera issue, I have and run both off my usb key; it's just a usability question).
civilization advanced enough to receive our radio waves and respond is likely greater than 2000 years more advanced
I wonder if such an advanced civilization would even recognize us as sentient beings. I mean, to them, our level of intelligence might be similar to how we see the intelligence of ants. Ants are pretty resourceful, and can complete pretty impressive projects for their size, but we don't consider them sentient, and we kill them as a matter of convenience. How would such a civilization respond to our attempts at communicating or fighting back? I wonder if it would be seen as just a natural reaction, like our ants suddenly scurrying madly about -- nothing to cause us to pause and reconsider.
Not that I think we'll actually have to worry about this in our lifetimes, but it's fun stuff to ponder. =P
So what?... What learning are you talking of? There's no learning in religion. You have some book written by ancient people, and you're supposed to just believe it. That's it. What more is there to learn?
I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. Your original question was "what's wrong with anti-religious sentiments?". I was providing one reason. Actually, I left it open to either you learning from them (which you don't seem to think is possible) or them learning from you. Either way, we can agree that mutual understanding can only benefit those involved, right?
By the way, there's no "you're supposed to just believe it" command in the Bible (the opposite, in fact: Acts 17:11, Proverbs 23:23, 1 Peter 3:15), and I'm pretty sure there isn't in most major religions, although I don't claim to be an expert in the subject. But this sort of learning is what I'm talking about: understanding that your idea of religion might not be what religion actually is (This is important because many disagreements are due to this fact, combined with the fact that others have an idea about science which differs from what science actually is).
What more is there? Well, just because the Bible (which is actually a collection of writings from some 40 different people who lived in different eras spanning some 1500 years, as well as from different areas all over the middle east, and in different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) was written a long time ago doesn't mean it's completely worthless. Even if you don't agree with the theology, I'm sure you can agree with much of the wisdom (e.g. Do to others as you would have them do to you). It's because they were written for humans, and we're still human. It's not all about abracadabra and hocus-pocus.
Religion is a pretty silly thing--really, who still believes in stuff like a guy named Atlas holding up the world? Although many religious people know laugh at this notion, all modern religions are filled with similarly stupid and ridiculous stuff, so I see no reason not to make fun of them. People made fun of the "stupid and ridiculous" ideas that the Wright brothers and Galileo had too. What reason was there not to? Of course in hindsight they were right, but even if they weren't, making fun of them doesn't help increase anyone's knowledge. If people are afraid to think of and test out new ideas, it impedes their learning, and our progress as a species suffers. This applies in a general sense, but more specifically about religious people: making fun of them doesn't increase anyone's knowledge, and just causes a gap in understanding.
Besides that, religion is to blame for a lot of the misery and suffering in the world, so again, I ask, what's wrong with anti-religious sentiments? Although religion is a vehicle for misery and suffering, it also causes joy and relief. If anything, I would say that people are to blame, rather than religion.
I had to use Firefox for a while for the same reason, but I found out that my work proxy is configured to use MS Proxy Client. You might be able to get it working to by going to the mspclnt share dir on your work's proxy server. (In Windows Explorer: \\proxyservername\mspclnt )
This allows most of your applications to connect to the internet without needing to manually set each of their proxy settings.
A simple way to test this at home is to look in the mirror. Switch back and forth between looking at your left eye and your right eye; can you see your eyes move? Not as cool as an eye tracker, but still pretty interesting...
Yeah, infidelguy seems to be a good place (from looking at the faq), and I agree about the Slashdot thing, heh. I didn't expect to get drawn into such a conversation, but I've learned a lot in researching the good points you brought up, so I'm glad for that. I'll definitely check out the forums in the next few days, and hopefully I'll be able to address the rest of your post there.
It's alright, I think I recognize most of your examples (please correct me if i'm wrong), although I think if we look at them in their original context, they don't mean quite what you make them out to mean:
"telling people to kill their children" - Abraham was being tested, but he knew that Isaac would be with God, so this was not a conflict of love. In the end, God provided a ram to be sacrificed instead anyway. If you are talking about the public stoning of your children, this is a great example of what I was talking about when I said there were things that don't make sense or should cause the reader to ask questions. The purpose of this law was not to encourage capital punishment against your children, but rather to discourage it. Compare these laws to the Roman laws, known as patria potestas, which gave the father power to kill his child at whim. The Biblical law requires the cooperation of the mother, as well as the public, while the Roman law left judgement and responsibility with one person, the father. So this increases accountability, which is a major theme in the Bible, and I think a solid moral value (Isn't it better the more accountability leaders have?).
"avoid women on their periods" - This chapter is just talking about when someone is considered unclean (not the same as sin). It lists situations for men as well, and it doesn't say to avoid women.
"kill those who don't believe as they do, shun those who express certain personal choices they disagree with, gain revenge on those whole harm them, kill those who don't observe their sabbath" - Not sure if you're referring to specifics here, but what Jesus says about revenge involves turning the other cheek, and loving your enemy. He doesn't say to kill them or shun them; in fact, Jesus was known for ministering to those that were looked down upon. He didn't shun the lady at the well, and instead of calling for the adulteress to be stoned, He said "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone"). Jesus also healed on the Sabbath, supporting the moral of love.
"endorsement of slavery, sacrifice, child abuse, torture, rape, bigotry and racism"
A lot to cover here, but slavery then is not as we think of it today. These slaves were paid (so you might call them servants), with conditions comparable to low class workers, or army servicemen. I don't believe endorsement of sacrifice (besides human sacrifice) conflicts with love. Not sure where you see child abuse, perhaps you mean the proverb of disciplining child; however, you can see that this doesn't endorse abuse, but discipline, which a loving father will do. If the torture you refer to is Revelation 9:5, context shows that it's not an endorsement, but a prophecy of torture, administered by a "fallen star" (probably Satan). Jesus teaches against bigotry and racism, in the parable of the good Samaritan, and with his own interactions with the woman at the well.
So yeah, these things wouldn't make sense the way you list them, but I think the meaning has been distorted (Not that I think you purposefully distorted it; a lot of these things are commonly mi
...the bible quite clearly states that it is absolutely, 100% literally true in it's entirity. (2 Tim 3:16 - and the argument that why would God allow his divine word to be corrupted by man?) The passage you cited does not say that. (You can go through the different translations at biblegateway, too.) And even if Paul did say that, note that he is referring to the "Scriptures" (which we know as the Old Testament today), of which none of his letters were included.
Your interpretation examples are a bit extreme, but I do think that much of the Bible is open to interpretation. Certainly not all of it, but just as certain, neither is every word meant to be taken literally. For example, Jesus often spoke in parables, which are necessarily interpreted. This doesn't mean we can twist them however we want; the spirit of the law is pretty clear: as Jesus said, the greatest commandments are to love God, and to love others as yourself.
Regarding historical accuracy, there are many resources that list both evidence for and against. Unfortunately, I can't point at anything outside the Bible for most of the things you listed (or else you probably would have been able to find information yourself) -- then again, it's understandable that there isn't physical evidence of a virgin birth (matching DNA from bones of mother and son?), or a resurrection, or a long day. There is some evidence of global flooding, however. Also, remember that the Bible itself is a historical document (a collection of records, letters, and prophecies by 40 different authors across 15 centuries), so there was a time when some of these documents were outside the Bible. So yeah, I can't provide anything too solid here, except to say that as a historical document, the Bible is as reliable or more so than many other historical documents.
As for an "uncompromised clear morally positive message", I refer again to the greatest commandments:
Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Finally, Lot is called "Just" and "Righteous" in 2 Pet.2:7-8, but the bible tells us on several occasions that There are no just or righteous people This one's easy: context. While there are certainly many things in the Bible which should cause readers to ask questions, this example doesn't require a lot of thought, and calling it a contradiction is a bit of a stretch. A simple example might be if you call your spouse perfect even though you know nobody's perfect.
Good thing nobody bases their lives or morality around this book! Just think how confused they'd be! Although the Lot example wasn't a good one, and since there are other examples that don't seem to make sense, I'd like to point out that dismissing the entire Bible just because of a few anomalies doesn't make sense. They should however cause you to think, which is a good thing; what's the point of exploring material that claims to profess truth if you don't analyze it?
Opera has released their first update to Opera 8 for Windows and Unix/Linux.
The upgrade, Opera 8.01, contains mainly security and bug fixes. In addition, Opera has also made many improvements to its handling of JavaScript.
Secunia released today 3 security advisories for Opera 8, all of which have security fixes in this new version. Apparently, Secunia delayed these security advisories to give Opera some time to respond.
Opera has also introduced Browser JavaScript, a JavaScript file that automatically fixes incompatible Web pages, out of date scripts, and pages that inadvertently block Opera. The script file is distributed by Opera (the company). Opera checks for updates to Browser JavaScript once every week. The feature is disabled by default, as it's not ready for prime time yet. Some performance issues still need to be worked out before it becomes a standard feature in a future release.
Note to Blogger users, Blogger now works with Opera 8.01.
Slashdot Mirror
I like Firefox because it's the most customizeable! I put the menu right back where it belongs! And the status bar, square tabs, light-on-dark, etc.
Hi!
I don't think the problem was that the Pharisees were looking for signs, I think it was that the Pharisees had already closed their minds to Jesus (By this time Jesus had already performed many miracles, but the Pharisees said it was by the devil's power instead of God's.). Jesus even hinted that "they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead", but even so still gave them that sign (dying and raising from the dead), and they weren't convinced.
Also, Thomas doubted, and Jesus didn't condemn him, but gave him the proof that he needed to believe.
I think for many of the verses you're thinking about, it's not blind faith that's expected, nor wanting proof that's sinful, but that they're rejecting proof -- they've already made up their mind about what's right and won't consider other evidence.
On the other hand, 1 Thessalonians 5:21 says: "Test everything. Hold on to the good." I think we can all agree with that.
Actually, at least regarding Christianity, trust and faith and belief are the same thing. They're all translated from the same word "pistis". What you're talking about is "blind faith", or "blind trust" (which many people do have, but my point is just that that's not the only type of faith there is). So while what you say is true for some people, I'd submit that there are also people whose faith is very similar to the trust relationship you've described -- trusting scientists because what they've said/written before has proved true, and trusting God because what he's said/written before has proved true.
What is more trustworthy is another topic altogether, but I think the trust/faith/belief people put in either is often more similar than you've described.
Actually, at least regarding Christianity, trust and faith and belief are the same thing. They're all translated from the same word "pistis". What you're talking about is "blind faith", or "blind trust", which describes the "without verification" part (otherwise the phrase "blind faith" would be redundant).
Of course, nowadays, a lot of people conflate "faith" with "blind faith", (it's one of those changing meaning things) so it's hard to tell what people mean unless you clarify it. I would like to propose we use "blind faith" to be clear, but I feel like that's similar to fighting the "hacker/cracker" battle. Or the "literally-means-literally -- literally!" battle. Sigh.
I understand your feelings toward people who want things removed, but I don't think Sirfrummel is expressing that. It sounded like he's just expressing his reaction to the game, and why others might feel the same way -- without mentioning what he thinks should be done about it. Sounds like he's just adding perspective, which is always good.
I have to disagree that "pro-choice" and "anti-choice" are perfectly neutral and descriptive. "Pro-choice" focuses on the choice part. "Pro-life" focuses on the life part. Those things are what they stand for. Just as "Pro-choice" doesn't stand for death or abortion, "Pro-life" doesn't stand for anti-choice.
"Pro-choice" / "Pro-life" may not be perfectly neutral and descriptive, but I would have to say that it's more neutral and descriptive of what they stand for than "Pro-choice" / "Anti-choice".
Skype might be good enough, because you can set it to auto-start, and you can set it to auto-accept calls (so you can initiate the calls from your end) and I think you can set it to auto-start in full-screen. That way, once you have it all set up, the most they'll have to do is turn on the physical power, and you'll be able to initiate the connection from your end.
where do you so-called Christians get off making shit up and then claiming, "God said so?"
This bothers me too, and is called taking God's name in vain, which is clearly commanded against in Exodus 20:7.
didn't God say to dominate nature for our own purposes, putting fear and terror into the hearts of all animals?
In Genesis 1:26-30 God is depicted giving man rule over animals.
"...it would probably be faster, cheaper, and ultimately more satisfying if we could just assassinate spamming assholes like PharmaMaster/Eran Reshef."
Eran Reshef is the CEO of Blue Security, according to the article: "Earlier this week, Blue Security's CEO, Eran Reshef, said a Russian spammer operating under the name PharmaMaster orchestrated a string of attacks this week that disabled its site and sent threatening messages to its users."
PharmaMaster is not Eran Reshef.
Just in case someone decides to harrass him....
http://plentpak.net/smb.html
I don't know if i'll ever finish it though, heh. But the code is all there, so someone else could, if he wanted to!
Sorry; what I meant by that statement was that usually when people say to have faith in God, they don't mean to believe he exists; they mean to trust in Him (i.e. 1st definition at http://www.answers.com/faith&r=67). Surely, if someone has faith in God, he also believe God exists.
I think we are discussing different definitions of the word "faith"; yours sounds more like definition #2, which very well could be blind. However, the first sense of the word is built on observation.
I only wanted to address this idea of faith, since I seem to see it rather often. I think this viewpoint is wrong, and to teach someone to have blind faith is to teach him to have no faith, since faith is built on experience (e.g. having faith your friend will come through because he always has).
Faith that is observable is not faith.
I keep seeing this idea come up, and I wanted to address it:
Faith must be based on observation, or it is blind. When we say we have faith in God, it is because we have observed God's consistency in being faithful to His promises. It is like having faith in your parents, or having faith in your children. It does not mean believing that he exists.
So, true faith is based on observation, otherwise it is illogical to have it.
That ctrl+T thing really confuses me. I mean, I'll get used to it, but I don't understand why ctrl+T opens a new Tab, but ctrl+W doesn't open a new Window (it closes the tab). In Opera, fortunately, you can ctrl+Z to get that tab back, but in Firefox, I lose the page. Isn't this a intuitive/consistent UI issue?
(Note: not trying to turn this into a FF vs Opera issue, I have and run both off my usb key; it's just a usability question).
civilization advanced enough to receive our radio waves and respond is likely greater than 2000 years more advanced
I wonder if such an advanced civilization would even recognize us as sentient beings. I mean, to them, our level of intelligence might be similar to how we see the intelligence of ants. Ants are pretty resourceful, and can complete pretty impressive projects for their size, but we don't consider them sentient, and we kill them as a matter of convenience. How would such a civilization respond to our attempts at communicating or fighting back? I wonder if it would be seen as just a natural reaction, like our ants suddenly scurrying madly about -- nothing to cause us to pause and reconsider.
Not that I think we'll actually have to worry about this in our lifetimes, but it's fun stuff to ponder. =P
My first thought when I read about the wand controller was gestures! (I'm an Opera user =P)
Think about casting spells by drawing designs in the air, or stringing combos with gestures. That would be way cool.
And it'd bring some of the fun of competing on physical stamina too.
So what? ... What learning are you talking of? There's no learning in religion. You have some book written by ancient people, and you're supposed to just believe it. That's it. What more is there to learn?
I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. Your original question was "what's wrong with anti-religious sentiments?". I was providing one reason. Actually, I left it open to either you learning from them (which you don't seem to think is possible) or them learning from you. Either way, we can agree that mutual understanding can only benefit those involved, right?
By the way, there's no "you're supposed to just believe it" command in the Bible (the opposite, in fact: Acts 17:11, Proverbs 23:23, 1 Peter 3:15), and I'm pretty sure there isn't in most major religions, although I don't claim to be an expert in the subject. But this sort of learning is what I'm talking about: understanding that your idea of religion might not be what religion actually is (This is important because many disagreements are due to this fact, combined with the fact that others have an idea about science which differs from what science actually is).
What more is there? Well, just because the Bible (which is actually a collection of writings from some 40 different people who lived in different eras spanning some 1500 years, as well as from different areas all over the middle east, and in different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) was written a long time ago doesn't mean it's completely worthless. Even if you don't agree with the theology, I'm sure you can agree with much of the wisdom (e.g. Do to others as you would have them do to you). It's because they were written for humans, and we're still human. It's not all about abracadabra and hocus-pocus.
Religion is a pretty silly thing--really, who still believes in stuff like a guy named Atlas holding up the world? Although many religious people know laugh at this notion, all modern religions are filled with similarly stupid and ridiculous stuff, so I see no reason not to make fun of them.
People made fun of the "stupid and ridiculous" ideas that the Wright brothers and Galileo had too. What reason was there not to? Of course in hindsight they were right, but even if they weren't, making fun of them doesn't help increase anyone's knowledge. If people are afraid to think of and test out new ideas, it impedes their learning, and our progress as a species suffers. This applies in a general sense, but more specifically about religious people: making fun of them doesn't increase anyone's knowledge, and just causes a gap in understanding.
Besides that, religion is to blame for a lot of the misery and suffering in the world, so again, I ask, what's wrong with anti-religious sentiments?
Although religion is a vehicle for misery and suffering, it also causes joy and relief. If anything, I would say that people are to blame, rather than religion.
I had to use Firefox for a while for the same reason, but I found out that my work proxy is configured to use MS Proxy Client. You might be able to get it working to by going to the mspclnt share dir on your work's proxy server. (In Windows Explorer: \\proxyservername\mspclnt )
This allows most of your applications to connect to the internet without needing to manually set each of their proxy settings.
A simple way to test this at home is to look in the mirror. Switch back and forth between looking at your left eye and your right eye; can you see your eyes move? Not as cool as an eye tracker, but still pretty interesting...
Yeah, infidelguy seems to be a good place (from looking at the faq), and I agree about the Slashdot thing, heh. I didn't expect to get drawn into such a conversation, but I've learned a lot in researching the good points you brought up, so I'm glad for that. I'll definitely check out the forums in the next few days, and hopefully I'll be able to address the rest of your post there.
Take care!
It's alright, I think I recognize most of your examples (please correct me if i'm wrong), although I think if we look at them in their original context, they don't mean quite what you make them out to mean:
"telling people to kill their children" - Abraham was being tested, but he knew that Isaac would be with God, so this was not a conflict of love. In the end, God provided a ram to be sacrificed instead anyway. If you are talking about the public stoning of your children, this is a great example of what I was talking about when I said there were things that don't make sense or should cause the reader to ask questions. The purpose of this law was not to encourage capital punishment against your children, but rather to discourage it. Compare these laws to the Roman laws, known as patria potestas, which gave the father power to kill his child at whim. The Biblical law requires the cooperation of the mother, as well as the public, while the Roman law left judgement and responsibility with one person, the father. So this increases accountability, which is a major theme in the Bible, and I think a solid moral value (Isn't it better the more accountability leaders have?).
"avoid women on their periods" - This chapter is just talking about when someone is considered unclean (not the same as sin). It lists situations for men as well, and it doesn't say to avoid women.
"kill those who don't believe as they do, shun those who express certain personal choices they disagree with, gain revenge on those whole harm them, kill those who don't observe their sabbath" - Not sure if you're referring to specifics here, but what Jesus says about revenge involves turning the other cheek, and loving your enemy. He doesn't say to kill them or shun them; in fact, Jesus was known for ministering to those that were looked down upon. He didn't shun the lady at the well, and instead of calling for the adulteress to be stoned, He said "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone"). Jesus also healed on the Sabbath, supporting the moral of love.
"endorsement of slavery, sacrifice, child abuse, torture, rape, bigotry and racism"
A lot to cover here, but slavery then is not as we think of it today. These slaves were paid (so you might call them servants), with conditions comparable to low class workers, or army servicemen. I don't believe endorsement of sacrifice (besides human sacrifice) conflicts with love. Not sure where you see child abuse, perhaps you mean the proverb of disciplining child; however, you can see that this doesn't endorse abuse, but discipline, which a loving father will do. If the torture you refer to is Revelation 9:5, context shows that it's not an endorsement, but a prophecy of torture, administered by a "fallen star" (probably Satan). Jesus teaches against bigotry and racism, in the parable of the good Samaritan, and with his own interactions with the woman at the well.
So yeah, these things wouldn't make sense the way you list them, but I think the meaning has been distorted (Not that I think you purposefully distorted it; a lot of these things are commonly mi
The passage you cited does not say that. (You can go through the different translations at biblegateway, too.) And even if Paul did say that, note that he is referring to the "Scriptures" (which we know as the Old Testament today), of which none of his letters were included.
Your interpretation examples are a bit extreme, but I do think that much of the Bible is open to interpretation. Certainly not all of it, but just as certain, neither is every word meant to be taken literally. For example, Jesus often spoke in parables, which are necessarily interpreted. This doesn't mean we can twist them however we want; the spirit of the law is pretty clear: as Jesus said, the greatest commandments are to love God, and to love others as yourself.
Regarding historical accuracy, there are many resources that list both evidence for and against. Unfortunately, I can't point at anything outside the Bible for most of the things you listed (or else you probably would have been able to find information yourself) -- then again, it's understandable that there isn't physical evidence of a virgin birth (matching DNA from bones of mother and son?), or a resurrection, or a long day. There is some evidence of global flooding, however. Also, remember that the Bible itself is a historical document (a collection of records, letters, and prophecies by 40 different authors across 15 centuries), so there was a time when some of these documents were outside the Bible. So yeah, I can't provide anything too solid here, except to say that as a historical document, the Bible is as reliable or more so than many other historical documents.
As for an "uncompromised clear morally positive message", I refer again to the greatest commandments:
Finally, Lot is called "Just" and "Righteous" in 2 Pet.2:7-8, but the bible tells us on several occasions that There are no just or righteous people
This one's easy: context. While there are certainly many things in the Bible which should cause readers to ask questions, this example doesn't require a lot of thought, and calling it a contradiction is a bit of a stretch. A simple example might be if you call your spouse perfect even though you know nobody's perfect.
Good thing nobody bases their lives or morality around this book! Just think how confused they'd be!
Although the Lot example wasn't a good one, and since there are other examples that don't seem to make sense, I'd like to point out that dismissing the entire Bible just because of a few anomalies doesn't make sense. They should however cause you to think, which is a good thing; what's the point of exploring material that claims to profess truth if you don't analyze it?
From a distance, 90% transparent windows are practically invisible!
The onlsy prlnblem sis ometimes you can'tread it that well youslef...
http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2005/06/opera-801-