Good post, but I have some completely offtopic points to make:
eg != egsample (I wouldn't be surprised if some people spell example that way after the guy saying 'appearently' above). It means "exempli gratia", which is Latin for "for example". So the for and parenthesis in "(for eg)" were extraneous.
Also, it's "coca-cola", and "choice".
This spelling/grammar nazi lesson is now over. You may go. Do not fail me again.
Depends if science ever shows the existence of a soul or other thing which was previously regarded as supernatural - then it's no longer all a matter of belief! Things like lightning and magnetism probably used to be regarded as supernatural as well. Then again, maybe there's nothing beyond this form of life.
My belief is based on knowing that translators of the AV/NIV bibles translated from the original Hebrew.
The only place I'd heard of Lilith is when watching Evangelion, despite reading the whole bible. She isn't referred to in Lilith in the bibles I've read, she's referred to as "the great owl" (found this from Wikipedia and looking up Isaiah 34:14).
I don't see anything about her being the 'first woman' apart from a reference to the "War of Darkness" game. After a bit of googling she seems more of a mythical demon from Jewish lore.
I didn't say the bible was the pristine word of God, I am no longer a Christian, but I also just 'know' some things. You saying that Lilith was the first woman created and me not finding any evidence for that with a bit of googling/wikipedia, makes it sound like you are just one of those people who takes something they hear randomly somewhere and repeat it as if it suddenly disproves the bible. You are claiming that scholars edited original Hebrew documents during the "middle ages"? Perhaps with a bit of tip-ex?
I do believe that the bible is the work of man these days, but I really don't like when people act as if they can disprove it when they clearly have no clue about the contents. Christianity has some benefits and is logical once you get passed a lot of illogical assumptions (which have to be assumed via "faith" or general feelings of being a sinner and such).
CBS has a far more limited market than google though, so an order of magnitude wouldn't be too far off. I've heard the name CBS, but I couldn't tell you what shows they make. I've maybe even seen a couple of them, but as I live in the UK, I don't have a channel called 'CBS' at least. The google brand name probably has more than 10x the recognition of CBS?
It's a lot more 'work' if you have to ignore the adverts. Ad blocker can be updated yes, but it will still work without installing the updates - I'm sure there's an option somewhere for disabling plugin update checks.. but I'm quite happy to be getting updates.
It's possible to ignore things like google ads, as they're done fairly 'tastefully', but flash ads are quite irritating.
Anyway, it's your loss - doesn't sound like you've even tried it!
Hmm, yeah I do remember reading a footnote in one of the gospels saying "these passages aren't found in some of earlier manuscripts", so that isn't really a surprise.
I didn't say that. It's simply what I was taught as a protestant. It's just the same idea as atheists vs christians, coloured vs white, and all the other stupid arguments that have gone on throughout history.
I still think that the Roman Catholic church has deviated quite a lot from the fundamentals of Christianity, but perhaps I'm wrong and it was Martin Luther than did that. I doubt it, but meh. Martin Luther also believed that James shouldn't be in the bible but it's still in the KJV, NIV, AV, etc.
I was just pointing out that the differences you talk about are Catholic only, and the whole Pope/priests thing still seems wrong to me even though I'm no longer a Christian. Of course I also went to a protestant church down in England where the minster wasn't even a Christian, which is just as absurd..
Actually, when people do new translations of bibles (at least the ones being translated into English, I'm not sure about those translating into other languages which don't yet have the bible) they do it from the original greek and hebrew manuscripts. My dad was even learning Hebrew before he died, presumably so he could read more original versions of the old testament, so the OT and Jewish Torah should be very similar. I wouldn't expect the differences to be any more than you'd get translating any other piece of writing. Hebrew sentence structure can be ambiguous, you often get footnotes in bibles saying stuff like 'this could also be translated as [...]'.
I use an ad-blocker and script blocker these days so I rarely see ads (I've maybe seen two in the several months that I've used it). Even when I did see ads, I've probably only clicked on 2 or 3 in my whole lifetime before just learning to mentally filter them out. When I want a product, I go google for it. The rest of the time I may be inspired towards a general product area by an ad, but I'll look for the best product I can get in that area, not necessarily the one that I saw advertised.
I'm probably not a very average consumer, but I've always thought the whole concept of advertising market was over-rated. I get that it's necessary in some cases, but the only ads that I find relevant to me these days are for upcoming movies (which I've often already heard about anyway).
For the average person, it's difficult enough to make a decent study of the bible without studying all the history behind it too. I've also been to a couple of things like churches in underprivileged areas, and soup/food kitchen nights where I wouldn't be surprised if the people there weren't able to read that well, let alone make an educated study into the history of the bible. I think people are better off (in terms of blisffully unaware happiness) if they just accept it rather than start questioning everything, otherwise they'll end up like me, questioning everything and then creating a new rift between themselves and their friends/family. I was shocked when I discovered that someone I didn't even know that well decided he wasn't a Christian anymore, I can imagine most of the people in my church will be rather disappointed (and my family keeps trying to get me to go back to church because they're all afraid I'm going to hell now:/ ).
So I think part of the answer is that ignorance is bliss, part of it is that people just don't make time to learn or even think to look into it, and the rest of the answer is that some people actually do look into it..
wtf dude, the version of the old testament that I read had all the stuff about circumcision and restricted foods etc.
While the Roman Catholic church worships images, reformed/protestant churches still think of that as wrong. When I was a Christian I regarded the catholic church to be an attempt by the Roman government to water down Christianity and actually turn it into an organisation under human control (the pope) rather than one that considers God as its leader.
Yes, whole sections of OT law are obviously superseded by the new testament (that's kind of the point), but that doesn't mean they aren't included in the bible.
The reformed church was a genuine attempt to get everything back as purely as possible to the way Jesus intended the church to be. The Roman Catholic church does a whole bunch of weird stuff that I've always considered decidedly un-christian:p Praying to Mary and confessing to priests, etc.. the Roman Catholic church just tries to take Jesus out of the picture and gain control/money. Sadly the ministers in my ex-denomination don't even make much money, though they do get accomodation provided for them:p They are genuine people too, not in it for control (my grandad was a minister, quite a few of my friend's are minister's kids, and I know people that have gone on to train for the ministry.. all very genuine people)
Those are part of the Roman Catholic bible, not the one that I've read. When I was a Christian, I always regarded Roman Catholicism as an attempt by government to control/weaken Christianity.
Probably because I wasn't Roman Catholic so most of the history I know was since the reform (and even then it's not like I read books about it, just heard sermons or had conversations about it).
Also because we have the bible in English already and a lot of Christians don't know Latin (though plenty learn it and study the original texts too). You don't have to learn about the Wright brothers to go on a passenger airline. Most Christians just go to Church each week and never really learn much from beyond what they hear there (if they're even paying attention). Why are you surprised at that?
If you're one of the nutjobs claiming that the bible is "god's word" in the literal sense, and not a human creation, then evidence that "the bible" doesn't exist, but is a collection that changed over time, is the death-blow to a core pillar of your faith.
Most Christians know that the bible is a collection of books, and know that there were other books that weren't included in the canon etc. It seems plain to me now how stupid that is, but Christians will believe that the 'true' books were included by divine guidance or whatever. People who think that you can 'reason' someone out of a faith have no idea what it's like to have faith. Arguing with someone about faith just makes them build up even more walls. Better to inform them and then let them decide for themself. I wasn't expecting to decide I didn't believe in the bible anymore, but through a series of events in my life, and news on better evidence for evolution etc (the one about those bacteria evolving to make use of a new chemical that several other control cultures didn't evolve to make use of was the one that pushed me over the edge I think).
People will believe the most idiotic things rather than discredit their current beliefs = losing faith is a seriously scary experience as you're wondering "what if I'm wrong and I'm going to go to Hell for this?", etc. Of course by a lot of Christian's reasoning, since I already have believed in Jesus at one point in my life, I'm saved, so I don't have to worry that much either way:P But I think that if the Christian God is real, he's a sadistic bastard for creating a bunch of people knowing that he's going to send most of them to Hell.
Having the devil cast into a fiery pit with his minions, then everyone else going to a massive city made of gold and gems to live with God and Jesus isn't a happy ending for Christians?
Right. I don't believe in the bible either, but would you listen to yourself? It's people like you that made me stand more by my faith for years, because I believed that people wouldn't be so desperately opposed to Christianity if there weren't some truth in it.
I basically can't be bothered reading the rest of your post after this obvious fallacy:
What we inherited as Christianity is actually mostly due to Paul, who went fanboy and convinced the others that they must (A) proselitise at all cost, and (B) that it's ok to change stuff, e.g., about half the Old Testament
You do realise that the Jews have the Old Testament too? How do you think changes to the Christian version of the old testament would somehow go un-noticed? Try thinking about stuff you hear before blindly accepting it just because you want to believe it. That's how Christians end up as Christians in the first place, because they get tricked into being afraid of Hell and are given an easy way out - it's like a form of brainwashing.
I'll be damned if I know what is the ultimate truth about life, the universe and everything, but I think there are too many inconsistencies in Christianity that people make gradually build up excuses for. One of the main reasons I have decided that the bible is a load of rubbish is not just that Genesis only takes 7 'days', but the way things are done are in the wrong order, so it doesn't really even make much sense as a metaphor..
The people in my denomination always believed that the original language versions were inspired and inerrant. I believed that myself up until early this year. Seeing this story doesn't surprise me now as I've already realised the whole thing is a crock.. the fact that this apparently dates to 400BC and doesn't have the resurrection (but for some reason has the rest of the Gospel of Mark before Jesus was even meant to have been born? WTF?) is even funnier.
Even though I don't believe the bible is true anymore, I still think people are dumb for thinking it has been rewritten lots when translaters tend to use the original language (though of course in those days copies were made by hand so a chinese whispers type effect could come into play for inattentive copies)
I think you overestimate Vista market penetration, and the general randiness of unspeyed cats everywhere.
Though perhaps I underestimate the frequency of Vista reboots needed to keep it running smoothly. I thought it was just slow though, not especially unstable.
Actually, for constant usage some SSDs can use more power than a HD. I would expect any SSD to beat HDDs on power for infrequent use and random access times though, because they don't have to spin up before they can be read from, and don't have to be kept spinning in case of future reads.
Slashdot Mirror
Suddenly it all makes sense!! Thankyou.
Welp - time for me to take a permanent holiday to nirvana. Laters!
Good post, but I have some completely offtopic points to make:
eg != egsample (I wouldn't be surprised if some people spell example that way after the guy saying 'appearently' above). It means "exempli gratia", which is Latin for "for example". So the for and parenthesis in "(for eg)" were extraneous.
Also, it's "coca-cola", and "choice".
This spelling/grammar nazi lesson is now over. You may go. Do not fail me again.
Depends if science ever shows the existence of a soul or other thing which was previously regarded as supernatural - then it's no longer all a matter of belief! Things like lightning and magnetism probably used to be regarded as supernatural as well. Then again, maybe there's nothing beyond this form of life.
In my shiney compu-tar - and in a few years also in my caaaaar.
My belief is based on knowing that translators of the AV/NIV bibles translated from the original Hebrew.
The only place I'd heard of Lilith is when watching Evangelion, despite reading the whole bible. She isn't referred to in Lilith in the bibles I've read, she's referred to as "the great owl" (found this from Wikipedia and looking up Isaiah 34:14).
I don't see anything about her being the 'first woman' apart from a reference to the "War of Darkness" game. After a bit of googling she seems more of a mythical demon from Jewish lore.
I didn't say the bible was the pristine word of God, I am no longer a Christian, but I also just 'know' some things. You saying that Lilith was the first woman created and me not finding any evidence for that with a bit of googling/wikipedia, makes it sound like you are just one of those people who takes something they hear randomly somewhere and repeat it as if it suddenly disproves the bible. You are claiming that scholars edited original Hebrew documents during the "middle ages"? Perhaps with a bit of tip-ex?
I do believe that the bible is the work of man these days, but I really don't like when people act as if they can disprove it when they clearly have no clue about the contents. Christianity has some benefits and is logical once you get passed a lot of illogical assumptions (which have to be assumed via "faith" or general feelings of being a sinner and such).
CBS has a far more limited market than google though, so an order of magnitude wouldn't be too far off. I've heard the name CBS, but I couldn't tell you what shows they make. I've maybe even seen a couple of them, but as I live in the UK, I don't have a channel called 'CBS' at least. The google brand name probably has more than 10x the recognition of CBS?
It's a lot more 'work' if you have to ignore the adverts. Ad blocker can be updated yes, but it will still work without installing the updates - I'm sure there's an option somewhere for disabling plugin update checks.. but I'm quite happy to be getting updates.
It's possible to ignore things like google ads, as they're done fairly 'tastefully', but flash ads are quite irritating.
Anyway, it's your loss - doesn't sound like you've even tried it!
Hmm, yeah I do remember reading a footnote in one of the gospels saying "these passages aren't found in some of earlier manuscripts", so that isn't really a surprise.
I didn't say that. It's simply what I was taught as a protestant. It's just the same idea as atheists vs christians, coloured vs white, and all the other stupid arguments that have gone on throughout history.
I still think that the Roman Catholic church has deviated quite a lot from the fundamentals of Christianity, but perhaps I'm wrong and it was Martin Luther than did that. I doubt it, but meh. Martin Luther also believed that James shouldn't be in the bible but it's still in the KJV, NIV, AV, etc.
I was just pointing out that the differences you talk about are Catholic only, and the whole Pope/priests thing still seems wrong to me even though I'm no longer a Christian. Of course I also went to a protestant church down in England where the minster wasn't even a Christian, which is just as absurd..
Actually, when people do new translations of bibles (at least the ones being translated into English, I'm not sure about those translating into other languages which don't yet have the bible) they do it from the original greek and hebrew manuscripts. My dad was even learning Hebrew before he died, presumably so he could read more original versions of the old testament, so the OT and Jewish Torah should be very similar. I wouldn't expect the differences to be any more than you'd get translating any other piece of writing. Hebrew sentence structure can be ambiguous, you often get footnotes in bibles saying stuff like 'this could also be translated as [...]'.
I use an ad-blocker and script blocker these days so I rarely see ads (I've maybe seen two in the several months that I've used it). Even when I did see ads, I've probably only clicked on 2 or 3 in my whole lifetime before just learning to mentally filter them out. When I want a product, I go google for it. The rest of the time I may be inspired towards a general product area by an ad, but I'll look for the best product I can get in that area, not necessarily the one that I saw advertised.
I'm probably not a very average consumer, but I've always thought the whole concept of advertising market was over-rated. I get that it's necessary in some cases, but the only ads that I find relevant to me these days are for upcoming movies (which I've often already heard about anyway).
oops, I replied to reissi instead of you.
Seems to me to be a pretty happy ending if you're a Christian.
For the average person, it's difficult enough to make a decent study of the bible without studying all the history behind it too. I've also been to a couple of things like churches in underprivileged areas, and soup/food kitchen nights where I wouldn't be surprised if the people there weren't able to read that well, let alone make an educated study into the history of the bible. I think people are better off (in terms of blisffully unaware happiness) if they just accept it rather than start questioning everything, otherwise they'll end up like me, questioning everything and then creating a new rift between themselves and their friends/family. I was shocked when I discovered that someone I didn't even know that well decided he wasn't a Christian anymore, I can imagine most of the people in my church will be rather disappointed (and my family keeps trying to get me to go back to church because they're all afraid I'm going to hell now :/ ).
So I think part of the answer is that ignorance is bliss, part of it is that people just don't make time to learn or even think to look into it, and the rest of the answer is that some people actually do look into it..
wtf dude, the version of the old testament that I read had all the stuff about circumcision and restricted foods etc.
While the Roman Catholic church worships images, reformed/protestant churches still think of that as wrong. When I was a Christian I regarded the catholic church to be an attempt by the Roman government to water down Christianity and actually turn it into an organisation under human control (the pope) rather than one that considers God as its leader.
Yes, whole sections of OT law are obviously superseded by the new testament (that's kind of the point), but that doesn't mean they aren't included in the bible.
The reformed church was a genuine attempt to get everything back as purely as possible to the way Jesus intended the church to be. The Roman Catholic church does a whole bunch of weird stuff that I've always considered decidedly un-christian :p Praying to Mary and confessing to priests, etc.. the Roman Catholic church just tries to take Jesus out of the picture and gain control/money. Sadly the ministers in my ex-denomination don't even make much money, though they do get accomodation provided for them :p They are genuine people too, not in it for control (my grandad was a minister, quite a few of my friend's are minister's kids, and I know people that have gone on to train for the ministry.. all very genuine people)
Those are part of the Roman Catholic bible, not the one that I've read. When I was a Christian, I always regarded Roman Catholicism as an attempt by government to control/weaken Christianity.
Probably because I wasn't Roman Catholic so most of the history I know was since the reform (and even then it's not like I read books about it, just heard sermons or had conversations about it).
Also because we have the bible in English already and a lot of Christians don't know Latin (though plenty learn it and study the original texts too). You don't have to learn about the Wright brothers to go on a passenger airline. Most Christians just go to Church each week and never really learn much from beyond what they hear there (if they're even paying attention). Why are you surprised at that?
Hi Mike, I recognise your name as the admin for the FCYA mailing list ;)
Yeah I realised that after reading TFA. The summary is indeed wrong.
If you're one of the nutjobs claiming that the bible is "god's word" in the literal sense, and not a human creation, then evidence that "the bible" doesn't exist, but is a collection that changed over time, is the death-blow to a core pillar of your faith.
Most Christians know that the bible is a collection of books, and know that there were other books that weren't included in the canon etc. It seems plain to me now how stupid that is, but Christians will believe that the 'true' books were included by divine guidance or whatever. People who think that you can 'reason' someone out of a faith have no idea what it's like to have faith. Arguing with someone about faith just makes them build up even more walls. Better to inform them and then let them decide for themself. I wasn't expecting to decide I didn't believe in the bible anymore, but through a series of events in my life, and news on better evidence for evolution etc (the one about those bacteria evolving to make use of a new chemical that several other control cultures didn't evolve to make use of was the one that pushed me over the edge I think).
People will believe the most idiotic things rather than discredit their current beliefs = losing faith is a seriously scary experience as you're wondering "what if I'm wrong and I'm going to go to Hell for this?", etc. Of course by a lot of Christian's reasoning, since I already have believed in Jesus at one point in my life, I'm saved, so I don't have to worry that much either way :P But I think that if the Christian God is real, he's a sadistic bastard for creating a bunch of people knowing that he's going to send most of them to Hell.
incidentally a some Jews get upset with the old/new distinction, I don't know why..
Was that a joke?
I actually believed for a little while that this really was from BCE, but now I read TFA it says 4th century, which makes a heckuva lot more sense!
Having the devil cast into a fiery pit with his minions, then everyone else going to a massive city made of gold and gems to live with God and Jesus isn't a happy ending for Christians?
Have you read it?
Right. I don't believe in the bible either, but would you listen to yourself? It's people like you that made me stand more by my faith for years, because I believed that people wouldn't be so desperately opposed to Christianity if there weren't some truth in it.
I basically can't be bothered reading the rest of your post after this obvious fallacy:
What we inherited as Christianity is actually mostly due to Paul, who went fanboy and convinced the others that they must (A) proselitise at all cost, and (B) that it's ok to change stuff, e.g., about half the Old Testament
You do realise that the Jews have the Old Testament too? How do you think changes to the Christian version of the old testament would somehow go un-noticed? Try thinking about stuff you hear before blindly accepting it just because you want to believe it. That's how Christians end up as Christians in the first place, because they get tricked into being afraid of Hell and are given an easy way out - it's like a form of brainwashing.
I'll be damned if I know what is the ultimate truth about life, the universe and everything, but I think there are too many inconsistencies in Christianity that people make gradually build up excuses for. One of the main reasons I have decided that the bible is a load of rubbish is not just that Genesis only takes 7 'days', but the way things are done are in the wrong order, so it doesn't really even make much sense as a metaphor..
The people in my denomination always believed that the original language versions were inspired and inerrant. I believed that myself up until early this year. Seeing this story doesn't surprise me now as I've already realised the whole thing is a crock.. the fact that this apparently dates to 400BC and doesn't have the resurrection (but for some reason has the rest of the Gospel of Mark before Jesus was even meant to have been born? WTF?) is even funnier.
Even though I don't believe the bible is true anymore, I still think people are dumb for thinking it has been rewritten lots when translaters tend to use the original language (though of course in those days copies were made by hand so a chinese whispers type effect could come into play for inattentive copies)
I think you overestimate Vista market penetration, and the general randiness of unspeyed cats everywhere.
Though perhaps I underestimate the frequency of Vista reboots needed to keep it running smoothly. I thought it was just slow though, not especially unstable.
Actually, for constant usage some SSDs can use more power than a HD. I would expect any SSD to beat HDDs on power for infrequent use and random access times though, because they don't have to spin up before they can be read from, and don't have to be kept spinning in case of future reads.
For those that don't want to run Vista but want to do the same trick
I'm happy without using 18GB for my OS folder, but thanks for offering!