If you were desperate enough…
A question for those who believe they were created by an all-powerful beinign god.
Howcome this creator gave us a hardwired instinct for self-preservation of our temporary, transient and relatively unimportant Earthly lives, but then didn't bother to give us an equally in-built instinct to save our allegedly permanent, immortal and everlasting souls from an equally everlasting torture? Howcome he left the most important instructions in a rambling, inconsistent and self-contradictory book for us to puzzle out if we can, but wired the least important straight into our brains?
Doesn't seem very beinign to me!
—Daz
“Howcome this creator gave us a hardwired instinct for self-preservation of our temporary, transient and relatively unimportant Earthly lives, but then didn’t bother to give us an equally in-built instinct to save our allegedly permanent, immortal and everlasting souls from an equally everlasting torture?”
Because if we had the latter, we wouldn’t have free will, now would we? God wants us to realize the obvious ourselves–not create us as Stepford beings who will automatically worship Him and do as He wants.
synapticcohesion
So the best he could do was put in a book so badly edited, copied, re-edited and further edited, even to the point of entire sub-books having been thrown away? He couldn’t give it to, say, the librarians at Alexandria, who’d have been in a position to do something with it? Nope, the stupid jerk gives it to a bunch of desert nomads in dribs and drabs, starting before they could even write down a fully god-authorised version before it got mangled by several hundred years of oral tradition and mucked about with for tribal-political purposes.
Yeah, the best he could do was the worst he could do. Makes all the sense in the world, that does.
“So the best he could do was put in a book so badly edited…”
Wow, do you know something that the rest of the word doesn’t know?
You don’t believe the Bible’s been edited?
Try the Synod of Hippo for starters, and that’s just the most obvious.
What I am saying is that you can’t know that it’s “badly edited,” unless you know what the original documents look like.
But how could it not be badly edited? If it was, as I keep getting told, the unerring word of God, how could mere humans know which bits to keep and which to chuck out? Or would you say that God’s original unerring word was, in fact, erring and needed editing by humans? Which kinda opens up a whole nother can of worms, don’t it. God made mistakes when passing his word to humans…?
Yeah, but what if the divine intention was to create a text so discomprehensible as to be beyond the understanding of us mere mortals?
Thus begatting faith, hence religion.
See Daz, it all makes sense when you think about it.
I don’t believe anything was “chucked out.” It was likely edited for grammatical errors, but it was not changed. Yes, some sects completely change or reinterpret parts of the Bible–that is wrong.
I can assure you, synapticcohesion, that the Bible is indeed badly edited. There is a big chunk out of one of the books of the prophets that is duplicated in Genesis. One of the books ends halfway through a sentence, we know that because that passage is duplicated elsewhere with the rest of the sentence intact. There is also a passage that is split in two with a completely unrelated passage in between the two halves. If you don’t believe me, I can give you chapter and verse to prove my case but this would take a little time and effort. Please let me know if you wish me to do so.
In addition to all that, the Gospels are in the wrong order and also should have been placed after the Epistles and not before.
Damnit Remigius, you win again! [Insert Mutley being pissed-off sound-effect]
synapticcohesion
“I don’t believe anything was “chucked out.” ”
You don’t? Where is the The Gospel According to Thomas in the Bible? How’s about Gospel of Mary. But even modern versions have major differences, with whole books included by some and not by others. There is not, and never has been a Bible.
For the New Testament, I recommend almost any book by Bart D Ehrman, but Misquoting Jesus would be a good start.
The question I have always had is this:
If God is omnipotent and omnipresent why did he simply not appear to all the people of the world at once instead of just a select few? Would an all powerful being really pick favorites?
Well synapti’ I have to say that I am very disappointed by your lack of curiosity. Since I had to do the research anyway, just in case, I can post the information even though nobody asked for it.
1 Chronicles Ch. 1 Vs. 43-54 appears verbatum in Genesis Ch. 36 Vs. 31-43.
The passage at the End of 2 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles Ch. 36 Vs. 22-23 finishes halfway through a sentence. The passage is repeated at the start of the book of Ezra, Ezra Ch. 1 Vs. 1-3 with the missing words intact.
A story related in the book of Jeremiah comes to an abrupt halt at Ch. 21 Vs. 9. The story continues at the beginning of Chapter 38.
JImi
Not to mention, of course, that neither God nor his alter-ego, Jesus, ever said a damn thing about either Judaism or the teaching of Christ being for anyone but the Jewish people. Paul seems to have decided that all on his own.
Stonyground
Thanks mate. It never seems to amaze me that so many Christians seem to have less of an idea about how their book was put together than do non-believers.
Stonyground, the passage is completed from v. 22 to v. 23. There’s nothing missing there. The passage is repeated at the beginning of Ezra because it was originally meant to be one work.
Ooh ooh Daz, remember me telling you of my fascination with anagrams of peoples names revealing their true character, well we’ve struck gold with our mate synapticcohesion
Sychophantic noise
Psychotic. So inane
Inane psycho stoic
O insane psychotic
Ape-shit cynic, so on…
And my personal favourite, though totally unPC, is what we all really want to shout to them religiot god imaginers…
Hey spastic…no icon!
Remigious, you ought to try it with ‘Christian apologist’.
Hint: the words ‘shit’ and ‘crap’ can both be made. No ‘e’ though, which is disappointingly limiting.
Halo coping satirist!
This tragical poison
I knew you’d like that!
Short anti-social pig!
It’s a historical pong!
Into historical gaps!
It is not a sharp logic!
Is a loo shitting crap?
OMG!!! I’ve, like, just invented a totally new verse form.
It is not a sharp logic, this tragical poison
Halo coping satirist into historical gaps
It’s a historical pong
Is a loo shitting crap?
That bloke what done the sonnets. That’s how I feel!
You’re a frickin’ genius is what you is!
Well played, sir.
@synapticcohesion
That looks suspiciously like an unsupported assertion to me. Even if it were true, it would hardly refute the accusation of poor editing that we started off with.
This stream of comments gave me the giggles.
Alice, fer Gawd’s sake don’t encourage Remigius like that! The lad’s like a walking Scrabble™ dictionary.