DOS Games Discussion

As I stated above, I wasn't giving Bible quotes as proof of anything, only to demonstrate that this is really what the Bible teaches. Normally I'd ask for your opinion on my post but if you aren't willing to read or consider it then there's not much else I can do ...

I think what emmzee and I have both said is this: Christianity is a relational religion. And, if you were to sum up the entire bible (all 66 books worth of history, poetry, prophesy, letters, law, and gospel) the message would be this: God created man. Mankind and God lived in perfect harmony for a while (Garden of Eden), but that relationship was broken by man's ambition and desire for power, a desire he placed above God. (The fall) The rest of the bible is about mankind living in a world of broken relationships, and God's effort to restore his creation to that perfect state of love and harmony. About the coming of Christ, the mediator between man and God, and prophesy about a time to come when we will again be perfected.

Which isn't to say God doesn't care about what we do - he does. But, it's not the sin he cares about so much as the broken relationships between us and him, and between us and eachother. Likewise, when we do good, it should be because we're so in love with God and the people around us that doing good is a natural reaction.

Now obviously, we need dicipline and doctrine to help us know what *is* good, which is why we have the bible, but I pretty much disagree with any system of pennance or excommunication. Making a person follow a strict set of rules just makes for legalism. Change a person's heart, and the actions will follow naturally - people follow what they love.

Heh heh, and I said I wouldn't be saying much in this thread. I'm a liar.

[Off-Topic] This is going to be a veeeeery long topic

Well said Doggy. If i weren't such an atheist, I'd join your church...and if i weren't such a shell-fish i'd probably love people and maybe even God too.

GAMER

the bible is one of the most selling books of all time. not o mention there are many other versions that contadict what the other is saying. how are you ment to know which is the right version?
this backs up my views a bit. would you be laughing if you wrote books that said one thing and then contradicted it in the other?

Prove it.

"not o mention there are many other versions that contadict what the other is saying. how are you ment to know which is the right version?"

When you say 'versions' do you mean translations, documents (ie. varying copies of the ancient manuscripts) or supposed contradictions between two verses?

If you mean 'translations', yes there are many different English translations, and also translations into 100s of other languages. It's necessary since few people today read Greek. Unlike the Qur'an (according to most Muslims it only be properly read in Arabic) there's no problem with having translations.

If you mean 'manuscript differences', modern texural criticism, combined with the literally 1000's of ancient manuscripts now available (more than any other document from that time period) allow us to read (for all intents and purposes) the same versions of the documents as when they were originally written.

If you mean 'verses', then I think that you'll discover that nearly all supposed contradictions disappear once they are studied in proper context (both immediate context and within the Bible as a whole) etc.

Sorry again for the long-ish post, but the thread is supposed to be for "intelligent" discussion after all.

BTW ... happy Thanksgiving all! (Well, Canadian Thanksgiving anyways! )

Sorry to double post, but this is sorta on a totally different topic than my previous one ...

GAMER wrote:If i weren't such an atheist, I'd join your church

Feel free to decline to answer if its too personal, but since you hinted before at something like a "Christian background", why are you now atheist? Primarily philosophical reasons? Emotional? Experiential? Again feel free to ignore this if you feel uncomfortable talking about this stuff.

The topic looks interesting..I would like to be invovled too.

Most of you are talking about problems occured in past and remain present and it will continue to the future, unless somthing important happen.

So please, don't start battles and fights.

I think that If someone would like to know the life on this earth then he/she must ask the 5w's[what, where, when, why and who] Plus How did and How many. he/she must work hard to lead him/her self to the truth.

After that, he/she can put the rules that can lead to the perfect living.

Facts are the main line to trust.... .. So I am trusting in facts that leads to the truth.


All of those things beloing to the [religion].

Anyway, I am talking too much..

im talking about versions and translations

Well Emmzee, I'm not really sure why I did beleive in the first place, or why i now don't...

I guess, being a 17 year old girl it is difficult for me to beleive in myself, let alone anything else or a higher being...Yeah, i really couldn't tell you why. :S

GAMER

what about being 16?

cyb3r, I'm still not sure exactly what you're referring to. If I understand you correctly, the argument is something like this:

In the spring of 1989 syndicated talk show host Larry King interviewed Shirley MacLaine on the New Age. When a Christian caller contested her view with an appeal to the New Testament, MacLaine brushed him off with the objection that the Bible has been changed and translated so many times over the last 2000 years that it's impossible to have any confidence in its accuracy. King was quick to endorse her "facts." "Everyone knows that," he grunted.

However the facts don't really support this idea. Firstly, the idea that it has been "translated so many times" is entirely misleading. There are hundreds of translations, yes ... but it's not as though they were done from one-to-another, like Greek->Latin->German->French->... Any modern translation to English (NRSV, NIV, etc) is directly from the Greek manuscripts to English. One step. The differences between the various English translations disappear when you consider the core messages proclaimed by ALL translations.

Secondly, regarding "versions", it is true that there are many differences found in the ancient manuscripts. When you consider that there are over 5,000 surviving texts or fragments from the 1st and 2nd century alone, that's hardly a surprise. There are three extremely important notes to make however:
1) No doctrine of Christianity is in any doubt based on any variation.
2) 95% of the variations are unintentional copying errors. (Eyeglasses weren't often used until the late 13th century, remember!)
3) The fact that so many copies exist make it relatively easy to compare them using ...
4) Textural criticism. Using the techniques of comparing the manuscripts the Bibles that we read today are essentially the same as when they were originally written.

So, considering the above, I'm not sure what your objection is. If you could explain it I might be able to give a more targeted reply.

If you need more info on this topic, you could try these links:
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nttextcrit.html
http://www.michaelhorner.com/articles/r ... index.html
Streaming Video: http://www.leestrobel.com/videos/Christ ... lT1142.htm

how long do you spend preparing this stuff?

I like church choirs

Emmzee strikes me as a, "I have a library in my head" kind of person. I assume he just types as he thinks, maybe looking up references every now and then. Plus, he's had a lot of practice with Religion threads like this one...

Emmzee - you don't think that over time as original sources were lost and copied by scribes (even before New Testament) that there could have been more than slight transcript errors? Perhaps there was one spelling mistake, that was seen by the next scribe to be a grammatical error so changed the wording around that particular error, to make the sentance make sence...but lose original meaning?

There are a few very interesting books littering my bedroom floor. Some of them are by Erich Von Daniken, whilst others are by less known authors. One of them in particular; I believe it's Daniken's (though i haven't read or really looked at it in a long while) starts with a narrative following the destruction of the world, save 4 people. Years from then, the story starts again, with the world populated once again and with the people worshipping their Saints; the four survivors. They worship too the items which the survivors left to them; a mobile phone type thing and some other useless junk...It draws some very nice comparisons to modern day religions.

GAMER

Wally*Won_Kenobie wrote:I like church choirs

OFF-TOPIC again: I hate church choirs cuz they only have drunken old men.

(HEH! I assume this does mean I DID use to believe in God huh?)

Psalm 14:1 states that "There is no God."

Edit by admin: It sure does! Although the full verse says: 'Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God."' Nice try though.

cyb3r.god3 wrote:how long do you spend preparing this stuff?

Not very long. New Testament reliability is a strong interest of mine so ... *shrugs* When I first took a look at the Bible, I wanted to see if there was historical evidence that it's reliable before I took it seriously, so I did some research, and have done more since then. (Also, I am a religious studies major so that helps )

GAMER wrote:Emmzee - you don't think that over time as original sources were lost and copied by scribes (even before New Testament) that there could have been more than slight transcript errors? Perhaps there was one spelling mistake, that was seen by the next scribe to be a grammatical error so changed the wording around that particular error, to make the sentance make sence...but lose original meaning?

It's certainly possible. When we're dealing with history, the best we can do is say whether a certain thing is probable or not, so while we can't say with 100% certainty, there are I think some good reasons to say that the sources we have a quite close to the originals (BTW yes this is off the top of my head so I am probably missing some other decent points )

- The copying of the New Testament documents wasn't done in a linear fashion like the "telephone game" where one copy was made, passed to a second person, who made another copy, and that copy was ... etc etc. It was more like a tree: the single original copy would spawn multiple, each of those in turn spawning many others, which could be cross-checked to make sure they are accurate. There were also still many eyewitnesses alive at the time they started to be circulated who could verify or deny what they contained.

- The NT books, written by many authors at many different times (independently) are all in agreement. It's not like everyone got together and said "Okay, we nominate Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to write gospels. And Paul, you write a bunch of letters. Then we'll put 'em all in a book!" The New Testament was written mostly independently (ex. there's no evidence that John had a copy of Matthew/Mark/Luke when he wrote his gospel) and the fact that the books are still in agreement with eachother lends them credibility.

- The Bible itself contains warnings not to make any changes to it (ev Rev 22:18-19) ... doesn't prove that people didn't of course, but it shows at least accurate copying was highly valued.

- There's some incidents recorded which would've been quite embarassing to the leaders of the early church, like Peter denying Jesus three times or Paul's petty argument with Barnabas. If there was any "editing" going on it seems odd that such incidents were left in.

- Nearly all early Christians were Jewish. For centuries the Jews had worked diligently to preserve the Hebrew Bible (aka the Old Testament) even during very harsh times. If any people in the world were adequately prepared to preserve the sources accurately, it was the Jews.

Yea hope all that makes sense, I just got home for the day so ...

where I live, there are about 15 people who attend church in my community. in communities next to mine, I went to church for a while. My dad was a minster early in my childhood as well. all this in consideration I have come to a conclusion,
I think that "god" is over rated. I believe more in evolution then the whole god made the world and stuff.
when I was small, I believe totally in god, i went to church, and sunday school. when My dad became a minster I went to church 3 times a sunday and more besides. during this time I had a chance to see who attends chruch and what their lives are really like. some we're good christians, a very small precentage, the others basicly we're bad people, Im not goign to say why they were bad people.
when my dad stop being a minster we still continued to go to the local church every sunday. I later learnt that most of the people around my community and in surrounding ones we're going to church and "pretending to be all for god" and at the same time go home and backstabb the minster saying harsh things, and about everyone who did or didnt attend. its not just where i live either, I've been to about 20 differnt churches and differnt denominations.
Seeing all this it turned me from going to church.
Oh btw, one more thing, the reasons I don't believe in God is because why is there starving children in the world? why is so many people dying of cancer when they take wicket care of themselves and someone who smokes for wbout 50 years can live until their 100? why are small children dying and then you see 100 year old women and men walking around rude as hell? why is Isreal the chosen land when all is going on over there is fighting? why do god let terrist attack and kill good people? why do rapist get to live to an old age and someone good dyes at 18? I can keep going on and on... make no wonder a lot of young people don't believe in the almighty "God" he shows us no sign of him being real, all I see is suffering and pain.