How often do we hear people “explaining” religious beliefs by stating “The Bible says so,” as if the Bible fell out of the sky, pre-translated to English by God Himself? It’s not that simple, according to an impressive and clearly-written book that should be required reading for anyone who claims to know “what the Bible says.”
Bart Ehrman’s Exploration: Who Changed the Bible and Why?
The 2005 bestseller, Misquoting Jesus, was not written by a raving atheist. Rather, it was written by a fellow who had a born-again experience in high school, then went on to attend the ultraconservative Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Bart Ehrman didn’t stop there, however. He wanted to become an evangelical voice with credentials that would enable him to teach in secular settings. It was for this reason that he continued his education at Wheaton and, eventually, Princeton, picking up the ability to read the New Testament in its original Greek in the process.
As a result of his disciplined study, Ehrman increasingly questioned the fundamentalist approach that the “Bible is the inerrant Word of God. It contains no mistakes.” Through his studies, Ehrman determined that the Bible was not free of mistakes:
We have only error ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.
(Page 7). At Princeton, Ehrman learned that mistakes had been made in the copying of the New Testament over the centuries. Upon realizing this, “the floodgates opened.” In Mark 4, for example, Jesus allegedly stated that the mustard seed is “the smallest of all seeds on the earth.” Ehrman knew that this simply was not true. The more he studied the early manuscripts, the more he realized that the Bible was full of contradictions. For instance, Mark writes that Jesus was crucified the day after the Passover meal (Mark 14:12; 15:25) while John says Jesus died the day before the Passover meal (John 19:14).
Ehrman often heard that the words of the Bible were inspired. Obviously, the Bible was not originally written in English. Perhaps, suggests Ehrman, the full meaning and nuance of the New Testament could only be grasped when it was read in its original Greek (and the Old Testament could be fully appreciated only when studied in its original Hebrew) (page 6).
Because of these language barriers and the undeniable mistakes and contradictions, Ehrman realized that the Bible could not be the “fully inspired, inerrant Word of God.” Instead, it appeared to him to be a “very human book.” Human authors had originally written the text at different times and in different places to address different needs. Certainly, the Bible does not provide an an “errant guide as to how we should live. This is the shift in my own thinking that I ended up making, and to which I am now fully committed.”
How pervasive is the belief that the Bible is inerrant, that every word of the Bible is precise and true?
Occasionally I see a bumper sticker that reads: “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” My response is always, what if God didn’t say it? What if the book you take as giving you God’s words instead contains human words. What if the Bible doesn’t give a foolproof answer to the questions of the modern age-abortion, women’s rights, gay rights, religious and supremacy, western style democracy and the like? What if we have to figure out how to live and what to believe on our own, without setting up the Bible as a false idol–or an oracle that gives us a direct line of communication with the Almighty.
(Page 14). Ehrman continues to appreciate the Bible as an important collection of writings, but urges that it needs to be read and understood in the context of textual criticism, “a compelling and intriguing field of study of real importance not just to scholars but to everyone with an interest in the Bible.” Ehrman finds it striking that most readers of the Bible know almost nothing about textual criticism. He comments that this is not surprising, in that very few books have been written about textual criticism for a lay audience (namely, “those who know nothing about it, who don’t have the Greek and other languages necessary for the in-depth study of it who do not realize there is even any “problem” with the text).
Misquoting Jesus provides much background into how the Bible became the Bible. It happened through numerous human decisions over the centuries. For instance, the first time any Christian of record listed the 27 books of the New Testament as the books of the New Testament was 300 years after the books have been written (page 36). And those works have been radically altered over the years at the hands of the scribes “who were not only conserving scripture but also changing it.” Ehrman points out that most of the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among the manuscripts were “completely insignificant, immaterial, of no real importance.” In short, they were innocent mistakes involving misspelling or inadvertence.
On the other hand, the very meaning of the text changed in some instances. Some Bible scholars have even concluded that it makes no sense to talk about the “original” text of the Bible. (Page 210). As a result of studying surviving Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, Ehrman concluded that we simply don’t have the original words constituting the New Testament.
Not only do we not have the originals, we don’t have the first copies of the originals. We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals. What we have are copies made later-much later. In most instances, they are copies made many centuries later. And these copies all differ from one another, and many thousands of places . . . Possibly it is easiest to put it in comparative terms: there are more differences among our manuscripts and there are words in the New Testament.
In Misquoting Jesus Bart Ehrman spells out the ways in which several critical passages of the New Testament were changed or concocted. They are startling examples:
A.) Everyone knows the story about Jesus and the woman about to be stoned by the mob. This account is only found in John 7:53-8:12. The mob asked Jesus whether they should stone the woman (the punishment required by the Old Testament) or show her mercy. Jesus doesn’t fall for this trap. Jesus allegedly states “Let the one who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.”
The crowd dissipates out of shame. Ehrman states that this brilliant story was not originally in the Gospel of John or in any of the Gospels. “It was added by later scribes.” The story is not found in “our oldest and best manuscripts of the Gospel of John. Nor does its writing style comport with the rest of John. Most serious textual critics state that this story should not be considered part of the Bible (page 65).
B) after Jesus died, Mary Magdalene and two other women came back to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, according to Mark 16:1-2). They were met by a man in a white robe who told them that Jesus had been raised and was no longer there. The women fled and said nothing more to anyone out of fear (16:4-8). Everyone knows the rest of Mark’s Gospel, of course. The problem with the remainder of the story is that none of it was originally in the Gospel of Mark. It was added by a later scribe. Those additions include all of the following:
Jesus himself appeared to Mary Magdalene. She told the eleven apostles (minus Judas) about this vision, but they did not believe her. Jesus then appeared to the apostles, chastising them for failing to believe. He tells them that those who believe will be saved and those who don’t will be condemned. Then follows a critically important passage of the Bible.
And these are the signs that will accompany those who believe: they will cast out demons in my name; they will speak in new tongues; and they will take up snakes in their hands; and if they drink any poison, it will not harm them; they will place their hands upon the sick and heal them.
Jesus is then allegedly taken up into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, while the disciples go forth into the world to proclaim the Gospel in miraculous fashion.
Without the above passages (which, again, were not written by Mark) the Pentecostals lose their justification for speaking in “tongues.” And the Appalachian snake handlers have no basis for their dangerous practices.
C) John 5:7-8 is the only passage in the entire Bible “that explicitly delineates the doctrine of the Trinity (that there are three persons and God but that all three constitute a single God):
There are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Spirit and these three are one; and there are three that bear witness on earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one.
Ehrman cites strong evidence that this Trinity passage was entirely concocted and foisted upon Erasmus by outraged theologians who needed support for their prized theological doctrine (page 81).
—
Ehrman reveals numerous other difficulties with the popular assumption that the Bible was perfectly handed down from its original written expression.
Many believers rely fervently on the King James version of the Bible, for instance. They sometimes even say “If the King James was good enough for St. Paul, it’s good enough for me.” Ehrman points out many problems with the King James version, warning that “we need to face up to the facts.”
The King James was not given by God but was a translation by a group of scholars in the early 17th century who based their rendition on a faulty Greek text.
(Page 209).
So what should we make of the Bible? Ehrman argues that the attacks of the New Testament are not simply collections of obvious, self-interpreting words. It’s the same problem we have with other important documents, such as the United States Constitution:
Texts do not simply reveal their own meanings to honest inquirers. Texts are interpreted and they are interpreted (just as they were written) by living, breathing human beings, who can make sense of texts only by explaining them in light of other other knowledge, explicating their meaning, putting the words of the text “in other words.”
(Page 217) The scribes changed the original words of the New Testament by putting them in other words.
In my experience, many people who cherry pick excerpts from the Bible as the proper way to determine what is moral are in utter denial that we don’t have accurate copies of the original writings. Most of them refuse to acknowledge that current popular versions of the Bible contain numerous discrepancies, even compared to the earliest manuscripts we do have. This is on top of the fact that their are hundreds of patent contradictions in the English version of the Bible. To most believers, none of this matters. Stay the course! In fact, in my experience most believers rarely read what the consider to be God’s own inspired word.
Ehrman’s book points out numerous troublesome issues that demand attention even assuming that the original writers of the Bible accurately reported the events described in their original writings (whatever those writings were). The elephant in the room, however, is that none of the authors of the Gospels ever claimed to witness any of the events they were reporting. Further, the extraodinary nature of Biblical claims demands extraordinary proof that ancient self-contradictory writings are simply incapable of providing, except to those of us who believe that the Bible is completely true “because it says so in the Bible.”
For all of those people who continue to go around clentching and thumping those Bibles they bought at Wal-Mart, and for all the rest of us who want to get the story straight, Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus should be required reading.
[Administrator’s Note: More than 540 comments were quickly contributed to this post, making this page too long to download and display. Therefore, on March 23, 2007, I closed off new comments. Last night (February 4, 2009), I discovered a WordPress plugin that allows me to paginate comments, thereby protecting the site from the sudden and repeated load of 540 comments.
Here’s the good news, then. Anyone who has not yet had his or her say on Bart Ehrman’s book may now jump in at the original post and post a comment. That’s right! If none of the 540 comments that have come before you didn’t address an important aspect of Bart Ehrman’s book, you may now remedy that omission, right here in the comments to this original post. Godspeed. ]
At least I got you using your noodle and not out terrorizing folks with your IGNORANCE. Try not to get so worked up, we are all just "DUST IN THE WIND" like you say. Nothing matters after you die, nothing matters after I die. Sad, lonely, …if you say so… Its the truth so learn to love it and make the best of it. WE ARE ALL JUST STAR DUST. – ALBERT EINSTEIN, famous ATHEIST (CHECK YOUR SOURCES BEFORE YOU TRY AND SAY OTHERWISE). AND WOW>>>PLEASE DO NOT JUDGE ME BECAUSE I HOLD BELIEFS DIFFERENT THAN YOU, to do so would be CHRISTIAN (i bite my tongue)
For Gatomjp:
You said, For WOW:
WOW, you are SO defensive! This conversation must have touched a nerve. Please PUT DOWN THE BIBLE AND STEP SLOWLY AWAY (I say that jokingly, like a cop in the movies) and please answer the very simple (and yet not so simple) question I have put to you.
Why do you need to believe?
Dude, sorry I am really busy with stuff today. Ok, my bible and guards are down. I like your humor!!!! I am not "So Defensive" as you put it. I did my education online and this was a problem throughout. Writing is only one part of the communication process. We are leaving out manerisms, sound (voice temperment), and visual (which is huge). Messages here (as well as the bible) are very easy to be misconstrued.
Your questions to me is very basic. you asked me why do I NEED to believe. That's a great question!
Originally, I used to think that it was because of my fear of death and finality. but then I realized that I accepted jesus into my life when I was 7 years old at a time when I did not fear death, I mostly feared life. I didnt have much direction in my life because my dad was a deadbeat that left my mom when I was 3 and never became a part of my life.
I dont feel that I found God, in fact, I am quite sure that He found me! I am a critical thinker and I could probably pose better questions against the existence of God then most people in this thread. I am a very deep thinker and analytical.
For example:
As humans we have a big advantage over animals which both helps us and hurts us. The fact that we can think so heavily with our frontal lobes gives us the ability to anticipate death……OUCH……… Who wants to die, right? I enjoy many of the things that I do in this life with my family and friends. But not only can we understand the concept of death, but we can understand the reality of God and design. I dont believe that God is a concept (as John Lennon puts it), on the contrary, I think that man creates many false gods from their creativity, but that doesnt mean that there is not a true God. I often wonder why God is playing such a big game with us, but then I realize that I am not God and really dont have the understanding behind my claim. We think like the animals as compared to Gods thought. Who knows Gods thoughts but God.
But the question of God is very tricky, very tricky indeed. God is God and thinks outside of time, however, we are stuck in time and full of emotions. This is counted against both Christians and non-Christians alike (atheists if you will).
I dont need to believe anything except the fact that I am alive (and there are people that would even question this…………?!!!!!!!!! LOL! (The Matrix)
I WANT (not NEED) to believe because of the evidence that God has put in my heart because I am willing to accept his love. I fell to my knees and broke down to God and asked him to tell me if he is real or not. the miracle happend inside my heart. A lot of Phycologists would say that it is my own desire to want to believe. That is a possiblity, but so is the fact that God answered my request!
Faith pleases God, why, I dont know??? Just because I can't answer all of my own questions about God doesn't mean that he doesnt exist. I cant see my brain, yet I believe it is there even though I havent seen it because technology has shown us this. But what about early man. Atheists will not believe in God until science proves His existence, but, Science has already done that. Even Einstein believes there is a God, and Steven Hawkins also. They just dont believe in a personal God which at that point it becomes a belief and opinion.
So I hope I answered your question.
I hope you find what your searhcing for dude, whether it be God, life, or just love!
Take care!
Ray:
You are seriously deluded if you've visited that site and came away with the thought that the creators of it had no agenda! I read the biography, and it read like a cliche account of a Jew who was steered down a path AWAY from Judaism. The rest of the site has all the earmarks of a ministry specifically engineered to steer Jews away from Judaism.
In the very bio you suggested I read, there is mention of interactions with a Lutheran minister, as well as mention that Fruchtenbaum's own father tried to stop his conversion, and, failing that, refused to be associated with him. Sadly, this is a common thread among Jewish children who are steered away from their true faith, which is one reason why I am violently and unapologetically opposed to any evangelical efforts towards Jews: it quite literally destroys Jewish families. So, stop the nonsense that this obvious and SELF-PROCLAIMED evangelical site has no agenda. That's unmitigated bullshit.
Secondly, referencing the books John, Mark, and Luke is not the most successful way to refute the point I made: as already addressed, those books, as well as the rest of the New Testament, are apocryphical, or outside the canon, so while you accept it as "G-d's word" and the truth, so solly, cholly, I don't.
If you read my previous posts more thoroughly, you will find my mentions of the Messianic prophecies Jesus failed to fulfill. In addition, please note, as previously mentioned in other posts, that Fruchtenbaum and his ilk ARE NOT A JEWS. As soon as he recognized Jesus as the messiah, he ceased to be a Jew. You don't maintain your Judaism, or become more Jewish, by accepting Jesus: in fact, you LOSE your Jewish identity. It's insidious, insipid, disturbing, and just flat out wrong to suggest otherwise. I've seen "Missions" like this myself, and spoken with so called "Jewish Christians" before, and it's frightening to see people reduced to zealous automotons, chewing over the same misinformation over and over in effort to fool more people away from their faith. Even in speaking with them, I was doing myself and my faith a disservice: just by engaging in discourse with them, arguing with them, I risked adding credence to their erroneous beliefs, while putting my self at risk.
But discourse is the only answer, which is why I've taken so much time to have this written conversation with you. If you take nothing else away from this, take away that, while trying to convert others to Christianity may be a tenent of your faith, such efforts should and will always receive extreme opposition from Judaism.
HEY WOW:
You state:
ALBERT EINSTEIN, famous ATHEIST (CHECK YOUR SOURCES BEFORE YOU TRY AND SAY OTHERWISE). AND WOW>>>PLEASE DO NOT JUDGE ME BECAUSE I HOLD BELIEFS DIFFERENT THAN YOU, to do so would be CHRISTIAN (i bite my tongue)
Dude, you call me ignorant. Einstein believed in Spinoza which is a God who created and put things in place. Einstein does not beieve in a personnal God.
I got an idea. If you would like I can send you to a beginners chat.
Let me know.
For Grumpy:
Dude, you are way to facinated with the "Garden of Eden". Are you a tree hugger?
How long was Adam alive before he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?? When God told Adam that he would die you dont think that Adam had a concept of death? Adam didn't ask God, "what is death". Did God create an unintelligent man.
You want the bible to be 5 million pages long and cover every conversation between God and man and every little detail (they would still be writting it today). You wouldn't be able to pick it up. The bible is letters written to people by man after man became imperfect. Moses was imperfect. Had he written the bible before Adam had sinned (which wouldnt make much sense) then I am sure it would have details of things in a perfect way.
Dude, there are many directions you can look at this from. I accept your thoughts, in fact they are well thought up (either by you, or stuff you have read). I question things myself, but it doesnt mean that God doesnt exist.
Look dude, thanks for your thoughts and take care!
Does God exist? We know God exists because he pursues us. He is constantly initiating and seeking for us to come to him.
I was an atheist at one time. And like most atheists, the issue of people believing in God bothered me greatly. What is it about atheists that we would spend so much time, attention, and energy refuting something that we don't believe even exists?! What causes us to do that? When I was an atheist, I attributed my intentions as caring for those poor, disillusioned people…to help them realize their hope was completely ill-founded. To be honest, I also had another motive. As I challenged those who believed in God, I was deeply curious to see if they could convince me otherwise. Part of my quest was to become free from the question of God. If I could conclusively prove to believers that they were wrong, then the issue is off the table, and I would be free to go about my life.
I didn't realize that the reason the topic of God weighed so heavily on my mind, was because God was pressing the issue. I have come to find out that God wants to be known. He created us with the intention that we would know him. He has surrounded us with evidence of himself and he keeps the question of his existence squarely before us. It was as if I couldn't escape thinking about the possibility of God. In fact, the day I chose to acknowledge God's existence, my prayer began with, "Ok, you win…" It might be that the underlying reason atheists are bothered by people believing in God is because God is actively pursuing them.
I am not the only one who has experienced this. Malcolm Muggeridge, socialist and philosophical author, wrote, "I had a notion that somehow, besides questing, I was being pursued." C.S. Lewis said he remembered, "…night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England."
Lewis went on to write a book titled, "Surprised by Joy" as a result of knowing God. I too had no expectations other than rightfully admitting God's existence. Yet over the following several months, I became amazed by his love for me.
Quote "I am as insane as Jesus". WOW…earlier in this thread HAHAHA 🙂
I think that kind of sums things up. I hold you in high respect like the great theologians of our time. The likes of Jim/Tammy Baker, Jerry Fallwell, Rush Limbaugh, WOW the chatterbox, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson. You win, I guess you do indeed belong in "advanced" chat with them.
You still cling to childhood beliefs about things like Santa Claus and GOD!
And on the 6th day GOD said "stay away from those pedophile priests of YOURS, they mean you much harm". A young child is very gullible…much like you "WOW"…willing to believe in things like Monsters and Tooth Fairies and ANGELS. While children such as yourself are still in this impressionable stage, they will believe in Christianity(religion). This explains our impasse. In my view you are still impressionable, (even though you may spout venom to the contrary) until you reach mental maturity. This occurs once the child is introduced to education, but only if the education is varied enough. Unfortunately, for the majority of the masses of humanity (this still includes you WOW) this does not occur because the environment is too stale and lacking of modern knowledge.
HMMMMMMMM>>>>
I am what people call an Atheist. I think of it as a positive thing. I used to believe in GOD, but choose not to now, because of the many evidences I personally have witnessed which refute HIS existence. Certainly I am entitled to have this point of view of the world, and to live my life under the VERY REAL assumption that no intelligent designer/GOD/WOW exists… and I agree that you are entitled to form your own opinion. I read your post and you are correct. I would like to believe that something greater exists, but my cold, hard steely, educated mind wont let me anymore, after years and years of science classes. I will list the classes because I feel that if you had taken the same classes (and passed) you could POSSIBLY come to the same conclusions. ANTHROPOLOGY, PHYSICS, PLATE TECTONICS, GEOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, AMERICAN STUDIES, GYM 🙂 , CALCULUS, ASTRONOMY, HISTORY, PSYCHOLOGY, BIOLOGY, ECONOMICS.
So, if you have any, any, any, tiny scrap of evidence that a Miracle or something has actually happened, I am willing to CHANGE my MIND and ACCEPT THE HOLY BIBLE>>> uhggg i cant believe i said it but there.
For Hey Ray Ray:
Many scientists are coming to realize Darwin's theory of evolution comes to a dead end (RIP). Those that still cling to it mostly do so for political purposes and to keep their job. The honest ones agree evolution has no place in science. It is their religion. Please see my previous links on science. If that is too much, then take a quick look at this page:
http://www.direct.ca/trinity/origin2.html
People:
It seems to me most of you posting are not looking for the truth, but want to argue endlessly without researching your facts. I have patience for honest questions but now I bow out of the discussions. You people seem quite capable of using Google to find answers (if you really wanted them). Peace.
We all can't be right.
Okay, I finally read some of what you wrote, and maybe I have you personally figured wrong, I was aiming at anyone who is anti-SCIENCE. I apologize for that, and to anyone I have offended along the way…(big words I know, but I mean it). Some people I know and love do believe in God. Although, I sometimes let them have it, and they say things like , "you cant know for sure" and "only He knows for sure". I guess my motive is just to spread the NEW WORD about the fact that GOD and SCIENCE do not belong in the same UNIVERSE. And its not just me…the entire scientific community is moving this way…the battle has just begun
Hi Scholar,
You are hilarious!!! Santa is not going to bring you anything for CHRISTmas this year you bad boy………Eww, that didnt sound good, or did it!!!!!!
The Bakers and Swaggart, you forgot Mike Warnke…He used to worship satan until he became a Christian and fooled the entire West Coast. Now he admits he was never a Christian. LOL…..
On the spouted venom of the contary, I am not gullible at all as I question everything, probably unbalanced and should incorporate a little gullibility in my life for entertainment purposes.
Mental Maturity. Whats funny is that you think that I have to feel exactely like you in order to reach mental maturity. So I must realize that God does not exist to reach mental maturity. My guess is that most people don't like you (even though you may spout venom to the contrary, as you would say). Who the heck talks like that???LOL Oh ya, you do…..LOL
So education is the answer. Well I have an education (3.5 GPA throughout) which was not easily attained. But I guess the education you are talking about would be in, lets see, Science maybe?? Maybe if I get the same education that you received I will start to see the light and God will slowly begin to fade away and I can experience freedom from all of this fairytale stuff. LOL………WOW, you are a tool man!!!!! OH, let's just say that I believe in God because my education is not varied enough. So when my education becomes varied then I will know the Truth, right!!! I can't wait. You blame everything and everybody except yourself.
I bet your a lonely person. What is your purpose for even contributing to this thread? I know, your searching. Man, if I was an atheist I would not spend my time in this chat room or any chat room wasting my time debating with Christians, unless, oh never mind, well, unless, no I better not, unless…………………you get the point! you are here for a reason and it's not to unconvert people, it's to convert yourself.
Happy searching mr. educated!
To all:
I am signing off. It's been fun people! I respect all belief and unbelief. I hope that you guys and girls, men and women, Jews, Mormons, Christians, Atheists (agnostics), and all religious types have a wonderful evening.
Here is what is important today:
Love your families, friends, and enemies so that this world can be a better place for you and me to live.
Since these aramaic references are totally put aside in the discussions here, I suggest you watch
Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ" in which every word was either spoken in aramaic or latin for a reason: to be as close as possible to the historical context of that period of time.
Every one is still entitled to believe what he/she wants, in spite of these historical elements…
Z.
I dont have time to read your whole response, however, I never said that you must disown GOD in order to reach mental maturity, but it has a nice ring to it. For me, this is what happened. And it is my belief that it is true. Goodbye my young padouin.
I have one last comment on this thread, regarding WOW's alleged citations of founding father quotes, and then I'll take my rest.
In the first place, quite a few of the alleged quotations which WOW cited are fabrications, invented by a right-wing pseudohistorian named David Barton. Several of the others are patently irrelevant, like the Rhode Island Charter (of 1683??). Yes, many of the English colonies had established religions originally. However, the United States was founded with no such thing, largely because of the immense harm that those very religious establishments were observed to cause. In 1683 New England, for instance, WOW (who, I assume, is not a Calvinist) would likely have been considered a heretic, and would have been jailed, run out of town, or whipped until he recanted his errors.
Secondly, be wary of assuming too much about the founding fathers' religious beliefs. WOW praises Thomas Jefferson in particular to the skies. I wonder if he knows that Thomas Jefferson took a razor blade to the Bible and cut out all the parts he found unbelievable, including all the miracle stories. WOW seems not to have noticed that one of the very Jefferson quotes he cited expresses Jefferson's belief that Jesus was not divine and never claimed to be divine ("ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other").
Thirdly, and here's the most important point: Regardless of what any of the founding fathers believed about religion or the existence of God, they did not write their beliefs into law. They did not make this a legally Christian nation, though they could have. The Constitution never mentions God and only refers to religion to forbid religious tests. On the contrary, they wanted to leave that decision up to every citizen to make for themselves, free of government interference. I asked WOW which specific principles of America are derived from the Bible, and it seems clear to me that this is a question he cannot answer.
To WOW:
Wow wrote: "I WANT (not NEED) to believe because of the evidence that God has put in my heart because I am willing to accept his love. I fell to my knees and broke down to God and asked him to tell me if he is real or not. the miracle happend inside my heart. "
Thank you for your very personal response to my question. It took some cajoling but I knew you had it in you!
I would like to point out that once WOW put down the bible and talked about his/her deepest feelings about god and eternity that there was little need for water turning into wine or people rising from the dead. "…the miracle happend inside my heart."
The core message of the bible is good and true, but GETTING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL TOPIC OF THIS THREAD, its message has been altered, intentionally and and accidentally, and overlaid with much mumbo-jumbo so that little of the original remains. WOW felt what s/he did and believes what s/he does naturally, without any magic tricks to convince him/her. We don't NEED the crap that MEN have added to impress an uneducated populace and keep them in line.
For me, Jesus can be just a regular dude, with a normal mother and father and no special superhero powers. But he is someone who saw through the hypocrisy of day to day life and tried to teach us a few good principals to live by. Isn't that enough?
P.S. And WOW, why did you put agnostics in parenthesis?? Are we not as important as Atheists?? And why do they get capitalized??? LOL! Kidding!
To Gatomjp:
You may be closer than you think because I can tell that you are asking many questions. Even though you may not realize it, your questioning reveals that you are searching for the Truth, God's Truth, and that "man's truth" doesn't satisfy. To remark on your last response to me, it is possible for it to be that simple. You don't have to be soul searching for the rest of your like once the Holy Spirit speaks to you, and you listen and obey. Now some may say the "Holy Spirit" is something separate from God, but I would say that it is a means of referencing an aspect of God, like the Jews used to refer to God's hand, or breath. Anyway, I can understand how the "stories" in the Bible could be perceived as unbelievable. And in some respects I can state that you don't "need" to believe the details of the stories in order to be saved. The Bible doesn't say you need to believe that Adam was in an actual garden, or that Noah actually had elephants on a boat in order to be saved. What it does say is that you must believe that Jesus is the Son of God (the physical, temporal form that the invisible, infinite God took for our benefit) and that He (God) is the only one that can save you, because you need Him (God) to save you from your sin. Once you accept that, then all the other stuff is not so unbelievable. It becomes stories of how God reached into and changed other people's lives. He always reaches different people in different ways. It is what we call our testimonies, our personal stories of how God changed us.
When God reaches into your life and awakens you, you want to share it, just like the people who wrote those stories in the Bible. So the question is do you believe that you need God, not the stories, but Him?
To Grumpypilgrim:
You sure are grumpy, but that is good for now, because I can tell that God is still prodding you. Why do you think that God was trying to poison Adam and Eve by placing a tree in their midst? The tree's fruit was not poisonous, their disobedience was the poison, and it was already in them. Their eating the fruit only revealed their inner nature, brought it to the surface, thus they saw they were naked. I can guess where you will go from here. Why would God create us to sin? He didn't. He created us to choose. Free will is a great and dangerous gift. The Bible says we are sinners. It doesn't say we are basically good people who choose to sin. It says by our very nature we are sinners. We can't change that. I believe it comes from the fact that we are finite (limited) beings inside of an unlimited being (God). To create "you" God had to make "you" separate from "me", in space (physical limit) and time (temporal limit). If we are not separate, there is no "you". Being a separate being, we are now able to differentiate and "see". There isn't just us now there are "others", ones who are "not us". However, in order to sustain our "separate" lives we still need to be connected to God, the source and sustainer of life. Once we think we don't need God, we are committing spiritual suicide. We are making our separation complete. Think about this, reread it. It is hard to accept. If the highest angel in God's heaven couldn't accept it, then it doesn't rely on stature to be believed. Your intellect cannot help you in this one. Your intellect only deals with what your physical eyes can see (what you can remember and puzzle over). Let God show "you" how "you" need Him and stop fighting Him with your attempts to control that which you cannot. You will realize He has been holding you all along.
Darwin saw, from reading the 1798 Essay on Population by Malthus, that if there are more descendents than can survive with the environmental resources available, then the more efficient resource users will increase as a proportion of that population, and the less efficient decrease. If a breeding population or deme is isolated from its related populations long enough, then the traits in that deme that mark it out from other closely similar demes will diverge too far from the ancestral populations for interbreeding to occur. By that stage, the isolates will have become a new species.
"Species" becomes partly a taxonomic term of convenience rather than a metaphysical kind or class. Incipient species can be termed "varieties" or "subspecies" or even "races", and biologists nowadays tend to award species rank only when interbreeding is either behaviourally or genetically difficult. Many species of bird are distinct primarily in their mating behaviour, even though they are interfertile, as is the case with lions and tigers. The fact that they do not interbreed marks them as distinct species (this is called the Biological Species Concept).
To understand the randomness claimed for evolution by scientists, as opposed to that feared by theologians and moral philosophers, it's important to ask "random relative to what?" In any model of a process as described by a scientific theory, there are many things taken for granted. Philosophers of science refer to these as ancillary assumptions or hypotheses. Some of these are assumed from ignorance: science might not yet have any workable and tested theory or model to deal with that class of phenomena. Others are assumed because they are well worked out in another scientific theory or discipline.
For example, Darwin knew that there was heredity, but he did not have a good theory of heredity to work by. His selection theory (the version he and Wallace published) had to assume that traits were heritable. He did propose a theory of heredity (pangenesis) based on a now discredited view of the influence of the use of traits on reproduction, but it was never essential to the theory of natural selection. So far as his theory of evolution by selection was concerned, heredity was an area to be filled out later.
The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia.
While these values do not compute an age for the Earth, they do establish a lower limit (the Earth must be at least as old as any formation on it). This lower limit is at least concordant with the independently derived figure of 4.55 billion years for the Earth's actual age.
The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This involves measurement of three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or Pb-204).
Prior to the development of radiometric dating geologists established the relative ages of rocks using stratigraphy (the geological column) and made crude estimates of absolute ages by taking into account sedimentation and erosion rates. Radiometric dating permits the accurate determination of absolute dates. The first radiometric dating was done in 1905; it and subsequent measurements confirmed that the Earth was several billion years old. Currently the best estimate of the age of the Earth is 4.55 billion years.
I have enjoyed reading through these posts which inspired me to add my thoughts.
To those of you who have tried to understand TRUTH via an objective, logical, scientific method, I suggest you read the work of Soren Kierkegaard regarding TRUTH and subjectivity. His conclusion is that TRUTH is SUBJECTIVITY.
Before any communication can begin, would you agree that we must agree on basic definitions and syntax?
From the posts, I discern that most have differing opinions of what they even mean by the term God. So, I offer that the word God is a term to describe that which is beyond our understanding.
When a helicopter landed in South America, the aborigine bowed and the word (in their own language) was God i.e., that which was beyond their understanding. Can we agree on the term?
Therefore, the atheists will say there is no God because they know and understand everything. I suggest that they are simply falling prey to the arrogance referred to in a previous post (I think it was Greg Baker) that has plagued mankind since before Galileo Galilei discovered that the Earth was not the center of the Universe. The degree of the arrogance of man is overwhelming. Can you actually believe that we actually thought that we were the center of the entire Universe? Talk about arrogance! History is rife with examples of our arrogance. The church is certainly not innocent in this regard either. Has anyone ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition? Let’s just say that it took civilization a while to recognize the TRUTH.
Hey, you atheist. Do you consider that it is possible that somewhere in the vast Universe there might be a civilization of beings that would be somewhat more advanced that we Earthlings? Could there be a civilization that was a few million years more advanced that ours? Now, consider that we have made a few strides within the last, say, one hundred years. Well, I guess it’s impossible for there to be anything beyond the understanding of the atheists and agnostics because you don’t believe in helicopters (oops, I mean God).
You arrogant generation of vipers! You will beg for God’s mercy when you learn that your intellect is insufficient to save your soul.
I guess you don’t believe in evil either. Maybe we can come to an agreement for the meaning of that term, too.