First, it is the words of humans, not God. Some people lead with brain washing, get people young, and teach them to live in fear or Guilt. A big difference than according to Christian teaching, Jesus is quoted as saying, "I leave you with one Commandment ;"That you love one another.
Love to me, means wishing and doing good to other’s Then let God handle the rest!
In truth the Golden Rule was then Budha’s he was in 500 BC
For Noah’s Ark to land on a mountain 15,000 feet high it would have no place to run to, if the entire world was flooded and no plants would grow, so If Noah had food for a year, the food for all would have run out, and there would be no palm tree for the dove to get, all plant life would be wiped out, and the animals would have nothing to eat except very few, if any>
Sound wisdom.
… THIS well said 
Well yes, many believers in God have embraced this condemnation attitude, literally searching the bible for ways to condemn people; I am not in to that, I search the scriptures for life, and have found life in them. I no longer see damnation in humanity, I see the salvation of all. And that death of Christ that certain Atheist make fun of, has made all of us justified before this great God, Rom. 5:18. Not that I am knocking Atheist, they do what they are bred to do, just as I do what I am bred to do, we all have our path; I am against this doctrine of eternal hell punishing, because it teaches the world that only certain people will " Make it", when the truth is, " We all make it."
Its a free gift for all! A sacrifice that benefits all.
I am not a believer, but it’s been explained to me that the whole idea of pitchforks and fire and devils poking you isn’t really what happens (who would’ve guessed) but it’s spending the rest of your eternal life without the love of God that is the torture. So everyone lives forever after death, but only those who accepted Jesus and gave the right handshake at the pearly gates get the happiness of knowing God’s love.
It’s very slightly more logical I suppose, if still completely untrue.
Well it still is untrue, many believers are just deceived into a mindset that " Limits the population of Heaven", or as Jesus put it in Matt. 23:12, " They shut off the Kingdom from men"; or they have these weird beliefs that reduce the number of people who can benefit from Gods gift of salvation. But I understand the deception, because these salvation limiting believers get these weird doctrines from the bible, and I think parts of the bible that has been tampered with.
The bottom line is what God desires, because I happen to believe that God gets all that he desires. I think all this, all that we are aware of and experienced, all of human history, is just a pretense to all of us being with God at a later time. I think that’s what God wants and desires; and if God cannot get something he desires, then that something would be more powerful than him.
Well what does God desire? Job 23:13, " But God is unique and who can turn him? What his soul desires, that he does." In 1 Tim. 2:3-4, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who " Desires” that ALL men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." This is the true destiny of all humans who have ever lived and will live; its the real truth that Christians are completely blind to, and Atheist as well; this is what God desires and nothing can stop him from getting what he desires. But you got these mistranslated verses in the bible that contradict that. These hell verses and any verse that limits people from being with God in any kind of way.
I think the bible got " Tweaked" many times back when the Roman Catholic church had complete control of it. They put THEIR version and understanding in it. And they are not admitting to this now. The bible could have got tweaked at any of these councils;
First council of Nicaea 325
First council of Constantinople 381
Council of Ephesus 431
Second council of Ephesus 449
Council of Chalcedon 451
Second council of Constantinople 553
3rd council of Constantinople 681
Quinisext of Constantinople 681
Council in Trullo 692
2nd council of Nicaea 787
1st council of Lateran 1123
4th council of the Lateran 1215
2nd council of Lyon 1274
1st council of the Vatican 1870
So, you believe that
a) the bible is the word of god
b) that God gets what he desires
c) that the bible has been ‘tweaked’ by man to subvert God’s desires
d) man is more powerful than God?
Do you have any evidence for this ‘tweaking’ outside of your conspiracy theory?
You realize that you are likely not even using the ‘Catholic Bible’ (their canon includes books that the ‘protestant’ Canon does not). So, suddenly your theory seems to fall apart if you blame the Catholics for ‘tweaking’ the ‘Protestant’ bible.
Further - if you accept that the "holy spirit’ directed the writing, gathering of the books - why do you think it would ‘allow’ for this tweaking?
I would amend this to that to say that floods (plural) are a historical fact. It is not surprising that a number of different cultures around the world have experienced a massive flood, (hurricane, tidal wave, natural dam break etc.) that killed many people and in the process entered the cultural oral history. Overtime it would be natural for this story to be exaggerated in the retelling into a flood that destroys the earth.
The Protestants continued the proud tradition of editing. But where did they start? The Roman Catholic bible. The Roman Catholic Church can be blamed for a whole lot of meddling, even if Protestantism decided it’s own edits later on. It’s not like they had access to the books that the first Council of Nicea had access to and recompiled the bible to their own purposes when the first vestiges of Protestantism appeared.
On the argument in whole, I find it best to reject the bible as “Written by God” and instead attribute it to what it is: 3,000 years of literature in a giant game of telephone.
Let’s, for the sake of argument, say that we have archaeological evidence of Noah receiving the 10 commandments (say, we found a burial yielding a corpse with two tablets that glowed and floated?). Those ten commandments, likely, copied for a few centuries directly from the stone, would have changed very little. All the events surrounding the receipt of the tablets was likely embellished repeatedly by future writers putting their own cultural and personal touches on the narrative.
Thus, you shouldn’t take what the bible says at face value and should instead use it as a method to identify the features that are beneficial to a person and society and try to incorporate them. Both Jesus and his senior contemporary Rabbi Hillel said roughly the same thing about the Jewish literature. If they can sum up a veritable bookcase of literature in a few lines, why can’t we also?
For reference:
Hillel: “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.” (Sh 31a - probably sources Tobit 4:15)
Jesus: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matt 7:12 KJV - probably sources Lev 19:18)
There is some discussion on the relative merits of both the negative and positive forms of the phrasing. I’ll leave that out of this.
Re the OP, it’s important to note that not all branches of Christianity, nor all Christians, subscribe to the theology of a Hell of eternal torment and suffering.
Some believe that Hell exists, but no one goes there. Some believe that hell is the state of being separated from the Kingdom of God, and eventually all people succumb to the irresistible grace. In other words, people may go to hell but they do not stay there - salvation is still available to those in hell.
Some people do believe in a hell of torment, but believe that ultimately the souls that go there are annihilated - so the torment is not eternal.
I’m a Christian - a rather liberal one - and I don’t focus a lot on hell. I believe that Christ died so that ALL might live, and that I’m no less a sinner in God’s eyes than any ‘evil’ person you care to name. If I can be forgiven and reconciled to God, so can anyone; and eventually they will. It may take them longer than it took me and until that time they may suffer from being outside the kingdom; but the door is always open to them.
Right - so local floods, no big deal - ‘destroyed all life on the planet’ floods - never happened.
This may also be a question of perspective. If the entire fertile crescent, for instance, flooded way back in the day (flood stories are incredibly common and fairly similar between all of the cultures in that region) and wiped out everything they knew about (All cities along the rivers, etc) then they may have conceived it to be “global” because they didn’t have the perspective to know that, for instance, South Africa existed.
Well yes, there are many different views of a hell I think simply does not exist in an manner it has been invented by any religion or branch of Christianity.
But I am happy to here you believe in Christ, many have been seduced into thinking he never existed.
Excellent point.
So - if its untrustworthy - created by man, edited by man, tweaked by man - why would I accept the ‘good parts’ as being ‘more trustworthy’ ?
Again - as stated before - I am an atheist - I accept the bible as a piece of ‘literature’ and a collection of ‘myths/histories/stories/fables’ that have cultural significance - and thats it.
In it, like in many works of literature - there is ‘good parts’ and ‘bad parts’ -
but if you want to claim its something ‘special’ that has been ‘corrupted’ by man - thats a whole different discussion.
IOW - you seem to still want to hold this ‘corrupted doc’ on a pedestal.
heaven as a reward for the ‘faithful’ is just as much a control tool as ‘Hell’ is for the unfaithful - if not more so.
I never said you had to believe in hell or believe in heaven. Quite frankly, what you believe is up to you and I’m not here to witness for a particular belief.
I also didn’t say “oh, the parts I believe should be more trustworthy!” I said that if you read the stories and sum up their value in terms of personal and social positives, it makes it useful.
I constrained my argument here to the bible, but this is my same opinion for all literature. Do you derive deep personal truths from “Built Ford tough”? Great. Go with it.
I **do **hold it to higher esteem than other documents. Personally. Whether you do or not is up to you and I make no expectation that you believe in this or any other faith. But I don’t suspend disbelief and I research it as much as I can and keep relatively abreast of archaeological developments in that part of the world out of interest in the Bible. If we find evidence next week that says the Bible and it’s history was fabricated by L Ron Hubbard, I’d drop my belief in Christ. But I won’t drop my internalization of positive moral attitudes in an attempt to rebel against my previously misled self and his now debunked guiding book.
As an aside, if you want to expand the discussion beyond the biblical texts (as previously with literature), everything around you is a tool of control. I’m sure a McDonalds employee is watching your browsing habits and purchase history to see what influences you into buying their meals and getting as much “buy ussssss” into your daily routine as they can.
<bolding mine> - are you trying to imply that I have dropped my ‘positive moral attitude’ ?
And I’m still unclear as to what you are overly trying to say -
“evertyhing that is good is good, everything that is bad is bad - the bible is good except the bad parts” ? does that pretty much sum it up?
Who knows, maybe a whole book created by man got inserted. Like Paul’s writings f.i.
Maybe several books.