Originally posted by HandyAndy
Who appointed you judge?

Who made you the identifier of who's been appointed judge?

Originally posted by josephw
Who made you the identifier of who's been appointed judge?

I'm self-appointed. Judge not, lest ye be judged.

Originally posted by josephw
I'd like to meet this no god.

Can you give a description of it? Did you speak with no god and it told you the truth that it is no god?

The truth is that I don't believe a god exists, and since truth was supposed to find me, I take it that this truth is the truth. You ask yourself now, what have you been talking to all these years? From the mess that is the bible, you've managed to convince yourself that your belief is some absolute truth?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Maybe, maybe not. We have no way of knowing. They are the oldest copies we have, but we don't know whether or not they were copied more accurately from common source documents than more recent copies were.

What a mess indeed.

Originally posted by sonship
I would say that typos in the Bible are not really your main reasoning for regarding it lightly. I would say "numerous incomplete, badly translated, now largly missing sources" is an intellectual excuse to hide a moral reasoning.

I would say your excuse "It is not reliable" masks another disdain which is more about wanting to be unaccountable to God ...[text shortened]... you, seem best to just accept without conviction from God or the need for reconciliation to God.

Do you really think a human, who is so low on the deity totem pole as to defy reason, can really disconnect him or herself from this god you so love? If this alleged god exists, there is no way for a human to disconnect from this god.

It is more like the declaration of disconnection ticks off fellow humans and words like Apostasy comes up if that disconnect is disconnecting yourself from a religion. Apostasy is an entirely human invention, as is the whole panoply of religion.

If we are in a universe controlled by a god, then we can no more disconnect from that god than our brain can disconnect itself from the body.

Originally posted by josephw
[b]"Or what say ye?"

I'd say you are blind to the truth. If there be a God that communicated His word to man, would He not then preserve it? Of course He would! It's the only rational conclusion on the matter.

The only way that it could be said that the Word of God isn't intact and 100% reliable is if God didn't exist.

You don't know that for a fact, do you?[/b]

Ok, so this alleged god preserved it. Why did there not appear a copy in Swahil, or Pashto or Farsi or Mayan? If Columbus had not crossed the Atlantic ocean, none of the people of North or South America would have ever gotten any of that unreliable text. There are still tribes in the Amazon that have never had contact with the outside world to this day.

Why didn't THEY get a text or verbal account if this god wanted to get all mankind together?

So you can say, when the "Tribulations" come and so forth, those people in the Amazon will go to hell, eh, thus proving your moral superiority.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Ok, so this alleged god preserved it. Why did there not appear a copy in Swahil, or Pashto or Farsi or Mayan? If Columbus had not crossed the Atlantic ocean, none of the people of North or South America would have ever gotten any of that unreliable text. There are still tribes in the Amazon that have never had contact with the outside world to this day.
...[text shortened]... d so forth, those people in the Amazon will go to hell, eh, thus proving your moral superiority.

"The gospel must first be preached to all the nations.

(Mark 13:10 NASB)