The Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click "I agree".
Steven Weinberg: With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. George Carlin: Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man -- living in the sky -- who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do.. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! ..But He loves you.
Kings is an excellent primer on what the Dark Ages, you know, knights in shining armor and all that, must have been like. In reality, those knights were what we would today call warlords, and the hair-raising stuff you see done in Kings is pretty much what they did. The Crusades were in part an attempt by the Pope to keep these bloodthirsty killers busy, to the everlasting regret of Constantinople, as it turned out. As for the rest, it's ancient history, as in, a history of what it was like a few thousand years ago. You do know that back then if you lost and weren't massacred you were made a slave? To take a city was to defeat its gods, and if you did that, the former followers had nothing, and could be treated in any way their conquerors felt like; it wasn't like they feared the wrath of their gods anymore, after all. You see that attitude all over the Bible. To be a slave was to be dead but still useful; a slave could still be killed at any time for any reason or no reason at all, with no consequences to the owner. The slave was, after all, a conquered person, with no gods to help him anymore. C'est la guerre.
of course the bible reflects the attitudes of the people who wrote it. just more evidence that the bible is a product of primitive men. Marie: Man created God in his image : intolerant, sexist, homophobic and violent.
More like early civilized man. We're talking literate city-dwellers with a sophisticated agricultural system. Anyway, not interested in this oddball obsession you have. Just figured I'd point out some historical background stuff as a general point of not much, this being the weekend. Interesting to know, and that's about it.
well, this is a thread about critical thinking. the stuff you pointed out should come into the analysis of a critical thinker trying to decide if the bible is god inspired. Critical thinking is thinking that questions assumptions. It is a way of deciding whether a claim is always true, sometimes true, partly true, or false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
This thread has nothing to do with critical thinking and everything to do with you just don't like Christians because they have the audacity contrary to your feelings to believe in God and you do not.
i dont hate christians. i am not fond of what their delusion does to them. that is why i spend so much time trying to help them escape. ok i am out of here for the weekend. things to do http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPs_j1EEplI