Not surprising, considering what their god did to his own son:

- Jeeesssss!! Jeeesss, come here!!
- I have a job for you. You've got to go down to the Earth for a suicide mission. C'mon, don't be long, some goatherds are already waiting for you.

the bible is a collection of myths with some historic facts stirred in to increase the efficacy of its stories. it is largely metaphorical, and should not be taken literally.

while the jesus of the bible may have connections to a real historic figure, the story of his resurrection is just another retelling of the classic tale of shamanic death and rebirth. this, like many common metaphors found in world religions, is ultimately sourced in experiences of altered states of consciousness.

I have a Bachelor's in Philosophy. Studying philosophy taught me to classify ideas, prioritize concepts based on whatever you are focusing on, compare and contrast things, qualify what it means to "know" something (epistemology), and be comfortable with the position: I don't know.

I have been a stout athiest, a stout christian. I have studied people that believed only what you use your senses to perceive can be believed, and I have studied people that believed you can't trusted your senses (mirage anyone?) and only things that pass the logic test should be upheld.

*Hindu's believe there are many paths to the top of the mountain
*Buddhists believe there is no such thing as a self, that there are only seeds of human traits in a wherehouse, and that when a person is born they get some collection of these trait (seed for music, seed for wood-working)
*Taoists never mention god, only that there is a path to walk, and that there is a thread that runs through everything and ties it all together
*Christians believe Jesus came from God to educate the world, and that there is "no way to the father but by" him.
*The bible was written by imperfect people, no matter how inspired they were
*What you really believe is what you do when everything falls apart
*People gravitate to the ethics that suit their preferences
*One day when I was an atheist, I was running around a track at Fresno State University, and something hit me in the chest hard enough to stop me in my tracks, and I heard "I am here"

I wrote this song:

The parts of me and you (chorus)
and this and that
Light and dark
Thin and fat

Eternal teeter totter (chorus)
but a thread runs through it
A thread runs through it
What is the thread that runs through it?

Get busy crackin seeds
but a thread runs though it
a thread runs through it
what is the thread that runs through it?


Or dirty minded
when I asked you if you knew it
or could no one make you do it
see a thread run through it?

(chorus)

Words are just sounds
that we use
but whatever words you choose
a thread runs through it

The fawcett is on or off,
why don't you leave it on?
A thread runs through it
what is the thread that runs though it?

(Chorus)


(A Thread Runs Through It copywrite 2004)

Didn't God tell the writers of the Bible what he wanted them to say? Were they not under the influence of God?

No.

Christian biblical canon was determined by the Council of Trent, Synod of Jerusalem, etc... I don't think that God spoke to the people of the council to determine the final canon.

Is this proveable?

I don't know.

I think the bible may be inspired by what I call God, but how well can the intsrument (humans) get it right?

If God "says" "The path is very narrow on the ridge"
And some Prophet writes "I want you to shoot an arrow at a bridge"

what can we do?

I think it is up to each person to listen. What is God telling you?

The Arabic word for God is "Allah"

The Hebrew word is "Eloh" since it takes a germanic mail ending, it is used as Elohim. Elohim is all through the bible.

Allah- pronounced "uh LUH"
Eloh- pronounced "ay LOH"

say it fast and who can tell the difference. Is that what all the fighting is about?

Yes. Decades of bloody warfare is simply a heated debate over which language has named "god" correctly.

??? And what's the point? :confused: A simply linguistic resemblance or difference doesn't entail a conclusion like that.

Everybody can play that kind of "games", mixing linguistics and religion. Look: Zeus (Ζεύς;, Greek) --> Deus (Latin). And here comes the "trap": to the polytheistic Romans deus meant god (with lower case); to the early Christians (monotheistic) the same word meant God (with upper case), that is, the only god.

But, obviously, there is an enormous difference between Zeus and God, despite those ancient Palestinian second-rate pseudo-writers tried to remedy their pathetic lack of literary imagination by imitating deeds from Classical mythology. For instance, the famous fantasy "a god impregnates a human virgin with not even being close to her" is not a Christian creation. As always, Greeks were previous and were better.

In short: Zeus was horny for Danae and invented the golden rain. Read the whole story yourselves.

So you agree, the names aren't important, and getting the stories right isn't important either. If God is a real thing, and I think it is, people should run into it as they go around, like they do with wind, trees, and other people.

Distraction is the enemy. Now why would that be?