Do you believe in God?
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Scaff
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The bible disagrees with you on that:
2 Peter 20-21
"20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."
Prayer, Prophecy, and Witnessing all have differences. Prayer does not focus or involve predicting the future, establishing law or explaining the reason of a law. The Gospel of Mark, Luke, and John were written by each respective author as an account of witnessing the life and teachings of Jesus, for Jesus speaks as God in the Flesh.
Everyone can Pray, only a special person can be a Prophet.
Scaff
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You seem to have forgotten that you said....
"The beauty of the Bible is it is written by many authors inspired by God. Not just one author who can customize it to what he only believes."
....which would mean that a large amount of the bible is not inspired by god at all, but rather his exact words.
Also (in regard top the 'other' parts) why is it better to have multiple people putting a spin on it rather than just one? If its being manipulated for personal belief then surly the number involved is immaterial, but rather the act itself is the actual concern.
zzz_pt
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I didn't say that god does not exist. I said that the god of christian religion doesn't make sense and the book that supports it it's full of nonsense. I know people can belive it because I used to believe too.
Carlos
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zzz_pt
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yes a lot of the bible does use the words God as his prophets say. At other times there are stories of those who followed God and believed in God but they were not Authors. Look at the Story of Sampson, he was not a prophet, he did not write his story, Sampson was a man who got his strength by following God, when he turned away from God his strength weakened, as he came back to following God, his strength came back to him.
History books and Reference books are more are more trusted and reliable if they were written in collaboration.
Look at how the literature of the North Koreans is shown, much of their literature is written by One person, Kim Jong Il, the North Koreans know little of the true History of North Korea, only the History which Kim Jong Il has reported.
Scaff
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Which is not what you originally said.
No they are 'more trusted and reliable' when they are well sourced, researched, peer reviewed and independently verifiable. Collaboration doesn't equal accuracy or even reality, Ken Ham and his collaborators are a clear example of that.
No its been written in collaboration with a ruling elite and is the product of at least three people as a minimum, even a basic understanding of NK history would show that (current ruler, his dad and grandfather). So unfortunately you are once again incorrect.
You are simply expanding upon what I meant about collaboration, so you have not proved me wrong, collaborative effort can be used in bad ways, or in the honest and correct way.
You are partially right about North Korea, but Kim Jong Il takes the credit for most of those books, especially after his father Kim Il Sung died. Even if 10 ghost writers worked on writing one book, Kim Jong Il would have the final say and free reign to edit those books as he pleased, he takes practically all the credit on that single book.
Democratic input in anything North Korea does including publishing books is not how it works, there is no true reliable sourcing, research, peer review. It's Dicatatorial, what the leader says must be in the books will be in the books, no one can disagree with what the leader wants.
Just because you do not agree with what I say does not make me wrong.
Scaff
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You stated that collaboration alone is enough to make things more trusted and reliable....
"History books and Reference books are more are more trusted and reliable if they were written in collaboration."
...from your original statement...
"The beauty of the Bible is it is written by many authors inspired by God. Not just one author who can customize it to what he only believes. It is a collaboration effort like many of our educational textbooks and reference books are today."
...I stated that is incorrect and that being "well sourced, researched, peer reviewed and independently verifiable" is far more important. As such your assumption was incorrect.
You then attempted to use NK as an example of a single author being an issue in regard to trust and reliability, however its quite clear that the 'deeds' of the Kim family are the result of at least three people, which would make it a collaboration - thus you fail at even making the point accurately. However even if this was an example of single author, the material would still not be untrustworthy and/or unreliable because of that, its would be so because of a lack of being "well sourced, researched, peer reviewed and independently verifiable".
It is however clearly not the work of an individual author, given that the country has a ratrher large an active propaganda ministry, churning out a vast quantity of posters, films and social media each year, not to mention the rather hilarious homepage for the country. Quite clearly the work of a large body of people working towards a single collaborative end, one that may have been the idea of a single person, but its certainly not solely authored by that person (because he''s dead).
You've basically (and to be blunt unsurprisingly) totally missed the point. The number of authors doesn't make a work trusted and/or reliable, the nature of the contribution does and if its not "well sourced, researched, peer reviewed and independently verifiable" then issues with trust and/or reliability will almost certainly arise (which is exactly the issue I raised).
As such a claim (such as you made) that the bible is better (I assume from your approach you mean to imply that its more trustworthy and/or reliable) simply because its a collaboration is simply absurd.
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I like cheese but I have a friend who vehemently dislikes it and will barely even discuss it. Which of us is wrong? He is, obviously, but that's only obvious in my opinion. I can't prove it other than by fighting him or sourcing facts. Neither will be easy. I eat far too much cheese, for one thing.
He says unless you buy chemical cheese you have to have cheese made of calf-spew. This is a true fact which I cannot deny. He wins the fact argument but I win the opinion argument because its always my opinion.
You believe that the Jews were enslaved en masse in Egypt. Scaff disagrees and, to show you why, he's presented credible evidence from notable scholars that shows why none of them believe that the slaves actually existed. Or that there was even a large Jewish population of any kind there.
Just take that as a fact and move on, let#s back to the legend. Jews believe in it and observe the telling of the story and the memory of its passing. So... why? What does it mean, what is the importance of the story or the lesson?
Instead of flogging a dead horse try looking over the hedge yourself, as my very drunk grandfather used to try to say. We think.
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You are totally missed my point and are trying to confuse and twist what I said to make me appear wrong in your eyes.
you are implying that in the case of North Korea that I said ALL of the Literature was written by Kim Jong Il, I said "MUCH of their literature is written by One person, Kim Jong Il" key word "much of" . Kim Il Sung was his father who was and kind of still is the Ultimate President of North Korea, now we have the Son of Kim Jong Il, who is the current leader Kim Jong Un. Now Kim Jong Un has absolute control.
While North Korea is not a perfect example, it is an example of how one person with absolute control can totally manipulate something to suit his own purpose or his own family's own purpose.
The Dynastic Dictatorship of North Korea is everything bad about the system of Monarchy can be. It is what happens when one person has control over everything and that power is passed on to only one person when that King or Dictator Dies.
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Scaff
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I've not missed your point at all. You made a claim that collaborative works are inherently more trustworthy and reliable simply because they are collaborative. You have not backed that up with anything more than "because I say so" and some very flawed examples.
Simply put a claim that trust and reliability in material is directly proportional to the number of people involved is ludicrous; trust and reliability is material comes from the method used to produce the material, regardless of the number of people involved.
No I'm stating that even a claim of 'much' coming from one person is wrong, and you can't even get the family history right.
The system in place was founded by Kim Il-sung (who is dead and eternal president), his son Kim Jong-il (also dead and eternal General Secretary) and now his son Kim Jong-un (not dead and Supreme Leader); that makes it very much a collaborative effort.
Given the vast body of propaganda that the country produces (for both internal and external use) how do you see the majority of this coming from one person?
Its not one person, its a family.
First its not a monarchy, and even if it was monarchy don't function as a single person either, they are a family 'business'.
All of which is a distraction on your part from your inability to support and argument that as the number of collaborators increases so does the trustworthiness and reliability of material.
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You are continuing to twist the intent of what I was trying to convey. I simply said collaboration on one work is more reliable than if one person wrote it. I did not go into detail of all the sources, researchers, subject matter experts, linguistics experts, etc.. Of course bad collaboration and good collaboration exists, you can't increase 200 monkeys to 10,000 monkeys to make one book a better book.
If you were to look at standardized versions of Bibles such as the NIV Version, the King James Version, the NIV Version.
For the NIV Bible "the core translation group consisted of fifteen Biblical scholars.The translation took ten years and involved a team of up to one hundred scholars from the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The range of those participating included many different denominations such as Anglicans, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Christian Reformed, Lutheran and Presbyterian.
The translation is a balance between word-for-word and thought-for-thought. Recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries helped in understanding passages that have traditionally been difficult to translate."
If you don't want to understand what I mean, then I won't explain anymore.
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Except that it's not true. You demonstrate this yourself with your monkeys example.
You are (or you were) talking about historical and reference documents. The important part with those is the reference to actual facts. How reliable a book is means how closely what the book describes is to what actually happened or exists. If the book or document is referencing actual facts, then there's nothing that ten people can do that one person can't. The truth is the truth, regardless of how many people are writing it.
If the book is not referencing facts and it's merely presenting opinions, then having more might make the document more useful to someone who wants to see the range of possible opinions. But since the book is only referencing opinion, by definition it's not a reliable source for facts, so having more opinions doesn't make it any more reliable.
A translation is an interesting one, but a translation by a group of translators isn't necessarily better than one from a single translator. In some ways it can be worse, in that it tends towards an average quality.
But a translation is essentially an opinion on what the passage would say if rendered into the target language, which is why translation is an art. A group translation is the sum of a group of opinions on what the passage would say in the target language. As it's presenting opinions, reliability doesn't really come into it.
BobK
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Actually the Bible is more of an anthology than a collaboration anyway. When people collaborate on a project, including books, they consult with each other during the production. An anthology is a collection of loosely related stories usually sharing a common theme. Pretty tough to collaborate when the authors are separated by hundreds of years.
But as long as we're talking about documents and reference works and that sort of thing, @dxld, how about producing some actually relevant evidence in support of your statement of fact that there were a large number, say 600,000 or so males (not counting women and children which would roughly double the number), of Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt? Or withdraw the statement?
But as long as we're talking about documents and reference works and that sort of thing, @dxld, how about producing some actually relevant evidence in support of your statement of fact that there were a large number, say 600,000 or so males (not counting women and children which would roughly double the number), of Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt? Or withdraw the statement?
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@dxld I find it interesting that you identify yourself as Jewish, yet have referenced The New Testament and Jesus several times. Was Jesus not considered a false prophet, (and therefore, logically (assuming logic has a place in organised religion, for the sake of discussion you understand 
) a heretic) or am I too intoxicated to function properly (again). 
On the original topic, no, I do not believe in a God/group of Gods, I like to think if there were a higher power my life would be at least slightly tolerable while sober. If I did believe... well, I'd probably be in a much worse state of mind, rather than merely bored with and angry at my continued existence.
Yes, I know the second paragraph reads like I intend to harm myself or something, but that's not its goal, just stating that belief in a God/group of Gods would drive me literally insane. If others find comfort in their beliefs, good for them, even if I have strong moral objections to certain religious practices in the modern world... I'll stop now, otherwise this'll end up twenty times as long and be construed as a religious hatred speech.
Sorry if any of that broke the AUP, mods (this is why I haven't posted in this thread before, religious discussion makes me nervous of causing offence. Really nervous).
) a heretic) or am I too intoxicated to function properly (again). On the original topic, no, I do not believe in a God/group of Gods, I like to think if there were a higher power my life would be at least slightly tolerable while sober. If I did believe... well, I'd probably be in a much worse state of mind, rather than merely bored with and angry at my continued existence.
Yes, I know the second paragraph reads like I intend to harm myself or something, but that's not its goal, just stating that belief in a God/group of Gods would drive me literally insane. If others find comfort in their beliefs, good for them, even if I have strong moral objections to certain religious practices in the modern world... I'll stop now, otherwise this'll end up twenty times as long and be construed as a religious hatred speech.
Sorry if any of that broke the AUP, mods (this is why I haven't posted in this thread before, religious discussion makes me nervous of causing offence. Really nervous).
Scaff
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JohnnyJohnson
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I don't know.
Danoff
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My mind wandered onto The Lord's Prayer this morning for some reason while I was washing dishes. As a child in catholic school I was forced to recite that every morning right next to the pledge of allegiance (the post 1950s version that includes "under god"). I have it memorized, but I honestly had not ever really given much thought to the words before. I translate it roughly like this:
God,
Your name is holy,
May your reign extend across all mankind.
May your commandments be followed here as they are in heaven.
Today please give us the means to survive, as you do each day.
Forgive our sins, as we forgive those who have wronged us.
Do not lead us to temptation, protect us from evil.
We submit to you, you're awesome, both forever AND ever.
The first few lines are not really very interesting. Holy god, let's follow your commandments. Ok fine whatever that's part of Christianity. But then we get into the "daily bread" line where we're somehow supposed to praise God for our own work, and that's something I really hate about religion. Why must we absolutely refuse to take credit for anything in religion. Sure religion says God made the universe, and that he made us. But that doesn't mean that we're not working our butts off too! Why doesn't it say something a little more independent like "don't stop us from providing for ourselves", no that's not humble enough, we have to give all the credit to god. He's the awesome one who can create the universe without lifting a finger, but then again, if it's no skin off his nose and no extra work for him, he didn't really work very hard so I don't think he deserves a lot of credit for that. The whole thing is so submissive.
The next line is normal, forgive us, we forgive others ok.. but then we go off the deep end again. Don't lead us into temptation? Uh.... that should go without saying right? Are we really concerned that god is going to screw with us by leading us astray? This is not the kind of lack of confidence that a loyal subject is supposed to display.
The last part is just silly. Yours is the power and glory, uh... he knows. He's god. He made the universe remember? He doesn't need tiny insignificant human telling him how awesome he is. And if he does, and that sways him at all, then he's not the omnipotent god that we thought.
Anyway, silly prayer.
God,
Your name is holy,
May your reign extend across all mankind.
May your commandments be followed here as they are in heaven.
Today please give us the means to survive, as you do each day.
Forgive our sins, as we forgive those who have wronged us.
Do not lead us to temptation, protect us from evil.
We submit to you, you're awesome, both forever AND ever.
The first few lines are not really very interesting. Holy god, let's follow your commandments. Ok fine whatever that's part of Christianity. But then we get into the "daily bread" line where we're somehow supposed to praise God for our own work, and that's something I really hate about religion. Why must we absolutely refuse to take credit for anything in religion. Sure religion says God made the universe, and that he made us. But that doesn't mean that we're not working our butts off too! Why doesn't it say something a little more independent like "don't stop us from providing for ourselves", no that's not humble enough, we have to give all the credit to god. He's the awesome one who can create the universe without lifting a finger, but then again, if it's no skin off his nose and no extra work for him, he didn't really work very hard so I don't think he deserves a lot of credit for that. The whole thing is so submissive.
The next line is normal, forgive us, we forgive others ok.. but then we go off the deep end again. Don't lead us into temptation? Uh.... that should go without saying right? Are we really concerned that god is going to screw with us by leading us astray? This is not the kind of lack of confidence that a loyal subject is supposed to display.
The last part is just silly. Yours is the power and glory, uh... he knows. He's god. He made the universe remember? He doesn't need tiny insignificant human telling him how awesome he is. And if he does, and that sways him at all, then he's not the omnipotent god that we thought.
Anyway, silly prayer.
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Given how incredibly pissy he gets when people don't submit to his every command, and how easily he will burn down your city just... because, he sort of does enjoy being told how awesome he is. The prayer is pretty much an ego massage.
But I think the power and glory bit is removed from the Protestant version of the prayer. "Too Old Testament".
Agreed.
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I think it's the other way around...
@Liquid I was C of E educated and we definitely had "the power and the glory". From being 6 years old I stayed electively silent for anything other than secular repetition, which was a shame because some of the prayers had lovely words. Because it was a Protestant school I didn't get beaten
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Hm, I remember having to say the lord's prayer in primary school* and after a while we sort of skipped over the power and glory line.
*Yes, a state school. Shocking in one way, but not so much in another when you consider that the UK does not have separation of church and state. Our head of state, the Monarch, is the supreme overlord of the Church of England and several bishops still sit in our upper chamber.
*Yes, a state school. Shocking in one way, but not so much in another when you consider that the UK does not have separation of church and state. Our head of state, the Monarch, is the supreme overlord of the Church of England and several bishops still sit in our upper chamber.
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