I'm hoping some one can explain this to me: What makes the Bible any more truthful than the Greek myths? They both depend on the reader's belief in special, immortal being(s). So what gives the Bible any more validity than Homer's Odyssey? Just wanted to get that cleared up.

Off hand i would say that the best answer for your question is that the bible is useful for starting fires. :D

There's nothing wrong with the bible, it's wrong with the thing how people interpret it. (speaking of EXODUS, new testament is manly pure fiction). And book burning is the biggest crime you can do, besides brainwashing(my oppinion).
Cheers!

When one has read 'Justine' too many times.....

Hollow it out and use it as a stash box......

Hollow partially, attatch catgut, and you have a musical instrument! Serenade your beloved!

Mech: Allow me to reply in BIG BLUE LETTERS!:

IT IS THE INERRENT WORD OF GOD! BLASPHEMER!

Id say that another good use for it is to find justification to torture and murder people who disagree with you. That seems to be the most common use anyway.

Oh yeah you cant prove its the word of god.

Originally posted by Neutrino_Albatross
Id say that another good use for it is to find justification to torture and murder people who disagree with you. That seems to be the most common use anyway. Yeah those were the times:) When genocide was legal, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh:):)
cheers!

The bible has many great uses.
Don't forget, you can use it to...

...hit people with! It's big and heavy!
...start fires! Doesn't work as well with laminated bibles though.
...justify absolutely anything!
...hold up that short leg on the couch.
...mix the pages with glue and make a paper-mache sculpture that mom would be proud of.
...rewrite the pages into a sexy murder mystery.
...recycle!
...save trees by not making bibles in the first place.
...get a good source of mindless quotes.
...rearrange the words to make god say "Eat fish and shut up."
...make long and boring movies out of!
...write notes in the margins on if you don't have a notebook.
...put a fake book cover on it in case you lose a textbook.
...crumple up the pages and use it as cheap packing material.
...tear pages out and housetrain your dog.
...line your parrot (or albatross) cage.
...yiff on.
...keep in the bathroom in case you run out of toilet paper.

Keep yiffing you crazy kids!

The bible is also good for...
~beating cats that are in heat!
~*Amber*~

SpyFox,

How dare you put Albatrosses in cages and make them defecate on pages of the bible. That is inhumane im starting a petition to boycott your posts untill you stop being racist against albatrosses. :mad:

Originally posted by Neutrino_Albatross
SpyFox,

How dare you put Albatrosses in cages and make them defecate on pages of the bible. That is inhumane im starting a petition to boycott your posts untill you stop being racist against albatrosses. :mad:

:D *rolls around on the floor laughing*
hmmm, a use for the bible?...

'I am the strongest man alive! watch as i rip this bible in half with my bare hands!'

I feel it is really sad how closed minded and rude some of you people really are...

In my opinion, the Bible simply put, the best book out there, ever (so far) :)

Anyone that sais the Bible is bogus, in my opinion, simply has not read it with an open mind. It is truly a genious writing.

Phsycologically, you can interperet anything in the Bible 100 different ways. It appeals to everyone, both the slave and the great ruler. It can be therefore used to organise people and bond them.

It inspires ideas in people and gives them reason to change into something they believe is better. This causes them to feel better about themselves.

It's usefull for rolling papers!

Originally posted by GRO$$

Phsycologically, you can interperet anything in the Bible 100 different ways. It appeals to everyone, both the slave and the great ruler. It can be therefore used to organise people and bond them.


It can be interpreted many difefrent ways just like fortune cookies or the crap you get from TV astrologists.

It doesn't appeal to everyone. It doesn't appeal to me.

It can be used to organise people. Like in the Crusades.

I agree Gro$$ the bible is very useful tool for oraganizing people. It was criticla for organizing the Crusades, The 30 Years War, and the Spanish Inquisition. Three of Christianity's proudest moments if you ask me. ;) If we want to branch out into Islam (which is almost the same as Chrisitianity) we get all modern terrorisim (except for the stuff Israel does, thats the Jews). Those are just some of the best examples of the value of organized religion if I wanted to I could come up with hundreds more! :D

It also can change people into something they'd rather be. It can change rather normal people into screaming fanatics ready to kill anyone who thinks differently from them. A useful change.

A paddle for a S&M spanking session in a motel! And afterwords, rolling papers!

(Note - That was not my idea. It was somone else's.)

I think I'm irreversibly damned now. Oh dear. :D

Organisation is good I think...

I once talked to an erderly philosopher and we got on the subject of war, and what good it serves. I asked him if he believes that war is good because it helps evolution, killing the weaker and letting the stronger exapnd....

He said that that depends on the definition of 'stronger'... in today's society, the stronger are no longer those that are physically stronger, not the ones that have more people (China), and not the ones that have more resources (Russia), but the ones that are best organised.

All religions are good at organising people for a common cause... and if they succeed, that cause will be thoughtof as good....

As for the Bible and MY belief, which some of you may not agree with ( I dont care if you accept it or not )... I think a race of being much more advanced than us passed by this planet a long time back, maybe they stop by evey once in awhile to watch, but last time they came, they saw how f-ed up the world was, how barbaric everything was, so they dropped a nice book on us: the bible... now, look at how we have advanced...

from 200,000 BC (this is when some estimate humans to have appeared) to now... we started counting time at the same time the Bible appeared, we started becomming more organised since the time it appeared.

Look at Russian history: people were barbarians, they killed their own families, the whole country wa split untill Vladimir Svyatoslavich, named he Great Prince, brought Christianity to Russia.

I believe the Bible helped us step over being scattered little organisations of people to being a interconnected world where I can sent information literally around the world and back to me in a matter or seconds.

I am going to go farther and say that the only reason you are on this board and we have computers is because of the Bible.

I am gunna love the resonses to this one ;) BRING IT ON! ;) :) :)

"I feel it is really sad how closed minded and rude some of you people really are... "

For those of us *not* familiar with the concept of humor...
Yes, believe it or not, I think the reference to using a bible to beat a cat in heat just *might* possibly maybe be intended to be humorous. But maybe not.

If you ask me religion is pretty rude as well. What, with all their "Believe in this religion or burn in eternal damnation". Funny how 100 different religions are saying that, and not one can be any more right than the next. It looks like no matter what you believe in, you still go to hell.:bugeye:

I feel it is really sad how closed minded and rude some of you people really are..

Gawd, I hope I wasn't as concieted when I was an agnostic. YIFF!

from 200,000 BC (this is when some estimate humans to have appeared) to now... we started counting time at the same time the Bible appeared, we started becomming more organised since the time it appeared.

The Bible didn't drop out of the sky. It evolved over time. See

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

http://orb.rhodes.edu/encyclop/religion/Bible/bible.html

Look at Russian history: people were barbarians, they killed their own families, the whole country wa split untill Vladimir Svyatoslavich, named he Great Prince, brought Christianity to Russia.

Have you never heard the story of his conversion? Probably false, but illustrative. He rejected Islam because he (Russian!) liked to drink, Judaism because the Jews could not possibly be God's chosen people, to him, because they had lost thier land.

Besides, he did much to unify Russia beyond converting to Christianity.

It gets worse.

I would wager that only 14 percent ( if even that ) of the Christian community alone acually knew the entails of their faith.

So now you've got thousands of little bunnies running around telling you whats right, whats wrong, and after a while, you just wanna swallow a revolver to make the bad men stop.

Of course, trying to determine the message of the Jesus, and balance out the whole love hoo-ba with the confusing concept of forgiveness, is, in itself, a task worthy of a God

:bugeye:

Now that we've seen how many athiest reacted to this question, other than fire wood, and toilet paper, the bible is the best tool to use as reference agaisnt theism as well. See this webpage,

http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/

Here you will really find what the bible is used for in an secular way. It is the best weapon against thiests.

Originally posted by GRO$$
As for the Bible and MY belief, which some of you may not agree with ( I dont care if you accept it or not )... I think a race of being much more advanced than us passed by this planet a long time back, maybe they stop by evey once in awhile to watch, but last time they came, they saw how f-ed up the world was, how barbaric everything was, so they dropped a nice book on us: the bible... now, look at how we have advanced...
Unfortunately, Chinese invented paper, gun powder, compass, and printing long before bible took step in China. And I think even today, the bible still rely on two of those inventions to extend its life.

And Gro$$ you do realize of course that the middle ages, the most religious period in european history, had less progress than any other. So much for Bible progress.

"For years, religion did nothin but divide"

Basic
Instuctions
Before
Leaving
Earth

B.I.B.L.E. by Killah Priest

Gro$$,

I think it is crazy that you mention how the Bible organizes and bonds people. Being that it is the same Book that Killed millions.

Peace

Check out my "The problem with religion and atheism thread". The bible didn't kill anybody, people did because its in our nature, as much a part of us as the sex drive. Humanity will never get along until they acknowledge that and make a conscious effort to alter our past behavoir.
In response to the question "What is the bible good for?" and arguments over those who have killed in the name of God we often forget the silent majority of those who adher to the various faiths of the world. Christians are people, and have their faults, but for the most part they are good people who are trying to live moral, compassionate lives. Church groups, missionaries, etc. provide a great deal of the charitable work done in this world. It's a shame that most people need a divine commision to help their fellow man, but if that's what it takes its fine with me.
Let us not forget that for most of human history organized religion and polictics were inseparable. This changed with the Bill of Rights and the seperation of church and state in the USA. My point is that religion or God has provided a crafty cover for those wanting to advance their own political interests. IMHO, with the exception of perhaps the Crusades, many of the great atrocities commited in the name of religion would have been commited even in the abscense of religion for strically political reasons.
The bible is an incredibly useful book, as all sacred texts are. Understanding humankinds spiritual musings is key to understanding human motivation as a whole.
Beyond that, the bible is a very valueable historical text.
Why is it more valid than the works of Homer? For one, he wrote hero epics, not religious texts. While the very early Greeks may have regarded those works as authentic accounts, by the time of "classical" Greek culture, especially in Athens, those tales were regarded as we might regard our folk tales, with great interest and love but not with religious faith.

But ythe thing is since god is all-knowing he knew ahead of time that his book would provide the excuse for countless deaths. If he really wanted to prevent it he either wouldn't have published the Bible or at least would have tried to stop some of it.

So my opinion will not be automatically dismissed, I am fascinated by all faiths and religions but owe allegeance to none. I do not consider myself an atheist or a theist.
The bible, nor any religious text, has killed anyone, except in one freak accident where the Bagavhad Gita fell on some guy's head(That a really bad joke)
People kill people. Not bibles, not even guns.

I, for one, agree with Starman Avatar on several points. I thank Xev for the web sites, I was very unfamiliar with the origins of the Bible or its writing. I am saying that the Bible is a book unlike others written in its time, it is one of the oldest book and still the most read, most rewritten, most analyzed, and overall most popular of all books. That right there makes it more useful than hitting people over the head...

Yes, i know its a joke, but as long as people can be offended by it, it is a bad joke. And i know a lot of jokes can be offensive, and they are all bad IMO, lots of bad joke out there... yes. But as long as you try to look at life from the viewpoint of everyone you meet, you will not have to make those jokes, and will respect God and their belief in Him as much as you respect your own opinion.

"I, for one, agree with Starman Avatar on several points. I thank Xev for the web sites, I was very unfamiliar with the origins of the Bible or its writing. I am saying that the Bible is a book unlike others written in its time, it is one of the oldest book and still the most read, most rewritten, most analyzed, and overall most popular of all books. That right there makes it more useful than hitting people over the head..."

Everybody in Hitler's Germany owned a copy of Mein Kempf. Like 1 in 20 read it.

The bible, nor any religious text, has killed anyone, except in one freak accident where the Bagavhad Gita fell on some guy's head(That a really bad joke)
People kill people. Not bibles, not even guns.

So you're saying that religious attrocites are actually manifestations of the darker side of human nature? That evil just dresses in the clothes of God's word? I agree to a certain extent. But:

A hypothetical: A religious text causes an evil act, by appealing to a person's goodness.
Let us say that we live in peace with the Weird sisters(these ones are nice, they leave Macbeth alone) next door, until one day we read a religious text that says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". Now we know that goodness is obeying God's word, so, our commitment to goodness neccesitates the killing of these witches. We invite them over for a BBQ.

In response to the question "What is the bible good for?" and arguments over those who have killed in the name of God we often forget the silent majority of those who adher to the various faiths of the world. Christians are people, and have their faults, but for the most part they are good people who are trying to live moral, compassionate lives. Church groups, missionaries, etc. provide a great deal of the charitable work done in this world. It's a shame that most people need a divine commision to help their fellow man, but if that's what it takes its fine with me.

That is not the work of the religion, by your reckoning it is the better aspects of human nature kicking in. And if we do need a divine commission, the cynical might say this hints at something less than altruism.