Here you go: Gumby Jack.
(Wow, I just figured out that if I open JWD in Explorer that the paperclip picture attaching thingy works)
I found a big ol' fat lie again in there!
by gumby 179 Replies latest watchtower bible
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bebu
Let's see.
Jesus died in 33 AD, give or take a couple years.
The gospels were not written immediately after this. And when they were written, they were not written to evangelize non-believers but to record the events around which their faith in Jesus was based. The gospels were not recorded until about 30 years afterwards. 30 years. That's a long enough time to get every last detail twisted between 4 accounts. (And if I had been a source, I can assure you that such would have been the case. My memory is miserable with chronology. )
So, I'm sorry if I don't share your underlying assumption that for the Word of God to be "perfect" it must have a rigid 100% accuracy between texts. That kind of definition helps with cancer lab reports and the like, but God doesn't seem bothered with being a clincian for your sake.
Leveling the charge of lying is too steep, especially given the years between the events and the recording. Compare, the Book of Mormon, which has at least 3 different stories written by one man, Joseph Smith, of how he was visited by god/Jesus/angels for the first time, over 20-year's time. I think there is ample evidence there (and in the proven fraud of the Book of Abraham) to convict Smith of lying.
Or compare the writings put forth by the WTS, which claims Jehovah as its editor. Whether theology, integrity regarding the UN, an account of their own history (less than 150 years' worth) or Miracle Wheat, I can't trust the WTS/GB. I think I can easily suspect more than just common human errors here.
Studies have shown that even groups who watch an event give different accounts of it--such is the nature of real independent accounts. Eusebius is recorded as defending Mark's gospel by commenting that Mark was Peter's translator who "wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said and done by the Lord." God used jars of clay, not digital recorders.
Surely, historians would say that if all gospels were 100% in harmony, in every minute detail, this would prove almost conclusively that 3 of the 4 were frauds. So, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Gumpy, you haven't proven anything here to support the intense gloating. IMHO.
bebu
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gumby
AChristian,
John may have sent his disciples to Christ with this question, not so much for his own satisfaction as for theirs. John's disciples may have been reluctant to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, because he eclipsed John. Though John himself was glad to turn over his disciples to Christ, they may have been reluctant to leave him. Perhaps John saw his death approaching, and therefore wanted his disciples to become better acquainted with Christ, under whose guardianship he knew he would leave them.
See your words in bold Christian? I could do that all day long with the bible like you do instead of bash it. I personally do not like making up excuses for a murderous god who holds claim to the bible as his word. As for me changing subjects, or dodging my initial thread subject, I don't believe I did. Your explanation pretty much sucked is why I didn't address it, nor did it make a lick of sense. The author of John was a special pleader just like you are. Your above statements testify to it.
Read John 1 :35-40 Christian. Johns diciples (at least two of them) were right there next to John when John saw Jesus coming and told them Jesus was the lamb of god. Your idea of John having his diciples "see for themselves" since he was in prison by having them inquiring of Jesus, is truely sad and pathetic.
Bebu......your a little sweetie, but I think your ideas are a bit smelly also. Your comparing the bible to Mormon material and Watchtower material as far as having mistakes? Puhleeeeeeeeease! Bebu....were talking of a god inspired book god wants all mankind to have so they can have life by learning of their only savior... Jesus. Are we to think the almighty cannot control the hand of scribes? Would god have a book written for man, then let it be altered to confuse it's readers?
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a Christian
Gumby,
You wrote: I personally do not like making up excuses for a murderous god ...
God does not murder. Murder is the unlawful taking of innocent life. First of all God makes the law. So his taking lives is not unlawful. Second, God has never taken an "innocent" life. There is no such thing as a truly innocent life. From our births we are all guilty of sin. David wrote, "In sin my mother conceived me." (Ps. 51:5) So we are all born sinful. Because we are, none of us deserves to live forever, or for that matter none of us deserves to live at all. "For the wages of sin is death." (Rom. 6:23) Besides, the Bible tells us that God will one day restore the life of everyone who has ever died.(John 5:28) That being the case, God has never really taken the life of anyone. He has only interrupted some lives. Something He, and not any of us, has a right to do. Why is that? Because God gave us our lives and God has the ability and the stated intention to restore every human life which has ever been lost.
Job 1:22 tells us, "In spite of everything, Job did not sin or accuse God of doing wrong." In this Job set a good example for you, and for us all.
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gumby
aChristian....first of all, I'm glad you decided to stick around and slug this thing out
I realise it hurts believers a bit when ones downgrade the bible or the god of the bible. It also hurts unbelievers that others are still bound to something unbelievers feel is a sham.....we kinda get that way after exiting the borg ya know. Having your hopes dashed to bits feeling you have been duped makes a guy a bit sensitive.
God does not murder. Murder is the unlawful taking of innocent life. First of all God makes the law. So his taking lives is not unlawful. Second, God has never taken an "innocent" life. There is no such thing as a truly innocent life.
God does too murder and god breaks his own laws. God says 'a son shall not pay for his parents sins' yet everyone born from Adam......is paying for his parents sins.....a DIRECT contradiction of gods own law. God also drowned thousands of babies in the flood didn't he? Why.....because these babies had Adam as their forefather? Were these little babies "DESERVING' of being drowned? I thought god killed all because they didn't repent and listen to Noah? Can little babies repent and listen to an old man and make decisions off of what he said?
That being the case, God has never really taken the life of anyone. He has only interrupted some lives. Something He, and not any of us, has a right to do. Why is that? Because God gave us our lives and God has the ability and the stated intention to restore every human life which has ever been lost.
Did you just listen to yourself? God has never taken the life of anyone???????? He just interupts their life? Tell that to all the women and babies killed in chapter 31 in the book of 'Judges'.
Please tell me something. Do you think the average reader who read the gospels for the first or second or third time.....would actually come to the conclusion you did regarding 'Johns' story of where Jesus went after his baptism? Did not you yourself not have to "look that one up" in a commentary to figure out the seemingly dilema? Does god expect one to have to go to those extremes?
Gumby
Gumby
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a Christian
Gumby, You wrote: God does too murder and god breaks his own laws. If you tell your children they are not allowed to cross the street, are you breaking your own laws if you cross the street? Of course not. Parents are allowed to set rules for their young children which they are not required to obey themselves. For parents are older and wiser than their children. You wrote: God says 'a son shall not pay for his parents sins' yet everyone born from Adam......is paying for his parents sins.....a DIRECT contradiction of gods own law. Like JWs, you misunderstand why Christ died and who He died for. The Bible clearly tells us that God holds each one of us responsible for his or her own unrighteousness, not for Adam's. (Romans 14:10-12, 2 Cor. 5:10) You wrote: God also drowned thousands of babies in the flood didn't he? Apparently so. You asked: Why.....because these babies had Adam as their forefather? No. You asked: Were these little babies "DESERVING' of being drowned?
God gives us all life. And God has the right to take it away. Every day of our life is a gift from God. To some of us He gives only one day. To some of us he gives very many days. Human parents do not always give all of their children the same number of gifts. Neither does God. Our lives belong to God. He gave them to us. He has the right to take them from us. And He does. And seldom at a time when someone feels God's timing was fair.
Scientists tell us that our universe is about 14 billion years old. So God has been around at least that long. The Bible tells us God had no beginning and will have no end. Most Christians believe that you and I will also have no end. With eternity in view, I see no problem with the fact that God has deprived some people of a few years of life, years which He will later give them back, and then some. You wrote: I thought god killed all because they didn't repent and listen to Noah? Can little babies repent and listen to an old man and make decisions off of what he said? No, but their parents could have. The Bible indicates that the people of Noah's land were given plenty of warning that an "act of God" was coming their way. They were also told what they would have to do to protect their selves and their children from that act of God. They were also provided a means of surviving that disaster, an ark large enough to save everyone in Noah's land who could have repented and entered into that ark with their children but chose not to. You can blame God for their deaths. I blame their parents. I wouldn't be criticizing God about His actions at the time of Noah's flood if I were you. How many adults and children lost their lives in floods caused by tsunamis, "acts of God," just last month? Those people were given no warning, as were the people of Noah's land, and no means of saving themselves, as were the people of Noah's land. I think your reasoning in these matters is based on a JW understanding of the Bible. JWs say that God created people to live forever on earth in paradise. He did not. God created us all to live on this earth for only a very brief period of time. Genesis does not indicate that Adam and Eve originally had eternal life programmed into their genetic codes by God and later had their genetic codes reprogrammed by God in order to remove eternal life from those codes. Rather, Genesis indicates that Adam and Eve would have lived forever only if God had graciously given them eternal life from an outside source, "the tree of life." In other words, Adam and Eve were created mortal, with a dying nature, just like we all are.
So, since God created us all to die, He designed our natural environment to be contain many things that would cause human beings to die. Since God created us to die, he also created a natural environment for us which contained things such as disease, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, wild animals, and volcanic eruptions, in order to make sure that we would die. For all deaths are caused by something. The fact is, there is no such thing as death by old age. Everyone dies either as a result of some sort of disease, as a result of some sort of accident - natural or otherwise - or as a result of some violent act. So, God would have only created a natural environment which contained nothing that might kill us if he intended for us to live forever on earth as physical people. But clearly that was not His intention. God created the physical world in which we now live for a purpose. That purpose was to teach mankind some lessons, lessons which we will all benefit from for all eternity, lessons which have required billions of human deaths, some of which came very shortly after a person's birth.
I'm sure you will agree, that If there is an all powerful God, everything must exist as it does now because of that God's desire and because of that God's design. And that means many children dying as a result of natural disasters, some of which God warned their parents about, others of which He did not. Again, If I were you, I'd be complaining about the ones He did not give people warning of, not the ones He did. Myself, I complain about neither. For I understand that it is God's intention for this physical world to serve as a learning experience for all of us. So that after leaving this world we can all clearly see that mankind does need God, that we cannot get along just fine without Him, doing things our own way rather than His way. For our edification God has allowed mankind for many thousands of years to go our own way. Billions of years from now, when this earth is a cinder, we will look back on the history of mankind, people who were allowed to live apart from God, and never again be able to say to God, "We can do just fine all by ourselves, and without you."
You wrote: Please tell me something. Do you think the average reader who read the gospels for the first or second or third time.....would actually come to the conclusion you did regarding 'Johns' story of where Jesus went after his baptism? Did not you yourself not have to "look that one up" in a commentary to figure out the seemingly dilemma?
Actually I had no problem seeing that you were way off base upon my first reading of the verses and their context, without consulting any commentaries. The fact of the matter is, after doing so I immediately thought your criticism was so "off the wall" that I was considering making a somewhat derogatory comment seriously questioning your reading comprehension skills.
You wrote: Does god expect one to have to go to those extremes?
Though I did not have to consult a commentary in this case, I do not consider doing so to be going to an "extreme." Occasionally I read something in the Bible which I don't understand and I appreciate reading another person's take on the passage. After all, the Bible tells us that, "When Christ ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men. .... It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers." (Eph. 4:8,11) So I have no problem, and neither should anyone else, in occasionally consulting the opinions of one of Christ's "gifted" teachers.
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Morgan
Sticking my nose in....John 1:19-37 is speaking of John the Baptist. Not John the apostle (who presumably wrote the book of John). It is not a 'play by play' account of Jesus's baptism. When John the Baptist sees the Christ walking towards him, (v.29) he reiterates the account of his baptism, telling those who are with him that this was the Christ and, for these reasons/identifying traits,(vs.29-34). The baptism of Jesus occured at an earlier time. Jesus did go to the wilderness for 40 days, following his baptism(the Matthew account). This account, in John, happened after that. That's how I read the scripture, anyway.
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gumby
Gumby, You wrote: God does too murder and god breaks his own laws. If you tell your children they are not allowed to cross the street, are you breaking your own laws if you cross the street? Of course not. Parents are allowed to set rules for their young children which they are not required to obey themselves. For parents are older and wiser than their children.
Truely pathetic achristian....truely pathetic.
This reasoning is ridiculous. Your comparing parents rules to gods rules for one. The crossing the street analogy is because the child is too young, so the parents set safety measures. What if the dad crossed the street to meet a hooker......would it be ok for dad to do this but tell the son he can't be meeting hookers? Can dad set these rules and be correct in doing so? Can god come to earth and sleep with your wife because he's god and sets the rules....and expect you to understand and respect him if he did? Setting safety measures and setting up your OWN moral laws are two different things entirely.
You wrote: God says 'a son shall not pay for his parents sins' yet everyone born from Adam......is paying for his parents sins.....a DIRECT contradiction of gods own law. Like JWs, you misunderstand why Christ died and who He died for. The Bible clearly tells us that God holds each one of us responsible for his or her own unrighteousness, not for Adam's. (Romans 14:10-12, 2 Cor. 5:10)
Gee, I thought the bible said in Adam, all are dying. And....through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin. Your also dodging the scripture that says "a son SHALL not answer for the sins of his father...each shall answer for their own sin".You wrote: God also drowned thousands of babies in the flood didn't he? Apparently so. You asked: Why.....because these babies had Adam as their forefather? No.
Wow, that was a deep answer!
You asked: Were these little babies "DESERVING' of being drowned?
Your avoiding the question. Did these babies sin in that they deserved to die? You just said these children are not answering for their parents sin but rather from their own sin. How do babies sin exactly and WHY did god kill them? So then achristian....god can just CHOOSE to kill someone because he is god and can take and give life eh? You said life is a gift from god. Why would someone give you a gift then take it back? Soory bud, your explanations suck badly and so does your pathetic loser god. You can have the sick bastard piece of crap that he is. I'm done with you here.....your answers just make matters worse. GumbyGod gives us all life. And God has the right to take it away. Every day of our life is a gift from God.
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Bryan
bebu
30 years. That's a long enough time to get every last detail twisted between 4 accounts.
Sorry, but if the scriptures are supposed to be inpired by God. Then yes, they should be perfect... or at least close.
IMHO
Bryan
Have You Seen My Mother
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gumby
Bryan........the scriptures we now have were all once rejected at one time by the lovely corrupt church. The Catholic were guided by gods holy spirit to choose the canon we now have doncha know?
30 years. That's a long enough time to get every last detail twisted between 4 accounts
Special pleading and making up excuses for god has always been then believers way. I guess since the O.T. is 3500 years old, this explains why it is so full of bullshit then.......gods words get twisted up by his creation and he allows it to happen even though it it causes havoc. Right in line with the bible god eh?
Gumby