ChatterBank0 min ago
The More I Learn About The Bible, The More Amazed I Am.
206 Answers
Atheists read the Bible and find plenty to criticise it.
However it so cleverly written, that there are levels of understanding at so many levels in even the most simple texts.
Many texts have been misunderstood for years until contemporary events have unlocked them.
This is worth more than instant dismissal by atheists.
Open minds?
Evidence?
We have an Internet capable of satisfying all of our enquirers.
Give it a go?
However it so cleverly written, that there are levels of understanding at so many levels in even the most simple texts.
Many texts have been misunderstood for years until contemporary events have unlocked them.
This is worth more than instant dismissal by atheists.
Open minds?
Evidence?
We have an Internet capable of satisfying all of our enquirers.
Give it a go?
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Here's a short extract from James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. If you can find the rest, then enjoy!
'Hell is a strait and dark and foul-smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke... The prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, ... so utterly bound and helpless that ... they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it...
--They lie in exterior darkness... the fire of hell, while retaining the intensity of its heat, burns eternally in darkness. It is a never ending storm of darkness, dark flames and dark smoke of burning brimstone, amid which the bodies are heaped one upon another without even a glimpse of air...
--The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench... Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption .. giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again ... a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell...
-- O, how terrible is the lot of those wretched beings! The blood seethes and boils in the veins, the brains are boiling in the skull, the heart in the breast glowing and bursting, the bowels a red-hot mass of burning pulp, the tender eyes flaming like molten balls...
--The damned howl and scream at one another, their torture and rage intensified by the presence of beings tortured and raging like themselves.... They are helpless and hopeless: it is too late now for repentance....
-- The devils ... mock and jeer at the lost souls whom they dragged down to ruin. It is they, the foul demons, who are made in hell the voices of conscience. Why did you sin? ... Why did you not repent of your evil ways? ... Now the time for repentance has gone by. Time is, time was, but time shall be no more!...
You may read the sermon and the book in its entirety at Online Reader - Project Gutenberg.
'Hell is a strait and dark and foul-smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke... The prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, ... so utterly bound and helpless that ... they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it...
--They lie in exterior darkness... the fire of hell, while retaining the intensity of its heat, burns eternally in darkness. It is a never ending storm of darkness, dark flames and dark smoke of burning brimstone, amid which the bodies are heaped one upon another without even a glimpse of air...
--The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench... Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jelly-like mass of liquid corruption .. giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again ... a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell...
-- O, how terrible is the lot of those wretched beings! The blood seethes and boils in the veins, the brains are boiling in the skull, the heart in the breast glowing and bursting, the bowels a red-hot mass of burning pulp, the tender eyes flaming like molten balls...
--The damned howl and scream at one another, their torture and rage intensified by the presence of beings tortured and raging like themselves.... They are helpless and hopeless: it is too late now for repentance....
-- The devils ... mock and jeer at the lost souls whom they dragged down to ruin. It is they, the foul demons, who are made in hell the voices of conscience. Why did you sin? ... Why did you not repent of your evil ways? ... Now the time for repentance has gone by. Time is, time was, but time shall be no more!...
You may read the sermon and the book in its entirety at Online Reader - Project Gutenberg.
Naomi//If god wanted you to know him why would he make it difficult by keeping secrets? //
There is no mystery about God. He has given people his word, the Bible. In it you can find the answers to "the meaning of life", "why we grow old and die", "What happens after death" and many more. Including what people are like in these critical times. 2 Tim: 3 v 1 -5
There is no mystery about God. He has given people his word, the Bible. In it you can find the answers to "the meaning of life", "why we grow old and die", "What happens after death" and many more. Including what people are like in these critical times. 2 Tim: 3 v 1 -5
// they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it... //
erm bible readers - the James Joyce paragraph is meant to be a spoof innit?
of a hell-fire preacher
JJ didnt er believe it
o well I seem to be the only one to have read james joyce and understood it - back to your lecterns, boys and girls!
erm bible readers - the James Joyce paragraph is meant to be a spoof innit?
of a hell-fire preacher
JJ didnt er believe it
o well I seem to be the only one to have read james joyce and understood it - back to your lecterns, boys and girls!
Naomi//Do you never ask yourself - honestly - why those who have studied it equally as thoroughly as you have reach conclusions that are at odds with yours? Hence so many denominations....//
Yes, and the conclusion of the matter is, that they want to go their own way and not be accountable to a higher authority. The very same reason Adam and Eve chose to go their own way. And look where that has got us!!
Yes, and the conclusion of the matter is, that they want to go their own way and not be accountable to a higher authority. The very same reason Adam and Eve chose to go their own way. And look where that has got us!!
idiosyncrasy, //Yes, and the conclusion of the matter is, that they want to go their own way and not be accountable to a higher authority.//
But that really isn’t true, is it. People who cleave to denominations other than that to which you adhere are no less devout. I asked you if you’d ever considered the question 'honestly'. It appears you haven’t.
But that really isn’t true, is it. People who cleave to denominations other than that to which you adhere are no less devout. I asked you if you’d ever considered the question 'honestly'. It appears you haven’t.
//Yes, and the conclusion of the matter is, that they want to go their own way and not be accountable to a higher authority.//
Twaddle. I was a Bible believer for many years, I Didn't want to reject God, the Bible or my faith but in the end had no option but to jettison it, after some serious study and questioning, when it became evident that the Bible is flawed from start to finish and it was also evident that God was made in the image of man.
Twaddle. I was a Bible believer for many years, I Didn't want to reject God, the Bible or my faith but in the end had no option but to jettison it, after some serious study and questioning, when it became evident that the Bible is flawed from start to finish and it was also evident that God was made in the image of man.
It is a fact that there are conservative Christians who adhere to the belief, say on reading Genesis, that God created the world in six days because they are convinced that the Bible can never be wrong about anything, thus placing themselves on an unnecessary collision course with modern science, this to the delight of evangelical atheists who quote them as proof of the infantilising nature of ALL religious belief; an extraordinary conclusion.
The Bible is not a book produced at one time, it is an anthology of books and some of these books are themselves anthologies and have been translated and re-translated many times over a very long period time, and there isn't probably a single episode on which you will find all modern scholars agree. So the taking of any detail and purporting that it nullifies the whole is a complete nonsense.
The Bible is not a book produced at one time, it is an anthology of books and some of these books are themselves anthologies and have been translated and re-translated many times over a very long period time, and there isn't probably a single episode on which you will find all modern scholars agree. So the taking of any detail and purporting that it nullifies the whole is a complete nonsense.
So Khandro, going on that ^ load of verbiage, the Bible is not true (in a literal sense) but its true nevertheless?
Ergo, the Harry Potter stories must also be true, as is the Koran, the writings of Scientology, the Satanic Bible, and the Enid Blyton Famous Five stories??
Or is it only YOU that can discern spiritual truth?
Ergo, the Harry Potter stories must also be true, as is the Koran, the writings of Scientology, the Satanic Bible, and the Enid Blyton Famous Five stories??
Or is it only YOU that can discern spiritual truth?
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