I'm going to steal this argument and use it on my rw xtian family members.

I was lucky, my own parents were smart enough to know that continuing to harangue me for not believing a word of it was not going to turn out well, so we settled on an armed truce.

What you need to remember is that stuff dinned into a child's head that the adult refuses to question doesn't have to make sense. It's what keeps them feeling safe in an uncertain world.

is the way to handle day to day common issues?

I can't share it, I really don't believe a word of it. However, I can acknowledge that it does have a few benefits for people who do.

soft spoken and benign appearing when their book has been and is quoted and used to promote some of the most hateful rhetoric on this planet. They are always so adept at pointing in another direction when being questioned about something that is uncomfortably true about what they have faith in. The bible was used to support some of the most vicious and killing slavery seen in human history. Black people bore the brunt of the hate caused by the cain and abel myth and the naked noah myth. The bible was used to keep women barefoot and pregnant and kept women from the sciences, arts and POLITICS. Reed is one hateful person under that thin veneer of civility. I have watched him for many years. When it comes to american bible fundamentalists I think, bob jones university and the southern baptist who comprise one of the largest protestant denominations. They are still notoriously racist. I was one for 20 years and they broke my spiritual heart. No, religion is the control tool of the ones with no religion. Faith is a spiritual matter, not religious. Just speaking for myself.

favorite marks.

The first concern Reed voices is the deficit caused by Dubya Bush's unnecessary wars of choice.

But Reed implies that social security and medicare are responsible for this deficit.

See where his mind is at? He is a mainstream lying Republican that could care less about the welfare of human beings unless they are affiliated with Halliburton or KB&R. The goal is to get FICA contributions into the hands of Wall Street investors (criminal) so they can double and triple game the system. See, there is nothing holy about Reed. He is a modern day snake oil salesman.

wasn't the old testament written by GOD?

Well, the dad is just a fictional character that they made up. I don't know about the son.

and upwards of 10,000 lies." Mark Twain

Thanks for sharing. Here's one in return.


"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination."

The laws in the Torah apply to Jews they do not apply to Gentiles thus crying to Christians on why they are not stoning women and children is stupid. Furthermore there are only 10 laws God gave for all to live and abide by, the other laws in the Old Testament start with tell the children of Israel so he is speaking directly to the Jews. I hate it when ignorant mouthpieces lump my people with Christians for anything.

New Testament? This would make him the same god of both the Jews and Gentiles? Or are you saying that the Christians should be Studying the New Testament and tossing out the Old Testament? Conservatives would not like that as they like the hell and brimstone of the Old Testament and are not actually followers of the teachings of Jesus.

I don't believe in the New Testament but even if it were true it does not matter, God held his chosen people to a hire standard thus Jews had more laws than anyone else. Gentiles do not follow the Torah because it's not required of them unless they convert to Judaism, the end. The Torah is very specific on who the laws applied too, it's why Jews did not run around forcing their laws on Gentiles that lived in Israel.

Furthermore some of our laws are actually compromises, Jews were tribal during a time period when you killed your children for looking at you funny and no one questioned it. God gave man free will, thus we can follow him or not. Because of this he gave us laws where we felt like we were retaining our old Tribal ways but in reality we were following his new ways. There were certain things he allowed the Jews to keep like being able to stone women and children but it first had to be approved by the elders and if you were found wrong like in the example of a woman's virginity you were screwed. Bill is citing an instance where a man who marries a virgin can say she was not and have her stoned. The problem is Bill is not saying what the penalty was for falsely bringing forth these accusations. If you accused your new wife of not being a virgin when she arrives then you go before the Elders and they would decide if she was or not. If they find she was not she can be stoned, if they find she was then you got to pay pretty much everything you have to her family and you are never, I mean never allowed to divorce her. Divorce was legal so even if your wife did cheat on you it was better to go the route of divorce than to be broke, stuck with her forever and laughed at in the eyes of everyone in the village because you were not man enough to hold your wife. It's why Jews would rather go the route of divorce over stoning, it's why we go that route today and it's basically a God out smarted us again technique that the Torah is full of.

is such a crock as it was humans, at the Council of Nicea that sat down and determined what THEY thought should be in the Bible. It was the Conservatives first attempt to try to dictate religious beliefs to the masses. They have been at it a long time and have had a lot of practice.

Christian Old Testament is word for word the same as our Tanakh, I would assume they would have rewritten that while they were rewriting the rest of their Bible to fit your imagination.

over the millennia, are political documents created by men to meet the needs of their peoples and times. What they share is a somewhat stable notion that rules are needed to order society and structure wealth. Depending on the time and peoples carrying the ball, this idea has morphed in to a variety of forms. Bottom line is that it is a collection of writings by men for men dating from the earliest eras of recorded history. These writings contain the legend of history, the superstitions of bygone eras, and seek to explain what man had no working knowledge of. The text has not been updated for two millennia to account for the new technologies or knowledge of the universe and world that man now holds. It is utter claptrap to rely on these writings as the be all and end all of what man is and can be.

"Studying."

And no THINKING Christian believes that the Gospels, e.g., with (alleged) authors' names attached, were "written (or dictated) by God.

I say this as a continuing questioning and questing lapsed Catholic.

BTW: "God" is a proper noun, so no amount of wiseacre-ishness would make a small "g" correct. J/S.

entire Bible) is an instrument written my humans in their effort to dictate to the masses what the masses should believe in. The proof is in the Council of Nicea when a committee of MEN came together to edit the book to their specifications. It is totally fictional piece of work. It just shows to you how many centuries conservatives have tried to shove their beliefs on everyone else as proven by the fact that they tend to follow the Old Testament far more then the New Testament as they don't seem to understand what the character of Jesus was supposed to be all about.

In my opinion, "God"/god/gods are man's attempts to explain the yet unknown in the world and universe around him. Thus diety/ies have tend to have been created in the image of man. Even the monotheistic traditions of the world assign human emotions and characteristics to the god they worship (e.g, anger or stretching out his hand, etc.). As man's knowledge has expanded, I believe the need for a diety to stand in the place of the unknown will decrease since we know that events or phenomena that were mystifying even a century ago can be understood when you are able to tease out the factors contributing to them.

stone."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery

I would like to see him have even the greenest of Rabi on his show and try that shit. He would get his ass handed to him so quick and look so dumb he would be working on his resume before the show ended because it would be his last.