DonRamsay

Any reason for omitting Tyndale's first English Language Bible? It is widely understood that Tyndale was opposed to the Catholic hierarchy and did a far from literal translation putting his personal bias into it and the influences from Luther. Not the first to do his own version it seems. And it almost doesn't matter how distorted the translation was because the provenance of what he was translating from was very poor. Dead Sea Scrolls may be helpful but they are vastly incomplete vis-a-vis the multitude of versions of bibles out there. Even if there were a complete original, first edition of each of the multitude of essays that make up the various bibles, translating them into modern English would take a phenomenal amount of guess work. Every linguist who attempted such a conversion would come up with a different version. How you could describe the outcome as the "inspired word of God" and then require strict adherence to every letter, is beyond belief. But, as you indicate, the earliest Hebrew copy dates from around the Battle of Hastings and would has no reliable or known provenance. As a work of history, it is as wouldn't rate higher than folklore. And yet some people swear by it! And demand that I live my life by an instruction manual written for ancient, wandering tribes (meaning of "Bedouin") that had no knowledge or understanding of just about anything by today's standards.

80KIAS, Marco Polo is unknown in China and it is highly unlikely he ever got there. There is a bridge in Bejing called after him but that's just to suck in the tourists. His story was written as a work of fiction. Very entertaining story written in Gaol by a conman. more top class faith based research.

Got to enjoy the irony of an arch science denier (climate, evolution, Big Bang, carbon dating, age of the universe) attempting to use science to deny science. Next he'll be quoting Dawkins to prove JC could turn water into wine. Somebody shoot me!

No, we don't believe in evolution - we learn the scientific theory and consider the evidence that confirms it and accept that on balance it is a very useful way of explaining the evolution of life on Earth. Evolution is not dependent on a belief system. It is not dogmatic. It does not involve a mind being closed to new information for 3 or 4 thousand years. If a theory came around tomorrow with strong evidence that was peer reviewed and accepted by all (but the usual few religious nutters) then I would be happy to accept Darwin was wrong and if he were still alive he would be delighted to find a better answer than the one he came up with. Now, compare that to the immutable nonsense in the Bible - the universe was created in 6 days about 6,000 years ago on a Thursday afternoon just before beer o'clock. And anyone who says that ain't so is a blasphemer and is to be stoned to death. "Belief" requires irrational acceptance of something because somebody told you to. No, what it shows is that all human beings currently alive are descended from people who came out of Africa. We are all the same species. "Race" is a concept that has little or no meaning in Science. A group of white supremacists who misunderstood Darwin's work came up with a faux science "eugenics" which has about as much validity as the other notable faux science "Creationism". Eugenics theory was a simple extrapolation of selective breeding that had been successful in domesticated animals and crops. The obvious flaw was that caucasians have no supportable claim to superiority over any other racial group but that didn't stop Christians from continuing slavery of other races whom they considered sub-human. We share 98% of the same genes with Gorillas and some other great apes and it is hard enough to claim superiority over them.

Regards the genocide at Jericho, who charged, tried and convicted the children and babies of "thuggish" or immoral behaviour and decided that their crimes merited slaughtering them? And why would any civilised person celebrate such an act of utter horror as ordained by their God? And we are supposed to love a God that sanctions such a massacre? Not my idea of a kind and just deity. Yet your God is supposed to be perfect, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient well the one in the Bible seems to have the odd peccadillo or two to go with his super powers. We are talking of a collection of stories that wasn't translated into English until 1526 having been translated though the one language (Hebrew) over millennia and then through ancient Greek and Latin to old English and modern English. But no mistakes were made either accidentally or on purpose? Are all Bibles true or all false? Most of us would have difficulty understanding much of Shakespeare's writings without the footnotes even though it is barely 500 years old. Go back another five hundred years to the writings that are in the earliest English (like Beowulf - see below) and I promise you that they are unintelligible to a person who knows only modern English. The same thing happened with the evolution of Hebrew . . yes Hebrew did the unthinkable and evolved over time. There have been scholarly arguments over just about every passage in the Bible at one time or another. There are more versions of the Bible than I've had hot breakfasts. And yet it is the unequivocal literal word of God. And if it is not to be taken literally, who gets to decide what is literal, what is metaphorical and what is parable? And who gets to say the Tyndale Bible is more or less correct than the King James? It is well know that Tyndale put a particular slant on the English translation to reduce the power of the clergy that he despised. In England, it meant torture and death to be found with a copy of this the first ever Bible in the English language. Why? Because some people didn't like the translation or interpretation. For these reasons Bibles have little or no provenance. Yes Bibles, plural. And what about the New Testament? There were not only four there were up to 100 and what happened to the other 96? Destroyed because the early Church didn't like them. [ATTACH]47483._xfImport[/ATTACH]

What a sad, depressing, gnarly world you exist in GG, no wonder you hanker for something better in your next incarnation. I have been fortunate enough to visit every inhabited continent on this planet. I have met just about every kind of person you could imagine. The one thing I find in common whether it is up the Nile or in the back blocks of China or on the high Andes plateau of Peru - people are inherently good, kind, generous and funny. I've shared a practical joke with an Egyptian peasant on the banks of the upper Nile even though we didn't have more than a word or two of common language between us. Wealth or lack of it (apart from abject life threatening poverty) does not have any relationship to happiness or goodness - almost the reverse. Some of the happiest people I've met have virtually zero wealth but enough to live on and that is all they crave. I'm not saying there are no evil people in the world. Sadly there are a few. Many of those suffer from psychological or psychiatric disorders and/or were raised in a regrettable culture. Man has evolved a big brain so that he can survive better in larger social groups than just the immediate family. Some have put that big brain to work and landed men on the Moon. Some like Emmanuel Kant have thought deeper about existence than I am comfortable with. I see a world filled with an overwhelming majority of good hearted, well intentioned, generous people. That has been my personal experience. You see a world of sinners, people so inherently evil that even by good works they can't redeem themselves. You see everyone who does not share your beliefs as infidels destined for hellfire for all eternity. You tolerate this land of Sodom and Gomorrah only because you will be one of the chosen few to enjoy perpetual bliss in the next life. And how did you come by this depressing belief? Somebody told you that you should believe and you accepted their word for it unquestioningly. You are quite prepared to live your life on a user manual written for superstitious goat herders who through no fault of their own knew no better. People who knew nothing of the scientific knowledge that we are blessed with now. You would have adulterers and homosexuals, blasphemers and critics stoned to death if the civil law did not forbid it. I know great music and great art are come from the highest intellects but that anyone can sing or whistle a tune. Living ethically is rewarding. Having an open mind to all things is a joy and generates endless discoveries of new (to me) knowledge. And you think I should give up my world for yours? Shut my mind to Science when the scriptures appear to say the opposite as Galileo Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Bruno and so many others were required to do? Not in this lifetime, GG.

Good point Turbs :-). What was I inferring though was that I've spent so much time here trying to refute the indescribably inane without getting through that I could have been better occupied learning something that might actually make my flying safer me and those who fly with me and live under where I fly. But, don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed offering some logic to counter the mysticism and handed down superstitions. I have very much enjoyed (intellectually) the clever and often humorous posts of some. But, it is frustrating when a logical argument is met with an "argument" in response doesn't even rise to the level of childish bickering. Clearly, none of this criticism is aimed at your informed and deeply researched work which I have appreciated as much as anyone challenging creationism.

But, there's always room for one more joke: A doctor, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The doctor remarked, 'Well, in the Bible it says that God created Eve from a rib taken from Adam. This clearly required surgery, so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world.' The civil engineer interrupted and said, 'But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, you are wrong doctor; mine is the oldest profession in the world.' The computer scientist leaned back in his chair, smiled and said confidently, 'Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?'

And after 505 posts, despite some fun repelling nonsense, I know not one thing more about aviation.

"Demand"? that is a deliberate and spiteful twisting of words. I suggested in the softest of words that there was little to be gained by continuing the thread and that friendships could be damaged. How is that demanding that it be shut down? Apology from you GG required for that unkind distortion . "discussion of faith" is another distortion of what you want to happen. It has been said many times above that the objection is to religious indoctrination in one particular faith before a child reaches the age of reason (set by the church at 7 years). We have frequently written above that education about a range of religions could be useful at the appropriate age. On the other hand, secular, practical, logical ETHICS could be taught at any age to good effect. "Scientific Theory" has a particular meaning that is not reflected in the vernacular use of the word "theory". Only religion claims to have all the answers with no proof required. Science has a process for putting and testing an hypothesis and repeatability of the test outcomes. To help you see the difference, Einstein's writing on general and special relativity are still referred to as "Theory". However, there is no credible scientist who would ignore it because it was "just a theory". It is not fully explained to the extent that scientists don't know everything (only your god claims that ability). There is still plenty of work going on to come up with a unified theory of everything but the people who are attempting that stand on the shoulders of giants like Newton and Einstein (or Mrs Einstein if you like). And they do this work under a barrage of christian criticism for daring to think that not all knowledge comes exclusively from texts written thousands of years BCE. No person with a scintilla of genuine intellect could equate a scientific theory with a "holy atheist doctrine ". Even a linguist who has never studied science would understand the illogicality of something being both "holy" and "atheistic". Scientific method is the logical opposite of bigotry. And the only bigots facing religious people are people who are not of their particular persuasion of religion. GG, you still don't seem to be able to grasp the fact that there is no bible of atheism that requires all "devout" atheists to be ANTI-theists or anti-religion. I am not anti religion other than when it attempts to run my life or take it from me. Happy to be bound by the law of the land and, better than that, by ethics. I have never cheated on my tax return because I think that would be unethical - not just because it may be illegal and I could be punished for it. Where, GG, in wikipedia did you come up with that "fact"? A reference would be useful otherwise it is just propaganda. Name one or two atheist governments other than communists. Christians committed genocide against Muslims in the former Yugoslav Republic as ethnic cleansing (read religious purification). Christians fought each other in WW1 murdering scores of millions of people for "God, King and Country" - ironically, the same God. The leading Nazis were brought up in Catholic Bavaria. The Romans raped and pillaged across the known world but were a lot more religious than you as they had many, many Gods. The Soviet Union under Stalin murdered 10s of millions of people as potential political enemies not as an act of anti-religious persecution. And the extremely religious ISIL boys just murdered 32o children, women and men in Iraq because they were not of the same sect of Islam. Ain't religion a wonderful thing compared with atheism? Please, no more of your fundamentalist christian codswallop about all atheists being immoral, murdering swine. There are plenty of very religious believers in your God that are killing innocent people NOW because they don't believe in your God. We have the freedoms we have now not because of the Christian faith but despite it. Enlightenment has meant that in western democracies you can have any faith or none at all and not be persecuted for it as was done when Christian Churches held political power. Scientists (e.g. Bruno) don't get burnt at the stake now because they argue that the Earth rotates around the Sun even though that conflicts with the Church's reading of the scriptures. Why? Because the Christian Churches no longer rule non-christians lives and let's all thank God for that. I take that as seriously ill-informed, illogical and offensive. Apology required. If Judaism had Abraham as a prophet and Christianity carried Abraham over and Islam recognises Abraham as a prophet . . . how can you be arguing that Allah is not the God of Abraham? You seem to think that making baseless assertions and tossing in gratuitous personal insults is a form of argument. Well it may have been for your very christian friends in the Holy Inquisition but has no basis in literate, cogent argument. So you've read the "primary sources" . . . in the original 7th Century Arabic I suppose or perhaps just been told the story by a completely unbiased christian minister? No, that couldn't be correct, you have undergone a thorough study of the Koran under a reputable Sheik - what could I have been thinking? Point of the above is what I was fearing even predicting at post #104. We now have unholy division created not by differences on the thing (aviation) that introduced us and for which we respect each other's opinions but over myths and legends and gratuitous insults.

The adoption of BCE and CE by academia seemed a little unnecessary to me but it is an attempt by historians and scientists to recognise that BC / AD is a reference to somebody that only a small proportion of the world's population would actually recognise as having possibly existed and for whom the date AD of 1/1/1 is a stab in the dark. It is only known by reference to other calendars of the day notably the Roman Julian calendar. Personally, I'd have gone with an "absolute" date of, say 10,000 BC as year 1 being about the time of recorded history and worked forward so you don't have to do the mental gymnastics of count down to year 1 and count up from year 1. Should Year 1 have been year "0"? But, a five digit year number would have caused more problems than the day after New Year's Eve 1999. So we are, for practical purposes, stuck in the third millennium CE - get used to it. I don't judge anyone with a genuine religious commitment as long as the rules of their religion don't require me to do anything but particularly: believe the same stuff or be cruelly murdered; be sadistically murdered if I give up that belief; be tortured and murdered if I said or wrote something about their particular deity they didn't like (blasphemy); be slowly, brutally stoned to death for consensual heterosexual acts outside of a marriage to their rules. or be tortured to death for however many other things their "principles" demanded. These after all were the enforced rules of Christianity until recent times and are the current rules of a certain branch of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic "faiths".

Turbo, You would be close to the last person I know that I would use a mythical "Stupid" button for - if I were ever to be so crass. I should make it plain that I was feeling a little frustrated by those who do not do what you do - research and apply rigid logic to to their learnings and still keep an open mind to future new knowledge. A "stupid" button has no place on RecFlying as I did obliquely indicate. You and I have been known to disagree strongly on some key issues, but I'd be prepared to bet that we have a meeting of minds on a lot more things than we would disagree on. In the 228 posts there were some highs and lows. Some brilliant humour and some insightful argument. But there was also mindless trotting out of other people's reputed words from many millennia past with no attempt at understanding of those obtuse quotes or their veracity or provenance. And in terms of productivity, while it has been at times I agree a stimulating discussion, I doubt that anyone has moved one millimetre. My suggestion to terminate was that continuing the discussion was likely to generate little in the end other than ill will. Extremist, fundamentalist christians have no doubt lowered their personal regard for people whose opinions they previously respected. And it is hard not to view with great distaste and personal affront the illogical, unsupported assertions of the immorality, worthlessness, purposelessness and megalomania attributed to people who have not accepted as gospel any of the thousands of myths pushed on them by people who have forsaken reason for spiritual one-upmanship. (Turbo) To everyone's credit the heat has been managed and civility largely remains intact. But I still believe more damage has been done than personal enlightenment achieved. Perhaps I take it too seriously and should just enjoy the creativity? [ATTACH]47482._xfImport[/ATTACH]

Well, I just made the terrible mistake of catching up on the 228 posts since I last visited this thread. Mistake? I should have taken my own advice and Turbos and stayed away until Ian implemented a "really stupid" button - not that he would. A couple of corrections for those who weren't aware: AD is no more it is now CE (Common Era) and BC is gone as well now being BCE (yes, you guessed it, Before Common Era). For convenience sake we still work with the Gregorian calendar although some in the world haven't seen the need to move on from the flawed Julian Calendar. As many have said, not believing in something can not logically be described as a "faith". Somebody smarter than me said "An idea is not responsible for the people who adopt it". Apply that to Atheism and you can understand that we are not as a group desirous of a totalitarian government with us in charge. While there has been one famous form of totalitarian government that claimed to be atheistic (Communism) most totalitarian governments are based on religion. The Bolsheviks didn't want to control Russia to get rid of religion, they did it because they wanted to break the stranglehold of the Russian Royal family and the Orthodox Church. A prime example of a religion based totalitarian regime is the United Kingdom. It has an absolute ruler who is the head of the Church of England. Sound like Iran to anyone? ISIL? And, no, Nazis were not atheists, they were formed by a bunch of Bavarian Catholics and not opposed by the then Pope. GG, I am sure you would object to the lack of religious freedom you currently enjoy if Sharia Law became entrenched for all Australians. I am certain you would demand freedom of religion. By the same token, atheists would like your support to be free FROM religion. We are not asking you to give up your belief systems however weird we might think them to be. But we are asking that we do not have to live under your Christian version of Sharia Law sometimes called Canon Law. Religious instruction in schools is fine if it is taught in an unbiased way as comparative religions. But I doubt this is something that Primary School Children need to be exposed to. It is good that teenagers have the opportunity to learn about all the various forms of religion from Judeo/Christian/Muslim to Shinto, Taoism and even Scientology. How else can they be prepared to chose wisely to be or not to be religious? Unfortunately, GG you seem to have swallowed, hook line and sinker, some extremist Christian ideology that has no basis in common sense let alone science or logic. You appear from your writings to be rigidly prejudiced against anything anyone says on this forum that is not in 100% agreement with you and that makes it a waste of everyone's time debating with you. The only thing I would like you to explain to me is why your religion is the one true religion. Why is not Shinto or Hindu or even Scientology the one true religion? The one thing I would like you to take away is that the Judeo/Christian/Muslims are just branches of the same faith with the same GOD. Christians broke away in CE 1 and Muslims broke away about 700 years later. Muslims accept Jewish prophets as true prophets but simply claim Mohammed was the last prophet and that there will be no more prophets. But, Mohammed was the servant of the Judeo/Christina God when he founded Islam. Ask your nearest minister and they will confirm that for you.

This thread needs a warning like the one they have on TV . . . "This thread is suitable for mature audiences". I often wonder where they think they are going to find one of those.

I'd like the good rev to explain to me which of the 613 commandments in the Bible it is OK to ignore and which have to be obeyed. Yes, there are 613 not ten, there were never only 10. Could you imagine how heavy those stone tablets would have been? You'd think the old guy would have invented the iPad to save having to lug that much rock around.

Same difference.

My belief is that if the JC were to return to this Earth, he would be appalled beyond belief by what's happening in Palestine and by the obscene wealth of the Vatican and its Princes.

Regarding Religious Education, I thoroughly enjoyed mine and it was at least a small irony that of the three students who topped Religious Doctrine (I was one) at the High School I attended, two were already confirmed atheists. . Religious Education (comparative religions) would do a great deal of good breaking down the stupid and false distinctions between sects, schisms and belief systems. Trouble is, you would have to look long and hard to find a religious person capable of objectivity in presenting the subject. So, my vote is to forget religious instruction and teach pure ethics. I am strongly inclined to the small "l" liberal side of politics but am blocked from supporting the spendthrift pinko union dominated ALP and the blinkered one-trick-pony Greens which basically leaves me with the LNP. If only Malcom had not fallen for that idiot Gretch's story we might have a Liberal Party that was truly liberal and a lot less conservative and heavily lent on by the religious far right. Ain't politics a bugger!

Daffyd, While I have readily conceded even applauded the good that Napoleon did, it is hard to forget that he dragged half a million Frenchmen around Europe murdering and pillaging on the grandest scale and ended the short lived democracy following the revolution. He was in the end, about as "great" as was Alexander, the other "great" megalomaniac pillager. And his tomb in Paris, best viewed from the Eiffel Tower is an insult to the civilised world. Last time I saw it I was actually offended even if I didn't shout my objection from the top of the Tower. It also amuses me no end that Eiffel was born Bönickhausen and didn't change his name officially to Eiffel (after the mountains) until 1880.

Saddest thing about the school chaplains is that ETHICS is banned. Lets not give our kids an understanding from first principles how to behave like a decent human being. Instead lets fill their heads with fairy stories and learn to hate others for their fairy stories. It has gone to the High Court and been lost by the Govt and the law changed to make it work. It would be unconstitutional in the USA and I suspect it still is here. The one thing I admired that megalomaniac mass murderer Bonaparte for was his Code Napoleon guaranteeing separation of Church and State. I am in strongly in favour of freedom of religion but much more important, for the religious and atheist, is freedom from one religion whether it be Shinto, Islam, Christianity, Judaism - you name it. And, please don't give me that B/S about this being a Christian country founded on christian principles. We are living in the 21st Century not the 18th Century. There has been a great deal of enlightenment since 1770. The UK was dominated by a schism of the Catholic Church for centuries and it was illegal for Catholics to be employed in the public service until our lifetimes. Nobody here wants Sharia Law why should we have to put up with Church of England Law or Presbyterian Law. Why not Law based on what makes sense in the 21st Century and that passes the test of fair to all and ethical? To be religious or not should be a personal thing not something to require others to be impaled on your belief system.

I'm afraid I'm with Daffyd on the subject of Intelligent Design. It is just codswallop and I refuse to even debate such a silly notion anymore. People walking with dinosaurs, denial of every piece of geological science possible. And spurious arguments that no person that follows scientific method could ever accept. Evidence be buggered, just give me the writings of a bunch of goat herders from a few thousand years BCE. No.

John, truth is I don't want to understand it. It hurts my head to think about it It is at the leading, bleeding edge and I don't have enough time left to really get into it. It doesn't affect flying or MotoGp that I've noticed so I can leave it to my nephew who's into to it and have friendly arguments on philosophical crap. Don

Science has not / could not disprove the existence of God. The really fun thing about conspiracy theories is that they can rarely be exhaustively disproven the same as they can rarely be proven. Not that Shelldrake is into conspiracy theories. I doubt that Shelldrake's theories could be disproven or that a serious scientist would consider it worth his/her while to invest time into trying.

When the cunning french linguist, Jean-François Champollion, cracked the Rosetta Stone the Catholic Church tried desperately to have it suppressed. The problem was it proved that people had been around a lot longer than the 6,000 odd years that the Bible said that we had been on Earth. The Rosetta Stone helped reveal the detailed written history of the Nile Valley that stretched back thousands of years before Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and made a mockery of the Great Flood story. In the end the Catholic Church failed - again - in its desire to perpetuate ignorance and superstition in the face of scientific fact.

Turbo, There are some interesting archeological and geological finds over the years that indicate that some bible events may have actually happened. However, there is so little as to be utterly meaningless and even if something like that reported in the Bible happened, we don't know who said what to whom and who did what. The great tenets of judeo/christian/islamic belief systems derive from that very flawed document the Bible. It can't be literally read without seeming utterly ludicrous (world flood/Noah) and there is nobody on the planet who can say definitively what is literal and what is metaphorical even if Popes claim infallibility. Sectarian wars in Europe like the 30 Years War reduced the population of some countries to one-third of what it was before the war commenced. And that's just between Christians who claim the same holy texts as their guide. Nobody claims that the fabulous work done by one of the greatest scientists of all time is the beginning, middle and end of the story about life on Earth. But it is certainly a damn good start and the best, most rational theory available on this planet. That is beyond question in 2014. But that doesn't mean that the Theory is final - it will continue to be studied over the coming decades and centuries. I laugh heartily at the "transitional species" nonsense. Every stage of evolution involves transitional species. Go have a look in the mirror and you will see one. There are many examples of transitions in the human series over a couple of million years leading to homo sapiens. And, if you can look a Gorilla in the face and tell me that it is no relative of homo sapiens, then I can't help you.