Flag priorities....

[Platapus]

Here is an interesting historical tidbit

As late as 1939, five states and the District of Columbia excluded the testimony of those professing a disbelief in God, and, in a dozen or so additional states, the testimony of nonbelievers was subject to attack on the ground that one's credibility was impaired by irreligion or a lack of belief in a deity.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

None of the New Testament was written in Hebrew. Since the book you cite was written in 1385 changes to the Gospel can only be counted as "after the fact" and are altered to meet the beliefs of the translator. That makes them invalid as proof for a discussion of the original text. A better argument might be to question how much of the quotations in the Gospels were said by Jesus at all.

Most of the NT was written by highly educated Greeks decades after Christ. There are no known Aramaic gospels. They are anonymous, the names Mark, Matthew, Luke and John were added much later by Irenaeus. There were possible 100's of different good news letters spread out among the nations and many like the greeks came up with their own based on passed down oral traditions and stories. They often differed greatly. Numerous NT books are pseudepigraphical works. As you know, books, letters, and later bibles were highly chosen and edited to fit the doctrine of the period. Almost all biblical factual scholars admit, if an original exist, we could never get back to it to know. But we do know the gospel story greatly evolved from Christ being maybe a great teacher guru of the day to God himself later.

[vienna]

Originally Posted by August

It's not absurd at all to a person who believes in God but then again those people are all just "thumpers" to you right? Seems to me that you and those sanctimonious politicians you mention have a lot in common.

Not at all. I bear no malice towards people of faith. Just as in politics, where there are varying beliefs in the proper secular manner of conducting Caesar's business, so are there in religious matters. Mark Twain once observed that man was the only creature with the one true religion; in fact, several of them. It seems there is no possible way to truly discern an absolute "true faith" and whatever tenets or morality it may encompass. There is a popular maxim, while in social groups, one should avoid the subjects of politics and religion. The same stricture should perhaps be applied to matters of state. Why, in fact, I do believe there was something about separating state and church in some document written by some people who are considered very wise, indeed...

I have known and discussed some of these matters with ministers, priests, rabbis and other clergy over the years and have found them and their views to be honest and sincere and I value the time spent with them; I tend to believe they represent the greater majority of those of faith. The ranting's of those such as the TV evangelists who tend to imply one cannot be a true American patriot if one does not believe as they do (you know, their particular version of the "true faith") are the ones I refer to as "Thumpers". Their insistence of imposing their wills on the whole of the population is repugnant and actually flies in the face of the teachings they so deeply claim to espouse. One wonders if Christ were to come to America today, what would he make of the "spokesmen" of his Word?...

I once read an interview given by Keith Richards. He was in a studio and the late, great sax player, Bobby Keys, was also in the studio. Keys was, at the time, a newly minted "born-again" Christian, and, as Keith would give his answers to the interviewer, interject a "Praise the Lord" or "God Bless", loudly. After a while Keith snapped at Keys to shut up. Keys was hurt and said to Keith, "Don't you love God?" Keith responded "I love God, I hate preachers". For some of us, it is the same: we have no animus towards any deity, we just find their representatives very often annoying and meddlesome..

[EDIT] I finished this after Steve posted his reply above. The stricture against oaths I mentioned was one the Catholic Church has in its dogma. The Biblical quote from Steve adds a pan-Christian view on the matter...


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