Now if everyone who claims to be a Christian would at least try to behave like one things might actually get better.

Fair comment. When people put C of E down as their religion, most times it is because they believe in a christian way of life i.e. don't murder or steal, nor commit adultery etc. I would say that only a fraction of self termed Christians are actually practising ones such as publicly going to church etc. The rest choose to live by the basic principles of Christianity.

.

If it weren't for my Christian upbringing and overall western background I could easily be a follower of Buddism.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

But you could get the same effect from studying virtually any religion.

How about Buddism, Buddhist don't have to believe in God(s).

Would you start reading the Bible?
Would you turn to religion?
Would you turn to God?
Would you start studying the Bible in detail?
Would you continue to reject the Bible, even though you knew it was true?
Would you stand firm and proclaim your allegiance to Atheism?
Would you pretend that you always secretly believed the Bible?
Would you try to hide the fact that you may have promoted Atheism in your past?
Would you repent for your sins?

No to all of the above. The day it happens I'll talk to ET direct thanks very much. You are trying to pave the way for your big announcement Johnney, we can all see that.

ET did NOT write the Bible, it was an attempt by the scribes at the time to write down the history of the Jewish race. Far too much was being handed down by word of mouth and was becoming diluted and misrepresented, old manuscripts were going missing. The Old Testament is a collection of myths, sagas, and legends, and parish records that still existed. e.g. abc begat xyz and lived 100 years etc. The New Testament is based upon relatively modern first or second hand accounts of happenings at the time.

Revelations is probably the result of someone on an early LSD trip more than anything else. However there are those that say, just supposing that the ET visit has come to an end, just supposing that someone took a human on a quick tour of the mother ship, before returning him to earth and them departing. How would that human try to describe to others his experience, in words and methods and cliches of the time?

Think on that for this weeks homework. Class dismiss.

What he said!! Btw, I have read the Bible at least a couple of times from cover to cover. Now if everyone who claims to be a Christian would at least try to behave like one things might actually get better.

---

Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I read the bible many years ago, I liked the old testament, there's some pretty racy stuff in there. It reminded me of the "Mandingo" series of books, or other historical novels that cover multiple generations of the same family. In the new testament, the first four books were interesting and Revelations is cool but in the other books Paul just drones on like an old professor teaching a philosophy class.

A quote I heard many years ago, "The god of the old testament is the devil of the new."

If I found out that ET wrote the bible I'd be severely cheesed off. It would mean that the thousands of dollars I've spent building and running computers to crunch numbers for SAH would have been totally wasted.

T.A.

Terror Australis,
That was a refreshing and interesting message to read! Its interesting that you spoke without attacking the book.

Being completely truthful with you, i have great difficulty reading any of the Bible stories. Some of them are absolutely horrific, and completely turn me off reading any more of it. Like you say, some of the stories are so boring, they put me to sleep. But then other stories, like the book of revelation, i'm after reading it multiple times in an attempt to extract the proper meaning from the book.

All in all, i find the Bible very difficult to read, and i avoid it at all cost. But the prophesy needs to be decoded and extracted. For this i found a preacher on Youtube that extracts the meaning from the prophesy sections. Its not that i believe his interpretation, its just that he has a photographic memory and it allows him to extract the true meaning. Then i stack my own scientific interpretation on top of his religious interpretation to get an end result.

On the topic of SETI. I really don't care how we get to the end result of contacting ET. If it has to be done through reading the Bible, then i will do whatever i have to do.

John.

I read the bible many years ago, I liked the old testament, there's some pretty racy stuff in there. It reminded me of the "Mandingo" series of books, or other historical novels that cover multiple generations of the same family. In the new testament, the first four books were interesting and Revelations is cool but in the other books Paul just drones on like an old professor teaching a philosophy class.

A quote I heard many years ago, "The god of the old testament is the devil of the new."

If I found out that ET wrote the bible I'd be severely cheesed off. It would mean that the thousands of dollars I've spent building and running computers to crunch numbers for SAH would have been totally wasted.

T.A.

It's a couple of booster rockets falling.

It is a high altitude balloon. It is a single semi-transparent cylindrical object, the bright areas are sunlight reflecting off the sides.

---

It's a couple of booster rockets falling.

JG, your librarian is here.

Misfit,
Your a man of few words! It took me a while to decode your message.

My "librarian" as you put it, has always been here. He never left, and thats not him in the article.

John.

JG, your librarian is here.

---

me@rescam.org

I was wondering a little about what is the more important or most important thing when it comes to science as a whole?

Both astronomy, evolution and religion could be viewed as scientific fields, all of them warranting a scientific study.

Knowledge is based on known facts about given subjects and we are able to obtain such facts by means of knowledge as it is being learnt.

Because more information is obtained all the time in all these three subject field, we are seeing an evolutionary trend where our understanding or comprehension regarding certain things either quickly change in certain areas, more slowly when it comes to our comprehension of religion, perhaps.

Astronomy depends on the subject fields of mathematics and physics. Physics are dealing with everything from the largest to the smallest as well as those things in between (like time) which for some reason is hard for us to comprehend.

We are using the subject field of mathematics as well as the the other mentioned fields as well in order to put everything we know into scale and context and trying to both explain as well as understand everything we are dealing with within these subject fields.

Also we are attempting to merge three fundamental laws which are dealing with matter and particles into a fourth one which is dealing with energy. But gravity has always been associated with mass, not energy and time has been shown to come to a standstill at the point where mass is known to be having its largest concentration in the smallest area of space, namely the singularity.

If we were able to find other civilizations in the Milky Way or Universe, such achivements will not necessary explain or give us a solution about whether everything we know do exist when it comes to stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies is having a divine creator. Religion alone is not supposed to give us an explanation regarding such a possible fact.

My actual intent was not to say they were OK, or not. Just very intense stories, that don't all line up with the common view of what it said about the Bible. I apologize if my wording was not precise enough.
To me the roots of both the old and new testament are highly questionable, as well as the information contained in them.

I do find it strange that a book with so many different versions, or any of the other religious defining books can be taken so seriously given what we know today. Some of the stories may be based on events, and others manufactured to get a particular persons view across.

Observation and mathmatics provide a testable, and correctable path. Religions are not supposed to evolve, but of course they have ever since they were invented. One thing I have said before is that there is no mechanism to keep people on a particular message. Hence tens of thousands of different versions of just Christianity.

Steve

---

Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

like the rape pillaging and genocide that occurred in the name of god. Sounds shockingly familar to modern times. It seems the more things change the more they stay the same

Exactly, so it doesn't say much for the bible then does it?

It really makes me wonder why anyone worships it in the first place. You can add incest, sodomy, and rule by fear and intimidation to the content. God creating horrific acts, like torturing Joeb, killing his family just to get a rise out of him. Any modern person would be given a death sentence for a tiny fraction of what God is said to have done.

Steve

Edit: God even had to torture and kill his own son just to make a point, that in the long run changed nothing.

When you go on like this, you'll think you can add just about anything.
Where did you find in The Bible that sodomy is ok? I suspect you found no such thing, not even a change in opinion (what to punish for, and what is a suitable punishment may likely have changed in other cases).
I mean, you know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, don't you?
You do realize the people of Sodom were being punished for sodomy, do you not?
Then again, Guy will wonder in here and accuse the NARW and LGBTs of thinking sodomy is a-ok.
Last: it? So, you have the mistaken impression that people are worshiping the book? Certainly, your "it" follows the last proper noun in the quote just above your opening sentence.
Of the things stated here today, I find myself most closely aligned to OzzFan, at least with regards to the Old Testament, much as he also finds the most horrifying things there.

I'm not sayinbg the bible said anything is OK, only that it is mentioned, and part of the story. No, I also did not mean they are worshipping the book, only what it stands for. My wording was not as accurate as I had wished.

Steve

You can add incest, sodomy, and rule by fear and intimidation to the content. God creating horrific acts ...

Considering this and several of your other posts, you are not just mentioning, you are saying The Bible says many horrific things are ok.
Horrific things are indeed described in The Bible. Some, for lack of a better way of putting it, seem to be "horrific at the moment for the overall purpose of driving toward some good". Rather Machiavellian, now that I think about it.
In any case, I am sure you'll find things condemned in The Bible that you also condemn.

Agreed. And you start narrowing down the possibilities by carefully examining all evidence until you can come to the best approximation. This is what Evolution Theory is.

+1

Steve

---

Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

The "data" has led me to the conclusion that evolution theory is not the full story.

Perhaps you've misunderstood the data, or you don't have all the pieces of information.

Darwinian evolution theory is not the complete story

Darwinian Evolution is the best approximation of the events to our current level of understanding. If there's something you don't understand, I'm sure there's plenty of people that can help you out with that.

The case is not closed until we thoroughly investigate ALL possibilities using the best science we have. And yes, that means using science to investigate biblical stories. Its the only way to know the truth.

Agreed. And you start narrowing down the possibilities by carefully examining all evidence until you can come to the best approximation. This is what Evolution Theory is.

I agree with almost everything said here. The bible is a violent book. Many of the stories are not pretty. The bible is very graphic.

Look i think it was Ancient Aliens TV show suggesting that the book of Ezekiel described a UFO that started me reading the bible again. I never would have read it otherwise. But the book of Ezekiel really does sound like some type of UFO. And so do many of the other bible stories, they sound like ET encounters. All the bible stories start to make sense if this guy called "God" is not God, but a human scientist "playing God" with the people down in the middle east.

John.

What if "alien abduction" is an explicable part of human psychology, and the bible stories you refer to are little more than ancient examples of this human psychology?

---

I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

I disagree. I think suggesting that aliens are the basis of the stories of the Bible make even less sense. Sure, you could take pieces of the book and interpret them to sound like it was ancient aliens, but there are so many holes in that theory that it just doesn't hold water. You can keep forcing the stories to make sense by picking and choosing what you want to support your theory, but this is the exact opposite of science, which is to let the data bring you to the conclusion.

The "data" has led me to the conclusion that evolution theory is not the full story. And the "data" also tells me that the biblical story is also not the full picture.

As far as i'm concerned;
The Bible is not the complete story
and
Darwinian evolution theory is not the complete story

The "scientific community" don't have the full story. And neither do the "religious community".

The case is not closed until we thoroughly investigate ALL possibilities using the best science we have. And yes, that means using science to investigate biblical stories. Its the only way to know the truth.

John.

like the rape pillaging and genocide that occurred in the name of god. Sounds shockingly familar to modern times. It seems the more things change the more they stay the same

Exactly, so it doesn't say much for the bible then does it?

It really makes me wonder why anyone worships it in the first place. You can add incest, sodomy, and rule by fear and intimidation to the content. God creating horrific acts, like torturing Joeb, killing his family just to get a rise out of him. Any modern person would be given a death sentence for a tiny fraction of what God is said to have done.

Steve

Edit: God even had to torture and kill his own son just to make a point, that in the long run changed nothing.

When you go on like this, you'll think you can add just about anything.
Where did you find in The Bible that sodomy is ok? I suspect you found no such thing, not even a change in opinion (what to punish for, and what is a suitable punishment may likely have changed in other cases).
I mean, you know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, don't you?
You do realize the people of Sodom were being punished for sodomy, do you not?
Then again, Guy will wonder in here and accuse the NARW and LGBTs of thinking sodomy is a-ok.
Last: it? So, you have the mistaken impression that people are worshiping the book? Certainly, your "it" follows the last proper noun in the quote just above your opening sentence.
Of the things stated here today, I find myself most closely aligned to OzzFan, at least with regards to the Old Testament, much as he also finds the most horrifying things there.

I'm not sayinbg the bible said anything is OK, only that it is mentioned, and part of the story. No, I also did not mean they are worshipping the book, only what it stands for. My wording was not as accurate as I had wished.

Steve

---

Warning, addicted to SETI crunching!
Crunching as a member of GPU Users Group.
GPUUG Website

+1.

If the bible was written by or about aliens, surely it would have been more coherent than what it is. Aliens travelling to our solar system would be intelligent enough in not making their "book" too obscure!

---

like the rape pillaging and genocide that occurred in the name of god. Sounds shockingly familar to modern times. It seems the more things change the more they stay the same

Exactly, so it doesn't say much for the bible then does it?

It really makes me wonder why anyone worships it in the first place. You can add incest, sodomy, and rule by fear and intimidation to the content. God creating horrific acts, like torturing Joeb, killing his family just to get a rise out of him. Any modern person would be given a death sentence for a tiny fraction of what God is said to have done.

Steve

Edit: God even had to torture and kill his own son just to make a point, that in the long run changed nothing.

When you go on like this, you'll think you can add just about anything.
Where did you find in The Bible that sodomy is ok? I suspect you found no such thing, not even a change in opinion (what to punish for, and what is a suitable punishment may likely have changed in other cases).
I mean, you know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, don't you?
You do realize the people of Sodom were being punished for sodomy, do you not?
Then again, Guy will wonder in here and accuse the NARW and LGBTs of thinking sodomy is a-ok.
Last: it? So, you have the mistaken impression that people are worshiping the book? Certainly, your "it" follows the last proper noun in the quote just above your opening sentence.
Of the things stated here today, I find myself most closely aligned to OzzFan, at least with regards to the Old Testament, much as he also finds the most horrifying things there.