The Bible gave us books.

I haven't seen any hate in this thread toward the Bible. What I have seen are outrageous claims by you that "the Bible gave us books" - a patently false statement - and your own defensiveness when people refute your claim. There were books since way before the Bible. There were printing presses before Gutenberg perfected his. Gutenberg printed other things before he printed the Bible. There really is no need to go on, it's all been said before and much better than I'm expressing it.

There really isn't much known about Gutenberg, the man... but here's a link to his hometown and a bit of history

http://www.mainz.de/gutenberg/english/zeitgum.htm
Have a nice day

And where do you think that sensitivity comes from? Why do you think there is a "negative" reaction to the topic?

First, you are misrepresenting what Buddhist philosophy says. It does not claim that we do not have souls -- that is a fiction. But don't take my word for it:

The difference is between NOT having a soul (your notion) and "not knowing one's self without enlightenment" (Buddhism). See the difference?

Anyway, lest we allow you to squirm off yet another hook, I'm going to quote your very words back at you. Posted yesterday (Wed.) at 11:08 AM:

And now you're dancing around some notion that Buddhists don't believe we survive death. Perhaps you would have been more accurate had you said "Buddhists believe mortal death is but one gate in the wheel of Life", but that's not what you said -- you said that, basically, Christianity is THE faith that suggests there is life after death. You said NOTHING about souls. You ignored Islam, Judaism, Mithraism, and a hundred ancient religions ... then decided to try to unpaint yourself from that corner by dickering over the beliefs of Buddhism. Reincarnation IS a form of "life after death", no matter how you want to spin it.

It's not working, Kevn. Stop trying so hard.


Unfortunately, nobody is ever able to report back that there's nothing out there.


Which I believe other people have admirably torn up as an argument already, no need for me to revisit the nonsense.


Possibly because the Bible is used as some kind of absolute source of Truth in these discussions when in reality it's merely a collection of stories of an ancient people's faith. It has lots of parables and some wisdom to impart, but as absolute, infallible truth I'd rather rely on a children's book.

Please, read the thread. The title of the thread is limited to a few words. Read the thread to see my real position. Or continue to flame, it make no difference to me really. Good day.

In other words, they believe in life after death, but are not Christian.

Which is what the whole point was.

Who is working hard? lol

That's the only sentence I felt needed a response, it made me smile.

You could say they believe in reincarnation, but not as self. No soul means no soul survives death.

"It follows that there cannot be a soul, but only the sequence of one moment giving rise to the next, constituting appearances with characteristic possibilities (human, for example, as oppose to animal, through the skandhas, aggregations). The no-soul doctrine is referred to as anatman. "

How hard is this? Splitting hairs again?

Who is flaming? It was and is an outrageous statement.

Being popular isn't winning. Winning is subjective. If I was concerned with being popular in an atheist crowd I wouldn't discuss the Bible, now would I?

My theory is that you enjoy winning un-popularity contests.

Indoctrination from public school perhaps... It's surely not anything occurring in these forums at present.

I see no excuse for being intolerant of any belief system.

lol

Welcome to the Atheist crowd

Briana Dawson

Even ones that have burned women at the stake, sent children to war and tortured whomever the local rumors said were heretics?


It's too bad your own specious positions aren't very funny. Still, as I predicted, yet another dodge from you.

No one ever died in the name of christianity !

The crusades,

The 30 years war,

The inquisition

Jean Calvin,

Salem,

etc.

oh wait ill take that back.

Can we say that Henry Ford gave us automobiles? Yes, books were around long before the bible was assembled just as cars were around before Ford's assembly line. I'm not going to argue theology, lord knows that's a hopeless battle, but history? Yeah, history is pretty set in its ways. Sorry, no matter how much you want to change it, it's there already. The Guttenburg press brought the technology into mainstream so that the illiterate masses could be educated.

Man, if only there was something like that for bloggers......

But we'rte talking about motives here. It would be a better example to claim that Henry Ford invented mass production of Automobiles so we could have Nascar. That's how much sense claiming Guttenberg invented the movable metal type wooden press to bring us Christianity would be.

Ford did it to make cars less expensive to make.
Guttenburg did it to make books less expensive to make.

Why do you hate NASCAR?

-Kiamat Dusk

I certainly agree completely. And we all know that NASCAR was born of bootleggers and rednecks - of which, Ford was neither. Anti-semitic, yes but true redneck, definately not.

This would be fine if similar intolerance were shown for the religion who is doing all of this currently. You know stoning of women still happens in Muslim countries, but I guess that slipped past your righteous indignation filter because, while hating the people running soup kitchens, homeless shelters, etc has become all the rage these days, hating the religion whose members force their women to cover from head to know, not get an education, not leave the house without a male escort, and whose members are prone to blowing themselves up on school busses and in crowds of children is simply not PC.

The people who burned witches and tortured rumored heretics were not following the teachings to which they claim to be adherents just as the jihadists are doing today.

Just because people claim to be doing something in God's name doesn't mean God ordered it or condoned it, nor does it mean that every follower of the religion condones it.

-Kiamat Dusk

Be careful. That was a little broad. Jihad was originally an internal struggle to find peace and harmony with god. It has certainly be corrupted in certain circles but to claim all Jihad is bad is incorrect. Just as not all missionaries murdered, raped and plundered their respective mission lands, not all Jihadists feel the need to blow themselves up.

I've been watching the blogs and I don't recall god telling anyone to invade any other country lately. Your god, my god, his god... they all seem to be pretty quiet now-a-days.

'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq', and I did." --George W. Bush