i'm looking to get english translations of the various works of God for my Nook, but i have no clue if there are different versions, or who authorizes what. i have the Catholic and King James bibles (sezs Authorized), but also want the Torah and Koran. is there a history book, or reference that states what's what?

hmm, maybe i should just check the Encyclopedia of Philosophy that i have squirrelled away somewhere....

maybe you should just stop believing in god like the sane people around these parts have

i regard them more as historical documents, being pretty much due the same kinda respect as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. those sane people ain't exactly right in the head, they don't have a clue that they don't know everything.

i hope those sane people have the slightest bit of evidence or proof?

or is not believing in god just another act of faith?

this is technically a thread about fact. i'm looking for information about various documents that have historical signifigance, but don't know how to authenticate what i'll be purchasing.

they have just as much proof that he doesnt exist as you do that he does, if not more so

i very well might be bat fluff crazy, farting in bath tubs and laughing my ass off, but we're gonna have to call that a scratch

(sorry dibs, i'll leave it alone)

6,000 year old documentation of eyewitness testimony that God exists vs what?

don't sweat it. i'm used to doing the leg work, i'll find the info eventually just didn't want to buy a degree to get there.

must be weird trying to explain why your religion has only existed for a few thousand years while humanity has for 10s of thousands.


religion is just mankinds way of answering the questions we dont have answers to. the progression of religion all but proves this fact.

that would be why the myans thought they had to sacrifice people to make the sun rise. they didnt know what the physics behind it was. we noe know, so that belief is kinda gone. same with the greeks and their polytheistic religion.

and now, with Christianity (im assuming you are christian, im sorry if im wrong) the same thing. where do we come from! what happens when we die! we dont have answers to these pressing questions, so your "faith" or religion provides them. you can also narrow it down to why events happen, like why did my dad get shot, or why did bob recover from his inoperable tumor. no answers, so religion is your crutch to the unknown.


now i am fully open to the fact that i could be wrong, as i agree that there is no proof either way. but to sit there, as a man of science like i am, and try to rationalize the existence of a supreme being..... it doesnt work for me.

i'm rubber, you're glue. whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.

i'm interested in the actual documents, well, the translations into english that i can read.

i don't care if it's all a work of fiction. i like reading fiction. i just want to make sure that i'm reading the right stuff.

"must be weird trying to explain why your religion has only existed for a few thousand years while humanity has for 10s of thousands."

that can be said for science and art as well, and does that lessen either of them? personal hygiene is another good one..

(and to answer your question literally, jesus didn't die fifteen thousand years ago..)

mayans were too busy with their aliens to put much real thought into the sun rising (or cloudy days, i guess)

so you pretty much disregard all past religions when yours was created. what will happen when Christianity is disregarded? what will the new one be!


if there was one god, and that one god created man, then that should of been the religion all along.

there is just too many holes in christianity for me to get into it. and i was raised methodist, church every weekend and sometimes on wednesday.

i'll likely be long dead, yourself as well, and between the two of us we'll know who was right all along :P

(i scoff at praying to the moon like you might scoff at alchemy)

You're an atheist? I thought you were in the South. Are you a social outcast?

i didnt say atheist did i?


id say more apathetic. i also said im open to the possibility that i could be wrong. im not up on the religious terms, but i dont think that falls under an atheists beliefs. i just dont care one way or another, but if forced to choose, i doubt a supreme beings existence.


and no, im not a social outcast. most of my friends, and dare i say generation, feel the same way i do.

Ah, Georgia is a strange southern state then, I spent a couple years in Tennessee and everyone my age attended church or was at least Christian. I would definitely say you are wrong to say your generation feels that way.

im not from Gerogia, im from North Carolina. and most of my friends from there feel the same way i do.

yep

It's all fine to regard ancient religious documents as historic, but common sense should lead a person to make interpretations on what is said. The notion that the entire planet was flooded by rain is scientifically ridiculous since water doesn't just come from nowhere so that sea levels can rise.

While I can't actually prove that the oceans didn't do that, Occam's Razor suggests it is much more likely that it just rained a lot, and the interpretations made by relatively uneducated people were not entirely accurate.

As for arguing religion itself, that is rather pointless. All beliefs are based on faith. Some faith systems are more simple and direct than others. Science is great and all, but philosophy is worth something too. What good is it to tell someone their beliefs are ridiculous. It's pretty uncommon to find someone who accepts that judgement and says, "Yeah, I'm pretty much an idiot. What do you think I should believe?"

It works better to accept a person and work with them with whatever faith they may have. If they decide to change, it will probably be toward the belief systems of other people who were most positive and encouraging to them.

your beliefs are ridiculous

i think what ford meant to say was,

yea, i'm pretty much an idiot, what do you think i should believe?


(not to call you an idiot, but the joke doesn't work without it :P)

IS THIS WHERE YOU WANNA BE WHEN JESUS COMES BACK?

the better question should be is this what i want to be wearing when he does?

it's nice that y'all are demonstrating considerable knowledge in an effort to help me, but i was thinking more along the lines of a list of credible publishers that i could make a purchase from.

Terror: one of the populist theories for the 'great flood' is the black sea area flooding when/if the bosphorous was breached

But yes, religious theories are fraught with problems like... which one is correct? Heck, which subsegment is correct? I was raised Catholic, and I'm pretty sure the prevailing theory of my grandparents was anybody who wasn't Catholic was going to die and go to hell. That seems suspicious to me. As does the theory that all non-muslims are going to do likewise. With so many religions, they can't all be right. In fact, that increases the odds that they are all wrong. Especially since so many originated so late in human history (6k years? we've been around for at least 250k+)

But as for publishers, I suggest the Pirate Bay they probably have some copies.

(the bible technically isn't under copyright, though by the definition of Jesus being alive, and copyright being authors/preformers life+50 years, it might still be; you can try to bring the copyright toll with you at death just in case)

but don't worry, if you're short he'll forgive you

what do i care if it's copyrighted? i'll send them a dang letter if i want their permission to use it in the odd event that i actually want to get something that i wrotedeth published.

it's copyright violation just to dl it, that's all

you live in a weird country.

You do as well I assume? are you not in the US?

<-- is Canadian

i dunno, but Canadian politics doesn't seem to hit our local news. course, we're probably not leaking info off of Canadian satellites in an attempt to find something to watch on TV.

lol

Who cares if Jesus is alive? He didn't write the Bible so he won't see a penny anyway.

i bet if the person who wrote the bible was still alive today they would be LOLing at what they created.

Have you tried reading Eliade? I believe that his work might help you. (and keep you occupied for years if you get serious about it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/...eneral_nature_of_religion

don't think i have, but i tend to forget who wrote what, assuming i can even remember what was written.

Give it a try. Both his scholar works and fiction novels. You'll also get a lot of (reliable) references and bibliography sources. He's not wikipedia; if you're interested in studying something about religions that's where you start.

i'll try, but it kinda depends on what B&N has for the Nook. hmm, studying? no, i don't study. don't like it when teachers yell at me. or maybe i do like it, that's why they yelled so much.

You don't study for your teachers, you study for yourself!

i kinda view reading as being different than studying. to me studying is what people do before tests, err, wait that's cramming, maybe.

well, maybe i just want them available for reference. they seem to get quoted alot.

i keep forgetting that history is linked to a written record. ugh. if it wasn't written down, it ain't history.

Art Scroll will have all Judaic religious works

yeah, looks like they do. i might want to think about turning a computer on long enough to search.

The whole concept of there are different versions, is true as politics gets into anything/everything, And all religion is political.

now the bible itself is not one book it is a collection of numerous books, put together to tell a story.
Yes, man existed for many years before the bible... Man only recently began writting, while we have some old I call picturesque/Symbolisms occurred pre-2000 BC,
The first Alphebetic systems (Consonantale , Semitic began @ 2000, and in Phonecian areas some time later (@ 1800), So Now the current bibles begin @ 1500 BC (and yes written language still developing greeks deside to add Vowels @ 800 bc.
So we have stries wriiten by various author over years with archaic and different writing many from verbal stories past on.

Consolidation Old testemnt begins @ 500 BC 39 Books brought together Hebrew.
Then 200BC Greeks and add 14 more
Then again greeks in 1st century start adding new Testiment books, and then effort to bring all the books together under 1 language: in scholarly order was done, by having a dozen languistics translate the old writings seperately over years of effort and then compare their translated differences, to settle on a final consolidated version, and in addition to the translation effort there also was the consolidation to leave it as a story leaving out some writings that were seen as less complete or so redundant as to not add anything that wasn't already include by another book, (yes there is still overkill of redundancies, and yes as many will argue they also were selective in removing political troubling pieces that might lead one to draw other conclusions then the way they in-charge wanted the storys told). this was finished @400 AD.

We then put it into numerous languages ( so re-translates, and numerous other rewrites over the years. ex. King James version) and so now you have the DILEMMA you ask for help, not to mention you want to throw in other problems like The Koran, and less problematic the Torah (as the Jewish books at least are close to the old testaments version of the same books.)

So like all the rest of the world pick a version and call it the REAL BOOKS, they all had political hands over the years translate, interpret, include and exclude as the Group doing the Rewrite choose. Though Historical the fact that excluded books match so close to New Findings, shows that the efforts actually did not stray much from the oldest writing found, and there hasn't been much significant that can be found to have been deleted.

why is it problematic to compare the Koran, Torah and Bible? thought they all were essentially the teachings of the prophets that God talked to.