Quotethanx david for sharing your views. personally i don't believe in god or any religions as they\'re currently [presented by humanity]. the more I learn about religion, the more it becomes clear that religious believers lack commonsense, logic and intelligence.
religion itself has inflicted [terrible horrors] on humanity, so much so, that it's difficult to believe and understand why any [decent moral person] could believe in god or have religious beliefs.
current evidence proves conclusively that [god and the bible] are both [fakes]. there is not one single matter discussed in the bible out of the many thousands of issues raised that has been proven true, yet many matters have been proven false. you don't really need to be a rocket scientist to deduce with practically 100% certainty that god and the bible are fake.
for me the bible is a very [dangerous book]. it\'s the biggest [load of lies] and codswallop ever [written by man], and i'm sure it will go down in history as the greatest load of [gobbledygook] ever to inflict such [traumatic mental and physical damage on humanity], but still today, some people sadly believe the bible to be true. that's very sad indeed. very sad.
if religious people are unable to apply [commonsense and logic] to develop a simple moral code to live by, then perhaps they could strip out of the bible the evil, murders, rapes, abuse, and all [traumatic] references. granted there will not be a lot left to read, but at least religious people may end up with a decent moral code to follow based on good, and not scare the living daylights out of [innocent] people.
i thank you very much for taking the time to post your ideas, yet i\'m afraid it won\'t make any difference on how i view christianity, god or the bible.
Try not to be as closed minded as many, but still not most, christians are.
I've read the bible, and know what's in there. Hell; I've read it over five times. The truth is: Yes, it was written by people. And people make mistakes. Yes, religion is of the people, and yes, people will try to abuse it, when they need to.
Take the Hebrews. The Hebrews were, at first, at war with.. Oh, everyone. They were travelling around, attacking other people, for oases, other people's goats, other people's people, and cities.
Their JHWH was a volcano God. A god of war. A god that smote the unbelievers. A god for the people.
Then came the whole Babylon deal. Babylon was kind of pissed off at those people waging wars on everyone. They captured the hebrews, and brought them into slavery. And here, religious leaders got thinking. About the world. Genesis was written, a book that looks as though it's solely about how everything came to exist, but there's a lot more to genesis than just that. It offered the reason for their babylonian oppressor to act as it has done.
Cain was in Nod for the murder on his brother. A murder commited because of envy, jealousy. God couldn't have with that, and sent the man to Nod, the place for contemplation. Only after Cain had spent a long time there, on his spiritual journey of contemplation, was Cain allowed to enter the World. Not paradise, not Eden, not the place his parents lived, but the World. And in the world, he met a woman, and started a new life.
Well, the Canaanites committed murder, aswell. And Babylon was their Nod. And from that moment on, the religion started to change. Suddenly, JHWH became benevolent, kind, loving, all knowing. Not the smiting child he was before that.
And yes, when Christianity arose, or better yet, shortly after, many mistakes have again been made. But it's not too late to see the lands Nod shining just over the horizon.
Because it's PEOPLE who do this sort of thing. It's not religion; religion is merely abused; it's their excuse to go around doing stupid things, things that harm others. But religion itself didn't do it. It was people who did. But the people who didn't need not be condemned to Nod like the people who did. Because the people who didn't know better.
All in all: There are sides to this story, sides to this opinion. But if you don't wish to be harmed because of your opinion, you'll have to be able to try and respect the opinions of others. Provided these opinions aren't harmful. Beneficial opinions should be sanctified, no matter what religion gave birth to them.