Absolutely no value without God

Without God the bible would be someone else's words either demonic or human.

The bible clearly states that God not only exists but explains why man was created, how he fell from grace and the only way back
through His ONLY begotten son Jesus Christ

Without God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit the bible would be a pack of lies....and lies no matter how they tickle the
ears are not worth following.

Not a pragmatist

The King James is a literary masterpiece and the cornerstone of western civilization. Every educated person should have at least a passing knowledge of the AV.

 

 

Agreed.

your post was no better than that of a clumsy child. Whose truth? Hitlers? Stalins? Pol Pot? perhaps Osama Bin Laden?

all real truth flows from God who created truth and allows us to recognize it through his Son our Lord, Jesus Christ...

Do the Iliad or the Odyssey have any value?

Nice pitch for objective morality. If I asked you if you had breakfast today would the answer be any different if God existed or not.

 

The Bible absolutely has value despite the existence or nonexistence of God.  BTW, you left out the very real possibility that there is a God but that being didn't write any "holy book" including the Bible.

That said, it has value as a moral and ethical guide and also as a look into the history of the people who wrote it.

nope i merely pointed out truth comes from God and without Him, anyone can claim to be the truth and we saw what happened when these characters acted out your thesis....

They have tremendous value despite the fact we today regard their background mythology as colorful but false. They deal with what it means to be a human being. The Iliad isn't so much about the noble wrath of Achilles as it is about his facing and accepting mortality in those we love (Patroclos) and one's own, and letting that knowledge ground you in humanity. If the Iliad is about men at war, the Odyssey is about man seeking to find peace after the brutality of war, about finding your human identity and place in society, which in the Hellenic world meant a man connected to his family, giving value to his community, justice to one's peers, and service to his country.

The background gods, titans, nymphs, ghosts, and other mythological creatures only better highlight what the shared human experience instead of obscuring the lessons.

If people just lived the "ten commandment" what a better world this would be. Then if they went the extra mile and "loved their neighbor as their selves" what would the world be like?

Koran = Bible.... NO!  To much hate for Jews, Christians, and non believers to have any real value. Remember it came after the bible. Anything good in it was hijacked from the Bible. If you follow the Koran you look like ISIS. If you follow the Bible you look like Mother Teresa.

Not much, aside from being the cornerstones of western literature that is.



 

Again, you don't answer anything, only more HERP DERP MY PERSONAL GOD (i.e. which God) MUST EXIST OR EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS AND TRUTH IS SUBJECTIVE. Is it the God of the Catholics, the Mormons, the Baptists, the Methodists, or the Jews? After all, they all believe different things about the same God, who "authored" the book or at least parts of it.





Furthermore, claiming to be the truth, actually being the truth, and being truthful are completely different things.






































 

J pat-

The adults HAVE been talking , now go back to the kids table where you belong...lol

Simultaneously warms my heart and wears the ignore button...





Fuckin' Thirteeners.

The problem is assuming the God of the Bible doesn't exist a very primitive culture with absolutely no understanding of the nature of creation created God in their image as the creator of a very small universe of which we are the apparent purpose. They got a lot of things wrong.

There is good stuff in the Bible, and some interesting history, but the worldview as a whole is not good, because it's wrong about the fundamental nature of the universe, and leads people to all sorts of folly. Giving that worldview divine authority makes things infinitely worse. Belief in inspiration, the infallibility of the writings of primitive men, and particularly prophecy are harmful and dangerous, the religions of the world seem intent on plunging humanity into the abyss over prophecy and will likely believe it's being fulfilled as they do so.

Prophecy, blood sacrifice, the book of Leviticus, all results of a primitive culture that doesn't understand anything about the world it inhabits, and powerful men using religion as a tool to control.

New testament is better, Romans obviously recognized the issues and tried to correct some of them with a Hellenistic mystery cult, kinder and gentler with more advanced morality, but still rooted in the same problems.

Mormonism is interesting in that it's a post enlightenment El worship religion that solves none of the problems.

Everything valuable in the Bible as a guide for life could be condensed to a Dr. Seuss book. A moral guide that has "don't covet your neighbors slaves" as one of it's primary rules, mentions slavery hundreds of times and never condemns it, is of limited value. The history it contains is interesting but obviously inaccurate if God doesn't exist which limits it's value.

Yup. I'm as atheist as they come but the Bible is valuable for reasons beyond faith and religion.





 

How mature of you.

Try not being so fucking condescending.

Admittedly I did tell him to either answer the questions or shut up and let the adults talk. I ignored him, let it go

 

As an atheist, I say it depends on your definition of value. By value do you me morality? Then yes. Everyone should try to treat others as they want to be treated and such. If you mean actual monetary value then it depends on if you like to read and what kind of books your into. I wouldn't consider it a good read so I wouldn't buy it. But others may pay up to $10 or so for a book that size.

I assumed your comment was in response to this

How can there be value in believing a lie?  If God exists, believe.  If God does not exist, believe that.

Too many people believe in that which can not be proven, or rather that which has been disproven.  Yet they persist in their false belief because they are emotionally invested in it, so invested in it that they will not even do the simplest research and persist in willfully believing a lie rather than letting the facts speak for themselves.

Does the Bible have value if there is no God?  How many non-Christians believe that The Golden Rule is the best way to live?  The Wiccans certainly do, even though that rule came straight from the lips of Jesus.  How much of the core of our legal code comes from the Bible?  Murder, theft, adultery, these are things that many in GD subscribe to, not for the religious value but for the practical value.  The list of practical life lessons from the Bible is endless.

Those were laws to set the Israelites apart from the neighboring nations.  They've served their purpose and are no longer applicable.

A certain 1500s unauthorized English translation has notes in the margin from the translator about wife-beating.  The Tyndale Bible, I think.

This. Lots of neat cultural tidbits in there, especially the Old Testament.

One of my favorite classes in college was about the Hebrew Bible.. It's crazy what you learn when you analyze the text critically.

there is a tremendous amount of wisdom in that book, whether or not there is a god.  it's a guide to living as much as it purports to be a roadmap of the metaphysical.

<Devil's Advocate>
Don't forget the 1631 "Wicked Bible" King James reprint, where a type-o leaving out the "not" from "thou shalt not commit adultery" got it banned and burned by the church. At least 989 of the 1000 copies anyway (11 are known to still exist).

That particular bible has an insane monetary value.
</Devil's Advocate>

Sure, if one looks at the Bible with knowledge/morals they already have beforehand (and has been written down long before the Bible even existed). See Christians defending slavery for ~1800 years using the Bible, etc.  People get to read the Bible as progressives now, throwing away the traditional interpretations for their new interpretations that never existed before. What caused such "new interpretations" to be needed ..... largely secularization. It wasn't from reading the bible extra hard.

I don't believe in talking pigs, but I liked and learned something from Animal Farm.

And I guess Charlotte's Web too, for that matter...

If the bible was a secular book, it would be regarded as the most factual of history books. Take the walls of Jericho for example. People have tried to disprove the works of the bible, and to this day, at least in the historical aspects of it. Have not been disproved. Take Sir William Ramsay's outlook on it.

And that's about it.

Your poll sucks: I'm neither Christian nor an atheist.

Not quite.  It's akin to the Odyssey, in that the city of Troy was found to exist.  The events in the book dealing with that city haven't been independently verified.

 

How can there be value in believing a lie?
Whenever belief in a lie results in better quality of life.
Which seems to be the case for most people - being social animals.

It's still an important work of fiction.

Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile

God doesn't exist and many people sem to fin value in it.

Good grief.