I’ve always thought that the problem with the Bible (or any religious text) should be immediately obvious to anyone with a working brain. That is…at best it is a human interpretation of the word of God. It is muddied, perverted, and twisted by all the human failings that we all suffer from.

Anyone who takes the time to actually read, or even *skim* (that’s the best I’ve done), the Bible will find hundreds if not thousands of outright contradictions. Everything before Jesus is smiting and begetting and thou shalt. It includes all sorts of nastiness about slavery and beating one’s wife appropriately. Then Jesus comes along, and its all forgiveness and turn the other cheek and tolerance. Jesus bathed the feet of beggars, and befriended a “sinning” prostitute, for heaven’s sake!

How can this all be the direct and true word of God? It obviously can not be. The Bible is terribly buggered up by all the humans that have tried to interpret his ineffable wisdom in the context of their own petty and sin-filled lives. There is lots of wisdom in there (and likewise in the Koran, and nearly any other holy book you can imagine), but you have to distill it through knowledge of the highly flawed people who had a hand in mucking it up.

“” Creation Science Museum just opened in Big Valley, in the western province of Alberta, in June. “”

Yup, we have them up here too

The bible (KJV), as much as I like to think it can be a good template for people who are too slow witted to know what the difference between right and wrong is, the problem is that people actually believe it is “god’s” writing.

The bible, whichever one someone wants to read, was put together by folks with a political and religious agenda.

Not just once, but slapped together by many different kings, monks, priests and author’s over a period of almost two thousand years.

Who knows what the “original” bible even says, and no matter what it says, it is still just a book.

I will refrain from making any comments about the Koran, for fear of having my house targeted by a suicide bomber.

( It is interesting to note that American dictionaries have pages of words with slightly different meanings derived from the root “evangelist”, almost none of which are recognized by Oxford. )

Now, I have read the bible, though not thoroughly and certainly can’t claim to have studied it… but I can’t seem to recall the chapter on physics. I must have missed that part

I wonder how many of the people who pursue the Intelligent Design concept and promote it as an alternative to scientific method have actually thought through their purpose. Does everyone really need to believe in God for the Rapture or whatever it is called to occur? I thought that there was a lot of unbeliever smiting and such going on in the whole second coming thing, which would imply a healthy dose of unbelievers to be …smitten

But then again, I don’t study this stuff. I have occasionally thought I should read the Bible, the Koran, and so forth, so I could understand where the thinking comes from. But it seems that so many influential religious people make stuff up as they go along: trying to take a scholarly view to understand the basis for their beliefs would, if I’m right, be pointless. That said, it has always seemed to me that there is a lot of wisdom in the Bible and (from what I’ve seen) the Koran- it is all the damn humans who choose to misinterpret or interpret literally only certain passages that screw things up so badly.

They feel that this has caused most of the ills in present society ( because everything was perfect back in the 1850’s right? ) and causes those that are “led astray” by such ideas to suffer here and in the hereafter.

But even more to the point, the core of these people, believe that we are all held back from heaven because some of us do not submit to God they way they do. These are “millennial” groups that believe the entire purpose of life is to prepare for the imminent coming of the Messiah (1st or 2nd.) Of course, when He doesn’t come, they need to find a reason, and that reason is people like you and me and our “bad” ideas.

So these core group of people consider it their holy duty to infiltrate school boards, and get rid of “Dawrinism”. If they have to misrepresent themselves, outright lie, and ruin the lives of others … all is forgiven because they are trying to bring heaven to earth.

It bears noting that this is *exactly* the belief of the Taliban: That heaven is attainable here and now if only they can get everyone to display proper faith and submission to God.