When do we cease to exist?

Doesn't the bible say, "go forth and multiply"?

RF has only partial knowledge. LOL

Why don't you speak plainly? Now you just sound butt hurt.

The conversation I had with that woman was pleasant, and we were both respectful to each other. I challenged her beliefs, and I think she probably stands a few levels above the average religious person simply for accepting the challenge and entering into it with honesty and integrity.

I did not agree with many of the things she said, but as a person she inspired nothing but respect.

That must be what, Crypto? Speak plainly.

For one there's big bang theory vs biblical creation. 7 days vs 13.7 billion years.

But this is only if you take the Bible literally. There isn't really any conflict between religion and science, except for where people fail to grasp the respective domains of one or the other. Unfortunately, none but the most educated people realize this.

Here is what Einstein though on this particular matter.

I'm sorry. You could be right.
I was just saying there may have been more going on

Yes, there may have been. I do not presume to know all her thoughts during our conversation. But she was a nice person. I've thought about that incident many times. If it really is the case that I broke her beliefs I do not count it among my good deeds.

All one need do is read Genesis 2:4 to understand the creative days were not 24 hours in length. The Hebrew word 'yom' can be of indeterminate length.
Add to that the larger unspecified time before the creative days in Genesis 1:1 and creation could have taken a kazillion years.

Good point. But doesn't this qualify as interpretation? Like I said, I think that there is only conflict between science and religion if one takes religious texts literally.

The Bible was not written as a scientific treatise. It was written so the least sophisticated of us would know why, instead of perfection, we have war and crime and disease and death. It also provides hope for God's eventual resolution.

But the writers themselves were not 'sophisticated.' They made too many errors and omissions. The contradictions should be self-explanatory.

They didn't have any Harvard educated writers back then. All of the Bible writers were flawed. But the message is not

I have to disagree on that. I don't think the bible was written with any specific goal in mind. It's a collection of texts that originated over several centuries.

Then, as you probably know, a council was held where the bible was compiled, and out of all the eligible texts and manuscripts, rather few were included. But this was, unless I remember it all wrong, a grand moment for Christianity, since before this moment there hadn't been one single unifying faith, but many conflicting ones, threatening to tear the movement apart from the inside.

Many of the catalogues were established long before the Council of Nicea.

BTW, the word 'gospel' means 'good news'. Jesus made many references to the OT in his teaching.

I'll have to come back to this. There is a pizza with my name on it .. ..

The command to kill your own children because they misbehaved or didn't show respect to their parents couldn't be called "good news" by any stretch of anyone's imagination. It's the parent's duty to teach their children right from wrong; not to kill them because god commanded it.

But was there widespread agreement? I seem to recall that there was not. There were many sects, each holding to their version. That's why the council was held in the first place, so that all the religious authorities of the many christian sects could meet and negotiate a common basis for their faith.



No he did not. He made references to the Hebrew Bible. It's what the OT is based on. But that wasn't Christianity. It was Judaism.

I didn't know you were famous, Romeo. By contrast, I am not. I am but the smallest straw in the broom that has come to sweep away your God defaming 'theology'.

With a little interpretation we might make something of it.
If we think of Adam not as the first human being, but as the first living thing. A single celled organism which then multiplied, just as God commanded.

And through multiplying and multiplying there were many.
And if some of the newer generations misbehaved (non-viable mutations unfit to survive) they died, as commanded by God.

Also, consider the idea that God made man in his image. Not the image of a man, but of a creative force. If we think of God as the thing that causes life to happen, some primal force embedded in the very fabric of everything, it isn't nearly so horrible.

But this is speculation. We could make similar speculations about Eru Illuvatar, the creator in the Lord of the Rings universe, and by the power of our creative minds it would all seem sensible and "true". The deciding factor being, of course, our creative minds.

The Muratorian Fragment dates to about 170 CE.
Might be spelled wrong. This is a tablet.
There are about a dozen or so early catalouges, essentially in agreement making up the Christian Canon. Whatever it was that Constantine had in mind at Nicea, it had more to do with politics than with truth.

Please explain what you consider to be the difference between the 'OT' and the Jewish Bible.