What good does religion offer the world today?

There are MANY instances where the New Testament biblical translations differ in massive ways.

This is why there are so many religious denominations.

Since there are no originals in existence one cannot say which translation is the best and where it may have been corrupted.

Then there is the issue of whether the Aramaic translations are more accurate than the Greek translations.

Scholars vehemently disagree whether the Aramaic was written first by the apostles before the Greek.

The prevailing opinion is that the Greek was written first even though Paul in the New Testament clearly states the Aramaic was written first.

Regardless of what was written first the originals were copied and recopied until the scribes began to take liberties in trying to "clarify" the text. The KJV of the Bible was translated only from one of the numerous translations where the Aramaic texts differ from the Greek in many respects. The Bible also (I think) states the apostles themselves saw to the translations.

Many of the errors are not trivial and consider there were no chapter names and verse numbers in the translations and no punctuation.

Things like this happen.

Luke 23:43 (KJV)
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

Comment: The punctuation was added to this by translators.
There is a problem here.

(The first unmanned Apollo mission to the moon blew up in mid air because of a misplaced comma in the software program.)

Verily I say unto you, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.

Or... Verily I say unto you today, thou shalt be with me in paradise (someday in the future).

Depending on where the comma is placed one's understanding of paradise is instantaneous after the death of the malefactors and Jesus, OR the other is that paradise is something that occurs sometime in the future.

The way the comma is supplied it is instantaneous, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.

Even though according to other scriptures Jesus was in the grave three days and three nights...

How could the malefactor be with Jesus in paradise on THAT day if he Jesus was sill in the grave?

Numerous times spirit is substituted for soul and in some places words simply appear that are not in any of the other translations in either language. (obvious additions)

We even have Josephus and other historians quoting these passages before the additions we added.

And then there is the apocryphal writings found that predate the translations and leave out entire sections (including the virgin birth and Jesus' death and resurrection).

Yet we are supposed to believe the word of God is "pure".

Psalm 12:6
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.

Comment: Well over time the words have become adulterated and in some instance they may even say the opposite of what they were originally intended to say. Who really knows?

The Old Testament has much less corruptions that occurred over time because of a numbering system the Hebrews used with their alphabet to insure fewer errors when copying.

The bottom line is the New (and Old) Testament cannot be trusted on surface value.

There is perhaps no possible way to get back to the original intended meaning of the authors.

Just live life with great love and hope for a better tomorrow for all living creatures.

...and then there is the Holy Spirit and holy spirit and Lord and lord...

These capital letters were added by the translators too.

Most times when you see the words lord or spirit you have to figure out in context who or what it is talking about. Often it is ambiguous.

You are of course correct about there being many interpretations of various parts of the bible. But being of no religious denomination and not having to fit it into pre-existing dogma, I have never found an instance where the meat of the meaning has not been discernable. In your example of the thief next to Jesus, the central message is that at any point in your life when you recognize the reality of God, you will be accepted. The 'day'? just trivia.

Even in 'this day' there is a plausible explaination. Death (of the body) is said to be nothing more than sleep. In sleep, there is no awareness of time so for the thief, if he awoke 3000 years later, it would seem like that same day to him.

And so on...

It was a surprise to me too when I finally read the book. I expected it to contradict much of what I had reasoned out myself as well as itself. I just haven't found any fundamental contradictions yet. I can only conclude that God must had insured that the central message was included and never allowed to be purged.

Interesting comment about the comma and Apollo 1, hadn't heard that. As a programmer I know the damage a single misplaced character can cause. That's one reason I have trouble with seeing such creative power in mutation. None of my typos or errors ever improved a single program. Granted, I haven't lived millions of years, so...

What is the greatest Bible verse?

"Without love for others, I am nothing..."

1 Corinthians 13:2
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity [love], I am nothing.

Comment:
Bible believer or not, without love, we are nothing.

I can't argue with that Cobbler

Umm... Amen..

Quite right, Rex.
What sort of love do you feel Paul was referring to?

Self love, feeling equal, so you are free to love others in a way that your own life and circumstances have designed for you do and be.

Without love what good is purpose?

The purpose is to love yourself and love others.

Not love others and be miserable yourself.

I think the Greek word used by Paul is agape, or principled love. Is that your take?

By "principled" love do you mean OT law?

What is evil?

I have come to the realization that just like I am not sure if God exists, I am also uncertain if evil exists.

But, I do know that bad people exist.

Bad people who use religion.

Sheep's clothes.

Wolves.

The pretenders who profess to be religions but simply use religion as tool to persecute others.

Religion works perfectly as such.

This is where reason comes in.

People need rules but these rules need to be reasonable.

The rules need to take into consideration the vast array and strata the we call the human condition and then take into mind our principles like liberty and equality, freedoms and “dreams”...

To have narrow laws impose because of fanatical and false hypocritical hateful dogmatic mythologies is nothing but travesty and a crime against humanity.

Are these religious people and their religion evil? They invoke and embody terror, a dark age and blind allegiance to a system, used by "bad religious people" to inflict acts of hate against those who dare to dream to be what they really are.

Bad people are also people who take liberty too far. There are the two extremes.

I see so many gods created by antiquity, I say, why not embrace them all, but take only the good from them?

Like our choice in life I see many people living their lives both good and bad and my choices are to take what is good from life and not the bad (if I can avoid it).

So then it comes down to standards.

It is in the very word "standards" the it embodies words like rules and laws and these imply virtues, morals and ethics...
It all boils down to one thing, bad religious people telling everyone else what to do.

Using gods and images to scare people into fear and submission.

We do not really have to think in religious architecture to survive in life.
Humans have survived in life for millions of years. Life has been surviving on this planet for billions of years. We see ourselves as the masterpiece of this planet and figure there must be something more evolved than us?

We see the vast and silent expanse between us and whatever is outside of our universe. There is time and only pure speculation. Is it forever and is it mastered by some intelligence?

Once again, we can only speculate.

Until we see the scars in his hands, or a burning bush or medusa shining in the reflection of a shield, our dream of knowing a super being are turned to stone and dust.

It is all merely speculation, it does not rain when God gets angry...

People do not get sick because they masturbate.

Evil spirits are not haunting us.

We are in a conscious wrestling match in the mind with good and bad thoughts.

Within the idea of "good and bad" it also embodies laws, rules, standards and ethics...

but we consider good and bad on evidence not on superstition.
The only time superstition is evoked is when people intend to use superstition to convict an innocent person, a "witch hunt".

Since witchcraft is also a religion, the witch hunters are also witches by their own definition.

They both use a supernatural being at the core of their rituals...
The witch hunters are witches also.

A non-witch is one who has a natural evidentiary view of phenomenon and miracles.

All religious people who have a deity are witches. they conjure ideas out of thin air that are whispered to them by their masters.

They use some sort of book or charm as their PROOF!

This is their soul stone.

It can be anything, a plastic model of Darth Vader, it can be a single phrase or mantra, a book, a thing like a mountain. river it can be a single word, sound or tone or unknown tongue.

These are the PROOF POSITIVE that their invisible god is true.

So they pray night and day to Darth Vader or even their favorite person, infatuation.

All because witches think there is something bigger than themselves out there.

I have to admit myself I find existence quite unexplainable.

But I do not also want to put "my own" explanations into the mouth of existence. rather I prefer I study and examine existence to the best of my ability and learn the true nature of my being.

So what if most of us are witches and believe in some supernatural being above (or below) ourselves? Are we being sincere? Are we devout enough?

Should we not be martyring ourselves for our gods?

Why are we wasting time just talking about it?

Well that would not be good.

Maybe if God had asked Abraham to sacrifice himself to prove his faith the Bible story might have had a different meaning.

Well many have sacrificed themselves for their gods.

They sacrifice themselves and take a bunch of other people down with them when they go. They drink Kool-Aid and hurl themselves from cliffs while they are handling a snake and shouting hallelujah!

The myriad if imperceptions are staggering.

It is only when we step back from "god" that we realize that we ourselves are alone, each of us are alone. We know only as much as we know and we will live our life until we die and that will be all we are sure of.

So the time spent dreaming should be well spent.

If you intend to find some sort of eternity be sure you are being ferried across the right river.

So there are two streams.

One is religion and the other is science.

They are like rivers and in some places they may converge but in many places they conflict.

What is interesting about religions, they will say the earth hatched out of a giant turtle, she had babies, they became the sun and many stars…

Science does not have stuff like that. Science has science fiction but science fiction is really religion, so they are witches too. The have their Klingon gods and Lord of the Rings....

Most everyone seems to be religions, we each have our own mantra.

What could all of this mean?

Why as are people so illumined towards this goal?

What is its purpose? Paradise? Riches? Or are they just bad?

What is it like to be bad?

I know bad exists. Bad is when a person hurts another thing.

We all know there is a lot of bad stuff happening all around the world.

We do not need bad people.

What made them bad? What was their mantra?

Guns, weapons or just plain anarchy.

Bad people.

Is there any hope?

Well actually yes.

When bad people do bad things, good people catch them and see that they are incarcerated so they cannot ever do a bad thing again.

It is the same way the body fights infection.

The body finds the infection surrounds it with healing agents that eradicate the infection from the body.

Cancer is when a healthy cell is fed the wrong information.

So where do we get information?

How do we get the wrong information?

We listen to the wrong stream.

When we should be listening to the stream of humanity and our own selves we are listening to some abstract stream and we become a cancer cell.

We become obstructionists to life and everything the body needs to function.

Because we are following Darth Vader, Superman or the Purple Leprechaun from Lake Lily Pad.

We are fed the wrong information.

What is the right information?

Graphs charts language numbers math geometry algebra chemistry biology physics astronomy... that is the stream of life. ALL things must be viewed through his lens.

Gaia, Zeus, fire dragon, water nymph...

Philosophy can also be a stream that collides with science.

You have science and religion and philosophy to acquire your information.

Whatever you put inside your brain you will have to justify.

Some things cannot be justified so choose wisely.

We know we can trust science having it verifiable for the most part or electricity would not work etc... relativity works or nuclear power would not work, math works or the New Horizon would have missed Pluto.

But we don't know if religion and/or philosophy work.

It is the religion and philosophy that the math is broken when the streams collide in confusion.

This is cancer.

The cell puts up a dementia of a fight, then dies.

This is due to religion because religion can easily break the bonds between that which is and that which is not. Once lulled into this security religion can start feeding the untruth mixed with truth. Frustration self-condemnation sets in a person becomes tormented by their God, ripped and torn by fear of being unworthy. They allow jealousy and rage to defeat them.

All because they felt unworthy. Who is worthy to stand before God?

So God always wins but the problem is the God is attached to many esoteric forms and ideas, these are then later carried into statutes and dictates.

So if God is a Barbie Doll then you can use that idea to carry out some heinous crime. Or God was a tormenting parent or relative, anything that is obsessive. God is a Pulitzer Prize so I will go insane at work.

This is where philosophy comes in and there are many warped philosophies.

Warped philosophy also produces cancer cells.

So don't be a cancer cell. View and weigh all things through the lens of pure science.

Hook into the stream of analytical evidentiary observation. Disbelieve all that does not have any proof. Look for that which inspires you towards making a "thing" that you may offer back to the world that will endure history because deep within that thing is something that is "good".

Bad and good are human values. It's necessary for society to have laws to control crime to live in some level of security.

Agape
Not Storge
Not Philia
Not Eros, a word that is not used in scripture.

Are you saying love is only 2000+ years old? Is that not a kick in the rear to all other species of life?

HMM.
No, I'm saying that Paul did not say that brotherly love never fails, or familial love, or sexual love. He said that principled love never fails. Can you see the difference?

Maybe, it was as tall as the Empire State building. LOL