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I just thought I'd clear the air about a few things. I am quite outspoken about how I feel the Bible is a man-made bunch of stories (fairy tales, I've actually said) and that has rankled many feathers. Fairly so. So, I thought I'd clear the air. The entire reason why I feel the Bible is nothing more than a book written by men is, honestly, because I do believe in a higher power and I think that a higher power great enough to do what he give that entity credit for would be above much that is written in the Bible. The Bible may be an amazing text filled with no shortage of timeless lessons, but it's also filled with some pretty nasty stuff. There are, after all, instructions on aquiring and dealing with slaves. If you think about it, slavery is probably second in line to only marching Jews into gas chambers on the list of effed up things that virtually everyone agrees is horribly wrong. And the Bible not only does not condemn it, but includes an instruction manual on how to manage them. The bible got something that virtually everyone agrees as undeniably horrible, wrong. So, when I say The Bible is just a book written by men and someone takes issue. Are you implying that this bit about slaves is the official word of god? Wouldn't this god be big enough to see the fundamental injustice in that? I mean, take the constitution. Initially, it was no better in this regard, but at least we didn't pretend that it was the word of god. So, once we realized that it actually didn't follow it's own goals with respect to "all men being equal", we fixed it. But with the bible, since we have to pretend that it is god's word, we just have to ignore things. We can discuss other things like stoning non-virgin brides and other. less than noble things, but I think you get the point. And, maybe this god, being a big picture guy, realizes that he has to let evil happen, because of the free will thing. So, I'm not saying god should step and and stop these sorts of things, but give instruction? Advocate? What I believe to be a plausible situation is that men witnessed miracles and wanted to record them. But, being men, there was corruption, right from the get go. I'm guessing, just like the writing of the Constitution. I'm pretty sure there were some who thought slavery was messed up back then, but politics will be politics, so you've got to bend a little here and there. There were likely men who just wanted to get this thing done and bent a little. But they talk about false prophets and such. How do we know the people who were actually writing this stuff down weren't as well? So, when I try to diminish the "validity" of the bible, I do so because I'd like to give god an out. I do so because I'd like to say, "Well, something had to get messed up in the translation because you're way too cool to have said this part." But, once you do that, of course, you have to start wondering how much of it is god's word. Once you assume that god doesn't want you to own people or stone a non-virgin bride, what other parts are you supposed to ignore? Seemingly, whatever parts the man (born from sin) who speaks at your church each day says. Which, in a way, is fine. Again, there's plenty of lessons in there worth shaping your life by. But this is why I try to remind people that I don't believe the bible is god's word. Not because I think your religion is stupid, but because I think it's odd to attach something that should be as great as god to that tome the way so many do. And this doesn't mean I don't have faith, because I do. In fact, I don't think it's silly to have faith that many of the things in the bible happened. But, if they happened, they happened long, long ago. And all we've been doing for 1000s of years is repeating the story. That doesn't make it any more certain to have happened. Every single person who believes what happened in the bible was not there to see it. So their mass doesn't make the it any more creidible. It's still faith, which is fine. This is not like 20 people all watching a crime go down and being called one by one to the witness stand. This is millions of people who have all been told the same story and thinking that makes it true. So, when you say you know, you're actually lying. If you say you believe, that's fine. But that's why I say, "just because a fairy tale has been repeated for 1000s of years, doesn't make it true" I'm not saying you're an idiot if you believe it. I'm saying you're a liar if you say you know it's true. At any rate, sorry to go on, but I just wanted to fully explain myself. And, yes, we can agree to disagree about whether the stories in the bible are all true. However, I'm not actually saying they're not. I'm just saying that neither of us knows for sure so I'd appreciate it if we didn't enter it as evidence.