Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
DID GOD CHOOSE ONE GROUP OF PEOPLE OVER OTHERS AND VALIDATE SLAVERY?
ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, HE DID - AND BLACK PEOPLE WORSHIP IT
.ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE, HE DID - AND BLACK PEOPLE WORSHIP IT
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In response, I tell them that they can just call me a mindless heathen and an instrument of “Satan” if I have to buy into that, because it strikes me as pure lunacy and lacking in common sense from my point of view. You cannot use the Bible to validate the Bible, yet, Christians do it routinely as though it’s a perfectly natural thing to do.
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There are many reasons to question the veracity of the Bible’s claim to be the word of God, and one of the many reasons is it tends to share all of the prejudices of the people who wrote it. For example, it only acknowledges the people who wrote it as worthy of God’s interest. Did God only speak to them? It all but ignores women, and the people of other lands. Where is the book of Mumbulu, Nancy, or Chong, for example? They’re all but dismissed, because they were unimportant to the people who wrote and/or compiled the Bible. Do you really believe that God would select a “chosen people" over all others (For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are - Deuteronomy 14:2), or that God would validate slavery (Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ” - Ephesians 6:5)? I don’t think so, but according to the Bible, God did both.
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The fact is, the “Holy Bible” that Christians Worship today was both compiled, and “blessed,” by the Catholic Church, not God, and any book that disagreed with the Catholic Church was banned. What Christians refer to as "The Holy Bible," and what preachers run around thumping, wasn’t even compiled until almost 400 years after the death of Jesus. So everything in it is hearsay. In terms of years, at the time the Bible was compiled they were twice as far away from the life and times of Jesus Christ as we are away from the life and times of George Washington today. So in reality, they didn’t know fact from fiction, or any more than we know about whether or not George Washington actually chopped down a cherry tree.
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"For the first 300 years of Christianity, there was no Bible as we know it today. Christians had the Old Testament Septuagint, and literally hundreds of other books from which to choose. The Catholic Church realized early on that it had to decide which of these books were inspired and which ones weren't. The debates raged between theologians, Bishops, and Church Fathers for several centuries as to which books were inspired and which ones weren't. In the meantime, several Church Councils, or Synods, were convened to deal with the matter, notably, Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 and 419. The debates sometimes became bitter on both sides. One of the most famous was between St. Jerome, who felt the seven books were not canonical, and St. Augustine who said they were. Protestants who write about this will invariably mention St. Jerome and his opposition, and conveniently omit the support of St. Augustine.
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“I must point out here that Church Father's writings are not infallible statements, and their arguments are merely reflections of their own private opinions. There are always three sides to every story, this side, that side, and the side of truth. Whether Jerome's position, or Augustine's position was the correct position, had to be settled by a third party, and that third party was the Catholic Church.
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"Now the story had a dramatic change as the Pope stepped in to settle the matter. In concurrence with the opinion of St. Augustine, and being prompted by the Holy Spirit, Pope St. Damasus I, at the Council of Rome in 382, issued a decree appropriately called, "The Decree of Damasus," in which he listed the canonical books of both the Old and New Testaments. He then asked St. Jerome to use this canon and to write a new Bible translation which included an Old Testament of 46 books, which were all in the Septuagint, and a New Testament of 27 books"
(http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928064041AATOZUD).
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SO THE POPE HAD SPOKEN, AND THE ISSUE WAS SETTLED. THUS, WHAT CHRISTIANS REFER TO AS "THE HOLY BIBLE" IS NOT THE WORD OF GOD, IT'S THE WORD OF POPE DAMASUS I.
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So as I pointed out in a previous article, truth and common sense dictates that it's all nonsense. If a devout Christian born in Georgia had been born in Israel, he would be a devout Jew, or if in Iran, a devout Muslim, or if he’d been born in China he would be a devoted Buddhist. That clearly demonstrates that religion is not of God, but of man. People are actually socialized into believing what they believe. If God had created religion to guide us, would he have created so many of them that they would cause man to hate, brutalize and murder one another? I don't think so, not a loving God.
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So from my point of view, the Bible is pure fiction, and it was written and compiled by its day's equivalent of the Republican National Committee. God has absolutely nothing to do with religion. Religion is the "word of man," not God. So anyone who chooses to believe in walking dead men and talking snakes over the common sense that was bestowed upon them by nature (God), has chosen to give the word of man priority over God.
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God is whatever force, entity, or process that’s responsible for what we refer to as existence, so if we exist, God exists, regardless of whether God is a he, she, or it - but he hasn't said a word to nobody. The mere fact that we’re here to question God’s existence, however, proves God’s existence. But that’s all we know, and that's all we have to know - period.
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Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.