(July 17, 2011 at 11:46 am)TheCarlisle Wrote: Time and time again, I hear that the Bible is wrong and a tool to brainwash. Me, being a Christian, don't fully understand the atheist's position. What do you believe about the Bible? Was it created for brainwashing people? Or was it created by people who truly believed that they were influenced by a god when there is none?
I personally believe that it is the word of God, and it's the only word of God we can base Christianity on.
Actually, the book you call "The Bible" is not one book - it's a collection of books selected by a committee called "The Council of Nicea" which met in 325 CE, and selected which of the assorted writings of Judeasm and Christianity were to be included, which not, and which were said to be "heretical". Furthermore, Protestant Bibles took out several of these books and labeled them "apocryphal".
So, the books of the Bible were written for a number of reasons - some political, some pseudo-historical, some relating to actual historical events such as Macabees (Macabean revolt - which also is described in Roman literature) although the books of Macabees have been taken out of Protestant Bibles as apocryphal... and Roman Catholic Bibles only have the first 2 chapters of Macabees, while Orthodox Bibles contain all four. Some of the people who wrote the books wrote them to control masses, some no doubt wrote them for spiritual reasons as they understood spirituality at the time, some are Law books outlining Laws for a group of people to live by, some are songs and poetry, and on and on.
Which Bible do you consider to be "The Word of God", and why do you consider those books, and no others, to be the "Word of God"? Are the Orthodox reading things which are not the "Words of God" and considering it to be so? Are the Protestants refusing to listen to some words of God? Are the Roman Catholics somewhere in the middle? How about the Gnostic and Coptic scriptures? Are they the words of God, or are they counterfeits?
Why did the Council of Nicea select the books they did and not others? Well, it's rather complicated. For one thing, they had to get rid of writings that were being read, and forbid their reading by members of the Church of Rome, which had by then taken over the Roman government, and keep them from reading literature from competing Christian Churches, such as the Gnostics, Coptic, Arian... groups which were called "heresies" and made illegal. So, in the style of modern dictatorships, they forbid reading books sympathetic with other viewpoints. Some were altered or portions left out as apocryphal, such as part of the Book of Daniel.
Discovery of the Nag Hamadi Library gets rid of some of the objections to some of these so-called "apocryphal" books, since there are now early manuscripts available, and copies of them are available to the common person... translations or in their original scripts and language.
Even in the early days of Christianity, Christians were not "known by their love", but rather by their strife.
