Uh-huh... I can't resist anymore...

Seth born when Adam is 130
Enosh born when Seth is 105
Kenan born when Enosh is 90
Mahalalel born when Kenan is 70
Jared born when Mahalalel is 65
Enoch born when Jared is 162
Methuselah born when Enoch is 65
Lamech born when Methuselah is 187
Noah born when Lamech is 182

What? And with no viagra??? And how old were the 'moms' - 11, 12, 13?

And Noah is 600+?

This is silly. I'm not buying into any of this.

Do or don't you believe in what the bible says, and still call yourself a christian? Does not the bible say the earth is about 6000 years old? So if you don't believe that, then how can you believe anything else it says?

This is an excellent point and one which has troubled me for years. If just one element of Christian doctrine or belief is so obviously either logically or scientifically flawed, how can one possibly just accept everything else as gospel?

Another such point is the imprisonment and near excecution of Galileo for advocating Copernican theory (the earth revolving around the sun and not vice versa, as early Christian dogma decreed). This genius was nearly murdered by the Catholic church for his understanding of what ultimately came to be commonly accepted science. This is just one example of religious zealots twisting reality into what often becomes a sad and needless demise for the innocent and others with too much common sense to blindly follow the pack.

Not wanting to be argumentative except when foiling bad science, isn't Adam, flood, Moses, etc. before JC? Muslims also consider that part of the Bible sacred, as do Jews.

So did God actually write the bible by his own hand? If he did, I wouldn't bitch about it. If he didn't, then it was written by humans.

A lot of stuff in the Bible was carried on through oral tradition.... there's lots of room for embellishment and such with that. Also, I don't think the Bible was originally written in English... another area for interpretation. And finally, people used allegories and symbolism to tell their stories.... I believe a lot of it is not to be taken literally... especially over thousands of years of revisions and whatnot.

"First there was darkeness.... then there was light...." ... much easier to say that than to tell people thousands of years ago about the Big Bang.

Just my opinion... well... actually .... many peoples opinion.


AK

I don't mean to target Christianity exclusively. These should only be taken as examples. All religions have their dark sides or so it seems.

What concerns me is the fact that there is so much pro-Christianity right now in the American culture and it appears to be having great effect on our daily lives through politics, education, etc. Understanding that these forces have at times been of a negative nature and detrimental to society would be a good thing to know, I believe.

The Nazis proclaimed themselves to be Christians. Many members of the Klan profess to being Christians. We all know about the Crusades. We realize how religions of all factions have been used as a tool to control the masses of the less fortunate. We see the problems within the preisthood today. We see multi-million dollar settlements being made to satisfy law suits against the Catholic church. Why wasn't this money used previously to help the needy instead of hoarded? Why were not the art treasures of the Vatican used to help the needy instead of being hoarded? Why were underhanded and shady deals made between the Catholic church and Italian government in association with the mob in the '70s and then swept under the rug when money was lost and leaders turned up murdered? This just goes on and on.

You can point to the terrorist cells in the Middle East and say that they are not really associated with the true Muslim culture but these acts are all said to be done in the name of religion. This is much like Nazi Germany embracing Christianity in the 1930's.

As for the origin and spreading of early biblical stories; I'm not surprised that each individual culture adpoted and accepted many of them over time and through translation or interpretation wound up with similar tales about their own evolution. The same could be said about urban legends today.

I believe the original bible was written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. I could be wrong.

What Andrew says shows the difference between someone who is able to get the real meaning of Christianity (or any of the world's great religions for that matter) and someone who isn't even able to scratch surface of it. If you only see the words and accept them literally at the expense of what your (God-given) five senses are telling you, then of course you're going to be stuck in the 1st century AD.

***
Buttrumpet, people have always abused religion. I forget the name of the serial killer they just caught - the family man - but he said he considered himself a Christian. Obviously, what the Nazis did and what he did are 100% the opposite of what the religion advocates. And while Karl Rove isn't a Nazi or serial killer even from my anti-war perspective, his shrewd manipulation of unsophisticated people with a vote was also quite ironic.

The point is that none of that is even remotely related to spirituality or the teachings in the religion. It's simply sanctimonious nonsense, thrown up so that anyone who calls it what it is appears to be against religion - as you saw happening to me here, which is frustrating and infuriating.

Are you concerned about fanatic Islam?

Which concerns you more?

Amen to that Nick. You have to wonder how Jesus would feel about today's thieving televangelists and the modern day Christians telling the rest of the world they are going to hell.

Which concerns me more? That depends. If I'm a doctor in an abortion clinic I guess I'm just as worried (if not more) about being murdered by religious Christian zealots than Islam extremists. I think any faction of extreme religion is dangerous and that's my point.