In the recesses of the messes of my pack-rat beset house, I have found a bible.
Now, I own far too many books, and cannot possibly keep track of all of them, but I think I would've known I had a Good Book if I'd had one.
I haven't been to church since the last time I was forced to go at age 5, and my sister took her bible with her, so this leaves me wondering where in the 9 circles of hell did this bible come from?

It seems likely that one of these things (if not two or three of them) has occured:

1. God has found the time to give me a miracle to de-heathenize me
2. Local Bible-Belt chuch conspiracy to de-heathenize me
3. I stole it when I was stoned
4. I've had it all along, never knowing it
5. There IS a God, and his counterpart (the Devil, duh) has given me the book to try and show me how boring of a read it is.

If you have any confessions about why this bible is in my house, or just some ideas as to why it is in my house, I'm all ears.

But mostly, I want to know what I should do with it.

So, is this in reality me capitalizing on a strange occurence to finally get to start a poll? Maybe, but answer the important questions first, damn't.

The options on the poll were given to me when I asked some folks elsewhere what I should do with it.
So don't give me any ethical preachins eh?

#3 You had it all along.

I bet money you read it everyday. Even when you're stoned and drunk as hell you read it without knowing it. Or you're somewhat shizophrenic.

Well I say keep it, you could use it to stop a bullet one day. You never know, or you could throw it away in front of george bush. Thats a nice suprise for the president. Hmmmm I have one day you might wanna try but I'm not sure that you're man enough to do it or crazy enough.

It depends. What version is it?

^ roflmao - that is a very good point.

I bet your sister planted it there before she left or whatever... so you had it all along and she hoped you would find it one day and read it.

Personally, I voted "Try learning from the bible in the way it was meant to be used, as well as reading it". The bible has a lot of good messages but its like an uber cryptic crossword puzzle thing. Or even more accuratly its like the law - up for interpretation. And its not fiction like a lot of people joke about - its history.

I would say read it and think about it - but you don't like .. have to turn relgious since you read the bible or anything. Its just always good to see the world from different perspectives.

Some of it is actually fiction, to my understanding. Most notably, the book of Job.

The Bible has been historically proven over and over again. You can disagree with it all you want, but it is historical.

You don't have to be religious to read the bible. Nly since you're an aethiest I want you to go to a church and say something blasphamus. I want you to go in there and just do something you would never see everyday.

Which we all know would achieve so much. ^-^

Okay, Job is a historical fictional story. I won't say the same for the rest, but Job just doesn't seem like something that actually happened, and I've read that unlike most of the books in the Bible, Job is fictional. You couln't possibly believe that God would really make a bet that involved one losing everything he had, including his entire family. The book says that God let Satan kill all these people just so God could win a little squabble with him. Sure, it says that he regained his riches and thensome, but that could not properly replace the faimily and servants he lost. (Shoot, I feel like I'm quoting somebody here.)

Well, why don't you just check it out N.L.Y. The book of Acts in the New Testament isn't boring at all. It talks about all that happened after Christ resurrected...some incredible things that the Spirit of God did through a motley crew of disciples.

Oookkk...some guy really got swallowed by a whale and lived. Someone really built a boat and put every mammal, insect, bird, etc. on it and waited for the flood to go away...how has this come anywhere close to being proven? Maybe the New Testament is real, but the Old Testament is a bunch of mythology...

Actually, I'm pretty sure there's been some theoretical evidence regarding Noah and the flood. And if one does the research (okay, I read it all on this one web site that gave a couple other interesting theories), one could see how the flood would have been possible.

Jonah and the whale, is one of those that I'm gonna have to look into a bit before deciding. 'Cause I forgot where and how the story occurred. Although that is yet another possibility, assuming Jonah got stuck in the whale's lungs (I assume that the blowhole connects pretty closely to the lungs), which made the whale sick, which eventually beached, allowing Jonah to walk out.

I've read it in some magazines and heard from some news show. Some say they found something like it but need to determine if its real.

^ I heard that recently as well. Pretty neat. They also recently found the Pool of Siloam (or was it Bethesda? One of those two). And Draygon's theory for Jonah and the Whale sounds very good as well.

Back to the earlier discussion:

Well they say that Noah's Ark is located up on a mountain somewhere in Turkey, but oddly enough they won't let anyone go up there. I really don't know if it's truly up there - you'd think they'd allow people to go. Then again, Hell Hunter mentioned something of another Ark discover (I think that's what you mentioned). That sounds interesting as well.

Anyways, scientists have discovered that it's possible to be swallowed by a whale or to rather enter a whale a certain way (like into his lungs) and still live. This is the case of a someone trying to discount the entire supernatural case. It's not impossible, but the health conditions of Jonah would have really been messed up.

Just because someone personally may have never seen the supernatural doesn't mean that the supernatural never occured. You must have absolute knowledge to say that something absolutely did not occur, or something giving information of absolute knowledge (I.E. God); but if you lack absolute knowledge (tell me how many hairs I have on my head, if not, you lack absolute knowledge), then you cannot declare an absolute statement - especially not one based off of ignorance (I.E. I didn't see something therefore it did not occur).

On the other hand, the events in the Book of Job was not a "bet", it was a matter of Faith - Satan told God that if God were to take away everything Job had, Job would curse God - but Job didn't curse God, although he did question God at the end. God used Job as an example - also, Job was rewarded later with riches beyond his wildest dreams. Attempting to discount God simply because you don't "feel" the events occur. In the Book of Job, it wasn't a "little squabble." If it's a "little squabble" it wouldn't tie in to the other 65 books of the Bible like it did (eg. the Bible doesn't promise people prosperity, rewards may not always be on Earth, but in heaven, Christians should very well expect persecution). Just because one may question God doesn't mean it never occured nor that God should never have done such a thing (Rom. 9: 20-23). In fact, Job never did curse God.

Just to disclaim something God did because you don't agree doesn't mean the events didn't occur nor that God wasn't righteous for doing what he did -- also, God didn't ill Job himself either, Satan did.

If anyone disagrees with any part of the Bible, you are basing your interpretation on Autonomous reason, and if you do that, you then have no good reason to believe any part of the Bible whatsoever because you've put the Bible subject to your personal, autonomous beliefs. You can't pick and choose. Accept the whole or reject the whole.

Perversion, you can either hurl charges or choose to look at the historical evidence. Just because you may be ignorant of something doesn't mean it's not true. All you've done is discribed how you think it was "not" possible. To laugh at and mock something does not invalidate it.

Concerning the flood, there has definitely been signs of a flood near the Black Sea, where it was said to have occured. There's even traces of the Grand Canyon that make you wonder - was this really flooded at one time? But there are definite signs of flooding near the Aegean and Black Sea.

If anyone really wants to discuss this, e-mail me or PM me. Please, no hurling charges. If anyone wants to discuss this more thoroughly and is more interested, PM me. Or if you want, I can also link people to a large website known as Archaeology and the Bible where Archaeologists have found overwhelming historical evidence for the Bible (so much so that many Archaeologists have converted to Christianity after discovering all of this historical evidence).

But that cannot properly replace his family and servants who suffered and died just so God could prove to Satan that Job is faithful. It's such an extreme idea, which is why I don't think the story is anything more than just that: a story. There's a lot of things in the Bible I believe to be true. Job isn't one of them.Well, that certainly didn't stop Job from questioning God, did it? And I would think a potter wouldn't want his pottery to get damaged if it was important to him.But God allowed it, just to prove how faithful Job was.

Say you have a very well-behaved daughter that everybody likes. But some kid came up to you and said that she's only well-behaved because nobody has given her a reason to be trouble. Would you tell that kid: "Go ahead and mess with her, make her miserable. But I assure you no matter what you do, she will not throw out her anger at anybody." (And if you would, you're a mean parent and I hope you never have kids.)I'm pretty sure I already have done picking and choosing. I'm not going to blindly believe an entire book just 'cause it's considered holy (or the words, at least). There's nothing wrong with a healthy dose of skeptisism.

[Message edited by owner.]

I wrote a large post here for Draygone but removed it (probably because I'd be flamed, and 20 people would post here before I chance to come back and review the results).

I'll PM it to you (Draygone) if you really want to discuss this.

I wonder how many pages this thread would get if i mentioned Dogma... hmm...

Sorry, I didn't mean the history thing to cause any kind of argument... I don't absolutly know for sure or anything close if it is history or not - the point was more that its a good point of view to look into. Which seems like a good point given the fact that the mere mention of the three words "bible", "fiction", and "history" has caused some uproar.

*uproars*

*loudly*

(The reason why mentioning the three words "Bible", "fiction" and "history" causes uproars is because the Church is always under constant attack.)

Well some churches like the attention

Nah, I don't really feel like going any deeper into the conversation. It was off-topic anyway.