kwikster, on 06 July 2010 - 08:46 PM, said:
Personally I do believe in God and Jesus. This being said ponder this for a moment, the Kuran and Bible share many similar stories, yet have differing names for God. It is my considered opinion, that many religions simply call one god by many names. Whether it be God, Allah, Buddah and so on. I know, I'll likely see a bit of flamage on this but I digress.
As for the Bible, yes it has been translated many times and thus much of the contents are likely skewed a bit. The language it was written in died centuries ago. The problems with tranlating anything is it usually is subject to interpretations of a select few. These "experts" have a general idea of what was written. All a translator is is an interpretor. If you go to Mexico for example and don't speak spanish, can you know if the interpretation is correct? Same goes with any work translated from another language. I remember a simplistic experiment from when I was young. Gather 10 or so people. Have them stand a bit apart. Write down a short sentence, so you know the original phrase. Whisper it to the next person with the instrutcion the do the same. Continue on around the room. Have the last person say it out loud for all present to hear. Then read the original statement out loud and see how much it changed. You'll be surpised. This is what happens during translation more often than not.
As for the Bible, yes it has been translated many times and thus much of the contents are likely skewed a bit. The language it was written in died centuries ago. The problems with tranlating anything is it usually is subject to interpretations of a select few. These "experts" have a general idea of what was written. All a translator is is an interpretor. If you go to Mexico for example and don't speak spanish, can you know if the interpretation is correct? Same goes with any work translated from another language. I remember a simplistic experiment from when I was young. Gather 10 or so people. Have them stand a bit apart. Write down a short sentence, so you know the original phrase. Whisper it to the next person with the instrutcion the do the same. Continue on around the room. Have the last person say it out loud for all present to hear. Then read the original statement out loud and see how much it changed. You'll be surpised. This is what happens during translation more often than not.
You are right.
Well your second paragraph is certainly true, and if I believed in God I would probably agree with your first paragraph as well.
However neither of them support the existence of God.
Oh and I do, of course, believe Jesus existed. But I don't believe he was God or anything else supernatural. Probably just a great orator and had the courage to die for whatever his reasons were.