True... I always believed that it was pretty crappy when you had to play more countries just to compete, or offer your tag more protection.

i warred every set.

That was basically 1999-2005 for me.

didn't play during that time (much).

Ah, you missed the real fun, then. :P

i got enuf fun bit later.

True enough.

although that fun went elsewhere than me.

Heh.

mostly elsewhere

yeah... it happens.

that was old ffa.

nice

what is?

Who knows... his name is a quotation of two Biblical verses.

biggest story book of world.

S is for SPAM!

The Bible is the world's first work of historical fiction.

it can't be proven right w/o timetravelling.

That's the catch-22 of faith. It cannot be proven. Once it's proven, it's no longer faith.

nope.

Because once it's proven, it becomes scientific or historical fact, two things religion have been working to rewrite or custom-fit to their doctrines. You have to read heavily into the Bible just to get rough a estimate of when Jesus was actually born (as December 25 is just wrong). The "best" estimates differ by about 2 years, which place him as having been born around September 15, 5 BCE.

Which considering this, even with his ass being born in a stable in Bethlehem, there should have been some record of his existence other than a book that's been rewritten more times than anyone's taken record to count.

or moses and his ship full of animals.

Exactly, considering the mountain the Ark supposedly landed on (Mount Ararat) is a few miles from the Armenian border in Turkey, it shouldn't be too difficult to find... if it exists.

its been claimed that it was found but that was years ago and no hard proofs.

Exactly... there's also the claim that the wood rotted away, leaving only small pieces of iron behind, but there's still nothing to substantiate even that claim.

bush shaped like a ship.

I don't even know where to go with that one.

some archelogists/whatever found bush/shrub/tree years ago (90s?) which looked like ship so they claimed it was mose's ship.

There's actually a really interesting book about a buy that went and walked through all the areas that cover the first five books of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Called Walking the Bible. I know it doesn't necessarily help with this argument, but the book did say that it was virtually impossible to get on Mount Ararat because of the government control on it. That was one place the author was completely shut out of (most places a bribe could get them into almost anywhere they wanted to go).

And Stryke: Not that it's a perfectly true situation here, but on the "book that's been rewritten so many times" comment, translators go back to the oldest manuscripts they can find. I don't know what type of manuscripts exist of some of the books, but it's not like the best versions of the Bible were re-written based on some 20-year-old, written in English already translation. The better translations of ANY book are ones where people had access to the original sources, or at least the oldest surviving version.

and those oldest surviving versions might been only 1-200 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus

This one dates to the 4th Century. In most cases, either museums or universities hold copies of old manuscripts that only scholars are allowed to actually view to protect the manuscripts as much as possible.

So no, the oldest surviving versions of any ancient text aren't just 1-200 years old.

i meant 1-200 years old during 10-12th century.

How does that even make sense? Nowhere in the conversation has the 10th-12th century been brought up. Besides, as I said, the Codex Sinaiticus goes back to the 4th century, and while in Europe, many older manuscripts were lost at this time, most of the scholars in the Holy Land that worked with copies of the text were likely using manuscripts that date back earlier than that, considering that those areas did a great job of keeping alive hundreds if not thousands of texts that were lost to Europe during the Dark Ages.

Besides, to actually comment on the original discussion, even if all the historical events in the Bible were proven or disproven, it still wouldn't prove or disprove the existence of God.

It could be completely untrue and merely allegorical in nature or it could just be a record of historical events that really happened, but had entirely natural causes that had nothing to do with any higher power.

And to think, in the other thread you said my spam was bad.

and copies were translations which were only good as translator was so might not been that good.

Not necessarily. Some of the copies may have simply been copies in the same language.

And besides, the main point I was making is that modern scholars are working from incredibly old manuscripts. Sure, they're translations of translations. But these scholars are still working from as authentic of manuscripts as possible, not just working from the 1940 version of a text.

and some translators might have left some parts away.

Nothing you've said has actually refuted my point though. In what is the closest thing to a real conversation of worth in any of these stickied threads, you still don't actually refute that most scholars work from the oldest (and therefore, logically the most authentic) manuscripts they can find.

Stryke made it seem like each translation was in fact an edit of the previous version that they made a year before, and then a year before that, so we're working with like a copy of a copy of a copy going about 5,000 copies deep.

My point was simply that this isn't the case.

only vatican knows fully or somewhat fully how bible has changed after each copy and/or translation and they won't tell.

I'm far from a Biblical scholar, but I'd imagine there are plenty of people that know plenty on such things. It's easy enough with a Google search to see which books the Catholics include and don't vs. the Protestants vs. the Jews (obviously dealing with the Old Testament alone in that case).

depends how well other sources than church have stored old bibles.

No.

I am not trying to say the Bible's been completely re-written, but there were made when the Bible as it was was translated into the King James Bible, such as a line that states "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" or something to that effect.

Which later on justified the entire Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, and various other atrocities from the Dark Ages to even the American Colonial period where if you didn't like someone all you had to say was you seen them practicing witchcraft, dancing in the woods at night around a campfire in the nude, etc... and this was all carried out in the name of God/religion.

Now, I am not trying to start some fluff-fest in regards to religion as we all know that Islam and Judaism both have their roots in the Bible... as much as anyone would like to raise hell and try to prove otherwise.

Through Abraham, we get Isaac who is later named Israel, as his descendants would become the nation of Israel. And then... we get Ishmael, who being Abraham's first son, yet not isn't the child to be blessed with his descendants being the nation of Israel, is still blessed so that *his* descendants would grow to be a great nation also, but would be a wild, unfriendly man.

Through Ishmael's sons, Kedar, (in Arabic قيدر pronounced Qaidar) father of the Qedarites, a northern Arab tribe that controlled the area between the Persian Gulf and the Sinai Peninsula. According to tradition, he is the ancestor of the Quraysh tribe, and thus of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.

Also, having said that... I noticed this bit: Kedar, (in Arabic قيدر pronounced Qaidar). Drop the 'r' and add an 'Al' as a prefix... and OMG!

I blame the freemasons.

They're always doing crazy stuff.

FARM THEM

And not all the books written were included in the Bible. I remember reading somewhere back when I was in school that they held a conference and decided which books were to be included and which ones were to be excluded. Mostly this was because the Pope and Cardinals wanted to protect their hold on their positions and the wealth they had accumulated. When the Dead Sea scrolls were found, it included books not currently in the Bible. Needless to say that cause some to question what the true Bible was.

Time to take this one over.