Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Yes, Satan nailed Eve in the Garden of Eden and had a son.

We have the Dead Sea Scrolls which are nearly word-for-word compared to most modern translations.

So this is what happens to Asians from Mythbusters when they die.

Funny, sse. Really.

Holy scheidt,

the Son of Adirondacks Comedians arrives!

I didn't get it.

I feel shame.

That's a bit unfair to Buddhism and Taoism from what I know of them.

Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, never really talks about a God, he sort of mentions "the gods" in an offhand manner sometimes. But what stands out is that he said basically "what I'm telling you works for me. Try it yourself, if it doesn't work, then try something else."

Taoism, from the Tao te Ching or Way of Life, also never talks about being a true religion, it doesn't even call itself a religion. The guy who supposedly wrote it just wrote down some things about the way the universe flows, and folks can go with that flow or against it.

Humans later on deified Buddha even though he never claimed to have any supernatural origin, plus they added a whole bunch of technical stuff which AFAIK he never talked about. I don't believe there is any central deified figure in Taoism although again, humans have created a structure of religion around it. Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism, not having a central god figure, are basically pretty peaceful religions, you won't find much in the way of crusades or mass wars caused by their believers. "It's God's will that we destroy you! (that salves our conscience about the horrible, sadistic brutality we bring upon you and makes it okay)" Absent that whole "god's will" thing folks tend to treat their fellows much better. The Hindus have fought against the Muslims but that's probably as much politically and economically based as the deadly struggles between Protestants and Catholics.

The Christian and Islamic power brokers are the two biggies who will kill you if you disagree, and in Christianity that's the extant remnant of the Roman Empire working symbiotically with secular governments to enlarge and cement their power. I suspect it's the same with Islam except the Islamic clerics want to be the entire government with no competition from secular sources.

Since you brought it up, baldhunter...

What began as a mass of ever-embellished verbal stories in Aramaic and other languages is finally collected in about the year 600, with about a third of them being discarded or rejected before being written down in ancient Greek. Later dubiously translated into ancient Latin and even more centuries later into Chaucerian English, early German, and other languages. Then continually revised, re-translated, abridged, and essentially re-written from scratch.

Until today, we are told to accept it word for word. (Coming soon: The Bible in Ebonics!)

But it’s the WORD OF GOD, they say. So is the Quran, the Talmud, as well as the texts of Buddhism, Taoism, and at least a dozen other “isms” of the thousands of other religions practiced in history and around the globe. Is yours the one and only “right” religion? Yes, say the believers of each and every one of them. Is your book the one and only word of god? Yes, say the believers of each and every one of them.

That is precisely my point, Jim: Humans deify EVERYTHING. Gods and religion are simply madeup superstition from the time when Og couldn't understand why his children died or even why it rained. There had to be something invisible that controlled it all. Hence, gods.

Then some clever villager realized that if he declared himself the only emissary that could talk to those gods, he could be as powerful as the village chief. And presto there were priests and their contrived version of reality/religion.

Since you brought it up, baldhunter...

What began as a mass of ever-embellished verbal stories in Aramaic and other languages is finally collected in about the year 600, with about a third of them being discarded or rejected before being written down in ancient Greek. Later dubiously translated into ancient Latin and even more centuries later into Chaucerian English, early German, and other languages. Then continually revised, re-translated, abridged, and essentially re-written from scratch.

Until today, we are told to accept it word for word. (Coming soon: The Bible in Ebonics!)

But it’s the WORD OF GOD, they say. So is the Quran, the Talmud, as well as the texts of Buddhism, Taoism, and at least a dozen other “isms” of the thousands of other religions practiced in history and around the globe. Is yours the one and only “right” religion? Yes, say the believers of each and every one of them. Is your book the one and only word of god? Yes, say the believers of each and every one of them.