Between Toni and mhaze we have a combined IQ of 12... well done!

mhaze criticises exactly the method he/she/it uses and Toni misses the point continually.

So what religion or group do you go to Toni? Imbecillian?

Let's add to the list of problems that shows your unknowingness, just for fun.

I'll use the New Testament and specifically the gospels...OOPS!

When did the temple curtain rip?

Mark 15:37-8 And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

OR

Luke 23:45-46 And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst.

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost

OR

Matthew 27:50-51 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

How you batting so far on inerrancy?

How much did David pay for the threshing floor?

1 Chronicles 21:25 So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.

OOPS! Hang on no

2 Samuel 24:24 And the king said unto Araunah, Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.

WOW "six hundred shekels of gold" miraculously turned into "fifty shekels of silver". Is there much of a difference

Cont...

Sel-Opinionated2,

I'm confused: are you saying that you believe the words of the New Testament, but slag everything in the Old Testament ? As an atheist for nearly seventy years, none of it, the OT or the NT, is factually true, but helpful 'stories', parables, lessons, garbled histories, borrowed bits and pieces, and ultimately guiding principles. None of it has to be 'true' for those principles to come through. It's much of that our present society is built on, I'm happy to admit.

So please forget about the silly stories about Moses and drowning Egyptians, or Noah and God drowning the entire world, or burning bushes, or any of the other delightful stories. Move on to the guts of the religion, the 'deep principles' that people now, at least many of them, try to live by. Of course, their over-riding notion, that by praying and sucking up to a being somewhere in the sky, surrounded by bare-arsed angels playing those bloody harps all damn day, that they can live forever in some sort of incredibly boring Paradise, may be what drives many: in other words, their fear of the alternative, death, the end, nothing afterwards.

As an atheist, the thought of death - and at my age, it will probably come in the next ten or twenty years, nothing much I can do about that - is a bit discomforting, I'd love to live a bit longer: another couple of lives, and I could train as a forester, or a linguist, or an archaeologist, or a cross-country skier, or marry Miss Universe (or at least go through the motions) - yeah, that all would be nice. But it's a bit late now :(. Death will come soon enough, and I hope my kids will remember me.

Joe

"WOW "six hundred shekels of gold" miraculously turned into "fifty shekels of silver". Is there much of a difference"

Inflation,

"or marry Miss Universe (or at least go through the motions)"

Going through the motions with Miss Universe!!

Another evocative image.

//Toni misses the point continually.//

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhc1hWXH5IM

Some people have made the mistake of seeing Op2's work as a load of rubbish about the Bible, but clever people like me who plagiarise Monty Python see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a mechanised forum. The points are frozen, the beast is dead. What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Paddington. The point is taken. If La Fontaine's elk would spurn Tom Jones the engine must be our head, the dining car our oesophagus, the guards van our left lung, the cattle truck our shins, the first class compartment the piece of skin at the nape of the neck and the level crossing an electric elk called Simon. The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? Over there in a box. Op2 is saying Samuel 24:24 when in reality he means the 8.13 from Gillingham. The train is the same, only the time is altered. Ecce homo, ergo elk. La Fontaine knew its sister and knew her bloody well. The point is taken, the beast is moulting, the fluff gets up your nose. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box? No, there isn't room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I'm having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted.

Toni,

I think you're given Op2 way too much credit here, assuming that (s)he is capable of that sort of cryptic messaging. Frankly I think the whole piece is merely an attempt to fart in our general direction. Admittedly it is hard to get Op2 to see reason since every time someone lands a telling blow, (s)he asserts its a mere flesh wound and carries on regardless.

So rather than these rants being a clever piece of cryptic analysis, Op2's outbursts don't show him/she to be the anti-Messiah, just a very naughty boy.