And God sayeth unto man: I've had it!

[Ian David]

REV. JOHN F. HUDSON
And God sayeth unto man: I've had it!

By Rev. John F. Hudson | August 23, 2006

MAKING HIS first public remarks in more than 1,000 years, God appeared in the heavens yesterday and ordered all world religions founded in His/Her name to ``immediately take a well-deserved and long overdue time-out." At the crowded press conference, hastily called by the angel Gabriel with a trumpet blast, God's tone switched between anger and sadness as He/She described being frustrated with the boundless cruelty and violence committed in His/Her name.

``It's not like I haven't been patient," said God, who is also known as Lord, Yahweh, Allah, Creator, and the Unnamed One. ``I make and give to humans this beautiful gift called Creation. I give them the ability to think and love and imagine. I send them messengers who teach. I provide food for all, sunsets, cute babies, music, even the Internet! But the minute I turn my back, they all start fighting. Holy War this, Crusade that, and Jihad, blah, blah, blah," He/She said.

Citing the recent war in Lebanon as the final straw, God declared that, until further notice, each of the world's major religions would be punished. God then sent the religious leaders, with their faiths, to their rooms so they could ``sit and think about all the ways they've been bad. They can take their sacred books with them to read," continued God, ``but that's it. No TV, no cellphone, and no iPod."

God was quick to assure the world that the good works of religion, including peacemaking, disaster relief, healthcare, education, and aiding the poor and downtrodden, would not be affected by the time-out order. ``It's not that everything they do on my behalf is bad," noted God. ``They do a lot of good. But just when you think humanity gets it and has learned how to live with one another, they start bombing each other. They stamp their feet and say, `My faith is better than your faith, my country matters more than your country.' They act like each owns me and knows my mind. But not anymore. I'm back in town and taking charge!"

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/08/23/and_god_sayeth_unto_man_ive_had_it?mode=PF

The Rev. John F. Hudson is the senior pastor at the West Concord Union Church (United Church of Christ) in Concord .

[ms liberty]

1. Yea! What He said! K&R n/t

[orpupilofnature57]

2. Kick!

[zeemike]

3. Amen to that

You would think that they would know that already sense he sent his son to teach them that exact message.

[Ian David]

4. "I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword"

But to bring a sword
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword" is one of the controversial statements reported of Jesus in the Bible. The saying has been understood in several ways, by Christians and non-Christians, to support several mutually-incompatible conclusions. Its main significance in that context is that it is often offered as evidence that Jesus advocated violence or rejected Messianic prophecy—a view that is repugnant to many Christians.

The "full" quote, according to the NASB translation of the Bible, reads (Jesus speaking):

"Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household." (Matthew 10:34-36 NASB)

The Lukan parallels read:

"I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!" ... "Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three."... (Luke 12:49,51-53 NASB)
"If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple." (Luke 14:26 NASB)

And the related Gospel of Thomas 16 (non-canonical) (SV) reads:

"Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone."

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/But_to_bring_a_sword

[believerinchrist]

6. The Bible is full of paradoxes

and this is one of them. Remember, Christ also said that the greatest two commandments are to love God with everything you have and to love your neighbor (and family members most definitely are one's neighbors) as yourself. How can this "contradiciton" be resolved?

The first element to consider is timing. When a person first "comes to" Christ ( or is "born again" or "saved"), he/she has an experience that is often misunderstood by family members and can cause contention, which is the opposite of peace. This happens on a regular basis. What Christ is saying in today's terms is, "Okay, your family and friends might not understand your experience--in fact, don't expect them to (i.e., conflict). Just don't let them interfer with the work I have done in your heart (i.e., hating your parents, siblings, spouses)."

Now, the love comes as a person presses into a walk with God through Jesus Christ. My experience has been the closer I have become to God, the greater my love, compassion, grace, and mercy for my fellow human beings have grown. The sword I once used to try to slice through my family's (and others') resistance to my experience now works to destroy the evil in my own life, so I can better love them. My responsibility is to be a positive force in people's lives and let God take care of the resistance against Him.

The Bible is full of paradoxes--what I call two sides of the same coin. When I don't understand something, I ask God to explain it to me. If I could make one change in this world, it would be that people would understand God is not who religions say He is. He wants to have a relationship with each and every individual, and what Christ accomplished on the cross and through his resurrection has made the way for this to happen. I'm praying the human race will wake up, look for, and find the love that God has for us all.

[zeemike]

8. The paradoxes are created by the mind of men

And it is usually for the purpose of manipulation and control.
Just because Jesus used the word sword in a sentence people think they can spin it into a justification for there own love of violence.
Kind of like they did to Gore on Inventing the internet.
Welcome to DU

[Ian David]

11. Who else could anything in the bible come from, Paradox or not? n/t

[Ian David]

9. It sounds like you've come to a more progressive, "Christian" Christ

I wish more "Christians" were like that.

Too many of them seem to be ACNC: All-Cross, No-Christ.

And you're right-- The Bible (and The New Testament) are both full of paradoxes and riddles and nuance and metaphor.

Which is why the only christians that can be 100% wrong are the ones who believe in a "literal" translation of The Bible (and/or The New Testament) as 100% right.

What Fundamentalists really seem to be saying is that their sect's interpretation of The King James Translation (Random House, 1976) is infallible.

It's unfortunate, but Gandhi was right-- most christians are very much unlike their Christ.

Of all the Christian sects, if I had to choose one to join, it would be The Unitarians, The United Church of Christ, or maybe one of the more liberal Quaker groups.

Although, if I were shopping for a religion, The Wiccans seem to be the most fun, and display the most cleavage. Wiccans be my first choice, right before The Raelians, if I was just looking for a good time.

The last ones I'd choose? Branch Davidians, Scientologists, Christian Scientists, Mormons and Heavens Gate.

[zeemike]

7. Yes indeed it is misunderstood

And most everyone forget that what he said was a prophesy for the future was it not?
And did that prophesy come true?
Less than 70 years later Israel was destroyed by the Romans and the Christians were put to the sword in the Roman theater. And there has been almost continual war over religion ever sense to this day.
A prophet like Jesus is not responsible for violence just because he predicted it.
But his commandments to his disciples and to us were clear.
Mathew 5; (KJV which I prefer)

38. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

Does any of that sound like he upheld violence at all?

[Ian David]

10. The words attributed to Jesus and Pals were written much later

It's a nice bit of post-hoc "prophesy."

<snip>

In fact, Mark is generally dated as having been written ca. CE 70, while Matthew and Luke are thought to have been written ca. CE 80 and John ca. CE 90. This squares rather nicely with the Rylands Fragment, a scrap of papyrus from the Gospel of John, dated at ca. CE 125. Since Irenaeus found the Gospel of Judas already being expounded among an entrenched community of Gnostic Christians in the western half of the Roman Empire in CE 180 in what is now France, we must assume it was in existence earlier, possibly as early as the canonical gospels.

More:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-05-03.html

[zeemike]

12. So you are saying that things written later are made up?

I wonder how you know that. Or do you just assume they are because that is what you would do in that situation? Or you just repeating what you have been told by the skeptics who also told us that the bible could not have been transmitted down through time being copied by hand all those years. Well we now know because of the Dead Sea Scrolls that at least some of it was copied accurately.But of course there will never be enough proof to satisfy because the problem is with the story not the book.
But say it is all made up, is there any value in the message or does it contain some evil that you wish to rid the world of?

[Ian David]

13. Real biblical scholars acknowledge the true history of the bible...

It was written by multiple people, over multiple periods.

Linguistic analysis of the oldest versions of the text allow scholars to attribute certain passages, within a single book of the bible, to various, individual athors, who lived during multiple time periods.

For example, The 10 Commandments were written centuries after the time when The Exodus was supposed to take place.

I could point you to a few books on the topic to get you started:

The Hidden Book in the Bible
By Richard Elliott Friedman
http://books.google.com/books?id=yPqdZhjlxeUC&dq=the+hidden+book+of+the+bible

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Hardcover)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060738170/ref=pd_sim_b_5/102-8528786-0712934?ie=UTF8

The Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Hardcover)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195141830/ref=pd_sim_b_1/102-8528786-0712934?ie=UTF8

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195102797/ref=pd_sim_b_2/102-8528786-0712934?ie=UTF8

By the way, yes, there is plenty of goodness inside the bible.

[zeemike]

14. And real biblical scholars can be wrong

Thanks for your response. I do appreciate it because most people just get mad and go away if you do not agree with them on religion and that goes for Christian or not.
But your statement;
The 10 Commandments were written centuries after the time when The Exodus was supposed to take place.

Is not correct. The Commandments were written on two tablets of stone and placed into the Arch of the Covenant and was with Israel for some time. Now it hard for me to believe that this was at some time or another not copied to some media, and perhaps later to scrolls that were used in the later days of Israel and Judah. And who is to say t hat Moses did not dictate the Torah to scribes as it is said that he did? The copies we have are later than that but it does not prove that there were not original copies at a much earlier time that just deteriorated and had to be replaced.
And the same is true of the New testament. And there is no proof that the copies we know of are the originals or not.
The other most used criticism is that errors occurred when they were copied by the monks who may have intentionally or unintentionally changed the text. However there is some proof that it never happened because of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And really I don’t believe that a linguist can tell who wrote something thousands of years ago by the style or by any other means. It is just too much of a stretch because I know for myself that with time and experience styles as well as other things can change. It is only human nature. So all of that in the absence of real evidence is just guessing.

[Ian David]

16. The 10 Commandments were written by Jewish priests...

after the conquest of Israel / Canaan, to try and keep them from acquiring the habits and customs of the local Pagans.

There never were two stone tablets.

Sorry.

It's a nice fairytale, though.

[zeemike]

17. How much do you know about the Torah?

That is the first 4 books of the bible where the ten commandments are written.
It is not as simple as you think and has for years been a source of mysticism among Jewish scholars, and has some unique properties.
And then there is this thing with the "Bible Code" that I am sure you would dismiss without even a thought, but never the less is a very interesting thing.
People have the tendencies to dismiss that which they do not understand. And that is OK if that is where you are at on the path, but don't think just because you do not understand that others are just stupid. That would be a big mistake.

[Ian David]

18. Oh, please. When people start with "The Bible Code" I dismiss them...

as lacking the capacity to engage in reasonable, informed discourse.

Not necessarily talking about you in particular.

But I can see I'm wasting my time.

[zeemike]

19. Well I wouldn't want you to waste your time

But if you know nothing about the Torah and the history of it then you could dismiss it as a crackpot theory. But the Bible code is nothing new, it has been used by Jewish scholars for hundreds of years. It is only with the aid of computers that it was confirmed. And I did it for myself with a program I have on my computer.
But thanks for the conversation.

[Ian David]

20. The same computer program gets the same results from Moby Dick

Apparently, either Moby Dick was written by God Almighty himself, or else people who believe in The Bible Code are Total Fucking Morons:

Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!
The following challenge was made by Michael Drosnin:

When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them.
(Newsweek, Jun 9, 1997)

Note that English with the vowels included is far less flexible than Hebrew when it comes to making letters into words. Nevertheless, without further ado, we present our answer to Mr Drosnin's challenge.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi



President Rene Moawad



Soviet exile Leon Trotsky



The Reverend Martin Luther King

(The underlined words were found by Shannon Kohl)


More:
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html



See also:

Professor Menachem Cohen, a celebrated Bible scholar at Bar-Ilan University, has criticized Witztum et al. on two counts: (1) there are several other Hebrew versions of Genesis for which ELS does not produce statistically significant results; and (2) the appellations given to the Great Men in Israel was inconsistent and arbitrary. Other critics, such as Brendan McKay, have done their own analysis of War and Peace with remarkably different results than those reported by Witztum et al. Many critics, however, have done little more than use ELS to find names, dates, and so on in various books, a feat already known by even the weakest of statisticians to be unremarkable. Drosnin once said, "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby-Dick, I'll believe them." McKay promptly produced an ELS analysis of Moby-Dick predicting not only Indira Ghandi's assassination, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Yitzhak Rabin, as well as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Mathematician David Thomas did an ELS on Genesis and found the words "code" and "bogus" close together not once but 60 times. What are the odds of that happening? Thomas also did an ELS analysis on Drosnin's Bible Code II: The Countdown (2002) and found the message "The Bible Code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax."* Does this mean that God put in a code to reveal that there is no code?

More:
http://skepdic.com/bibcode.html


Of course, debunking the bible code is Rational Thinking 101 for Beginners.

Anyone who still believes in such tripe after such easy, obvious pedestrian debunking is a lost cause intellectually and may as well lock themselves in a dark room wearing diapers.

Bible Code? Yawn.

What's next? Tea leaves and Bigfoot?

[zeemike]

21. No the results are not the same

But of course you must be willing to hear the other side of the argument, which few are willing to do because it challenges there own bias.
But here it is, and I post it knowing that it will make no difference to you, but I would not like to leave the impression in some Innocent reader mind that there was only one side and it was sooooo good that only morons would believe as you suggest.

The Refutation of the Attempts to Invalidate the Torah Codes

1. The Refutation of MBBK's Statistical Science Paper


A. Articles:
A Review of the Attempts to Invalidate the Torah Codes
English Version
Hebrew Version


MBBK's Study of Variations
Abstract:
A paper of McKay, Bar-Natan, Bar-Hillel and Kalai (MBBK) in the Statistical Science (1999) made the extraordinary claim that the result of Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg (WRR), which was published in the same journal in 1994, was obtained by deceit. The main statistical work presented in MBBK's paper is the "study of variations", aimed at proving that WRR's result was obtained through "tuning" of their data.
In reply, we argue that MBBK's case is fatally defective, indeed that their results merely reflect on the choices made in designing their "study of variations", collecting the data and presenting the results. We present extensive evidence in support of that conclusion. In particular, we report on many experiments of our own, in which we applied their "study of variations" to several lists of data, some of them "tuned" and some of them not "tuned" – and the results are the exact opposite of the expectation of MBBK's thesis.

English Version
Hebrew Version


McKay's Reconsideration of his Hypothesis
Following our Critisim of his "Study of Variations"
English Version
Hebrew Version


Concerning the Choices of Dates for WRR's Rabbis Samples
This article scrutinizes MBBK's claim that WRR directly optimized the results by exploiting "beneficial" choices pertaining to the dates. Careful examination of all the choices indicates WRR's perfect integrity. Alternative choices, based on MBBK's suggestions, would have yielded better results –– sometimes by a factor of 2 or 3, sometimes by a factor of 10 or 100, and sometimes by a factor of tens of thousands.
All this starkly contradicts MBBK's report and the impression created by their article.

English Version
Hebrew Version


Smoke Screen
Concerning McKay's Response to our Article
"Concerning the Choices of Dates for WRR's Rabbis Samples.

English Version
Hebrew Version


Concerning the Genesis Text used in our Experiments

English Version
Hebrew Version


New Statistical Evidence for A Genuine Code in Genesis
This article reveals that:

The main "replication" presented in MBBK's Stat. Sc. paper, was actually deceptively fabricated as an "independent experiment" to present it's complete failure.

An experiment based on data given by MBBK's own expert shows that WRR's original result was not achieved through "tuning" of names and appellations.

English Version - Hebrew Words In Hebrew Font
Hebrew Version


July 6 2001

Designed to Distract
(On McKay and Kalai's Response to our article "New Statistical Evidence for a Genuine Code in Genesis")

English Version
Hebrew Version


Of Science and Parody: A Complete Refutation of MBBK's Central Claim
This article refutes MBBK's central claim that they did "the same thing" in War and Peace as WRR did in Genesis. Here we refute this claim without overwhelming the reader with statistical, linguistic or bibliographic details. We show that their data is incorrect and misleading, and that their method is unscientific and is in fact designed to facilitate deceit.

English Version - Hebrew Words In Hebrew Font
Hebrew Version


June 6 2001

Concerning McKay's Response to our article "Of Science and Parody"
English Version
Hebrew Version


August 7 2001

A Response to McKay's Response
to My Response to His Response
concerning my article "Of Science and Parody"


English Version
Hebrew Version


August 7 2001

Barry Simon's "Cities Experiment"

English Version
Hebrew Version


Concerning the Statistical Test that was Published in our Paper in Statistical Science
MBBK claim in their Stat. Sc. paper that WRR used a permutation test that differed from that agreed upon with Prof. Diaconis, and this was done behind his back.
This response shows that their claim is simply false.

English Version
Hebrew Version


Concerning the Statistical Test that was Published in our Paper in Statistical Science - Part B
When we published our response (see one item above), MBBK refused to admit their mistake. Instead McKay and Kalai publicized an article on the Internet (called "The origin of the permutation test"), where they unsuccessfully attempted to conceal the fact that they had been caught red-handed. Here we prove that their arguments only strengthen our case. We find McKay's et al. description of this issue very creative and imaginative but far away from reality. We will learn that such fairy tales are sometimes based on falsehoods and concealing of relevant data.

English Version


A New Measurement of the "Famous Rabbis" Sample
Here we report on a new application of a different method of randomization to the measurement of the significance of the correlation in the famous Rabbis sample. The measured significance was found to be 0.0000009. Note that MBBK's complaints concerning the original permutation test – are irrelevant here.

English Version-Hebrew Words In Hebrew Font
English Version-Hebrew Words In Michigan Clairmont Coding
A copy of Michigan Clairmont
Hebrew Version-(in "Visual" Hebrew)


A Primer on the Torah Codes Controversy for Laymen by Harold Gans
Mr. Harold Gans has written a new paper describing many aspects and details of the Torah codes controversy in a way which is understandable to non-technically oriented people. It also includes a foreword by world renowned Professor Robert Haralick. The paper is entitled "A Primer on the Torah Codes Controversy for Laymen." (Mr. Harold Gans was a senior Cryptologic Mathematician with the National Security Agency, US Department of Defence, for 28 years until his retirement in 1996.)
B. Documents

The following documents were created at earlier stages of the debate. Originally, they served to refute the previous versions of MBBK's claims. But they are still important and relevant to the refutation of MBBK's present version of claims in their Statistical Science paper.

A Refuted Refutation, or: How the List of Famous Rabbis Failed in War and Peace

English Version-Part 1
English Version-Part 2
Hebrew Version-part1
Hebrew Version-part2


Document 1- Professor Havlin's Statement of Opinion

English Version
Hebrew Version


Document 2- Bar-Hillel and Bar-Natan Inquire: Witztum and Rips Respond

English Version
Hebrew Version


Document 3- Prof. Havlin's Response to Prof. Cohen
English Version
Hebrew Version


Document 4- An Analysis of the Choices in our Research
English Version
Hebrew Version


Prof. Auman's response to Prof. Maya Bar-Hillel (English)

[GardeningGal]

5. Great editorial n/t

[NAO]

15. Fake! Fake!! God would NEVER speak thru a Boston, Fagassachutts

newspaper!

All the gays and liberals would not let Him into their state to do the interview. Everybody knows that.

Like Katherine Harris said, "if we don't elect Christians to government, they are going to legislate sin, such as gay marrige and abortion!"