The American Child After Same-Sex Marriage

[vraiblonde]

Originally posted by Tonio
That sounds more to me like a practical division of responsibility. I would guess that you and Larry both agreed to the arrangement. That's not nearly the same thing as a husband demanding submission from his wife, or even a wife demanding submission from her husband.

No, we didn't agree to the arrangement. I'm just not a person who will go to the mat over things that don't really matter to me. Larry frequently demands submission from me. But it's always over crap I could care less about so I submit, occasionally after some initial resistance. And sometimes I'll only resist so that when I eventually give in, he'll feel like he's really won something.

[Toxick]

Originally posted by Tonio
The Bible has been translated so many times, and meanings of words change over time. That's why I don't believe the Holy Book can be interpreted literally.

Copied and pasted from one of my old articles in a religious debate.

I hear everyone skipping this already....

The oldest manuscripts of ancient writers like Aristotle, Plato, Herodotus (among other) amounts to a small number of copies that were made a thousand years or more after the originals were written. There are no more then ten manuscripts of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, and the oldest copy of that was written over 900 years later than the original. Scholars accept these documents as adequate reprentations of the originals.

Why not the bible?

The earliest portions of The New Testament date to within just 25 years of the originals. Some nearly complete books of the new testament date to within one century or less from the originals. And we're not even talking about a handful of copies that can be compared with one another to determine accuracy or consistance. There are nearly 25,000 complete manuscripts of the New Testament, with more than 15,000 that date to before the 7th Century A.D. (or C.E. if you prefer). These include 5,300 copies in the original Greek, over 10,000 in Latin Vulgate, 4,100 Slavic tranlations, 2,000 Ethiopian thranslations and about 1,000 other early translations.

Further, in the first centuries after Christ, thousands of letters, and other documents were written in which people quoted from other documents that would later be assembled into what was to become the New Testament.. These quotes are so extensive that even if there wasn't a single bible in existence, you could go back to those letters and documents and using only those written within 250 years after the death of Christ, you could find every word of the New Testament, with the exception of 11 verses.

There are small differences in all those manuscripts - however, all these differences, most are a matter of spelling or word order changes that were made as the styles changed over the ages. In fact a total of only about 200 words, or 1/10 of 1 percent of the entire new testament are subject to more than trivial differences.

And there no single doctrine of Christiantiy in all it's denominations througout history depend on a piece of disputed text.

I have cites to back all that crap up, if you really want to read them.

[Dymphna]

Originally posted by Tonio
Promise Keepers.

:shiver: A few years back, we were in Cracker Barrel in Frederick. It was the weekend of the first Promise Keeper rally and a couple of buses of them had stopped at the Cracker Barrel. OMG, I have never met any group of people who were more nasty and rude. It was literally like I was invisable. I was stepped on, shoved, interrupted and cut off. All I could think of was WTH, I thought these guys were supposed to be respectful of women, (granted in a patronizing sort of way) but they couldn't even manage rudimentary politness.

[justin anemone]

Originally posted by cmcdanal
:shiver: A few years back, we were in Cracker Barrel in Frederick. It was the weekend of the first Promise Keeper rally and a couple of buses of them had stopped at the Cracker Barrel. OMG, I have never met any group of people who were more nasty and rude. It was literally like I was invisable. I was stepped on, shoved, interrupted and cut off. All I could think of was WTH, I thought these guys were supposed to be respectful of women, (granted in a patronizing sort of way) but they couldn't even manage rudimentary politness.

I generally tend to ignore those fringe-type groups, but "Promise Keepers" actually got under my skin. You're right; a bunch of hypocrits. I think if you have to wear your affiliation on your sleeve like that, you're basically saying "Hey everyone...look at me!!! I'm in this group so I MUST be righteous!
Ugh...

[CMC122]

Originally posted by justin anemone
I generally tend to ignore those fringe-type groups, but "Promise Keepers" actually got under my skin. You're right; a bunch of hypocrits. I think if you have to wear your affiliation on your sleeve like that, you're basically saying "Hey everyone...look at me!!! I'm in this group so I MUST be righteous!
Ugh...

Kinda like highschool clicks.

[Toxick]

Originally posted by *archimedes*
I'll take a stab at it... because it's full of all kinds of goofy bull#### that didn't really happen?

Wow when you say it with such authority like that, I just want to toss out everything I've spent my entire life studying and just take your word for it.


Thanks.

[ceo_pte]

Originally posted by Toxick
Copied and pasted from one of my old articles in a religious debate.

I hear everyone skipping this already....






I have cites to back all that crap up, if you really want to read them.

Manuscript Evidence for the Bible

Reliability of the New Testament as Historical Documents

"Astounding" number of ancient manuscripts extant: 5,000 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin and 9,000 other--totaling over 24,000 manuscript copies or portions of the New Testament. These are dated from 100 to 300 years after the originals. (There are no original manuscripts ["autographs"] extant, but the number and similarity of copies allows scholars to reconstruct the originals.)
Early fragments: John Ryland manuscript 130 A.D. in Egypt; Bodmer manuscript containing most of John 150-200 A.D.; Magdalen fragment from Mat. 26 believed by some to be within a few years of Jesus' death; Gospel fragments found among the Dead Sea Scrolls dated as early as 50 A.D.
Comparison with other ancient documents (available copies versus the originals):
Caesar -- 10 copies -- 1000 year gap
Tacitus -- 20 copies -- 1000 year gap
Plato -- 7 copies -- 1200 year gap
F. F. Bruce: "There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good attestation as the New Testament."
William F. Albright: "Thanks to the Qumran discoveries, the New Testament proves to be in fact what it was formerly believed to be: the teaching of Christ and his immediate followers circa.25 and circa. 80 AD."

Quotations from Early Church Fathers:

Clement of Rome (a disciple of the apostles) cited Matthew, John, and 1 Corinthians in 95 to 97 A.D. Ignatius (who knew the apostles well) referred to six Pauline Epistles in about 110. Polycarp (disciple of apostle John) quoted from all four Gospels, Acts, and most of Paul's Epistles from 110 to 150. Taitian's harmony of the Four Gospels completed in 160 A.D. Irenaeus (who apparently heard the apostles) quoted from Matthew, John, Acts, and 1 Corinthians in 160 A.D.
Of the four Gospels alone, there are 19,368 citations by the church fathers from the late first century on. Even if we had no manuscripts, virtually the entire New Testament could be reconstructed from these quotations. This argues powerfully that the Gospels were in existence before the end of the first century, while some eyewitnesses (including John) were still alive.

Primary Source Value

Testimony of the New Testament authors themselves: Luke 1:1-3, 3:1, John 21:24; Acts 26:24-26, 2 Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:3.
John A.T. Robinson's argument for early date for the Gospels (before 70 A.D., the destruction of Jerusalem). Though the Gospels include prophecies of such a destruction, they are prophetic stock-in-trade. These prophesies lack any details that certainly would have been added if written after this important historical event.
Substantial other evidences of New Testament being written between 40 and 60 A.D. See Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics.

Reliability of the Old Testament

Jewish scholars performed "unbelievable" care in copying and preserving Scripture.
The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 are dated from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. These manuscripts predate by 1000 years the previous oldest manuscripts. They represent every Old Testament book except Esther (as well as non-biblical writings). There is word for word identity in more than 95% of the cases, and the 5% variation consists mostly of slips of the pen and spelling.