6 arrested in Gateshead for burning Koran

[jim]

To be fair, I don't think the Bible says anywhere that the Earth is 6500 years old. Those sorts of things go for all sorts of texts though - what people think things say, and what they actually say, are often two very different things.

[nibbler]

You can't start burning everything that you (are probably correct in) think[ing] is wrong. If it provokes such a reaction it's not worth it, what has actually been achieved by burning thoser books. Nothing except a reaction from muslims. Completely unneccessary and pointless.

[peterb]

yes perterb was talking about the bible as a historical record of events....old testament may be loosely based on events but it is also possible to be complete fiction, and the new testament was, as i said originally written long after the death of Christ, and is very much based on stories that were told down a few generations, not written until 150 years after Christ's death. but do you believe the following events are true and historical?

the bible "historical events".

the earth is 6500 years old. (9000 years) today

we are made of clay

women are made from mens ribs.

7 specimens of every species on the planet was preserved on the ark. thats 7 x 1.7 million = 12,000,000 individuals on a boat. thats 1860 times bigger than the current largest passenger ship in the world.

Jesus fed 5000 people and stopped them staving with 5 loaves and 2 fish.. even if the fish were whale sharks (largest fish) it still sounds a little unbelievable.

the sun revolves around the earth.

+ many many more "truths" in the bible simply did not happen..

i don't agree with peterb, and his view that the bible is historically accurate, that it's based around true events.. why? im not sure, I need proof! and.... absolutely no single event can be proved accurate, and all books that back up events exist only post old testament.. "truths" believed in the bible are probably just popular legend, so many are taught as if it were the truth... "facts" are found to prove the bible true, but since the western world reached the Age of Reason and certainly the Enlightenment Age, we started to ask for proof. Scientific method was widely adopted..

we should examine the evidence and collate and answer.......... not look for evidence to fit the question, which is what religious people tend to do.

the fact that not one single text or book from antiquity mention crosses or even crucifixion. pre bible, mean that it probably did not exist at all when Jesus lived. the first place in any text it is mentioned is the gospels. Making the way Jesus died highly unlikely. most evidence points to death from a pole, as not one mention to a execution techniques relating to a cross exist in any other text or book.. the pole method of execution recorded at the time was shoved up the bum hole.

not 1 single event can be proved in the bible, because nothing else exists to corroborate it.. if all these old testament major events happened why do none of them get mentioned by homer? because homer was a fiction writer too maybe? well yes he was. the catholic church in 2005 published "The Gift of Scripture" basically admitting that only slight traces of history can be a possibility. and the bible is only "the word of god" and human fiction.

yes there was probably a major flood, plague, drought in ancient times... but all these events have also happened in my life time too.

the word of god in works by Homer are probably fiction, the character Noah probably never existed, the gospels were probably stories based on a popular guy that was killed, the Buddha was probably not super natural, Mohammed was likely either a fibber or misguided, the Qu'ran is probably building on the "facts" of the bible mixed with the new word of god. these are as close as we can get to the truth.

and to top it all off the joke may finally be understood... the unknown 4th word of the bible has never been translated to any other language because it was not used pre bible. it was essentially a nonsense word. את (read right to left in hebrew) could mean A to Z as these are the Hebrew equivalent.. or may mean beginning to end.. the new testament, revelation is written in Greek, Christ is said to refer to himself as alpha omega.. (a to z) beginning to end. apparently the word post bible came to mean "the object" but interestingly the number 4 in scripture is thought to mean the fiction of god. number 4.. word four of the bible could very well mean fiction. moving on the 4th gospel of the bible, refers to Jesus as simply "the word".. the nonsense word maybe? the 4th word, the word that means fiction? is the bible telling us the joke?

so IMO burning any of these books is nothing more than burning works of fiction, some based on "true" events of previous works of fiction. they are just books from the development of man..

Hmm - but you are viewing historical events with a modern perspective. At the time, the obvious explanation for the sun's motion was that the sun revolved around the earth. It is a logical conclusion without an understanding of gravity and mathematics. Similarly the diversity of species was probably not understood at the time the story of the flood was written. And what was the world? Probably to those who passed the story down until it was recorded, it was their own local area. The known world was much smaller than the known world today.

The parables of the new testament are just that - were there 5000 people fed? Who knows? It might have been 50, it might have been a large number for which 5000 was chosen as a representation. What is the biblical definition of a year, or a day? There was no-one there to record that. Exaggeration of events to suit an author's perspective is not just a modern phenomenon. And how much was a less than literal translation from ancient Hebrew? And the stories in the Bible have been selected anyway. The Church of England Bible excludes the books that com[prise the Apocrypha, other Christian religions include it.

As for corroboration - well I'm not a Theologian, or Archaeologist, but I think there was some corroboration in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Non of that (IMHO) excuses the (mainly Catholic) church from not updating doctrine. However the majority of Christians don't regard the Bible as a literal explanation - apart from some fundamentalist groups.

One might also make a case that the ten commandments (whether or not they were handed down on tablets of stone) make a pretty good system of law for a society (I might make an exception for "Worship no other God but me)

However the Bible (and Koran) are religious icons to many many people, and the point I am making is that intolerance of any kind, whether by one religious group to another, a religious group to a non religious group, or vice-versa is the fundamental problem. After all, it was religious intolerance that started the first migrations to America in the 16th century!

However, there are millions of people who do have religious beliefs. Is that due to brainwashing, as the sneering cynics say, or is it a fundamental requirement that human species has evolved as an aid to survival?

Certainly by defining a "code of practice" backed by dire threats, it may have had a civilising influence on ancient societies. Does that need still exist today, and does religious belief confer any evolutionary advantage today? Impossible to say.