>>Again, written by people that never met him <snip>
>At this point.. You are wrong dear friend. . the new testment was maded by the jesus apostles.. They live many years with Jesus.. Some of them more than his own family..It is generally acknowledged that the Canonical Gospels, a set of narratives on the life of Jesus Christ start with the Gospel of Mark. Asuuming - as far as we can know - that Mark actually wrote it himself, according to scholars it was written within a few years of 70 A.D., Matthew and Luke in the 80's and 90's and John about 100 A.D.
See: "Gospel Fictions" by Randel Helms - (ISBN 0-87975-572-5)
"It has been suggested that this first of the gospels (Mark) was put in writing in order to cirsulate among Christians the story of the sufferings of Jesus and his steadfastness under affliction. Perhaps this was inorder o encourage Christians at a time when they, generally, were undergoing persecution. The first serious persecutions of Christianity were initiated in Rome by the Emperor Nero after the great fire of 64 A.D. and it is indeed likely that Mark's gospel may have been written shortly after." - Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible. - Volume II - Page 903 (ISBN 0-517-34582X)
The problem with the writings ascribed to these authors, are that they were written almost a century after Jesus death. So I venture to say that they are recollections, mostly by word of mouth, maybe by previous writings by contemporaries. Reading the gospels you begin to see that even when telling the same stories, sometimes they don't agree on the facts. That seems to me about the retelling of the stories before they were written in a form that reached us.
>>and can only rely on hearsay, told over many times. And we all know what happpens with oral histories passed around by several people. How much do they correspond to reality after they are modified by peoples recollections and peoples biases?
>Here is, the most amazing thing on the bible.. It is the connection or the moral links between histories writed with more than 1k years between them..As I said before, there are many more accounts of atrocities, genocide, murder and sin than there are moral stories. Just read it and judge for yourself. Some passages read like a bad horror movie to me.
>Morality does not necessarily come from religion. You can be moral and a good citizen, knowing the difference between right and wrong and how to be a good member of society without haviong read the bible or even having heard of it.
Do you know ? Almost all of our occidental constitution was made totally inspired on the old testment.. When you were only a little project of a man that you are today.. His laws were already on each corner of each city that we live..Can you cite scholarly references for that? I don't know that they were. The US Constitution was a way to break with a monarchical England and a tyranny of the church, allowing for freedom of expression and freedom of religion. Where is it based on the Old Testament (again a horrid book filled with murder, corruption, mayhem and the worst kind of genocide I can think of). I am sorry if that is not how you see it, but ifwe are reading fom the same book,and I imagine that your copy in Portuguese is a direct translation as is the one I read in English, you must agree that certain passages are not apt to be read to children.
Can you see here any God's power..No. All I see are words written in some books. Were's God's power? Just hearsay from (mostly) anonymous writers.
>>Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, Animists, etc. would also disagree with you.
At that time, Jews people are the responsable for the maintnance of our bible.. The only think that we disagree it is about Jesus..
All the Moslems race started from Abrahan (the prophet) and one of his slaves.. Do you know all the problems between Moslems and Jews at Jerusalem today was prophesied in the Bible (but, how ??)
About Buddhists, Animists, etc.. I prefer to stay with no other comment (because I don't know too much about them)You don't have to know much about them. Just to say that if they are saying they have the true god, and you say (or Christians in general say) that they have the true god, we have a conflict. So which one is it?
