Actually, on my way to the grocery store after posting this morning I did think about you a little, and wondered what had happened, somebody died that you'd asked God to save, or SOMETHING, beyond just prolonged teenage rebellion, and I'm even wondering if you were brought up in a separatist group which is against instrumental music, about which there are some online forums/support groups for ex-members.
If you are truly 71 forgive my arrogance, I understand when getting older it's harder to accept reality of no gods, and that perhaps one has been deceived for the entirety of their lives. My turning my back on religion was not out of a drastic occurrence, nothing happened, I only educated myself in psychology and philosophy, those led to studying astronomy, archeology, and a bit of evolutionary sciences, I was introduced to Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and from there on I slowly but surely turned my back on religious rhetoric, and realized it's only a primitive attempt at explaining metaphysics in our ancient past, the bible is only a story of people's life and struggle written by many authors, the bible is an account of many stories of ancient peoples all put on one book.
That's why many of it's story is somewhat similar to other societies other than the Hebrews, the ten commandments is similar to commandments written on the walls of ancient Egyptians book of the dead, other similar stories are that of Gilgamesh's Epic, just to name but a few!
BTW, before the world's worst hypocrit is exposed as a traitor to his own nation, I guess there will be more attacks on Israel. I've studied clues about him but not much about Israel because others are doing that. A man on religious TV last night was saying they will choose this imposter who's only pretending to be religious, to bring them a peace arrangement, but it will not last long. I don't claim to have studied that.
When these things do come to pass, I hope you'll not be too embarrassed having gone too far out on a limb, which may be a symptom of some kind of post traumatic stress, if you've had some, which I sympathetically suspect.
Theologians have been interpreting bible prophesies with events of our times, however get a thousand of interpreters of bible prophesies, and you'll get a thousand different set of prophesies, all from the predictions of Napoleon Bonaparte to Hitler, and any great deviant who has brought world wars to our lives, I believe these were called "anti-christs" any how this all just a matte of interpretation. It changes as some changes in our societies do happen, bible scholars are not all sure or in agreement of all supposed predictions, there is a fine line between "reality" and interpreting ancient text, as if the future has been foretold.
God says through ancient Isaiah, something about they'll finally begin to learn true doctrine, I forget exactly where in Isaiah, and something about "no more pricking briar". If you're old enough to remember the PTL breakdown, you may remember the media quoting "If my people which are CALLED BY MY NAME...will humble THEMSELVES....." emphasis mine, obviously, "and repent of their wicked ways"...then will I hear from heaven and heal their LAND.
PTL? LOL... The Bakers who made billions of dollars and have even gold faucet in their waterloo? No this only shows how easy it is for these deceivers and usurpers who live off the innocent but ignorant believers, what I've realized is that many of these do still exist, and still they live off those whom they usurp with false promises, and false hopes, religion is big business, it ought to be taxed!
I never said I could prove this tentative theory, just showing how interesting Bible can be if you investigate on your own instead of taking anyone else's word for it.
We had a character here on Sciforums, he called himself SouthStar his by line was "defender of the faith", he would dance circles around some bible scholars with all his knowledge of scripture, he was a very good bible quoter, and seemed to have known and understood the document very well. Though spending a few years here on Sciforums and engaging in many debates, there's one thing we noticed about this fella he was honest, and this brought him to a realization of which he changed his ways, and basically became an atheist. What do you suppose happened? He wrote his post after a long vacation from Sciforums and his bi line read "I want to believe" his post renouncing religion was and is one best threads this forum has seen for quite a while, many people got involved in discussing his despair, and his troubled mind, but this person latter turned out to be a good debater against religion even using the bible as his guide, to refute theistic claims!
Many atheist here know the bible very well, many were once religious, but we've all come to a conclusion, with out evidence of the claims made in bibles, it all boils down to having faith in unsupported ancient claims.
