No zealot like a convert.

Quote from Dan on Sep 28^th, 2011, 4:16pm:

 
   Yes, I'm sure it works both ways.  
   Knaight, I'm not so sure that Dr. Hovind is lying about anything.  Though IMHO his lecture style leaves much to be desired, I believe that he's sincere.  Of course there's no way for us to know for sure.

It's an interesting statement on Christianity (and especially the more fundamentalist sects) that they can manage to see others who profess the same faith as not even being "Christian".
 
We have seen this from sundry fundamentalist TV-Evangelist types, who allowed as how luminaries like Mother Theresa would be condemned as they were not properly Christian.  
 
Of course, that's not unique to Christianity... We see various sects of Islam all merrily blowing each other up.
 
Regarding Hovind.... He's a poster-boy of creationist nonsense and we have a lot of fun at his expense on the Randi forum.  As noted, it's impossible to believe the man is actually so misinformed and so the conclusion that he's simply lying for effect is inescapable.

Dan, you claim to want to keep this conversation civil, yet you make a statement like the Pope isn't Christian.  If I were still a practicing Catholic I would be very deeply offended by that.  Calm down and think before you post please.  I can see this thread quickly grinding to a halt.

Quote from Dan on Sep 30^th, 2011, 8:38am:

 
I would like to hear more about the validity of the Bible. Just send a PM with links or whatever you want to say.
 
1. Knaight covered this quite well already.
 
2. So we must merely take God's word that He is right and we are wrong? I find it interesting to note that it seems we are constantly correcting ourselves on what God deems just and not just. At one point the witches are burned, Jews persecuted, some of it done by Christians. Now, we say they were not properly following the Bible. But I think that morals are completely separate from God. To all theists here, what do you think about we who do not have belief in God and are moral? Are morals from God? I don't want to continue on this idea and make assumptions, when I can get a sense of how you guys view us in this respect.
 
3. Read the books, understand the books. The theory is sound, new information simply adds to the credibility of the theory. Let's not go into that here, we've already covered that for 30 pages.  
 
Story time- I was with some friends a few nights back discussing some of these very topics, like whether atheism was a religion. At one point, one friend wanted me to prove why 2 + 2 = 4 is a fact, and not subjective. So I tried to reason it out. We have singular objects, and regardless of the name you give them, it is (or they are) what is is. Double it, that is two, add it, that is two, its counting numbers. One person said that 2  + 2 = 4 was false, because of decimals, though I explained that 2.0, the 0 can continue indefinitely, and counting numbers are whole numbers without decimals. Point in case, how simplified can you get before it's just impossible to make it any easier? Either a person understands or they don't. Or maybe math, and everything, really is subjective?
 
Dan, why do you believe that the Pope is not a Christian?

Quote from Bikewer on Sep 30^th, 2011, 5:58pm:

 
I used "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color", and used not believing in an invisible dragon, as well as leprechauns, but they regarded both examples as not comparable and completely unrelated to atheism and religion.

Quote from Dan on Sep 30^th, 2011, 8:38am:

Math and science are fundamentally different. One is observation based, the other based on development from basic axioms, and comparing the two simply doesn't work. That's like insisting that we have no idea of the approximate force of gravity on earth, because you actually have to test it and collect data instead of being able to just know it. Which is B.S. as we know full well that it is approximately 9.8 m/(s^2), with slight variation by altitude.

I read a fascinating book on the Book Of Revelation just last year.   It's more of a history of what effect that particular book has had on society, but the author does go into the history of the work itself.
It's one of the very few books in the Bible that we actually know the author...
 
As Greencheapsk8 notes, the whole thing is not (as is often assumed) a prophecy of the End Times, but rather a screed against things that were going on when it was written.
It was actually written about 200 years CE (or AD for those that like that system), a period in which the early Christian church was still in very much an unsettled state and all sorts of competing sects and groups were running around claiming to be the "real" version.
As well, Christianity had begun to be a thorn in the side of the Romans, who were starting to get serious about their persecutions.    They pretty much ignored the religion at first.
So, Revelations is about the various "false prophets" that were running around, the various heretical sects (or heretical in the mind of the author, at any rate), and the Romans and their policies.
This is all pretty well studied and as I noted in an earlier post, well-understood by scholars but not generally at the level of street-level believers.