LOL...like you check things out outside of religious propaganda?

You're blinded by bias.

The vast majority of artifacts and things of religious value have only been preserved by people that care about these things and all the compilations are done by them as well.

How many religious compilations do you think atheists participated in? They want to erradicate the evidence or disparage it so I don't think they collect or preserve any objectively or carefully.

Also the book above often times pictures the items. You can go to the museums or look them up in encyclopedias to get a more objective look.

What you should be picturing in your mind is a church altar. Only the little old ladies that really revere God maintain his altar and clean and prepare the altar cloths. This is the historical method of preservation of all matters/things involving faith. It almost always requires someone who cares.

Well, I give up. I've looked around on the web, and I can't find a single non-religious source for the claim that Chinese characters tell the story of the Bible.

I guess, if the points made previously in this thread can't dissuade you, nothing will. I'll take one last stab at it, though.

1. The way the authors of the link in the OP use the language is faulty. They don't dissect all the words entirely, they just do so when it adds meaning to their argument.

2. Dissecting the Chinese language like that doesn't work on a regular basis - many symbols, when dissected into their individual parts, don't make any sense. Any complex language is going to have similar results if you go combing through it looking for examples. In order to be anything more than random chance, a significant number of the symbols within the language would have to have strong correlation. It does not appear that this is so.

3. If in fact ancient Chinese characters carried the stories of the Old Testament, this would be an amazing discovery in a wide variety of fields: history, linguistics, and theology, just for starters. But, looking for any kind of professional research on the subject, all I can find is heavily biased Christian apologists.

4. Just out of personal curiosity, I was able to discuss this with a Korean coworker of mine (I am currently in Seoul, South Korea) who has studied Chinese. She is a Christian, and she just smiled politely and said, "it doesn't work that way." She also suggested The Origin and Early Development of the Chinese Writing System, by William G. Boltz as a sound text on the subject, which would clearly show the video in the OP to be incorrect.

5. This last one is just for fun, although the statement is, supposedly, true.. Apparently, you can take the square symbol meaning "mouth" or "praying" , add the symbol for "man" and add the symbol of a cross and it makes a Chinese character. However, it doesn't make the word "sacrifice" or "savior" or "love." It makes the word stupid or dull-minded. http://www.hanzismatter.com/2006/03/...ge-of-god.html

Well WBS has an 800 number maybe those interested can call them. I'm pretty much thru with indulging 2+2 skepticism. To them everything is a Christian conspiracy and I really don't care what they believe or accept and I don't care about any isolated instances of mistakes either. Christianity has a huge body of facts to sift through and one or two facts don't make it or break it.

There is no conspiracy. If you can't choose God freely nobody's going to chase you. Maybe a few nutty cults might but that's usually it.

For their phone number:
http://worldbibleschool.net/c_aboutwbs/contact.php

I'm really confused now, because my last post said nothing about

1. A Christian Conspiracy
or
2. How showing that the topic at hand is false also disproves all of Christianity.


I think you need to take a deep breath, realize that Christians aren't going to get every single thing right, and if someone points out where they are incorrect, it's not equivalent to saying "OMG, everything about religion is always false!"

Proverbs 12:1 seems relevant.

You haven't been on 2+2 religion boards very long.

Meaning.... I should have known you routinely assume those untrue things?

Being a believer is something like a miraculous state of being.

Every time you slam the proof door you denied wonder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmF-s9Dd83g

Personally (assuming God exists) I'd rather know the difference between what's true and false, than believe everything. God and his nature would indeed be the most amazing thing to discover in the history of the universe. You' want to mix in a ton of lies and half-truths with the real Truth, because it's easier to believe everything?

Because as far as I can tell, you're equating trying to discern truth from falsehood with "denying yourself wonder."

Well that's your personal method then. Maybe you'll have to find God in your own way and not mine but going around slamming doors for everybody else isn't any way to help them if there is a God now is it?

I believe Solomon was pretty accurate in The Book of Wisdom. Maybe you can see it if you read a few chapters.

http://www****dm.org/bible/Old%20Testament/wisdom.htm

And I believe you shouldn't have to tell people lies and misinformation to make them see God. The Bible agrees - try looking up how pissed Jesus gets when people misunderstand what he is on Earth to do, or what he is like. Try looking at all the times Yahweh in the Old Testament defines exactly what kind of God he is, exactly what his nature is.

Yet, all this Biblical truth isn't enough to show what God is like, and people won't be convinced unless they lie to themselves (or others) on top of that? Please tell me you're not serious.

I don't think anything has been definitely established in this thread.

Maybe for some people but not for me.

I still want to hear from somebody who understands the Chinese writings from the period of the writing.

Logic does not trump practical relevance. You have to know the times when someone does something because the times give you the context and a better understanding of the origins and motives.

basically, splendour will never admit she's wrong until a christian expert in the history of chinese language, comes onto this board and tells her straight up that she is wrong. Quite the miracle required.

hey splendour, do you realize that the original document *wasn't* written by experts in chinese language, yet you insists on believing it? double standards ftw! If you disagree, feel free to provide evidence that this was written by chinese language experts.

Obv we don't know if someone Chinese came up with this idea, translated it and gave it to WBS. Only WBS can tell where they got it from and if you can't reach someone in WBS who knows this info you need a Chinese Language Expert from the period concerned.

We know just from Bible translations that the King James Bible uses expressions accurate to its days that we no longer use.

I'm not debating this any more. Because we have no expert just a lot of religious people claiming it and it must be a conspiracy right because Christians always try to lie and deceive people, right?

uh no, its because you act like Christianity is so weak in and of itself, that it needs to latch on to these half-truths to convince people to be Christians.

Its just hilarious how you are willing to believe anything that is attached to the idea of Christianity *without* the need of an expert to back it up, but in order to dismiss it, you need an expert to dismiss it. Why the double standard?

And theres not "a lot of " religious people claiming it. I am chinese, and have gone to a chinese church for 15+ years, and visited countless churches/missionaries in the west coast + china + taiwan and have *never* heard anything as ridiculous as this before.

starvingwriter is more christ-like than you, and he's an atheist!

You're wrong. I personally don't think Christianity needs anything more than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John to establish itself. Anything after that or before that is gravy.

As far as my so called "double standard" its just the other side of the coin of personal emphasis. My faith must be of a different nature than yours because I don't need to engage in ridiculous tests all the time that the bible specifically says we're not to engage in so if you're going to hold something up to a test why not make sure its done by the best if you're assessing something claiming to be connected to the spiritual realm.

For spiritual enlightenment try reading the Book of Wisdom. You might actually learn the definition and responsibilities of faith and be able to put it into practice someday.

I want to facepalm so hard every time I come back to this thread.

Yes, you're right when you say that a better understanding of the times translates into a better understanding of the characters in question. However, as far as I know, each character was only "created" once. Understanding the environment in which these characters were derived from could only further explain why they used "boat" (舟) and "a marsh at the foot of the hills" (㕣) to create the word "boat or large vessel" (船). Trying to assert that the elements of this character may have originally meant something else is like me trying to say that the "zoo" in "zoology" might have meant "a parklike area (blahblahblah)" before it meant "animal" in Greek depending on "the times."

For clarification, that wasn't "logic." That was an analogy.

Speaking of logic; looking up a character's etymology is not "logic." In fact, I believe it's the people behind this slide who are using fuzzy logic.

Just for fun, http://www.chineseetymology.org/Char...ton1=Etymology show's how the word "first" (先) came about: forward footprint 止 of person 儿. Kind of blows this,

out of the water, doesn't it?

But of course, none of this matters because me? I am no expert.

And so, I present to the thread, this: http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/creati...haracters.html , a collection of articles and letters written by EXPERTS!!!!!!!!!1

A few highlights:

- Letter Published in The Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 19, June, 1982. Comment on The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language by C. H. Kang and Ethel Nelson (this is the book that most of the religious sites cite from).

- Letter from a Chinese expert on "Genesis and Chinese characters"

- More bogus Chinese character analysis

Done.

You are very talented at quietly backing out of a discussion or quickly changing the topic once it becomes obvious you are irrefutably wrong. You have lots of different ways of doing this across RGT and SMP:

1) Refusing to actually cite evidence for a dubious claim:

When challenged to provide a source for an unfounded assertion -

After asserting that studies in the social sciences prove God exists, being contradicted and asked to cite a source -

See how you basically just dodge the question and then re-assert your claim?


2) Saying that you're "just trying to learn" or some other platitude when shown to be wrong:

Here you say that 'the evidence speaks for itself'...then deny there is anything to debate. You don't want to be contradicted, under the guise of being spiritual -

The 'scholars' are 'just reporting'...so there's no need to use your brain.


3) Pleading ignorance:

If one of your points is refuted, you simply claim not to understand the refutation. Then move on.


These are just a few examples. In a lot of the threads from which I have quoted, the websites you posted were torn apart though you continued to defend them. When shown to be absolutely incorrect, though, you simply leave the thread and start a new one, never admitting you were wrong. You don't just do this within threads; you do this within posts. You jump from one point to the other, hoping no one notices that you didn't answer a question or acknowledge being wrong. I can also find plenty of examples of this if you like.

The Bible absolutely does not call on people to remain ignorant (in fact, it encourages people to gain knowledge and wisdom!) and gaining knowledge and checking for factual accuracy is not even close to "testing God" as it's outlined in the Bible.

What did you prove? You took a bunch of posts out of context then slapped your opinion on them. Big deal.

What I said above still stands.

As for accepting burden of proof anytime anyone says so. I'm not obligated to anyone on here to accept it. My time is my own.

Besides I don't officially debate anymore. I've told everyone that for a really long time. If they don't like it tough.

Then how can you pwn teh trolls?!?

The type of knowledge the bible says to obtain is biblical knowledge not the general type you are implying. The type you are implying is way way too broad to even be realistic.

Checking factual knowledge is practical and relevant at times but if you have a problem then its yours to research. Its not mine because my faith doesn't rest on it.

This shouldn't even be a debate thread. It was clearly a sharing info thread from the outset its just everyone on here thinks everything is a debate. From my pov it's not and I get sick of people dragging me into them.

Don't believe the WBS. Its your choice what you believe. Just don't expect me to agree. Everyone knows browbeating me is next to impossible because unlike the average person I don't live for group approval. I only fear God.

Lol...trolls are never debate worthy.

You mostly just slap them silly every time they get out of line.

... I'm not sure you really understand what "taken out of context" means.

My answer was: no.

I will say you have put a significant amount of work in this thread. You're no slug. I just have some reservations because of lack of knowledge of the times.