The Good Book - Football v. Religion (No.2)

The Rules of Association Football, unlike the Holy Bible, have been revised frequently since they were first written in the 1860s. These revisions have been discussed openly, agreed by the appropriate governing body, trialled and then ratified, and it is a shame that this process has not been applied to the holy books of all religions.

The purposes of these Association Football rule changes have been to improve the game, make it a better sporting spectacle and to adopt advances in technology for the benefit of all, for example,

• Introduction of penalty kicks,
• Introduction of red and yellow cards,
• Change in the number of substitutes permitted,
• The back-pass rule,
• and next year possibly the introduction of goal line technology 

So it is clear that the Rules of Association Football have undergone quite a few changes during its 150 or so years in print.

By comparison, it has to be said that it is to the detriment of the human race that the Holy Bible has not undergone any such re-write over a much longer timescale. Without going too far into specifics on this post, is would be beneficial had the Holy Bible been re-written to edit out,

• entries that are factually incorrect  (the earth is not flat)
• entries that are scientifically incorrect (Eve was not made from Adam's rib)
• entries that are just wrong (there are no unicorns)
• entries that are contradictory. For crying out loud, its been 500 years since the King James Bible was printed, was nobody proof reading this rubbish. It is so full of contradictory facts you'd think the whole thing was made up......

NonStampCollector has captured the problems of Biblical contradictions excellently.

So it has to be said that from an editorial and revision perceptive that the Rules of Association Football have certainly benefited from being edited and revised. It is a shame that the Holy Bible has not undergone such a process, because a large part of the World's population would benefit from a revised, modernised, factually and scientifically correct, version of the bible.

The Good Book - Football v. Religion (No.1)

The Rules of Association Football and the Holy Bible have many similarities and differences.

One similarity is that nobody knows for sure who is actually responsible for the entire authorship of either book.

However, in regard to the veracity of the two books, that is where the similarities end. For example,

• The Rules of Association Football do not suffer from 'acuracy' problems due to multiple poor translations from  Hebrew, Greek and Latin.
• The original Rules of Association Football have not been tampered with, or had sections added, deleted or amended to suit the religious authorities or the monarchy of the day.
• There are not multiple versions of the Rules of Association Football all claiming to be the 'Real Rules'.

So it would appear to me that the Rules of Association Football, in use today, are far closer to the original ideas, ethos and meaning of Football that the Holy Bible is to Christianity.