How can Christians ,without special pleading,distinguish their Yeshua from other dying and ressurrected gods. How can they maintain that their god plans events in the world when that contradicts natural selection,the unplanned agenccy of change? How can they affirm the trinity? I f Catholic ,how can they affirm Mary' perpetual virginity? I f errantist ,how can they affirm the Buy-bull over other fables and how can they affirm truth in it when it is replete with historical and other errors and magic-miracles? How cana they affirm faith when that begs the question ? How can they affirm they are rational when the religon is so irrational?eligion is mythinformation.
Although I agree with you that many fundamentalist Christians believe in irrational and often completely unreasonable things without any proof, a large part of being religious is believing in so-called "miracles", or simply things that cannot be explained by us. I think that you are being too general when you maintain that all Christians believe in Intelligent Design and some of your other assumptions. It is of course possible to be a Christian and also believe in evolution and science. Some people read the Bible and interpret it literally; however, most read it in a figurative way and use it as simply a moral and spiritual guide. Religion gives people something to believe in, and most humans have the need or find it comforting to believe in something.
QUOTE
How can they affirm they are rational when the religon is so irrational?eligion is mythinformation.
Griggs 1947,
I think this is a perfect example of what faith is and it’s function. It is all too human to seek out that witch provides us comfort and sooths our emotional distress, addresses our fears or bolsters our ego. These are very attractive and powerful personal motivators and support mechanisms that appeal to every human on some level, and that’s the point.
You cannot debate a religion or a faith when it comes to personal meaning. You can only debate specific details like the ones you have listed.
Reaching a person with reason and having him or her using it effectively and honestly is something you cannot do for them. Much like trying to quit smoking, this is something that the person themselves must do.
Ask any atheist who was raised as a theist and through reason and self-examination left religion behind. One of the hardest things to overcome was all the support mechanism in place that people rely upon that religion supplies. Even now I can see the attractive nature and power of those support mechanisms. Some people just do not want to or cannot give those up.
And that leads to why people react the way they do when you challenge the validity of their support mechanisms be it political, social or religious.
These nonsensical and irrational comfort mechanisms are not limited to religion and I dare say that we all carry a few greegrees around with us no matter how rational we try to be.
QUOTE
You cannot debate a religion or a faith when it comes to personal meaning. You can only debate specific details like the ones you have listed.
So what? Would we still continue with the debate. You said it's not debatable. So I think there's no problem with that. I wouldn't want to argue about faith anymore. I'm tired of that thing. It's always on my mind. Now, I can't even erase it.
You have many questions griggs. And that's nice. But only you could find the answer for those. You shouldn't ask us. We can only give opinions. It's still your choice at the end. Good luck on your faith. Hope you find the answers right for you!
All that's required, initially, is a belief that your 'gut feelings' are actually a message from God. Then, when you hear theological arguments, your 'gut feelings' will twitter with sympathy towards certain types.
Then, you can pick your religion.
("Gut feelings", seemingly, can be groomed in people - to bias them in their youth)
Then, you can pick your religion.
("Gut feelings", seemingly, can be groomed in people - to bias them in their youth)
Gene Splicer, we are in sync. I have used silly names for a god in order to demystify the notion .I also use the term deity to elevate the debate? Any comments on terms? Vanadese, I do not assume those Christians use ID,but I find their use of a god conveys nothing . They all reject a belief in a particular god to control a force of nature: no Thor to control the weather.But they find a god for all nature.One cannot ask of cause of the polyverse what one asks of its parts without committing the fallacy of composition. For the errantists to follow the Bible when scholars have peluciddly demonstrated its unreliability and its questionable moral system, is mind-boggling. Why not use Esop's Fables? The atonement is irrational. See ' The Unauthorized Version , Who were the early Israelites and where did they come from, Misquoting Jesus and The Bible Unearthed" for information on the composition of the book. See" The born again Skeptics Guide to the Bible and Biblical Nonsense' on biblical immorality. There are so many skeptical books now on the book,that we common folk can know what Christian scholars like Bishop John Shelby Spong know. See Walter Ka ufmann on the errantists chery picking and reading into the Bible their own views: all exegesis is eisegesis . Yes ,errantists accept evolution ,but their irrationality is to posit a mind behind a blind process , natural selection . They endorse a contradiction, thus. As far as meaning , we are own own meanings . We can socialize without going to a church.We can meditate without praying . We can be emotional in going to rock concerts rather than to charismatic churches. I think we naturalists need to concentrate on the psychology of the religious as William J ames did as wel l as to atheology ; we cannot use psychology to committ the genectic falla cy ,but tell the theists how to overcome their religiosity. I all to well understand neurotocism as I am neurotic and paranoid.That derives from my schyzotypy. Fortunately, unlike other schyzotypals,I abhor the supernatural a nd paranormal and any weird ideas.
Griggs,
Yeah, different names, believers, concepts, but what the hell?? They are all gods, anyway. You didn't use silly names for a god. Names are just representations so there's nothing wrong about what you did, don't worry.
Like you said, we all have our own meanings. We are all different. That should be the way things are.
Yeah, different names, believers, concepts, but what the hell?? They are all gods, anyway. You didn't use silly names for a god. Names are just representations so there's nothing wrong about what you did, don't worry.
Like you said, we all have our own meanings. We are all different. That should be the way things are.
Science and religion are not natural adversaries; indeed, they complement each other quite nicely. Einstein observed that science cannot provide goals, only means. It is up to religion and philosophy to provide the goals for humanity and up to science to enable man to reach those goals. When a man of the cloth ventures to challenge science he damns himself from the start. When science tries to choose man's direction, an ugly picture of the future is inevitably painted. Science ought to respect religion's role in society, and religion ought to let science advance unhindered. That is all. For one to obstruct the other hurts both.
But I find we all can motivate ourselves and find our own meanings without a Sky Pappy or ground of bei ng a la Tillicn.I find that my naturalism explains matters wihout the man behind the curtain to do so. I find that theists just dress up there old garbage into new cans: Michael Martin and so many other atheists have demolished new versions of of old argument that Hume and Kant long ago demolished. The Buy- bull and other fables have no quarters on morals; indeed i t is replete with the immorality of its god and its son-himself. What we need is a psychology that can help people overcome supernaturalism and paranormality.Albert Ellis can point the way. I look to team Ashtekar to enlighten us further on the the Big Bounce and those who stu dy. the origins of life . These studies, not superstitions, enlighten us all to the true nature of things. The man behind the curtains is absent!
its simple to believe, you can go to the places christ was. I take it that your an evolutionest, how can you believe that life came from non life, you can't even go there, its just a theory and noone was around to even witness it. The asids that make up enzymes which form protine, they were mainly right handed, even after tested in a lab, we are pribarilly left handed. there wernet enough left handed ones to even make one enzyme baised on the tests constructed to duplicate the climate. you can measure the turn of a galaxy, every turn creates another ring, no more than 30,000 years have past according to the turn of galaxys, and that is an absolute that is not being interfered by anything. Hell, there isn't even one of the acclaimed 1000's of between stages for humans. Evolutionists must have a greater faith than Christians because of the overwelming evidence against what you say.
If evolutionists have a greater faith than Christians, maybe they really do, considering the amount of evidence that could be used against it. But you can't really measure faith at all. Maybe, evolutionists believe that this theory is really true and it might lead to the question:"Where do we came from?". On the other side, Christians believe in a God which could also be the reason why we are all here. It's about different faiths so I think they should not be compared.
QUOTE
Evolutionists must have a greater faith than Christians because of the overwelming evidence against what you say.
You are absolutely brutally misinformed. There is information from a variety of fields that supports evolution - enough to fill thousands of volumes. Enough to fill an entire library. The only "evidence" against evolution is semantics on the exact process that contributed to the fact of evolution. Creationists point to "holes" in the theory. Usually this is by people who are ignorant of the data - and so they misclassify areas that have not been studied sufficiently as areas that evolution cannot explain. Either that, or they quote mine, present outdated information, or purposely mislead their audience.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| Evolutionists must have a greater faith than Christians because of the overwelming evidence against what you say. |
You are absolutely brutally misinformed. There is information from a variety of fields that supports evolution - enough to fill thousands of volumes. Enough to fill an entire library. The only "evidence" against evolution is semantics on the exact process that contributed to the fact of evolution. Creationists point to "holes" in the theory. Usually this is by people who are ignorant of the data - and so they misclassify areas that have not been studied sufficiently as areas that evolution cannot explain. Either that, or they quote mine, present outdated information, or purposely mislead their audience.
The asids that make up enzymes which form protine, they were mainly right handed, even after tested in a lab, we are pribarilly left handed.
This is borderline incomprehensible, but i'll respond anyway. In a lab, we are unable to test more than a few kilos (at most) of material - in an attempt to simulate the early earth. Any experiments that are done could not last more than a year or two - though even that would be an exceptionally long one considering the energy necessary to simulate the early earth environment. Contrast this against the trillions of kilograms and billions of years available to create just one or two self replicating molecules. You are simply regurgitating the same kinds of creationist arguments - none of which are actually valid.
QUOTE
Hell, there isn't even one of the acclaimed 1000's of between stages for humans.
Total BS. Again, you're just repeating the same arguments that have been blatently disproven. No evidence for tansitional fossils for humans? Check out figure 1.4.4, 2/3 of the way down the page.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| Hell, there isn't even one of the acclaimed 1000's of between stages for humans. |
Total BS. Again, you're just repeating the same arguments that have been blatently disproven. No evidence for tansitional fossils for humans? Check out figure 1.4.4, 2/3 of the way down the page.
its simple to believe, you can go to the places christ was.
I want to stay fairly friendly here, so i'll try to restrain myself. But i can step through every single page of the bible and point out historical innacuracies, geographic innacuracies, as well as blatent plagarization from earlier god-men stories. Why do all the god-men stories (Krishna, Buddha, Ra, Apollo, Indra, etc) share so many similarities? Because they're all based on pagan stories that predate all of them. Every single event in the life of jesus can be traced to astrological cults that predate christianity by thousands of years. The early christian leaders simply rehashed it all so that their god would appeal to everyone - yet theirs was "real", so they had more pull. I repeat - every significant number, and every significant event in the life of that christ figure comes from other stories - all of which are based on astrology.
The time that jesus supposedly lived was documented by 50 or more significant historians who focused on that area of the world - none of which ever make a single mention of the miraculous things he did, nor did they talk of the huge numbers of people converting. The only non-biblical sources that discuss an actual historical jesus (all written way after his supposed death) have been shot down as containing blatent literary seams. We know how much the christians rewrote history during the middle ages - it would have been easy for a few well-meaning scribes to perpetrate pious fraud and insert their god-man into those forged documents. But in doing so they left evidence. All the documents which questioned his existence would have been burned - the authors tortured and murdered.
So when you tell me that "Evolutionists" have to have more faith - you could not be more wrong. Not only does all the evidence so far support the theory, WE are willing to ask questions. We will never rely on scientific theories that blatently fly in the face of the evidence.
Please take the time to educate yourself before making irrational claims.
Justavian , thanks . I find errantists just as obtuse as inerrantists; they just have to have faith in order to find meaning ,it seems . We depend on ourselves; we are the adults, so to speak.Without faith one can live; without science we would be in Hell. Operating eternally , natural selection - the anti-chance agency, " designs matters in the polyverse Thus it has two attributes of a ppppppppppppputative god- eternity and designing. Theists try to find other attributes for their god,but there is no reason to think they exist. These two suffice.
Christians simply need to believe in God. I have met many a "Christian" who goes to church dilligently, and believes that the whole bible is 100% true, but in themselves are complete jerks!
A christian in the most part is someone who is good to the people around them. A belief in god is a stigma attached, that most people move to define Christians under. But being Christian isn't going to church and daming things like evolution (which I will say is hardly a matter of faith. There's enough evidence to support evolution for the rest of my life is we ran a forum of them all), it's about loving thy neighbour as thyself etc.
You follow that commandment, then you're behaviour is Christian.
"Pure Christianity— the Christianity of the catacombs— is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." ~Hitler.
"If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of know- ledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It is Christianity that is the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself." ~Hitler.
"Originally war was nothing but a struggle for pasture grounds. To-day war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them. The great migrations set out from the East. With us begins the ebb, from West to East. That's in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of natural selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure." ~Hitler.
Put that in your pipes and smoke it!
Political:
Violant tyrany of the Nazis was so obvious, unhidden, and all-be-it, more honest -- when compared to the temptation, the bullshittery, the blind faith and the nature-destroying corporations and organized religions that I see today. The evils of the Nazis were so obvious, that any layman could hate them, whilst the evils of the nations around them were quickly accepted and even defended. When two evils go to war against one another [in a world war], the nation most appealing to humanity will win. If there is a third world war, then the most popular of the evils will win out over the other, even if the winner is far more evil -- in that it was the sweetest poision of humanity. Know this, fools of earth: Beauty is the greatest weapon!
Is it any wonder that an all-mighty, all-seeing "god" needs so many people to speak for him? If a man, unable to walk or even eat solid foods wished to speak to the entire world, then he would need many messengers; it would be of little surprise to me of one man needing many messengers, but one "all-mighty" god needing even one messenger??? Rediculus! The masses are truly lost! Such vast lies are forgiven, tolerated and even accepted.
As Hitler's wisdom has shown me, the people on earth who promise a utopia and a paradise, these ones always cause slavery. They want to control and dominate the entire earth!
Christianity and Islam may infact eventually destroy humanity.
"If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of know- ledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It is Christianity that is the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself." ~Hitler.
"Originally war was nothing but a struggle for pasture grounds. To-day war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them. The great migrations set out from the East. With us begins the ebb, from West to East. That's in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of natural selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure." ~Hitler.
Put that in your pipes and smoke it!
Political:
Violant tyrany of the Nazis was so obvious, unhidden, and all-be-it, more honest -- when compared to the temptation, the bullshittery, the blind faith and the nature-destroying corporations and organized religions that I see today. The evils of the Nazis were so obvious, that any layman could hate them, whilst the evils of the nations around them were quickly accepted and even defended. When two evils go to war against one another [in a world war], the nation most appealing to humanity will win. If there is a third world war, then the most popular of the evils will win out over the other, even if the winner is far more evil -- in that it was the sweetest poision of humanity. Know this, fools of earth: Beauty is the greatest weapon!
Is it any wonder that an all-mighty, all-seeing "god" needs so many people to speak for him? If a man, unable to walk or even eat solid foods wished to speak to the entire world, then he would need many messengers; it would be of little surprise to me of one man needing many messengers, but one "all-mighty" god needing even one messenger??? Rediculus! The masses are truly lost! Such vast lies are forgiven, tolerated and even accepted.
As Hitler's wisdom has shown me, the people on earth who promise a utopia and a paradise, these ones always cause slavery. They want to control and dominate the entire earth!
Christianity and Islam may infact eventually destroy humanity.
QUOTE (Your fellow human (yfh)+May 24 2006, 11:57 PM)
If there is a third world war, then the most popular of the evils will win out over the other, even if the winner is far more evil -- in that it was the sweetest poision of humanity. Know this, fools of earth: Beauty is the greatest weapon!
Lucifer
a breath of fresh air... to still a man's troubled soul
Lucifer
a breath of fresh air... to still a man's troubled soul
QUOTE (yfh+)
"Pure Christianity— the Christianity of the catacombs— is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." ~Hitler.
"If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of know- ledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It is Christianity that is the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself." ~Hitler.
"Originally war was nothing but a struggle for pasture grounds. To-day war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them. The great migrations set out from the East. With us begins the ebb, from West to East. That's in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of natural selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure." ~Hitler.
yfh: Do you have a reference for these "quotes" from Hitler? If so, could you please provide it for me? Thanks.
Griggs 1947,
I think this is a perfect example of what faith is and it’s function. It is all too human to seek out that witch provides us comfort and sooths our emotional distress, addresses our fears or bolsters our ego. These are very attractive and powerful personal motivators and support mechanisms that appeal to every human on some level, and that’s the point.
You cannot debate a religion or a faith when it comes to personal meaning. You can only debate specific details like the ones you have listed.
Reaching a person with reason and having him or her using it effectively and honestly is something you cannot do for them. Much like trying to quit smoking, this is something that the person themselves must do.
Ask any atheist who was raised as a theist and through reason and self-examination left religion behind. One of the hardest things to overcome was all the support mechanism in place that people rely upon that religion supplies. Even now I can see the attractive nature and power of those support mechanisms. Some people just do not want to or cannot give those up.
And that leads to why people react the way they do when you challenge the validity of their support mechanisms be it political, social or religious.
These nonsensical and irrational comfort mechanisms are not limited to religion and I dare say that we all carry a few greegrees around with us no matter how rational we try to be.
I agree with you 100%.
Religion is comfort, if one looks into human psychology and religious history, this becomes pretty clear and completely logical.
Religion provides comfort on so many levels. Having been raised as a Christian, you are absolutely right to say that even as someone begins to step away from religion...the attraction to the belief is harder to overcome even when your own logic goes against it.
Regardless I would still say faith is a good thing, simply for the fact that it makes people's lives easier and more pleasant.
After numerous arguments provided by "creationists", I have yet to come across anything factual or at least logical.
"If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of know- ledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It is Christianity that is the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself." ~Hitler.
"Originally war was nothing but a struggle for pasture grounds. To-day war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them. The great migrations set out from the East. With us begins the ebb, from West to East. That's in accordance with the laws of nature. By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of natural selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of human failure." ~Hitler.
yfh: Do you have a reference for these "quotes" from Hitler? If so, could you please provide it for me? Thanks.
QUOTE (yfh+)
Put that in your pipes and smoke it!
Unless I'm reading you wrong, you're quoting Hitler to make your "logical"(?) point. The guy was a madman. Who will you "quote" next? Jeffrey Dahmer? Talk to you later. Please do give me the reference for the "quotes", if you have them. Thanks again.
Unless I'm reading you wrong, you're quoting Hitler to make your "logical"(?) point. The guy was a madman. Who will you "quote" next? Jeffrey Dahmer? Talk to you later. Please do give me the reference for the "quotes", if you have them. Thanks again.
Hey newguy,
Who said good and evil don't exist?
(sarcastic)
You gotta love this guy yfh. A real winner. This guy could be the poster boy for Thorazine.
The price of Israel... 6 million Jews.
The price of our Lord... 30 pieces of silver.
Eternal Salvation... priceless
Who said good and evil don't exist?
(sarcastic)
You gotta love this guy yfh. A real winner. This guy could be the poster boy for Thorazine.
The price of Israel... 6 million Jews.
The price of our Lord... 30 pieces of silver.
Eternal Salvation... priceless
QUOTE (T-cell+May 25 2006, 01:37 AM)
Hey newguy,
Who said good and evil don't exist?
(sarcastic)
You gotta love this guy yfh. A real winner. This guy could be the poster boy for Thorazine.
The price of Israel... 6 million Jews.
The price of our Lord... 33 pieces of silver.
Eternal Salvation... priceless
Religion has been turned into a MasterCard commercial. How fitting.
Who said good and evil don't exist?
(sarcastic)
You gotta love this guy yfh. A real winner. This guy could be the poster boy for Thorazine.
The price of Israel... 6 million Jews.
The price of our Lord... 33 pieces of silver.
Eternal Salvation... priceless
Religion has been turned into a MasterCard commercial. How fitting.
QUOTE (gmilam+May 25 2006, 12:53 PM)
Religion has been turned into a MasterCard commercial. How fitting.
If being a Christian was only that easy.
If being a Christian was only that easy.
QUOTE (GeneSplicer+May 9 2006, 01:11 PM)
QUOTE
How can they affirm they are rational when the religon is so irrational?eligion is mythinformation.
Griggs 1947,
I think this is a perfect example of what faith is and it’s function. It is all too human to seek out that witch provides us comfort and sooths our emotional distress, addresses our fears or bolsters our ego. These are very attractive and powerful personal motivators and support mechanisms that appeal to every human on some level, and that’s the point.
You cannot debate a religion or a faith when it comes to personal meaning. You can only debate specific details like the ones you have listed.
Reaching a person with reason and having him or her using it effectively and honestly is something you cannot do for them. Much like trying to quit smoking, this is something that the person themselves must do.
Ask any atheist who was raised as a theist and through reason and self-examination left religion behind. One of the hardest things to overcome was all the support mechanism in place that people rely upon that religion supplies. Even now I can see the attractive nature and power of those support mechanisms. Some people just do not want to or cannot give those up.
And that leads to why people react the way they do when you challenge the validity of their support mechanisms be it political, social or religious.
These nonsensical and irrational comfort mechanisms are not limited to religion and I dare say that we all carry a few greegrees around with us no matter how rational we try to be.
I agree with you 100%.
Religion is comfort, if one looks into human psychology and religious history, this becomes pretty clear and completely logical.
Religion provides comfort on so many levels. Having been raised as a Christian, you are absolutely right to say that even as someone begins to step away from religion...the attraction to the belief is harder to overcome even when your own logic goes against it.
Regardless I would still say faith is a good thing, simply for the fact that it makes people's lives easier and more pleasant.
After numerous arguments provided by "creationists", I have yet to come across anything factual or at least logical.
QUOTE (Your fellow human (yfh)+May 24 2006, 11:57 PM)
Christianity and Islam may infact eventually destroy humanity.
No, people who fail to accept the diversity of humanity and who kill in the name of a God (which no real God would truly invoke) will destroy humanity. Islam and Christianity are good ideas, it's some of the extremist nut jobs (not directly referring to anyone on this forum) who follow them that will destroy humanity.
It is. Be nice to the people around you.
How hard can it be?
No, people who fail to accept the diversity of humanity and who kill in the name of a God (which no real God would truly invoke) will destroy humanity. Islam and Christianity are good ideas, it's some of the extremist nut jobs (not directly referring to anyone on this forum) who follow them that will destroy humanity.
QUOTE
T-cell Posted on Yesterday at 2:49 PM
QUOTE (gmilam @ May 25 2006, 12:53 PM)
Religion has been turned into a MasterCard commercial. How fitting.
If being a Christian was only that easy.
QUOTE (gmilam @ May 25 2006, 12:53 PM)
Religion has been turned into a MasterCard commercial. How fitting.
If being a Christian was only that easy.
It is. Be nice to the people around you.
How hard can it be?
QUOTE (blue_bottle+May 26 2006, 01:42 AM)
Be nice to the people around you.
How hard can it be?
Harder than it sounds... But it has been pointed out to us numerous times as being a good idea.
The Golden Rule
How hard can it be?
Harder than it sounds... But it has been pointed out to us numerous times as being a good idea.
The Golden Rule
QUOTE (GeneSplicer+May 9 2006, 01:11 PM)
It is all too human to seek out that witch provides us comfort and sooths our emotional distress, addresses our fears or bolsters our ego.
Teena
These remind me of the following which I have heard in similar ways so many times before:
"Religion is just a psychological crutch for weak and scared to help you deal with ignorance and fear. ”
This attitude toward religion and Christianity in particular not an uncommon one. It is assumed that if something meets too many of our needs, then it must be suspect; it is thought to most likely be a psychological defense mechanism.
I do recognize that too many people have used Jesus Christ as a crutch. Jesus is sometimes used as a Rolaids tablet to settle an upset stomach caused by the fear of death. But Jesus Christ is not merely a sedative to give one peace and to ease our anxiety.
Rather, Jesus Christ calls one to a radically new lifestyle. As the former agnostic Charles Colson once asked, "If we were making up our own god, would we create one with such harsh demands for justice, righteousness, service and self-sacrifice as we find in the biblical texts?"
Jesus said: Love your enemies. If someone strikes you on one side, turn the other cheek. Pride is a sin. If you want to become rich, give away your money. If you truly want to be great, you must be a servant. He said that if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away! And He said being persecuted in His name is a blessing.
According to Jesus, the rich are poor; the up are down; the down are up; the self-righteous are sinners; the sinners are forgiven. The last are first and the first are last.
This kind of talk is not what one would expect to draw throngs of people to meet their psychological needs. This is the opposite of much of modern psychology's emphasis on "self-esteem" or "I'm OK, You're OK." Indeed the words of Jesus challenge one to the very core of existence, putting at risk one's whole reason for living.
At the same time, we should recognize that we all use some crutch to prop up our lives. It could be the prop of materialism, living to amass wealth. It could be the prop of hedonism, living to stimulate our nerve endings. It might be the prop of narcissism, living for ourselves. It might be the prop of careerism, living for personal achievement. It might be the prop of personal happiness, living for self fulfillment. Crutches help us to escape what we feel, to reduce the pain of emptiness at the core of our lives.
Jesus Christ comes and knocks those crutches away and challenges us to live for something bigger than ourselves. He challenges us to live to serve God and to serve a suffering humanity. To reject Christ and to buy into one of the crutches that our culture offers is to escape the challenge of life. Christianity doesn't allow one to hide behind crutches (even though many may try). Christ forces one to face life squarely and realistically.
Second, seeing Jesus Christ as a psychological crutch distorts the issue. The question of Jesus Christ is not a psychological question. It is really a historical question.
Jesus really lived, taught, died and rose from the dead two thousand years ago. It has very little to do with how well Jesus meets my needs. The evidence for Jesus is based on history. The historical evidence is that Jesus lived a perfect life and taught others to imitate his lifestyle; the evidence is that he bled and died on the cross; the historical evidence is that three days after he died he rose from the dead. Now the real question we must answer is, "Is this Jesus really the truth as he claimed to be?"
Third, while some may claim that Jesus is a father figure in the sky that we project to meet our psychological needs, the psychological argument is circular. It could just as easily be said that the reason people reject Jesus is because they have psychological hang-ups that prevent them from being able to trust a father figure. Or could it be that atheism is but a psychological invention to get rid of moral obligation? Because of our egocentricity, God can appear as an awesome threat to us. Atheism and agnosticism want to cover that up by refuting God.
Just because God can and may choose to meet certain needs in us is no reason to reject him. But again this is not the issue. We are confronted with the historical Jesus Christ who claims to be the infinite, eternal God penetrating human history two thousand years ago. Is he the truth or is he a liar?
As human beings we all have real needs. We have known guilt, loneliness and fear, and have experienced emptiness, sorrow and depression. Trying to escape them seems impossible. Regardless of how many sophisticated games we play to ignore it, we all face the finality of death.
To reject a cure because it is a cure seems silly. The exciting news is that Jesus Christ meets us in the midst of our very real needs. Jesus promises to forgive us and to wipe away the guilt that plagues us. Jesus Christ calls us into a relationship with the living God that will meet our deepest need for unconditional love. Jesus Christ knows our struggles, our fears and wants to replace them with peace and joy. We should only reject a cure if it is a false one, especially one that makes our condition even worse.
You and I have real needs and hurts in life. It does no good to cover up these hurts and needs. That is escapism. Jesus Christ challenges us to face reality, and Jesus Christ promises to go with us through reality if we will invite him into our lives. The question are we willing to let him?
Just Some Food for thought. Will be out of pocket for the weekend.
Teena
QUOTE
Religion is comfort
These remind me of the following which I have heard in similar ways so many times before:
"Religion is just a psychological crutch for weak and scared to help you deal with ignorance and fear. ”
This attitude toward religion and Christianity in particular not an uncommon one. It is assumed that if something meets too many of our needs, then it must be suspect; it is thought to most likely be a psychological defense mechanism.
I do recognize that too many people have used Jesus Christ as a crutch. Jesus is sometimes used as a Rolaids tablet to settle an upset stomach caused by the fear of death. But Jesus Christ is not merely a sedative to give one peace and to ease our anxiety.
Rather, Jesus Christ calls one to a radically new lifestyle. As the former agnostic Charles Colson once asked, "If we were making up our own god, would we create one with such harsh demands for justice, righteousness, service and self-sacrifice as we find in the biblical texts?"
Jesus said: Love your enemies. If someone strikes you on one side, turn the other cheek. Pride is a sin. If you want to become rich, give away your money. If you truly want to be great, you must be a servant. He said that if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away! And He said being persecuted in His name is a blessing.
According to Jesus, the rich are poor; the up are down; the down are up; the self-righteous are sinners; the sinners are forgiven. The last are first and the first are last.
This kind of talk is not what one would expect to draw throngs of people to meet their psychological needs. This is the opposite of much of modern psychology's emphasis on "self-esteem" or "I'm OK, You're OK." Indeed the words of Jesus challenge one to the very core of existence, putting at risk one's whole reason for living.
At the same time, we should recognize that we all use some crutch to prop up our lives. It could be the prop of materialism, living to amass wealth. It could be the prop of hedonism, living to stimulate our nerve endings. It might be the prop of narcissism, living for ourselves. It might be the prop of careerism, living for personal achievement. It might be the prop of personal happiness, living for self fulfillment. Crutches help us to escape what we feel, to reduce the pain of emptiness at the core of our lives.
Jesus Christ comes and knocks those crutches away and challenges us to live for something bigger than ourselves. He challenges us to live to serve God and to serve a suffering humanity. To reject Christ and to buy into one of the crutches that our culture offers is to escape the challenge of life. Christianity doesn't allow one to hide behind crutches (even though many may try). Christ forces one to face life squarely and realistically.
Second, seeing Jesus Christ as a psychological crutch distorts the issue. The question of Jesus Christ is not a psychological question. It is really a historical question.
Jesus really lived, taught, died and rose from the dead two thousand years ago. It has very little to do with how well Jesus meets my needs. The evidence for Jesus is based on history. The historical evidence is that Jesus lived a perfect life and taught others to imitate his lifestyle; the evidence is that he bled and died on the cross; the historical evidence is that three days after he died he rose from the dead. Now the real question we must answer is, "Is this Jesus really the truth as he claimed to be?"
Third, while some may claim that Jesus is a father figure in the sky that we project to meet our psychological needs, the psychological argument is circular. It could just as easily be said that the reason people reject Jesus is because they have psychological hang-ups that prevent them from being able to trust a father figure. Or could it be that atheism is but a psychological invention to get rid of moral obligation? Because of our egocentricity, God can appear as an awesome threat to us. Atheism and agnosticism want to cover that up by refuting God.
Just because God can and may choose to meet certain needs in us is no reason to reject him. But again this is not the issue. We are confronted with the historical Jesus Christ who claims to be the infinite, eternal God penetrating human history two thousand years ago. Is he the truth or is he a liar?
As human beings we all have real needs. We have known guilt, loneliness and fear, and have experienced emptiness, sorrow and depression. Trying to escape them seems impossible. Regardless of how many sophisticated games we play to ignore it, we all face the finality of death.
To reject a cure because it is a cure seems silly. The exciting news is that Jesus Christ meets us in the midst of our very real needs. Jesus promises to forgive us and to wipe away the guilt that plagues us. Jesus Christ calls us into a relationship with the living God that will meet our deepest need for unconditional love. Jesus Christ knows our struggles, our fears and wants to replace them with peace and joy. We should only reject a cure if it is a false one, especially one that makes our condition even worse.
You and I have real needs and hurts in life. It does no good to cover up these hurts and needs. That is escapism. Jesus Christ challenges us to face reality, and Jesus Christ promises to go with us through reality if we will invite him into our lives. The question are we willing to let him?
Just Some Food for thought. Will be out of pocket for the weekend.
Particular thanks for the last three posts on this thread and to the people who posted them.
C2.
C2.
I never did fall for that "virgin" Mary stuff. That sounds like an excuse when her betrothed asked her how this happened she stumbled for a moment then said "um..God did it!"
People were pretty gullible back then.
People were pretty gullible back then.
Balderdash! Christians themselves say , in effect , their nonsense is a crutch. Pastors keep others enthrall by saying that we hav e a yearning for their god when there is no such yearning, Francisco Ayala,theistic evolutionist , declares that the religious need their god to overcome a dread of death and to get a meaning for life .Freud knew Albert Ellis knows that such people need counseling . I am my own meanings. We naturalists advocate respour own respon sibility rather than reliance on the crutch of religion. J. Christ was an irrationalist; he ad vocated faith- reliance o n what some igonorant bigots stated and I just say so- no need for evidence and reason.His morality is suspect . See G.A. Wells and Michael Martin on that quack's morality.[ I f he were the son and his own father of the god of old ,then he embrace a Deluge, ethnic cleansing, the Atoenment , Hell slavery , misogyny and capital punishment for trivialities. For errantists to mind life -enhancing metapors there is more nonsense. Logic is the bane of theists. [ATONEMENT]
Yo griggs 1947,
For someone who doesn't believe in God, you seem pretty angry at him.
What's up? If He were to hypothetically exist, why blame Him for the actions of man. He wouldn't have created robots. He'd have created beings with a free will to do right or wrong. If He does exist, He'll deal with their justice. Believe me, good Christians care about everyone, especially nonbelievers. Unfortunately, I'm not a "good Christian". If I were, I'd be doing what Christ asked people to do unto others- "Love them". If I make it to heaven, it will be by the skin of my teeth. I'm a sinner like everyone else. Who the hell isn't? The only one I know of was Him. In fact, ironically He was looked down upon for hanging out with sinners.
For someone who doesn't believe in God, you seem pretty angry at him.
What's up? If He were to hypothetically exist, why blame Him for the actions of man. He wouldn't have created robots. He'd have created beings with a free will to do right or wrong. If He does exist, He'll deal with their justice. Believe me, good Christians care about everyone, especially nonbelievers. Unfortunately, I'm not a "good Christian". If I were, I'd be doing what Christ asked people to do unto others- "Love them". If I make it to heaven, it will be by the skin of my teeth. I'm a sinner like everyone else. Who the hell isn't? The only one I know of was Him. In fact, ironically He was looked down upon for hanging out with sinners.
Issachar,
I think Jesus could have very well existed, but I do not see how that proves anything.
I think its safe to say that every big rumor is based on at least a little truth, even the modern vampire (Dracula) stories are supposed to be based on a real person that once lived.
But to say that it proves existence of God, is a bit of a stretch in my opinion. Jesus could have lived, could have done something to cause people to follow him. After all, we're talking how many years ago, it is more than likely that whatever happened got twisted & turned into what it is today.
My main point is, very very few people's beliefs are based on anything personal. If you were locked away from the society and somehow found your belief in God, only then it would be legid in my opinion. Otherwise it is purely based on something someone else said, somebody else wrote, somebody else saw & witnessed thousands of years ago. I simply cant belive something that I havent personally experienced in any way, something that people came up with THAT long ago.
I think Jesus could have very well existed, but I do not see how that proves anything.
I think its safe to say that every big rumor is based on at least a little truth, even the modern vampire (Dracula) stories are supposed to be based on a real person that once lived.
But to say that it proves existence of God, is a bit of a stretch in my opinion. Jesus could have lived, could have done something to cause people to follow him. After all, we're talking how many years ago, it is more than likely that whatever happened got twisted & turned into what it is today.
My main point is, very very few people's beliefs are based on anything personal. If you were locked away from the society and somehow found your belief in God, only then it would be legid in my opinion. Otherwise it is purely based on something someone else said, somebody else wrote, somebody else saw & witnessed thousands of years ago. I simply cant belive something that I havent personally experienced in any way, something that people came up with THAT long ago.
Free will is just a cop-out! If free will in a Heaven precludes evil why not here? This is the contradiction in the debate over theodicy.i F Yeshua could be free and not sin , why not here ? The robot answer proves to much : it applies her e as well as in Heaven! As far as me, I can hardly hate the non-existent. I do think that those who advocate the biblical god do overlook its evil . Absolute power impresses them evidently at the expense of true morality ,which is what is good or bad for humans , other animals and the enviornment ,n ot the I just say so of the ignorant immoralists who composed the Buy-bull! My life is sufficient unto itself as not to require an after life . And what makes this religion better than any other religion ? I t is the foolishness I find that I rail against. It is the errantists who are my bete-noire: they see metaphors in the foolishness of the book that overooks its evil- the Deluge,ethnic cleansing etc.I t is the doctrines I object to. The pagans had as good a morality[ See Stein's first anthology on atheism and see other books on atheism . Prometheus alone puts out many .].Pecentagewise , there are fewer non-theists in jails and prisons that the religous and we fare , in general, as moral as them.I f theists are so happy, why are there so many in asylems and needing treatment otherwise? Theists and their allies like Ruse cannot stomach it that we are so militant to stan d up for our belief in reality as oppossed to their belief in the unreality. We are the believers, they, the unbelievers! Reason is the bane of theists.
We only know of Yeshua from one sided,approving sources, so we do not have to believe he was free of wrong-doing and that goes against experience anyway!And as I stated there our those who find his morality appalling;I reject his call for faith- the I just say so of the composers of the Buy-bull. No wonder that I rail!
If one believes in evolution, one should notice that Christ and others were a natural part of that evolution. Talk about selective advantage, two thousand years have past, kingdoms have come and gone, yet the selective advantage is still evident all over the world. Very little in science has the same long term sticking power. Even today, much is still undergoing mutations that have yet to stabilize. These mutations are creating a changing environment such that some of the original selective advantage of Christ is being lost. One can not alter the environment back to what it was, but rather one needs to adapt to the change. It has happned many times over the past two thousand years.
Evolution is a flawed theory. I cannot see the difference between the scientists who preach evolution and the Rabbis/Popes/Priests/Pastors/Imams who preach religion. The scientists who preach that human evolution from ape, has never seen that process with their own eyes and on the other hand, the Rabbis/Popes/Priests/Pastors/Imams who preach religion and the existence of God has never seen God themselves.
QUOTE (NickFun+May 26 2006, 11:16 PM)
I never did fall for that "virgin" Mary stuff. That sounds like an excuse when her betrothed asked her how this happened she stumbled for a moment then said "um..God did it!"
People were pretty gullible back then.
Anyone who believes that Mary was a virgin all her life is not only being dramatically unreasonable, but also is splitting up the Holy Family.
If Mary was a virgin, then she and Joseph never consummated their marriage. Therefore they would never have, in the eyes of GOD been married.
But how easily you leap to the idea that Mary lied to Joseph. Assuming the worst in people is the easiest thing. But assuming the best, much harder, especially after you've been betrayed once.
People were pretty gullible back then.
Anyone who believes that Mary was a virgin all her life is not only being dramatically unreasonable, but also is splitting up the Holy Family.
If Mary was a virgin, then she and Joseph never consummated their marriage. Therefore they would never have, in the eyes of GOD been married.
But how easily you leap to the idea that Mary lied to Joseph. Assuming the worst in people is the easiest thing. But assuming the best, much harder, especially after you've been betrayed once.
Maybe Joseph was gay. Or he had ED. Most likely, of course, he and Mary got it on with the bouncy-bouncy.
Mary being a virgin is one of the basic tenets of Catholicism.
Mary being a virgin is one of the basic tenets of Catholicism.
QUOTE (NickFun+May 29 2006, 03:30 PM)
Maybe Joseph was gay. Or he had ED. Most likely, of course, he and Mary got it on with the bouncy-bouncy.
Mary being a virgin is one of the basic tenets of Catholicism.
As far as the virgin birth of Christ goes, that is really a matter of one's world view.
If God exists, then it is reasonable for the supernatural to be able to occur.
As far as the perpetual virginity of Mary, this is unfortunately just a baseless tradition.
The Catholic doctrine of the eternal virginity of Mary is not supported by the Scripture.
Mary had four other sons, Joseph, James, Jude, and Simon. Because of the virgin birth, Joseph was not the father of Jesus so these were the half brothers of Jesus. The last three mentioned are not to be confused with those who were disciples of Jesus by the same name. Here are some passages where the other sons of Mary by Joseph are mentioned (Matt. 12:46; 13:55; Mark 6:3; John 2:12; 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14; 1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 1:19).
The Catholic church claims these others were sons of Joseph by a former wife, but there is no biblical foundation for this nor for the perpetual virginity of Mary. The Bible only teaches us that Joseph kept her a virgin until after the birth of Jesus (see Matt. 1:18-25).
I might be able to address a few other points of griggs & others at a later time.
I hope you all have a great day in the meantime.
Mary being a virgin is one of the basic tenets of Catholicism.
As far as the virgin birth of Christ goes, that is really a matter of one's world view.
If God exists, then it is reasonable for the supernatural to be able to occur.
As far as the perpetual virginity of Mary, this is unfortunately just a baseless tradition.
The Catholic doctrine of the eternal virginity of Mary is not supported by the Scripture.
Mary had four other sons, Joseph, James, Jude, and Simon. Because of the virgin birth, Joseph was not the father of Jesus so these were the half brothers of Jesus. The last three mentioned are not to be confused with those who were disciples of Jesus by the same name. Here are some passages where the other sons of Mary by Joseph are mentioned (Matt. 12:46; 13:55; Mark 6:3; John 2:12; 7:3, 5, 10; Acts 1:14; 1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 1:19).
The Catholic church claims these others were sons of Joseph by a former wife, but there is no biblical foundation for this nor for the perpetual virginity of Mary. The Bible only teaches us that Joseph kept her a virgin until after the birth of Jesus (see Matt. 1:18-25).
I might be able to address a few other points of griggs & others at a later time.
I hope you all have a great day in the meantime.
QUOTE (Issachar+)
If God exists, then it is reasonable for the supernatural to be able to occur.
Thats right. If God exists, everything that we don't understand can be explained by saying 'God did it'.
Why does light behave as wave and particle? God did it
How did humans originate? God did it.
How did the universe originate? God did it
Why is there a traffic jam? God did it
Thats right. If God exists, everything that we don't understand can be explained by saying 'God did it'.
Why does light behave as wave and particle? God did it
How did humans originate? God did it.
How did the universe originate? God did it
Why is there a traffic jam? God did it
QUOTE (vkamath+)
Thats right. If God exists, everything that we don't understand can be explained by saying 'God did it'.
vkamath: "Everything" that "we" don't understand? How about "some of the things" that "YOU" don't understand? Apparently there are people in this world that understand quite a few things that you don't due to your willful ignorance. Your choice.
vkamath: "Everything" that "we" don't understand? How about "some of the things" that "YOU" don't understand? Apparently there are people in this world that understand quite a few things that you don't due to your willful ignorance. Your choice.
QUOTE (newguy+May 30 2006, 05:37 PM)
QUOTE (vkamath+)
Thats right. If God exists, everything that we don't understand can be explained by saying 'God did it'.
vkamath: "Everything" that "we" don't understand? How about "some of the things" that "YOU" don't understand? Apparently there are people in this world that understand quite a few things that you don't due to your willful ignorance. Your choice.
Exactly what I am saying. For YOU, everything is 'God did it'. So there is nothing for to 'understand'.
vkamath: "Everything" that "we" don't understand? How about "some of the things" that "YOU" don't understand? Apparently there are people in this world that understand quite a few things that you don't due to your willful ignorance. Your choice.
Exactly what I am saying. For YOU, everything is 'God did it'. So there is nothing for to 'understand'.
QUOTE (newguy+)
willful ignorance. Your choice.
Funny I have to hear this from YOU.
Funny I have to hear this from YOU.
QUOTE (vkamath+May 30 2006, 05:41 PM)
QUOTE (newguy+May 30 2006, 05:37 PM)
QUOTE (vkamath+)
Thats right. If God exists, everything that we don't understand can be explained by saying 'God did it'.
vkamath: "Everything" that "we" don't understand? How about "some of the things" that "YOU" don't understand? Apparently there are people in this world that understand quite a few things that you don't due to your willful ignorance. Your choice.
Exactly what I am saying. For YOU, everything is 'God did it'. So there is nothing for to 'understand'.
vkamath: No, for me "everything" is definitely NOT "God did it". Men did plenty of "things" apart from God and I trust you know by now that I'm convinced that evil spirits/other gods "have their hand" in plenty of "things". Additionally, just because God did something doesn't mean that one has no understanding as to how He did it. Anyhow, in our case, this is simply "beating a dead horse".
vkamath: "Everything" that "we" don't understand? How about "some of the things" that "YOU" don't understand? Apparently there are people in this world that understand quite a few things that you don't due to your willful ignorance. Your choice.
Exactly what I am saying. For YOU, everything is 'God did it'. So there is nothing for to 'understand'.
vkamath: No, for me "everything" is definitely NOT "God did it". Men did plenty of "things" apart from God and I trust you know by now that I'm convinced that evil spirits/other gods "have their hand" in plenty of "things". Additionally, just because God did something doesn't mean that one has no understanding as to how He did it. Anyhow, in our case, this is simply "beating a dead horse".
QUOTE (vkamath+May 30 2006, 05:44 PM)
QUOTE (newguy+)
willful ignorance. Your choice.
Funny I have to hear this from YOU.
vkamath: Actually, I find nothing "funny" about this conversation at all. If you'd like to cite some of my "willful ignorances", then please feel free to. I'm big enough. I'll be happy to address them at a later time. Until then...
Funny I have to hear this from YOU.
vkamath: Actually, I find nothing "funny" about this conversation at all. If you'd like to cite some of my "willful ignorances", then please feel free to. I'm big enough. I'll be happy to address them at a later time. Until then...
QUOTE (newguy+)
No, for me "everything" is definitely NOT "God did it". Men did plenty of "things" apart from God and I trust you know by now that I'm convinced that evil spirits/other gods "have their hand" in plenty of "things". Additionally, just because God did something doesn't mean that one has no understanding as to how He did it. Anyhow, in our case, this is simply "beating a dead horse".
So things that you understand, you call as done by Man. For example a car is built by Man.
Things that you don't understand, you call as done by God. For example the universe is created by God.
Things that you don't understand and are bad (for which you cannot blame your favorite God), you call as the work of Evil Spirits. For example sickness is the work of Evil Spirits.
So things that you understand, you call as done by Man. For example a car is built by Man.
Things that you don't understand, you call as done by God. For example the universe is created by God.
Things that you don't understand and are bad (for which you cannot blame your favorite God), you call as the work of Evil Spirits. For example sickness is the work of Evil Spirits.
QUOTE (newguy+)
Actually, I find nothing "funny" about this conversation at all. If you'd like to cite some of my "willful ignorances", then please feel free to. I'm big enough. I'll be happy to address them at a later time. Until then...
Pretending that God exists is willful ignorance of the lack of proof, willful ignorance of reality and willful ignorance of rational thoughts. It is nothing but wishful thinking.
Pretending that God exists is willful ignorance of the lack of proof, willful ignorance of reality and willful ignorance of rational thoughts. It is nothing but wishful thinking.
QUOTE (newguy+)
No, for me "everything" is definitely NOT "God did it". Men did plenty of "things" apart from God and I trust you know by now that I'm convinced that evil spirits/other gods "have their hand" in plenty of "things". Additionally, just because God did something doesn't mean that one has no understanding as to how He did it. Anyhow, in our case, this is simply "beating a dead horse".
QUOTE (vkamath+)
So things that you understand, you call as done by Man. For example a car is built by Man.
Things that you don't understand, you call as done by God. For example the universe is created by God.
Things that you don't understand and are bad (for which you cannot blame your favorite God), you call as the work of Evil Spirits. For example sickness is the work of Evil Spirits.
vkamath: You can't even understand my words and you're going to teach about "understanding"? I've told you that I
have understanding about some of God's ways and I've also told you that I have some understanding of the "dark side" of the spirit world and you, in turn, "understand" that to mean that "the things that I understand, I call as done by Man"?
Great deducing there.
Things that you don't understand, you call as done by God. For example the universe is created by God.
Things that you don't understand and are bad (for which you cannot blame your favorite God), you call as the work of Evil Spirits. For example sickness is the work of Evil Spirits.
vkamath: You can't even understand my words and you're going to teach about "understanding"? I've told you that I
have understanding about some of God's ways and I've also told you that I have some understanding of the "dark side" of the spirit world and you, in turn, "understand" that to mean that "the things that I understand, I call as done by Man"?
Great deducing there.
QUOTE (vkamath+)
Pretending that God exists is willful ignorance of the lack of proof, willful ignorance of reality and willful ignorance of rational thoughts. It is nothing but wishful thinking.
You're the one who's "pretending", not me. You'd really have us to believe that you know everything, wouldn't you? You've already stated that you're both an atheist and an agnostic...why don't you just come out and publicly state that you're omniscient too? You don't know about God's existence because of your own stubborn refusal to do things God's way and because of your willful ignorance. Period. Your "wishful thinking" does absolutely nothing to change the "realities" that I and others like me have experienced for years with "plenty of proof". You might want to work a little more on your omnipotency, while you're at it. As it currently stands, you're simply not strong enough to change any of the realities in my life or in the lives of others like me(yeah, there are some). Keep on trying though, won't you? Pssst...I successfully prayed deliverance for someone only yesterday. This was made possible by having at least some understanding of God, man and evil spirits. Kinda gets you right there, doesn't it? Yeah, I'll just keep on helping people with my "irrationalities" while you just sit there and shake your "rational" head going "uh uh". Fair enough? Have a nice day.
P.S. Make sure that you counter with something like "blind faith", "pink unicorns", "flying spaghetti monsters" or something of that sort...as if that will change anything. I'm fully aware that my words alone will not change anything either. However, those who genuinely repent and turn back to God through Jesus Christ will experience plenty of change. That's the real reason why many of you avoid God like the plague, isn't it?
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."(John 3:19-21)
You're the one who's "pretending", not me. You'd really have us to believe that you know everything, wouldn't you? You've already stated that you're both an atheist and an agnostic...why don't you just come out and publicly state that you're omniscient too? You don't know about God's existence because of your own stubborn refusal to do things God's way and because of your willful ignorance. Period. Your "wishful thinking" does absolutely nothing to change the "realities" that I and others like me have experienced for years with "plenty of proof". You might want to work a little more on your omnipotency, while you're at it. As it currently stands, you're simply not strong enough to change any of the realities in my life or in the lives of others like me(yeah, there are some). Keep on trying though, won't you? Pssst...I successfully prayed deliverance for someone only yesterday. This was made possible by having at least some understanding of God, man and evil spirits. Kinda gets you right there, doesn't it? Yeah, I'll just keep on helping people with my "irrationalities" while you just sit there and shake your "rational" head going "uh uh". Fair enough? Have a nice day.
P.S. Make sure that you counter with something like "blind faith", "pink unicorns", "flying spaghetti monsters" or something of that sort...as if that will change anything. I'm fully aware that my words alone will not change anything either. However, those who genuinely repent and turn back to God through Jesus Christ will experience plenty of change. That's the real reason why many of you avoid God like the plague, isn't it?
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."(John 3:19-21)
QUOTE (vkamath+)
So things that you understand, you call as done by Man. For example a car is built by Man.
Things that you don't understand, you call as done by God. For example the universe is created by God.
Things that you don't understand and are bad (for which you cannot blame your favorite God), you call as the work of Evil Spirits. For example sickness is the work of Evil Spirits.
Read this once more newguy, for this paragraph holds the true reflection of your "philosophy".
Things that you don't understand, you call as done by God. For example the universe is created by God.
Things that you don't understand and are bad (for which you cannot blame your favorite God), you call as the work of Evil Spirits. For example sickness is the work of Evil Spirits.
Read this once more newguy, for this paragraph holds the true reflection of your "philosophy".
QUOTE (vkamath+)
Pretending that God exists is willful ignorance of the lack of proof, willful ignorance of reality and willful ignorance of rational thoughts. It is nothing but wishful thinking.
QUOTE (newguy+)
You're the one who's "pretending", not me. You'd really have us to believe that you know everything, wouldn't you? You've already stated that you're both an atheist and an agnostic...why don't you just come out and publicly state that you're omniscient too? You don't know about God's existence because of your own stubborn refusal to do things God's way and because of your willful ignorance. Period. Your "wishful thinking" does absolutely nothing to change the "realities" that I and others like me have experienced for years with "plenty of proof". You might want to work a little more on your omnipotency, while you're at it. As it currently stands, you're simply not strong enough to change any of the realities in my life or in the lives of others like me(yeah, there are some). Keep on trying though, won't you? Pssst...I successfully prayed deliverance for someone only yesterday. This was made possible by having at least some understanding of God, man and evil spirits. Kinda gets you right there, doesn't it? Yeah, I'll just keep on helping people with my "irrationalities" while you just sit there and shake your "rational" head going "uh uh". Fair enough? Have a nice day.
You asked me to cite some of your "willful ignorances", and I did. I am not going to respond to anything that you wrote above, because there is nothing there to respond to. You can freely continue kidding yourself with your deliverances.
You asked me to cite some of your "willful ignorances", and I did. I am not going to respond to anything that you wrote above, because there is nothing there to respond to. You can freely continue kidding yourself with your deliverances.
QUOTE (newguy+)
However, those who genuinely repent and turn back to God through Jesus Christ will experience plenty of change. That's the real reason why many of you avoid God like the plague, isn't it?
Genuinely repent for what?
Genuinely repent for what?
QUOTE (newguy+)
"And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."(John 3:19-21)
I thought you would know better than to quote scripture on me.
I thought you would know better than to quote scripture on me.
Man, can't you dig it? Buy-bull - thumping is so futile , so puerile. How can anybody comes here who is such a cretin that she cannot abide evolution. Man, it blows the mind to think that such people attempt to influence us lovers of reality with their drivel!I dig it. They are scared that if children learn of evolution ,they will act like the other animals. Mn,they cannot dig it that our big brains aid us to see what is good for us , other animals and the enviornment that other brains cannot do for the other animals.That is objective enough, man.Holy cow,why can't creationists use reason " If they did, they would not be creationists. Gee, man, they are scared of life ! Poor things. And they lie about evolution ,because of that fear of children learning evolution would lessen morality! I dig it.
Hello all,
I'm not trying to get into the middle of an already started argument, debate, discussion, whatever you'd like to call it, but I have a question for newguy.
What is your take on people of the past (Buddha comes to mind) who have "cast out unclean spirits" that did in the name of their own inner divinity, and not in the name of your dying/resurrecting god-man?
I'm not trying to get into the middle of an already started argument, debate, discussion, whatever you'd like to call it, but I have a question for newguy.
What is your take on people of the past (Buddha comes to mind) who have "cast out unclean spirits" that did in the name of their own inner divinity, and not in the name of your dying/resurrecting god-man?
As for proof in the existence of a god, any god, there is no physical evidence available.
Now lets have fun with the 'Christians'
The proof of miracles lies in the reading the Christian bible, but even the catholic church who has a diverse team to investigate claims of miracles has seen no proof since near the death of Jesus ( who was technically not a Christian, but a Jew ) Since there has been no proof since that time does it stand to reason that when he was killed the Christian god threw up his hands and said "That is it, you are on your own"?
All miracles investigated by the Catholic church have shown to be miracles of faith as quoted by Fr. Cassian Yuhaus who is an investigator for the church.
Other faiths also have their list of miracles, but again none show to be recent, so have we in fact out grown miracles or are they just not able to stand up to modern science? Or have they been things that happened that the observer simply did not understand?
Now lets have fun with the 'Christians'
The proof of miracles lies in the reading the Christian bible, but even the catholic church who has a diverse team to investigate claims of miracles has seen no proof since near the death of Jesus ( who was technically not a Christian, but a Jew ) Since there has been no proof since that time does it stand to reason that when he was killed the Christian god threw up his hands and said "That is it, you are on your own"?
All miracles investigated by the Catholic church have shown to be miracles of faith as quoted by Fr. Cassian Yuhaus who is an investigator for the church.
Other faiths also have their list of miracles, but again none show to be recent, so have we in fact out grown miracles or are they just not able to stand up to modern science? Or have they been things that happened that the observer simply did not understand?
vkamath
Yes, there will continue to be those things that are beyond the comprehension of us who are but finite and limited. We have still not completely grasp the 'mysteries' of gravity, of mass, of Mars, of the universe, etc. Scientific inquiry will certainly build our knowledge in these areas as it should, but at the end of the day, our capacity is limited and we will not be able to understand all things.
I concur with Newguy, this does not mean it would be prudent to assign all things we don’t know to be caused by God, but only some things. Take your example of sickness, which in a particular example we may not understand. It could be the result of poor hygiene habits or general cleanliness, exposure to another person carrying a particular flu or virus, past exposure to a harmful substance etc. It is possible to result from any number of unknowns.
Now the things which you are able to exercise control over in your life, you may choose to do so, or you may choose not to do so, correct? Would it not be also true for One who is sovereign? Hope that may clarify the point a little.
Regards,
from Teena previously
I think its safe to say that every big rumor is based on at least a little truth, even the modern vampire (Dracula) stories are supposed to be based on a real person that once lived.
My main point is, very very few people's beliefs are based on anything personal. If you were locked away from the society and somehow found your belief in God, only then it would be legid in my opinion. Otherwise it is purely based on something someone else said, somebody else wrote, somebody else saw & witnessed thousands of years ago. I simply cant belive something that I havent personally experienced in any way, something that people came up with THAT long ago.
Teena,
I understand what you are are saying, but you should not be so hard on yourself. How much do you really know that is strictly from personal experience verses what you have learned at least in part from believing on the authority of someone else? I would say very little. Believing things on authority only means believing them to be true because you have been told them by someone you think is trustworthy. As of yet, I have not seen with my own eyes Seoul, South Korea but I believe there is such a place. I would have difficulty proving by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place, but I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary person believes in atoms because scientists say so. None of us have seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Spanish Armada but we believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell about them, that is on authority. If people jibbed at authority on other things the way some people do in religion, they would hardly know anything at all in life.
Did you know that Alexander the Great’s biography by Flavius Arrianus 150 A.D was written some 500 years after he lived but historians generally consider it to be a reliable account?
There is less evidence for Julius Caesar's existence than for the historicity of the New Testament.
The Gospels in the New Testament were written in the first century, within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. These eyewitnesses, both friendly and hostile, scrutinized the accounts for accuracy. The documentary evidence for the New Testament far surpasses any other work of its time. We have over 5000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in Greek, and many are dated within a few years of their authors' lives. When you include the quotes from the church fathers, manuscripts from other early translations like the Latin Vulgate, the Ethiopic text, and others, the total comes out to over 24,000 ancient texts. Nothing like this abundance exists for any other historical writing.
Even without the ancient New Testament and other Christian writings, there is a considerable amount of important historical evidence which would tell us the following: 1.) Jesus was a Jewish teacher, 2.) many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms, 3.) some people believed he was the Messiah, 4.) he was rejected by the Jewish leaders, 5.) he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, 6.) Despite his shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by A.D. 64, and 7.) all kinds of people from the cities and the countryside –men, women, slave and free –worshiped him as God.
I will concede that you will have an easy time finding many skeptical opinions of people who only did a cursory review of the facts. I challenge you (for your own self knowledge) to prove that the NT gospels are not based on historical facts. You need not take my word on it, find out for yourself. You will either fail to do so and give up your quest or you just might find He is all that he claimed to be.
Good luck and regards!
Yet another Theist-atheist argument which has a tendency to get people no where in life.
I'm sure, all you theists, that God did not put you on this Earth to constantly argue about his existence. the term making full use of your talents springs to mind. An atheist who is a good person is a better Christian than some of the people I know.
And atheists who seek to constantly test the faith of all Christians should have finally come to realize that it is through faith that they believe in God. Not as you say vkamath through "willful ignorance".
I am a Christian, and am proud to see one. I have seen people who I believe have been taken by the holy spirit (a young girl who began crying, before laughing for no apparent reason). I know that there are probably a million other reasons for what I saw, but it is what I believe that counts.
What the truth is, I shall one day discover.
Yes, there will continue to be those things that are beyond the comprehension of us who are but finite and limited. We have still not completely grasp the 'mysteries' of gravity, of mass, of Mars, of the universe, etc. Scientific inquiry will certainly build our knowledge in these areas as it should, but at the end of the day, our capacity is limited and we will not be able to understand all things.
I concur with Newguy, this does not mean it would be prudent to assign all things we don’t know to be caused by God, but only some things. Take your example of sickness, which in a particular example we may not understand. It could be the result of poor hygiene habits or general cleanliness, exposure to another person carrying a particular flu or virus, past exposure to a harmful substance etc. It is possible to result from any number of unknowns.
Now the things which you are able to exercise control over in your life, you may choose to do so, or you may choose not to do so, correct? Would it not be also true for One who is sovereign? Hope that may clarify the point a little.
Regards,
from Teena previously
QUOTE
I think Jesus could have very well existed, but I do not see how that proves anything.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| I think Jesus could have very well existed, but I do not see how that proves anything. |
I think its safe to say that every big rumor is based on at least a little truth, even the modern vampire (Dracula) stories are supposed to be based on a real person that once lived.
QUOTE
But to say that it proves existence of God, is a bit of a stretch in my opinion. Jesus could have lived, could have done something to cause people to follow him. After all, we're talking how many years ago, it is more than likely that whatever happened got twisted & turned into what it is today.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| But to say that it proves existence of God, is a bit of a stretch in my opinion. Jesus could have lived, could have done something to cause people to follow him. After all, we're talking how many years ago, it is more than likely that whatever happened got twisted & turned into what it is today. |
My main point is, very very few people's beliefs are based on anything personal. If you were locked away from the society and somehow found your belief in God, only then it would be legid in my opinion. Otherwise it is purely based on something someone else said, somebody else wrote, somebody else saw & witnessed thousands of years ago. I simply cant belive something that I havent personally experienced in any way, something that people came up with THAT long ago.
Teena,
I understand what you are are saying, but you should not be so hard on yourself. How much do you really know that is strictly from personal experience verses what you have learned at least in part from believing on the authority of someone else? I would say very little. Believing things on authority only means believing them to be true because you have been told them by someone you think is trustworthy. As of yet, I have not seen with my own eyes Seoul, South Korea but I believe there is such a place. I would have difficulty proving by abstract reasoning that there must be such a place, but I believe it because reliable people have told me so. The ordinary person believes in atoms because scientists say so. None of us have seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Spanish Armada but we believe them simply because people who did see them have left writings that tell about them, that is on authority. If people jibbed at authority on other things the way some people do in religion, they would hardly know anything at all in life.
Did you know that Alexander the Great’s biography by Flavius Arrianus 150 A.D was written some 500 years after he lived but historians generally consider it to be a reliable account?
There is less evidence for Julius Caesar's existence than for the historicity of the New Testament.
The Gospels in the New Testament were written in the first century, within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. These eyewitnesses, both friendly and hostile, scrutinized the accounts for accuracy. The documentary evidence for the New Testament far surpasses any other work of its time. We have over 5000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in Greek, and many are dated within a few years of their authors' lives. When you include the quotes from the church fathers, manuscripts from other early translations like the Latin Vulgate, the Ethiopic text, and others, the total comes out to over 24,000 ancient texts. Nothing like this abundance exists for any other historical writing.
Even without the ancient New Testament and other Christian writings, there is a considerable amount of important historical evidence which would tell us the following: 1.) Jesus was a Jewish teacher, 2.) many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms, 3.) some people believed he was the Messiah, 4.) he was rejected by the Jewish leaders, 5.) he was crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, 6.) Despite his shameful death, his followers, who believed that he was still alive, spread beyond Palestine so that there were multitudes of them in Rome by A.D. 64, and 7.) all kinds of people from the cities and the countryside –men, women, slave and free –worshiped him as God.
I will concede that you will have an easy time finding many skeptical opinions of people who only did a cursory review of the facts. I challenge you (for your own self knowledge) to prove that the NT gospels are not based on historical facts. You need not take my word on it, find out for yourself. You will either fail to do so and give up your quest or you just might find He is all that he claimed to be.
Good luck and regards!
Griggs 1947,
I do not have much time to address many of your points (or ranting
) at this time but perhaps can attempt to a later time.
I have something for you to consider in the meantime, the idea of a conscience. Some of us as human kind may suppress it so frequently that we can easily do the worst of vices, this conscience may be calloused and dull, like a weak withered muscle of an invalid from its non-use. But its still there, and if we looked into prisons (or homes of the unaccused), we would find scores people that would be heavy laden with guilt.
Now a shark will not feel guilty for eating another shark and the alpha wolf will not feel guilty for stealing the meat of the kill away from a lesser wolf. Nor should they.
Yes, there may be exceptions or psychos that may be outliers, but in general, we that are human do experience (or have in the past) guilt from our conscience. I do not consider this to be by accident either.
There is also within us a sort of law of human nature. Now it may not be so rigidly defined with exact boundaries, but across nationalities and cultures and religions or not, it lies within us. We by no means achieve this sort of law of human nature, but there is an innate sense of 'what we ought to do', even though we so often fail to do it, or may claim incapable to do it. For instance, we (the normal and 'sane' in general) know that it is always wrong to kill someone for fun, to steal in general (arguable cases of great need aside), etc.
Perhaps this has something to do with gmilam’s comment about the golden rule.
Now as soon as one of us will say, "That’s not true, there are numerous exceptions."
That very person will say immediately if they were the one to suffer those grievances by another that, "No its not fair for one to kill or injure me, or to treat me unkindly, or to steal or cheat from me, or to lie to me."
My point is thus, even though we so frequently fail to follow this sort of law of human nature, there still lies with us (in general) that sense of this thing that we "ought to do.'' The one who Denies it will cry foul if it is done against himself.
I do not consider this to be by accident either, but consider this to be a clue of the divine. I am confident that you will disagree, however, am interested to hear your take on the subject.
I do not have much time to address many of your points (or ranting
) at this time but perhaps can attempt to a later time.I have something for you to consider in the meantime, the idea of a conscience. Some of us as human kind may suppress it so frequently that we can easily do the worst of vices, this conscience may be calloused and dull, like a weak withered muscle of an invalid from its non-use. But its still there, and if we looked into prisons (or homes of the unaccused), we would find scores people that would be heavy laden with guilt.
Now a shark will not feel guilty for eating another shark and the alpha wolf will not feel guilty for stealing the meat of the kill away from a lesser wolf. Nor should they.
Yes, there may be exceptions or psychos that may be outliers, but in general, we that are human do experience (or have in the past) guilt from our conscience. I do not consider this to be by accident either.
There is also within us a sort of law of human nature. Now it may not be so rigidly defined with exact boundaries, but across nationalities and cultures and religions or not, it lies within us. We by no means achieve this sort of law of human nature, but there is an innate sense of 'what we ought to do', even though we so often fail to do it, or may claim incapable to do it. For instance, we (the normal and 'sane' in general) know that it is always wrong to kill someone for fun, to steal in general (arguable cases of great need aside), etc.
Perhaps this has something to do with gmilam’s comment about the golden rule.
Now as soon as one of us will say, "That’s not true, there are numerous exceptions."
That very person will say immediately if they were the one to suffer those grievances by another that, "No its not fair for one to kill or injure me, or to treat me unkindly, or to steal or cheat from me, or to lie to me."
My point is thus, even though we so frequently fail to follow this sort of law of human nature, there still lies with us (in general) that sense of this thing that we "ought to do.'' The one who Denies it will cry foul if it is done against himself.
I do not consider this to be by accident either, but consider this to be a clue of the divine. I am confident that you will disagree, however, am interested to hear your take on the subject.
Yet another Theist-atheist argument which has a tendency to get people no where in life.
I'm sure, all you theists, that God did not put you on this Earth to constantly argue about his existence. the term making full use of your talents springs to mind. An atheist who is a good person is a better Christian than some of the people I know.
And atheists who seek to constantly test the faith of all Christians should have finally come to realize that it is through faith that they believe in God. Not as you say vkamath through "willful ignorance".
I am a Christian, and am proud to see one. I have seen people who I believe have been taken by the holy spirit (a young girl who began crying, before laughing for no apparent reason). I know that there are probably a million other reasons for what I saw, but it is what I believe that counts.
What the truth is, I shall one day discover.
Bubba or Darling, thanks for knowing that we non-theists are moral.I imagine that you actually base your morality on what is good or bad for us ,other animals and the enviornment .That is humanistic ethics., not the Ijust say so of ignorant bigots who ascribe their misanthropy and irrationality to some Sky Pappy. See " The born again Skeptic's Guide to the Bible." and other works we crtics consult.That Yeshua was as vindictive as Sky Pappy.How can errantists get metaphors out of the Dluge, genocide, misogyny, slavery,Atonement and hell ? ALL members of Christinsanity chery pick. I got so sick of its Fables, I could no longer read it in several languages! I rest in my Socratic ignorance and humble naturalism.
Oh,fortunately, most people are not psycopaths like the god of the Fables, so they do have consciences. I cannot imagine a god or an afterlife and I have schzotypy,which for me fortunately on the supernatural and paranormal and other nonsense is the opposite .I eschew such .I gainsay that when humanity can overcome those vices ,we'll have better lives. Religon is mythinformation ,saith the Englishman.
Issachar
Not to vouch for the validity of any site, but this site poses some interesting points that go against your "proof" that the new testament is anything more than overhauled myth, lies, and manipulative control drama.
Link to site
Allot of it is speculative opinion, but there are some valid points in there.
What is your opinion of it's claims?
Not to vouch for the validity of any site, but this site poses some interesting points that go against your "proof" that the new testament is anything more than overhauled myth, lies, and manipulative control drama.
Link to site
Allot of it is speculative opinion, but there are some valid points in there.
What is your opinion of it's claims?
QUOTE (blue_bottle+)
And atheists who seek to constantly test the faith of all Christians should have finally come to realize that it is through faith that they believe in God. Not as you say vkamath through "willful ignorance".
Faith is nothing but willful ignorance of the facts.
Faith is nothing but willful ignorance of the facts.
Issachar,
You are right, majority of what we "know" we don't know from personal experience, but I do not see how you can compare it to religion. Most of what we don't personally know, we could check & see given the desire or the power. Using your example of South Korea, there are people every day that confirm that "knowledge" by visiting, and you could confirm it if you wanted to. Existence of God, could not be confirmed no matter who you are, how much money or power you have. There's a huge difference.
And again, all of the events you listed that have to do with Jesus could very well be true. I don't doubt that they eyewitnesses were telling the truth, but how do you know that what they saw was what they thought it was? You've got to remember we're just talking about people, people that didn't have the knowledge that we have today on top of that.....who is to say that they weren't deceived? Look at history, people worshiped anything & everything they didn't understand in many different cultures & locations. After his death people still though he was alive? People still think 2pac & Elvis are alive.
As far as Gospels, I won't even pretend I'm overly familiar with it. Unfortunately I don't have the time to look into it at the moment, but I'll get back to this once I do. So my question to you is, assuming the historical facts on Jesus are in fact correct, what proof is there that Jesus really was who he was believed to be? People's beliefs all those years ago, personally don't cut it for me. All those sects today have many people following the most ridiculous things, it shows how gullible & how willing to follow someone we can be even today..
You are right, majority of what we "know" we don't know from personal experience, but I do not see how you can compare it to religion. Most of what we don't personally know, we could check & see given the desire or the power. Using your example of South Korea, there are people every day that confirm that "knowledge" by visiting, and you could confirm it if you wanted to. Existence of God, could not be confirmed no matter who you are, how much money or power you have. There's a huge difference.
And again, all of the events you listed that have to do with Jesus could very well be true. I don't doubt that they eyewitnesses were telling the truth, but how do you know that what they saw was what they thought it was? You've got to remember we're just talking about people, people that didn't have the knowledge that we have today on top of that.....who is to say that they weren't deceived? Look at history, people worshiped anything & everything they didn't understand in many different cultures & locations. After his death people still though he was alive? People still think 2pac & Elvis are alive.
As far as Gospels, I won't even pretend I'm overly familiar with it. Unfortunately I don't have the time to look into it at the moment, but I'll get back to this once I do. So my question to you is, assuming the historical facts on Jesus are in fact correct, what proof is there that Jesus really was who he was believed to be? People's beliefs all those years ago, personally don't cut it for me. All those sects today have many people following the most ridiculous things, it shows how gullible & how willing to follow someone we can be even today..
QUOTE (Issachar+)
Yes, there will continue to be those things that are beyond the comprehension of us who are but finite and limited. We have still not completely grasp the 'mysteries' of gravity, of mass, of Mars, of the universe, etc. Scientific inquiry will certainly build our knowledge in these areas as it should, but at the end of the day, our capacity is limited and we will not be able to understand all things.
I agree that we will not be able to understand all things. But Scientific method is the only way forward.
Religion is like a fog, it prevents us from seeing the reality clearly.
I agree that we will not be able to understand all things. But Scientific method is the only way forward.
Religion is like a fog, it prevents us from seeing the reality clearly.
Griggs 1947,
So it sounds like you think Yeshua, Mashiach was vindictive, whereas;
vindictive - showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite; "a despiteful fiend"; "a truly spiteful child"; "a vindictive man will look for occasions for resentment"
Will you please explain why you think He is vindictive so I may be in a position to understand you what you are talking about?
You also said:
That sounds a little similar to the utopia the communist thought they would achieve. Communists believed that through Marxism which knowledge was scientific, based on historical materialism & naturalism (thus ridding the world of God), an understanding of the dialectical process in nature and human society, and a materialist (and thus realistic) view of nature would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness.
Their Utopia had grave consequences:
Approximately 61,000,000 people were killed under the megamurderer Soviet Union. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto. Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the cultural revolution, which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered, is the second worst megamurderer. Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as North Korea and Tito's Yugoslavia.
It is not by chance that the greatest famines have occurred within the Soviet Union (about 5,000,000 dead during 1921-23 and 7,000,000 from 1932-3) and communist China (about 27,000,000 dead from 1959-61). In total almost 55,000,000 people died in various communist famines and associated diseases, a little over 10,000,000 of them from democidal famine. This is as though the total population of Turkey, Iran, or Thailand had been completely wiped out. And that something like 35,000,000 people fled communist countries as refugees, as though the countries of Argentina or Columbia had been totally emptied of all their people, was an unparalleled vote against the utopian pretensions of Marxism-Leninism. Perhaps your Utopia will work better than theirs.
So it sounds like you think Yeshua, Mashiach was vindictive, whereas;
vindictive - showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite; "a despiteful fiend"; "a truly spiteful child"; "a vindictive man will look for occasions for resentment"
Will you please explain why you think He is vindictive so I may be in a position to understand you what you are talking about?
You also said:
QUOTE
I cannot imagine a god or an afterlife and I have schzotypy,which for me fortunately on the supernatural and paranormal and other nonsense is the opposite .I eschew such .I gainsay that when humanity can overcome those vices ,we'll have better lives.”
That sounds a little similar to the utopia the communist thought they would achieve. Communists believed that through Marxism which knowledge was scientific, based on historical materialism & naturalism (thus ridding the world of God), an understanding of the dialectical process in nature and human society, and a materialist (and thus realistic) view of nature would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness.
Their Utopia had grave consequences:
Approximately 61,000,000 people were killed under the megamurderer Soviet Union. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto. Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the cultural revolution, which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered, is the second worst megamurderer. Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as North Korea and Tito's Yugoslavia.
It is not by chance that the greatest famines have occurred within the Soviet Union (about 5,000,000 dead during 1921-23 and 7,000,000 from 1932-3) and communist China (about 27,000,000 dead from 1959-61). In total almost 55,000,000 people died in various communist famines and associated diseases, a little over 10,000,000 of them from democidal famine. This is as though the total population of Turkey, Iran, or Thailand had been completely wiped out. And that something like 35,000,000 people fled communist countries as refugees, as though the countries of Argentina or Columbia had been totally emptied of all their people, was an unparalleled vote against the utopian pretensions of Marxism-Leninism. Perhaps your Utopia will work better than theirs.
What if we were created for a place in which spirits can live? That we are the recepticals for a higher dimension?
When Revalation comes do you expect that the evil spirits will be allowed to stay in their physical body? No they will be in hell in the lake of fire.
I believe it has already happened.
Christianaty has become apostate. It is really just Churchianity. Christ didn't come for you to excuse your sin. He doesn't love you the way you are. That is a damned lie. He loves you away from what you are.
When Revalation comes do you expect that the evil spirits will be allowed to stay in their physical body? No they will be in hell in the lake of fire.
I believe it has already happened.
Christianaty has become apostate. It is really just Churchianity. Christ didn't come for you to excuse your sin. He doesn't love you the way you are. That is a damned lie. He loves you away from what you are.
SENT
There are certainly people of the opinion of the site you posted that the NT is "is anything more than overhauled myth, lies, and manipulative control drama."
Per your request, I will take a look at it and let you know what I think of its claims.
Teena,
I will consider your questions and also try to get back to you at a later time. You are right, there are people who think Elvis is still alive. They are also multiplying! I ran a 1/2 marathon last fall and in crowds of runners I came upon a pack of running Elvis's with a boom-box blaring tunes as they jogged.
vkamath,
I agree with you the scientific method is moving us forward (as it should), but respectfully disagree that is the the only way forward.
We keep going faster, higher, better.
Technological advances are exciting events, but do you think we are really any better off in terms of being happier or more fulfilled?
Regards (collectively)
There are certainly people of the opinion of the site you posted that the NT is "is anything more than overhauled myth, lies, and manipulative control drama."
Per your request, I will take a look at it and let you know what I think of its claims.
Teena,
I will consider your questions and also try to get back to you at a later time. You are right, there are people who think Elvis is still alive. They are also multiplying! I ran a 1/2 marathon last fall and in crowds of runners I came upon a pack of running Elvis's with a boom-box blaring tunes as they jogged.
vkamath,
I agree with you the scientific method is moving us forward (as it should), but respectfully disagree that is the the only way forward.
We keep going faster, higher, better.
Technological advances are exciting events, but do you think we are really any better off in terms of being happier or more fulfilled?
Regards (collectively)
QUOTE (SENT+May 31 2006, 12:26 PM)
Hello all,
I'm not trying to get into the middle of an already started argument, debate, discussion, whatever you'd like to call it, but I have a question for newguy.
What is your take on people of the past (Buddha comes to mind) who have "cast out unclean spirits" that did in the name of their own inner divinity, and not in the name of your dying/resurrecting god-man?
Sent: Quite honestly, this is the first time that I have ever heard of Buddha "casting out unclean spirits". Are we talking about the same thing? If you'd like to provide me with some documentation of what you are speaking about, then I will certainly look it over and give you my opinion. At this point, I really don't have any information on the topic but your post. Thanks.
I'm not trying to get into the middle of an already started argument, debate, discussion, whatever you'd like to call it, but I have a question for newguy.
What is your take on people of the past (Buddha comes to mind) who have "cast out unclean spirits" that did in the name of their own inner divinity, and not in the name of your dying/resurrecting god-man?
Sent: Quite honestly, this is the first time that I have ever heard of Buddha "casting out unclean spirits". Are we talking about the same thing? If you'd like to provide me with some documentation of what you are speaking about, then I will certainly look it over and give you my opinion. At this point, I really don't have any information on the topic but your post. Thanks.
Issachar,
Technological advances are exciting events, but do you think we are really any better off in terms of being happier or more fulfilled?
I suspect you (willfully?) turned 'scientific method' into 'technology'. I suggest (without proof) that vkmath intended something else.
Perhaps science is to explorer as technology is to package holiday tourist. I remember myself thinking (pre Star Trek!) .. we are born to explore .. that is all science is. If the universe is made by God there is nothing to fear .. if the Universe is not made by God .. a certain amount of caution is appropriate .. there will be losses.
Of technology (this) .. if it makes possible a kind word from a stranger.. its value is beyond reckoning.
My very best wishes to you.
-C2.
QUOTE
Technological advances are exciting events, but do you think we are really any better off in terms of being happier or more fulfilled?
I suspect you (willfully?) turned 'scientific method' into 'technology'. I suggest (without proof) that vkmath intended something else.
Perhaps science is to explorer as technology is to package holiday tourist. I remember myself thinking (pre Star Trek!) .. we are born to explore .. that is all science is. If the universe is made by God there is nothing to fear .. if the Universe is not made by God .. a certain amount of caution is appropriate .. there will be losses.
Of technology (this) .. if it makes possible a kind word from a stranger.. its value is beyond reckoning.
My very best wishes to you.
-C2.
I don't seem to be able to find my reference, but I'll keep looking. (I get a bunch of "christians" against buddhism when I search for it )
What about Tactus' account of emperor Vespasian healing a blind man, and a lame man ?
The question I'm driving at is, do you believe that all "miracles" that aren't done in the name of your god-man are done by evil spirits?
When I was young I was taught to believe that EVERYONE not accepting "Christ" as their personal savior would go to hell. I'm just curious if that's part of why you feel so justified in some of your posts.
)What about Tactus' account of emperor Vespasian healing a blind man, and a lame man ?
The question I'm driving at is, do you believe that all "miracles" that aren't done in the name of your god-man are done by evil spirits?
When I was young I was taught to believe that EVERYONE not accepting "Christ" as their personal savior would go to hell. I'm just curious if that's part of why you feel so justified in some of your posts.
Analyze all the religions together. Most of them show a certain presence they cannot describe and give it a word, a denomination. But what do they all REALLY have in common? Fraternity between men. What can make man bond together more than religion? More than a presence protecting them all? Nothing. Today we might say theres other things like a common cause, politics, ideals that work the same way; but religions were born when such things were not even beginning to arise. People that were present upon Earth had nothing to look forward to. The concepts of "global village", world trade, space travel, were not even slightly in the minds of our ancestors. All that was present was how to survive and live, but with what intent? For what? Today, the people that aren't caught up in their lives still have that question. "God" is the binding of men, a hope for the future, hope that humans need to have in the back of their minds because we are simply that, humans. God is not a presence out there that created heaven and hell, the sun or anything else. It's our ability to interact with one another, help each other, know that we have an objective in life. God is our ability to live without fear or desperation. God is not going to church and pray for your soul to be saved, its going to your friend's house and helping him with his problems, it's going to work and being productive, it's researching new technologies that will help others and advance our place in the universe. When men will realize that God is simply our ability to interact with each other, everyone on this planet and beyond, and prosper while doing so, the very concept of God will be no more, it'll be something larger than mankind, something that we wont even bother trying to understand because we will be so in awe, so much "awakened" that "God" will be something left behind.
The common thread of religion is the experience that one "feels" when the practice culminates into an experience beyond ego. ecstasy, love, completeness
Any group that doesn't include everyone divides the world, and anything that divides the world will ultimately cause problems.
Religion might have originally intended to be a glue for humanity, but as soon as the "holy" texts of the different sects started being taken literally, there were wars in the name of that god.
We need something other than an ancient label to unite under that doesn't have all the garbage attached to it through centuries of torture and suffering.
Some see that as science.
Any group that doesn't include everyone divides the world, and anything that divides the world will ultimately cause problems.
Religion might have originally intended to be a glue for humanity, but as soon as the "holy" texts of the different sects started being taken literally, there were wars in the name of that god.
We need something other than an ancient label to unite under that doesn't have all the garbage attached to it through centuries of torture and suffering.
Some see that as science.
Indeed. Historical facts have shown that there is no "true" religion amongst all of them. We as people need to break down the barriers that devide us, wichever ones they might be and find a common cause. Build a future together. Thats religion.
I bless my fellow skeptics! There is a name fo r that bond-humanism[ it includes other animals and the enviornment ] . Our morality discerns what is good ar bad for us, other animals and the enviornment, making it ,thus,objective. I t is provisional,like science.We do not depend on the farout morality of the ignorant bigots who wrote the Buy-bull, their I just say so of faith . Our morality , in also thus ,thus neither relativistic nor absolustic . Thank the people who give us these blogs w here we ca n take on the irrationalists. Thank Paul Kurtz for Prometheus press. Thank all the naturalists for their books we didn't have when I started out decades ago in understanding naturalism versus irrationalislm[supernaturalism and paranormal]Iremain in my Socratic ignorance and humble naturalism/humanism/rationalism.
I bless my fellow skeptics! There is a name fo r that bond-humanism[ it includes other animals and the enviornment ] . Our morality discerns what is good ar bad for us, other animals and the enviornment, making it ,thus,objective. I t is provisional,like science.We do not depend on the farout morality of the ignorant bigots who wrote the Buy-bull, their I just say so of faith . Our morality , in also thus ,thus neither relativistic nor absolustic . Thank the people who give us these blogs w here we ca n take on the irrationalists. Thank Paul Kurtz for Prometheus press. Thank all the naturalists for their books we didn't have when I started out decades ago in understanding naturalism versus irrationalislm[supernaturalism and paranormal]Iremain in my Socratic ignorance and humble naturalism/humanism/rationalism.
C2,
Thanks for the well wishes. I was jumping ahead of myself and on to the next train of thought, but should have clarified it better. What you said is true, perhaps vkamath intended something else and I was mistaken.
Best regards to you and yours.
Teena,
I think your questions are very reasonable to ask so would really like to come back to them.
SENT,
Regarding your asking of my opinions of the site you posted claims;
As I alluded to earlier, one can find some kind of support for just about anything one wants to.
The premise of the site is that Jesus never existed, then the writers went to great lengths to conceive an argument for their case. That is an extremely preposterous and absurd position to take given the far-reaching impact that he has made on human history.
Even without the eyewitness accounts of the gospels, there is non-biblical corroborative evidence such as from the Jewish historian, Josephus. Josephus' Antiquities are dated to be completed by around 93AD or about 60 years after Jesus’ death (later than the books & letters of the NT with the possible exception of John’s gospel which some scholars date in the mid 90’s) . He grew up in the lifetime of those who has witnessed the events and completed his works in the lifetime of those who had witnessed the events.
I will tell you there are some scholars that do consider there may be some interpolations to Josephus’ passage on Jesus, meaning that they think that early Christian copyists inserted some phrases that a Jewish writer such as Josephus would not have written.
However, barring the interpolations, there is remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic.
Lets look at the passage which is controversial:
Flavius Josephus (37-97 AD), court historian for Emperor Vespasian:
"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accepted the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”
The first line says, ‘About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man’ , this phrase is not normally used by Christians and seem authentic of Josephus to write while the 2nd part, ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’ implies he was more than human so some consider this part an interpolation. It goes on, ‘For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accepted the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks.’ This is considered authentic and in accord with his writing and vocabulary elsewhere. The unambiguous statement, ‘He was the Christ’ seems to be an interpolation, because Josephus says in his references to James that Jesus was ‘called the Christ.’ The next part talking about Jesus’ trial and crucifixion and the fact that his followers still loved him is unexceptional and considered genuine. The part about, ‘On the third day he appeared to them restored to life’ is a clear declaration of the belief in the resurrection and so it may be unlikely that Josephus wrote it, so those three elements mentioned seem to be interpolations.
Even if you consider it without the points of dispute mentioned, the consensus is that Josephus most likely wrote the passage and collaborates some important information about Jesus: That he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem and that he was a wise teacher who established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified under Pilate at the instigation of some of the Jewish leaders.
Josephus also describes elsewhere in his antiquities how a high priest named Ananias took advantage of the death of the Roman governor Festus, who is also mentioned in the New Testament, in order to have James killed.
Josephus writes: ‘He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.’
I have not heard of any ‘scholars’ that have successfully disputed this passage.
From John 7:5, we know that even Jesus’ own brothers did not initially believe in him. But here, Josephus provides a reference to the brother of Jesus who was put to death for his faith and who had apparently been converted by the resurrection (see Acts 1:14).
Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 AD), "the greatest historian" of ancient Rome wrote of that the emperor Nero was blamed by the Roman populace for the fire of Rome:
"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."
Here you have a Roman historian referring to Christ being crucified under Pontius Pilate (who is also mentioned in the gospels) when he explains how emperor Nero redirected his blame by the populous for the fire of Rome in A.D. 64 to the Christians.
There is other extra-biblical & non-Christian corroborative evidence (for Jesus and his claims) as well but I will stop there as I think you understand my point. The site also made some unmerited archaeological claims which I disagree with as well.
My advice for you is to go to the best source material you can find before making an unbiased conclusion.
Have a good afternoon.
Thanks for the well wishes. I was jumping ahead of myself and on to the next train of thought, but should have clarified it better. What you said is true, perhaps vkamath intended something else and I was mistaken.
Best regards to you and yours.
Teena,
I think your questions are very reasonable to ask so would really like to come back to them.
SENT,
Regarding your asking of my opinions of the site you posted claims;
As I alluded to earlier, one can find some kind of support for just about anything one wants to.
The premise of the site is that Jesus never existed, then the writers went to great lengths to conceive an argument for their case. That is an extremely preposterous and absurd position to take given the far-reaching impact that he has made on human history.
Even without the eyewitness accounts of the gospels, there is non-biblical corroborative evidence such as from the Jewish historian, Josephus. Josephus' Antiquities are dated to be completed by around 93AD or about 60 years after Jesus’ death (later than the books & letters of the NT with the possible exception of John’s gospel which some scholars date in the mid 90’s) . He grew up in the lifetime of those who has witnessed the events and completed his works in the lifetime of those who had witnessed the events.
I will tell you there are some scholars that do consider there may be some interpolations to Josephus’ passage on Jesus, meaning that they think that early Christian copyists inserted some phrases that a Jewish writer such as Josephus would not have written.
However, barring the interpolations, there is remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic.
Lets look at the passage which is controversial:
Flavius Josephus (37-97 AD), court historian for Emperor Vespasian:
"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accepted the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”
The first line says, ‘About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man’ , this phrase is not normally used by Christians and seem authentic of Josephus to write while the 2nd part, ‘if indeed one ought to call him a man’ implies he was more than human so some consider this part an interpolation. It goes on, ‘For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accepted the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks.’ This is considered authentic and in accord with his writing and vocabulary elsewhere. The unambiguous statement, ‘He was the Christ’ seems to be an interpolation, because Josephus says in his references to James that Jesus was ‘called the Christ.’ The next part talking about Jesus’ trial and crucifixion and the fact that his followers still loved him is unexceptional and considered genuine. The part about, ‘On the third day he appeared to them restored to life’ is a clear declaration of the belief in the resurrection and so it may be unlikely that Josephus wrote it, so those three elements mentioned seem to be interpolations.
Even if you consider it without the points of dispute mentioned, the consensus is that Josephus most likely wrote the passage and collaborates some important information about Jesus: That he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem and that he was a wise teacher who established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified under Pilate at the instigation of some of the Jewish leaders.
Josephus also describes elsewhere in his antiquities how a high priest named Ananias took advantage of the death of the Roman governor Festus, who is also mentioned in the New Testament, in order to have James killed.
Josephus writes: ‘He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.’
I have not heard of any ‘scholars’ that have successfully disputed this passage.
From John 7:5, we know that even Jesus’ own brothers did not initially believe in him. But here, Josephus provides a reference to the brother of Jesus who was put to death for his faith and who had apparently been converted by the resurrection (see Acts 1:14).
Cornelius Tacitus (55-120 AD), "the greatest historian" of ancient Rome wrote of that the emperor Nero was blamed by the Roman populace for the fire of Rome:
"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."
Here you have a Roman historian referring to Christ being crucified under Pontius Pilate (who is also mentioned in the gospels) when he explains how emperor Nero redirected his blame by the populous for the fire of Rome in A.D. 64 to the Christians.
There is other extra-biblical & non-Christian corroborative evidence (for Jesus and his claims) as well but I will stop there as I think you understand my point. The site also made some unmerited archaeological claims which I disagree with as well.
My advice for you is to go to the best source material you can find before making an unbiased conclusion.
Have a good afternoon.
Thank you for your replies.
Interesting link Confused2
Issachar,
Not to discredit anything that Josephus has to say, but he has also made it clear that what we would call miracles wasn't always considered so.
"That skill which expels demons out of human bodies, is a science useful and sanative to men," Josephus: "Antiquities," viii., 2.
So here he says that it's no great thing to "expel demons", which is much of the "miracles" attributed to Jesus.
As for the passage of Cornelius Tacitus, one could easily argue the gnostic viewpoint here, and say that the people running around proclaiming him to be a flesh and blood human were initiates, and not privy to the actual mysteries. Not to mention the fact that even if there were a bunch of people running around converting people to christianity in those 65years, I doubt this passage because it appears to me to be an exaggeration of numbers. Things like "immense multitude" used in place of an actual number is constrained to the writers sense of "immense multitude", and gives no indication whatsoever that this isn't a second/third hand account of things that took place.
This could go on, but that wouldn't really prove anything.
I've not seen/read enough valid information to convince me that the Gnostic's didn't have the closer picture of the truth.
After all, if there were "proof", there'd be no debate
I'm willing to listen though.
Interesting link Confused2
Issachar,
Not to discredit anything that Josephus has to say, but he has also made it clear that what we would call miracles wasn't always considered so.
"That skill which expels demons out of human bodies, is a science useful and sanative to men," Josephus: "Antiquities," viii., 2.
So here he says that it's no great thing to "expel demons", which is much of the "miracles" attributed to Jesus.
As for the passage of Cornelius Tacitus, one could easily argue the gnostic viewpoint here, and say that the people running around proclaiming him to be a flesh and blood human were initiates, and not privy to the actual mysteries. Not to mention the fact that even if there were a bunch of people running around converting people to christianity in those 65years, I doubt this passage because it appears to me to be an exaggeration of numbers. Things like "immense multitude" used in place of an actual number is constrained to the writers sense of "immense multitude", and gives no indication whatsoever that this isn't a second/third hand account of things that took place.
This could go on, but that wouldn't really prove anything.
I've not seen/read enough valid information to convince me that the Gnostic's didn't have the closer picture of the truth.
After all, if there were "proof", there'd be no debate
I'm willing to listen though.
Why would an Orthodox Jew write such praise about a man who , some say, said he was a god ?At most , Josephus was just retelling what gullible Christians averred.And why would any rational person adhere to the stupidity of the Christian morality? Orthodox Jews do not seek to enforce capital punishment for trivialities in Leviticus .Christians do not practice the stupidity of turning the other cheek and give the robber more goods. That is why I call the religion Christinsanity.Miracles were common back then. And why would a rational god send A Deluge and establish a Hell? Sadistic , ignorant bigots wrote the Buy-bull![S ee the new thread on dread and the religous.]
Griggs 1947, SENT, TEENA et al,
I must run go catch a train at the moment, so will not be able to get back to you until the first part of next week.
Until then, Hope you all have a great weekend!
Regards,
"Everybody thinks of changing humanity," noted Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, "but nobody thinks of changing himself."
I must run go catch a train at the moment, so will not be able to get back to you until the first part of next week.
Until then, Hope you all have a great weekend!
Regards,
"Everybody thinks of changing humanity," noted Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, "but nobody thinks of changing himself."
QUOTE (vkamath+May 31 2006, 06:06 PM)
QUOTE (blue_bottle+)
And atheists who seek to constantly test the faith of all Christians should have finally come to realize that it is through faith that they believe in God. Not as you say vkamath through "willful ignorance".
Faith is nothing but willful ignorance of the facts.
You shoot down something that gives millions upon millions of people hope every day?
Is there something wrong with hope? Do you have any problem with people being hopefull, believing in something better?
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Einstein, not me. Man needs both. People of faith to answers some questions, and those of science for others. No scientist could give a person a reason to exist? No religious man can give an adequate explanation of how we got here. For a complete answer, you need both.
Faith is nothing but willful ignorance of the facts.
You shoot down something that gives millions upon millions of people hope every day?
Is there something wrong with hope? Do you have any problem with people being hopefull, believing in something better?
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
Einstein, not me. Man needs both. People of faith to answers some questions, and those of science for others. No scientist could give a person a reason to exist? No religious man can give an adequate explanation of how we got here. For a complete answer, you need both.
You confirm my point that religion is a placebo.Thanks.What I am attempting is to demonstrate that there is no deity and that people make their own lives themselves. I could belie ve that Sandra Bullock is enthralled with me to as a placebo to my being happy.Why not argue for the truth instead of using a logical fallacy? Logic is the bane of theists. Fr. Griggs[I] rests in his Socratic ignorance and humble naturalism. Gee,let adults believe in Santa Claus![[Respond to my other thread,please. I want to generate more lively comment.]
"Hope is as Hollow as fear" Tao Te Ching
What this means is that they are both phantoms of the mind. As griggs 1947 puts it, they aren't real, they are placebos.
Every moment we live is a miracle. It doesn't require belief in anything to look out on the world with wonder. To hope for a better day could be waiting for something that never arrives. Hope sells the current moment very short.
Happiness is a choice that doesn't require a particular belief, or hope, just an open mind.
What this means is that they are both phantoms of the mind. As griggs 1947 puts it, they aren't real, they are placebos.
Every moment we live is a miracle. It doesn't require belief in anything to look out on the world with wonder. To hope for a better day could be waiting for something that never arrives. Hope sells the current moment very short.
Happiness is a choice that doesn't require a particular belief, or hope, just an open mind.
Experience shows there can be realistic hope. Experience shows faith and prayer work as placebos without empirical content .Science needs not relgion,but realistic ethics that looks out for us ,other animals and the enviornment, not commandments without regard to that good.
QUOTE (Teena+May 31 2006, 06:42 PM)
And again, all of the events you listed that have to do with Jesus could very well be true. I don't doubt that they eyewitnesses were telling the truth, but how do you know that what they saw was what they thought it was? You've got to remember we're just talking about people, people that didn't have the knowledge that we have today on top of that.....who is to say that they weren't deceived? Look at history, people worshiped anything & everything they didn't understand in many different cultures & locations. After his death people still though he was alive? People still think 2pac & Elvis are alive.
As far as Gospels, I won't even pretend I'm overly familiar with it. Unfortunately I don't have the time to look into it at the moment, but I'll get back to this once I do. So my question to you is, assuming the historical facts on Jesus are in fact correct, what proof is there that Jesus really was who he was believed to be? People's beliefs all those years ago, personally don't cut it for me. All those sects today have many people following the most ridiculous things, it shows how gullible & how willing to follow someone we can be even today..
Teena,
Your questions are reasonable ones to ask. I will try to keep this brief in lieu of time, but feel free to question more if you surmise.
I agree with you, people can be very gullible and there are no shortage of current examples which come to mind. So how do we know what they saw was what they thought it was? And assuming the historical facts on Jesus are in fact correct, what proof is there that Jesus really was who he was believed to be?
If you have ever had a roommate which you spent time with for only a limited part of the day, you can recall that it doesn’t take too long for you to get to know the real person and see their true colors.
The disciples were with Jesus for the 3-year period of time of his ministry. The disciples were, for the most part, with Jesus 24/7 in the every day course of life; eating, resting, traveling, ministering. They saw his miracles. They knew his character.
Even though they had been told by Christ that he must suffer, die and rise again, they just didn’t fully understand at the time what must take place. They saw him arrested, tortured exceedingly, and die on the cross. He was then laid in a tomb for three days which was guarded by soldiers. Their ‘faith’ was fractured.
The Resurrection
When first reports of the Resurrection came to the disciples, they were not eager to believe. Rather, they greeted these reports with skepticism, because they had seen him die.
(Luke 24:10-11) It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.
And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.
(John 20:24-29) But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
Their unbelief changed once they saw him.
An attempted explanation claims that the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection were either illusions or hallucinations. A typical hallucination presents images in confusion, without the internal logic of reality. Moreover, no two people ever hallucinate exactly the same impressions. Unsupported by the psychological principles governing the appearances of hallucinations, this theory also does not coincide with the historical situation.
The disciples enjoyed extended interaction with the risen Jesus.
He appeared to them at least ten times over a period of forty days (Acts 1:3). The circumstances were varied. He came to them both at night (John 20:19) and in broad daylight (Matt. 28:9; Luke 24:29; John 21:4), both indoors (Mark 16:14; John 20:26) and outdoors (Matt. 28:16-17; Acts 1:9). He met them singly (1 Cor. 15:5, 7-8), in small groups (Luke 24:13-15; John 20:19, 26), and in large groups (1 Cor. 15:6; Acts 1:6-15). He joined with them in such activities as eating and walking (Luke 24:15, 50). In their presence He did the work of preparing a meal (John 21:9-13). They held lengthy conversations with Him (Luke 24:27, 45-49; John 21:15-22). It is not rational either to suppose that the familiar friends of the real Jesus went through all these encounters with an impersonator and yet failed to penetrate the disguise.
Several very important factors are often overlooked when considering Christ's post-resurrection appearances to individuals. The first is the large number of witnesses of Christ after that resurrection morning.
One of the earliest records of Christ's appearing after the resurrection is by Paul. The apostle appealed to his audience's knowledge of the fact that Christ had been seen by more than 500 people at one time. Paul reminded them that the majority of those people were still alive and could be questioned. Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, emphasizes: "What gives a special authority to the list (of witnesses) as historical evidence is the reference to most of the five hundred brethren being still alive. St. Paul says in effect, 'If you do not believe me, you can ask them.' Such a statement in an admittedly genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost as strong evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly two thousand years ago."
A single eyewitness account in a courtroom can often determine the outcome of a trail. If you took the more than 500 witnesses who saw Jesus alive after His death and burial, and place them in a courtroom. Do you realize that if each of those 500 people were to testify for only six minutes, including cross-examination, you would have an amazing 50 hours of firsthand testimony? Add to this the testimony of many other eyewitnesses and you would well have the largest and most lopsided trial in history.
Another factor crucial to interpreting Christ's appearances is that He also appeared to those who were hostile or unconvinced. I have read or heard people comment before that Jesus was seen alive after His death and burial only by His friends and followers. Using that argument, they attempt to water down the overwhelming impact of the multiple eyewitness accounts. But that line of reasoning hardly deserves any comment. No author or informed individual would regard Saul of Tarsus as being a follower of Christ. The facts show the exact opposite. Saul despised Christ and persecuted Christ's followers. It was a life-shattering experience when Christ appeared to him. Although he was at the time not a disciple, he later became the apostle Paul, one of the greatest witnesses for the truth of the resurrection.
THE DISCIPLES' LIVES
"We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." 2 Peter 1:16
But the most telling testimony of all must be the lives of those early Christians. We must ask ourselves: What caused them to go everywhere telling the message of the risen Christ?
Had there been any visible benefits accrued to them from their efforts--prestige, wealth, increased social status or material benefits--we might logically attempt to account for their actions, for their whole-hearted and total allegiance to this "risen Christ ."
Now a modern day terrorist might sincerely believe they will go to heaven if they blow themselves up for their religion, but the terrorist could be sincerely wrong in his beliefs. The disciples had an extreme advantage, they had seen Christ in the flesh alive from the dead and could not stop telling everyone about this good news of Messiah’s sacrifice on the cross covering our sins and establishing a right relationship with God, which is what religion is incapable to do.
As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.
Yet, they laid down their lives as the ultimate proof of their complete confidence in the truth of their message.
I hope that answers your question at least a little bit that the Jesus they saw was who he really was.
Regards,
As far as Gospels, I won't even pretend I'm overly familiar with it. Unfortunately I don't have the time to look into it at the moment, but I'll get back to this once I do. So my question to you is, assuming the historical facts on Jesus are in fact correct, what proof is there that Jesus really was who he was believed to be? People's beliefs all those years ago, personally don't cut it for me. All those sects today have many people following the most ridiculous things, it shows how gullible & how willing to follow someone we can be even today..
Teena,
Your questions are reasonable ones to ask. I will try to keep this brief in lieu of time, but feel free to question more if you surmise.
I agree with you, people can be very gullible and there are no shortage of current examples which come to mind. So how do we know what they saw was what they thought it was? And assuming the historical facts on Jesus are in fact correct, what proof is there that Jesus really was who he was believed to be?
If you have ever had a roommate which you spent time with for only a limited part of the day, you can recall that it doesn’t take too long for you to get to know the real person and see their true colors.
The disciples were with Jesus for the 3-year period of time of his ministry. The disciples were, for the most part, with Jesus 24/7 in the every day course of life; eating, resting, traveling, ministering. They saw his miracles. They knew his character.
Even though they had been told by Christ that he must suffer, die and rise again, they just didn’t fully understand at the time what must take place. They saw him arrested, tortured exceedingly, and die on the cross. He was then laid in a tomb for three days which was guarded by soldiers. Their ‘faith’ was fractured.
The Resurrection
When first reports of the Resurrection came to the disciples, they were not eager to believe. Rather, they greeted these reports with skepticism, because they had seen him die.
(Luke 24:10-11) It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.
And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.
(John 20:24-29) But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
Their unbelief changed once they saw him.
An attempted explanation claims that the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection were either illusions or hallucinations. A typical hallucination presents images in confusion, without the internal logic of reality. Moreover, no two people ever hallucinate exactly the same impressions. Unsupported by the psychological principles governing the appearances of hallucinations, this theory also does not coincide with the historical situation.
The disciples enjoyed extended interaction with the risen Jesus.
He appeared to them at least ten times over a period of forty days (Acts 1:3). The circumstances were varied. He came to them both at night (John 20:19) and in broad daylight (Matt. 28:9; Luke 24:29; John 21:4), both indoors (Mark 16:14; John 20:26) and outdoors (Matt. 28:16-17; Acts 1:9). He met them singly (1 Cor. 15:5, 7-8), in small groups (Luke 24:13-15; John 20:19, 26), and in large groups (1 Cor. 15:6; Acts 1:6-15). He joined with them in such activities as eating and walking (Luke 24:15, 50). In their presence He did the work of preparing a meal (John 21:9-13). They held lengthy conversations with Him (Luke 24:27, 45-49; John 21:15-22). It is not rational either to suppose that the familiar friends of the real Jesus went through all these encounters with an impersonator and yet failed to penetrate the disguise.
Several very important factors are often overlooked when considering Christ's post-resurrection appearances to individuals. The first is the large number of witnesses of Christ after that resurrection morning.
One of the earliest records of Christ's appearing after the resurrection is by Paul. The apostle appealed to his audience's knowledge of the fact that Christ had been seen by more than 500 people at one time. Paul reminded them that the majority of those people were still alive and could be questioned. Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi, associate professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, emphasizes: "What gives a special authority to the list (of witnesses) as historical evidence is the reference to most of the five hundred brethren being still alive. St. Paul says in effect, 'If you do not believe me, you can ask them.' Such a statement in an admittedly genuine letter written within thirty years of the event is almost as strong evidence as one could hope to get for something that happened nearly two thousand years ago."
A single eyewitness account in a courtroom can often determine the outcome of a trail. If you took the more than 500 witnesses who saw Jesus alive after His death and burial, and place them in a courtroom. Do you realize that if each of those 500 people were to testify for only six minutes, including cross-examination, you would have an amazing 50 hours of firsthand testimony? Add to this the testimony of many other eyewitnesses and you would well have the largest and most lopsided trial in history.
Another factor crucial to interpreting Christ's appearances is that He also appeared to those who were hostile or unconvinced. I have read or heard people comment before that Jesus was seen alive after His death and burial only by His friends and followers. Using that argument, they attempt to water down the overwhelming impact of the multiple eyewitness accounts. But that line of reasoning hardly deserves any comment. No author or informed individual would regard Saul of Tarsus as being a follower of Christ. The facts show the exact opposite. Saul despised Christ and persecuted Christ's followers. It was a life-shattering experience when Christ appeared to him. Although he was at the time not a disciple, he later became the apostle Paul, one of the greatest witnesses for the truth of the resurrection.
THE DISCIPLES' LIVES
"We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." 2 Peter 1:16
But the most telling testimony of all must be the lives of those early Christians. We must ask ourselves: What caused them to go everywhere telling the message of the risen Christ?
Had there been any visible benefits accrued to them from their efforts--prestige, wealth, increased social status or material benefits--we might logically attempt to account for their actions, for their whole-hearted and total allegiance to this "risen Christ ."
Now a modern day terrorist might sincerely believe they will go to heaven if they blow themselves up for their religion, but the terrorist could be sincerely wrong in his beliefs. The disciples had an extreme advantage, they had seen Christ in the flesh alive from the dead and could not stop telling everyone about this good news of Messiah’s sacrifice on the cross covering our sins and establishing a right relationship with God, which is what religion is incapable to do.
As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.
Yet, they laid down their lives as the ultimate proof of their complete confidence in the truth of their message.
I hope that answers your question at least a little bit that the Jesus they saw was who he really was.
Regards,
QUOTE (SENT+Jun 2 2006, 12:58 PM)
Issachar,
Not to discredit anything that Josephus has to say, but he has also made it clear that what we would call miracles wasn't always considered so.
"That skill which expels demons out of human bodies, is a science useful and sanative to men," Josephus: "Antiquities," viii., 2.
So here he says that it's no great thing to "expel demons", which is much of the "miracles" attributed to Jesus.
SENT,
I hope all is well with you.
In that section, Josephus mentions the great sagacity and wisdom of King Solomon bestowed on him by God. Josephus then refers specifically to the art of exorcism which appears to be assigned to Solomon from the books concerning the secrets of magic, medicine, and enchantments which the real authors prefixed his great name to give them creditability. Some pretended fragments of these books of conjurations of Solomon are still extant in Fabricius's Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Test. page 1054.
My opinion is entirely differ from Josephus’, that such books and arts of Solomon were not parts of that wisdom which was imparted to him by God in his younger days. The OT does not mention Solomon possessing this skill and the only previous biblical instance of similarity is David playing the harp for King Saul to relieve him of the evil spirits as found in 1 Samuel 16.
They must rather have belonged to such profane but curious arts as we find mentioned, See Acts 19 13-20 and had been derived from the idolatry and superstitions of heathen wives and concubines, in his old age; when he had forsaken God, and God had forsaken him and given him up to demoniacal delusions.
This could go on, but that wouldn't really prove anything. I've not seen/read enough valid information to convince me that the Gnostic's didn't have the closer picture of the truth. After all, if there were "proof", there'd be no debate
I'm willing to listen though.
What is most interesting to me about the passage of Tacitus is that a religious movement based on a ‘criminal’ that was executed by crucifixion had to be explained. In your consideration of the multitudes see my post above to Teena about why there were so many of them.
You hinted for my thoughts about Gnosticism.
It taught about having this ‘secret knowledge’ that material world was evil and the spiritual realm was pure, that the way to attain oneness with the divine was by attaining mystical knowledge which the goal was escaping the prison of the impure body in order for the soul of the individual to travel through space avoiding hostile demons, and uniting with God. Another Gnostic fundamental teaching is that the problem of man is not sin but ignorance.
Gnosticism sounds good on the surface, and I can thus see why it could be an appealing philosophy today for those who want a little ‘spirituality’ to make them feel good. Gnostic philosophy is contrary to Old and New Testament teachings. The Bible is in opposition to Gnostic teaching on fundamental doctrines such as the nature of God, Christ, the material world, sin, salvation, and eternity. Jews and Christians rejected Gnostic teaching as heretical, and the Gnostics rejected Christianity. It is not readily pointed out today, but gnosticism was also sexist as some documents showed a clear bias against women.
In the New Testament, Jesus’ mission is clearly stated. He came to die an atoning death for the sins of the world and conquer the grave with His bodily resurrection. This contradicts gnosticism that teaches Christ sought death to free himself from the imprisonment of his body.
Gnosticism does not stack up with who Jesus was historically. The discovery of the Nag Hammandi documents which includes a number of Gnostic writing may include some information regarding the life of Jesus, but they are not really adding much. No ancient documents compare with the New Testament in terms of importance of Christian history or doctrine, which contains the best sources for the history of Jesus. The limits of the canon were discerned with a clear and balanced perspective of the gospel of Christ. You may want to read the Gnostic documents as compared to the NT to see for yourself. They are written later than the four gospels, in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and even 5th centuries, long after Jesus. They contain names like the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of Mary that are unrelated to real authorship. On the other hand, the 4 gospels in the New Testament were readily accepted with high unanimity as being authentic in the story told.
For much more thorough commentary on Gnosticism you may refer to the following links:
http://www.equip.org/free/DG040-2.htm
&
http://www.equip.org/free/DG040-1.htm
I hope that helps to partially clarify your inquiry.
Regards,
Not to discredit anything that Josephus has to say, but he has also made it clear that what we would call miracles wasn't always considered so.
"That skill which expels demons out of human bodies, is a science useful and sanative to men," Josephus: "Antiquities," viii., 2.
So here he says that it's no great thing to "expel demons", which is much of the "miracles" attributed to Jesus.
SENT,
I hope all is well with you.
In that section, Josephus mentions the great sagacity and wisdom of King Solomon bestowed on him by God. Josephus then refers specifically to the art of exorcism which appears to be assigned to Solomon from the books concerning the secrets of magic, medicine, and enchantments which the real authors prefixed his great name to give them creditability. Some pretended fragments of these books of conjurations of Solomon are still extant in Fabricius's Cod. Pseudepigr. Vet. Test. page 1054.
My opinion is entirely differ from Josephus’, that such books and arts of Solomon were not parts of that wisdom which was imparted to him by God in his younger days. The OT does not mention Solomon possessing this skill and the only previous biblical instance of similarity is David playing the harp for King Saul to relieve him of the evil spirits as found in 1 Samuel 16.
They must rather have belonged to such profane but curious arts as we find mentioned, See Acts 19 13-20 and had been derived from the idolatry and superstitions of heathen wives and concubines, in his old age; when he had forsaken God, and God had forsaken him and given him up to demoniacal delusions.
QUOTE
As for the passage of Cornelius Tacitus, one could easily argue the gnostic viewpoint here, and say that the people running around proclaiming him to be a flesh and blood human were initiates, and not privy to the actual mysteries. Not to mention the fact that even if there were a bunch of people running around converting people to christianity in those 65years, I doubt this passage because it appears to me to be an exaggeration of numbers. Things like "immense multitude" used in place of an actual number is constrained to the writers sense of "immense multitude", and gives no indication whatsoever that this isn't a second/third hand account of things that took place.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| As for the passage of Cornelius Tacitus, one could easily argue the gnostic viewpoint here, and say that the people running around proclaiming him to be a flesh and blood human were initiates, and not privy to the actual mysteries. Not to mention the fact that even if there were a bunch of people running around converting people to christianity in those 65years, I doubt this passage because it appears to me to be an exaggeration of numbers. Things like "immense multitude" used in place of an actual number is constrained to the writers sense of "immense multitude", and gives no indication whatsoever that this isn't a second/third hand account of things that took place. |
This could go on, but that wouldn't really prove anything. I've not seen/read enough valid information to convince me that the Gnostic's didn't have the closer picture of the truth. After all, if there were "proof", there'd be no debate
I'm willing to listen though.
What is most interesting to me about the passage of Tacitus is that a religious movement based on a ‘criminal’ that was executed by crucifixion had to be explained. In your consideration of the multitudes see my post above to Teena about why there were so many of them.
You hinted for my thoughts about Gnosticism.
It taught about having this ‘secret knowledge’ that material world was evil and the spiritual realm was pure, that the way to attain oneness with the divine was by attaining mystical knowledge which the goal was escaping the prison of the impure body in order for the soul of the individual to travel through space avoiding hostile demons, and uniting with God. Another Gnostic fundamental teaching is that the problem of man is not sin but ignorance.
Gnosticism sounds good on the surface, and I can thus see why it could be an appealing philosophy today for those who want a little ‘spirituality’ to make them feel good. Gnostic philosophy is contrary to Old and New Testament teachings. The Bible is in opposition to Gnostic teaching on fundamental doctrines such as the nature of God, Christ, the material world, sin, salvation, and eternity. Jews and Christians rejected Gnostic teaching as heretical, and the Gnostics rejected Christianity. It is not readily pointed out today, but gnosticism was also sexist as some documents showed a clear bias against women.
In the New Testament, Jesus’ mission is clearly stated. He came to die an atoning death for the sins of the world and conquer the grave with His bodily resurrection. This contradicts gnosticism that teaches Christ sought death to free himself from the imprisonment of his body.
Gnosticism does not stack up with who Jesus was historically. The discovery of the Nag Hammandi documents which includes a number of Gnostic writing may include some information regarding the life of Jesus, but they are not really adding much. No ancient documents compare with the New Testament in terms of importance of Christian history or doctrine, which contains the best sources for the history of Jesus. The limits of the canon were discerned with a clear and balanced perspective of the gospel of Christ. You may want to read the Gnostic documents as compared to the NT to see for yourself. They are written later than the four gospels, in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and even 5th centuries, long after Jesus. They contain names like the Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of Mary that are unrelated to real authorship. On the other hand, the 4 gospels in the New Testament were readily accepted with high unanimity as being authentic in the story told.
For much more thorough commentary on Gnosticism you may refer to the following links:
http://www.equip.org/free/DG040-2.htm
&
http://www.equip.org/free/DG040-1.htm
I hope that helps to partially clarify your inquiry.
Regards,
QUOTE (griggs 1947+Jun 6 2006, 12:28 AM)
Experience shows there can be realistic hope. Experience shows faith and prayer work as placebos without empirical content .Science needs not relgion,but realistic ethics that looks out for us ,other animals and the enviornment, not commandments without regard to that good.
Griggs 1947,
I hope all is going well for you!
Although I may agree with some of the others, that religion (in general) MAY have some good teachings and may bring a benefit to society in some areas, I also happen to agree with you that religion is basically worthless.
God isn't interested in religion. Religion is the human effort to reach God through rules, regulations and rituals. These things do not please God, for nobody can ever be good enough to satisfy a perfect & Holy God. God doesn’t want “religion;” He wants a relationship, which can only be found through Yeshua (Jesus).
The scientific method is very capable of dealing with quantitative matters: How much? How big? How far? How fast?
It serves that purpose most excellently.
Philosopher Huston Smith has argued that, for all the achievements of science, it is incapable of speaking to such important issues as values, purpose, meaning, and quality.
You said that
So what is your ‘realistic hope’ anyway?
I would like to know given your views on naturalism.
When one looks for the significance or the point of our activities, we are wondering about their meaning. Reflective individuals carry this idea further, wondering What's the point--or what is the meaning--of it all? Although many people would argue that life has no ultimate meaning, most people seem to expect it to. We search for it in creativity, in helping others, in "finding ourselves," and in a variety of other ways.
How do you expect your ‘realistic hope’ to achieve that?
Thanks for helping me to understand where you are coming from better.
Regards,
Griggs 1947,
I hope all is going well for you!
Although I may agree with some of the others, that religion (in general) MAY have some good teachings and may bring a benefit to society in some areas, I also happen to agree with you that religion is basically worthless.
God isn't interested in religion. Religion is the human effort to reach God through rules, regulations and rituals. These things do not please God, for nobody can ever be good enough to satisfy a perfect & Holy God. God doesn’t want “religion;” He wants a relationship, which can only be found through Yeshua (Jesus).
The scientific method is very capable of dealing with quantitative matters: How much? How big? How far? How fast?
It serves that purpose most excellently.
Philosopher Huston Smith has argued that, for all the achievements of science, it is incapable of speaking to such important issues as values, purpose, meaning, and quality.
You said that
QUOTE
Experience shows there can be realistic hope.
So what is your ‘realistic hope’ anyway?
I would like to know given your views on naturalism.
When one looks for the significance or the point of our activities, we are wondering about their meaning. Reflective individuals carry this idea further, wondering What's the point--or what is the meaning--of it all? Although many people would argue that life has no ultimate meaning, most people seem to expect it to. We search for it in creativity, in helping others, in "finding ourselves," and in a variety of other ways.
How do you expect your ‘realistic hope’ to achieve that?
Thanks for helping me to understand where you are coming from better.
Regards,
Hello Issachar, all is well here, I hope you enjoy the same.
What sources are you using? The Gnostic's allowed women to teach, give the Eucharist, and baptize. How is that biased?
Original article
What sources are you using? The Gnostic's allowed women to teach, give the Eucharist, and baptize. How is that biased?
Original article
Several trends within Gnosticism saw in God a union of two disparate natures, a union well imaged with sexual symbolism. Gnostic's honored the feminine nature and, in reflection, Elaine Pagels has argued that Christian Gnostic women enjoyed a far greater degree of social and ecclesiastical equality than their orthodox sisters. Jesus himself, taught some Gnostic's, had prefigured this mystic relationship: His most beloved disciple had been a woman, Mary Magdalene, his consort. The Gospel of Philip relates,"...the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended... They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us? the Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as I love her?"18
Also, there is a nice layout of what we "know" about the bible that can be found here.
There's more, but if you'd like to read the whole article the link is posted above.
I guess I don't understand where your opinions are coming from when scholars, dates, and "evidence" on the subject tend to disagree.
QUOTE
It is not readily pointed out today, but gnosticism was also sexist as some documents showed a clear bias against women.
What sources are you using? The Gnostic's allowed women to teach, give the Eucharist, and baptize. How is that biased?
Original article
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| It is not readily pointed out today, but gnosticism was also sexist as some documents showed a clear bias against women. |
What sources are you using? The Gnostic's allowed women to teach, give the Eucharist, and baptize. How is that biased?
Original article
Several trends within Gnosticism saw in God a union of two disparate natures, a union well imaged with sexual symbolism. Gnostic's honored the feminine nature and, in reflection, Elaine Pagels has argued that Christian Gnostic women enjoyed a far greater degree of social and ecclesiastical equality than their orthodox sisters. Jesus himself, taught some Gnostic's, had prefigured this mystic relationship: His most beloved disciple had been a woman, Mary Magdalene, his consort. The Gospel of Philip relates,"...the companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene. But Christ loved her more than all the disciples, and used to kiss her often on her mouth. The rest of the disciples were offended... They said to him, "Why do you love her more than all of us? the Savior answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you as I love her?"18
Also, there is a nice layout of what we "know" about the bible that can be found here.
QUOTE
THE BIBLE GOSPELS
The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]
Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]
Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels got written during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.
The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]
The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.
Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occurred at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.
The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]
* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.
The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.
The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source"). [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.
John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]
Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.
The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]
Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]
Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels got written during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.
The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark..." [Pagels, 1995]
The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.
Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occurred at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.
The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]
* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.
The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.
The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source"). [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.
John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]
Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.
There's more, but if you'd like to read the whole article the link is posted above.
I guess I don't understand where your opinions are coming from when scholars, dates, and "evidence" on the subject tend to disagree.
SENT,
Regarding the first part, the Gospel of Thomas ends with, 'Let Mary go away from us, because women are not worthy of life.'
In it, Jesus is quoted as saying, "Lo, I shall lead her in order to make her a male, so that she too may become a living spirit, resembling your males. For every woman who makes herself a male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
That is not the Jesus we know from the four canonical gospels.
I will read the article and get back to your question, but have to run at the moment.
Regarding the first part, the Gospel of Thomas ends with, 'Let Mary go away from us, because women are not worthy of life.'
In it, Jesus is quoted as saying, "Lo, I shall lead her in order to make her a male, so that she too may become a living spirit, resembling your males. For every woman who makes herself a male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
That is not the Jesus we know from the four canonical gospels.
I will read the article and get back to your question, but have to run at the moment.
Issachar,
Hope your running is productive
If you understand the gnostic gospels as the Gnostic's read them you'll understand that the statement in question. The Gnostic's understood that ALL gospels were allegorical, and that "Christ" was something that we all aspire to. The message in the quote in question is that there is no difference in male or female in gnosis. It's saying that our base nature is to consider ourselves better than another social or biological grouping, but in spirit we are all equal.
IMO if you read ANY of the gospels literally they are very misleading, but it's been done for so long by so many people that many take it for granted, and out of reflex try to read the gnostic literature literally. Doesn't make much sense that way, and was written to be read that way by the those without gnosis only. Those who had been brought into the greater and lesser mysteries understood the deeper meaning being conveyed by these simple stories. So in effect they are stories for every walk of understanding, but religion has lost most of the deeper meaning behind the stories. This was part of the conflict between the gnostic and orthodox churches of that day.
I find it funny that the only thing that made orthodox christianity different was the physical appearance of their version of the dying/resurrecting god-man, but the Gnostic's like every other mystery school in the first century believed that the god-man stories were multi-layered awakening stories that told of each and every human beings' journey to their true nature. That we are all god coming to know itself from many different perspectives all at once.
Anyway, IMO you have to understand the Gnostic's to understand their text, but much like the bible, you can interpret it however your wish. After all, it was written to speak to everyone regardless of the point in their journey. Before it was edited anyway.
Peace
Hope your running is productive
If you understand the gnostic gospels as the Gnostic's read them you'll understand that the statement in question. The Gnostic's understood that ALL gospels were allegorical, and that "Christ" was something that we all aspire to. The message in the quote in question is that there is no difference in male or female in gnosis. It's saying that our base nature is to consider ourselves better than another social or biological grouping, but in spirit we are all equal.
IMO if you read ANY of the gospels literally they are very misleading, but it's been done for so long by so many people that many take it for granted, and out of reflex try to read the gnostic literature literally. Doesn't make much sense that way, and was written to be read that way by the those without gnosis only. Those who had been brought into the greater and lesser mysteries understood the deeper meaning being conveyed by these simple stories. So in effect they are stories for every walk of understanding, but religion has lost most of the deeper meaning behind the stories. This was part of the conflict between the gnostic and orthodox churches of that day.
I find it funny that the only thing that made orthodox christianity different was the physical appearance of their version of the dying/resurrecting god-man, but the Gnostic's like every other mystery school in the first century believed that the god-man stories were multi-layered awakening stories that told of each and every human beings' journey to their true nature. That we are all god coming to know itself from many different perspectives all at once.
Anyway, IMO you have to understand the Gnostic's to understand their text, but much like the bible, you can interpret it however your wish. After all, it was written to speak to everyone regardless of the point in their journey. Before it was edited anyway.
Peace
Issachar, you make my point about realistic hope - it is all those positive matters . No ultimate purpose is relevant anyway. I do not want some Sky Pappy telling me what my purpose is;i am no slave. Thanks, others for the comments on Gnosticism. Some allege that ,because the Gnostic accounts were written much later than the Orthodox ones , they could not have become canonical anyway . I understand that because Irenaeus said that because there are four winds and four other matters, there could only be four gospels. Also , some allege that the Gnostic accounts are more fanciful than the canonicals. And what else do you find irrational about Christinsanity? How about the trinity and how others defend it. How can errantists find metaphors that have life significant meanings in the Deluge , genocide , misogyny and Atonement and the monster god in their Bible? I find the fundamentalists compose fantastic cop-outs for the c ontradictions in that exercrable book . Why not comments on errantists mistakes?
SENT,
Thanks for the wishes! Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t running as in pounding the pavement around trails of the local park, but just typical busy work/meeting/family schedule along with a home renovation project. This project, which although interesting has turned out to be quite the learning experience and a dragon to be slayed. I think we shall have it under control in the near future.
Out of respect for you, I took the time to read both articles but do not have time to address to an apt degree moment and will thus have to come back to it.
I must also commend your for you wrote on another post (I think) that
I think this is well said, SENT. We might think that God simply wanted obedience to a certain set of rules, but I think He is really interested in people of a particular sort. (Still has some work to do on me.)
Expect to get back to you and Griggs 1947 later.
Take care in the meantime.
I
Thanks for the wishes! Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t running as in pounding the pavement around trails of the local park, but just typical busy work/meeting/family schedule along with a home renovation project. This project, which although interesting has turned out to be quite the learning experience and a dragon to be slayed. I think we shall have it under control in the near future.
Out of respect for you, I took the time to read both articles but do not have time to address to an apt degree moment and will thus have to come back to it.
I must also commend your for you wrote on another post (I think) that
QUOTE
Seems more noble to be good for the sake of being good than it does to be good because of some cosmic guilt trip.
I think this is well said, SENT. We might think that God simply wanted obedience to a certain set of rules, but I think He is really interested in people of a particular sort. (Still has some work to do on me.)
Expect to get back to you and Griggs 1947 later.
Take care in the meantime.
I
QUOTE (griggs 1947+Jun 5 2006, 09:19 AM)
You confirm my point that religion is a placebo.Thanks.What I am attempting is to demonstrate that there is no deity and that people make their own lives themselves. I could belie ve that Sandra Bullock is enthralled with me to as a placebo to my being happy.Why not argue for the truth instead of using a logical fallacy? Logic is the bane of theists. Fr. Griggs[I] rests in his Socratic ignorance and humble naturalism. Gee,let adults believe in Santa Claus![[Respond to my other thread,please. I want to generate more lively comment.]
Religion as a placebo? Curious.
Believe as you wish. But at least listen to this point.
Jesus existed. Of that there is no doubt. Ancient Roman records stipulate such. And there can be no doubt he caused quite a stir because he was crucified. So what can we assume? Either he was a Zealot who attepmted an uprising and therefore was excecuted by the Romans. Unlikely, as this uprising may have appeared elsewhere in historical documents. Or he was a man who got the wrong peoples backs up (the religious leaders) who disposed of him.
A charming thought. But it is the assumption that Jesus was a good person who encouraged people to do likewise (love thy neighbour etc.) that has caused numbers of people to be warm and kind to their fellow man.
I don't care if it is a placebo. It encourages people to be nice and thats all that matters.
Religion as a placebo? Curious.
Believe as you wish. But at least listen to this point.
Jesus existed. Of that there is no doubt. Ancient Roman records stipulate such. And there can be no doubt he caused quite a stir because he was crucified. So what can we assume? Either he was a Zealot who attepmted an uprising and therefore was excecuted by the Romans. Unlikely, as this uprising may have appeared elsewhere in historical documents. Or he was a man who got the wrong peoples backs up (the religious leaders) who disposed of him.
A charming thought. But it is the assumption that Jesus was a good person who encouraged people to do likewise (love thy neighbour etc.) that has caused numbers of people to be warm and kind to their fellow man.
I don't care if it is a placebo. It encourages people to be nice and thats all that matters.
Hello all,
This is something we have no way of proving, partially because of the book burning spree of the catholic church, and partially because as a gnostic who had realized gnosis often times re-wrote the scripture in a way that still contained the messages of awakening as a way of showing that they understood gnosis. This is one of the reasons that one of the earliest spin-doctors (Irenaeus) complained about people "re-writing" the gospels. IMO we have Irenaeus to thank for much of the corruption in the "canon".
This is something we have no way of proving, partially because of the book burning spree of the catholic church, and partially because as a gnostic who had realized gnosis often times re-wrote the scripture in a way that still contained the messages of awakening as a way of showing that they understood gnosis. This is one of the reasons that one of the earliest spin-doctors (Irenaeus) complained about people "re-writing" the gospels. IMO we have Irenaeus to thank for much of the corruption in the "canon".
(Issachar) We might think that God simply wanted obedience to a certain set of rules, but I think He is really interested in people of a particular sort.
I think that some of those rules have real merit in regards to our wellbeing. I do energy work in my spare time, and I can honestly say that things like lying, stealing, cheating, lusting, and numerous other biblical "rules" have a real effect on a persons energy. What I mean by this is when someone lies their energy prepares to defend that lie before it's even spoken, and as a result the overall energetic health falls. The same is true for all those I mentioned. When our energetic health falls we feel irritable, or have a short fuse to irritable, and over time we increase our chances of contracting something. So in effect, if we don't know how to replenish this self imposed deficiency, we're shortening our life, or lessening the ease of chosen happiness.
As for god being interested in a particular sort of person, I think that for the source of all things to value his left eye more than his right would be less than wise, so why would one human be valued less than another? Isn't it "fair" to allow people the chance to learn life at their own rate? This is a little more difficult to fathom now that reincarnation isn't included, but that's part of the problem with calling an edited book "holy", some accept it at face value.
Anyway, good luck with the home improvement
There was quite a few men named Jesus, and there were probably even a few that were crucified, but that has nothing to do with the biblical account. The literal biblical account is what's in question.
There was quite a few men named Jesus, and there were probably even a few that were crucified, but that has nothing to do with the biblical account. The literal biblical account is what's in question.
It encourages people to be nice and thats all that matters.
So does jail time, but we're not ready to call the laws "holy".
IMO it does matter. I would rather have someone do something nice for me out of the desire to do nice rather than their belief that it will get them something, in this life or the next.
Do you really think "god", or "Jesus" approves of things justified through a book, or do you think they would approve of questioning everything? Do you believe they would support goodness for the sake of goodness, or goodness done with motives? Does it matter? Only when it imposes on others.
If/when you look at another human being and think negative thoughts about them (i.e. They're going to hell) you create a barrier that doesn't need to be there. The more barriers we have the harder it is to work together.
What we need right now is a way to work together, not divide.
QUOTE
(griggs 1947)
Some allege that ,because the Gnostic accounts were written much later than the Orthodox ones , they could not have become canonical anyway .
Some allege that ,because the Gnostic accounts were written much later than the Orthodox ones , they could not have become canonical anyway .
This is something we have no way of proving, partially because of the book burning spree of the catholic church, and partially because as a gnostic who had realized gnosis often times re-wrote the scripture in a way that still contained the messages of awakening as a way of showing that they understood gnosis. This is one of the reasons that one of the earliest spin-doctors (Irenaeus) complained about people "re-writing" the gospels. IMO we have Irenaeus to thank for much of the corruption in the "canon".
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| (griggs 1947) Some allege that ,because the Gnostic accounts were written much later than the Orthodox ones , they could not have become canonical anyway . |
This is something we have no way of proving, partially because of the book burning spree of the catholic church, and partially because as a gnostic who had realized gnosis often times re-wrote the scripture in a way that still contained the messages of awakening as a way of showing that they understood gnosis. This is one of the reasons that one of the earliest spin-doctors (Irenaeus) complained about people "re-writing" the gospels. IMO we have Irenaeus to thank for much of the corruption in the "canon".
(Issachar) We might think that God simply wanted obedience to a certain set of rules, but I think He is really interested in people of a particular sort.
I think that some of those rules have real merit in regards to our wellbeing. I do energy work in my spare time, and I can honestly say that things like lying, stealing, cheating, lusting, and numerous other biblical "rules" have a real effect on a persons energy. What I mean by this is when someone lies their energy prepares to defend that lie before it's even spoken, and as a result the overall energetic health falls. The same is true for all those I mentioned. When our energetic health falls we feel irritable, or have a short fuse to irritable, and over time we increase our chances of contracting something. So in effect, if we don't know how to replenish this self imposed deficiency, we're shortening our life, or lessening the ease of chosen happiness.
As for god being interested in a particular sort of person, I think that for the source of all things to value his left eye more than his right would be less than wise, so why would one human be valued less than another? Isn't it "fair" to allow people the chance to learn life at their own rate? This is a little more difficult to fathom now that reincarnation isn't included, but that's part of the problem with calling an edited book "holy", some accept it at face value.
Anyway, good luck with the home improvement
QUOTE
(bluebottle)
Jesus existed. Of that there is no doubt. Ancient Roman records stipulate such. And there can be no doubt he caused quite a stir because he was crucified.
Jesus existed. Of that there is no doubt. Ancient Roman records stipulate such. And there can be no doubt he caused quite a stir because he was crucified.
There was quite a few men named Jesus, and there were probably even a few that were crucified, but that has nothing to do with the biblical account. The literal biblical account is what's in question.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| (bluebottle) Jesus existed. Of that there is no doubt. Ancient Roman records stipulate such. And there can be no doubt he caused quite a stir because he was crucified. |
There was quite a few men named Jesus, and there were probably even a few that were crucified, but that has nothing to do with the biblical account. The literal biblical account is what's in question.
It encourages people to be nice and thats all that matters.
So does jail time, but we're not ready to call the laws "holy".
IMO it does matter. I would rather have someone do something nice for me out of the desire to do nice rather than their belief that it will get them something, in this life or the next.
Do you really think "god", or "Jesus" approves of things justified through a book, or do you think they would approve of questioning everything? Do you believe they would support goodness for the sake of goodness, or goodness done with motives? Does it matter? Only when it imposes on others.
If/when you look at another human being and think negative thoughts about them (i.e. They're going to hell) you create a barrier that doesn't need to be there. The more barriers we have the harder it is to work together.
What we need right now is a way to work together, not divide.
QUOTE (SENT+Jun 8 2006, 01:07 PM)
I think that some of those rules have real merit in regards to our wellbeing. I do energy work in my spare time, and I can honestly say that things like lying, stealing, cheating, lusting, and numerous other biblical "rules" have a real effect on a persons energy. What I mean by this is when someone lies their energy prepares to defend that lie before it's even spoken, and as a result the overall energetic health falls. The same is true for all those I mentioned. When our energetic health falls we feel irritable, or have a short fuse to irritable, and over time we increase our chances of contracting something. So in effect, if we don't know how to replenish this self imposed deficiency, we're shortening our life, or lessening the ease of chosen happiness.
SENT,
Very interesting comment about the energy work you do on the side, I must say. It sounds like its lessons of causes and consequnses you have found could probably be of benefit to us all. So good luck with that, hope you enjoy it.
About the Ggnostics teachings, these were extremely different from the unified teaching and theme of the old testament/Tenach & NT/Britt Chadeshah, which is God’s redemptive plan for mankind through the suffering and death of the Anointed One. (Christ's life, which he surrendered for them, is the "ransom" by which the deliverance of his people from the servitude of sin and from its consequences of death is secured. The debt against us is not viewed as simply cancelled, but is fully paid.).
From cults to the New Age, people make all sorts of claims these days about how the Bible is missing books including the Gnogstic writings, books that help justify what they hope to believe. Sometimes people claim that the Bible was edited to take out reincarnation, or the teaching of higher planes of existence, or different gods, or ancestor worship, or "at-one-ment" with nature.
The "lost books" were never lost. They were known by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New Testament times and were never considered scripture. They weren't lost nor were they removed. They were never in the Bible in the first place.
The additional books were not included in the Bible for several reasons. They lacked apostolic or prophetic authorship, they did not claim to be the Word of God; they contain unbiblical concepts such as prayer for the dead in 2 Macc. 12:45-46; or have some serious historical inaccuracies.
The early church basically had three criteria in determining which books were authoritative.
First, the books must have apostolic authority, which is, were they written either by the apostles themselves, who were eyewitnesses to what they wrote about, or by a followers of the apostles. For instance, while Mark and Luke, were not among the twelve disciples (Did you know that? ), the early church tradition was that Mark was a helper of Peter, and Luke an associate of Paul.
Second, there was the criterion of conformity to what was called the rule of faith, that is, was the document congruent with the basic tradition that the church (the worldwide believers) recognized as normative?
Third, did the document have continuous acceptance and usage by the church as large? They merely applied those criteria and let the chips fell where may.
What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike. The Gnostic writings including the Gospel of Thomas weren’t excluded by some decree of a council, they really had already excluded themselves from what early Christians accepted as trustworthy. The canon was not the result from series of church politics, but rather the separation that came about because the intuitive insight of Christian believers. They could hear the voice of the Good Sheppard in the Gospel of John; but they could only hear it in a muffled and distorted way in the Gospel of Thomas, mixed with a bunch of other things. The canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books. These were determined as authoritative long before anyone had gathered them together by what the early church had sensed all along.
I have heard it compared to calling several academies of musicians to come together and pronounce that the music of Bach and Beethoven is wonderful. Well that’s great, but we already knew that before the announcement was made.
I will certainly agree with you SENT that some of these Gnostic writings may be interesting documents, by all means. They just have no fellowship as a basis for Christian theology.
The Gnostic beliefs which had their origin in Eastern dualism well before Christianity, took over features from Christianity in the course of their spread westward, but also added Greek philosophy to the mix. For instance, in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Split wood, I am there. Lift up a stone, and your will find me there.” That is pantheism, the idea that Jesus is coterminous with the substance of this world, which is contrary and alien to anything in the gospels.
Famed Bible scholar F. F. Bruce is pretty blunt regarding the competing truth claims. He has written, "There is no reason why the student of this conflict should shrink from making a value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose." Few would question the historical record that Gnosticism was rejected by the church in the second and third centuries.
Gnosticism is incompatible with the message of the Gospel; the good news of salvation and presents a conflicting depiction of Christ.
While Orthodox Christianity and Judaism both point to human rebellion as the source of our flawed existence; Gnosticism blamed the creator.
The content and the literary style of the Gnostic writings compared to the biblical record are so different that they cannot both be accurate.
Also the Gnostic texts do not offer a recounting of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Much of what is attributed to Jesus is detached from any historical setting. The Letter of Peter to Philip depicts Jesus more as a lecturer on philosophy than a Jewish prophet. In it, the Apostles supposedly ask Jesus, "Lord, we would like to know the deficiency of the aeons and of their pleroma." Jesus responds with Gnostic teachings about God the Father and a female deity whose disobedience results in the physical cosmos. This is clearly not the Jesus of the New Testament.
Another question regarding Gnostic texts is their date of origin. The documents found at Nag Hammadi are quite old, probably dating from A.D. 350-400. The original writings are even older, but not prior to the second century A. D. Thus, the consensus of most scholars is that they appeared after the New Testament had been completed. The Gospel of Truth, which is attributed to Valentinus, actually quotes the New Testament at length. It would be odd to accept its authority over the New Testament.
I also agree will with you, that the teachings of Valentinus had a considerable impact on his world.
But I understand why the early church considered him a heretic. I found the following on famous or infamous Irenaeus depending on how one may view him.
The spread of Gnosticism in Gaul led Irenaeus to make a careful study of its tenets, not an easy matter since each Gnostic teacher was inclined to introduce subtleties of his own. Irenaeus was born, probably about the year 125, in one of the maritime provinces of Asia Minor, where the memory of the Apostles was still cherished and where Christians were already numerous. His education was exceptionally liberal, for, besides a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, he had an acquaintance with Greek philosophy and literature. Irenaeus had also the privilege of sitting at the feet of men who had known the Apostles. Of these the one who made the deepest impression on him was Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. All through his life, he told a friend, he could recall every detail of Polycarp's appearance, his voice, and the very words he used when telling what he had heard from John the Evangelist and others who had seen Jesus. He was, Tertullian tells us, "a curious explorer of all kinds of learning," and the task interested him. Irenaeus was convinced that the veil of mystery which enveloped Gnosticism was part of its attraction, and he was determined to "strip the fox," as he expressed it. His treatise <Against the Heresies>, in five books, sets forth fully the doctrines of the main dissident sects of the day and then contrasts them with the words of Scripture and the teachings of the Apostles, as preserved not only in sacred writings but by oral tradition in the churches which the Apostles founded. A humble, patient man, he wrote of controversial matters with a moderation and courtesy unusual in this age of perfervid conviction.
I think I can see why he was respected in the early church.
About the comment of God being interested in people of a particular sort, I was more referring to I think God is interested in us developing character.
This might not be the greatest example but I shall attempt to illustrate. For instance, suppose if you have young son or daughter and you ask them to perform a simple chore such as to take out the trash; 1.) they might say yes and go do it in fine spirits, 2.) they might refuse expecting the consequences 2.) or they might whine and complain and say they did it last week and tell you how its not fair that their sibling doesn’t have to do it, then after much unnecessary discourse, they begrudgingly agree to take out the trash grumbling the whole way. Now technically they took out the trash as you asked, but perhaps you will agree that they are hardly on the way towards being the responsible young adult that will one day do things to help your household without you needing to ask, or later taking care of their own needs responsibly.
Moving on, now you might be proud or not always be proud of you child’s accomplishments, but that doesn’t (or perhaps shouldn’t) change the fact that you will ever love them any less, because they are your child.
You are correct that God should not value one human over another. He doesn’t. If it was only you or only Griggs, he still would have chosen to pay in full the costly ransom of suffering and dying on the cross to set you free from the power of sin and death. It is independent from your current or past position in life, whether you be the angry atheist, the proud intellectualist, the vile axe murderer on death row, or a Mother Teresa full of good works, or in between, he still paid the price.
I would hardly call it fair, because there is no way I could ever pay for my sin, I could never be good enough. We only get one life to choose to accept his offer and repent. ‘The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.’ (2 Pet. 3:9)
In regards to the reference about the sermon on the mount, where Jesus in a bold figure of speech, said, “if your eye caused you to sin, pluck it out.” He wasn’t focusing on the eye. Rather He was saying, in effect, “Take the most drastic action necessary to keep your inner life pure.” The whole context of Christ's command was to show us that, if physical life is worth such drastic action, then spiritual life is worth even more.
Obviously it is not your hand or your eyes that actually cause you to sin. Cutting a thief's hand off does not stop the greed that caused the theft in the first place.
What we need to think more seriously about is a 'heart' transplant! Jesus said "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be." (Matthew 6:21) And he says to forsake our treasure if we want to be his disciple. (Luke 14:33) Paul says the love of money is the root of all evil (its not the money that’s the problem, but the love of it). (I Timothy 6:10) So this is what we must cut out, that is anything that takes preeminence in our life to God himself.
As extreme as amputation may be, most people would rather lose an arm or leg than give up their wealth and their source of income. But Jesus says to pick up that axe and hack away at the real causes of sin in your life. I think he is quite literal about forsaking the root of our sin. Whether it be pride, selfishness, love of our career, etc, it needs to go.
Regards & Have a good evening.
SENT,
Very interesting comment about the energy work you do on the side, I must say. It sounds like its lessons of causes and consequnses you have found could probably be of benefit to us all. So good luck with that, hope you enjoy it.
About the Ggnostics teachings, these were extremely different from the unified teaching and theme of the old testament/Tenach & NT/Britt Chadeshah, which is God’s redemptive plan for mankind through the suffering and death of the Anointed One. (Christ's life, which he surrendered for them, is the "ransom" by which the deliverance of his people from the servitude of sin and from its consequences of death is secured. The debt against us is not viewed as simply cancelled, but is fully paid.).
From cults to the New Age, people make all sorts of claims these days about how the Bible is missing books including the Gnogstic writings, books that help justify what they hope to believe. Sometimes people claim that the Bible was edited to take out reincarnation, or the teaching of higher planes of existence, or different gods, or ancestor worship, or "at-one-ment" with nature.
The "lost books" were never lost. They were known by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New Testament times and were never considered scripture. They weren't lost nor were they removed. They were never in the Bible in the first place.
The additional books were not included in the Bible for several reasons. They lacked apostolic or prophetic authorship, they did not claim to be the Word of God; they contain unbiblical concepts such as prayer for the dead in 2 Macc. 12:45-46; or have some serious historical inaccuracies.
The early church basically had three criteria in determining which books were authoritative.
First, the books must have apostolic authority, which is, were they written either by the apostles themselves, who were eyewitnesses to what they wrote about, or by a followers of the apostles. For instance, while Mark and Luke, were not among the twelve disciples (Did you know that?
), the early church tradition was that Mark was a helper of Peter, and Luke an associate of Paul.Second, there was the criterion of conformity to what was called the rule of faith, that is, was the document congruent with the basic tradition that the church (the worldwide believers) recognized as normative?
Third, did the document have continuous acceptance and usage by the church as large? They merely applied those criteria and let the chips fell where may.
What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike. The Gnostic writings including the Gospel of Thomas weren’t excluded by some decree of a council, they really had already excluded themselves from what early Christians accepted as trustworthy. The canon was not the result from series of church politics, but rather the separation that came about because the intuitive insight of Christian believers. They could hear the voice of the Good Sheppard in the Gospel of John; but they could only hear it in a muffled and distorted way in the Gospel of Thomas, mixed with a bunch of other things. The canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books. These were determined as authoritative long before anyone had gathered them together by what the early church had sensed all along.
I have heard it compared to calling several academies of musicians to come together and pronounce that the music of Bach and Beethoven is wonderful. Well that’s great, but we already knew that before the announcement was made.
I will certainly agree with you SENT that some of these Gnostic writings may be interesting documents, by all means.
They just have no fellowship as a basis for Christian theology.The Gnostic beliefs which had their origin in Eastern dualism well before Christianity, took over features from Christianity in the course of their spread westward, but also added Greek philosophy to the mix. For instance, in the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Split wood, I am there. Lift up a stone, and your will find me there.” That is pantheism, the idea that Jesus is coterminous with the substance of this world, which is contrary and alien to anything in the gospels.
Famed Bible scholar F. F. Bruce is pretty blunt regarding the competing truth claims. He has written, "There is no reason why the student of this conflict should shrink from making a value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose." Few would question the historical record that Gnosticism was rejected by the church in the second and third centuries.
Gnosticism is incompatible with the message of the Gospel; the good news of salvation and presents a conflicting depiction of Christ.
While Orthodox Christianity and Judaism both point to human rebellion as the source of our flawed existence; Gnosticism blamed the creator.
The content and the literary style of the Gnostic writings compared to the biblical record are so different that they cannot both be accurate.
Also the Gnostic texts do not offer a recounting of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Much of what is attributed to Jesus is detached from any historical setting. The Letter of Peter to Philip depicts Jesus more as a lecturer on philosophy than a Jewish prophet. In it, the Apostles supposedly ask Jesus, "Lord, we would like to know the deficiency of the aeons and of their pleroma." Jesus responds with Gnostic teachings about God the Father and a female deity whose disobedience results in the physical cosmos. This is clearly not the Jesus of the New Testament.
Another question regarding Gnostic texts is their date of origin. The documents found at Nag Hammadi are quite old, probably dating from A.D. 350-400. The original writings are even older, but not prior to the second century A. D. Thus, the consensus of most scholars is that they appeared after the New Testament had been completed. The Gospel of Truth, which is attributed to Valentinus, actually quotes the New Testament at length. It would be odd to accept its authority over the New Testament.
I also agree will with you, that the teachings of Valentinus had a considerable impact on his world.
But I understand why the early church considered him a heretic. I found the following on famous or infamous
Irenaeus depending on how one may view him. The spread of Gnosticism in Gaul led Irenaeus to make a careful study of its tenets, not an easy matter since each Gnostic teacher was inclined to introduce subtleties of his own. Irenaeus was born, probably about the year 125, in one of the maritime provinces of Asia Minor, where the memory of the Apostles was still cherished and where Christians were already numerous. His education was exceptionally liberal, for, besides a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, he had an acquaintance with Greek philosophy and literature. Irenaeus had also the privilege of sitting at the feet of men who had known the Apostles. Of these the one who made the deepest impression on him was Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. All through his life, he told a friend, he could recall every detail of Polycarp's appearance, his voice, and the very words he used when telling what he had heard from John the Evangelist and others who had seen Jesus. He was, Tertullian tells us, "a curious explorer of all kinds of learning," and the task interested him. Irenaeus was convinced that the veil of mystery which enveloped Gnosticism was part of its attraction, and he was determined to "strip the fox," as he expressed it. His treatise <Against the Heresies>, in five books, sets forth fully the doctrines of the main dissident sects of the day and then contrasts them with the words of Scripture and the teachings of the Apostles, as preserved not only in sacred writings but by oral tradition in the churches which the Apostles founded. A humble, patient man, he wrote of controversial matters with a moderation and courtesy unusual in this age of perfervid conviction.
I think I can see why he was respected in the early church.
QUOTE
As for god being interested in a particular sort of person, I think that for the source of all things to value his left eye more than his right would be less than wise, so why would one human be valued less than another? Isn't it "fair" to allow people the chance to learn life at their own rate? This is a little more difficult to fathom now that reincarnation isn't included, but that's part of the problem with calling an edited book "holy", some accept it at face value.
About the comment of God being interested in people of a particular sort, I was more referring to I think God is interested in us developing character.
This might not be the greatest example but I shall attempt to illustrate. For instance, suppose if you have young son or daughter and you ask them to perform a simple chore such as to take out the trash; 1.) they might say yes and go do it in fine spirits, 2.) they might refuse expecting the consequences 2.) or they might whine and complain and say they did it last week and tell you how its not fair that their sibling doesn’t have to do it, then after much unnecessary discourse, they begrudgingly agree to take out the trash grumbling the whole way. Now technically they took out the trash as you asked, but perhaps you will agree that they are hardly on the way towards being the responsible young adult that will one day do things to help your household without you needing to ask, or later taking care of their own needs responsibly.
Moving on, now you might be proud or not always be proud of you child’s accomplishments, but that doesn’t (or perhaps shouldn’t) change the fact that you will ever love them any less, because they are your child.
You are correct that God should not value one human over another. He doesn’t. If it was only you or only Griggs, he still would have chosen to pay in full the costly ransom of suffering and dying on the cross to set you free from the power of sin and death. It is independent from your current or past position in life, whether you be the angry atheist, the proud intellectualist, the vile axe murderer on death row, or a Mother Teresa full of good works, or in between, he still paid the price.
I would hardly call it fair, because there is no way I could ever pay for my sin, I could never be good enough. We only get one life to choose to accept his offer and repent. ‘The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.’ (2 Pet. 3:9)
In regards to the reference about the sermon on the mount, where Jesus in a bold figure of speech, said, “if your eye caused you to sin, pluck it out.” He wasn’t focusing on the eye. Rather He was saying, in effect, “Take the most drastic action necessary to keep your inner life pure.” The whole context of Christ's command was to show us that, if physical life is worth such drastic action, then spiritual life is worth even more.
Obviously it is not your hand or your eyes that actually cause you to sin. Cutting a thief's hand off does not stop the greed that caused the theft in the first place.
What we need to think more seriously about is a 'heart' transplant! Jesus said "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be." (Matthew 6:21) And he says to forsake our treasure if we want to be his disciple. (Luke 14:33) Paul says the love of money is the root of all evil (its not the money that’s the problem, but the love of it). (I Timothy 6:10) So this is what we must cut out, that is anything that takes preeminence in our life to God himself.
As extreme as amputation may be, most people would rather lose an arm or leg than give up their wealth and their source of income. But Jesus says to pick up that axe and hack away at the real causes of sin in your life. I think he is quite literal about forsaking the root of our sin. Whether it be pride, selfishness, love of our career, etc, it needs to go.
Regards & Have a good evening.
Griggs 1947,
I am still a little confused about the hope, can you help me out a little more? Do you mean good things in life etc.? Thanks!
I think some or most of your questions/hang-ups are reasonable to ask, and still would like to attempt to address a few at a later time.
Regards,
I am still a little confused about the hope, can you help me out a little more? Do you mean good things in life etc.? Thanks!
I think some or most of your questions/hang-ups are reasonable to ask, and still would like to attempt to address a few at a later time.
Regards,
Hello issachar,
I had a wonderful evening, my daughter and I played at the playground until it started raining, came home and she fell asleep on the couch. Double reward! Fun, and quiet
Yea, they were different, but they never believed he came in the flesh so it stands to reason that their writings would be different. The believed that their writings spoke of a human potential that we all have, not some special incarnation.
What I wonder about the "accepted" interpretation is, did they even know how to interpret the writings, or had they lost the true meaning? Did they suffer the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts? It's funny how, to this day, rabis' don't believe that one persons death could atone for all of mankind's sin. Doesn't really fit in with your assumed plan of the OT.
Yea, they were different, but they never believed he came in the flesh so it stands to reason that their writings would be different. The believed that their writings spoke of a human potential that we all have, not some special incarnation.
What I wonder about the "accepted" interpretation is, did they even know how to interpret the writings, or had they lost the true meaning? Did they suffer the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts? It's funny how, to this day, rabis' don't believe that one persons death could atone for all of mankind's sin. Doesn't really fit in with your assumed plan of the OT.
What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike.
First_Council_of_Nicaea
Major topic - was Jesus divine (Arianism)
First_Council_of_Constantinople
Major topic - was the holy spirit divine
Council_of_Ephesus
Major topic - was Jesus divine (Nestorianism)
On, and on, and on ...
These books that were "divinely inspired" seem to have been highly disputed by the early church. Already accepted?
Could that be because people were burnt and hung for believing something other than the "orthodox" christians? Do you accept that your view on the literature in question is at least partially shaped by these early disputes, and atrocities?
Could that be because people were burnt and hung for believing something other than the "orthodox" christians? Do you accept that your view on the literature in question is at least partially shaped by these early disputes, and atrocities?
The Gnostic beliefs which had their origin in Eastern dualism well before Christianity, took over features from Christianity in the course of their spread westward, but also added Greek philosophy to the mix.
Really, what about Dionysus? I would say more likely Egypt, and if you examine the stories of the two you'll find that it's more probable that the early christians borrowed from the mystery schools than the other way around.
This, to me, sounds like someone is fairly attached to their own beliefs, and has no interest in researching facts. It's funny how the pagan mysteries survived for SO long before christianity, were united in their purpose, and bear a striking resemblance to christianity, even more so to gnostic belief, but yet gnostics deserved to loose? I think it was the book burning, murder, and emperor backed slaughter that helped the gnostics loose.
This, to me, sounds like someone is fairly attached to their own beliefs, and has no interest in researching facts. It's funny how the pagan mysteries survived for SO long before christianity, were united in their purpose, and bear a striking resemblance to christianity, even more so to gnostic belief, but yet gnostics deserved to loose? I think it was the book burning, murder, and emperor backed slaughter that helped the gnostics loose.
Gnosticism is incompatible with the message of the Gospel; the good news of salvation and presents a conflicting depiction of Christ.
While Orthodox Christianity and Judaism both point to human rebellion as the source of our flawed existence; Gnosticism blamed the creator.
Actually, gnostics blamed ignorance to be the source of flaw. They claimed that we were created because of the ignorance of one of gods' creations, who later proclaimed "I am a jealous god, and there are none before me.", and in gnostic texts is actually reprimanded by Sophia, and called "god of the blind".
That's because they never believed he existed in the flesh.
That's because they never believed he existed in the flesh.
Another question regarding Gnostic texts is their date of origin. The documents found at Nag Hammadi are quite old, probably dating from A.D. 350-400. The original writings are even older, but not prior to the second century A. D. Thus, the consensus of most scholars is that they appeared after the New Testament had been completed.
Right, copies of copies of copies. Who's to say which came first of the "christian" documents. Again, look at Dionysus. Christianity wasn't original when it was conceived other than the supposed "physical" appearance of the god-man.
You do realize that this is the same man that was angry about women having any significance in the gnostic church?
You are good enough. I believe that each and every one of us are divine, but we're so caught up in this dream that we forget that we're also the dreamer. We each have things to learn, and those lessons take us down many paths, but in the end they all go back to WHO, and WHAT we are.
So to me, it doesn't matter what anyone believes, thinks, or does, it all ends in the realization that we are all god coming to know itself through a unique perspective.
Anyway, have a wonderful day.
SeekEntertainmentInTruth(SENT)
I had a wonderful evening, my daughter and I played at the playground until it started raining, came home and she fell asleep on the couch. Double reward! Fun, and quiet
QUOTE
About the Ggnostics teachings, these were extremely different from the unified teaching and theme of the old testament/Tenach & NT/Britt Chadeshah, which is God’s redemptive plan for mankind through the suffering and death of the Anointed One.
Yea, they were different, but they never believed he came in the flesh so it stands to reason that their writings would be different. The believed that their writings spoke of a human potential that we all have, not some special incarnation.
What I wonder about the "accepted" interpretation is, did they even know how to interpret the writings, or had they lost the true meaning? Did they suffer the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts? It's funny how, to this day, rabis' don't believe that one persons death could atone for all of mankind's sin. Doesn't really fit in with your assumed plan of the OT.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| About the Ggnostics teachings, these were extremely different from the unified teaching and theme of the old testament/Tenach & NT/Britt Chadeshah, which is God’s redemptive plan for mankind through the suffering and death of the Anointed One. |
Yea, they were different, but they never believed he came in the flesh so it stands to reason that their writings would be different. The believed that their writings spoke of a human potential that we all have, not some special incarnation.
What I wonder about the "accepted" interpretation is, did they even know how to interpret the writings, or had they lost the true meaning? Did they suffer the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts? It's funny how, to this day, rabis' don't believe that one persons death could atone for all of mankind's sin. Doesn't really fit in with your assumed plan of the OT.
What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike.
First_Council_of_Nicaea
Major topic - was Jesus divine (Arianism)
First_Council_of_Constantinople
Major topic - was the holy spirit divine
Council_of_Ephesus
Major topic - was Jesus divine (Nestorianism)
On, and on, and on ...
These books that were "divinely inspired" seem to have been highly disputed by the early church. Already accepted?
QUOTE
They just have no fellowship as a basis for Christian theology.
Could that be because people were burnt and hung for believing something other than the "orthodox" christians? Do you accept that your view on the literature in question is at least partially shaped by these early disputes, and atrocities?
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| They just have no fellowship as a basis for Christian theology. |
Could that be because people were burnt and hung for believing something other than the "orthodox" christians? Do you accept that your view on the literature in question is at least partially shaped by these early disputes, and atrocities?
The Gnostic beliefs which had their origin in Eastern dualism well before Christianity, took over features from Christianity in the course of their spread westward, but also added Greek philosophy to the mix.
Really, what about Dionysus? I would say more likely Egypt, and if you examine the stories of the two you'll find that it's more probable that the early christians borrowed from the mystery schools than the other way around.
QUOTE
"There is no reason why the student of this conflict should shrink from making a value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose."
This, to me, sounds like someone is fairly attached to their own beliefs, and has no interest in researching facts. It's funny how the pagan mysteries survived for SO long before christianity, were united in their purpose, and bear a striking resemblance to christianity, even more so to gnostic belief, but yet gnostics deserved to loose? I think it was the book burning, murder, and emperor backed slaughter that helped the gnostics loose.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| "There is no reason why the student of this conflict should shrink from making a value judgment: the Gnostic schools lost because they deserved to lose." |
This, to me, sounds like someone is fairly attached to their own beliefs, and has no interest in researching facts. It's funny how the pagan mysteries survived for SO long before christianity, were united in their purpose, and bear a striking resemblance to christianity, even more so to gnostic belief, but yet gnostics deserved to loose? I think it was the book burning, murder, and emperor backed slaughter that helped the gnostics loose.
Gnosticism is incompatible with the message of the Gospel; the good news of salvation and presents a conflicting depiction of Christ.
While Orthodox Christianity and Judaism both point to human rebellion as the source of our flawed existence; Gnosticism blamed the creator.
Actually, gnostics blamed ignorance to be the source of flaw. They claimed that we were created because of the ignorance of one of gods' creations, who later proclaimed "I am a jealous god, and there are none before me.", and in gnostic texts is actually reprimanded by Sophia, and called "god of the blind".
QUOTE
Also the Gnostic texts do not offer a recounting of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
That's because they never believed he existed in the flesh.
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| Also the Gnostic texts do not offer a recounting of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus. |
That's because they never believed he existed in the flesh.
Another question regarding Gnostic texts is their date of origin. The documents found at Nag Hammadi are quite old, probably dating from A.D. 350-400. The original writings are even older, but not prior to the second century A. D. Thus, the consensus of most scholars is that they appeared after the New Testament had been completed.
Right, copies of copies of copies. Who's to say which came first of the "christian" documents. Again, look at Dionysus. Christianity wasn't original when it was conceived other than the supposed "physical" appearance of the god-man.
QUOTE
I think I can see why he was respected in the early church.
You do realize that this is the same man that was angry about women having any significance in the gnostic church?
You are good enough. I believe that each and every one of us are divine, but we're so caught up in this dream that we forget that we're also the dreamer. We each have things to learn, and those lessons take us down many paths, but in the end they all go back to WHO, and WHAT we are.
So to me, it doesn't matter what anyone believes, thinks, or does, it all ends in the realization that we are all god coming to know itself through a unique perspective.
Anyway, have a wonderful day.
SeekEntertainmentInTruth(SENT)
Sent,bless you for your remarks . [I am a cheerleader for those who contribute valid information and good argumentation here .] What about my other questions?Fr.Griggs rests in his Socratic ignorance and humble naturalism.
Hello griggs 1947, thank you for the blessing, and blessings to all who question.
Which questions are you referring to?
This is all IMO ...
The deluge if looked at allegorically is symbolic of the "dark night of the soul", and the struggle that occurs when a person realizes that all they have thought themselves to be is an illusion
Genocide was an extreme reaction to a misunderstanding. If it was taken allegorically the way it was meant to, we would have millions of interpretations, but we would be united in our quest for ourselves. Not what has happened though, and I believe this to be a result of literalistic interpretations.
Misogyny is the view of the Romans that were under control at the time, and not the viewpoint of the gnostics, but it was used as leverage against the gnostics by the orthodox christians to discredit their competition
Atonement how? Through Jesus? This is another allegorical meaning that has gone awry. If you consider Christ to be the perfected state of being that occurs once a person has realized their true nature then they can look back on life as the learning experience it was, and not as a bunch of sins. If it was a learning experience within a single consciousness then it's not possible for anyone to have done anything wrong. So all "sins" are atoned for through realization of reality as they saw it.
Errantist mistakes? People were so scared to be "out" of the "church" that many times they had to adopt a "Um, what did you say? Yea that's what I believe too!" standpoint or end up burned, tortured, or ruined. This resulted in a very fluid rule base for the early church, even though they tried so hard to set rules in "stone" there were always things that didn't fit with they way they wanted things to be. So ... more rules ... big surprise.
What else is twisted? Everything that has been taken literally that's been construed as unable to grow with the humans it's meant to speak to.
(Most of it )
If I missed anything, misread something, or wasn't clear let me know.
SENT
Which questions are you referring to?
QUOTE
And what else do you find irrational about Christinsanity? How about the trinity and how others defend it. How can errantists find metaphors that have life significant meanings in the Deluge , genocide , misogyny and Atonement and the monster god in their Bible? I find the fundamentalists compose fantastic cop-outs for the c ontradictions in that exercrable book . Why not comments on errantists mistakes?
This is all IMO ...
The deluge if looked at allegorically is symbolic of the "dark night of the soul", and the struggle that occurs when a person realizes that all they have thought themselves to be is an illusion
Genocide was an extreme reaction to a misunderstanding. If it was taken allegorically the way it was meant to, we would have millions of interpretations, but we would be united in our quest for ourselves. Not what has happened though, and I believe this to be a result of literalistic interpretations.
Misogyny is the view of the Romans that were under control at the time, and not the viewpoint of the gnostics, but it was used as leverage against the gnostics by the orthodox christians to discredit their competition
Atonement how? Through Jesus? This is another allegorical meaning that has gone awry. If you consider Christ to be the perfected state of being that occurs once a person has realized their true nature then they can look back on life as the learning experience it was, and not as a bunch of sins. If it was a learning experience within a single consciousness then it's not possible for anyone to have done anything wrong. So all "sins" are atoned for through realization of reality as they saw it.
Errantist mistakes? People were so scared to be "out" of the "church" that many times they had to adopt a "Um, what did you say? Yea that's what I believe too!" standpoint or end up burned, tortured, or ruined. This resulted in a very fluid rule base for the early church, even though they tried so hard to set rules in "stone" there were always things that didn't fit with they way they wanted things to be. So ... more rules ... big surprise.
What else is twisted? Everything that has been taken literally that's been construed as unable to grow with the humans it's meant to speak to.
(Most of it
)If I missed anything, misread something, or wasn't clear let me know.
SENT
Sent , interesting,but could you elaborate? I don't see how erranists can use what I rail against as being metaphorical .Evis is still evil . I fail to see how they have much to glean from the book even if they acknowledge that the book is largely tall tales, no history .H ow can they justify the Atonement ? Even if they confirm that hell is just a metaphor , why use it? I say why not use Esop's Fables without a god ? Does anyone else vouch for errancy ? Does anyonw else ,besides fundamentalists, have anything to state against it?
QUOTE (SENT+Jun 9 2006, 03:19 PM)
What I wonder about the "accepted" interpretation is, did they even know how to interpret the writings, or had they lost the true meaning? Did they suffer the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts? It's funny how, to this day, rabis' don't believe that one persons death could atone for all of mankind's sin. Doesn't really fit in with your assumed plan of the OT.
SENT,
I am very glad you had the opportunity to have fun with your daughter. Mine is only 7 months old, so the fun growing. Interesting derivation of your screen name, I must say.
Can you please provide evidence of the cut-n-paste of “they suffer(ed) the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts?” I am interested in your view on this. I will add to your words that many rabi’s that don’t see it that way. There are also many that do, and this is starting to be more so. Keep in mind most of the very early believers were Jewish, but 1st century persecution took a heavy toll on them. Please see the following links to see what I am talking about.
http://www.imja.com/
http://www.messianic.com/top/
These books that were "divinely inspired" seem to have been highly disputed by the early church. Already accepted?
Yes, I know its sounds funny but did mean what I said.
“What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike. “
The early church had long attested to the fact of the inspiration and early acceptance of the NT books:
I. This process began immediately with the writers recognizing that their own writings were the Word of God (read Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 4:15). But they also recognized that other writings of the New Testament were Scripture and on a par with the Old Testament. In 1 Timothy 5:18 Paul quoted Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7 and referred to both passages as Scripture. Peter likewise attested to Paul’s writings as Scripture in 2 Peter 3:15-16. Furthermore, the New Testament epistles were being read and circulated among the churches as authoritative revelation from God (cf. Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:27).
II. The writings of Irenaeus assume the authority of the books of the New Testament in common use during the second century, although his citations are from only 23 of the 27 New Testament books. Three of the four books that he does not cite were cited as Scriptures by earlier Christian writers (Ignatius refers to Philemon, while Clement of Rome cites James and II Peter). The Epistle of Barnabas also cites II Peter), and the fourth (III John) was probably not cited simply because of its brevity.
III. An early list of the books of the New Testament appears in the Muratorian fragment (A.D. 170), found by L. A. Muratori in manuscript form and published in 1740. Although the fragment is missing its beginning and end, it attests to the widespread use as Scripture of all books of the New Testament except Hebrews, James, I and II Peter. However, the Apostolic Fathers had already cited all of these four books as Scripture. The Muratorian fragment also mentions The Shepherd of Hermas as worthy to be read in church, but not to be included with the apostolic writings. Curiously, the Wisdom of Solomon, an Old Testament Apocryphal book, is also included as canonical.
III. Another early list appeared in the Codex Barococcio (A.D. 206), which included 64 of the 66 books of the present-day Bible. Esther and Revelation were omitted, but Revelation had formerly been regarded as Scripture by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and the Muratorian Canon.
IV. In A.D. 230, Origen (A.D. 185-254) stated that all Christians acknowledged as Scripture the four Gospels, Acts, the thirteen epistles of Paul, I Peter, I John, and Revelation. He added that the following were disputed by some people: Hebrews, II Peter, II John, III John, James, Jude, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the Gospel according to the Hebrews.(1) In other words, all the churches by this time were in agreement about most of the books, but a few doubted some of the epistles that were not as well known. Others were inclined to include a few books that eventually did not secure a permanent place among the canonical books. (2)
(1) Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter 25
(2) F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, third ed. (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1963), p. 112
V. By A.D. 300, all the New Testament books we presently use were generally accepted in the churches, although in a few places, James, II Peter, II and III John, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation were not in use.(3) Doubts about these books faded during the next fifty years, so that by A.D. 367, Athanasius listed all the 27 books as canonical in his Easter Letter, which also recommended certain other books for private reading only, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache. (3) Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book III, Chapter 25
VI. The Synod of Hippo (A.D. 393) and the third synod of Carthage (A.D. 397) also recognized these 27 books as canonical, as did the highly influential church Fathers Jerome (A.D. 340- 420) and Augustine (A.D. 354-430). They did not confer upon these any authority that they did not already possess; they merely recognized their previously established canonicity.(4) Bruce, p. 113.
The Counsel of Nicaea
Eusebius speaks of more than 250 bishops, and later Arabic manuscripts raise the figure to 2000 - an evident exaggeration in which, however, it is impossible to discover the approximate total number of bishops, as well as of the priests, deacons, and acolytes, of whom it is said that a great number were also present. St. Athanasius, a member of the council speaks of 300, and in his letter "Ad Afros" he says explicitly 318.
They Affirmed the concept of the trinity as reveled in the New Testament.
From the Nicaean Creed:
“We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ek tes ousias] of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father [homoousion to patri], through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost.”
Of the 318 Bishops, all but 5 (five) immediately declared themselves to subscribe to the formula. The opponents were soon reduced to 2 (two) dissenting opinions (only Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais) out of 318 bishops.
(That is 0.006 or 0.6%, I would hardly call that highly disputed).
They were basically excommunicated & exiled along with Arius who was not counted among the bishops and some historians say Arius’ books were burned, which to me doesn’t sound like it would be a whole lot, but I do not have good information to say if his books would be significant or not.
I (we) am glad to live in the U.S. where there is a least more freedom of religion (or the freedom to choose not to practice it ) is valued.
The concept of the trinity as affirmed in Nicaea was not new to Scripture:
Old Testament Scriptures
While there is no explicit statement in the Old Testament affirming the Triunity, the Old Testament not only allows for the Triunity, but also implies that God is a triune Being in a number of ways:
(1) The name Elohim, translated God, is the plural form of El. While this is what is called a plural of plenitude pointing to the power and majesty of God, it certainly allows for the New Testament revelation of the Triunity of God.
(2) There are many instances where God uses the plural pronoun to describe Himself (see Gen. 1:26; 3:22; 11:7; Isa. 6:8).
(3) In the creation account, both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are seen in the work of creation. It is stated that God created heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1), but that it was the Holy Spirit who moved over the earth to infuse it with life in the sense of protecting and participating in the work of creation (Gen. 1:2).
(4) Writing about the Messiah, Isaiah reveals Him to be equal with God, calling Him the “Mighty God” and “Eternal Father” (Isa. 9:6).
(5) Several passages reveal a distinction of Persons within the Godhead.
• In Psalm 110:1, David demonstrates there is a distinction of Persons between “LORD,” the one speaking, and the one addressed called by David, “my Lord.” David was indicating the Messiah was no ordinary king, but his own Lord, Adoni (my Lord), one who was God Himself. So God the first Person addresses God the second Person. This is precisely Peter’s point when He quotes this Psalm to show the resurrection of the Messiah was anticipated in the Old Testament.
• The Redeemer (who must be divine, Isa. 7:14; 9:6) is distinguished from the Lord (Isa. 59:20).
• The Lord is distinguished from the Lord in Hosea 1:6-7. The one speaking here is Yahweh, the Lord, yet, note the statement in verse 7, “I will have compassion … and deliver them by the Lord their God.”
• The Spirit is distinguished from the Lord in a number of passages (Isa. 48:16; 59:21; 63:9-10).
(6) In the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, God made it clear that the One who would be born of the virgin would also be Immanuel, God with us.
(7) Two other passages which imply the Trinity are Isaiah 48:16 and 61:1. In Isaiah 48:16 all three Persons are mentioned and yet seen as distinct from each other. See also Gen. 22:15-16.
New Testament Scriptures
The case for the Triunity of God is even stronger in the New Testament. Here it can be unequivocally demonstrated the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Furthermore, the New Testament teaches us that these three names are not synonymous, but speak of three distinct and equal Persons.
(1) The Father is called God (John 6:27; 20:17; 1 Cor. 8:6; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 4:6; Phil. 2:11; 1 Pet. 1:2).
(2) Jesus Christ, the Son is declared to be God. His deity is proven by the divine names given to Him, by His works that only God could do (upholding all things, Col. 1:17; creation, Col. 1:16, John 1:3; and future judgment, John 5:27), by His divine attributes (eternality, John 17:5; omnipresence, Matt. 28:20; omnipotence, Heb. 1:3; omniscience, Matt. 9:4), and by explicit statements declaring His deity (John 1:1; 20:28; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8).
(3) The Holy Spirit is recognized as God. By comparing Peter’s comments in Acts 5:3 and 4, we see that in lying to the Holy Spirit (vs. 3), Ananias was lying to God (vs. 4). He has the attributes which only God can possess like omniscience (1 Cor. 2:10) and omnipresence (1 Cor. 6:19), and He regenerates people to new life (John 3:5-6, 8; Tit. 3:5), which must of necessity be a work of God for only God has the power of life. Finally, His deity is evident by the divine names used for the Spirit as “the Spirit of our God,” (1 Cor. 6:11), which should be understood as “the Spirit, who is our God.”
Matthew 28:19 best states both the oneness and threeness by associating equally the three Persons and uniting them in one singular name. Other passages like Matthew 3:16-17 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 associate equally the three Persons but do not contain the strong emphasis on unity as does Matthew 28:19.”18
Peter, in explaining the phenomenon of Pentecost, represents it as the activity of the Trinity: ‘This Jesus … being … exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear’ (Acts 2:32-33). So the church of Pentecost was founded on the doctrine of the Trinity.
In 1 Cor. there is mention of the gifts of the Spirit, the varieties of service for the same Lord and the inspiration of the same God for the work (1 Cor. 12:4-6).
Peter traces salvation to the same triunal source: ‘destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ’ (1 Pet. 1:2). The apostolic benediction: ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all’ (2 Cor. 13:14), not only sums up the apostolic teaching, but interprets the deeper meaning of the Trinity in Christian experience, the saving grace of the Son giving access to the love of the Father and to the communion of the Spirit.
SENT, you are doing an excellent job keeping me on my toes.
That’s all I can respond to at the moment, but would still like to come back to a couple of points. Take care in the meantime.
SENT,
I am very glad you had the opportunity to have fun with your daughter. Mine is only 7 months old, so the fun growing. Interesting derivation of your screen name, I must say.
Can you please provide evidence of the cut-n-paste of “they suffer(ed) the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts?” I am interested in your view on this.
I will add to your words that many rabi’s that don’t see it that way. There are also many that do, and this is starting to be more so. Keep in mind most of the very early believers were Jewish, but 1st century persecution took a heavy toll on them. Please see the following links to see what I am talking about.http://www.imja.com/
http://www.messianic.com/top/
QUOTE
On, and on, and on ...
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| On, and on, and on ... |
These books that were "divinely inspired" seem to have been highly disputed by the early church. Already accepted?
Yes, I know its sounds funny but did mean what I said.
“What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike. “
The early church had long attested to the fact of the inspiration and early acceptance of the NT books:
I. This process began immediately with the writers recognizing that their own writings were the Word of God (read Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 4:15). But they also recognized that other writings of the New Testament were Scripture and on a par with the Old Testament. In 1 Timothy 5:18 Paul quoted Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7 and referred to both passages as Scripture. Peter likewise attested to Paul’s writings as Scripture in 2 Peter 3:15-16. Furthermore, the New Testament epistles were being read and circulated among the churches as authoritative revelation from God (cf. Col. 4:16; 1 Thess. 5:27).
II. The writings of Irenaeus assume the authority of the books of the New Testament in common use during the second century, although his citations are from only 23 of the 27 New Testament books. Three of the four books that he does not cite were cited as Scriptures by earlier Christian writers (Ignatius refers to Philemon, while Clement of Rome cites James and II Peter). The Epistle of Barnabas also cites II Peter), and the fourth (III John) was probably not cited simply because of its brevity.
III. An early list of the books of the New Testament appears in the Muratorian fragment (A.D. 170), found by L. A. Muratori in manuscript form and published in 1740. Although the fragment is missing its beginning and end, it attests to the widespread use as Scripture of all books of the New Testament except Hebrews, James, I and II Peter. However, the Apostolic Fathers had already cited all of these four books as Scripture. The Muratorian fragment also mentions The Shepherd of Hermas as worthy to be read in church, but not to be included with the apostolic writings. Curiously, the Wisdom of Solomon, an Old Testament Apocryphal book, is also included as canonical.
III. Another early list appeared in the Codex Barococcio (A.D. 206), which included 64 of the 66 books of the present-day Bible. Esther and Revelation were omitted, but Revelation had formerly been regarded as Scripture by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and the Muratorian Canon.
IV. In A.D. 230, Origen (A.D. 185-254) stated that all Christians acknowledged as Scripture the four Gospels, Acts, the thirteen epistles of Paul, I Peter, I John, and Revelation. He added that the following were disputed by some people: Hebrews, II Peter, II John, III John, James, Jude, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and the Gospel according to the Hebrews.(1) In other words, all the churches by this time were in agreement about most of the books, but a few doubted some of the epistles that were not as well known. Others were inclined to include a few books that eventually did not secure a permanent place among the canonical books. (2)
(1) Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter 25
(2) F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, third ed. (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1963), p. 112
V. By A.D. 300, all the New Testament books we presently use were generally accepted in the churches, although in a few places, James, II Peter, II and III John, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation were not in use.(3) Doubts about these books faded during the next fifty years, so that by A.D. 367, Athanasius listed all the 27 books as canonical in his Easter Letter, which also recommended certain other books for private reading only, such as the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache. (3) Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book III, Chapter 25
VI. The Synod of Hippo (A.D. 393) and the third synod of Carthage (A.D. 397) also recognized these 27 books as canonical, as did the highly influential church Fathers Jerome (A.D. 340- 420) and Augustine (A.D. 354-430). They did not confer upon these any authority that they did not already possess; they merely recognized their previously established canonicity.(4) Bruce, p. 113.
The Counsel of Nicaea
Eusebius speaks of more than 250 bishops, and later Arabic manuscripts raise the figure to 2000 - an evident exaggeration in which, however, it is impossible to discover the approximate total number of bishops, as well as of the priests, deacons, and acolytes, of whom it is said that a great number were also present. St. Athanasius, a member of the council speaks of 300, and in his letter "Ad Afros" he says explicitly 318.
They Affirmed the concept of the trinity as reveled in the New Testament.
From the Nicaean Creed:
“We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ek tes ousias] of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father [homoousion to patri], through whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and our salvation descended, was incarnate, and was made man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven and cometh to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost.”
Of the 318 Bishops, all but 5 (five) immediately declared themselves to subscribe to the formula. The opponents were soon reduced to 2 (two) dissenting opinions (only Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais) out of 318 bishops.
(That is 0.006 or 0.6%, I would hardly call that highly disputed).
They were basically excommunicated & exiled along with Arius who was not counted among the bishops and some historians say Arius’ books were burned, which to me doesn’t sound like it would be a whole lot, but I do not have good information to say if his books would be significant or not.
I (we) am glad to live in the U.S. where there is a least more freedom of religion (or the freedom to choose not to practice it
) is valued.The concept of the trinity as affirmed in Nicaea was not new to Scripture:
Old Testament Scriptures
While there is no explicit statement in the Old Testament affirming the Triunity, the Old Testament not only allows for the Triunity, but also implies that God is a triune Being in a number of ways:
(1) The name Elohim, translated God, is the plural form of El. While this is what is called a plural of plenitude pointing to the power and majesty of God, it certainly allows for the New Testament revelation of the Triunity of God.
(2) There are many instances where God uses the plural pronoun to describe Himself (see Gen. 1:26; 3:22; 11:7; Isa. 6:8).
(3) In the creation account, both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are seen in the work of creation. It is stated that God created heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1), but that it was the Holy Spirit who moved over the earth to infuse it with life in the sense of protecting and participating in the work of creation (Gen. 1:2).
(4) Writing about the Messiah, Isaiah reveals Him to be equal with God, calling Him the “Mighty God” and “Eternal Father” (Isa. 9:6).
(5) Several passages reveal a distinction of Persons within the Godhead.
• In Psalm 110:1, David demonstrates there is a distinction of Persons between “LORD,” the one speaking, and the one addressed called by David, “my Lord.” David was indicating the Messiah was no ordinary king, but his own Lord, Adoni (my Lord), one who was God Himself. So God the first Person addresses God the second Person. This is precisely Peter’s point when He quotes this Psalm to show the resurrection of the Messiah was anticipated in the Old Testament.
• The Redeemer (who must be divine, Isa. 7:14; 9:6) is distinguished from the Lord (Isa. 59:20).
• The Lord is distinguished from the Lord in Hosea 1:6-7. The one speaking here is Yahweh, the Lord, yet, note the statement in verse 7, “I will have compassion … and deliver them by the Lord their God.”
• The Spirit is distinguished from the Lord in a number of passages (Isa. 48:16; 59:21; 63:9-10).
(6) In the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, God made it clear that the One who would be born of the virgin would also be Immanuel, God with us.
(7) Two other passages which imply the Trinity are Isaiah 48:16 and 61:1. In Isaiah 48:16 all three Persons are mentioned and yet seen as distinct from each other. See also Gen. 22:15-16.
New Testament Scriptures
The case for the Triunity of God is even stronger in the New Testament. Here it can be unequivocally demonstrated the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Furthermore, the New Testament teaches us that these three names are not synonymous, but speak of three distinct and equal Persons.
(1) The Father is called God (John 6:27; 20:17; 1 Cor. 8:6; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 4:6; Phil. 2:11; 1 Pet. 1:2).
(2) Jesus Christ, the Son is declared to be God. His deity is proven by the divine names given to Him, by His works that only God could do (upholding all things, Col. 1:17; creation, Col. 1:16, John 1:3; and future judgment, John 5:27), by His divine attributes (eternality, John 17:5; omnipresence, Matt. 28:20; omnipotence, Heb. 1:3; omniscience, Matt. 9:4), and by explicit statements declaring His deity (John 1:1; 20:28; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8).
(3) The Holy Spirit is recognized as God. By comparing Peter’s comments in Acts 5:3 and 4, we see that in lying to the Holy Spirit (vs. 3), Ananias was lying to God (vs. 4). He has the attributes which only God can possess like omniscience (1 Cor. 2:10) and omnipresence (1 Cor. 6:19), and He regenerates people to new life (John 3:5-6, 8; Tit. 3:5), which must of necessity be a work of God for only God has the power of life. Finally, His deity is evident by the divine names used for the Spirit as “the Spirit of our God,” (1 Cor. 6:11), which should be understood as “the Spirit, who is our God.”
Matthew 28:19 best states both the oneness and threeness by associating equally the three Persons and uniting them in one singular name. Other passages like Matthew 3:16-17 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 associate equally the three Persons but do not contain the strong emphasis on unity as does Matthew 28:19.”18
Peter, in explaining the phenomenon of Pentecost, represents it as the activity of the Trinity: ‘This Jesus … being … exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear’ (Acts 2:32-33). So the church of Pentecost was founded on the doctrine of the Trinity.
In 1 Cor. there is mention of the gifts of the Spirit, the varieties of service for the same Lord and the inspiration of the same God for the work (1 Cor. 12:4-6).
Peter traces salvation to the same triunal source: ‘destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ’ (1 Pet. 1:2). The apostolic benediction: ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all’ (2 Cor. 13:14), not only sums up the apostolic teaching, but interprets the deeper meaning of the Trinity in Christian experience, the saving grace of the Son giving access to the love of the Father and to the communion of the Spirit.
SENT, you are doing an excellent job keeping me on my toes.
That’s all I can respond to at the moment, but would still like to come back to a couple of points. Take care in the meantime.
Alas, scholars have shown the Bible as being unhistorical .What about that ? Fellow skeptics , what do you have t o say about this thread? I find the trinity meaningless and why would it be more real than may other trinity? How is Yeshua, without special pleading , any more real than any other legend [ a real person made in to a legend] ,any different? What about that monster who sent a delge to murder all those people and ordered genocide? The Atonement is just another demand for an animal sacrifice; sacrifices never made sense in the first place. Why would a ratinal being want blood spilled to assuage his poor self-esteem that all would have to worship it ? Fellow skeptics, we have so much to disabuse the gullible of! We are the bleievers in reality; the others in the unreality of the supernatural . Oh, how is a god suppose to influence what goes on in the world? As the world is just a brute fact ,Christinsanity 's raison d'etre has no justification. Fellow skptics, what can you add to my poor remarks? How about those bounces that Team Ashtekar have demonstrated ? Wow, the world is awesome! Without any plan , here we are!
Hello griggs 1947, Issachar, and all
Evil is a judgment based on your current perspective. To the one doing the "evil" act it is meant to teach them something about themselves, but much of the time they fail to see the lesson, so continue to do "evil". Evil is nothing more than stagnation, or deterioration of our growth as a person. EVERYONE wants to be happy, but many of us have a flawed concept of happiness, and attribute it to a circumstance or object, and when this happens we see it as a personal attack on our happiness, and retaliate in kind. In circumstances like murder, rape, or other such atrocities, it's a matter of escape into the addiction of adrenaline, or addiction to the other chemicals produced which we feel as emotions. The cells of the body respond to this by replicating with more receptors for a particular type of chemical set, because it's the chemical set most produced, and the chemical set that forms an addictive escape to the reality of one's actions.
Did I miss, or would you like more?
Evil is a judgment based on your current perspective. To the one doing the "evil" act it is meant to teach them something about themselves, but much of the time they fail to see the lesson, so continue to do "evil". Evil is nothing more than stagnation, or deterioration of our growth as a person. EVERYONE wants to be happy, but many of us have a flawed concept of happiness, and attribute it to a circumstance or object, and when this happens we see it as a personal attack on our happiness, and retaliate in kind. In circumstances like murder, rape, or other such atrocities, it's a matter of escape into the addiction of adrenaline, or addiction to the other chemicals produced which we feel as emotions. The cells of the body respond to this by replicating with more receptors for a particular type of chemical set, because it's the chemical set most produced, and the chemical set that forms an addictive escape to the reality of one's actions.
Did I miss, or would you like more?
(Issachar)
Can you please provide evidence of the cut-n-paste of “they suffer(ed) the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts?” I am interested in your view on this.
NOTE: These are considered myths, and I'm not presenting them as otherwise, but the resemblances are STRIKING.
Dionysus
Osiris-Dionysus
Osiris-Dionysus
The term Osiris-Dionysus is used by some historians of religion to refer to a group of deities worshiped around the Mediterranean in the centuries prior to the birth of Jesus. It has been argued that these deities were closely related and shared many characteristics, most notably being male, partly-human, life-death-rebirth deities.
Here is a side by side comparison of some of the attributes of these god-men
Similarities
And a perspective on the coincidences that exist
Jesus Myth
I don't not agree with everything on these pages, but it illustrates my point of a "cut-n-paste" bible.
I'm sorry, but my 2yr old daughter has just awoke so I must be a good daddy and provide the security of a loving father figure Oh, and PLAY too
I will respond to the rest as I have time, but this is a good start.
QUOTE
(griggs 1947)
I don't see how erranists can use what I rail against as being metaphorical .Evis is still evil .
I don't see how erranists can use what I rail against as being metaphorical .Evis is still evil .
Evil is a judgment based on your current perspective. To the one doing the "evil" act it is meant to teach them something about themselves, but much of the time they fail to see the lesson, so continue to do "evil". Evil is nothing more than stagnation, or deterioration of our growth as a person. EVERYONE wants to be happy, but many of us have a flawed concept of happiness, and attribute it to a circumstance or object, and when this happens we see it as a personal attack on our happiness, and retaliate in kind. In circumstances like murder, rape, or other such atrocities, it's a matter of escape into the addiction of adrenaline, or addiction to the other chemicals produced which we feel as emotions. The cells of the body respond to this by replicating with more receptors for a particular type of chemical set, because it's the chemical set most produced, and the chemical set that forms an addictive escape to the reality of one's actions.
Did I miss, or would you like more?
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| (griggs 1947) I don't see how erranists can use what I rail against as being metaphorical .Evis is still evil . |
Evil is a judgment based on your current perspective. To the one doing the "evil" act it is meant to teach them something about themselves, but much of the time they fail to see the lesson, so continue to do "evil". Evil is nothing more than stagnation, or deterioration of our growth as a person. EVERYONE wants to be happy, but many of us have a flawed concept of happiness, and attribute it to a circumstance or object, and when this happens we see it as a personal attack on our happiness, and retaliate in kind. In circumstances like murder, rape, or other such atrocities, it's a matter of escape into the addiction of adrenaline, or addiction to the other chemicals produced which we feel as emotions. The cells of the body respond to this by replicating with more receptors for a particular type of chemical set, because it's the chemical set most produced, and the chemical set that forms an addictive escape to the reality of one's actions.
Did I miss, or would you like more?
(Issachar)
Can you please provide evidence of the cut-n-paste of “they suffer(ed) the same problem that the NT possibly suffered in that it was a "cut-n-paste" of previous texts?” I am interested in your view on this.
NOTE: These are considered myths, and I'm not presenting them as otherwise, but the resemblances are STRIKING.
Dionysus
QUOTE
Parallels with Christianity
It is possible that Dionysian mythology would later find its way into Christianity. There are many parallels between Dionysus and Jesus; both were said to have been born from a mortal woman but fathered by a god, to have returned from the dead, and to have transformed water into wine. The modern scholar Barry Powell also argues that Christian notions of eating and drinking "the flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus. Certainly the Dionysus myth contains a great deal of cannibalism, in its links to Ino (however, one must note that Dionysian cannibalism has no correlation with self-sacrifice as a means of propitiation). Dionysus was also distinct among Greek gods, as a deity commonly felt within individual followers. In a less benign example of influence on Christianity, Dionysus' followers, as well as another god, Pan, are said to have had the most influence on the modern view of Satan as animal-like and horned.6 It is also possible these similarities between Christianity and Dionysiac religion are all only representations of the same common religious archetypes. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the story of Jesus turning water into wine is only found in the Gospel of John, which differs on many points from the other Synoptic Gospels. That very passage, it has been suggested, was incorporated into the Gospel from an earlier source focusing on Jesus' miracles.7
According to Martin A. Larson in The Story of Christian Origins (1977), Osiris was the first savior, and all soteriology in the region borrowed this religion, directly and indirectly, including Mithraism and Christianity, from an Osirian-Dionysian influence. As with their common dying and resurrected saviors, they all share common sacraments, ostensibly grounded in their reliance on seasonal cereal agriculture, having adopted the rituals with the food itself. Larson notes that Herodotus uses the names Osiris and Dionysus interchangeably and Plutarch identifies them as the same, while the name was anciently thought to originate from the place Nysa, in Egypt (now Ethiopia).
The subject of Dionysus is complex and baffling. The problem is further complicated by the fact that he appears in at least four characters: first, as the respectable patron of the theatre and the arts; second, as the effeminate, yet fierce and phallic mystery-god of the bloodthirsty Maenads; third, as the mystic deity in the temples of Demeter; and fourth, as the divine savior who died for mankind and whose body and blood were symbolically eaten and drunk in the eucharist of the Orphic-Pythagorean celibates. Beyond this, almost all barbarian nations had their own versions of Dionysius under many names. And yet there is a simpler explanation: Dionysus, Bromius, Sabazius, Attis, Adonis, Zalmoxis, Corybas, Serapis, and Orpheus himself are replicas of their grand prototype Osiris; and the variations which appear among them resulted from the transplantation of the god from one country to another, and reflect simply the specific needs of his multifarious worshipers (37-38).
It is possible that Dionysian mythology would later find its way into Christianity. There are many parallels between Dionysus and Jesus; both were said to have been born from a mortal woman but fathered by a god, to have returned from the dead, and to have transformed water into wine. The modern scholar Barry Powell also argues that Christian notions of eating and drinking "the flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus. Certainly the Dionysus myth contains a great deal of cannibalism, in its links to Ino (however, one must note that Dionysian cannibalism has no correlation with self-sacrifice as a means of propitiation). Dionysus was also distinct among Greek gods, as a deity commonly felt within individual followers. In a less benign example of influence on Christianity, Dionysus' followers, as well as another god, Pan, are said to have had the most influence on the modern view of Satan as animal-like and horned.6 It is also possible these similarities between Christianity and Dionysiac religion are all only representations of the same common religious archetypes. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the story of Jesus turning water into wine is only found in the Gospel of John, which differs on many points from the other Synoptic Gospels. That very passage, it has been suggested, was incorporated into the Gospel from an earlier source focusing on Jesus' miracles.7
According to Martin A. Larson in The Story of Christian Origins (1977), Osiris was the first savior, and all soteriology in the region borrowed this religion, directly and indirectly, including Mithraism and Christianity, from an Osirian-Dionysian influence. As with their common dying and resurrected saviors, they all share common sacraments, ostensibly grounded in their reliance on seasonal cereal agriculture, having adopted the rituals with the food itself. Larson notes that Herodotus uses the names Osiris and Dionysus interchangeably and Plutarch identifies them as the same, while the name was anciently thought to originate from the place Nysa, in Egypt (now Ethiopia).
The subject of Dionysus is complex and baffling. The problem is further complicated by the fact that he appears in at least four characters: first, as the respectable patron of the theatre and the arts; second, as the effeminate, yet fierce and phallic mystery-god of the bloodthirsty Maenads; third, as the mystic deity in the temples of Demeter; and fourth, as the divine savior who died for mankind and whose body and blood were symbolically eaten and drunk in the eucharist of the Orphic-Pythagorean celibates. Beyond this, almost all barbarian nations had their own versions of Dionysius under many names. And yet there is a simpler explanation: Dionysus, Bromius, Sabazius, Attis, Adonis, Zalmoxis, Corybas, Serapis, and Orpheus himself are replicas of their grand prototype Osiris; and the variations which appear among them resulted from the transplantation of the god from one country to another, and reflect simply the specific needs of his multifarious worshipers (37-38).
Osiris-Dionysus
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| Parallels with Christianity It is possible that Dionysian mythology would later find its way into Christianity. There are many parallels between Dionysus and Jesus; both were said to have been born from a mortal woman but fathered by a god, to have returned from the dead, and to have transformed water into wine. The modern scholar Barry Powell also argues that Christian notions of eating and drinking "the flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus. Certainly the Dionysus myth contains a great deal of cannibalism, in its links to Ino (however, one must note that Dionysian cannibalism has no correlation with self-sacrifice as a means of propitiation). Dionysus was also distinct among Greek gods, as a deity commonly felt within individual followers. In a less benign example of influence on Christianity, Dionysus' followers, as well as another god, Pan, are said to have had the most influence on the modern view of Satan as animal-like and horned.6 It is also possible these similarities between Christianity and Dionysiac religion are all only representations of the same common religious archetypes. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the story of Jesus turning water into wine is only found in the Gospel of John, which differs on many points from the other Synoptic Gospels. That very passage, it has been suggested, was incorporated into the Gospel from an earlier source focusing on Jesus' miracles.7 According to Martin A. Larson in The Story of Christian Origins (1977), Osiris was the first savior, and all soteriology in the region borrowed this religion, directly and indirectly, including Mithraism and Christianity, from an Osirian-Dionysian influence. As with their common dying and resurrected saviors, they all share common sacraments, ostensibly grounded in their reliance on seasonal cereal agriculture, having adopted the rituals with the food itself. Larson notes that Herodotus uses the names Osiris and Dionysus interchangeably and Plutarch identifies them as the same, while the name was anciently thought to originate from the place Nysa, in Egypt (now Ethiopia). The subject of Dionysus is complex and baffling. The problem is further complicated by the fact that he appears in at least four characters: first, as the respectable patron of the theatre and the arts; second, as the effeminate, yet fierce and phallic mystery-god of the bloodthirsty Maenads; third, as the mystic deity in the temples of Demeter; and fourth, as the divine savior who died for mankind and whose body and blood were symbolically eaten and drunk in the eucharist of the Orphic-Pythagorean celibates. Beyond this, almost all barbarian nations had their own versions of Dionysius under many names. And yet there is a simpler explanation: Dionysus, Bromius, Sabazius, Attis, Adonis, Zalmoxis, Corybas, Serapis, and Orpheus himself are replicas of their grand prototype Osiris; and the variations which appear among them resulted from the transplantation of the god from one country to another, and reflect simply the specific needs of his multifarious worshipers (37-38). |
Osiris-Dionysus
The term Osiris-Dionysus is used by some historians of religion to refer to a group of deities worshiped around the Mediterranean in the centuries prior to the birth of Jesus. It has been argued that these deities were closely related and shared many characteristics, most notably being male, partly-human, life-death-rebirth deities.
Here is a side by side comparison of some of the attributes of these god-men
Similarities
And a perspective on the coincidences that exist
Jesus Myth
QUOTE
- Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the saviour and 'Son of God'.
- His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin.
- He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on 25 December before three shepherds.
- He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites OT baptism.
- He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony.
- He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honor him.
- He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
- After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory.
- His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days.
- His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize his body and blood.
- His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin.
- He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on 25 December before three shepherds.
- He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites OT baptism.
- He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony.
- He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honor him.
- He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
- After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory.
- His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days.
- His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine which symbolize his body and blood.
I don't not agree with everything on these pages, but it illustrates my point of a "cut-n-paste" bible.
I'm sorry, but my 2yr old daughter has just awoke so I must be a good daddy and provide the security of a loving father figure
Oh, and PLAY too I will respond to the rest as I have time, but this is a good start.
Cont...
This might be true, but it took 500 years, and someone like Constantine to get to that point.
What do I mean by that? Constantine
This might be true, but it took 500 years, and someone like Constantine to get to that point.
What do I mean by that? Constantine
In mid-310, two years before the victory at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine reportedly experienced the publicly announced vision in which Apollo-Sol Invictus appeared to him with omens of success.
This being the same vision where it was later said that "Under this sign you will conquer" originated, and he supposedly received the chi-rho as his holy symbol. Not to mention the fact that he wasn't baptized until he was on his deathbed so he could continue to murder and deceive until the end. Oh, and there's also the forgeries done by the church to make him look better, and even later calling him a "saint".
But let's start a little earlier.
I. Circular reference, no dispute needed if the body of work that the reference comes from is disputed.
II.Irenaeus
Why do we have four gospels? Why not two, or three?
But let's start a little earlier.
I. Circular reference, no dispute needed if the body of work that the reference comes from is disputed.
II.Irenaeus
Why do we have four gospels? Why not two, or three?
Of the many gospels written in antiquity, exactly four gospels came to be accepted as part of the New Testament, or canonical. An insistence upon there being a canon of canonical four, and no others, was a central theme of Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 185.
Source
III. The Muratorian fragment dated around 170 CE
So let's assume that the four listed are in fact the for we have today. When did Irenaeus live? Seems like he lived at a prime time to write this, wrote in greek, and was a major hitter for the "four true gospels".
III(b?)The Codex Barococcio (A.D. 206) is not evidence IMO, because this gave Irenaeus plenty of time to establish his version of the truth.
IV. Origen
So let's assume that the four listed are in fact the for we have today. When did Irenaeus live? Seems like he lived at a prime time to write this, wrote in greek, and was a major hitter for the "four true gospels".
III(b?)The Codex Barococcio (A.D. 206) is not evidence IMO, because this gave Irenaeus plenty of time to establish his version of the truth.
IV. Origen
In Origen Christianity blended with the paganism in which lived the desire for truth and the longing after God.
Reliable reference for this argument?
V-. This just says that there were quite a few people who bought into the propaganda of the early spin-doctors.
Old Testament Scriptures
Elohim
This is not evidence of anything except maybe plagiarism. (see link)
Elohim
This is not evidence of anything except maybe plagiarism. (see link)
(2) There are many instances where God uses the plural pronoun to describe Himself
This neither proves the trinity, or the concept of the bible being divinely inspired.
Besides, this didn't start with christianity. (see link)
Triple deities
What makes this story better than these? creation myths
Most of the rest can be refuted by examining the above link also found here
Triple deities
Most of what the bible has to say was said before so any arguments you pull from that book can be traced to earlier sources. Everything from moses, who mysteriously doesn't appear in Egyptian writings, to the Nazareth that didn't exist when Jesus was supposed to be born there. It's a bunch of bedtime stores that have had a few historical facts added to give it weight.
I'm sorry for all the links and references, but it's better than taking my word as the "gospel" truth
Hope you're all having a wonderful day.
SENT.
Hope all is well. I have been tied up refinishing floors and will have to tell you about it sometime.
VERY STRIKING, I must say. Thanks for the information. This is nothing new, however.
Christ’s critics have used such parallels many times before in an attempt to establish their contention that Jesus of Nazareth is neither a unique character nor a worthy, personal savior. The attitude that “The legend of Jesus is little more than a variant of older religions common to the Middle East thousands of years ago”—which stems from the fact that historical and mythological parallels between Jesus and other religious personalities do exist—likely is much more prevalent than many people realize. And while it is true that none of these historical/mythological parallels is exact, it is true that they are close enough to elicit serious investigation on the part of skeptics and followers of Jesus alike.
History records that almost two thousand years ago the early Christian apologists were busily engaged in responding to the exact same argument.
For example, Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-426) stated in his Christian Doctrine:
“The readers and admirers of Plato dared calumniously to assert that our Lord Jesus Christ learnt all those sayings of His, which they are compelled to admire and praise, from the books of Plato—because (they urged) it cannot be denied that Plato lived long before the coming of our Lord (2:28, parenthetical item in orig.).”
Augustine refuted the argument by suggesting that Plato had read the prophet Jeremiah and then conveniently incorporated Jeremiah’s teachings into his own. The point is: as early as A.D. 400, skeptics and enemies of the Cross were accusing of alleged plagiarism at both Christ and His followers.
The earliest apologists not only recognized that the story and teachings of Jesus bore striking similarities to ancient mythological accounts, but even emphasized these similarities in an attempt to get pagans to understand more about Jesus and His mission. Justin Martyr (A.D. 100-165) set forth an argument in his First Apology that was intended to put Christ at least on an equal playing field with earlier mythological gods.
“And if we assert that the Word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God. But if any one objects that He was crucified, in this also He is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours.... And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Ferseus. And in that we say that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Æsculapius (Chapter 22).”
Tertullian (c. A.D. 160-220) observed that the story of Romulus, another character from ancient Greek mythology who was seen after his death, was quite similar to the story of Christ being seen after His death. However, Tertullian went on to note that the stories of Christ were much more certain because they were documented by historical evidence (Apology, 21).
The writings of such men as Augustine, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and others document the fact that early Christians could see the similarities between the story of Jesus and the accounts of mythological, pagan gods. Some of those early Christians even seized upon those very similarities to defend Jesus’ position as the unique Son of God. The apologists’ point, of course, was two-fold: (1) men of the past had searched for a unique savior-god and, finding none, resorted to inventing him and bestowing upon him certain distinct characteristics; and (2) that Savior—who, although in the past had been endowed with unique traits of their own feeble creation—actually had come! "
I have no problem recognizing the fact confirmed by mythology, history, and even early Christian apologists—that ancient documents reveal that the story of Christ is not the first story ever told of a virgin-born, crucified, resurrected, miracle-working savior-god who supposedly died for the sins of humanity. These documents further reveal that many of Christ’s teachings can be gleaned—at times almost verbatim—from sources that were in circulation hundreds or thousands of years before Jesus was born. Early apologists acknowledged these facts because they were, and are, quite indisputable.
WHY AN UNORIGINAL JESUS?
The obvious question must be asked: Why would anyone want to claim that the story of Jesus is unoriginal or plagiaristic? First, it is a simple fact that those who do not believe in God, and who consequently accept a completely naturalistic view of the origin of the Universe and its inhabitants (perhaps our very own beloved Mr Griggs 1947 among others ), must find some way to explain the uniqueness of Christ and the uniqueness of the system of religion He instituted. Those who believe that the Universe and life within it evolved in a purely naturalistic fashion likewise must find a totally naturalistic cause for every facet of life. Religion itself is one of those facets, it is not difficult to see why an evolutionist would believe it to be inevitable that the story of Jesus originated from earlier, primitive stories.
Second, while some may be motivated by a search for a purely naturalistic origin of religion, others teach that the story of Jesus is derived from earlier Jewish and/or pagan myths and legends. Some have suggested that Christ and Christianity are viewed as natural developments out of Judaism and paganism.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, in The Jesus Mysteries present their Jesus Mysteries Thesis in attempt to explain the similarities between the stories of Osiris-Dionysus and Jesus Christ:
“The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that that is exactly what it is.... Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras, and the other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem?...
We have become convinced that the story of Jesus is not the biography of a historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. “
It is not Christ’s historicity that is at stake here (see, for example, Butt, 2000); unbelievers and infidels of every stripe have long acknowledged His existence. Rather, the issue has to do with whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was Who He claimed to be—the unique, “only begotten,” incarnate Son of God.
MAN’S RELIGIOUS BENT AND “SAVIOR SIMILARITIES”
It is agreed that many stories over the course of history resemble that of Jesus of Nazareth in one way or another. And why should this surprise us? After Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, man became keenly aware of both the presence and the consequences of sin. From the time of Cain and Abel, God had established sacrifices and decreed specific rules regarding those sacrifices. Since that time, all humans have had at least some perception—however slight or flawed—that they needed to “do something” to stand justified once again before their Creator. One way to do that was to invent a “stand-in”—someone who could take their place—as the epitome of sinless perfection to plead their case before the Righteous Judge of all the Earth (cf. Genesis 18:25).
Additionally, however, it can be argued that the similarities we have listed (and, indeed, many others just like them) are only similarities, not exact parallels. It further can be argued that Jesus’ story, even though it seems similar to some others, is not exactly the same and, in fact, differs substantially in the minute details. For example, Krishna allegedly was crucified via an arrow through his arms, while Jesus was nailed to the cross. Confucius offered the negative form of the so-called “golden rule” (“Do not do to others”), while Jesus stated the positive (“Do unto others”). Dionysus’ mother, Persophone, reportedly had intercourse with Zeus, while Mary was a virgin. This line of reasoning possesses some merit, because it certainly is true that none of the ancient stories sounds exactly like Christ’s.
A closer look at the Egyptian legend of Osiris provides a good example of the many important differences between the account of Jesus and other stories. Legend says that Osiris was killed by his evil brother Seth, who tore Osiris’ body into fourteen pieces and scattered them throughout Egypt. Isis, the goddess-consort of Osiris, collected the pieces and buried them, thus giving life to Osiris in the underworld. Afterward, she used magical arts to revive Osiris and to conceive a child (Horus) by him. After fathering Horus, Osiris remained in the underworld, not really ever rising from the dead (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1997, 8:1026-1027). This legend, taken as a whole, provides few (if any) real parallels to the story of Jesus. Furthermore, when all the stories about characters who supposedly were similar to Christ are told in their entirety, it is obvious that each of them contains only a few characteristics that come anywhere close to resembling those contained in the life story of Jesus. Additionally, some of the alleged parallels rest upon tenuous documentation and may even be fabricated.
However, there are some common threads that weave their way through many of the various legends: a superhuman hero does miraculous things, is killed to save mankind (sometimes even by crucifixion), and is brought back to life in some form or another, thereby defeating death. Although the minute details are quite different, the general similarities are close enough to demand scrutiny—and an explanation.
Independent Nature of Similar Stories
In the early part of the twentieth century, Joseph McCabe, one of the most outspoken atheists of his day, in his The Myth of the Resurrection and Other Essays painstakingly documented the similarities between the story of Jesus and pagan stories such as those of Osiris, Adonis, Tammuz, and Attis, yet specifically noted: “It is a most important feature of our story that this legend of a slain and resurrected god arose in quite different parts of the old civilized world. Tammuz, Attis, and Osiris are three separate and independent creations of the myth-making imagination” (1993, p. 45). McCabe acknowledged that these pagan stories with similar themes did not copy either one another or some earlier, predominant story. Rather, they arose separately—and even independently—of each other. McCabe admitted: “For some reason...the mind of man came in most parts of the world to conceive a legend of death and resurrection.... In fact, in one form or other there was almost a worldwide belief that the god, or a representative [king, prisoner, effigy, etc.] of the god, died, or had to die every year” (pp. 52,53, bracketed material in orig.). McCabe wrote: “In sum, I should say that the universal belief in a slain and resurrected god throws light upon the Christian belief by showing us a universal frame of mind which quite easily, in many places, made a resurrection myth” (p. 63). McCabe—even as an infidel—willingly acknowledged that numerous (but different) resurrection myths arose from various regions around the globe, each similar in its facts yet original in its derivation. These stories apparently arose because of what he referred to as a “universal frame of mind.” And yet in spite of such evidence, on page 69 of his book, McCabe concluded: “Man has no religious instinct.”
Mankind’s Religious Instinct
People around the world—due to a “universal frame of mind”—independently concocted stories that revolved around a god dying and then rising again. These stories span both time barriers and geographical limits; they are—in a very literal sense—“worldwide” and “universal.” Yet we are asked to believe that the people from different countries and cultures who concocted these stories possessed “no religious instinct”? How McCabe could make the concessions he did, yet reach such a conclusion, defies rational explanation.
In truth, man does have a religious instinct—one that is keener than even many theologians would like to admit. In speaking of God, the writer of Ecclesiastes remarked: “He hath made everything beautiful in its time: he hath set eternity in their heart” (3:11). Paul said that mankind always has been able to understand God’s “everlasting power and divinity” (Romans 1:20). God did not place man on Earth to abandon him. Instead:
He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons and bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him though he is not far from each one of us; for in him we live, and move and have our being; as certain of your own poets have said, for we are his offspring (Acts 17:26-28, emp. added).
God has indeed “set eternity” in the hearts of men and given them a universal instinct that is intended to cause them to seek Him.
In his book, Why We Believe the Bible, the late George DeHoff commented: “No nation or tribe has been found which did not believe in a Supreme Being of some kind and practice religion in some form” (1944, p. 42). He is absolutely right. But it is not just believers who have presented and documented this kind of information. Even nonbelievers have been forced to such a conclusion by the historical and scientific evidence.
Clarence Darrow and Wallace Rice joined to edit a book titled Infidels and Heretics: An Agnostic’s Anthology. On the inside cover, a description of the book’s contents suggested that it contained “the best gleanings from the most important works of the great agnostics, skeptics, infidels and heretics of the world.” On page 146, the compilers quoted the famous skeptic, John Tyndall: “Religion lives not by the force and aid of dogma, but because it is ingrained in the nature of man. To draw a metaphor from metallurgy, the moulds have been broken and reconstructed over and over again, but the molten ore abides in the ladle of humanity. An influence so deep and permanent is not likely soon to disappear...” (1929).
Approximately fifty years later, Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University (who is known as the “father” of the biological discipline of sociobiology) penned a book titled On Human Nature. The inside front cover stated that Wilson’s goal was “nothing less than the completion of the Darwinian revolution by bringing biological thought into the center of the social sciences and the humanities.” Wilson wrote: “The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature” (1978, p. 167). He went on to say that “skeptics continue to nourish the belief that science and learning will banish religion, which they consider to be no more than a tissue of illusions,” yet the idea that increased learning and technology will strip mankind of his religious nature “has never seemed so futile as today” (p. 170).
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE
How, then, did the instinct to worship God lead to the concoction of numerous stories about a virgin-born savior-god who dies as a sacrifice for mankind’s wrongdoings? First, it started with the idea of sacrifice. From the moment Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, man was acutely aware that he was a sinful being in need of redemption. Humans also understood that some type of atoning sacrifice was required to absolve them of sin. The writer of the book of Hebrews observed that “by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (11:4).
Oddly, some skeptics seem to understand this point quite well. In the late eighteenth century, T.W. Doane caustically attacked the doctrines of Christ and the Bible in his work, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (1882). Yet even he understood that mankind always has realized its own sinfulness and its need for an atoning sacrifice. He wrote: “The doctrine of atonement for sin had been preached long before the doctrine was deduced from the Christian Scriptures, long before these Scriptures are pretended to have been written” (p. 181).
Bible scholar R.C. Trench commented:
Nations which it is impossible could have learned it from one another, nations the most diverse in culture, the highest in the scale and well nigh the lowest, differing in everything besides, have yet agreed in this one thing, namely, in the offering of things which have life to God,—or, where the idea of the one God has been lost,—to the “gods many” of heathenism—the essential feature of that offering in every case being that the life of the victim was rendered up (n.d., p. 177).
Those who might wish to challenge Trench’s assessment can examine any book on world history or world religions and see that he is correct. Abel offered the first of his flock, and from that day forward, humanity began offering live sacrifices to a deity in the hope of absolving anger and forgiving sin. In fact, mankind has sacrificed living things to a deity from the beginning of time. But which particular sacrifices did humanity think had the power to forgive sins? The general rule for the atonement value of a sacrifice was: the more costly and perfect the sacrifice, the more sins it would absolve.
When God initiated the ritual sacrifice of animals for the religious ceremonies of His chosen people, He laid down strict rules. In Leviticus 22:19-20, God told the Jews: “You shall offer of your own free will a male without blemish from the cattle, from the sheep, or from the goats. But whatever has a defect, you shall not offer, for it shall not be acceptable on your behalf ” (NKJV). The Lord always has demanded that blood be shed for the remission of sins. Hebrews 9:22 reiterates that point: “And according to the law...all things are cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.” This should not be at all surprising, since “the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life” (Leviticus 17:11).
Men and women of ages past knew all too well God’s commandments regarding atonement by blood. It began with Cain and Abel, was reaffirmed by Noah (Genesis 9:1-6), was regulated by Old Testament law, and was carried through to fulfillment by Jesus. When God instituted the Law of Moses, He did not introduce animal sacrifices as an innovation never before seen by the Israelites. Rather, He showed the Israelites the proper manner in which to sacrifice such animals, until the time that the fulfilling sacrifice of His Son would bring to a halt the need for any further blood atonement via animal sacrifices. In showing them the proper way, God made strict provisions to keep the children of Israel from turning from God-approved sacrifices to sacrificing their own innocent children like the pagans around them. In Leviticus 18:21, God told the children of Israel: “And thou shalt not give any of thy seed to make them pass through the fire to Molech; neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am Jehovah.” God went to great lengths to warn the Israelites against offering their children as sacrifices because it was well known that the nations around them took part in such infanticide. The question arises, “What in this world could convince a mother or father to offer their children to a god?”
Wendy Davis writes for paganism in Widdershins. In an article on the World Wide Web, As Old as the Moon: Sacrifice in History, she stated: “The act of ritual murder is probably as old as we [humans—KB/BT] are. Throughout the ages, people sacrificed when they needed something. Our ancestors often gave the best they had, their first-born, to save themselves” (1995, emp. added). The most precious possession of a mother or father would be their first-born child. That child, however, would be not only precious, but also sinless. Sacrifice of anything less than that which is spotless and pure diminishes the inherent value of the sacrifice. Thus, it was believed that a sinless and pure sacrifice of such magnitude could wash away the sins of the parents (or, for that matter, the sins of an entire village!). Therefore, corrupt, perverse religions sprang up around the sacrifice of children, one of the most famous of which was that of Molech (see 2 Kings 23:10).
Yet even though the sacrifice of infants fulfilled the sinless aspect of a perfect sacrifice, it was lacking in other areas. For example, an “ordinary” infant born of peasant parents was not the most costly sacrifice available; a royal child of a king would be even better. Thus, as Davis went on to observe, kings ultimately sacrificed their own children to appease “the gods.”
But the sacrifice of a king’s child still did not represent the perfect sacrifice, because the child did not go of his (or her) own free will. A free-will sacrifice of royal blood would come closest to the perfect offering. In an article titled No Greater Sacrifice, which appeared in Widdershins, one writer suggested: “Willing sacrifice is more interesting. Why does someone want to sacrifice himself or herself for what they believe in? Historically speaking, we must consider the sacred kings who sacrificed themselves for the Land” (see Andy, 1998). Yes, a king who offered himself of his own free will would be almost the perfect sacrifice. The only problem with such a concept was the fact that no king ever had lived a perfect life. As the Widdershins writer correctly observed, in an attempt to solve this, “Finally someone came up with the idea of one final sacrifice. One sacrifice to count for all the rest for all time. But who could be offered? It had to be someone very important; even kings were not good enough. Clearly, only a god was important enough to count as the last one” (Andy, 1998). Thus, it becomes clear why even the pagan world demanded a sacrifice that was sinless, royal, and higher in stature than other humans. Doane stated: “The belief of redemption from sin by the sufferings of a Divine Incarnation, whether by death on the cross or otherwise, was general and popular among the heathen, centuries before the time of Jesus of Nazareth” (1882, pp. 183-185).
Once we comprehend the need for the death of the savior-god, it is not difficult to see why humanity would want (and need) to see him defeat death. The writer of the book of Hebrews addressed this very point when he wrote that Christ allowed Himself to be sacrificed so that He “might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (2:15). Death holds more terror for man than perhaps anything else on Earth. It was for this reason that the Greeks invented Hercules—half man and half god—to conquer the Underworld, and the Egyptians formulated Osiris. Surely a savior-god who offered himself voluntarily as the sacrifice for all humanity could defeat mankind’s dreaded enemy—Death. So, the idea of a sacrificial savior-god who victoriously defeats death through his resurrection came easily to the minds of people who knew that they needed forgiveness, and who desperately wanted to live past the grave.
And so, from a “universal frame of mind” different tribes and religions—spanning thousands of years—formulated their personal versions of what they thought a resurrected savior-god should be and do. Some said he was torn into fourteen pieces and scattered throughout the land of Egypt (e.g., Osiris). Others said he would look like a man but would possess superhuman physical strength and descend to the underworld to conquer Hades (e.g., Hercules). Yet one thing is certain: tales about a hero who saved mankind were on the lips of almost every storyteller.
Trench stated correctly:
“No thoughtful student of the past records of mankind can refuse to acknowledge that through all its history there has run the hope of a redemption from the evil which oppresses it; and as little can deny that this hope has continually attached itself to some single man. (n.d., p. 149).
That the one savior for whom all humanity waited was, and is, Jesus. I will have to have to come back later as to why this can be maintained.
REFERENCES
Andy (1998), “No Greater Sacrifice,” Widdershins, 4[4]:no page number, [On-line], URL: http://www.widdershins.org/index.html.
Butt, Kyle (2000), “The Historical Christ—Fact or Fiction,?” Reason & Revelation, 20:1-6, January.
Darrow, Clarence and Wallace Rice (1929), Infidels and Heretics: An Agnostic’s Anthology (Boston, MA: Stratford).
Davis, Wendy (1995), “As Old as the Moon: Sacrifice in History,” Widdershins, June 21, 1[2]:no page, [Online], URL: http://www.widdershins.org/index.html.
DeHoff, George W. (1944), Why We Believe the Bible (Murfreesboro, TN: DeHoff).
Doane, T.W. (1882), Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (Kila, MT: Kessinger).
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1997), “Osiris” (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.) 8:1026-1027.
Freke, Timothy and Peter Gandy (1999), The Jesus Mysteries (New York: Harmony Books).
McCabe, Joseph (1993), The Myth of the Resurrection and Other Essays (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, reprint of 1926 edition).
Trench, R.C. (no date), Christ the Desire of All Nations; or the Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom, (Searcy, AR: Bales Publications).
Wilson, Edward O. (1978), On Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
QUOTE
“What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike. “
This might be true, but it took 500 years, and someone like Constantine to get to that point.
What do I mean by that? Constantine
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| “What the synods and councils did in the 5th century and following was to ratify what was already accepted by high and low Christians alike. “ |
This might be true, but it took 500 years, and someone like Constantine to get to that point.
What do I mean by that? Constantine
In mid-310, two years before the victory at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine reportedly experienced the publicly announced vision in which Apollo-Sol Invictus appeared to him with omens of success.
This being the same vision where it was later said that "Under this sign you will conquer" originated, and he supposedly received the chi-rho as his holy symbol. Not to mention the fact that he wasn't baptized until he was on his deathbed so he could continue to murder and deceive until the end. Oh, and there's also the forgeries done by the church to make him look better, and even later calling him a "saint".
QUOTE
His reputation as the "first Christian Emperor" has been promulgated by historians from Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea to the present day; although there has been debate over the veracity of his faith because he was baptized only on his death bed.
But let's start a little earlier.
I. Circular reference, no dispute needed if the body of work that the reference comes from is disputed.
II.Irenaeus
Why do we have four gospels? Why not two, or three?
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| His reputation as the "first Christian Emperor" has been promulgated by historians from Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea to the present day; although there has been debate over the veracity of his faith because he was baptized only on his death bed. |
But let's start a little earlier.
I. Circular reference, no dispute needed if the body of work that the reference comes from is disputed.
II.Irenaeus
Why do we have four gospels? Why not two, or three?
Of the many gospels written in antiquity, exactly four gospels came to be accepted as part of the New Testament, or canonical. An insistence upon there being a canon of canonical four, and no others, was a central theme of Irenaeus of Lyons, c. 185.
Source
III. The Muratorian fragment dated around 170 CE
QUOTE
The unidentified author accepts four Gospels, the last two of which are amongst the modern four, but the names of the first two are lost in the lacking beginning
So let's assume that the four listed are in fact the for we have today. When did Irenaeus live? Seems like he lived at a prime time to write this, wrote in greek, and was a major hitter for the "four true gospels".
III(b?)The Codex Barococcio (A.D. 206) is not evidence IMO, because this gave Irenaeus plenty of time to establish his version of the truth.
IV. Origen
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| The unidentified author accepts four Gospels, the last two of which are amongst the modern four, but the names of the first two are lost in the lacking beginning |
So let's assume that the four listed are in fact the for we have today. When did Irenaeus live? Seems like he lived at a prime time to write this, wrote in greek, and was a major hitter for the "four true gospels".
III(b?)The Codex Barococcio (A.D. 206) is not evidence IMO, because this gave Irenaeus plenty of time to establish his version of the truth.
IV. Origen
In Origen Christianity blended with the paganism in which lived the desire for truth and the longing after God.
Reliable reference for this argument?
V-. This just says that there were quite a few people who bought into the propaganda of the early spin-doctors.
Old Testament Scriptures
QUOTE
(1) The name Elohim, translated God, is the plural form of El. While this is what is called a plural of plenitude pointing to the power and majesty of God, it certainly allows for the New Testament revelation of the Triunity of God.
Elohim
This is not evidence of anything except maybe plagiarism. (see link)
QUOTE (->
| QUOTE |
| (1) The name Elohim, translated God, is the plural form of El. While this is what is called a plural of plenitude pointing to the power and majesty of God, it certainly allows for the New Testament revelation of the Triunity of God. |
Elohim
This is not evidence of anything except maybe plagiarism. (see link)
(2) There are many instances where God uses the plural pronoun to describe Himself
This neither proves the trinity, or the concept of the bible being divinely inspired.
Besides, this didn't start with christianity. (see link)
Triple deities
QUOTE
(3) In the creation account, both God the Father and God the Holy Spirit are seen in the work of creation. It is stated that God created heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1), but that it was the Holy Spirit who moved over the earth to infuse it with life in the sense of protecting and participating in the work of creation (Gen. 1:2).
What makes this story better than these? creation myths
Most of the rest can be refuted by examining the above link also found here
Triple deities
Most of what the bible has to say was said before so any arguments you pull from that book can be traced to earlier sources. Everything from moses, who mysteriously doesn't appear in Egyptian writings, to the Nazareth that didn't exist when Jesus was supposed to be born there. It's a bunch of bedtime stores that have had a few historical facts added to give it weight.
I'm sorry for all the links and references, but it's better than taking my word as the "gospel" truth
Hope you're all having a wonderful day.
QUOTE
NOTE: These are considered myths, and I'm not presenting them as otherwise, but the resemblances are STRIKING.
SENT.
Hope all is well.
I have been tied up refinishing floors and will have to tell you about it sometime.VERY STRIKING, I must say. Thanks for the information. This is nothing new, however.
Christ’s critics have used such parallels many times before in an attempt to establish their contention that Jesus of Nazareth is neither a unique character nor a worthy, personal savior. The attitude that “The legend of Jesus is little more than a variant of older religions common to the Middle East thousands of years ago”—which stems from the fact that historical and mythological parallels between Jesus and other religious personalities do exist—likely is much more prevalent than many people realize. And while it is true that none of these historical/mythological parallels is exact, it is true that they are close enough to elicit serious investigation on the part of skeptics and followers of Jesus alike.
History records that almost two thousand years ago the early Christian apologists were busily engaged in responding to the exact same argument.
For example, Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-426) stated in his Christian Doctrine:
“The readers and admirers of Plato dared calumniously to assert that our Lord Jesus Christ learnt all those sayings of His, which they are compelled to admire and praise, from the books of Plato—because (they urged) it cannot be denied that Plato lived long before the coming of our Lord (2:28, parenthetical item in orig.).”
Augustine refuted the argument by suggesting that Plato had read the prophet Jeremiah and then conveniently incorporated Jeremiah’s teachings into his own. The point is: as early as A.D. 400, skeptics and enemies of the Cross were accusing of alleged plagiarism at both Christ and His followers.
The earliest apologists not only recognized that the story and teachings of Jesus bore striking similarities to ancient mythological accounts, but even emphasized these similarities in an attempt to get pagans to understand more about Jesus and His mission. Justin Martyr (A.D. 100-165) set forth an argument in his First Apology that was intended to put Christ at least on an equal playing field with earlier mythological gods.
“And if we assert that the Word of God was born of God in a peculiar manner, different from ordinary generation, let this, as said above, be no extraordinary thing to you, who say that Mercury is the angelic word of God. But if any one objects that He was crucified, in this also He is on a par with those reputed sons of Jupiter of yours.... And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Ferseus. And in that we say that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Æsculapius (Chapter 22).”
Tertullian (c. A.D. 160-220) observed that the story of Romulus, another character from ancient Greek mythology who was seen after his death, was quite similar to the story of Christ being seen after His death. However, Tertullian went on to note that the stories of Christ were much more certain because they were documented by historical evidence (Apology, 21).
The writings of such men as Augustine, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and others document the fact that early Christians could see the similarities between the story of Jesus and the accounts of mythological, pagan gods. Some of those early Christians even seized upon those very similarities to defend Jesus’ position as the unique Son of God. The apologists’ point, of course, was two-fold: (1) men of the past had searched for a unique savior-god and, finding none, resorted to inventing him and bestowing upon him certain distinct characteristics; and (2) that Savior—who, although in the past had been endowed with unique traits of their own feeble creation—actually had come! "
I have no problem recognizing the fact confirmed by mythology, history, and even early Christian apologists—that ancient documents reveal that the story of Christ is not the first story ever told of a virgin-born, crucified, resurrected, miracle-working savior-god who supposedly died for the sins of humanity. These documents further reveal that many of Christ’s teachings can be gleaned—at times almost verbatim—from sources that were in circulation hundreds or thousands of years before Jesus was born. Early apologists acknowledged these facts because they were, and are, quite indisputable.
WHY AN UNORIGINAL JESUS?
The obvious question must be asked: Why would anyone want to claim that the story of Jesus is unoriginal or plagiaristic? First, it is a simple fact that those who do not believe in God, and who consequently accept a completely naturalistic view of the origin of the Universe and its inhabitants (perhaps our very own beloved Mr Griggs 1947 among others
), must find some way to explain the uniqueness of Christ and the uniqueness of the system of religion He instituted. Those who believe that the Universe and life within it evolved in a purely naturalistic fashion likewise must find a totally naturalistic cause for every facet of life. Religion itself is one of those facets, it is not difficult to see why an evolutionist would believe it to be inevitable that the story of Jesus originated from earlier, primitive stories. Second, while some may be motivated by a search for a purely naturalistic origin of religion, others teach that the story of Jesus is derived from earlier Jewish and/or pagan myths and legends. Some have suggested that Christ and Christianity are viewed as natural developments out of Judaism and paganism.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, in The Jesus Mysteries present their Jesus Mysteries Thesis in attempt to explain the similarities between the stories of Osiris-Dionysus and Jesus Christ:
“The Jesus story does have all the hallmarks of a myth, so could it be that that is exactly what it is.... Why should we consider the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis, Mithras, and the other Pagan Mystery saviors as fables, yet come across essentially the same story told in a Jewish context and believe it to be the biography of a carpenter from Bethlehem?...
We have become convinced that the story of Jesus is not the biography of a historical Messiah, but a myth based on perennial Pagan stories. Christianity was not a new and unique revelation but actually a Jewish adaptation of the ancient Pagan Mystery religion. “
It is not Christ’s historicity that is at stake here (see, for example, Butt, 2000); unbelievers and infidels of every stripe have long acknowledged His existence. Rather, the issue has to do with whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was Who He claimed to be—the unique, “only begotten,” incarnate Son of God.
MAN’S RELIGIOUS BENT AND “SAVIOR SIMILARITIES”
It is agreed that many stories over the course of history resemble that of Jesus of Nazareth in one way or another. And why should this surprise us? After Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, man became keenly aware of both the presence and the consequences of sin. From the time of Cain and Abel, God had established sacrifices and decreed specific rules regarding those sacrifices. Since that time, all humans have had at least some perception—however slight or flawed—that they needed to “do something” to stand justified once again before their Creator. One way to do that was to invent a “stand-in”—someone who could take their place—as the epitome of sinless perfection to plead their case before the Righteous Judge of all the Earth (cf. Genesis 18:25).
Additionally, however, it can be argued that the similarities we have listed (and, indeed, many others just like them) are only similarities, not exact parallels. It further can be argued that Jesus’ story, even though it seems similar to some others, is not exactly the same and, in fact, differs substantially in the minute details. For example, Krishna allegedly was crucified via an arrow through his arms, while Jesus was nailed to the cross. Confucius offered the negative form of the so-called “golden rule” (“Do not do to others”), while Jesus stated the positive (“Do unto others”). Dionysus’ mother, Persophone, reportedly had intercourse with Zeus, while Mary was a virgin. This line of reasoning possesses some merit, because it certainly is true that none of the ancient stories sounds exactly like Christ’s.
A closer look at the Egyptian legend of Osiris provides a good example of the many important differences between the account of Jesus and other stories. Legend says that Osiris was killed by his evil brother Seth, who tore Osiris’ body into fourteen pieces and scattered them throughout Egypt. Isis, the goddess-consort of Osiris, collected the pieces and buried them, thus giving life to Osiris in the underworld. Afterward, she used magical arts to revive Osiris and to conceive a child (Horus) by him. After fathering Horus, Osiris remained in the underworld, not really ever rising from the dead (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1997, 8:1026-1027). This legend, taken as a whole, provides few (if any) real parallels to the story of Jesus. Furthermore, when all the stories about characters who supposedly were similar to Christ are told in their entirety, it is obvious that each of them contains only a few characteristics that come anywhere close to resembling those contained in the life story of Jesus. Additionally, some of the alleged parallels rest upon tenuous documentation and may even be fabricated.
However, there are some common threads that weave their way through many of the various legends: a superhuman hero does miraculous things, is killed to save mankind (sometimes even by crucifixion), and is brought back to life in some form or another, thereby defeating death. Although the minute details are quite different, the general similarities are close enough to demand scrutiny—and an explanation.
Independent Nature of Similar Stories
In the early part of the twentieth century, Joseph McCabe, one of the most outspoken atheists of his day, in his The Myth of the Resurrection and Other Essays painstakingly documented the similarities between the story of Jesus and pagan stories such as those of Osiris, Adonis, Tammuz, and Attis, yet specifically noted: “It is a most important feature of our story that this legend of a slain and resurrected god arose in quite different parts of the old civilized world. Tammuz, Attis, and Osiris are three separate and independent creations of the myth-making imagination” (1993, p. 45). McCabe acknowledged that these pagan stories with similar themes did not copy either one another or some earlier, predominant story. Rather, they arose separately—and even independently—of each other. McCabe admitted: “For some reason...the mind of man came in most parts of the world to conceive a legend of death and resurrection.... In fact, in one form or other there was almost a worldwide belief that the god, or a representative [king, prisoner, effigy, etc.] of the god, died, or had to die every year” (pp. 52,53, bracketed material in orig.). McCabe wrote: “In sum, I should say that the universal belief in a slain and resurrected god throws light upon the Christian belief by showing us a universal frame of mind which quite easily, in many places, made a resurrection myth” (p. 63). McCabe—even as an infidel—willingly acknowledged that numerous (but different) resurrection myths arose from various regions around the globe, each similar in its facts yet original in its derivation. These stories apparently arose because of what he referred to as a “universal frame of mind.” And yet in spite of such evidence, on page 69 of his book, McCabe concluded: “Man has no religious instinct.”
Mankind’s Religious Instinct
People around the world—due to a “universal frame of mind”—independently concocted stories that revolved around a god dying and then rising again. These stories span both time barriers and geographical limits; they are—in a very literal sense—“worldwide” and “universal.” Yet we are asked to believe that the people from different countries and cultures who concocted these stories possessed “no religious instinct”? How McCabe could make the concessions he did, yet reach such a conclusion, defies rational explanation.
In truth, man does have a religious instinct—one that is keener than even many theologians would like to admit. In speaking of God, the writer of Ecclesiastes remarked: “He hath made everything beautiful in its time: he hath set eternity in their heart” (3:11). Paul said that mankind always has been able to understand God’s “everlasting power and divinity” (Romans 1:20). God did not place man on Earth to abandon him. Instead:
He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons and bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him though he is not far from each one of us; for in him we live, and move and have our being; as certain of your own poets have said, for we are his offspring (Acts 17:26-28, emp. added).
God has indeed “set eternity” in the hearts of men and given them a universal instinct that is intended to cause them to seek Him.
In his book, Why We Believe the Bible, the late George DeHoff commented: “No nation or tribe has been found which did not believe in a Supreme Being of some kind and practice religion in some form” (1944, p. 42). He is absolutely right. But it is not just believers who have presented and documented this kind of information. Even nonbelievers have been forced to such a conclusion by the historical and scientific evidence.
Clarence Darrow and Wallace Rice joined to edit a book titled Infidels and Heretics: An Agnostic’s Anthology. On the inside cover, a description of the book’s contents suggested that it contained “the best gleanings from the most important works of the great agnostics, skeptics, infidels and heretics of the world.” On page 146, the compilers quoted the famous skeptic, John Tyndall: “Religion lives not by the force and aid of dogma, but because it is ingrained in the nature of man. To draw a metaphor from metallurgy, the moulds have been broken and reconstructed over and over again, but the molten ore abides in the ladle of humanity. An influence so deep and permanent is not likely soon to disappear...” (1929).
Approximately fifty years later, Edward O. Wilson of Harvard University (who is known as the “father” of the biological discipline of sociobiology) penned a book titled On Human Nature. The inside front cover stated that Wilson’s goal was “nothing less than the completion of the Darwinian revolution by bringing biological thought into the center of the social sciences and the humanities.” Wilson wrote: “The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature” (1978, p. 167). He went on to say that “skeptics continue to nourish the belief that science and learning will banish religion, which they consider to be no more than a tissue of illusions,” yet the idea that increased learning and technology will strip mankind of his religious nature “has never seemed so futile as today” (p. 170).
THE PERFECT SACRIFICE
How, then, did the instinct to worship God lead to the concoction of numerous stories about a virgin-born savior-god who dies as a sacrifice for mankind’s wrongdoings? First, it started with the idea of sacrifice. From the moment Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, man was acutely aware that he was a sinful being in need of redemption. Humans also understood that some type of atoning sacrifice was required to absolve them of sin. The writer of the book of Hebrews observed that “by faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain” (11:4).
Oddly, some skeptics seem to understand this point quite well. In the late eighteenth century, T.W. Doane caustically attacked the doctrines of Christ and the Bible in his work, Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (1882). Yet even he understood that mankind always has realized its own sinfulness and its need for an atoning sacrifice. He wrote: “The doctrine of atonement for sin had been preached long before the doctrine was deduced from the Christian Scriptures, long before these Scriptures are pretended to have been written” (p. 181).
Bible scholar R.C. Trench commented:
Nations which it is impossible could have learned it from one another, nations the most diverse in culture, the highest in the scale and well nigh the lowest, differing in everything besides, have yet agreed in this one thing, namely, in the offering of things which have life to God,—or, where the idea of the one God has been lost,—to the “gods many” of heathenism—the essential feature of that offering in every case being that the life of the victim was rendered up (n.d., p. 177).
Those who might wish to challenge Trench’s assessment can examine any book on world history or world religions and see that he is correct. Abel offered the first of his flock, and from that day forward, humanity began offering live sacrifices to a deity in the hope of absolving anger and forgiving sin. In fact, mankind has sacrificed living things to a deity from the beginning of time. But which particular sacrifices did humanity think had the power to forgive sins? The general rule for the atonement value of a sacrifice was: the more costly and perfect the sacrifice, the more sins it would absolve.
When God initiated the ritual sacrifice of animals for the religious ceremonies of His chosen people, He laid down strict rules. In Leviticus 22:19-20, God told the Jews: “You shall offer of your own free will a male without blemish from the cattle, from the sheep, or from the goats. But whatever has a defect, you shall not offer, for it shall not be acceptable on your behalf ” (NKJV). The Lord always has demanded that blood be shed for the remission of sins. Hebrews 9:22 reiterates that point: “And according to the law...all things are cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.” This should not be at all surprising, since “the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life” (Leviticus 17:11).
Men and women of ages past knew all too well God’s commandments regarding atonement by blood. It began with Cain and Abel, was reaffirmed by Noah (Genesis 9:1-6), was regulated by Old Testament law, and was carried through to fulfillment by Jesus. When God instituted the Law of Moses, He did not introduce animal sacrifices as an innovation never before seen by the Israelites. Rather, He showed the Israelites the proper manner in which to sacrifice such animals, until the time that the fulfilling sacrifice of His Son would bring to a halt the need for any further blood atonement via animal sacrifices. In showing them the proper way, God made strict provisions to keep the children of Israel from turning from God-approved sacrifices to sacrificing their own innocent children like the pagans around them. In Leviticus 18:21, God told the children of Israel: “And thou shalt not give any of thy seed to make them pass through the fire to Molech; neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am Jehovah.” God went to great lengths to warn the Israelites against offering their children as sacrifices because it was well known that the nations around them took part in such infanticide. The question arises, “What in this world could convince a mother or father to offer their children to a god?”
Wendy Davis writes for paganism in Widdershins. In an article on the World Wide Web, As Old as the Moon: Sacrifice in History, she stated: “The act of ritual murder is probably as old as we [humans—KB/BT] are. Throughout the ages, people sacrificed when they needed something. Our ancestors often gave the best they had, their first-born, to save themselves” (1995, emp. added). The most precious possession of a mother or father would be their first-born child. That child, however, would be not only precious, but also sinless. Sacrifice of anything less than that which is spotless and pure diminishes the inherent value of the sacrifice. Thus, it was believed that a sinless and pure sacrifice of such magnitude could wash away the sins of the parents (or, for that matter, the sins of an entire village!). Therefore, corrupt, perverse religions sprang up around the sacrifice of children, one of the most famous of which was that of Molech (see 2 Kings 23:10).
Yet even though the sacrifice of infants fulfilled the sinless aspect of a perfect sacrifice, it was lacking in other areas. For example, an “ordinary” infant born of peasant parents was not the most costly sacrifice available; a royal child of a king would be even better. Thus, as Davis went on to observe, kings ultimately sacrificed their own children to appease “the gods.”
But the sacrifice of a king’s child still did not represent the perfect sacrifice, because the child did not go of his (or her) own free will. A free-will sacrifice of royal blood would come closest to the perfect offering. In an article titled No Greater Sacrifice, which appeared in Widdershins, one writer suggested: “Willing sacrifice is more interesting. Why does someone want to sacrifice himself or herself for what they believe in? Historically speaking, we must consider the sacred kings who sacrificed themselves for the Land” (see Andy, 1998). Yes, a king who offered himself of his own free will would be almost the perfect sacrifice. The only problem with such a concept was the fact that no king ever had lived a perfect life. As the Widdershins writer correctly observed, in an attempt to solve this, “Finally someone came up with the idea of one final sacrifice. One sacrifice to count for all the rest for all time. But who could be offered? It had to be someone very important; even kings were not good enough. Clearly, only a god was important enough to count as the last one” (Andy, 1998). Thus, it becomes clear why even the pagan world demanded a sacrifice that was sinless, royal, and higher in stature than other humans. Doane stated: “The belief of redemption from sin by the sufferings of a Divine Incarnation, whether by death on the cross or otherwise, was general and popular among the heathen, centuries before the time of Jesus of Nazareth” (1882, pp. 183-185).
Once we comprehend the need for the death of the savior-god, it is not difficult to see why humanity would want (and need) to see him defeat death. The writer of the book of Hebrews addressed this very point when he wrote that Christ allowed Himself to be sacrificed so that He “might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (2:15). Death holds more terror for man than perhaps anything else on Earth. It was for this reason that the Greeks invented Hercules—half man and half god—to conquer the Underworld, and the Egyptians formulated Osiris. Surely a savior-god who offered himself voluntarily as the sacrifice for all humanity could defeat mankind’s dreaded enemy—Death. So, the idea of a sacrificial savior-god who victoriously defeats death through his resurrection came easily to the minds of people who knew that they needed forgiveness, and who desperately wanted to live past the grave.
And so, from a “universal frame of mind” different tribes and religions—spanning thousands of years—formulated their personal versions of what they thought a resurrected savior-god should be and do. Some said he was torn into fourteen pieces and scattered throughout the land of Egypt (e.g., Osiris). Others said he would look like a man but would possess superhuman physical strength and descend to the underworld to conquer Hades (e.g., Hercules). Yet one thing is certain: tales about a hero who saved mankind were on the lips of almost every storyteller.
Trench stated correctly:
“No thoughtful student of the past records of mankind can refuse to acknowledge that through all its history there has run the hope of a redemption from the evil which oppresses it; and as little can deny that this hope has continually attached itself to some single man. (n.d., p. 149).
That the one savior for whom all humanity waited was, and is, Jesus. I will have to have to come back later as to why this can be maintained.
REFERENCES
Andy (1998), “No Greater Sacrifice,” Widdershins, 4[4]:no page number, [On-line], URL: http://www.widdershins.org/index.html.
Butt, Kyle (2000), “The Historical Christ—Fact or Fiction,?” Reason & Revelation, 20:1-6, January.
Darrow, Clarence and Wallace Rice (1929), Infidels and Heretics: An Agnostic’s Anthology (Boston, MA: Stratford).
Davis, Wendy (1995), “As Old as the Moon: Sacrifice in History,” Widdershins, June 21, 1[2]:no page, [Online], URL: http://www.widdershins.org/index.html.
DeHoff, George W. (1944), Why We Believe the Bible (Murfreesboro, TN: DeHoff).
Doane, T.W. (1882), Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions (Kila, MT: Kessinger).
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1997), “Osiris” (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.) 8:1026-1027.
Freke, Timothy and Peter Gandy (1999), The Jesus Mysteries (New York: Harmony Books).
McCabe, Joseph (1993), The Myth of the Resurrection and Other Essays (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, reprint of 1926 edition).
Trench, R.C. (no date), Christ the Desire of All Nations; or the Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom, (Searcy, AR: Bales Publications).
Wilson, Edward O. (1978), On Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Greetings Issachar, griggs 1947, all,
Very interesting commentary.
I know you said you'd come back to it, so there's still information you have yet to present, but I would like to point out that ALL myth within the realm of personal realization was supposed to change based on the individuals interpretations of that myth, and oftentimes resulted in a re-telling of the same myth with the students own understandings added. As a result, there were gospels that actually painted the serpent in the garden as Sophia, and Jehovah as the "devil". My only point is that just because the bible is a myth doesn't mean I think we shouldn't be spiritual. It just means that we can do it without all the baggage, and dividers contained therein. It is my thought that we're all divine, and the only thing that keeps us from acting as such is our mistaken identification with the current form we inhabit. IMO, the issue is in thinking that one perception is the ONLY way of obtaining divinity.
In other words, each interpretation of whatever myth is being viewed is correct for the person doing the interpretation, but to lock all subsequent interpretations into a specific frame is shortsighted. We each have lessons to learn, and not all lessons are contained in the current interpretation of the bible, so why not allow without judgment any perspective opinion of each individual reader. This would do away with allot of the hierarchy we see today, and this would allow for a more dynamic approach to god. IMO, god isn't contained in a book. God is the creative principal, and not just the current form. Shape is deceiving, because shapes change, but that which we truly are will not change. Consciousness. God becoming aware of god through many perspectives. The universe becoming conscious with each of us as a looking glass into itself.
Any thoughts?
Very interesting commentary.
I know you said you'd come back to it, so there's still information you have yet to present, but I would like to point out that ALL myth within the realm of personal realization was supposed to change based on the individuals interpretations of that myth, and oftentimes resulted in a re-telling of the same myth with the students own understandings added. As a result, there were gospels that actually painted the serpent in the garden as Sophia, and Jehovah as the "devil". My only point is that just because the bible is a myth doesn't mean I think we shouldn't be spiritual. It just means that we can do it without all the baggage, and dividers contained therein. It is my thought that we're all divine, and the only thing that keeps us from acting as such is our mistaken identification with the current form we inhabit. IMO, the issue is in thinking that one perception is the ONLY way of obtaining divinity.
In other words, each interpretation of whatever myth is being viewed is correct for the person doing the interpretation, but to lock all subsequent interpretations into a specific frame is shortsighted. We each have lessons to learn, and not all lessons are contained in the current interpretation of the bible, so why not allow without judgment any perspective opinion of each individual reader. This would do away with allot of the hierarchy we see today, and this would allow for a more dynamic approach to god. IMO, god isn't contained in a book. God is the creative principal, and not just the current form. Shape is deceiving, because shapes change, but that which we truly are will not change. Consciousness. God becoming aware of god through many perspectives. The universe becoming conscious with each of us as a looking glass into itself.
Any thoughts?
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