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Letter from Thomas Jefferson to his nephew, referring to the Apocrypha:

"I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics."

This proves conclusively that a) the NT is NOT divinely inspired and that b) Jesus was NOT the divine son of god. Numerous facts show us that this is true beyond any doubt.

Fact: We KNOW the author of the statement. Unlike the bible, we have proof of the existence of      the author as a historical figure. He was the 3rd President of America and author of the Declaration of independence.

Fact: We know his exact birthday and day of death. Unlike Jesus, we have lots of eyewitnesses that wrote about Jefferson when he was alive.

Fact: Jefferson tells us that the council of ecclesiastics are in fact PSEUDO-evangelists. The dictionary tells us that 'pseudo' means bogus, sham, phony, artificial, mock. Therefore the people who decided what is the word of god and what is not, are not only mortal primates but also phony and therefore not to be authentic.

Fact: Jefferson states in his letter that the authors of the bible pretend to inspiration. The dictionary tells us that the word 'pretend' means: 'speak and act as to make it appear that something is the case, when in fact it is not. Used in a game of deception'. This proves conclusively that the bible is NOT inspired by any deity.

Fact: A proven historical figure, a President of the US, tells us that the bible is not the inspired word of god and that Jesus is neither the son of god nor divine.

A simple comparison of credibility between bronze age goat herders with stupid claims of miracles and a historical figure of brilliance and knowledge without any supernatural claims. These facts have passed the 'Carson litmus test' and have been found conclusive and reliable!!

Ah, but you forget, as our good friend Randy teaches us, if it's written in the Bible it is FACT by default because you can't prove it's not.  And the Bible contains EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS of the death and erection of Jesus, also because you can't prove it doesn't because, though all the evidence certainly suggests the earliest books were written well after the supposed death of Jesus, the evidence doesn't PROVE this.  And, as we all know, one person who agrees with Randy has more authority on these matters than many millions who do not.  These are FACTS!  You cannot deny them.  No, they're not true and no, I can't prove them, but they are FACTS nonetheless because I have capitalized the word "FACT".  You only bolded it.  You should have done your homework!

Quote from: reasonist on May 10, 2016, 10:04:51 AM
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to his nephew, referring to the Apocrypha:

"I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics."

This proves conclusively that a) the NT is NOT divinely inspired and that b) Jesus was NOT the divine son of god. Numerous facts show us that this is true beyond any doubt.

Fact: We KNOW the author of the statement. Unlike the bible, we have proof of the existence of      the author as a historical figure. He was the 3rd President of America and author of the Declaration of independence.

Fact: We know his exact birthday and day of death. Unlike Jesus, we have lots of eyewitnesses that wrote about Jefferson when he was alive.

Fact: Jefferson tells us that the council of ecclesiastics are in fact PSEUDO-evangelists. The dictionary tells us that 'pseudo' means bogus, sham, phony, artificial, mock. Therefore the people who decided what is the word of god and what is not, are not only mortal primates but also phony and therefore not to be authentic.

Fact: Jefferson states in his letter that the authors of the bible pretend to inspiration. The dictionary tells us that the word 'pretend' means: 'speak and act as to make it appear that something is the case, when in fact it is not. Used in a game of deception'. This proves conclusively that the bible is NOT inspired by any deity.

Fact: A proven historical figure, a President of the US, tells us that the bible is not the inspired word of god and that Jesus is neither the son of god nor divine.

A simple comparison of credibility between bronze age goat herders with stupid claims of miracles and a historical figure of brilliance and knowledge without any supernatural claims. These facts have passed the 'Carson litmus test' and have been found conclusive and reliable!!

reasonist,

Lest you forget, when discussing Jesus as god incarnate with the divisions of the Trinitarian faith, especially the Catholics, one has to remind them that if Jesus is god, then this biblical character is held culpable for all of the horrific and brutal killings within the scriptures when he got mad and took out revenge upon his creation!  Wait, I forgot that Jesus is all loving and forgiving, my bad.

Do you ever hear the Catholic Church reminding their flock that Jesus, as god, KILLED and ABORTED millions of his creation in the Great Flood, plagues, pestilence, etc.?  NOT!

Quote from: 21CIconoclast on May 10, 2016, 04:00:30 PM
reasonist,

Lest you forget, when discussing Jesus as god incarnate with the divisions of the Trinitarian faith, especially the Catholics, one has to remind them that if Jesus is god, then this biblical character is held culpable for all of the horrific and brutal killings within the scriptures when he got mad and took out revenge upon his creation!  Wait, I forgot that Jesus is all loving and forgiving, my bad.

Do you ever hear the Catholic Church reminding their flock that Jesus, as god, KILLED and ABORTED millions of his creation in the Great Flood, plagues, pestilence, etc.?  NOT!

That is always a dilemma for the apologists. How do you reconcile omni- benevolence with mass murder?
The frightening part is that the flock knows about these atrocities and still worship and submit to this monster of the imagination. Impossible for a rational mind and yet easy for so many. Hitch is right, our frontal lobes are too small and our adrenaline glands too big. Some design...

Quote from: reasonist on May 10, 2016, 04:12:19 PM
That is always a dilemma for the apologists. How do you reconcile omni- benevolence with mass murder?
The frightening part is that the flock knows about these atrocities and still worship and submit to this monster of the imagination. Impossible for a rational mind and yet easy for so many. Hitch is right, our frontal lobes are too small and our adrenaline glands too big. Some design...

The Krell for Forbidden Planet.

Quote from: reasonist on May 10, 2016, 10:04:51 AM
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to his nephew, referring to the Apocrypha:

"I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics."

This proves conclusively that a) the NT is NOT divinely inspired and that b) Jesus was NOT the divine son of god. Numerous facts show us that this is true beyond any doubt.

Fact: We KNOW the author of the statement. Unlike the bible, we have proof of the existence of      the author as a historical figure. He was the 3rd President of America and author of the Declaration of independence.

Fact: We know his exact birthday and day of death. Unlike Jesus, we have lots of eyewitnesses that wrote about Jefferson when he was alive.

Fact: Jefferson tells us that the council of ecclesiastics are in fact PSEUDO-evangelists. The dictionary tells us that 'pseudo' means bogus, sham, phony, artificial, mock. Therefore the people who decided what is the word of god and what is not, are not only mortal primates but also phony and therefore not to be authentic.

Fact: Jefferson states in his letter that the authors of the bible pretend to inspiration. The dictionary tells us that the word 'pretend' means: 'speak and act as to make it appear that something is the case, when in fact it is not. Used in a game of deception'. This proves conclusively that the bible is NOT inspired by any deity.

Fact: A proven historical figure, a President of the US, tells us that the bible is not the inspired word of god and that Jesus is neither the son of god nor divine.

A simple comparison of credibility between bronze age goat herders with stupid claims of miracles and a historical figure of brilliance and knowledge without any supernatural claims. These facts have passed the 'Carson litmus test' and have been found conclusive and reliable!!

:whoo: :weehee: :singing:

All the fairy tales aside, the problem is not even the questions of 'Was Jesus Divine' or even 'Has Jesus really existed as a person?' There is no need for one man for any of this to occur. Having said that probably there have been a  few dozen real life men that have tried to lead revolutions of some sort in the environment of those days in Ancient Rome. The 'nobles' controlling all the land, slaves doing all the work and citizens never getting paid enough to survive. Constant immigrations to the cities...etc. And there are soldiers of course. Soldiers are crucial.

Highly likely there were other rumoured stories that grew up to a point but never manage to become myths in the end and faded away in course of hundreds of years. And when one stuck around -the tipping point- and spread enough to become dangerous enough to threaten the Empire they have felt the need to make it official and standardise it for control. Now, when you are 'making' an epic story for people you take motifs and characters people already are familiar with in collective memory.

The options in myth making is pretty few anyway. Of course there will be a man with super powers. What else was there going to be? A squirrel? An ordinary man? What good is that? You need a super hero. And you need to make that man perform extraordinary deeds, make him say things that contrast the system they live in, so people would follow him. None of it has to be original, infact it must not be original, it must be very simple so people would follow it. What is that? 'This man was killed and he came back.' A hero that defied the very fear why humans invented religions and god in the first place. Fear of Death.

How did Christianity spread, what Constantine did, what what was done in Nicea councils and others with creeds is politics catching up. They are not a different political decision than what Ramses II has done to keep the order and the balance of the masses, more than thousand years before Jesus. In a different way, but for the same goals.

But in real life practice, it comes down to the soldiers. If a threatening amount of soldiers didn't convert to Christianity -remember that the only biggest power is trained, armed men that day- Christian myth could have died out easily. Because it wouldn't have even become the official religion of the Roman Empire. And even that took a very long time.

You know what, looking from the point of view of domestic politics of the Empire, the whole thing is actually brilliant. :lol: 

It was essential that the Christians compromise on the one thing they couldn't compromise on ... kind of like the guy at the end of "1984".  Gotta make them love Big Brother Constantine.  Pacifism would be fatal to the Roman legions and the Roman state.  Christian legionaries before Constantine, failed to worship the emperor as a living god, and espoused pacifism.  So no surprise they were executed quickly.  The emperor was downgraded a little from "god" to "vicar of Christ" (it wasn't the Pope).  So that key point had to go.  There is no difference between the Jesus of Constantine and Sol Invictus ... both are war gods ... as is the Jewish and Muslim gods.  I might have doubts about the value of Gentile Christianity from 135 - 325 CE ... but I can't ignore the total corruption after 325 CE.  Augustine of Hippo being one late exception ... he poo pooed the Roman state, just before Hippo was surrounded by the Vandal hordes.  Edward Gibbon was right about them.  The Buddhist core of the NT had to be neutralized.

Quote from: reasonist on May 10, 2016, 10:04:51 AM
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to his nephew, referring to the Apocrypha:

"I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics."

This proves conclusively that a) the NT is NOT divinely inspired and that b) Jesus was NOT the divine son of god. Numerous facts show us that this is true beyond any doubt.

Fact: We KNOW the author of the statement. Unlike the bible, we have proof of the existence of      the author as a historical figure. He was the 3rd President of America and author of the Declaration of independence.

Fact: We know his exact birthday and day of death. Unlike Jesus, we have lots of eyewitnesses that wrote about Jefferson when he was alive.

Fact: Jefferson tells us that the council of ecclesiastics are in fact PSEUDO-evangelists. The dictionary tells us that 'pseudo' means bogus, sham, phony, artificial, mock. Therefore the people who decided what is the word of god and what is not, are not only mortal primates but also phony and therefore not to be authentic.

Fact: Jefferson states in his letter that the authors of the bible pretend to inspiration. The dictionary tells us that the word 'pretend' means: 'speak and act as to make it appear that something is the case, when in fact it is not. Used in a game of deception'. This proves conclusively that the bible is NOT inspired by any deity.

Fact: A proven historical figure, a President of the US, tells us that the bible is not the inspired word of god and that Jesus is neither the son of god nor divine.

A simple comparison of credibility between bronze age goat herders with stupid claims of miracles and a historical figure of brilliance and knowledge without any supernatural claims. These facts have passed the 'Carson litmus test' and have been found conclusive and reliable!!

FACT: Thomas Jefferson is not recognized as a NT scholar or an authority on the material he commented upon in this passage. He is offering his personal opinion, and the only reason this is even noted is because of his celebrity status. This is the equivalent of someone like Beyonce testifying before congress on climate change without having any genuine scientific credentials whatsoever.

Unbeliever, I just used the 'Carson method'. This way I can prove anything I want.  :high5: 
I just came across god's speech on the grassy knoll:

Here is an excerpt of god's sermon on the grassy knoll:
" Yes, I created the heavens and the Earth. And I created you in my image. I gave you dominion over flora and fauna, except micro organisms that create suffering and death to keep you submissive.
I covered most of the Earth with water but gave you lungs to breathe air. I gave other mammals lungs, like whales and dolphins, but made them live in water to make it interesting.
I want you to multiply but made the mechanism repulsive. That's why I placed your reproductive organs so close to your sphincter.
I gave you independent thought but want you to forego this gift and instead adore me and grovel before me; I need that.   
I made cave animals blind, like salamanders and bats, but gave them eyes anyways, just in case.
I created you from dust and gave you an appendix and tail bone for the fun of it.
I have a plan but am willing to change it all the time if you ask me on your knees.
You can keep some of your brethren as slaves and the virgins from the spoils of wars for your entertainment, just don't go after your neighbor's oxen."

Quote from: widdershins on May 10, 2016, 10:41:52 AM
erection of Jesus

(https://data.desustorage.org/co/image/1451/16/1451167326032.gif)

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 11, 2016, 07:56:56 AM
FACT: Thomas Jefferson is not recognized as a NT scholar or an authority on the material he commented upon in this passage. He is offering his personal opinion, and the only reason this is even noted is because of his celebrity status. This is the equivalent of someone like Beyonce testifying before congress on climate change without having any genuine scientific credentials whatsoever.

Authority.  What a concept.  If Jesus is supposed to be a personal god, one who can watch over you (each and every one of us), then that god would be the authority.  Not any human--ever.  If Jesus were a personal god without exception, one who loves each and every one of us, that god would make sure that each human had a way to understand that this god was really there.  There would be no need for an authority.  So, the christian seeking out and labeling another human as an authority sort of put their whole concept to a lie. 

Most of the time when a christian labels somebody an authority, they simply agree with that person and want to say --"See, I told you that this is true, and (insert name) agrees with me!"  Look at the language of the bible.  It is replete with labels like king, lord, master---it uses the jargon of a kingdom, which is easy for the people then to relate to.  Christians love hierarchy.  Without it they and their religion would flounder.  They need that 'authority' to tell them how to think, how to believe and that faith is all that is needed.  They don't want to think--only be guided.  It is so much easier that way.  Authority seeker=willing slave.  And willful ignorance follows.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 11, 2016, 09:12:07 AM
Authority.  What a concept.  If Jesus is supposed to be a personal god, one who can watch over you (each and every one of us), then that god would be the authority.  Not any human--ever.  If Jesus were a personal god without exception, one who loves each and every one of us, that god would make sure that each human had a way to understand that this god was really there.  There would be no need for an authority.  So, the christian seeking out and labeling another human as an authority sort of put their whole concept to a lie. 

Most of the time when a christian labels somebody an authority, they simply agree with that person and want to say --"See, I told you that this is true, and (insert name) agrees with me!"  Look at the language of the bible.  It is replete with labels like king, lord, master---it uses the jargon of a kingdom, which is easy for the people then to relate to.  Christians love hierarchy.  Without it they and their religion would flounder.  They need that 'authority' to tell them how to think, how to believe and that faith is all that is needed.  They don't want to think--only be guided.  It is so much easier that way.  Authority seeker=willing slave.  And willful ignorance follows.

Yes, I always found the fact that the flock is so eager to give up individualism in order to enjoy serfdom and thought control, as a form of masochism. The concept of loving someone who we also fear is just that.
Marx described it as 'the opium of the people', Kuhn describes it as the 'cessation of self worth', Hitchens calls it 'wish thinking', I call it self deception of the emotionally needy. Either way, the result is always the same; the voluntary relinquishing of critical thought. Sam Harris says that faith is not a valid cognitive function. George Smith writes:" Insofar as faith is possible, it is irrational; insofar as faith is rational, it is impossible".

"What remains after the qualities essential to a rewarding life are surrendered? Nothing-except a man without reason, without passion, without self esteem. A man, in other words, that will find ANYTHING preferable to life on earth. Such a man may claim that christianity has given him hope of happiness in an afterlife, but all that christianity has really given him is an elaborate excuse, draped in the banner of morality, to continue his blind stumbling through life on earth. Human misery is a sad spectacle. But it is sadder still when disguised as moral righteousness."
G.H. Smith

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 11, 2016, 09:12:07 AM
Authority.  What a concept.  If Jesus is supposed to be a personal god, one who can watch over you (each and every one of us), then that god would be the authority.  Not any human--ever.  If Jesus were a personal god without exception, one who loves each and every one of us, that god would make sure that each human had a way to understand that this god was really there.  There would be no need for an authority.  So, the christian seeking out and labeling another human as an authority sort of put their whole concept to a lie.

Most of the time when a christian labels somebody an authority, they simply agree with that person and want to say --"See, I told you that this is true, and (insert name) agrees with me!"  Look at the language of the bible.  It is replete with labels like king, lord, master---it uses the jargon of a kingdom, which is easy for the people then to relate to.  Christians love hierarchy.  Without it they and their religion would flounder.  They need that 'authority' to tell them how to think, how to believe and that faith is all that is needed.  They don't want to think--only be guided.  It is so much easier that way.  Authority seeker=willing slave.  And willful ignorance follows.

There is enough evidence for those who want to find it to be able to do so but not so much as to coerce those who do not.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 11, 2016, 10:09:10 AM
There is enough evidence for those who want to find it to be able to do so but not so much as to coerce those who do not.

And I say to you, good sir--bullshit.  All you say and the way you believe--bullshit!

The basic question we should ask the pious is what G.H.Smith asked: (and I do it in red, that seems to be more factual for some)

"The responsibility of explanation lies with the christian. If there is no conflict of reason and faith, why has christianity insisted on rigorous censorship of dissent for 1,500 years? If the catholic church is an institution committed to rationality and truth, why has it subjected dissenters to torture and death? The man of reason, the man concerned with arriving at truth, supports his ideas with reason and evidence - not with a torture rack and stake." (//http://?Ifthecatholicchurchisaninstitutioncommittedtorationalityandtruth,whyhasitsubjecteddissenterstotortureanddeath?Themanofreason,themanconcernedwitharrivingattruth,supportshisideaswithreasonandevidence-notwithatorturerackandstake.")

Quote from: Munch on May 11, 2016, 09:10:42 AM
(https://data.desustorage.org/co/image/1451/16/1451167326032.gif)

QuoteThou art filled with shame for glory: drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the LORD'S right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory.

Habakkuk 2:16

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 11, 2016, 09:12:07 AM
Authority seeker=willing slave.  And willful ignorance follows.

Ironically, this makes for a less than ideal worker.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 11, 2016, 10:09:10 AM
There is enough evidence for those who want to find it to be able to do so but not so much as to coerce those who do not.

I heard the same claptrap from the Rosicrucians, the Scientologists, the Southern Baptists, the Seth entity (whatever the hell that was), etc. They all claim that if only I'd accept their worldview (their assumptions) and think hard enough about it, I'd come to see it as obvious: "believe hard enough and it will be true." But this is magical thinking, whether it concerns ghosts, goblins or gods.

Credo quia absurdum (I believe because it is absurd)

Fictional entities can have any attributes an author cares to give them, (e.g., dragons can be nice or mean, vampires can be blood-sucking monsters or hapless victims, etc.) and God, being fictional, can be given any attributes a believer in God cares to give Him (or is told by "authorities" He has). This is why there are so many possible answers to the question: what is God? God is like a Rorschach test - different people see different things when considering what God is.

Quote from: Charles Bradlaugh
The atheist does not say," There is no God", but he says, "I know not what you mean by God"; the word God is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation.

I feel similarly, so I could be called a non-cognitivist. Unless the word "God" is well defined, we none of us know what the hell we're talking about when we use the word.

But if an entity has attributes that conflict, that contradict each other, then that entity can't logically exist in anything other than fiction, never in reality with exactly those contradictory attributes. Reality won't allow the existence of a God (or any other entity) that has incompatible properties, and yet God (as in the Judaeo/Christian/Muslim view of Him ) has many such conflicting attributes, at least the theistic, omnimax type of God-conecpt we're all familiar with.

Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey

If a God of this theistic type can't exist in reality, then it does not, in fact, exist I reality.

Quote from: gentle_dissident on May 11, 2016, 05:23:55 PM
Ironically, this makes for a less than ideal worker.

"If the bible and my brain are both the work of the same infinite god, whose fault is it then, that the book and my brain do not agree?"
R.G. Ingersoll

"Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor."
S. Freud

"However, a moment in history has arrived when even a pigmy such as myself can claim to know more - through no merit of his own - and to see that the final ripping of the whole disguise is overdue. Between them, the sciences of textual criticism, archeology, physics, and molecular biology have shown religious mythology to be false and man made and have also succeeded in evolving better and more enlightened explanations."
C. Hitchens

PLEASE, quit trying to prove that the biblical character named Jesus was not divine!

I personally need Jesus to be god incarnate to make it easier to show the pseudo-christian Trinitarian to be an outright fool. This is because when Jesus is god, then he is held culpable for all of the horrific murders he did in the Old Testament such as abortions, killing the first born in Egypt, having babies smashed against the rocks, ripping open women with child, forcing his creation to eat their own children, and lest we forget about Jesus' Great Flood scenario, one of the greatest mass murders of all time!

It must be so embarrassing to be a Catholic going into the 21st century, sad indeed.

Quote from: 21CIconoclast on May 12, 2016, 03:28:16 PM
PLEASE, quit trying to prove that the biblical character named Jesus was not divine!

I personally need Jesus to be god incarnate to make it easier to show the pseudo-christian Trinitarian to be an outright fool. This is because when Jesus is god, then he is held culpable for all of the horrific murders he did in the Old Testament such as abortions, killing the first born in Egypt, having babies smashed against the rocks, ripping open women with child, forcing his creation to eat their own children, and lest we forget about Jesus' Great Flood scenario, one of the greatest mass murders of all time!

It must be so embarrassing to be a Catholic going into the 21st century, sad indeed.

LOL, OK, I'll posit a different take.

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider the low life expectancy of humans in the first century. According to the religious scholar, J.D. Crossan, "the life expectancy of Jewish males in the Jewish state was then twenty-nine years." [Crossan] Some people think this age appears deceptive because of the high infant mortally rates at birth. However, at birth the inhabitants of the Roman Empire had an even lower life expectancy of around twenty-five years. [source] According to Ulpian, a Roman jurist of the early third century C.E., the average life expectancy at birth came even lower to around twenty-one. [Potter] Of course these ages represent averages and some people lived after the age of 30, but how many? According to the historian Richard Carrier: "We have reason to believe that only 4% of the population at any given time was over 50 years old; over age 70, less than 2%. And that is under normal circumstances. But the Gospels were written after two very devastating abnormal events: the Jewish War and the Neronian Persecution, both of which would have, combined, greatly reduced the life expectancy of exactly those people who were eye-witnesses to the teachings of Jesus. And it just so happens that these sorts of people are curiously missing from the historical record precisely when the Gospels began to be circulated." [Carrier] Even if they lived to those unlikely ages, consider the mental and physical toll (especially during the 1st century) which would have likely reduced their memory and capability to write. Moreover, those small percentages of people who lived past 50 years were usually wealthy people (aristocrats, politicians, land and slave owners, etc.). However, the Gospels suggest that the followers of Jesus lived poorly, and this would further reduce the chances for a long life span. Although the New Testament does not provide the ages of the disciples, most Christians think their ages came to around 20-30 years old. Jesus' birth would have to have occurred before Herod's death at 4 B.C.E. So if Jesus' birth occurred in the year 4 B.C.E., that would put the age of the disciples, at the time of the writing of the first gospel, at around age 60-70 and the last gospel at around age 90-100! Based on just life expectancies alone, that would make the probability unlikely they lived during the writing of the first gospel, and extremely unlikely any of them lived during the writing of the last gospel (and I have used only the most conservative numbers)."
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

7 minutes of enlightenment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMo5R5pLPBE

Excellent video. Truly miss Hitchens.

Quote from: stromboli on May 15, 2016, 08:00:36 PM
Excellent video. Truly miss Hitchens.

You can still enjoy the other Hitchens. His brother, Peter.

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71erMSry9yL.jpg)

...and was consistently outmatched by his brother.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XHv7IQCg-w

the truth always wins.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 15, 2016, 08:43:30 PM
You can still enjoy the other Hitchens. His brother, Peter.

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71erMSry9yL.jpg)

Part of the reason I accuse you of making appeals to authority are posts like this one. Reasonist posted Christopher Hitchens' actual argument. You have simply name-dropped his brother. Please present arguments, not authority figures.

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on May 15, 2016, 09:06:05 PM
Part of the reason I accuse you of making appeals to authority are posts like this one. Reasonist posted Christopher Hitchens' actual argument. You have simply name-dropped his brother. Please present arguments, not authority figures.

But I responded to stromboli.

Quote from: stromboli on May 15, 2016, 08:00:36 PM
Excellent video. Truly miss Hitchens.

Quote from: reasonist on May 15, 2016, 09:03:51 PM
...and was consistently outmatched by his brother.

the truth always wins.

Have you read The Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens?

I have.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 15, 2016, 09:31:37 PM
Have you read The Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens?

I have.

I have. It's sitting right here on my desk, I just dug it out. And now what? Hijiri is right.

Quote from: reasonist on May 15, 2016, 10:18:59 PM
I have. It's sitting right here on my desk, I just dug it out. And now what? Hijiri is right.

Great!

What is your opinion of the conversion of Peter and his assessment of Christopher's atheism?

Interesting question. Peter is in my opinion an agnostic or a deist at most. He believes in evolution. They grew up separately for most of their youth and didn't like each other that much. Peter was an atheist and probably just switched to piss off Christopher. Peter was quite a drunk and womanizer in his earlier years until he found god. Just replaced one drug with another.
Christopher always won the debate on it's merits, Peter disliked debating him because of that; as far as I know they had only 3 or 4 debates. But they always respected each other despite their differences. I read his " The Abolition of Britain", a pessimistic rant of an isolationist.
If you follow both brother's career, you will find that their path was very similar in their younger years. It seems to me that Peter always felt like being in the shadow of his older brother. That's why he changed his outlook in life. From ultra left wing to social conservative, from atheism to faith. I hope that explains.

Now you have to tell us why you reject many monotheistic gods but belief in a particular one. We established that you are an atheist like us, we belief in one god less than you.
Was it indoctrination from someone or you were in need of an emotional crutch? And surely if you were born in say Riyadh you still would be a Jesus believer, right? You would be executed but you would insist...

Quote from: Munch on May 11, 2016, 09:10:42 AM
(https://data.desustorage.org/co/image/1451/16/1451167326032.gif)

I caught that too! lol!

Quote from: drunkenshoe on May 11, 2016, 06:24:10 AM
All the fairy tales aside, the problem is not even the questions of 'Was Jesus Divine' or even 'Has Jesus really existed as a person?' There is no need for one man for any of this to occur. Having said that probably there have been a  few dozen real life men that have tried to lead revolutions of some sort in the environment of those days in Ancient Rome. The 'nobles' controlling all the land, slaves doing all the work and citizens never getting paid enough to survive. Constant immigrations to the cities...etc. And there are soldiers of course. Soldiers are crucial.

Highly likely there were other rumoured stories that grew up to a point but never manage to become myths in the end and faded away in course of hundreds of years. And when one stuck around -the tipping point- and spread enough to become dangerous enough to threaten the Empire they have felt the need to make it official and standardise it for control. Now, when you are 'making' an epic story for people you take motifs and characters people already are familiar with in collective memory.

The options in myth making is pretty few anyway. Of course there will be a man with super powers. What else was there going to be? A squirrel? An ordinary man? What good is that? You need a super hero. And you need to make that man perform extraordinary deeds, make him say things that contrast the system they live in, so people would follow him. None of it has to be original, infact it must not be original, it must be very simple so people would follow it. What is that? 'This man was killed and he came back.' A hero that defied the very fear why humans invented religions and god in the first place. Fear of Death.

How did Christianity spread, what Constantine did, what what was done in Nicea councils and others with creeds is politics catching up. They are not a different political decision than what Ramses II has done to keep the order and the balance of the masses, more than thousand years before Jesus. In a different way, but for the same goals.

But in real life practice, it comes down to the soldiers. If a threatening amount of soldiers didn't convert to Christianity -remember that the only biggest power is trained, armed men that day- Christian myth could have died out easily. Because it wouldn't have even become the official religion of the Roman Empire. And even that took a very long time.

You know what, looking from the point of view of domestic politics of the Empire, the whole thing is actually brilliant. :lol:

The Christian myth bore a great similarity to the Mithra myth. Mithra had been the god of choice of the legions for quite some time. The problem w/Mithra was that his cult did not admit women. Enter Jesus. A similar god, allowing easy conversion of the troops - and allowing their extended families to join, as well. Now the whole family could worship Mithra/Jesus. Everybody was happy.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 11, 2016, 07:56:56 AM
FACT: Thomas Jefferson is not recognized as a NT scholar or an authority on the material he commented upon in this passage. He is offering his personal opinion, and the only reason this is even noted is because of his celebrity status. This is the equivalent of someone like Beyonce testifying before congress on climate change without having any genuine scientific credentials whatsoever.

How dare you compare a noted scholar, fluent in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French to Beyonce! How dare you! Jefferson had a fine education and was widely read. He had the largest private library in North America. How dare you!

Quote from: reasonist on May 15, 2016, 06:43:20 PM
7 minutes of enlightenment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMo5R5pLPBE

I love Christopher Hitchens!

Quote from: reasonist on May 16, 2016, 12:54:48 AM
Interesting question. Peter is in my opinion an agnostic or a deist at most. He believes in evolution. They grew up separately for most of their youth and didn't like each other that much. Peter was an atheist and probably just switched to piss off Christopher. Peter was quite a drunk and womanizer in his earlier years until he found god. Just replaced one drug with another.
Christopher always won the debate on it's merits, Peter disliked debating him because of that; as far as I know they had only 3 or 4 debates. But they always respected each other despite their differences. I read his " The Abolition of Britain", a pessimistic rant of an isolationist.
If you follow both brother's career, you will find that their path was very similar in their younger years. It seems to me that Peter always felt like being in the shadow of his older brother. That's why he changed his outlook in life. From ultra left wing to social conservative, from atheism to faith. I hope that explains.

I don't think Peter views himself as "an agnostic or a deist at most". And you propose that Peter became a believer just to get our from under Christopher's shadow? Interesting take.

QuoteNow you have to tell us why you reject many monotheistic gods but belief in a particular one. We established that you are an atheist like us, we belief in one god less than you.

Nope. Apparently, you missed this thread:

Do Atheists Just Believe in One Less God Than Christians?
http://atheistforums.com/index.php?topic=10068.0

Oh...wait...you have several posts in that thread. (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/ani/ani_yup.gif)

QuoteWas it indoctrination from someone or you were in need of an emotional crutch?

The grace of God and my own reasoning. Mostly grace. I was raised in a Christian home, but I hadn't been to church in years when God reached out to me.

QuoteAnd surely if you were born in say Riyadh you still would be a Jesus believer, right? You would be executed but you would insist...

Probably not. But I would still have the obligation to follow God as best I could with the information available to me.

Same as you.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 16, 2016, 07:36:29 AM
Probably not. But I would still have the obligation to follow God as best I could with the information available to me.

Same as you.

Unfortunately you did not answer the question on the other thread either. But at least you gave a partial answer here. So I will try this one more time, let's see if you have the honesty to answer the question objectively.

You would NOT follow Jesus as a christian if you would have been born and raised in Riyadh. There would be no bible available, it's possession is equivalent to a death sentence. The only book available would be the Koran, your parents would have sent you to a madrassa where you would recite the book of Mohammad all day long.
If you would have been born in New Delhi you would be a follower of the Sikh religion, in Peking it would be Shangdi etc etc.It's called social conditioning and is a proven fact and a logical conclusion.
All the current monotheisms claim exclusive truth at the exclusion of other faiths. Milliions have been slaughtered because of "minor differences" over the last 2 millennia.
But here is the crux. The truth is not a local phenomena. The truth is universal. It doesn't change with geographic location. The truth is the truth in Siberia or Saigon, Singapore or Switzerland. Truth proven by facts, verifiable, testable and disprovable facts. Of course the guy in Baghdad defends his truth as fervently as you do, many times with brute force. Depending where you Randy Carson were born, you might be a suicide bomber, an aspiring martyr or a monk in Tibet for all you know.
A peer reviewed, proven fact on the other hand is the same anywhere in the world. There aren't many different truths. There can only be one. And as long as you don't admit that, we cannot have a honest dialogue. So try to think as a human primate, which means objectively, and a whole new, wonderful world will open up for you. Where you are now, most of us have been many years ago, so we know where you come from. It's tough to let go but it's the only way if you want to be honest with yourself and others.

And that is why Constantine must conquer the world, posthumously.  To prevent kids in Riyadh from not becoming good 4th century Romans ... who probably ended up in hellfire anyway.  "hellfire and brimstone" were real places ... mines on Sicily and Sardinia ... where some people were transported to work out their punishment.  "lake of fire" of course refers to Mt Etna also in Sicily.  The method of eruption of Mt Vesuvius, was unlike Mt Etna, and that is why the Romans didn't get away quicker.  The Sicilian Greek philosopher, Empedocles, became a god by throwing himself into the molten crater of Mt Etna.

Quote from: Baruch on May 16, 2016, 11:20:52 PM
And that is why Constantine must conquer the world, posthumously.  To prevent kids in Riyadh from not becoming good 4th century Romans ... who probably ended up in hellfire anyway.  "hellfire and brimstone" were real places ... mines on Sicily and Sardinia ... where some people were transported to work out their punishment.  "lake of fire" of course refers to Mt Etna also in Sicily.  The method of eruption of Mt Vesuvius, was unlike Mt Etna, and that is why the Romans didn't get away quicker.  The Sicilian Greek philosopher, Empedocles, became a god by throwing himself into the molten crater of Mt Etna.

Pompeii revisited. From death trap to tourist trap.

Quote from: reasonist on May 16, 2016, 11:50:10 PM
Pompeii revisited. From death trap to tourist trap.

We all become archeology eventually ;-)

Of course Jesus wasn't divine. Same thing with every other person that never existed in the first place.

-Sent from your mom

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 16, 2016, 07:36:29 AM
Probably not. But I would still have the obligation to follow God as best I could with the information available to me.

Same as you.

Well, then, we're all good.  The information available to me is "there are no gods".  That being the information I have, I AM following God as best I can with the information available to me.  Since there are no gods, there is nothing to follow but my own sense of morality, which I do follow.

Quote from: widdershins on May 17, 2016, 02:44:27 PM
Well, then, we're all good.  The information available to me is "there are no gods".  That being the information I have, I AM following God as best I can with the information available to me.  Since there are no gods, there is nothing to follow but my own sense of morality, which I do follow.

Is that actually the information you have available to you? That there is no God?

Weird. More than two thirds of the population of earth disagrees with that.

That doesn't make them right, of course, but it ought to make you wonder if you've missed something that others are seeing...

But you don't care, so all is well. Stay Calm and Carry On.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 17, 2016, 05:06:59 PM
Is that actually the information you have available to you? That there is no God?

Weird. More than two thirds of the population of earth disagrees with that.

That doesn't make them right, of course, but it ought to make you wonder if you've missed something that others are seeing...

But you don't care, so all is well. Stay Calm and Carry On.

Wow, found two of them this time.

(http://i.imgur.com/jHM7xcb.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/XJLUlNd.jpg)

Arguments like this make me want to convert to Buddhism. I could use some meditation about now!

The Buddha avoided talking about speculative theology, about miracles or heaven or hell or gods.

Quote from: Baruch on May 18, 2016, 07:14:17 AM
The Buddha avoided talking about speculative theology, about miracles or heaven or hell or gods.

But he never avoided grub.

Quote from: reasonist on May 18, 2016, 02:11:24 PM
But he never avoided grub.

I bet he avoided any grub like this one:

(http://www.strangezoo.com/images/content/129312.jpg)


Now that's a grub!

Best 10 minutes of Hitchens. Funny and factual...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ndNsE7dL5Q

Buddha was a vegetarian.

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on May 18, 2016, 12:42:53 AM
Wow, found two of them this time.

Arguments like this make me want to convert to Buddhism. I could use some meditation about now!

I conceded the fallacy when I wrote:

"That doesn't make them right, of course, but it ought to make you wonder if you've missed something that others are seeing."

And yes, you ought to consider if you have missed something.

Quote from: Unbeliever on May 18, 2016, 03:49:55 PM
I bet he avoided any grub like this one:

(http://www.strangezoo.com/images/content/129312.jpg)


Now that's a grub!

Or that person has very tiny hands.

Now that is sophistry.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 18, 2016, 07:58:24 PMAnd yes, you ought to consider if you have missed something.

What makes you think I haven't done so?

I will never pretend to speak for anyone else here, but I personally have read your arguments (albeit from other people) probably over a thousand times, and maybe the first two or three times I gave them serious consideration. After that, well, it was just repetition, and rather annoying at that. At this point, if I've read it once I've read it a thousand times. Whether I am right to do so or just stubborn as a bull, the fact remains that you're just not going to convince me with that line of argument. Talk about something else.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 17, 2016, 05:06:59 PMIs that actually the information you have available to you? That there is no God?

Weird. More than two thirds of the population of earth disagrees with that.

And the majority opinion not terribly long ago was that there are multiple gods, slavery is okay, and that monarchy is the best form of government.  So what?

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on May 18, 2016, 09:48:50 PMWhat makes you think I haven't done so?

I will never pretend to speak for anyone else here, but I personally have read your arguments (albeit from other people) probably over a thousand times, and maybe the first two or three times I gave them serious consideration. After that, well, it was just repetition, and rather annoying at that. At this point, if I've read it once I've read it a thousand times. Whether I am right to do so or just stubborn as a bull, the fact remains that you're just not going to convince me with that line of argument. Talk about something else.

Yeah.  Aside from assuming what one's trying to prove, appealing to popularity or consequences or a lack of knowledge, it's a really poor showing.  Maybe a couple word games if you're into that stuff.  Otherwise, there's not really much to see.  Just another huckster with wares to sell.  Invisible, intangible wares curiously immune to anti-fraud laws.  But it'll pay out a huge fortune when you're dead, swearsies.

Quote from: Baruch on May 18, 2016, 07:58:06 PM
Buddha was a vegetarian.

Then he sure liked vegetarian grub. :-)

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on May 18, 2016, 09:48:50 PM
Talk about something else.

In the Christianity subforum? What else should we talk about? (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/shrug.gif)

Quote from: Hydra009 on May 19, 2016, 12:44:11 AM
And the majority opinion not terribly long ago was that there are multiple gods, slavery is okay, and that monarchy is the best form of government.  So what?

Your examples notwithstanding, if there is a sizable audience for a particular speaker, it might be worth hearing what he's saying. You might disagree with him and walk away, but maybe not.

See, we're not all as stupid as you atheists keep telling each other. Some of us are reasonably intelligent and decently educated. And we still believe.

So, maybe there is something to what we keep saying.

Quote from: Hydra009 on May 19, 2016, 01:02:44 AM
Yeah.  Aside from assuming what one's trying to prove, appealing to popularity or consequences or a lack of knowledge, it's a really poor showing.  Maybe a couple word games if you're into that stuff.  Otherwise, there's not really much to see.  Just another huckster with wares to sell.  Invisible, intangible wares curiously immune to anti-fraud laws.  But it'll pay out a huge fortune when you're dead, swearsies.

If you think I'm just a huckster, Hydra, why not ask a question or interact with the OP of one of my threads?

Then, we'll see how you fare.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 19, 2016, 12:19:40 PMSee, we're not all as stupid as you atheists keep telling each other.

And we're not a group that can be lumped together, as you Christians keep telling each other. Case in point: I have never said that religious people are stupid, nor do I agree with the people saying such a thing. I think you're stupid, but that's a separate matter entirely. :lol:

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 19, 2016, 12:15:03 PM
In the Christianity subforum? What else should we talk about? (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/shrug.gif)

You could try a line of argument that we haven't been beaten over the head with yet; a more original approach, if you will. I don't think you've had an original thought in the entire time you've been on this forum, mind you, but I encourage you to try.

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on May 19, 2016, 12:33:55 PM
And we're not a group that can be lumped together, as you Christians keep telling each other. Case in point: I have never said that religious people are stupid, nor do I agree with the people saying such a thing. I think you're stupid, but that's a separate matter entirely. :lol:

My wife thinks so too...every time she sees me logged into this forum.

QuoteYou could try a line of argument that we haven't been beaten over the head with yet; a more original approach, if you will. I don't think you've had an original thought in the entire time you've been on this forum, mind you, but I encourage you to try.

Perhaps. But the flip side is also true. Do you think that anyone in this forum has actually caused me to stop and say, "Damn...how do I answer THAT question"?

Don't get me wrong...I'm not all that, and I've been in some forums that required me to buy books, watch videos, and do a lot of research to keep my head above water.

Generally speaking, though, this ain't one of them.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 19, 2016, 01:36:39 PM
Perhaps. But the flip side is also true. Do you think that anyone in this forum has actually caused me to stop and say, "Damn...how do I answer THAT question"?

They evidently have not. And that's fine. Again, speaking only for myself, I haven't really tried to sell you on anything. I'm a skeptic by nature, and generally evaluate ideas more often than I voice my own. I don't think less of you for rejecting the ideas of others here.

However, you also seem to stay within a fairly narrow comfort zone in terms of the arguments you make. You appear to believe that you have this one magic bullet of an argument that totally confirms the rest of your beliefs. You don't appear to have considered that this argument only makes sense in isolation, and that other aspects of your  faith could be demonstrably false to the point of making your pet argument irrelevant.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 19, 2016, 01:36:39 PM
My wife thinks so too...every time she sees me logged into this forum.

Perhaps. But the flip side is also true. Do you think that anyone in this forum has actually caused me to stop and say, "Damn...how do I answer THAT question"?

Don't get me wrong...I'm not all that, and I've been in some forums that required me to buy books, watch videos, and do a lot of research to keep my head above water.

Generally speaking, though, this ain't one of them.

Then why stick around?  I get it--you like being a troll.  Okay.  And a bunch of us like having a chew toy around.  So, no matter what your wife says, stay.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 19, 2016, 02:15:16 PM
Then why stick around?  I get it--you like being a troll.  Okay.  And a bunch of us like having a chew toy around.  So, no matter what your wife says, stay.

Poor wife, if that's true. Hope they didn't (or don't) procreate. It would be a sin to hand down that stupidity to the next generation

Quote from: reasonist on May 19, 2016, 04:20:05 PM
Poor wife, if that's true. Hope they didn't (or don't) procreate. It would be a sin to hand down that stupidity to the next generation

:))))))))))))))))))

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 19, 2016, 01:36:39 PM
My wife thinks so too...every time she sees me logged into this forum.

Perhaps. But the flip side is also true. Do you think that anyone in this forum has actually caused me to stop and say, "Damn...how do I answer THAT question"?

Don't get me wrong...I'm not all that, and I've been in some forums that required me to buy books, watch videos, and do a lot of research to keep my head above water.

Generally speaking, though, this ain't one of them.

You gotta be part Irish ... a gift for blarney ;-)

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on May 19, 2016, 02:01:18 PM
They evidently have not. And that's fine. Again, speaking only for myself, I haven't really tried to sell you on anything. I'm a skeptic by nature, and generally evaluate ideas more often than I voice my own. I don't think less of you for rejecting the ideas of others here.

However, you also seem to stay within a fairly narrow comfort zone in terms of the arguments you make. You appear to believe that you have this one magic bullet of an argument that totally confirms the rest of your beliefs. You don't appear to have considered that this argument only makes sense in isolation, and that other aspects of your  faith could be demonstrably false to the point of making your pet argument irrelevant.

The decision to stick to a narrow range of material is a conscious one.

This is a hostile environment for me, so it is best to focus on a few points that are easily defended.

It's also the best way to avoid playing the forum version of Whack-A-Mole: "Oh, yeah, well what about...?"

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 21, 2016, 05:50:41 PM
The decision to stick to a narrow range of material is a conscious one.

This is a hostile environment for me, so it is best to focus on a few points that are easily defended.

It's also the best way to avoid playing the forum version of Whack-A-Mole: "Oh, yeah, well what about...?"

Oh, now, stop, Randy, you enjoy the fight!

Quote from: marom1963 on May 21, 2016, 06:29:33 PM
Oh, now, stop, Randy, you enjoy the fight!

But has the Pope decided if masochism is a sin?  This was a recurring problem from the time of the Desert Fathers.

Quote from: Baruch on May 21, 2016, 06:38:39 PM
But has the Pope decided if masochism is a sin?  This was a recurring problem from the time of the Desert Fathers.

Well, if you're enjoying it - it must be a sin!  :whip:

Quote from: marom1963 on May 21, 2016, 06:29:33 PM
Oh, now, stop, Randy, you enjoy the fight!

Absolutely!

Though I liken it more to playing blitz chess, actually.

And even so, I try to stick to well-known openings and defenses.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 21, 2016, 08:57:33 PM
Absolutely!

Though I liken it more to playing blitz chess, actually.

And even so, I try to stick to well-known openings and defenses.

Yeah, but chess does not have fictional pieces.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 21, 2016, 09:06:13 PM
Yeah, but chess does not have fictional pieces.

The only fictional pieces before us are your "arguments" against Christianity.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 21, 2016, 09:31:13 PM
The only fictional pieces before us are my "arguments" in favor of Christianity.

FTFY

I can be immature as well, Randy. [emoji5]

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 21, 2016, 09:06:13 PMYeah, but chess does not have fictional pieces.

More like playing blackjack against a guy with invisible, intangible cards.  And wouldn't you know it, he says he's never lost a hand.  He's also likely never played a hand.

Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on May 21, 2016, 11:29:19 PM
FTFY

I can be immature as well, Randy.

None of us is alone in that regard. (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif)

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

QuoteThe Christian Era and the Last Great Revision of Judaism

30 C.E. to appx. 73 C.E

The conflict between the Hellenism and the traditions of ethnic Judaism was nowhere more obvious than in the northern part of Palestine, which had been so often subject to conquest and which, being on the major trade route between Asia Minor and the Transjordan, was constantly subjected to foreign influence. This northern region apparently didn't even consider itself to be Jewish, but rather a separate nation that had been annexed, apparently involuntarily, by the Maccabean kings of Israel. So here you have Hellenized Semitics under the influence and control of Jewish kings, looking elsewhere for philosophical guidance. It was a volatile mix.
Into this little region, called Galilee, was born a stubborn iconoclast. He resented the Roman occupation but accepted its rule. He was an intellect who understood at least the rudiments of the Cynic school of Greek philosophy and the complex theology of the Semitic Jews around him. But he would have none of it. He felt that there had to be a better way to live. He grew up a suburb of the capital of Galilee, in a place called Nazareth. His name was Jesus.

At least, that's the mythology that has grown up around this figure. For all his influence on the world, there's better evidence that he never even existed than that he did. We have absolutely no reliable evidence, from secular sources, that Jesus ever lived, or that any of the events surrounding his life as described in the four Gospels ever happened.

Indeed, when scholars apply the Negative Evidence Principle, it begins to look like the Jesus we know from the New Testament is the result of late first-century mythmaking.

The Negative Evidence Principle is, of course, not foolproof. It is not a proof in itself, but is rather a guideline, a good rule of thumb. How useful and reliable it is, of course, is subject to debate among logicians. Here's how the N.E.P. works - it states that you have good reason for not believing in a proposition if the following three principles are satisfied: First, all of the evidence supporting the proposition has been shown to be unreliable. Second, there is no evidence supporting the proposition when the evidence should be there if the proposition is true. And third, a thorough and exhaustive search has been made for supporting evidence where it should be found.

As for the first point, the only somewhat reliable, secular evidence we have for the life of Jesus comes from two very brief passages in the works of Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian. And Josephus was a prolific writer - he frequently wrote several pages on the trial and execution of individual common thieves, but on Jesus, he is silent except for two paragraphs, one of which is a known interpolation, and the other is highly suspect. Other references to Jesus in secular writings are ambiguous at best, or known to be later interpolations, or both. The earliest references to Jesus in the rabbinical literature come from the second century, even though known historical figures such as John the Baptist merit considerable discussion, even though his impact on Judaism was minimal. There are no references to Jesus in any of the Roman histories during his presumed lifetime. That he should be so thoroughly ignored is unlikely given the impact the gospel writers said he had on the events and politics of the Jewish kingdom.

So we have to turn to Christian literature for help.

At this point, caution is called for in examining first century Christian literature. This caution is made necessary by the fact that during this era, it was not considered wrong to write your own material and ascribe it to someone else, someone you consider your philosophical mentor, in whose name and style you are writing. Indeed, not only was this a common practice, but it was actually a skill taught in the schools of the day. This practice has made modern scholarship enormously difficult in dealing with who actually wrote the New Testament books and when. The problem, though difficult, is not insoluble, and modern scholarship has developed techniques which have been applied to early Christian writings, to find out who is saying what, when and why. When these techniques are applied to these early Christian writings, the results have been quite surprising.

The writings of Paul accepted as genuinely his (Galatians I and II and Thessalonians I and II, Corinthians, Romans, Philemon, Phillipians, and possibly Colossians) are by far the most pristine of any early Christian literature we have. They were probably written beginning in the fifth decade of the first century - well after the events of Jesus' life. When the letters are examined in isolation, it becomes apparent that Paul was ignorant of the doctrine of the virgin birth, that he never spoke in terms of having lived in Jesus' time, nor does he mention that any of his mentors were contemporaries of Jesus, nor that Jesus worked any miracles and he appparently did not associate the death of Jesus with the trial before Pilate. Only in Galatians 1:19 does he make reference to a contemporary Jesus, and then only in terms of James being the "Lord's brother." The use of the term "Lord's" even makes that single reference somewhat questionable to scholars, as the word "Lord's" did not have currency until the late 2nd. century. So the Pauline letters, at least the reliably Pauline letters, aren't good witnesses for a Jesus of the first half of the first century. What makes this particularly interesting, is that other non-Canonical early Christian pre-Gospel literature make the very same omissions.

There you go, Randy. More reading material. Big picture. Keep reading.

Quote from: stromboli on May 22, 2016, 09:31:52 AM
The writings of Paul accepted as genuinely his (Galatians I and II and Thessalonians I and II, Corinthians, Romans, Philemon, Phillipians, and possibly Colossians) are by far the most pristine of any early Christian literature we have. They were probably written beginning in the fifth decade of the first century - well after the events of Jesus' life. When the letters are examined in isolation, it becomes apparent that Paul was ignorant of the doctrine of the virgin birth, that he never spoke in terms of having lived in Jesus' time, nor does he mention that any of his mentors were contemporaries of Jesus, nor that Jesus worked any miracles and he apparently did not associate the death of Jesus with the trial before Pilate. Only in Galatians 1:19 does he make reference to a contemporary Jesus, and then only in terms of James being the "Lord's brother." The use of the term "Lord's" even makes that single reference somewhat questionable to scholars, as the word "Lord's" did not have currency until the late 2nd. century. So the Pauline letters, at least the reliably Pauline letters, aren't good witnesses for a Jesus of the first half of the first century. What makes this particularly interesting, is that other non-Canonical early Christian pre-Gospel literature make the very same omissions.

Wouldn't you benefit more from actually reading the NT yourself rather than following guides who are misrepresenting it to you?

Three points from the passage you quoted:

1. There are genuine writings of Paul. Keep that in mind as you contemplate Jesus Mythicism.

2. Concerning the Virgin Birth "absent" in Paul's letters:

QuoteWhy Didn’t Paul Mention the Virgin Conception?
http://coldcasechristianity.com/2015/why-didnt-paul-mention-the-virgin-conception/

Paul’s Silence is Not Enough

We need to be very careful about drawing conclusions from silence. Paul may not have mentioned the virgin conception simply because it was widely understood or assumed. Paul may also have been silent because it was not the focus or purpose of his letters (which are often devoted to issues related to the Church). Remember that Paul was a contemporary of Luke (who was one of the two authors who wrote extensively about the conception of Jesus). Paul appears to be very familiar with Luke’s’ gospel (he quotes Luke in 1 Timothy 5:17-18 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). If Paul disagreed with Luke’s account of the conception, we would expect to hear Paul say something about it in his letters. Paul never refuted or openly questioned the claims of Luke regarding the “virgin conception”.

Paul’s Statements May Be More Than Enough

Critics also cite two verses in Paul’s letter as specific proof that Paul was not aware of Jesus’ virgin conception. The first is found in Paul’s letter to the Galatians:

Galatians 4:4-5
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

Paul says that Jesus was “born of a woman” and not “born of a virgin”. Critics have argued that this is proof that Paul was unaware of the virgin conception. But this is not necessarily the case. Many scholars have observed that the expression, “born of a woman, born under the Law” implies that Jesus had no earthly father because Paul curiously chose to omit any mention of Joseph in this passage. It was part of the Hebrew culture and tradition to cite the father alone when describing any genealogy, yet Paul ignored Joseph and cited Mary alone, as if to indicate that Joseph was not Jesus’ father. In addition to this passage in the letter to the Galatians, critics also cite the openly lines of Paul’s letter to the Romans to make a case against Paul’s knowledge of the virgin conception:

Romans 1:1-4
Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord

Critics claim that Paul’s statement that Jesus was a “descendant of David according to the flesh” reveals the fact that Paul believed Joseph, a descendant of David, was the physical father of Jesus. But careful examination of this letter leaves open the possibility that Paul may simply have been referring to the fact that Mary was herself was also a descendant of David. Mary’s relationship to David was important, because Joseph was a descendant of Jeconiah, the King of Judah described in 2 Kings 24:8. Jeconiah was cursed by God:

Jeremiah 22:30
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Write this man down childless, A man who will not prosper in his days ; For no man of his descendants will prosper Sitting on the throne of David Or ruling again in Judah.’ “

According to this passage, no descendant of Jeconiah would ever sit on the throne of David. If Jesus was a direct descendant of Joseph, he would be excluded according to this curse, as Joseph was in the line of Jeconiah. But Paul consistently omits Joseph when describing the genealogy of Jesus. In addition, Paul later refers to Jesus as the “son of God” in the same passage from the letter to the Romans. Paul often used this expression to describe Jesus, and Paul was consistent and clear about Jesus’ divinity throughout his letters. If Paul believed that Jesus was born of a human mother and father, we would expect Paul to describe how a normal man, born of human parents, could be God Himself. Paul never does that, and this is consistent with the fact that Paul was aware of the virgin conception.

Paul’s writings simply cannot be used in isolation to determine what he knew (or didn’t know) about the virgin conception. It’s hard to believe that a man familiar with Luke’s gospel would be ignorant of the birth narrative Luke wrote.

3. Jesus before Pilate:

1 Timothy 6:12-14
12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ

Jesus didn't turn on his followers to the authorities, even under torture.  Usually when faced with a Roman authority, people squealed like stuck pigs, even implicating their own mother ... out of terror.

Please wake me up when the apologist(s) have discovered ONE falsifiable claim that we can TEST with the scientific method and either prove or disprove with empirical evidence.
In the meantime I trust the people who have a bit more grey cells than all of us. They are not infallible either but they sure have more information and knowledge than the flock.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7VTdzuY7Y


I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false.
Lawrence M. Krauss

The opposite of religious dogma. Religion only wants to prove claims to be true (without empirical evidence) at all cost.

Quote from: reasonist on May 22, 2016, 08:26:42 PM
The opposite of religious dogma. Religion only wants to prove claims to be true (without empirical evidence) at all cost.

Empirical evidence? How does a historian repeat something that occurred in the past?

Does this mean that historians cannot know what happened hundreds or thousands of years ago?

Quote“We have no direct access to the past. Once something happens, it is over and done with. There is no way to repeat a past event all over again. This makes historical evidence different from the kinds of evidence used in the hard sciences. In science, you can repeat an experiment. In fact, you have to repeat the experiment. Once an experiment is repeated sufficiently with the same results, a kind of predictive probability is established that the same results will obtain if the experiment is conducted one more time….”

“With history, though, we don’t have the luxury of being able to repeat an event once it happens and so we look for other kinds of evidence. How do we know if we’ve proved something historically? Technically, we cannot prove a single thing historically. All we can do is give enough evidence to convince enough people (hopefully nearly everyone) about a certain historical claim, for example that Lincoln really did deliver the Gettysburg Address or that Julius Caesar really did cross the Rubicon. If you want to demonstrate that either historical event actually occurred, you need to marshal some convincing evidence. In neither of these cases, of course, is there really much doubt….”

“Historians cannot repeat the past and so have to base their judgments on evidence that establishes most probably what happened.” (Ehrman, Bart, Did Jesus Exist?, 37-39.)

You not understand. You alien?

Your cult claims the repeated suspension of the laws of physics through miracles. Name one of them that we can take to a lab and repeat. One that we can test through the mathematical method. One which we have tangible evidence, such as fossils, or find a talking snake, a unicorn or cockatrice. Anything that we can disseminate, dissect and/or repeat.

Proving bronze age scribes' truth with more scribblings and claims doesn't cut it. If you can't come up with any, you practice racketeering and deception.

Quote from: reasonist on May 22, 2016, 09:48:07 PM
You not understand. You alien?

Your cult claims the repeated suspension of the laws of physics through miracles. Name one of them that we can take to a lab and repeat. One that we can test through the mathematical method. One which we have tangible evidence, such as fossils, or find a talking snake, a unicorn or cockatrice. Anything that we can disseminate, dissect and/or repeat.

Proving bronze age scribes' truth with more scribblings and claims doesn't cut it. If you can't come up with any, you practice racketeering and deception.

How can anyone here in the material universe constrained by the laws of nature replicate an event which is supernatural in a laboratory?

If anyone could do such a thing, then it would not longer be supernatural, would it?

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 07:14:16 AM
How can anyone here in the material universe constrained by the laws of nature replicate an event which is supernatural in a laboratory?

If anyone could do such a thing, then it would not longer be supernatural, would it?

There ya go! Finally the light came on! Now you know why we don't believe in this mumbo jumbo. Whatever science proposes can be tested and replicated/calculated repeatedly, which cannot be done with any of the religious claims. Science works with observation, you work with revelation. The first has verifiable facts, the latter needs blind faith. The first is the search for truth, the latter is obscurantism.
Despite your attempts to convert people on an atheist forum, I owe you a great deal of gratitude. I can't speak for anybody else here, but you prompted me to do some additional research and digging in and that had the opposite effect from what you intended. Anybody with an objective mind has to come to the same conclusion: religion is a man made racket.
The difference between us is that I (we) have an open mind to any new information. I'd like to see a loving, caring entity that protects us and helps us in time of need. Your god is a cruel monster and doesn't deserve a thought wasted, but a loving sky daddy would be cool. But such an entity would have interfered long time ago and saved us from stupid superstition.
So if you would be as open to new evidence, we wouldn't have this debate. But what you are doing is defending nonsense at any cost. How is it working for you?
See, it's not who wins or loses this exchange. It's about who has the truth through facts. You certainly don't have any, which makes you credulous and gullible.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 07:14:16 AM
How can anyone here in the material universe constrained by the laws of nature replicate an event which is supernatural in a laboratory?

If anyone could do such a thing, then it would not longer be supernatural, would it?

Supernatural=fiction.  And in each and every case--FACT!  If even one tiny piece of evidence could be produced, quick like the Easter Bunny, get to Skeptic Mag and claim your million!!!

Quote from: reasonist on May 23, 2016, 08:20:30 AM
There ya go! Finally the light came on! Now you know why we don't believe in this mumbo jumbo. Whatever science proposes can be tested and replicated/calculated repeatedly, which cannot be done with any of the religious claims. Science works with observation, you work with revelation. The first has verifiable facts, the latter needs blind faith. The first is the search for truth, the latter is obscurantism.

So, your position is not simply one of science but of scientism - the belief that science can and will eventually explain everything.

This is a false view. Science simply cannot explain everything, and this is especially true in those areas which are not natural or material; in other words, the supernatural.

QuoteDespite your attempts to convert people on an atheist forum, I owe you a great deal of gratitude. I can't speak for anybody else here, but you prompted me to do some additional research and digging in and that had the opposite effect from what you intended. Anybody with an objective mind has to come to the same conclusion: religion is a man made racket.

Dialogue is good, and I thank those who have pushed me harder for answers to the objections of atheists. (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/ani/ani_tiphat.gif)

QuoteThe difference between us is that I (we) have an open mind to any new information. I'd like to see a loving, caring entity that protects us and helps us in time of need. Your god is a cruel monster and doesn't deserve a thought wasted, but a loving sky daddy would be cool. But such an entity would have interfered long time ago and saved us from stupid superstition.

It is your opinion that God is a cruel monster, but what is this based upon? Your own experience? Isn't that purely subjective and non-empirical data that cannot be replicated in a laboratory? Or is it based upon your interpretation of the Old Testament which, unless you claim infallibility for yourself, could be false?

I'm kinda leaning toward the latter of those two options, and I'm pretty sure I could explain the passages from the OT that trouble you in a more positive light than you have seen in the past. This may be helpful to you.

QuoteSo if you would be as open to new evidence, we wouldn't have this debate. But what you are doing is defending nonsense at any cost. How is it working for you?

That is unclear. I enjoy what I'm doing here, and I get a lot out of it personally. Whether any of the seeds I'm planting in the minds of those reading my posts will bear fruit in the future may not be known in this life.

QuoteSee, it's not who wins or loses this exchange. It's about who has the truth through facts. You certainly don't have any, which makes you credulous and gullible.

I suppose it depends on what you define as a "fact". For example:

• it is a fact that the Pilate Stone confirms the existence of Pontius Pilate thereby corroborating what was only known through scripture for 1900 years.
• It is a fact that we have nearly 30,000 manuscripts which enable us to reconstruct the original texts of the gospels with a stunning degree of certainty.
• It is a fact that the Telephone Game analogy often cited by atheists in their attempts to discredit the gospels does not apply to the writings of the New Testament.
• It is a fact that while there are numerous hypotheses about what happened to Jesus after he was nailed to the cross, none of them have the explanatory scope and depth of the resurrection hypothesis.

I could go on and on. The "facts" which I "don't have" are all contained in the OP's of my various threads.

Oh, yeah...I have facts. It's just easier for you to ignore them than it is for you to actually formulate coherent refutations of them.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 09:45:11 AM

Oh, yeah...I have facts. It's just easier for you to pretend otherwise than it is for you to actually formulate coherent refutations of them.

???????????????????????????????

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 23, 2016, 09:47:22 AM
???????????????????????????????

You have a question?

Hawkins’ statement in that video makes no sense.  "Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there was no time for god to create the universe."

The whole premise is that God predates and exists outside of the universe. Stating that God would have been constrained by time, which doesn’t exist without the universe, makes no sense if God exists outside the universe.  This logic is so obviously flawed I doubt he really believes it himself.  It makes me wonder what motivated him to state that.  It could be that as a physicist, he refuses to acknowledge anything can exist outside of our universe.  However, physicists propose other universes so I doubt that explains his statement.   
Even if you disagree with the premise of God, I think you have to admit his logic is flawed.  It would be interesting to hear him explain it.

Also, we have no idea what happened before the Big Bang and we will never know.  There is no data prior to the Big Bang so they just assume everything stated with that, but physicists really have no clue. 

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 23, 2016, 09:47:22 AM
???????????????????????????????

LOL! He always wants to prove my point...and succeeds!!!

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 09:48:28 AM
You have a question?

Yes.  I question everything about you.

Here is a guy who can explain better than most the difference between science and faith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6T39bz7A4w

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 23, 2016, 10:43:28 AM
Yes.  I question everything about you.

When we first began interacting in these threads, I thought it was amusing to respond in kind to your personal attacks, but recently, I've grown bored with this. Behaving like squabbling children on an unsupervised playground is not terribly conducive to the genuine exchange of ideas, is it?

Why don't we try talking to one another instead of about one another for a change?

Quote from: u196533 on May 23, 2016, 09:52:48 AM
Hawkins’ statement in that video makes no sense.  "Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there was no time for god to create the universe."

The whole premise is that God predates and exists outside of the universe. Stating that God would have been constrained by time, which doesn’t exist without the universe, makes no sense if God exists outside the universe.  This logic is so obviously flawed I doubt he really believes it himself.  It makes me wonder what motivated him to state that.  It could be that as a physicist, he refuses to acknowledge anything can exist outside of our universe.  However, physicists propose other universes so I doubt that explains his statement.   
Even if you disagree with the premise of God, I think you have to admit his logic is flawed.  It would be interesting to hear him explain it.

Also, we have no idea what happened before the Big Bang and we will never know.  There is no data prior to the Big Bang so they just assume everything stated with that, but physicists really have no clue. 

I don't pretend to speak for Hawking, however my translation of his statement is that time is a human construct. The big bang gives us a beginning which our stone age brains need to comprehend. There probably were infinite big bangs before the last one. There are also (probably) infinite universes. All of this is impossible for us to comprehend. Infinity itself does not exist in our lives. Everything has a beginning and an end. In this sense Hawking might allude to the time before our big bang, which means infinity has no concept of time. So there was no "time" for a god to create. Just my translation. I am not a physicist and I don't pretend to have all the answers like the believers.
In any case, none of the unanswered questions can imply a super being that 'created' the universe(s), that interferes with our lives, that answers prayers, that doesn't give a damn about natural disasters etc.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 10:51:26 AM

Why don't we try talking to one another instead of about one another for a change?

Of course you are the adult here Randy.  I know my ideas and ideals are very childish.  Most of us here are childish.  So, Randy, why are you here?

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 23, 2016, 11:29:57 AM
Of course you are the adult here Randy.  I know my ideas and ideals are very childish.  Most of us here are childish.  So, Randy, why are you here?

To explain and defend the Christian faith.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 11:40:24 AM
To explain and defend the Christian faith.

Abject failure.

Quote from: u196533 on May 23, 2016, 09:52:48 AM
Hawkins’ statement in that video makes no sense.  "Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there was no time for god to create the universe."

The whole premise is that God predates and exists outside of the universe. Stating that God would have been constrained by time, which doesn’t exist without the universe, makes no sense if God exists outside the universe.  This logic is so obviously flawed I doubt he really believes it himself.  It makes me wonder what motivated him to state that.  It could be that as a physicist, he refuses to acknowledge anything can exist outside of our universe.  However, physicists propose other universes so I doubt that explains his statement.   
Even if you disagree with the premise of God, I think you have to admit his logic is flawed.  It would be interesting to hear him explain it.

Also, we have no idea what happened before the Big Bang and we will never know.  There is no data prior to the Big Bang so they just assume everything stated with that, but physicists really have no clue.

I believe Hawking's main point was at the end. That it is easier to explain everything without gods. That there is nothing supernatural to explain anything that is natural.

There was nothing before the Big Bang. Time is change, and nothing changed until the Big Bang, which is the beginning for our world.

The universe does not need a god to be. And when one can grasp at the enormity of it, only complete twits would think a god would exist with such a level of incompetence that it would make laws about a woman's menstrual cycle or be defeated by a human army because they had iron wheels. LOLOL

They sure think they have a bang up argument but need a ladder to climb up to stupid.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 11:40:24 AM
To explain and defend the Christian faith.

I agree that the 'christian faith' needs defending--and explaining.  But why here?  Frustration feels good?  Or is this more of the 'hair shirt' type of cleansing torture?  I really don't get it.

Quote from: Blackleaf on May 23, 2016, 01:04:13 PM
I believe Hawking's main point was at the end. That it is easier to explain everything without gods. That there is nothing supernatural to explain anything that is natural.

There was nothing before the Big Bang. Time is change, and nothing changed until the Big Bang, which is the beginning for our world.

They cannot explain source of the energy for the Big Bang or how it consolidated into one point (the ultimate violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics).

We have no information prior to the Big Bang.  We don't know that there was nothing before the Big Bang.  It is possible there were other bangs which would explain dark matter/energy.  I tend to believe there was nothing, but we'll never know.  Physicists want to condense everything into a few pages of equations so they won't openly admit there are things we'll never know.

His logic is totally flawed, and I wonder why.  He is too smart to not see such an obvious flaw.

Quote from: u196533 on May 23, 2016, 02:34:05 PM
Physicists want to condense everything into a few pages of equations so they won't openly admit there are things we'll never know.

I think physicists would be the first to admit they don't know everything.  But it is far more ridiculous to start throwing gods into the equation when there is absolutely nothing that suggests the need for them. Why would anyone do that? Why not throw a farting turtle into the equation? Equally stupid.

We would have never gotten past goat herding if gods were real.

Quote from: u196533 on May 23, 2016, 02:34:05 PM
They cannot explain source of the energy for the Big Bang or how it consolidated into one point (the ultimate violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics).

We have no information prior to the Big Bang.  We don't know that there was nothing before the Big Bang.  It is possible there were other bangs which would explain dark matter/energy.  I tend to believe there was nothing, but we'll never know.  Physicists want to condense everything into a few pages of equations so they won't openly admit there are things we'll never know.

His logic is totally flawed, and I wonder why.  He is too smart to not see such an obvious flaw.

He just operates on a different level than us. The 'source' for energy is only a valid question if there was nothing before. Surely you know that energy and matter are exchangeable, so if there was mass before the big bang, you get all the energy needed. But admittedly there are lots of questions we cannot answer yet and many we never will. I can live with that. I can't see an atom with the naked eye either and it won't keep me up at night. We live in what Dawkins calls 'middle world' where we cannot see (and therefore comprehend) leptons and quarks for example, to the infinite large (no end to the universe(s) and yet we know they exist. Unless our brains evolve drastically, we will never understand certain things. Can we grasp the distance of 14 billion light years? The speed of light? We can explain it with numbers but that doesn't mean we understand it as a conceptual image. But since we always need an answer, true or false, even a false answer is better than none. We have no idea how things came to be as they are in the universe but we shouldn't explain them with a celestial overlord. That's a cheap cop out. I can live a normal life without understanding infinity. I can vaguely explain it: something that has no beginning and no end, but to truly understand it is impossible. Delving into the supernatural doesn't explain anything either; it's a proposition not an explanation. I'd rather have no answer than a miraculous one.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 23, 2016, 02:06:23 PM
I agree that the 'christian faith' needs defending--and explaining.  But why here?  Frustration feels good?  Or is this more of the 'hair shirt' type of cleansing torture?  I really don't get it.

Arguing with Protestants about infant baptism and transubstantiation gets old after awhile.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 03:55:57 PM
Arguing with Protestants about infant baptism and transubstantiation gets old after awhile.

Really?  Yeah, I can imagine.  I've had my times on various forums, so I know the feeling.  So, you're just bored.  But the fact that christians of various stripes can argue about minute details such as baptism or transubstantiation underlines one of the reasons I don't believe in any god--not just yours.  But yours created mankind after "us" and "we" found the creation good.  I've often wondered who those were in Gen. 1--; but anyway, I digress.  So, your god created humans to look like god (or gods according to Gen. 1).  Why only in the Mid East?  Why is this all such a mystery--one so convoluted that literally thousands of christian sects have evolved from those writings?  Why not make the message crystal clear, and make it for all time, for all when and for all where--so that even those isolated tribes deep within the Amazon Jungle would know of this power, his love, his rules?  Why are missionaries even needed?  Why churches?  Don't tell me that god is not capable of doing that.  Don't tell me that it is just free will--can't be free will if all are not equally informed.  All this just smacks of human creation.  So far, that's what I have found no matter where in christian history I look--humans playing power politics.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 23, 2016, 07:18:37 PM
Really?  Yeah, I can imagine.  I've had my times on various forums, so I know the feeling.  So, you're just bored. 

Bored with that, yes. Bored with learning the weaknesses of atheist arguments, no. I'm like a kid with a new video game...exploring and leveling up as I master new skills and material.

QuoteBut the fact that christians of various stripes can argue about minute details such as baptism or transubstantiation underlines one of the reasons I don't believe in any god--not just yours. 

That's like saying that you don't like women because they don't where the same perfume and shade of lipstick. Christians may not all agree on the filioque, but we are all down for the resurrection.

QuoteSo, your god created humans to look like god (or gods according to Gen. 1).  Why only in the Mid East? 

Simple. He molded a relatively small group of people in preparation for the incarnation, and that takes time.

QuoteWhy is this all such a mystery--one so convoluted that literally thousands of christian sects have evolved from those writings?  Why not make the message crystal clear, and make it for all time, for all when and for all where--so that even those isolated tribes deep within the Amazon Jungle would know of this power, his love, his rules?  Why are missionaries even needed?  Why churches?  Don't tell me that god is not capable of doing that.  Don't tell me that it is just free will--can't be free will if all are not equally informed.  All this just smacks of human creation.  So far, that's what I have found no matter where in christian history I look--humans playing power politics.

God is capable, but he chose to covenant Himself with a single people, the Jews, in order to prepare for the Incarnation.

Then God established the Church as an offshoot of the original covenant, and commissioned the Church to take the message to the rest of the world. Just as God gives a man and a woman the ability to share in His creative process when they produce a child, so He allows us to participate in His plan of salvation, also.

It's worked amazingly well given the success of Christianity over the past 2,000 years. Perhaps He knew what He was doing after all.

The original covenant was a lie from a book.  A new covenant based on that ... is going to be a joke.  The Jews and G-d have proven repeatedly, that there is no original covenant.  The Christians and G-d have proven repeatedly, that there is no new covenant either.  The institutional religion of both parties, has been mostly in vain.

"But yours created mankind after "us" and "we" found the creation good." ... not hard to understand in the original Hebrew, and if you get past the lies of the rabbis.  Originally one of the names of G-d was "Elohim" which is a masculine/generic plural.  This was converted semantically but not grammatically ... into singular.  This happened after the return of the Babylonian Exiles, who invented Torah Judaism while in Babylon.  Before the Babylonian Exile, almost all Jews were polytheists, not monotheists.  The interpretation, if not the words, of scripture had to be edited to fit in with the new ideology.

Note ... in Hebrew and many other languages ... the male gender is not only masculine, but gender indefinite.  There is only a specifically feminine form to apply, if all members of the group of things or people being discussed, are feminine.  Otherwise masculine gender is the default ... as it still is in the old word "mankind" meaning people in general, not just men.  There are a number of such curiosities in Biblical Hebrew, that betray profound agendas.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 03:55:57 PM
Arguing with Protestants about infant baptism and transubstantiation gets old after awhile.

Arguing about infant baptism is so infantile ... bwaaaaa

Transubstantiation developed in the Early Middle Ages ... it isn't Biblical, except that Pagans falsely accused early Christians of being cannibals.  Are you saying the pagans were right?

You know you're up shit creek when you're a christian and the resident theist tells you you're full of crap.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 23, 2016, 07:36:53 PM
God is capable, but he chose to covenant Himself with a single people, the Jews, in order to prepare for the Incarnation.

An observation, if I may, Randy.  You are a vain, small and arrogant sort of a person. 

And it is simply amazing how you can read the mind of your god and just know what it is he planned and how he planned it.  Just more proof that your god is a fiction crafted by man.

Quote from: Baruch on May 23, 2016, 07:47:50 PM
"But yours created mankind after "us" and "we" found the creation good." ... not hard to understand in the original Hebrew, and if you get past the lies of the rabbis.  Originally one of the names of G-d was "Elohim" which is a masculine/generic plural.  This was converted semantically but not grammatically ... into singular.  This happened after the return of the Babylonian Exiles, who invented Torah Judaism while in Babylon.  Before the Babylonian Exile, almost all Jews were polytheists, not monotheists.  The interpretation, if not the words, of scripture had to be edited to fit in with the new ideology.

Note ... in Hebrew and many other languages ... the male gender is not only masculine, but gender indefinite.  There is only a specifically feminine form to apply, if all members of the group of things or people being discussed, are feminine.  Otherwise masculine gender is the default ... as it still is in the old word "mankind" meaning people in general, not just men.  There are a number of such curiosities in Biblical Hebrew, that betray profound agendas.

Wasn't that a bad turn in human history when the Messianists replaced the Hellenists.

Quote from: reasonist on May 23, 2016, 08:20:30 AM
There ya go! Finally the light came on! Now you know why we don't believe in this mumbo jumbo. Whatever science proposes can be tested and replicated/calculated repeatedly, which cannot be done with any of the religious claims. Science works with observation, you work with revelation. The first has verifiable facts, the latter needs blind faith. The first is the search for truth, the latter is obscurantism.
Despite your attempts to convert people on an atheist forum, I owe you a great deal of gratitude. I can't speak for anybody else here, but you prompted me to do some additional research and digging in and that had the opposite effect from what you intended. Anybody with an objective mind has to come to the same conclusion: religion is a man made racket.
The difference between us is that I (we) have an open mind to any new information. I'd like to see a loving, caring entity that protects us and helps us in time of need. Your god is a cruel monster and doesn't deserve a thought wasted, but a loving sky daddy would be cool. But such an entity would have interfered long time ago and saved us from stupid superstition.
So if you would be as open to new evidence, we wouldn't have this debate. But what you are doing is defending nonsense at any cost. How is it working for you?
See, it's not who wins or loses this exchange. It's about who has the truth through facts. You certainly don't have any, which makes you credulous and gullible.

I wish I could like this more than once. If idiots like Randy could read this and comprehend it rather than ignore it and deflect, they'd be much less idiotic.

Science is falsifiable, with scientists trying to prove themselves wrong in order to reach a more reliable conclusion. Apologists already know their conclusion, and they search for whatever "evidence" they can find to support their beliefs.

Scientists do not regard their findings as "facts." They do not prove anything; they support their hypotheses. Apologists are too arrogant to see the difference, even when it's repeatedly pointed out to them.

The differences between atheists and Christians are similar. Atheists are not biased in their lack of belief. Many would like to believe that there is a loving God watching over them, but they look around and find no reason at all to believe that such a god exists. Christians, on the other hand, are convinced that they are right, and are not even open to the possibility that they could be wrong. Each one creates their god in their own image, picking whatever verses from the Bible are convenient for them and ignoring the rest, hence why there are so many denominations. To a clear minded atheist, this is obvious, but each denomination is filled with people who are 100% sure that THEIR interpretation is the right one.

Quote from: reasonist on May 23, 2016, 10:35:04 PM
Wasn't that a bad turn in human history when the Messianists replaced the Hellenists.

The devil is in the details, or course ... about 400 years worth, the inter-testamental period nobody talks about.

The Hellenists got labeled the bad guys in the Hannukah legend.  The winners write the history (Maccabees book 1, 2, 3).  The Maccabees were a bunch of Hamas terrorists ... though one has to admit that the Greek government in Antioch went out of its way to piss everyone off.  Until then, in Antioch and Alexandria in particular, there were growing populations of Greek speaking Jews, or at least bilingual in Aramaic and Greek.  This had developed strongly after Alexander's conquest and for the following 200 years.  In the meantime, there were Buddhist missionaries and Hindu fakirs in Antioch and Alexandria.  You didn't even have to travel to Babylon or India to meet some.

With the rise of the Maccabees, there was a long guerrilla war between Syria and Judea.  Judea managed to get some autonomy, because Syria developed problems elsewhere, even Roman problems.  Pretty soon Syria was a Roman province (that is why Obama is attacking it), and the autonomy of Judea became a Roman problem (see modern Israel).  As soon as Jew was fighting Jew, the Romans came in and brokered the convention, in their own favor.  Shortly afterward, they also did the same to a much larger protectorate, Egypt.  So now the three largest areas of Judaism, outside of Babylon, were Roman occupied.

There were recurring problems of course, leading to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Jewish-Roman wars.  In the 1st Jewish-Roman war and 3rd Jewish-Roman war, the Hellenizers were again on the wrong side, collaborators.  In the first war Galilee was ravaged and Jerusalem destroyed.  In the 2nd Jewish-Roman war, the Romans had temporarily gotten as far as the Persian Gulf, and started interfering in Babylon.  But it didn't last, thus a large group of anti-Roman, pro-Persian, anti-Hellenizer Jews were left intact for later fun and games (see Babylonian Talmud).  Elsewhere in that war, the Hellenizers were the target of Rome, particularly in Alexandria where they were destroyed.  The miracle of Hannukah and false messiahs was a gift that kept on giving ... so there had to be a 3rd Jewish-Roman war that destroyed Jerusalem a second time.

By this time, Gentiles in general and Romans in particular were pretty anti-Jewish for good reasons.  Surviving Jews after the 1st Roman-Jewish war, concentrated north of Jerusalem in Galilee ... and started the Jerusalem Talmud, which was never finished, and started the Jewish calendar we have today in the 4th century CE.  Once Rome went Christian, the Romans had an additional reason to hate Jews, and the Jews in Galilee and Antioch were suppressed but not massacred.  Work on the Jerusalem Talmud stopped, but the version on the Babylon Talmud was continued, out of Roman reach.  From 400 CE until 650 CE ... the Jews in Antioch were quiet, not wanting to get massacred by the Antioch Christians (ironically this is where they were first called Christians ... a Greek term of derision, meaning Messianic Maniac ... not unlike how the group that William Penn was part of became known as Quakers.  Pretty soon the Muslims arrived, taking over Babylon and Antioch, and eventually building a new capital in Baghdad, not far from Babylon.  Jews did quite a bit better under Islam than under Christianity, being seen as the same ethnicity as the Arabs, just inferior cousins.  And Aramaic is similar to Arabic ... though Hellenizers again were seen as a fifth column, because the Roman Empire was now Greek, not Latin.  Christian anti-Semitism was enhanced by the attacks of the Arabs, and by the presence of Jewish communities in those parts of the old Roman Empire that weren't Muslim.

In summary, there were Jewish Greek speakers in declining numbers all the way to the end of the 20th century.  But back in the day, most of the messianics weren't Hellenizers, they were Palestinian Jews, not unlike Hamas.  In the 1st and 3rd Jewish-Roman wars they were exterminated while awaiting miracles that never came ... because of the spin doctoring about Hannukah.  The Hellenizer messianics were pro-Roman and pacifist ... aka Pauline ... they were still guilty of a felony though ... because it was illegal to create private clubs, even religious ones, without the support of the pagan government, which views all private activity with suspicion.  Normal pagan ritual was done in public, in the open.  Not privately in someone's house church.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 23, 2016, 10:34:13 PM
An observation, if I may, Randy.  You are a vain, small and arrogant sort of a person. 

And it is simply amazing how you can read the mind of your god and just know what it is he planned and how he planned it.  Just more proof that your god is a fiction crafted by man.

What I know of this comes from reading what God has said on the matter in the scriptures. No mind reading is required.

And more ad hominems, Mike?

"He just operates on a different level than us. The 'source' for energy is only a valid question if there was nothing before. Surely you know that energy and matter are exchangeable, so if there was mass before the big bang, you get all the energy needed."

Just because he operates on a different level doesn't mean he can piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.  His logic is so flawed I doubt he believes it himself.  That video is like an infomercial of a celebrity endorsing a political candidate. 

Yes, converting all that matter could give you the energy needed.  (It still begs the question of the source.)  Surely you know that condensing all of that energy into a single point would be the ultimate violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  That would clearly be supernatural.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 24, 2016, 07:32:00 AM
What I know of this comes from reading what God has said on the matter in the scriptures. No mind reading is required.

And more ad hominems, Mike?

You can't seem to get through your thick skull that I hold none of the assumptions about your god, your jesus or your religion.  I reject them all as fictional or not good.  So, reading from a fictional book about a fictional god does not inform any of my thoughts or actions. Your beliefs and faith has only served to entrench my thoughts about your fictional god and jesus even more firmly.   

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 24, 2016, 09:22:26 AM
You can't seem to get through your thick skull that I hold none of the assumptions about your god, your jesus or your religion.  I reject them all as fictional or not good. 

You're kidding? All this time we've been chatting and you're just now telling me this? (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif)

QuoteSo, reading from a fictional book about a fictional god does not inform any of my thoughts or actions. Your beliefs and faith has only served to entrench my thoughts about your fictional god and jesus even more firmly.

The point, Mike, is that if God exists and has all of the attributes that theists acknowledge, then:

"God is capable [of revealing himself worldwide], but he chose to covenant Himself with a single people, the Jews, in order to prepare for the Incarnation."

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 24, 2016, 09:58:16 AM
You're kidding? All this time we've been chatting and you're just now telling me this? (http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif)

The point, Mike, is that if God exists and has all of the attributes that theists acknowledge, then:

"God is capable [of revealing himself worldwide], but he chose to covenant Himself with a single people, the Jews, in order to prepare for the Incarnation."

Stingy bastard!

Lol. In a universe of immense size and vastness and a world of millions of square miles, god chose to present his entire scenario within a few thousand square miles of desert in the Middle East. Which was pretty much the known world in the Bronze Age. What a coincidence.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 24, 2016, 09:58:16 AM


The point, Mike, is that if God exists and has all of the attributes that theists acknowledge, then:

If, if, if.  Your fear mongering does not work.  I have heard this stuff all my life.  Fear--the trump card of the theists.  Better believe, for if you do, you are saved.  If not, you go to hell.  If I (the theist) am wrong, then what do you have to lose?  I lose my own self respect if I believe this tripe because of fear.  I lose my ability to reason and consider things critically.  I lose myself.  I refuse to worry about the 'then:'.  If your fictional god or your fictional jesus wish to make themselves known, then they know what to do.  Until then, I will act in a sane manner based upon reasoning and critical thinking.  You can act on any fiction you wish.

Quote from: Randy Carson link=topic=10032.msg1133720#msg1133720 date=1464098296

"God is capableof revealing himself worldwide], but he chose to covenant Himself with a single people, the Jews, in order to prepare for the Incarnation."

You keep spouting this fiction.  How do you know what god chose or chooses to do?  Apparently you have a pipeline into god's mind.  That's a neat trick, considering that god is a fiction.  Or are you god's human consultant?  How did he ever get along until you showed up??????  Repeater Randy, you keep repeating this crap over and over.  It will never make any sense.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 24, 2016, 11:04:22 AM
You keep spouting this fiction.  How do you know what god chose or chooses to do?  Apparently you have a pipeline into god's mind.  That's a neat trick, considering that god is a fiction.  Or are you god's human consultant?  How did he ever get along until you showed up??????  Repeater Randy, you keep repeating this crap over and over.  It will never make any sense.

Well, it's in the Bible, of course! And that's all there is to it. Read that and you'll understand.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 24, 2016, 11:04:22 AM
You keep spouting this fiction.  How do you know what god chose or chooses to do?  Apparently you have a pipeline into god's mind.  That's a neat trick, considering that god is a fiction.  Or are you god's human consultant?  How did he ever get along until you showed up??????  Repeater Randy, you keep repeating this crap over and over.  It will never make any sense.

Because people who were present when God promised to do so wrote about it.

The word "covenant" appears 322 times in the scriptures. Have you seen this in your reading?

Quote from: marom1963 on May 24, 2016, 11:09:27 AM
Well, it's in the Bible, of course! And that's all there is to it. Read that and you'll understand.

Over and over again we read that.  I guess if the religious keep saying it, it will be true---for them. 

Quote from: marom1963 on May 24, 2016, 11:09:27 AM
Well, it's in the Bible, of course! And that's all there is to it. Read that and you'll understand.

Probably not given the mental acuity I've observed so far, but it would be a start...

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 24, 2016, 11:12:14 AM
Because people who were present when God promised to do so wrote about it.

The word "covenant" appears 322 times in the scriptures. Have you seen this in your reading?

Well, I'll be damned--that is the exact count I came up with!!

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 24, 2016, 11:14:16 AM
Well, I'll be damned--that is the exact count I came up with!!

Then why did you ask, "How do you know what god chose or chooses to do?"

You have already seen God's thoughts on the covenant he established in the course of your own Bible study.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 24, 2016, 11:42:07 AM
Then why did you ask, "How do you know what god chose or chooses to do?"

You have already seen God's thoughts on the covenant he established in the course of your own Bible study.

HHHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 24, 2016, 11:13:33 AM
Probably not given the mental acuity I've observed so far, but it would be a start...

Oh, that hurt. I had to eat a whole bag Fritos to just to recover from that.You're so mean! I'm going to tell my mommy on you!

Seriously. I find it difficult to understand how anyone cannot understand that offering up Scripture as proof is the same as offering up no proof. One might as well offer up a phone directory. It's a pile of paper w/printed words on it. A maniac could easily read meaning into it. How does what a band of believers said 2 millenniums ago make a difference? "He said" - well, he's DEAD. What about now? Oh, a miracle! We're always falling back on those non-events. Show me one, and I'll believe it. Again - a case of something that has never stood up to the least scrutiny. The crying saint? Well, Henry # 8's agents found the bore holes in the statue's eyes and the pump mechanism that made the statue cry! The RCC is very wise in not allowing Holy Relics to be scientifically examined! I believe that one saint's bone that was examined turned out to belong to a dog!

Quote from: marom1963 on May 25, 2016, 07:02:19 AM
Oh, that hurt. I had to eat a whole bag Fritos to just to recover from that.You're so mean! I'm going to tell my mommy on you!

(http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif)

Quote from: marom1963 on May 25, 2016, 07:31:43 AM
Seriously. I find it difficult to understand how anyone cannot understand that offering up Scripture as proof is the same as offering up no proof. One might as well offer up a phone directory. It's a pile of paper w/printed words on it. A maniac could easily read meaning into it. How does what a band of believers said 2 millenniums ago make a difference? "He said" - well, he's DEAD. What about now? Oh, a miracle! We're always falling back on those non-events. Show me one, and I'll believe it. Again - a case of something that has never stood up to the least scrutiny. The crying saint? Well, Henry # 8's agents found the bore holes in the statue's eyes and the pump mechanism that made the statue cry! The RCC is very wise in not allowing Holy Relics to be scientifically examined! I believe that one saint's bone that was examined turned out to belong to a dog!

Forget about "scripture" for a moment, okay? We're not dependent on "inspiration".

Simply look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (as well as Paul's letters) for what they are: historically reliable accounts of some events which occurred in first-century Judea.

What do they tell us AS HISTORY?

Well, that a guy named Jesus got crucified and according to his disciples he came back to life three days later?

Is this credible?

If not, why not?

I've given Randy the chance to prove he was right before, but he chose to ignore it instead. Why? Because he knows that if he asks his god for a miracle, he's going to be met with silence.

Here's another chance. Any Christian at all is welcome to try to repeat Elijah's demonstration. In case you forgot how it works, here's some instructions:

1. Take some beef and place in on a pyre.

2. Pour water all over the meat and wood three times. But you know what? To make things easier on your god, you can skip this step.

3. Say these words, "Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."

4. Wait for heavenly fire to light up the wood and meat.

5. Kill the witnesses. Wait. No, that you get you in some legal trouble. You can skip this one too.

Let me know when you want to attempt this so I can watch. After all, if God is willing to prove himself this way once, why not a second time? What's wrong? Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened. Is that what's preventing you?

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 25, 2016, 10:10:07 AM
Forget about "scripture" for a moment, okay? We're not dependent on "inspiration".

Simply look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (as well as Paul's letters) for what they are: historically reliable accounts of some events which occurred in first-century Judea.

What do they tell us AS HISTORY?

Well, that a guy named Jesus got crucified and according to his disciples he came back to life three days later?

Is this credible?

If not, why not?

The short list of the other dying and resurrected gods -
Adad of Assyria
Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece
Alcides of Thebes
Atys of Phrygia
Baal and Taut, "the only Begotten of God," of Phoenicia
Bali of Afghanistan
Beddru of Japan
Buddha Sakia of India
Cadmus of Greece
Crite of Chaldea
Deva Tat, and Sammonocadam of Siam
Divine Teacher of Plato
Fohi and Tien of China
Gentaut and Quexalcote of Mexico
Hesus of Eros, and Bremrillah, of the Druids
Hil and Feta of the Mandaites
Ischy of the Island of Formosa
Ixion and Quirnus of Rome
Holy One of Xaca
Indra of Tibet
Jao of Nepal
Krishna of Hindostan
Mikado of the Sintoos
Mohammed, or Mahomet, of Arabia
Odin of the Scandinavians
Prometheus of Caucasus
Salivahana of Bermuda
Thammuz of Syria
Thor, son of Odin, of the Gauls
Universal Monarch of the Sibyls
Wittoba of the Bilingonese
Xamolxis of Thrace
Zoar of the Bonzes
Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia
Zulis, or Zhule, also Osiris and Orus, of Egypt

Quote from: Blackleaf on May 25, 2016, 10:14:13 AM
I've given Randy the chance to prove he was right before, but he chose to ignore it instead.

Where was this?

Quote from: marom1963 on May 25, 2016, 10:31:43 AM
The short list of the other dying and resurrected gods -

The short refutation of this silly claim:

Jesus and the “Dying-and-Rising” Gods

The claim is that Jesus is a "copy cat god" and that the disciples of Jesus simply took beliefs from older religions and molded them together to create a storyline for their new religion. Since this line of argumentation is pursued by atheists on a regular basis, it will be instructive to review the type of academic scholarship that has been done on these so-called gods.

Edwin Yamauchi, is a top Mithra scholar with a doctorate in Mediterranean studies. He has studied 22 languages and written 17 books including Persia and the Bible. (The Mithras religion is said to have started in Persia before coming to the Roman Empire.) Yamauchi was also one of the scholars who attended the Second Mithraic Congress in Tehran, Iran in the 1970′s.

Dr. Yamauchi addressed each of the alleged similarities between Jesus and Mithra:

• Mithraism did not teach that he was born of a virgin; rather, the mythical Mithra was born out of a rock.
• Furthermore, he was born an adult, not a baby as was Jesus.
• And, Jesus was, of course, not born in a cave as the second century letter of Barnabas alleges.
• The birthday of Jesus Christ is not mentioned in the Bible and is not known. In fact, the earliest birth date for Jesus celebrated by Christians was January 6th. The earliest time in which Dec. 25 th was used by Christians is AD 336 when Emperor Constantine proposed this day â€" possibly appropriated from the sun god worship. December 25th is close to the winter solstice and was chosen by Emperor Aurelian for the dedication of his temple to the sun god.
• Mithra was not a traveling teacher of disciples.
• The belief of immortality may be inferred in Mithraism, but that is common to almost all religions, so is not significant.
• Mithra did not sacrifice himself for anyone; he killed a bull.
• After extensive study, Yamauchi knows of no references to Mithra’s death. And, consequently, there are no records of his resurrection.
• Any possible sacramental meal in Mithraism is unrelated to the Lord’s Supper because it was initiated much later, in the second century. Furthermore, the Christian meal is based on the Passover, begun during the time of Moses.

From a Wikipedia article on the "Dying-and-rising gods" category of ancient Near East religions:

Quote"One of the leading scholars in the deconstruction of the "dying-and-rising god" category was Jonathan Z. Smith, whose 1969 dissertation discusses Frazer's Golden Bough, and who in Mircea Eliade's 1987 Encyclopedia of Religion wrote the "Dying and rising gods" entry, where he dismisses the category as "largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceeding late or highly ambiguous texts", suggesting a more detailed categorization into "dying gods" and "disappearing gods", arguing that before Christianity, the two categories were distinct and gods who "died" did not return, and those who returned never truly "died"."

Smith also wrote:

Quote“Some of these divine figures simply disappear, some disappear only to return again in the near or distant future, some disappear and reappear with monotonous frequency. All the deities that have been identified as belonging to the class of dying and rising deities can be subsumed under the two larger classes of disappearing deities or dying deities. In the first case, the deities return but have not died; in the second case, the gods die but do not return. There is no unambiguous instance in the history of religions of a dying and rising deity.” (volume 4, page 521-522)

If there is no credible support for a dying and rising deity in the ancient religions, then Christianity cannot possibly be indebted to them. Jesus of Nazareth is God and was before He died. He rose again as He promised, but He did not become God in the process.

Thus, unlike the false gods of the "dying-and-rising gods" category, He is unique in history despite the claims of similarity made by non-Christians.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 25, 2016, 12:06:42 PM
The short refutation of this silly claim:

Jesus and the “Dying-and-Rising” Gods

The claim is that Jesus is a "copy cat god" and that the disciples of Jesus simply took beliefs from older religions and molded them together to create a storyline for their new religion. Since this line of argumentation is pursued by atheists on a regular basis, it will be instructive to review the type of academic scholarship that has been done on these so-called gods.

Edwin Yamauchi, is a top Mithra scholar with a doctorate in Mediterranean studies. He has studied 22 languages and written 17 books including Persia and the Bible. (The Mithras religion is said to have started in Persia before coming to the Roman Empire.) Yamauchi was also one of the scholars who attended the Second Mithraic Congress in Tehran, Iran in the 1970′s.

Dr. Yamauchi addressed each of the alleged similarities between Jesus and Mithra:

• Mithraism did not teach that he was born of a virgin; rather, the mythical Mithra was born out of a rock.
• Furthermore, he was born an adult, not a baby as was Jesus.
• And, Jesus was, of course, not born in a cave as the second century letter of Barnabas alleges.
• The birthday of Jesus Christ is not mentioned in the Bible and is not known. In fact, the earliest birth date for Jesus celebrated by Christians was January 6th. The earliest time in which Dec. 25 th was used by Christians is AD 336 when Emperor Constantine proposed this day â€" possibly appropriated from the sun god worship. December 25th is close to the winter solstice and was chosen by Emperor Aurelian for the dedication of his temple to the sun god.
• Mithra was not a traveling teacher of disciples.
• The belief of immortality may be inferred in Mithraism, but that is common to almost all religions, so is not significant.
• Mithra did not sacrifice himself for anyone; he killed a bull.
• After extensive study, Yamauchi knows of no references to Mithra’s death. And, consequently, there are no records of his resurrection.
• Any possible sacramental meal in Mithraism is unrelated to the Lord’s Supper because it was initiated much later, in the second century. Furthermore, the Christian meal is based on the Passover, begun during the time of Moses.

From a Wikipedia article on the "Dying-and-rising gods" category of ancient Near East religions:

Smith also wrote:

If there is no credible support for a dying and rising deity in the ancient religions, then Christianity cannot possibly be indebted to them. Jesus of Nazareth is God and was before He died. He rose again as He promised, but He did not become God in the process.

Thus, unlike the false gods of the "dying-and-rising gods" category, He is unique in history despite the claims of similarity made by non-Christians.

Raspberries.
Jesus replaced Mithra for Constantine's troops. It was Pope Gregory who standardized 25 December for the celebration of Christmas.

Quote from: marom1963 on May 25, 2016, 12:34:29 PM
Raspberries.
Jesus replaced Mithra for Constantine's troops. It was Pope Gregory who standardized 25 December for the celebration of Christmas.

My source:

Edwin Yamauchi, a top Mithra scholar with a doctorate in Mediterranean studies. He has studied 22 languages and written 17 books including Persia and the Bible. (The Mithras religion is said to have started in Persia before coming to the Roman Empire.) Yamauchi was also one of the scholars who attended the Second Mithraic Congress in Tehran, Iran in the 1970′s.

What is YOUR source?

Haha, the old Mithra excuse. Marom listed dozens and one is picked as refutation. I listed (and others) hundreds of monostheistic gods from before Moses was invented. After I listed many, the answer was...Mithra.
You wanna start with copyright infringement in the good books, OK, let's start with the Torah, or as you call it the OT.

In Greek mythology the serpent 'Ladon' is coiled around the tree in the garden of Hesperides, protecting the golden apples.
A tree guarded by a serpent is in the Sumerian seals.

Adam made of dust, earth? Sure.

In the Babylonian myth 'Enuma Elish' goddess Ninhursag created humans from clay
Prometheus shaped man out of mud
African mythology and Yoruba culture holds that the god 'Obatala' created the human race out of clay.
Egyptian mythology god 'Khnum' made people of clay
Chinese, Mayan and Maori ancient myths have the very same story.

Sounds familiar? There are hundreds of them and I posted many already. Copied, some word for word, some just stole the basic fable, some just changed the names. It is really ridiculously obvious how human invented (and copied) the whole scam is.

Ha!  There it is in a nutshell!  Repeater Randy is a COWARD!!  He is all about popularity and not taking any risks.  If he were to spend some actual time using critical thinking he may find that he can't believe in his fiction--but he is too frightened to do that.  So, just in case, he will say he is a christian, a believer in the fictional jesus just so he can go to heaven--if it exists.  If not, nothing lost.  Except his self respect and his ability to critically think.  For him, being the coward he is, he finds that acceptable.  Hypocrite is far far better for him to be than a candidate for hell, even if it is fictional.  Just thinking of it makes his knees quake and his eyes tear in horror!!!  Poor Repeater Randy--scared out of a reasoning mind--settling for an insanity, a fiction.  Yes, the one word I have for Repeater Randy is PITY.  I do pity the poor insane christian.

Quote from: reasonist on May 25, 2016, 01:04:25 PM
Haha, the old Mithra excuse. Marom listed dozens and one is picked as refutation.

Oh. Apparently, you are already familiar with the stupidity of claiming that Jesus is a copy-cat god since you call my response the "old Mithra excuse". And the reason for choosing Mithra is simple: if the BEST of the so-called prototypes can be shown to come up short, then the rest are not worth worrying about.

Now, don't get me wrong, I understand it can be important (to you) that each one of these pretenders be given full consideration. And I have no doubt that each of them probably has been looked at by Christian scholars in the past. But who the heck has time to read everything that could be posted about each and every one of them in this thread?

So, Mithra, the poster boy of the "copy-cat" crowd has been pulled down from his high perch, and with him falls the copy-cat god theory.

Every god is borrowed from the original Father, and every goddess is borrowed from the original Mother.  Adam and Eve, deified.  I incarnated Santa Claus when my daughter was 6 months old, she was appropriately terrified ;-(  Oedipus complex, Electra complex ... the theory isn't that complex.

Quote from: Mike Cl on May 25, 2016, 01:05:40 PM
Ha!  There it is in a nutshell!  Repeater Randy is a COWARD!!  He is all about popularity and not taking any risks.  If he were to spend some actual time using critical thinking he may find that he can't believe in his fiction--but he is too frightened to do that.  So, just in case, he will say he is a christian, a believer in the fictional jesus just so he can go to heaven--if it exists.  If not, nothing lost.  Except his self respect and his ability to critically think.  For him, being the coward he is, he finds that acceptable.  Hypocrite is far far better for him to be than a candidate for hell, even if it is fictional.  Just thinking of it makes his knees quake and his eyes tear in horror!!!  Poor Repeater Randy--scared out of a reasoning mind--settling for an insanity, a fiction.  Yes, the one word I have for Repeater Randy is PITY.  I do pity the poor insane christian.

Does anyone else see the irony in Mike repeatedly posting this in every thread?

(http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/ani/rotfl.gif)

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 25, 2016, 12:41:11 PM
My source:

Edwin Yamauchi, a top Mithra scholar with a doctorate in Mediterranean studies. He has studied 22 languages and written 17 books including Persia and the Bible. (The Mithras religion is said to have started in Persia before coming to the Roman Empire.) Yamauchi was also one of the scholars who attended the Second Mithraic Congress in Tehran, Iran in the 1970′s.

What is YOUR source?

The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazier. One of the most exhaustive studies of Mediterranean mythology ever undertaken. 4 colossal volumes.

More up to date ...

Ancient Religions ... Sarah Iles Johnston, general editor

A very good read.  Covers Iran and everything west ... that had written records.

Quote from: marom1963 on May 25, 2016, 01:20:42 PM
The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazier. One of the most exhaustive studies of Mediterranean mythology ever undertaken. 4 colossal volumes.

Great. You've named a book. Or four books.

And sure, after Constantine's victory a the Battle of Milvian Bridge, the troops probably did decide that Jesus was the real deal.

But the context is whether or not Jesus was simply a copy-cat god in the order of other so-called "dying and rising" gods.

Yamauchi is a world-renowned expert in the field and he says, "Nope."

1)  Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense.

2)  Mithra was born on December 25 as told in the “Great Religions of the World”, page 330; “…it was the winter solstice celebrated by ancients as the birthday of Mithraism’s sun god”.

3)  According to Mithraism, before Mithra died on a cross, he celebrated a “Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.

4)  After the death of Mithra, his body was laid to rest in a rock tomb.

5)  Mithra had a celibate priesthood.

6)  Mithra ascended into heaven during the spring (Passover) equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length).

Yup, a bad example for plagiarism. And that's your only rebuttal? There are hundreds of these and you haven't been able to answer one. How transparent and infantile.

Quote from: reasonist on May 25, 2016, 01:41:45 PM
1)  Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense.

2)  Mithra was born on December 25 as told in the “Great Religions of the World”, page 330; “…it was the winter solstice celebrated by ancients as the birthday of Mithraism’s sun god”.

3)  According to Mithraism, before Mithra died on a cross, he celebrated a “Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.

4)  After the death of Mithra, his body was laid to rest in a rock tomb.

5)  Mithra had a celibate priesthood.

6)  Mithra ascended into heaven during the spring (Passover) equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length).

Yup, a bad example for plagiarism. And that's your only rebuttal? There are hundreds of these and you haven't been able to answer one. How transparent and infantile.

Unsourced? Why am I not surprised?

Is there any chance you could provide the bibliographical data when you quote someone.

I do.

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 25, 2016, 01:18:54 PM
Does anyone else see the irony in Mike repeatedly posting this in every thread?

(http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/ani/rotfl.gif)

No, not every--basically just yours.  I was hoping you would put me on ignore that way I would not have to worry about you snooping on my posts. :)))))

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 25, 2016, 10:10:07 AM


Simply look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (as well as Paul's letters) for what they are: historically reliable accounts of some events

LOLOLOL

QuoteWell, that a guy named Jesus got crucified and according to his disciples he came back to life three days later?

Yeah, and the dead came to life and walked all through town but no one mentioned it and a third of the stars fell to the earth and rocks cracked open and the sun stopped.....yeah....LOLOL

AANNNNDDDDD THAT ALL FOLKS!! THATS WHAT DANDY RANDY CALLS RELIABLE!! THE WHOLE GOTDAMN BABBLE IS RELIABLE. LOLOL

and they wonder why we work so hard to keep that ignorant blather out of schools...

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 25, 2016, 01:43:18 PM
Unsourced? Why am I not surprised?

Is there any chance you could provide the bibliographical data when you quote someone.

I do.

No point. You reject the truth no matter what we post. Here it is:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/mithra.htm

Much of the OT and NT fables come from Babylonian mythology. Clay fragments that have been translated by the finest translators from Sumerian, Akkadian and Cuneiform, show us lots of borrowed myth by the christians and before by the Jews. My translation is from Andrew George, He is a professor of Akkadian and Sumerian language at the University of London School of Oriental and African studies where he is also a Professor of Babylonian and Assyriology.

Anything from the flood story to Noah (Atram-hasis) to the ark, the animals, garden of eden (paradise), man made of clay etc. etc. was written long before Yahweh was invented. These are archeological artifacts from ca. 3,500 years ago. Translated and re-translated and always the same result.
They are tangible, displayed artifacts pre dating your sun god by 1,500 years.

Now you got some resource info, go and learn.

Quote from: reasonist on May 25, 2016, 02:25:17 PM
No point. You reject the truth no matter what we post. Here it is:
http://www.truthbeknown.com/mithra.htm

Much of the OT and NT fables come from Babylonian mythology. Clay fragments that have been translated by the finest translators from Sumerian, Akkadian and Cuneiform, show us lots of borrowed myth by the christians and before by the Jews. My translation is from Andrew George, He is a professor of Akkadian and Sumerian language at the University of London School of Oriental and African studies where he is also a Professor of Babylonian and Assyriology.

Anything from the flood story to Noah (Atram-hasis) to the ark, the animals, garden of eden (paradise), man made of clay etc. etc. was written long before Yahweh was invented. These are archeological artifacts from ca. 3,500 years ago. Translated and re-translated and always the same result.
They are tangible, displayed artifacts pre dating your sun god by 1,500 years.

Now you got some resource info, go and learn.

OMG. No wonder you didn't want to give that out.

Have you read what Bart Ehrman wrote about Archaya S. (aka D.M. Murdock) in Did Jesus Exist? It was devastating stuff.

Or what atheist Tim O'Neill wrote online? He calls her ideas "New Age imaginings" and more here:

QuoteThe Mythicist theories fall into four main categories:

1. "Jesus was an amalgam of earlier pagan myths, brought together into a mythic figure of a god-man and savior of a kind found in many cults of the time."
This is the explanation offered by the New Age writer who calls herself "Acharya S" in a series of self-published books beginning with The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold(1999).  Working from late nineteenth and early twentieth century theosophist claims, which exaggerate parallels between the Jesus stories and pagan myths, she makes the typical New Age logical leap from "similarity" to "parallel" and finally to "connection" and "causation".  Leaving aside the fact that many of these "parallels" are highly strained, with any miraculous conception or birth story becoming a "virgin birth" or anything to do with a death or a tree becoming a "crucifixion" (even if virginity or a cross is not involved in either), it is very hard to make the final leap from "parallel" to "causation".

This is particularly hard because of the masses of evidence that the first followers of the Jesus sect were devout Jewsâ€"a group for whom the idea of adopting anything "pagan" would have been utterly horrific.  These were people who cut their hair short because long hair was associated with pagan, Hellenistic culture or who shunned gymnasia and theaters because of their association with pagan culture.  All the evidence actually shows that the earliest Jesus sect went through a tumultuous period in its first years trying to accommodate non-Jews into their devoutly Jewish group.  To claim that these people would merrily adopt myths of Horus and Attis and Dionysius and then amalgamate them into a story about a pagan/Jewish hybrid Messiah (who didn't exist) and then turn around and forget he didn't exist and claim he did and that he did so just a few decades earlier is clearly a nonsense hypothesis.

Heh...I've already learned - from atheist scholars - that people like Acharya S. are a waste of the "little grey cells."

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 25, 2016, 02:32:23 PM
OMG. No wonder you didn't want to give that out.

Have you read what Bart Ehrman wrote about Archaya S. (aka D.M. Murdock) in Did Jesus Exist? It was devastating stuff.

Or what atheist Tim O'Neill wrote online? He calls her ideas "New Age imaginings" and more here:


Heh...I've already learned - from atheist scholars - that people like Acharya S. are a waste of the "little grey cells."

Well, you keep the tradition of your blood cult: you practice deception.
I have no idea who Acharya S. is, but that is YOUR baby, not mine.

The point is as obvious as can be for everyone to see:

I bring provable (readable and translateable), touchable, tangible evidence, that pre-dates your deity by 1,500 years and you in return "QUOTE" more apologists and whoever agrees with your point of view. You even give apologists a bad name.

Here is the best link, with pictures and location of the artifacts. Even the 'flood' tablet is pictured.

http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ355/choi/bab.htm

Maybe Randy Carson has a spark of independent thought and reads some real history. Let's see.

Real history consists in multiple sources from multiple competing cultures/factions.  What is left after they cancel each other out, might not amount to much, but it is probably close to the boring truth.

Quote from: Baruch on May 25, 2016, 07:38:15 PM
Real history consists in multiple sources from multiple competing cultures/factions.  What is left after they cancel each other out, might not amount to much, but it is probably close to the boring truth.

Tough to beat real artifacts with writing on them that predate christianity by a couple of thousand years and tell you the same stories. How does one argue a touchable, displayed artifact away? Something that invalidates the claim that the good books are divinely inspired? These artifacts are readable for everybody who is interested. How can anyone claim that the flood story for example is the word of the jewish/christian god, when the same story was told millennia before? Common sense can answer that quickly.

Quote from: reasonist on May 25, 2016, 08:00:04 PM
Tough to beat real artifacts with writing on them that predate christianity by a couple of thousand years and tell you the same stories. How does one argue a touchable, displayed artifact away? Something that invalidates the claim that the good books are divinely inspired? These artifacts are readable for everybody who is interested. How can anyone claim that the flood story for example is the word of the jewish/christian god, when the same story was told millennia before? Common sense can answer that quickly.

The evidence is that Jerusalem was just a bandit hideout until the time of King Hezekiah, when all the Israelite refugees moved south to escape the Assyrians.  Biblical archeology only used archeology, when it works for them.  Dishonest as hell.  Interestingly, that other very important city, Rome, was just a bandit hideout until the Republic started, 250 years after its founding.

Quote from: reasonist on May 25, 2016, 08:00:04 PM
Tough to beat real artifacts with writing on them that predate christianity by a couple of thousand years and tell you the same stories. How does one argue a touchable, displayed artifact away? Something that invalidates the claim that the good books are divinely inspired? These artifacts are readable for everybody who is interested. How can anyone claim that the flood story for example is the word of the jewish/christian god, when the same story was told millennia before? Common sense can answer that quickly.

Come, come, you silly man.  Those false archaeological artifacts are just part of Satan's Scheme.  He planted them there to lead you astray. 

Quote from: reasonist on May 25, 2016, 02:41:13 PM
The point is as obvious as can be for everyone to see:

I bring provable (readable and translateable), touchable, tangible evidence, that pre-dates your deity by 1,500 years and you in return "QUOTE" more apologists and whoever agrees with your point of view. You even give apologists a bad name.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: apologetics are for the believers, not the unbelievers. Apologetics are there to give an excuse for the believer to short circuit the good sense that their god supposedly gave them, in favor of ginned up tales that are obvious myths to everyone else. It's there to keep them from the horror of realizing that they have wasted their precious time on this earth. Then again, they hold their time on this earth in such contempt that it's criminal.

Quote from: Hakurei Reimu on May 25, 2016, 09:09:40 PM
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: apologetics are for the believers, not the unbelievers. Apologetics are there to give an excuse for the believer to short circuit the good sense that their god supposedly gave them, in favor of ginned up tales that are obvious myths to everyone else. It's there to keep them from the horror of realizing that they have wasted their precious time on this earth. Then again, they hold their time on this earth in such contempt that it's criminal.

That's beautiful!

Quote from: reasonist on May 25, 2016, 02:41:13 PM
Well, you keep the tradition of your blood cult: you practice deception.
I have no idea who Acharya S. is, but that is YOUR baby, not mine.

The point is as obvious as can be for everyone to see:

I bring provable (readable and translateable), touchable, tangible evidence, that pre-dates your deity by 1,500 years and you in return "QUOTE" more apologists and whoever agrees with your point of view. You even give apologists a bad name.

(http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

Quote from: Randy Carson on May 26, 2016, 02:23:25 PM
(http://forums.catholic.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFJVLSCdy8Y

Constantine might not have invented Catholicism out of whole cloth, but may have modified an older Flavian messiah cult (Josephus said Vespasian was the avenging Messiah, but his son Titus actually destroyed Jerusalem).  Even Cyrus, king of Persia, is called messiah in the OT, but then the Torah was put together by people beholden to the Persians.  I was impressed by this interview, some time ago, and was "called by G-d" to find it and share it.  I don't need a priest sir.