I offer an alternative to mass spewing about Christianity

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timy

Sport climber
Durango
Aug 28, 2014 - 12:39pm PT
Academics in scriptures means ultimately you don't really know sh!t and is very evident by all your daily spew ......

So by this logic, one can say "2+2=9 because that's what I believe and if you go and learn some math and try to say otherwise, you won't know shit".
Sounds like total spew.
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Aug 28, 2014 - 12:43pm PT
Werner's a good man. Just one with a limited vocabulary.
jstan

climber
Aug 28, 2014 - 01:23pm PT
In the link I posted above reference is made from 1000 BCE to "those who sleep in the dust." And even till 600 BCE common people were linking Yahweh to the Canaanite mother goddess Asheran. Despite their having left that culture and going to the hill country to start over. Apparently this coupling by the common people was fought tooth and nail by the authors of the Hebrew bible.

Am I alone in seeing similarities between that cultural stress and the threads we see on ST? Has anything at all changed in 3000 years?

Last week I was cleaning up some scattered mattresses and sofas. Suddenly I noticed right behind me a homeless girl who paused but then walked on toward downtown JT. When working I focus on the work. It was several minutes before I realized I was destroying her home and that she was powerless and quite afraid to tell me what I was doing. As much as I could I left unchanged what she needed.

People are still sleeping in the dust.

Has anything changed? Now as then, people have a number of lives available to them and they chose from those lives the one they prefer. When the US emptied its mental institutions some portion of those people were able to choose homelessness. In that life there was at least more freedom.

If there is change it lies in our access to knowledge. I can learn that 3000 years ago people had to sleep in the dust and others felt badly about it. Today we don’t have to die from many of the old diseases. And if we are lucky we don’t have to deal with thugs carrying weapons. Sometimes at least.

We very much need to learn.

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Aug 28, 2014 - 01:43pm PT
Has anything at all changed in 3000 years?

Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature


Keep the faith, jstan. (The evidence and reason-based faith, that is.)

1,000 years from now, we'll have either (a) a lot more consensus about how we should live our lives; or (b) a lot fewer people.

"we'll" - lol!

Well, "we'll" - as in our species.
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Aug 28, 2014 - 04:29pm PT
I wonder if any of our resident Christians will review the archaeological data presented in links like the one recently provided? It would be interesting to hear their take on them.
thebravecowboy

climber
strugglin' to make time to climb
Aug 28, 2014 - 08:19pm PT
but do you know the sound of one hand clapping?
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Aug 28, 2014 - 08:22pm PT
Wow! How articulate and candid! Frank Sinatra is on belief, God and religion and everything else. Here's an interview with Playboy, 1963, if you can believe it! Check it out!!

http://longform.org/stories/playboy-interview-frank-sinatra

"let’s let it run. I’ve thought this way for years, ached to say these things."

"It figures that if a man is frustrated in a material sense, his family hungry, he suffers, he broods and he becomes susceptible to the blandishments of any ideology that promises to take him off the hook."

"I’ve always had a theory that whenever guys and gals start swinging, they begin to lose interest in conquering the world. They just want a comfortable pad and stereo and wheels, and their thoughts turn to the good things of life—not to war. They loosen up, they live and they’re more apt to let live. Dig?"

Very impressed!!!
madbolter1

Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
Aug 28, 2014 - 09:21pm PT
plenty o folks dying for lies out there

You are missing the point.

Plenty of people die for lies, but only because they believe them.

People do NOT die for what they themselves know to be a lie.
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Aug 28, 2014 - 09:29pm PT
Um, I think that was assumed. I might have even mentioned it.

Is this a trick question?

Christ, Allah, Jim Jones, the Thousand Year Reich - bullshit is bullsh#t.
jstan

climber
Aug 28, 2014 - 09:35pm PT
MB1:
As the journalist's head was being cut off he knew it was all about a lie. People who did not agree with the inquisition still had molten lead poured down their throats. A lot of the vets in Nam knew it was all a lie. Snowden did his job for quite some time knowing it was illegal.

You are a thinking person. How did you miss all of that?

Tvash

climber
Seattle
Aug 28, 2014 - 09:37pm PT
I believe we're talking about people willingly sacrificing themselves here.
madbolter1

Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
Aug 29, 2014 - 12:54am PT
As the journalist's head was being cut off he knew it was all about a lie. People who did not agree with the inquisition still had molten lead poured down their throats. A lot of the vets in Nam knew it was all a lie. Snowden did his job for quite some time knowing it was illegal.

No, the claim was that there was nothing special about Christ's disciples sacrificing their lives for a lie. It was claimed that people give up their lives for a lie all the time.

And I said that that claim was missing the point. The issue here is not whether people give up their lives for a lie. The issue here is whether or not people give up their lives for what they themselves KNOW is a lie.

So far, there have been no examples of that.

"Snowden did his job for quite some time knowing it was illegal." Oh, come on. This one isn't even relevant. Snowden BELIEVED that what he was doing was RIGHT and that the laws the NSA were breaking demanded exposure. He didn't believe what he himself knew to be a lie. He believed what he thought was the truth. Whether he was incorrect or not is irrelevant. He did not believe what he himself KNEW was a lie.

"As the journalist's head was being cut off he knew it was all about a lie." Not the same thing at all! And obviously not. HE didn't believe the lie. And HE did not sacrifice HIMSELF for what he knew to be a lie.

"People who did not agree with the inquisition still had molten lead poured down their throats." Again, not the same thing, and obviously not. As with the journalist, they were not sacrificing themselves to sustain a lie they were telling the world and that they themselves knew to be a lie.

"A lot of the vets in Nam knew it was all a lie." Closer, but still not EVEN a cigar. The vets were not dying to TELL the lie. And they were not being martyred, which is a huge difference! Every soldier has a hope of making it through.

Contrast that with a martyr who is about to be burned at the stake....

"Recant your lies, and you shall be spared. But do not recant, and the fire will burn your flesh away starting from the feet up."

YOU are that person tied to the stake, and you KNOW that what you have been saying is a bold-faced lie. Do you or do you not INSTANTLY recant?

Of course you do! There is ZERO motivation to push the lie, that you KNOW to be a lie, and have your flesh burned off from the feet up. I am CERTAIN that you would not get 10 seconds into the roasting before you would be SCREAMING: "It was a lie! All a lie! STOP the fire! I recant!"

What happens under torture is that people will say ANYTHING to make it stop. They will lie to make it STOP!

What people will NOT do is lie to intentionally make torture START and then keep lying to make it continue! People do not lie and lie through torture to the point of death.

THAT is the point, and none of you have yet offered up a counterexample.

And even if you could find one or two people in history that had done so, the disciples had to be engaged in a conspiracy, where without exception they had to lie and lie without flinching in the face of torture and death. And the torture and death were ABOUT the very lies they were supposedly telling. ALL they would have had to do is simply quit lying... any one of them... and the whole "lie" would have unraveled.

You do not get dozens to hundreds of people TOGETHER to tell what they KNOW to be a lie and then die to seal the lie.

Even the Jim Jones example is flatly ridiculous. Those people didn't KNOW that what they believed was a lie. That is the really amazing part of that story... that so many people could be led to BELIEVE in a goofball like Jim Jones. But they believed! They did not perpetrate a lie KNOWING that it was a lie.

What you have to think about the apostles to get the conspiracy theory off the ground is something lie this:

* The apostles stole the body and then started lying publicly that Christ had risen.

* They themselves knew that what they were floating was a bold-faced lie.

* They then endured decades of unpopularity, poverty, and ultimately torture and death FOR the lie that they knew was a lie.

* ALL they had to do to lead normal and fairly comfortable lives was SIMPLY not keep telling the lie!

* But they chose the infamy, torture, and death FOR the lie, even knowing every step of their lives that it was all a lie.

Nope! Ridiculous. Nobody does that. And no group of people do that. Not for what they themselves know is a lie.

You have ALL sorts of more or less plausible ways to deny the veracity of the Bible about Jesus. But claiming that the apostles all bold-faced lied is not a plausible theory of what happened.
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Aug 29, 2014 - 05:24am PT
nobody has claimed that christian martyrs didn't believe - just what they believed is bullsh#t. people do that all the time for a variety of bullsh#t.

wow. your brain can't even go there MB, can it?

just…wow.
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Aug 29, 2014 - 09:10am PT
Claiming what the apostles believed to be true was actually bullshit is highly plausible, however. Of course, we have zero historical evidence that the apostles even existed at all. Zero.

Believing in bullshit is just what we Hairless Monkeys do. Peruse any forum here for evidence.

"Yeah, and then, and then, he took a loaf of bread and fed 50 people...no, wait, it was more like 500 people - maybe even a thousand..."

No, that could never happen. Those anonymous gospel authors over 100 years after the fact had to be spot on.

The Bible tells me so.
madbolter1

Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
Aug 29, 2014 - 09:53am PT
nobody has claimed that christian martyrs didn't believe - just what they believed is bullsh#t. people do that all the time for a variety of bullsh#t.

wow. your brain can't even go there MB, can it?

just…wow.

"nobody has claimed that christian martyrs didn't believe." Actually, that is precisely what has been claimed upthread: "They lied."

My only argument is that, whatever else might have happened, including the idea that they didn't even exist, the theory that they lied simply isn't plausible. Simple, straightforward point. I'm arguing nothing else.

But your mind can't even go there, huh?

Now, regarding the idea that they didn't even exist... Wow! Just wow!

So, the biggest religion on the planet just sprang up out of nowhere, fabricated entirely out of whole cloth, documented carefully by early-century historians (that are independently considered credible by even non-Biblical scholars), and was started entirely by non-existent people, huh? That's your theory?

Paul never existed? That's your theory?

Then I guess that these folks and writings also never existed: Josephus (although his reference is questionable); Tacitus (whose reference is not questionable), both Gemaras in the Talmud (updated in the first century, and both explicitly referring to Jesus as a factual figure, although, of course, denying that he was the Christ; and other credible historians of the first four centuries who documented the rise of Christianity.

ROFL

And this "lie" stands in stark contrast to the other, much more solidly established religions of the time, all of which have faded into utter obscurity and even non-existence. Whatever else it is, by your lights, this is by FAR the most successful "lie" in the history of humanity.

Look, it simply strains credulity to claim that there were no such people as Jesus and the apostles. There are much better arguments against Christianity than that! Go with those and quit bottom-feeding.
Ken M

Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
Aug 29, 2014 - 10:01am PT
So, the biggest religion on the planet just sprang up out of nowhere, fabricated entirely out of whole cloth, documented carefully by early-century historians (that are independently considered credible by even non-Biblical scholars), and was started entirely by non-existent people, huh? That's your theory?

Paul never existed? That's your theory?

Crop Circles.
Byran

climber
San Jose, CA
Aug 29, 2014 - 10:20am PT
The thing you have to understand when you're citing someone like Tacitus, is that we don't actually have anything written by Tacitus himself. The oldest surviving copy of the Annals dates from the 11th century, and is a copy of a copy penned by various Catholic scribes in Italy during the early years of the Inquisition.
BLUEBLOCR

Social climber
joshua tree
Aug 29, 2014 - 10:20am PT

jstan asked;

Am I alone in seeing similarities between that cultural stress and the threads we see on ST? Has anything at all changed in 3000 years?

jstan's nova link,

These are pioneers in the hill country who are fleeing the urban centers, the old Canaanite cities, which are in a process of collapse. And in particular they are throwing off the yoke of their Canaanite and Egyptian overlords. They are declaring independence.

Now, why these people were willing to take such a risk, colonizing the hill country frontier, is very difficult to know. I think there were social and economic compulsions, but I would be the first to say I think it was probably also a new religious vision.

As to your question; No! God loving people have been persecuted, killed, robbed and raped, chased out of towns, and have fled from the worldly warlords since before we could write! And why?, because secular man cannot comprehend faith, and the love for something/God he cannot touch. It all sounds alot like why and how our Nation got started! And the persecution of christians continues today throughout the world. Even here on ST. This is what i think anyway.

Just like the author of the article said many time's, "This is what i think!"
Norton

Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
Aug 29, 2014 - 10:21am PT
So, the biggest religion on the planet just sprang up out of nowhere, fabricated entirely out of whole cloth, documented carefully by early-century historians (that are independently considered credible by even non-Biblical scholars), and was started entirely by non-existent people, huh? That's your theory?

Paul never existed? That's your theory?

yes, I agree that IS the "theory"

Santa and the Easter Bunny are likewise also purely human invented myths

and so are ignorant smoking ducks, oh well that one is real
Tvash

climber
Seattle
Aug 29, 2014 - 10:35am PT
By MB1's logic, Osiris, Zeus, Quezalcoatl, and every other God in human history actually exists.

I mean, THEY WOULDN'T LIE ABOUT THAT, WOULD THEY?

You can't make this stuff up....

I guess old MB's never played the Pass It On Story Game. Try it sometime and report back. It's amazing how quickly some Christians seem to forget about the basic quirks of human cognition - the tendency to exaggerate, misinterpret, fill in the blanks, etc, when even a little light is shined on the foundations, or lack thereof, of their religious beliefs.

It's widely believed by scholars that Paul existed, and that he was the author of 7 of the 14 New Testament books attributed to him by the Bible. He believed in the resurrection, but that, of course, says nothing about the validity of such a belief.

I believe there is no god. If you want proof, just ask me.
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