Defending the Truth

I got the movie yesterday, and watched it. Interesting, it was. I'm surprised that Robert Shaw (Henry VIII) was not seen much in it. Again, thanks for the suggestion.

You are assuming Jesus existed. Prove Jesus existed. Simple fact is you can't. There is clearer evidence that Mohammad existed. But even then there is more evidence that that book was written about 200-300 years after his death.

Why would humanity make rules and laws up?? I can imagine why anyone would do that..it's not like we have laws or anything. Religion was the law, can you think of anything more powerful then saying if you don't follow the law you are doomed in the hereafter to some form of torture, considering we are obssessed with the hereafter I can't think of anything more powerful personally.

Until fairly recent history people had no idea why we were here or why we had rivers or why water existed. To say water exists because we need to drink it even isn't even backed by the bible...the world was created before humanity and then God created us to suit the world which just shows that even the Bible believes in Evolution.

You are correct peoples concept of God changes therefore people create God not the other way around. Peoples concept of God changes because of what we discover about the physical world and realize that what we previously held to be true cannot be. What you are saying is that Moses and Abraham were morons (more or less) and couldn't understand what we now know to be true. (And even Jesus was a moron although the son of God because he clearly believes in the Jewish traditions and that vision of the world..strange that God should believe that all this was true but then knew otherwise at the same time). I know you will resist the term moron. We create God to suit what we know now to be true in the secular world. God reflects our society which is why there are so many divergent versions of God to this day.

There is no clearer evidence that we create God then the Mormons who aren't even sure the Catholics are Christains and who for some reason cannot see that what they believe is a perversion of Catholicism. But they do believe in magic underwear. Or the simple fact that everything we base current God on (and I mean any version of God Eastern or Western) is derived from some ancient semi-literate 'prophet', at least the mormons try to update the prophets by giving us themselves now.

Exept for a few who aren't taken very seriously, most serious scholars conclude that Jesus did, in fact, exist.

You seem to be seeing only a one-way pattern. That being -- Man makes God(s) to suit his percived needs.. and God(s) are reinvented as man changes.

I think it's more dynamic and complicated than that. I would say it goes -- God created man and wished man to know him and to educate man. God sends Messengers to educate and quicken the spirits of man. Over time, the origional message is lost or corrupted. It begins to flow the other way, and man re-invents God(s) in his own image or to suit his own desires. Blind tradition becomes dogma. Dogma becomes "truth." Religion because an empty routine of mechanics and rules. Religion becomes a tool of worldly power and a way to dominate othes.
God sends a new Messenger, the errors are corrected, new knowlege and inspiration is passed on.. the cycle begins again. Meanwhile the teacher Himself is usually feared, despised -- and perhaps even imprisoned, tourtured or killed -- by those in power. Becasue they hold temporal power, they foolishly think they can "stop" the Messenger by temporal means. Thus, they attack and persecute him and his earliest followers. Such was the case with Christ Jesus. But by killing his physical body, He was only made stronger -- as a true spiritual force. Consider today that Christ still holds sway over the hearts of billions. Those who opposed him during his Earthly life saw him as a temporal threat. Yet it was through his spirit that Christ eventually conqured entire nations. Those who opposed him could not see or grasp this, because their materialistic thinking had blinded them. To them, again, religion was a source of Earthly pride and power.

As for the Mormons, I believe Joseph Smith was truely inspired by some sort of vision or insight. Many people throughout history have been.

Past that, I reserve no judgement or criticism of the Mormon religion. It is not my place to do so.

I've peronally known some Mormons who seemed to have a true, abiding love for God.

Joseph Smith was an illierate man who 18 months prior to fining the golden plates that no-one but himself has ever seen and now resides in heaven was arrested and convicted of fraud. He was trying to pass himself off and defrauded peope of lots of money. He is a snake oil salesmen pure and simple. here is why:

After he found the Golden plates and contended the 12 tribe of Isreal followed an Angel called Moroni here to the US thousands of years prior to actual European settlement (or invasion if you like), they had a war with the local inhabitants and because the local inhabitants (who in his 'vision are black) were the wrong color (yes its that racist) they won. So Native Americans are actually the descendents of the 12 tribe of Isreal. After he found out about Moroni (if they follow Moroni why aren't they called morons???) via divine inspiration which seems to have actually happened when he was in jail for fraud he found the plates no-one else ever saw and the stones, stones only he could use, and wrote the book of mormon. As he couldn't write he enlisted the help of a neighbour. The neighbours wife stole the first 180 pages of what they had divined from God (on suspicion Smith was full of it) saying that if its written on these stomnes then you should be able to write the exact same ting word for word, of course he couldn't.

Tell me again why you think he was divinely inspired???

Saying you are not going to pass judgement on someones religious beliefs but you will pass judegment on mine because they aren't religious which just go to prove my contention that things that are not OK are OK when its religion. Why??

God sends a new messegener and the prior messeges are corrected, how convienient..btw that would mean we should all be mormons after all he was the last 'big' religion to have been divinely inspired by God, which means everyone but them is wrong. I think you should call the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury and inform them.

What you are saying is based on conjecture and is completely unprovable, its faith. Which by its nature is of course devoid of reason. When you attach actual evidence and reason to it it cannot stand up to what it is we now kow to be true about the world around us. Jesus was Jewish and everything he said was within the realms of Judaism, he was in fact what we would call today a Fundamentalist Jew. He wanted a return to strict judaism and everything he suposedly said points to this.

The bible itself was written many years after the supposed existence of Jesus. We know this because there are words and concepts that didn't exist until centuries after Jesus was suppose to have existed. The story of Mary M is prime example. Where was the man?? In jewish tradition both the man and woman she was caught committing adultry with should of been there to be stoned. But here is no man. The first texts we have of the Bible have been studied by many religious scholars most of whom have concluded this story was added hundreds of yearsafter the death of Chirst.

Another reason its all crap is Mary the Mother of Jesus who seems consitantly surprised her son is doing any of this . Did she forget the Angel Gabriel?? And the virgin birth?? In Catholic mythology the concept of the immaculate conception remained hidden until an edict by the Pope in the 1850's and theconcept of the assumption didn't appear until the 1950's. Tell me again why you think that Jesus the messenger (which is actuallly Gabriel in Christain mythology) came to fix what had been written.

Simple fact is there is evidence which I would say is pretty conclusive to suggest we created God to explain what we couldn't explain. That we hang on to the concept through vainity (we don't want to appear silly for believeing) and the need to think there is more then this. Its also a handy system of authoritarian control and although we have freedom of speech that speech seems never to be as important as the freedom of and from religion. Got to ask yourself why don't youself why?? Why can we question my belief but its not up to anyone to question peoples religious belief. Why not?? The belief is amaking the world really screwed up and always has.

Even the writers of the Bible new the world came before we did they just didnt now how it worked but now we do ergo no need for God to explain these things.

Many people refuse to accept the evidence because they need to the thought of an afterlife or something bigger then they are to make life seem worthwhile or because they just don't want to look like morons for believing that whoich isn't true. To say there is no God completely disrupts our sense of who we are. It would make us listless and so forth. The same reason we invented God still exists, it is a way of controlling the masses.

Thanks for letting me know 80.
I hope you enjoyed it.

If you still want more More (then "Sir Thomas", now "Saint Thomas"), you'll find he also wrote a book. The title is Utopia, author Thomas More.

As you might imagine the copyright has run out on it, so it's public domain. I've got it on CD.

But I'll bet you can find the text of it on the Internet.

I've never been able to bring myself to read much of it.
But you're welcome to have a look ...

Any serious scholar of theology perhaps, who is committed to his faith (in other words, in complete objection to the evidence).

Any serious historian however, will concede that there is no historical evidence of Jesus existing. Which makes sense because the story of Jesus was just another concoction of the sun-god...rooted primarily in pagan myth and astrology.

Oh wait, just like dinosaur fossils existing, God erased any objective evidence of Jesus or even himself existing to test our faith .

And yet, I quote you:

Besides, no beginning? Creation itself connotes beginning. Unless of course you're now saying the universe just always was, which, I would agree with you makes more sense.

Creation isn't a direct connection? I guess I learn something new everyday...

An emulation is dependent upon that which it emulates. Hence a connection. Something can't depend upon something which is completely and utterly independent and inherently existing.

I wish you would stop redefining words in an attempt to rationalize your fallacies. If not then at least for the sake of putting an end to ridiculous semantics.

My point was that in this logic, weakness can only exist when superimposed over strength. The relation is that a positive exists only when faced with the option of its negative. Existence is a positive because it asserts itself over non-existence. Therefore this logic deduces that existence is constantly coming from non-existence; like sound can only come from silence, or life from death, or consciousness from the absence of consciousness.

I'm not necessarily saying this is true, I'm just saying where such logic leads you.

What evidence?

Your conclusion is non sequitur. Physical laws existing is merely evidence of physical laws existing. Not God.

It's more draft to suggest that something that is so inherently unknowable exists rather than not affirming this positive precisely because it is unknowable. It's way too convenient for you to suggest that your theory (something that came from human intuition) is completely protected from human intuition.

Maybe 'strong atheists' should suggest the same. The concept of God not existing is so beyond human logic, so you can't debate my assertion that god doesn't exist. It would be like teaching physics to a dog!

Gods were attributed to phenomena when they were unexplainable. It's classic human superstition, and attempted rationalization. When they see phenomena that is unexplainable they conjure grand theories to attempt to explain it. It's the god of the gaps...and science has a habit of lessening that gap of inexplainable phenomena. It's merely the atheist's position that attempting to rationalize the gap of inexplicable phenomena with gods is futile...precisely because it is inexplicable. And the strong atheist suggests that you don't need the theory of god to fill that gap, or the assertion that science has largely already filled in that gap. I find myself somewhere in between the two 'atheist' characteristics.

In "my" belief of "God", I have left room for just about anything. I think the ancient pictures of space alien looking things to be quite curious. There seem to be ancient pictures of men flying in some types of craft before there ever could have been such things created by humans. I'm open to any ideas. But I do see that some things around us seem to have definite "rules". But even among those "rules" things can go wrong.

I don't "know" why we are here. But I don't think it just kinda happened. If someone wants to try and make sense of it with religion, more power to them, it's not my job to try and dissect their belief system.

IMHO anyone who is militant anti-religion is just as disrespectful as someone who is militantly religious.

Kat,
I appreciate your high standard.
But I suspect in this case, it's a little too high.
"no historical evidence" is, in my opinion, an exaggeration.

First of all, there's Biblical testimony. Thin "evidence" to be sure. Not admissible in a U.S. court of law. But ... evidence by some standard.

As recently as a few years ago, I recall a ~rectangular ceramic vessel being found which might have been the burial container of Jesus' brother, or some such.

I don't remember the details precisely. But perhaps we ought to avoid absolutizing our own positions here.

Ockham's razor.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was indeed a Jewish carpenter named Jesus, at that time.
And my understanding is, Messiah complexes are not all that unknown to experts on the mentally ill.
What reason do we have not to believe that carpenter may not have been thus afflicted?

More to the point, remember the Salem witch trials? My understanding is, those "witches" were believed (by modern investigators) to have been afflicted by toxic ergot poisoning (essentially, a natural LSD overdose).

If Jesus' diet included steady, low doses of this ergot toxin (quite possible), he might well have been profoundly confused, manifested bizarre behavior, and done other things the Bible says he did / said.

Ockham's razor: after centuries, still sharp as a tack.
How do you like me now?

Sear, if I'm not mistaken, we do not have any copy of the Bible that would date back to the time of Jesus or otherwise be considered an 'original copy' (most if not all don't even date to the same century). So, even the Bible as written testimony comes into doubt. The oldest copies we have are largely hearsay of hearsay of hearsay, etc. Most likely lost in translation.

But, even giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt (which, in my mind would be sacrificing true empirical method for generosity way too much), what I largely meant by no historical evidence is no physical evidence, or no otherwise objective written record of his existence. Same thing with much of the Old Testament's story, like Moses and the plight of the Jews from Egypt, etc.

If we're really going to be talking about evidence and logic; it's not looking too good for Jesus and the Christian God. But I'm not sure if myt truly understands that evidence isn't supposed to be the point, otherwise there would be no 'faith' involved.

And, yes, Jesus was a very popular name at the time. And I'd imagine there were plenty of carpenters. Really the only thing that caught my eye for a moment was 'the Tomb of Jesus' that was debuted on the Discovery Channel. But the legitimacy and method used in that discovery has come into a lot of doubt; especially from the archaeological and historical communities. Until that tomb is properly investigated I think it's safe to say that the Documentary Channel's crew was largely rash in their conclusions. They seemed to make a conclusion, and then find ways to fit the evidence around that conclusion; which we all know is the opposite of the true scientific method.