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technically, anyone who survives is fittest to do so. Evolution is about survival of traits within a population though, not really about individuals. Anarchy would be the same as Capitalism, Mercantilism, Socialism, Communism, etc if it was about only the fittest surviving.
Many times, He showed or stated He was God. He said, when you see Me, you see the Father. He said, the Father and I are One. He said, before Abraham was, I was. The book of John chp. 1 states, In the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. Col. Chp. 1 states, Christ is the visible image of the invisible God, for God is a Spirit and is invisible. The whole problem, dumb people can't see and understand is, the Godhead is made up of three different individuals , Who all agree as one individual. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,(or Holy Ghost if you like).
I can't believe so many people that post on this site, but have not studied the Bible, but read other coot's books instead of the Bible and seem to know little about the true words of God.
I can't believe so many people that post on this site, but have not studied the Bible, but read other coot's books instead of the Bible and seem to know little about the true words of God.
You're new.
You have much to learn about this site and its posters. Some of the atheists here know more about the bible than you'll ever glean.
I'm confused! How does a human make someone a real God?
And seeing that John was the one disciple that knew Jesus the best, I guess he would know. Then again, there is his mother and his brothers and sisters. His mother especially knew.
The point I am trying to make, trumpet, is that ALL of His disciples would have known He was God simply because it is something SO important that He would NEVER have neglected to tell His apostles this fact about Himself. Yet how is it that Jesus, being God or referring to Himself as God, passes through the first three gospel writers with nary a mention until we get to John and 95 AD or so and then it finally comes out. Doesn't that strike you as a little odd?
Now think about this: the early Christians were having trouble winning converts because the potential converts wanted a god to worship and Jesus hadn't presented Himself as God, just the Son of God--no different in the potential converts' minds than the prevailing legends of Hercules who was the son of Zeus but not a god himself. As the Christian leaders were losing converts who wanted a god to worship, one of them had a brainstorm: Let's make Jesus into a God. Let's write another gospel and in this gospel we will say that Jesus referred to Himself as God numerous times.
Voila, we get the gospel of John and now Christian leaders can say, "Yes, Jesus is God. He said it many times. It's right here in the Gospel of John, whom Jesus knew better than any of the other apostles, even Peter. John should know." Remember, by 95 AD ALL the apostles and disciples were dead so nobody could go to them to corroborate these new claims that Jesus made Himself into God.
And bingo. We have Jesus as God. And the new converts can worship Jesus as God because John said He was God. I mean John wouldn't lie about something that important just to win converts to Christianity, now would he??? So now Christianity can grow as a religion as millions of converts pour in.
And Christians fought internally about this corruption of the truth for centuries, until the mythology-based version was adopted and the supporters of the reality-based version persecuted.
He did call himself God. Ask yourself which is worse, blindly following a religious teacher? Or blindly accepting the ideas of a skeptic like Ehrman that makes a LOT of money doing this Schtick? He has been soundly refuted on his silly notions, yet he keeps writing books and people keep lapping it up.
Vizio, ironically the shoe is on the other foot because you have hundreds of pastors like Mike Murdock, Benny Hinn, Hal Lindsey, Ken Copeland, Creflo Dollars, Jesse Duplantis, Rod Parsley, John Hagee, Marilyn Hickey, Joseph Prince, Kim Clement, Mark Charonna, Juanita Bynum.....shall I continue with another couple dozen? They are writing books and making boatloads of money off them too---$$$$'s in amounts so vast it makes Ehrman's take look like a panhandler's on a rainy day and people are blindly accepting their false theologies. So I take it you have a problem with Ehrman but you have no problem with his detractors who do the same thing. By a not-so-odd coincidence their theology, minus the prosperity angle, line up exactly with your own.
Why people appoint themselves as some sort of judge of what people should or shouldn't read is something I've never understood. It reeks of censorship and authoritarianism. "Read this! Not that!" Sorry, no. God gave me a brain. I'll read what I like. If it's provocative and makes people think for themselves.... so much the better.
Oddly enough, even with the giant strides toward reason in this modern age, ".....or you'll burn in torment in hell for all eternity" still holds some mystical sway over otherwise very sound-minded, rational people.
Jesus only preached righteousness, peace, and love for each other.
This is where people get it wrong. Many people believe Jesus came to correct the wrong perception of a vengeful, wrathful God depicted in the Old Testament.
If anything, Jesus only worsened it with His proclamation of "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels". This, to my mind, is the ugliest sentence found in the Bible, because it paints Jesus as a schizophrenic split personality---someone who in one breath teaches God loves the sinner enough to go to any lengths to save him, while in the next breath casting a hapless sinner away in the vilest language with not so much as a teardrop. Schizoid, completely schizoid.
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jetson72
So now Christianity can grow as a religion as millions of converts pour in.
Good for you.
