Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Why would Jesus care about what a person believes or doesn't believe before He helps them? Even as humans we are capable of extending great compassion to others without knowing a thing about them outside of the fact they are suffering. Even being despised by the other doesn't stop some people from extending compassion toward them. Why would Jesus be below humans in that regard?
What a great point that is...I had never thought about it!
Thanks.
What a great point that is...I had never thought about it!
Thanks.
That was post 127 if you wanna rep it.
Thanks Miss H. I think that's the "divine" is us. When people behave in selfless ways they are God in that moment. With 9/11 coming up I remember those fire fighters that marched up the stairs to help people escape probably fully aware they were not coming out.
We'll see if billions are reading about Harry 2000 years from now.
This is a bit naive, I'm afraid, Oakback. The Bible you are reading probably derives from the King James which has only been around about 500 years. The scriptures have been translated so often that they are in roughly the 20th generation or so and would barely reflect the original texts. Furthermore:
Close to 1 in 8 (12%) admit they rarely or never read the Bible. A 2016 Lifeway Research study found 1 in 5 Americans said they had read all of the Bible at least once.----Jul 2, 2019
Christians are not big on Bible reading. What the Bible's advantage has been however is that for roughly 1500 years Catholics were threatened with death if they did not accept the teachings of the Church. That kept the scriptures alive somewhat. It's really not a fair comparison. I never meant to suggest Harry Potter was as popular as the Bible. I only said Harry Potter's red-letter words would make it easier to read what harry said. That's all I meant.
I remember when a theist friend gave me this Josh McDowell book to read. He claimed it would prove to me that God exists.
Ah, that would be Evidence that Demands a Verdict (or its sequel, More Evidence That Demands a Verdict). He was a popular Christian apologist in I think the 1970s or 80s but his arguments were not convincing, I agree.
Here's the crux of your question, mordant: how on earth could it possibly happen that the Christians were right all along and the historians were wrong? Christians have had 2000 years to uncover something--ANYTHING that would prove Jesus was real and they haven't been able to do it. If it was going to happen it would have happened already, so we can say with 99.9999999% assurance the Jesus as portrayed in the gospels never existed. The closest historians can get is to say, "A man upon which the Jesus of the gospels was based likely lived but we have no historical record for him so we can only rely on church traditions for affirmation."
Well some admit church traditions into evidence on the basis that all that chatter counts for something, but most are relying on Roman historian and politician Tacitus who wrote that "Chrestus" was crucified by Pontius Pilate put together with a stele discovered that proves Pilate was in fact the Roman procurator in that area at that time (which is about as helpful as suggesting that Harry Potter must be true because it mentions real places like London). Beyond that there's not much. There's the Testimonium Flavium, widely agreed to be a "pious fraud"; there's mention of ChristIANITY which only demonstrates the religion existed, not its namesake.
What it amounts to is a weak consensus of historians toward historicity. When you consider that along with the fact that many studying the issue have tenure directly or indirectly from Christian institutions, it's not that impressive that they lean as they do.
Truth No 4: if God had wanted us to believe Jesus is his divine son sent to earth to die for our sins, God would have left a mountain of evidence proving this that would be so compelling that no one in their right mind could argue otherwise. But God left no such compelling evidence. The proof for this fact is truth No 1 above. That would mean the Christian god, if he even exists, doesn't give a tinker's damn whether or not we believe in Jesus.
Doesn't it stand to reason that the Christian god would NEVER have left such "very thin evidence" of Jesus if he had wanted us to believe in Jesus???????
This fact NEVER occurs to Christians or they just push it out of their consciousness because it is too inconvenient a truth.
One then reaches the conclusion through simple logic that the Christian god couldn't have cared LESS whether or not we believe Jesus was real OR his son OR the savior of mankind.
The Christian god simply doesn't care.
Well we all know the circumlocution usually used here: god wants us to have faith without evidence, which is somehow virtuous and good, rather than evidence to substantiate the claims, which is somehow craven and evil.
I think atheists have a problem sometimes separating spiritual from religious.
You can believe in and even experience God/a higher power and not be religious or associated with
any particular religion.
It seems on this forum that atheists always lump everyone not an atheist into the “religious” category. Maybe I’m wrong….
Speaking only for myself, I understand the distinction well, but tend to regard personal spirituality as a "religion of one" because it is still based on the same premises. One simply cherry-picks what one wants from one or more extant religions and/or personal preference. None of it is evidence-based.
In many cases "spiritual but not religious" is NOT a roll-your-own-belief-system but rather rejects organized religion as inherently in the way of personal insight and expression of faith. So it is possible to be "not religious" and yet hold a set of beliefs that would be entirely acceptable to a particular religion or at least sect, in which case, the critique of that particular sect's dogma and beliefs and claims applies equally to the individual.
Other times it is just an eclectic pastiche of beliefs, assembled based on personal preference and/or experience.
Personal spirituality distances one from the excesses of organized religion but in general does not make the personal beliefs more defensible or justifiable.
The scriptures have been translated so often that they are in roughly the 20th generation or so and would barely reflect the original texts.
I can't let that one pass, as we unbelievers sometimes overreach here.
Current translations are not "translations of translations of translations".
They are each one-off translations directly from the oldest available original manuscript copies. Those manuscripts are copies of copies of copies but by and large don't vary significantly from one another, from which we can deduce that the corpus of manuscripts used for a given translation (e.g., Wescott & Hort) are pretty close to the originals, or most certainly not wildly divergent from them.
The closest to "translation of translation" that anyone ever came to were translations based on the Latin Vulgate, which was a Latin translation done by Jerome in about 382 AD. Some English Bibles were translated from the Vulgate, e.g., the Douay–Rheims Bible. But no English translations in popular use today used that as a basis.
The problem is not with manuscript copying or translation, nearly so much as with internal inconsistencies, fantastical claims and lots of unevidenced assertions. Plus the fact that the modern canon of scripture is the result of some guys in a (metaphorical) smoke filled room deciding what was orthodox and what was heresy. There were at least a dozen flavors of Christianity competing for supremacy. What is now considered orthodox was just the one that won out. And there were many other gospels and epistles and apocalyptic books that did not make the cut to be included in the Bible exactly because they were the books supporting those competing orthodoxies. Most of them are lost to us as the victors purged them from existence, although some have turned up in recent years.
I think atheists have a problem sometimes separating spiritual from religious.
You can believe in and even experience God/a higher power and not be religious or associated with
any particular religion.
It seems on this forum that atheists always lump everyone not an atheist into the “religious” category. Maybe I’m wrong….
I think they understand all things just fine. They just prefer to twist the two and all things religious to fit into an atheist paradigm, so they can continue to drum the war dance.
Thus if you identify your religion, then you cannot possibly believe other religions are true. Never mind that yes you can, but the does not work into the paradigm and so it is wrong.
If you believe in God, you have to identify which god. Never mind that you you believe there is only one god and we all worship the one in multitude of ways. No , not possible. because if you tell that to a muslim you might be dead. Muslims are ALWAYS in play.
Spirituality is always a woo. They afraid to even mention it so they do this baby talk to soothe themselves. No such thing exists. It has to be one religion set in stone, one god, the punishing kind, and hell exists.
Welcome to Religion and Spirituality 101. The atheists have the lesson plan. There will be pop quizzes. You can never pass. It is like hell, you will have to take it over and over.
Ah, that would be Evidence that Demands a Verdict (or its sequel, More Evidence That Demands a Verdict). He was a popular Christian apologist in I think the 1970s or 80s but his arguments were not convincing, I agree.
These Christian authors are on a mission to try to convert as many people as they can before they die (and make a lot of loot in the process--look at Tim LaHaye the Left behind author died with $78 Million). Problem is the lies and deceptions fly so thick at times you'd swear you were caught in a human waste storm. I guess it's the old "The end justifies the means" rationalization.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
