Faith

[Svengoolie 3]

Taking away belief in Christianity could be wonderful.  You could free someone from living in fear of a giant invisible man living way up in the sky on a cloud who will send them to an eternal flame  for not groveling to him.  You could free someone from feeling they gave to reject a loved one because that person isn't a halohead too.  You could free them from hating themselves because something about them doesn't pass holy roster.

http://foo.ca/wp/chick-tract-satire/whos-your-daddy/

You make me nostalgic since you remind me of myself as a teenager, though I was more open-minded and courteous, less convinced I knew enough to make absolute declarations, and also I had a better vocabulary.

As I said, and which you didn't do, explain the resurrection as a fraud in ways that cover every known fact and you'll have my genuine gratitude.

This topic grows stale. On to the next...

You remind me of people I knew who were obnoxious,  pompous and self righteous. But I don't feel nostalgia for them.


BTW,  the resurrection was a fraud.  Plain and simple.  Like Joe Smith's magic hat runes or all the miracles of mohammud in the Koran.. I'm sure you dismiss all the miracles mohammud (yes I'm misspelling it)  was recorded to have committed in the Koran.  Look at how you dismiss them and you'll see how to dismiss the resurrection.

[Rev. Powell]

Let's steer away from ad hominems, shall we? The topic is inflammatory enough as is.

[Svengoolie 3]

Let's steer away from ad hominems, shall we? The topic is inflammatory enough as is.

hey, when er stops taking swipes at me I'll be happy to stop swiping back.

As to faith, to be honest I've reached a point where I hear people in america talking about their faith it makes me sick with disgust. We had a president for 8 years that was a good family man with two daughters, a man of kind disposition, who sought to help the poor and sick much as the bible decrees, who turned the other cheek to his enemies as the bible dictates and was a model of temperament and civility.

The majority of people of faith in america spent 8 years hurling excrement, poison and fire at him. A man of faith had this prayer for him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/david-perdue-obama/486587/

Then in 2016 people of faith overwhelmingly voted for a man who embodies most of the 7 deadly sins. Wrath, greed, gluttony, pride, envy. A man who committed acts that the bible calls for the perpetrators to be stoned for. A man who uses language that is not able to be broadcast on network tv. But the faithful voted for him.

Actions speak louder than words and when the faithful voted for this man their actions proved what their faith was worth.

[HappyGilmore]

Flyleaf. 

http://youtu.be/417YOjyl1kg
	Small | Large

I listen to Flyleaf in regards to some turmoil here.  They're a Christian Rock/Metal band and a lot of their songs have helped me out when needed.  If that's anything.

[indianasmith]

Let's steer away from ad hominems, shall we? The topic is inflammatory enough as is.

hey, when er stops taking swipes at me I'll be happy to stop swiping back.

As to faith, to be honest I've reached a point where I hear people in america talking about their faith it makes me sick with disgust. We had a president for 8 years that was a good family man with two daughters, a man of kind disposition, who sought to help the poor and sick much as the bible decrees, who turned the other cheek to his enemies as the bible dictates and was a model of temperament and civility.

The majority of people of faith in america spent 8 years hurling excrement, poison and fire at him. A man of faith had this prayer for him.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/david-perdue-obama/486587/

Then in 2016 people of faith overwhelmingly voted for a man who embodies most of the 7 deadly sins. Wrath, greed, gluttony, pride, envy. A man who committed acts that the bible calls for the perpetrators to be stoned for. A man who uses language that is not able to be broadcast on network tv. But the faithful voted for him.

Actions speak louder than words and when the faithful voted for this man their actions proved what their faith was worth.

For the record, not ALL of us fell for that con man.  I fought that tide as hard as I have fought anything in my life.
For the record, also, the Quran does NOT attribute any miracles to Muhammad.  It is a collection of his sayings, not his deeds.  The miracles attributed to him are found in a collection of stories called the Hadith, stories about his life that were composed long after his death.  The earlier Hadith don't include miraculous deeds, either.  They don't begin to show up in the narratives of Muhammad's life until more than a century had passed after his death - in other words, long after the witnesses were conveniently dead.

You  posit the Resurrection as a hoax.  OK, if you want to take that route, I would enjoy asking you a few questions.
WHO perpetrated this hoax?
HOW was it done?
and WHY was it done?
Lastly, what proof do you present that your answers to those questions are correct?

Not looking for a flame war, and I'm not trying to throw any shade at you.
But since you reject something that I have built my whole life around, and apparently would be very happy if I rejected it also, I invite you to give me some reasons.  Fair enough?

[Svengoolie 3]

First off in biblical days there were no photographs and drawn. Art was poor.. How do fake a resurrection?  Wait a while then start spreading stories about it.  Written accounts of Jesus didn't begin appearing until many years after his death.

Also. Remember in those days most people lived their lives within 20 miles of where they were born.   So when stories of Jesus began spreading thru the roman empire most Romans had never been there. 

Who spun this fable?  The people who wanted to rebel against Rome and needed a divinity to serve as a rally point.

You think lies can't easily be spread especially back in biblical times?  Look at how many lies people spread today in an age of instant communications and access to data.  Look at this lies that have been spread despite not only no proof but actual overwhelming evidence that they are lies.  Obama's fake birth certificate.  The Hillary emails.  The Ben ghazi lies.  All lies,  all disproved repeatedly and believed  by those who want to believe in them for their own purposes.  They we're spread by people with a political agenda and believed by people who wanted to beliefs them.

So in the biblical days people hated Rome and wanted to believe in a Messiah,  a God mightier than Rome,  a Savior who best Rome's whipnhand,  crucification.  People believed it because they wanted to just people today believe all the lies being told for political reasons.

As for the fact you spent most of your life believing this and letting it mold your life,  that means absolutely nothing whatsoever.  Ask yourself about the people who believe in Islam all their lived and model their lives on it.  What about the people who believe in reincarnation and follow Hindu beliefs all their lives?  What would you say to them about how much their beliefs and the fact they. Modeled their lives on them mattered?  You'd likely tell them they were wrong.  Well,  imagine being told what you'd tell them.

Christianity is about keeping people in line and keeping most people down and a few on top. So's Islam.  A lot of religion is about controlling people thru lies meant to create fear and offer comfort.  Christianity and Islam. Are the most controlling religions,  the ones with the biggest scarecrows and the most dictates.  They are also the two biggest.  Coincidence?  I think not.

[RCMerchant]

I really got no use for religion. More negatives than positives-and I just can't suspend my belief that much. I like science to much.
It's FAITH that escapes me, not religion. Religion can go on spinning it's web-I could care less.
i'm getting to the point of apathy. With religion, (like Svengoolie sez-the religious nuts who voted for Trump and that backwoods, gun-toting, child molester from Alabama), and with politics. I used to be very passionate about all this-but I have no faith. It all makes me sick.
I have no problem with anyone's beliefs-unless they try to stick it down my throat. And I got passionate about politics because that IS my problem-having dishonest, self serving people make the laws I have to live by bugs the s**t outta me.

[RCMerchant]

I wish I had never started this topic. I should follow that old rule-"Never talk religion or politics"
But it's hard to NOT discuss it-when it affects all our lives.
 

[lester1/2jr]

svengoolie -

"The people who wanted to rebel against Rome and needed a divinity to serve as a rally point" the Jesus as Robin Hood idea. I agree with this but it doesn't mean that Jesus wasn't ressurected.

maybe it was the IDEA of Jesus that didn't die when he did and it took 3 days for people to realize that? maybe THAT is what a resurrection really is. in the same way that Jesus probably didn't calm down the winds but made people feel so at ease that it was like he did. or that they had such a good time at the wedding that no one noticed there was so little food.


more to the point here: Christiniaty isn't the only religion! to say the Christian notion of Heaven and Hell is cartoonish is one thing.

Peoples consciences are more judgemental than the Christian God could ever be. many people are mired in guilt and performing rituals that they don't need to do. maybe if they read the New Testament they'd have more mercy towards themselves and others.

truith and mercy are two sides of the same coin, after all. i didn't write that

[ER]

...don't say anything else don't say anything else don't say anything else don't....

Well, like Oscar, I never could resist temptation.

The idea that the movement surrounding Jesus caught on because he was anti-Roman is an odd one to perpetuate, since when his foes were trying to trick Jesus into speaking sedition against the Romans, Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's..."

Hardly the words of a political revolutionary. Far from hating Romans, Jesus is recorded dining with their representatives, and even healing the daughter of a centurion. When hauled before Pilate, Jesus did not take the opportunity to denounce Rome with one final manifesto, as a fanatic likely would. These things are there in the written records that constitute the biography of Jesus.

As for how accurate those records are, they were penned by eyewitnesses or those who knew eyewitnesses, in a time when other living witnesses were alive who could contradict  the inaccuracies of the accounts, yet the enemies of nascent Christianity did not deny these records, they said Jesus was a devil-worshiper.  Even Josephus speaks of Jesus in his histories, written in the first century. First-century accounts are much closer in time to Jesus than any histories of Alexander the Great, which are more than four-hundred years after his time, or Mohammad, whose tales in the hadith were composed more than a century after he died. Buddha, in final comparison, has zero known accounts of his life and sayings that can be dated to within eight-hundred years of his lifetime.

Also when the anti-Roman revolt of circa AD 70 erupted in present-day Israel, Christians played almost no role. Their numbers were too small and their mindset too otherworldly, too much expectation of the end-times being at-hand to be overly preoccupied with waging a conflict. The revolt in the 70s was almost entirely Jewish, and Jews overwhelmingly rejected Jesus, so again, it’s a bad theory to say Jesus' popularity was mired in anti-Roman sentiments. Christians were by then living peacefully in Rome itself.

Also, going back a bit to the frankly weird notion that the Garden of Eden was borrowed from a Greek myth....just wow.

The Garden of Eden is a story found embedded in Mesopotamian lore to at least 2,000 BC, likely much more ancient, and the Mesopotamian civilization is the oldest known on the planet, pre-dating Classical Greece or even proto-Hellenic culture by millennia. The idea that Mesopotamians somehow went west, encountered myths among the comparatively primitive Peloponnesians and came home and spread it so it displaced tales and gods peculiar to their native Mesopotamia is as fanciful a bit of fiction as I’ve ever heard. It simply does not cohere.

The notion that Jesus survived a beating and crucifixion seems to me even more fantastical than the notion that  a miracle took place, since I have every respect for the Romans’ capacity to be deft killers. (Did you know if a condemned prisoner escaped or survived execution those responsible for carrying out the sentence forfeited their lives? Might be motivating to do things right, huh?) Why think a man who’d been tortured beforehand could possibly survive crucifixion?

And since women had such low status in Jewish culture that they could not testify in court,  why would any sane Jewish writer who was inventing an account of someone coming back to life choose to make his witnesses to the event a gathering of women, when many observant Jews would think women lacked the mental capacity to be believable witnesses? If women had not seen the event, why say they had instead of saying it was men?

If Jesus did survive his execution and live, who would see that as miraculous so much as lucky? Why follow some mutilated pathetic criminal? Would you die for someone like that? No, I think the account of the disciples seeing a miracle is a very good explanation for why their lives were suddenly so changed and they were willing to die for what they claimed they saw. They never got rich or powerful, personally, they were hunted and beaten and ultimately all but one were murdered. Why die for a falsehood?

I do think Jesus came back from the dead, and anyone who can do that deserves to be listened to. That is the basis for why I believe. If ever the day comes any of that can be disproven, I’ll change my mind.

But I don’t think it ever will.

Okay, NOW I and done here. Honest. Cross my toes. Done. Moving on. Unlesssss….No, no, I am done!

[lester1/2jr]

revelation I think is pretty clear on the position of Christians towards Rome and the pharisees. it's passive, basically saying okay you guys are doin good we are going to create our own universe here and exist in it and watch you all play yourselves and pick up th pieces when you're gone , which is what they did

it's hard to parse "the Whore of Babylon" and "Synagogue of Satan"

[indianasmith]

I simply can't add anything in defense of the historicity of the Gospels that my friend ER didn't already say better in that last post.

Svengoolie, your bottom line seems to me to be that you believe Christianity is based on a lie because you hate Christians, particularly American Christians who disagree with you on political matters.  You present no evidence, only supposition, in your defense.

You have the absolute freedom to believe, or disbelieve, or believe something else.  That is what the First Amendment is all about.
All I can do is treat you in such a manner that maybe, as you get to know me better, you will see that not all Christians fit the negative mold you have cut for us.  In the meantime - peace be with you.   

[Svengoolie 3]

Ah,  the old ''You hate christians'' line.  TBH,  I do.  Not because you're religious,  I don't hate Hindus or Jews,  but because you try to force your religion on others.  Christians helped put trump in the white house and yes I hate them for that.

I was agnostic long before that.

[indianasmith]

"Forcing" my faith on others is anathema to me.
I share, persuade, I debate, I discuss.  And that's it.
I do detest Trump and I think evangelical support for him was a badge of shame we will wear for a long time, though.

[RCMerchant]

Ah,  the old ''You hate christians'' line.  TBH,  I do.  Not because you're religious,  I don't hate Hindus or Jews,  but because you try to force your religion on others.  Christians helped put trump in the white house and yes I hate them for that.

I was agnostic long before that.

I really can't blame true 'Christians' for Trump. I've known Indy for some years, and he's a TRUE Christian. Back woods racist poor white trash are what voted Trump in.  If they claim to be Christian-they're  only kidding themselves. Go to church on Sunday and smoke foils on Monday.
I know-I'm poor white trash in Michigan-and most of my fellow PWT are dumb as a bag of doorknobs.