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AxeBoy34
Joined: 25 Dec 2006
Posts: 74
Location: Wisconsin
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 Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:21 am Post subject: |
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My opinion on the death penalty is this: Karma. You fuck up, the world fucks you up. That's what I say. Revenge is a bitch!
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psychomonkey62
Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Posts: 1495
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:32 am Post subject: |
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| Matt wrote: | | The ark didn't house 2 of every species, just 2 of every kind of animal. So 2 cats, 2 dogs, etc. 2 Horses, for example, would mean there was no need for 2 zebras. |
Define "kind." |
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jman00555
Joined: 08 Sep 2007
Posts: 139
Location: playing rock band
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 4:41 am Post subject: |
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Since this thread is starting to cool down and go back to its original intention, I would like to say that i was hypocritical for calling UltraMega closed minded. To explain this i'll answer a hypothetical that was asked earlier: If i was presented with undeniable scientific proof that God didnt exist, i would still continue to believe in God. I would believe that God was testing me. You may not understand this, as in order to understand my reason, you would need to have experienced God first hand. You would need to have been filled by his spirit to understand. Faith is a main thing in Christianity, which is why i beleive God removes physical proof of his existance. I understand where aethiests come from, as even with the Faith I have in God i find stuff in Christianity unbelievable, but i still believe it. I cant fully explain this (probably not even partialy) all i have is the feeling that my life is complete.
Also, i may have implied my beliefs in some posts earlier but i dont believe ive stated them. I attend a Southern Baptist Church, dont realluy know much about denominations so i dont know where my exact beliefs fall into. I do not believe in the North Dakota (it does not exist, theres nothing there) nor do i believe in the Bermuda triangle (went on a cruise, didnt see any lines indicating a triangle) I believe that it is possible that God created other inteligent beings on other planets, but this would most likely have been after Adam and Eve (or atleast after Earth was created, if at all) so it is quite unlikely that the UFO and alien sitings are these creatures. I believe that area 51 is a testing facility for newage stealth technology and nulclear experiments, with no aliens. After watching the video presented in Matts link, I believe his claim of something significant will happen in 2015. I believe that Global warming is a natural process and is not man made. I believe I can fly, i believe i can touch the sky. Umm... i believeother stuff but cant think of it right now (Its 12:40 AM here and im all jacked up on mountain dew) |
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Doughboy
Joined: 27 May 2007
Posts: 605
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:01 am Post subject: |
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| psychomonkey62 wrote: | | Matt wrote: | | The ark didn't house 2 of every species, just 2 of every kind of animal. So 2 cats, 2 dogs, etc. 2 Horses, for example, would mean there was no need for 2 zebras. |
Define "kind." |
I think he's trying to say something like "they took 2 dogs on the ark, not two dalmations, two chihuahuas, two golden retrievers, and more dogs". If you're asking about if he means class, or order, or phyla (is it phyla or phylum?), or something like that, then I'm not sure which he'd be talking about, but I don't think he is talking about a specific scientific classification.
As far as the death penalty, our prisons need to be a lot harder on criminals. Some jails have better living conditions than some houses (not taking into account the other people though, but sometimes everyone is seperated from each other in jail anyway), which is pretty stupid. We lose a lot of money taking care of them, we should at least lower the standards of living conditions in the jails that are "nice jails" as I would call them. |
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Akumu
Joined: 23 Nov 2007
Posts: 472
Location: Colorado
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 6:54 am Post subject: |
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| AxeBoy34 wrote: | | My opinion on the death penalty is this: Karma. You fuck up, the world fucks you up. That's what I say. Revenge is a bitch! |
Coming from a man with a Rambo avatar. 
I think rotting in prison for all your life is worse than getting the death penalty. Too many innocent people die from the death penalty and perhaps it should be abolished. (I use the word perhaps, so don't flame me) |
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BlackAprilShadow
Joined: 25 Jun 2008
Posts: 84
Location: Zanarkind, Spira
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woozerkristen 
Joined: 16 Mar 2007
Posts: 1917
Location: Auburn/Tuskegee, AL
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:03 am Post subject: |
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| UltraMegaOK1988 wrote: | | woozerkristen wrote: | | Again you keep saying we have nothing to stand on, but I've asked several times for what your specific issues with the historical reliability of the New Testament are, and you never have anything to say on this. |
I haven't seen you post in this thread; if you did, I missed you. |
First response on page 25
Further elaboration on page 28
Brought up again when the topic was resurrected on the next page
Me responding to you again on page 39
| UltraMegaOK1988 wrote: | There's the fact that Christianity claims that there were twelve disciples, but only Matthew gives twelve. Others give as few as three and as many as 13.
Mark and Luke give 13.
John gives 8.
The Gospel of Ebionites gives 7.
Thomas and the Babylonian Talmud give 5.
Peter gives 3. |
And so the biggest complaint you can come up with is that they don't agree on the number of the disciples?
Besides, when people are making things up as a group, one of the biggest signs that they're lying is an absurd agreement upon details. If all the different gospels agreed on every single thing, I'd have a harder time believing them than if there's some disagreement. The four gospels are people attempting to set down in written form the life of Jesus before the people who were eyewitnesses to it died off and weren't there to share it any more. That would have been their only reason for needing to write it down -- fears that the oral tradition, typical for passing on history at the time -- would begin to corrupt it.
The whole point of including four gospels in the canon rather than just one is so that multiple points of view could be presented. What's important is what they agree on. Who would be considered Christ's closest followers and how many of them there were would seem to be something it would be easy for different people to estimate at different numbers.
| UltraMegaOK1988 wrote: | | Furthermore, no one knows exactly who wrote the N.T. or when it was written. |
We don't know "exactly" who wrote some books, but we have pretty good answers regarding authors for most of them and dates for nearly all that put them within the lifetimes of eyewitnesses to Christ. The four gospels are attributed to Matthew (disciple, formerly tax collector), Mark (not disciple but someone who recorded the teachings of Peter, who was a disciple), Luke (not a disciple, friend/companion of Paul, also not a disciple but former enemy of Christians who was converted to Christianity by what he claims was an appearance to him by Christ after Christ's death and resurrection), and John (disciple). Most of the arguments I've heard against traditional authorship are pretty absurd (like Bart Ehrman's claim that occasional switches from third to first person in Luke indicate that Luke didn't write it but that it had to be pieced together from sources. Interesting theory, but people write like that all the time. Most attempts to discredit traditional authorship are along those lines.) No, there's no way to prove these four wrote them, but why would anyone attach in particular Mark and Luke's names to them if they didn't write them? They're not exactly celebrities. If you're going to try to lend credibility to a work you're trying to pass off as a biography of Christ, you're going to go for the big names like Peter or Thomas or Mary, which - hey! - some people about a hundred or so years later did.
Dates for the gospels: Mark is thought to be earliest, before 70 AD; Luke is dated either between 80 and 90 AD, though some scholars argue specifically for 60-61 AD for the Gospel of Luke and 60-62 for Acts, which, since Luke borrows from Mark in some places, would put Mark even earlier (the 70 is the latest most scholars agree on -- some argue for in the 50s and 60s). John is the latest, around 100 AD. Matthew is a weird case because an early church historian Ireneus mentions a gospel of Matthew but describes it as a collection of sayings by Jesus set down by Matthew in Aramaic, while the gospel of Matthew as we have it was originally found in Greek. Matthew, too borrows from Mark but includes its own material, and yes, it would seem strange for an eyewitness to need to borrow from another source. Based on all the ideas I've come across about this issue, the best answer I've seen (and I thought at first that I was the first to think of it -- turns out no) is that the original Matthew was just a collection of sayings, written in Aramaic, written down by Matthew, and that later someone took those sayings, added in material from Mark and some other information and shaped it into the full biography that we now call the Gospel of Matthew, which did originally appear in Greek rather than Aramaic. If I remember correctly, this is called the Augustinian hypothesis. The full gospel of Matthew is dated to between 70 and 100 AD.
I can tell you about the authors of the others and dates for them too, if you would like, but this is already getting long and those aren't as pertinent to the issue of historicity of Christianity's beliefs about Jesus. In short, letters that are uniformly attributed to Paul and dated in the 50s and early 60s reference beliefs in such things as Christ's resurrection, showing that even earlier than the earliest dates attributed to the four gospels, this is an accepted part of the Christian faith. It didn't get just made up later on.
The information we have about Jesus from the New Testament and some other sources is recorded far closer to his lifetime than the information we have about major figures like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and yet we don't dismiss the acts attributed to them as myth nearly as easily as we do the acts of Jesus. Why should there be a different standard?
Along with strong tradition in favor of authors who would have been close to either Jesus or his disciples (however many there were), you have issues like the fact that those disciples were willing to (and often did) die because of what they believed and proclaimed. Yes, people are willing to die for all sorts of different beliefs, but when you're talking religious beliefs, how many of them are going off of first hand experience rather than faith? I have a hard time imagining a disciple who knew for a fact that Jesus did not rise from the dead going around saying that he did until he was martyred, refusing to recant his story.
| UltraMegaOK1988 wrote: | | Here is another great article on the Bible's fallibility. |
Yep, a great article that nitpicks issues of translation and what gets included in the canon, but does not even slightly damage the core of what the books of the New Testament assert about Jesus life, death, and resurrection. This would be the sort of thing to bring up if we were having an argument over particular dogma, but not about whether the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament is a historically accurate one. That would be like saying that because different sources disagreed on what exactly Alexander the Great looked like or how many friends he had or his particular wording in a certain instance meant that none of what history claims he did was actually done by him.
You said there's no evidence for the "magical powers" Jesus, I'm telling you that, aside from external references to Jesus including mentions that he was punished for practicing "sorcery," the New Testament is composed of historical documents (letters and biographies), they agree on the things central to the Christian faith (particularly regarding the life and death and resurrection of Christ), and that they stand up to scrutiny regarding who wrote them and when they were written. The ones excluded from the canon, which the article you linked makes such a big deal about, were excluded because they can't be demonstrated to come from people who were close to Christ or to the early church.
You keep calling books like The Case for Christ propaganda without reading more than a review of them, and yet the source you're going to use for all your information is from an atheist website? Both sides are going to stick primarily to the people who agree with them for their information, but need to be willing to read the other point of view and see what they're really arguing rather than making judgments on boiled-down versions of those claims. Both sides.
The offer to scan some book chapters for you still stands.
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yudlugar
Joined: 29 Oct 2007
Posts: 356
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:45 am Post subject: |
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| woozerkristen wrote: |
You keep calling books like The Case for Christ propaganda without reading more than a review of them, and yet the source you're going to use for all your information is from an atheist website? |
I think it was me who called the case for christ propaganda. I haven't actually read a review of the book, or the book.
I did watch the documentary of the same name based on the book in full. Then watched it again with a critical analysis in the form of slides placed throughout. All properly sourced. It pointed out many bendings of the truth, strawman arguements and outright lies. It manipulated statistics in many occasions to get across its point of view and in some cases made them up. That is why I called the film propaganda. I didn't call the book propaganda as I haven't read it.
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Necrosis
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Posts: 360
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:51 am Post subject: |
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| yudlugar wrote: | | woozerkristen wrote: |
You keep calling books like The Case for Christ propaganda without reading more than a review of them, and yet the source you're going to use for all your information is from an atheist website? |
I think it was me who called the case for christ propaganda. I haven't actually read a review of the book, or the book.
I did watch the documentary of the same name based on the book in full. Then watched it again with a critical analysis in the form of slides placed throughout. All properly sourced. It pointed out many bendings of the truth, strawman arguements and outright lies. It manipulated statistics in many occasions to get across its point of view and in some cases made them up. That is why I called the film propaganda. I didn't call the book propaganda as I haven't read it. |
I too called that book propaganda. I actually read it, too (Have it in my bookshelf, sitting ironically aside Dawkin's God Delusion  ). It was a frustrating read even before discovering its criticisms online, for many of the poorly constructed arguments were obvious, and would be obvious to any logical skeptic.
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UltraMegaOK1988
Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Posts: 311
Location: Philadelphia, PA
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 11:41 am Post subject: |
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| woozerkristen wrote: | | And so the biggest complaint you can come up with is that they don't agree on the number of the disciples? |
Who said it was the biggest? It was one that I could thoroughly remember without digging into books.
| woozerkristen wrote: | | Besides, when people are making things up as a group, one of the biggest signs that they're lying is an absurd agreement upon details. If all the different gospels agreed on every single thing, I'd have a harder time believing them than if there's some disagreement. |
Wow, this may be the single most flimsiest defense I have ever heard.
| woozerkristen wrote: | | What's important is what they agree on. |
By your logic, the converse has to be true as well. And... they disagree on such a basic fact as to how many disciples there were!
| UltraMegaOK1988 wrote: | | Furthermore, no one knows exactly who wrote the N.T. or when it was written. |
| woozerkristen wrote: | | If you're going to try to lend credibility to a work you're trying to pass off as a biography of Christ, you're going to go for the big names like Peter or Thomas or Mary, which - hey! - some people about a hundred or so years later did. |
Another flimsy defense. These arguments wouldn't hold an ounce of water if you tried to use it in a court of law.
| woozerkristen wrote: | | You keep calling books like The Case for Christ propaganda without reading more than a review of them, and yet the source you're going to use for all your information is from an atheist website? |
It's propaganda just because an atheist wrote it? Ahem... ad hominem.
I haven't read the Case for Christ. I've read a lot about it and read a lot of people (from both sides) discuss it on various forums. I've only seen the most devout, close-minded Christians defend it to the death. That's because Strobel's methodologies are highly flawed and biased, including who he "interviewed."
| woozerkristen wrote: | | The offer to scan some book chapters for you still stands. |
I'm uninterested.
A lot of the other stuff you wrote is stuff I already know or is irrelevant to the argument.
As for Jesus and miracles, they were taken from previous writings, including the Old Testament, and even the Quran. Compare 2 Kings 4:42-44 to the Jesus-bread story.
Compare 2 Kings 4:27-37 to Mark 5:22-24.
Compare Luke 7 (Jesus raises a widow from the dead) to 1 Kings 17 (Elijah raises a widow from the dead).
In Acts 10, Peter -- who was previously described as illiterate and ignorant -- recalls Ezekiel 4:14 word-for-word. Coincidence? I think not.
How about the water into wine story? John uses 1 Kings 17... 1 Kings 17:18 is exactly what Jesus says.
The tales of Jesus and miracles are just that: tales. They are not based in any kind of truth whatsoever; they were used as a marketing technique.
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Matt
Joined: 04 Feb 2006
Posts: 3780
Location: Bethel, Vermont
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 1:04 pm Post subject: |
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| UltraMegaOK1988 wrote: | | As for Jesus and miracles, they were taken from previous writings, including the Old Testament, and even the Quran. |
That would be pretty impressive, since the Quran was written down several hundred years after the New Testament.
You have a point, there, thought. It seems almost as if Christ never took the time to say "Hey, wait, this already happened once, so I'm not allowed to do it again".
Honestly, I don't understand why you use such flimsy arguments. Do you actually take this as "proof" that the Bible is made up? You're attacks against the Bible are about on par with Dawkins.
I would recommend you stick to science, where you seem to have a much better grasp on things.
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Mark 8:36 |
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UltraMegaOK1988
Joined: 15 Oct 2007
Posts: 311
Location: Philadelphia, PA
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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You're right, Matt, I misspoke when I said that the NT stole from the Quran. It was the other way around.
I don't expect you to even pay one ounce of attention to my arguments since they attack the very core of your entire life. It's willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty to ignore the adaptations of the New Testament from the Old Testament.
Look at 2 Kings 4:42-44:
| Quote: | 42 A man came from Baal Shalishah, bringing the man of God twenty loaves of barley bread baked from the first ripe grain, along with some heads of new grain. "Give it to the people to eat," Elisha said.
43 "How can I set this before a hundred men?" his servant asked.
But Elisha answered, "Give it to the people to eat. For this is what the LORD says: 'They will eat and have some left over.' " 44 Then he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the LORD. |
Compare it to John 6:
| Quote: | 1Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), 2and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. 3Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. 4The Jewish Passover Feast was near.
5When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?" 6He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.
7Philip answered him, "Eight months' wages[a] would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!"
8Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up, 9"Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?"
10Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. 11Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.
12When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." 13So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.
14After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, "Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world." 15Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. |
Look at the similarities. It's so obvious that John 6 took from 2 Kings 4.
How about 2 Kings 4:27-37?
| Quote: | 27 When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, "Leave her alone! She is in bitter distress, but the LORD has hidden it from me and has not told me why."
28 "Did I ask you for a son, my lord?" she said. "Didn't I tell you, 'Don't raise my hopes'?"
29 Elisha said to Gehazi, "Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and run. If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not answer. Lay my staff on the boy's face."
30 But the child's mother said, "As surely as the LORD lives and as you live, I will not leave you." So he got up and followed her.
31 Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy's face, but there was no sound or response. So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and told him, "The boy has not awakened."
32 When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. 33 He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the LORD. 34 Then he got on the bed and lay upon the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out upon him, the boy's body grew warm. 35 Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out upon him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
36 Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, "Call the Shunammite." And he did. When she came, he said, "Take your son." 37 She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out. |
Compare it to Mark 5:22-24:
| Quote: | 22Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet 23and pleaded earnestly with him, "My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live." 24So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. |
Along with Mark 5:35-43:
| Quote: | 35While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher any more?"
36Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."
37He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep." 40But they laughed at him.
After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" ). 42Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat. |
The similarities (quoting someone else):
| Quote: | * In both stories someone tries to discourage the parent from bothering Elisha and Jesus.
* In both stories it is unclear to some people in the story whether the child is dead ,dying or asleep.
* In both stories the child is in a house some distance away.
* In both stories a second source comes from the house and confirms that the child is dead.
* In both stories Jesus and Elisha continue anyway to the house.
* In both stories the parent precedes Elisha or Jesus
* In both stories Elisha and Jesus seek a high degree of privacy by turning people out of the house before their miracle . |
If you want to label it merely a coincidence, you're putting on blinders.
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siavashinkttx
Joined: 02 Mar 2008
Posts: 189
Location: Katy, Tx
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:04 pm Post subject: |
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| shit!- This is popular! Who knew this would lead to life-after-death discussions? |
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Cable89 
Joined: 11 May 2008
Posts: 183
Location: Munford, Alabama
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Epox6000 wrote: | | stevenlarged wrote: | on the death penalty:
you kill someone, you should be killed. eye for an eye, and all that. |
The problem with an eye for an eye, is that everyone ends up blind. |
Not necessarily.
Eye Gouge Scenario
1. 
2. 
3.
4. 
5.
6. -------> (runs away)
Of course this is assuming they all take turns, and that a person who has just had both eyes ripped out won't be able to find or remove anyone else's. I really doubt that any sane person would just stand there and wait for the blind guy to take his eye out.
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Matt
Joined: 04 Feb 2006
Posts: 3780
Location: Bethel, Vermont
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| Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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| UltraMegaOK1988 wrote: | I don't expect you to even pay one ounce of attention to my arguments since they attack the very core of your entire life. It's willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty to ignore the adaptations of the New Testament from the Old Testament.
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I agree 100% that these things happened more than once. And no, I don't chalk it up to coincidence. I chalk it up to the fact that the Old Testament foreshadows the New Testament in all sorts of regards. So your examples actually reaffirm my faith rather than hurt it.
But let me ask you a serious question. Let's say, hypothetically, the rapture of the Church happens. What would you do?
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"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?"
Mark 8:36
Last edited by Matt on Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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