Lord, liar, lunatic, legend?

[MikeH]

It's written in heiroglyphics. The only thing we have to translate heiroglyphics is the Rosetta stone, which is dated to about the 2nd century BC. That's 20 centuries of evolution in the language. How do we know how the egyptian language has changed in that time?

Then you have the attendent translations from the Greek to English.



How do we know it's an accurate account of events that happened several thousand years before they were recorded in stone?

These are very good points. We don't know how much the Egyptian writings have been distorted/mistranslated.

We have much better evidence about the way the bible and Christian doctrines have been edited, constructed and mistranslated over the last couple of thousand years. As well as good sources for many parts of the myth existing in pre-christian cultures.

[loinburger]

You could be talking about yourself. No one here starts a Believe In Religion or Burn In Hell thread. It's always asswipes that don't believe that act like they're on a crusade. So screw you and your "referring to" bull****.
I don't give a rat's ass, boy.

Why the hell do you even bother posting?

[Sirotnikov]

And conspiracies in which 16 perfectly and uniquely placed people are willing to sacrifice their lives (literally or figuratively) to foment a fake resurrection of no benefit to themselves (if they live they'll be galley slaves or some such) makes so much sense? That's what I call grasping at straws.

There could be a 1000 alternative explanations, including falsification of evidence and things such as rumors, that are far more reasonable than a dead guy coming back to life and ascending to heaven.

Christianity isn't based on "this is statistically guaranteed" but on "this is what we saw, and heard, and touched."

If you're going to end up foregoing objective standards of analysis and rely on the subjective "it's what about I think I saw and heard" then why do you start an argument pretending you have actual objective evidence of it being true?

If you wanna pretend your evidence is objective - be ready to stand up to scrutiny. Otherwise, admit you believe it based on faith and subjective rationalization. I don't think that's wrong, or makes your faith any less meaningful.

Christ is risen, and I have proof in my life. If you are too cool to seek truth in your life, but rather trust in a retconned hexadecimo-fecta, I feel sorry for you.

I have no problem with God or with people who believe in God. I think it's great and I don't feel dislike towards most religious types.

It's when people come and show off about how their faith can be proven and how everyone ignoring the evidence are fools, immediately followed by presenting silly evidence and enormous logical leaps to support it, that it becomes annoying to me, and embarrassing to watch.

I don't blame or question somebody else's faith. I think it's an important institution in society. I'm somewhat agnostic myself.

But, when a person barges in saying "HA! I can prove it! I can find no other logical explanation for an event that supposedly happened 1970 years ago, so IT MUST BE that this magical highly unlikely thing occured". That's when I feel I'm annoyed.

If you wanna believe - believe. If you wanna pretend you can prove something - you're in for what ever criticism I throw at you.

[Sava]

Problem is that there were living eyewitnesses alive when scripture was written.

as opposed to the dead eyewitnesses alive

[Sava]

Why the hell do you even bother posting?

rawrrawrrawr TEXAS!

[Nikolai]

I guess that was my biggest problem. Some Woman is rambling on about how she lost something and prayed to god to help her find it and when she finds it praises god for helping her. Millions of children are dying from disease and starvation every day and God spent his time helping this woman finding a trinket. So the women claims that finding her trinket is proof that god exists. Hmmmm. If any prayer being answered or any other miracle is proof/reinforcement that God exists, then I refuse to worship a god that will answer those prayers while letting all those children die. What a crappy God.

So please tell me how your faith was supported while more children die.

There is no easy answer for this. Books have been written on this topic, and still we struggle with it. I could try to answer it, but I'll fail, trust me. But okay: It has to do with free will, basically. God created us with a free will, and we can choose good or evil. As we all know, humans choose evil every day. Either by committing it or by not doing something.

If God were to remove all evil, he would have to remove our free will. That however, would make us to robots, not being able to choose. And worse, we would loose the ability to love. Love is the fundation of good, and it is a choice. No choice, no love, no good, only forced "good behaviour" forced on us by a tyrant. God is not a tyrant. He respects our choices, them being good or bad. But he wants us to choose good of course.

As for your other question, God loves all. Why can't he help us in the small, just as much as in the bigger?

[MikeH]

The scriptures weren't written by eyewitnesses anyway, we know that.

[rah]

There is no easy answer for this. Books have been written on this topic, and still we struggle with it. I could try to answer it, but I'll fail, trust me. But okay: It has to do with free will, basically. God created us with a free will, and we can choose good or evil. As we all know, humans choose evil every day. Either by committing it or by not doing something.

If God were to remove all evil, he would have to remove our free will. That however, would make us to robots, not being able to choose. And worse, we would loose the ability to love. Love is the fundation of good, and it is a choice. No choice, no love, no good, only forced "good behaviour" forced on us by a tyrant. God is not a tyrant. He respects our choices, them being good or bad. But he wants us to choose good of course.

As for your other question, God loves all. Why can't he help us in the small, just as much as in the bigger?

Blah blah blah blah blah. I'll concede the free will stuff and go along with there is evil in the world.

But what I can't go along with is the if God has helped anyone in any small manner while ignoring the plight of millions of starving children, his priorities are really really screwed up and is not a God that deserves any of my respect or worship. So anyone that tells me that GOD has stepped in and helped them personally, (not including helped because the person had faith or things like that) then that person should really rethink the whole thing because their god is wacked. Millions of kids starving has very little to do with free will.

[Jon Miller]

We have much better evidence about the way the bible and Christian doctrines have been edited, constructed and mistranslated over the last couple of thousand years. As well as good sources for many parts of the myth existing in pre-christian cultures.

While Christian doctrines have definitely changed, the actual Bible hasn't changed (other than translation) for 1700 years.. since the earliest historical copies.

The old testament even longer, over 2000 years. Some of the new testament books have been unchanged for over 1800 years, since the earliest historical copies, as well.

What is known is that not all the writings that could have been in the Bible are in the Bible. This would obviously be the case.

While I was obviously not around from 50 AD until 300 AD, based on my knowledge of the not included writings, it seems like decisions made were the right ones.

JM

[Jon Miller]

The scriptures weren't written by eyewitnesses anyway, we know that.

A fair number were written by Paul, who knew eyewitnesses, and lived in a time when many close eyewitnesses (The other apostles) were still alive and active.

It is true that the gospels were mostly not written by eyewitnesses (With the possible exception of John). But knowledge of Christ's life was assuredly collected after His death and resurrection, and we know that in the time of Paul that things would have been written down.

So that Luke, Mathew, Mark and possibly John weren't written by apostles doesn't mean much.

JM

[MikeH]

Most of the big translation errors probably happened earlier than that. eg. Young Woman mistranslated as Virgin.

[Nikolai]

The scriptures weren't written by eyewitnesses anyway, we know that.

Most of Paul's works are accepted as genuinely his, and he was alive when Jesus lived. Mark was written between 65 and 75 AD, only 30-40 years after Jesus' death. Mathew was written around 80 AD, still within living memory of Jesus' death. Luke is thought to be from around 90 AD, but otoh, Acts are thought to be from around 60 AD, so Luke might be older than we think(Acts indicates that Luke was written before it). The earliest books are some of Paul's letters, of which some are dated to late 40s, early 50s AD.

[MikeH]

A fair number were written by Paul, who knew eyewitnesses, and lived in a time when many close eyewitnesses (The other apostles) were still alive and active.

It is true that the gospels were mostly not written by eyewitnesses (With the possible exception of John). But knowledge of Christ's life was assuredly collected after His death and resurrection, and we know that in the time of Paul that things would have been written down.

So that Luke, Mathew, Mark and possibly John weren't written by apostles doesn't mean much.

JM

It does mean that you can't say the scriptures are true because they were written by eyewitnesses.

[Jon Miller]

It is true, RAH, that those who think that God does miraculous intervention all the time, when it appears that He does not, seem deluded.

However, God mostly works through people, in particular those that follow Him.

So, yeah, if someone who follows Him wants to find something, He may help them.

And maybe He is instructing many people to help the starving children, and they are not doing so. It is the case that many Christians are trying to do so.

If someone who claims to be following God, and doesn't show concern for the starving children of the world, I would question them.

But I know that I don't know what to do really. I give some money, I should probably give more (and find better sources to give it to). And also, it is so easy to get distracted (Both from the problems, and from God).

JM

[MikeH]

As someone else pointed out above, even if they were written by eyewitnesses it doesn't make them true.