BIBLE AUTHENTICITY

[Bill M]

Amazingly, Christians almost never question the authenticity of Jesus and
the Bibles, yet the very foundation of their faith is based on their
authenticity.

The Bibles are the literature of 'faith', not of scientific observation or
historical fact or demonstration.

If religion was based on facts instead of pure faith the followers would be
called knowers instead of followers. Why are there hundreds of different
"one true faiths"?

If religion was supported by any real 'objective evidence', 'faith' would be
totally unnecessary. It is only unsupportable assertions that require the
suspension of reason, and unsupportable ideas require belief based on 'faith'.

It is believed that the foundation of the Christian religion, civilization
and morality is the Bibles. This is patently ridiculous because the Bibles
are nothing more than an assortment of books of myths, fables,
contradictions, human and animal sacrifices, genocide, slaveholding,
misogyny, destruction, barbarisms, and impossible tales by authors of
totally unknown veracity. There are NO-NADA originals in existence. All that
is available are hand copies of copies by church leaders wanting to impress
their flocks. The original Bibles are all more than 1700 years old and the
originals rotted and disappeared before that time.

The 66 books of the Bible apparently had 56 or more independent authors
living in 7 different countries during a time span of more than 750 years.

They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any god
unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They are not even
good fiction.

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.
Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
that mentions Jesus except one.

This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian considers
this passage to have been written by Josephus.

All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the life of
the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an
earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. It is
reasonable to assume that these ancient documents were doctored and altered
to enhance the power of the clerics of the time. Many of these writings come
from fraud, interpolations and hearsay.

The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
leaders.

There is also the matter of the Biblical canon itself. After all, ancient
Israel and the early church knew of many more religious books than the ones
that now constitute the Bible. For example, there were 50 gospels in
circulation at the time the New Testaments were chosen by church leaders,
yet only four
made it into the New Testament. Who decided which of the books would
become part of the Christian scriptures, and again, "Why?" Who decided,
"This book belongs... this book doesn't..."? What were their reasons?
What were their motives? How do we know if ANY of them were authentic?
In addition there is evidence that the Bibles were altered by church leaders
to support their personal motives and ambitions..

The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which books
were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among scholars
is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words, the
only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires and
motives of the church leadership at the time

The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years after the
claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were just a collection
of various regional stories from older civilizations. Some Biblical scholars
claim the earliest versions of the Bible were not in existence until 150
years after the claimed crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was claimed to
be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created by church
leaders to enhance their power? There are NO originals of any of the Old or
New testaments. They are all hand copies of copies of copies with
alterations to suite the copiers.

It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during Jesus'
claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation of tales and
the embellishment of history.

The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They contain
manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities, indecencies,
obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore and legends. They are
mostly nonsense and hearsay.

Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a
witness' own knowledge. Courts of law do not allow hearsay as testimony, and
nor does honest modern scholarship.

We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or
monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies that are believed as fact
are taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. Humans are known to lie and
exaggerate to benefit themselves or express their delusions.

Valid historian's do not just tell unsubstantiated stories, but cite their
articles with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to
eyewitnesses and physical artifacts.

The most claimed "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from
the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not
come into the Bible as original and authoritative documents from the authors
themselves, but rather from copies influenced by early church leaders,
especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in
the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels were written by
that time, but Irenaeus selected only four of them, out of almost fifty, for
mystical reasons.

The four gospels (Mark, Luke, Matthew and John) then became Church cannon
for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were
burned, destroyed, or lost.

Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag
Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually
wrote any of them. Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that
NONE of the Gospels were contemporarily written during the alleged life of
Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly
Jesus. Add to this that NONE of the ORIGINAL gospel manuscripts exist; we
only have copies of copies etc. from unknown copiers! ( The printing press
was not invented until over 1000 years AFTER the last Bible was claimed to
have been written. )

Why would any REAL GOD permit the destruction of his words and the
distortion of his history???

The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest New
Testament Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last
Gospel, John after 90 C.E. This would make it over 40 years after the
alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have ANY Gospel writings that mention
him! Others claim the New Testament Bibles did not exist until 200 AD.

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke,
Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural and historical
research that there is simply no evidence that the gospel authors could have
served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we
hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual Disciples
of Christ. This is factually false.

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them,
consider that the average life span of humans in the first century was about
30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occurred at
about the same time as the alleged Jesus crucifixion, and wrote their
gospels in their old age, Mark then was at least 70 years old, and John at
over 110. Rather unlikely.

The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although
Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark was
written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can
deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his
personal follower.

Whoever wrote the gospel, simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without
question and wrote a crude and ungrammatical account of the popular story at
the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark,
Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and
Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666 verses, some
600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the
author of Mark, stands at least at a third removed from Jesus and more
likely a fourth removed. [Helms]

The author of Matthew had obviously obtained his information from Mark's
gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal
to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel,
altered what he felt theologically important, and heightened and embellished
the miracles and magic.

The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and
not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4).

No one knows the author or where or how he got his information or the date
of its authorship. Again we are faced with unreliable methodology and
obscure sources.

John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological
discourses from Jesus that could not possibly have come as literal words
from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described
in Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of
eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown
authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe
narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who
wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person,
not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus
could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of
the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone.
If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists
report about what Jesus thoughts. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts?
Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any
case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as
fictional, mythological, or false stories.

Doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as
Hebrews, James John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude and Revelation, were raised even in
antiquity by Origen and Eusebius. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of
James calling it worthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude,
Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. ALL New Testament writings came
well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors.

Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest
surviving Christian texts, written perhaps as early as 60 C.E. Most scholars
have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. However,
there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever
meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus'
life on earth. Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have come
from other believers or his imagination. Paul's Biblical letters are pure
hearsay.

Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a James as the letter
writer, but which James? The Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an
introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical
Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account.

Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation
appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the
same author. Some suggest that these writings of John come from the work of
a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from
the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church.

The epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do
we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay
accounts.

Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the
epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote
it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright
forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full
edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985. In short, no one has any way of
determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author
also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims
of the Church.

Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no claims or
eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus.

As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No
book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we
have, come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionable origins and
copiers. The earliest copies we have were written over a century later than
the autographs, and these exist only on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard;
Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any
manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we
actually have copies from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield]

The editing and formation of the Bibles came from members of the early
Christian Church. Since the leaders of the Church possessed the texts and
determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of
opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster
the power of the Church and it's leaders.

Take, for example, [Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church
historian and bishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he
openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests
of the Church (Remsberg). The first mention of Jesus came from Eusebius
(none of the earlier church fathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes as no
surprise why many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In
his Ecclesiastical History, he writes, "We shall introduce into this history
in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and
afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2). In his Praeparatio
Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawful and Fitting
to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be
Deceived" (book 12, chapter 32).

The early Church had such power over people, that to question the Church
could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had to
take it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We
should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is
really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."

The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus,
who determined the four gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the
Heresies." According to Romer, Irenaeus' great book not only became the
yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of
later inquisitions.

" [Romer] The early Church burned many heretics, along with their sacred
texts. If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings were burned along
with them because of their heretical nature. We will never know.

With such intransigence from the Church and the admitting to lying for its
cause, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how
could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute,
much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intolerant and
biased position, as reliable evidence? Certainly NOT the word of any God!

Pliny the Younger, a Roman official, was born in 62 C.E. His letter about
the Christians only shows that he got his information from Christian
believers themselves. Regardless, his birth date puts him out of the range
of eyewitness accounts.

Suetonius, a Roman historian, born in 69 C.E. who mentions a "Chrestus," a
common name. Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ." But even if
Seutonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus.
Just like all the others, Suetonius birth occurred after the purported
Jesus.

Talmud: Amazingly some Christians use brief portions of the Talmud, (a
collection of Jewish civil and religious law, including commentaries on the
Torah), as evidence for Jesus. They claim that Yeshu (a common name in
Jewish literature) in the Talmud refers to Jesus. However, this Jesus,
according to Gerald Massey actually depicts a disciple of Jehoshua
Ben-Perachia at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus. [Massey]
Regardless of how one interprets this, the Palestinian Talmud was written
between the 3rd and 5th century C.E., and the Babylonian Talmud between the
3rd and 6th century C.E., at least two centuries after the alleged
crucifixion! At best it can only serve as controversial Christian and pagan
legend; it cannot possibly serve as evidence for a historical Jesus.

Because the religious mind relies on belief and faith, the religious person
can inherit a dependence on any information that supports a belief and that
includes fraudulent stories, rumors, unreliable data, and fictions, without
the need to check sources, or to investigate the reliability of the
information.

What appears most revealing of all, comes not from what was later written
about Jesus but what people did not write about him. Consider that not a
single historian, philosopher, scribe or follower who lived before or during
the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him!

If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then
the one feature that stands out prominently within the stories shows that
people claimed to know Jesus far and wide, not only by a great multitude of
followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who
claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only
read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great
multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jersulaem,
and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordon." The gospels mention, countless
times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who
congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that
Luke 12:1 alleges that an "innumberable multitude of people... trode one
upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and
great multitudes came together to hear..." The persecution of Jesus in
Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes,
including the high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in
his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The
multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle
healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5).

So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a
prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him,
including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the
area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the
poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about
Jesus, who would not have heard of him?

Then we have a particular astronomical event that would have attracted the
attention of anyone interested in the "heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45,
there occurred "about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the
earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the
temple was rent in the midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour
ecliptic event got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and
astrologers, anywhere in the world. Nor does a single contemporary person
write about the earthquake described in Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth
shook, rocks ripped apart (rent), and graves opened.

Matthew 2 describes Herod and all of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of
the infant Jesus. Herod then had all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If
such extraordinary infanticides of this magnitude had occurred, why didn't
anyone write about it?

Some apologists attempt to dig themselves out of this problem by claiming
that there lived no capable historians during that period, or due to the
lack of education of the people with a writing capacity, or even sillier,
the scarcity of paper gave reason why no one recorded their "savior." But
the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served, in fact, as the center of
education and record keeping for the Jewish people. The Romans, of course,
also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels mention scribes many times,
not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected with the high
priests. And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time who had the
capacity and capability to record, not only insignificant gossip, but
significant events, especially from a religious sect which allegedly drew so
much popular attention a famous and infamous Jesus.

Take, for example, the works of Philo Judaeus who's birth occurred in 20
B.C.E. and died 50 C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic
philosopher and historian of the time and lived in the area of Jerusalem
during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish
events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his
volumes of writings, do we read a single account of a Jesus "the Christ."
Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca's (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.)
writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23?B.C.E - 79 C.E.).

If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, does any
reader here think it reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus
would not have reached the ears of one of these men?

Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer, even those who
lived in the Middle East, much less anywhere else on the earth, who ever
mention him during his supposed life time. This appears quite extraordinary,
and you will find few Christian apologists who dare mention this
embarrassing fact.

Considering that most Christians believe that Jesus lived as God on earth,
the Almighty gives an embarrassing example for explaining his existence.
You'd think a Creator might at least make sure there exists some good solid
evidence of his power and existence.

The gross lack of evidentiary evidence was illustrated clearly in an
interview by the renowned Biblical scholar, David Noel Freeman (Freeman, the
General editor of the Anchor Bible Series and many other works). An
interviewer asked him about Biblical interpretation. Freeman replied:

"We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal profession, to
convict the defendant of a crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
In civil cases, a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient. When dealing
with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up a little;
otherwise, we can't really say anything."

-David Noel Freedman (in Bible Review magazine, Dec. 1993, p.34)

The implications appear obvious. If one wishes to believe in a historical
Jesus, he must accept it based on loose standards. Couple this with the fact
that all of the claims come from hearsay, and we have a foundation made of
sand.

When a story uses impossible historical locations, or geographical errors
there is serious evidence of fiction.

For example, in Matt 4:8, the author describes the devil taking Jesus into
an exceedingly high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world.
Since there exists no spot on the spheroid earth to view "all the kingdoms,"
we know that the Bible errs here.

John 12:21 says, "The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida
of Galilee. . . ." Bethsaida resided in Gaulonitis (Golan region), east of
the Jordan river, not Galilee, which resided west of the river.

John 3:23 says, "John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. . . ." Critics
agree that no such place as Aenon exists near Salim.

There occurs not a shred of evidence for a city named Nazareth at the time
of the alleged Jesus. [Leedom; Gauvin] Nazareth does not appear in the Old
Testament, nor does it appear in the volumes of Josephus's writings (even
though he provides a detailed list the cities of Galilee).

Many more errors and unsupported geographical locations appear in the New
Testament. And although one cannot use these as evidence against a
historical Jesus, we can certainly question the reliability of the texts. If
the scriptures make so many factual errors about geology, science, and
contain so many contradictions, falsehoods could occur in any area.

If we have a coupling with historical people and locations, then we should
also have some historical reference of a Jesus to these locations and
people. But just the opposite proves the case. The Bible depicts Herod, the
Ruler of Jewish Palestine under Rome as sending out men to search and kill
the infant Jesus, yet nothing in history supports such a story. Pontius
Pilate supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus,
yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. The gospels portray a multitude
of believers throughout the land spreading tales of a teacher, prophet, and
healer, yet nobody in Jesus' life time or several decades after, ever
records such a human figure. The lack of a historical Jesus in the known
historical record speaks for itself.

Many Christian apologists attempt to extricate themselves from their lack of
evidence by claiming that if we cannot rely on the post chronicle exegesis
of Jesus, then we cannot establish a historical foundation for other figures
such as Socrates, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, etc. However, there sits a
vast difference between historical figures and Jesus. There occurs either
artifacts, writings, or eyewitness accounts for historical people, whereas,
for Jesus we have nothing.

Alexander, for example, left a wake of destroyed and created cities behind.
We have buildings, libraries and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his
name. We have treaties, and even a letter from Alexander to the people of
Chios, engraved in stone, dated at 332 B.C.E. For Socrates, we have the
eyewitness writings of Plato that depicts his philosophy and life. Napoleon
left behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters.

Interestingly, almost all important historical people have descriptions of
what they looked like. Plato described what Socrates looked like, we have
busts of Greek and Roman aristocrats, artwork of Napoleon, etc. We have
descriptions of facial qualities, height, weight, hair length & color, age
and even portraits of most important historical figures. But for Jesus, we
have nothing. Nowhere in the Bible do we have a description of the human
shape of Jesus.

Not until hundreds of years after the alleged Jesus did pictures emerge as
to what he looked like from cult Christians, and these widely differed from
a blond clean shaven, curly haired Apollonian youth (found in the Roman
catacombs) to a long-bearded Italian as depicted to this day. This mimics
the pattern of Greek mythological figures as their believers constructed
various images of what their gods looked like according to their own
cultural image.

Historial people leave us with contemporary evidence, but for Jesus we have
nothing.

If a person accepts hearsay and accounts from believers as historical
evidence for Jesus, then shouldn't they act consistently to other accounts
based solely on hearsay and belief?

To take one example, examine the evidence for the Hercules of Greek
mythology and you will find it parallels the "historicity" of Jesus to such
an amazing degree that for Christian apologists to deny Hercules as a
historical person belies and contradicts the very same methodology used for
a historical Jesus.

Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. Hercules was born as
a human from the union of God (Zeus) and the mortal and chaste Alcmene, his
mother. Similar to Herod who wanted to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill
Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal helping
mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Like Jesus who died and rose to
heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives
example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They
believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshiped him, and
dedicated temples to him.

Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have
historical people like Hesiod and Plato who mentions Hercules. Similar to
the way the gospels tell a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic
stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and
quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have mention of Jesus in Joesphus'
Antiquities, so also does Joesphus mention Hercules in Antiquities (see:
1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also
mention Hercules many times in his Annals. And most importantly, just as we
have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have
nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules and Jesus comes from
stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical
Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have
stories and beliefs about him?

Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because
they think there never occurred any precedence for it. We have many examples
of myth from history but what about the other way around? This doubt fails
in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek mythologies where Greek
and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there
must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus,
Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc. These writers put their mythological heroes
into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus, for example, tried to
determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed, "The whole
approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who originated it."
[Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized
mythologies: UFO adherents who's beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily
invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some of which have
formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as pure
fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from fiction
but believed by their constituents.

People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no
longer believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so
go their gods. Christianity and its church authorities, on the other hand,
still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges.
Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his
existence or else risk future funding and damage to their reputations or
fear embarrassment against their Christian friends. Christianity depends on
establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even the
most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief
alone can create intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and
secular thought. We have so many Christian professors, theologians and
historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a
historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even
the most ardent skeptic. The establishment of history should never reside
with the "experts" words alone or simply because a scholar has a reputation
as a historian. If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should
depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he says so.
Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably
without evidence at all, facts depend on evidence.

===================================================================

THEN WHY THE MYTH OF JESUS?

Some people actually believe that just because so much voice and ink has
spread the word of a character named Jesus throughout history, that this
must mean that he actually lived. This argument simply does not hold. The
number of people who believe or write about something or the professional
degrees they hold say nothing at all about fact. Facts derive out of
evidence, not from hearsay, not from hubris scholars, and certainly not from
faithful believers. Regardless of the position or admiration held by a
scholar, believer, or priest, if he or she cannot support their hypothesis
with good evidence, then it can only remain a hypothesis.

While the possibility exists that an actual Jesus lived, the possibility
also occurs that a mythology could have arrived totally out of earlier
mythologies. Although we have no evidence for a historical Jesus, we
certainly have many accounts for the mythologies of the Middle East and
Egypt during the first century and before that appear similar to the Christ
saviour story.

If you know your ancient history, remember that just before and during the
first century, the Jews had prophesied about an upcoming Messiah based on
Jewish scripture. Their beliefs influenced many of their followers. We know
that powerful beliefs can create self-fulfilling prophesies, and surely this
proved just as true in ancient times. It served as a popular dream expressed
in Hebrew Scripture for the promise of an "end-time" with a savior to lead
them to the promised land. Indeed, Roman records show executions of several
would-be Messiahs, (but not a single record mentions a Jesus). Many ancients
believed that there could come a final war against the "Sons of Darkness"--
the Romans.

This then could very well have served as the ignition and flame for the
future growth of Christianity. This coupled with the pagan myths of the time
give sufficient information about how such a religion could have formed.
Many of the Hellenistic and pagan myths parallel so closely to the alleged
Jesus that to ignore its similarities means to ignore the mythological
beliefs of history. Dozens of similar savior stories propagated the minds of
humans long before the alleged life of Jesus. Virtually nothing about Jesus
"the Christ" came to the Christians as original or new.

For example, the religion of Zoroaster, founded circa 628-551 B.C.E. in
ancient Persia which roused mankind in the need for hating a devil, the
belief of a paradise, last judgment and resurrection of the dead. Mithraism,
an offshoot of Zoroastrianism probably influenced early Christianity. The
Magi described in the New Testament appears as Zoroastrian priests. Note the
word "paradise" came from the Persian pairidaeza.

The Egyptian mythical Horus, god of light and goodness has many parallels to
Jesus. [Leedom, Massey] For some examples:

Horus and the Father as one

Horus, the Father seen in the Son

Horus, light of the world, represented by the symbolical eye, the sign of
salvation.

Horus served the way, the truth, the life by name and in person

Horus baptized with water by Anup (Jesus baptized with water by John)

Horus the Good Shepherd

Horus as the Lamb (Jesus as the Lamb)

Horus as the Lion (Jesus as the Lion)

Horus identified with the Tat Cross (Jesus with the cross)

The trinity of Atum the Father, Horus the Son, Ra the Holy Spirit

Horus the avenger (Jesus who brings the sword)

Horus the afflicted one

Horus as life eternal

Twelve followers of Horus as Har-Khutti (Jesus' 12 disciples)

According to Massey, "The mythical Messiah is Horus in the Osirian Mythos;
Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of
Atum-Ra; and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these
characters."

Osiris, Hercules, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and others compare to
the Christian myth. According to Patrick Campbell of The Mythical Jesus, all
served as pre-Christian sun gods, yet all allegedly had gods for fathers,
virgins for mothers; had their births announced by stars; got born on the
solstice around December 25th; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their
infancy; met violent deaths; rose from the dead; and nearly all got
worshiped by "wise men" and had allegedly fasted for forty days. [McKinsey,
Chapter 5]

The pre-Christian cult of Mithra had a deity of light and truth, son of the
Most High, fought against evil, presented the idea of the Logos. Pagan
Mithraism mysteries had the burial in a rock tomb, resurrection, sacrament
of bread & water (Eucharist), the marking on the forehead with a mystic
mark, the symbol of the Rock, the Seven Spirits and seven stars, all before
the advent of Christianity.

Even Justin Martyr recognized the analogies between Christianity and
Paganism. To the Pagans, he wrote: "When we say that the Word, who is first
born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ,
our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into
heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those
whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)." [First Apology, ch. xxi]

Virtually all of the mythical accounts of a savior Jesus have parallels to
past pagan mythologies which existed long before Christianity and from the
Jewish scriptures that we now call the Old Testament. The accounts of these
myths say nothing about historical reality, but they do say a lot about
believers, how they believed, and how their beliefs spread.

In the book The Jesus Puzzle, the biblical scholar, Earl Doherty, presents
not only a challenge to the existence of an historical Jesus but reveals
that early pre-Gospel Christian documents show that the concept of Jesus
sprang from non-historical spiritual beliefs of a Christ derived from Jewish
scripture and Hellenized myths of savior gods. Nowhere do any of the New
Testament epistle writers describe a human Jesus, including Paul. None of
the epistles mention a Jesus from Nazareth, an earthly teacher, or as a
human miracle worker. Nowhere do we find these writers quoting Jesus.
Nowhere do we find them describing any details of Jesus' life on earth or
his followers. Nowhere do we find the epistle writers even using the word
"disciple" (they of course use the term "apostle" but the word simply means
messenger, as Paul saw himself). Except for two well known interpolations,
Jesus always gets presented as a spiritual being that existed before all
time with God, and that knowledge of Christ came directly from God or as a
revelation from the word of scripture. Doherty writes, "Christian documents
outside the Gospels, even at the end of the first century and beyond, show
no evidence that any tradition about an earthly life and ministry of Jesus
were in circulation."

These early historical documents can prove nothing about an actual Jesus but
they do show an evolution of belief derived from varied and diverse concepts
of Christianity, starting from a purely spiritual form of Christ to a human
figure who embodied that spirit, as portrayed in the Gospels. The New
Testament stories appears as an eclectic hodgepodge of Jewish, Hellenized
and pagan stories compiled by pietistic believers to appeal to an audience
for their particular religious times.

A NOTE ABOUT DATING:

The A.D. (Anno Domini, or "year of our Lord") dating method got invented by
a monk named Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth-century. Oddly, some people seem
to think this has relevance to a historical Jesus. But of course it has
nothing at all to do with it. In the time before the 6th century, people
used various other dating methods. The Romans used A.U.C. (ab urbe condita,
or "from the foundation of the city," that being Rome). The Jews had their
own dating system. Dionysisus simply decided to reset time on January 1, 754
A.U.C. to January 1, of year one A.D., to fit his beliefs about the birth of
Jesus. He conjectured his information from the Bible (which he got wrong).
[Gould, 1995]

Instead of B.C. and A.D., I have used the convention of B.C.E. (Before the
Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) as often used in scholarly literature.
They correspond to the same dates as B.C. & A.D., but without alluding to
the birth or death of an alleged Christ.

QUOTES FROM A FEW SCHOLARS:

Although apologist scholars believe that an actual Jesus lived on earth, the
reasons for this appear obvious considering their Christian beliefs.
Although some secular freethinkers and atheists accept a historical Jesus
(minus the miracles), they, like most Christians, simply accept the
traditional view without question. As time goes on, more and more scholars
have begun to open the way to a more honest look at the evidence, or should
I say, the lack of evidence. So for those who wish to rely on scholarly
opinion, I will give a few quotes from Biblical scholars, past and present:

When the Church mythologists established their system, they collected all
the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. It is a
matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now
appear under the name of the Old and New Testaments are in the same state in
which those collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered,
abridged or dressed them up.

-Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

The world has been for a long time engaged in writing lives of Jesus... The
library of such books has grown since then. But when we come to examine
them, one startling fact confronts us: all of these books relate to a
personage concerning whom there does not exist a single scrap of
contemporary information -- not one! By accepted tradition he was born in
the reign of Augustus, the great literary age of the nation of which he was
a subject. In the Augustan age historians flourished; poets, orators,
critics and travelers abounded. Yet not one mentions the name of Jesus
Christ, much less any incident in his life.

-Moncure D. Conway [1832 - 1907] (Modern Thought)

It is only in comparatively modern times that the possibility was considered
that Jesus does not belong to history at all.

-J.M. Robertson (Pagan Christs)

Whether considered as the God made human, or as man made divine, this
character never existed as a person.

-Gerald Massey, Egyptologist and historical scholar (Gerald Massey's
Lectures: Gnostic and Historic Christianity, 1900)

Many people-- then and now-- have assumed that these letters [of Paul] are
genuine, and five of them were in fact incorporated into the New Testament
as "letters of Paul." Even today, scholars dispute which are authentic and
which are not. Most scholars, however, agree that Paul actually wrote only
eight of the thirteen "Pauline" letters now included in the New Testament.
collection: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1
Thessalonians, and Philemon. Virtually all scholars agree that Paul himself
did not write 1 or 2 Timothy or Titus-- letters written in a style different
from Paul's and reflecting situations and viewpoints in a style different
from those in Paul's own letters. About the authorship of Ephesias,
Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, debate continues; but the majority of
scholars include these, too, among the "deutero-Pauline"-- literally,
secondarily Pauline-- letters."

-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, (Adam, Eve,
and the Serpent)

We know virtually nothing about the persons who wrote the gospels we call
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, (The Gnostic
Gospels)

Some hoped to penetrate the various accounts and to discover the "historical
Jesus". . . and that sorting out "authentic" material in the gospels was
virtually impossible in the absence of independent evidence."

-Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University

We can recreate dimensions of the world in which he lived, but outside of
the Christian scriptures, we cannot locate him historically within that
world.

-Gerald A. Larue (The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

The gospels are so anonymous that their titles, all second-century guesses,
are all four wrong.

-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

Far from being an intimate of an intimate of Jesus, Mark wrote at the forth
remove from Jesus.

-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

Mark himself clearly did not know any eyewitnesses of Jesus.

-Randel McCraw Helms (Who Wrote the Gospels?)

All four gospels are anonymous texts. The familiar attributions of the
Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come from the mid-second century and
later and we have no good historical reason to accept these attributions.

-Steve Mason, professor of classics, history and religious studies at York
University in Toronto (Bible Review, Feb. 2000, p. 36)

The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of
Jesus in any Gospel.

-Bishop John Shelby Spong

Many modern Biblical archaeologists now believe that the village of Nazareth
did not exist at the time of the birth and early life of Jesus. There is
simply no evidence for it.

-Alan Albert Snow (The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read)

But even if it could be proved that John's Gospel had been the first of the
four to be written down, there would still be considerable confusion as to
who "John" was. For the various styles of the New Testament texts ascribed
to John- The Gospel, the letters, and the Book of Revelations-- are each so
different in their style that it is extremely unlikely that they had been
written by one person.

-John Romer, archeologist & Bible scholar (Testament)

It was not until the third century that Jesus' cross of execution became a
common symbol of the Christian faith.

-John Romer, archeologist & Bible scholar (Testament)

What one believes and what one can demonstrate historically are usually two
different things.

-Robert J. Miller, Bible scholar, (Bible Review, December 1993, Vol. IX,
Number 6, p. 9)

When it comes to the historical question about the Gospels, I adopt a
mediating position-- that is, these are religious records, close to the
sources, but they are not in accordance with modern historiographic
requirements or professional standards.

-David Noel Freedman, Bible scholar and general editor of the Anchor Bible
series (Bible Review, December 1993, Vol. IX, Number 6, p.34)

It is said that the last recourse of the Bible apologist is to fall back
upon allegory. After all, when confronted with the many hundreds of biblical
problems, allegory permits one to interpret anything however one might
please.

-Gene Kasmar, Minnesota Atheists

Paul did not write the letters to Timothy to Titus or several others
published under his name; and it is unlikely that the apostles Matthew,
James, Jude, Peter and John had anything to do with the canonical books
ascribed to them.

-Michael D. Coogan, Professor of religious studies at Stonehill College
(Bible Review, June 1994)

A generation after Jesus' death, when the Gospels were written, the Romans
had destroyed the Jerusalem Temple (in 70 C.E.); the most influential
centers of Christianity were cities of the Mediterranean world such as
Alexandria, Antioch, Corinth, Damascus, Ephesus and Rome. Although large
number of Jews were also followers of Jesus, non-Jews came to predominate in
the early Church. They controlled how the Gospels were written after 70 C.E.

-Bruce Chilton, Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College (Bible Review,
Dec. 1994, p. 37)

James Dunn says that the Sermon on the Mount, mentioned only by Matthew, "is
in fact not historical."

How historical can the Gospels be? Are Murphy-O-Conner's speculations
concerning Jesus' baptism by John simply wrong-headed? How can we really
know if the baptism, or any other event written about in the Gospels, is
historical?

-Daniel P. Sullivan (Bible Review, June 1996, Vol. XII, Number 3, p. 5)

David Friedrich Strauss (The Life of Jesus, 1836), had argued that the
Gospels could not be read as straightforward accounts of what Jesus actually
did and said; rather, the evangelists and later redactors and commentators,
influenced by their religious beliefs, had made use of myths and legends
that rendered the gospel narratives, and traditional accounts of Jesus'
life, unreliable as sources of historical information.

-Bible Review, October 1996, Vol. XII, Number 5, p. 39

The Gospel authors were Jews writing within the midrashic tradition and
intended their stories to be read as interpretive narratives, not historical
accounts.

-Bishop Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels

Other scholars have concluded that the Bible is the product of a purely
human endeavor, that the identity of the authors is forever lost and that
their work has been largely obliterated by centuries of translation and
editing.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "Who Wrote the Bible," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.
10, 1990)

Yet today, there are few Biblical scholars-- from liberal skeptics to
conservative evangelicals- who believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
actually wrote the Gospels. Nowhere do the writers of the texts identify
themselves by name or claim unambiguously to have known or traveled with
Jesus.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10,
1990)

Once written, many experts believe, the Gospels were redacted, or edited,
repeatedly as they were copied and circulated among church elders during the
last first and early second centuries.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10,
1990)

The tradition attributing the fourth Gospel to the Apostle John, the son of
Zebedee, is first noted by Irenaeus in A.D. 180. It is a tradition based
largely on what some view as the writer's reference to himself as "the
beloved disciple" and "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Current objection to
John's authorship are based largely on modern textural analyses that
strongly suggest the fourth Gospel was the work of several hands, probably
followers of an elderly teacher in Asia Minor named John who claimed as a
young man to have been a disciple of Jesus.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10,
1990)

Some scholars say so many revisions occurred in the 100 years following
Jesus' death that no one can be absolutely sure of the accuracy or
authenticity of the Gospels, especially of the words the authors attributed
to Jesus himself.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.
10, 1990)

Three letters that Paul allegedly wrote to his friends and former co-workers
Timothy and Titus are now widely disputed as having come from Paul's hand.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.
10, 1990)

The Epistle of James is a practical book, light on theology and full of
advice on ethical behavior. Even so, its place in the Bible has been
challenged repeatedly over the years. It is generally believed to have been
written near the end of the first century to Jewish Christians. . . but
scholars are unable conclusively to identify the writer.

Five men named James appear in the New Testament: the brother of Jesus, the
son of Zebedee, the son of Alphaeus, "James the younger" and the father of
the Apostle Jude.

Little is known of the last three, and since the son of Zebedee was martyred
in A.D. 44, tradition has leaned toward the brother of Jesus. However, the
writer never claims to be Jesus' brother. And scholars find the language too
erudite for a simple Palestinian. This letter is also disputed on
theological grounds. Martin Luther called it "an epistle of straw" that did
not belong in the Bible because it seemed to contradict Paul's teachings
that salvation comes by faith as a "gift of God"-- not by good works.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.
10, 1990)

The origins of the three letters of John are also far from certain.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.
10, 1990)

Christian tradition has held that the Apostle Peter wrote the first
[letter], probably in Rome shortly before his martyrdom about A.D. 65.
However, some modern scholars cite the epistle's cultivated language and its
references to persecutions that did not occur until the reign of Domitian
(A.D. 81-96) as evidence that it was actually written by Peter's disciples
sometime later.

Second Peter has suffered even harsher scrutiny. Many scholars consider it
the latest of all New Testament books, written around A.D. 125. The letter
was never mentioned in second-century writings and was excluded from some
church canons into the fifth century. "This letter cannot have been written
by Peter," wrote Werner Kummel, a Heidelberg University scholar, in his
highly regarded Introduction to the New Testament.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.
10, 1990)

The letter of Jude also is considered too late to have been written by the
attested author-- "the brother of James" and, thus, of Jesus. The letter,
believed written early in the second century.

-Jeffery L. Sheler, "The catholic papers," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec.
10, 1990)

According to the declaration of the Second Vatican Council, a faithful
account of the actions and words of Jesus is to be found in the Gospels; but
it is impossible to reconcile this with the existence in the text of
contradictions, improbabilities, things which are materially impossible or
statements which run contrary to firmly established reality.

-Maurice Bucaille (The Bible, the Quran, and Science)

The bottom line is we really don't know for sure who wrote the Gospels.

-Jerome Neyrey, of the Weston School of Theology, Cambridge, Mass. in "The
Four Gospels," (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990)

Most scholars have come to acknowledge, was done not by the Apostles but by
their anonymous followers (or their followers' followers). Each presented a
somewhat different picture of Jesus' life. The earliest appeared to have
been written some 40 years after his Crucifixion.

-David Van Biema, "The Gospel Truth?" (Time, April 8, 1996)

So unreliable were the Gospel accounts that "we can now know almost nothing
concerning the life and personality of Jesus."

-Rudolf Bultmann, University of Marburg, the foremost Protestant scholar in
the field in 1926

The Synoptic Gospels employ techniques that we today associate with fiction.

-Paul Q. Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June
1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p. 43)

Josephus says that he himself witnessed a certain Eleazar casting out demons
by a method of exorcism that had been given to Solomon by God himself--
while Vespasian watched! In the same work, Josephus tells the story of a
rainmaker, Onias (14.2.1).

-Paul Q. Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June
1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p. 43)

For Mark's gospel to work, for instance, you must believe that Isaiah 40:3
(quoted, in a slightly distorted form, in Mark 1:2-3) correctly predicted
that a stranger named John would come out of the desert to prepare the way
for Jesus. It will then come as something of a surprise to learn in the
first chapter of Luke that John is a near relative, well known to Jesus'
family.

-Paul Q. Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June
1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p. 43)

The narrative conventions and world outlook of the gospel prohibit our using
it as a historical record of that year.

-Paul Q. Beeching, Central Connecticut State University (Bible Review, June
1997, Vol. XIII, Number 3, p. 54)

Jesus is a mythical figure in the tradition of pagan mythology and almost
nothing in all of ancient literature would lead one to believe otherwise.
Anyone wanting to believe Jesus lived and walked as a real live human being
must do so despite the evidence, not because of it.

-C. Dennis McKinsey, Bible critic (The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy)

The gospels are very peculiar types of literature. They're not biographies.

-Paula Fredriksen, Professor and historian of early Christianity, Boston
University (in the PBS documentary, From Jesus to Christ, aired in 1998)

The gospels are not eyewitness accounts

-Allen D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity
School

We are led to conclude that, in Paul's past, there was no historical Jesus.
Rather, the activities of the Son about which God's gospel in scripture
told, as interpreted by Paul, had taken place in the spiritual realm and
were accessible only through revelation.

-Earl Doherty, "The Jesus Puzzle," p.83

Before the Gospels were adopted as history, no record exists that he was
ever in the city of Jerusalem at all-- or anywhere else on earth.

-Earl Doherty, "The Jesus Puzzle," p.141

Even if there was a historical Jesus lying back of the gospel Christ, he can
never be recovered. If there ever was a historical Jesus, there isn't one
any more. All attempts to recover him turn out to be just modern
remythologizings of Jesus. Every "historical Jesus" is a Christ of faith, of
somebody's faith. So the "historical Jesus" of modern scholarship is no less
a fiction.

-Robert M. Price, "Jesus: Fact or Fiction, A Dialogue With Dr. Robert Price
and Rev. John Rankin," Opening Statement

It is important to recognize the obvious: The gospel story of Jesus is
itself apparently mythic from first to last."

-Robert M. Price, professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry
Institute (Deconstructing Jesus, p. 260)

CONCLUSION

Belief cannot produce historical fact, and claims that come from nothing but
hearsay do not amount to an honest attempt to get at the facts. Even with
eyewitness accounts we must tread carefully. Simply because someone makes a
claim, does not mean it represents reality. For example, consider some of
the bogus claims that supposedly come from many eyewitness accounts of alien
extraterrestrials and their space craft. They not only assert eyewitnesses
but present blurry photos to boot! If we can question these accounts, then
why should we not question claims that come from hearsay even more?
Moreover, consider that the hearsay comes from ancient and unknown people
that no longer live.

Unfortunately, belief and faith substitute as knowledge in many people's
minds and nothing, even direct evidence thrust on the feet of their claims,
could possibly change their minds. We have many stories, myths and beliefs
of a Jesus but if we wish to establish the facts of history, we cannot even
begin to put together a knowledgeable account without at least a few
reliable eyewitness accounts.

Of course a historical Jesus may have existed, perhaps based loosely on a
living human even though his actual history got lost, but this amounts to
nothing but speculation. However we do have an abundance of evidence
supporting the mythical evolution of Jesus. Virtually every detail in the
gospel stories occurred in pagan and/or Hebrew stories, long before the
advent of Christianity. We simply do not have a shred of evidence to
determine the historicity of a Jesus "the Christ." We only have evidence for
the belief of Jesus, NOT a witness of him!

So if you hear anyone who claims to have evidence for a witness of a
historical Jesus, simply ask for the author's birth date. Anyone who's birth
occurred after an event cannot serve as an eyewitness, nor can their words
alone serve as evidence for that event.

Sources (click on a blue highlighted book title if you'd like to obtain it):

Briant, Pierre, "Alexander the Great: Man of Action Man of Spirit," Harry N.
Abrams, 1996

Doherty, Earl, "The Jesus Puzzle," Canadian Humanist Publications, 1999

Flavius, Josephus (37 or 38-circa 101 C.E.), Antiquities

Gauvin, Marshall J., "Did Jesus Christ Really Live?" (from:
www.infidels.org/)

Gould, Stephen Jay "Dinosaur in a Haystack," (Chapter 2), Harmony Books, New
York, 1995

Graham, Henry Grey, Rev., "Where we got the Bible," B. Heder Book Company,
1960

Graves, Kersey "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors," 1875

Helms, Randel McCraw , "Who Wrote the Gospels?", Millennium Press

Irenaeus of Lyon (140?-202? C.E.), Against the Heresies

Leedom, Tim C. "The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read," Kendall/Hunt
Publishing Company, 1993

Massey, Gerald, "Gerald Massey's Lectures: The Historical Jesus and Mythical
Christ," 1900

McKinsey, C. Dennis "The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy," Prometheus
Books, 1995

Metzger, Bruce,"The Text of the New Testament-- Its Transmission,
Corruption, and Restoration," Oxford University Press, 1968

Pagels, Elaine, "The Gnostic Gospels," Vintage Books, New York, 1979

Pagels, Elaine, "Adam, Eve, and the Serpent," Vintage Books, New York, 1888

Pagels, Elaine, "The Origin of Satan," Random House, New York, 1995

Price, Robert M.," Deconstructing Jesus," Prometheus Books, 2000

Pritchard, John Paul, "A Literary Approach to the New Testament," Norman,
University of Oklahoma Press, 1972

Remsberg, John E., "The Christ," Prometheus Books

Robertson, J.M. "Pagan Christs," Barnes & Noble Books, 1966

Romer, John, "Testament : The Bible and History," Henry Holt and Company,
New York, 1988

Schonfield, Hugh Joseph, "A History of Biblical Literature," New American
Library, 1962

Spong, Bishop Shelby, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism,"
HarperSanFrancisco, 1991

Tacitus (55?-117? C.E.), Annals

Wilson, Dorothy Frances, "The Gospel Sources, some results of modern
scholarship," London, Student Christian Movement press, 1938

The Revell Bible Dictionary," Wynwood Press, New York, 1990

King James Bible, 1611

U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 10, 1990

Various issues of Bible Review magazine, published by the Biblical
Archaeology Society, Washington D.C.

Online sources:

[1] "James (book of Bible)," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001

[2] "John, Epistles of," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001

[3] "Peter, Epistles of," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Bill M wrote:
>
> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any god
> unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They are not even
> good fiction.
>

This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.

>
>
> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
> contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.
> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
> that mentions Jesus except one.
>

This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
everything under the sun. At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city
in a conquered nation. Initially, the death of Jesus was
insignificant. Later, Chrisianity spread from his death to the rest of
the world. You have no proof Jesus didn't exist. Consequently, your
argument is irrelevant.

> This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian considers
> this passage to have been written by Josephus.
>

It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't
exist. This belief is not cognizant on facts.

> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the life of
> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an
> earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. It is
> reasonable to assume that these ancient documents were doctored and altered
> to enhance the power of the clerics of the time. Many of these writings come
> from fraud, interpolations and hearsay.
>

This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
just make up facts to support your beliefs.

> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
> leaders.
>

Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined
before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
Some of the rest are still existant.

>

> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which books
> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among scholars
> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words, the
> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires and
> motives of the church leadership at the time
>

Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
irrational.

>
>
> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years after the
> claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were just a collection
> of various regional stories from older civilizations. Some Biblical scholars
> claim the earliest versions of the Bible were not in existence until 150
> years after the claimed crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
>
> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was claimed to
> be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created by church
> leaders to enhance their power? There are NO originals of any of the Old or
> New testaments. They are all hand copies of copies of copies with
> alterations to suite the copiers.
>
> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during Jesus'
> claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation of tales and
> the embellishment of history.

Again you come to unsupported conclusions.

>
> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They contain
> manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities, indecencies,
> obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore and legends. They are
> mostly nonsense and hearsay.
>

You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of history.
You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.

Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 9 Oct 2006 14:38:38 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Bill M wrote:
>>
>> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any god
>> unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They are not even
>> good fiction.
>>
>
>This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
>speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha...........

[Lucifer]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

<snip>

> You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of history.
> You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.

*BOOM*.
...
...
...

Uhm...labs? I need another one

--

Lucifer, EAC Librarian of Dark Tomes of Excessive Evil and General
Purpose Igor
"Don't worry, I won't bite.......hard"

>
> Jimmy Boy

[Enkidu]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

>
> Bill M wrote:
>>
>> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
>> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They
>> are not even good fiction.
>>
>
> This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
> speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.
>
>>
>>
>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical
>> Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written
>> manuscripts. No contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate
>> executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs
>> not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus except one.
>>
>
> This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
> everything under the sun. At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city
> in a conquered nation. Initially, the death of Jesus was
> insignificant. Later, Chrisianity spread from his death to the rest
> of the world. You have no proof Jesus didn't exist. Consequently,
> your argument is irrelevant.

If he wandered from place to place, curing the sick, feeding the hungry,
raising the dead, somebody would have noticed. In any event, it doesn't
change the fact that there is no evidence supporting your belief.

>> This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
>> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian
>> considers this passage to have been written by Josephus.
>
> It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
> arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't
> exist.

I can't prove Zeus didn't exist. Does that mean I should believe he did
exist?

> This belief is not cognizant on facts.

You've got that right. To bad you don't understand the implications. Your
belief is not tied to historical reality by any facts.

>> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the
>> life of
>> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never
>> met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical
>> writings. It is reasonable to assume that these ancient documents
>> were doctored and altered to enhance the power of the clerics of the
>> time. Many of these writings come from fraud, interpolations and
>> hearsay.
>>
>
> This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
> up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
> originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
> just make up facts to support your beliefs.

So, you have some evidence the Bible *is* more accurate than the Vedas or
the Koran? Yes? Present it. No? then dump the Bible or believe in the
other holy books too.

>> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church
>> leaders to
>> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by
>> church leaders.
>>
>
> Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined
> before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
> Some of the rest are still existant.

Yeah? Does that make them true?

>> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
>> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which
>> books were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion
>> among scholars is that the decision was based on whether or not the
>> book agreed with the prevailing theological thought and motives at
>> the time. In other words, the only books accepted were the ones that
>> agreed with the opinions, desires and motives of the church
>> leadership at the time
>>
>
> Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
> the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
> irrational.

You come to a concrete conclusion that the Bible is true and accurate
without a shred of evidence.

>> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years
>> after the claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were
>> just a collection of various regional stories from older
>> civilizations. Some Biblical scholars claim the earliest versions of
>> the Bible were not in existence until 150 years after the claimed
>> crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
>>
>> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was
>> claimed to be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable
>> created by church leaders to enhance their power? There are NO
>> originals of any of the Old or New testaments. They are all hand
>> copies of copies of copies with alterations to suite the copiers.
>>
>> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during
>> Jesus' claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation
>> of tales and the embellishment of history.
>
> Again you come to unsupported conclusions.

No, *everyone* agrees that no part of the New Testament was written before
60ce.

>> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They
>> contain manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities,
>> indecencies, obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore
>> and legends. They are mostly nonsense and hearsay.
>>
>
> You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of
> history.
> You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.
>
> Jimmy Boy

When you learn to read for yourself and think for yourself, will you become
"Jimmy Man"?

--
Enkidu AA#2165
http://www.thoughts.leaddogs.org/
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to
the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his
children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken

[Mike Painter]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Bill M wrote:
>>
>> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
>> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They
>> are not even good fiction.
>>
>
> This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
> speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.

Start with "Who wrote the Bible" for the "contemporary" view of the first
books (the last 100 years), read a few books like "The Bible Unearthed" for
some historical and archeological evidence and then get back to us with
questions about what you think might have been valid.
We hold Hitler to be an insane mad man for wanting to kill all the Jews as
well as the deformed and mentally ill. This god in the bible allegedly
killed all but eight and still couldn't get it right.

>
>>
>>
>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical
>> Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written
>> manuscripts. No contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate
>> executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs
>> not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus except one.
>>
>
> This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
> everything under the sun. At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city
> in a conquered nation. Initially, the death of Jesus was
> insignificant. Later, Chrisianity spread from his death to the rest
> of the world. You have no proof Jesus didn't exist. Consequently,
> your argument is irrelevant.

There *are* historical records of other Messiahs being killed. They and all
their supporters were killed. The story of Christ is missing.
And while Jerusalem was a city in a conquered nation there are lots of
records from then but none that mention the deaths of thousands of children
or any of the other stories in the book.

>> This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
>> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian
>> considers this passage to have been written by Josephus.
>>
>
> It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
> arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't
> exist. This belief is not cognizant on facts.

You have the burden to provide *facts* of existance. Did this god hide the
records of this person and allow other records to survive as a test?

>
>
>> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the
>> life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who
>> had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or
>> allegorical writings. It is reasonable to assume that these ancient
>> documents were doctored and altered to enhance the power of the
>> clerics of the time. Many of these writings come from fraud,
>> interpolations and hearsay.
>>
>
> This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
> up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
> originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
> just make up facts to support your beliefs.

I'd suggest you read some. Even the most fundamental religions will admit
that nothing has ever been found that was written anywhere near the time of
Jesus that mentions him.
How do you know things have been lost in time? That's like claiming the
lottery because you were going to pick those winning numbers.

>
>
>> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church
>> leaders to support and enhance their power. The rest have been
>> destroyed by church leaders.
>>
>
> Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined
> before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
> Some of the rest are still existant.

Wrong again. In fact the current version of the OT differs between churches
and the Prodestant version was not official until 1865.
>
<snip>

>>
>> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years
>> after the claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were
>> just a collection of various regional stories from older
>> civilizations. Some Biblical scholars claim the earliest versions of
>> the Bible were not in existence until 150 years after the claimed
>> crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
>>
>> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was
>> claimed to be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable
>> created by church leaders to enhance their power? There are NO
>> originals of any of the Old or New testaments. They are all hand
>> copies of copies of copies with alterations to suite the copiers.
>>
>> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written
>> during Jesus' claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the
>> creation of tales and the embellishment of history.
>
>

> You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of
> history. You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.
>

If you have read the bible, it's clear you have not read much else.

[jke...@zoomnet.net]

Bill M wrote:
> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
> contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.

because there are NO surviving contemporary Roman record,or little else
from 30-50.

> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
> that mentions Jesus except one. This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus,

There TWO passages from Josephus that mention Jesus. The shorter
"James passage" is almost universally considered genuine.

was debunked as a
> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian considers
> this passage to have been written by Josephus.

Really?

How about
LEWIS FELDMAN
PAUL WINTER
GEZA VERMES
SCHLOMO PINES

They're JEWISH!

Do some research,Bill.

>

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 9 Oct 2006 16:47:59 -0700, jke...@zoomnet.net wrote:

>
>Bill M wrote:
>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
>> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
>> contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.
>
>because there are NO surviving contemporary Roman record,or little else
>from 30-50.
>
>
>> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
>> that mentions Jesus except one. This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus,
>
>There TWO passages from Josephus that mention Jesus. The shorter
>"James passage" is almost universally considered genuine.

Only by those who want it to be. It dwescribes a different James, who
doed dirrefently than church history describes.

[Bill M]

<jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

>
> Bill M wrote:
>>
>> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any god
>> unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They are not
>> even
>> good fiction.
>>
>
> This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
> speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.

You quite apparently didn't read the post!

>>
>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus;
>> no
>> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
>> contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named
>> Jesus.
>> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
>> that mentions Jesus except one.
>>
>
> This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
> everything under the sun. At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city
> in a conquered nation. Initially, the death of Jesus was
> insignificant. Later, Chrisianity spread from his death to the rest of
> the world. You have no proof Jesus didn't exist. Consequently, your
> argument is irrelevant.

Later Rome and the church fabricated history that supported their religous
control
and power.

>> This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
>> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian considers
>> this passage to have been written by Josephus.
>>
>
> It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
> arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't
> exist. This belief is not cognizant on facts.

I did not clim Jeuse didn't exist. I merely claim that there was only very
week evidence for his existence.

>> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the life
>> of
>> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met
>> an
>> earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. It
>> is
>> reasonable to assume that these ancient documents were doctored and
>> altered
>> to enhance the power of the clerics of the time. Many of these writings
>> come
>> from fraud, interpolations and hearsay.
>>
>
> This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
> up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
> originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
> just make up facts to support your beliefs.

Your stetement is pure unsupported nonsense. When are you going to back up
your claims
with some evidence instead of purely your personal opinion.

>> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders
>> to
>> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
>> leaders.
>>
>
> Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined
> before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
> Some of the rest are still existant.

I never said the Old Testement was written after Christ and their are NO
ORIGINALS of
either the oled or New Testements in existence.

>
>
>> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
>> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which
>> books
>> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among
>> scholars
>> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
>> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words,
>> the
>> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires
>> and
>> motives of the church leadership at the time
>>
>
> Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
> the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
> irrational.

Care to back up your irrational claims with some 'objective verifiable
facts' instead of just wild statements.

>> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years after
>> the
>> claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were just a
>> collection
>> of various regional stories from older civilizations. Some Biblical
>> scholars
>> claim the earliest versions of the Bible were not in existence until 150
>> years after the claimed crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
>>
>> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was claimed
>> to
>> be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created by church
>> leaders to enhance their power? There are NO originals of any of the Old
>> or
>> New testaments. They are all hand copies of copies of copies with
>> alterations to suite the copiers.
>>
>> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during
>> Jesus'
>> claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation of tales
>> and
>> the embellishment of history.
>
> Again you come to unsupported conclusions.

In your wild 'unsubstantiated opinion'.

>> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They contain
>> manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities, indecencies,
>> obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore and legends. They
>> are
>> mostly nonsense and hearsay.
>>
>
> You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of history.
> You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.

You have made dozens of statemnents bu thave not backed up any with some
'objective verifaible evidence'.

It appears that the data in the post conflicts with your belief system and
causes
your irrational reaction.

> Jimmy Boy
>

[bk]

WOW!!!!! What EVIDENCE!!!! FOUR people think that 5" of text that
support an entire man's existence may be true and not an
interpolation!!! You know, there's that website that shows a small % of
the population thinks there may be scientific evidence for Bigfoot!!
Time to get those church cloppers on!!!!! Wheeeeeesh!!

[Greywolf]

<jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>

You're trying to defend ridiculous and preposterous claims. It's utter
madness to believe that the stories revolving around Jesus/God are actually
true. You're just another brainwashed Christian trying to defend the
indefensible. Not brainwashed, you say? Try this: Post something to the
effect that it just may be *possible* -- not necessarily true -- that the
bible contains mistakes and contradictions, and that some of the stories we
find in the New Testament are simply not historically true (like Mt.
27:50-53). If you can do that -- in an honest manner -- maybe you might not
be completely brainwashed. If you can't, you are.

We'll be waiting.

Greywolf

[Thurisaz, Germanic barbarian]

Bill M:

> If religion was based on facts instead of pure faith the followers would
> be called knowers instead of followers. Why are there hundreds of
> different "one true faiths"?

It's just another one of 1001 ways of admitting "my faith teaches me to kiss
a sadist's arse" ;)

--
"To his friend a man a friend shall prove, and gifts with gifts requite;
But men shall mocking with mockery answer, and fraud with falsehood meet."
(The Poetic Edda)
Must have been written with fundies in mind...

My personal judgment of monotheism:
http://www.carcosa.de/nojebus

[Stephen Knight]

On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:40:09 -0400, "Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net>
wrote:

Snip over a thousand lines of Apologetic drivel. (Like I'm going to
spend that much time losing brain cells....)

>Amazingly, Christians almost never question the authenticity of Jesus and
>the Bibles, yet the very foundation of their faith is based on their
>authenticity.

We know. "Amazingly" is the operative word. How can you be so
stupid to believe that asshole even existed?

Not to set myself aside... I, and quite a few atheists have serious
issues about the relationship between Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. Bugs
in drag and kisses Elmer. Okay... That's fine when the carrot is a
stick of dynamite, but what's with the lipstick?

Warlord Steve
BAAWA

[bk]

Greywolf wrote:
> <jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

[]

> > You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> > Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of history.
> > You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.
> >
> > Jimmy Boy
> >
>
> You're trying to defend ridiculous and preposterous claims. It's utter
> madness to believe that the stories revolving around Jesus/God are actually
> true. You're just another brainwashed Christian trying to defend the
> indefensible. Not brainwashed, you say? Try this: Post something to the
> effect that it just may be *possible* -- not necessarily true -- that the
> bible contains mistakes and contradictions, and that some of the stories we
> find in the New Testament are simply not historically true (like Mt.
> 27:50-53). If you can do that -- in an honest manner -- maybe you might not
> be completely brainwashed. If you can't, you are.
>
>We'll be waiting.

Interested to hear JB's answer here too but while we're waiting:

"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise" (Cor: 1:27)

Doesn't that tie it all together quite neatly? ;)

[Free Lunch]

On 9 Oct 2006 19:37:58 -0700, in alt.atheism
"bk" <backandf...@yahoo.com> wrote in
<1160447878.6...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>:

Yes, it's the all-purpose excuse for intentional ignorance.

[Darrell Stec]

After serious contemplation, on or about Monday 09 October 2006 7:47 pm

jke...@zoomnet.net perhaps from jke...@zoomnet.net wrote:

>
> Bill M wrote:
>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical
>> Jesus; no
>> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts.
>> No contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man
>> named Jesus.
>
> because there are NO surviving contemporary Roman record,or little
> else from 30-50.
>

Guess what? You are wrong. There is a treasure trove of works dug up
from Herculaneum that as of the summer of 2005 scientists have managed
to process from the charred lumps they once were.

>
>> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary
>> writing that mentions Jesus except one. This one ancient passage,
>> supposedly from Josephus,
>
> There TWO passages from Josephus that mention Jesus. The shorter
> "James passage" is almost universally considered genuine.
>
>

Try looking up the word contemporary. Josephus was born after the
supposed death of your Joshua. And he fails to record a single
miracle. One would think something as important and earth shaking as
raising the dead would have made it into his Annals. And the even more
remarkable hundreds of walking zombies should have at least raised an
eyebrow. Yet Josephus nor any other writer that lived in the area at
the supposed time of the crucifixion noticed.

>
> was debunked as a
>> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian
>> considers this passage to have been written by Josephus.
>
> Really?
>
> How about
> LEWIS FELDMAN
> PAUL WINTER

Feldman and Winter believe there is SOME authentic SUBSTRATUM (plus
CHRISTIAN additions, changes, and deletions). The same view is
mirrored by Morton Smith, James Charlesworth, A. Dubarie, Carlo
Martini, S. Brandon, Wolfgang Trilling, and John P. Meier (a rather
diverse group of scholars).

> GEZA VERMES
> SCHLOMO PINES

Shlomo Pines commented on the longer passage considered to be an
interpolation by many scholars, not the shorter version. He based his
observations on a 10th century Arabic manuscript. Pines also refers to
a Syriac version which copied the variant used by Jerome -- "He was
believed to be the christ."

J. D. Crossan quotes Pines' translation as: "For he says in the
treatises that he has written in the governance of the Jews: "At this
time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was
good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the
Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him
to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did
not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to
them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive.
Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the
Prophets have recounted wonders.""

You might note that Eusebius is the first to have quoted the passage.
Some scholars credit him with inventing it, however we have nothing
earlier than about six or seven centuries after Eusebius died, from
him. All copies of Josephus derive from Christian sources including
the Arabic one.

Origin explictly states that Josephus did not believe Joshua was the
christ. And Josephus mentions about 27 Joshuas and several James.

>
> They're JEWISH!

And they do not actually affirm what you would have us believe.

>
> Do some research,Bill.
>

Do some research, jkelley.

>>

--
Later,
Darrell Stec dar...@neo.rr.com

Webpage Sorcery
http://webpagesorcery.com
We Put the Magic in Your Webpages

[Al Klein]

On 9 Oct 2006 14:38:38 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>Bill M wrote:

>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
>> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
>> contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.
>> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
>> that mentions Jesus except one.

>This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
>everything under the sun.

Your religion was based on one thing by another - the Logos by the
Chreestos. You know that already, right?

What you (and 99.999% of Christians) don't know yet - because of
discoveries made only in the last couple of years - is that:

a) the Logos is the part of your god he uses to interface with the
universe (according to early Christians, and who would know better
than those who founded the religion). That's "the part of" the god of
Moses, of course - Christianity, in the first century, at least, was
just a few (or a few dozen or a few hundred - who knows, we only know
from the writings we've found, not the ones we haven't found) sects of
Judaism.

and b) The Chreestos was the congregation They were - all Christians
at that time, by definition, were - "the Anointed of God". That's
what "Christian" meant in the first century. Not followers of a
Christ that wasn't mentioned until the second century.

The 'Jesus' part came later - much later. The first mention of any
'Jesus' figure in Christianity didn't come until the second century.
Paul's "Jesus" was the Logos - pure spirit. Christian (early
Christian - 1st century) belief was salvation through knowledge of the
god of Moses. No 'son', no crucifixion - that was all added later by
those who hadn't been born when it all supposedly happened. Whose
parents hadn't been born then. And, figuring the average life span
back then, whose grandparents hadn't been born back then. (100 years
was really 4 generations back then - 50 was OLD.)

>At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city in a conquered nation.

And, 100 years after the death of someone who's name wasn't even
recorded, they wouldn't even know that he had existed. Some preacher
your grandfather listened to as a small child? Tell me about life in
the ante-bellum South. We have written records - but do you have any
idea what life was like then? And that's closer to us, as far as
records go, than "Jesus" was to those who wrote the Gospels. (Pauline
"Christianity" had nothing to do with a person - any person.)

>You have no proof Jesus didn't exist.

You have no proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist. Nor
do you have the slightest shred of contemporaneous evidence that Jesus
the Nazorite (another little error that crept in - but are you at all
aware of the PROFOUND difference there is between Nazorite and
Nazarene?) existed. Nor was there even a claim that he did until
about 100 years after he supposedly died. That would be like 1,000
years now, for that "backward city in a conquered nation". And the
claim wasn't even in what later came to be called the Bible. Those
claims came later still.

>It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
>arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't
>exist. This belief is not cognizant on facts.

Explain some of these facts
<http://home.ca.inter.net/~oblio/home.htm>. No hand-waving - if you
want to discuss the Bible, let's discuss the Bible.

>> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the life of
>> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an
>> earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. It is
>> reasonable to assume that these ancient documents were doctored and altered
>> to enhance the power of the clerics of the time. Many of these writings come
>> from fraud, interpolations and hearsay.

>This is nonsense and totally inaccurate.

Since almost everything about a personality named 'Jesus' comes from Q
(everything that comes from early documentation, at least), nothing
about him can be earlier than Q. Not that we have anything even that
early. Paul never wrote about a man named Jesus, about a crucifixion,
about a resurrection. He was there - supposedly - just after the
events. But they weren't important enough to Christianity for him to
mention?

>You have no idea what and when things were originally written.

You think that, because you know almost nothing about the history of
Christianity, it's not known? We can date almost every single early
document of Christianity we have, and we can date it pretty
accurately.

>Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
>just make up facts to support your beliefs.

And you can't just make up claims and say that, since the proof has
"been lost in time", your assertions stand. Have you read the site I
gave you the link to?

>> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
>> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
>> leaders.

>Again you are writing history.

He's reading it. The Council of Nicea was charged with canonization
(making up the rules) of the New Testament.

>The Old Testament was determined
>before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.

Read what you wrote. That's a claim that they're not to be believed.
That men chose which books were "correct" by *consensus* is something
you think leads weight to the authenticity of the words in the Bible?
The truth of the words is based on what they thought was the best to
keep? So all of Christianity is, by your claim, the idea of 300 men?
And what if Arius, among all of them, was the one who was correct?

>Some of the rest are still existant.

Do you know what "extant" means? NONE of the original Christian
writings of the early first century are extant. We know of the
existence of very few documents from that period that mention
Christianity at all, from the Christian side - none at all that
mentions a Christ or a man named Jesus. Parts of later documents
(about a dozen words, in one case, with almost no meaning) are extant.
We really have nothing until the first quarter of the second century.

>> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
>> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which books
>> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among scholars
>> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
>> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words, the
>> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires and
>> motives of the church leadership at the time

>Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
>the Canon.

No one but "true believers" (those who will believe Church doctrine
regardless of fact) believe that any longer. We have enough
documentation of the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries to know what
happened in the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries. and enough
documentation referring to earlier occurrences to pretty accurately
figure out what happened.before that.

>> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years after the
>> claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were just a collection
>> of various regional stories from older civilizations. Some Biblical scholars
>> claim the earliest versions of the Bible were not in existence until 150
>> years after the claimed crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

>> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was claimed to
>> be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created by church
>> leaders to enhance their power? There are NO originals of any of the Old or
>> New testaments. They are all hand copies of copies of copies with
>> alterations to suite the copiers.

>> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during Jesus'
>> claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation of tales and
>> the embellishment of history.

>Again you come to unsupported conclusions.

You're a true believer. Christian Bible scholars know that all of
the assertions in the above 3 paragraphs are, if not true, as close as
we now know the truth to be.

>> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They contain
>> manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities, indecencies,
>> obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore and legends. They are
>> mostly nonsense and hearsay.

>You make many unsupported claims.

Some of the scientific errors have been known for over 100 years. Many
of the prophesies have proved false. The rest are so ambiguous as to
be meaningless or are supposed to come true in the future. So all the
ones that can actually be tested are false.

Forcing a rape victim to spend the rest of her life married to her
rapist is immoral, obscene, barbaric and atrocious.

Killing all but the virgin girls of a people, and raping them, is
immoral, obscene, atrocious and barbarous (and a few other not nice
things).

Allowing slavery without speaking against it is barbaric and immoral.
(Don't start with the "selling themselves into slavery" nonsense - the
Bible gives permission to enslave one's enemies for life.)

>I suspect you haven't read the Bible.

Since most atheists have read more Bibles more times than most
Christians, that's ludicrous, although I'll let Bill speak for
himself, but I expect that he knows your Bible (and others) better
than you do.

Others? Oh, weren't you aware that there are a number of different
Christian Bibles, and that some of them contradict others of them? And
that NONE of them use the actual Hebrew Bible as "their" Old
Testament?

BTW, you DO read Greek and Hebrew, don't you? Or do you consider
reading a translation of a translation of a translation of ...
"reading the Bible"?

If you'd like to discuss the New Testament, let's. I've been studying
it - not as in Bible study, but seriously studying it, and
Christianity as history - probably longer than you've been alive. And,
since new discoveries are made all the time, I keep studying it. The
Christianity of today is NOT the Christianity of yesterday - or the
Christianity of the original Christians, either.
--
rukbat at optonline dot net
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator."
- G W Bush (Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000)
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Enkidu wrote:
> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
> news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>
> >
> > Bill M wrote:
> >>
> >> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
> >> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They
> >> are not even good fiction.
> >>
> >
> > This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
> > speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.
>

> I can't prove Zeus didn't exist. Does that mean I should believe he did
> exist?
>

It is a totally irrelevant point. You claim that something didn't
exist. Yet we have written eye witness testimony. We have a religion
that started from his followers. You suddenly claim that he didn't
exist. You have no facts and coherent logic to support your
suppositions.

> > This belief is not cognizant on facts.
>
> You've got that right. To bad you don't understand the implications. Your
> belief is not tied to historical reality by any facts.
>
> >> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the
> >> life of
> >> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never
> >> met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical
> >> writings. It is reasonable to assume that these ancient documents
> >> were doctored and altered to enhance the power of the clerics of the
> >> time. Many of these writings come from fraud, interpolations and
> >> hearsay.
> >>
> >
> > This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
> > up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
> > originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
> > just make up facts to support your beliefs.
>
> So, you have some evidence the Bible *is* more accurate than the Vedas or
> the Koran? Yes? Present it. No? then dump the Bible or believe in the
> other holy books too.
>

You can't follow the thread of a single argument without start talking
about something totally irrelevant.

> >> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church
> >> leaders to
> >> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by
> >> church leaders.
> >>
> >
> > Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined
> > before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
> > Some of the rest are still existant.
>
> Yeah? Does that make them true?
>

Again you miss the point. I am not arguing that they are true or not.
Only that your opinions about what happened is not based on facts.

> >> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
> >> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which
> >> books were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion
> >> among scholars is that the decision was based on whether or not the
> >> book agreed with the prevailing theological thought and motives at
> >> the time. In other words, the only books accepted were the ones that
> >> agreed with the opinions, desires and motives of the church
> >> leadership at the time
> >>
> >
> > Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
> > the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
> > irrational.
>
> You come to a concrete conclusion that the Bible is true and accurate
> without a shred of evidence.
>

Again you make things up!! I never said anything about the Bible being
true and accurate. The only point I am making is that you and not
being accurate. You are not even rational.

> >> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years
> >> after the claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were
> >> just a collection of various regional stories from older
> >> civilizations. Some Biblical scholars claim the earliest versions of
> >> the Bible were not in existence until 150 years after the claimed
> >> crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
> >>
> >> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was
> >> claimed to be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable
> >> created by church leaders to enhance their power? There are NO
> >> originals of any of the Old or New testaments. They are all hand
> >> copies of copies of copies with alterations to suite the copiers.
> >>
> >> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during
> >> Jesus' claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation
> >> of tales and the embellishment of history.
> >
> > Again you come to unsupported conclusions.
>
> No, *everyone* agrees that no part of the New Testament was written before
> 60ce.
>

Most scholars agree that the first versions were oral histories which
predate the written ones. Consequently your arguments are irrelevant.

> >> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They
> >> contain manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities,
> >> indecencies, obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore
> >> and legends. They are mostly nonsense and hearsay.
> >>
> >
> > You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> > Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of
> > history.
> > You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.
> >
> > Jimmy Boy
>
> When you learn to read for yourself and think for yourself, will you become
> "Jimmy Man"?
>

I have read what you right for myself and have thought for myself and
concluded that you are nuts. You don't know reality between your
warped beliefs.

Jimmy Boy

[Uncle Vic]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
> Enkidu wrote:
> > jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
> > news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
> >
> > >
> > > Bill M wrote:
> > >>
> > >> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
> > >> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They
> > >> are not even good fiction.
> > >>
> > >
> > > This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
> > > speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.
> >
> > I can't prove Zeus didn't exist. Does that mean I should believe he did
> > exist?
> >
>
> It is a totally irrelevant point. You claim that something didn't
> exist. Yet we have written eye witness testimony. We have a religion
> that started from his followers. You suddenly claim that he didn't
> exist. You have no facts and coherent logic to support your
> suppositions.
>

What we have here, Jimmy Boy, is a story about some witnesses that
Jesus appeared to, to prove that he had risen from the dead. That part
of the story ends there. Not one of the witnesses bothered to report
what he saw to anyone else. A historian would have been nice.

You say we have a religion (Christianity) that started from his
followers. Therefore it must be true, eh? The Greeks had a religion
that started from the followers of Zeus and his godfamily. I guess
that one must be true too. Oh, wait. Nobody believes in that religion
anymore. Why?

Because the Christians converted them or killed them in the fourth
century.

We have a religion called Islam which was started by the followers of
Mohammad. That must be true too. We also have a religion called
Hinduism, started by the followers of Shiva. Is that one true too? It
must be, by your logic.

How can we have all these "One True Religions" co-existing on this
planet? Answer: We can't. They can't all be true, and we have as
much evidence that one is as true as the next. They can, however, all
be false. I'll go with that one. But let's put it to the test, just
to show you that your Jesus religion is false.

Let's all pray to God for Jesus to appear in the flesh right next to
us. He is omnipresent, so this should not be a problem. He is also
omnipotent, so this should not be a problem. In the bible, Jesus
appeared to 500 witnesses, to do exactly what I'm asking him to do: to
prove his resurrection to those of us who missed it. And the bible
says you can pray for ANYTHING in Jesus' name, and you will receive it.

It doesn't work, does it?

It looks like your religion is false, and Jesus is imaginary.

Uncle Vic

[Mike Painter]

Darrell Stec wrote:
>>
>> Do some research,Bill.
>>

Small steps. First introduce the concept of "books" to him.

[Darrell Stec]

After serious contemplation, on or about Tuesday 10 October 2006 1:23 am

jim_ha...@yahoo.com perhaps from jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

> It is a totally irrelevant point.  You claim that something didn't
> exist.  Yet we have written eye witness testimony.   We have a
> religion that started from his followers.  You suddenly claim that he
> didn't exist.  You have no facts and coherent logic to support your
> suppositions.

There was NO eyewitness testimony, most especially of the written type.
If you doubt that please produce it. But do not point to the gospels
as your evidence because nowhere in them, or any New Testament text
does the author claim to be an eyewitness.

The most conservative of biblical scholars places the earliest gospel
slightly AFTER 70 CE. and even that is wishful thinking. There is a
fair amount of evidence that the entire New Testament was a compilation
starting about the mid-second century and continuing through the third
century.

The earliest mention of four gospels was circa 170 CE and the earliest
name of all four gospels dates to the 190s. The first real evidence of
the first gospel (the gospel according to Mark) was quoted by Marcion.
And that was completely different from the Markian gospel as we know
it. In fact Marcion's gospel could well have been the original written
by none other than Marcion himself. The gospel according to Mark we
now have (albeit with numerous alterations) is the doctored Marcion
Mark edited and revised by the orthodox church, namely the Catholic
Church.

[bob young]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

> Bill M wrote:
> >
> > They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any god
> > unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They are not even
> > good fiction.
> >
>
> This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
> speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.

Genesis 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.
Genesis 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created.

Genesis 1:20-21, 26-27 Birds were created before man was created.
Genesis 2:7, 19 Man was created before birds were created.

Genesis 1:24-27 Animals were created before man was created.
Genesis 2:7, 19 Man was created before animals were created.

Genesis 1:26-27 Man and woman were created at the same time.
Genesis 2:7, 21-22 Man was created first, woman sometime later.

Genesis 1:31 God was pleased with his creation.
Genesis 6:5-6 God was not pleased with his creation.

I find Paul to be a very interesting character in the Bible.

Romans 13:1-4, 1st Peter 2:13-15

Obey the laws of men (i.e., government). It is the will of God.

Acts 5:29 Obey God, not men.

Acts 9:7

Those present at Paul's conversion heard the voice but saw no one.

Acts 22:9

They saw a light but did not hear a voice.

Acts 9:7

Those present at Paul's conversion stood.

Acts 26:14

They fell to the ground.

Acts 9:19-28

Shortly after his conversion, Paul went to Damascus, then
Jerusalem where he was introduced to the Apostles by Barnabas, and
there spent some time with them (going in and out among them).

Galatians 1:15-20

He made the trip three years later, then saw only Peter and
James.

>
>
> >
> >
> > No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
> > artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
> > contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.
> > Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
> > that mentions Jesus except one.
> >
>
> This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
> everything under the sun. At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city
> in a conquered nation. Initially, the death of Jesus was
> insignificant. Later, Chrisianity spread from his death to the rest of
> the world.

Idiot - ever heard of Buddhists? Taoists, Hindus, Sheiks?

Why would the son of a god not reach the aborigines in Australia and thousands
living in what we no call South America and North America.

The very fact that Christianity 'spread' clearly shows it is a man made thing and
no gods involved =- there are none

> You have no proof Jesus didn't exist. Consequently, your
> argument is irrelevant.

Stupid. You grovel to the story whilst you have no proof it is not mythology.

Why is there nothing covering the first twenty years of the life of Jesus.

The son of a god that created everything on this planet lives in obscurity for
twenty years.

Rubbish - the story writers and spreaders of the time just forgot to cover it,
they made a big mistake didn't they? they thought it din;t matter in their rush
to spread their gospel.

Common sense takes first place over superstition every time

>
>
> > This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
> > forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian considers
> > this passage to have been written by Josephus.
> >
>
> It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
> arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't
> exist. This belief is not cognizant on facts.

Aaaaaah.....THE FACTS. I have been waiting for these for so long.
Please be kind enough to provide them then

>
>
> > All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the life of
> > the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an
> > earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. It is
> > reasonable to assume that these ancient documents were doctored and altered
> > to enhance the power of the clerics of the time. Many of these writings come
> > from fraud, interpolations and hearsay.
> >
>
> This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
> up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
> originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
> just make up facts to support your beliefs.

That the translators added their own bits and pieces as that old book was passed
down over the years is common knowledge.

If you could go back to year 300 and ask a falla in the street "Excuse me sir but
where can I buy a bible"

He would say "Buy a WHAT?"

>
>
> > The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
> > support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
> > leaders.
> >
>
> Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined
> before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
> Some of the rest are still existant.

Totally wrong. nothing exists.

Hey 'Jimmy Boy' let us just suppose for the sake of argument that you were
orphaned at age two and then, having been put up for adoption, you were adopted
by a Hindu family, you Jimmy Boy would now be groveling to a god that has the
body of a woman and the head of an elephant.

CURTAIN RISES

[Menam, a Priest, is talking with his buddies in the temple. It is 'year two',
according to our current calendar]

ŅBrothers the flock are restless I'm tired of them asking me 'Where is the god
you keep asking us to pray to', they keep insisting on seeing him"

Rastus, [another priest]:

"I have the same problem, it's getting me down, they keep saying 'Where is he,
produce him'. You know the Vishnus down the road have a wooden god in a hut for
everyone to see and more and more people are going there to pray these daysÓ

Influx [The Senior Priest]:

"Listen I have an proposal, let's invite that fella Jesus to join us, he is
popular and he preaches well. We'll say he is god's sonÓ.

Rastus.

ŅDon't be silly, how can we just say that, gods don't send their sons down to
earth. How do we say he got here?Ó

Influx.

ŅEasy we just tell them 'e was borne of a virgin.[scratches head] I'm sure we can
find one somewhere if we look hard enough.

Rastus.

That won't be much use, when 'e dies we'll have to start all over again and find
another 'son of a god' and they are not going to believe that weird story twice
over!

Influx.

Aaah but there's more. [Chuckles] When 'e dies we'll hide him away in a cave,
steal the body in the middle of the night and then, listen to this, your gonna
love this, [nudges Rastus in the ribs, more chuckles] and then [hee hee] we'll
tell 'em he floated slowly up into the sky to heaven just above the clouds and
that he now sits up there on the right hand of our god.

Fellas we'll have 'em in the palm of our hand for eternity.

[All priests together]:

"spontaneous laughter and cheeringÓ.

[bob young]

Enkidu wrote:

Baha'i Sacrid writings

Life of Buddha - Dhammapada - Pali cannon

The Bible - Christian religious documents - 18 English versions alone.

[No originals of the old or new testaments exist.]

The Book of Mormon - Church of Latter Day Saints

The Analects - Confuscianism

The Eddas and Sagas - Icelandic beliefs

Wicca - Neo paganism of Greece and Rome over the centuries

Bhagavgita and Rig Veda - Hinduism

Qur'an - Islam

Adi Granth and Dasam Granth - canonical scripture of the Sikhs

The Tanakh - Jewism

Tao-Te-Ching - Taoism

Nag Hammadi - Gnostics

Zhuan Falun - Falun Gong

[zambon...@knowshpamatyahoo.com]

On 9 Oct 2006 22:23:25 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Enkidu wrote:
>> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
>> news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>>
>> >
>> > Bill M wrote:
>> >>
>> >> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
>> >> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They
>> >> are not even good fiction.
>> >>
>> >
>> > This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
>> > speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.
>>
>> I can't prove Zeus didn't exist. Does that mean I should believe he did
>> exist?
>>
>
>It is a totally irrelevant point. You claim that something didn't
>exist. Yet we have written eye witness testimony.

LOL...of course you don't. What extra biblical proof do you
have...NONE! There I helped you.

>We have a religion
>that started from his followers.

Like every other one...LOL!

>You suddenly claim that he didn't
>exist. You have no facts and coherent logic to support your
>suppositions.

You ARE stupid! No, we can't prove he didn't exist. I can't prove
unicorns didn't exist either. Therefore we should worship
thim...right? You stupid fucking dumbass!!! LOL!

>
>> > This belief is not cognizant on facts.
>>
>> You've got that right. To bad you don't understand the implications. Your
>> belief is not tied to historical reality by any facts.
>>
>> >> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the
>> >> life of
>> >> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never
>> >> met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical
>> >> writings. It is reasonable to assume that these ancient documents
>> >> were doctored and altered to enhance the power of the clerics of the
>> >> time. Many of these writings come from fraud, interpolations and
>> >> hearsay.
>> >>
>> >
>> > This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
>> > up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
>> > originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
>> > just make up facts to support your beliefs.
>>
>> So, you have some evidence the Bible *is* more accurate than the Vedas or
>> the Koran? Yes? Present it. No? then dump the Bible or believe in the
>> other holy books too.
>>
>
>You can't follow the thread of a single argument without start talking
>about something totally irrelevant.
>

Well, we're trying to show you how stupid you are...unfortunately you
are too fucking stupid to understand... so we are wasting our
time...right!

Christian scholars...right?

>
>> >> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They
>> >> contain manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities,
>> >> indecencies, obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore
>> >> and legends. They are mostly nonsense and hearsay.
>> >>
>> >
>> > You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
>> > Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of
>> > history.
>> > You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.
>> >
>> > Jimmy Boy
>>
>> When you learn to read for yourself and think for yourself, will you become
>> "Jimmy Man"?
>>
>
>I have read what you right for myself and have thought for myself and
>concluded that you are nuts. You don't know reality between your
>warped beliefs.
>
>Jimmy Boy

"Boy" is about right...learn something...please!
--

zamboni30000

I swear...there are days that I get down on my knees and thank almighty god that I'm an atheist!

zamboni #2139

[Greywolf]

"bk" <backandf...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1160447878.6...@i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

Nope.

That was con-artist Paul using his con-artist skills to dupe ignorant people
into believing even more nonsense. Think about it: Paul is telling a bunch
of extremely gullible bunch of morons that 'God' deliberately chose the
stupid, the ridiculous, the preposterous, the absurd, the unbelievable --
tales that defy belief; but are 'true' nevertheless, in order to make wise,
educated, reasonably-minded 'intellectuals' appear really, really, really,
stupid and ignorant. All so that these gullible and *truly* ignorant people
listening to his 'mystical' nonsense can feel that they have a leg-up on the
truly intelligent. It no doubt made them feel somehow 'smarter' and
*superior* to the 'wise' men and women around them and no longer 'inferior'.
Clever, eh'? He appealed to their egos. It's the same ploy modern TV
evangelists use to make the gullible believe that they have a 'secret'
knowledge and are somehow connected to a 'God' no theist on planet earth has
*ever* been able to prove exists. 'Confound the wise'? No. 'dupe the stupid'
would be more appropriate. And instead of 'God', substitute the name 'Paul'.

Ties in rather well. Don't you think?

Greywolf

[Elroy Willis]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in alt.atheism

> Bill M wrote:

>> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
>> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
>> leaders.

> Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined
> before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
> Some of the rest are still existant.

>> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
>> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which books
>> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among scholars
>> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
>> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words, the
>> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires and
>> motives of the church leadership at the time

> Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
> the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
> irrational.

You said in your last paragraph that they were "chosen by consensus,"
didn't you?

--
Elroy Willis
www.elroysemporium.com

[Elroy Willis]

Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote in alt.atheism

> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

<snip>

>> The Old Testament was determined before the birth of Christ.
>> The later books were chosen by consensus.

> Read what you wrote. That's a claim that they're not to be believed.
> That men chose which books were "correct" by *consensus* is something
> you think leads weight to the authenticity of the words in the Bible?

I pointed out the same thing.

BTW, how's it going? Haven't seen you around here in a while.

--
Elroy Willis
www.elroysemporium.com

[Al Klein]

On 9 Oct 2006 16:47:59 -0700, jke...@zoomnet.net wrote:

>There TWO passages from Josephus that mention Jesus. The shorter
>"James passage" is almost universally considered genuine.

You misspelled "universally, by actual historians, considered to be a
later insertion".

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid
consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and
ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who
works on the basis of reward and punishment. "
- Letter to M. Berkowitz, October 25, 1950; Einstein Archive 59-215

[Al Klein]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:54:57 GMT, Elroy Willis
<elroy...@swbell.net> wrote:

>BTW, how's it going? Haven't seen you around here in a while.

Just got tired of reading the same crap from the same idiots. IT
seems as if there are a few new ones, so I figured I'd throw a few of
them on the barbee.

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"A truly unselfish act would be a Christian volunteering to have his soul take your
soul's place in hell, so yours could go to Heaven. Don't hold your breath."
- John Popelish

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

I never said anything about worship. All I wanted was some accuracy
and not wild speculation spinned as fact. If you read the original
post, you will see that I object to people re-writing history to suit
their own views. Just because people don't agree with you doesn't make
them stupid fucking dumb asses.

> >
> >> > This belief is not cognizant on facts.
> >>
> >> You've got that right. To bad you don't understand the implications. Your
> >> belief is not tied to historical reality by any facts.
> >>
> >> >> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the
> >> >> life of
> >> >> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never
> >> >> met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical
> >> >> writings. It is reasonable to assume that these ancient documents
> >> >> were doctored and altered to enhance the power of the clerics of the
> >> >> time. Many of these writings come from fraud, interpolations and
> >> >> hearsay.
> >> >>

> of a single argument without start talking
> >about something totally irrelevant.
> >
> Well, we're trying to show you how stupid you are...unfortunately you
> are too fucking stupid to understand... so we are wasting our
> time...right!

I don't see where you have shown any intelligence at all.

>
> "Boy" is about right...learn something...please!
> --

I haven't seen anything to learn from you except bad language,
illogical arguments and total arrogance.

Jimmy Boy

[roger_...@yahoo.co.uk]

Al Klein wrote:
> On 9 Oct 2006 14:38:38 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> >Bill M wrote:
> >> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
> >> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
> >> contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.
> >> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
> >> that mentions Jesus except one.
>
> >This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
> >everything under the sun.

Indeed so. "Bill M." displays no knowledge whatever of how ancient
history is done: instead he simply read something where someone looks
at what the data is for Jesus of Nazareth, and then demands that more
is required. But such silliness hardly needs comment.

> What you (and 99.999% of Christians) don't know yet - because of
> discoveries made only in the last couple of years - is that:

It would be idle to ask "Al Klein" just what discoveries these might
be.

> a) the Logos is the part of your god he uses to interface with the
> universe (according to early Christians, and who would know better
> than those who founded the religion).

Note the vagueness. Tertullian refers to Christ as the ratio -- the
reason -- of God.

> Christianity, in the first century, at least, was
> just a few (or a few dozen or a few hundred - who knows, we only know
> from the writings we've found, not the ones we haven't found) sects of
> Judaism.

The point about Christianity, of course, is that it was not just
another Jewish sect, since it went on -- unlike all the others -- to
take over the world. So this is an unthinking taunt, it would seem.

> and b) The Chreestos was the congregation They were - all Christians
> at that time, by definition, were - "the Anointed of God". That's
> what "Christian" meant in the first century. Not followers of a
> Christ that wasn't mentioned until the second century.

Again note the lack of evidence for this. The evidence, of course, is
otherwise.

> The 'Jesus' part came later - much later. The first mention of any
> 'Jesus' figure in Christianity didn't come until the second century.

Again a statement which can only be made by disregarding all the
sources.

Much of what follows is of a similar low standard, and I will just snip
it.

> Explain some of these facts
> <http://home.ca.inter.net/~oblio/home.htm>. No hand-waving - if you
> want to discuss the Bible, let's discuss the Bible.

This website, by a crank author, contains few facts; fewer, indeed,
than scholarship admits, for in order to peddle his idea he has to get
rid of what facts exist. Such authors have always existed, but we need
not pay them attention.

> >> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the life of
> >> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an
> >> earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. It is
> >> reasonable to assume that these ancient documents were doctored and altered
> >> to enhance the power of the clerics of the time. Many of these writings come
> >> from fraud, interpolations and hearsay.
>
> >This is nonsense and totally inaccurate.

Indeed. It's also obscurantist, since it encourages people to ignore
the treasures that have come down from antiquity, as an excuse for
ignoring what they say about Jesus.

> Since almost everything about a personality named 'Jesus' comes from Q...

Note the appeal to a hypothetical document, and the failure to mention
that people who knew Jesus personally were still alive in 100AD.

> >You have no idea what and when things were originally written.
>
> You think that, because you know almost nothing about the history of
> Christianity, it's not known? We can date almost every single early
> document of Christianity we have, and we can date it pretty
> accurately.

This is true, but that 'we' evidently does not include Al Klein. Nor
should this ignorance be projected onto others.

> >Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
> >just make up facts to support your beliefs.
>

> And you can't just make up claims ...

But you can?

> >> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
> >> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
> >> leaders.
>
> >Again you are writing history.
>
> He's reading it. The Council of Nicea was charged with canonization
> (making up the rules) of the New Testament.

Unfortunately Al Klein really does know that this is untrue, since I
have told him so repeatedly and pointed him to the ancient sources in
question. Whether someone like Al willing to lie for his faith is
someone you or I should listen to is not for me to say, of course.

> >The Old Testament was determined
> >before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
>
> Read what you wrote. That's a claim that they're not to be believed.

Note the failure to state the position being asserted: that if humans
are involved God cannot be. Such theology needs to be proved, not
asserted.

> Do you know what "extant" means? NONE of the original Christian
> writings of the early first century are extant.

One can only wonder whether Al knows the meaning of the word 'extant',
otherwise he might examine his New Testament, and indeed apostolic
fathers.

> >> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
> >> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which books
> >> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among scholars
> >> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
> >> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words, the
> >> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires and
> >> motives of the church leadership at the time

Nonsense.

> >Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
> >the Canon.

In a sense; but we do have some rather detailed statements which shed
light on it; that the texts had to be apostolic, and in keeping with
what the apostles were known by those who knew them to have taught.

> No one but "true believers" (those who will believe Church doctrine
> regardless of fact) believe that any longer. We have enough
> documentation of the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries to know what
> happened in the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries. and enough
> documentation referring to earlier occurrences to pretty accurately
> figure out what happened.before that.

Whether Al knows any of it, of course, is quite another matter. This
is, after all, the man who won't accept statements about what the
council of Nicaea did.

> >> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years after the
> >> claimed death of Jesus Christ

In 93 AD? By that date the NT was complete.

> >> Some Biblical scholars
> >> claim the earliest versions of the Bible were not in existence until 150
> >> years after the claimed crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Which scholars claim that this is so -- not until 183 AD? We have
manuscripts older than this!

> >> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was claimed to
> >> be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created by church
> >> leaders to enhance their power? There are NO originals of any of the Old or
> >> New testaments. They are all hand copies of copies of copies with
> >> alterations to suite the copiers.
>
> >> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during Jesus'
> >> claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation of tales and
> >> the embellishment of history.
>
> >Again you come to unsupported conclusions.

Indeed so.

> You're a true believer.

So are you, but the difference is that hate blinds you to reason.

> Christian Bible scholars know that all of
> the assertions in the above 3 paragraphs are, if not true, as close as
> we now know the truth to be.

Nonsense.

> >I suspect you haven't read the Bible.
>
> Since most atheists have read more Bibles more times than most

> Christians, that's ludicrous...

In fact this is nonsense. What is true, tho, is that most atheists are
renegades from parsonage upbringings. Listening to them rationalising
their lusts is a depressing business.

> Others? Oh, weren't you aware that there are a number of different
> Christian Bibles, and that some of them contradict others of them? And
> that NONE of them use the actual Hebrew Bible as "their" Old
> Testament?

Note that attempt to patronise without giving information.

> BTW, you DO read Greek and Hebrew, don't you? Or do you consider
> reading a translation of a translation of a translation of ...
> "reading the Bible"?

Al, of course, knows neither Greek or Hebrew. Note also that he can't
even state his proposition -- that scripture must be read in the
original -- never mind offer any evidence for it.

> If you'd like to discuss the New Testament, let's. I've been studying

> it - not as in Bible study, but seriously studying it,...

A rather more pressing concern for Al Klein is to study morality; and
even more pressing, to practise it, especially the bits about honesty.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:05:27 -0500, " Midwinter"
<midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>"Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>> Amazingly, Christians almost never question the authenticity of Jesus
>> and the Bibles, yet the very foundation of their faith is based on
>> their authenticity.
>

>Obviously. They believe. If they didn't, they wouldn't be Christian.
>
>
>> The Bibles are the literature of 'faith', not of scientific
>> observation or historical fact or demonstration.
>
>I've yet to be convinced that the Bible has no historical merit
>whatsoever. On the other hand, I've never considered it literal truth,
>but a collection of myths and at best distorted truth. But a great deal
>can be learned about a people and a culture by studying their mythology
>and its development.
>
>
>> If religion was supported by any real 'objective evidence', 'faith'
>> would be totally unnecessary.
>
>Everyone needs faith, Bill. Even you have faith that you're right.
>You'll say you 'know' it, I've no doubt, and you could offer the usual
>reams of examples of why atheists are intelligent and the religious are
>idiots - but when push comes to shove, you're here fighting your battles
>because you believe in the reason you're doing it. You have faith -
>either that you can make a difference and help to bring down religion, or
>that you can make yourself look really clever (I'm still not sure which
>you're after).

This is a standard equivocation between meanings of "faith".

We certainly don't have anything like the theist's faith - an excuse
for belief in the absence of evidence.

There are better words to use that carry the exact meaning.

Replacing these with "faith" obstructs communication because those
doing it want to remove the differences in meaning.

>> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
>> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They are
>> not even good fiction.
>

>I can't argue with the first part, since I would reason similarly -
>albeit the words of that god aren't unlike the words of many other
>ancient gods. I don't feel inclined to get worked up enough about that
>particular god, since I don't believe in Him.
>
>But whether or not something is good fiction isn't for you to judge for
>anyone except yourself.
>
>For that matter, the fact that you and I agree that the Bible stories, if
>literal truth, would make God, let's say, an unpleasant chap, has no
>bearing on anyone except you and me.

>
>
>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical
>> Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written
>> manuscripts. No contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate
>> executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs
>> not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus except one.
>

>In two thousand years, barring a surprising preservation of the Usenet
>archives, there will probably be no record of anyone called Bill M, or
>anyone called Midwinter. I guess the rational people of the time will
>have to conclude that you and I never existed.

Misrepresentation alert.

There is zero reason to assume he did. The only "mentions" outside the
Christian tradition are obvious, later insertions.

And I doubt the things attributed to Bill are a mish-mash of earlier
legends told about earlier mythical heroes.

If Christians could only live and let live, then nobody would care
about it. They hero means no more to us then eg Mohammed does to
Christians, etc. But they think Jesus is supremely important to
everybody and that they are commanded to tell the rest of us al about
it. Couple that with the fundamentalists who imagine their religions's
orders apply to us as well, and you understand why we demand the proof
that is never forthcoming. Also just how worthless remarks like "prove
he didn't" are.

Most Christians don't seem to realise just how utterly irrelevant the
object of their most cherished beliefs, is to non-Christians. Even
though I doubt they give eg Mohammed or any of the others much
thought.

Which is why they invent positions, beliefs etc we don't have, and
don't understand why we object.

Like "believing Jesus never existed". We don't waste time and effort
having that belief about something that is merely part of somebody
else's religion. We do however point out the total lack of evidence
outside the Christian tradition (even the apocryphal, non-canonical
stuff is inside Christian tradition even if it's a branch of
Christianity that lost out). After all, I doubt Christians would
accept the Hindu scriptures as anything other than what the Hindu's
believe, so why should they expect us to take their own equivalent any
more seriously?

We wouldn't even have known about the lack of evidence if Christians
attempting to prove it had given anything other than a standard list
that has been debunked so many times it's frustrating to keep hearing
it.

It makes us wonder if they bother to read it objectively before they
post it.

>> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was
>> claimed to be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created
>> by church leaders to enhance their power?
>

>Could be. Or it could be that the church leaders have taken what they
>can find and welded it into the Bible. Or it could be that the record-
>keepers didn't really think that much of Jesus at the time. Or it could
>be that the Pauline Church entirely misinterpreted what Jesus was doing
>and...
>
>Well, suffice to say that there's no evidence Jesus didn't exist, some
>suggestion that he may have done, and nothing that'd convince me he was a
>god.
>
>
>> We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts,
>> or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies that are believed
>> as fact are taken from nothing but belief and hearsay.
>
>And they're all idiots, too, no doubt. True, some people are gullible
>and credulous. Some people'd believe absolutely anything. Many do. But
>I'm not sure which would be worse: being someone who assumes every story
>they hear is true; or someone who can't accept that there might be
>anything out there that they can't immediately see or feel.
>
>Personally, I like to weigh evidence, and to keep an open mind. I don't
>believe science will ever address the question of divinity one way or the
>other (which is why I think it's pointless advancing science as a way to
>disprove the general concept). I can't prove that Jesus existed, but I'm
>not going to rule out the possibility simply because he's become the
>focus of a religion I don't follow.

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Uncle Vic wrote:

> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
> What we have here, Jimmy Boy, is a story about some witnesses that
> Jesus appeared to, to prove that he had risen from the dead. That part
> of the story ends there. Not one of the witnesses bothered to report
> what he saw to anyone else. A historian would have been nice.
>

If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? They were a
bunch af historians living around AD 30. If they were, they probably
wouldn't have noticed Jesus because his ministry was probably only a
couple of years. He talked to a bunch of poor peasants.

> You say we have a religion (Christianity) that started from his
> followers. Therefore it must be true, eh? The Greeks had a religion
> that started from the followers of Zeus and his godfamily. I guess
> that one must be true too. Oh, wait. Nobody believes in that religion
> anymore. Why?
>

This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
accounts. Something happened. Our dating system starts with the death
of Christ. Yet you choose to believe it didn't happen. All these Zeus
and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.

>
> Let's all pray to God for Jesus to appear in the flesh right next to
> us. He is omnipresent, so this should not be a problem. He is also
> omnipotent, so this should not be a problem. In the bible, Jesus
> appeared to 500 witnesses, to do exactly what I'm asking him to do: to
> prove his resurrection to those of us who missed it. And the bible
> says you can pray for ANYTHING in Jesus' name, and you will receive it.
>
> It doesn't work, does it?
>
> It looks like your religion is false, and Jesus is imaginary.
>

You haven't shown that Jesus is imaginary. It is what you choose to
believe. You are a man of faith.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

> There was NO eyewitness testimony, most especially of the written type.
> If you doubt that please produce it. But do not point to the gospels
> as your evidence because nowhere in them, or any New Testament text
> does the author claim to be an eyewitness.
>

I disagree. The New Testament texts are eyewitness accounts. Possibly
Luke is not, he said he collected the accounts from people. Matthew,
Mark and John were present during the events. They wrote about them.
This makes them eyewitnesses.

> The most conservative of biblical scholars places the earliest gospel
> slightly AFTER 70 CE. and even that is wishful thinking. There is a
> fair amount of evidence that the entire New Testament was a compilation
> starting about the mid-second century and continuing through the third
> century.
>

Most scholars believe there was an early oral version which started
soon after the events. The truth is that we have no idea when the first
Gospel was written. It is all speculation.

> The earliest mention of four gospels was circa 170 CE and the earliest
> name of all four gospels dates to the 190s. The first real evidence of
> the first gospel (the gospel according to Mark) was quoted by Marcion.

This is just theory. The priority of Mark is still just speculation.
It has not been proven. Some scholars think it is probable, but no one
knows.

> And that was completely different from the Markian gospel as we know
> it. In fact Marcion's gospel could well have been the original written
> by none other than Marcion himself. The gospel according to Mark we
> now have (albeit with numerous alterations) is the doctored Marcion
> Mark edited and revised by the orthodox church, namely the Catholic
> Church.

This is just pure speculation. The early versions we have are all in
close agreement. There is zero evidence that Mark was "doctored".
The story is what it is. The wording my have changed a little but the
story didn't grow over time.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Mike Painter wrote:
> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > Bill M wrote:
> >>

>> You have the burden to provide *facts* of existance. Did this god hide the
> records of this person and allow other records to survive as a test?
>

God is irrelevant. The question is that whether Jesus existed. I
think there is enough evidence to say that it is probable he did.
However, for someone to say with a certainty that he didn't exist is
simply re-writing history.

> >
> >
>
> I'd suggest you read some. Even the most fundamental religions will admit
> that nothing has ever been found that was written anywhere near the time of
> Jesus that mentions him.
> How do you know things have been lost in time? That's like claiming the
> lottery because you were going to pick those winning numbers.
>

Again you need to think about the times Jesus lived. There wasn't a
bunch of historians to report on every minute detail like we have
today. You had a peasant who spent a couple of years talking to poor
people. He wasn't a blip on the radar. It was the ideas that spread
from the small seed which became this massive tree of Christianity.

> Wrong again. In fact the current version of the OT differs between churches
> and the Prodestant version was not official until 1865.

You are talking about the apocryha. To quote Wikipedia: In
Judeo-Christian theology, the term apocrypha refers to any collection
of scriptural texts that falls outside the canon. Consequently everyone
pretty much agrees what the OT + NT contain. The addition or
subtraction of a few books are really irrelevant.

> >
> >
> > You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> > Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of
> > history. You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.
> >

> If you have read the bible, it's clear you have not read much else.

I am interested in accuracy. Not spinning facts to support views. You
can call me an idiot but it doesn't prove anything.

Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 07:59:21 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Uncle Vic wrote:
>> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> What we have here, Jimmy Boy, is a story about some witnesses that
>> Jesus appeared to, to prove that he had risen from the dead. That part
>> of the story ends there. Not one of the witnesses bothered to report
>> what he saw to anyone else. A historian would have been nice.
>>
>
>If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? They were a
>bunch af historians living around AD 30. If they were, they probably
>wouldn't have noticed Jesus because his ministry was probably only a
>couple of years.

That's a rationalisation, an attempt at an excuse.

> He talked to a bunch of poor peasants.

Feel free to demonstrate that he did.

Unfortunately he was supposed to have been executed by the Romans, who
kept profuse records. But there are none for this or anything else
about him.

>> You say we have a religion (Christianity) that started from his
>> followers. Therefore it must be true, eh? The Greeks had a religion
>> that started from the followers of Zeus and his godfamily. I guess
>> that one must be true too. Oh, wait. Nobody believes in that religion
>> anymore. Why?
>>
>
>This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
>accounts. Something happened. Our dating system starts with the death
>of Christ. Yet you choose to believe it didn't happen. All these Zeus
>and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant, it is an exact parallel.

YOU don't have any eyewitnesses either. Just a book of religious
propaganda that says there were. You need to look up "hearsay".

Our calendar proves nothing. The origin is cultural, from a time when
everybody believed as you do. It's not worth changing - but in any
case even if he existed, the corroborated events (eg Herod) place his
birth at maybe 4 BC,

And why the lie about "you choose...."? When you perfectly well there
is no reason to believe it, because there is no evidence.

The Zeus and Mohammed comments are exact parallels. You need to start
thinking outside the box and realise that those who don't believe your
version see it in much the same way you see those.

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

>
> Later Rome and the church fabricated history that supported their religous
> control
> and power.

Tell what was fabricated? The Bible was written before the Roman
church was established.

>
> >> This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
> >> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian considers
> >> this passage to have been written by Josephus.
> >>
> >
> > It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
> > arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't

> > exist. This belief is not cognizant on facts.
>
> I did not clim Jeuse didn't exist. I merely claim that there was only very
> week evidence for his existence.

This is a matter of opinion.

>
>>
> Your stetement is pure unsupported nonsense. When are you going to back up
> your claims
> with some evidence instead of purely your personal opinion.
>

I ask for you to be factual and you parrot what I say.

> >> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders
> >> to
> >> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
> >> leaders.
> >>
> >

> > Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined

> > before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.

> > Some of the rest are still existant.
>

> I never said the Old Testement was written after Christ and their are NO
> ORIGINALS of
> either the oled or New Testements in existence.
>

Of course there are no originals. We have tens of thousands copies of
copies. The sheer number of copies verify the content.

> >
> >
> >> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
> >> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which
> >> books
> >> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among
> >> scholars
> >> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
> >> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words,
> >> the
> >> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires
> >> and
> >> motives of the church leadership at the time
> >>
> >

> > Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining

> > the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
> > irrational.
>

> Care to back up your irrational claims with some 'objective verifiable
> facts' instead of just wild statements.

This doesn't pertain to what I said. No wonder you chose to hide the
text. Your mind seems incapable of coherent thought.

>
> >>
> >
> > You make many unsupported claims. I suspect you haven't read the
> > Bible. I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of history.
> > You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.
>

> You have made dozens of statemnents bu thave not backed up any with some
> 'objective verifaible evidence'.
>
> It appears that the data in the post conflicts with your belief system and
> causes
> your irrational reaction.

I believe in rational discourse. There is no point discussing this
further.

Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 08:08:00 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>> There was NO eyewitness testimony, most especially of the written type.
>> If you doubt that please produce it. But do not point to the gospels
>> as your evidence because nowhere in them, or any New Testament text
>> does the author claim to be an eyewitness.
>>
>
>I disagree. The New Testament texts are eyewitness accounts. Possibly
>Luke is not, he said he collected the accounts from people. Matthew,
>Mark and John were present during the events. They wrote about them.
>This makes them eyewitnesses.

Then you don't know what constitutes an eyewitness account.

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

> You're trying to defend ridiculous and preposterous claims. It's utter
> madness to believe that the stories revolving around Jesus/God are actually
> true. You're just another brainwashed Christian trying to defend the
> indefensible. Not brainwashed, you say? Try this: Post something to the
> effect that it just may be *possible* -- not necessarily true -- that the
> bible contains mistakes and contradictions, and that some of the stories we
> find in the New Testament are simply not historically true (like Mt.
> 27:50-53). If you can do that -- in an honest manner -- maybe you might not
> be completely brainwashed. If you can't, you are.
>
> We'll be waiting.
>

Of course it is possible that the bible contains mistakes and
contradicitons. I am still looking for some solid contradictions.
Most seem to be manufactured by strict interpretations. Personally, I
don't believe in Bible inerrancy.

As far as Matthew 27, it is his version of events. You can choose to
believe him or not. What happened? We don't know for certain. For
that matter we know little for certain about the past. Time erases
all. It is nature of our existance.

Jimmy Boy

[Enkidu]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in news:1160492361.204694.200780
@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

> This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
> accounts.

So, tyou have no eyewitness accounts.

> Something happened.

It did? We have no evidence, and we have no eyewitness accounts. How do
you know something happened?

> Our dating system starts with the death of Christ. Yet you choose
> to believe it didn't happen.

It didn't start with the mythical birth at the time of the mythical
birth. Wasn't it Justinian who started that tradition centuries later?
So, yet another case where a tradition is based upon no eyewitness
testemony.

> All these Zeus and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.

You are too blinded by your indoctrination to see that we reject all gods
for the same reason you reject all but one. If you understand why you
reject Zues, Mohammed, Thor, and Ra, you should understand why we reject
your God and your Jesus.

[Enkidu]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in news:1160496719.067376.23050
@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> Of course it is possible that the bible contains mistakes and
> contradicitons. I am still looking for some solid contradictions.
> Most seem to be manufactured by strict interpretations. Personally, I
> don't believe in Bible inerrancy.

So, the book is *partly* the word of God? How do you know which parts to
believe? We call your type "salad bar Christians" because you go through
your Bible taking what you like and leaving what you don't.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 08:23:21 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Mike Painter wrote:
>> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> > Bill M wrote:
>> >>
>>> You have the burden to provide *facts* of existance. Did this god hide the
>> records of this person and allow other records to survive as a test?
>>
>
>God is irrelevant. The question is that whether Jesus existed. I
>think there is enough evidence to say that it is probable he did.
>However, for someone to say with a certainty that he didn't exist is
>simply re-writing history.

Then provide it - but not the standard list we've heard thousands of
times already, that we're fed up with debunking.

Nobody is rewriting history - apart from Christians.

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Al Klein wrote:
>
> Your religion was based on one thing by another - the Logos by the
> Chreestos. You know that already, right?

>
> What you (and 99.999% of Christians) don't know yet - because of
> discoveries made only in the last couple of years - is that:
>

> a) the Logos is the part of your god he uses to interface with the
> universe (according to early Christians, and who would know better

> than those who founded the religion). That's "the part of" the god of
> Moses, of course - Christianity, in the first century, at least, was

> just a few (or a few dozen or a few hundred - who knows, we only know
> from the writings we've found, not the ones we haven't found) sects of
> Judaism.
>

> and b) The Chreestos was the congregation They were - all Christians
> at that time, by definition, were - "the Anointed of God". That's
> what "Christian" meant in the first century. Not followers of a
> Christ that wasn't mentioned until the second century.
>

> The 'Jesus' part came later - much later. The first mention of any
> 'Jesus' figure in Christianity didn't come until the second century.

> Paul's "Jesus" was the Logos - pure spirit. Christian (early
> Christian - 1st century) belief was salvation through knowledge of the
> god of Moses. No 'son', no crucifixion - that was all added later by
> those who hadn't been born when it all supposedly happened. Whose
> parents hadn't been born then. And, figuring the average life span
> back then, whose grandparents hadn't been born back then. (100 years
> was really 4 generations back then - 50 was OLD.)
>

This is very old news. This is gnositicism. It was rejected by the
early church founders as herecy.

> >At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city in a conquered nation.
>

> And, 100 years after the death of someone who's name wasn't even
> recorded, they wouldn't even know that he had existed. Some preacher
> your grandfather listened to as a small child? Tell me about life in
> the ante-bellum South. We have written records - but do you have any
> idea what life was like then? And that's closer to us, as far as
> records go, than "Jesus" was to those who wrote the Gospels. (Pauline
> "Christianity" had nothing to do with a person - any person.)
>

Christianity didn't originate with Paul. The basic theme of
Christianity started in Genesis. You can find all the details of
Christianity in the Genesis. The later writers simply expounded upon
the theme.

> >You have no proof Jesus didn't exist.
>
> You have no proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist. Nor
> do you have the slightest shred of contemporaneous evidence that Jesus
> the Nazorite (another little error that crept in - but are you at all
> aware of the PROFOUND difference there is between Nazorite and
> Nazarene?) existed. Nor was there even a claim that he did until
> about 100 years after he supposedly died. That would be like 1,000
> years now, for that "backward city in a conquered nation". And the
> claim wasn't even in what later came to be called the Bible. Those
> claims came later still.
>

I don't see the point. Tomayto - tomato what is your point. The story
is that Jesus came from Nazarus. It was a backward province even for
the occupied territory of Judea.

>
> >This is nonsense and totally inaccurate.
>

> Since almost everything about a personality named 'Jesus' comes from Q

> (everything that comes from early documentation, at least), nothing
> about him can be earlier than Q. Not that we have anything even that
> early. Paul never wrote about a man named Jesus, about a crucifixion,
> about a resurrection. He was there - supposedly - just after the
> events. But they weren't important enough to Christianity for him to
> mention?
>

The Q document is purely theorectical. You can't say that everything
came from something you can't even prove existed. This is pure
speculation.

Paul wasn't an eyewitness of the event. He became a follower later.
Also Paul didn't invent Christianity. This was described in the Old
Testament. Jesus merely appropriated the theme and applied it to
himself. Paul basically outlined the doctrine more explicitedly. He
didn't create anything.

> >You have no idea what and when things were originally written.
>
> You think that, because you know almost nothing about the history of
> Christianity, it's not known? We can date almost every single early
> document of Christianity we have, and we can date it pretty
> accurately.
>

We can't document what we don't have. We also can't prove these
documents never existed just because we want to.

> >Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
> >just make up facts to support your beliefs.
>

> And you can't just make up claims and say that, since the proof has
> "been lost in time", your assertions stand. Have you read the site I
> gave you the link to?
>

The proof either way is lacking.

> >> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
> >> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
> >> leaders.
>
> >Again you are writing history.
>

> He's reading it. The Council of Nicea was charged with canonization
> (making up the rules) of the New Testament.
>

But they didn't write the New Testament. They only agreed what should
be in it.

> >The Old Testament was determined
> >before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
>

> Read what you wrote. That's a claim that they're not to be believed.

> That men chose which books were "correct" by *consensus* is something
> you think leads weight to the authenticity of the words in the Bible?

> The truth of the words is based on what they thought was the best to
> keep? So all of Christianity is, by your claim, the idea of 300 men?
> And what if Arius, among all of them, was the one who was correct?
>

This is all irrelevant. Men chose the books. It doesn't have anything
to do with how accurately they portrayed events. Arius is your
gnositic who was branded a heretic.

> Do you know what "extant" means? NONE of the original Christian

> writings of the early first century are extant. We know of the
> existence of very few documents from that period that mention
> Christianity at all, from the Christian side - none at all that
> mentions a Christ or a man named Jesus. Parts of later documents
> (about a dozen words, in one case, with almost no meaning) are extant.
> We really have nothing until the first quarter of the second century.
>

That is my point. You can't say for certainty what and when about the
NT. Everything portrayed as fact is all speculation. Yet I have been
called a stupid asshole for pointing out the obivous.

>
> >Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
> >the Canon.
>

> No one but "true believers" (those who will believe Church doctrine
> regardless of fact) believe that any longer. We have enough
> documentation of the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries to know what
> happened in the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries. and enough
> documentation referring to earlier occurrences to pretty accurately
> figure out what happened.before that.
>

What are taking about? What happened ?

>
> You're a true believer. Christian Bible scholars know that all of

> the assertions in the above 3 paragraphs are, if not true, as close as
> we now know the truth to be.
>

How can something be close to the truth?

> >> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They contain
> >> manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities, indecencies,
> >> obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore and legends. They are
> >> mostly nonsense and hearsay.
>

> >You make many unsupported claims.
>

> Some of the scientific errors have been known for over 100 years. Many
> of the prophesies have proved false. The rest are so ambiguous as to
> be meaningless or are supposed to come true in the future. So all the
> ones that can actually be tested are false.
>

Give me some examples!!

> Forcing a rape victim to spend the rest of her life married to her
> rapist is immoral, obscene, barbaric and atrocious.
>

Now you are making value judgements of a ancient culture.

> Killing all but the virgin girls of a people, and raping them, is
> immoral, obscene, atrocious and barbarous (and a few other not nice
> things).
>

When did raping girls happen?

> Allowing slavery without speaking against it is barbaric and immoral.
> (Don't start with the "selling themselves into slavery" nonsense - the
> Bible gives permission to enslave one's enemies for life.)
>

Again you are making value judgments of an ancient society. We had
bondsmen in the old Colonial times. They were indentured servants. You
are a slave to your job. It is a value judgement. You need to have
lived in the times to understand them.

> >I suspect you haven't read the Bible.
>

> Since most atheists have read more Bibles more times than most

> Christians, that's ludicrous, although I'll let Bill speak for
> himself, but I expect that he knows your Bible (and others) better
> than you do.
>

I don't think so. From what I have read there is much you haven't
read.

> Others? Oh, weren't you aware that there are a number of different
> Christian Bibles, and that some of them contradict others of them? And
> that NONE of them use the actual Hebrew Bible as "their" Old
> Testament?

We all use translations of the Hebrew Bible. The OT is based on the
same texts as the Jewish writings.

>
> BTW, you DO read Greek and Hebrew, don't you? Or do you consider
> reading a translation of a translation of a translation of ...
> "reading the Bible"?
>

Do you know ancient Greek? Modern Greek is very different. Besides the
message is very simple. It is not based on complicated word play.

> If you'd like to discuss the New Testament, let's. I've been studying

> it - not as in Bible study, but seriously studying it, and
> Christianity as history - probably longer than you've been alive. And,
> since new discoveries are made all the time, I keep studying it. The
> Christianity of today is NOT the Christianity of yesterday - or the
> Christianity of the original Christians, either.

That is not true. Basic Christianity started with Genesis. The story
is the same throughout the Old Testament. Jesus and the apostles
didn't start anything new.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

>
> A rather more pressing concern for Al Klein is to study morality; and
> even more pressing, to practise it, especially the bits about honesty.
>
> All the best,
>
> Roger Pearse

Thank you Roger. I don't know why I bothered. You could be a Christian
or not. But I do know that you are rational thinking human being.

I am going to leave these guys to you. There is no point is arguing
with someone about their belief system. Especially when they can't
distinguish between fact and belief.

Jimmy Boy

[Al Klein]

On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 19:24:40 -0700, Stephen Knight
<woo...@comcast.net> wrote:

>On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:40:09 -0400, "Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net>
>wrote:
>
> Snip over a thousand lines of Apologetic drivel. (Like I'm going to
>spend that much time losing brain cells....)

>
>>Amazingly, Christians almost never question the authenticity of Jesus and
>>the Bibles, yet the very foundation of their faith is based on their
>>authenticity.
>

> We know. "Amazingly" is the operative word. How can you be so
>stupid to believe that asshole even existed?
>
> Not to set myself aside... I, and quite a few atheists have serious
>issues about the relationship between Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. Bugs
>in drag and kisses Elmer. Okay... That's fine when the carrot is a
>stick of dynamite, but what's with the lipstick?

It's not lipstick, you unrepentant heathen - it's The Blood of Carrot.

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"The study of geology is ok-But not when it contradicts what is laid
out in the Bible that the earth is more than 10,000 years old."
- Doug Lee, Creationist

(random sig, produced by SigChanger)

This signature was made by SigChanger.
You can find SigChanger at: http://www.phranc.nl/

[Al Klein]

On 9 Oct 2006 19:37:58 -0700, "bk" <backandf...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
>wise" (Cor: 1:27)

>Doesn't that tie it all together quite neatly? ;)

Sure does. He confounded them - now they're believers.

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"They laughed at Newton, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at
Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 11:12:59 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>
>>
>> A rather more pressing concern for Al Klein is to study morality; and
>> even more pressing, to practise it, especially the bits about honesty.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Roger Pearse
>
>Thank you Roger. I don't know why I bothered. You could be a Christian
>or not. But I do know that you are rational thinking human being.

Bwaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha.........

Roger has nothing but wishful thinking, and slander for those who
don't buy into it.

>I am going to leave these guys to you. There is no point is arguing
>with someone about their belief system. Especially when they can't
>distinguish between fact and belief.

What "belief system", lying theist?

You and Roger are the ones who can't distinguish between fact and
belief.

You're talking to people OUTSIDE YOUR RELIGION. Where your religion's
doctrinal presumptions are worthless to your audience. Where you need
real-world, outside-your-religion evidence.

And your personal lies confirm you both have nothing.

>Jimmy Boy

[Al Klein]

On 9 Oct 2006 22:23:25 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>Enkidu wrote:

>> I can't prove Zeus didn't exist. Does that mean I should believe he did
>> exist?

>It is a totally irrelevant point. You claim that something didn't
>exist. Yet we have written eye witness testimony.

To a physical Jesus? No we don't.

> We have a religion that started from his followers.

We have a religion that started from Odin's followers - when are you
going to start making sacrifices to Odin?

> You suddenly claim that he didn't exist.

Since his name never comes up until decades after his supposed death.

> You have no facts and coherent logic to support your
>suppositions.

You have logic backwards - those who claim existence bear the burden
of proof.

>> So, you have some evidence the Bible *is* more accurate than the Vedas or
>> the Koran? Yes? Present it. No? then dump the Bible or believe in the
>> other holy books too.

>You can't follow the thread of a single argument without start talking
>about something totally irrelevant.

It's the same argument - evidently following a train of logic is
beyond your capability.

>> > Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined

>> > before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.

>> > Some of the rest are still existant.

>> Yeah? Does that make them true?

>Again you miss the point. I am not arguing that they are true or not.
> Only that your opinions about what happened is not based on facts.

Since the NT was chosen to reflect the beliefs of the times, not the
other way around, what Enkidu says is about what happened. Even you
say so - you just don't realize what your own words mean. "chosen by
consensus" means "this is what we believe", not "this has any
connection with reality". And NOT ONE of the original books of the NT
are extant. (We have no idea what or where the "original books" of
the OT were, so of course none of them are extant. Probably none of
them were in existence at the supposed time of Jesus.)

>> >> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
>> >> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which
>> >> books were unacceptable and why.

<snip>

>Again you make things up!! I never said anything about the Bible being
>true and accurate. The only point I am making is that you and not
>being accurate. You are not even rational.

Yet his statement is accurate - we know the charge to the Council of
Nicea. We even know of the fighting caused by Arius.

>> No, *everyone* agrees that no part of the New Testament was written before
>> 60ce.

>Most scholars agree that the first versions were oral histories which
>predate the written ones.

Scholars (as opposed to Christian apologists whose only
"qualifications" are degrees from theological diploma mills) know that
the Gospels are rewrites of Q, and Q does not date from the first
third of the first century.

IOW, you're quoting 300 year old claims, when there's 2 year old
information that contradicts it.

>> >> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They
>> >> contain manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities,
>> >> indecencies, obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore
>> >> and legends. They are mostly nonsense and hearsay.

>> When you learn to read for yourself and think for yourself, will you become
>> "Jimmy Man"?

>I have read what you right for myself and have thought for myself and
>concluded that you are nuts. You don't know reality between your
>warped beliefs.

So explain the historical, geographical (you forgot those, Enkidu) and
scientific errors. (An eclipse on the afternoon before Passover is
astronomically impossible.) Explain the prophesies that have failed.
Explain away the immoralities.

40 days of rain, hard enough to flood the entire world? The resultant
heat would have sterilized the world for eons to come. The water came
up from the ground? Hydraulically impossible. And there's not enough
H2O on the planet - in any phase - to flood the entire land area.

And that's just one claim that's utter nonsense.

We're waiting for your "explanations". Or are you just going to make
more ad hom attacks?

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived."
- Isaac Asimov

(random sig, produced by SigChanger)

This signature was made by SigChanger.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 13:28:01 -0500, " Midwinter"
<midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>Christopher A. Lee <ca...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>> This is a standard equivocation between meanings of "faith".
>>
>> We certainly don't have anything like the theist's faith - an excuse
>> for belief in the absence of evidence.
>

>Actually, you do. At least, I would hope you do. I've offered similar

Try not to be so arrogantly rude next time.

>examples before: you step on a plane because you trust it isn't going to
>crash. But they do - so why take the risk? Because it's not likely -
>and because it's not likely you're willing to have faith that yours won't
>be the one. Likewise, when you undergo an operation you put your faith
>in the skill of the surgeon. Why? Like as not you've never met him.
>All you've got is the fact that he's qualified and that he's never
>screwed it up before.

Actually you're wrong. Because as I pointed out earlier, that is not
faith in the sense of the theist's excuse for a belief in the absence
of evidence.

I don't give it a thought. I would simply be surprised if it crashed.

Please don't conflate an exuse for an unjustifid belief in the absence
of evidence, and an expectation based on a lifetime's experience.

>You have faith, to an extent, that everything'll work out okay for you
>and your family and loved ones. Can you imagine how difficult life'd be
>if you couldn't bring yourself to trust in that?

Why do you keep repeating this? Do you really imagine you know what is
in my mind better than I do myself?

This last is an example of a standard but dishonest bait'n'switch
regularly used by believers.

Demonstrate this alleged god to the same level of observation,
evidence, etc that there is for my family, loved ones etc. Then and
only then you can make that comparison.

>Yes, I know these don't carry the precise weight of the word 'faith' as
>it's used in relation to religion. But really, used in that context
>there's a whole range of weights. There are the frothing loons who have
>faith that God wants them to massacre the non-believers. Then again,
>there're those who just have faith that death isn't the end.

And you're still wrong.

>And here, I do believe we've an example of the same kind of faith that
>motivates evangelists to spread their god's word. And before you take
>offence and start going through the usual corrections as to why atheism
>isn't a religion - I know it's not. But I could lack belief in God and
>get on just fine without ever visiting a religious group on Usenet. So
>what makes an atheist do that? They do it for the same reason that the
>religionists do: they think their point of view's the right one, and they
>want to express it, perhaps in the hope that someone'll embrace it.

Completely irrelevant.

>Bill's a prime example of a man on a mission, judging by his posts in
>here. And if he's not got faith in what he's doing, then it's difficult
>to see why he's doing it.

No. He's a troll giving the religionists a taste of their own
medicine.

Even he wouldn't give a toss for what you and they believe if they
kept it to themselves, didn't impose it and didn't slander those
outside it.

[Al Klein]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:41:56 GMT, Elroy Willis
<elroy...@swbell.net> wrote:

>jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in alt.atheism

>> Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining

>> the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
>> irrational.

>You said in your last paragraph that they were "chosen by consensus,"
>didn't you?

He's trying to be pious - you know, contradict himself like his Bible
does? Isn't it written somewhere that the more a document contradicts
itself, the more true it is? If not, it should be, somewhere in the
annals of Christianity.

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social
ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he
had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
-Albert Einstein

[Al Klein]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:05:27 -0500, " Midwinter"
<midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>"Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>> If religion was supported by any real 'objective evidence', 'faith'
>> would be totally unnecessary.

>Everyone needs faith, Bill.

Spoken like a theist. Atheists don't need the kind of faith being
discussed here. If we did we'd be theists. But there are some who
can no more imagine how lack of religious faith is possible than they
can flex their gills.

>but when push comes to shove, you're here fighting your battles
>because you believe in the reason you're doing it.

I don't know about you, but I consider alt.atheism (which is where I'm
reading this) to be a form of entertainment. Like watching the
monkeys at the zoo. I don't "believe" in any "reason" for watching
them - it's just mildly amusing to do so. Sometimes it's even fun.

>You have faith - either that you can make a difference and help to bring down religion

It doesn't need me - religion is eventually doomed anyway. Children
either grow up or die young. Either way they stop being children.
(And after the past couple of days, it's not so certain that the
species will live long enough to change - due to the insane [read:
religion-driven] beliefs of one man.)

>or that you can make yourself look really clever (I'm still not sure which
>you're after).

I don't know about Bill, but I never try to make myself look like what
I'm not. If someone thinks I'm clever that's nice, but I have fun
reading the bleating either way. I don't really expect a serious
discussion about Christianity here - most atheists don't care and most
Christians don't know enough about Christianity to discuss it.

>But whether or not something is good fiction isn't for you to judge for
>anyone except yourself.

Writing that contradicts itself isn't good writing, unless it does so
deliberately.

>In two thousand years, barring a surprising preservation of the Usenet
>archives, there will probably be no record of anyone called Bill M, or
>anyone called Midwinter. I guess the rational people of the time will
>have to conclude that you and I never existed.

Unless there's still a religion called Billism, in which case Bill's
deathless prose will probably be preserved.

If you actually study the history of Christianity, you'll see that
Chreestos as an entity, rather than as a group of people, was invented
long after the supposed death of the entity. If there had actually
been a Joshua the Anointed One he wouldn't recognize Christianity
today. For one thing, they worshipped the god of Moses. For another,
salvation came through knowledge of that god alone. Sound familiar?
No? But that's what Christianity was, until Constantine's crowd
"canonized" it. ("Canonize" - to make rules about. Nothing about
truth, just arbitrary rules.)

Well, that was one sect of it. There were almost as many variations
then as there are now, with each group telling the other groups that
they weren't really the Anointed of God (which is what "Christians"
originally meant).

>Could be. Or it could be that the church leaders have taken what they
>can find and welded it into the Bible. Or it could be that the record-
>keepers didn't really think that much of Jesus at the time. Or it could
>be that the Pauline Church entirely misinterpreted what Jesus was doing
>and...

If you read Pauline Christianity (just one of the many then-extant
sects) you'll see that there was no man as a savior - Paul's Jesus was
spirit. What's practiced today is Constantinism. Or maybe we should
call it Helenism.

>Well, suffice to say that there's no evidence Jesus didn't exist

There's no evidence that Holy Macaroni doesn't exist either. Logic
doesn't prove the non-existence of a claim, it proves the existence.

>> We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts,
>> or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies that are believed
>> as fact are taken from nothing but belief and hearsay.

>And they're all idiots, too, no doubt. True, some people are gullible
>and credulous.

The very vast majority are.

> Some people'd believe absolutely anything. Many do. But
>I'm not sure which would be worse: being someone who assumes every story
>they hear is true; or someone who can't accept that there might be
>anything out there that they can't immediately see or feel.

Something, yes. Something that has only one source, and a source that
a) contradicts itself, b) lies and c) contradicts reality - no. It's
much more logical to believe in Leprechauns than it is to believe in
the Christian god.

>I don't believe science will ever address the question of divinity one way or the
>other

It definitely won't, any more than it'll address the whichness of the
what. Supernatural claims aren't the province of science.

>I can't prove that Jesus existed, but I'm
>not going to rule out the possibility simply because he's become the
>focus of a religion I don't follow.

How about because the objective evidence actually points to the fact
that there was no such character, because "Chreestos" never meant "a
man", it meant "the congregation"? The man Christ was invented LONG
after Christianity was - the original Christians were named such
because THEY were the Anointed of God - his children. Someone put the
cart on the road before the horse was born.

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise
as false, and by the rulers as useful."
- Seneca the Younger

[Robibnikoff]

"Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:XsyWg.11833$O65....@bignews5.bellsouth.net...

> Amazingly, Christians almost never question the authenticity of Jesus and
> the Bibles, yet the very foundation of their faith is based on their
> authenticity.

You're a PITA
--
Robyn
Resident Witchypoo
#1557

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

>
> Then provide it - but not the standard list we've heard thousands of
> times already, that we're fed up with debunking.
>

Believe what you want to believe - this is what man has always done.

> Nobody is rewriting history - apart from Christians.

You think nobody every rewrote history? You are very niave.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Enkidu wrote:
> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in news:1160496719.067376.23050
> @b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
>
> > Of course it is possible that the bible contains mistakes and
> > contradicitons. I am still looking for some solid contradictions.
> > Most seem to be manufactured by strict interpretations. Personally, I
> > don't believe in Bible inerrancy.
>
> So, the book is *partly* the word of God? How do you know which parts to
> believe? We call your type "salad bar Christians" because you go through
> your Bible taking what you like and leaving what you don't.
>
> --
>

Why are you labeling me? You are so prejudiced. You know nothing of
my beliefs. Stop defining my beliefs for me.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> On 10 Oct 2006 11:12:59 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >>
> >> A rather more pressing concern for Al Klein is to study morality; and
> >> even more pressing, to practise it, especially the bits about honesty.
> >>
> >> All the best,
> >>
> >> Roger Pearse
> >
> >Thank you Roger. I don't know why I bothered. You could be a Christian
> >or not. But I do know that you are rational thinking human being.
>
> Bwaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha.........
>

This is what I am talking about. I get nothing from gibberish from you
guys. My four year old can talk and make sense.

> Roger has nothing but wishful thinking, and slander for those who
> don't buy into it.
>
> >I am going to leave these guys to you. There is no point is arguing
> >with someone about their belief system. Especially when they can't
> >distinguish between fact and belief.
>
> What "belief system", lying theist?
>

You have your own belief system. The problem is that you don't know
it. You think your beliefs are all grounded in facts. Everything you
have is based on faith.

> You and Roger are the ones who can't distinguish between fact and
> belief.
>
> You're talking to people OUTSIDE YOUR RELIGION. Where your religion's
> doctrinal presumptions are worthless to your audience. Where you need
> real-world, outside-your-religion evidence.
>
> And your personal lies confirm you both have nothing.
>

What lies? You are beginning to sound like a lunatic to me.

Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 12:45:22 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>>
>> Then provide it - but not the standard list we've heard thousands of
>> times already, that we're fed up with debunking.
>>
>
>Believe what you want to believe - this is what man has always done.

No, moron - that's what YOU do.

We simply don't have thet belief, let alone the strawman opposite you
invent to the point of falsehood.

Now, stop lying and provide that evidemnce.

>> Nobody is rewriting history - apart from Christians.
>
>You think nobody every rewrote history? You are very niave.

A liar as well as an idiot.

>Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

Then stop defining them for us, hypocrite.

>Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 12:52:11 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On 10 Oct 2006 11:12:59 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >>
>> >> A rather more pressing concern for Al Klein is to study morality; and
>> >> even more pressing, to practise it, especially the bits about honesty.
>> >>
>> >> All the best,
>> >>
>> >> Roger Pearse
>> >
>> >Thank you Roger. I don't know why I bothered. You could be a Christian
>> >or not. But I do know that you are rational thinking human being.
>>
>> Bwaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha.........
>>
>
>This is what I am talking about. I get nothing from gibberish from you
>guys. My four year old can talk and make sense.

Like I said elsewhere - a liar as well as an idiot.

>> Roger has nothing but wishful thinking, and slander for those who
>> don't buy into it.
>>
>> >I am going to leave these guys to you. There is no point is arguing
>> >with someone about their belief system. Especially when they can't
>> >distinguish between fact and belief.
>>
>> What "belief system", lying theist?
>>
>
>You have your own belief system. The problem is that you don't know
>it. You think your beliefs are all grounded in facts. Everything you
>have is based on faith.

No, liar.

You're the one who hides behind faith.

Provide some facts and then we'll discuss them.

Until you do that you have nothing whatsoever to say.

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:05:27 -0500, " Midwinter"
> <midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >"Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >
>

> This is a standard equivocation between meanings of "faith".
>
> We certainly don't have anything like the theist's faith - an excuse
> for belief in the absence of evidence.
>

Give me a break!! First you have the belief that Jesus didn't exist.
Then you have the belief that the Bible was written after the fact and
couldn't contain eyewitness accounts. They you have the belief that
any person of faith is a complete idiot incapable of coherent thought.
I could go on and on. You read your atheistic propaganda and take it
as gospel - despite what any real evidence or common sense says.

You have many beliefs. You just don't know it.

> There are better words to use that carry the exact meaning.
>
> Replacing these with "faith" obstructs communication because those
> doing it want to remove the differences in meaning.
>

You have faith in your paradigm. You are a true believer. I am a man
full of doubts. I doubt everything.

> Most Christians don't seem to realise just how utterly irrelevant the
> object of their most cherished beliefs, is to non-Christians. Even
> though I doubt they give eg Mohammed or any of the others much
> thought.

I got a news flash for you. Other people's most cherished beliefs are
often irrelevant to people. This transcends Christianity to humanity.

You have a fixation with Jesus and Christianity.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

You are very emotional. I think you have a real problem. It has
nothing to do with religion. You expect everyone to "believe what you
believe" or "think as you think". If they disagree then they are liars
and idiots.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

> >
> >Why are you labeling me? You are so prejudiced. You know nothing of
> >my beliefs. Stop defining my beliefs for me.
>
> Then stop defining them for us, hypocrite.
>

Now your label me a hypocrite. You just insist on labeling people.
You are one seriously prejudiced person.

Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 13:39:11 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:05:27 -0500, " Midwinter"
>> <midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> >"Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> >
>>
>> This is a standard equivocation between meanings of "faith".
>>
>> We certainly don't have anything like the theist's faith - an excuse
>> for belief in the absence of evidence.
>
>Give me a break!! First you have the belief that Jesus didn't exist.

Learn to read for comprehension.

I DO NOT HAVE THAT BELIEF.

I merely don't have your belief that he did.

And when you folk insist he did, I demand evidence, but you haven't
got anything that stands up to any scrutiny.

Please try and understand the difference between that and your straw
man.

>Then you have the belief that the Bible was written after the fact and
>couldn't contain eyewitness accounts. They you have the belief that
>any person of faith is a complete idiot incapable of coherent thought.
>I could go on and on. You read your atheistic propaganda and take it
>as gospel - despite what any real evidence or common sense says.

Again, what "belief"?

I am not and never have been Christian. I simply treat the bible like
any other scripture of any other religion.

>You have many beliefs. You just don't know it.

You are a liar, who conflates words that carry different meanings,
like "observation", "conclusion" etc with "belief" meaning your own
kind of belief, to replace the meanings of what you are told, as
though we had meant your new version.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 13:43:22 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On 10 Oct 2006 12:45:22 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Then provide it - but not the standard list we've heard thousands of
>> >> times already, that we're fed up with debunking.

It would have been easier for you to do this if you actually had any.

>> >Believe what you want to believe - this is what man has always done.

Translation (apart from the personal lie): you have none.

>> No, moron - that's what YOU do.
>>
>> We simply don't have thet belief, let alone the strawman opposite you
>> invent to the point of falsehood.

Why didn't you have the courtesy to acknowledge this instead of
nastily insisting that you know the contents of my mind better than I
do myself?

>> Now, stop lying and provide that evidemnce.

>>
>> >> Nobody is rewriting history - apart from Christians.
>> >
>> >You think nobody every rewrote history? You are very niave.

Translation (apart from the personal lie): you have none.

>> A liar as well as an idiot.
>
>You are very emotional. I think you have a real problem. It has
>nothing to do with religion. You expect everyone to "believe what you
>believe" or "think as you think". If they disagree then they are liars
>and idiots.

Translation (apart from more personal lies): you have none.

If you don't like it, stop lying. It gets very personal when you
resort to personal lies like insisting I believe something I don't.

And you confirm it when you further lie about "if they diagree they
are liars and idiots".

You don't need to do this.

Just provide this alleged evidence.

You showed yourself to be both of those when you

>Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

Hardly, liar. I only called you a hypocrite for being one. After all
you have repeatedly defined beliefs we don't have, insisting that we
did.

>Jimmy Boy

[derrick_a...@yahoo.com]

Salutations!
>
> The gross lack of evidentiary evidence was illustrated clearly in an
> interview by the renowned Biblical scholar, David Noel Freeman (Freeman, the
> General editor of the Anchor Bible Series and many other works). An
> interviewer asked him about Biblical interpretation. Freeman replied:
>

Allow me to throw in my justified ad hominem here. This is a poor man's
attempt at biblical criticism. The fact Mr. Bill would even utter the
name "David Noel Freeman" (sic) sickens me. So many precious gigabytes
wasted on this asinine polemic. I shall post something of substance
later - "God" willing.

best wishes,

Derrick Mohammad Abdul-Hakim

[raven1]

On 9 Oct 2006 22:23:25 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Enkidu wrote:
>> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in

>> news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>>
>> >
>> > Bill M wrote:
>> >>
>> >> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
>> >> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They
>> >> are not even good fiction.
>> >>
>> >
>> > This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
>> > speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.

>>
>> I can't prove Zeus didn't exist. Does that mean I should believe he did
>> exist?
>>
>
>It is a totally irrelevant point. You claim that something didn't
>exist. Yet we have written eye witness testimony.

No, we don't. The Gospels are hearsay at best, and the authors are
unknown.

> We have a religion
>that started from his followers.

This is irrelevant, unless you want to accept that say, Krishna is
also real.

> You suddenly claim that he didn't

>exist. You have no facts and coherent logic to support your
>suppositions.

And you do?
--

"O Sybilli, si ergo
Fortibus es in ero
O Nobili! Themis trux
Sivat sinem? Causen Dux"

[raven1]

On 10 Oct 2006 07:59:21 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

> Our dating system starts with the death
>of Christ.

This alone is enough to dismiss you as an idiot.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:37:18 -0500, " Midwinter"
<midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>Christopher A. Lee <ca...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>>>Actually, you do. At least, I would hope you do. I've offered
>>>similar
>>
>> Try not to be so arrogantly rude next time.
>

>I'm well aware that you'll take enthusiastic offence no matter what I say
>and no matter how I say it.

Blatant and personal falsehood.

> This I've gathered from our previous
>conversations (also generally stemming from Bill's proclamations),
>because you have me down as a religionist and therefore it's a point of
>principle that you see me as an unreasonable person trying to attack you.

No.

Now you're amateur-psychologising your own falsehood.

You don't seem to grasp how arrogantly rude you are when you insist
that I have faith, over my explanatons that I don't.

Has it escaped your notice, that you are not a mind reader, and that
I, not you, am the arbiter of what is in my own muind?

You can tell me you don't understand it, but never, ever try to tell
tell me or anybody else they are wrong about what their own point of
view actually is. Or try to "prove" it's something else.

I don't care what you are.

I want to know why you used a standard theist dishonesty to tell me I
had faith, which conflates a whole slew of more accurate words, with
the theist's use of it as an excuse in the absence of evidence.

I strenuously object to people telling me I have faith when I don't.

>Frankly I'm no more interested in whether I offend you or not than I
>suspect you're interested in whether you offend me. Your personal issues
>out of the way, let's concentrate on the subject, shall we?

You made yourself the issue, when you got personal.

>> Actually you're wrong. Because as I pointed out earlier, that is not
>> faith in the sense of the theist's excuse for a belief in the absence
>> of evidence.
>

>Nevertheless, it is faith. There is no evidence that your plane will not
>crash, or that your surgeon will not hash the job up. But you reason -
>since these events are rare - that you will be safe.

Only in your dreams, moron.

What part of I DON'T GIVE IT A THOUGHT are you pretending you don't
understand?

And what part of I WOULD BE SURPRISED?

>> I don't give it a thought. I would simply be surprised if it crashed.
>

>And you would be surprised because...?

Because I don't expect it.

I don't "have faith" in it.

And I doubt you do either.

I want to know why you (a) equivocate on it, (b) think you know what
is in my own mind better than I do myself, and (c) ignore correction
on (b).

>> Please don't conflate an exuse for an unjustified belief in the absence

>> of evidence, and an expectation based on a lifetime's experience.
>

>"Expectation based on a lifetime's experience"? And what if a religious
>person told you that they had been having religious experiences all their
>lives? Could you disprove a thousand experiences any more effectively
>than you could disprove one? Could they prove a thousand better than
>they could prove one? No. Again, it's a matter of personal perception
>and interpretation. Their belief is theirs. Your lack of belief is
>yours. That's all there is to it.

Red herring. But in any case you're conflating their subjective
interpretation with the thing they're interpreting.

>
>> Why do you keep repeating this? Do you really imagine you know what is
>> in my mind better than I do myself?
>

>I could ask "why not", since you make no secret of your assumptions about
>me.

>
>
>> Demonstrate this alleged god to the same level of observation,
>> evidence, etc that there is for my family, loved ones etc. Then and
>> only then you can make that comparison.
>

>Here we have a problem. See, I can prove the existence of my gods to MY
>satisfaction by looking out of the window. I see sky, and sun, trees and
>water, and light and shadow, and so on. They are there, just as the desk
>on which my computer sits is there.
>
>It's a given, of course, that I can't prove my gods to YOUR satisfaction.
>I'd have a hard enough time, I'm sure, just getting you to understand
>what I mean by 'god'. To me, the concept is very different from how the
>Judeo-Christian God is described. But in the end, what does it matter
>whether I can explain it to you? You're not me. Why should I expect you
>to see what I see anyway? There are some here who tell me that a
>divinity inherent in nature "doesn't count", and that if this is the
>basis of my religion then I'm not properly religious at all. So be it.
>Again, another person's assessment of my religion is of no consequence to
>me.
>
>But you continue to demand proof of the god you seem to think I follow.
>You know I can't provide such proof, yet you continue to demand it. But
>why? What do you demonstrate to yourself that you don't already know?
>You know perfectly well that my continued failure to provide evidence
>isn't going to affect that fact that I believe - so what's your aim?
>What does my belief system have to do with you? Does it offend you that
>I believe in something you don't believe in?
>
>As to your further point here, there is indeed empirical, objective,
>measurable proof of the existence of your family and your loved ones.
>But I'd be very interested to see you empirically demonstrate your
>feelings for them.

>
>
>>>Yes, I know these don't carry the precise weight of the word 'faith'
>>>as it's used in relation to religion. But really, used in that
>>>context there's a whole range of weights. There are the frothing
>>>loons who have faith that God wants them to massacre the
>>>non-believers. Then again, there're those who just have faith that
>>>death isn't the end.
>>
>> And you're still wrong.
>

>Oh? You should've mentioned it, then. Obviously if I'd known THEN that
>I was wrong I'd have done things differently...
>
>Seriously: telling me "you're wrong" doesn't change anything. It's not
>even an argument. I'm aware that you don't share my beliefs or my
>opinions; I'm equally aware that I'm in your category marked "religious
>nutter". You should be aware, then, that none of that matters to me.

>
>
>>>And here, I do believe we've an example of the same kind of faith that
>>>motivates evangelists to spread their god's word. And before you take
>>>offence and start going through the usual corrections as to why
>>>atheism isn't a religion - I know it's not. But I could lack belief
>>>in God and get on just fine without ever visiting a religious group on
>>>Usenet. So what makes an atheist do that? They do it for the same
>>>reason that the religionists do: they think their point of view's the
>>>right one, and they want to express it, perhaps in the hope that
>>>someone'll embrace it.
>>
>> Completely irrelevant.
>

>Really? I don't think so. I think your motivations for what you're
>doing are the very hub of this particular issue. And I notice you don't
>actually deny what I said.

>
>
>>>Bill's a prime example of a man on a mission, judging by his posts in
>>>here. And if he's not got faith in what he's doing, then it's
>>>difficult to see why he's doing it.
>>
>> No. He's a troll giving the religionists a taste of their own
>> medicine.
>

>And those who rally to support his every trolling post? What does this
>say for them?
>
>Even if what you say is true, and if Bill is the pitiable creature you
>make him out to be (and I don't believe that's the case), why would he be
>wanting to 'give religionists a taste of their own medicine', if he
>didn't believe they needed it?

>
>
>> Even he wouldn't give a toss for what you and they believe if they
>> kept it to themselves, didn't impose it and didn't slander those
>> outside it.
>

>And yet my involvement in this thread, as with most, is in *reply* to
>comments by others - in this case, Bill. Strange, that, considering I'm
>trying to force my beliefs on people. What's also strange is that,
>although I've explained my beliefs when appropriate, I've never actually
>suggested to anyone that they should believe as I do. In fact, several
>times I've told people that they shouldn't - that their beliefs are for
>them to sort out, not me. It's not a very effective method of
>proselytisation, though, is it? And of course, since I only subscribe to
>alt.religion.christian from amongst the header groups, there's also the
>question of how Bill's OP was visible to me at all...

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

>
> Well, I'm not a scholar. What I can say is that I'm not interested in
> 'Christ'. I don't believe in 'Jesus Christ'. I'm simply willing to
> accept the possibility of the existence of a man called Jesus, because as
> far as I'm concerned, there's some indication that there was such a man,
> and no evidence that there wasn't.

Your posts are refreshing. It is nice to read something from a
rational point of view.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

All right, do you believe that Jesus Christ didn't exist? If so, what
is your empirical evidence? If you have nothing concrete, then you
have a belief.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

All right Chris, do you believe that Mount Everest is the tallest
mountain on the Earth?

If so, then why? Is because you read it somewhere? Then you believe
what you read and are told. It is not a matter of empirical evidence.
You don't have knowledge to measure the mountain. It could be possible
that K2 is taller. You would need to research the methods used to do
the calculations and then interpret the veracity of the results. Even
then you would have faith in the methods used.

Much in life is a matter of belief, if you think about it.

For example, is it wrong to kill someone? What about in war? Now tell
me why.

Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

Can't you read for comprehension at all?

I do not waste time having that belief about something so irrelevant
outside your religion.

I OBSERVE (do you know what that means?) Christians imposing their
beliefs nearly every day.

I OBSERVE that they talk to the rest of us as though their beliefs
were universally granted.

I OBSERVE that they talk about the alleged "evidence", inventing all
sorts of falsehoods to rationalise whey we don't believe while
ignoringthe actual one.

I OBSERVE that when told to put up or shut up, they dredge out the
same old debunked list of so-called "evidence".

I CONCLUDE that if they had anything that stood up to the least
scrutiny, they would have provided it long ago.

I OBSERVE that every attempt at "proof" which fails, every fallacy.
every slander etc when they could have provided this alleged
"Evidence" is a data point against.

I OBSERVE that there are no data points for.

I CONCLUDE the obvious from this.

>Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 15:57:23 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>All right Chris, do you believe that Mount Everest is the tallest
>mountain on the Earth?

For fuck's sake, why do you want to reduce everything to "believe"
when there are far more accurate words that avoid the equivocation you
seem intent of doing?

[rest of this tripe deleted]

[Neil Kelsey]

jim_halle...@yahoo.com wrote:
> All right Chris, do you believe that Mount Everest is the tallest
> mountain on the Earth?
>
> If so, then why? Is because you read it somewhere? Then you believe
> what you read and are told. It is not a matter of empirical evidence.

Yes it is. Mount Everest has been measured numerous times. There are
detailed explanations of the various ways it's been measured over the
years.

> You don't have knowledge to measure the mountain. It could be possible
> that K2 is taller. You would need to research the methods used to do
> the calculations and then interpret the veracity of the results. Even
> then you would have faith in the methods used.

That's not faith, that's knowledge. If you read how they measured the
mountains, and UNDERSTAND it, then you'd know faith has nothing to do
with it. Measuring a mountain is a rational, logical process backed up
by actual evidence that the process works. Faith involves blind leaps,
science doesn't.

The other thing is, there is no agenda behind measuring a mountain.
Even if I didn't know exactly how they measured Everest, I'd tend to
trust the scientists/mathematicians because there is no particular
reason for them to lie to me (and have a great track record that
science works). However, when someone claims there is an invisible
being that is everywhere and yet is very reclusive, and that this being
made everything inthe universe and that this being loves me, and they
want me to donate my money and time on bahalf of their god, I have to
ask where this being is. When I don't get a straight answer (I haven't
got one yet), I tend to become suspicious that the person making the
claim is either lying to me or lying to themselves. When it comes to
religion, it is obvious that the claimants have an agenda, and I think
it is a very dangerous agenda.

> Much in life is a matter of belief, if you think about it.

You haven't proved your premises yet, if that is your conclusion. I
think belief should be mostly irrelevant in life.

> For example, is it wrong to kill someone? What about in war? Now tell
> me why.

These examples are qualitatively different than measuring mountains.
You're now talking about ethics, not mathematics. And if you're asking
about belief in regards to killing and are comparing it with belief in
regards to god, then you're going to have to look up the word "belief"
in a dictionary. That word has several shades of meaning, and you're
equivocating on those meanings. Intentional equivocating is dishonest,
unintentional equivocating is ignorant. Which one are you?

> Jimmy Boy

[Bill M]

<jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1160521043.3...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...

>
> All right Chris, do you believe that Mount Everest is the tallest
> mountain on the Earth?

The hight of mountains is base on accurate measurements and Surveyors math
and is
usually confirmed by others observations and claculations.

> If so, then why? Is because you read it somewhere? Then you believe
> what you read and are told. It is not a matter of empirical evidence.
> You don't have knowledge to measure the mountain.

No but we do know which scientific publications are relible and factual.
and we can easely observe that the bibles are nothing more than books of
myths, fables and imppausable tales.

Intelligent people do not believe that the Wiard of OZ was any real god.

It could be possible
> that K2 is taller. You would need to research the methods used to do
> the calculations and then interpret the veracity of the results. Even
> then you would have faith in the methods used.
>
> Much in life is a matter of belief, if you think about it.

Yes, beleif confirmed by authoritative and realible sources or personal
observation!

[Don Kresch]

In alt.atheism On 9 Oct 2006 22:23:25 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com
let us all know that:

>
>Enkidu wrote:
>> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
>> news:1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
>>
>> >
>> > Bill M wrote:
>> >>
>> >> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any
>> >> god unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They
>> >> are not even good fiction.
>> >>
>> >
>> > This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
>> > speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.
>>
>> I can't prove Zeus didn't exist. Does that mean I should believe he did
>> exist?
>>
>
>It is a totally irrelevant point. You claim that something didn't
>exist. Yet we have written eye witness testimony.

No, you do not. No, the gospel authors were not eyewitnesses.
No, Paul was not an eyewitness.

Don
---
aa #51, Knight of BAAWA, DNRC o-, Member of the [H]orde
Atheist Minister for St. Dogbert.

"No being is so important that he can usurp the rights of another"
Picard to Data/Graves "The Schizoid Man"

[Al Klein]

On 10 Oct 2006 07:27:01 -0700, roger_...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

>Al Klein wrote:
>> On 9 Oct 2006 14:38:38 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>> >Bill M wrote:

>Indeed so. "Bill M." displays no knowledge whatever of how ancient
>history is done: instead he simply read something where someone looks
>at what the data is for Jesus of Nazareth

If you're going to correct someone on historical grounds, be on solid
ground yourself. It's Jesus the Nazorite, not Jesus the Nazarene.
Stop reading mistranslations.

Oh, we had this discussion years ago, didn't we, Roger? I didn't
notice to whom I was responding. The world's greatest authority on
the Bible. (Self-proclaimed.)

>> What you (and 99.999% of Christians) don't know yet - because of
>> discoveries made only in the last couple of years - is that:

>It would be idle to ask "Al Klein" just what discoveries these might
>be.

Then I won't waste my keys.

>> a) the Logos is the part of your god he uses to interface with the
>> universe (according to early Christians, and who would know better
>> than those who founded the religion).

>Note the vagueness. Tertullian refers to Christ as the ratio -- the
>reason -- of God.

1) Since when did Tertullian become the final authority on
Christianity?

2) Considering the level of the audience, I wouldn't use "reason" in
that sense. They might read "reason for being".

3) When you start to explain things to people who have had no exposure
to them before, you don't start at the graduate level and go downward,
you start at the kindergarten level and go upward.

>> Christianity, in the first century, at least, was
>> just a few (or a few dozen or a few hundred - who knows, we only know
>> from the writings we've found, not the ones we haven't found) sects of
>> Judaism.

>The point about Christianity, of course, is that it was not just
>another Jewish sect

No, only to the Christians. To the Paulists it was a name to hang a
new religion on.

>, since it went on -- unlike all the others -- to
>take over the world.

Take over? About 1/6 of the world is even nominally Christian, and a
lot of "Christians" debate whether other "Christians" are really
"Christians". Some takeover.

> So this is an unthinking taunt, it would seem.

No, it's the closest we currently know about early Christianity. If
the truth seems like a taunt to you, the fault, Dear Roger ...

>> and b) The Chreestos was the congregation They were - all Christians
>> at that time, by definition, were - "the Anointed of God". That's
>> what "Christian" meant in the first century. Not followers of a
>> Christ that wasn't mentioned until the second century.

>Again note the lack of evidence for this. The evidence, of course, is
>otherwise.

Used to be. Come on, Roger, it's late 2006, not 1996. Get with the
program.

>> The 'Jesus' part came later - much later. The first mention of any
>> 'Jesus' figure in Christianity didn't come until the second century.

>Again a statement which can only be made by disregarding all the
>sources.

A statement which can only be made by inventing sources. Without
mentioning the usual frauds and counterfeits, name the so-called
'sources'. Not Josephus, surely? Serious sources. Written prior to
100 AD.

>> Since almost everything about a personality named 'Jesus' comes from Q...

>Note the appeal to a hypothetical document

So hypothetical that it's referred to by all REAL Bible scholars.
Apologists who want to be scholars claim it's hypothetical, so we now
know exactly where you're coming from, Roger.

> and the failure to mention that people who knew Jesus personally were still alive in 100AD.

Names? Assuming someone met Jesus when he was 5 years old, he'd be 70
in 100. VERY old for the times, and a 5 year old isn't a reliable
witness. A 20 year old? More reliable, but he'd be 85. In those
days? How much would you want to rely on the memory of an 85 year old
back then?

Sure, witnesses. Like the 500 who saw him after he left the tomb. Who
were they? We don't know, but because the Bible says that 500 people
saw him we have 500 eye witnesses.

Try that in any court in the world.

>This is true, but that 'we' evidently does not include Al Klein. Nor
>should this ignorance be projected onto others.

Which 'ignorance' is that, Roger? Yours in trying to slip made up
things past us? Like totally ignoring Arius, as you insisted on for
months?

>> >Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
>> >just make up facts to support your beliefs.

>> And you can't just make up claims ...

>But you can?

No, and I don't. But I still haven't seen the list of your witnesses
- those who knew 'Jesus' and were alive and testifying in 100 AD.

>> >> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
>> >> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
>> >> leaders.
>>
>> >Again you are writing history.
>>
>> He's reading it. The Council of Nicea was charged with canonization
>> (making up the rules) of the New Testament.
>
>Unfortunately Al Klein really does know that this is untrue

I know that you keep claiming that it's untrue. That means about as
much as Putch's claim that Hussein had WMDs. Nada.

>, since I have told him so repeatedly and pointed him to the ancient sources in
>question.

What was that about not making things up, Roger?

> Whether someone like Al willing to lie for his faith

Atheists have no faith, in the sense you mean it there. So, yes, I'm
lying for something that doesn't exist. Like lying for Jesus, I
guess.

>> >The Old Testament was determined
>> >before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.
>>
>> Read what you wrote. That's a claim that they're not to be believed.
>
>Note the failure to state the position being asserted: that if humans
>are involved God cannot be.

If humans arbitrarily decide which books are included, it's an
arbitrary decision. Try not reading things that aren't there.

> Such theology needs to be proved, not asserted.

It's theology that arbitrarily deciding which books are to be included
is an arbitrary decision?

>> Do you know what "extant" means? NONE of the original Christian
>> writings of the early first century are extant.
>
>One can only wonder whether Al knows the meaning of the word 'extant',
>otherwise he might examine his New Testament, and indeed apostolic
>fathers.

Extant means that the manuscript exists. Name one earlier than 100
AD. Extant doesn't mean that we have a copy of a translation of a
copy of ...

>> >> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
>> >> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which books
>> >> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among scholars
>> >> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
>> >> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words, the
>> >> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires and
>> >> motives of the church leadership at the time
>
>Nonsense.

Tell the scholars whose opinion that is. IOW, most of them currently
involved in research.

>> >Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
>> >the Canon.

>In a sense; but we do have some rather detailed statements which shed
>light on it

Like Arius'?

>that the texts had to be apostolic, and in keeping with
>what the apostles were known by those who knew them to have taught.

Of course, since this was in the 4th century, no one who knew them was
around, so it became "what we think those who knew them would have
taught - which is, of course, what we teach today". What religion has
EVER made the claim that what it teaches isn't EXACTLY the correct
form of the religion? If it wasn't, it wouldn't be what they were
teaching, would it? Who teaches something he knows is wrong?

I know 8-year-olds who can grasp this concept, Roger. Are you as
intelligent as the average 8-year-old?

>Whether Al knows any of it, of course, is quite another matter. This
>is, after all, the man who won't accept statements about what the
>council of Nicaea did.

Your statements? As soon as you show me your invitation to the
Council. How would you know what they did? If you're a Biblical
scholar, I'm a Pentium chip.

>> >> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years after the
>> >> claimed death of Jesus Christ

>In 93 AD? By that date the NT was complete.

Q may have been. The Gospels taken from Q weren't even started yet.

>> >> Some Biblical scholars
>> >> claim the earliest versions of the Bible were not in existence until 150
>> >> years after the claimed crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

>Which scholars claim that this is so -- not until 183 AD? We have
>manuscripts older than this!

Well ... yes, we have one from around 140 - with about 12 words. It
appears to be the center of a manuscript, the words don't form even
one sentence, though.

And we have later references to earlier documents. Are you referring
to Marcion, perhaps? "We have" isn't too descriptive.

>> >> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was claimed to
>> >> be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created by church
>> >> leaders to enhance their power? There are NO originals of any of the Old or
>> >> New testaments. They are all hand copies of copies of copies with
>> >> alterations to suite the copiers.

>> >> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during Jesus'
>> >> claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation of tales and
>> >> the embellishment of history.

>> >Again you come to unsupported conclusions.

>Indeed so.

So post the documents that were written during his lifetime that
mention him. Simple enough if there are any.

>> You're a true believer.

>So are you

Lack of belief isn't belief - it's lack of belief. (If English isn't
your first language let me know. We may have one in common that you
DO understand.)

>but the difference is that hate blinds you to reason.

You mean that lack of actual verifiable objective evidence keeps me
from blind acceptance.

Feel free to prove me wrong - post some. You never took me up on this
offer before, so I'm not going to expect much.

>> Christian Bible scholars know that all of
>> the assertions in the above 3 paragraphs are, if not true, as close as
>> we now know the truth to be.

>Nonsense.

So quote one who says it isn't. A Bible scholar, not a Christian
apologist with a degree from a diploma mill.

>> >I suspect you haven't read the Bible.

>> Since most atheists have read more Bibles more times than most
>> Christians, that's ludicrous...

>In fact this is nonsense.

In fact, most atheists I've known have read many Bibles, and most
Christians I've known have read one or two.

> What is true, tho, is that most atheists are renegades from parsonage upbringings.

Not even sure I know what you mean. I've never been in a parsonage.
Only been in churches when friends' kids were being baptized, making
communion, getting married, etc.

>> Others? Oh, weren't you aware that there are a number of different
>> Christian Bibles, and that some of them contradict others of them? And
>> that NONE of them use the actual Hebrew Bible as "their" Old
>> Testament?

>Note that attempt to patronise without giving information.

READ the Hebrew Bible (in Hebrew, of course). Now read some Christian
Bibles. See the differences? The Protestant and Catholic Bibles are
different. Different versions of the Protestant Bible are different.

Evidently a) you were being disingenuous or b) you haven't read many
Bibles.

>> BTW, you DO read Greek and Hebrew, don't you? Or do you consider
>> reading a translation of a translation of a translation of ...
>> "reading the Bible"?

>Al, of course, knows neither Greek or Hebrew.

I failed your test? Without even knowing it? Shame on me!

> Note also that he can't
>even state his proposition -- that scripture must be read in the
>original

I can't but just did. What ARE you babbling about, Roger? Did the
medication wear off so suddenly?

>> If you'd like to discuss the New Testament, let's. I've been studying
>> it - not as in Bible study, but seriously studying it,...

>A rather more pressing concern for Al Klein is to study morality; and
>even more pressing, to practise it, especially the bits about honesty.

Says someone who worships a god who insists that a rape victim spend
the rest of her life married to her rapist. Yes, Roger, you know a
lot about mortality. Seduce any young boys recently?

Now I remember why I had you in my kill file. My computer's IQ is
higher than yours - and Bush is more honest than you are.

<get back in there>
--
rukbat at optonline dot net
"Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They slander each
other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot come to any sort of
agreement in their teachings. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own
with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect little pigs of those it wins over to its
side."
- Celsus On the True Doctrine, translated by R. Joseph Hoffman, Oxford University Press, 1987
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)

This signature was made by SigChanger.
You can find SigChanger at: http://www.phranc.nl/

[Al Klein]

On 10 Oct 2006 12:52:11 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>This is what I am talking about. I get nothing from gibberish from you
>guys. My four year old can talk and make sense.

Sounds like an admission of child abuse to me. Forcing a 4-year-old
to be a Christian? For shame!

Next you'll be telling us how you beat him because your god tells you
not to spare the rod.

>> What "belief system", lying theist?

>You have your own belief system.

Yep - we believe in not believing in fairy tales unless there's actual
verifiable objective evidence to back them up.

>What lies?

That your god exists, for one. Actual verifiable objective evidence?
I thought not.

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"For aught we know a priori, matter may contain the source, or spring, of order
originating within itself, as well as the mind does."
- David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

[The_Sage]

>Reply to article by: jim_ha...@yahoo.com
>Date written: 9 Oct 2006 14:38:38 -0700
>MsgID:<1160429918.4...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>

>> They are not accurate history and certainly are not the words of any god
>> unless he is an insane and totally untrustworthy monster. They are not even
>> good fiction.

>This is a broad sweeping statement. Show examples. The hyperbole
>speaks volumes about the veracity of your claims.

You have no proof that it is hyperbole unless you ask him to come up with some
examples and he fails to do so. Consequently, your argument is irrelevant.

>> No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no
>> artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. No
>> contemporary Roman records show Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus.
>> Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing
>> that mentions Jesus except one.

>This is ridiculous. There wasn't the mass media reporting on
>everything under the sun. At the time, Jerusalem was a backward city
>in a conquered nation. Initially, the death of Jesus was
>insignificant.

That is simply of case of the Emperor's New Clothes and not proof of the
historicity of the existence of Jesus. Of the 29 historians contemporary to the
time Jesus allegedly existed (ie -- between 5BC and 33AD), exactly ZERO of them
described the existence of Jesus. Since you obviously wouldn't know exactly
which historians I'm speaking of, here is a list:

Philo Judaeus
Apollonius of Tyana
Valerius Maximus
Marcus Manilius
Velleius Paterculus
Quintus Curtius Rufus
Pomponius Mela
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Petronius Arbiter
C. Musonius Rufus
Aulus Persius Flaccus
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
Hero(n) of Alexandria
Geminus
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella
Cleomedes
Phaedrus
Dioscorides
Plutarch of Chaeronea
Justus of Tiberias
Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus)
Dio Chrysostom (Cocceianus Dio)
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus
Publius Papinius
Dio of Prusa
Silius Italicus
Sextus Julius Frontinus
Marcus Valerius Martialus
Hierocles of Alexandria

Obviusly the grave that Jesus was entombed in is empty because it never held
anything in it to begin with.

>Later, Chrisianity spread from his death to the rest of
>the world.

...try about 300 years later

>You have no proof Jesus didn't exist. Consequently, your
>argument is irrelevant.

There is nothing extraordinary about doubting the existence of someone who has
never been proven to exist in the first place. "Jesus was a historically real
person" is an extraordinary claim, and extraordinary claims require
extraordinary proof. We have heard your extraordinary claim, now where is your
extraordinary proof? You have none so the logically proper thing to do is to
doubt your claim...

>> This one ancient passage, supposedly from Josephus, was debunked as a
>> forgery years ago. Not a single legitimate non church historian considers
>> this passage to have been written by Josephus.

>It is irrelevant. You can't prove that Jesus didn't exist. Your
>arguments are very weak. It shows that you believe that Jesus didn't
>exist. This belief is not cognizant on facts.

The logically proper thing to do when presented with a claim given in the
complete absence of evidence, is to doubt that claim. You claim that Jesus
existed but you have offered absolutely no facts this is true. Consequently,
your argument is irrelevant and the logically proper thing to do is to doubt
your nonsense claims.

>> All documents ( the Bibles )about Jesus were written long after the life of
>> the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an
>> earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. It is
>> reasonable to assume that these ancient documents were doctored and altered
>> to enhance the power of the clerics of the time. Many of these writings come
>> from fraud, interpolations and hearsay.

>This is nonsense and totally inaccurate. You are just making things
>up. Try to be objective. You have no idea what and when things were
>originally written. Certain things have been lost in time - you can't

>just make up facts to support your beliefs.

How would you know exactly what things have been "lost" in time, seeing as they
have been lost?

>> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
>> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
>> leaders.

>Again you are writing history. The Old Testament was determined

>before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.

>Some of the rest are still existant.

>> The fact is, there are no clear records available which document the
>> church's process of determining which books were acceptable and which books
>> were unacceptable and why. The general consensus of opinion among scholars
>> is that the decision was based on whether or not the book agreed with the
>> prevailing theological thought and motives at the time. In other words, the
>> only books accepted were the ones that agreed with the opinions, desires and
>> motives of the church leadership at the time

>Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
>the Canon. Yet you come to a concrete conclusion. Your arguments are
>irrational.

The Cathoics disagree with you. Your premature judgement means nothing coming
from someone who doesn't bother to cite or mention any facts in his entire
posting. Case in point: The Old Testament was not determined before the birth of
Christ and there is more than one version of it floating around. The Jews don't
have an Old Testament. The Catholics have one and the Protestants have a
different one but both versions were created long after Jesus allegedly lived
and died. See for yourself at
http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/b/bible.html

>> The earliest part of New Testament was written more than 60 years after the

>> claimed death of Jesus Christ and the Old Testaments were just a collection
>> of various regional stories from older civilizations. Some Biblical scholars

>> claim the earliest versions of the Bible were not in existence until 150
>> years after the claimed crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

>> Why are there NO contemporary documents created while Jesus was claimed to

>> be on earth? Could it be that Jesus is just a fable created by church
>> leaders to enhance their power? There are NO originals of any of the Old or
>> New testaments. They are all hand copies of copies of copies with
>> alterations to suite the copiers.

>> It is interesting to note that NONE of the Bibles were written during Jesus'
>> claimed life time. Time needed to pass to permit the creation of tales and
>> the embellishment of history.

>Again you come to unsupported conclusions.

So you say without a shred of evidence. There is certainly no reason to believe
anything you say until you can support your conclusions with some evidence.

>> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They contain
>> manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities, indecencies,
>> obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore and legends. They are
>> mostly nonsense and hearsay.

>You make many unsupported claims.

As have you.

>I suspect you haven't read the Bible.

I know for a fact you haven't read the history of the Bible or any of the 29
ancient historians of the middle east who lived and wrote between 5BC and 33AD.

>I have grow weary of your "supernatural knowledge" of history.
> You don't know the difference between fact and conjecture.

Get the speck out thine own eye before trying to extract the log from your
brother's eye.

The Sage

=============================================================
http://members.cox.net/the.sage/index.htm

"All those painted screens erected by man to shut out reality
-- history, religion, duty, social position --
all were illusions, mere opium fantasies"
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman
=============================================================

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> On 10 Oct 2006 07:59:21 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> >

> >Uncle Vic wrote:
> >> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >> What we have here, Jimmy Boy, is a story about some witnesses that
> >> Jesus appeared to, to prove that he had risen from the dead. That part
> >> of the story ends there. Not one of the witnesses bothered to report
> >> what he saw to anyone else. A historian would have been nice.
> >>
> >
> >If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound? They were a
> >bunch af historians living around AD 30. If they were, they probably
> >wouldn't have noticed Jesus because his ministry was probably only a
> >couple of years.
>
> That's a rationalisation, an attempt at an excuse.
>
> > He talked to a bunch of poor peasants.
>
> Feel free to demonstrate that he did.
>
> Unfortunately he was supposed to have been executed by the Romans, who
> kept profuse records. But there are none for this or anything else
> about him.
>
> >> You say we have a religion (Christianity) that started from his
> >> followers. Therefore it must be true, eh? The Greeks had a religion
> >> that started from the followers of Zeus and his godfamily. I guess
> >> that one must be true too. Oh, wait. Nobody believes in that religion
> >> anymore. Why?
> >>
> >
> >This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
> >accounts. Something happened. Our dating system starts with the death
> >of Christ. Yet you choose to believe it didn't happen. All these Zeus
> >and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.
>
> It's not irrelevant, it is an exact parallel.
>

Zeus and Mohammed are not exactly like Jesus. Zeus was a god.
Mohammed was a prophet. And Jesus was a man. Now are you saying that
Mohammed wasn't a historical character. After all the only ones who
wrote about him were Muslims. Consequently, in your logic there is no
evidence he existed.

> YOU don't have any eyewitnesses either. Just a book of religious
> propaganda that says there were. You need to look up "hearsay".
>

The apostles were eyewitnesses. They may be lying eyewitneses but they
are technically eyewitnesses. The Gospels are their eyewitness
accounts. You need to look up "hearsay".

> And why the lie about "you choose...."? When you perfectly well there
> is no reason to believe it, because there is no evidence.
>

You discount all evidence. To say that there is none is just
ridiculous. Many people wrote about Jesus. Josephus mentions him in
passing. Of course, you disregard those accounts as "forged". It is
typical of your viewpoint. If you don't like something, then you
totally disregard it and proclaim it is not evidence.

> The Zeus and Mohammed comments are exact parallels. You need to start
> thinking outside the box and realise that those who don't believe your
> version see it in much the same way you see those.
>

Zeus and Mohammed are not exact parallels. Unless you deny that
Mohammed existed. Also, no one ever wrote they broke bread with Zeus.
He didn't live among mortals. Your exactness is hard to fathom.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> On 10 Oct 2006 08:08:00 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> >
> >> There was NO eyewitness testimony, most especially of the written type.
> >> If you doubt that please produce it. But do not point to the gospels
> >> as your evidence because nowhere in them, or any New Testament text
> >> does the author claim to be an eyewitness.
> >>
> >
> >I disagree. The New Testament texts are eyewitness accounts. Possibly
> >Luke is not, he said he collected the accounts from people. Matthew,
> >Mark and John were present during the events. They wrote about them.
> >This makes them eyewitnesses.
>
> Then you don't know what constitutes an eyewitness account.

What do you think an eyewitness account is? Eyewitnesses are people
who see an event and are witnesses for this event. Matthew, Mark, and
John claim to have witnessed the events and then they provided a
written account. Consequently, everyone have always said they were
eyewitnesses. I am not the first to call them eyewitnesses.

Jimmy Boy

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

Enkidu wrote:
> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in news:1160492361.204694.200780
> @i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

>
> > This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
> > accounts.
>

> So, tyou have no eyewitness accounts.
>
> > Something happened.
>
> It did? We have no evidence, and we have no eyewitness accounts. How do
> you know something happened?
>

We do have eyewitness accounts. Matthew, Mark, and John are the
prominent ones.

>
> It didn't start with the mythical birth at the time of the mythical
> birth. Wasn't it Justinian who started that tradition centuries later?
> So, yet another case where a tradition is based upon no eyewitness
> testemony.

>
> > All these Zeus and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.
>

> You are too blinded by your indoctrination to see that we reject all gods
> for the same reason you reject all but one. If you understand why you
> reject Zues, Mohammed, Thor, and Ra, you should understand why we reject
> your God and your Jesus.
>
>

Mohammed was a historical figure. He never portrayed as a God. Zeus
was mythical figure as Thor. I haven't studied Ra. It is all apples
and oranges.

Jimmy Boy

[Free Lunch]

On 10 Oct 2006 19:14:49 -0700, in alt.atheism
jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
<1160532889.4...@e3g2000cwe.googlegroups.com>:

>
>Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On 10 Oct 2006 07:59:21 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

...

>> >This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
>> >accounts. Something happened. Our dating system starts with the death
>> >of Christ. Yet you choose to believe it didn't happen. All these Zeus
>> >and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.
>>
>> It's not irrelevant, it is an exact parallel.
>
>Zeus and Mohammed are not exactly like Jesus. Zeus was a god.
>Mohammed was a prophet. And Jesus was a man. Now are you saying that
>Mohammed wasn't a historical character. After all the only ones who
>wrote about him were Muslims. Consequently, in your logic there is no
>evidence he existed.
>
>> YOU don't have any eyewitnesses either. Just a book of religious
>> propaganda that says there were. You need to look up "hearsay".
>
>The apostles were eyewitnesses. They may be lying eyewitneses but they
>are technically eyewitnesses. The Gospels are their eyewitness
>accounts. You need to look up "hearsay".

The apostles of Jesus would have been eyewitnesses, but there is no
evidence that they wrote anything. When others write things that they
claim the apostles saw, we are well into hearsay.

>> And why the lie about "you choose...."? When you perfectly well there
>> is no reason to believe it, because there is no evidence.
>
>You discount all evidence. To say that there is none is just
>ridiculous. Many people wrote about Jesus. Josephus mentions him in
>passing.

Josephus was born after Jesus was said to be dead. He may have heard
stories about such a person, but had no evidence to rely on.

>Of course, you disregard those accounts as "forged". It is
>typical of your viewpoint. If you don't like something, then you
>totally disregard it and proclaim it is not evidence.

The only honest viewpoint is to use a valid definition of evidence in
advance and then use that to decide between unsubstantiated stories,
possibly true stories, and physical evidence. Right now, there is no
physical evidence that supports the claim that Jesus ever existed. There
is no evidence that would be considered by scientists or allowed into
court that tells us anything about what Jesus did or taught.

There is no evidence about Jesus.

>> The Zeus and Mohammed comments are exact parallels. You need to start
>> thinking outside the box and realise that those who don't believe your
>> version see it in much the same way you see those.
>
>Zeus and Mohammed are not exact parallels. Unless you deny that
>Mohammed existed. Also, no one ever wrote they broke bread with Zeus.
>He didn't live among mortals. Your exactness is hard to fathom.

Zeus slept with many mortals.

[Free Lunch]

On 10 Oct 2006 19:28:59 -0700, in alt.atheism
jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
<1160533739.7...@c28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>:

The problem is that there is no historical evidence to support the claim
that the gospels were written contemporaneously with Jesus' life.

[jim_ha...@yahoo.com]

I am merely showing you that your observation of the world is very
limited. Consequently you have to accept certain things on faith. I
noticed you really didn't want to discuss value systems at all. The
concept of right and wrong is not something that been discerned by
observation. Many things are matter of belief and faith. In your
paradigm you could only have knowledge of things directly experienced.
However, this is very limiting. Therefore you must except certain
things by faith. You can't reject everything that there is no
empirical evidence for. Otherwise you would have a very limited world.

Jimmy Boy

[Enkidu]

jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in
news:1160533922.9...@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

>
> Enkidu wrote:
>> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in news:1160492361.204694.200780
>> @i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>>
>> > This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
>> > accounts.
>>
>> So, tyou have no eyewitness accounts.
>>
>> > Something happened.
>>
>> It did? We have no evidence, and we have no eyewitness accounts.
>> How do you know something happened?
>>
>
> We do have eyewitness accounts. Matthew, Mark, and John are the
> prominent ones.

Cool! Oh . . . wait. We don't know who they were or when they wrote
whatever was credited to them. When we read these texts, we find that
they disagree in many important details. We find they refer to events
that we know happened long after 30CE, so we know they were not written
near the time the Jesus myth supposedly happened, but long after any
"witnesses" would have died of old age.

No, no eyewitnesses after all.

>> It didn't start with the mythical birth at the time of the mythical
>> birth. Wasn't it Justinian who started that tradition centuries
>> later? So, yet another case where a tradition is based upon no
>> eyewitness testemony.
>>
>> > All these Zeus and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.
>>
>> You are too blinded by your indoctrination to see that we reject all
>> gods for the same reason you reject all but one. If you understand
>> why you reject Zues, Mohammed, Thor, and Ra, you should understand
>> why we reject your God and your Jesus.
>>
>>
>
> Mohammed was a historical figure. He never portrayed as a God. Zeus
> was mythical figure as Thor. I haven't studied Ra. It is all apples
> and oranges.

Yes, Mohammed was a historical figure. We know this, because the very
type of evidence we see missing for Jesus exists for Mohammed. Is this
the "apples and oranges" you mean?

--
Enkidu AA#2165
http://www.thoughts.leaddogs.org/
EAC Chaplain and ordained minister,
ULC, Modesto, CA

"The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever
believed Christian notions."
-Dan Barker

[Al Klein]

On 10 Oct 2006 10:56:50 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>This is very old news. This is gnositicism. It was rejected by the
>early church founders

On what grounds? They hadn't been born when the events supposedly
took place. That they thought the Gnostics were wrong? Gee, that's a
really solid basis. They never even claimed that God told them which
books to include and which to reject. If he had, he forgot to copy
Arius on the memo.

> as herecy.

Translation: "as not something we believe". (It's spelled heresy, and
that's what it means.)

>Christianity didn't originate with Paul.

WHICH Christianity? The early first century Jewish sects that added a
belief in salvation? They believed in salvation through Logos
(knowledge of the God of Moses), not thru a man who had been
crucified.

Next came Paul, who only changed that a little. You'll notice that he
never mentioned a MAN Jesus, he mentioned a SPIRIT. A part of God.
That Christianity? (Which no one practices today?)

The Christianity of the Gospels? Which had very little to do with
Paul. The writers of the Gospels probably weren't even aware of
Paul's letters.

Or the Christianity of Constantine? The one that threw out everything
they didn't believe was correct. 300 years after the fact, in an
almost totally illiterate world, where 300 years might as well have
been 3,000, as far as preservation of fact was concerned. They
codified the books that agreed with their beliefs, not the other way
around.

So which Christianity are we talking about?

>The basic theme of
>Christianity started in Genesis. You can find all the details of
>Christianity in the Genesis.

Not according to the people who actually wrote it. Ask any Jew. It
is, after all, THEIR book. Nothing about salvation in the OT. Nothing
about God having to give us a son to kill to keep us out of hell.
Nothing at all like any of the forms of Christianity. Without the
concept of salvation, Christianity is pretty much Judaism.

>> >You have no proof Jesus didn't exist.

>> You have no proof that the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist. Nor
>> do you have the slightest shred of contemporaneous evidence that Jesus
>> the Nazorite (another little error that crept in - but are you at all
>> aware of the PROFOUND difference there is between Nazorite and
>> Nazarene?) existed. Nor was there even a claim that he did until
>> about 100 years after he supposedly died. That would be like 1,000
>> years now, for that "backward city in a conquered nation". And the
>> claim wasn't even in what later came to be called the Bible. Those
>> claims came later still.

>I don't see the point.

You claim that there's no proof that the Biblical Jesus existed. (I'll
grant you hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews named Yeshua in the
first third of the first century. The name was as common as Joe is
today.)

Logic doesn't work that way. If you claim that something existed, the
burden of proof is on you. If I say I don't accept your claim, I bear
no such burden. Occam's Razor says that, barring proof of an unusual
claim, the claim is to be not accepted. And the claim of a man who
cured the blind, dumb and halt, and raised the dead, is NOT a usual
claim.

> Tomayto - tomato what is your point. The story
>is that Jesus came from Nazarus.

No, the claim (the mistranslation, actually) is that he came from
Nazareth. Because a mistranslation called him Jesus the Nazarene. His
earlier title was Jesus the Nazorite - "Jesus who took the vow
described in Numbers 6:1-21". There was no place called "Nazareth" in
the first third of the first century. The place described, as closely
as we can locate it today, was a cemetery, not a village. And not
named Nazareth. The name didn't appear until long after his death -
because the mistranslation said he came from there, so of course there
had to be a village of that name. You won't find any historical
reference to Nazareth in the beginning of the first century.

>It was a backward province even for the occupied territory of Judea.

So backward that, like Brigadoon, no one had ever heard of it.

>> >This is nonsense and totally inaccurate.

>> Since almost everything about a personality named 'Jesus' comes from Q
>> (everything that comes from early documentation, at least), nothing
>> about him can be earlier than Q. Not that we have anything even that
>> early. Paul never wrote about a man named Jesus, about a crucifixion,
>> about a resurrection. He was there - supposedly - just after the
>> events. But they weren't important enough to Christianity for him to
>> mention?

>The Q document is purely theorectical.

Only according to Christian apologists, not according to Biblical
scholars. We don't have copies of it, but we have documents that
copied from it.

>You can't say that everything
>came from something you can't even prove existed.

Are you sure you want to go there? You can't prove that Jesus
existed. And a document needs a lot less proof than claims about a
miracle worker only son of God does. We KNOW that documents exist.

>This is pure speculation.

You're SURE you want to go there, huh?

>Paul wasn't an eyewitness of the event. He became a follower later.
>Also Paul didn't invent Christianity. This was described in the Old
>Testament.

As I said, no. Not one word about salvation through a crucified son
of God (which is what Christianity is all about) in the OT. That
Christianity accepts that the OT is true (well, kinda-sorta) is not
the same as Christianity being described in the OT. (Islam accepts
the OT as a holy writing too, but Islam isn't described in the OT.)

>Jesus merely appropriated the theme and applied it to
>himself.

Since there's not a single word in his own hand (or any "Gospel
according to Jesus") that's pure speculation. You can't even prove
that a Biblical Jesus existed. (I'm just using YOUR argument. Either
it's valid or it's not.)

>Paul basically outlined the doctrine more explicitedly. He
>didn't create anything.

Since there's no doctrine of salvation through God's only son
crucified and resurrected in the OT (and that's what Christianity is),
there was no doctrine TO outline.

>> >You have no idea what and when things were originally written.

>> You think that, because you know almost nothing about the history of
>> Christianity, it's not known? We can date almost every single early
>> document of Christianity we have, and we can date it pretty
>> accurately.

>We can't document what we don't have.

And you can't make the claim, "we don't have the documents, so you'll
just have to accept our assertions", either.

>We also can't prove these documents never existed just because we want to.

We don't have to prove that they didn't exist, you have to prove that
they did. It's your (plural) claim, we're just not accepting it.

>> >Certain things have been lost in time - you can't
>> >just make up facts to support your beliefs.

>> And you can't just make up claims and say that, since the proof has
>> "been lost in time", your assertions stand. Have you read the site I
>> gave you the link to?

>The proof either way is lacking.

Since there's no burden to prove that something didn't happen, or
didn't exist, there's only a burden of proof in one direction - prove
your assertions. We're not making any existential assertions, we're
just not accepting your assertions.

>> >> The documents included in the Bible were selected by the church leaders to
>> >> support and enhance their power. The rest have been destroyed by church
>> >> leaders.

>> >Again you are writing history.

>> He's reading it. The Council of Nicea was charged with canonization

>> (making up the rules) of the New Testament.

> But they didn't write the New Testament. They only agreed what should
>be in it.

They decided what the bible should be. Which version of which
document should be included and which should be excluded. Why was
Arius wrong? Just because? Not good enough.

They chose the documents that agreed with what they were taught was
the "true religion". So? What has that to do with what actually
happened? Not a thing. The canonization of the NT was totally
arbitrary, and that's admitted by even Christian scholars. It's just
denied by apologists - those who must have the religion as they were
taught it, because they can't even imagine not having Christianity to
believe in, let alone imagine what they'd do if they had to give up
their beliefs.

Remember, the people who chose the books were Catholic. Most of
Christianity today rejects a lot of the Catholic viewpoint. Huh? Most
of Christianity claims that the people who decided what Christianity
is were wrong? Or aren't you aware that the Constantine Church was
the early Catholic Church? That there was no Protestant Church until
the 16th century. And that the sole reason for the Council of Nicea
was that there were so many contradictory sects of "Christianity" at
the time? (Arianism was only one of many sects that were judged to be
"heretical".) You've heard that the victors write the history? This
is a perfect example.

>> >The Old Testament was determined
>> >before the birth of Christ. The later books were chosen by consensus.

>> Read what you wrote. That's a claim that they're not to be believed.
>> That men chose which books were "correct" by *consensus* is something
>> you think leads weight to the authenticity of the words in the Bible?
>> The truth of the words is based on what they thought was the best to
>> keep? So all of Christianity is, by your claim, the idea of 300 men?
>> And what if Arius, among all of them, was the one who was correct?

>This is all irrelevant. Men chose the books. It doesn't have anything
>to do with how accurately they portrayed events. Arius is your
>gnositic who was branded a heretic.

Why? No reason other than he had different ideas than most of the
rest of them. Different, not incorrect. He may well have been the
only one there who WAS correct. Do you know? Or do you just accept
what your Church tells you?

Christianity is the winner's slant on what happened, not necessarily
what actually happened. Now, if that doesn't make any difference to
you, so be it. I really don't care whether you believe in
Christianity A, Christianity B or Satanism - I'm not trying to convert
you. But, from your viewpoint - aren't you betting your immortal soul
that you've chosen the right belief? Are you just going to wait and
see what happens when you die, or are you interested enough to do some
searching?

It's your choice - I really don't care. This is an intellectual
exercise for me, not a matter of eternity.

>> Do you know what "extant" means? NONE of the original Christian

>> writings of the early first century are extant. We know of the
>> existence of very few documents from that period that mention
>> Christianity at all, from the Christian side - none at all that
>> mentions a Christ or a man named Jesus. Parts of later documents
>> (about a dozen words, in one case, with almost no meaning) are extant.
>> We really have nothing until the first quarter of the second century.

>That is my point. You can't say for certainty what and when about the
>NT.

You can say very many things about it - that's the difference between
scholarship and apologetics.

>Everything portrayed as fact is all speculation.

Not everything. Many things are known. It's known, for instance,
that there's not a single reliable mention of a man named Jesus until
the second century. Known, not speculated.

>Yet I have been called a stupid asshole

Not by me. You've been called wrong by me. Maybe I was wrong to call
you wrong, but if you can't handle being called wrong you should
probably be living in a seminary. (I don't really think your skin is
that thin.)

> for pointing out the obivous.

For pointing out what's obvious to you. As you've been told, those
not of your beliefs don't start out with your assumptions, so what's
obvious to you is merely your assertion to us.

>> >Everyone agrees that we don't know what the process was in determining
>> >the Canon.

>> No one but "true believers" (those who will believe Church doctrine
>> regardless of fact) believe that any longer. We have enough
>> documentation of the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries to know what
>> happened in the late 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries. and enough
>> documentation referring to earlier occurrences to pretty accurately
>> figure out what happened.before that.

>What are taking about? What happened ?

For one thing, Constantine charged them with coming up with a single,
universal (catholic) set of beliefs. No method, no "try to find the
truth", his mother wanted a unified Church, so he ordered one.
Everyone who studies early Christian history knows who Helen was and
her importance to Christianity. Without her you'd probably be Jewish.
Or some other religion that arose after the 4th century. Maybe you'd
be worshipping the Lady of the Lake. (Did you know that Christianity
made worship of the Lady a crime punishable by death? Kind of an
early practice run at the Inquisitions.)

READ the history of your religion. (History, not theological
assertions.) Or aren't you interested in what we really know? Roger
Pearce isn't - he's interested only in solidifying his beliefs. If he
lost his blinders and was forced to accept that he was wrong (not an
argument - IF his beliefs were wrong) he'd probably be one of those
Christians who is thankful that he has a God to keep him from
murdering people - without a God. He'd lose it.

Read about Arius. Not just "he was a heretic". Read the history or
Arianism. That's as much a part of Christianity as the Puritans are a
part of the US.

>> You're a true believer. Christian Bible scholars know that all of

>> the assertions in the above 3 paragraphs are, if not true, as close as
>> we now know the truth to be.

>How can something be close to the truth?

Some of the things asserted in those 3 paragraphs we know. Some of
them we're almost certain of. Some of them we're pretty certain of.
Some of them seem to fit all the evidence we have. None of them
directly contradict actual evidence.

>> >> The Bibles contain both historical and scientific errors. They contain
>> >> manifest absurdities, unfulfilled prophesies, immoralities, indecencies,
>> >> obscenities, atrocities, barbarities, myths, folklore and legends. They are
>> >> mostly nonsense and hearsay.

>> >You make many unsupported claims.

>> Some of the scientific errors have been known for over 100 years. Many
>> of the prophesies have proved false. The rest are so ambiguous as to
>> be meaningless or are supposed to come true in the future. So all the
>> ones that can actually be tested are false.

>Give me some examples!!

The Molten Sea. It's a circle, 10 cubits around and 3 cubits across.
Try drawing that. (Use inches, feet, the math is the same regardless
of the units.) It's absolutely impossible. You can have any two, but
not all 3. What the Bible is claiming is that pi=3.3333. It doesn't.
(It didn't then either, even though some apologists use that
argument.)

Rabbits don't chew their cud. (The Hebrew uses the same words as the
ones used to describe what a cow does.) These people cut up their
meat, they didn't buy packaged meat at the supermarket, so they knew
that cows and rabbits were totally different. The passage was written
by a city dweller, much later.

Locusts DON'T have just 4 legs.

(Matt 28:1-2)
(Mark 16:4)
(Luke 24:2)
(John 20:1)
Which one is correct?

Present a timeline of the morning of the resurrection. Include
everything mentioned in all 4 Gospels. Don't add anything not in all
4. You can't do it.

Exodus 20:13
Leviticus 24:17
Put to death by whom? That would violate Ex 20:13.

Exodus 20:15 No stealing. (Notice that there's no condition or
exception - thou shalt not. Period.)
Exodus 3:22 Steal from the Egyptians.

Oh, BTW, the translation of Exodus 20:8 is "Remember Sabbath". There's
no article ("the") in Hebrew. "Sabbath" is the English translation of
the Hebrew name of the day of the week we call Saturday. (And no, the
Bible passage didn't mean "the day of rest - it meant the day named
Sabbath.) Oops. 2,000 years of profaning Sabbath.

Ephesians 2:8,9
vs.
James 2:24
Works or faith alone?

John 8:14
vs.
John 5:31

I John 4:12
vs
Exodus 33:11
John didn't know the OT?

Who was Joseph's father, Jacob or Heli?

There are, literally (that means actually), hundreds and hundreds of
these.

>> Forcing a rape victim to spend the rest of her life married to her
>> rapist is immoral, obscene, barbaric and atrocious.

>Now you are making value judgements of a ancient culture.

No, I'm making a value judgment of a god who is claimed by his
followers to be all good. If I could come up with a better way, so
could he, since he's omniscient and omnipotent.

Which brings up another thing to ponder:

Time is a property of the universe. (It is - research it if you
like, but don't argue with the greatest minds the human species has
produced. I'm just telling you what they say.) God created the
universe, therefore he's not part of it. (If he were part of it he
would have been created when it was.)

Therefore, "wherever" he resides, there's no such thing as time, so he
sees what we call the past, the present and the future. He knows what
he's "going" to do "tomorrow", so he has no free will. He can't
"decide" to do something other than what he "already" knows he
"already" did. In fact, he can't "decide", since decision takes time,
and that's the one thing he doesn't have.

Can you see where this is leading? Nowhere. The whole concept of a
being outside the universe who can do things doesn't make sense.

Oh, another thing - the universe is a singularity (argue with Hawking,
not with me). That means that, aside from Hawking radiation, nothing
gets in or out. Not information, not energy, certainly not matter -
nothing. This isn't one of those "but God can do it if he wants to"
things. If it's possible, then everything we know is wrong and the
universe doesn't exist. (Matrix, anyone?) 2nd millennium BC
"science", of course, knew nothing about this - they thought there
were 7 heavens, the moon in the first one, the sun in the second one,
etc., God in the 7th one. But a creator god residing, as he must by
definition, "outside" the universe he created, couldn't affect
anything inside that universe - it's, by needs, a singularity. (If it
isn't it doesn't exist, but it does, so it is.) So, assuming he can
"do" without time in which to "do", he can't do anything in this
universe, only outside it. He can't know what's going on in here (no
information can get out). So some of the Biblical claims have to be
wrong.

Bible as science text doesn't work, although the Bible makes
scientific claims by the very nature of the things it says. (It's
like a book that claims that there's red, and people later telling us
that the book doesn't claim anything about 'color'. Sure it does,
even though it doesn't use the word.)

>> Killing all but the virgin girls of a people, and raping them, is
>> immoral, obscene, atrocious and barbarous (and a few other not nice
>> things).

>When did raping girls happen?

The Amalakites. The Hebrews were told to take all the virgin girls
"as their own". That meant "as concubines". (That means "use them
for sex".)

>> Allowing slavery without speaking against it is barbaric and immoral.
>> (Don't start with the "selling themselves into slavery" nonsense - the
>> Bible gives permission to enslave one's enemies for life.)

>Again you are making value judgments of an ancient society.

No, as I said, just of a god who, since we mere mortals can come up
with a better way, certainly could have.

>We had bondsmen in the old Colonial times.

Bonded servants and slaves aren't nearly the same thing. You could
bequeath a slave to a child. You could beat a slave to death (as long
as he didn't die within a day or two.) Your slave was your property,
the same as your shoes. Your bonded servant wasn't.

And you couldn't take an Israelite as a slave, not matter what.
Servants (Israelites, mostly) had to be freed every 7 years (Jubilee).
Servants you kept - until they died.

>You need to have lived in the times to understand them.

I merely have to know the Christian claims about its god -
omnibenevolent. That means ultimate good. It's just about the same
as the Problem From Evil. Could but wouldn't? Wanted to but
couldn't? If you make a claim you can't divorce yourself from it.
Either he's omni* or he's not.

>> >I suspect you haven't read the Bible.

>> Since most atheists have read more Bibles more times than most
>> Christians, that's ludicrous, although I'll let Bill speak for
>> himself, but I expect that he knows your Bible (and others) better
>> than you do.

>I don't think so.

How many Bibles have you thoroughly studied? (The Hebrew? The
Catholic? The Mormon?)

>> Others? Oh, weren't you aware that there are a number of different
>> Christian Bibles, and that some of them contradict others of them? And
>> that NONE of them use the actual Hebrew Bible as "their" Old
>> Testament?

>We all use translations of the Hebrew Bible.

Different translations. With different claims.

>The OT is based on the same texts as the Jewish writings.

The OT *IS* the Hebrew Bible. (Or, more properly, the Hebrew Bible is
called the OT.) But different Christian sects have different versions
of it, saying different things.

>Besides the message is very simple. It is not based on complicated word play.

Then why does it have to be interpreted? Why are non-believers told
that they have to believe in order to understand this "very simple"
book.

Unless you mean the message that the only way to salvation is through
Jesus - which isn't anywhere in the OT, because a) there's no risen
son of God in the OT and b) there's no concept of salvation in
Judaism.

>That is not true. Basic Christianity started with Genesis.

As I've told you - "basic Christianity" is belief in salvation through
a crucified and risen Christ. If you don't accept that you aren't
Christian. (Different sects require more, but not one of the
thousands of Christian sects will call you Christian if you don't
accept that one basic tenet.)

There's ABSOLUTELY NO CONCEPT of salvation in the OT at all. So the
OT has nothing to do with Christianity. Christianity accepts it as
true, but it's not Christianity. There's a difference.

>The story is the same throughout the Old Testament. Jesus and the apostles
>didn't start anything new.

Jesus, if you accept the story as told, was born a Jew, lived as a Jew
and died a Jew. There's never been a claim (by any intelligent adult
- I've heard it from 5-year-olds) that Jesus was a Christian. So of
course Jesus didn't start anything that contradicted the OT - he said
that, as long as heaven and Earth existed, the OT was the word of God
and must be followed and obeyed (which Christians have been trying to
get around for almost 2,000 years). But Paul invented something new.
The early Christian fathers invented something new. And Christianity
has been inventing new Christianity ever since. (The Protestant
reformation, the doctrine of Papal infallibility, all the things the
Popes have said when speaking ex Cathedra, Limbo, no Limbo, etc.,
etc., etc.) Nothing in Christianity ever changes, but it doesn't stay
the same either.

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he
unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."
-- Bertrand Russell.

[Al Klein]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:55:05 -0500, " Midwinter"
<midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>Al Klein <ruk...@pern.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 07:05:27 -0500, " Midwinter"
>> <midwi...@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>>"Bill M" <wm...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>>>> If religion was supported by any real 'objective evidence', 'faith'
>>>> would be totally unnecessary.
>>
>>>Everyone needs faith, Bill.
>>
>> Spoken like a theist.
>
>Unsurprising.

>> Atheists don't need the kind of faith being discussed here.

>You mean you don't need belief in God or gods? True. But faith, as
>Christopher has already pointed out, is simply a belief in something
>without evidence

You evidently missed the "being discussed here". That would be
religious faith in a god or gods.

> on which to base that belief. Chris is accusing me of
>using the 'wrong' meaning of faith. From my point of view, the problem
>is with the idea that the concept of faith can be split up neatly into
>separate pieces for convenience. Faith doesn't require religion. But
>life and religion both require faith.

But we're discussing only one meaning of faith here (in alt.atheism.
"Faith" is assumed to mean "in a god or gods".)

>> If we did we'd be theists. But there are some who
>> can no more imagine how lack of religious faith is possible than they
>> can flex their gills.

>There are. And, unfortunately, there are some here who believe that,
>because someone IS religious, it means that they can't imagine how a lack
>of religious faith is possible. Which of course is equally narrow-
>minded.

Reminds me of a female friend who claimed that she could think like a
man. Maybe she could "imagine" what it might be like to be a man, but
she couldn't think like one. I seriously doubt that any theist can
know what it's like to be an atheist. (You'd have to ask an ex-theist
to be sure though - since I was never a theist I have no idea what
it's like to have religious belief.)

>> I don't know about you, but I consider alt.atheism (which is where I'm
>> reading this) to be a form of entertainment. Like watching the
>> monkeys at the zoo. I don't "believe" in any "reason" for watching
>> them - it's just mildly amusing to do so. Sometimes it's even fun.

>It's a point of view I hadn't considered, I must admit.

So I'm not all that "narrow-minded", eh? ;)

I do like teaching, but if someone wants to discuss without learning,
or someone who's pig-headed wants to make a fool of himself, so be it.
I prefer discussions like this one, though.

>> It doesn't need me - religion is eventually doomed anyway.

>That's probably true. But the truth is that it just doesn't matter to
>me.

And certainly not to me. I'd miss it like I'd miss the Princess of
Barsoom. (Who 'dat?)

>> I don't really expect a serious
>> discussion about Christianity here - most atheists don't care and most
>> Christians don't know enough about Christianity to discuss it.

>I'd be more prepared to believe that atheists didn't care if some of them
>weren't so quick to anger. Why get worked up about something that you
>don't care about?

It lets you get other angers out of your system in a pretty harmless
way. Kind of written primal scream therapy.

>Why even bother wasting your time talking about it?
>If you don't believe, you don't believe.

If theists didn't post to alt.atheism we wouldn't. The main purpose
of the group isn't to interact with theists, it's to interact with
atheists.

>You could simply go about your
>business. Ah, but no - I remember. It's because "religionists are
>always trying to push their beliefs on us", isn't it? And obviously it
>makes *sense* to respond by encouraging them further... :o]

Well ... no, it makes sense that if you get frustrated reading a post,
you bang your metaphoric head on the metaphoric wall of the newsgroup,
instead of beating your physical head against the physical wall.

In fact, some of us used to have brick walls for sigs.

>> Writing that contradicts itself isn't good writing, unless it does so
>> deliberately.

>And does it?

The Bible? I don't think it's deliberate. I think it's due to the
fact that it's a horse built by committee; some painted the stripes
horizontally, some painted them vertically and some painted polka
dots.

Ever try to build a timeline of the morning of the resurrection? It
can't be done, except by leaving things out or inventing things.

Did Judas die by hanging or by some kind of Martian Rot?

>> If you actually study the history of Christianity, you'll see that
>> Chreestos as an entity, rather than as a group of people, was invented
>> long after the supposed death of the entity.

>I wouldn't deny that. The issue I have here is with the generalisations
>that Bill and supporters often seem to make in attacking 'religion', and
>'faith', and 'gods' - where what they really seem to mean (or at least
>what they seem to base their arguments on) is 'Christianity'.

You're evidently fairly new here. (I've been away for a few years and
I'm not exactly an old-timer.) The only reason that most of the
anti-religion seems to be anti-Christianity is that, almost without
fail, the theists who post provocatively here are Christian. VERY few
Moslems and Jews do. We've had Wiccans and others here - but they
don't care about our beliefs or lack of them, so we don't discuss
belief with them.

>Even after the discussions I've already had with them, being as open as I
>can be, in many cases I'm still fairly sure they're convinced I'm a
>Christian.

I have no idea what you are - I'm half convinced that you're a theist.

>> No? But that's what Christianity was, until Constantine's crowd
>> "canonized" it. ("Canonize" - to make rules about. Nothing about
>> truth, just arbitrary rules.)

>I couldn't help but wonder at the news report the other day that the
>Catholic Church was thinking of ditching the idea of 'Limbo'. Curious.
>So did God come down to the Pope and say "I've shut it down"; or is the
>Church tacitly saying "we got it wrong"?

Since it was never an infallible doctrine, it's more "we're going to
forget about it". Of course even infallibility isn't an infallible
doctrine. Curious, what?

>It's got to be one or the other
>- and the rider for the latter is obviously "because we're making it up
>as we go along".

I can't imagine any part of any religion being any more than that. Was
Moses here watching as God created the Earth?

>> There's no evidence that Holy Macaroni doesn't exist either. Logic
>> doesn't prove the non-existence of a claim, it proves the existence.

>No - but as I'm trying to explain, since there ARE ancient documents that
>refer to this man called Jesus

Not a single one until around 100 years after his supposed death. Back
then? The entire internet was 404. So someone remembered for over
100 years until it was finally written down? 4 generations? Or
someone's father told him that someone had told him that ...

Ever play Telephone?

When the original Christianity considered the Chreestos to be the
congregation, not a man? (The people in the congregation were "the
Anointed of God" - the Chreestos.) Salvation originally was through
knowledge of the God of Moses, not through crucifixion and
resurrection.

Sure sounds to me like "we're making it up as we go along".

>I'm quite happy to believe that he existed - as a man.

I can guarantee you that a man named Joshua existed in the early part
of the first century. Saying there was no such man is the same as
saying no man named Joe exists in the US now.

>What that DOESN'T equate to is believing that he's
>God. I think there's a danger of irrationality in rejecting outright the
>very existence of a potential historical figure simply because you don't
>like or don't believe what later generations have decided to describe him
>as.

Or because there's absolutely no mention of him until LONG after no
eye witnesses were around, because things claimed about him were
either patently wrong or mistranslations (he was Jesus the Nazorite
(pious, took an oath, etc.), not Jesus who came from a
non-existent-at-that-time place named Nazareth), because salvation,
claimed to be only obtainable through him was originally obtainable -
according to, we're told, the same religion - only through direct
knowledge of God. Many, many anomalies.

It's easier to believe in Leprechauns - they're just impossible.

>> Something, yes. Something that has only one source, and a source that
>> a) contradicts itself, b) lies and c) contradicts reality - no.

>Well, I can't argue there either. If I disagreed, I'd probably be
>Christian.

Nah - many Christians can separate their belief from their knowledge.
Don't ask me how, but they're rational about their belief. Some of
them even post here (in alt.atheism - I have no idea where you're
reading this).

>far as I'm concerned, there's some indication that there was such a man,
>and no evidence that there wasn't.

Oops. There can't be evidence that someone didn't exist, which is why
logic doesn't call for proof of the non-existential claim. I mean,
"see, here's where his footprints aren't" is somehow just a little
short of terribly convincing, no?

--
rukbat at optonline dot net

"I received your letter of June 10th. I have never talked to a Jesuit
priest in my life and I am astonished by the audacity to tell such lies
about me. From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and
have always been an atheist."
- Albert Einstein to Guy H. Raner Jr, July 2, 1945,
responding to a rumor that a Jesuit priest had caused Einstein
to convert from atheism. Article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic
magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997

[derrick_a...@yahoo.com]

Salutations!

Al Klein wrote:

> READ the history of your religion. (History, not theological
> assertions.) Or aren't you interested in what we really know?

What do you mean by *history* and not *theological* assertions? What a
priori judgments can you proffer that treats theological assertions as
non-historical events? Perhaps you can elaborate what you're implying.

Anyhow, I am not so sure you can speak of history in any justified
sense. As soon as we begin to delve into the "history" of religion we
immediately fall short of sufficient data for a positive historical
reconstruction, not to mention the Heidegger-Gadamer-Ricoeur historical
hermeneutic problem. What is needed is a philosophical-scientific
methodology that will render a positive account; my personal view is
weak abduction (also known as: pragmatism). However, given the paucity
of historical knowledge of 1st century Judea, I doubt a plausible
construction will be fruitful, albeit I am optimistic.

What is not needed are ideological polemics. Far too often members of
Usenet group tend to have an axe to grind and conflate objectivity with
polemics; i.e. Bill M. Exhibitions of Mr Bill's style only taint
accuracy and mock historical pursuit.

best wishes,

Derrick Mohammad Abdul-Hakim

[Christopher A. Lee]

Only inside your religion. This is the real world outsde it. In which
yours is merely one of hundreds of differenet religions, no more
special than any of the others except to its believers.

>Mohammed was a prophet. And Jesus was a man. Now are you saying that

There is actually evidence for Mohammed. Unlike Jesus, who is a
moish-mash of previous hero figures.

>Mohammed wasn't a historical character. After all the only ones who
>wrote about him were Muslims. Consequently, in your logic there is no
>evidence he existed.

Am I saying that, liar?

Hint: I'm not. Why not address what you are told instead of digging
yourself in deeper each time?

Either provide this alleged evidence for an historical Jesus or admit
you have none, which every single response you make confirms - if you
had any you would have given it already.

[Christopher A. Lee]

And you're not the first to have got it wrong, either.

>Jimmy Boy

[Christopher A. Lee]

On 10 Oct 2006 19:32:02 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:

>
>Enkidu wrote:
>> jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote in news:1160492361.204694.200780
>> @i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>>
>> > This is irrelevant. You didn't have people writing eyewitness
>> > accounts.
>>
>> So, tyou have no eyewitness accounts.
>>
>> > Something happened.
>>
>> It did? We have no evidence, and we have no eyewitness accounts. How do
>> you know something happened?
>>
>
>We do have eyewitness accounts. Matthew, Mark, and John are the
>prominent ones.

Except that they aren't. The bible is a work of religious propaganda,
written long after the alleged events, and heavily edited by the
church.

No different than any of the equivalents from all the other religions.

You need CORROBORATION OUTSIDE THE VARIOUS CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS, of
which you have none.

>> It didn't start with the mythical birth at the time of the mythical
>> birth. Wasn't it Justinian who started that tradition centuries later?
>> So, yet another case where a tradition is based upon no eyewitness
>> testemony.
>>
>> > All these Zeus and Mohammed comments are irrelevant.
>>
>> You are too blinded by your indoctrination to see that we reject all gods
>> for the same reason you reject all but one. If you understand why you
>> reject Zues, Mohammed, Thor, and Ra, you should understand why we reject
>> your God and your Jesus.
>>
>>
>
>Mohammed was a historical figure. He never portrayed as a God. Zeus
>was mythical figure as Thor. I haven't studied Ra. It is all apples
>and oranges.

There is actually evidence outside Islam for Mohammed.

Provide some for Jesus.

>Jimmy Boy

[Mike Painter]

Then give us some references that acknowledge this idea.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 21:41:01 -0500, Free Lunch <lu...@nofreelunch.us>
wrote:

Yet another lie. I don't "discount all evidence". What little claimed
evidence there is, has been debunked.

He doesn't seem to grasp that every time he resorts to that kind of
lie, conforms that he hasn't any. Otherwise he would not have needed
to lie instead of giving it.

>Josephus was born after Jesus was said to be dead. He may have heard
>stories about such a person, but had no evidence to rely on.

What he is supposed to have said, is an obvious later insertion that
is out of context with the surrounding material. Even the smaller
mention is an insertion into a passage about a different James who
died differently to the James of the Gospels (According to church
history).

>>Of course, you disregard those accounts as "forged". It is
>>typical of your viewpoint. If you don't like something, then you
>>totally disregard it and proclaim it is not evidence.

More personal lies rather than addressing the points.

>The only honest viewpoint is to use a valid definition of evidence in
>advance and then use that to decide between unsubstantiated stories,
>possibly true stories, and physical evidence. Right now, there is no
>physical evidence that supports the claim that Jesus ever existed. There
>is no evidence that would be considered by scientists or allowed into
>court that tells us anything about what Jesus did or taught.
>
>There is no evidence about Jesus.

The only early mention outside church tradition seems to be the two in
Josephus. Neither of which are known by church historians until much
later, even by those whose writings cite Josephus extensively.

The larger one is obviously written by a Christian - if Josephus had
believed what he is supposed to have written, he would have converted
- but he didn't (Origen). A Jew would not have described the coming
of the Messiah as "another misfortune for the Jews". The passage is in
the middle of a description of events that happened more than a decade
earlier - the events of the Temple of Isis happened circa 19 CE. The
(real) misfortune was the rioting and deaths as the result of temple
money being used to build an aqueduct. The passage is totally out of
context with this surrounding material.

This tampering automatically makes the smaller one suspect. Which
describes the death of a James. Completely differently than the
church's own history's death of the James of the gospels.

>>> The Zeus and Mohammed comments are exact parallels. You need to start
>>> thinking outside the box and realise that those who don't believe your
>>> version see it in much the same way you see those.
>>
>>Zeus and Mohammed are not exact parallels. Unless you deny that
>>Mohammed existed. Also, no one ever wrote they broke bread with Zeus.
>>He didn't live among mortals. Your exactness is hard to fathom.
>
>Zeus slept with many mortals.

Like most believers, he applies his inside the religion criteria as
though they were objective.

He can't grasp that the followers of Mohammed and Zeus apply their own
inside-the-religion criteria to "prove" their own beliefs are real and
his aren't.

[Christopher A. Lee]

Yet another dishonest theist who replaces a whole slew of more
accurate words with "faith", "believe" etc so he can eliminate the
actual meanings and pretend they are equivalent to his believe in
spite of the total lack of evidence.

Who also doesn't seem to realise that every time he does this sort of
thing, resorts to personal lies, or any of his other transparent
copouts rather than provide this alleged evidence, he confirms he has
none.

>Jimmy Boy

[Greywolf]

<jim_ha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1160534764.7...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...

>
> Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On 10 Oct 2006 15:57:23 -0700, jim_ha...@yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >All right Chris, do you believe that Mount Everest is the tallest
>> >mountain on the Earth?
>>
>> For fuck's sake, why do you want to reduce everything to "believe"
>> when there are far more accurate words that avoid the equivocation you
>> seem intent of doing?
>>
>>
>
> I am merely showing you that your observation of the world is very
> limited. Consequently you have to accept certain things on faith.

No you don't; especially if they're absurd beyond belief. Believe Mt.
27:50-53 is a description of truly historical 'facts'? Hardly! Can a person
have 'faith' in something that is completely untrue? You betcha! Just look
at the baseless contention that a 'God' exists. Not a *single* human being
who has ever lived on planet earth has proven that 'God' is a real being.
Not a one. Then why have faith in something lacking *any* evidence for its
existence? What is it that the theist can detect that others can't? Why such
exclusivity? It's all bogus. And as bogus as it possible gets. You can't
find anything more unsubstantiated.

I
> noticed you really didn't want to discuss value systems at all. The
> concept of right and wrong is not something that been discerned by
> observation. Many things are matter of belief and faith. In your
> paradigm you could only have knowledge of things directly experienced.
> However, this is very limiting. Therefore you must except certain
> things by faith.

And would this include belief in a deity that is completely undetectable by
man?

You can't reject everything that there is no
> empirical evidence for.

Well shouldn't you at least have a 'sign' that the thing exists instead of
creating something out of nothing, claim that it truly exists, and then be
completely unable to provide tangible proof that it does?

Otherwise you would have a very limited world.
>

Who cares about a 'limited' world? Shouldn't we be concerned about learning
the truth about our universe and our existence instead of making up and then
believing in the theist's brazen lies about it?

Greywolf