Originally posted by Logician
Hi SethJaneRob



What's so unscientific about the allegory of Adam/ Eve and the Garden of Eden? Can you do a better job of explaining the origin of man? The bible uses basic language to wrestle complex issues, namely because humanity is STILL in no position to comprehend them . For instance, do you know how primitive our contemporary ideas on the 'big bag theory' , 'human psychology' etc. are ? Just ask a person living in the 23rd century (if you could reach that far ahead in time), for instance. I believe when the smoke finally clears, the bible version would come closest to the 'ultimate' truth, as it were. Passing fancies like 'chaos theory', 'multiple-univerese theory', 'string theory' i predict would not survive the test of time. But 200 years from now(speaking purely in the 'secular' sense ) people will STILL be debating the bible! .. Infact 20th century science is forced to agree with the bible on many fundamental issues-- that there was a creation even, i.e. the big bang, that there will probably be an end to the Universe, that there must be a God(Einstein's famous 'God does not play dice' saying), that man has a 'soul','spirit',a 'collective subconscious' (Jung, Freud, etc) etc.
Knowledge, as in "the tree of knowledge," might mean consciousness in the sense that Julian Jaynes uses the term (the bicameral mind.) Regarding the 'six day creation week' Ensign proposed (1998) that "Periods of time for the creation may have lasted... even millions of years", etc.

THen the story is just that...a story. It is not truth. Can I do a better job? I would assume that God could come up with something better.

What's impossible about Jonah and the 'Whale'? Besides it doesn't say Whale but a 'sea creature';could have been a Whale though.

Why don't you recount the story to me and I think the impossibility of it will be very clear.

Sodom and Gomorrah have been archeologically attested for my friend. Just as is written in the bible, the sinful cities were destroyed by 'brimstone and fire'.

Really? So they have been able to figure out that Angels came down and warned a guy and his family and when the guy's chick tunred for one last look she turned into a pillar of salt? I think not. Sinful cities??? They were able to tell that were they using archeological evidence?

Deluge stories abound in the psychology and written craft of virtually ALL human races! Scholars do not doubt that in man's primordial past there was a flood of titanic proportions which wiped out everything in it's path.

The entire world was once flooded and everything wiped out except for the animals and people on a boat that Noah built?????????? Please, point me to this evidence or any scholar that says such a thing. Where would all that water have come from????

There is little doubt that Moses existed.

Really? So a man once existed that part the Red Sea with his stick and allowed a bunch of people to pass through. Come on

What's your point?

My point about the 10 commandments is that they were made up. Show me some proof that God gave these thigns to moses. Another fairy tale.

Actually, you have a steeper hill to climb; because with each new archeological discovery the Biblical is invariably proved right! Haven't you learnt your lesson yet?

No you have a steeper hill to climb. Look I don't care about your religion and your god or gods. But you make a claim that you can't possibly back up. You lack objectivity. I'd rather you just say I don't know or simply it's what I believe, but the arrogance of xians in general and their own lack of historical knowledge about their own religion is what drives me nuts.

Hi Jane,

Why don't you recount the story to me and I think the impossibility of it will be very clear.

A man living in the belly of a Sea Creature for three days hardly qualifies as a miracle, or an 'impossibility' , not even by an agnostic's standards , I think . Look it: we believe in God . We are convinced Jesus gave the blind sight, the crippled legs, the dead life! As Jesus himself remarked to would be scoffers, "You shall see greater things than that." (John 1:50) And here you're Jane, shocked because Jonah dwelled in the belly of a Sea creature for 72 hours...

I think you're missing the point of the whole argument. Let me reiterate; we have shown, time and time again, that ALL of the historically varifiable claims of the bible have been REPEATEDLY proved correct . The bible has never been archeologically proved wrong. Therefore it's supernatural(unvarifiable) claims must not also be dismissed outright. It comes down to the issue of credibility.


Let me give you another small archeological example. (I hope the following doesn't 'drive you nuts'.) For a long time anti-biblicals (like yourself) were convinced that King David was not a historical figure but a fictional character , the bible just a bunch of 'fairy-tales' therefore, they claimed. . However with the discovery of the 'Mesha Stela'(and other archeological finds) these malcontents have forever been silenced, in this regard at least. ... Now the same people have come up with a new tact; attack the unprovable, i.e. pick on the 'miracles' of the bible to malign it's integrity,attack poor Jona in the 'belly of the Whale', scoff at the healings of Jesus, etc..

Undoubtly such folk know from bitter experience that archeology has a way of always CONFIRING the scripture account, so they don't challenge the historicity of the Bible anymore, they only dare attack it's supernatural aspects. In this sense then, we have already won half the battle . Intellectually speaking the other half(the supernatural aspect) is 'unwinnable' by any side because it's unprovable one way or other. Logically therefore, the bible has the upper hand in the all important battle for historical credibility.
























[edit on 12-12-2004 by Logician]

Jane writes,

Really? So they have been able to figure out that Angels came down and warned a guy and his family and when the guy's chick tunred for one last look she turned into a pillar of salt? I think not. Sinful cities??? They were able to tell that were they using archeological evidence?

Before archeologists confirmed the existence of Sodom and Gomorrah, people like Jane used to ridicule the bible for inventing 'fairy-tale cities'. "There is very little chance that Sodom and Gomorrah ever existed, the bible is historically inaccurate", they scoffed. Now such a position is no longer viable.


So Jane(and others like her) presently uses a different tact, and adopts a far humbler position . She's now limited to attacking the bible's 'unprovable'/'unvarifiable'(miraculous) elements (i.e. the supernatural events surrounding the Sodom/Gomorra narrative ; angels, pillar of Salt etc.).

She no longer has a leg to stand on when assaulting the bible's varifiable historical record. For example, she cannot anymore deny the FACT that Sodom and Gomorra were REAL cities just as the Bible said they were .


This is highly telling , isn't it?














[edit on 12-12-2004 by Logician]

Another small example:

People who question the validity of the Bible, who say it is full of historical inaccuracies, have a way of being silenced. A new series of monumental archeological discoveries were made which countered every one of these arguments.

For instance, there had never been any historical record of the court where Jesus Christ was tried by Pilate - called the "Gabbatha" or pavement in John 19:13. Many said, "It's a myth. See ... the Bible is not historical."

However this court has now been proven to be the court of the Tower of Antonia, which was the Roman military headquarters of Rome in Jerusalem. The court was destroyed between 66 A.D. - 70 A.D. during the siege of Jerusalem. It was left buried when the city was rebuilt in the time of Hadrian, and not discovered until recently.


God Bless All




[edit on 12-12-2004 by Logician]

Three days after my post which responded to saint4's request to expound, saint4 has proffered no evidence to counter my claim that Jesus' resurrection was nothing but myth given the inconsistencies and contradictions of the gospels, even though saint4 was posting within 24 hours of my post.


Perhaps one day someone will unearth a cross with at least the initial "I" engraved on same, and like Logician does making leaps in logic with his salt deposit from an area filled with same, use that to proclaim proof of Jesus's crucifixion.

saint4 has proffered no evidence to counter my claim that Jesus' resurrection was nothing but myth given the inconsistencies and contradictions of the gospels, even though saint4 was posting within 24 hours of my post.

This is exactly what I mean. Detractors of the Bible cannot substain a refutation of it's varifiable subject matter for long(sooner or later archeology tends to support it). So they assault the supernatural(albeit unprovable) content of the Bible narrative in order to discredit the whole. But this sort of criterion is a non-starter.


The basic argument(or variants of it) seems to be this: The bible is just a bunch of 'fairy-tales' because Christians cannot prove the resurrection of Jesus or the miracles he performed . But there's no logical method to test(prove / disprove) the supernatural in the first instance. Therefore this sort of argument is inherently flawed.

However,where the Bible narrative is provable, archeology invariably reinforces it by agreeing with it!


Grace to ALL,

P.S. Inbetween seems to be arguing a variant of the 'flawed argument' fallacy harkened to above. She claims Jesus was not resurrected "given the inconsistencies and contradictions of the gospels". Therefore she is certain, " the Bible is myth". But it can easily be proved that there is no contradiction in the gospel narratives regarding Jesus's resurrection. Inbetween's is actually a very weak strain of the 'flawed argument' fallacy.



[edit on 12-12-2004 by Logician]

Originally posted by Logician

saint4 has proffered no evidence to counter my claim that Jesus' resurrection was nothing but myth given the inconsistencies and contradictions of the gospels, even though saint4 was posting within 24 hours of my post.

This is exactly what I mean. Detractors of the Bible cannot substain a refutation of it's varifiable subject matter for long(sooner or later archeology tends to support it). So they assault the supernatural(albeit unprovable) content of the Bible narrative in order to discredit the whole. But this sort of criterion is a non-starter.


The basic argument(or variants of it) seems to be this: The bible is just a bunch of 'fairy-tales' because Christians cannot prove the resurrection of Jesus or the miracles he performed . But there's no logical method to test(prove / disprove) the supernatural in the first instance. Therefore this sort of argument is inherently flawed.

However,where the Bible narrative is provable, archeology invariably reinforces it by agreeing with it!


Grace to ALL,

P.S. Inbetween seems to be arguing a variant of the 'flawed argument' fallacy harkened to above. She claims Jesus was not resurrected "given the inconsistencies and contradictions of the gospels". Therefore she is certain, " the Bible is myth". But it can easily be proved that there is no contradiction in the gospel narratives regarding Jesus's resurrection. Inbetween's is actually a very weak strain of the 'flawed argument' fallacy.



[edit on 12-12-2004 by Logician]

What if it was proven that a person call Chris T. penned all these stories that became bedtimes stories=myth=religion. He was a popular authors and people loved his stories because it allowed them to step away from their boring daily life?

And then he won an emmy.

Would people who believe in these stories just wake up? Or would they kill the messenger?

They found Sodom and Ghomorah?

Your Christ as a divine manifest is fiction, logician. The new testament which you struggle to support is not only a farce, but effectively proven to be so by the church fathers who failed to destroy the evidence which by their own stupidity they did not realise they were creating. Jesus was nothing more than a prophet, perhaps the one with the most profound words if in fact the words attributed to him are in fact his. Of divine birth he was not, or divine resurrection he was not.

Cant' have it both ways!... If Jesus was not resurrected then he was a false prophet. Jesus promised his apostles that he would rise from the dead.


Infact, if his resurrection never took place, Jesus proves himself to be a liar, a lunatic or something worse. He could never be a great moral teacher with the 'most profound words' . Rather he would be a lying, self-deluded , perhaps mentally disturbed freak.


C.S. Lewis put it best in Mere Christianity:

“A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”


God Bless ALL,


[edit on 13-12-2004 by Logician]

There's only one thing I'm more sure of than my own existence ; that Jesus is who he claimed to have been as recorded in the 4 gospels. Don't ask me why or how I know, I'm just absolutely sure of it, like the air that I breath at regular intervals. It's a matter of knowing by faith. I can't expalin it.


Best Wishes to All,





[edit on 13-12-2004 by Logician]

Friends and Foes,

Logic requires that if something exists contingently, it must have a cause. That is merely to say, if it is an effect it must have an antecedent cause. Thus, since the Universe is a contingent effect, the obvious question becomes, “What caused the Universe?”

There are but three possible answers to this question: (1) the Universe is eternal; it has always existed and will always exist; (2) the Universe is not eternal; rather, it created itself out of nothing; (3) the Universe is not eternal, and did not create itself out of nothing; rather, it was created by something (or Someone) anterior, and superior, to itself.

I want readers to think through (1) through (3) and judge for themselves which proposition makes most sense.


Blessings,




[edit on 13-12-2004 by Logician]

I feel the same way about Santa Claus. I know he exist, I can feel him every Christmas. I spend all night waiting for him. One of this Christmas I will catch him to prove that he does exist. I have an elaborate trap set up in my house, I had to install a chimney, because the traditionalist believe that he comes down the chimney.

I will catch him.

Hi 'Justanotherperson',

You've just shown your I.Q......Please show us one instance where archeology has proved the bible wrong.

Put up or shut up, as they say.

[edit on 13-12-2004 by Logician]

I find it interesting whenever there is a discussion about God or Jesus, somebody has to bring up the Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny. Just goes to show how easily we were misled between fiction and reality by our parents. Or so it seems people blame their parents. Time to cut the cord and do something thinking on our own. Maybe it's TV's fault for our psychosis. Yum, spoon fed by flickering lights and entertainment-truths. Whoever is at fault it couldn't possibly be ourselves right? Pride seems to get in the way of us denying ignorance. Let's say to ourselves, I will find the truth regardless of how it changes me. I think that's step one. From there I think it's a lot easier to find the answer to the question the original person posted in this thread.

Pray, train, study.
God Bless.

I love reading opinions about the bible from those who have never actually studied it. They get all of their information from books written by other people. It is very interesting to watch them try to prove a point by using only circumstancial evidence and taking bible passages out of context.

A. We know there is a God because no one can prove otherwise and science eludes to it through intelligent design theory.

B. We know that the tradition of transcribing the Torah and the writings of the prophets was a very strict practice and if any mistake was made in transcribing they had to burn the page and start over again. You could trust the transcriptions to be accurate becuase of comparing contemporary translations to the old manuscripts, which are exactly the same (i.e. Dead Sea Scrolls).

C. We know that if there is a God wouldn't he make sure that his word was not compromised. Remember He created the heavens and the Earth.

D. We know that the Old Testament prophesied exactly Jesus' birth, life and death (Isa). There is no way that anyone could fullfil those prophesies by chance.

E. There were 12 apostles (all Jewish) and Jesus (A Jew). The apostles wrote down exactly what happened and they all say the same thing.

F. Most of the information that questions Jesus' birth, life and death comes from the writings of the agnostics, which was a cult that wrote about Jesus life a long time after Jesus died and rose again. If I were to believe anyone it would be those individuals (apostles) who lived with Jesus and risked their lives to spread the good news about Jesus' death and resurrection. Why would anyone risk their lives to get nothing out of it here on earth.

There is a lot of info to cover to debunk the crap that is coming from the Neo-Agnostic crowd found at Ivy League colleges. Unfortunately there isn't enough room here to cover it, so I would suggest to those that are so hell bent on trying to debunk Christ to look at other sources of material that counter the claims of works of fiction like "The DaVinci Code".

Thanks for breaking it down in a clear, concise manner.

Pray, train, study.
God Bless.

Hi All,

I find it interesting whenever there is a discussion about God or Jesus, somebody has to bring up the Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny.

In the last 2000 years many apostles , laypeople and great intellectuals have certified that faith in Jesus Christ has brought them, ‘peace’, ‘salvation’ and an inexplicable certainty in His claims. Maybe they were all wrong/misled. But one thing is certain; no one in their RIGHT MIND has ever proclaimed the same about Santa Clause . Even children do not acknowledge Santa or the Easter Bunny as Saviour and Lord. Children intrinsically know even at age 4 that Santa is 'fiction' and the chimney stories are make believe. And even if a few believe Santa to be 'real' in their tender years, this thesis is invariably discarded by them as they age. Only lunatics continue to believe in Santa in adulthood.

But what is it about Jesus that caused tens of thousands of sane adults to acknowledge Him Son of God, Lord and Saviour even while being fed to Lions ? Would anyone do the same for Santa or the Easter bunny?

Therefore the analogy between Jesus and Santa/Easter Bunny is a false, and desperate one.


Example:

'justanotherperson' says:

I feel the same way about Santa Claus. I know he exist, I can feel him every Christmas. I spend all night waiting for him. One of this Christmas I will catch him to prove that he does exist. I have an elaborate trap set up in my house, I had to install a chimney, because the traditionalist believe that he comes down the chimney.

Even children rarely say such things . Subject seems to possess a feeble mind.
















[edit on 13-12-2004 by Logician]

ok... why would the Romans bother to crucify the son of a soldiers rape ??? lol... like rape wasnt usual during invasions.

why would the Romans form te Catholic Church and change their worship to the son of a rape ??? good grief... if Mary had been raped, Yoshua would have never even been seen as a THREAT to the Roman Empire.

I don't believe that Jesus was a bastard. Instead, I actually believe that he was a clone of YHVH and that the bright light that Mary saw was actually her abduction and implantation of the God-clone into her. This explains how a virgin could become pregnant without first having had sexual intercourse. It also explains how when Jesus said to look upon him was the same as seeing his father...he was a clone!

The Lost Books of the Bible has a beautiful story of Mary's life called "The Book of Mary"...an interesting read!