Man Shown A Once Atheist Author Now In Hades

reply to post by Akragon


Then Luke's account is no different than John Mark's account. Both men wrote their accounts from first-hand witness testimony. And there are numerous things in the different accounts that are not included in all. You can't arbitrarily pick and choose what you accept and reject without sound reason.

reply to post by NOTurTypical


Oh but I can...

Luke was a follower of Paul.... That's sound reasoning as far as I'm concerned...

Many that follow liars become liars themselves...

Now don't get me wrong... im not calling Luke a liar.... but in following a liar... a self proclaimed thief and murderer... He would likely be more open to alterations within what information he received from these so called "witnesses" he mentioned in the first chapter...

I also find it a bit hard to believe that Luke "interviewed" first hand witnesses... He obviously got his information from the exact same source as the other two books of the synoptic texts... then added his own flare to the information.

Similar to his master Paul...

reply to post by Akragon


No, that's called a "circumstantial ad hominem".

reply to post by EfficientP

Ever wonder what happens to some of these famous people who promote atheism and then die and find out what the afterlife really holds without taking Pascal's wager?

Sometimes. I also wonder the same of famous Christians who've spent their entire life investing in the promise of a next life.

Pascal's Wager is, in my opinion, the most spineless thing someone can do. It's akin to converting to a faith on the death bed just in case.

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
reply to post by Akragon

 

No, that's called a "circumstantial ad hominem".

Lets leave the debate tactics out of the conversation for once eh...

I am not attacking luke... I challenge the validity of a fabricated story within his writing...

the story luke presents is not found anywhere within the other gospels... and its obvious from his book that most of it parallels what is found in the other two synoptic texts... so the story came from somewhere... which leaves the so called witnesses he interviewed... none of which wrote their own story of the events, and if they did, said story was obviously covered up or destroyed by the church because it didn't line up with their agenda.

Luke did not ever meet Jesus... so that eliminates this story coming directly from the source...

Jesus was alive at the time of this story... So there is no way he could have known what happened to the rich man or lazarus while they were dead.

Which basically leaves an embellished story based on a previous text...

And the only way to show that this story is actually something that happened is to use circular logic... that being its in the bible, and the bible says everything in said book is true.... so it must be true

In reality, this is an allegorical story... which pushes an agenda of fear which the previous religion feeds upon

The bit about paul being responsible for this little story is just my own personal theory...

I don't trust liars... or anyone who might bring harm to his fellow man...

reply to post by Akragon


The Bible is a unified document, as proven by its heptadic numerical sub-structure. The writings of Luke fit with a precision which belies any charge of fabrication, or liar following another liar.

Thy logic lies with fault before the Truth of God.

reply to post by Lazarus Short


So what are you saying? Are you saying that the scribes, hundreds of years later, who decided which Biblical texts would be included and from which letters, and which antidoctal stories, handed down orally, should be woven into the New Testament, all have Gods "stamp of approval" secretly encoded in the final Greek, Hebrew. Latin and Aramaic scripts?

Please. Do tell us more about this!

Is it just the book of Luke that contains this hidden code, or is it every book of the New Testament, the Gospels, Paul's letters and John's apocryphes? All the Old Testament too?

Originally posted by Lazarus Short
reply to post by Akragon

 

The Bible is a unified document, as proven by its heptadic numerical sub-structure. The writings of Luke fit with a precision which belies any charge of fabrication, or liar following another liar.

Thy logic lies with fault before the Truth of God.

The finder of said structure (Ivan Panin) cooked his results to get what he wanted to find...

Have you ever tried to verify these so called "codes"?

Personally I haven't... and math is easily my worst subject... but others have... And these hepitadic structures aren't all they're cracked up to be...

As far as I know only Mr. Misler actually supports this theory... and maybe those who need something like this to reinforce belief in their religion

www.moresureword.com...

Sorry... its not one "complete" document... and considering the blatant contradictions found within the book... it actually makes no sense at all...

Believe what you will though...

reply to post by Akragon


Let me get this straight.. Dr. Panin, an atheist at the time, cooked his results so he could convince himself that God existed and the Bible was His word and of supernatural origin. Cooking this all up so he could abandon Atheism to embrace Christianity?

Really? That's gotta be unprecedented.

reply to post by Akragon


Leave what out of the argument? No, I'm not going to pretend basic fundamentals of rationality do not exist to accommodate your inability to use them. People need reasons to believe something, not just go on a hunch because they don't like someone. That's wholly irrational.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by Lazarus Short

 

So what are you saying? Are you saying that the scribes, hundreds of years later, who decided which Biblical texts would be included and from which letters, and which antidoctal stories, handed down orally, should be woven into the New Testament, all have Gods "stamp of approval" secretly encoded in the final Greek, Hebrew. Latin and Aramaic scripts?

Please. Do tell us more about this!

Is it just the book of Luke that contains this hidden code, or is it every book of the New Testament, the Gospels, Paul's letters and John's apocryphes? All the Old Testament too?

Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, like a lot of ancient scripts, did not have a separate set of symbols for numbers. The letters of the alphabet were assigned numerical values. If you plug those numerical values into the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, you get coherent patterns of numbers, which have a disappearingly small chance of being due to chance - disappearingly small if we consider just a small sample of text. The whole Book, from Genesis to the Revelation, displays such patterns. I don't know about the Apocrypha.

Check this out:

www.wordworx.co.nz...

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
reply to post by Akragon

 

Let me get this straight.. Dr. Panin, an atheist at the time, cooked his results so he could convince himself that God existed and the Bible was His word and of supernatural origin. Cooking this all up so he could abandon Atheism to embrace Christianity?

Really? That's gotta be unprecedented.

Hardly... even I came from being an atheist, to knowing for a fact that God exists through study... Its not far fetched at all considering the book he dedicated his study to was Christian material... He likely would have converted to islam if he chose to study the quran instead...

Panin wasn't ever an atheist as far as I've read... He came from an atheistic country... but he was agnostic... and he was looking for a scientific discovery within the bible likely because his work was pretty much disregarded by his peers in the scientific community. He was passed over in 1932 for the nobel prize in his own field... Perhaps he had something to prove...

unfortunately after 50 years the only thing he ended up proving is that he could produce patterns within a book... through a flawed mathematical process...

If God has taken such care over every word of the Scriptures, then we want to have the most accurate translation possible in our own language. Unfortunately this is not as easy as it sounds.

The first problem is that exact translation is impossible. Meanings of words and grammatical structures in any two languages do not generally correspond.

We can illustrate this with the Greek word logos. No one English word is exactly equivalent to it. It can mean a word, a thought, a saying, a discourse, a narrative, a matter and many other things besides. The translator must choose the best equivalent in each situation.

To illustrate grammatical problems we can consider tenses. English has two present tenses where most other languages only have one. Esthio in Greek or je mange in French can mean I eat or I am eating. Pronouns also are full of problems. Hebrew has four words for you distinguishing between masculine and feminine and singular and plural. Modern English has only one. In the Song of Solomon, it is always clear from the gender in Hebrew whether the bride or bridegroom is speaking. (Some English versions lose the distinction.)

To summarise, it is totally impossible to take a document in one language and make an exact word for word equivalent of it in another. Frequently the translator must grasp the meaning of the original as best he can and then seek to reproduce that meaning in the target language.

This leads us on naturally to another problem - that of understanding the Bible. Here in fact there are at least three problems. There is a plain language problem in that ancient languages can only be understood by guesswork. No one who spoke the language is around to tell us what it means. Words must be studied in all the places where they occur in available writings and compared with similar words in related languages and their meaning then guessed. Usually but not always this process gives reliable results!

There is also a culture problem. With an imperfect knowledge of ancient cultures it is not always possible to understand references of various kinds.

In both these areas archaeological and linguistic research are continually increasing the knowledge available.

The third and most important problem in understanding the Bible is the spiritual problem. ‘The natural mind does not receive the things of the Spirit of God’ (1 Cor 2:14). Anyone who knows God has had the experience of reading a Bible passage a hundred times and then suddenly seeing what it means. As we grow in spiritual understanding the Bible continually unfolds its deeper meanings. The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth. Who then would claim to understand every word of the Bible? Hidden gems may well lie beneath the surface of its every sentence.

Leave what out of the argument? No, I'm not going to pretend basic fundamentals of rationality do not exist to accommodate your inability to use them. People need reasons to believe something, not just go on a hunch because they don't like someone. That's wholly irrational.

Well... I already stated specifically that pauls influence over the story of the rich man and lazarus is my own personal theory...

And as far as being irrational is concerned... I personally find it irrational to take the word of a murderer, and a liar... but Christianity seems to have no issue with it...

To each his own I suppose

reply to post by Akragon


Ideas are limited by our communication of them, and our communication of them limits how others understand them. Is it any surprise that spirituality is no longer what it used to be? Especially when people learned the power of words. Words are a political tool, especially when you give them power over you. Saruman from LOTR, with his honeyed voice of persuasion and compulsion, is no myth. Hitler proved that.

Words are powerful. Quite often, it doesn't matter what you say. You can tell someone Obama killed their parents in a nuclear attack and will shortly be sending the SWAT team after them, and still have that person want to make love to you - if you do it right. It's called neurolinguistic programming, using a person's desires and preconceptions against them, or even replacing such desires and preconceptions. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the authors of the modern Bible were counseled by masters of psychology and mass influence. Christianity is a cult. There's no denying that. And cults are developed using psychology. Is it any wonder that so many political tricks are found in the pages of the Bible?

It's not coincidence. These techniques are very, very old.

reply to post by Lazarus Short


Too me, this is highly suspicious.

I have studied, through lectures and writing from the Meru Foundation some of the symbolism of the Hebrew letters as they are arranged alphabetically and in the Torah, and have had my mind BLOWN!

The written language, I can only surmise, had to have been handed down by a much more advanced people, who wanted to timelessly preserve "truth" in face of ignorant and destructive obstacles.

The message is not found within the narrative, but is woven underneath, like a secret spy code hidden in a picture. I have no reason to believe that this code was designed by "GOD" but by a highly advanced "people."

But, when we look at the New Testament, we find stories that are pieced together from oral traditions, handed down generationally. We have letters, supposedly written by Paul to argue his position and philosophy, providing hope and faith to his fledgling churches, and wild visions from a man cast into isolation and exile.

These writing don't come from a mysterious source, like the Torah does. So, when I hear about a code embedded within the scriptures, a numeric code, unlike the message coded within the Hebrew letters themselves, I am suspicious.

I'm suspicious that this numeric code may be part of some conspiracy that the scribes, perhaps the Catholic Church, knew of, and perpetrated for some unknown, to me at least, reason. It feels counterfit, even sinister.

reply to post by windword


Yes, I have had my mind blown by the Meru Foundation material, but they seem to want to lock it all down as their own possession - it is not. As to the idea that the numerical codes were man-made, I don't think so. As a published poet, I know the difficulties of doing grammar, rhyme and meter, and doing it well to boot. However, the numerical codes in the Biblical text run to dozens of levels, daunting I'm sure, even for a supercomputer, gibberish aside. Think it through. Oral tradition does NOT produce complex mathematics.

reply to post by Lazarus Short


Well, I'll have to take your word for it, as far as there being some kind of mathematical code, embedded with the text of the New Testament. Has anyone deciphered it? Or, are there as many alternative meanings as there are numbers.

It doesn't make the scriptural stories more true, in my opinion. We know too much of the various translation problems, contradictions, changes, addings, etc. for it to be taken as truth.

Regarding the Meru Foundation, I have heard that Stan Tenen and his partner, don't know his name, did have a parting of the ways, and each has copywritten pieces of their research. But, as far as I know, no one is keeping the information hidden. A lot of it is freely available, and they do sell CD's of lectures and such.

Originally posted by EfficientP
If you are right, and there is no God, you lose nothing. But if you are wrong, you lose EVERYTHING!

Isn't this the exact logic hat the religious zealots have been using to scare and intimidate people for thousands of years? Isn't it based on the superstitious "feelings" that have been indoctrinated into humanity by the few manipulative incividuals. Maybe this is in itself proof of evolution. survival of the manipulative (which could be perceived as the fittest)

Originally posted by windword

Well, I'll have to take your word for it, as far as there being some kind of mathematical code, embedded with the text of the New Testament. Has anyone deciphered it? Or, are there as many alternative meanings as there are numbers.

It doesn't make the scriptural stories more true, in my opinion. We know too much of the various translation problems, contradictions, changes, addings, etc. for it to be taken as truth.

Regarding the Meru Foundation, I have heard that Stan Tenen and his partner, don't know his name, did have a parting of the ways, and each has copywritten pieces of their research. But, as far as I know, no one is keeping the information hidden. A lot of it is freely available, and they do sell CD's of lectures and such.

There is nothing to decipher - the numbers are just there. Panin deciphered it all simply by plugging in the numerical values. One of his (still unrefuted) contentions is that the codes enable us to restore the original text of the Bible mathematically. That means that all quibbles about translations, problems, contradictions, changes, additions, subtracts, etc., are just that: quibbles.

reply to post by Lazarus Short


Okay, you made me do it! I had to break down and Google Ivan Panin's Bible Code. It'a not a pretty picture. The guy has been debunked all over the place! The only person, that I can find, that supports his claims is Chuck Missler! Go figure?

Panin’s Bible numerics prove to be a hoax; however, like Westcott and Hort, his New Testament scheme was not in vain, for nearly a century later Christians are turning to Bible codes to ascertain which of the Greek Texts is the inspired Word of God. The average Christian, who knows little or nothing about mathematics or Greek texts, will probably never figure out that these Kabbalists “cooked the books” to promote a hidden agenda.
watch.pair.com...

Ivan Panin and the Gospel of Mark

Perhaps the most impressive work of Ivan Panin concerned the passage Mark 16:9-20 in the Greek New Testament. Modern scholars are almost unanimous in judging this passage an interpolation, but Panin, in his pamphet "The Last Twelve Verses of Mark" provides a dazzling array of numerical patterns. In his view, these patterns appeared by design, not by accident, and of course the designer must have been God. Therefore, the passage is authentic.
As we shall see, this example provides an important lesson about Panin's work.

We see that none of these editions has even the right number of words for Panin's claims. What chance do they have for Panin's claims concerning letter counts or numerical values? We conclude that Panin himself designed the patterns he found.
cs.anu.edu.au...

Critics of his work doubt the value of some of his findings and dismiss more evident numerical patterns as random chance. Panin's claims, that the existence of such statistical anomalies is proof of divine inspiration, are still sharply debated by skeptics of his work today. Panin used the edition of Westcott and Hort of the New Testament, as the basis for his work, but made selective use of alternative readings that those authors suggested. He even published his own version of the Greek text, claiming to have reconstructed the lost original version by his techniques; critics see this as circular reasoning, and state that it only shows that he was capable of producing patterns himself.[1] Another criticism is that the same kind of numeric patterns can be found in any text
en.wikipedia.org...

Sorry Laz, I'm just not buying it.

Was it because you smoked what was refered to by the street name of HOG? Or did you shoot some MDA?

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by glassspider

 

Hey, my "1970's" experience is just a valid as anyone's! But those kinds of "experiences" aren't for everyone, and are not allowed to be discussed on ATS.