svensky

turtnom, i notice you make a point about stories, fiction from the time, other gospels etc.

But just one question,

You have actually read the 4 gospels, and maybe some of the ones that where dropped from the cannon. Right ? Seems like an awfully strong statement if you haven't. May i encourage you if you haven't to actually read the texts before making up your mind.

I do remember when i was an athiest, prior to becoming a christian, that i would shoot my mouth off about the claims of the bible without actually having a clue as to its content.

Jason

Sauron

You'll find that his 'physical/archaeological evidence' doesn't stand up.

For example, McDowell claims that:

• the city of Tyre was destroyed and never rebuilt(both claims are false);
  Sidon was spared devastation (it was not);
  Babylon was destroyed by the Medes (it was not);
  Edom was destroyed (not only is this wrong, but McDowell mistakes the stone city of Petra for Edom);

One thing to note in that in his most recent repring of this book, the chapter that deals with archaeological evidence (Ch. 11) was entirely left out - most likely because he has received so many rebuttals to the claims that it was too embarrassing to print it any further.

Vorkosigan

Jas,

I've read all of the canonical and many of the extracanonical gospels. They are no more convincing than the many other religious books I've read, including the Bhagavad-Gita, the extremely tedious Book of Mormon, Chuang Tze, Lao Tze, the Yi Ching, the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead, and of course, the many tales of N'gai I heard in Africa, and others. I make a point of reading major religious works (including the Bible, cover to cover), so that when people attack me for not having read their Book, I can point out its singularly null effect on me.

I also have a shelf full of scholarly works on the NT and the Bible, as well as on Chinese philosophy and religion. My wife being an ardent Tibetan Buddhist, we also have several shelves full of material from that religion in Chinese and English.

In any case, one does not have to know much about the NT to point out the obvious fact that there are no gods, humans do not rise from the dead, demons do not cause mental illness, the dead do not rise from their graves and walk, and virgins do not give birth. These are fairy stories, just like those of the Taoist Immortals or Krishna.

Michael

lpetrich

Whatever "faith" is supposed to be, other than Mark Twain's supposed view that it is when you believe something when you know it isn't true.

Kharakov

Spoken like a true fundie.

Obvious fact? The correct term is 'personal belief'.

You cannot prove whether any story you hear is true or false, although repeated affirmations of a story / prophecy / theory (like Einstein's G&S relativity) lead many to have faith that the prophecy is correct, until we observe something that appears to disprove the prophecy / theory (like quantum entanglement in the case of faster than light "travel").

Kosh

"Scratch the skin of a Fundie, and you'll
find an athiest. Scratch the skin of an
athiest, and you'll find a Fundie"
- Quote from somewhere in the SecWeb Lib.

DB_Hunter

Sounds like Leto II:

"Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and you find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it's that patterns are repeated..."

DB