dr lazer blast

For the most part you're right, and as far as muhammad goes, I am still in the process of researching the possibility that muslims and christians actually MIGHT be worshiping the same God. Who is John smith? are you referring to joseph smith? also its not all about self fulfilling prophecies, I know that every religion has self fullfilling prophecies but the prophecies in the bible have hard evidence behind them. Jeruselum is a real place, the temple was there intact, and Jesus predicted its destruction, and if you go by the earliest copy of the bible which is 3 AD it's destruction was predicted 63 years prior, so its not the prediction was written after the destruction of the temple took place. The jews and the muslims are real people, and the hate that they feel for each other is real. If one looks at all the wars fought in history you will find that muslims have been involved in a lot of them, which was predicted in the bible as well

That quote is actually taken from Sam Harris's book (I don't remember what it is called)

I don't doubt that mohammed existed, but once one looks into the life of mohammed you would see rape, sex with children, things like that, and being a pretty good guy (at the time I considered myself to be) I didn't really want to follow someone like that

Also the earliest known copy of the bible in the world is the codex sinaiticus,which is from the 3rd or 4th century AD, whereas the earliest known copy of the Koran is like 800 AD, now if one takes into account that the koran talks about the same people as the bible does (Mary, Jesus, abraham, Issac, Ishmel) and one also takes into account that the Muslims and Jews have had a bloody rivalry throughout history, It lead me to beleive that the muslim religion is also borrowed from the Jewish religion.

Well right now I know the truth, however I am interested in anything you might have that would make me question that, or if I came to the wrong conclusion

--------------------------
That isn't what was said. What was said was 'God' and not religion. You are trying to insert the word religion in the place of the word God, and that quote is not read like that. Also there was the 2nd part of the quote as well.

"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours"

and I don't dismiss other gods because of lack of evidence, I dismiss them because they are minions of satan.

Atheos

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. You have chosen to accept the claims of the bible for the reasons you described above. For some reason you have chosen to disregard the claims of the Quran as well as those of the Hindu Vedas and over 1,000 different sets of religious beliefs that people have created over the years. As Smullyan-esque has already pointed out it doesn't really look like you have really spent a lot of time checking out why you believe what you believe.

It's all a matter of when you're willing stop asking the question "but why?"

• "But why should I believe in God?" A: Because the bible tells us god exists.
• "But why should I believe what the bible says?" A: Because the bible is the inspired word of God.
• "But why should I believe the bible is the inspired word of God?" A: Because Reverend Slartibartfast says so, and he wouldn't lie about something like that.
• "But why does Reverend Slartibartfast say the bible is the inspired word of God?" A: Because he learned all about it in a seminary he attended.
• "But why do the folks at the seminary believe the bible is the inspired word of God?" A: Because for hundreds of years these are the 66 books people have believed were the inspired word of God."
• "But why did people believe these 66 books were the inspired word of God for hundreds of years?" A: Because they were the books selected by the men who attended the Nicean council in 325 A.D.
• "But why did those men select those books and reject other books?" A: Because those books agreed most with what they knew to be the truth about the word of God.
• "But why did those men know that what they knew to be the truth about the word of god was actually right?" A: :huh:

I hate to break it to you, but the truth is that it's all built on bluster and smokescreen. At the end of the questions there is nothing of substance. I've been there and checked it out. I went to a conservative christian college and took a B.A. in "Bible" with a minor in Greek and Hebrew. For over 16 years I occupied pulpits and defended the bible as the word of God, but I just couldn't stop asking questions rather than just accept that someone out there somewhere knew the real answers to the questions of why we believed all these things.

At the end of the trail I discovered that there really wasn't anything there. The origin myths of Genesis crumble to dust under academic scruitiny. There never was a global flood, disparate languages did not suddenly erupt overnight from some location in the mid-east ("Babel"), there is no reason to believe there ever was a large contingent of "Hebrew" people who were enslaved by Egypt, nor is there any evidence to support the 10 plagues or the mass Exodus of nearly 2 million people from that area. Joshua's conquest of Caanan is completely unsupported by any archaeological evidence as is the mythical kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon. Whatever existed in that area at that time was certainly nothing so signifigant as to impress the Queen of Sheba as the myth claims in I Kings 10:7.

Indeed the more likely scenario is that these stories formed something of an oral tradition that was redacted into the Pentateuch and History books during the Babylonian exile, and presented as "Freshly discovered" by Nehemiah.

Similarly, there is good reason to believe that the "Jesus" myth was just another "Hero God" myth. Hero gods were a dime a dozen in the centuries prior to the establishment of christianity. Promethus died by having his liver eaten by birds every day for hundreds of years and was resurrected each following morning only to go through the process again so men could have fire. Hercules, who was the son of Zeus and a virgin earth mother died to save others and was resurrected by his father Zeus to become one of the immortals. Sound familiar? He, too was threatened when he was still just a baby by a jealous ruler (Hera) and barely escaped with his life.

In fact there were so many hero gods whos story sounded remarkably like the life of Jesus that one early christian apologist (Justin Martyr) was prompted to write:
Of course Justin Martyr also went on to say something which (based on what you've already said) I imagine you're going to agree with:
In other words, like you, Justin Martyr believed that these "imitation" god myths that had all kinds of savior gods born of virgins, living, dying and being resurrected again were perpetrated by Satan.

The problem here is that so far the bible has done nothing to distinguish itself from any of the other god-myths out there. It is demonstrably incorrect about a great many things (e.g., Herod never ordered a mass-killing of male children during his reign, Herod the great and Quirinius were not contemporary rulers, the four "resurrection" accounts are impossibly contradictory). There is no predictive prophecy in the bible that can be verified to have been uttered before the event that was prophecied. Heck, even I can produce a piece of paper signed by me and dated 05/25/2008 showing the winning powerball numbers from 05/31/2008. I just couldn't show it to you before 06/01/2008.

Perhaps you should give your attention to the Hindu Vedas. After all, 3000 years before your particular hero-god arrived on the scene they were already preaching the following:
... or the Jain religion, circa 500 BC:
... or maybe even the Taoist religion, also around 500 BC:
Is there anything about the bible that I've overlooked that distinguishes it as the word of a TRUE and LIVING GOD and makes it obvious that it's superior in any objective way to the Quran or the Hindu Vedas?

dr lazer blast

1.) wrong, I was an atheist before I even came to christianity, so I did not believe in God because the bible said there was a God.

2.) wrong again, I believed in the bible because of the evidece listed above (for a more detailed version look at my most recent post replying to Smullyan-esque), there was more evidence than that but listing all of that out would take up too much space.

3.) wrong I believe the bible is God inspired because of the evidence listed above.

4-8 are just more incorrect assumptions.

Care to make more assumptions about my life based upon christian blanket statements?

Just because you can't stop asking questions doesn't mean anything. I always ask questions and will never stop asking questions, and personally I don't think that continuous questions are a good reason to stop believing in anything. If I stop any beliefs I had because of questions then I woudln't be a golden glove champion, I would not have won 5 mma tournaments because I have un ending questions about styles and fighting, I would've just quit because there were to many questions.

I fail to see how one could find any evidence of Genesis, a global flood, or anything else you've suggested, things that happened millions of years ago and carbon dating breaks down after so many years. The only thing you have to go on is fundies bringing evidence, and their suggestions are disproved, and take that as a reason to disbelieve. However christianity has gotten along totally fine without evidence of a global flood, the tower of babel, and talking snakes, and I highly doubt that the jewish religion, christian religion, and islam religion would survive so long without some sort of evidence.

Also I highly doubt an egyption pharoe that believes himself to be god incarnate and can speak to gods, with that much ego and pride, would chronicle how he was bested by a shepherd and a bunch of slaves.

Also Saul, David and Solomon have evidence for their kingdoms. Its not HUGE evidence, but there is evidence non the less. Archeologists are looking for something big like what the Pharaoh's left behind, gold, diamonds, statues, etc. etc.. but if you consider the fact that jerusalem was conqured and occupied, one could see the reason why there isn't so much gold, pictures, diamonds.


sure that is a theory

That doesn't explain taticus and the other non christian records of Christ.


Are you sure you got a B.A. in christian theology? mainly because a contradiction is something that can't both be and not be, and there is no example of that at all in the gospels.

Yes, mohammad had sex with little kids, rape, unessacary violence, and this is the leader of islam someone at the time I was doing my study on religions I did not want to follow, and the hindu religion is constatly changing all the time, and it is a really diverse religion with little to no universal acceptance between the people, it is very difficult to understand, and something one can't really understand unless you're born into it.


Also I'd like to point out that I realize other religions had the "Do to others as you want done to yourself" however those religions lack the evidence that christianity has (check at some of the reasons I have above)

Smullyan-esque

We're drifting a ways from the original OP, but I like this coversation, so ... eh.

What exactly do you think Tacitus says, and when do you think he says it? He mentions the existence of Christians, a century after the purported life of Christ, which certainly isn't any sort of evidence that Jesus actually existed.

What other non-Christian evidence do you think there is? If you've got something good and solid, you can make quite a splash in historical circles! So for, none of the professional historians have been able to come up with anything solid.

So, yeah, as we've been saying, it looks like you didn't do much investigation before you latched on to Christianity.

dr lazer blast

Did you read about any of the evidence I presented? the temple being destroyed? the muslims and jews hating each other? the muslims being involved in those wars? can you respond to that?

It doesn't matter how big the gap is between the crucificion and when Tacitus wrote that, he is still saying that Christ was crucified by Pilate. Just because it was written a century afterwards makes little difference, as there are many historical documents written centuries after certain incidents take place and they are still regarded as evidence.

Atheos

Well you've certainly got answers, I'll give you that. I'm just saying, I've looked at the 'evidence' and it's mighty thin. I didn't mean to imply that the path you followed to christianity in any way followed the bulleted list I provided in my earlier post. I was merely attempting to show a chain of questions one might ask and the sort of answers one might receive. My point was not that this was the chain you (or anyone else) followed. My point was that when you keep asking "But why..." you eventually get to the end of the trail and there isn't a "but why". It's just another person making a claim that he or she received a message from some god. No different from the claim that Joseph Smith made in the 1830s. No different from Mohammad (spare us the "murderer and pedophile" stuff please - Moses was a murderer too wasn't he?). No different from David Koresh, Jim Jones, Orel Roberts, Jim Bakker and hundreds of other folks that pull the same scam year after year. Every generation has dozens of articulate, charismatic people who convince people that they've got a message from god. Some of them are very successful, some aren't.

The "Jesus" myth has been very successful over the years, that's for sure. It's not because it's any better a myth than that of Perseus, Promethus, Hercules, Osiris, Mithras, Zeus, Thor or Ra, it's more because the people who followed that particular myth killed off all their competitors in bloody wars and conquests. The inquisitions of the 16th century made people afraid for their lives to confess that they were skeptical about christianity.

I'm intrigued by the following quote:What, exactly, does any of that have to do with believing the bible? Nobody argues that the descriptions of the temple being destroyed were actually written before the temple was destroyed. I can't help being skeptical about someone with an agenda to promote a particular god-myth who puts prophecies into their hero-god after the fact and say "See, he knew it before it happened!" Like I said, I can produce a piece of paper with yesterday's winning powerball numbers with a date from a month ago and my signature. Doesn't mean I actually knew the numbers before unless I can show you the paper before the drawing. It's the bloody same thing.

And why do you keep going on about the muslims and jews hating each other? Is that something clearly prophecied in the bible? I've never seen such a verse.

Also the following:No, what he is saying (100 years after the fact) is that there are christians who claim that their hero-god was crucified by Pilate. Big difference. There is absolutely no reason to think Tacitus went back and dug through archives to check on the validity of that particular claim. Lots of people got crucified, and Pilate may have signed off on any number of orders of execution. And big freaking deal if some itenerant preacher with the name of Jesus did get crucified by Pilate. Where are the contemporary records of the bloodshed and mayhem that resulted from Herod's order to kill all the male children 2 years and under? You'd think something like that would cause more than a little ripple, but there's nary a sausage of evidence that anything remotely like that ever happened. How does one reconcile Matthew's claim that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the great and Luke's claim that Jesus was born while Quirinius was governor when Herod died a full 10 years before Quirinius became governer? These sorts of discrepancies are consistent with independent, unsubstantiated fables that grow with the retelling and are eventually written down decades later, but they are not consistent with the idea that the events actually happened. Where are the reports of Matthew's "night of the living dead" where corpses rose from their graves and were seen by people when Jesus died? Once again, deafening silence. These things would have made major headlines. The fact that they did not speaks volumes.

He wouldn't have to. Do you honestly think Egypt could have survived the economic chaos that the 10 plagues would have wrought without leaving traces of the commerce necessary to replace all the livestock, food supplies, etc., that got "totally destroyed" during the plagues? The countries round about would have had a field day. Do you really believe that some Pharoah could have repelled the inevitable invading hoardes when his entire army was drowned in the Red Sea? C'mon. Some record would still exist chronicled by surrounding countries. Once again, deafening silence.

How about:Okay, explain to me why "John" says that Mary Magdelene arrived all alone to a desolate scene on resurrection morning to find nothing but an empty tomb. She ran back to find Peter and "the beloved disciple", explained to them that Jesus's body was missing and she didn't know where they had taken it. Peter and "BD" run back to investigate, find nothing and leave. Mary sobs for a few minutes, looks back into the tomb, sees and talks to a couple of angels and then turns around and bumps into Jesus himself.

But "Matthew" says that Mary (Jesus's ma) and Mary Magdalene (1 contradiction) both went to the tomb, whereupon they witnessed a great earthquake, at least two guards scared shitless and fainting at the sight of an angel who rolled away the stone right in front of them, sits on the stone and proudly proclaims that "He is not here, he is risen!" (2 contradictions, as the scene was anything but desolate). Angel sends them back to tell the disciples (3 contradictions, as M and M know what happened before they went to get the disciples and before they get to the disciples they run smack dab into Jesus himself, hug him, then go tell the disciples who don't believe them at first. The contradictions could be called "Legion" for they are many.

As if that weren't bad enough, "Mark" disagrees with both of them, saying that "Mary, Mary Magdalene and Salome" go to the tomb, find it already open, walk inside where they find a solitary young man dressed in white. The young man tells them to go to the disciples and tell them to go find Jesus in Galilee. The book of Mark actually ends without anyone seeing the resurrected Jesus. Everything after verse 8 is well recognized as later additions to "flesh out" the ending.

But alas, "Luke" says, "No, it happened like this". It was Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and at least two other women who came to the tomb that morning. We've gone from one woman ("John") to no less than five women visiting that tomb that morning. The women all went into the tomb (haven't seen any angels outside the tomb yet as Matthew says). They're looking around perplexed and two men appear in "shining garments". The men instruct the women to go tell the disciples he's risen from the dead. The women go tell the disciples but don't bump into Jesus on the way there as "Matthew" says. The disciples don't believe them. Peter goes back to investigate but finds nothing except garments (nothing about a "beloved disciple" accompanying Peter), and don't forget that in "John's" version Mary had heard nothing from anyone about any resurrection business and was quite clear that as far as she knew someone had made off with the body of Jesus when she went to the disciples. According to Luke's version the first people to actually see the resurrected Jesus were two men walking to Emmaus. These two men go back to Jerusalem after Jesus pulls a "vanishing" trick on them and find "The eleven" which one would imagine included all of the disciples except for Judas, but conflicting reports claim that Thomas wasn't there for that first visit, which would leave only "ten", strangely enough. Hmmm. Regardless, it's also interesting to note that in "Luke's" version Jesus meets his disciples in Jerusalem and clearly directs them to "Remain in Jerusalem" until they are endued with "power from on high". He leads them out of Jerusalem as far as Bethany and then ascends back into heaven. They go back to Jerusalem and stay there according to "Luke" / Acts until the day of Pentecost (50 days later). The geography is critical to appreciating what may be the most glaring contradiction of all between these accounts. Matthew and Mark insist that Jesus was going to (and eventually did, according to Matthew) meet the disciples in Galilee, not Jerusalem. The southernmost edge of Galilee was over 50 miles from Jerusalem, in a day when 50 miles was several days journey. "Luke" leaves absolutely no room in his account for "Matthew's" excursion to Galilee.

I've seen some mighty tortured attempts at reconciling all this, involving myriad visits by Mary Magdalene to the tomb and back to the disciples, all the while exhibiting the memory capacity of a goldfish. I've never seen any resolution that could simply take all the details of that single piece of the "Jesus" myth and place them in a chronological order that made sense.

My friend, there's plenty more where that came from. The myths that arose over the decades about the legend that would eventually become venerated as "Jesus", son of Yahweh were many and sometimes quite contradictory. They were collected and redacted by editors into the various traditional "Gospels" at some point, which is why they bear the earmarks of oral traditions that grew with the retelling into the stories they are today.

But how can someone claim that they somehow appear more valid than other religious writings? Is salvation nothing more than having the "good taste" to like the "Jesus" story better than the "Mohammad" story?

angelo

We do not know who wrote the gospels. When they first appeared, they circulated anonymously and were only later attributed to important figures in the early church. The authors were Jewish christians, who wrote in Greek and lived in the Greek Hellenistic cities of the Roman empire. They were not only creative writers, each with his own bias, but also skilled redacters who edited earlier material. Mark wrote in about 70; the gospels attributed to Mathew and Luke in the late 80s, and John in the late 90s or even later. All four gospels reflect the terror and anxiety of this traumatic period. The Jews were in turmoil. The war with Rome had divided families and whole communities and all the different sects had to rethink their beliefs. In this climate was christianity born.

Atheos

Wow. And that's different from christianity in what way? There are only about 30,000 different variants of christianity. Just about every day I hear some new 'version' of christianity that I had not heard of before (why just this last week I found out about a version of christianity who accepts that there are other gods besides Jehovah ... trying to remember where I heard about that new sect...). Nobody's ever been able to offer a satisfactory explanation as to why Jehovah required a human sacrifice before he could actually forgive imperfect people for being ... imperfect people. Opinions vary greatly as to the meaning of "Speaking in tongues" in I Cor 13-15, whether or not baptism is necessary for salvation, when and how often to rehash the last supper, what "law" the people who died during the 50 days between the resurrection and the day of pentecost were under, whether or not miracles can still be performed today, whether or not it's proper to call a preacher "reverend", what the one "unpardonable sin" actually involves, whether or not people are "foreordained" to salvation (predestination) or they have "free will", what someone actually has to do to be saved (isn't that kind of important? why would it be so vague?), whether or not non-christians are amenable to the bible's law regarding marriage / divorce / remarriage, what those laws actually are, whether or not there will be a "rapture", etc.

So far you're not wowing us with your reasons to loft christianity above the competing religions. This isn't just a case of the pot calling the kettle black. It's almost a case of the cast iron pot calling the stainless steel kettle black. Hinduism is far less diverse and evolving than christianity, and predates it by over 3,000 years.

funinspace

I have choosen Daniel as an example because it could have easily been made clear with todays technology. Also, I have no clue as to what you mean above with a reference to 3 AD. The oldest near complete copy of any Gospel is from the latter part of the second century AD. We have no originals. The date ranges are all speculative based usually upon ones theological POV. About all that can be said difinitively, is that they were written before 120 AD, since we begin to see a few references to them by other Christians at this point. Paul, the earliest writer never mentioned this prophetic prediction in his letters, which would have been far more interesting evidence.

The date range for the writing of Mark is 60-75 AD by most theologins. We really don't even know who the author is with any certainty. All the other Gospels are considered to have been written after Mark by the vast majority of theologins. Also, the words attributed to Jesus said that "no stone shall be unturned". What is the wailing wall (or western wall)?

As Atheos has commented on, predictions are a fickle thing. If one cannot provide reasonable evidence that suggests the prediction was provided before the event, then one is taking it on faith that the prediction came before the event. Your God could have choosen to help his cause greatly by helping Daniel in how he recorded the stories. He could have had Daniel record his prophecies on clay tablets circa 600 BCE; and made sure they survived the ages. Thereby today's carbon dating would validate when such prophecies were written. As it stands today, even many Christain scholars believe Daniel was written circa 200BCE. Ergo, there is no verifiable prophetic prediction, because we don't know when it was written. God could have sent angels to make the author of Mark go off and write his Gospel on clay tablets in the first couple years after Jesus death, giving it a time stamp of around 35AD, which would again give solid predictive evidence. As it is, your God choose to leave his message in a fog of unknowables. I don't think this would be hard to accomplish since we have clay tablets from the Sumerians circa 2600 BCE, or 2,000 years earlier than Daniel.

You know a funny thing happens when one goes mining for answers to fit ones theological POV. A few thoughts on this idea….The Arabs/Muslims who pushed the Eurpeans back out of Palastine in the 6th century were more tolerant of those civilians who remained than the barbarians of Europe who prefered to kill the Muslim and Jews who were in "their Christian" lands. You notice the phrase "toward all his brothers". Well, the last time I checked the Muslims weren't having any real issues with central/south America, China, Japan, the Nordic European countires, Africa, and many other countries. And these countries are not raising their hand against them.

And if you look over the expanse of time it gets even fuzzier. Not that we can really put a date on Ge 16, but I think looking at the area from beginning of Israel in any sense of the word would be sufficient. And in looking at the last 3,000 years of history the only serious and constant hostility (hate) is the last 100 years, or 3% of the time line.

Here are some date ranges and a link to history of the area:
1,000 BCE - 135 BCE : No obvious extra animosity between this little group of Israel and the other semetic lands. Consider the purpetual wars of Europe; China vs. the Mongel and other bordering societies.
--135 AD Roman finished the exodus of the Jews from their lands.
135 BCE - 600 AD: No obvious extra animosity between the 2 ethnic groups, while in disporia.
600 AD - 1000: AD: In fact the Jews were better treated by the Muslims than by the Christians in this period. The Jews were allowed to return in some numbers. See link below.
1099 - 1917: Again the Europeans expelled/killed the Jews from their lands, never to return until the modern age. Once the Muslims took Palastine back, they didn't let/invite Jews back, but no other obvious events happened either. Many Jews also lived within Arab/Persian cultures while in disporia with little extra harassment while being one of the many different peoples.

http://www.american.edu/TED/hpages/jeruselum/muslim.htm


And Moses was a murderer, along with David and his other "sins". Now if one takes the conquest of Caanon as real history, your God was certainly as blood thirsty as Mohammed. Never mind his magical world wide deluge, nor his barbaric revelations if one is to take it as future history. Yet you cuddle up to this…

So your holy book is 300-400 years removed from said events, and the Koran is 200 years from it's events. And the problem is??? If you want to say that Mohammed was 800 years removed from Jesus et.al., then you put yourself on shaky ground in reference to your own Biblical history. When did the garden of Eden happen? When did the Tower of Babel happen? When did the flood happen? When did Job live? And when was this all recorded?

Again they don't have a bloody rivalry throughout history (see above); or at least no more bloody than most any other area of the world. The Christians borrowed from the Jewish religion just as the Muslims have, so what? The Jews and others do and can say that Christians have tortured Isaiah and other Jewish scripture to fit their new cult.

dr lazer blast

The people that believed in those gods were already dwinidling long before the inquisition came along. It all started with Constantine 2 in 353 AD and the inquisition didn't start until the 12-13th century.

I don't think im following you here. Lets take your example for instance. The paper you produce would obviously be dated (if scrutinized by science) after the winning power ball numbers were shown.
Science has scrutinized the bible and shown the new testament to be between 60-105 AD, and pauls epistles to be as old as 50 AD, which brings me back to your example. I have a hard time seeing your point. Its not as if the old testament was dated later than the destruction of the 2nd temple.

Its talking about ishmel, the original muslim.


What type of evidence are you expecting? roman records, dealt with things that had interest to the political people of the empire, instead of isolated tragedies in remote countries that were under the imperial control, not to mention that bethlehem was a small town and according to ezra 2:21 it had only 123 men living in bethlehem, so whats that leave? about 25-30 babies under the age of 2?
You're acting like bethlehem was a city the size of san francisco or new york. I highly doubt that the murder of 25-30 babies (and don't get me wrong, the murder of one baby is horrible) in a small town would hardly matter to anyone of importance, not to mention, if one looks at that guy josephis (i think thats his name) who recorded many examples and incidencts of king herod killing people because they were a threat to his power, something like that is not totally outside the possibility of reality. Also there are some extra biblical refrences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents

Before I go and answer this, I am kindly going to have to ask you to show me scripture. I have come across lots of people that tell me scriputre says something, only to open up the bible discover they had taken it totally out of context. I am not saying you are wrong, nor am I calling you a liar, but I would like to see where you are getting that from.


I don't know, good point, I'll have to do some research on this. Good point though, I never thought of that.

Once again not trying to be rude, but I am going to kindly ask for the scripture you are getting this from.

Yes I have heard that before, and they are far from being new. In fact were being asked around the 3rd and 4th century. The fact is, Christ is unique among all of those myths. He sacrificed Himself out of His own free will, Gods first and only son, and Jesus is a historical figure, Jesus was also sinless and He subjected Himself to the same tempations and rules all humans live by today, all while still remaining sinless.

As I said, the bible has more substance in it. It doesn't talk about far away places that don't exist here on earth, from the begining to the end almost 100% of the bible takes place on earth (with the exception of heaven and hell) real places, real cities. Substance.

Also Moses was a murderer, but when he found God he didn't murder anyone, mohammad on the other had, was the opposite.