Clouseau

[QUOTE=Toto;4531855]Is the popularity of that book dependent on the popularity of the Bible?

I suppose that people take them in order to prevent them being read. A local bookshop stopped stocking them a while back, maybe that was the reason.

Roger Pearse

That criminality is indeed related to low intelligence .

All the best,

Roger Pearse

ksen

Should they have just gone down to their local Kinko's and run off a few hundred copies?

Toto

Please bring this back to the topic, or start a new thread in an appropriate forum.

Thanks.

Toto

Political power and free speech have been split off here

Clouseau

[QUOTE=mountainman;4531782]Is that saying very much?

I don't believe that anyone can be described as an intellectual who is also a censor. But was Julian's own faith any more than fabrication?

All Roman emperors, even the most liberal, knew one thing very well- that their survival depended on exploitation of millions. Almost all of their words and actions may be interpreted in the light of that fact. Potentates are never the people to go to for independent, objective advice.

However, the organic wholeness of the Bible is apparent to even an untutored eye. Serious study reveals detail that is compelling. Nothing else compares, in literature, in other religions. It is certainly not a mess, which has been claimed but not supported.

mountainman

Yes, for a start it is saying that there are people who are in
fact convinced that the "Constantine Bible" is not any form
of compelling uncomparable wholeness, rather a fabrication,
a fiction and a monstrous tale.

History tells us that Julian did was himself censored by the
Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, and not the other way around.
In fact, perhaps the most astounding thing that mainstream
dogma needs to understand, is that Cyril is not refuting the
faith of Julian, but Julian's treatise (presumably entitled)
"Against the Galilaeans". Cyril starts by claiming Julian is
essentially "making up lies". This wont do.


The emperors were largely a bunch of uneducated mafia thugs.
You are not really telling me anything here. They were slave
masters on the grandest of scales; enactors of genocide.

You keep asserting this paragraph about the compelling
uncomparable organic wholeness, without any external
evidence, as an admirer of art pointing at a bad painting.

The new testament is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.
This assessment, of the emperor Julian, is not wihout merit.

Doug Shaver

You evaded the question.

I didn't ask you anything about what you say it is not. I asked about what you say it is and about your claim about evidence for its being that.

Clouseau

[QUOTE=mountainman;4533635]It is saying that one person said that the Bible is a fabrication, a fiction and a monstrous tale. It does not mean either that he was not mistaken or that he believed what he said. It is saying, we now learn, that Julian was 'arguably' the best of 'largely a bunch of uneducated mafia thugs'. So it may not count for much if Julian was 'well versed in other religions and was arguably the most well read and studious Roman emperor'.

Cyril did not censor, though he did censure Julian's work. One might very aptly quote from his remarks, also.

'But since (Julian) asserts - on what head I don't know! ... that there is nothing serious or useful in our beliefs, well! Let him prove it! Surely he isn't going to leave his assertion bare and without proof?'

Why not? Is free speech not permitted?

Hardly the people to go to for impartial advice on religious matters, then.

It's quite contrary to the spirit of debate, I realise. But what else is to be done when requests to explain why the Bible is 'a mess' are not answered? Surely one is not going to leave one's assertion bare and without proof?

How does one know that a painting is bad? Is beauty not in the eye of the beholder? Is the best-selling status of the Bible simply a symptom of bad taste?

Yet another instance of this unsupported allegation. The irony!

Because? Despite his 'mafiosi' background? Let's make a start. Why is the Bible a mess?

Clouseau

[QUOTE=Doug Shaver;4533655]On the contrary.

But you can't dictate how others will reply. You cannot legislate against logic.

Why should I give evidence of my claim in post #100, when no-one has provided a single word of evidence for a previous claim made in #18, despite requests for that evidence?