Naked Ape

Johnny, the true miracle would be to piss on a concrete wall and not leave a mark like that.

Cheers,

Naked Ape

judge

You may wish to less condescending to the sheep of your flock.



But Yes, I will try to show more grace towards you in the future.

All the best

judge

Yes my argument (if one can call it that) is not strong. But is it really any weaker than this.


So one thinks paul should have mentioned this. Maybe maybe not. :huh:

Johnny Scholar

:rolling: i dont know if im rolling cuz im drunk or youre a damn funny guy!!!!!!

Johnny Scholar

good point. i think i am more upset with my former fundamentalist self than anything. of non-thinkers, i was the chief of sinners. maybe i dont give them enough credit.

starling

Hmm... what you might do would require some extra work. Independantly from your required bible readings, you could do some talks about the importance of questioning one's beliefs to weed out the weak ones, and how thinking critically is the surest way to keep from being led astray by foul tempters. Maybe add something about how one should always keep an open mind, to avoid missing revelations because they don't agree with what you assumed so far. If you're really feeling evil, do a speech on doublethink: how two people might both claim to believe something neither believe in, because they're afraid the other will reject them for not believing, however ridiculous the belief. Or on how easy it is to claim a false belief because you're expected to be that way. It's hard branding yourself as a hypocrite, but might be a necessary evil at this point.

And yeah... my commendations to you. That's gotta be a disenheartening situation to be in. At least you're learning first hand how immoral unbelievers can act like believers and sway huge crowds to their bidding. Of course moral atheists can't do that out of their conscience, but people like certain Presidents of certain nations seem to have no problem converting to evangelical Christianity when they think it'll get them more votes. Because you can stand before an audience of people and say, "I have a firm belief in God, and the bible is the truth." when you know better than to believe in either one. And your audience will take your words to heart.

judge

Yeah the more and more I go on I find fundametalism offensive but I am such a sceptic at heart at times and so stubborn that I don't necessaily accept infidel ideas either.

At least I can get this stuff out of my system here.

Johnny Scholar

Critical claim: The idea of a virgin birth was mythologically derived.

christiananswers.net says: Author Patrick Campbell (The Mythical Jesus) and Episcopal Bishop J.S. Spong are two of a number of individuals who have suggested that "...the virgin birth account [is a]...clearly recognized mythological element in our faith tradition whose purpose was not to describe a literal event but to capture the transcendent dimensions of God in the earthbound words and concepts of first-century human beings."

Both men, however, overlook a simple fact: No respectable Jew would have ever condescended to buy into a Greek/Babylonian mythological base for an account dealing with the birth of his/her Messiah.

johnny scholar's comment: virtually no respectable jew ever did buy it. the first-century christians were all nonrespectable jews.

Diogenes the Cynic

Mreover, none of those 1st century Jewish-Christians ever heard of the Virgin Birth anyway. That was a late 1st century invention of Matthew's and it was sold to Gentile converts, not Jews.

I see this a lot in apologetics. They don't seem to realize that most of the Christian Myth was created by pagans, not Jews, and that Pauline Christianity never really found a Jewish audience.

andrewcriddle

One issue is that the alleged parallels between the Gospels and Greek and other myths are not all that close.

The pagan myths mostly seem to be stories about a woman supposedly becoming pregnant after having sexual relations with a God or daimon or something like that.

Andrew Criddle