Sheshbazzar

Rennia, If you haven't yet noticed, I have been a participant in that thread, and I was the one who in Post #71 of that thread, was, that "other skeptic" playing the "Ace in the hole card" on the value of the entire subject with my statement;
A statement that certainly would seem to qualify for ;
"I then feel like head butting my monitor a few times and suddenly discover a whole new ability to speak fluent Klingon^^."
Really rennia, as a skeptic, I am not at all sympathetic to Jewish or to Christian traditions, interpretations, or to their byzantinian doctrinal concerns.
I analyse the texts as being works of propaganda, and investigate to what ends it was that this propaganda material was being implemented.

Philosopherjay is willing to "go out on a limb" in drawing his own inferences and conclusions from the details that the texts do supply, as well as those details that those same texts so glaringly omit.

My accounting of the NT as being little more than a crudely assembled collection of distorted myths and urban legends, interspersed with hundreds of latter church theologically contrived insertions and passages by pseudonymous authors, tends to discredit any integrity of the collective whole, or of any of its individual plots, or characters alleged words or acts.
In short, with respect to the NT, it is of little matter to me, what inferences or conclusions my fellow skeptics might draw from its various fairy-tales.

Ben C Smith

Ben.

Ben C Smith

1. No, he is not.
2. Even if he were correct, it would still be irritating.

Ben.

arnoldo

I wish Mr. Shilling was correct since life would be so much simpler. Basically the golden rule would be "do what thou whilt" and the meaning of life would be "eat, drink and be merry"

schilling.klaus

Smith is just spreading the usual Eusebianist desinformations in order to deceive mankind.
Irritating it could be only for hylics, not for pneumatics.
There's absolutely no reason for being merry and no meaning of life in this world.

Klaus Schilling

arnoldo

Nihilism? I would argue that "survival of the fittest" or "eat or be eaten" would be an excellent meaning of life from a social darwinist perspective.

spin

"[F]airy tales"? You're mixing your genres a bit there, Sheshbazzar.


spin

arnoldo

It's of little interest to you but not to real scholars

Johnny Skeptic

Whatever the truth is, it is a virtual given that no God has revealed it through Bible prophecies. No rational person would believe that a God exists who is not able to convince everyone that he is able to predict the future, and always makes indisputable prophecies. I wish to distinguish disputable prophecies from false prophecies. A false prophecy is a prophecy that does not come true. A disputable prophecy does not necessarily have to be a false prophecy. Even if all Bible prophecies are true prophecies, they have failed to convince the majority of the people in the world that they are true prophecies. If Pat Robertson accurately predicted when and where a natural disaster would occur, month, day, and year, that would be far less disputable than any Bible prophecy. In my opinion, no prophecies at all would be much better than 100% disputable prophecies. That is because the Bible says that God is not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), and yet Bible prophecies have needlessly cause lots of confusion. That is sufficient evidence that the God of the Bible does not exist.

If a God inspired the Bible, there are not any doubts whatsoever that he would be able to convince more people to love him and to accept him without unfairly interfering with their free will. It would certainly not have been unfair for Jesus to accurately predict what the names of the Roman emperors would be for the next 200 years, and their dates of birth and death, which would surely have caused more people to become Christians. That is a reasonable assumption since historically, many people have accepted all kinds of outlandish religions based upon much less convincing evidence than that. In addition, Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce attracted a lot of followers based upon a lot less convincing evidence than that.

Since Jesus made some predictions, Christians cannot get away with claiming that he did not want to use prophecy to try to influence people in future generations.

Why doesn't God consider the spread of the Gospel message to be important enough to tell people about it himself?

Why does God only want people to have enough food to eat if they are able to obtain it through human effort?

Under many under conditions of chance and circumstance, you would not have been a Christian today, and you would have been just as certain of your worldview as your are now. I am not impressed with a God who allows what people believe to be determined by chance and circumstance.

If a God exists, he could easily telepathically communciate the same messages to everyone in the world, thereby discouraging dissent instead of needlessly inviting dissent. What would be wrong with that?

Clivedurdle

What if your brother has a plank in his eye and you only have a speck in yours?