aa5874

Who wrote the NT and claimed Jesus was the Child of a Ghost and was taken up in a CLOUD?

Who wrote that Jesus have MANSIONS in Heaven?

Who compiled the NT Canon?

Listen to Origen.

"Against Celsus" 1.32 Even ORIGEN BELIEVED Jesus was some kind of a SPACE ALIEN or a GHOST MAN.

bacht

I thought these kinds of arguments had already been tackled by Pharisees before the common era (cf Ezra's Oral Torah).

We know that the Sadducees' 'literalist' approach was already being challenged by Hasmonean times. And the post-70 rabbis had to discard much of the Levitical rules because the sacrificial cult was removed.

Do we even know if such rules were applied in the time they were written? Some of this could just have been wishful thinking from stringent priests.

Toto

Except that Harris is explaining why the Bible should not be taken as an authority on morality, and most fundamentalists never seem to mention the parts about stoning people, and a few other things.

The liberal Christians who claim that fundamentalists are mistaken about the Bible have no answer to the question of why the Bible should be treated as any sort of guide to life or salvation, or why there is any value to Christian belief at all.

Toto

IIRC the Jews never followed these rules, or always found a loophole. The Muslims took them literally.

No Robots

The Christians, in using the Bible, made it serve purposes altogether different from its original design, a dogmatic chain to fetter the intellect; the Jews use the Bible freely and rationally, because they are in possession of the key which does not idolize every word, but applies it to various needs in accordance with the varying time.--"The Attitude of Christian scholars toward Jewish literature" / Kaufmann Kohler. In Studies, addresses, and personal papers, p. 417.

Perspicuo

When those who wrote the Bible scribbled that "King X built the walls around Y city" or that "There was a flood" they meant what they said.

If not, what they wrote would have been different.

It's not that atheists are stupid for thinking the Bible is stupid. It's that most religionists have found that there are things in the Bible that cannot correspond to reality, so they don't trust it, but they are not allowed to call it stupid.

So we basically have an agreement between reasoning religionists and athiests, that neither trust the Bible. Only that atheists call it rubbish, and religionists speak of "sophisticated reading", "tradition", "magisterium", "hermeneutics".

But it's all a load of hogwash words so as to not say what is obvious: they do not and cannot trust what the Bible says.

They pretend that the Bible is telling them this great big deal of things, when it's them who are reading these things into the scripture. What sounds great they will post it and make Hallmark cards with it, etc. What they don't like, what doesn't fit, they will exuse it with grandiose fuzzy words.

They don't trust it, and we don't either.

bacht

But surely the Bible is also a record of human thought and behaviour. We don't have to use it as a guide to modern life in order to study it as an artifact from pre-modern peoples.

Dave31

It makes perfect sense when people realize just how utterly dishonest you are in your pseudo-skeptical tirades against Acharya and her work.

I can't help but notice that you don't go after Dr. Hallet, John Jackson (who cited Hallet) or anyone else who writes about Pygmies You only go after Acharya for mentioning Pygmies and from there you turn it into a UFO convention complete with an image of an alien at the bottom of your article due to your own utter lack of (selective) comprehension.

Dr. Jean Pierre Hallet has received over 100 awards and honors including being nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in the 70's for his work with the Pygmies. Hallet is discussed in at least 20 books published by university presses. Why aren't you going after them, GDon?

GDon is simply tossing spaghetti on the wall hoping something will stick. Epic fail.

GakuseiDon begins his article with a falsehood:

I've never, not one time, made that comment. So that's a completely false claim. GDon's entire article is a straw man with an endless stream of quote-mining out of context to prop up his 8 year long smear campaign against Acharya S.

Here's another example of intellectual dishonesty by GDon where he quotes Acharya's article titled, Mysteries of the World. GDon says "Acharya makes a strange connection between "little people" and "aliens":

GDon conveniently skips the fact that Acharya was quoting or citing someone else, who was properly cited and he also skips this quote from the top of that list:

Acharya herself doesn't even use the word "alien" anywhere in that article. She is quoting or citing others, which GDon completely failed to note.

Here's another example where GDon says:

GDon cites a "Jan 2011 blog entry." Even though, in bold Acharya says: "In posting this video, I am only interested in what the highly connected Dr. Wernher von Braun allegedly told Carol, as I think it's important."

GDon skips the comments by Acharya that destroys his entire selective premise. GakuseiDon's smear campaign against Acharya on this Pygmy issue is based entirely on false premises. GDon's comprehension of what Acharya was actually saying is a complete divorce from reality. Everybody here knows better than to expect accuracy or intellectual honesty from GakuseiDon (or AAbe) whenever discussing Acharya's work.

Out of 5 or 6 books by Acharya only Christ Conspiracy mentions Pygmies across a mere few pages but, leave it to GDon to use it to bludgeon her entire body of work with over 2,100 pages of text, 5,700 footnotes/citations and 300+ images.

This whole Pygmy issue is nothing more than another one of GakuseiDon's distraction fallacies to avoid discussion of his own belief in Jesus.

Pygmies in 'The Christ Conspiracy'

Here's 30 year archaeologist and professor of archaeology, Dr. Ken Feder, citing Acharya (calling her a "scholar") for debunking Zecharia Sitchin's work on the topic of the Annunaki in his book, Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology

Who are the Anunnaki?

How come he gets it but for GDon and AAbe it's over their heads?

:huh:

Toto

Please stop repeating this. Hallet may have done good work on many levels, but there is no reason to accept the Pygmy origin myths as having any validity.

I do not have the obsession with Acharya S that Don seems to demonstrate, but I think that she is a part of the New Age scene and feels a need to treat New Age ideas with a certain amount of deference, even when they are crazy. Sort of analogous to all of the liberal secularists in SBL who feel a need to defer to Christian beliefs in god.

But I could be wrong.

Dave31

Well, I wasn't even responding to you - I was responding to GDon, who, apparently hadn't read it yet. GDon needs to remove the falsehoods from his article.

As I already explained to you, "that's a complete misunderstanding. Her whole point is that further research is needed but if confirmed it could be very significant."

You've been reading the trash from GDon rather than reading the material straight from Acharya herself.

Pygmies in 'The Christ Conspiracy'

Or are you simply inadvertently admitting that you have a biases against Dr. Jean Pierre Hallet who has received over 100 awards and honors including being nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in the 70's for his work with the Pygmies. Hallet is discussed in at least 20 books published by university presses and none of them had a problem with Dr. Hallet.