aa5874

Josephus wrote a history of the Jews up to around 92 CE, he gave NO indication that he was aware of any offspring of the Holy Ghost named Jesus or indicated that there were followers of such an entity.

Josephus did not write that John the Baptist ever mentioned anyone called Jesus or that John the Baptist was a Christian, or baptized the offspring of the Holy Ghost at all.



There are eyewitness accounts of Jesus ascending through the clouds, they are eyewitness acounts of Jesus making his own face shine like the sun and bringing DEAD prophets to life, and there are eyewitness accounts of Jesus walking on water.

Peter and the disciples saw him do those things, is that what you call good evidence?

That's fiction.



Atomic energy is NOT a RELIGION.

That's it, Jesus was just an idea put forward by anonymous writers and the idea got its power from Constantine.

Jesus of the NT was NOT a man, he was a God and Man, a fictitiuos character, a myth. Jesus had no POWER.

Jesus is irrelevant, just like Apollo, Zeus, Dionysus and Achilles, if ideas have power in THEMSELF.

Booky

:devil3: My point was that I showed myself as correct by word and by link,

while you are just "nay saying" and senseless denials.

I say it is petty to deny Jesus when it is the followers of Jesus that affront you.

Would I affront Einstein when the subject is his theory of relativity, not if I wanted to be respected.

I like Alexander very much, and I say to preach such famous people as him and Jesus then we must first aspire in rising to their level, or else any denial is a show of weakness.

:bulb:

Booky

:Cheeky: That was my point that Josephus wrote in negative terms about Christains and negative about Jesus and John the Baptist and it is his negativity that gives the Josephus account credibilty that there was in fact the man Jesus and the basic events told in the Gospels, not the miracles.

:huh: I have no love for the recorded miracles myself, so my point was only saying that there is contemporary evidence that a real person we call Jesus (Yesu) did live and die at that time.

The Muslims say Jesus (Isu) was a great phophet (without Divinity) and that works okay for me.

The miracles have no real value for my kind of followers so I see no reason to argue the credibility of miracles or not.

When I exclude the miracles then the doctrines remains, and it is the doctrines that do count.

:frown: Planet of the Apes part II, and the followers made a God out of the bomb.

So the concept and my point stands.

:devil3: I am not equating miracles as "POWER" but the ideas do have power within themselves.

It might be easy to down play "Appolo and Zeus" now but the Empire of Rome was built on top of their backs by turning the ideals into reality.

That equates as real power in my perspective.

:bulb:

elevator

If you claim the existence of an intelligent agent, or God as a Creator as you put it, then how is that not a supernatural claim? The very concept of a God is a supernatural one, so it doesn't matter whether or not you deny the validity of religious denominations and certain religious doctrines; the fundamental claim of most religions is that a governing and creating being exists at the bottom of it all. How is that not a supernatural claim? If you claim that it is not, I must ask you to provide your definition of both “supernatural” and “God”.

I would love to hear what your reasoning is behind this last paragraph? How would evolution from a lower-state to a higher-state be evidence of an intelligent designer and the opposite evidence of the non-existence of an intelligent designer? I don't follow that reasoning at all. Isn't it reasonable to assume that an all-powerful creator would create life-forms in a perfect state? Similarly isn't it unreasonable to assume that natural evolution would start of with something very complex and “evolve down into a degraded state”? The evidence for evolution is massive, Booky. What would be intelligent about designing a creature that was not perfect? Especially if you had the power to do just that?

No, no. You make the mistake of thinking that scientists are deliberately trying to disprove God with what they do; like there's some grand conspiracy here. God, in most cases, has nothing to do with scientific research. Scientists reports their findings in as unbiased and honest way as possible. If the findings of a biologist contradict the belief that life was created by God; then he is not going to lie and pretend that his results didn't show what they showed just to conform to religious beliefs about said subject. Scientists do not have some secret agenda against the existence of God. In fact a vast number of scientists believe in God.

I don't wish to argue the definition of “infidel”, but my dictionary says:

1. a person who does not accept a particular faith
2. a person who has no religious faith whatsoever; unbeliever
3. (loosely) a person who disbelieves or doubts a particular theory, belief or creed; skeptic

I was, of course, referring to your comment about the “idiots” But no matter, there is no lack of less-than-polite exchanges between believers and non-believers.

Exactly. How can you say that my comment was contradictory when it was you who said it, not me? I disagree firmly; nothing about DNA is intelligently designed. Again, the molecular evidence for evolution will show you many examples of this.

See my comment above. I think you have this turned upside down.

All sources I have seen have put Buddha as the source for the above quote, but I am, of course, not going to deny that Gandhi may have used it. So sure, I can compromise.

Booky

:Cheeky: You are exactly right to seek a definition of those two terms.

I am saying that the religions have so extremely perverted the very concept (and truths) about "God" that you (most people) have that twisted version of the reality based on the common wrong perceptions.

1) Supernatural; would be some thing that is fundementally imposible.
2) God; is some incredibly strange force that has before and does continue to effect reality in intelligent ways. And that effect can be a negative effect from our perspective - like a destructive hurricane.

The thing that I find is that the Creator / God is distorted by the so-called miracles described in the various scriptures while the reality is a far more practical and restricted entity that we call God.

The telling of supernatural miracles is the biggest source of the confussions and the misunderstandings of what "God" is all about.

That is my point that God is not really supernatural at all and that is a human error and in things like human War then God can help on D-Day but we had to do the physical fighting or else it would not have happened. We needed God (says me) and God needed us which most people fail to see that God is not all powerful as religions pretend because God is subject to reality just as humanity is also.

God still has some forms of power like healing a person (as Dr. McCoy did) and God is smarter in ways but we are His smartest components, and supernatural would only be a proof in stuff like magic and not intelligence.

Of course this and I are both unOrthodox and I am a true heretic indeed.

:frown: If we are to accept the fact that life began on earth by creation or happen-chance then that beginning put life and us people on an upward path to improvement thus whether we call it a God or an evolutionary process of improvements and that makes the origin to be an intelligent process.

The idea that if God created mankind then we had to be created perfect is one huge big assumption that is not supported by scripture or otherwise.

When we made the Space Shuttle then it blew up a couple times and we improved it so it was made perfect at first and it evolves forward.

In the Bible telling (that everyone seems to agree on) it says that God created a group of creatures called Angles and a third of those Angles turned rebellious and made war in the Heavens and so the scriptures tell us that God's earlier creation screwed up big time. So saying that God must create perfect inventions is not a sound doctrine at all. In fact evolution is the only sensible way of making or creating anything.

I agree very much with evolution except I see God as the force and the intelligence behind all the evoluting.

:worried: There is no sensible arguement against that.

If you see the high Priest of science as being so benevolent, then I will not argue against that.

:Cheeky: I understand that is what the English language declares, but I maintain that is an incorrect religious meaning of the word.

:wave: That is funny, I am so pitiful, since I forgot about apologizing to the idiots. :rolling:

:huh: Of course I am trying to turn it upside down - and right side up where it belongs.

We all know that DNA is a very complex science and thus intelligent.
The designer part is in me declaring that intelligence of such kinds do not happen by chance - thus intelligent design.

Proof of evolution is a proof of intelligent activity - that remains my point.

:jump:

elevator

I certainly agree that God is an incredibly strange thing. And every time I debate someone it seems to be getting stranger. It seems like everyone has different definitions, different experiences, a different ultimate understanding of God and what God is, the question of his existence and to what extent he just created or if he is still actively participating in the development of the universe and the life within it. Not to mention that different cultures have vastly different accounts of creation and the nature of God. And if that was not enough, there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God. You find evidence of God in the apparent presence of intelligent design. Where you see design, however, I see well-researched natural phenomena with natural explanations (that are, in most cases, testable and observable). While I am in absolute awe of the grandeur of our universe and the diversity of life on our planet, I see nothing divine about it. If I were to lend credence to the claims of everyone I debated I’d believe a lot of strange things, I tell you!

Oh yes, believers who accept evolution and who are able to consolidate it with their faith is nothing new. I think it is great that they are able to do that. It is one step in the right direction. It does of course limit God’s participation in creation to that of creating the first primitive life (depending on how you define life – perhaps as the first self-replicating cell?) and letting evolution continue from that point on. Since science has no definitive answer on how life arose in the first place; my answer to that question would be that I don’t know. But I still see no evidence of God in the equation – we don’t even know if God exists. As I have said so many times before; there is nothing reasonable about explaining an unknown with another unknown. If you believe in God; fair enough, you’ll believe that God set it all in motion; but it is ultimately no argument for its value as truth.

There is nothing religious or dogmatic about the scientific method; hence the analogy to a priesthood is, in my opinion, absurd.

Seriously, if you use a non-dictionary definition of a term or one that you made up yourself, how am I supposed to know what you are talking about? You were criticizing this board for using that particular term, when I can assure you it was established with the dictionary definition of the word in mind.

Complexity doesn’t imply design. Evolution works through natural selection and genetic drift, not divine guidance. Again, the only place I see room to enter God into the equation is abiogenesis, and even then you are left with the task of proving that God exists and performed this act of creation. I don’t think any of your arguments thus far have provided that proof.

The exact same goes for the origin of the universe. Complexity doesn't imply design. And the only place to enter God into the equation is at the moment of the "big bang" when all the matter in the universe came to be. But again you are left with the task of proving that God exists or that an intelligent cause of the universe is more likely than a natural cause. Again, I don't think any of your arguments thus far have provided that proof.

aa5874

Where did Josephus write negative about Christians? Which book is that? Josephus wrote nothing about Christians. Zero.

Josephus did not write anything negative about John the Baptist. He wrote negative about Herod who executed John the Baptist.

And Josephus wrote zero about Jesus of the NT. Antiquities of the Jews18.3.3 is not authentic.

The Muslims say Jesus was a prophet, the Christians say he was a god and a man. At least one of them or both don't really know who Jesus was. You think you know who he really was?

We all know Jesus was fundamentally fiction.
No, when you remove the miracles you are left with fiction.

You must be logical at all times.

If the authors of the NT claimed Jesus performed miracles and he did not ,then the authors wrote fiction. That is so basic.

show_no_mercy

If you remove the supernatural claims from the NT, then Christianity makes no sense. The doctrine of Christianity isn't morality for the sake of morality, it's morality for the sake of saving your eternal soul. The doctrine of Christianity is to accept Jesus as your personal savior and act like him - to be "Christ-like". Christianity without the supernatural is like a book with no words.

Toto

This thread is being moved to ~Elsewhere~ .

Booky

:frown: All that is fine by me because I do not want to convert you or anyone.

I thought this Board was about Biblical Criticism and not Heathen that simply deny God in every form.

And now the Moderator is moving this thread out to the Forum's waste land - and I sure do not appreciate that.

All that is far too much for me, and I will leave this Forum.

I am not really talking negative about this Forum, as I just had a wrong impression of it before I ever registered, and it is I that was proved wrong for being here.

I am still registered here and I am "Subscribed" to this thread, so if I get any PM or future replies here then I will get an email notice, and if it really calls for it then I will reply again in the future, but it is my intention to let the thread fade away and I will leave here on peaceful terms.

I have been recommended to another forum called Pagans and I might try posting there.

Perhaps I can do some thing simple like explain to them the religious definition of "Pagan" without dispute? Never know.

:huh: