|
3 registered (kenny_canuck, my1952HD, 1 invisible),
82
Guests and
41
Spiders online. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
38666 Members
55 Forums
183232 Topics
1649110 Posts
Max Online: 1054 @ 07/29/08 07:31 AM
|
|
|
|
|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
|
5
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
9
|
10
|
11
|
|
12
|
13
|
14
|
15
|
16
|
17
|
18
|
|
19
|
20
|
21
|
22
|
23
|
24
|
25
|
|
26
|
27
|
28
|
29
|
30
|
31
|
|
|
|
#1273454 - 02/27/07 08:21 AM
Re: is the bible reliable.
[Re: skitzo420]
|
Old hand
Registered: 12/17/04
Posts: 927
|
Quote:
an intelligent designer leads to an ad infinitum argument, so i dont see how it answers anything. it makes a claim that something exists independent of the universe, without compensating for what made that....it is pointless.
A miracle is knot pointless.
The number of angels dancing on the head of a pin is pointless.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#1273455 - 02/27/07 08:25 AM
Re: the bible is reliable.
[Re: benjamin]
|
Ganja God
Registered: 06/21/00
Posts: 7136
Loc: Vancouver, BC
|
Quote:
I believe the Bible is a reliable source of information for life . Without question it reliably teaches predictable outcomes for behavior . Moreover , the Bible traces the geneology of Jesus Christ. A remarkably preserved record of the Jews also ; not limited to the modern kingdom of Israel
where YHWH is King. I couldn`t help inserting the Izzy thorn. 
The Bible offers two geneologies of Jesus Christ, one from Mary and one from Joseph. If God was Jesus' daddy why did they include Joseph's geneology?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_of_Jesus
"The genealogy of Jesus through either one or both of his earthly parents (Mary and Joseph) is given by two passages from the Gospels, Matthew 1:2–16 and Luke 3:23–38. Both of them trace Christ's line back to King David and from there on to Abraham. These lists are identical between Abraham and David, but they differ radically from that point onward."
From Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible:
...the early Church fathers, in order to make their new faith more palatable to the pagans around them whom they wished to convert, adopted aspects of the Pagan cults mythologies and applied them to their own savior Jesus Christ. A later invention and adaptation of the myth would help to account for the contradictions which occur in the canonized Biblical narratives about the birth of Jesus. Alongside the controversy as to whether the savior’s birth took place in a house or a stable, the Gospel of Luke has shepherds present at the divine birth, and not the Magi as recorded in Matthew. "Luke alone...has the shepherds and the angels, the inn and the manger, the earlier presentation and later finding in the Temple, while Matthew alone has Herod and the Magi, the slaughter of innocents, and the flight to Egypt"(Crossan 1994). The other two canonized accounts of the life of Christ, John and Mark, make no references to the birth story what so ever, and the whole cornerstone of the belief in an immaculate conception is based on these two contradictory accounts. "At the very least, mutual contradiction means that someone is wrong, and it opens the possibility that perhaps none of the Gospel writers is correct in the literalness of their assertions"(Spong 1991).
The Bastard-Messiah
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."
-Psalms 51:5
A number of scholars have stated that the contradictory accounts concerning the birth of Jesus, are because they were later interpolations that were fabricated to cover-up evidence of an illegitimate birth. In response to Christian claims of a divine birth and divinity the "pagan philosopher Celsus, writing in the last quarter of the second century, declares, in the name of both Judaism and paganism, that a cover-up for bastardy must have been the real reason for such claims" (Crossan 1989). Bastards, were outcasts in ancient Jewish culture, ritually unclean according to "the Law", and were referred to with the derogatory name, mamzer. Much like the Hindu untouchables, who are at the bottom of the caste system, a mamzer would have been considered "ritually unclean', and virtually born into a life of either servitude or begging.
Traces of an illegitimate birth can even be seen in the scriptures themselves. The Gospel of Matthew, has Joseph consider divorcing Mary when she suddenly becomes pregnant "before they came together" (Matthew 1:18-19). We are told that "Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly"(Matthew 1:19). One would think that such a righteous figure as this Joseph, would have garnered more space in the Bible, little of his life, and nothing of his death is ever described, and he is likely an invention of the early Christians, created in retaliation to remarks about the illegitimate birth of their savior that were circulating at the time and, as shall be discussed, according to the New Testament itself even during Jesus' own lifetime.
The Gospel of John which has no account of the virgin birth, contradicts the typical Bethlehem nativity story. When Jesus’ former neighbors and countrymen, who also knew his family, point out that he is from Galilee, not Bethlehem as suggested by tradition, and also not of the line of David; "...we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no-one will know where he is from.... How can the Christ come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that the Christ will come from David's seed and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?... Look into it, and you will find that the prophet does not come from Galilee."(John 7:27-52). A situation that may have been remedied by the pen of the authors of Matthew and Luke, although the later Toledoth Yeshu seems to reconcile the two traditions.
The Toledoth Yeshu recount that Jesus was in fact born in Bethlehem to a Miriam, who was betrothed to one, Yohanan of the House of David. Unfortunately the young virgin was tricked by a Joseph Pandera into thinking he was her future husband, and unable to seduce her with lies, he took Miriam by force. As a result of the rape, Miriam found herself both with child and abandoned by Yohanan, who not wanting a deflowered bride headed off to Babylonia. The disgraced Miriam gave birth to Jesus (Yeshu), and the boy proved to be as unruly as his father. After the youthful Jesus showed "shameful disrespect" for the Sages "discussion arose as to whether this behavior did not truly indicate that Yeshu was an illegitimate child and the son of a niddah", meaning that the boy was the product of a sexually impure relationship, (adultery, prostitution, incest, etc.). Questioned on this, Miriam reluctantly admitted that this was the case, and further sealed the boys fate by confessing that she was unclean because of menstruation when she was raped by Pandera. "After this became known, it was necessary for Yeshu [Jesus] to flee to Upper Galilee", (where he was placed in the Gospel of John).
In the oldest Gospel, that of Mark, which like John, also makes no reference to Jesus’ divine birth, or his father Joseph, there is an account recording the rejection of Jesus by members of his hometown, the people refer to him as "the son of Mary" (Mark 6:3), a term which is indicative that there never was a Joseph, and Jesus was a bastard. "In Semitic usage, to refer to a man as the son of his mother was to indicate that his father's identity was uncertain...a long string of Christian copyists (who surely believed in the virgin birth) changed 'the son of Mary' into 'the son of the carpenter and Mary' or just 'son of the carpenter'...[because]... Mark's phrase was offensive" (Smith 1978). "Jane Schaberg, who chairs the religion department at the University of Detroit... contends, to traditionalist scorn, that the unwed Mary was impregnated by a man other than fiancee Joseph and that she was a liberated woman who was 'not identified or destroyed by her relationship with men'"(Ostling 1991).
These facts make it probable that Jesus was not the son of Joseph; had he been so, "the son of Mary" would never have appeared in a Christian text. The probability is confirmed by a number of curious details: (1) Matthew's genealogy of Jesus (1.2--16) refers to only four women besides Mary: they are Tamar, whose children were born of incest; Rahab, the madam of a brothel; Ruth, a non-Israelite, who got her second husband by solicitation, if not fornication, and so became the great-grandmother of David (Ruth 4:21f.); and Bathsheba ("the wife of Uriah"), whose relation with David began in adultery, though she became the mother of Solomon. That the author of a genealogy for a Messiah should have chosen to mention only these four women requires an explanation. The most likely one is that Matthew wanted to excuse Mary by these implied analogies. (2) Each man in the genealogy is said to have begotten his son, until Joseph, of whom it is said, he was "the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus was born" (1.16). (3) The genealogy in Luke says that Jesus was, "as was believed," the son of Joseph (3.23).
If Jesus' birth was in fact irregular, he would have been a ridiculed child in the small country town where he grew up, and we could easily imagine the reasons for his leaving Nazareth... We could also understand the surprising lack of material about his family in the gospels, and the cool or even hostile tone of what little there is...the saying "If anyone...does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and himself too, he cannot be my disciple" (Lk. 14:26), reflects Jesus' own attitude to his family better than his followers. (Smith 1978)
In The Making of the Messiah; Christianity and Resentment, Robert Sheaffer, also suggests that Jesus was a bastard, and believes that this could account for much of Jesus' rebellious attitude against the existing establishment. (As the title of his noteworthy book attests to Sheaffer suggests that Christianity itself is a religion born out of resentment.). "One cannot help but sympathize...with Jesus, who suffered so greatly from the persecution under 'the law' owing to his illegitimate birth, through no fault of his own. One can readily imagine the bitter resentment that he must have felt against the hated, harsh, inflexible law"(Sheaffer 1991).
Sheaffer backs up his theory of an illegitimate birth with statements attributed to Celsus in the third century and the aforementioned medieval Jewish manuscript the Toldoth, which he argues convincingly, could well be a later copy of a much earlier work containing the Jewish version of the life of Jesus.
Origen's third century defense of Christianity, Contra Celsum, quotes Celsus' charge that Jesus "fabricated his birth from a virgin. He came from a poor country woman who earned her living by spinning. She was driven out by her husband, who was a carpenter for trade, as she was convicted of adultery. After she had been driven out by her husband and while she was wandering about in a disgraceful way she secretly gave birth to Jesus".(Sheaffer 1991)
Past critics of the bible have suggested that the virgin birth story was invented to fulfill a prophecy in Isaiah 7:14, which read in an early Greek translation as, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son", (although the original Hebrew text refers to a "young woman" and not a "virgin"). The beginning of the prophecy in Isaiah is particularly unsuitable to the life of Jesus, and account of this prophetic fulfillment only appears in the Gospel of Matthew (1.23). As Professor Smith points out, "Matthew (or the school he drew on) is notoriously unscrupulous in ripping Old Testament verses out of context to make them prophecies of gospel stories" (Smith 1978).
In such cases the starting point was commonly the story; the editor's problem was to find a text that could be forced to fit it. Therefore, we can be almost certain that the story of the virgin birth was also given to him by tradition, not invented from the text he twisted to suit it. If so, where did the tradition come from? Why was the story invented? Perhaps because some of Jesus' followers wanted to make him a match for Hellenistic "divine men" who often had divine fathers. Perhaps also because the irregularity of his birth had to be explained. The motives may have coexisted. (Smith 1978).
The Gospel of Mark, (the earliest of the series, c. 75 a.d.) has no mention of a divine birth, but has Jesus begin his messianic mission after his Baptism by John, when the spirit is said to have descended upon him in the form of a dove. Unlike Mary, "the divine Mother of God", whose historicity and divinity is based upon the conflicting New Testament accounts, the personality of John the Baptist, is not easily denied, as the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus (37-95 ad), referred to him and his strong influence on the Jewish populace a number of times in his Antiquities.
As there is only the most scant references to Jesus as a boy, and the Baptism story is the first event mentioned in all three synoptic Gospels, it is most likely that Jesus was first recognized as the Messiah, (Greek Christ), meaning the "Anointed One", after his initiation by John the Baptist. This idea is strengthened by the fact that the Gnostic group, such as the Basilidians (who formed around the teachings of the second century Christian theologian, Basilides), celebrated Jesus' Baptism, on January 6th, which up until the 4th century had been celebrated as his birthdate, and acknowledged this as the date that Jesus' role as the Christ began. As the ancient Gnostics reasoned, "...the Lord would not have said 'My [father who is in] heaven' (Mt 16:17) unless [he] had had another father, but he would have said simply '[My father]'"-(The Gospel of Philip)
Considering the contradictory accounts of Jesus' birth, and the controversy that surrounded the subject, "...we can readily understand the problem...orthodox theologians faced. Some [groups] were teaching that before Jesus' baptism, he was nobody in particular"(Sheaffer 1991).
Jesus was literally just some poor bastard who wandered into the right place at the right time when the Father needed a certain task to be performed. In this view, "The Christ" or "The Savior" was a divine person, or at least a divine role, that happened to descend upon Jesus of Nazareth when he was baptized; it might as easily have descended upon someone else. The account in Mark of Jesus' baptism seems to support this view. All of Jesus' previous sins were wiped away by John's baptism, at which time this new divine mission descended upon him like a mantle, immediately eradicating the stigma of his illegitimate birth.(Sheaffer 1991).
Like the fairy tale stories of the poor little child whose real parents are a King and Queen, a lineage that will one day see them restored to their rightful inheritance of the kingdom; the Christian's fabricated the story of the Virgin birth of Baby Jesus in order to justify the supremacy of their faith. The only two Gospel accounts of the immaculate conception in Matthew and Luke, only more fully confirm this, they are utterly contradictory, and as they can't both be right, their similarities lay clearly in their mutual fabrications. Indeed, these stories, like other aspects of the Christian mythos obviously mark further adaptations from existing traditions:
Early Christians demanded a virgin birth for their Savior out of simple imitativeness.... Zoraster, Sargon, Perseus, Jason, Miletus, Minos, Asclepius, and dozens of others were God-begotten and virgin-born. Even Zeus, the heavenly father who begot many other "virgin born" heroes, was himself called Zeus Marnas, "Virgin-born Zeus"....
After Christianity was established as the official religion of the Roman empire... church fathers tried to discredit all other virgin births by claiming that the devil had devised them, and maliciously placed them in a past time, so they would pre-date the real Savior. Justin Martyr wrote, "When I am told that Perseus was born of a virgin, I realize that here again is a case in which the serpent and deceiver has imitated our religion."(Walker 1983).
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#1273456 - 02/27/07 08:29 AM
Re: is the bible reliable.
[Re: skitzo420]
|
Ganja God
Registered: 06/21/00
Posts: 7136
Loc: Vancouver, BC
|
Quote:
well then why even refer to a god? or jesus as some divine being? whats the point? its all just becoming symbolic now? see how easy it is to break down the idea of something that isnt there and then to mold it to fit what you think?
maybe we should just stick to the cold hard facts that we have, the ones i have been talking about, evolution, anthropology, astro-physics. those are all answers that dont make any claims you cant test and see for yourself to be true.
Those are all theories still and subject to change. They seem like reasonable theories to me, but they may be modified as we find out more.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#1273457 - 02/27/07 09:31 AM
Re: is the bible reliable.
[Re: chrisbennett]
|
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 05/08/04
Posts: 2991
Loc: detroit area MI usa
|
Quote:
In the oldest Gospel, that of Mark, which like John, also makes no reference to Jesus’ divine birth, or his father Joseph, there is an account recording the rejection of Jesus by members of his hometown, the people refer to him as "the son of Mary" (Mark 6:3), a term which is indicative that there never was a Joseph, and Jesus was a bastard. "In Semitic usage, to refer to a man as the son of his mother was to indicate that his father's identity was uncertain...
At least now we know where the phrase: "Jesus, You Bastard!" comes. Thanks for this just in time for the "discovery of Christ's Tomb". Mikey Evans, CHairman, Oakland County NORML
Quote:
NEW YORK (Feb. 26) -- Filmmakers and scholars on Monday unveiled two stone ossuaries they said could have contained the remains of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, but several other scholars derided claims in a new documentary as unfounded and contradictory to basic Christian beliefs
"I don't think that Christians are going to buy into this," Pfann said. "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."
http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/scholars-clergy-criticize-jesus/20070226101109990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#1273458 - 02/27/07 09:50 AM
Re: is the bible reliable.
[Re: chrisbennett]
|
Old hand
Registered: 12/17/04
Posts: 927
|
Quote:
How does intelligent design translate into the Bible being a reliable source of information?
Is a puffer a reliable source for food?
Just because a fish has poison inside, it does not follow that it is not reliable as a source for food.
Just because a particular library, known as the Bible, or any library, for that matter, has poison inside, in the figurative sense of falsehoods as the "poison", it has little if no bearing on the reliability of the Bible as a source of information, just as the puffer is any more or any less reliable as a source for food.
Quote:
There is no evidence of DNA theory in the Bible.
The Bible has no evidence of the gene on Chromosome 19 which has been linked to Alzheimer's disease.
But the Bible does REVEAL evidence on the theory of the Book of Remembrance.
Malachi 3:16 Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.
The theory of ID reminds me of a signature thing.
Suppose that everything is Creativity.
It's been observed that Nature is very artistic.
Usually there is an artist behind the creativity.
Or if science is a better, objective expression of such resolution, call it entropy then, if art is too subjective of a case.
There's the ARTIST behind the art.
Or there's DESIGN behind the entropy.
Someone asked me one time while high was sitting on a stone fence much like the type found around cemetaries and church yards.
So I'm sitting there in Deep Thought musing upon the Nature of Entropy (or is it ART?) and this old man comes up to me, out of nowhere, and he kind of looked like Inspector Gadget, believe it or not.
...and he askes me what I'm thinking about.
Kind of weird to slay the fleeced, I mean say the least, what's up with this dude asking me such a thing???
So high smiled and replied entropy.
To which he immediately winked with a gleem in his eye, like he knew what I was thinking already and asked me what was different about the house across from me?
I laughed 'cause it was so obvious, the house was all in shambles, breaking up and the yard and lawn all overgrown.
So he asks me why is it like this?
I laughed again, 'cause it seemed like such an obvious answer.
Nobody is taking care of it.
So he looks at me again with a twinkle in the eye, and asks me if Nature is like that house?
I said no, it's not falling apart.
And he says to me, because someone is taking care of it.
It was a bizarre encounter.
So what about this ID thing?
Supopose Nature is like a work of art.
Now you would think, when an artist creates a work of art, like lets say an artist like Michelangelo , he's got a Signature, especially in the STYLE of his art.
Picasso has a signature too.
So this is the thing.
Is there an ID signature in sunset, in tree, in smile, in love?
And if there is, how is it recognized?
Perhaps, and this is just a conjecture of sorts, is it possible that the ID signature is the Tree of Life?
And has it been signed with Nature's very own TOE ?
Or maybe the SIGNature is like this bird?
There is a bird hidden in this image
©1997 IllusionWorks, L.L.C.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#1273460 - 02/27/07 11:38 AM
Re: is the bible reliable.
[Re: Big Bat]
|
Stoner
Registered: 03/27/06
Posts: 524
Loc: Ottawa
|
Quote:
Facts to me and you are different!
actually what makes them facts is their objectivity. the same results from the same experiment conducted by different people. like a mathematical equation can be worked on by different people all across the world but when if it's a fact they all reach the same results. once somebody has different results, you revise it
when you refer to what it must feel like to kill a man. that is subjective knowledge. you can't make facts out of it. because the feeling wouldn't exist without YOUR point of view. facts are suppose to exist outside of people's points of view. just like you can't form a theory or law about the sexual experience that would let virgins understand what sex is like without having ever had it. you need the subjective experience.
what we have here is two different forms of knowledge.
spirituality for me falls into the second one. listen to your heart, that's totally subjective. one time i had what they call a mystical experience. i can't use words to convey it to you. the only facts they can make about it is comparing what i felt to what you felt to what he felt and she felt and try to derive some generalization. it still wouldn't explain the phenomenon to ppl who've never had one.
cold hard facts are useful but so is subjective spirituality. you need both.
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#1273461 - 02/27/07 12:58 PM
Re: is the bible reliable.
[Re: a big deuce]
|
Pooh-Bah
Registered: 09/21/04
Posts: 1931
Loc: l7
|
Quote:
cold hard facts are useful but so is subjective spirituality. you need both.
Quote:
Philosophy is ... infected by a broader tendency of contemporary intellectual
life; scientism. Scientism is actually a special form of idealism, for it puts one
type of human understanding in charge of the universe and what can be said
about it. At its most myopic it assumes that everything there is must be
understandable by the employment of scientific theories like those we have
developed to date—physics and evolutionary biology are the current
paradigms—as if the present age were not just one in the series.—Thomas
Nagel (1986)
http://www.clarku.edu/students/philosophyclub/docs/nagel.pdf
Another way to approach this seems to be quality vs. quantity. All of the quantification of what it means to have a pain in your right foot in terms of neurons firing, nerves transmitting messages and so on does not convey the quality of the experience of having a pain in your foot any more than looking at a map of Paris conveys the experience of being in Paris.
Religion/Spirituality might be understood as a way to relate these subjective experiences, for science simply doesn't do that except insofar as reduces those experiences to quantifiable things.
Quote:
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows: --
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." -- The City's gone, --
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, -- and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
Horace Smith, http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1904.html
Oh, and one more---why not?
Quote:
Well, this old ball of blue will go on spinning around
If you're staying behind, take good care of the ground
Just let go of my wings, don't lock up our dreams
Don't deny us the sky, hey, we'll see you around
Barlow/Weir, http://www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/songfile/FLYAWAY.HTM
Oh, one more, why not?
Quote:
"Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the "nature of man." It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity to the constantly lurking possibility of deepest error. For this reason no amount of scientific rigor attains to the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the standard of the idea of science."
Martin Heidegger, "What is Metaphysics?"
skitzo, have you ever read "The Question Concerning Technology"? Those whacky Germans get better and better after Nietzsche...
If there are no moral facts, skitzo, what's wrong with being religious? It sounds an awful lot like you are passing moral judgement...Do you take your Nietzcshe seriously, or do you take seriousness Nietzschely? =]
_________________________
"Dreams are lies"
"Rtav writes well but has poor attitude." --JodieGR
CONTRA MUNDUM!
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
Moderator: BongPixie, CaliGrower, chrisbennett, Dana Larsen, FranCouver, Fred_the_Plumber, frmrgrl, goodster, jacob, JodieEmery, Marc Scott Emery, muadhib, puff_tuff, stinkweed
|
Previous Topic
Index
