Alexander the great is thought to have been in a coma for several days after his retinue deemed him dead, before actually dying. Otherwise the recorded lack of rigor mortis and puzzlingly absence of putrification would puzzling in the hot weather.

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(November 24, 2011 at 5:00 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Apparently, not even in the Middle Ages - when religious shitheads were running things and ignorance was rampant- did that happen.

http://historymedren.about.com/od/dailyl...d_dead.htm

Quote:At no time during the Middle Ages was there a prevalent fear that people were getting buried alive, and in no known instance did anyone rig up a bell-pull to notify the living. Most medieval people were smart enough to distinguish a living person from a dead one. Throughout history there has been the occasional case of someone getting buried alive, but by no means was this as frequent as the hoax would have you believe.

That they are so uncommon might make it more plausible for an occurrence to be deemed a resurrection. If it happened all the time, then no one would have thought anything of Jesus for repeating a common occurrence that might have been seen from many a riffraff, not to say Jesus wasn't a no good riffraff.

People being presumed dead still happens from time to time

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...orgue.html

Quote:An unconscious grandfather presumed dead by his family woke up yesterday in a morgue.

The frightened 50-year-old screamed to be let free after finding himself zipped up in a body bag inside a mortuary chiller.

Health officials today confirmed the asthmatic man had been taken to a private undertakers on Saturday evening after his family found him unconscious at home and assumed he was dead.

LOL.

Well, it is SOUTH AFRICA.

Quote:The terrified pair ran out of the building into the street after assuming the bellowing was coming from a ghost.

I still think the undertaker might have noticed something amiss when he started his procedures.

Frankly, this whole deal sounds like wishful-thinking on the part of the "family."

(November 24, 2011 at 1:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote: People in a coma are not dead. They breathe, they have a pulse, they piss, shit, and fart.

I really do think the ancients were smart enough to know the difference.

Dead people fart.

(November 25, 2011 at 1:39 pm)Norfolk And Chance Wrote:

(November 24, 2011 at 1:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote: People in a coma are not dead. They breathe, they have a pulse, they piss, shit, and fart.

I really do think the ancients were smart enough to know the difference.

Dead people fart.

Yep. Farts are simply gas in the intestines from chemicals and bacteria. After death, the muscles relax, including the anal sphincter.

I don't believe that Jesus was an actual historical figure. It seems there would be more documentation of his life if he had actually existed. I don't know for sure though, it's just a hunch. However, I am very certain that there is no god, and there is no son of god, no virgin birth, no miracles, the entire Christian religion is nothing more than mythology.

Apologists will try to tell you that he was a nobody to those who would have written the accounts. They like to work in a little underdog narrative. Son of god, miracles left, right, and center. Entirely unremarkable.

(November 25, 2011 at 8:00 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Apologists will try to tell you that he was a nobody to those who would have written the accounts. They like to work in a little underdog narrative. Son of god, miracles left, right, and center. Entirely unremarkable.

Just like what Lucent said about the Trinity, it's having your cake and eating it too.

Jesus' life was the "greatest story ever told", except that he was an unremarkable nobody that never got anyone's attention outside his band of followers.

Here's a quote from the "reliable eye-witness accounts" discussing this insignificant, unremarkable ministry that never got anyone's attention:

Quote:Matthew 4:23-25 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.

Yeah, totally unremarkable ministry. Just some nobody that no one ever paid attention to pretty much.

There are plenty more examples in the Gospel accounts. Herod Antipas wondered if he was John the Baptist reincarnated (Matt 14:1-2). A centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant (Luke 7:1-10). A wealthy woman sought Jesus out to cure her illness (Mark 5:25-34). Two wealthy friends of Jesus convinced a Roman governor to allow a crucified man a burial (John 19:38-42). A wealthy man sought Jesus out to be advised how he might be saved (Mark 10:17-23). John the Baptist, who was himself a successful religious leader, declared Jesus the "Lamb of God" (John 1:29) the one for whom he was to be a forerunner (Matt 3:3). All this is to say nothing of the established clergy at the time, for whom Jesus was a constant thorn in their side, so much that they met on Passover Freaking Eve to conspire against him.

Read the Gospel accounts. If you accept them as a reliable account, you do not have the option of discounting Jesus as an obscure figure.

Yep, D-P. I call that The Great Xtian Paradox.

Jesus was a fuckin' nobody that no one paid any attention to EXCEPT his multitudes of followers who made him so fucking dangerous that the priests had to break every rule in their own book to kill him.

It takes a special kind of asshole to adhere to such an absurd doctrine.

I voted no because Rseasha voted yes.