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(January 22, 2017 at 9:42 am)Tazzycorn Wrote: Jim Jones wasn't a scammer? There are a myriad of miriads of accounts of people being lead to their deaths by conmen and charlatans. There is no evidence that on at least some levels christianities are much different.
I've always wondered about all the Christians that recanted on threat of death. Its funny you don't seem to hear about them. Also the proportion of who recanted and who chose martyrdom.
In the face of torture and horrible ways to die I would recant.
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!
(January 22, 2017 at 9:21 am)chimp3 Wrote: Imagine meeting a very, very joyouslly excited man who could not wait to tell you a story. He tells you about a man who turned an office water cooler into wine, brought a rotting corpse back to life, caused a herd of pigs to drown themselves, attacked a group of bankers with a whip, healed cancers and blindness with a touch, and is volunteering to be tortured to death so I can be relieved of the burdens of my human weaknesses.All I have to do is drop my job and responsibilities and this fellow will take me to this magical man. Aside from considering the potential of having a friend who can make water into wine and terrorize bankers I would move as far away from this crazy person as possible. Why should I lend this absurd tale any credence simply because it comes from the iron age?
And yet people do give such stories credence, and make life changing decisions based on nothing more than a story and a feeling. That a handful of people believed the stories and promoted them does not speak to the truth of the stories themselves. Even the most ridiculous story in the world will find its own group of gullible proponents.
January 22, 2017 at 11:07 pm (This post was last modified: January 22, 2017 at 11:09 pm by vorlon13.)
The disciples of Jesus, hmmm.
The Jewish God sends His Jewish son to preach to the Jews in fulfillment of Jewish law and Jewish prophecy. The Son collects 12 other Jews in his retinue, and among other things he preaches to His fellow Jews is to follow the Jewish law even closer than the current crop of Jewish leaders do.
OK, 2000 years pass (m/l) and look at current mainstream Christianity.
So the gist of this topic is we're hanging the biggest cock up in history to the 12 who fell for Jesus brand of crap first ??
How about laying it all on Jesus, and maybe second runner up, the Apostle Paul for finishing off whatever it was Jesus was so ineptly trying to convey.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
One of the main tenets of certain religions, such as Christianity and Islam, is that if a person is killed for his faith that he gets to go to the head of the line to get into heaven or paradise.
According to the biblical fairy tale a magic number of Christians must be killed before Jesus returns. And if they are killed because of their faith their souls are kept under the altar and they are given white robes.
In Islam if a person dies as a martyr he gets to intercede on behalf of 70 of his buddies on Judgment Day.
So in Christianity the reward for being killed for one's faith is rather selfish since it just benefits the person killed.
In Islam being killed for one's faith is altruistic because up to 70 other people can benefit from one person's death.
(January 22, 2017 at 9:42 am)Tazzycorn Wrote: Jim Jones wasn't a scammer? There are a myriad of miriads of accounts of people being lead to their deaths by conmen and charlatans. There is no evidence that on at least some levels christianities are much different.
I've always wondered about all the Christians that recanted on threat of death. Its funny you don't seem to hear about them. Also the proportion of who recanted and who chose martyrdom.
Yeah - you never hear jesus freaks talk about this very much....
Quote:Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do--these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.
Pliny the Younger c 112 AD in a letter to Emperor Trajan
If you believe that Jesus existed, you would have to say that he could not of picked 12 worse marketers of his supposed ministry if he tried. These 2 dimensional dummies were just made up as his fall guys and made very little impact in the society that they were supposed to evangelise. After Jesus's death, over 80 cults sprang up in the area over the next couple of centuries. Some of the more prominent were Simonians, Montanists, Marcionites (Marcion was also a docetist, he wrote the first type of Bible), Ebionites, and Phibionites.
How could people so easily be converted away from Christianity when the "truth" was firmly known and confirmed by all the miracles, resurrection and ascension?
Regarding the disciples, Paul never calls them by that name, and is silent on Jesus's ministry and life before the trial. He only knows of him via an apparition, even after speaking with a couple of the the disciples whom he calls apostles. Hardly anything is known about their lives, where they were born and what became of them after the resurrection. Only two of them have their deaths recorded in the Bible: James, whom Herod killed “with the sword” (Acts 12:2) and Judas Iscariot, who either hanged himself or fell and burst open - which ever contradictory account you believe in.
The first sermon Peter preached resulted in 5000 new Christians. Christianity spread quickly throughout the known world of that time. Paul was at the stoning of Stephen a Jewish believer, this was most likely God's beginning work on Paul's spirit. So you see the chosen disciples had a huge effect on the spread of Christianity. The real truth of this matter doesn't begin with what the disciples were doing, the truth is what God was doing through them and they knew this to be the truth, it is conveyed in the NT.
GC
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
January 23, 2017 at 7:40 am (This post was last modified: January 23, 2017 at 8:06 am by Firefighter01.)
(January 22, 2017 at 11:07 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: The disciples of Jesus, hmmm.
The Jewish God sends His Jewish son to preach to the Jews in fulfillment of Jewish law and Jewish prophecy. The Son collects 12 other Jews in his retinue, and among other things he preaches to His fellow Jews is to follow the Jewish law even closer than the current crop of Jewish leaders do.
OK, 2000 years pass (m/l) and look at current mainstream Christianity.
So the gist of this topic is we're hanging the biggest cock up in history to the 12 who fell for Jesus brand of crap first ??
How about laying it all on Jesus, and maybe second runner up, the Apostle Paul for finishing off whatever it was Jesus was so ineptly trying to convey.
Gladly. I'm just saying his sales and marketing team were piss poor if they existed any more than in an allegorical sense and vanished as quickly as they popped up after serving their purpose.
(January 23, 2017 at 5:34 am)Godschild Wrote:
(January 21, 2017 at 8:43 pm)Firefighter01 Wrote:
If you believe that Jesus existed, you would have to say that he could not of picked 12 worse marketers of his supposed ministry if he tried. These 2 dimensional dummies were just made up as his fall guys and made very little impact in the society that they were supposed to evangelise. After Jesus's death, over 80 cults sprang up in the area over the next couple of centuries. Some of the more prominent were Simonians, Montanists, Marcionites (Marcion was also a docetist, he wrote the first type of Bible), Ebionites, and Phibionites.
How could people so easily be converted away from Christianity when the "truth" was firmly known and confirmed by all the miracles, resurrection and ascension?
Regarding the disciples, Paul never calls them by that name, and is silent on Jesus's ministry and life before the trial. He only knows of him via an apparition, even after speaking with a couple of the the disciples whom he calls apostles. Hardly anything is known about their lives, where they were born and what became of them after the resurrection. Only two of them have their deaths recorded in the Bible: James, whom Herod killed “with the sword” (Acts 12:2) and Judas Iscariot, who either hanged himself or fell and burst open - which ever contradictory account you believe in.
The first sermon Peter preached resulted in 5000 new Christians. Christianity spread quickly throughout the known world of that time. Paul was at the stoning of Stephen a Jewish believer, this was most likely God's beginning work on Paul's spirit. So you see the chosen disciples had a huge effect on the spread of Christianity. The real truth of this matter doesn't begin with what the disciples were doing, the truth is what God was doing through them and they knew this to be the truth, it is conveyed in the NT.
GC
(January 23, 2017 at 7:40 am)Firefighter01 Wrote:
(January 22, 2017 at 11:07 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: The disciples of Jesus, hmmm.
The Jewish God sends His Jewish son to preach to the Jews in fulfillment of Jewish law and Jewish prophecy. The Son collects 12 other Jews in his retinue, and among other things he preaches to His fellow Jews is to follow the Jewish law even closer than the current crop of Jewish leaders do.
OK, 2000 years pass (m/l) and look at current mainstream Christianity.
So the gist of this topic is we're hanging the biggest cock up in history to the 12 who fell for Jesus brand of crap first ??
How about laying it all on Jesus, and maybe second runner up, the Apostle Paul for finishing off whatever it was Jesus was so ineptly trying to convey.
Gladly. I'm just saying his sales and marketing team were piss poor if they existed any more than in an allegorical sense and vanished as quickly as they popped up after serving their purpose.
(January 23, 2017 at 5:34 am)Godschild Wrote: The first sermon Peter preached resulted in 5000 new Christians. Christianity spread quickly throughout the known world of that time. Paul was at the stoning of Stephen a Jewish believer, this was most likely God's beginning work on Paul's spirit. So you see the chosen disciples had a huge effect on the spread of Christianity. The real truth of this matter doesn't begin with what the disciples were doing, the truth is what God was doing through them and they knew this to be the truth, it is conveyed in the NT.
GC
As if anyone could work out that exactly 5,000 men instantly believed after hearing one sermon! It's just an empty assertion.
January 23, 2017 at 10:24 am (This post was last modified: January 23, 2017 at 10:24 am by Crossless2.0.)
(January 23, 2017 at 7:40 am)Firefighter01 Wrote: As if anyone could work out that exactly 5,000 men instantly believed after hearing one sermon! It's just an empty assertion.
Perhaps they gave Peter their money. Peter was big on that, apparently.
If you believe that Jesus existed, you would have to say that he could not of picked 12 worse marketers of his supposed ministry if he tried. These 2 dimensional dummies were just made up as his fall guys and made very little impact in the society that they were supposed to evangelise. After Jesus's death, over 80 cults sprang up in the area over the next couple of centuries. Some of the more prominent were Simonians, Montanists, Marcionites (Marcion was also a docetist, he wrote the first type of Bible), Ebionites, and Phibionites.
How could people so easily be converted away from Christianity when the "truth" was firmly known and confirmed by all the miracles, resurrection and ascension?
Regarding the disciples, Paul never calls them by that name, and is silent on Jesus's ministry and life before the trial. He only knows of him via an apparition, even after speaking with a couple of the the disciples whom he calls apostles. Hardly anything is known about their lives, where they were born and what became of them after the resurrection. Only two of them have their deaths recorded in the Bible: James, whom Herod killed “with the sword” (Acts 12:2) and Judas Iscariot, who either hanged himself or fell and burst open - which ever contradictory account you believe in.
The first sermon Peter preached resulted in 5000 new Christians. Christianity spread quickly throughout the known world of that time. Paul was at the stoning of Stephen a Jewish believer, this was most likely God's beginning work on Paul's spirit. So you see the chosen disciples had a huge effect on the spread of Christianity. The real truth of this matter doesn't begin with what the disciples were doing, the truth is what God was doing through them and they knew this to be the truth, it is conveyed in the NT.
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