Totally NOT a debate about the veracity of the gospels

[*Deidre*]

Hello. :-)

In part you're right, but what he meant was that ultimate truth can be found, within. (if we believe the story, one can assume Jesus meant that a life without God, will create an inner turmoil)

But...We don't need to believe in a Deity to live with peace, joy hope and love. Those things are the "truths" of a content life. With or without a belief in a Deity.

Yes?

I don't know a single person, theist or atheist, who is truly content.

Life's a journey, and there are struggles, and lessons and no matter if you follow a god or not, there is no escaping that. But you can still find contentment even during strife. Contentment doesn't mean without suffering at different points. Suffering doesnt rob us of contentment, how we view it does. It's all about perspective, I think?

[Bad Writer]

In case you were unawares, I was not being so utterly serious as you seem to have thought I was....

Tell me now....and be honest....do you frequent Starbucks????

LOL

Is that a fact? I wonder what else you're not being "so utterly serious" about. I'm glad we're getting closer to putting your bullshit to rest, in this case.

I do not frequent Starbucks, but I have no qualms about going. I'm also not obese. In the meantime, would you like to make any other general claims without evidence to back them up?

[Bucky Ball]

As Requested

Ok, here's my problem. This is what clinched it for me.

Red is not purple.

Matthew says that the soldiers “put a scarlet robe” on Jesus (27:27-28), Mark says that “they clothed Him with purple ” (15:16-17), and John states that the soldiers put “a purple robe” on Him (19:1-2)

I've heard any number of takes on this and none of them are convincing.

Matthew could have been colourblind. Fine, but that means the human limitations of the authors have to be allowed for. Which means someone else might have written something wrong because of perspective.

It could be that one has to COMBINE the gospels to get to the truth. In which case we have a bible which all together leaves us a robe 2/3rds of the way between purple and red. Which is a different colour which is NOT RED AND NOT PURPLE. Read any one gospel and its wrong.

Or we could go down the route that it was a FADED red robe which was starting to look purple. In which case it wasn't red any more.

Some people have it that the romans used the same word for red AND purple. Bully for them. We don't. Red is not purple. Purple is not red.

I've read (ha) a few other explanations but fundamentally it boils down very simply. Red and purple are different. Thus if it was one thing, it was not the other thing. And if it was a THIRD thing (purply red or reddish purple) then it was NEITHER red nor purple.

That's it. Red is not purple.

That's seriously the LEAST of the problems.
a. The Jewish Sanhedrin was NEVER ONCE in all of history called into session the week prior to, or on Passover weekend. So there's that. If they had been this one time, a Jewish historian would have said something.
b. Matthew says the temple curtain was spontaneously torn, that rocks were split, and many other people also rose from the dead, on Easter Sunday morning. If that had happened, some Jewish historian would have mentioned it, (such as Philo who talked about all sorts of other more mundane things going on in Jerusalem at that time. Some think he may actually have been Jerusalem at the time. He says nothing.) Someone would have talked about, or pointed out ONE of the other risen people, or empty graves, (or split rocks) and the Roman authorities would have mounted some sort of action to find them, or at least Jesus. Nothing. Do the Jews or Romans go try to find him, upon hearing he might be alive again, after they went to all the trouble to get rid of him ? No. Not one word. In fact in Acts when Peter is trying to convince them they killed Jesus, they have no clue what he is even talking about, and Peter eventually backs down, and says "Well your sins killed him".
c. The accounts of the trials are seriously contradictory. Most say he was silent. John says he gave a long speech. No Galilean peasant ever was brought into the presence of Roman aristocrats for trial. In the Pax Romana, troublemakers were summarily executed with no trial. There was no trial.

The gospels are not "history". Archaic Hebrew had no word for "history". They are faith texts to be used in liturgical services, written by believers, for believers to remind themselves what they already believed. No one sat around reading anything, in those days. The literacy rate was about 5 %.
There were all kinds of "gospels". Euseubius said he was cutting down the number to 4, because "There are 4 winds, and 4 pillars upon which the Earth is set". Nothing about "inspired" anything or content.

[Minimalist]

Ever read Earl Doherty's "Jesus Puzzle," Buck?

[Mudhammam]

If the gospels writers were indeed inspired by God to write what they did, I believe their accounts must not contradict one another.

What Christians actually mean by honest and objective critique of (their) religion.

[Bucky Ball]

Ever read Earl Doherty's "Jesus Puzzle," Buck?

I haven't. I suppose some day I will get around to reading it.

[Minimalist]

Interesting stuff.... particularly when he points out how entire passages of gmark were plagiarized from the OT by cherry-picking different verses and stringing them together.

9 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.

Zech 9

Zech. 9 being one example.

[Mudhammam]

Interesting stuff.... particularly when he points out how entire passages of gmark were plagiarized from the OT by cherry-picking different verses and stringing them together.

9 “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.

Zech 9

Zech. 9 being one example.

Fulfilled prophecy. Proof that Jesus was God.

[Minimalist]

Except Zech. was talking about Syria and how 'god' would protect his people and some victories of the jews...which did not happen.

Zech 9:10

I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
And the horse from Jerusalem;
The battle bow shall be cut off.
He shall speak peace to the nations;
His dominion shall be ‘from sea to sea,
And from the River to the ends of the earth.’[b]

No. They didn't. The Babylonians kicked their asses.

[DarkHorse]

Because I once believed in it. And I don't know if I can ever get past that part of it. The part where I followed it for a long time, and like you, witnessed my faith to others. And for what? A lie?

It is a lie, discipulus. I know you don't or won't see it that way, but maybe someday ...you will be on the other side, just like I am, now. And while I've come a long way, it's very hard to get past knowing that a religion like Christianity has prospered for so long, by duping people.

This is what I feel, anyways.

Nah, you have just been duped Deidre. Somewhere along the way you became jaded with Christianity. Since you have never been born again or have experienced what it is like to have a personal intimate relationship with Jesus, this is to be expected.

You grew up in a Christian home maybe. You probably went to church often and sang the songs and read the bible and hung out with friends and had the warm fuzzies on several occassions, but you never saw yourself in desperate need of being saved. You never saw yourself as a sinner. So it follows logically that you would never come to the end of yourself and cry out to be saved from eternal separation from God.

Now you have abandoned Christianity and in order to silence the voice of conviction you rail and rant and rave viciously at anyone who speaks the truth. You try to drown that voice of reason that whispers to you in the innermost part of your being by a multiplicity of words and arguments that you yourself know are simply ridiculous.

By your own admission you have not been born from above and therefore you cannot see the kingdom of God.

Those that do hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled Deidre.

I believe you hunger now. I believe that is why you are here.

---

Fine, I'll restate the question for the benefit of an evasive jerkoff.

Do you, disciplus, believe the bible is the infallible word of God, or a fallible work of men?

I believe the Words of God are true and that they endure forever.

It seems to me you enjoy feeling as though you know someone, when in actual fact you don't.

I was a born again Christian once. I was brought up in a Christian home. When I was 16, I went through a very dark time. Actually, my whole life was filled with darkness from the beginning of my life. I wanted it to end by that point. I cried out to God, I needed Him. I was desperate.

Now I see, I dreamed all that up because I needed to believe that he heard me. Everything that happened that I attributed to God, looking back now, it was a) coincidence and b) my own mind. A lot of it, I can see, now that my eyes are open, how I contributed to making those things happen.

Anyway, it carried on for years, I was on a spiritual high. Yes, I went through hard times and times when I was angry with God, but I never fell away. I believed in him through it all, believed he was my savior. I knew as a sinner I needed him. I was invested. Hell, I wanted to become a minister. My dad was one, and I helped with the youth group. So don't tell me I wasn't a true Christian, or I didn't DO IT RIGHT. My deconversion happened slowly, over time. Do you think I wanted that to happen? I became more and more despondent and things made less and less sense. Those things that came up every now and then that I shoved away because I didn't want to deal with it and think that christianity was a lie. Well, now I can see clearly, and I don't see a god that's angry with me, or is going to send me to hell for not believing anymore. I feel at peace.

What right do you have to tell Deidre who she is, or why you THINK she's here? That she doesn't know what you know, so can't possibly have what you have, because of that?

You're probably going to go on a rant about this message and defend yourself and christianity, but I don't give a shit.

Oh and one more thing. If the words of god are true, then why does it take a concordance and whatever other religious material you have, in order to make sense of most of it? That's one thing I never understood. If god wants us to follow him and do his will, then why the hell make it so hard to understand the so called TRUE meaning behind what's written? Think that's a fair god? Hell, if you have a kid and you want him/her to be happy, are you going to make life difficult for him, and talk to them in riddles? Doesn't make sense, sorry.