(May 29, 2017 at 10:28 am)vorlon13 Wrote: God said it, Scripture records it, believers damn well better fucking believe it.
Yeah believers believe no matter how much Gospels contradict with each other, with history and reason. It's really not a hard job to look at gospels and Crucifixion to see contradictions not only to gospels themselves but history, so it's obvious that Jesus life was not just a forgery but a bad one indeed.
Mark 14:65 describe, "Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, “Prophesy!” And the guards took him and beat him." Yeah this is fantasy as it gets because Sanhedrin and Roman courts held high to the law, dignity, and decorum. This kind of turmoil would not have been permitted. And yet John even said Jesus suffered indignities at the hands of a Roman court.
Mark 14:54 says, "Peter followed Jesus afar off, even into the palace of the high priest." No trial ever was ever held at the residence or palace of the high priest.
Then Jesus apparently had no lawyer and this would have been against Jewish law.
The trial lasted only a few hours. Yet Jewish law required at least two days for a capital offense - one day for the prosecution, one day for the defense. No trial for a capital offense was ever allowed to begin on the day before the Sabbath. Matthew and Mark even say it started during the night and yet Jewish law prohibited the opening of a trial at night.
Matthew 27:38 says, "Then there were two thieves crucified with him..." Yet it is widely known that thieves were not crucified. Theft was not even a capital offense in the Roman Empire, being contrary to both Jewish and Roman law.
Mark 15:46 says, "So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body..." Isn't the crucifixion supposed to be happening during Jewish holiday of Passover? So how could he buy anything? Even if there was some non-Jew selling stuff Joseph was a Jew which meant he desecrated the Passover. And Jews themselves desecrated the Passover by allowing crucifixion during that holiday in which dead human body is looked as a desecration.
Luke 23:12 states, "Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day..." Pilate and Herod were always enemies.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
