Yes, the disciples had no motivation or means with which to fabricate Jesus' life.
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Poll: Do you believe in God? This poll is closed. |
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Yes | 148 | 13.91% | |
No | 916 | 86.09% | |
Total | 1064 vote(s) | 100% |
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Quick Poll - Do you believe in God?
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So does this conclude our census of active theists on this board??
"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest." G'Kar-B5
(January 16, 2012 at 5:31 pm)Undeceived Wrote: Yes, the disciples had no motivation or means with which to fabricate Jesus' life. Who suggests that the disciples all got together and made up Jesus? Why is such a conspiracy necessary as the only alternative to the truth of Christian claims? I think you need to talk to atheists more.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too." ... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept "(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question" ... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
So 137 atheists (as of my post here, including myself) and 19 people who need to grow out of their imaginary friend stage.
Not bad. Personally, though, my lord and savior is Ceiling Cat and my beliefs about the afterlife can be summed up in the movie Beetlejuice. Then again, when I was screaming at the neighbor's mice while shirtless this morning I've come to realize that that may be because I took Mickey Rooney's Crazy Pills with my breakfast. Still, the day is young and there are school children I need to use as kitten-throwing target practice.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925 Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan (January 17, 2012 at 3:20 am)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote: Personally, though, my lord and savior is Ceiling Cat I have a kitten that looks up at the ceiling and chirps to Ceiling Cat. He's like a Pentecostal kittah the way he squeeks and stares with such fascination whenever he sees reflected light he believes to be kittah angels.
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too." ... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept "(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question" ... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist (January 17, 2012 at 3:03 am)genkaus Wrote:(January 16, 2012 at 5:31 pm)Undeceived Wrote: Yes, the disciples had no motivation or means with which to fabricate Jesus' life. What was the motivation to start a new religion? They get no power or money, and all but one disciple was martyred. Christianity was so contradictory to Judaism that they might as well have been asking for executions. Their law forbids deception, and the punishment for blasphemy is death. Also, there wasn't enough time for a legend to form around Jesus. The writing of Paul's Corinthians places the explosion of new Christians within five years of Jesus' death. They would not have been convinced unless they at least thought something incredible happened (like a resurrection). And the disciples had no means to steal the body. The Romans were trained, practiced executioners. Jesus definitely died. And guards were sentenced to execution themselves if they let a prisoner go, so they would not have simply let the disciples into the tomb. They had no swords to fight their way in, and plotting on the Sabbath was against their moral law.
That's ridiculous.
Around that time there were many sects of Judaism, not just the four main observance levels that you see today. Christianity wasn't contradictory except for the fact that they were following a messiah that the rest of Judaism didn't follow - and there were a few of those jerk-offs running around at the time. And legends can spread quickly, even in a time before the internet. And if you've got a martyr complex as large as the Jews did even 2000 years ago, believe me it can happen. Quote:Who suggests that the disciples all got together and made up Jesus? I predict a strawman argument. RE: Quick Poll - Do you believe in God?
January 18, 2012 at 2:00 am
(This post was last modified: January 18, 2012 at 2:06 am by Undeceived.)
(January 17, 2012 at 10:00 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: That's ridiculous.I'd like a source for Judaism's 'sects.' To my knowledge, most of Israel was united under the same Law. The Samaritans were different, not believing the temple was required for sacrifice, and within the Jews were the Pharisees and Sadducees. But they all still followed Moses' Law, which Jesus fulfilled, and in their minds, repeatedly broke. He wasn't just a messiah. He claimed to be God-- blasphemy. He also did work on the Sabbath and told everyone that nearly all of their traditions were worthless. He said that you cannot be saved by your own actions after all, but have to believe in Him. The method of salvation was turned upside down. Nothing they did--tithing, circumcision, sacrifice--mattered any more. Social standings were destroyed. Judaism is night to Christianity's day. You're savvy. I doubt you really believe a legend can form in five years. Thousands of people saw Jesus on Passover week (when all of Israel went to Jerusalem). If they were one of the few who didn't, they could talk to His disciples themselves or Mary. If you're to undergo a change in lifestyle (perhaps life-threatening) you're not going to make that decision on circumstantial evidence. They had the same skepticism and human psychology we have today. These people were so convinced they would die for Jesus. A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford did a study of the rate at which legend accrued in the ancient world and concluded that not even two full generations was enough time for legend to develop and to wipe out a solid core of historical truth. Now compare the Bible to other historical documents. The earliest histories of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after his death. Yet they are still considered to be generally trustworthy, as are all of Plato's and Aristotle's works on similar time frames. People can be so quick to judge a book as fiction if they want it to be fiction, even though they have no evidence for their claim. |
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