lol @ "seemingly in violation of thermodynamics"

do people actually sit around making this stuff up?

truth is, all it would take would be a "change of mind" for any non-believer to believe. whatever god is, it is much more likely to affect your change of mind than to have an angel appear in front of you and restore your milk like david blaine

... ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_C...of_Constantine

Why are all your posts so aggressive and silly these days

ukes post is equivalent to "If I saw a miracle performed" and "I've seen miracles" is a common reason given for a persons theism (among others).

Sure, but what has that to do with the persecution of christians until the beginning of the 4th century?

If I saw the moon turn into a face, I would have to ask someone else if they were seeing the same thing before I could experience any degree of being convinced that it was actually happening. So my experience would have to be validated (I'll borrow that word) by at least one more person before I could begin to trust my perceptions.

So, how do people who have had 'personal' experiences, trust those experiences to the point that they'll believe in a deity, when it's entirely possible, and even likely, that they're are actually just fooling themselves or giving significance, meaning or purpose to something that doesn't actually deserve it?

He said.

"how it has thrived in circulation throughout the centuries in the face of persecution"

Which i would mean more then Christianity's early history. You kind of added that.

I don't think the question is answerable in any meaningful way, because obviously a lot of the reasons why I don't believe in the mythical narrative of Jesus are exactly the reasons many people worship it as religion. Iow. the "Jesus" I would end up being convinced about would not be the Jesus that people actually worship.

If this seems strange, consider this analogy: The athlete that is hugely succesful, but is then caught using drugs. It is the same person and the person did the same thing, but the two versions do do not evoke the same response in people. Btw - This is not a comparison between Jesus and a drugged athlete, but an explanation of concept. To avoid trainwrecks, it is probably best to point this out.

I don't think so. If anything, LK did: Indicentally, christian persecution didn't entirely stop with Constantine either. After Constantine, there was a short stint under Julian the Apostate, who was the last pagan Emperor and who tried to stop the spreading of Christianity in the roman empire. Only after that Christianity was declared state religion in 380 under Theodosius.

So to point to Constantine with regards to christian persecution is somewhat of a curious choice: For one, the fact that christianity was tolerated doesn't negate earlier persecution. For two, while he unquestioningly marks the turning in the history of the early church, christian persecution didn't "end" with him. At the same time, he didn't go as far as elevating Christianity to state religion either.

there's only so much bollocks you can read before you start to call a spade a spade.

that would have been more reasonable than the angel magically repairing his item of crockery. i just felt that particular example was not only ridiculous and horribly contrived but a complete cop-out, given that it's never going to happen.

i still stand by what i said as being legit:

I haven't been through this part of the forum much but there are some interesting debates which it caught my interest and this thread is one.
Personal experience:
As a kid I grew up Orthodox and had to go to church with grandma and do stuff that was formal in church that had nothing to do with God but mostly with culture and whatever they were celebrating on that particular day.

When I was 16 got a visa and packed a bag of clothes and moved to US by myself and worked for my uncle until I finished high school. He took me to a Christian Church and basically for me was another formal thing that I was doing because of family and the social circle was doing the same thing. I did this for about 5 years.

Then went through a bad stage in my life financially and also had a surgery that almost had me paralyzed from waist down due to some doctor error. Somehow at that low point I saw how helpless I was and how everyone else around me could do nothing for me but sit around and sympathize.

Ended up going to church and some African guy was visiting and he was preaching about how in the part of Africa where they from, they don’t have doctors but they have Jesus so they call upon Him. He kept saying whoever wants to come to Jesus and be saved/forgiven/healed to have him pray for us.

All these questions came into my head such as: Why did Jesus die for me? What was his gain? I know the Bible gives plenty of reasons of why but I wanted my own logical explanation. Then afterwards judging my own being I also asked: I don’t do anything for Jesus or for God I just play or put up a front. And then for some reason I felt guilty and started to cry. Eventually I went to this guy and he prayed for me and I felt something, not physically but to a deep unconscious level. I felt peace, I felt a sense of belonging, and some sort of happiness and like all my troubles and whatever I was stressing at the time vanished.

I was still not convinced that God existed or Jesus existed for that matter. I started to read the Bible which I never did from cover to cover and did some hardcore praying and somehow my surgical recovery was done and also my financial problems were solved. The financial problem was solved through circumstantial ways (basically somehow I connected with the right people at the right time and got the right job etc..).

As I read more I realized how the Bible had things that didn’t make sense or I couldn’t understand but with faith I went forward and in my heart I believed more and more in that God existed and also how noble the sacrifice of Jesus was for me. Afterwards I kept going to church and being knowledgeable of the Bible I could see how opinionated preachers were and how people just simply believed every word they said.
So I kind of went on my own reading the Bible praising God and every single day thanking Him for the birds, the trees, the food and anything I could think of because I could see God in everything (not physically but spiritually). From a personal experience trying accepting Jesus gave me one of the best experiences ever. I believe it was a life changing moment and the most at peace I could be with myself/the world and God. I had compassion for anyone who would ask for help and I was always looking for ways to help others.
From a logical point of view I have my doubts but I feel like I am still too small and I cannot as of yet comprehend the laws of the universe fully to be able to define God/His ways or deny Him. I think Jesus tried to show us the way by helping us understand that kindness, compassion and sacrifice for your fellow man will help one get close to God. It looks like Jesus didn’t ask for anything in return but to follow in His steps. I guess that is my understanding and my take on it.
I still have a lot of questions and I would love some concrete answers but I don’t have them yet and our world cannot give them either it can all still be very debatable. As far as the Bible goes, it requires faith to be able to go by it and follow it through word by word and it also requirea a certain understanding to be able to comprehend it well. I guess that’s why we have atheists and all these denominations.

Hmmm...I would think that there are some "non-Christians" ( that would also vehemently not associate with "Christianity" ), namely Messianic Jews or Netzari Jews that believe that:

1) Yeshua is the "Lamb of G-d" that died for the sins of humanity ( or made propitiation for the sins of humanity ); and
2) Yeshua was crucified and rose three days later, according to the TaNaKh.


OTOH, I think you have stated the main points well, i.e., that the crucial issues are a) that Yeshua the Messiah died for my sins, your sins, etc., in a personal way; b) Yeshua rose again after three days; c) a person needs to trust in the previous two points ( possibly in a different way that some "Christians" would think is necessary; e.g., Abraham would likely believe in the Messiah dying for the sins of mankind and being raised to life again ) to have any hope in the olam haba~life hereafter.


For Jewish believers in Hashem, it would normally require at the very least, some belief in the New Testament writings. For atheists/agnostics, some don't have the requisite basic knowledge if they have not been exposed to the TaNaKh or the New Testament of what "sin" is, how serious "sin" is and the judgment of every human being after physical death.

I think it is important to note that in the "parable of Lazarus and the rich man", that a dead man returning to life is not a good enough reason to make teshuvah (~repent ) and it is more important to follow "Moshe and the prophets". BTW, just in case you don't know, Yeshua is the "tree of life" and the "living Torah", so someone following "Moshe and the prophets" is really following the Miltha~"Word of G-d"~preincarnate Yeshua, whether that someone knows it or not.

The bolded is the right place to start. Why would Yeshua ( when he was the Miltha~"Word", before his human existence ), who already is the "right arm" of YHWH Elohim (~"G-d"), become a mere human being? By doing so, he can't "unbecome" human. He also subjects himself to the troubles of the world, is eventually abandoned by his talmidim~"disciples", is physically crucified by being hung on a tree, and becomes "sin" to Hashem and suffers His wrath due to our being sinful human beings.

The world can't give us the answers the Ruach HaKodesh~"Spirit of Truth" can. A key passage is the Akedah and a key verse is the well-known Jn 3:16.

Righto.

Eh? As I said, the statements are essentially equivalent. Uke isn't saying that his specific example is the one and only possible miracle he would accept, he's just giving a specific example of the sort of thing that would count as a miracle cf. David Hume's definition of "miracle" in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Furthermore, uke explicitly said that this was just one of many possible evidences for God:

I really can't see what has got you so angry here.

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to communicate here. Can you expand on it a bit?

That is an incorrect statement. There are numerous first and second century writings, apart from the Bible, which reference the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

The guy said throughout the centuries. He didn't focus on early persecution.

As for the rest. There was no persecution, it was all political. Thats how Christianity gets out of the dog house. Should work the other way around.

Not sure what you're saying. LK referenced Constantine, not me, and with that he's apparently interpreting txag's point as relating to the early centuries. About the rest - consulting wikipedia, and perhaps a book would be the appropriate step(s).

Thank you for your post, and for what you shared. You have a great testimony. If you don't mind sharing them, what are some of your questions?

In my experience, most of the people who are at the point where they call spades spades still manage to avoid calling diamonds diamonds.

Some recent scholars have questioned the standard narrative of Christian persecution in the early church, claiming that it is very exaggerated (Candida Moss' book The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom is a prominent example).

Id interpret LK's Constantine remark to show Christainty was not, right or wrong, persecuted throughout the centuries. Neither him or txag0007 focused on early persecution.

About the rest. Consulting when Christians are accused of persecution should help ya.

This would depend on what the "standard narrative" would look like. For example, this: “the Sunday school narrative of a church of martyrs, of Christians huddled in catacombs out of fear, meeting in secret to avoid arrest and mercilessly thrown to lions merely for their religious beliefs.” (from the salon article) is certainly not what you'd find contemporary scholarly work on the subject. (or wiki, for that matter).

In fact, what the article lays out is more or less what you'd hear at the vast majority of universities, and can read in most books on the subject, at least in Europe. So perhaps that's another instance where US scholarship gets around breaking to its evangelical brethren what the rest of academia has known for decades? (To put that admittedly flippantly)

So we're interpreting LK differently. Ok, thanks for sharing.

Yeah....



You dont really see the problem there do you. Ok i guess.

It's not possible to eliminate these things, nor the matrix possibility.


These things equally prove the spaghetti monster is a liar.