hi ld,

again, i don't know what we are arguing about. you assume i am a believer. i would characterize myself as one who is open to the stories of jesus, but i would never state with metaphysical certitude that he was the son of god. i do, like you, believe the preponderance of the evidence points to jesus being a live person, not a fantasy compilation driven by the evil christians at the council of nicea intentionally working a scam on humanity.

i mean the notion that he doesn't show up all over recorded roman history shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone. he was a nobody rable rouser who had a relatively short career as a preacher. the idea that he was mentioned tangentially by a few historians and then written about by his friends should not be surprising.

the interesting thing is, in a place replete with would-be messiahs lurking around every corner, the life of jesus was embraced by a large number of people in his day, and continues so 2 millenina after his death.

butcho,

i'm really not trying to be a wise guy, but i've never heard a satisfactory explanation via cosmology what , if anything ,was in existence 60 seconds prior to the big bang. i mean an awful lot of "stuff" seemed to crystallize (not the right word, maybe accrete is better) out of nothingness.

i characterized the notion of nothing spontaneously exploding at the big bang as quite an act of faith, which you took umbrage to.

i'm asking for an explanation that doesn't take a big leap of faith, much like religion. that's as specific as i can get.

A very well funded PR team backed by scared, but hopeful, people. And then later fueled by those seeking to teach.. and those seeking to control.

** I may have misinterpreted "much like religion".

Religion wouldn't exist without a big leap of faith. We use our eyes to gather more information than any of the other senses we use. To deny or neglect to show someone what it is they should believe in demands faith. It's not so much about trust.. you can believe without trust. But believing in something, imo, requires honesty and proof.. then maybe I'll believe. But an invisible "supernatural entity" that cannot be questioned, or tested, mainly because it cannot be seen, would require a HUGE leap of faith on my part.. to truly believe. And in a lot of peoples' minds I would think. Especially as science grows. But hey, people have been gullible to lesser causes and could be doing worse things with their intellect.

Bob

The spread of christianity doesn't prove anything either. False memes spread all the time-- 20 percent of america now believes Obama is a Muslim foreigner. And we have examples of religions spreading in recent history, such as scientology and LDS.

Christianity managed to convert the emperor of Rome at the time when he was the most powerful person in the western world. That helped a lot.

And Islam's spread over its first 500 years or so is just as impressive as Christianity's.

hi lv,

i think it is a bit disingenuous to claim that the early followers of christ from the first century AD were the product of a "well funded PR machine".

i would agree with you that today it means little. i would disagree that the first 100 yrs spread of christianity means nothing.

someone motivated the original followers of christ to take the worst of it. i don't think they imagined that.

The answer that doesn't take a leap of faith is.

The same thing that motivated the early Mormons to drop everything and move to Illinois and then on to Utah, bob.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven'...eligious_group)

These guys knew what they were getting themselves into and they still went along with it at a time of much higher levels of education and critical thinking.

If its meaningful to you, I was taught in college that the roman empire adopted Christianity as a means to consolidate the empire. It was adopted as a political tool. Worth knowing is while it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, they continued to worhship the Roman Gods simultaneously.

And of course it means nothing with respect to its truth. If you look at other religions throughout history in different parts of the world you'll find that others had periods where they spread rapidly. Clearly that has no bearing on whether they were real.

Fwiw - if the speed a religion spreads has any bearing on its truthiness.... the future is looking good for Mormons!
From the Christian Broadcasting Network (no date given)

God is really sorry and sends you his regrets that he is not your lap dog and that you cannot take a really good look at him.

Jokes aside, my point was that he was in fact experienced and "seen" in earlier religious systems (which would be a blasphemy, of course, in later monotheistic constructions).

hey, i went to the u of utah as a non mormon, you are walking on hallowed ground there buddy

you mean you aren't waiting for the statue of angel moroni to come alive and start blowing his trumpet, signaling the return of jesus???

fwiw, if i remember correctly they started out in upstate ny and then traveled /(got run out of) ohio, missouri, illinois and nebraska.

Constantine, and the Roman Empire were a huge boost for Christianity. That continued with the colonial expansion of Spain, Portugal, and England.

Of course Christians would counter with "See, God is watching over us".

that old constantine, he was nobody's fool, he knew where his bread was buttered

i'll bet old constantine might rephrase that though..... he might say the power of christ was a huge boost for him

Would you explaining how you draw a conclusion from this? The logic is not quite clear.

What? Several of the New Testament authors were first-hand witnesses to the ministry of Jesus itself.

Someone please explain why the authors of the Gospels wrote things almost identically (content, word choices and event placement). The identical wording is in red.

Probably no one has other than a speculative explanation for that. What about it? I can't wait to see the tour de force of logical reasoning you have ready to spring on the forum.

Because they were all getting the same message form God. Its not like they copied each other or anything.

1. I don't draw a firm conclusion from the existence of non-canonical gospels. But they are evidence that an image that a lot of Christians have-- i.e., that Jesus gets resurrected, a bunch of people see proof of it, and then the the meme spreads throughout the region-- is not necessarily correct. We know that Jesus was really influential because you eventually have all these people attributing words to him. But the stories were all over the map, and you had various communities who believed they were followers of Jesus but who believed completely different stories about him and his teachings. We further know that eventually, when power was centralized in Rome, great effort was made to persecute and suppress the heretical forms of Jesus-following (with "heretical" defined as "contrary to the teachings agreed upon by the politicians in Rome).

That's what we know. Now, you can still say "well yes, that's all true, but the correct version won out". And maybe it did. But that's the actual claim that is being made-- that Jesus died, a bunch of people attributed different teachings to him, eventually a group that was claiming that he was resurrected gained power, and agreed on a canon that said that, suppressed all the books that didn't, and persecuted the heretics, and this process resulted in the truthful story of Jesus' life and death being passed down through the ages.

2. We don't know who authored the books of the canonical New Testament. We have some idea as to Paul's authorship of a few books, and have some reason to believe that the same person authored both books attributed to John, but in terms of actual proof of who the authors were, it's pretty thin.

We do know: (1) the books were authored long after the events that are described therein occurred, so the authors were unlikely to be reporting facts within their personal knowledge, (2) the books borrow from each other and from other sources, and (3) as noted above, there were many other books that also purported to contain the story and teachings of Jesus which were read and promulgated by groups of followers of Jesus during the early years and were later suppressed by Christian authorities once Rome took control.

That's really it. If you really believe that, for instance, the Gospel According to Matthew was authored by a guy named Matthew who personally witnessed the events described and recorded them in the time immediately following Jesus' death, there is not a shred of evidence that supports that belief and quite a bit of evidence that casts it into doubt.

I mean to inquire in particular directions, not ignore your previous details.

That is what I would like to see your logical process for. By what reasoning do you consider the existence of apocryphal books to be impeaching evidence against the canonical New Testament?

Can you cite specific evidence inconsistent with the New Testament's internal claims of authorship?

its all greek to me!

1. I explained it already. Read my earlier posts.

You are implying as if, say, an authenticable copy of a book in Joseph Smith's hand that is found and which dates to about the same time as the Book of Mormon but which contains teachings that are contrary to the teachings in the Book of Mormon would have no bearing on the credibility of the Book of Mormon. Your implication makes no logical sense whatsoever. You are trolling.

2. You are shifting the burden of proof on authorship. If we find a document tomorrow from about 2000 years ago that has Jesus' signature on it, we don't immediately assume that it is authentic and ask skeptics to disprove the document's "internal claims of authorship". We would first require sufficient historical corroboration that, indeed, it was the signature of Jesus.

There is, as I said, absolutely no such evidence with respect to any of the gospels, and little such evidence with respect to the rest of the new testament. The best we can do is attributing some letters to Paul (who never met Jesus anyway) and tying the authorship of John and Revelation together (but without any evidence that either were written by the biblical character known as John).

Further, there is evidence that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' life, and that the synoptic gospels were copied or adapted from either each other or earlier, lost common sources.

"Internal claims of authorship" don't count for anything. I suppose you are one of those people who thinks the Federalist Papers were written by some guy named Publius.

I was referring to the part where you said "and continues to this day". As in, part of the reason it's survived for so long (imho).

I treat God like he bet first and I called.. you show first dick head!

He shows down the invisible nuts though.. EVERY SINGLE TIME!

I'm going to start selling used 3D glasses on eBay..

The hitch?