Aggghhh!
I could go with that too.
They didn’t even have to actually steal the body. Remember how the 'holy spirit visits them? That’s when they ‘realise’ he has come back. It was a spiritual ressurection at first. Paul still talks about a spiritual Jesus, only later does it get embellished to a bodily ressurection, with stories about the tomb.
There’s loads of adherants to ideoligies that cannot face the fact that they were wrong and turn their loss into a temporary setback. “No! Eventually we will be proven right!”
I’ve met a girl that truly believed Copperfield performs real actual magic.
Don’t underestimate the level of stupid out there.
That girl will have children and raise them already taking certain things for granted.
Had Copperfield been a religious person on a mission, over time this could have become huge.
There will always be suckers that follow a reasonably charismatic person, and they will spread to non-suckers by marriage (who want to keep their spouse happy) and their children by imbueing them with it. The examples of this are legion.
As Czarcasm has already pointed out, the stories in the NT were not written by the disciples.
Paul’s church was in fact in direct competition with the actual disciples, namely Peter, and very much at odds with the congregation back home in Judea, led by Jezus’s own brother..
Yes, I do.
I mean that particular bible passages and characterizing the bible as “intolerant” is beside the point since I am not a bible literalist.
Okay, I explained my position that God, being outside of time, knows the future and the choices we will make. People, being inside time, don’t know the future and make choices of their own free will.
You insisted that this idea is modern liberalism. Pish-tush. It was the opinion of the following “modern liberals”: C. S. Lewis, early 20th Century; Thomas Aquinas, 13th Century, and Boethius, 6th Century. And it wasn’t new with Boethius, or even with Paul and the authors of 1-2 Peter and 1-3 John. The concept of predestination dates back to the ancient Greeks.
The notion that predestination precludes free will doesn’t even enter the picture until the 16th Century and the troublesome John Calvin. And once again, no, most Presbyterians don’t assume that predestination means God has fore-ordained hellfire and damnation. John 3:16-17 and other salvation-inclusive passages are more commonly believed by all but the most separatist denominations.
As to the scriptures you mentioned:
Romans 8:29-30 speaks of God’s foreknowledge and predestination of those who are called. Back up though, from Chapter 7 onwards he is making the case that Christ’s salvation is not just for the Jew, but for all who believe in him, Gentile as well as Jew, and that the Gentiles are called as well. This large section is inclusive in tone, and does not talk of damnation anywhere.
Romans 9 is a reiteration that all of humanity is eligible for salvation, however, the section you refer to does speak of God hardening the hearts of those who are not called so they cannot be saved. It also illustrates the idea that humans are not suitable judges of God’s motivations, leaving that as a mystery.
Ephesians 1:4-5, 11 are all part of a passage which does not refer to the Christian community, nor the Jews, nor the Gentiles: it refers to the apostles and early missionaries, as stated in 1:12, “to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of his glory”. (NASB) And it goes on: “In him, you also, having listened to the message of truth, the glory of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” Inclusive message of salvation for all mankind.
By the way, when shopping at Amazon for Sam Harris books, I noticed he’s written one titled “Free Will”. I haven’t read it, but the blurbs and reviews indicate that he doesn’t believe humans have Free Will either.
No shit. :eek:
So not one eyewitness? The Mormon golden plates are better attested. Do you believe in them?
Is that your nice way of saying, “yes it’s wrong, someone just made it up” or do you mean more than that?
If he’s really quoting eyewitness testimony, why is he copying so much from Mark?
Really? The plates were reportedly seen be a dozen witnesses, all of whom were obviously partisan. I mentioned 1 Corinthians refers to over 500 witnesses to Christ’s resurrection and you hooted it down because it was partisan. I don’t see where that makes them better attested. And no, I don’t believe in them. It seems very odd to me that God gave the Hebrews the OT in Hebrew, the Greek-speaking world the NT in Greek, and then would give American Indians the Book of Mormon in Latin.
The author of Mark traditionally received his information directly from Peter, who was an eyewitness.
I mean more than that, but with all the other discussions in this thread, I’m not getting into this one.
You make it sound as if the book was carefully designed by some advanced society, then delivered to the primitive society. The book was written by someone in that primitive society, with the same mindset as that primitive society-it is more likely that the author believed what he wrote, rather than he tried to “use allegory to explain first causes”. You might be confusing the author’s original intent with later rationalizations of the contents.
Were there actually over a dozen witnesses that could be identified and questioned or was it just a claim, like the previous hearsay claim of 500 witnesses for Jesus you made earlier?
edited to add: The “500 witness” claim wasn’t dismissed because it was partisan-it was dismissed because it was hearsay…unless you are willing to believe my claim that 10,000 witnesses saw me climb the Empire State Building. Who are you to argue with 10,000 witnesses?
There is considerable textual evidence in Genesis that the work has been repeatedly redacted, combining various forms of the same stories together in an attempt to make a coherent whole. The original authors most probably did believe it. The redactors may have believed it. There’s an awful lot of parallels between the origin stories and tales from Egyptian, Akkadian, Babylonian and other religions, enough to posit that each has put its own cultural and geographic spin on an ur-narrative.
Book of Mormon witnesses - Wikipedia.
Judge for yourself. At least they have names, and they didn’t contradict each other to any great extent.
Okay, granted the distinction between partisanship and hearsay. It still doesn’t impel me to believe in the Book of Mormon.
See this is your problem in a nutshell right here. You know the evidence for the resurrection is insufficient to warrant belief. However you claim you have this extra evidence that none of us can see. But when you tell is about your extra evidence, you are not Thomas who saw the holes in the hands of Jesus. You are just some guy who heard a song, or just thinks he did. As far as you have written you have no way of knowing that the song was sung by Jesus or by and angle sent by Jesus. That’s just what you attached it to because it’s the religion myth you know the best. That’s irrational.
Just think about it. It’s considerably more likely that aliens were probing you and that’s why you heard the song, then some dead guy named Jesus or one of his angels sang it to you. It’s also more likely that you just imagined you heard it, had a hallucination, or someone drove by playing his radio loud. Some ghost playing it for you is likely the least probable (I’ll go so far as to say impossible) of all explanations, and to top it off you think you can say what particular ghost sent the singer, yet admit you couldn’t see either and you couldn’t understand what any of the words were.
Then it wasn’t originally allegory, and thus it isn’t allegory now. You can’t turn someone else’s inaccurate story into allegory by decree-it has to be the intent of the original author.
And Jesus’ supposed 500 witnesses?
I think if you do a web search of popular Christian apologetics you will come back blaming evil on free will.