If Jesus Could Heal the Sick and Raise the Dead

Great Debates
221

I forgive you and others for rejecting it. No doubt religion and religious people have done much to earn the anger and disdain aimed in their direction. What’s harder to forgive is your condescending attitude expressed here. You’re telling others to grow up while expressing your own childishness. We’ve seen on this board, and in this thread, examples of atheists clinging to beliefs they have no foundation for other than personal opinion, preference, and some emotional attachment. It appears to be part of the human condition. You may find it useful or entertaining to selectively criticize that quality. I find it a simplistic and fairly useless approach to a complex subject. It’s akin to calling all Jews cheap, and all people of polish descent stupid.
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This is about as disingenuous as it gets. This is a debate board where facts matter and people get called on it. You were wrong and you continue to be wrong, but rather than admitting it and appreciating the opportunity for education in a certain area, you resort to telling others to grow up, and totally misrepresenting **Toms ** position. Sheesh!

222

I find it unfortunate that “we are all sinners, all unworthy” was you first thought. No mention of what Jesus himself said were the most important commandments.

A lifestyle choice huh? I hope you file that under personal opinion rather than God’s direction.
“John 4:24
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

Is it in truth, a lifestyle choice? What does the evidence say?

IMHO it is the intent behind an act, the condition of the heart, that makes it a sin, {something that separates us from God and each other} No physical act by itself can be sinful. An act of love is an act of love.

223

Can you be more specific? Or is this a blanket condemnation of me and everything I stand for?

224

Wow, people disagreeing about the Bible? Whoda thunk it?

225

How much more time do you want to get your story straight?

226

No it isn’t. It is quite simply impossible. Not much to “grasp” about that.

So the Bible can only be understood by physicists with a concentration in multi-dimensional objects? Yup, that must be it. Let us all go get a PHd in physics so we can understand a book written mostly by a bunch of sheep-herders and the like.

Talk about twisting the pretzel, you’ve actually outdone yourself from your already contrived initial post.

227

I didn’t realize that I, as a non-Catholic, was required to “get my story straight” with the leader of the Catholic religion.

228

Just read the amazing variety of interpretations of Christ’s message in the above emails.

Here we have Kanicbird who is very kindly explaining to me why it is no longer necessary to murder queers like me, although it would have been OK before 33 BCE. Now, he points out, we could theoretically kill me as soon as I accept Jesus so that I can die before I sin again, (just out of curiosity, K-bird, would you recommend stoning, burning, or. . . .) but he decides Jesus probably does not want that. Better to give me the rest of my life to turn away from my “evil”, after which, if I have not done so, K’bird’s loving god can roast my ass in Hell for having lived with and loved my partner for 30-50 years. :smiley:

By the way, considering how happy my life with my partner has been (we married legally under Canadian law last year) your God had better have some pretty horrible tortures lined up for us in Hell, because both of us are likely to say “Do your worst, God, it was still worth it”. But then again, considering the over 800 verses in the Bible recording God’s cruelty (including drowning innocent babies in Noah’s flood and approving of King David’s torture of the populations of entire conquered cities) I have no doubt that your God can come up with some marvellous sadistic punishments. IF HE EXISTS AT ALL.

Anyhow, thanks for not killing me, dude, I appreciate it. May I return the favour by saying that I do not want to see Bible-thumping fundies murdered either? :stuck_out_tongue:

By the way, K’bird, you are actually right to call it a lifestyle choice. The liberals who disagree with you are actually wrong on that. That is, I did not choose to be homosexuality oriented (indeed, I fought it every way I knew how until the age of 25). The decision to HAVE an active sex life rather than to take cold showers for tghe rest of my life was indeed a choice. The sexual orientation *per se * is not a choice.

But then we have the liberals like Polycarp and others aghast at what Kanicbird has been saying to me, and interpreting Christ’s message in a whole different way.

Another one says he does not have to agree with the Pope because he is not an RC but a Christian.

And as I pointed out, people like Torquemada ran the Inquisition basing themselves on the same Bible and worshiping the same Jesus Christ as Polycar[p, and reading the same Gospels.

Catholics and Protestants have been blowing each other’s asses off in Northern Ireland basing themselves on the very same message of Jesus Christ.

And every one of you is certain that THEY have got the message of Christ right.

Are you guys sure you are all singing from the same hymnal? :smiley:

Which is the correct interpretatiion of Christ’s message? I know the answer already: Mine! No, not his, mine! NO, not his, mine!

229

Valteron, you’re right that there are people who self-identify as Christians and that they disagree on what the Bible says and on what Jesus’ message was/is. Nobody’s disputing that.

So what was your point again?

230

Is this one more of your posts where you accuse me of evil deeds and then refuse to provide evidence of your accusations? Where have I misquoted you, here?

Specifically:

I have never claimed that there is “evidence” for the life of Jesus. I have never claimed that anyone has any reason outside faith to believe in the purported message of Jesus. Attacking me on those points is a strawman.

However, you frequently fall back on the argument that people believe things “because” it is in scripture. My only point is that if you make that basic error of understanding, then you are going to make a lot of rather silly claims about what and why people believe. My details and facts do NOT “support” your “basic point.” And your absolute inability to see the difference between what actually happened and what you claim happened is the only reason I ever bother posting to these belief threads. I fully agree that there is ample reason to ignore Christian belief or teachings for every person for whom those stories do not resonate in their lives. However, this is the Straight Dope, and claims that belief originated from Scripture are factually in error and your insistence in repeating that Fundamentalist error will always bring me into a thread to correct it so that you do not mislead the peanut gallery at home.

If you want to point out that miracles do not happen or that the Resurrection is physically impossible or that Christians have often behaved in an un-Christian manner and that, in your view, all those issues relegate Christianity to a misguided system that should be abolished (apply as needed to other religious systems of belief), go ahead. I have never interrupted a thread to refute those claims and I have no interest or desire to get into those exchanges.
The issue is a a simple one: if you wish me to stay out of your rants against belief, learn enough facts about the system you are condemning that you do not call attention to factual errors that need to be corrected.

For example:

Your claim of a “century” after the life of Jesus is in error. All the writings currently in the New Testament had been written in a recognizable form before a century had elapsed, and several other documents refering to Jesus had been written in the same time period without relying on the works that were later incorporated into scripture. The earliest writings occurred within about twenty years of his purported death.
Part of your point is correct: surely some of the events reported should have gotten a bit more notice from other writers of the time. On the other hand, you also overemphasize how much was not recorded. Nearly all the written references to the entire Celtic culture that extended from the Northwest of Europe all the way across to today’s Turkey are limited to a handful of throwaway paragraphs in one work by Julius Caesar and a couple of similar passing comments from other authors. We have enormous amounts of evidence about the Etruscan culture from their ruined cities and cemetaries, and almost nothing written about them by the Latin peoples who replaced them (and lived next to them and fought them for a couple of centuries). For that matter, how much do we have that is written down in histories about the great Mississippi flood that was the proximate cause of the great migration of blacks to the U.S. North in the 1920s? That migration generally gets a few mumbled lines about “job opportunities” and “the people suffered under Jim Crow” and very few people in the U.S. know that there was an explicit event that affected millions of people that provided the specific spur to begin that migration. How many people living in 2007 realize that Will Rogers was once sufficiently popular that people actually attempted to draft him to run for president? Today he is recognized as a “humorist” with a few funny comments while his huge political power (that he chose to not wield) is unknown. And the last two events are well documented in the many newspapers and journals of the time, not limited by the fact that there were fewer than a dozen, or so, historians in the first century actually bothering to write down by hand the vague reports they may have heard from distant countries only to have their writings vanish because there was no printing press to distribute them acrtoss the Mediterranean world.

When you wish to disparage the miraculous on the grounds of improbability, you are doing fine. When you insist that the only world is physical, you have an argument that can be supported. Every single time you try to drag in historical information, whether it is a lack of records, getting your dates wrong, or seriously misunderstanding the structure and purpose of biography and history in the first century, you seem to get your facts wrong. So, if you do not wish to see my corrections to your errors, stick to the philosophical arguments or your beliefs concerning science and leave your lack of historical comprehension out of your arguments.

231

Yes, this another place where I generally refer back to your previous post and ask you to do me the courtesy of reading the fucking thing, in the spot I indicate you have misquoted me (the beginning) and correct your mistake.

Well, that’s good. Because there isn’t. So long as we agree: there is zero reason for a rational person to accept the historicity of Jesus, we can move on to other subjects.

Oh, my gosh. You’re so right. I have committed a misdeed in wrongfully asserting that a full century passed after Jesus’s death before it was written up. You’re certainly correct here.

Except for one small detail: Far from specifying (or caring) that at least 100 years had passed after Jesus was killed, I just said that it was approximately a century. More precisely, what I wrote was “all of the documentation about Xianity dates from a century or so after his supposed life, though there were contemporary historians around when he was performing miracles, rabble-rousing in the streets of Jerusalem, and generally creating a sensation.”

Normally, I would report someone who deliberately mis-quoted me out of context so that I would appear to be inaccurate or lying, but whom do I report this to? “Dear Tom, I wish you would sanction that evil, evil Tomndebb for distorting reality repeatedly in GD…” Nahh.

I’ll let you know when I see an error of mine you have pointed out.

232

So you are going to insist thjat I have misquoted you even though I have not misquoted you and then pretend repeatedly that I have misquoted you just to post angry unsubstatntiated claims. Just so we’re clear on that.

233

I was replying to a specific question about a specific circumstance. But you do make a good point, I frequently default to that position, thank you. For the record:

I was not using this in terms of choosing to be gay.

Jesus teaches that the intent is all that is needed, the act is secondary. I don’t think He goes into the act without intent except when on the cross

234

This may be relevant to the question in the OP. It’s the third verse of a hymn text written by Charles Wesley, brother of John who founded Methodism:

235

So, even though I have not misquoted you and you cannot show anywhere that I misquoted you, you wish to keep simply repeating that I did misquote you in the hopes that someone will believe your baseless accusation. Just so we’re clear on that.

I’d love to see how you present stuff in the classes you supposedly teach. In what part of the English language does “a century or so” suddenly mean “some indefinite period that changes at the revision of the author”?

I would not have made it an issue if the reality was that only ninety years had elapsed. However, your statement is clearly wrong. The earliest “documentation about Xianity” occurred around 20 years after the date that Jesus is supposed to have died with the earliest “biography” around forty years after his death–less than half the period included in your “or so.” The latest writings that were accepted as scripture were written no more than 65 years after his death (although some editing and additional text occurred later), only 2/3 of the way through your “or so.” By claiming “a century or so” you are deliberately trying to push back the period when the writing occurred beyond the possible life of any actual witness (none of whom are known to have written anything, but several of whom may have carried the word out to those who did begin writing about him). By pretending that I misquoted you, (even though I directly quoted your words), you are doing nothing to make your point. 65 years is “a century or so”? 40 years is “a century or so”? 20 years is “a century or so”? There’s glory for you!

So, yes, your claim, even when you post it in size 5 font, is clearly in error. Your fixation on this point, of course, is also a way for you to avoid addressing the actual point that I had been making as well as covering your own contradictions.

If everything was taken from stuff written a century (or so) later, (which you need to emphasize in order to make your irrelevant point that it was historically suspect–we already know that it is historically suspect), then the belief could not have arisen based on scripture, (your claim), since there had already been recognition by outside authorities that the Christians (with or without Jesus) had a system of belief before the text was actually written.

236

I mistyped this, which should have said"
The latest writings that were accepted as scripture that directly addressed the life of Jesus were written no more than 65 years after his death. . . .

There were writings included as scripture written as late as 90 years aftewr the supposed death of Jesus, (although none as late as a century :stuck_out_tongue: ).

237

Just a small note: even on the later datings held by one school of critical thought, all the present contents of the NT except a few short books (II Peter, Jude, I and II Timothy, Titus) is considered to have been composed by 100 AD – approximately 70 years after Jesus’s death – although perhaps not quite in the present form.

However, first and second century debates about this sort of stuff were on which gospels, which acta, which letters were reliable, i.e., which reported factual material as understood by First Century criteria. The first “list of NT books” is a scrap listing some of them in the context of “you can trust the information in these even though Marcion and his followers claim otherwise” – no “canonicity” is claimed, only relative accuracy of contents.

Actually pulling them together into a second set of Bible books was comparatively late, and begun with a local meeting of Spanish bishops, the Council of Elvira, late in the third century. A final formalized canon accepted by churches across the breadth of the “Christian world” awaited the following century and the first ecumenical councils. There’s an adage used in these arguments: “The church created the Bible, not the Bible the church.”

By the way, PRR other late-First and early-Second century writings that did not make it into Scripture include four letters by Clement of Rome, seven by Ignatius of Antioch, one by my namesake, a major theological polemic by Irenaeus, the utterly fascinating but preserved only in short quotes collection and analysis of sayings of Jesus compiled by Papias of Hierapolis, the extended collection of dialogues and treatises by Justin Martyr, and the rather peculiar “Shepherd of Hermas” and “Didache.” The first two sets of items above are definitely First Century in date.

238

Tom: Use your fucking eyes (or have Jesus restore your sight) and look VERY carefully at what you quoted at the VERY beginning of post #210 in this VERY thread. I have now instructed you to look at the beginning of this post three separate times (counting this reminder) and I’m starting to think that you’re simply too stupid to catch your error, and too vain to consider apologizing for making it. (This can’t really count as an insult, can it, since I’m not quite there yet in attributing raw, unalloyed stupidity for this error, although I will be if you refuse to acknowledge it after this explicit post in which I direct you, exactly as I would direct a mentally retarded four year old to the spot in which the misquotation occurred. If I do have to conclude that it is your mental cappacity, and not some flaw in your character, that impedes you from seeing this gross and obvious misquotation, I will see you in the Pit, and I will definitely be filing a formal complaint against your grotesquely inappropriate modding of GD. Count on that.) Now that being said, look at post #210, at the beginning as I have instructed you twice previously, and read the very first words in that post. To save you from the difficulty of scrolling up, I will reproduce those words here, in this present post:

These words, that you clearly attribute to me, were never said by me. This is known as a misquotation. When you have finished apologizing for commiting this error, and for wasting my time, and everyone else’s time in your previous refusal to look at the beginning of your post, as I have asked several times in this thread, then we can continue.

239

And, Dr Ruber when you are through throwing a hissy fit over a supposed misquotation (which I, not being on the board staff, do not plan on taking the time to investigate your allegation about), you can consider apologizing to me for repeatedly attributing motives to me that I have explicitly disavowed. It is that grotesque refusal to read the words in front of your eyes with some comprehension of what they say that has made me choose to withdraw from argumentation here (though not from reading the thread and supplying factual correction to misstatements where useful).

240

I take it then, that his contemporaries weren’t all that impressed with his amazing miracles.

Come to think of it, that’s quite amazing in and of itself. Or maybe they weren’t all that amazing to begin with? I mean, really, if we could send David Copperfield back in time, I’m pretty certain he’d cause quite a stir like…

…by disappearing, say, a pyramid! :eek:

Headline news on all stone tablets and/or papyrus covering the land. In huge bold fonts too.