A friend of mine is religiously faithful, because she saw an angel, once, when she was awakening.
As someone who has experienced hypnagogic and hynopompic hallucinations of the most astonishing kinds – angels? Hey, I’ve had wolves and ninjas and deer and glowy-eyed witches in my bedroom! – I’m not sold.
No, a memory from childhood of seeing a man floating in the sky after you woke up from a nap during a long trip would not count as a personal interaction. Before we go any farther, you might want to look up both “personal” and “interaction” in a dictionary.
Dibbs, can you do me a favor, since the big guy refuses to appear to me, can you ask him to maybe do something about the thousands of people being butchered by ISIS. Or maybe the babies starving to death in Africa.
I understand he’s probably rather busy making repeated appearances to well off American Christians in order to help them get through tough times, like the time their favorite team lost the big game, or the time their wife cheated on them, but you know, there are a few outstanding issues out there that might, and I’m just suggesting this possibility, be of more importance to the world.
K? Thanks.
Some of you people are absolutely hysterical. You keep hammering on with comments suggesting that I, or others, are in this world to “convince” you of this or that. And yet, as I have spoken to you with sincerity AND logic, you demonstrate that you suffer badly in the reading comprehension department by not grasping the nuances of my words while flinging around the term science, as if one is to automatically say, “You’re right! This is not a mystical world at all and if one person experiences something then it automatically follows that its validity is doubtful!”
What foolishness!
Here, since you want to play the game of being all technical – which you’re not any good at, btw – answer this question: Is love real? (Don’t forget that it cannot be measure, weighed, proved, etc.!:eek:)
And for about the fourth time, let me again say I MADE IT CLEAR FROM THE START THAT I NEVER(!!) HAD ANY INTENTION OR DESIRE TO “PROVE” OR “CONVINCE” OR “SELL” ANYONE ON THE FACT THAT MY EXPERIENCES HAPPENED. (And if you have any doubt of this, go back to my first comment and you’ll see that I made that point clear as can be.)
I’m a pretty easy-going guy and don’t do sarcasm and rudeness unless others decide to throw it at me first, in which case I may or may not respond in kind. I seriously don’t get how some of you approach Truth, as it doesn’t make sense to me that you SOMEHOW missed comments where I stated that MANY other things have happened to me… but you quickly hit the shrill/sarcasm/rude button like as if I’m supposed to start tap dancing for you.
IF our little discourse had been calm, respectful, intelligent and sincere, we “might” have gotten to the more “objective” side that I could have pointed to so as to give my claims much weight. But that didn’t happen, and it wasn’t because of my approach. I am a stickler for clarity and details.
Incidentally, I can’t help but wonder if some of you are the same person using different computers… 'cause it’s strange how some of you so quickly circled the wagon with trying to make it seem like I’m the one that caused things to derail.
Some of you people need much more humility. You seem more interested in personal attacks than you do in discovering what the Truth of things are when it comes to matters of deep importance. It might pain you to hear this, but, when you so quickly get all cocky by trying to arrogantly “win” by suggesting someone read certain books so that they can become as learn-id as yourself, when you encourage others to rally against me by citing their comments as a way for them to get the hint and “take your side,” you only shortchange yourselves and waste everyone’s time.
You think Jesus isn’t real? Try this: Get on your knees and ask for Him for forgiveness of your sins, and then ask Him to prove Himself as being real. Because who knows? He might decide to take you little game players up and do for you what you wouldn’t allow me to even get close to – i.e. bring you to the TRUTH of things.:eek: (Imagine how you’ll feel if He should come to YOU in a dream and/or in the sky and/or through other means and methods, ways in which you never allowed me time to get to before you became overbearing with your little science and whiney demands.:mad:)
It sounds like you’ve been taking lessons from some of the other witty fellows around here. Learn humility and sincerity … and then get back to me.
I’ll do that right after you admit that I’ve been clear from the start that my desire was to have an honest and friendly discourse; to share some experiences I’ve had over the course of my life, not this business of having to prove or substantiate a thing anyone.
The “Truth”?
When that word gets capitalized, it becomes next to impossible to bring any logic back into the conversation. BTW, nice persecution complex you’ve got there. I assure you we are all different posters here.
The thread is called: “Was Jesus Real or a Myth”?
People here are discussing the evidence for an actual historical figure whence the Jesus mythology of the bible sprung forth.
Your childhood fantasy playmates aren’t going to settle that debate one way or another, I’m afraid. Why are you here, other than to drive by witness?
What you seem to want is a free pass. You said you had personal interactions with Jesus, but what you have described so far could not possibly be defined as personal interactions. In the case of the dream, it was personal, but not really an interaction. In the case of you being a child in the car, if were truly awake and if you are remembering the event correctly, there was also no interaction-just a vision, at best.
What is it about this, my 3rd post on this thread, that you don’t get: I’m not into trying too hard to convince anyone of anything, just in a friendly way make a few mentions here and there of some of the events of my own strange life is about all.
This is a debate forum. Dropping in with a comment that you have some sort of esoteric truth or knowledge on a topic being debated, then trying to avoid actually engaging in debate is not appropriate.
Not going to work.
If every single response to you had been heavy sarcasm, you might have a point. However, the first three responses only asked for information at which point you made an issue of sarcasm before any had been posted.
Again, not appropriate.
This is witnessing, (accompanied by the sort of snide comment that we often see from proselytizers whose comments are not immediately embraced).
This forum permits witnessing, so you may open a new thread to make your pitch. This forum does not permit personal attacks, and your own sarcasm has come closer to that than the posts which preceded it.
If you wish to witness, open a new thread.
If you are here to play the supercilious “saved” card, either open a new thread in The BBQ Pit or just take it to a different site on the Net.
[ /Moderating ]
And I’m sure that if people had reacted positively and accepted your stories here without question you would have likewise reacted negatively, telling them that you weren’t trying to convince them of anything and not to make anything of it. Truth to tell, your life as you’ve described it thus far just isn’t that strange-I’ve heard stranger dreams and weirder supernatural encounters on this message board before, and very often, when others fail to take them blindly at their word, they end up saying pretty much what you just said about you not being here to convince anybody.
Substantial as in there is actual physical evidence of his presence hat an objective 3rd party can see and observe?
I tried that. I got on my kneesies and asked Him for forgiveness for my sins.
I got no reply. I therefore conclude, using your impeccable logic, that Jesus is either deaf, doesn’t give a shit, or doesn’t exist. Or maybe he’s a practical joker, someone I really want to worship.
Of course, since my observation is highly personal, you are free to discount or ignore it, as I do yours.
Whether or not he ever did exist, in biblical times, as a non-supernatural man, is still an open question.
And they said evangelism was dying
That’s something a lot of believers don’t understand: many of us who are unfaithful have tried to reach out to God. We’ve sincerely prayed, begging with utmost humility for help in time of trouble, for solace in woe, for comfort in loss.
And, while there are many who say that they have been answered, there are a good many of us who have not been answered.
God could have had a great many more faithful disciples, if he were in a position to answer all prayers.
‘faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains’ - yet there doesn’t seem to be anyone that has enough faith to actually be heard - (for the big things, not the seemingly little things that people praise god for instead of the team of doctors).
I can’t say I’m particularly inclined to flame Dibbs, unless doubting that his (?) mystical beliefs have any basis in reality counts as flaming.
Hi, razncain!
Is it possible that I overstated my case in the brief summaries I’ve provided here and elsewhere? Of course it’s possible - I would be a fool to insist otherwise. But I’ve read and carefully reviewed his arguments in The Christian Myth several times over the years, and although you won’t find the words “I am a mythicist | ahistoricist” point blank, as I’ve stated before such an expectation would be absurd in the extreme.
But I continue to hold that the book (as well as the full fair-use summary I posted at my site) nearly shouts his 2001 change of position to ahistoricist (if one can ‘shout’ with dignity and elegance and wit)!
What he’s clearly arguing quite strongly is that if Jesus was a historical, physical man, there absolutely would be persuasive (if not compelling) textual evidence of such existence, but since all the alleged evidence for such existence fails utterly to provide ANY reliable, rationally justifiable evidence that could establish this allegation, one therefore must concede that no such historical person – at that approximate time in that approximate location – ever existed.
Neither Mack nor Doherty nor myself denies that some historical people may (or may not) be “reflected” in the texts that survive, but that’s all. As I’ve claimed a few times up-thread, I personally hold that the historical person probably named “Judah” (ignore the other name I incorrectly remembered previously) – who was a Jewish rebel who fought with the royal/Jewish leadership and lived circa 100 BCE – very probably formed the initial source for the earliest Jesus myth/legend (such as Q1, assuming it is historical). But as I shouldn’t have to make clear, some possible historical source for the Jesus material does NOT magically mean that some ‘Jesus’ existed!
I assume you’re referring there to Ehrman’s near-universally scorned apologetic travesty, Did Jesus Exist?
That’s most probably a fair point, but although I cannot refute it without a great deal more personal evidence from those authors themselves (and I’ll try to contact Doherty on this very question), it’s not at all difficult to reasonably speculate that they failed to specially note Mack’s change of perspective for the same reasons that Frylock and yourself have: i.e., I have failed to point to any specific single phrase where Mack writes “I am now a mythicist”. And what’s left can be interpreted as ‘ambiguous’ (even if I do not see it that way at all).
So you’ve set me a new task: to try to find out why Doherty & Carrier don’t see the conclusions of The Christian Myth the way I do (It’ll take some time, of course…)
Then I very strongly suggest that you get a copy of Mack’s The Christian Myth and study it very carefully. Or, hell, just pay attention when reading it 
Speaking candidly, I honestly cannot see how anyone could come to any other conclusion than that Mack had become an ahistoricist as of 2001.
(BTW: When I had a similar debate on another site some years back, my main opponent claimed to have contacted Mack by email and claimed that Mack rejected my claim. However, he refused to provide the email address he used to contact him, and he also refused to publish Mack’s response, so no one on that site believed him for a second, especially since Mack is long retired and has no official public email address that anyone can find that’s still current).
Hey, MfM, sorry for the long delay in responding…
The two words are virtually synonyms in my usage: ahistoricist = a-historicist = non-historicist ~= mythicist. I’m not playing games with semantics, I just don’t like using the same term all the time in my writing (writing 101).
I dunno if he thinks it would be a “Mug’s game” or not (of course), but see my reply just above this one to razncain.