God needs a super-natural visit today

[The Irish Ram]

I may not agree with your opinion, but I respect your right to have one.
Night Joe.

 

[AVG-JOE]

The entire Bible is written by the inspiration of God.

Nonsense.

Men can’t be ‘inspired’ by something that doesn’t exist as perceived by theists.

As already correctly noted several times: the bible was written by men, where its teachings and dogma are suspect accordingly.

If that is true then there is no one strapping bombs on their bodies and yelling, "For Allah." They're nothing if not inspired.
God wrote, man penned. Men can't tell the future.

True, but with vague enough predictions and 8,000 years of Time to spread them over, even Monkeys can get lucky.

 

[Hollie]

The entire Bible is written by the inspiration of God.

Nonsense.

Men can’t be ‘inspired’ by something that doesn’t exist as perceived by theists.

As already correctly noted several times: the bible was written by men, where its teachings and dogma are suspect accordingly.

If that is true then there is no one strapping bombs on their bodies and yelling, "For Allah." They're nothing if not inspired.
God wrote, man penned. Men can't tell the future.

There is absolutely nothing to indicate any gods wrote anything.

Of course, your gods have chosen a painfully inept way to "keep the truth" since there's a glut of holy texts, religions, sects, and beliefs, so many of them contradicting one another. I still chuckle when I realize the religions of the ancient Egyptians are pure to this day-- chiseled in stone, it would be hard for the texts to go through the laughable circus attending the "holy words of Jehovah" or those other gods?

I'll point out the obvious that the heiroglyphics discovered buried for thousands of years under the sands of Egypt is a far more prisitine and unaltered communication from an ancient civilization than any bible or scripture ever produced. Yet the "veracity" of the ancient Egyptian religion is dismissed while the veracity of the bible-- on far weaker evidence -- is upheld. Other than gainsaying preference, I ask the theist to support why their argument only supports the bible under these circumstances.

Creationists simply ignore the facts written in stone (they prefer the myths inscribed on parchment)

 

[DriftingSand]

If you had bothered to study history, you would have learned that hey-Zeus wrote none of hype bibles. He left no written letter.

The entire Bible is written by the inspiration of God.

Nonsense.

Men can’t be ‘inspired’ by something that doesn’t exist as perceived by theists.

As already correctly noted several times: the bible was written by men, where its teachings and dogma are suspect accordingly.

And yet men were inspired to write the Bible. It exists and it was written and something (Someone) inspired them to write it. The fact that the various books of the Bible compliment each other and yet were written over a long period of time is evidence enough that these various men were inspired to write about a God that they all agreed existed.

 

[Hollie]

The entire Bible is written by the inspiration of God.

Nonsense.

Men can’t be ‘inspired’ by something that doesn’t exist as perceived by theists.

As already correctly noted several times: the bible was written by men, where its teachings and dogma are suspect accordingly.

And yet men were inspired to write the Bible. It exists and it was written and something (Someone) inspired them to write it. The fact that the various books of the Bible compliment each other and yet were written over a long period of time is evidence enough that these various men were inspired to write about a God that they all agreed existed.

Men (and women), have been inspired to write many books. The books they wrote were sometimes written "over a long period of time". That is not evidence that any of these books deserve to be worshipped as "holy".

 

[hobelim]

The New Testament is a popular piece of literature... The Koran even more so.

Does 'popularity' equate to 'truth' now? If popularity is the litmus test for a religion, the Muslims have the market cornered for worshiping The God of Abraham.



The New Testament was written between 40 and 100 years AFTER the events it describes.

Can you imagine the political power one could tap into if given the opportunity to document the assassination of Dr. Martin L King 40 years after the event?



Obviously I can no more disprove The New Testament than anyone else can prove it. There is no proof or truth here... All we in the here and now can have regarding the events described in ancient stories like The New Testament, The Koran, and The Torah is an opinion of them based on the evidence.

If proof one way or the other were possible, we wouldn't be having this conversation but,

If something is too good to be true... it most likely is.​

I didn't say "popularity." I said it has lasted against all odds for centuries. We already know that it's not popular because it requires mankind to reach for a standard that he isn't comfortable with. Nobody wants anyone or anything messing with his comfort zone.

If I, at 53, decide to write about my early childhood does that make my autobiography untrue? Much of the New Testament is made up of letters written by Paul. Those letters were written the moment they were written (obviously). There are still authors today writing about events that took place decades or even centuries ago. So "when" an important document is written doesn't detract from its veracity.

So, we will all just have to settle on our own acceptance or rejection of the level of factual evidence provided by the Bible. On faith (as well as some secular evidence) I believe it to be 100% true. All of it.

Come on now... writing about something that happened to you a few years ago is not the same as writing about events that you heard about which happened to someone else 50 years ago.

And certainly Paul wrote from first hand experience regarding his visions his plans and his admonitions to the church, but the stories of the life and ministry of Jesus are embellished tales of passion at best, the biggest joke being the red letter editions with the words of Christ in red.

The words purported to have been uttered by Christ weren't committed to paper and preserved as history until 50 years after the events! How can those stories possibly be taken seriously?!?

Judging by the disturbing effects that those stories have had and continue to have on 'the nations' for the past few thousand years, you should take them seriously.

That these stories were penned either immediately before, during, or after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem where hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered should alert you to the fact that the Gospels were written in code when there was no such thing as freedom of speech for the benefit of exiles who believed that Jesus was the Jewish messiah who was expected to destroy the nations by the sword..

Jesus didn't come in fulfillment of thousands of years of Jewish messianic expectations because God loved the Romans so much.

"I have not come to bring peace but a sword."

"Take from my hand this cup of fiery wine and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. When they have drunk it they will vomit and go mad; such is the sword that I am sending among them."

"From his mouth there went a sharp sword with which to smite the nations"

"Take this cup of wine and drink from it, this is a cup of my blood, the blood of the covenant."

"Whosoever leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who lifts the sword to kill is bound by the sword to be killed."

"Just art thou in these thy judgments, thou Holy One who art and wast; for they shed the blood of thy people and of thy prophets and thou hast given them blood to drink."

 

[PostmodernProph]

Nonsense.

Men can’t be ‘inspired’ by something that doesn’t exist as perceived by theists.

As already correctly noted several times: the bible was written by men, where its teachings and dogma are suspect accordingly.

And yet men were inspired to write the Bible. It exists and it was written and something (Someone) inspired them to write it. The fact that the various books of the Bible compliment each other and yet were written over a long period of time is evidence enough that these various men were inspired to write about a God that they all agreed existed.

Men (and women), have been inspired to write many books. The books they wrote were sometimes written "over a long period of time". That is not evidence that any of these books deserve to be worshipped as "holy".

and yet, 3 billion people consider the Bible to be a communication of God's intent for humanity......it isn't a question of "deserved".....its a question of acceptance......

 

[PostmodernProph]

Come on now... writing about something that happened to you a few years ago is not the same as writing about events that you heard about which happened to someone else 50 years ago.

and yet that's an inaccurate depiction of the gospels.....in the case of John, he wrote about events he witnessed and his intent was to prove that Jesus was in fact God at a time when a heresy was denying his divinity.....Matthew was not an apostle, but he was among those who followed Jesus while he was alive....he wrote for those the apostles were preaching to in Jerusalem, those who were being shown that Jesus was the promised Messiah....Mark was an early missionary working with Paul who knew the apostles and transcribed their experiences while they were still alive...he wrote for the people Paul was preaching to in the Gentile community who had no previous knowledge of a Messiah......Luke, who also wrote the book of Acts, wanted to put down in an historically chronological order the events he experienced and heard the various apostles describe and discuss....the gospels aren't just something someone "heard about".....

 

[DriftingSand]

The New Testament is a popular piece of literature... The Koran even more so.

Does 'popularity' equate to 'truth' now? If popularity is the litmus test for a religion, the Muslims have the market cornered for worshiping The God of Abraham.



The New Testament was written between 40 and 100 years AFTER the events it describes.

Can you imagine the political power one could tap into if given the opportunity to document the assassination of Dr. Martin L King 40 years after the event?



Obviously I can no more disprove The New Testament than anyone else can prove it. There is no proof or truth here... All we in the here and now can have regarding the events described in ancient stories like The New Testament, The Koran, and The Torah is an opinion of them based on the evidence.

If proof one way or the other were possible, we wouldn't be having this conversation but,

If something is too good to be true... it most likely is.​

I didn't say "popularity." I said it has lasted against all odds for centuries. We already know that it's not popular because it requires mankind to reach for a standard that he isn't comfortable with. Nobody wants anyone or anything messing with his comfort zone.

If I, at 53, decide to write about my early childhood does that make my autobiography untrue? Much of the New Testament is made up of letters written by Paul. Those letters were written the moment they were written (obviously). There are still authors today writing about events that took place decades or even centuries ago. So "when" an important document is written doesn't detract from its veracity.

So, we will all just have to settle on our own acceptance or rejection of the level of factual evidence provided by the Bible. On faith (as well as some secular evidence) I believe it to be 100% true. All of it.

Come on now... writing about something that happened to you a few years ago is not the same as writing about events that you heard about which happened to someone else 50 years ago.

And certainly Paul wrote from first hand experience regarding his visions his plans and his admonitions to the church, but the stories of the life and ministry of Jesus are embellished tales of passion at best, the biggest joke being the red letter editions with the words of Christ in red.

The words purported to have been uttered by Christ weren't committed to paper and preserved as history until 50 years after the events! How can those stories possibly be taken seriously?!?

We can assume that the writings about Christ weren't written until 50 years after the events but we don't know this for certain. If evolutionists can "assume" that a billion years worth of missing links might be found someday (hopefully, maybe, possibly) then I can assume that records of the events of Christ's day existed prior to the "assumed" 50-year-after belief so dearly held by the anti-Christ community.

My grandma used to tell me about things that happened 75 years before I was born. She told me about the 1st car she had ever seen and the fear she had at the sound of the engine. She told me about an old turkey that used to come on to her farm property in southern Colorado and the fact that nobody would shoot that particular turkey because of its size and age. She passed on all manner of events that happened long ago but never wrote any of those events down. But I have no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth. The writers of the Bible either wrote down personal, eyewitness accounts of what they saw and heard or they wrote down the accounts of others who had been eyewitnesses to those events. Either way, there's no reason to believe that they would lie about such things considering the fact that their lives were in danger for simply accepting the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.

 

[Hollie]

And yet men were inspired to write the Bible. It exists and it was written and something (Someone) inspired them to write it. The fact that the various books of the Bible compliment each other and yet were written over a long period of time is evidence enough that these various men were inspired to write about a God that they all agreed existed.

Men (and women), have been inspired to write many books. The books they wrote were sometimes written "over a long period of time". That is not evidence that any of these books deserve to be worshipped as "holy".

and yet, 3 billion people consider the Bible to be a communication of God's intent for humanity......it isn't a question of "deserved".....its a question of acceptance......

And yet, we see that overwhelmingly, geography accounts for whatever communications from the gods (by way of books written by men), is the determining factor for religious belief.

The "Herd Mentality" is hardly a factor for determining the veracity of one collection of gods vs. another.

At one time, 3 billion people believed that the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. Hey, 3 billion people can't be wrong.

 

[indiajo]

I didn't say "popularity." I said it has lasted against all odds for centuries. We already know that it's not popular because it requires mankind to reach for a standard that he isn't comfortable with. Nobody wants anyone or anything messing with his comfort zone.

If I, at 53, decide to write about my early childhood does that make my autobiography untrue? Much of the New Testament is made up of letters written by Paul. Those letters were written the moment they were written (obviously). There are still authors today writing about events that took place decades or even centuries ago. So "when" an important document is written doesn't detract from its veracity.

So, we will all just have to settle on our own acceptance or rejection of the level of factual evidence provided by the Bible. On faith (as well as some secular evidence) I believe it to be 100% true. All of it.

Come on now... writing about something that happened to you a few years ago is not the same as writing about events that you heard about which happened to someone else 50 years ago.

And certainly Paul wrote from first hand experience regarding his visions his plans and his admonitions to the church, but the stories of the life and ministry of Jesus are embellished tales of passion at best, the biggest joke being the red letter editions with the words of Christ in red.

The words purported to have been uttered by Christ weren't committed to paper and preserved as history until 50 years after the events! How can those stories possibly be taken seriously?!?

We can assume that the writings about Christ weren't written until 50 years after the events but we don't know this for certain. If evolutionists can "assume" that a billion years worth of missing links might be found someday (hopefully, maybe, possibly) then I can assume that records of the events of Christ's day existed prior to the "assumed" 50-year-after belief so dearly held by the anti-Christ community.

My grandma used to tell me about things that happened 75 years before I was born. She told me about the 1st car she had ever seen and the fear she had at the sound of the engine. She told me about an old turkey that used to come on to her farm property in southern Colorado and the fact that nobody would shoot that particular turkey because of its size and age. She passed on all manner of events that happened long ago but never wrote any of those events down. But I have no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth. The writers of the Bible either wrote down personal, eyewitness accounts of what they saw and heard or they wrote down the accounts of others who had been eyewitnesses to those events. Either way, there's no reason to believe that they would lie about such things considering the fact that their lives were in danger for simply accepting the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.

There are many reasons. John Smith was teaching that he could read the word of god engraved in a golden plate he found in his backyard with the help of a stone in his hat. For details please ask Google, I just recall the summary.
Actually this became a sect, just like Christianity in the beginning. A sect based on 100% absolute bullshit lies. Your last GOP presidential candidate is one of them.
Arabs blow themselves up because they believe they go straight to paradise, fucking 72 virgins for eternity. Without Viagra, as I was told.
So, the allegded top notch of the evolution does quite a few very strange things. And I am afraid if we will not become the rational beeings that our brains enables us to be, and that very soon, the ants will take over the planet some day.

I am aware that this sounds very cynical. It is. Because I was born Catholic. My Parents dragged me to church until I was 18. But I was already spoiled for Christianity since I was a small child.
I cannot remember anything, but I think the first blow to faith came with Yuri Gargarin.
the first man in space, who stated "I could not see God up there". Well, he was a Soviet, a Communist, therefore an evil man and I remember the sarcastic comments of the teachers and the pastor and how confused I was. Because until then they all had told me that God would be up there watching me.
But I was lying in the bed many nights before falling asleep and thought tht over. They were lying to me all the time. Not that I lost this hammered in belief in that moment, but I realized this people had no idea where god was, yet they were professing to know it, and forcing me to believe it. Gargarin was indeed up there and was not lying, even if he was an evil Communist. This was the seed of doubt, and it started growing like weed.
I was reading everything I got in my hands as a child, really everything that had printed letters, and every information I stumbled over and I could relate to the religious dogmas I was told brought me to the conclusion they were wrong. Deliberate lies.
All was set with 14, the event of confirmation. When they tell you it is now your decision to belong to the church or not. Well, what decision do you have when your complete surrounding is breathing down your neck? And you can be absolutely certain that you would not have one day left without them bashing you if you say no? With 14?
This was the day I not only finally refused that bullshit, I started to hate and despise them for their hypocrisy.
And I had not one single reason to take one step back the past 45 years.

 

[DriftingSand]

Come on now... writing about something that happened to you a few years ago is not the same as writing about events that you heard about which happened to someone else 50 years ago.

And certainly Paul wrote from first hand experience regarding his visions his plans and his admonitions to the church, but the stories of the life and ministry of Jesus are embellished tales of passion at best, the biggest joke being the red letter editions with the words of Christ in red.

The words purported to have been uttered by Christ weren't committed to paper and preserved as history until 50 years after the events! How can those stories possibly be taken seriously?!?

We can assume that the writings about Christ weren't written until 50 years after the events but we don't know this for certain. If evolutionists can "assume" that a billion years worth of missing links might be found someday (hopefully, maybe, possibly) then I can assume that records of the events of Christ's day existed prior to the "assumed" 50-year-after belief so dearly held by the anti-Christ community.

My grandma used to tell me about things that happened 75 years before I was born. She told me about the 1st car she had ever seen and the fear she had at the sound of the engine. She told me about an old turkey that used to come on to her farm property in southern Colorado and the fact that nobody would shoot that particular turkey because of its size and age. She passed on all manner of events that happened long ago but never wrote any of those events down. But I have no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth. The writers of the Bible either wrote down personal, eyewitness accounts of what they saw and heard or they wrote down the accounts of others who had been eyewitnesses to those events. Either way, there's no reason to believe that they would lie about such things considering the fact that their lives were in danger for simply accepting the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.

There are many reasons. John Smith was teaching that he could read the word of god engraved in a golden plate he found in his backyard with the help of a stone in his hat. For details please ask Google, I just recall the summary.
Actually this became a sect, just like Christianity in the beginning. A sect based on 100% absolute bullshit lies. Your last GOP presidential candidate is one of them.
Arabs blow themselves up because they believe they go straight to paradise, fucking 72 virgins for eternity. Without Viagra, as I was told.
So, the allegded top notch of the evolution does quite a few very strange things. And I am afraid if we will not become the rational beeings that our brains enables us to be, and that very soon, the ants will take over the planet some day.

I am aware that this sounds very cynical. It is. Because I was born Catholic. My Parents dragged me to church until I was 18. But I was already spoiled for Christianity since I was a small child.
I cannot remember anything, but I think the first blow to faith came with Yuri Gargarin.
the first man in space, who stated "I could not see God up there". Well, he was a Soviet, a Communist, therefore an evil man and I remember the sarcastic comments of the teachers and the pastor and how confused I was. Because until then they all had told me that God would be up there watching me.
But I was lying in the bed many nights before falling asleep and thought tht over. They were lying to me all the time. Not that I lost this hammered in belief in that moment, but I realized this people had no idea where god was, yet they were professing to know it, and forcing me to believe it. Gargarin was indeed up there and was not lying, even if he was an evil Communist. This was the seed of doubt, and it started growing like weed.
I was reading everything I got in my hands as a child, really everything that had printed letters, and every information I stumbled over and I could relate to the religious dogmas I was told brought me to the conclusion they were wrong. Deliberate lies.
All was set with 14, the event of confirmation. When they tell you it is now your decision to belong to the church or not. Well, what decision do you have when your complete surrounding is breathing down your neck? And you can be absolutely certain that you would not have one day left without them bashing you if you say no? With 14?
This was the day I not only finally refused that bullshit, I started to hate and despise them for their hypocrisy.
And I had not one single reason to take one step back the past 45 years.

I feel your anger. It's likely what's keeping you from connecting with God. You seem to be blaming a lot of folks in your life for putting you on the spot. I would probably be angry too.

But don't confuse Catholicism with biblical Christianity. Catholicism mixes man's traditions with the tenets of the Bible but many of their traditions actually contradict the Bible.

I wouldn't personally put my child on the spot in front of a congregation and make him accept my beliefs. I believe that a person should come to a belief in Christ without force or trickery. Either you believe or you don't. It's an "inside job."

 

[The Irish Ram]

If what was written up to 50 years after the fact wasn't true, enough people would still have been alive, to refute it. Some texts were written in the moment. In all probability, Matthew's accounts were one of those, his job having required short hand.

At Passover the city was crowded beyond capacity. No one refuted what happened. While many said they saw with their eyes, the same man that hung on a cross till dead, walking around for forty days after He died, no one said, " I was there also, and that didn't happen." You'd think they'd jump all over a claim like that.

 

[AVG-JOE]

I didn't say "popularity." I said it has lasted against all odds for centuries. We already know that it's not popular because it requires mankind to reach for a standard that he isn't comfortable with. Nobody wants anyone or anything messing with his comfort zone.

If I, at 53, decide to write about my early childhood does that make my autobiography untrue? Much of the New Testament is made up of letters written by Paul. Those letters were written the moment they were written (obviously). There are still authors today writing about events that took place decades or even centuries ago. So "when" an important document is written doesn't detract from its veracity.

So, we will all just have to settle on our own acceptance or rejection of the level of factual evidence provided by the Bible. On faith (as well as some secular evidence) I believe it to be 100% true. All of it.

Come on now... writing about something that happened to you a few years ago is not the same as writing about events that you heard about which happened to someone else 50 years ago.

And certainly Paul wrote from first hand experience regarding his visions his plans and his admonitions to the church, but the stories of the life and ministry of Jesus are embellished tales of passion at best, the biggest joke being the red letter editions with the words of Christ in red.

The words purported to have been uttered by Christ weren't committed to paper and preserved as history until 50 years after the events! How can those stories possibly be taken seriously?!?

We can assume that the writings about Christ weren't written until 50 years after the events but we don't know this for certain. If evolutionists can "assume" that a billion years worth of missing links might be found someday (hopefully, maybe, possibly) then I can assume that records of the events of Christ's day existed prior to the "assumed" 50-year-after belief so dearly held by the anti-Christ community.

My grandma used to tell me about things that happened 75 years before I was born. She told me about the 1st car she had ever seen and the fear she had at the sound of the engine. She told me about an old turkey that used to come on to her farm property in southern Colorado and the fact that nobody would shoot that particular turkey because of its size and age. She passed on all manner of events that happened long ago but never wrote any of those events down. But I have no reason to doubt that she was telling the truth. The writers of the Bible either wrote down personal, eyewitness accounts of what they saw and heard or they wrote down the accounts of others who had been eyewitnesses to those events. Either way, there's no reason to believe that they would lie about such things considering the fact that their lives were in danger for simply accepting the Gospel message of Jesus Christ.

You ass-u-me what you need to, and I'll ass-u-me what I need to, so that we may sleep at night, 'k Bro'?


I know Monkeys and the spin that we're capable of when we're telling stories.... especially when there's an agenda that needs pushin'.

 

[AVG-JOE]

If what was written up to 50 years after the fact wasn't true, enough people would still have been alive, to refute it. Some texts were written in the moment. In all probability, Matthew's accounts were one of those, his job having required short hand.

At Passover the city was crowded beyond capacity. No one refuted what happened. While many said they saw with their eyes, the same man that hung on a cross till dead, walking around for forty days after He died, no one said, " I was there also, and that didn't happen." You'd think they'd jump all over a claim like that.

Corroboration from Non-Christian Sources.
This page examines corroborative evidence for Jesus' resurrection from Jewish and Roman sources.


N.B. The following is a summary of the available information. More detailed discussion, including fuller citations and evidence regarding their authenticity, may be found by clicking on the links provided.

1. What Might We Expect to Find?

What sort of historical corroboration of the Christian message should we expect to find from non-Christian sources? Certainly not claims that Jesus was the Messiah, or that he rose from the dead. The Christian faith was seriously at odds with accepted beliefs in Jewish, Roman and Greek society, so we should expect rather that such references as do exist in non-Christian sources would be disparaging.

Very few secular documents from the time of Jesus and the apostles have survived to the present. As a result, we are forced to rely on secular sources of a slightly later date. But, although there are few really early external corroborations of the historicity of Jesus, those that do exist are of precisely the type and approximate number we should expect.

Tacitus and Josephus are amongst the best, since both are well attested and have a reputation as careful researchers. Other sources did exist, for they are mentioned in writings of the early church Fathers, but have since been lost. All of these are discussed in outline below, along with some other later references from secular and Jewish sources.

Corroboration from Non-Christian Sources

Unless of course... some Dude was actually seen by a large number of people walking around outside his own tomb.

I would think something like a resurrected victim of Roman capital punishment would be a bit more than less than a foot-note in secular history.

Secular history would not have ignored the Resurrection of Jesus if it had actually happened.

 

[AVG-JOE]

I didn't say "popularity." I said it has lasted against all odds for centuries. We already know that it's not popular because it requires mankind to reach for a standard that he isn't comfortable with. Nobody wants anyone or anything messing with his comfort zone.

If I, at 53, decide to write about my early childhood does that make my autobiography untrue? Much of the New Testament is made up of letters written by Paul. Those letters were written the moment they were written (obviously). There are still authors today writing about events that took place decades or even centuries ago. So "when" an important document is written doesn't detract from its veracity.

So, we will all just have to settle on our own acceptance or rejection of the level of factual evidence provided by the Bible. On faith (as well as some secular evidence) I believe it to be 100% true. All of it.

Come on now... writing about something that happened to you a few years ago is not the same as writing about events that you heard about which happened to someone else 50 years ago.

And certainly Paul wrote from first hand experience regarding his visions his plans and his admonitions to the church, but the stories of the life and ministry of Jesus are embellished tales of passion at best, the biggest joke being the red letter editions with the words of Christ in red.

The words purported to have been uttered by Christ weren't committed to paper and preserved as history until 50 years after the events! How can those stories possibly be taken seriously?!?

Judging by the disturbing effects that those stories have had and continue to have on 'the nations' for the past few thousand years, you should take them seriously.

That these stories were penned either immediately before, during, or after the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem where hundreds of thousands of Jews were slaughtered should alert you to the fact that the Gospels were written in code when there was no such thing as freedom of speech for the benefit of exiles who believed that Jesus was the Jewish messiah who was expected to destroy the nations by the sword..

Jesus didn't come in fulfillment of thousands of years of Jewish messianic expectations because God loved the Romans so much.

"I have not come to bring peace but a sword."

"Take from my hand this cup of fiery wine and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. When they have drunk it they will vomit and go mad; such is the sword that I am sending among them."

"From his mouth there went a sharp sword with which to smite the nations"

"Take this cup of wine and drink from it, this is a cup of my blood, the blood of the covenant."

"Whosoever leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who lifts the sword to kill is bound by the sword to be killed."

"Just art thou in these thy judgments, thou Holy One who art and wast; for they shed the blood of thy people and of thy prophets and thou hast given them blood to drink."

That's your evidence of a God who intervened?!? Our HISTORY?!?

Whatever helps you sleep at night, Bro'.​

 

[AVG-JOE]

And yet men were inspired to write the Bible. It exists and it was written and something (Someone) inspired them to write it. The fact that the various books of the Bible compliment each other and yet were written over a long period of time is evidence enough that these various men were inspired to write about a God that they all agreed existed.

Men (and women), have been inspired to write many books. The books they wrote were sometimes written "over a long period of time". That is not evidence that any of these books deserve to be worshipped as "holy".

and yet, 3 billion people consider the Bible to be a communication of God's intent for humanity......it isn't a question of "deserved".....its a question of acceptance......

It appears to be a question of popularity.

If that's the criteria, the Muslims win!!

 

[sealybobo]

If what was written up to 50 years after the fact wasn't true, enough people would still have been alive, to refute it. Some texts were written in the moment. In all probability, Matthew's accounts were one of those, his job having required short hand.

At Passover the city was crowded beyond capacity. No one refuted what happened. While many said they saw with their eyes, the same man that hung on a cross till dead, walking around for forty days after He died, no one said, " I was there also, and that didn't happen." You'd think they'd jump all over a claim like that.

But only 11 people believed and spread the word that Jesus did all those miraculous things. 11 because Judas killed himself. Everyone else said Jesus was a blasphemer and not the messiah. So your cult grew and millions believe now. So what? Millions also believe the jewish story, muslim, mormon, jehova. They're all wrong.

 

[sealybobo]

If what was written up to 50 years after the fact wasn't true, enough people would still have been alive, to refute it. Some texts were written in the moment. In all probability, Matthew's accounts were one of those, his job having required short hand.

At Passover the city was crowded beyond capacity. No one refuted what happened. While many said they saw with their eyes, the same man that hung on a cross till dead, walking around for forty days after He died, no one said, " I was there also, and that didn't happen." You'd think they'd jump all over a claim like that.

So uneducated human's 2000 years ago believed whatever wild stories they were told. Not much different from the people today.

There is no evidence to support any of the claims made in the Bible concerning the existence of a god. Any ‘evidence’ proposed by theists to support the Bible’s various historical and supernatural claims is non-existent at best, manufactured at worst.

The Bible is not self-authenticating; it is simply one of many religious texts. Like those others, it itself constitutes no evidence for the existence of a god. Its florid prose and fanciful content do not legitimise it nor distinguish it from other ancient works of literature.

The Bible is historically inaccurate, factually incorrect, inconsistent and contradictory. It was artificially constructed by a group of men in antiquity and is poorly translated, heavily altered and selectively interpreted. Entire sections of the text have been redacted over time.

And Kings finally accepted christianity because it was an effective way to used religion to collect taxes. Hard to argue with a person who's rule is divine.

 

[Indeependent]

And yet men were inspired to write the Bible. It exists and it was written and something (Someone) inspired them to write it. The fact that the various books of the Bible compliment each other and yet were written over a long period of time is evidence enough that these various men were inspired to write about a God that they all agreed existed.

Men (and women), have been inspired to write many books. The books they wrote were sometimes written "over a long period of time". That is not evidence that any of these books deserve to be worshipped as "holy".

and yet, 3 billion people consider the Bible to be a communication of God's intent for humanity......it isn't a question of "deserved".....its a question of acceptance......

Deuteronomy 7:7 The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.
The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people:

And perhaps that's why the overwhelming number of Jews are unconvinced by the "Popularity" argument.