Originally Posted By mrkthompsn Well, they didn't necessarily ~have~ to be in the Bible, but they just so happend to be: disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come to mind. Then there's John the Baptist, and Paul. Then there are several high-level Roman soldiers and officials that came to witness the truth, especially the Roman soldier who observed the curtain of the temple tear in two, and the earthquake at the moment if Christ's death at Cavalry. And of course there's the people all over Jerusalem who witnesses dead prophets rise from their graves and walk about the city the moment after Jesus died. Yeah, they just so happen to be in the bible, but that doesn't mean their accounts aren't recorded elsewhere.
Originally Posted By mele So, the people IN the Bible are the people are your excellent sources? Well, Rudolph is an excellent source for proving Santa is real. After all, SANTA HIMSELF asked Rudolph, with his "nose so bright" if he would "guide his sleigh tonight". That's a direct quote. It says so in every single Rudolph book AND on the TV show. You can read or watch it yourself. You just can't get a more reliable source than that! People who say there is no Santa are just liars and are destined to get no presents for Christmas.
Originally Posted By quincytoo Rofl at post 102 I celebrate Rudolph and Santa on Dec 25 along with peace and goodwill to men. There IS a Santa!!!! As for someone who might have been born a few thousand years ago??? Heck I find it hard enough to remember to send my own wonderful father a birthday card, I am not celebrating Jesus's birthday. >>>>God put you on death row. There you will remain, unless you choose to agree with the Bible and accept it's spoken truth<<<<<< It is deranged mutterings like this and other posts I have read today that made me run from any type of religion involving the Christian bible. I grew up in a Catholic home and did the whole Catholic private school, church on Sunday's yada yada. Heck I even read the bible!! Even back then I thought that the bible doesn't quite add up. Turns out there were a whole lot better reads on the weekly bestsellers list. Funny thing is that I do believe in a higher power, some type of a god, but so many of the zealous fanatics in the Christian religion have me completely turned off Christianity.
Originally Posted By X-san ***Woah... my dad was a pastor and I NEVER heard anything like that. I think maybe you need to take a step back and re-examine your faith. That doesn't sound anything like the God I was taught about when I was little. And if I did still attend church... I'd never go to one that had that as its message.*** IPB is a PK, eh? (you know what that means, right?) NOW I know why you're so cool. And a little bit bad. I dated a PK once. She was cool and a little bit bad, too.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn This from Romans: Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
Originally Posted By dshyates Mark, once again, quotes from the book do nothing to validate the book. The fact it says in the book that the story is true doesn't mean it is.
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn Not trying to validate the book. Just explaining the death penalty to Tiggirl. But just so you know, the entire Bible from one end to the other is one large attestment made by several people. It is essentially a series of news articles made by people who actually lived and witnesses real events, and testify their lives to their observations. If you question the validity of the Bible, then you are probably consistent in questioning every single news article of every magazine, newspaper, news show that have ever existed.
Originally Posted By mele Ever play the game "Gossip" or "Telephone"? It's pretty much the same thing as your "eye witness" reports. And using the same logic in your last sentence, you must believe everything you read and/or hear. Seen Elvis lately?
Originally Posted By ecdc >>But just so you know, the entire Bible from one end to the other is one large attestment made by several people. It is essentially a series of news articles made by people who actually lived and witnesses real events, and testify their lives to their observations.<< Except that's not what it is in many cases. Many of the people (including those who wrote the Gospels) did not witness the events. They wrote these things down through oral traditions decades and sometimes centuries after the events. Many of them created the stories out of whole cloth to promote their own political agenda. So to use your analogy, it's more like if I wrote a story about how Abraham Lincoln rounded up several southerners and shipped them to Cuba to be tortured for information, as a way to defend the Bush administration today. Of course, Lincoln did no such thing. That's what much of the Bible is - it uses past people and invents stories around them to promote a current political agenda. Just by way of example, the Pharisees were not at all common when Jesus lived. But they were in power generations later, which is why those writing the Gospels were critical of them, and they used the tradition of Jesus as a way to bolster their case against the Pharisees.
Originally Posted By Tiggirl I understand "the wages of sin is death" blah, blah, blah. I don't need for you to explain that to me. I did plenty of bible reading in my younger years. My point is I have never heard that "God put us on death row" or however you worded it. I've never heard it explained that way. If you're trying to minister to people... well that would turn me off to whatever you had to say. Of course its your right to say it but to me it seems the point of this thread is to "gather lost sheep to the herd" as it were... I don't think that saying God has selected them for the slaughter house is a good way to do that. But hey... its your thread. C'est la vie ~Beth
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn It is reasonable to question the validity of everything. But doing so doesn't make everything invalid. Don't be so certain that the Bible is invalid. Doing so could put you on the wrong side of truth - whatever "truth" really is.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>But doing so doesn't make everything invalid. Don't be so certain that the Bible is invalid. Doing so could put you on the wrong side of truth - whatever "truth" really is.<< You're not responding to anything I've said. You're resorting to nice platitudes about "truth." Do you have any response to the specifics I offered? It's of course fine if you're unfamiliar with Biblical historicity and the multitude of issues surrounding Biblical literalism. Believers have no reason to question what they believe if it makes them happy and makes them feel at peace. But then, they might want to think twice before simply insisting that their way is "truth" because they're going to challenged on it. And if they aren't familiar with the arguments, then they're not going to have much of a leg to stand on.
Originally Posted By EighthDwarf I think Jesus came to the world for the same reason we all did: his parents were exercising their life-giving instincts. However, because of some man-made rules, his parents weren't supposed to be doing the dirty deed so they came up with a story that amounted to "I have no idea why I'm pregnant, I have never been with a man. It must have been God!" So Jesus was born into a strange situation in which, to keep up with the facade, he was told he was god's kid. Like all of us, he played the role he was assigned. And he pissed off a bunch of folks and was killed for it. In order to justify why the "god in the flesh" could be killed (aren't gods supposed to be immortal???) his followers created the story of him dying to save all of us. They borrowed and stole from the "old" testament to support their claims. Mix that mythology with the cultural beliefs of the day and voila, you have Christianity. Jesus was probably a really interesting guy along the lines of Socrates. Neither Jesus nor Socrates wrote anything that has survived through time but they both had followers that wrote down their words (and most likely added a lot of their own) and used them to support their own ambitions. If Jesus were alive today, I'd love to have a beer with him.
Originally Posted By Elderp "If Jesus were alive today, I'd love to have a beer with him." Would that be before or after you called his mother and adulterer?
Originally Posted By Elderp Webster's definition of adulterer "voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and someone other than his wife or between a married woman and someone other than her husband; also : an act of adultery" Webster's definition of a fornicator "past participle of fornicare to have intercourse with prostitutes" I think he called her an adulterer.
Originally Posted By dshyates I'm not all that familiar with the story but were either Mary or Joseph married to anyone other than each other. And I will go with websters definition of adultry, which would require her to be married to someone other than who she is having sex with. You cannot commit adultry unless you are married. That is the first time I have ever heard of prostitutes being involved with the definition of "Fornicate'. The definition I am familiar with is intercourse out of wedlock. This link is inline with my understanding. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fornicate" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fornicate</a>
Originally Posted By jdub Not adultery if none of the parties are married. I think these days it would just be called "hanging out."
