Posted on Thursday, September 20, 2012 - 08:33 pm:
Because of the vital importance of the upcoming election which will determine the fate of America for the next century, I choose to remain focused on the Romney/Obama threads. This thread is a distraction. YMMV.
Posted on Thursday, September 20, 2012 - 10:27 pm:
"Because of the vital importance of the upcoming election which will determine the fate of America for the next century, I choose to remain focused on the Romney/Obama threads. This thread is a distraction. YMMV."
Yet youve posted this in multiple threads...so this "distraction" is due to your own choices. You chose to look at this thread, and others, so how focused are you really?
Posted on Saturday, September 22, 2012 - 09:52 am:
Blake, don't be a hater.
It's good that Union Man has something to keep him busy. Kind of like throwing rocks at a train. He can throw all he wants, but the train just goes on.
4th Century. 17 centuries from now, if someone finds a copy of the Divinci Code, will folks believe it is what was believed today? Lots of cults in play in the 4th Century. Gnostics wrote their own bible about then, found in the late 1940s and now published as The Nag Hamadi Library.
The scrap means nothing to me, other than as an artifact.
Mox your correct as is Blake but the folks that thinks a real issue will not listen to evidence. Just passing it off as a non issue is easier most of the time.
Now AES is on to something every guy knows his wife hates his fishing buddies ! Being a fisher of men or just plain fisherman wouldnt matter!
Full credit to Sam Kinison. His humor was often obscene and rude, but insightful.
His putdown of a heckler sets a new low in "yo mamma" insults, is hilarious, and certainly not suitable to any thread involving Jesus. ( it's on youtube, not work or children safe... )
Sam was a Preacher before he took up comedy. Irreverent informed humor, quite biting and offensive. I miss him.
I don't know why it bothers some people to think Jesus might have been married, I don't recall it being an issue in the writings of his apostles. ( I could be wrong, it's been years since I read that book. )
I suppose there is some "if it's not in the holy book it's not needed" attitude, ( leading to the burning of the Library at Alexandria. More than once, by Christians, and Muslims ) or perhaps the "if it's not spelled out it's not so" aspect?
regardless.
Casting doubt on a faith by quoting commentaries or parodies written years later is giving authority to those who do not, in fact, possess it. ( Blake's point )
"Space Balls" does not "disprove" "Star Wars".
The belief, widely published, of an Air Force General, that rockets can't work in space because there's no air to push against, does not disprove Newton, nor did it keep Apollo from making it to the Moon.
Looks like it was faked. If the forger hadn't plagiarized other works, he might have gotten away with it until the tests on the ink and paper come back.
so its a forgery - what is the agenda behind it ?.... Make the Christ story more ordinary - shackle him with a wife - he is an ordinary man after all.... because the true one God is Allah ?....
Decapitate the heros, dehumanize the enemy : tale as old any spook agenda recorded.
Has the biblical authorship question been answered yet? Mosaic dictation? Multiple authors spread over millennium? Inerrant word of God? What about Redaction, revision, language, alteration, etc. The possibilities are limitless. Is claiming to know "The Truth" without equivocation, based on biblical material/literature, more valid for Christians than for any other religion?
The Da Vinci Code may indeed be an artifact in 17 centuries, but will it be any more or less demonstrable than religious artifacts from millennia ago?
ah the art of transcribing any oral tradition will lead to gaps, now add time, language, dialects, distance and a supercharged topic...
and you will find that there are several versions of the Bible and that their tale is mimmic'd and repeated in other contemporary religious iconography.
If God did not create man, man would have found the need to create HIM
it is all about revenue, territory, tithing and control. It is FARMVILLE for the masses 1.o
pull the emotion of God out of the equation, look hard at what the church (any of them, from any religion) has done in the name of 'faith'....
You mean like saving souls, building hospitals, universities, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, stuff like that?
Lots of evil men have exploited religion for their own purposes. The same is true of most any large institution anywhere, govt, education, political ideologies, militaries, ...
Hold the people responsible, not sweep away all of religion with one broad brush because of it. Definitely hold all accountable and call out the corrupt, self-serving among us all.
But don't be blind to the bigger picture either. The Christian churches and people of America do a lot of noble work in the world.
The Holy Spirit lives and acts powerfully in a very real way through those that believe.
It's easy to say that there is no sunlight if you spent your whole life in a cave. Until you step outside the cave and actually experience sunlight for the first time.
^^^ The Cave Allegory from Plato is fully relevant and well placed here. Kudos.
That a government would build roads, construct hospitals, establish schools and promote universities to create loyalty, dependency and entitlements is no more foreign than the church doing it.
I look at them both with the same abstraction and idiom. Call it Faith, Call it Nationalism..... the color of the flag is the only difference In the end, one tribe is better than the other, and the lesser must be subjugated, conquered, enlightened, reeducated and endentured. History is replete with examples of it - it is power, wealth, control, and yes - ego.
and eventually - they all collapse; it should no longer be a surprise.
Any hierarchical church gives the potential for abuse by evil men.
Most have fallen prey to such over the years.
I suspect that's the realization that many adolescents come to when they first really intellectually dissect their faith. Their teachings, specifically. It's hard not to feel the hypocrisy of the observed unfairnesses of a church. You see the petty power politics of the event ladies, and get disillusioned on the whole notion of Church.
It's a crisis of faith at a time when you seek to escape the bonds of your parent's control and not incidentally, are in a hormone storm. Many religions have restrictive rules on sex, and adolescents struggle with the responsibilities, moralities and limits.
I think many atheists hit this crisis and reach a rationalized conclusion that the whole supreme overlord thing is a scam.
The real maturity issue is if you examine your preconceptions and determine an acceptable moral code based on reason, compassion, and/or the wisdom you distill from the religions others believe.
Whatever path you chose, whichever traditions and god(s) you decide or return to, If you're not hurting people trying to impose your belief on others, that's a win, I'd say.
The rest is details.
( lots of arguing in the details... )
As to the original question on the thread, I'm sticking to Sam Kinison.