not_a_wings_fan wrote:It would seem that reading for comprehension is not your strong suit.
You are missing my point as well as arguing the wrong premise. But more importantly, it's not a necessary point to win to debunk the Christ myth.
I don't believe it because "the bible", and I never said I did.
You lost this argument before you started, btw, because your burden of proof is a self-fulfilling prophecy - you won't accept any source that is counter your argument and invent ways to disqualify the preponderance of evidence that disproves your position.
You can't find any written, firsthand accounts of my children in extant writings- by your definition that would mean my four kids never existed either, but clearly someone is eating all the food in my house and leaving toys everywhere.
YOU are the one who has lost the argument! There are THOUSANDS of stories of gods out there and the burden of proof is on the BELIEVER! I have even spoken to Christian clergy (including a head pastor just over the holidays) and even THEY admit they cannot meet a higher burden of proof than any other god!
Your example of your kids is PATHETIC and only shows how desperate you are. Every day your kids go to school or go out there are plenty of non Christian eyewitness to your kids. Cannot say the same for Jesus.
Flake, even Christian CLERGY have admitted the similarities between Jesus and previous gods like Horus, Mithras, Krishna, Osiris, Hercules, etc. etc. They KNOW they are busted so the simply say "Satan did it." They are just justifying mythology with more mythology!
Read below as to the AMAZING similarities between Jesus & Hercules. There are even historical characters who cite Hercules and you have the SAME number of eyewitnesses to Hercules as you do Jesus! If you guys don't realize the myth of Jesus after all this you are in TOTAL denial!
Similarities between Jesus & Hercules
Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. The mortal and chaste Alcmene, the mother of Hercules, gave birth to him from a union with God (Zeus). Similar to Herod who wanted to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Similar to Jesus who died and rose to heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him.
Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people like Hesiod and Plato who mention Hercules in their writings. Similar to the way the gospels tell a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have a brief mention of Jesus by Joesphus in his Antiquities, Joesphus also mentions Hercules (more times than Jesus), in the very same work (see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also mention Hercules manytimes in his Annals. And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of course not, and the same must apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity.
Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because they think there never occurred any precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what about the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc. These writers put their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus, for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed, "The whole approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who originated it." [Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized mythologies: UFO adherents whose beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as pure fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from fiction but believed by their constituents.
People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no longer believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so do their gods. Christianity and its church authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges. Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else risk future funding and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even the most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic. The establishment of history should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because a scholar has a reputation as a historian. Historical review has yet to achieve the reliability of scientific investigation, (and in fact, many times ignores it). If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he or she says so. Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence at all, facts dependon evidence.
You guys are in TOTAL denial if you cannot see that ALL the major aspects of Jesus were simply copied from previous gods. Even many Christians themselves have admitted this! The lack of anything unique or evidentiary about Jesus is why Christianity is dying all over the west! All over Europe churches are empty and hundreds of churches close Iin America every year! The influence of the church is at an ALL TIME LOW & keeps falling. Why? There is NO difference between the gods below and deep down you all know it!
JNE, part of the problem here is your style of disputation is asinine.
They didn't record things nearly as frequently as they do now when Jesus lived. No, really, there aren't first hand accounts of much besides kings and such. For you to want said same from the lifetime of someone who no one knew would be as important as he became is ridiculous. And that's really the point - you have denied the evidence that disproves everything about your point and FURTHER you are ignoring the subtle point I keep trying to make.
So, one last try, you are conflating the religion that grew up around the myth of the individual with the historical evidence for the existence of an individual. They are two different points.
I won't argue any of your points about Christianity being made up and invented after the fact...and I haven't. But saying that there is zero factual basis for the individual around whom the myth was grown is ridiculous. It's like trying to argue that because every word of the bible isn't true, then the bible isn't actually a book. It's false logic.
New model suggests the Big Bang never occurred
Instead, the Universe has simply been going forever.
FIONA MACDONALD 10 FEB 2015
A new quantum equation suggests that the Universe has no beginning or end, and it could also account for dark matter and dark energy.
Researchers have created a new model that applies our latest understanding of quantum mechanics to Einstein’s theory of general relativity - and according to their calculations, the Universe may have been going forever.
It’s currently widely accepted that the Universe is around 13.8 billion years old, and before that everything in existence was squished into a tiny point - also known as the singularity - which was so infinitely dense that we can't see anything before it. From there it famously exploded into a “Big Bang”.
This hypothesis was derived from the mathematics of general relativity, but scientists have one big issue with it - it only explains what happened immediately after the Big Bang, not what happened during or immediately before it.
"The Big Bang singularity is the most serious problem of general relativity because the laws of physics appear to break down there," co-creator of the new model, Ahmed Farag Ali from Benha University and the Zewail City of Science and Technology, both in Egypt, told Lisa Zyga from Phys.org.
Working with Sauya Das at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, Ali has now managed to resolve the issue by creating a new model in which the Universe is infinite, and the Big Bang singularity never occurred.
This model was created using updated quantum equations and trajectories, and it also doesn’t predict a “big crunch”, when the Universe collapses in on itself a condenses to that dense point once more. Which, we guess, is pretty good news when you think of the alternative.
The physics behind the quantum corrections is pretty intense, but, basically, the researchers updated several equations and replaced the notion of geodesics, the curved paths that particles will move along when they're only under the influence of gravity, with quantum trajectories. And unlike classical geodesics, which cross at points of singularity, these quantum trajectories never intersect.
Importantly, the model, which has been published in Physics Letters B and arXiv, also gives the Universe new constants and explains why it’s not shrinking as the current model predicts.
Zyga explains over at Phys.org:
"In cosmological terms, the scientists explain that the quantum corrections can be thought of as a cosmological constant term (without the need for dark energy) and a radiation term. These terms keep the Universe at a finite size, and therefore give it an infinite age. The terms also make predictions that agree closely with current observations of the cosmological constant and density of the Universe."
According to the new model, the Universe is filled with a quantum fluid, which might be composed of gravitons - hypothetical particles that have no mass and mediate the force of gravity. A related paper, co-written by Das, also supports the hypothesis, by showing that gravitons can, in theory, form a Bose-Einstein condensate at the temperature of the Universe.
However, this isn't the only new hypothesis about the Universe's origins. Another recent model proposed that the Big Bang created two parallel universes, one moving forward in time and one moving backward.
The physicists now need to analyse their model more rigorously in order to work out if it holds true for all of our growing knowledge of quantum mechanics, but for now they’re quietly confident.
"It is satisfying to note that such straightforward corrections can potentially resolve so many issues at once," Das told Zyga.
2015-2016 Official LGB Sponsor of Jaden Schwartz (IR) & The Hockey Gods
2014-2015 Official LGB Sponsor of T.J. Oshie
2013-2014 Official LGB Sponsor of Kevin Shattenkirk
2012-2013 Official LGB Sponsor of Ryan Reaves
2011-2012 Official LGB Sponsor of Vladimir Tarasenko
2010-2011 Official LGB Sponsor of Vladimir Tarasenko
The Big Bang always seemed pretty far fetched to me. I'm not saying I don't think it happened...but it always seemed like a wild stab in the dark at what happened...even though there is a solid scientific theory behind it.
But the idea that something has simply been going on forever doesn't seem plausible either. How can something have just always existed without ever having a beginning?
Our brains were not meant to understand this stuff. I know this because when I really think about "what was at the beginning, and then once you answer that question...what was before that" or "Where does space end, and then what's after that?", I get these weird feelings like whatever happened or whatever is out there can't possibly be explained...yet we feel it has to have an explanation.
And turning to religion doesn't do any good either. It may seem easy to say, "God created it. Easy explanation." Because then who or what created God? And what was there before that?
Truly thinking about infinity, when referring to outer limits of space and when referring to the past in terms of time, can really screw up your brain.
Its really funny how people want to eliminate God from our everyday life at every turn. To love God and to be a disciple of God is a constant exercise in less of me and more of 'you' (God) and to try and live this everyday. When men / women rely on themselves they all too often leave God completely out. When you have a problem in your life, your first instinct (and mine a lot of the time) is how am 'I' going to fix this problem... My wife and I talk about this all the time. The struggle to let God do his will in your life and to seek his guidance rather than to 'do' for yourself. I am a big 'doer'. When something comes up, I want to go work to fix, if that makes sense. You may ask why I am even dredging into this on this forum but something JNE said struck a nerve (I know, I know). Anywho, It seems to me that for the last several hundred years, man has been determined to disprove and discredit God, his existence, his sons existence, his disciples existence and his chosen peoples existence every chance they have. This is the new 'scientific' method to discredit anything written in the Bible. Modern leaders in education, science and industry have created a science-centric world. And this is the root of the problem. Prophesy already said this would happen.
The Apostle Peter wrote, “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts .… For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:3, 5-6). Peter states clearly that one of the hallmarks of our day is a willing ignorance of God. The truth is, men could know much more about God but choose not to. What does this mean? Peter warns that willing ignorance of God, along with a great expansion in all other fields of knowledge will bring about our ultimate downfall.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools .… And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:21-22, 28).
This is our generation!!! Everyone is out to show how wise and smart they are and want to discredit the only real truth out there. Science it would seem is leading the charge. I can't count how many times science has been wrong and done a 180 starting with the world being flat leading up to today where every other day scientist say...this hypothesis is wrong or we just learned this 'new' piece of information and they change 180 or create a new unfounded hypothesis. They say doctors 'practice' medicine because they are just practicing their experiments on you. If it were an 'exact science' like pure mathematics, they wouldn't need to practice on you, you would walk in, they would scan you, get a true diagnosis and you would leave the doctor well. I think its funny that people lean so heavily on their own understanding and never realize that they don't know jack crap about anything. I make drawings for a living and have for over 20 years. I deal with hard and fast numbers sometimes down to hundred thousands of an inch, that is exact. If its not right, I know it. There is a discrepancy somewhere and I have to find it and correct it. Science and Medicine are not so exact.
God has given the godless over to a reprobate mind. Our civilization glorifies music, movies, superstars, television and debauchery of all sorts. The bloodier the better, the more swear words someone can use the cooler, pornography is running rampant on the internet and children of the world view all these immoral and disgusting things everyday and think that its ok if not great. Shows like South Park, etc., etc. appear to be cartoons for kids but have adult content. You know kids watch this stuff, by t-shirts and talk about it with their friends. Parents don't supervise their children and restrict what they intake. People watch shows and revel in their ludeness. People listen to music that degrades women, men, relationships, love, etc. People kill babies in the name of choice and freedom. All this because we have our eyes on the world and ourselves and not on God. It is our generation that is giving in to this and in the name of freedom, we allow immorality to flourish.
I say mankind needs God only doesn't know it. What a poor and sad state of affairs. Everyday I read, The President lied about this, news anchors embellished the truth, etc. How can we rely on what any man tells us when all men are capable of lies and deceit. Psalms 118:8 - It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.
I know JNE is attempting to discredit the Bible / Jesus. He is giving a valiant effort. There are several things that he is leaving out. For years, as I stated to begin with, man has attempted to discredit the Bible, saying that all the characters, places, events in the Bible didn't take place and were no more real than Homers writings. But I would like to challenge all of you to start searching the internet for evidence that Bible characters, places, and events did happen and that archeological finds have proven over and over again that what is written in the Bible from a historical standing is fact. There are lots of things men don't know and lots of things men haven't discovered, this being said, that doesn't mean that they aren't real. In fact my history professor in college was a major history buff and ex military general. He got his kicks on keeping up with the latest archeological findings and using them to prove the Bible. I loved his class and his passion, not only for the truth but for God. They are constantly uncovering new cities buried under layers upon layers of earth, ancient kingdoms, Hebrew writing in places they say never existed. Just look. Search for the truth and you will discover that God is there waiting for you.
Lastly, I know I'm long winded, I don't have to vet the scientific facts of does God exist or not. I do have faith that he does. What does that matter to you? You have all the answers you need using factual evidence of what can and can't be seen, heard, felt or otherwise sensed. I say this because I also know what I have seen, heard, ......My wife, early in our marriage had chronic ear infections. So painful that it nearly incapacitated her at times. We visited several ENT doctors and they would make the symptoms go away for a while, then they would come back. Horrible pain and suffering. We went to church at the time and decided that we would go for prayer and healing after service one night. Me, my wife, a woman named Roslyn and a hand full of other Christians stood and prayed for healing. During prayer, Roslyn's hands (placed about my wifes ears) grew extremely hot and we didn't know it at the time, but she was healed permanently. No ear infection since...over 13 years ago. That is a real God and not some made up god from man. That is a God that lives, heals and answers prayer.
Remember,
Amateurs built the ark ....
Professionals built the Titanic
The evidence in support of the big bang is pretty solid. Galaxies whizzing away from each other at a tremendous rate, the further they are the faster they move, where galaxy clusters still come together because of gravity but distant galaxies move apart which is contradictory to what should happen... unless there was an initial major explosion. The cosmic radiation is evenly distributed all over the universe, the only real question remaining is what happened before the big bang. I'm in the "big bangs are happening all the time" camp. We're not the only universe out there, and when this one ends, another one will spring up to replace it because the matter has to go somewhere. So it'll just re-accumulate in yet another singularity, a black hole of immense proportions that becomes violently unstable and bang, we start over. Of course the fact remains that there had to be some sort of beginning point whether that was 14 billion years ago or 140 billion years ago. Now whether that beginning point was when some higher being snapped his fingers and made all of this possible is up for debate, and one possibility. To discredit god entirely is risky business--and contrary to good science. You test until you disprove, not until you decide not to believe something. But to discredit sound scientific research that has been tested, confirmed and documented is riskier. Seeing is believing... except, apparently, for some people.
The problem is that extremely religious folks flatly refuse to accept observed scientific facts, whereas guys like JNE flatly refuse to accept that the existence of a god is one of many possible causes of everything. Both extremes are dangerous.
Also, flat Earther's, while nuts themselves, are rooted in the original belief the Earth was flat which, at the time, was a valid belief because we didn't have the technology to know better. When we sent man to space and saw from a distance that Earth wasn't flat, well that changed everything once and for all. When Galileo observed Callisto, Io, Europa and Ganymede orbiting Jupiter, that drastically changed the churches demands that Earth be the center of everything. In 1992 the church finally apologized to Copernicus for declaring him a heretic. This was multiple centuries after most people figured out he was rightish about heliocentrism. His crime? Contradicting the very church he was a member of. And yes, the heliocentric model isn't entirely accurate, but it's a heck of a lot better than Earth being the middle of everything, or more specifically according to Ptolemy, Athens being the middle of everything.
The more we look, the more capable we get of seeing into deep space, seeing on a microbial level, seeing things we couldn't see before, the more we learn about the wonder of science. Can science and religion intertwine? It's certainly possible, but not if extremists don't allow it to. Saying that scientists make about faces all the time and that proves science false is a terrible argument. They're not about faces, they're improvements based on new data that take a fuzzy picture and make it clearer.
I hear you and I understand you and like you, I am just saying that scientific data evolves and changes as men discover new things and is often times unreliable. When I hear something as scientific fact, it better be pretty sound for me to accept it. On many fronts, the universe, the natural environment on earth, including all living bodies discovered so far, etc. we are where Ptolemy was...we see the world the way we want to see it and contrive data to back up our often unfounded scientific theorems. Until we have fully explored our own ocean, until we have spacecraft to fly to other galaxies and get better data, I'm not buying any of it. Its all conjecture and extrapolation. Sure we can find bits and pieces of information that may or may not be helpful in understanding our physical bodies and the world around us, but just think of the complexity of the things we are studying and trying to understand. This journey of understanding has been going on for hundreds of years and we have come a long way but it's just the beginning of what is really out there for us to grasp.
Now, If you can wrap your head around this massive amount of creation that we see, the complexities surrounding them and the years its taken to get where we are and the road still to come, and all that we won't ever know because of the vastness of the universe, how can you not believe there is a God. Creation is a true wonder in its variety, in its complexity, how all these things work together, there has to be intelligent design. I am still uncertain and don't think I'll ever really come to an understanding of exactly how God made the world. Genesis sais God created in 6 days. Most Bible experts clock the Earth at only thousands of years old and that God in his infinite wisdom made it basically the way we see it now with the exception of the great flood I'm guessing. I don't know that I am in that camp. I think God enjoys watching us grow (physically and spiritually) and I don't know that he doesn't enjoy watching his other creation grow and change therefore leaning back on millions and millions of years of growing and changing of our planet. Also, the Bible says, But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day - 2 Peter 3:8. So who can tell if the creation story is literal or if this text proves otherwise. God is capable of either one and we will never know the truth until that day.
To me, it is next to impossible to take into account that for all the exploration we've done, we can find no other life on any other planet. If whatever happened to create the universe really happened and life sprang from this, why haven't we seen other life forms? Surely other planets that have different physical make ups would have created their own complex life forms. Maybe rock creatures, or gas creatures, or light creatures...nope...none of these exist. No, we are on a planet which is a certain distance from a sun which perfectly creates an atmosphere for human habitation. If the Earth were just a little further away from the sun, we would all freeze to death. If the Earth were just a little closer to the sun, we would all burn up. The Earth has a perfect tilt to create elaborate seasons for us to live in, just a slight variation and it would all be messed up. This is the only planet in the universe that we know of that has an atmosphere and can sustain life. This doesn't just happen!!! Every time I walk outside and see the beauty that God created for us, I thank him. Every time a cool breeze blows in the summer when I'm working outside, I thank him. Every time I see my wife and children and how individual and wonderful they are, I thank him. Only God could create what you see and I can't imagine how someone can see Gods creation and not be awestruck.
BTW, I believe in scientific 'facts' that aren't complete crap. I believe that we have created wonderful things to explore and discover the world around us. I also believe that mankind in his infinite arrogance and self reliance presume to know things which they don't fully understand as well and there is a lot out there which we have only marginal understanding of. We haven't even explored all of our own planet (after how many millions of years of existence did you say?)
Nuff said
Remember,
Amateurs built the ark ....
Professionals built the Titanic
Humans haven't been around for millions of years. And we didn't spring up with the capablilities to make discoveries or have scientific reasoning right away.
We have found exoplanets with water, with atmospheres, within proper distance of their host star, our problem is getting there which is something we'll probably be working on long after I'm pushing daisies. But we've also found a moon with an atmosphere, we've found oceans under surface ice on Europa and other moons, we've found evidence of primitive life on Mars in the form of methane waste. Just because life isn't entirely like ours doesn't make it any less life or any less likely to host life. We've discovered extremophiles so unusual in such hideous conditions, there's no reason to suppose we couldn't find them elsewhere. We just haven't really begun looking. When we send a lander to Europa and cut through the ice, if we find complex organisms, that would throw a huge monkey wrench into the theory of god, or at least into the theory that he made Earth especially for us and we're the only place in the entire universe capable of housing life of any kind. To suppose we're the only life in the entirety of the universe may be a religious belief of many, but to a huge number of people it sounds more like the height of human arrogance that no one else could possibly ever be like us.
"Of course, all of these features of Europa are purely hypothetical. NASA has no direct evidence of an ocean, but engineers at the space agency are really eager to verify that it exists. Now, with the most recent announcement from the White House, they will finally get that chance.
If we do find life on Europa someday, the finding will change everything. It answers that all-powerful question: Are we alone? Just a few microbes on Europa mean that life is probably pretty common throughout the universe.
And if there are no traces of life on Europa, even when conditions are ideal, that too denotes a huge finding. "If the ingredients are there and there's no life," says Pappalardo, "then wow, life must be even more special and rare than we imagined."
Remember,
Amateurs built the ark ....
Professionals built the Titanic
