Alrighty then: disprove each and every contradiction on that list. It'll take a while but I'm sure you'll score points with the big man for taking the time to defend the most important book in the world. God's gotta appreciate the people who got the extra mile for their faith.

It won't make us believe that the bible really is the word of God, but it will shoot our current argument full of holes and put a great deal of egg on our face. I'm sure there's at least a handful there which actually are based on mistranslation/make more sense in context. Be thorough though, because we only really need 1 real contradiction to prove that your book isn't divine.

Nope. They pretty much had the same idea (except it looks as if Jesus is encouraging people to not only leave their families, but actually die for him in 10:39).

Or at least it's indicative of more contradictions between Gospels:

Des (and everyone else here in Gnet Land for that matter) : First, I welcome critical thought of opinions and beliefs including religion. If one best friend asks the other best friend his honest opinion, does the other best friend want to tell his best friend the truth? Of course. Sycophants and yes men do not help us reason. They are an obstacle to reason. So please don't think I feel offended because you are asking important questions. I have grown so much (intellectually speaking) from being forced to reevaluate my beliefs by people here on Gnet (Alan especially), in the most Socratic-ally beneficial way.

So getting back to dissection. The following quote summarizes the reason this thread exists:


Yes. Imperfections. Human imperfections. Let us apply this to other aspects, not to distract from the subject under scrutiny but to see it in comparison and thus greater understanding of human imperfection, and yet, progress.

The government of the United States is not perfect. (Waits for hilarious laughter to die down to chortles, grunts, slaps and guffaws).
Yet millions of people agree to be governed by it, willingly, and even patriotically. Abhorent! Stupid! A blatantly imperfect government yet people by the millions follow it? Absurd!

The United Nations is not perfect. (Avoids glares) Yet wealthy, intelligent, and resourceful nations willingly join it and abide by its rules (usually. It is imperfect after all).

I think my point is made. Do some people think government should always be obeyed? Sure, there is a sucker born every minute. Do some believe that Obama is the anti-christ? Sure. Ditto. But most people are aware of the shortcomings in the entities that are greater than themselves, and yet follow it because it is better than than the alternative.

That, is the reason the greater distribution of Christians people follow the bible. Their local legacy is Christianity; had Shinto been there instead than it would have sufficed, but because of earlier, more primitive times and the discovery, conquering and migration of Christians past, the Christians of today follow the bible because that is all, as I think you said earlier, they know.

Had it been Shinto, they would have accepted the flaws and contradictions in it as well.

We are moving into the gray area between reasoning and providing an excuse, but that is observed behavior.

Put any contradiction in our current government on display in front of a patriotic American and of course they will become uneasy and say "uh...".

But finding perfection? In humans? Surely, you jest. But we can aspire to perfection, and so follow a star to use a jaded metaphor, and thus evolve, albeit slowly, over time towards that ideal.

I thought Des would appreciate this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSqKZITXJzs&NR=1

Ooo fun psychological fact time: most people only think that they have exact memories of traumatic events like that. It is due to the same psychological processes that make people such crappy eye-witnesses, our brain really likes to auto complete and we don't really know the difference between what we have actually processed and what our mind has added in after the fact.

So you're saying that I might, in fact, have not been in highschool Chemistry class during 9-11, but instead on top of Clingman's Dome in the Great Smokey Mountains?

She's saying you might have remember you were asked to recite the pledge of allegiance through the speaker and they actually only announced the cafeteria menu.

Des it generally isn't something that drastic and the closer to your normal routine the easier it is to remember. For instance if you are a student and you were home sick on 9/11 you would most likely remember being in class when you heard the news, even though you actually weren't. There are also cases of people who where on business trips or vacations and remember hearing the news at some layover near New York, when they were on a non-stop flight that didn't go anywhere near there. People also remember hearing the sound of the crash even though they were well outside of hearing range.

Okay, but if that is true, it still doesn't apply to the conversation we're having:

These are most of the specific contradictions about the events leading up to the crucifiction:

Not likely to be a minor (or even major) detail that you're talking about. An error like this would be akin to me remembering I was in school, when really I was in the Smokey Mountains.

Keep in mind this is also the 11 disciples witnessing their beloved friend and teacher, whom they saw die, return from the friggin' grave Then fuck off to heaven riding a beam of light.

If you're a Christian, then this is the single most important event in human history, and the people who were supposedly there can't even remember the fucking geographical region in which it took place.

Dude, somebody is jerking you people around. Either:

A) Matt is wrong/lying

B) Luke is wrong/lying

C) Both Matt and Luke are wrong/lying

Therefore, why should you believe that any of this even happened? The story of Christ has been told again and again in one form or another for centuries before Christ was even born. There are multiple deities with the same/similar back story, birth circumstance, and death circumstances as Christ. Isn't it much more likely, given how unreliable the scriptures are, and how common a death/birth deity is spoken of, that he was just a social reformer/benevolent cult leader who's followers affixed to iconic folktales after his death?

Dude, like I said earlier: humans aren't perfect. Matt and Luke probably erred.



So because they humanly erred, why throw out the nativity baby with the bathwater? Salvation is the point of the whole thing, not geographical accuracy. If you demand that you are in the same camp as those who say the bible can be used to explain dinosaurs too.

Possible, but then you give them credit for saying "Hey, let's write up some tall tales that will lose their origins over a thousand years until no one knows we lied!" What would they really expect to accomplish? Now remember: these guys were true believers that if they sinned against the Son of Man they would go to hell, they honestly wanted to bring glory to the Heavenly Father, so this would provide some level of checks and balances in terms of them lying or pulling anything out of their ass.

I see what you're getting at, it just seems so highly suspect to me.

I never knew the writers of the gospels, so I can only guess at their motivations.

I have a feeling that they were true believers, but I don't think it's particularly likely any of them ever even met Christ.

I think it's far more likely that they wrote down the folktales told by other members of their fledgling religion and attributed them to the Apostel who supposedly first told the story. Over time these stories blended with other bits of folklore until Jesus's story took on the structure it has today.

The images in Christ's story are an amalgamation of pagan beliefs and dietys. Prometheus was crucified, Odin was hung from a tree (as opposed to a cross) and stabbed in the side with a spear and rose again in nine days, Horus was born under special circumstances, died and rose again.

We celebrate Jesus's birth at Christmas because Mithras was supposedly born then.

Do I think this was by design? Not really (thought subverting Mithras and the winter Solstice may have been) More, I think people have a tendency to think in certain patterns, and are attracted to certain images.

I remember back in middle school I was surrounded by kids who believed Kurt Cobain faked his death because they didn't want to believe otherwise. I think it's likely that Jesus was a Jewish reformer, was crucified, and stayed friggin' dead. It seems to me far more likely that his disciples (or other believers who weren't there) decided he'd come back because they didn't want to face the truth. They repeated it, and repeated it, and others affixed local folklore to the story, and 40+ years later some anonymous scribes collected the tales in a couple of books, and before you know it you have the Holy Catholic Church.

Having been a christian, who has associated with other christians I find that the main issue with non-believers posing any logical questions, is the whole deal that faith will ALWAYS come before reasoning. Those who believe in the bible will probably always find an answer, and as for the ones they can't answer, they will just claim that it's truth. Although I never had christianity pressed on me as a child...I WAS raised into it, and it just becomes imbedded into you to the point of honestly not being able to think outside of the box aka logically. I'm still having difficulties breaking away.
But I'm glad I can understand both sides now. I think a really good question to ask christians is about the whole suffering deal. Usually when you ask a believer why god would let us suffer, or why he lets us get cancer, etc etc... the answer is always that it's a way to test us, and challenge our faith in him. What I don't understand though is why exactly does god test children and babies then, why does he allow sick parents to lock they're children in closets, or abuse them? Why does he let babies get torn to shreds? Is it necessary for an innocent child to be "tested"? More than likely a christian will still say that it's a mystery that only God knows the answer to... I claim bullshit. If god were perfect he wouldn't have flaws nor create flaws, but in my opinion we live in one hell of a flawed world.

Hence my problem with Religion in general and Christianity in particular when followers wield political power.

HP would most likely vote the same way I would, but there are millions of Americans who will elect a Muslim to office before an atheist. Considering that recently a cab driver got his throat slit simply for BEING a Muslim...well you can see my conscern.

I've lived in the bible belt. You can't talk to these people. Their brains are so turned-in on themselves due to generations of indoctrination that conversation or debate abouth their faith (or issues they've related to it, like homosexuality or prayer in school, or the US being 'a Christian nation') is totally futile.

And now, thanks to Fox news they are one of the loudest and most influential political lobbys, and no one is standing up to them for fear of offending moderate Christians.

Yah here in Texas it's pretty bad. Like most of you guys have said, it's not that I'm really against the lifestyle, it's just the mindset and brainwashed ideas. I see how frustrating and pushy most of these christians can be. What causes me to be even more angry is the hypocrisy. There's a girl I know who I mentioned in another thread yesterday that is your typical southern white christian, yet she drinks, smokes weed, and is constantly bragging about what guy she wants to bang next even though she's married. She goes to church every Sunday and has the gut to literally speak her mind about "not being able to wait to see others in hell, while she chills in heaven". It's so FRUSTRATING... rant. She's going to heaven and I'm going to burn in hell... rant</ul>

Anyways, I need to move.

Sorry I dropped out of the discussion, this week has been craaaaaazy and I'll go back and read some things but right now I'm just too exhausted. Great to see you finally jump in HP ^_^

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I got some neat info for you though. The Gospel of St. Mark, the oldest gospel (I think the only one that could have realistically been written by someone who knew Jesus, it was written in what, 70CE?), originally ended earlier than what is in the Bible we have now. It never mentioned the disciples actually going to Galilee and seeing Jesus, it stops when the angel tells the women to go tell the disciples to meet in Galilee. Its still a contradiction, but I thought it was hilarious that not only did they muck the details up later, but when they went back to tack things on they didn't correct that.

Oh dude, no Zeitgeist stuff, you're breaking my heart. Mithras worship started in the first century! If anybody copied anybody...Also, he was born of a rock, and we don't know much about the cult that worshipped him. The Winter Solstice was around long before him or Jesus.

HORUS NEVER DIED AND WAS RESURRECTED OMFG. NEVER DIED. He was not born of a virgin, Isis resurrected her husband and had sex with his zombie corpse, and got pregnant. Horus supposedly had his eye gouged out in his battle with Set but other than that he did not die!

Prometheus wasn't crucified, he was chained to a rock and an eagle came down and ate his liver everyday, which grew back every night. He was later saved by Hercules.

Odin is the only really comparable one there, and even then I think its kinda pushing it that a religion started in Israel ripped off a religion that belonged to northern barbarians. Crazier parallels exist but I think in the time that Jesus's story supposedly happened to the start of the cult, to its progress to religion happened too fast to have evolved from Norse influence that may have reached Israel.

But yes, Christmas was the winter solstice and Easter was a fertility festival. Way I think of it is that when Paul started preaching to Gentiles, and so many Romans converted, and especially when Constantine converted and it became a state religion, you suddenly got lots and lots and lots of pagans in the Christian faith who still like some of their pagan things. So now we have Christmas.


Yeah, I think he was a Jewish reformer too. I think there's a lot of Christians in my Christianity course this year because our prof took this stance and now we seem to be missing half the class these days. I think the evidence is that Paul doesn't really say fuck all about Jesus's teachings but is solely fixed on Jesus as a divine figure who will come back. And it seems he thought that it would happen in his lifetime. Obviously that didn't happen, and eventually it stopped being an apocalyptic religion. Generally, I realize there's many people today who think the world is going to end pretty soon. They don't seem as happy about it as Christians used to be, though.

ug...my mistake.

I actually mentioned the Mithras dealy because of Gaiman, not Zeigiest (I assumed he'd done his research, Mithras is not a diety I've read much about, it just popped into my head when I was typing). And yeah, I know about the Zombie Corpse thing, that's why I said "special circumstances" as opposed to "virgin birth".

I did get Horus partially crossed with his father Osiris though, which really is inexcusable for someone who reads as much mythology as I do. My bad.

The Prometheus "crucifiction" bit deals with a play I'm currently working on. What I meant was that he was made to suffer in much the same way Jesus was, and in the play I've referred to him as being "crucified" on the rock. Sorry if I didn't express myself properly.

The main point of my argument is that the whole Life-Death-Rebirth story has been done before.

I don't think, like the maker's of Zeigiest, that Christianity is a conspiracy by "word bankers" *cough*Jews*cough* to control our lives and put chips in our heads. I think that humans naturally have a psychological attraction to certain images and certain types of stories. Jesus wasn't strung up, struck by a spear, died and rose, because Christians were copying the northern barbarians or even vice-versa: Both Christ and Odin were "strung up", struck with a spear, died and rose again because those stories and images are ingrained in the human psyche.

Similarly, I don't think that there are stories of vampires and dragons in every culture around the globe because vampires and dragons exist, or that the cultures are necessarily copying each other, more that both those types of stories play into our psychology as a species.

I lived with a quazi-Christian vegetarian doomsday cult in Vermont for a couple of days. They're pretty sure that the world is coming to an end as soon as they can get enough people to live in their hippyish communes, drink mat'e, and let the community decide who they'll marry and when it's time to have a kid.

A TON of Christians back in Kentucky, including close relatives of friends of mine believe we are currently living in the end times.

Well thank Jebus, I really can't stand the religious inaccuracies of Zeitgeist. Osiris wasn't resurrected in the sense that Jesus was though, I think it was just his body that was resurrected enough to impregnant Isis, after that he was still in the underworld. I do agree that there's parallels and common themes over the world, but I really think that you were right in that his resurrection was believed in because he promised all these things and never achieved it in life, so his followers wanted to believe he'd come back and liberate them.

My prof said 65% of Americans believe the end of the world will come in the next fifty years, should ask him where he got that figure but its a scary thing to think about if its true.

I'm just glad us atheists are the fastest growing minority in the United States. By the time I'm a professor hopefully I won't have to deal with as many dipshits.
Want an example of how religion, even when not or only moderately manifested in politics is still bad? A student last semester deviated the whole lecture by saying "evolution is just a theory" over and over again. The lecture was about Bacon to add to the insult.

You're gonna be one scary professor!

Tch, no one would get away with that here. My Asian Religions prof took ten minutes going on a tangent on why the notion of a soul is absolutely ridiculous. Stupid dualists, she said.

Wow. Details please? That sounds insane.

The teacher was precisely explaining how in science there's only theories because of the idea of falsifiability, how it all stems from Bacon's scientific method.
And THAT'S when the guy decides to ask his hand and ask if then that proves that 'evolution is just a theory'
Sweet Jesus, that's like asking if your team won after being told the score is 7 - 0 against.
The whole class except a couple gave a collective sigh because we knew where this was going. He didn't listen to any of our arguments nor the professor's until she decided to continue the lecture despite his hand still being raised.

Oh. I thought you were lecturing about bacon, as in the pork product.

This is funny too though.

Bahahahah! That's hilarious.

Alan: So as you can see, pigs have evolved over the years to produce-

Kid: Evolution is only a theory!

Alan: What?

Kid: It's just a theory! You can't break my faith!

Alan: ...Okay, but, I mean we're talking about trans-fats here, so-

Kid: Trans fats are a theory!

Alan: Trans fats are no laughing matter, Childhood obesity is on the rise and-

Kid: Childhood Obesety is a tool of the Obama administration! Jesus loves fat people! Palin/Hannity 2012!


and so on.