50 unproven messiahs

Well lately his followers "priests" have molestered thousands of children.

You mean molested? And you mean less than 1% of the priest population? Great statistic!

Yep, hard to argue with that!

That the demon guy is calling others morons yet he's the one who believes that the universe was created by some long bearded dude...

The fact that Farang pretends to know what I believe just proves my point without any effort whatsoever...:1orglaugh

What's this reasonable evidence?

A few lines in josephus in not terribly good evidence.

I'm curious if you actually know what types of evidences exist, and the dates and provenence of said evidences.

The problem with using "Evidence" on this forum is that both sides will discard ANY signs of evidence that opposes their belief system.. Then the topic begins about what is constituted as "evidence" since it's apparently very relative.

different yeshuah. that yeshuah has a well established provenence. interesting story.

however, one of the possible sources of content in the gospel stories, yes.

you're going to have a hard time finding actual evidence. it's a fun search.

in this case, "evidence" is, as you say, relative, in the sense that what evidence exists is largely circumstantial and textual.

I happen to be discussing this with a history buff who is arguing that the jesus stories were an invention of the roman secret police to weaken the political imapact of the jeweish rebels after the diaspora. thats a fun conversation. saul/paul as an agent of rome, delivering sacks of gold to the new churches as part of a disinformation campaign. lol.

convieniently explains how they got the money to build the early church.

however it may be an unneccessary flourish. occams razor doesn't require it, people under the stresses of such a time are perfectly capable of starting messianic movements without the help of secret police.

Tell your history buff that his rationalization is strong with the force.


The funny thing is, science and religion not only do not contradict, but coexist just fine. It's the nuts on both ends that need some kind of closure..

That's what the bible says. God created the world and everything in it bla bla bla and you say that science and religion don't contradict :1orglaugh

They don't. Try educating yourself on the subject. Einstein's theory of relativity in particular. What God defines as "days" isn't a 24 hour period. God created man on the 6th day, which meant he created everything else on the first 5 days including apes, dinosaurs, etc.. Ergo, no contradiction. Thanks for playing...


Also, before you mention the big bang, think carefully before you claim something can be created out of nothing, and then realize it doesn't contradict with religion either.:1orglaugh

Yes molested, my bad. Point still stands be it 1% or 99%, he asked lately and well you hear about it quite a bit "lately"

No problems there, those guys need to be behind bars..

yeah yeah of course :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

It's usually the ignorant atheists that post their bullshit, not the intelligent ones..:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

You're not really serious, are you?

I mean, it's so painfully obvious how many wars have been fought due to religion over the course of human history, you'd have to be thick as a brick to think that.

Take everyone who died in WWI and WWII combined, and I mean every single one- civilian and soldier, death camp and front line a like- and you're still not even scratching the surface of the number of people who have lost their lives over religion throughout the centuries.

saul/paul could be one of my most favorite historical characters. it's interesting to me that you suggest he was an agent for rome, esp. in light of the fact he was such a religious person. it's amazing to think that he converted from judaism to christianity but it's MINDBLOWING to hear some think he was an agent of rome. he never even visited rome until much much later in his life, and combined with all of the persecutions he recieved- i would be blown away if it were shown he turned his back on religion and actually sabotaged the jewish on behalf of the roman state.

I was going to say that too.
The was also a pretty good documentary on the other week that suggests that Jesus was just one of many "prophets" around in the Roman Empire (suprisingly, quite a lot is known about many of them) but over time, Jesus's name became attached to the exploits of those various people.

well, the only hope of proving or disproving such a thesis would come from as yet unmade archaeological discoveries - because textual evidence and hermenuetics can only tell us so much.

I personally doubt such archaeology will be uncovered, but, I'm always watching for it.

an agent for roman intelligence wouldn't have to be roman, or to ever have been in rome.

saul/paul is a rather terrifying character to have as a favorite figure. but, that is a bias on my part, I always found the letters rather disturbing.

altho I kinda feel like I should reread them. they appeared, and were arguably written, before the gospels, which were always my favorite documents of the collection - it might be educational to re-examine them with the mental toolset I have now.

there's no need to pass judgement.

it's in the nature of human beings to make judgements.

arguably characters like saul/paul and augustine shaped the moral structure of the early church far more than the yeshuah of the gospels did. the early church and today's churches as well.

the core message of the letters seemed to me to be, "do not dare to defy the authority of appointed leaders, for fear of judgement", but I think I've already admitted I found them a difficult read.

I'd be happy to hear any lauding of saul/paul that anyone might care to make.

you know, I have to admit I don't have a decent book about paul in my library. I wonder if there is one.

there are several good books about paul. they were required reading for me back in college. he's been studied extensively since he made such a massive impact on western civ.

like what?

I'm more interested in recent books - there's been a comparitively large revolution in biblical studies in the past two decades, such that the newer books tend to be much better.

I rather enjoyed Robert Funk's "Honest to Jesus", and his hermeneutic analysis of what in the gospels might actually be from the yeshuah era (20 to 40 AD) and what was provably added later or taken from earlier documents.

Which translates to, "I don't have any proof of this and in actuality the proof is against me so I'm going to call him braindead and hope he doesn't call my bluff". Sorry to tell you, but Stalin's secularism and Hitler's quasi-atheism own religion in terms of murders. Keep rationalizing.

Everyone please forgive that backward brain dead dumbfuck Texan "The Demon"

In the spirit of Xmas let's all give that evil mean spirited ugly motherfucker a break.

Saying communist secularism killed more people than people have killed people over religion is a foolish statement. The Sunnis and Shiites alone have been killing each other over religion- the same religion- for hundreds of years. You can't put a body count on that kind of carnage. Do you really think more people were killed in the USSR than people have been killing eachother over religion globally?

The crusades, the spanish inquisition, the troubles in Ireland, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, etc etc. You really think one period of time for a nation stands up to all of that combined? Because that's what you said- and if that's what you meant.... then yeah, you're pretty far out there.

Even if you attributed every single person that died of unnatural causes while Stalin was in power, from treason to starvation, you'll never come close to what's been going on in the middle east for generations. In the grand scheme of things Stalin's rule was a blink of an eye, meanwhile in the middle east people are still blowing each other up over there. Muslim vs Muslim, Muslim vs Jew, etc etc. Centuries of hatred.

If you have any facts to present please do. I tried like hell to get a number of deaths directly attributed to secularism under Stalin and didn't find any sources that broke it out.

Here, I'll start you off:

http://atheism.about.com/od/isatheis...eismKilled.htm

Ok- Go!


:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Oh, and-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War