Religion is a disease

Firstly, could you supply me with some details of this documentation. I'd be particularly interested in the names of the books you are referring to.

Secondly, I'm specifically interested in secular documentation closer to Jesus' actual life, not a century or more after his death by which time the Jesus myth could have formed and been propagated.

As far as I'm concerned one century later just doesn't cut it.

My point was Jesus was against idolatry; what are so many ppl practising today? Jesus has been elevated to idolatry status, equivalent to "god"; hence ppl wearing his image around their necks, crucifixes in their homes, praying to these idols. I think this would have horrified Jesus, unless after time, it too would have went to his head and fed his ego as it has so many others.

I couldn't agree with you more. I'll go you one further; due to the Scientific Revolution, the game has changed. We definitely need a new mythology to evolve into a new religion that is humanist and scientifically based........keeping pace with our changed world.

What we DON'T NEED is ppl going around and killing other ppl in the name of god.

If you believe the Bible, God and Jesus are one and the same. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit make up the Trinity and are all considered "God".

I don't believe it. I know what it evolved from. Just as I don't believe Buddha or Mohhamed were or are god. Not a chance.

Agreed.

Now do you have those references handy? I still don't believe Jesus ever existed.

Tacitus, The Annals
BOOK XV: A.D. 62?65

context of this: Nero's persecution of the Christians to deflect attention away from the fire set in Rome...........

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their [p. 381] CHRISTIANS ACCUSED OF INCENDIARISM
centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Mohhamed never claimed to be God, only that he was a prophet who God communicated with (not in the sense of talking to him directly though - I don't think).

Actually I think organised religion sucks. I am religous, in the sense that I do believe in a God - a higher power - but although being raised as a Christian I have never agreed with the organised faith. I believe each should find within themselves what they believe, rather than being born into a particular belief.

I also think that is what we are slowly evolving towards. Less people actually attend Church, etc, yet at the same time many people still believe in a God. However, I could be totally wrong - afterall Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.

Was Jesus God's son?

http://www.skepdic.com/gods.html

gods

Gods are beings created by humans and given supernatural powers or attributes such as immortality, omniscience, telekinesis, and invisibility. These creations serve many purposes, such as imaginary protection from enemies or explanations for the origin of such things as good and evil, fire and wind, or life and death.

Gods are often the central figures around which religions are built. It is often claimed that religion began in fear and superstition. The same might be said for gods.

Some religions maintain that there is just one God and that all the gods of all religions except theirs were created by human beings. Yet, everyone who believes in a god of some sort believes their god is real.

Since gods are supernatural, they exist outside the bounds and laws of space and time. They can possess any of an infinite array of magical powers. Hence, there is no way to prove or disprove their reality. One might say: If gods exist, anything goes!

I'd be interested in your view of this refutation of the Tacitus passage:

Conceivably, Tacitus may just be repeating what he was told by Christians about Jesus. If so, then this passage merely confirms that there were Christians in Tacitus' time, and that they believed that Pilate killed Jesus during the reign of Tiberius. This would not be independent confirmation of Jesus's existence. If, on the other hand, Tacitus found this information in Roman imperial records (to which he had access) then that could constitute independent confirmation. There are good reasons to doubt that Tacitus is working from Roman records here, however. For one, he refers to Pilate by the wrong title (Pilate was a prefect, not a procurator). Secondly, he refers to Jesus by the religious title "Christos". Roman records would not have referred to Jesus by a Christian title, but presumably by his given name. Thus, there is excellent reason to suppose that Tacitus is merely repeating what Christians said about Jesus, and so can tell us nothing new about Jesus's historicity.

I just don't see the relevence of this movie. I wouldn't want to watch anyone get tortured.

Jesus (assuming for the sake of argument he was a real man), is certainly not the only person ever tortured. The only reason anyone would care about this particular toture, is that he was "the son of God" the son of "the creator".

http://www.skepdic.com/creation.html

Creationism is a religious metaphysical theory which claims that a supernatural being created the universe. Creation Science is a pseudoscientific theory which claims that (a) the stories in Genesis are accurate accounts of the origin of the universe and life on Earth, and (b) Genesis is incompatible with the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution. ?Creation Science? is an oxymoron since science is concerned only with naturalistic explanations of empirical phenomena and does not concern itself with supernatural explanations of metaphysical phenomena.....

Well we need something honest and quite humanistic.......the hypocrisy and killing or persecuting in the name of god has to end...........for instance, some of the biggest hypocrites I see are those that attack our industry, porn, which is as old as life itself; eg. jimmy swaggart.......attacks porn then goes out and procures a prostitute........there are many works of art going back to pictures on cave walls of "primative man" depicted in various sexual acts so "porn" is as old as we are as a species......we draw and create what we know, and one of the driving forces is sex.......second only to procuring comfort such as food and shelter.

We need religion to get back to incorporating this and to banish the guilt; if we were more honest about it, we wouldn't have priests required to abstain from sex (who the hell can do this anyways), and sublimating their desires into unnatural expressions such as pedophilia.

We need religion to get back to its humanistic roots. We don't need repressed assholes like Assshhhaaa-hahahahahaer covering up a naked Lady Justice statue with drapes making the rules.

Did God create man? or did man create God?

What's the difference between modern religion and the "Mythical Greek Gods"?

Do you guys believe in UFOs?

Joe, what you are looking for does not exist. Back in that day, they didn't record historical events the meticulous way we do, unfortunately. Their culture did not stress this. Someone did not sit down right after Jesus was killed and start documenting everything. Even the gospels took decades. And thats the rub isn't it? After such time, stories get created out of thin air and embellished to suit the sensibilities of the time. And these ppl were not scientific at all. They lived in a world of parables, myths, and stories. But Jesus' physical existence was recorded over time by Tacitus, Pliny, etc etc...........but not in the way we do things today.........which is what I think you are looking for.

Trying to understand Jesus solely on whether he was a historical figure or not is a no-go.

Kierkegaard talked about The Leap of Faith. Either you believe or you don't.

So what you are really saying is that the extra-biblical historicity of Jesus is NOT well documented and that the one or two passages that exist are nothing more than hearsay.

Whether or not some guy named Jesus ever existed or not is irrelevent.

There are hundreds of thousands of people named Jesus today.

The relevent portion of the argument is a) Does God exist? b) Did he have a "son"...

If Jesus wasn't an historical figure then Christianity comes tumbling down.

We still have the same impulse........to create things to explain what we don't understand. For instance, death. Death is a mystery in which the living simply CANNOT understand. It is our greatest fear........oblivion, simply not existing. So what do we do? We incorporate an afterlife into our religion, whatever that afterlife entails.

About UFOs? I don't believe in them, but there are many ppl in the field of myth and religious studies who equate aliens with our new "view of god." We give them god-like attributes, do we not?

Some even believe some of these fringe ufo religions may evolve into a major religion over time, as Christianity evolved from a tiny tent religion into what it is today.

Who knows..............

Maybe so. Great parts of the Bible are proven historically incorrect. And what about Buddha?

Maybe neither Jesus nor Buddha were historical persons - but the ideas about ethical behavior they preached will live on.

I was flipping through the radio dial today.. I came across some guy talking about Creationism and basically just spouting off blatent lies to ignorant people in hopes that they'd buy his books and CDs.

http://www.gty.org/

He made statements such as:

"Evolitionists rely on pseudoscience and Creationists rely on Logical Science"

When in fact, the opposite is true.

"How did that building get there? Someone made it. How did that piano get there? Someone made it. How did the Universe get there? Someone made it!"

That's quite a leap.. Someone made a piano, therefore is probable that someone made the Universe.

I'm thinking about complaining to the FTC about this guy's fraudulent claims.

Thats right. No one who knew him wrote about him and documented his life right after his death. It took decades.

I agree that the Greeks made up Gods to explain the unexplainable (back then).. We still do it to this day.

Want to know what happens when we die? Our bodies stop working and decompose. We turn into dirt and that's it.

I don't have a problem with that.. It is what it is. Whether or not I believe in anything else isn't going to change the fact that I will become dirt when I die!!!

man.... you guys are deep.......haha

Don't even bother wasting your time, KC..........these ignoramuses go on and on and on..........and it seems there is always someone willing to buy the snake oil.........

That idiot seems a perfect candidate for a juror in the first OJ trial..........damn the scientific evidence, lets acquit for emotional reasons........

:eyecrazy

I think Mathew's Gospel talks about not going to church but rather lock yourself in a room and pray privately, ignore the phony church stuff, spirituality and godliness comes from within.

Fair enough.

Thank you for admitting that there is no real evidence that Jesus ever existed.

Some would even argue that Christianity is, above all, a moral framework that Western societies are built around. The Reformation modernized Christianity by removing things like paying money to expiate sins. You might call it Version 2.0 of Christianity.

In Islam there was no such renewal - and look what happened. Or rather: What didn't happen.

Is it worth seeing if you're not religious? It looks like a pretty good drama from the previews.

Banshee...

Have you checked out some of the articles/reports at the Skeptics Dictionary?

http://skepdic.com/

It's nice to see a critical thinking professor reason through controversial subjects and then back the statements up with references.

http://skepdic.com/contents.html

Ironic too, is the fact that the Crusades happened out of Christendom's jealousy of how advanced these Islamic societies were............and now these Islamic societies are so far behind Judeo-Christian societies, which has bred rampant jealousy in their societies..........so jealous that they now lash out at Western, Judeo-Christian based societies.

I like that site, KC........don't always agree with everything on it, but it sure is a reasonable, thoughtful site.

Hey bud, I am going to it.........why? Because I like good movies............I don't believe in hobbits either, but ROTK was fuckin' brilliant (not to mention that whole series).

I just like watching good movies. And Gibson did make Braveheart, so he's proven to me he can make great movies.

So I'm going.

:glugglug

The author, Robert T. Carroll encourages everyone to be skeptical of everything. Even his own site!

"Though clearly it is my hope that the seeker will become skeptical, I also hope the seeker will investigate these matters before coming to a decision."

According to the scriptures, there was in fact a fight between disciples of St Peter who wanted to remain a jewish sect and the disciples of St Paul who argued that anybody should be allowed to become a Christian?.. As we all know, St Paul won?

About the film, it seems that it is unlikely that we are able to see it in France as, so far, no film distribution company bought it?. When the last temptation of Christ was released a cinema was destroyed by catholic extremists. This time nobody seem to be ready to release the movy because of jew integrist?.

hail satan.

that is all.

"'He came up from Hell and begat a son upon the world.'
'Hail Satan.'
'Hail Satan'"

"God is dead! The year is one!"
"His might is stronger than stronger, his reign shall last longer than longer!"

----Rosemary's Baby

bump for headless

bah.... looks like a horror flick..

if the movie was about anyone else, the christians would be up in arms about gratuitous movie violence.

as it is it's a movie made by a loonie tune for loonie tunes.

So i guess you were there when it happened right ?:helpme

Dammit, read the entre thread!

This is the third time I will say this:

It is accurate to what it says in the bible. I would'nt have even known this had my girl not been there.

Geez.

How could any of you think I was stupid enough to assume I knew exactly what happened?

C'mon now.

Sorry guys but i just can't understand people beleiving or WORST participating in a religious thing.

Hey, wake UP GUYS !
All religions were created by MEN period !!!!!!!!!

2004 and still............... Bahhhhhhh Anyways worthless as people beleiving in that shit don't want to hear anything about it.
They are SOOOOO afraid that they could doubt abiout certain aspects or go "WTF ?" This thing can't be real etc....

OH NO I'LL BURN IN HELL
FORGIVE ME FORGIVE ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeee:helpme

K



you scared me there (i posted the reply before seeing yours hehee)

Glade you got all your head :thumbsup

God forbid someone make a movie, with their own money, about anything pertaining to relegion. The jews in Hollwood are pissed that Gibson is going to make a fortune off this movie as well as become an icon in the eyes of many. All done without their assistance.

Got his email dude ?
It's just that i need to "communicate" with him
:helpme



Religion = Globill

as long as you never use "me and you" again I think you should.....

he he heh just about choked on my pizza:thumbsup

...and I'm the cure...

Sly Stallone "Cobra"