Milgrams "Obediance and Individual Responsibility" was the first psychological experiment I took an interest in reading.

My first was Peterson and Peterson on the primacy and recency effect. I also like Solomon Asch's work on compliance.

for me, it was Donald Hebb's experiments on sensory depravation. amazing stuff.

God wasn't born here. He created the world, then he thought of a great and beautiful place to people live (and were the gorgeous girls would born), and where he would like to born: BRAZIL. Then, millions of years later, he sent the portugueses to the paradise.

That's why GOD is Brazilian.... and the Pope is "Carioca" (from Rio de Janeiro).

Jer

The pope sure screwed Portugal with that Line of Demarcation, eh?

From Darkness came light.

Its called Chaos not some God creating us.

God threads are sure fun to watch.

I am not sure about this assertion.

The key ingredients of any religion/religous type belief system was broken down by Prof. Mircea Eliades as roughly 1) explanation of the beginning/cause of things 2) explanation of why things are the way they are presently 3) explanation of what will come next.

If you use this structuralist approach, there are many modern philosophies that fit the religious mold which satisfies the same psychological/spiritual urges -- Marxism, Objectivism, you name it.

Traditional religion may seem weakened by "modern" science but modernity has definitely given rise to new belief systems that, while seemingly objective and "scientific", fill the same psychological/spiritual needs that religion traditionally filled.

Hubbard is a cult leader now?

geez, I thought he was a Fiction Writer, not his fault everyone took hisbooks serious and started worshipping them.

hell if tyhats the case, you can say George Lucas is the largest Cult Leader today, next to gene Roddenberry, and CNN.

All I can say regarding this controversy is:

Requiring proof of faith removes the need for faith. If it can be proven, no faith is required. Faith must be pursued in the absence of proof and sometimes in the face of "evidence" to the contrary.

As for atheists, isn't belief in no God, still a belief?

Maybe Salman Rushdie was right when he wrote [in Satanic Verses] "the opposite of faith is not disbelief but doubt. Disbelief, in its certainty, is another form of faith. Doubt erodes faith and ultimately destroys it."

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Colin


So you believe there was a figure named Jesus then?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Labret's answer:

For sure.




Edited to (try) to fix the quotations.










I won´t say I believe or I don´t believe in the existence of Jesus (though I say that I loved Brian´s Life, by the Monthy Python).

But I ask you: what difference does it make the appearance now of the tomb of a supposed brother of Jesus, to make you believe or not in the existence of a Jesus Christ?
For centuries, inside the Holy Church, in Jerusalem, anyone can see the tomb of Jesus Himself; right beside the Golgota (the hill where Jesus was crucified), right at the end of Via Dolorosa (the path followed by Jesus carrying the cross; btw, that`s the way it reads in Jerusalem signs: Via Dolorosa, which is exactly the Portuguese translation of Painful Path or Path of Sorrows). I was there a few years ago, any Israeli here can confirm it.

So, I wonder again: why would the recent discovering of the supposed tomb of a supposed brother of Jesus be more influential in your believings than the already undisputed existence of Jesus grave itself?

I'll pray for you, Fletch.

L. Ron Hubbard. Founder. The Church of Scientology of California. 1954.

1955. Moved to Washington DC to found the "Founding Church of Scientology"

Best quote ever - "if a man wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." - L.R. Hubbard. 1949

And the conclusion is ...

JERUSALEM (AP) -- (July 24) Police have arrested an Israeli antiquities dealer suspected of creating two forgeries that shook the religious and archaeological world, including a burial box purported to be that of Jesus's brother James.

Anti-semite!