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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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The Bible was not written four centuries after Jesus. That is compleat bs. The Bible was widely circulated by that time and there had are ready bean Church Councils a few centuries before establishing what books were in and what were out. I believe they have even found manuscripts from the second century.
Serious scholars are pretty much all in agreement that the books of the Bible were written from about 50 AD to early second century at the latest.
But this is off topic from the OP so I won't be making any more comments on this issue here. Historical and miraculous proofs have there place, but not in this particular thread. Maybe I will make a new thread about the Shroud of Tryin (spelling?) or other such miracles.
BULLSHIT! The oldest "bible" is the Codex Sianaticus which was written in the 4th century.
The codex is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in the 4th century in uncial letters on parchment. Current scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of the New Testament, along with the Codex Vaticanus.
Dumb Ox,
The Bible as a comprehensive collection of stories did not exist until a committee of story tellers, writers, and artists in England produced the 75 pound Codex Amiatinus in the year 692 A.D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Amiatinus One of the three copies was intended as a gift to the Pope because the Bible didn't exit before that time.
All subsequent Bibles were coped from one of the three copies.
BTW, "Jesus" didn't exist until 1630-1632. He got his name from two Dutch con men who were printing bad Bibles. The character's name was listed one time in the lawsuit filed against them. People liked the name and the writers started including it in all newly printed Bibles.
Christian4251
What testable evidence do you have for a god? I have found no evidence of any god. What roman writings are you talking about?
Ultimately, historical arguments rely on verbal testimony. If we were to adopt a reflexively skeptical attitude toward all such testimonies, we would know virtually nothing about history.
As someone coming to Catholicism from atheism, I had no bias to confirm. If anything, my bias was toward the atheist position. But upon examination, I found myself in agreement with Christian scholars and historians. The evidence weighs heavily in their favor.
If you are interested in further reading on this subject, I recommend Are the Gospels Myth? by Carl Olson.
There is always archaeology, that can help support written and verbal accounts. Have not found any verified reports of archaeologist uncovering evidence of Christ or God's miracles or other evidence of them. But we do have ruins of the roman coliseum we can go check out now that helps tell us and verify some small parts of the history of the roman empire. (Among many other ruins or still standing artifacts from that time.)
But I also think is good to be skeptical of written and especially verbal testimony. Especially stuff from 2000 years ago that has been passed down, translated and edited dozens upon dozens of times. What was the purpose of the new testament if not to edit and amend the old testament in a large ways?
I am always curious what the deciding factor for someone to go from atheist to a religion or a religion to atheist. So you found evidence weighs in the favor of the christian god huh? Like I said, your definition of evidence is very different then mine. On your definition of evidence for your christian god, what evidence do you have that disproves the Islam god? The flying spaghetti monster? The: "theist are silly god" that I just made up?
I kindly recommend you read the most important book, (usually a version of the bible,) of your particular christian denomination, from cover to cover, if you are going to base your life around it. Except, go into it with no biases, do not assume that the god is real, all powerful and all knowing. If you are incapable of escaping your own biases, practice by reading the quran cover to cover, and then apply the same thought process you had to the quran as you did to the bible of your choice.
The claim is often made that Jesus—if he even existed at all—was a persuasive teacher during his life, but after his death the early Christians began to exaggerate stories about him, leading eventually to his deification.
This position flies in the face of the historical evidence. If his deification, miracles, and resurrection from the dead were later additions to his story, then we should not see evidence for this until several generations had passed. Instead, the evidence indicates that the apostles themselves taught these things about Jesus to their students. They were believed from the very beginning.
What sort of historical evidence? More books based on supposed verbal accounts when people were trying to launch their particular religion from obscurity?
I am no religious scholar, but don't we have evidence of the contrary? That the earliest christian holy books did not include quite a few things that the later books added in, like new testament, kings James bible, etc?
Christian4251,
Why do you believe what you wrote? You have absolutely no authentic source for Yeshua's miracles and resurrection. Even Paul said that if the dead do not rise then your faith is in vain. Have you ever seen a roomful of actual zombies? Has anyone you ever known come back to life?
The rule on this planet is that once dead, always dead!
1 Corinthians 15:12-18 (TLB) = "12 But tell me this! Since you believe what we preach, that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying that dead people will never come back to life again? 13 For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ must still be dead. 14 And if he is still dead, then all our preaching is useless and your trust in God is empty, worthless, hopeless; 15 and we apostles are all liars because we have said that God raised Christ from the grave, and of course that isn’t true if the dead do not come back to life again. 16 If they don’t, then Christ is still dead, 17 and you are very foolish to keep on trusting God to save you, and you are still under condemnation for your sins; 18 in that case, all Christians who have died are lost!"
@LogicforTW: "But we do have ruins of the roman coliseum we can go check out now that helps tell us and verify some small parts of the history of the roman empire."
It tells us a bit about Jewish history too. It was funded by treasure looted from the temple in Jerusalem after the city was sacked by Titus in 70 CE. You can see Roman soldiers carrying Jewish candlesticks on the Arch of Titus. There are plenty of historical accounts of the sack of Jerusalem by Jewish and Roman historians, whereas the birth and death of god are mentioned nowhere.
No historical documents DON'T rely on verbal testimony! Where the fuck did you get that stupid shit from?
@Christian4251: "we would know virtually nothing about history."
Actually we have acres of inscriptions on Egyptian obelisks and buildings, baked clay tablets from various civilizations, writing on stone and bronze artefacts in India, China and Japan, pictures and writing on ceramics, and even preserved parchment (e.g., the Dead Sea Scrolls). Much written material from Greek and Roman libraries was transcribed and preserved by Arab scholars. On top of that we have archeological evidence, including grave goods and statues.
In all of this rich treasure trove of history, you won't find a scrap of physical evidence about the life or death of Jesus dating to before the time of Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, who went to Jerusalem and "miraculously" found the so-called Holy Sepulchre.
As far as " The flying spaghetti monster"
It is said that if a lie is repeated often enough and loudly enough, people will come to believe it. That isn’t necessarily so.
A real whopper may never be believed fully by anyone, no matter how often or loudly it is proclaimed, but for a whopper to be effective, it does not need to be believed in every detail. It is enough that it leaves behind a bad impression. People will think that if anyone bothers to promote such a lie, there must be a kernel of truth in it.
The same goes for exaggeration and false implications. Distort the truth and people will think it has some basis in fact. Take a truth and phrase it in such a way that it looks suspicious, or juxtapose it with an acknowledged evil, and the mind will be tempted to draw all sorts of ill-founded conclusions.
I agree with this post.
I assume you honestly and fully applied the ideas in this post to Christianity, and you... did not find it lacking? Knowing full well peoples minds tendencies to believe a lie if its repeated enough, or disbelieve a fact because of how it is presented by someone?
It is impossible to live (as I did, for a decade) in Muslim countries without feeling the powerful draw of the Islamic faith. Islam is, of course, an amalgam of Judaism and Christianity. Hilaire Belloc (in The Great Heresies) points out that Islam is not merely a new religion that appeared in the seventh century A.D., but a heresy, consisting of "Catholic doctrine, oversimplified." It has a single deity, the same God of Abraham and Jesus; a single scripture, the Quran, which repeats many biblical teachings, revealed directly from God, not written by apostles or prophets; and about a billion adherents. It is a streamlined religion, in addition to being still young and vital. Islam is, in fact, a proselytizer’s dream.
No Catholic should be uninformed about this major world faith. Not only does Islam sizzle with missionary zeal in, say, Africa, where it is by far the strongest challenger to Catholicism, but it is growing fast in America, through immigrants and converts. By 2000, it will be the second largest faith in the United States.
Answering Islam is the primer most Christians need about Islam, and more: a heavily detailed and footnoted, closely reasoned analysis of Islam. Its first section sets out the basic doctrines, with accurate and informative discussions of the Islamic view of the prophets (including Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus), Muhammad himself, and the Quran. The second is a point-by-point Christian response to the same Islamic beliefs. The third is a "positive defense" of the Christian perspective, focusing on the Bible, the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, and salvation by the cross.
Like when you told us there were sources for the life and resurrection of Jesus? LOL.
What a bunch of BULLSHIT!
Christian4251
Do you have any testable evidence that the god of islam is real? Do you have any testable evidence any god is real? Muhammad was a warlord that forced islam on the arabic people.
I entered this forum sevral days ago.
Dumb Ox,
St. Thomas Aquinas didn't know Einstein's relativity theory.
acording to the special theory of relativity.
all the objects in the universe move in the same speed in spacetime(not space),
that speed is zero,0
in other words,nothing comes into being and nothing disappears into nonexistence,
"4 dimentional space-time" and "andromeda paradox" in
the special theory of relavity both maintain time don't exist ultimately .
the past,present and future always exist, being as real as the present.
we can think the Big Bang as the beginning of the universe.
but in view of relativity theory,the big bang eternally exists in spacetime without no beginning and no end.
the famous Zeno's paradoxes also maintains space and time are illusions.
Zeno's paradoxes are really Parmenides'view on the reality.
according to Parmenides,space and time are only an illusion like when we see a moving person
in a movie although the person don't move.
it is also the very relativity theory's assertion.
our consciousness shows us space and time are illusions
the remarkable feature of consciousness is its integration of
separate parts of a sense,emotion and thought into a unitary one,a conscious human being.
the separately existing information in space and in time are integrated into one consciousness.
if space exists in consciousness,consciousness can not be produced.
time is the same.
if the god you are saying exists,you proved the special theory of relativity is wrong.
or at least that andromeda paradox is wrong.
but it doesn't seem like that.
would you read articles from this link
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/god.html
if god in the bible really created the universe.
does anyone in this forum believe he is the highest being?
it doesn't seem so.
a certain entity can create the universe,although he is not the highest being as
written in the bible.
But it seems those who think that they thought up strong arguments for god's existence always (or almost) are attracted to the established
religion,although there are no guarantees that the two god is the same god even if both the arguments for god's existence and a religious texts is true .
put another way,suppose UV teM proved the highest being's existence,and UV teM also proved the entity called god in the bible created the universe and jesus and miracles really existed.
then,does UV teM know God in the bible is the highest being?
belivers would answer 'yes'
but atheists would know that the answer is 'no'
because the proved highest being is an abstract entity ,on the contrary, god in the bible is a concrete entity having a personality.
so,what would be the point of argument on whether or not the bible is true?
and what would be the point of argument on whether or not god,the highest being exists.
we can't turn the two idea into one proof that god in the bible is the highest being.
Parmenides Is wrong in his belief that nothing moves or changes. How do we know this? Our thoughts and perseptions change. How do we get past his a prior argument that from nothing nothing comes, but change would violate this principle? Act and potency fixes that prob.
"Dumb Ox, St. Thomas Aquinas didn't know Einstein's relativity theory. acording to the special theory of relativity. all the objects in the universe move in the same speed in spacetime(not space), that speed is zero,0 in other words,nothing comes into being and nothing disappears into nonexistence"
Reputtle: same as with Parmenides. Our thoughts are real things and they come into and out of existence.
I feel its kind of hopeless to argue infinity, and nothingness. As us being somethings, it is likely going to preclude us the ability to truly understand true nothingness.
The best way we can understand infinity is really really big numbers, and some mathematical concepts of it.
Some people came up with this "idea" of a "god" to explain it, by breaking all the rules we know for it. Which is fine, if what keeps you up at night is the thought of something from nothing, perhaps this god idea can help.
I only have a problem when people waste their time worshiping it, praying to it, stop taking responsibility for themselves, and divide them selves because of differences in their interpretation of "god."
'
I am going to gone over the weekend and won't be able to respond, but I will be back.
there is no way to prove gods existence, the scientist are still working on this.all I can say that the 1st mover doesn`t necessarily have to be a god or gods.
Ah, hell. It's summer and here comes the new crop of Christian missionaries.
please all you Christians please go to your own websites and leave us alone.your arguments have no foundation you are over 2 billion ignorant followers over some body called jesus who was a cult leader.
Science follower, theists are welcome here. This is a debate forum and its purpose is conversation with folks whose views may differ from yours. If you do not want to read posts by theists, keep to the Atheist Hub forum and do not read anything in this one.
I believe in the big bang theory but what caused it either god or gods is still not proven cosmologist and others are working on this.i don`t really care if there is a god or gods it has no affect on my life what so ever.
Dumb Ox
Suppose a conscious being exists.
There is nothing existing except for the being(A).
A has existed from the infinite past.
sometime in the past,A created something(B)
everything concerning B can be controlled by A's will while A wants.
and A always knows everything about B.
Is B the material thing or the part of consciousness belonging to A.
or can't you decide what B is, because more infomation is needed ?
then,what are those(ie,some property) which differentiate matter from mind?
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