Thanks for the link, Pommy. I can't believe I forgot about the Council of Nicaea...

Pommy is correct. The first Council of Nicea was in 325 AD.

Obi is wrong; no trail is too old, nor too new!

Oh, and there could be drastic differences. Probably why there's so many contradictions, because they're all based of fragments of old scrolls that have eroded due to centuries of being at the sea.

Or something.

My faith-killer when it came to Mormonism was the Book of Abraham. Joseph Smith's translation was irrevocably proven false by Egyptologists after they gained the ability to translate Egyptian (which conveniently happened after Joseph Smith published his bogus version).

I remember when I stopped believing in God. It wasn't really a major thing. I just realized one day that the notion of a supreme being was silly. I realized science can explain nearly everything. And I realized how insane it was for us to think people of the past had silly religious beleifs by believing in Zues, Hera, etc...

**** you.

I hope Zeus puts a lightning bolt down your pants.

I prefer the Greek gods. They're sweet. They kicked all kinds of ***. What did Jesus do? Manifested fish and bread? Big deal.

Nobody has yet to give me a good reason why they hate Jesus so much when all he did was tell everyone how great it would be if we were nice to each other for a change.

He got nailed to a tree for that one.

I find the keyword "nearly" is enough for me to see that clearly there must be some supernatural power at work.

And Jesus was not resurrected with 'magical powers'. Think of this from a Christian perspective. God has power over all his creation. Jesus is God's Son. Thus, a simple resurrection would seem quite easy.

I'd talk about this more but I have class now, toodles.

Yes, he sounds like a lovely bloke. I know some people who are like that, they're pretty cool.

Nobody hates Jesus, they hate what he has come to represent.

Thankyou for perfectly describing magic.



Hippies are annoying.

Will we be able to know the outcome of this press conference? A video perhaps? Is it going to make big news? Stupid question, of course not...

Nobody hates jesus. Some people just done believe in divinity.

There was a five second thing on my local news channel saying that 'so and so expert says it isn't the tomb of Christ...' but that it would be on the discovery channel in the near future.

Heh...it turns out Cameron's "reasoning" for his "discovery" is quite laughable. However, I'll give him credit in admitting that his findings show no evidence against the ressurection.

Basically, he says that it's the tomb of Jesus because 4 tombs have the names Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Mariamne. His DNA evidence shows that Mariamne and Jesus were not related, and so he concludes that they were married.

Because we have Jesus' DNA for comparison.:downswords:

I meant Cameron's DNA evidence.

It wasn't really directed at you, but more at Cameron's claims.

Either way, I just wanted to use that smilie

It's actually a simple mathematical matter.

you mean an ecumenical matter.

cookies for anyone who got that reference

If 2 plus 2 equals 5 it's the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth?

I say we just decide this matter the american way: with groundhogs. If we pull an upset, confused groundhog out of a box and it freaks out, Jesus was the son of god. If it calmly and disinterestedly falls asleep, Jesus was a man.

ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY GROUNDHOG.

Actually, its generally taught that Jesus was 100% man and 100% God.

If the groundhog falls asleep, it would mean Jesus was only a man.


'course, if it was the tomb of Jesus they'd find it empty anyway.

The Vatican examines every possible scientific explanation of a supposed miracle before proclaiming it as such. Once they run out of ways to explain it, they call it a miracle. I call it fallacious logic. A lack of an explanation does not mean, "oop, God did it!"

Also, you'll forgive me if I don't believe you that he writes from a "very skeptic point of view." If he had really proven the resurrection of Jesus, his work would be appearing in a peer-reviewed history journal, not on Amazon.

Drink!

That was a big one for me, too. In history class, the teacher made it seem like the Greeks and their gods were silly compared to our own. I quickly realized how asinine that position is. The other big one for me is this: I can't be religious, because that would require me to decide whether to be a monotheist or polytheist. I can't do that because there is no conceivable reason to choose one over the other.

To accept that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and that he rose from the dead would mean quite a lot. Like, you would have to bow the knee/change your life. I don't think people want to do that. It's much nicer to believe that no one is in charge of your life except you.

I've studied the evidence and I'm convinced that Jesus rose from the dead. It's not like I'm a brainwashed zombie. I know that it sounds absurd to seriously give credit to a story about a man rising from the dead. At one point, I thought it was rubbish, too! I know it sounds weird to abstain from all sorts of 'normal' things, or to sit around and pray. I used to think it was totally stupid to waste your time at church on a Sunday morning. After all, you could be sleeping in.

Something in me told me that if hell were a real place, and people I knew thought I was going there, regardless of my ignorance, I should at least check it out thoroughly. I mean, what if I were wrong? I'd be in hell. That would really suck to say "I decided I didn't like the idea of hell, so I chose to have it not be real for me. Unfortunately, this truth was not relative."

Imagine being on the Titanic, and being told by your friend that the ship was sinking. You could laugh and say that the Titanic wasn't sinking. You could rationalize the situation in your mind, given the knowledge that you have. Regardless of what you knew, though, if you didn't go out of your cabin just to make sure, you'd be pretty stupid.
People have reasons for not believing in Jesus, but I really don't think that its all about science or truth. It's about having to change your life, and that isn't always appealing.

Most of the people I know don't make Jesus their king because of something other than facts. They don't want to change their life, or have to go to church, or have to admit they're wrong on some things.

This is just an internet forum, though. I'm only posting my opinion. These words, I'm almost sure, will never cause a conversion or anything. Just throwing out thoughts.

And... I love you all. No hard feelings.

But you can't simply go out of your proverbial cabin and see the ship sinking. That's precisely the problem.

So you freely admit that your refusal to acknowledge God is due to a choice that you made? You were aware of God at some point, so you made a conscious decision and are basically without any other excuse. In short, you have followed out what is described in Romans 1:21. (or Romans chapter 1, for that matter). Now, I doubt that you are capable of acknowledging God to any degree at this point because you have been given over to what you have chosen to believe in. You still worship something; you have simply replaced God with science.

Aware of God?

I just typed up and deleted maybe a dozen responses to this. In the end the only one that expressed my feelings was this one:

Bow to the almighty Laws of Thermodynamics! Sacrifice your electrons to the God of Quantum Mechanics so that he may or may not observe your good deeds and possibly reward you with an infinite probability of gold and jewels!

What is worship, after all? When people use science to explain their existence and to define perceived reality, then are they not placing their faith in something that has more power than themselves? Such people are only attempting to replace God with something that is not as blatantly offensive to their point of view. It would certainly explain the hatred that many in the scientific community hold towards God and anything to do with Him.

No branch of science attempts to explain our existence. The purpose for our existence, if any, is beyond the scope of science and, presumably the physical universe, and will most likely be an unknown forever. Religion fills in the gap by saying "God put us here." Science just says "we don't and may never know."


Science doesn't define reality, it merely attempts to explain it.


Huh? Science is simply an inductive method used in order to obtain knowledge about the physical universe. It isn't a "thing" that can "have more power then ourselves."


No, we are restricting our view and knowledge of the universe to what can be rationally learned through the scientific method. No matter how much you believe, you can never truly know that God exists. You can never provide evidence, no shred of proof. Faith is, by definition, blind. Science is never blind. Except for the bad kind conducted by charlatans who have sniffed too many chemicals over the years and are only allowed to continue research because they have tenure at their university.


How can we hate something that we don't believe exists? The idea of a benevolent god that would grant you eternal happiness is very appealing, but to us, there is no evidence and no reason to believe. Some say "have faith!" Well, why? Why not have faith that one of hundreds of other religions is the correct choice? There is no evidence for any of them.

The only people I hate are those who capitalize "him."

Why does there have to be a purpose to our existence? I realize humans are self-important and thus create these grand notions of purpose some being has for them, but really, that's not necessary at all.

There's a purpose for everything, even if only to support everything else.

Our existence so far has been nothing but destruction, and while entropy is very real, it would not manifest itself in a species.

I don't think everything has a purpose. What about your appendix?