"God and Jesus are the same thing, except Jesus lived on earth and could do impossible things. If you think too hard, this doesn't make sense: So don't."

Hahaha. What's that ringing in my ears? Oh, it's stupidity.

Actually, thats tinnitus.

You have suffered hearing loss. I'm sorry, but you're never getting it back.

Generally when I talk about Roman Catholicism in a historical sense I'm referring to the original Catholic church, as in the general/universal Christian church (and it was) that was established in the late Roman Empire. In and around the 10th century. The overwhelming majority of Christians were Roman Catholic up until the protestant reformation in the 16th century. The original Catholic church splintered apart into Roman catholicism, the various protestant denominations and regional orthodoxies. The lineage - and therefore the inherited interpretations of the Bible - is quite clear.

As far as I know, the only significant group of pseudo-Christians who are not directly descended from the Roman brand of Christianity are the Jehovah's Witnesses, who also - if I recall correctly - interpret this point in the same way I do.

Mormons and other "restorationists" (which I guess the JWs fall into that category) believe in a three person Godhead, that is triune in purpose but not in being. Basically that they're three dudes on a kickass cosmic superhero team.

And yeah. I'm pretty sure the idea more or less originated at the "Party at Nicea" as I like to call it cus some of that **** they had to have been on drugs to have come up with.

Jesus is considered by most sects of mainstream Christianity to be part of the trinity godhead. Jesus is part of the deity. This is how they get around the whole 'thou shalt worship no other god before me' bs, by making Jesus part of god.

And no, his existence certainly isn't proven. It's only accepted traditionally by scholars - to date, there is absolutely no contemporary evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. The names you'll hear again and again - Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Josephus - none of them work. The only text that would be contemporary is that of Josephus, and the tiny little passage that mentions Jesus has been established pretty firmly by the academic community as a forgery. The gospels are all written at the earliest 70 AD, due to its mention of the destruction of the temple, and likely significantly later than that.

Only recently have people begun to question the popular notion that a historical Jesus existed and started the Christian movement. Do some searches on the Jesus Myth and mystery cults and you're likely to stumble into a conversation you've never heard of before.


(BTW - yes, JWs are not trinitarian... they believe Jesus is a completely separate entity. They actually make Jesus and the Archangel Michael (?) the same being. I'm pretty sure they also don't personify the 'holy spirit', as protestants do. Not sure what the Catholic take on this is.)

You guys sure talk about God a lot.

I mean, seriously. 2000 years.

Jesus Hax Christ!

The H stands for 'Holy'. "Jesus Holy Christ".

I always thought it should be Jesus F. Christ, because, well, people say that a lot more.

The H stands for Hussein.

I thought it stood for Helbrunastavilowskistangerlietenstein.

Because eyewitness accounts, the tomb, historical recordings by the romans, and a whole bunch of other stuff about him that exists isn't enough.

Hey guys, the universe was created a couple centuries ago because we weren't around back then and the stuff that supposedly existed back then could be all lies

Eyewitness accounts? Like what? It can't come from the bible, seeing that the events were written down decades after what happened. And the tomb where?

The stuff in the bible were written as gospels by his followers. I thought this was already discussed in 3 threads in the past two months. Not even.

They were spread out and scattered around, and decades after the events occured were they brought together in one book. NOT written.

Self-contained logic doesn't count, then. "This book is true because it is the word of God. God exists because this book is true." Bull****.

lmfao. Do you also believe that the 'Gospel of Mark' was written by Mark? Or the 'Gospel of Luke' by Luke? If so, you've got a thing or two to learn. The Bible was canonized more than just a couple decades later, and the gospels represented in the Bible canon aren't the only ones out there (other provide further contrasting views, as if the contradicitons in the Bible weren't enough as it is). And you claim they weren't written? They just appeared? seriously... do I even need to continue?

I'm sorry, but you're the one who needs to learn a thing or two. The gospels were censored, yes, but they weren't drastically altered. There may be some mistranslations, yes, but the general idea is still there. What was censored really wasn't that important (making Mary Mag a whore, for instance, to make women feel less important)

You can believe whatever you want to believe, but if you want ME to believe something other than the truth than you're going to have to disprove it with something other than "Well you're wrong"


By the way, where the hell did I say they weren't written? I said that the gospels are composed of letters and entries made by the disciples and when the bible was formed, it was simply a composisition of them. This is what I was told, and since I'm open minded, I weighed it against what I used to think. It makes a lot more sense than "word of mouth".

The gospels were written by the apostles. Varying perspectives and spins were adopted in each one so the story would be more acceptable to various target audiences (such as the Romans).

There were many, many gospels written. Few of them were recovered, and even fewer were included in the Bible. With the exception of the Gospel of Mary (which was excluded for political reasons), the others were omitted for the sake of brevity.

I also don't understand why anybody would consider it so incredible that the gospels were written down since papyrus was commonplace in the region as early as 3000 BC. There were well-educated and literate followers of Jesus (Matthew, for instance) who would have been capable of writing the accounts of the illiterate ones as well.

The letters were not written by the apostles, however they are attributed to them.

no, you need to get out. people like you give a bad name to atheists and your arguments are stupid. maybe the next time an internet forum convinces you to join a religion you won't become an asinine militant anti-advocate of it. The fact that religious debates on massassi talked you out of religion is a pretty sure sign that you don't know a goddamn thing about logic or debate.

That is highly unlikely. The gospels were attributed to the respective 'authors' several decades (in most cases almost a century) after they were written. From what I remember about this topic the authors of the gospels are questionable.

Perhaps you're misunderstanding me. I'm not denying that anything was written down. I obviously know materials for writing were available in the area at the time. What I'm talking about is the date at which the gospels were written. Most modern scholars place the lower limit of the gospel of Mark's writing at 70 AD. The other three gospels are derived from the gospel of Mark at a later time with variations to appeal to different groups, as you noted.

You point about the 'well-educated and literate' followers of Jesus is also part of my point. The fact that there were supposedly such people existing, and this character was supposed to be such a controversial and amazing man, yet there are no contemporary writings about him is a very good reason to call into question his existence, and ask why we are supposed to believe he existed in the first place.

I'm hardly an abnormal atheist, and hardly a 'militant'. The fact that you don't know anything about when the gospels were written, or by who (rather, who not), is a pretty clear sign that you've not really done any reading or discussing on the topic. I've run into very few atheists that don't know exactly what I've just rattled off, it's not like I'm spouting out anything that's not backed up by scholars and know by fellow atheists.

The fact that a Massassi debate got me to cut the final cord from religion only shows that didn't succumb to early childhood indoctrination, like so many other people unfortunately do. But, I was never really aiming to turn this into a Christianity v Atheism thread anyhow. There's enough of those elsewhere.

As fun as it is to make that kind of remark, people like Fire Fox on the religious debate forum had really rock-solid arguments in favor of atheism.

That's really not impressive. Disproving Theism ranks somewhere between learning to tie your shoes and not choking on your own drool.

dear god, I have godbotherers pushing religion on me, and a forum full of the athiest version of godbotherers here. What the hell is wrong with letting people believe what they want to believe? Why does anyone here care? And does anyone here think they're really going to convince people who actually believe? It seems like it's become a club to openly mock people for believing something that you don't

Being Christian doesn't necessraily make you a better/happier person
Being an Athiest doesn't make you a smarter person.
Talking down to people doesn't make you look smarter

/rant

On a side note... what would that be called?

ding ding ding!

But it does increase comraderieship with others who do the same

A stubborn idiot?

If I can remember correctly, DoGSRooL is probably only the few that could do decent argument for theism, at least he did it in a civil manner with some effort.

Yay for the days of old.

no, but it does exclude you from a class of idiots known as christians

case in point

i'm not an atheist

There should be a rule at Massassi regarding religious tolerance.

Or just removing religious debates completely, I could probably dig up a 2005 thread about some random subject and it would have exactly the same stuff as in this thread.

Or just any of those 52,480 threads last year. :downs:

Debating religion is not a problem. I'm all for that, if it remains civil (which doesn't happen).

But it seems there is a lot of "you're a retard because you have beliefs in *this* and *that*" A person shouldn't be defined because he happens to be religious, even if his views may not make much sense to people or whatever. Yay for the community.

Well yeah, but then again whole Massassi/Internet is about "you're a retard because you have beliefs in *this* and *that*". "YOUR OPINION IS WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111"

if you don't like religious debate, why would you participate?

the real problem with religious debate is that by definition of religion, one of the parties is inherently closed-minded and thus impossible to reason with.

I don't participate in any religious debates. If a post has over 2 paragraphs (and if they're long paragraphs at that) I ignore them. It's always a waste of time to spend time in my opinion, unless you're like me and type stuff in like few seconds.

postcount++

okay, i was wrong

not "closed-minded", but 'presumtious'

right, but I feel like if a religious person made some of the smartass, unwarranted comments that some people here do, even when it doesn't even have to be brought up, that person would be universally hated and ridiculed for being such an obnoxious godbotherer. I know I'd hate them. But the samekind of remarks said by an athiest here elicits this "Hahaha you're so funny, we're so much better than those stupid christians, look at us, we're obviously so much smarter and a class above them" type of response. I mean I'm exaggerating a little, but I feel like some of them are becoming exactly like the kind of people they all hate and ridicule.

I don't know, I guess I'll get off my soapbox now.

It could imply a higher degree of rational thought, but it's not possible to generalize.

When you destroy religion there will still be stupid people.

I fully agree with that.

FGR agreed with me! Glee!

I'm going to go ahead and say this: It is not a matter of argument. There is no proof for God. Nor is there a way you will ever disprove God. Sorry, guys, you can't do it. God is, pretty much by definition, outside the realm of proof or scientific observation. You may have a thought process that leads you to believe that God is improbable, but since when is improbability the same as disproof? It's very convenient for the religious-types.

Some people decide they trust their emotions and their experiences enough to believe in God (and maybe) religion. Some don't. What are you going to do? You can't even proove that someone who trusts emotion and personal experience is less intelligent! Inferior scientists maybe, but not less intelligent.

To quote a middle-aged hairdresser from an episode of Penn and Teller's Bull****:

So, if we can't know for sure, how can we say that we are inherently better than someone whose beliefs differ from ours? (Hey, it's moral relativity!) This isn't to say that presenting arguments for atheism or religious missionary work is a bad thing, I just want people to stop saying things like:






How about:


(lots of quotes make it looooong!)