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Religion IS crazy!

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Hmm its a story.
The scriptures are also stories.
They maybe authentic but you cannot prove the contents.
LJ Hubbard is fictional yet according to followers its/he's GOSPEL.

Sorry but I just don't trust the human race.
They lie to justify their stand point.---
 
pavilion103 said:
You need to look into oral tradition more in terms of these types of societies.
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Oral tradition is not fact. The stories of the aboriginal dream-time are an oral tradition. They are beautiful stories, but they are not historical fact.

Expert scholars? The ones that share your opinion?.
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No, I am not that arrogant. They don't share my opinion, but after doing much reading from different sources, I share theirs.

You are intellectually dishonest throwing the blanket statement "experts" ............
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I didn't make a blanket statement about experts at all. In fact I don't think I even used the word. I referred to scholars - people who have academic qualifications, respect of their peers, and decades of experience in their field. It is not my opinion, but the opinion of such scholars, well versed in their subject, that the gospels are not eye-witness accounts, and that they contain inconsistencies, factual errors and a lot of embellishment added long after the event. You seem to think that the very existence of these documents is evidence of their veracity - just because you want it to be true.
 
pavilion103 said:
I have provided compelling evidence already about the crucifixion and resurrection. I've mentioned disciples willing to die for testimony that they KNEW to be true (not thought was true). Manuscripts written in the lifetime of eye-witnesses who could refute this if untrue. Writing by eye-witnesses so close to the events compared to anything else in antiquity (Buddha was about 600 years later I think).
5,200 Greek manuscripts, an abundance of evidence also showing myth was not added later, the original was of a supernatural Jesus, not a natural one.

You are using a different standard if evidence to other events in antiquity if you conclude that the resurrection did not occur. If you are being consistent then you cannot say that Buddha existed, or Alexander the Great. In fact there is more evidence for Christ than for Caesar (about 10 manuscript).

Luckadoo I think it was. The lawyer of 255 consecutive murder acquittals investigated the evidence from a court of law standard and concluded by this standard it is beyond any doubt at all.

But hey your faceless "scholars" all think otherwise lol.
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Deep sea scrolls, manuscripts written on grand parchments or chipped in stone do not make the words fact or truthful. Even a dying declaration in a court of law needs to be supported by other evidence to be fact.

As far as the different God's are concerned a good read on religions for me at Uni was "The Golden Bough" by an Oxford scholar called Frazer.
 
I can understand the logic that because a document exists it doesn't prove the events are real. I agree.

I'm going to take a bit of a different direction here.

Who believes that Jesus existed as a man?

I ask this because no serious historian believes that Jesus did not exist at all. Heck, even Dawkins back flipped on this one and admitted that it is beyond doubt.

So do people believe that Jesus existed as a man or not?
 
I think the reason we even have this argument or discussion is that religion is a belief that those who believe it to be fact, possess. Those that do not believe in religion usually believe in facts supported by what we determine to be the most accepted methods of the scientific community.

I don't think this is going to end well, discussions between believers and non-believers. We should all just respect each others right to believe in whatever we want, be that fact or religion.:2twocents

I just don't want this to become a slinging match between the believers and non-believers.
 
pavilion103 said:
I can understand the logic that because a document exists it doesn't prove the events are real. I agree.

I'm going to take a bit of a different direction here.

Who believes that Jesus existed as a man?

I ask this because no serious historian believes that Jesus did not exist at all. Heck, even Dawkins back flipped on this one and admitted that it is beyond doubt.

So do people believe that Jesus existed as a man or not?
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*drumrolll*...incoming C.S. Lewis quote!
 
I agree with that CanOz and I take no offense to anything in here. It's hard to communicate the manner in which we are debating and mine is a friendly one and not very emotional at all.

I like an intellectual discussion and this is not personal one bit. I hope that is the same for others.
 
pavilion103 said:
I can understand the logic that because a document exists it doesn't prove the events are real. I agree.

I'm going to take a bit of a different direction here.

Who believes that Jesus existed as a man?

I ask this because no serious historian believes that Jesus did not exist at all. Heck, even Dawkins back flipped on this one and admitted that it is beyond doubt.

So do people believe that Jesus existed as a man or not?
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Jesus may have existed. There seems to be a lot of evidence to support that, and many scholars seem to agree on that point. However it is rather a large leap of the imagination to go from believing a man existed to endowing him with diving qualities - virgin birth, rising from the dead, and then taking off into the sky.
 
But back to my question...

I'll add my thoughts.

It boggles the mind that every serious historian and most others will accept as a fact that Jesus the man existed using the historical evidence.

YET say that those same historical documents are unreliable when a Christian makes a claim about Jesus. (Oh they are just old papers and don't prove that any of the events happened - which includes Jesus existing)

Completely inconsistent and also totally absurd.

You can't have your cake and eat it too and anyone who can't see this inconsistency shouldn't even be having a discussion like this.
 
pavilion103 said:
But back to my question...

I'll add my thoughts.

It boggles the mind that every serious historian and most others will accept as a fact that Jesus the man existed using the historical evidence.

YET say that those same historical documents are unreliable when a Christian makes a claim about Jesus. (Oh they are just old papers and don't prove that any of the events happened - which includes Jesus existing)

Completely inconsistent and also totally absurd.

You can't have your cake and eat it too and anyone who can't see this inconsistency shouldn't even be having a discussion like this.
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Pav - this is not inconsistent. Scholars concede that Jesus may have existed, or possibly existed, or probably existed because the body of evidence available supports that hypothesis - not that his existence is an incontrovertible fact.

As for all the other stuff....... what evidence supports virgin birth (for example)? So these 'old papers' don't prove or disprove anything. They seem to provide evidence that Jesus existed, and that perhaps some of the events occurred, but no more.

An integral part of oral tradition is its allegorical nature - hidden meanings and symbols wrapped up in stories which were never meant to be taken as 'fact', and changing as they are passed down the generations. Characters and events are given qualities in the re-telling that the originals never had. This is what myths and legends, (and religious stories) are.
 
I think this is going a little in circles now. I've given my reasoning, many have given theirs.

We will have to agree to disagree.

For every one post others have to answer I have about 3 or 4 lol. This is taking up time!

It's been good chatting, appreciate all your contributions. *shakes hands*

We will reconvene at a future date no doubt. I've got some money to go and make between now and then. Cya guys in the trading threads!! :)
 
pavilion103 said:
It's been good chatting, appreciate all your contributions. *shakes hands*
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Brought to mind: "...if you die there are only two things to worry about, either you will go to heaven or to hell. If you go to heaven, then there is nothing to worry about. And if you to go hell, you'll be so darn busy shaking hands with your friends you won't have time to worry!"
 
I'm currently on holiday and using a VPN via the US to protect my internet traffic over the free wifi at the hotel.

Due to my IP address being in the USA range I am getting interesting adds on ASF. The best one so far is 7 biblical truths about investing revealed.

Now I have read that some ethical investing strategies have seemed to provide better than average earnings, but I do find it a long stretch of the bow to claim the bible has investing strategies relevant to the world of dark pools and pico second HFT.

Might have to ask PBS to do a doco on the success or otherwise of the biblical trading strategy :cool:
 
Excerpt of Jed McKenna's Theory of Everything. Talking with his 'students' about the movie Truman Show.

---------------------------------------

“So, pretend it’s you opening that door,” I tell John and
Claire after the movie when they come to discuss it with
me. “Your whole life has been moving toward this; you’ve
undergone crisis after crisis, fought battle after battle,
destroyed illusion after illusion. You’ve been living in a
state of unrelenting emotional upheaval as your world
collapsed around you, you’ve made a great journey, and
now you’re about to discover the truth of your being.
You’re about to leave the only reality you’ve ever known
and step into a new, bigger reality you’ve never seen and
only recently began to suspect. Okay?”
“Okay,” they agree in unison.
“Okay. In the movie-metaphor, Truman is just stepping
out of a microcosm into the regular cosm we all know; it’s
really the same paradigm he’s known in the vast
sound-stage of Seahaven, but on a different scale. He’s just
tunneling from one cell into a larger cell, right?”
I wait for their reply because this is a good time to have
everyone on the same page. They assure me they are.
“But what if, instead of standing at a door to the next
level, he was standing at the final door? A door that
wouldn’t open into just another layer, but beyond all layers
and into the ultimate, eternal and infinite reality. What if
he’d killed his final Buddha, took his final bow, and
stepped through that door into the perfect void of nothing
forever? What then?”
They treat the question as rhetorical and stare at me.
“There’s no time or space on the other side of that final
door,” I continue, “no energy or matter, no motion, no
relativeness, no otherness. The mountain is not a mountain.
There are no people or places out there, no character to play
or audience to play to; it’s all truth and no Truman. There’s
nothing to perceive, so there’s no perception, and without
perceived and perception, how can there be a perceiver?”
“What does that mean?” asks Claire.
“Nothing forever,” I say. “The void of undifferentiated
consciousness.”
“But what does that mean?” asks John.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I say, “it just is.”
They look at each other, and back at me.
*
Let’s say Truman makes it to that final door. Then
what? Maybe he extends his hand through the door and
sees it disappear, or maybe he dives out and lands back on
the spot he dove from, or maybe... well, we kind of run out
of metaphors at this point. Standing at that final door isn’t
like anything. It’s the end of the line. The final question is
destroyed, the final veil is drawn back, the final gate is
opened. Everything is understood. Perfect knowledge is
attained because all false knowledge has been destroyed.
He has arrived at the only place in Maya’s universe where
there is no further, a strange and lonely place called Done.
All he can do now is turn around and re-enter the false
reality he gave everything to escape. Only now he is, quite
literally, disillusioned.
And there it is. The enlightened guy is really just a bad
sport who stomped off in a black rage and then slinks back
after discovering that there’s nowhere else to go. I called
enlightenment a booby prize, and this is why, but truth-realization
isn’t achieved by desire, so it’s only those who
can’t get there that would be disappointed. The black rage
guy didn’t want to become something true, he wanted to
un-become something false. That is achievable, and that’s
the only way it works.

----------------

Damn, he's good!!
 
Cut into pieces: ‘She challenged God’s orders’

MULTAN: A cleric cut his wife into pieces on Wednesday for refusing to wear a veil and sending their children to school, police said.

They said the body was recovered from near their house. They said they found his confession on the body and had also recovered the weapon he had used.

The body has been handed over to the family following a post-mortem examination.

A case has been registered against the confession-killer, who the police said had been missing.

Ahmad Aziz, father of the deceased Farzana Bibi, 36, said that she married Muhammad Sharif, 42, a resident of Bakkhal Bhir in Mumtazabad Colony.
They had three children.

Aziz said that Sharif led prayers at the neighbourhood mosque and also gave Quran lessons at their home. He said

Sharif was short-tempered and would often beat up Farzana Bibi. He had been telling her to cover her face when she left the house.

Aziz said Farzana Bibi wore an abaya (gown), but did not want to cover her face.
He said they often quarreled over the matter.

Police said Aziz was informed about the incident by the police shortly after they found Farzana Bibi’s body. Police said it had first been seen by a neighbour, who informed the police.

Police said in his note, Sharif had confessed to killing Farzana Bibi.
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http://tribune.com.pk/story/593466/cut-into-pieces-she-challenged-gods-orders/
 
Texas megachurch reverses anti-vaccination stance after 20 members contract measles

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-texas-megachurch-measles-vaccination-082613

A measles outbreak linked to a Texas megachurch amplifies the public health concern for those who opt out of immunizations.

A Texas megachurch has shifted its stance on immunization, following a measles outbreak among its faithful.

At least 20 members of the Eagle Mountain International Church in North Texas have been diagnosed with measles after a few members of the congregation traveled abroad on a mission trip and contracted the disease. The church is part of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, which has advocated abstaining from vaccinations and immunizations for fear they cause autism.

Pastor Terri Copeland Pearsons, daughter of Kenneth Copeland, announced in a sermon last week that the church will be hosting vaccination clinics and urged her congregation to attend.

Health officials report that exposure to the virus in foreign countries by unvaccinated people is one of the most common ways for outbreaks to occur in the U.S., but that the virus is otherwise largely avoidable due to regular vaccination schedules for children.

In response to the outbreak, Texas remains under an alert issued by the Texas Department of State Health Services, which urges people without a measles vaccine to obtain one.

Coincidently, the outbreak is occurring during National Immunization Awareness Month.

During the initial outbreak, the church released a statement to its faithful, saying their position “regarding dealing with any medical condition involving yourself or someone in your family is to first seek the wisdom of God, His Word, and appropriate medical attention from a professional that you know and trust. Apply wisdom and discernment in carrying out their recommendations for treatment.”
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