ZeitGeist

Fair enough. I concur with your reasoning. Sure He did. But you will just rely on the fact that the gospels could be inaccurate. So what difference will it make to you?

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

So, tell me, when you do exactly the same thing that you whine about atheists "commonly" doing, is that "both interesting and hypocritical"?Or is your own personal hypocrisy of the dull and boring variety?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Where? I don't understand the question. What are you getting at?

YES.Do you suppose that I believe all the miraculous stories about Roman emperors in the Twelve Caesars of Suetonius?Every purported historical document must be subjected to the same critical analysis.

I agree with Dr. Adequate...and for Nemesis, once again you are wrong about what I think or thought when I saw Zeitgeist. Also to say that knowledge is based on assumptions??????!!?

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You have no beliefs, whatsoever??? Are you kidding me? Do you believe your parents love you? Do you believe that one day your dog, Shep, will die? Do you believe you will wake up tomorrow? You have much faith in many things. To live without a measure of faith is an unlivable life full of total obscurity. Of course you have beliefs. If you'd like to quote us so you can respond, copy the text, hit the reply button and paste it. If you want to know the html codes, hit the peek function so you can see how its done.An option to what that I haven't provided? What are you referencing? What does this have to do with anything that I said? The fact that He went through is precisely to expose the very reason for our need of Him. ................................? I'm not following you. Its a way of personifying that which has no physical personhood. Why do they refer to ships as a "she?" Of course God isn't a He or a She or even an It. These are quaint definitions for our benefit, simply because it is difficult to conceptualize God. I do not ascribe to the notion of an anthropomorphic God-- that is to say, that I do not believe He has literal human features. While it is true that the Bible makes mention of human characteristics, it is purely metaphorical. When the Bible refers to God as a ”He’ or ”Him’, this is an allegorical approach of personifying that which has no physical personhood; or at the very least, that which has no need of a physical personhood.Rather than wondering where God is, I wonder where isn't God. Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : typo

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"It is better to shun the bait, than struggle in the snare." -Ravi Zacharias

One little thing I want to bring to your attention: The little thing that happened with Thomas after Jesus was risen.Are you telling me that Thomas who has been with Jesus and witnessed all the miracles thus far is STILL not sure about Jesus' authenticity, that he needs to feel the wounds with his own hands?This passage alone is incredibly important and revealing. If Thomas still needed assurance at that point what makes you think he won't question it again? Is Thomas a crazy man or just one with diamond hard principles?

thomas is my favorite. i think you're reading it wrong. consider it this way.everyone told thomas that they'd seen jesus alive. he didn't buy it. he wanted to see and touch with his own senses. he demanded this of his friends, but didn't ask jesus himself. but jesus provided the proof thomas required without even being asked. he wasn't offended by thomas' need, and he didn't belittle him (unlike many modern christians). he simply gave what thomas needed to help him believe.

I do, actually. I don't think "the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible are actually his verbatim speech, even though it was never written down until 70 years later" constitutes one of those reasonable assumptions. Can you defend it, if it's so reasonable to you? Sex, drugs, murder, whatever you want. When has belief in God ever been an impediment to those behaviors? Hell, they make it easier to justify. You get a lot more out of rationalizing your behavior as something "God wants me to do" than by embracing some kind of purposeless life. With religion, you get to do whatever you want and you get a purpose, hand-delivered to you by an infinite cosmic being who's always on your side and is obsessed with your each and every action.How can atheism-for-rationalization's-sake hold a candle to that? People don't become atheists to justify their own behavior. For that they turn to religion, NJ. True fact. Not everyone is atheist for good reasons. Some people are atheist because their religion tells them to be.I can't condone that. You should be an atheist because you've accurately concluded that there's no such things as gods based on the abundant evidence this is so, not because you read "there are no such things as gods" in a book somewhere or your buddy told you.Skeptikal should believe what he believes because of the evidence, not because of what he wants to be true. Only he can tell us whether or not he's doing that.

I tried doing the quote thing, but I guess I did it wrong. have to try using the HTML I guess.Nope. I don't have any beliefs. I KNOW my parents love me from experience (and alot of it of course). I KNOW that my dog will die, again from experience and what I have seen. I don't know nor believe that I will wake up tomorrow, I ASSUME so, but of course I could be wrong. This refutes everything you just said about faith and belief.Look, drugs like cocaine and heroine are man made. They produce certain ecstatic feelings in your nervous system and this helps alleviate pain...temporarily. They also cause detrimental effects on your health to the point of fatality. The cycle is people get addicted and either start to realize that they have to find a way out or continue until they either whither or die of an OD. It is the same thing with faith and belief.I mentioned crucifixion because the act itself was beyond grotesque and barbaric. Why should just one man aka Jesus be isolated and associated with it? But I guess the root of the problem lies not with Jesus but with God (himself?). Jesus is the loophole.believing is the original sin because it created something out of nothing...God. When reading the bible try looking at it from two angles. One angle is the one you have already learned and 'believe' is true and the other is that there is more to the bible than you think. Read it with scrutiny...read anything with scrutiny.Edited by Spektical, : No reason given.

WTF Bible are you reading? Jesus burns Thomas so bad in that passage:

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But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

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25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the LORD. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.

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26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

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27 Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

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28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.

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29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

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As in "blessed are they, Thomas, and not you." What could be more belittling than the Son of God telling you that the people who did exactly the opposite of what you just did are the ones who are blessed?Do you simply not read the pique in that verse? The condescension? The disapproval?

LMAO at crashfrog. Its so true But you missed the point Brenna...first of all, that whole passage is a Jesus marketing scam for the future generation that will obviously not see him physically (I don't know why!!) but should believe so they can be blessed (lol). Second, Thomas says 'so I may believe', he's still skeptical about the man he spent so much time with and in fact, the same man who made him a disciple when he raised that little girl from the dead IN FRONT OF HIM!!!Back to crashfrog's comment about Jesus burning his disciple. This seems true of all the disciples. All of them were used and manipulated by Jesus: Judas, John, Thomas, Peter and THAT IS condescending.

All the disciples are portrayed as complete retards.

We'd look for consistent, plausible accounts. We'd look for multiple records of existence from the time. We'd look for events ascribed to him being corroborated by other sources. There are none of these things. Where do Christians get this crap? The historical evidence for Jesus is scanty at best. You've got four gospels, most of which are partially derived from each other, or a fourth source and all of which were written decades after the event - a timescale plenty long enough to allow mythology to develop. That's it. There's more justification for the existence of King Arthur and Robin Hood. Because the claims made about Jesus are extraordinary, and thus require extraordinary evidence.