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Member Posts: 3941 From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior) Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
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Author | Topic: The Existence of Jesus Christ | |||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
We can look at Heaven's Gates claims which led to suicide and ask if there are similar reasoning. Did they all meet and know someone intimately who was killed and then came to life for example? No, they did not. no. but they knew someone who had contact with space aliens, and had been on an alien spaceship disguised as a comet. and besides, the buddhists all know someone who died and came back to life: the buddha. otherwise known as his holiness, the dalai lama. claims are not always true. lots of people are willing to die for their faith, no matter the religion or the veracity of it.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i was making a slight ot comment. however.
The point has been made here that Paul and Peter and the early church did not believe in a literal man Jesus that was crucified, buried and rose again. that wouldn't really suprise me, if it were true. there was actually a whole subset of the church who didn't believe in a literal jesus.
Now, the fact they were willing to die for their belief in a literal Jesus and his resurrection does not by itself prove that Jesus rose from the dead, but it does prove they believed he rose from the dead. not neccessarily. that subset of believers that didn't believe in the literal jesus, the gnostics, also died for their faith. my point is that faith is a very strong thing, and really has nothing to do with the particulars of the belief.
Were they deluded by a charismatic preacher that told them it was true, like the Heaven's Gate people? No. They claimed to have direct personal experience with Jesus, something most believers claim although not to have witnessed his resurrected body as they claimed. But it's clear the religion is based on direct personal experience and testimony of that, and that the early apostles all believed they saw the resurrected Jesus. faith, to me, is not really valuable without doubt. if i can't doubt it, there's no reason for it to be special that i believe. similar to your point, lots of buddhists have direct personal experiences with the buddha. heck, you can even get photos of him.
see? a real, tangible person that people can interact with. he's even given a lecture at my college. real personal experience is completely meaningless. even if jesus was real, he could still be lying, insane, a demon, or any number of other possibilities. people of other religions, ESPECIALLY cults like heaven's gate, all make the same claims christian do. except we don't claim our leader still walks around and lecture at colleges. you have to remember also that we're only being told that someone, somewhere, at sometime had something like proof. maybe we're being deluded by some charismatic preacher, like luke for instance? how does a gospel testimony differ from the hypothetical heaven's gate testimony, if both only say they saw something?
As far as this thread topic, I think it's safe to say they believed Jesus rose from the dead and were willing to be martyred for that belief. some, certainly. i've even heard suggestions that martyrdom was encouraged, like in some modern fanatical muslim circles. my point is that they truly believe SOMETHING, anything really. the specifics of it don't matter.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
to believe contains an element of risk... Doubt too is risky. seem to me that doubt is the risker of the two. if it's all a sham, christianity is not a loss. but if christianity is right, doubt will land your ass in hell. there's a lot of "just in case" believers, i think. and i think that's part of how a lot of people are converted: fear of "what if it's true?" the story of my conversion had nothing to do with jesus or heaven or hell, it had to do with abraham i think. but i'd be lying if i said that didn't play a role.
So we have different starting points due to differing experiences you assume alot. i've been just about every type of christian there is, short of a yec. i also spent alot of time trying to justify old-earth creationism and match with with evolution/geology/cosmology.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
What sort of experiences did you have with the Holy Spirit, recognizing that maybe you are not sure, perhaps, if it was the Holy Spirit or something else? i hope you don't take this as dodging, or as a joke. but there are just some things i don't really discuss. and the inner workings of my faith i've never really shared with anyone, even the religious people i've been close to.
quote: But the discoveries and their implications were so astounding that I generally learned not to discuss them with people, and despite knowing their veracity, it was quite a shock to my world. well, i have a rather interesting belief regarding the future evolution of the human race, and our relationship to god. it's not one well recieved by most believers. or rather, it takes way too much debate to get across what i mean. but as for actual experiences, i couldn't even find a framework with which to convey my relationship with my god to another, even if i wanted to. sorry.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
At the same time, to post of how you used to think along similar lines or some such sort of violates that to a degree, but it is still understandable. well, i will discuss my beliefs, but not my relationship/experiences. i opened up a bit to faith a while back regarding my beliefs. she was confused as to why someone who professes to be a christian works at tearing down the bible so much, instead of affirming it and talking about faith and truth. i explained that as a matter of faith for me, it's important to know and understand what i'm given with, in all of it's imperfections. blindly asserting the bible's perfection and divine origin doesn't really do much for me. i used this as an example. the book of deuteronomy contains the advice (command, whatever) "thou shalt not tempt the lord your god." jesus quotes this at some point, too. now, i've found out something very interesting about deuteronomy: it's a fake. a complete forgery. it's the document that's "found" during the reign of josiah of judah, and is subsequently used to justify damnation of isreal, fueling a civil war. it contains the commandment that it central to how judah is judged: that there shall only be one temple. sounds a lot like those forged un documents our government made up to justify a war in iraq, right? and yet god still speaks through it. the forgeries of men, written in spite to be used as a weapon against an entire nation... and god speaks through it. that to me is a lot more powerful than thinking god told moses to write two books that were almost exactly the same. finding problems also aids in understanding. for instance, it's the contradictions in genesis that tell us which source is which. and lets us pick apart the stories into their original forms. and it's understanding the structure, and what the book actually is, that's important to me. but as for my religious experiences? those are a little more private.
Imo, one's subjective experience of God or lack thereof, or failure to recognize something was indeed God, probably has a whole lot to do with their faith, and their presuppositions, and thus affects their suppossed objective analysis in this area. recognizing god is indeed a matter of faith. but imo, and i don't mean to be insulting, i think alot of people wouldn't know god if he hit them with a lightning bolt. and i think that what a lot of people experience is largely a product of their own brains. but yet i do think god exists, just that he mostly stays out of things for the time being. however, i do believe in providence. well, actually, no. scratch that. i TRUST in providence.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
my local paper recently had an article about some mentions of jesus in the talmud, one referencing handing him over to the roman, and another referencing the date of his crucifixion.
of course, it contains no reference to WHERE in the talmud, or who said it, and when. if anyone's especially interested, maybe i'll copy the article by hand, but it's not really very informative. and i strongly doubt its authenticity. it mentions small print, and marginalized printing (emendations) which could EASILY be forgeries.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
that's what i said. i was wondering if anyone (ie: you) knew anything on the matter.
(another article on the same page is about a new translation of the babylonian talmud. all 35,000 pages of it. so i wouldn't be suprised if no one here is familiar with this claim)
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
This is the first that I've heard the claim that the Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of the Buddha. My understanding has always been that he is the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. i'd always heard that the original dalai lama was siddhartha gottama. but maybe that's apocryphal.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1343 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i though my statement was rather simplistic...
What other avenue of experience do you think we have? what i meant was: "i think that what a lot of people experience is largely a product of their own brains. [as opposed to real spiritual experiences or interactions with god, the devil, angels, or space aliens]" meaning that i reserve the small chance that the occasional experience could be real, but most of them, i think, are hallucinations and the like.
Are you asserting that consciousness can be independent of the nervous system so that we can or do experience independent of our brains? basically do we have souls independent of our bodies? i dunno.
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