The Atheist Experience

I accept that it is ONE of many quotes attributed to Jesus that are often contradictory.And that the author of John was vigorously marketing his product.

Do we have any evidence of this? Why did mainstream Christianity embrace rather than question the authorship, authenticity, and ulterior motive that you seem to suggest is behind the Gospel Of John? (I must leave for work now....will get back to you later )

I've asked you many times: What does it mean to believe?You can "believe" fervently that the Salvation Army exists but does that get the homeless fed?

I know. I think that jar believes that Christianity taught us what it is we can and should do and that you loosely agree with this assessment. Mainstream Christianity claims that it is all about believing that Jesus died for us, rose from the dead and is alive today being a prerequisite to effective good works. Why throw that away?

1. Because it isn't true.
2. Because it's a scam trying to sell you get-out-of-hell-free.

It costs nothing, why do you keep using the word "sell?" You have no reason to call it a scam. Where do such silly ideas come from? And again, scam implies it costs something. The whole point is it really IS free. Get out of jail free if you have to put it in such denigrating language. Free, got it? Free.

We have what is written. We have the Jesus that the author of John describes and the Jesus of Matthew 25 and we can compare what is actually written. You have several questions and each opens yet another whole discussion.First is the issue of Authorship. Honestly, we have no idea who actually authored most of the Bible. But folk like the concept of "Authorship" of "Source" and so they tended to attribute authorship.Next, Authenticity. I don't think anyone or at least most folk question whether or not the work called the Gospel of John is authentic. It's not like the long ending of Mark that seems quite obviously something added much later than the original. But John is quite different from the other Gospels, the Synoptic Gospels and that difference has been long acknowledged. The author of John as tends to emphasis Jesus performing miracles to show his divinity; a subtle difference in marketing and intent. In the others Jesus tends to do miracles because they need doing and quite often is quoted as asking folk not to tell or not taking credit for the miracle.Finally is what you call "ulterior motive. I don't even try to address motive. I think that is irrelevant and also simply impossible to determine. What I do is point to what is actually written. I'll leave issues like motive to the carny barkers.

Your "marketing" theme is disgusting and offensive and yes John did describe many miracles for the express purpose of convincing people of the truth of Jesus' identity as God and mission of salvation. John was also given the privilege of writing the book of Revelation, and was described as being particularly close to Jesus. And this is another big hoax against the truth, part of the whole attempt to substitute fake heretical New Testament manuscripts in the place of the Textus Receptus, touted as the "oldest" manuscripts and therefore the most authentic. Big deception, too bad the Church is so gullible. Clues that they are phony include the fact that the most famous ones are complete and intact, which shows that they were hardly ever used, a clear sign that they were recognized as fakes by the mainstream churches and rejected. The remains of the true manuscripts only go back as far as the tenth century and they exist in about five thousand portions and fragments. The originals are long since gone as they should be since they would have been copied over and over and used over and over and disintegrated from all that handling.The idea that some of the most famous (and most supernastural) passages of the Bible were added later is the big fat lie. The fact is that they were there in the originals and REMOVED by heretics who share your prejudice against their supernatural content. EVIDENCE that the passage in Mark was removed is that there is a blank space of exactly that length in one of the phony corrupted manuscripts now substituted for the true ones. The manuscript called Sinaiticus has a big gap there. Obviously the passage was originally there and REMOVED from it.Dean John William Burgon wrote a whole book about this fraud on the Church of the removal of the passage in Mark, and three major articles on the whole hoax itself of substituting corrupted maniscripts for the Textus Receptus, titled "The Revision Revised." Both these works are online Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It really is simple Faith.Produce the originals.

You obviously didn't read what I wrote: the originals would have disintegrated from use, as would most of the ancient copies. What remains goes back to the tenth century. You need to study the work of the textual critics who have reconstructed the originals from the existing fragments by painstaking comparisons among them all.Here's a discussion of textual criticism: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It really is simple Faith, produce the originals.

Gosh that WOULD be simple, but only a complete idiot asks for the impossible, and the work of textual reconstruction is excellent, which only an intelligent person can appreciate.

Produce the original Faith.The issue is very similar to science.We can say the some dinosaurs were feathered because there is actual evidence showing feathered dinosaurs.We can say that some dinosaurs were brightly colored because there is actual evidence showing colored dinosaurs.But there is NO evidence of what was in any original Biblical manuscript.

I've seen the evidence reconstructed. They compare all the existing fragments with each other, determining as far as possible which wordings were scribal errors, which were copied from which, and how many of each of the variant wordings exist, among other things, and they really are able to reconstruct the original wording that way. Your dinosaur comparison is utterly irrelevant and silly.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But science actually has evidence of the original. Physical evidence.Now produce the original biblical manuscript.