Ravi
Diamond Member
Hmmm...what other fabrications do you know of where people down through the ages have laid down their lives in support of? Over and over again? For 2 thousand years?
Islam
How long did people believe in the Greek gods?
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Hmmm...what other fabrications do you know of where people down through the ages have laid down their lives in support of? Over and over again? For 2 thousand years?
And what, exactly, was the profit to the disciples, who all but one died poor and tortured, to spread this ideology? What was their motivation, if it was all just vapid musings and power-mad fabrication?
Where does the future lie for the Bible then? If it continually gets debunked, do you think we are going to see a move to a new type of worship. Like when humans moved from pagan worship to monotheistic religion to worshiping figures like Jesus, Mary, Muhammed, etc.
Why are there suicide bombers that see themselves trying to spread an ideology?
Why are there suicide bombers that see themselves trying to spread an ideology?
In 1997, thirty-nine well-educated members of the so-called Heavens Gate cult, many of whom were computer programmers who worked on the cults web sites, committed suicide in a town near San Diego, California, because they were certain that their prophets vision of a spaceship traveling in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet was true. The prophet, a man named Marshall Applewhite, told them that if they all committed suicide when the comet was passing near the earth, they all would enter heaven right away. These poor folks didnt know first-hand that a vehicle which would take them to heaven was in the comets tail, but they obviously believed it as strongly as apostles of Jesus in the first century must have believed in their God.
The same type of psychology would have been at work in the minds of members of other religious groups of the 20th Century who willingly die for their beliefs, including for example the nine-hundred faithful Peoples Temple followers of Jim Jones in Guyana, and the 76 members of David Koresh's Branch Davidians, who believed him when he told them he was the divinely appointed head of the biblical House of David, and an angel and agent of God, and allowed themselves to die in the fire at the church compound in Waco, Texas.
THey aren't interested in spreading an ideology. Islam doesn't seek converts. It seeks to destroy Christians, nitwit. You don't spread ideology by killing your potential converts, or by blowing your own self up, genius.
I don't believe what made it in to the Bible is something writen at the last minute or FALSE....we are just missing additional books that also should be in theire, if they truely are inspired....kinda hard to know for certain which are and which aren't....
I personally think they are all wonderful and insighful to read, even the missing books of the Bible or the Apocryphilia books....
Those leading the churches today can not be blamed for what the early christians did a couple of thousand years ago though....at least not in my opinion....
I have met many Christians that are opened to reading other inspired books that were left out of the Bible intentionally....
care
What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand.
~Adlai E. Stevenson:
Not true. They are open to converts. Just like Christians are. And need I remind you of the crusades?
If the gospel stories about Jesus were false, the apostles would have said so.
Not necessarily. This assumes that the gospel stories were in circulation at the time the apostles died. However, the gospels were written between 70-120 AD, about forty to ninety years after the events alleged in the gospel stories. If the average age of the apostles at the time they allegedly walked with Jesus was 20 years, then they would have been between 60-100 years old when the stories were written. The life expectancy in those days was 40 years, so there is a good chance all of them were long already dead before the first gospel story about Jesus was written. Thus, the apostles prior to the time of their deaths would obviously not be in a position to deny stories if they had not yet in circulation because they had not yet been written.
THey aren't interested in spreading an ideology. Islam doesn't seek converts. It seeks to destroy Christians, nitwit. You don't spread ideology by killing your potential converts, or by blowing your own self up, genius.
Dying for ones faith is nothing new; people do it every day, but those willing deaths dont prove the truth of the martyrs belief. They only prove that the believer's faith is extremely strong--so strong in fact that theyre willing to die for it. Examples of this type martyrdom for ones faith abound in the 20th Century. Suicide-bombing Palestinians believe in their god, too, but their willingness to die doesnt prove that the stories about Allah being god are true.
Actually the Mormons happen to believe Jesus did visit the America's and that the Book of Mormon is that chronicle and religious text.
Hmmm...what other fabrications do you know of where people down through the ages have laid down their lives in support of? Over and over again? For 2 thousand years?
The only problem with this is that if you believe those books are inspired, then you think God is infallible and made a "mistake" somewhere...or was duped by man.
I believe the bible is perfect and is the word of God. I think the other books were not inspired, though they are certainly interesting, and as they were not inspired have no place in the bible.