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you have to be born to be subject to original sin, if i remember correctly. i may be wrong, however. It's been some time.
Like anything in life people have different asnswers. Most Christians I know say !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you have to be born to be subject to original sin, if i remember correctly. i may be wrong, however. It's been some time.
This is obvious:
The aborted children of Republican donors go to heaven.
If the parents vote straight-ticket Republican, their aborted infants go to purgatory.
All other infants go to . Heaven is an eternal RNC.
I find it ridiculous that so many in this thread are attempting to prove the other side wrong.
A few people watch the movie Zeitgeist and think they've been explained the mysteries of the world. When a man like Stephen Hawking has a difficult time explaining the origins of the universe and suggests that intelligent design is highly possible, it's humorous to see atheists in here acting as if they have some type of insight on the topic.
Its about as interesting as faces dropping into 30+ page threads and acting like they've read the entire thing.
I'd apologize, but i feel more intelligent for not reading the last 15 pages.
If there's anything you think i might have missed please enlighten me, but otherwise, reread my previous post. Reread it as many times as necessary...it's obvious that simple concepts seem to elude you.
In other words, god and religion have to be tip-toed around and cannot be questioned.
Questioned yes but proven as fact? NO.
There is a God, Melmart be thy name.
truth=right for only one side, but that doesn't matter for whoever is wrong because I don't believe they'll accept the truth if it means they're wrong.
I think either side, in the face of insurmountable evidence contrary to their beliefs (meaning God himself walks up to an atheist and says "hey I'm God" and proves that he's God, or there is irrefutable scientific evidence explaining the beginning of life itself not coming from a god).....the wrong side would still deny it to the bitter end, because it's not about knowing the truth, it's about proving that the other guys are stupid.
You think wrong. Most atheists aren't 100% sure the way most Christians claim to be.
There is a god and only one god. It's hard to believe because it's hard to believe that one can be the creator of mankind and all that we see and don't see and all that we know and don't know. But that's what makes god so great and worthy of worship, is that he created us and gave us good and bad of everything so that we may learn and in doing so may return to him in repentance. As long as you are sincere is your repentance, you are forgiven by the one and only Allah.
some folks say all truth is realtive it just depends on what u believe...un know ain't no way for sure who god is or whats really true but that means u believe you own statement. thats there's no way to really know whats true u saying thats that statement is true ...u killing yourself ...if whats truth for you is truth for you whats truth for me is truth for me ..what if my truth says yours is a lie..is it still true?....c'mon man,
paraphrasing
oh and o i'm new
It's been do ented and known to scholars for CENTURIES that Jesus myth is just another incarnation of the same ancient Sun god worship. Humans have been changing the characters and details around but it's the overall same story.
It goes all the way back to Osiris/Horus in ancient egypt. This is -provable with archeological evidence and history. There is no debate. You can't debate facts.
The correlation of EVERY MAJOR DATE in Jesus' life is DIRECTLY in line with a major solar event that has been recognized in many other religions that PRE-DATE christianity.
Next, when pertaining to Judaism and the Old Testament as known to you Christians, it has also been explained. There are no 'miracles'.... it's all a form of telling real events in story form.
Anyone arguing this is just intentionally dishonest or blind and holding onto straws.
Were you there to prove that Jesus didn't perform miracles? IMO both sides to this debate suck, everyones just saying "No what I believe is right you're stupid if you think anything else." You can debate every last story in the bible all day, but who's to say the bible wasn't created by God to give us guidelines to live by and providing examples rather than an actual account of history? Neither side has presented any sort of a real argument yet..
Were you there to prove Horus, Mithras, etc didn't perform those miracles?
They all have the same outline story that Jesus did.
Why do you choose to ignore that and just say the Jesus version is real and the others are fake? The Catholic Church did it's job well.
Here is a crash course of what is being talked about :
- Ancient Egypt, 4,000-3,500 BC somewhere around that time Horus/Osiris/Isis spread in the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt. Eventually, the Upper and Lower kingdoms were unified into the Egyptian empire. Horus is worshipped in many forms, most importantly as the Sun god. He 'travels' across the sky (the Sun) and saves mankind from darkness (night time). He is the Son of God (Osiris) born of a miraculous birth (Isis, his mother) and he comes to Earth to save us, his birth is said to be during the winter solstice of Dec. 21-25th, etc. There is a LOT of material on the meanings and astrology behind everything on this matter.
Horus is portrayed carrying an Ankh, the egyptian symbol for "life"
The Ankh is the basis for the Christian Cross, which also has come to symbolize Christ's 'ressurection' aka Life.
Isis caring for Horus / Mary caring for Jesus
- Time is passing, humanity continues to create Sun gods, influenced by Horus/Osiris. Mithras, Krishna, a lot of others. The Roman Empire has heavy influences. Mithraism is extremely popular. Mithras shares the same story. Son of God, etc etc. Greeks, everyone have their own.
- eventually, a Roman Emperor by the name of Constantine is having trouble. The Empire is in shambles. Barbarians are invading. Major military defeats are suffered on different fronts. Constantine declares Christianity the official religion of the Empire. The birthday, Easter celebrations, everything is carried over from ancient Sun Gods into the story of Jesus to facilitate easier acceptance by the public. The Roman Church begins it's work.
- The last Roman Emperor outlaws all practice of Mithraism and others. The stamping out of other religions to cover up and legitimize Christianity begins.
- The Roman Catholic Church burns books, destroys churches, statues, all sorts of destruction.
- Eventually, during the Dark Ages, the Church takes it a step further and just begins to burn people at the stake, torture people. mass murder on large scales to anyone who denies that Jesus LITERALLY walked on water and is the son of god. No more ancient Sun worship and the true meanings. That is being covered up now. Confess that Jesus really DID ressurect or we torture you and cut your head off.
- Time passes, here we are in 2008.
I left A LOT out. A ton. I didn't get into the MANY similarities between Horus/Mithras/Dionysus/etc and Jesus and into the bigger history timeline.
This isn't up for debate. These are facts.
Last edited by MiamiHeat; 01-03-2009 at 07:31 AM.
You're taking real events such as the ones you listed which are BELIEVED by scholars to be true and mixing them in with personal opinion. You do not KNOW that Jesus didn't walk on water. And not everyone who believes in God interprets the bible literally. Who says that it wasn't written by God as a set of guidelines for us to live by with the stories having an underlying meaning besides being taken literally. Just because MiamiHeat posted some correlations between early Egyptian beliefs, astronomy, and Christianity doesn't mean that no God exists. Your argument is pretty much a weak one, unless you're just simply here to post history facts. None of those things prove in any form or fashion that God doesn't exist.
Where is the personal opinion in what I wrote?
Go ahead and try and point it out.
And you do not KNOW that Horus didn't perform miracles.
So with this logic, every god, including the Flying Spaghetti Monster, can't be questioned.
The Bible is the Word of God, as it says so itself. The book is taken to be the Word of God. You can't pick and choose which to believe literally and which not to believe literally.
Who decides what parts are real and what aren't? By the way, the Catholic Church already tried that. A committee got together and chose which books would become CANON and which would be left out of the Bible you see today. That didn't fix the problem now did it?
and what type of logic do we use to decipher what is bull and what isn't?
Let's be honest here. You can't do this and tell me with a straight face that there isn't something fishy going on here.
I never said "No God can possibly exist"
I said "Christianity and Judaism's God doesn't exist"
Now, what do you have to say about the mountains of evidence that religion is man-made and Christianity in particular owes it's roots to Sun worship?
sure we can.
i think you've done an excellent job of letting us know what you don't believe in...would you now progress to tell us what God you do believe in?I never said "No God can possibly exist"
I said "Christianity and Judaism's God doesn't exist"
I will see you all in about 3 years...... My children
No, you can't. Once you acknowledge that even -1- instance is corrupted and is not the word of god, then you admit that the whole thing is now in question. It would mean the Bible is not the Word of God and cannot be taken literally.
Your user name is interesting :P Most people would probably reference Star Wars, but you have an avatar of the Sun. You know what I know :P
Here's a little story for those who don't know :
The Sun is said to 'travel' across the sky and through the constellations, etc. Ancient Egyptians used the Sun to tell time. Horus, being the Sun God, is said to 'walk across the sky' during the day. Therefore, Egyptians would divide the time by saying "Horus of the first step, Horus of the second step, Horus of the third step" etc...
Consequently, we use the word "hours" as a play on "Horus" to tell the time.
And here is a crash course of the responses.
A look at the account of Horus from reputable contemporary Egyptologists puts to lie the notion that Jesus and Horus are paralleled in anything more than a superficial and specious fashion. All who claim otherwise are either relying on old sources which have been debunked, or on amateur skeptics with an axe to grind.
Most if not all Egyptian Gods carry an Ankh, not just Horus.Horus is portrayed carrying an Ankh, the egyptian symbol for "life"
The Ankh is the basis for the Christian Cross, which also has come to symbolize Christ's 'ressurection' aka Life.
The popularity of the physical cross as a Christian symbol ABSOLUTELY originated with Egyptian Christians. Early Christians did not use it the way modern Christians do. There are accounts of early Christians tracing out the sign of the cross on their foreheads, but we cannot know for sure that the cross was absolutely the symbol we are thinking of today. The Greek term stauros and the Latin term crux referred to a variety of configurations for the same kind of torture, from a single vertical pole, to a T, to the cross we think of, to an X or even a Y shape.
The notion that the traditional shape we think of is sort of backed up in Scripture by the account of Jesus carrying his cross and Simon the Cyrene having to pick it up, and by the account of there being room to attach the sign, but it wasn't a point belabored by the early followers. Adopting the cross right away would have been sort of like the NAACP adopting the hangman's noose as its chief symbol at its founding -- shocking and painful. A few Early Church Fathers reported that the cross was really a T.
I don't think there is much doubt that the cross really became popular as a dominant symbol in Alexandria, Egypt, largely because of the ankh, which looked like a kind of a crux immissa, and already had symbolism for eternal life. Egyptians saw the parallels and carried over the symbol. Coptic Christians still use the Ankh.
This is the whole reason Jehovah's Witnesses reject the sign of the cross and insist that Jesus was crucified on a vertical stake.
Some of those 19th-century skeptics MiamiHeat is so fond of went so far as to say not only that Jesus' crucifixion never happened, but that crucifixion as a Roman means of execution was a myth. That was put to rest when skeletal remains with a nail through the heel bone and scratches on the wrist bones was found in Israel in 1968.
The image of Mother and Child predates Christianity. It is a universal theme of humanity. Christian artists absolutely carried on these themes from earlier traditions. I don't think there are too many Christians out there who are going to claim that God went on inspiring ex nihilo completely unprecedented art forms for the Christian church.Isis caring for Horus / Mary caring for Jesus
Other things that have been co-opted in:
The basilica shape of a lot of churches is carried over from the typical Roman meeting hall.
The image of Jesus as a long-haired guy with a beard is probably of Greek origin. Some Early Church Fathers, especially the Levantine ones, describe Jesus' appearance as that of a skinny young man with frizzy, relatively short hair, a prominent hook nose, and a rather weak beard. In fact, there was a dispute between some Syrian Fathers and Greek Fathers over the proper depiction, with the Syrians in favor of frizzy, Semitic-looking Jesus, and the Greeks in favor of bearded long-haired Jesus. The Syrians accused the Greeks of co-opting the appearance of Zeus. As time has gone on, Italians depicted Latin Jesus, Goths depicted white, blue-eyed Jesus, Africans depicted Black Jesus, and Asians have depicted Chinese Jesus in his silk robe. Now Middle Eastern Christians just have a Semitic-looking long-haired bearded Jesus.
Not only is the date of Christmas carried over from Roman Saturnalia, so is the tree with its decorations, evergreen branches in the home, the colors red and green, the garland, and the lights. The further east one gets from Rome, the less important Christmas is to Christian communities dating from antiquity. The pagan symbols were really, really popular with the Germanic tribes who come from areas colder than the Mediterranean. The Anglo, Dutch, and German white people who settled what became the United States were mostly descendants of that tradition, which is why Christmas is a bigger deal here than say, Argentina.
The Parthenon was converted into a Christian church in late antiquity, with the Athena statue reconsecrated as the Virgin Mary. This happened over and over and over. When Muslims started conquering, they did this too, converting a lot of churches into mosques. The Ottoman Turks did this in spades.
Parallels between Horus and Krishna are even more strained than the ones between Horus and Jesus. This is just a sloppy assumption from someone that has made up his mind that all gods are based upon sun worship, damn the evidence otherwise.Time is passing, humanity continues to create Sun gods, influenced by Horus/Osiris. Mithras, Krishna, a lot of others. The Roman Empire has heavy influences. Mithraism is extremely popular. Mithras shares the same story. Son of God, etc etc. Greeks, everyone have their own.
This is sloppy both in terms of Roman history and religious history. Skeptics have created quite a legend about old Constantine, and also about what was decided at the Council of Nicaea.eventually, a Roman Emperor by the name of Constantine is having trouble. The Empire is in shambles. Barbarians are invading. Major military defeats are suffered on different fronts. Constantine declares Christianity the official religion of the Empire. The birthday, Easter celebrations, everything is carried over from ancient Sun Gods into the story of Jesus to facilitate easier acceptance by the public. The Roman Church begins it's work.
Constantine never, ever declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. He declared it a permissible religion. Constantine's mother became a Christian. Constantine also wanted to move his capital away from Rome, into a strategic area that just happened to be in the only area of the Empire that was majority-Christian. Tolerating Christianity suddenly became politically desirable.
The celebration of Christmas had been observed, mostly in the West, a century prior to Constantine, but it was primarily a means of competing with the extremely popular Roman festival, much like Jews in America have elevated the relatively minor holiday of Chanukah to compete with Christmas today. With Constantine, the celebration became Empire-wide, though it never took hold in the East the way it did in the West. Christmas was not discussed at the Council of Nicaea, as the skeptic legend claims.
Easter was discussed at the Council of Nicaea, and the longstanding dispute between those who wanted Pascha based on the Jewish calendar and those in favor of the Roman calendar was decided in favor of the pro-Romans.
It is also often claimed that the Council of Nicaea wiped out all competing forms of Christianity. Nicaea did anathematize Arianism, a belief somewhat similar to what JW's believe, but it was far from the end for that belief system. Subsequent emperors were Arians, and oppressed the Nicenes. Theodosius made Nicene Christianity the official religion once and for all in 381. In the West, Arianism was less popular, but ironically, Gothic kings tended to be Arian, because at the time, Arianism was seen as a sign of being a good military leader for some reason. The king of the Franks converted to Nicenism in 496, but Arianism persisted a while longer, so much that Western bishops changed the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed to buttress the case of Jesus' divinity (which is why the Catholic and Orthodox versions are different).
It is also claimed that Nicaea banned a whole bunch of New Testament books that were previously in the canon, like the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Judas, etc. Actually, no e enical council ever defined the books of the New Testament. A Western synod did, but the East never did, though it uses the same books. The ancient Syriac church actually omits four General Epistles and Revelation.
The Gnostic works were particular to the Gnostics. Claiming that the Nicenes were suppressing those works from the Church is, from a historical standpoint, akin to claiming that evangelical churches today are suppressing the Book of Mormon, or various New Age writings. They don't use them because they don't believe them. When Midwesterners were persecuting Mormons in the 19th century, it wasn't because Protestant churches were confused about whether the Pearl of Great Price belonged in the canon.
The books that were occasionally included in the early churches but ultimately omitted from the canon make up part of the Apostolic Fathers, a collection that is by no means hidden from us. Any questioner is free to read them.
Theodosius did this in 394. Constaninople goes further and further over the years, adopting a penchant for persecuting anybody who goes against what the emperor says about religion. The Copts, Syriacs, Latins, and Armenians all got a taste of the sword from time to time. Nicenes who preferred their own local rites to the Byzantine Rite got harassed. Byzantium's behavior was so oppressive that Levantine and Eastern Christians found life as dhimmis under Islamic rule much more favorable. The only check on the emperors' behavior was the citizenry of the City who only put up with so much.- The last Roman Emperor outlaws all practice of Mithraism and others. The stamping out of other religions to cover up and legitimize Christianity begins.
Say anything that went against Catholic dogma, such as "hey, isn't the Eucharist supposed to be bread and wine?" or "We're teaching that you can buy coupons to get into heaven now? Seriously?" and you got offed.- Eventually, during the Dark Ages, the Church takes it a step further and just begins to burn people at the stake, torture people. mass murder on large scales to anyone who denies that Jesus LITERALLY walked on water and is the son of god. No more ancient Sun worship and the true meanings. That is being covered up now. Confess that Jesus really DID ressurect or we torture you and cut your head off.
You left a few centuries out.- Time passes, here we are in 2008.
Your argument is specious when it pertains to the historicity of Jesus and generally accurate when it pertains to the expropriation of symbols and observances from other religions as Christianity spread, and to the persecution of other groups when the church became entangled with the power of the state. As to historicity and the parallels of Jesus to the sun god, regardless of how many times you repeat it, it is still a fringe position rejected by all mainstream scholarship on the subject, whether religious or historical, whether Egyptian or Jewish. The denial that Jesus existed is appealing as a skeptics' myth, because believing in it is a magic bullet. But it is not "facts."This isn't up for debate. These are facts.
i personally feel that the bible is a playground for allegorical interpretation.
i do not feel that this eliminates the possibility of divine inspiration.
that is interesting and something i did not know.Here's a little story for those who don't know :
The Sun is said to 'travel' across the sky and through the constellations, etc. Ancient Egyptians used the Sun to tell time. Horus, being the Sun God, is said to 'walk across the sky' during the day. Therefore, Egyptians would divide the time by saying "Horus of the first step, Horus of the second step, Horus of the third step" etc...
Consequently, we use the word "hours" as a play on "Horus" to tell the time.
But what i am asking is if you, yourself, believe in a higher power, and if so, what details are you willing to share regarding the God you believe in?
I feel our purpose in life is to become better human beings...selfless...reaching a point of enlightenment. I believe this is a journey from within. The Christian guide is clearly Jesus Christ.
What do you feel our purpose of life is? And if it is similar, than who is your guide?
Well, crap, since a bat is not a kind of bird, I guess you win!
Oh, baloney. That's a silly folk etymology from some of the same crank Egyptologist wannabes that spout the Jesus=Horus parallel. "Hour" has the same root as "year" and comes from the proto-Indo-European language. Look up the cognates in some of the Indian languages.Consequently, we use the word "hours" as a play on "Horus" to tell the time.
Out of curiousity I'd like to know what ES thinks is the single most compelling piece of evidence supporting the existence of Jesus. I'm not talking about God just a mortal man named Jesus who was the son of God....magical powers and all.
I don't want 5, 6 or 10 things. Just the one single most compelling piece of evidence.
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