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Sorry, that's a lieHitler's movement is no more Socialist than China is a People's Republic but you know that, right?
Hitler was a confirmed Christian who not only distained socialists, he had them murdered repeatedly.

so go enjoy your non-inspected foods, your non safety tested cars, your no building code house, your unpaved subscription based zero-design-work done road,...

know what, this joke is taking too long.
lets cut to the chase: you're an idiot, who isn't even aware of all the things government has done for you in a single day (recommended reading: http://www.nobeliefs.com/Repub...)

and for one who likes to bray on about binary decision makers, you have a startling lack of self-awareness.

There is a certain amount of public resources that have gone into you. I can provide examples if you lack the creativity or vigor to look for them.
You have a cost to society. It's not a difficult concept, you're not a homesteader who thinks your trusty double-barrel is keeping the Cherokee away, though you're like just as ignorant as one.

Here, I believe this is the link you are looking for:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Repub...

I had always assumed he did exist, then I looked into it.

So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him?

here ya go.

I thought the US was supposed to be a christian country and slashdot was supposed to be am mostly american site (I say mostly because I am actually british)?

Didn't Jesus say:

No. http://www.nobeliefs.com/Tripoli.htm

People always quote these three assholes and attribute them to atheism. And nothing could be further from the truth and everyone who modded parent up should go crawl in a corner.

First, Hitler was a christian. Some other Nazis toyed with pagan ideas and more nonsense, but none of them had an explicitly atheist agenda.

Second, Stalin exploited religion, even though he was an atheist himself. And while atheism was a part of communist dogma, there was very little explicitly anti-religious prosecution in communist russia. On the contrary, even Stalin himself maintained close ties with the orthodox church, and while its power was greatly reduced, it was never abolished.

If anyone of these can be accused of anti-religious actions, it is Mao, who indeed had religious sites ransacked during the cultural revolution. But again, to the best of my knowledge, there were no explicit anti-religious death camps or anything like that.

You, sir, are a fraud and a liar, a demagoge and manipulator. First, you attribute the total death count of world events to one person, and then to one feature (in one case, a falsely alleged feature) of their personality. That's like saying that Bill Gates is as rich as he is because he has a nose. Nevermind that lots of other people with noses aren't that rich, nor is it a general feature of people with noses to be rich - uh, sorry, lots of atheists never killed anyone, nor is it a general feature of atheism to kill people.

Your argument is entirely fraudulent in every step. You fail to establish causation, you don't even try. Your entire argument boils down to "look, here is three evil people, here is something they had in common, therefore that thing is really, really evil". Oh yes, and all that is graciously ignoring that you are dead wrong on one of them.

I despise cheap rhetorics like this. I hate it when it is false-to-facts.

Oh, please.. As if the Bible is that much better?

Remember who gobbled the apple?

There are so many bible verses that I'll just link to some web pages:
First page

Second page

Third page

Yes, the new testament was generally better than the old testament, but there's lots of fun wackiness in both.

Deuteronomy - Chapter 13 is also a fun read :)

I'm sure the docs have already told him that (obesity is a contributing factor) but "a waist is a terrible thing to mind."

Much easier to just nail him to his perch and say he's pining for the fjords (just make sure you use Wilson's Nails if you decide to do it before his "best-before date").

After all, he likes parrots. And as one poster in that thread points out, most fatties don't eat breakfast ...

Where exactly does Christianity say you can kill infidels? Look here. Being Deuteronomy, those passages also apply to Judaism.

Buddhism and Hinduism are pretty strongly pacifist, so they don't really qualify. However, even though the religion opposes it, if you look at the nations of that religion, you'll find they don't really follow that and still have a tendency to kill non-believers.

Uhhhmmmm - whoa now. Maybe someone has attempted to claim that Christianity has/had no mass murderers. I have not.

"Kill them all, let God sort them out."

I don't think there is any quote that is more famous, uttered by any religious fanatic. Christianity has a long, long list of atrocities to it's "credit". Hitler, however, has not been demonstrated to have been "Christian". The man manipulated the Church, the churches, the clergy, and the faithful, that much is provable fact. When he couldn't manipulate them, he intimidated them. That is more provable fact. But, as for Hitler's own personal beliefs about God? You ain't got them. He didn't write anything down that suggests that he believed in any Creator, or that he thought that he might one day be held accountable by that Creator.

All of his actions, regarding the Jews, suggests that he believed Neitsche's myths about mankind coming into this world from another dimension or something, in waves. And, the Jews were actually subhumans who came onto this planet long after the Aryans had settled the world. His ACTIONS speak much louder than the few words he uttered in lip service to the church.

What you can find, if you search for it, is the fact that Hitler and his cronies were perfectly willing to use the religious beliefs of the common man for their own ends.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1699/was-hitler-a-christian
"National Socialism [Nazism] and Christianity are irreconcilable"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_religious_views
According to the controversial collection of transcripts edited by Martin Bormann, titled Hitler's Table Talk, as well as the testimony of some intimates, Hitler had privately negative views of Christianity.

http://nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm

For me to claim that Hitler had nothing to do with Christianity, or that he didn't use Christian beliefs to help justify his actions would be utterly foolish - so I make no such claim. But, without his autobiography, in which he explains his true beliefs, it is just as foolish to claim that he was a believer. As I said already, his actions speak louder than the little bit of lip service he gave to Christianity.

> The whole U.S. is established on the idea of God and religion

I am not sure what you mean by this, but I'd like to disagree with how you have framed it.

In its essence, your comment is factually incorrect, but I will concede that such notion may be derived from observing elements of the culture and government as we know them today (e.g. notes on currency, addition of "Under God" to Pledge of Allegience). Without a doubt, that religion or concept of a God hold strong and there's a variety of individuals and organizations pushing for its inclusion in government operation and its laws.

It has not been established on the idea of God and its religion however (by the way, which religion do you mean), see separation of church and state: http://nobeliefs.com/Tripoli.htm.

> tells you to pray towards said imaginary person and completely disregards science in favor of what someone wrote on paper 1500-2000 years ago

While science cannot prove nor disprove existence of God, while there's a conservative religious following to discredit or "adjust" science to further its own goals, it is factually disingenious to suggest that Christian faith commands to completely disregard science in favor of some text.

It is sad, however, that what the evangelical conservative Christians do is to promote this type of interpretation among non-Christians, which affects you, judging by your comments.

Please do not judge the faith alone by standards of a vocal activists of an organized church/religion, same as do not fall into the trap of believing that any experiment could be called "science" even if it's fabricated for a different purpose than pursuit of truth or expansion of knowledge.

The respective scientific communities of their day thought the above were true scientific settings. One has to recognize that scientists are humans and are affected by various belief systems and social norms - thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, decades ago, today and most likely tomorrow as well.

Science is a process and a way of thinking. It is built based on observation, testing, and drawing conclusions based on a thorough examination of evidence. It's not based on belief systems. That would make it a religion.

Perhaps I was not clear, I am not claiming that science is a belief system. What I am pointing out is that humans, including those who are scientists, often have belief systems (both pro and con religion) and history shows that their belief systems can interfere with the scientific process. As shown when a hypothesis was rejected because it was authored by a priest, as was the case in the big bang theory. FWIW, the western tradition of the scientific process (observe, hypothesize, predict and test) was establish as a methodology with a large contribution coming from members of the clergy. This process is not incompatible with faith.

Actually the bible using the phraseology of a primitive sheep herder from millennia ago is a point I've often made. I've also already commented on scientists suggesting the earth was a sphere in classical era greece, 2nd century india, 17th century China, etc. That said, your citation does not demonstrate the Bible saying the earth is flat. That is an interpretation some men have made, often stretching the interpretation quite a bit. Starting from heaven above earth below, someone at a zenith, someone seeing all kingdoms from a height, the heavens spreading (sounds like cosmic inflation/expansion), the earth flattening (sounds like erosion), the earth is fixed (given the pace of continental drift an easily forgiven error), etc. Add to this that we are using a somewhat poetic english translation with know translation errors.

Again, you're not looking at my sources and are ignoring human history, making up claims instead. Do you have a credible citation for any of these claims?

The faulty examples of the bible saying that the earth is flat is coming from your sources.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by me "moving the goal posts". You seem to be throwing this term around to dismiss yourself from having to refute my claims :(

Reread previous posts. "You are moving the goal post, from *a* holy book to *their* holy book." and "I may be in the *US* but the conversation was about religion *in general*. Again, you change the goal posts." are pretty clear in their original contexts. "A" vs "their", "US" vs "global".

Seriously? The nazis justified atrocities in a darwinian and scientific setting, the soviets justified atrocities with scientific and political rationalization, the khmer rouge also did so with political rationalization. Each of these groups killed millions without religious justification, they all view religion as an enemy.

It's commonly known that the Nazis followed Christ

Seriously?! If anything the Nazis looked to the pagan era for their fundamental mythology. What christian imagery they incorporated was to accommodate the many Germans who had a christian faith. Their actual perspective of christianity was that it would be a useful system to co-opt and manipulate. Intimidation of clergy to introduce their interpretations and mythology was a stated goal, internally at least. That said they embraced science and introduced pseudo-science to an even larger degree ... medicine, biology, psychology, archeology, etc.

I'm kind of disappointed that you believe that evolution and social darwinism are the same;

The respective scientific communities of their day thought the above were true scientific settings. One has to recognize that scientists are humans and are affected by various belief systems and social norms - thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, decades ago, today and most likely tomorrow as well.

Science is a process and a way of thinking. It is built based on observation, testing, and drawing conclusions based on a thorough examination of evidence. It's not based on belief systems. That would make it a religion.

Actually the bible using the phraseology of a primitive sheep herder from millennia ago is a point I've often made. I've also already commented on scientists suggesting the earth was a sphere in classical era greece, 2nd century india, 17th century China, etc. That said, your citation does not demonstrate the Bible saying the earth is flat. That is an interpretation some men have made, often stretching the interpretation quite a bit. Starting from heaven above earth below, someone at a zenith, someone seeing all kingdoms from a height, the heavens spreading (sounds like cosmic inflation/expansion), the earth flattening (sounds like erosion), the earth is fixed (given the pace of continental drift an easily forgiven error), etc. Add to this that we are using a somewhat poetic english translation with know translation errors.

Again, you're not looking at my sources and are ignoring human history, making up claims instead. Do you have a credible citation for any of these claims?

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by me "moving the goal posts". You seem to be throwing this term around to dismiss yourself from having to refute my claims :(

You'd be really hard-pressed to find someone who would try justifying an atrocity without religion;

Seriously? The nazis justified atrocities in a darwinian and scientific setting, the soviets justified atrocities with scientific and political rationalization, the khmer rouge also did so with political rationalization. Each of these groups killed millions without religious justification, they all view religion as an enemy.

Or were you just hoping to invoke Godwin's law with that comment? ;-)

It's commonly known that the Nazis followed Christ. I'm almost surprised that you're claiming otherwise (though, according to Godwin's Law, one of us was going to anyway, so I'm not really that taken aback :P). I'm kind of disappointed that you believe that evolution and social darwinism are the same; one is a natural process and the other is amoral and deliberate. It's also worth pointing out that your god has employed social darwinism in committing genocide on various groups; from killing entire cities such as Sodom to flooding the entire earth because he hated his human creation, god has been a proponent of social darwinism, killing the sinful so that the obedient would survive.

Though they're not Christian, other totalitarian governments have built up their leaders as being superhuman through propaganda and terror. The leaders turned their images into icons that symbolized a sort of salvation for their countries. People were promised prosperity so long as the leader stayed in power and those who opposed were destroyed.

I've also never heard of anyone committing great and nefarious acts in the name of atheism. There always is some sort of conclusion that is supposed to come about from these acts that is invented and based on faith.

Again, the point is that even though Christians have the same holy text in common, they have beliefs that contradict with one another ...

Perhaps you missed the following in my first post of this thread: "Christianity has a wide range of opinions and only a very small minority are of the earth is 6,000

Historically, we can demonstrate the existence of Jesus, due to the historical events of Pontius Pillate and Ceaser and other shit happening around that time lining up, and something about some annoying beggar-preacher that they executed.

Oh puh-leeze. The evidence for a real Jesus is slim at best. http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

And we would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids.

Wilson's Nails, etc.

-- Barbie

I've studied the Bible... The morality is repulsive. The theology is degrading...

[citation needed] That was pretty vague, unfortunately. Toss me an example or two to illustrate.

I'm not the grandparent you were responding to, but here are some examples.

Start with Hosea 13:16 which speaks for itself: "The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open."

1 Corinthians 11: 2-16 says that women should cover their heads with a doiley in Church or when praying, to avoid disgracing God. Like many other anti-women scriptures, modern Christians have spent a great deal of time and mental power explaining this away.

1 Corinthians 14: 34-36 says that women should STFU in church, should not be allowed to speak. If they have a question, they should be good and talk to their man privately at home. Again, much time and energy has been spent by Christians explaining away this segment of the Word of God.

It's actually too easy, with regard to women, to bag on the bible. From putting women to death for prostitition, to cutting off the hand of a women who tries to help her husband in a fight and showing her no pity... to put it mildly, the Bible takes an unkind and unenlightened view of the role of women in the world.

Ephesians 5:22-24 says that women should submit absolutely to their husbands in everything, just like a husband should ultimately submit to God. "For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour."

Go read the Bible, cover to cover. It's disturbing in parts. But don't worry too much, very few Christians actually read it for themselves except for the happy parts. Alternatively, look at Dark Bible for a very unkind look at other things that are in the Bible.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

He was a Deist. The Jefferson bible removed all supernatural and mythical features of the scriptures and focused on the moral teachings of Jesus.

Um, that's probably not a good idea, at least not if the movie follows the book too closely. The level of violence and sex in the bible would result in ratings of at least R, with portions being XXX. For examples, check out http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/DarkBibleContents.htm

In the 20th century, both Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany imagined - and tried to create - societies where there was no religion.

Wrong. Nazi Germany did not. The storm troopers' belt buckles used to say, "Gott mit Uns."

That's propaganda put about by the believers to try to persuade people that atheism leads to totalitarian fascism.

We could celebrate with a new newsgroup, alt.die.bold.die

Hopefully, when it comes time to nail them to the wall, they'll use Wilson's Nails.

I'll forget for the moment that you just Godwin'd yourself there...

For a start, I said "LESS likely", not "can not". I'll grant that Stalin almost certainly was an atheist and did some horrific things, but Hitler? He was definitely a Christian.

Fascinating how you could turn a horrible act of religious intolerance perpetrated by Christians primarily against Jews into an anti-science rant.

It is also "safe to say" the Holocaust would never have happened if many other straw men hadn't been born, but it doesn't make you in any way right.

Islamic law on this issue is not monolithic and this restriction is not universal among Muslims.
Many Shia Muslims believe that respectful pictures of Mohammed are OK.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
"Iranian Shi'a scholars, accept respectful depictions, and use illustrations of Muhammad in books and architectural decoration, as have Sunnis at various points in the past."

Wikipedia has a FAQ on this issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muhammad/FAQ

While Right-wing activist Sunni Muslims have a right to sign petitions and complain about whatever they want, this alone does not create an obligation on publishers to listen to them. It is conceivable that two religions or ideologies will take offense at two opposite actions. For example, Athiests are offended by the phrase "under God" in the American Pledge of Allegiance, which was added in 1954, whereas certain Christians are offended by the idea of removing the phrase "under God". While the obvious solution here is to allow people to say whatever version of the pledge of allegiance they want, nonetheless various pushy groups are always going to go around demanding that everyone do what they say.

The best attitude here is exemplified by Thomas Jefferson's words:
"But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm

Let the far-right Muslims complain all they like; we don't have to do what they tell us to. It's when they go beyond mere complaining, into doing (or advocating) physical harm or property damage that the trouble begins.

You're wrong, Christian apologist. There are NO "better-attested" accounts of Jesus than many, many other historical figures, as none of the Jesus accounts are contemporaneous. Just read this and don't tell me what "opinions" I can and cannot utter: http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Sorry, are you proposing the Bible as a realistic source of third-party, first-hand, contemporaneous accounts of the existence of Jesus? That is laughable.

That book you suggest I read seems to accept Jesus's existence a priori, and just discusses his purported divinity - which also presupposes a belief in God. Again, no.

Here's a link to take a look at when you have a moment: http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

There's just no evidence the guy existed. At all.

The Nazis maybe didn't like religious organisations it's true, but it wasn't an atheist regime. http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm The German army retained it's motto "Gott im himmel", the SS oath mentions god, and so and so forth.

The religious types would *like* to portray Hitler as an atheist, but their evidence is shakey. http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerSources.htm.

So, that knocks the bodycount by Hitler out of the equation.

Mao doesn't even count: Chinese history is separate from Western, and atheism doesn't even come into the equation, as much as Christians want it to.

Which leaves us with Stalin. Stalin's atrocities - and I'm not defending the man - wasn't qualitatively the same as Hitlers on the industrial scale. The majority of Stalin's "work" comes from stuffing people in prison and letting them rot - see a Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as an exampl. True, he did this to a large number of people, and sometimes to nearly whole ethnic groups but the point is, he didn't have gas ovens.

The Nazis maybe didn't like religious organisations it's true, but it wasn't an atheist regime. http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm The German army retained it's motto "Gott im himmel", the SS oath mentions god, and so and so forth.

The religious types would *like* to portray Hitler as an atheist, but their evidence is shakey. http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerSources.htm.

So, that knocks the bodycount by Hitler out of the equation.

Mao doesn't even count: Chinese history is separate from Western, and atheism doesn't even come into the equation, as much as Christians want it to.

Which leaves us with Stalin. Stalin's atrocities - and I'm not defending the man - wasn't qualitatively the same as Hitlers on the industrial scale. The majority of Stalin's "work" comes from stuffing people in prison and letting them rot - see a Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich as an exampl. True, he did this to a large number of people, and sometimes to nearly whole ethnic groups but the point is, he didn't have gas ovens.

Just great. So while we're censoring every form of art, how about Michelangelo's statue? Someone needs to put some leaves there. Oh, is that a breast on that artwork? Better get the censor bars out.

Proof is for mathematics and not religion.

There is not one iota of evidence for any gods. I recommend everyone to read:
http://www.whywontgodhealamputees.com/
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Hitler was a Christian. Science does not take away any meaning to life. Religion does not bring any meaning to life. You are free to create your own meaning, using religion, science, or anything else you find. No one is forcing any opinions on you. Disagreement is not force. Torturing someone until they recant their beliefs and agree to yours is force, and science has never done that. We think your beliefs are incorrect and foolish. Saying so is not forcing anything on you. You are free to say otherwise, and believe whatever you like. You do not have the right to force us to keep quiet.

You are free to leave the discussion, to ask that people refrain from insults (and saying "I don't believe you" IS NOT an insult, sorry), and to state your opinions.

Hitler was a Christian.

There are no contemporaneous, third-party accounts of Jesus that we know of. Everything about him was written after he supposedly died. It seems likely Jesus is a fictional figure.

For example, see here: http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Let's start with the bible, the most hateful book ever written!

Every EU citizen should write to their elected whore in support of this attack on Christian bullshit.

Inciting others to kill, or attack a religion or race is not something that should be allowed but is

"And what happens when a rational atheist, holding no irrational fantasies about any mystical nature of man's existence, is in charge of the military weapons technology instead?

I'd answer that for you, but I'd be invoking Godwin's Law."

Are you referring to the Nazis, and their exalted leader Hitler, who believed that he was fighting for God? Check this out:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter."

""Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

Hitler, and the whole Nazi program, was extremely religious. Wikipedia says this:

"Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an "anti-godless" movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: "We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis' complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith."

You might think that they were wrong, or otherwise disagree with them, but that does not make them atheist.

Oops, try this instead:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

None of the sources you mentioned (Josephus and Tacitus) were alive when Jesus supposedly lived. They, and several others, are addressed in the above link (assuming I got it right this time). They do not constitute contemporaneous, eyewitness evidence. As for the other deductive stuff, it's fun to talk about, but that's about it. Saying stuff like, "Myths would have done this or that" isn't evidence. It's an historian expressing his personal opinions. Finally, the Talmud is just another book of fairy tales - not a good source when trying to determine something that actually happened.

In the end, it probably doesn't matter. The Christian myth, like that of every other religion, isn't super concerned about fact. That which sustains Christians in their fantasy has little to do with the question of whether its prophet actually existed or not.

Saying things like, "That's nonsense!" [...] doesn't constitute evidence. Sorry.

Well it's a good thing that there was more to my post than those two words, isn't it?

Saying things like [...] "Well, why would this guy have done that if so and so" doesn't constitute evidence. Sorry.

It's reasoning to aid in the interpretation of evidence. We have evidence concerning Jesus' life, death and resurrection. We're drawing completely different conclusions fromt he evidence, but that doesn't mean it isn't evidence; it simply means that at least one of us is wrong. My point concerned my I interpret the evidence the way I did. Biblical scholars (e.g. FF Bruce, NT Wright) are fairly confident that the NT dates back to the first century AD and we are fairly sure that Jesus' disciples died proclaiming the message of the NT. The question is therefore whether or not their message was true. They were willing to suffer and die for it, which seems highly unlikely if they believed it was a lie and they would have known if it was true or not, therefore their deaths are a convincing reason to take the NT as true.

There are no eyewitness accounts of his existence. Not even from the Romans. If you know of one, post a link citing sources.

Jewish and Roman sources:

• Flavius Josephus - The Antiquities of the Jews. Admittedly it's not as historically reliable as the New Testament as the earliest manuscripts we have date a few centuries after the originals, compared with a few decades for parts of the New Testament, but it's generally accepted as a fairly decent document.
• Cornelius Tacitus - Annals of Imperial Rome.
• The Talmud

I also recommend the following books:

• FF Bruce - Are the New Testament Documents Reliable
• CA Evans - Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation
• GH Twelftree - Jesus in Jewish Traditions
• J Dickson- Simply Christianity: Beyond Religion

A quote by Emeritus Professor EA Judge of Macquarie University Sydney:

An ancient historian has no problem seeing the phenomenon of Jesus as an historical one. His many surprising aspects only serve to anchor him in history. Myth or legend would have created a more predictable figure. The writings that sprang up about Jesus also reveal to us a movement of thought and an experience of life so unusual that something more substantial than the imagination is needed to explain it.

Here, read this (warning: you won't like it): http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm/

'The requested URL /exist.htm/ was not found on this server.' - a tad ironic given the page name.

Saying things like, "That's nonsense!" or "Well, why would this guy have done that if so and so" doesn't constitute evidence. Sorry.

There are no eyewitness accounts of his existence. Not even from the Romans. If you know of one, post a link citing sources.

Here, read this (warning: you won't like it): http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm/

Jesus came for the purpose of paying the debt for our sins

How can this mythical man come again? It seems he was never here in the first place Jesus never existed?
--
The devil does some of his best work in the name of God.

Neither you nor I have any idea of whether Hitler was a "christian" or not (Unless you have magical first-hand knowledge or direct evidence to the contrary). As pointed out in my previous post, however, using the quotes you did from one questionable source to try and prove that he was not are misleading and foolish. Read http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerSources.htm for a different look on things. Yes, he may have only called himself a christian for political motives (a la Bush and nearly any other U.S. politician), and may have, like the majority of other political leaders, been using religion as a tool, but the only "evidence" we have to go by is what the person said, in both public and private. And, throughout his life, in public and private both before and after his rise to power, Hitler said and did far more things claiming that he was a christian than to the contrary.

Those who try to use that Table Talk thing to "prove" that Hitler wasn't a christian, without looking into it further than a quick snippet or two, are often the same people who try and use other statements to prove he was actually a homosexual (yes, it's true, they do). They're also often the same people who claim that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist raised in Soviet Russia. And often the same ones who claim that Star Wars is satanic because it shows people going beyond Light Speed, and since heaven and god are beyond the speed of light, any attempt to reach them is trying to "be" god, and thus satanic. There have been books written with all of these ideas as their foundations. And those who write and blindly follow them often fall into the same crowds.

There are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus's alleged existence. Even the Bible was compiled long after he died, though its contributors may have lived during his alleged life - who knows.

He's a mythical character, like Zeus or Apollo, around whom there is a cycle of stories.

You linked to an overtly religious source, so I'll link to non-religious ones:

http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist .html
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Hitler very much used religion for his own ends, yes, which was exactly why I pointed to it. But he did so by coopting established christianity in Germany.

Lets not forget Thomas Jefferson, who wrote "The Philosophy of Jesus Christ".

Most definitely NOT a christian by the traditional definition of the word.

And don't forget, most of our founding fathers were products of the age of reason.

Attaching a label to yourself is a great way to start a self fulfilling prophecy...

It's also a way of gaining self knowledge, a way to explore your own psyche and those of others. Finding language you can use to describe yourself doesn't have to limit what you can be.

Anyway, you seem to be worried about being trapped by the "is" of identity. Check out E Prime.

You learned your American history from a bible thumper didn't you? Because that's not what Ben "As to Jesus of Nazareth [, I have] some doubts as to his divinity" Franklin, or deist Thomas Jefferson, or the authors of the Federalist Papers, have said. Infact, they've said quite the contrary.

So your opinion is that psychics and two-thousand-year-old mythological characters better understand the nature of consciousness than modern neuroscientists?

Pray tell, what great scientific achievements did Edgar Cayce contribute to the world? I'll even let all of his missed and failed predictions, such as his belief that we would discover the death-ray used in Atlantis back in 1958, slide. I just want to know how he contributed to our understanding of consciousness.

As for Jesus, he was a fictional character. There is no more reason to believe that Jesus really existed than that Zeus, Achilles, or Hercules really existed. On top of that, none of the sayings attributed to him in any way contribute to our understanding of consciousness.

Psychics and fictional characters didn't invent the light bulb or the rocket ship. They aren't going to decipher the mysteries of the conscious mind either. We got to where we are today because of science, not religion.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

Of interesting note is the "Jefferson Bible". He took the Christian Bible and stripped out all referrences to miracles and the supernatural. In particular Jesus is an extrodinary philosopher and teacher, and presents his teachings, but he is an otherwise ordinary man who simply lived and died. "In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."

You can find Jefferson quotes on Christianity and religion here, and easily find countless quotes of all sorts from Google.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

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This is clearly starting to thread on contested historical turf. I have seen at least 5 versions of the Niemöller quote, some have Christians, some Unionists, some insert other groups in the list. Anyhow, to make things complicated, many Christians after the WWII were uncomfortable with the types of activity German Christian Faith Movement and others were engaged into and a plethora of various contradictory explanations, ever-mutating quotes etc appeared ever since. I simply cannot tell what versions of history are correct beyond these simple facts: Germany was at least nominally, majority Christan faith during the Nazi rule. Hitler used religious imagery and professed to be a Christian in many speaches and evidence still exists of his active pursuit of his image as a devout believer. That is all that I have to go by and unfortunately it seems that a strong link between (supposed) Christian beliefs and Hitler does exist.

Can you point to a source for this?