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Nobody said that Muslims should get special treatment, but then again, it sounds like that is what you are proposing.

Freedom of speech doesn't cover libel and slander. It is based upon a mutual agreement within society that we will tolerate each other's offensive speech ... within limits.

As such, if the Muslim's concept of society is Kill the Infidel who Slanders the Prophet - they cannot coexist with a country that has Freedom of Speech. Either we keep Freedom of Speech, or the Muslim religion.

We don't single out all Christians because Timothy McVey was one or the Westboro Baptist Church are.

You liar. Timothy is an agnostic. Westboro is not guilty of using violence; they are abusing free speech, but that is preferable to the consequences of shutting them up. Their group is also denounced by Baptist associations.

So, why should we single out all Muslims because of the actions of a few? If if there were a million Muslims who were extremists, that is .06% of the estimated total Muslim population in the world.

Because there is a pattern, and the pattern is that the peaceful "moderates" do not control and exclude the violent "extremists".

If they will not police themselves, then we have to police them .. and deeper study will show that the root of the problem is not extremism, it is Islam.

Muslim countries do not practice Freedom of Speech. There's a reason for that.

The difference one may cite is that the government is not suppling such christian software. The US government, however, does require filtering software in certain situations and such filtering software is seen as having a radical christian bent most people who do not suffer from radical christian ideas.

Have you ever seen exploit code? Are you familiar with the low-level details of a stack-smashing attack? For most of the bugs that Microsoft fixes, it requires quite a bit of skill to make them manifest. There's a reason the programmers did not notice them prior to releasing it as production code despite fuzz-testing and other forms of tests and audits. It's because they are non-obvious and non-trivial.

Unfortunately, once someone with that level of skill produces exploit code and releases it, any unskilled person can re-use that code to compromise vulnerable machines. Those are called "script kiddies" because they have little or no skill of their own. But that's another discussion. The point is that actually discovering and manifesting that class of bugs is not easy at all.

By comparison, intercepting and recording many times more data than you intended is a very trivial mistake. Any amount of testing against Google-owned Wi-Fi systems (y'know, before deploying this code on a large scale against public systems) would have quickly made this obvious. It's not some terribly complex bug that can remain hidden despite vast efforts to find it. The slightest effort to check whether their code does as it is intended to do would have caught this one. It's either intentional or an instance of incompetence, and while that latter option is possible, Google is not generally known for incompetence.

When I point out with good reason that this is an extremely trivial and easily recognized mistake, you try to make that sound like I am demanding 100% perfection in all things. No, that isn't going to work. It's a failure of reasoning. You don't sound inclined to take my word for that, so please review this reference:

A subfallacy of Strawman is to take an extreme version of a person's position and attack it. According to Fallacy Files (see references below), this is called a Strawdemon.

Mom: The doctor says that these exercises will help you recover more quickly.
Son: Aw, Mom! Do I have to look like Arnold Schwarzsnegger?

Any idea how we can tell the great minds from the mediocre idiots?

Several rules of thumb. If this person can't spell or their grammar is poor, I figure that the odds of them being a "great mind" are poor. Language is a system that requires some intelligence to master. And English as a second language should not be a barrier, there are thousands of grad students from all over the world churning out papers that are "good enough" as far as this is concerned. This will weed out most of the mediocre thinkers right away.

Logical fallacies - if I see some I stop reading. Someone with basic scientific training should not be making these. This eliminates more. http://www.tektonics.org/guest/fallacies.html

Gobbledygook - is the terminology of whatever scientific domain used correctly? If not, discard. If someone is too stupid to make it through high school physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics etc, odds are very remote that they will come up with something ground breaking.

Perpetual motion machine - ignore.

"For the secret to ... send money..." -ignore.

If they get that far, then as another poster said, does the theory match known empirical data? Is there actually a theory at all? Does it make new predictions that are testable? If so, then we might have something of worth. However, we have probably eliminated 99% of the random idiots out there with the first few tests. I'd be surprised if there are many false positives. A great mind will have good enough language skills, know what logical fallacies are and not rely on them, use proper scientific terminology, not propose perpetual motion machines, and not be selling snake oil.

In addition, if a great mind wants to be taken seriously he will bend over backwards to make it as easy as possible to get to the crux of the idea and pass all of the above hurdles. He will look at how his argument appears to a third party and attempt to be as transparent as possible. He will assume complete lack of trust in himself and thus buttress his argument with empirical data from trusted third parties so that his argument does not rest on assertion.

The mediocre minds Einstein was referring to are not the rank and file mediocre minds the tests above will eliminate. It is the moderately intelligent and educated mediocre minds in positions of power who are not brave or smart enough to change the status quo and/or have a vested interest in said status quo. Because there is always a power structure associated with the existing status quo, and those people want to maintain their positions, these "mediocre minds" will always put up a fight.

I mean that religion has often perverted the human sexual drive for it's own ends.

I don't think you even need to stop there. It seems to me that if a religion is false, than anything it asks of people is unreasonable, from self-castration down to wasting Sunday mornings.

Personally, I think the question of whether or not some religion is actually true is a pretty interesting one. From your tone I'm going to guess you've already decided that none is, though.

I was curious about the Matthew verse you quoted, and if there were any interpretations that seemed plausible and didn't make Matthew sound like a nut-crusher. I did come across this, if you're interested. Not a great article, but it's something I guess.

Yes, lets quote with no attempt at understanding. The bible is not the most read book in the world through the centuries because it is simple minded. You have to study it to understand it. To the first point, read this: http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesussayshate.html To the second point: Jesus read the man like a book, and noted that HIS greatest issue was that HE loved money above everything else, and so gave HIM a challenge which he knew would be most difficult for HIM to overcome. This is not a prescription or command for everyone. The thing for everyone to take out of this, is that you need to place nothing above God. His observation was that rich people often place their money as their highest priority. He said it is 'hard' for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, not impossible.

http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jesussayshate.html

Explanation.

Alternatively, I think you'll find that almost no Christian in the world believes that those two verses are literally applicable.

I mean, there is the whole "love thy neighbor as thyself" thing in the entire Bible (from Leviticus of the Old Testament to the Gospels and beyond of the New Testament) to counteract any specious hatred speech.

Also, a note: You may think a lot of what Christians believe is silly, but to expect any sort of Slashdot debate on verses in the text to reveal how foolish the religion is is folly, in my opinion. People have been trying to take down the religion for 2000 years. That doesn't make the religion valid, but it does make it nigh bulletproof in (d)eBates.

How the heck should I know if they were frightened. You want to state their beliefs as fact simply because Nero gave it attention?

The growth of early Christianity is a powerful piece of evidence that can't be explained away easily. It took from the mid 30s AD to the mid 60s AD for this new movement to not only spread from an obscure province of the Roman Empire to Rome itself, but attract enough attention that the emperor - the most powerful man in the world then - could use followers as a scapegoat.

Hmmm.... Okay. Maybe then if Bill Gates acknowledged the Tooth Fairy she would be real.... simply because a bunch of people started saying it and he noticed it. I am sure pragmatism had nothing to do with anything back then.

Actually, it was the most sceptical, disbelieving and hostile environment for a new religion possible. See here:
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/nowayjose.html

Really? Eyewitness accounts? From 2,000 years ago? Well Golly Gee Willickers! I stand corrected.

Well don't take my word for it. Go away and do years of study on textual criticism, ancient near east history, archaeology, Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and associated literature from that time and you'll be properly equipped to determine whether the NT documents are eyewitness accounts or not.

Trying saying that out loud a couple times and then think about it some more. There is no forensic proof. Loyalty has nothing to do with Faith. Faithfulness can be synonymous with Loyalty, but Loyalty does not automatically imply faith.

The opposite of my definition would be belief based on factual material evidence and logical proof. A word for that might be reason.

That is a problem with people in religion. They like to confuse words to support their own faith. Faith, Belief, Reason, Skepticism (spelled correctly), Logic, etc. are all words that we should use correctly when communicating our ideas. The original point of my post.

Indeed. So when I read the word "faith" in the original language of the documents on which I base my belief, I went back to see how it would have been understood by the original audience. And the word "pistis" in Greek means either forensic evidence or assurance sometimes, faithfulness sometimes or loyalty to a patron sometimes. It does _not_ mean blind belief in nonsense or something that you know ain't so. In fact the authors keep telling their readers to go check things out for themselves and to use their eyes and ears and minds.

BTW, I'm not from the US - sceptic is how I spell it.

You C A N N O T prove that god exists, or more accurately, change your sets of beliefs from being based on intangible and irrational assumptions TO proven and repeatable results from experiments derived from logical theories about material evidence being presented.

Two things here: it is _reasonable_ to conclude from every piece of evidence we have (and we have a great deal: testimonies from both friendly and hostile sources, archaeology and history) that a man Jesus who claimed to be divine rose from the dead, thus vindicating what he claimed before he was executed. I prefer to base my beliefs on events in space-time history not intangible and irrational assumptions.

Second thing: proven and repeatable results from experiments from logical theories about material evidence being presented don't apply to _any_ historical event at all, so your point is moot. Do we know Abraham Lincoln existed? Sure - there's historical evidence of what he did, there are four biographies written about him by eyewitnesses, each with a different slant although some bits are clearly using the same sources (sound familiar?) and there's other references to him in recorded works of the day. Perhaps you'd like to construct an experiment to _prove_ Abe existed.

God does not have an email address, you can't find him in a Starbucks sipping a Frappachino, and he will not be visiting orphans tomorr

That is not entirely true. While alcohol is indeed referred to as "strong drink", there are numerous references to good ol' alcoholic wine: see here.

All of your questions are answered here: http://www.tektonics.org/lp/merrit01.html If you have something specific to ask, I'd be very happy to answer you specifically with text. But if all you have is links and second-hand objections, I'll answer with links.

The video you link to is misrepresenting disputed material as fact. After researching the material myself, I can hardly watch more than the introduction.

The video begins rather innocently, explaining the zodiac and whatnot. Then it starts to list descriptions of the Egyptian god "Horus" that are suspiciously similar to descriptions of Jesus Christ. Depending on your disposition, you might immediately suspect Christianity of fraud (or at least of being unoriginal). The viewer is left with the impression that any Egyptian scholar would agree with these facts, and that these facts are damning to the Christian reputation.

Here is a different source which presents additional information conveniently left out of the video.

I teach ancient Greek. Everything that author claims is founded solely on internal evidence from four texts using words in unusual contexts.

By all means correct him then. J.P. Holding loves nothing more than someone pointing out where he's wrong. Someone's already tried though and this is his answer:

My article contained solid data from parallel uses of pistis in the Greco-Roman world; data from scholars who were specialists in ancient anthropology of the Mediterranean (Malina, Neyrey, deSilva) -- and Gleeson is saying that this is a matter of it being "not in line with my own Biblical interpretation"? It's as simple as this: either the "standard view" is right, or I (and Malina, Neyrey, etc) are right, and the other is wrong, or both are wrong. Gleeson doesn't even mention in his article that there are parallel definitions in Quintillian and Aristotle, or the context of the Greco-Roman client-patron relationship,

From here.

You say:
About the only claims there that are consistent with non-biblical usage are (1) that pisteuo means "to rely on, trust in", which does not support the general argument;

But that's exactly the point. The NT is full of adherents of this new movement telling people to go check it out, use their eyes and ears and confirm the evidence for themselves. Faith is an action based on reaction to this evidence.

(2) when he cites someone else to assert that "faith" can usefully be thought of as "framed in terms of an ancient client-patron relationship". There is no necessary connection with proof or evidence,

Uh huh. I suppose if my patron beat and abused me then it would be blind faith indeed to trust him as a good master.

I teach ancient Greek. Everything that author claims is founded solely on internal evidence from four texts using words in unusual contexts.

About the only claims there that are consistent with non-biblical usage are (1) that pisteuo means "to rely on, trust in", which does not support the general argument; and (2) when he cites someone else to assert that "faith" can usefully be thought of as "framed in terms of an ancient client-patron relationship". There is no necessary connection with proof or evidence, and pistis means pretty much exactly what the crazier fundamentalists think it does. (One of the few things they do get right.)

Belief without proof is faith.

The word translated as "faith" in the biblical documents means assurance based on a track record or forensic proof i.e. just the opposite of belief without proof. See here for a longer explanation.

Christians need to spend more time studying what those original authors meant.

And here's one from the "other" point of view. http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html I think the general consensus of historians is for the existence of the actual person, Jesus. Of course, historians differ in the divinity of Jesus.

Osiris was believed to die and be reborn as Horus. Look it up.

I have. Try here too.

That's where you claimed that the Osiris myth was a copy of the Jesus myth. Yet the Osiris myth predated the Jesus myth. Of course you'll disagree, with some semantics, or maybe just some more circular references where you cite today's bible to prove today's bible.

I didn't and I won't - still waiting for some circular references that I've used.

You don't even seem to understand that in fact Lincoln's existence, while it can be readily accepted, cannot be proven the way that your existence can be proven, but could be proven in a way that god's existence cannot be proven.

And this is a meaningful distinction how exactly? Especially when you're talking about a historical figure who claimed be God.

You've been doing this "for decades". Yet your defense is the most trivially dismissed

You can believe that if you like.

And I certainly cannot learn anything from more exposure to your kind of representations that pass for "scholarship", but ceased being convincing as such towards the late Middle Ages.

That's rich from someone who doesn't even know the basics about Jesus or Osiris or Horus. The scholarship I was referring to was modern stuff from people like William Ramsay who spent most of his life verifying that Luke was the most reliable historian who ever lived.

Can you explain the difference for those of us who aren't experts in four thousand year old texts?

Anyway, many of the practices and tenets of Pauline Christianity are based more on pre-Christian Dionysiac cults than on human sacrifice per se: the ideas of the sacrifice, tearing-apart, and eating of the god at a feast, of the god having an intensely personal relationship with the individual practitioner, the god dying in order to give eternal life to the practitioner, miracles etc at the birth of the god, and others, are basically Dionysiac.

This claim is complete nonsense as this essay makes clear. From the conclusion:

"Moreover, to make his argument persuasive, the claimant must explain how and why a group of Palestinian Jews borrowed the theology and teachings of a foreign cult and founded a new religion based upon them. He must also explain why the parallels between the doctrine taught by Jesus and that of contemporary Judaism were so similar, not to mention why the early Christians initially maintained the trappings of Jewish religious observation (Temple attendance, circumcision, etc.).

In fact, the only Apostle who might reasonably be expected to have had any reasonably detailed knowledge of pagan religion was the educated rabbi, Saul/Paul - and it utterly defies credibility that a professed and professing Pharisee, let alone a pupil of Gamaliel, would or even could have taken control of a group of Palestinian peasants and turned them into proselytising Messianic Bacchus-worshippers."

More Mithra/Jesus comparisons:

http://jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianity.ht ml
http://www.venusproject.com/ecs/true_origins_chris tianity.html
http://tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html

Mithraism dates back 4000 years, obviously predating Christianity. Here's a few little details that Christianity borrowed from Mithraism:

1. Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25th in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds.
2. He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
3. He had 12 companions or disciples.
4. Mithra's followers were promised immortality.
5. He performed miracles.
6. As the "great bull of the Sun," Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.
7. He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again.
8. His resurrection was celebrated every year.

All of the above devoutly believed (believes, in the case of Knuth, who is still alive) in God and the Bible!

Dig a little in history if you don't know their contributions and/or their beliefs.

First hit on Google for scientists Christian, which is very different than the reverse...

http://www.tektonics.org/scim/sciencemony.htm

My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?

But there are some components of "the law" (broad term covering the old testament) which were civil or ceremonial in nature, others were moral, and some were universally appropriate to all cultures.

A good discussion of this can be found here:
http://www.tektonics.org/lp/lawrole.html

----- Begin from that page

If one then happens to ask, "On what basis do you then continue to say that these laws are still valid morally?" -- beyond the "all agree" level of things like murder, and in the category of things like homosexuality and adultery -- the answer is that when a superior writes a contract, even if you are not a party to it, the contract will still give you an idea what values the superior holds to. We no longer enforce the penalties, but we still know what actions displease God.

"Well, then, why aren't Christians out sacrificing animals and eating kosher?"

The reason is simple for this one: All of the ceremonial laws has been superseded by Christ.

----- End from that page
It's not a "pick and choose as we like" kind of thing, although many people believe that it is.

Regards,
Anomaly

I'm surprised you've not heard of Ehrman. If you are such a scholar, I would imagine you would be aware of other published scholars.

I have now - currently reading as much as I can by him and on him. And I'm sure you're diligently studying the New Testament too :)

If you weren't lazy, you could have just Googled him.

I did get around to Googling him thanks. It takes thirty seconds to post "lol the b1bl3 is a myth!" and about five hours to reply to it.

I caught him on Fresh Air and enjoyed it. You can find it on the web if you're interested in his thoughts on "what hangs together". Also, you can get a more nuanced point of view from his papers/lectures. I'd say, head on back to your seminary, I bet they can get them for you (if you are actually interested in skeptical textualism and what not).

Well, so far so not very good.

I may have misjudged your comments, but it sounds to me like you already know what you want to know ("onus is on the skeptic"!?!).

Unfortunately yes. The sceptic who challenges me has to try and convince me I'm hallucinating about twenty years of answered prayer. But if he's going to post nonsense about the historical nature of my faith in space-time history then I'm going to research and reply.

Wow, have you even opened the damn book? I mean, without your bible study group to cherry pick the passages and explain away all the glaring inconsistencies? The bible is not consistent with history,

neither is history

archeology,

neither is archeology

anthropology,

neither is history or archeology. I don't think you are getting anywhere with such vague assertions. I wonder if you include "biblical" "history" "archeology" and "anthropology", as it clearly has real and historical authorship

physics,

I'd like to see what you have, here

any coherent system of ethics,

I think you shot yourself with "any", but I contest the point without that word

or even with itself! #lameness filter lint

It's about as self-consistent as most anthropoligical, archealogical or historical sources of similar size and date whichever way you slice it; which isn't bad considering it went through some editing work during its lifetime.

There are two completely different versions of the creation myth

The mormons have even more accounts, however...

and two versions of the ten commandments.

Or even three

The four gospels tell wildly

not wildly, about as much as many sources

different stories of Jesus' death and resurrection, while Paul never mentions the resurrection once--probably

this must be some special use of the world probably, I would say that "possibily" that in the writings we actually have of Paul (yes we know some are missing) he didn't attempt to give an account. It's not like he was there at the time, or like he was trying to do a historical report like Luke, is it?

because the myth of the resurrection was not widely adopted till after his death.

The "myth" was prophesied long before his birth.

In fact, the original sources

there are no "original sources" unless you found a stash recently

for the gospels consist of aphorisms, he-said they-said...without a word about what Jesus did or about what happened to him. Look up the Gospel of Thomas if you want to see the original format of the gospels.

I guess that be a copy of something claiming to be the Gospel of Thomas and not any other original copies of any other gospels at all? How is a not-really-original copy of Thomas gospel even nearly equivalent to "the original sources">

The story of his life was filled in later, #lameness filter lint

The gospels weren't written till decades after they occurred, yes.

and in the grand tradition of hellenistic heroes, he was made the son of a god.

Are you trying to make out that this wasn't one of the reasons he was crucified, for blasphemously claiming to be the Son of God?

Of the four gospels the sermon on the mount is the only part that everyone agrees is probably accurate.

I may have to call on you to exband on this word "everyone", and also "accurate". I suspect that for "accurate" you mean without dispute over the documented event, what is more interesting is what is disuputed; we expect disputes over historical records.

http://www.taivaansusi.net/historia/mithraism.html

Well, we do know the truth (here is a page that includes real sources):
http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html

Kind Regards
Simon Harvey

That is why it was worded as "serious consequences" instead of "military action" for example, no?

This was the intent behind the statement.

I guess my little exposé of the illogic of claiming to know hidden "intents" behind plain statements which do not convey them went over your head. I suppose then, that you had in depth conversations with the UN ambassadors, at which, behind the closed doors, they did explain to you what they really meant by "serious consequences", so that someone of such cosmic importance to the world as yourself would not be so needlessly kept in the dark, no? Or, alternatively, a position I humbly subscribe to, you just made shit up to fit your supremacist fantasies.

No you didn't. You simply restated the quote I provided, and attributed it to Powell yourself. Doesn't change the facts.

In response to your quote of:

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix has said Iraq had failed to provide evidence in its declaration to prove that it no longer has weapons of mass destruction

I pointed out this CNN article titled "Powell lays out path in Iraq dispute", which contains your text verbatim. Word "Annan" does not occur there even once. You on the other hand, did not provide a link to your source. This is the example of your "arguments ... all backed by facts which have been cited, unlike your wild accusations and paranoid delusions".

Perhaps that procedure of yours of breaking bricks with your forehead before typing anything, which you employ to get your "thinking juices" going, has some side effects?

So I thought you might be interested to know the actual definition of the term 'strawman'.

Sure. Here is one. And another. And another. I was even as generous as to provide you with a clarification of the particular definition I was referring to, quoting myself: "Building and attacking mis-representations of your opponents position ", about which Wikipedia states that "Some logic textbooks define the straw-man fallacy only as a misrepresented argument".

You on the other hand, as expected, dug up some poor approximation, quoted it and promptly misunderstood it. Another example of your "informed" position.

You have accused me - six times no less! - of creating weak or sham arguments for you to easily refute. ... So you are claiming that I am purposefully making weak arguments for you to defeat?

Your lack of comprehension (or desperation to deceive) is truly of heroic proportions. Let me repeat again: "Building and attacking mis-representations of your opponents position ". As in, you are doing both the building and attacking. Like, oh I don't know, when accused of "building and attacking your opponent's position" you then proceed to pretend that it means you building the representations and then me attacking them ... and go down hill from there.

Stawman Fallacy! Remember these words, because that is what you do most of the time. At least now you know that your bullshit has a name. Which must hurt, because, judging by your general attitude, you probably "thought" you invented that crap all by yourself.

I believe what you were actually trying to claim is that I am using 'red herring' arguments, not 'strawman' arguments.

"Strawman" argument is a specific type of "red herring" argument. Close but no cigar.

It's okay, by this time I've grown used to educating you.

You must mean you have grown used to being educated by me, as this example clearly shows

It annoys me when people assume that science and faith are separate, and that Christians are anti-science, or especially that any scientist of any repute must be non-Christian. The below scientists (among many others) were well-known Christians:

André-Marie Ampere (as in 'amps')
Charles Babbage (his early math machines were predecessors to the computer)
Johann Bernoulli (mathematician)
George Boole (mathematician)
Robert Boyle (chemist)
Johannes Kepler (scientist/astronomer)
Blaise Pascal (mathematician)

I've just listed a few, the below is a great reference (there's around 1600 listed on there).
http://www.tektonics.org/scim/sciencemony.htm

Your attitude, "Without us atheist scientists, you Christians wouldn't have what you have," is ridiculous, because if you look in depth at the history, it's more like, "Without us scientists of Christian faith, you atheists wouldn't have what you have." If you believe that God created the universe, and created us with intelligent minds (which I do), it's pretty ridiculous to think that looking into how he created the world is a fundamentally non-religious activity.

And that doesn't mean you have to believe in evolution either, or that anyone who doesn't believe does so for purely faith-based reasons. There are many good non-religious scientific oppositions to evolution (read Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by Richard Milton).
I believe that it takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in creation, and to hear a lot of people who don't have any stake in it defend it really backs up that claim. While I acknowledge there are Christian evolutionists, many who believe in evolution I believe do so so that they don't have to believe in God, a God who will stir up their lives, change things around that they like the way they have them, a God who will force them to examine who they really are inside and why they exist. In that way, belief in evolution can be a crutch, as many argue that belief in God is.
And the way evolution is being taught in this country is terrible- read Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells- examples of evolution, diagrams of evolution, and other things that the general scientific community long ago proved were false are STILL included in modern biology textbooks that they teach in high school and college- I doubt this is just an oversight.

> Not likely. This is too much like the thinking of Gnosticism, which has been condemned by the Church.

First off, I am not talking about Gnosticism at all, that is an entirely different concept. Gnosticism requires obtaining certain knowledge to be "saved," whereas Buddhism attempts to open your mind: the information itself is not divine, nor even necessary. Very different.

Secondly, even if I did mean Gnosticism, "the church," made that decision a thousand years after Christ died. Not exactly a solid source. :)

> If Christ was being metaphorical, then how come those people were eating and drinking themselves unto death?

I think I am confused here. The only way to translate what you have written is "Jesus made sick those that did not partake in his cannibalism." You are saying that these people, literally, ate themselves (their own flesh) to the point of killing themselves? Eating yourself to any point is sufficiently macabre, to death even moreso. Plus, I've been to some pretty crazy websites & spoken to some wierdos that, I figure, would have mentioned that cannibalism is positively seen by Jesus in the Bible (well, in the NT -- OT would be no surprise, you can justify anything with that, and it's "Old Law" anyway).

> How can you possibly insist that they were in error?

Let's see... Well, I can insist it because it's contrary to the established laws ("theories" if you wanna bitch about minor semantics) of all science and it reeks of ignorant mysticism.
Insert another few paragraphs of atheist screaming here. I'm leaving out the drawn out arguments, because if you actually believe that bread can magically change into human flesh, you have no interest in reasonable discourse.

Anyway, last point: This page states that those passages are "clearly" allegorical. I believe it's all hogwash anyway, so it makes no personal difference to me...

here

The only difference is that one requires facts and one requires faith.

So in other words, no difference at all, really.
http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatfaith.html
The sole criteria of creationism is "intelligent design". It is completely possible to define that in a way that scientific scrutiny can be applied.

While funny (I love Douglas Adams) the joke relies on a very poor understanding of what Christian faith really is. You can read more here -> http://www.tektonics.org/whatfaith.html

BTW the Mithras parallels to Jesus are way over done unless you are willing to classify a spontaneous generation from a rock as a virgin birth.

Confronting the Copycat Claims

Here's a good review and critique that goes into some detail of what's wrong with the book.

Here's a good review of the supposed `facts' this book tries to put forth.

PI in the Bible

"The Bible says pi = 3."

Does the Bible say pi equals 3.0?

Does the Bible Give a Wrong Value for Pi?

I see four major issues in the relevant Scripture:

1. We don't know the exact length of a cubit.
2. We aren't sure of the complete geometry of what was being measured.
3. The Scripture is giving measurements of real-world objects, not presenting a mathematical theorem. If the numbers seem wrong to us, we're not understanding what was being measured.
4. We don't know what kind of rounding, if any, was being used.

"However, even if the New Testament happens to have all its historical facts straight, that doesn't give the slightest suggestion that any of the supernatural claims it makes are true. (Perhaps you've heard of historical novels?)"

The closest thing to a historical novel at the time were the "historical romances." These tended to cover love, adventure, quests, and miracles that are more "theatrical" than those of the Gospels The Gospels fit far better in the genre of ancient biography, and in comparison with the historical romances are less flowery. Some of the flourishes of historical romance show up in apocryphical gospels. An example of the difference in tone between the apocryphals and the canonical gospels is here.

"Some of the peripheral claims are testable and fail, e.g. the ability of believers to drink poison without coming to harm."

Um, that claim comes from an ending of Mark that is not in the earliest manuscripts of Mark and is nowadays known to be spurious. In fact, the earliest known manuscripts of Mark end in a conjunction, which is extremely unusual, like ending a book in mid-sentence. The likelihood is that the original ending has been lost; maybe the last page fell out of the codex. There are two "endings" of Mark found in manuscripts, one a very short ending, and the longer one with which you are familiar. See here.

This deals with the "kingdom" issues. Make of it what you will.

And then read the reviews of that review here and here

And while we are at it, what proof do you have that there is a God?

Have you looked for proof? It's right here. Read More

And what proof do you have that Bible is God's word?

I believe it is because it says so throughout. Actually, the real question is "How do we know the Bible is true?" We have over 20,000 copies of New Testament manuscripts alone which serve to corroborate the recorded historical events. This is not to mention secular ancient manuscripts, such as Tacitus and Josephus. Dr. Nelson Glueck, a Palestinian archeologist, said in his publication Rivers in the Desert, "As a matter of fact, however, it may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has every controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible." Hundreds of prophecies have been fulfilled over the centuries exactly as they were foretold in Biblical manuscripts. Several prophecies are unfolding before our eyes today!

God is a scientist, not a magician. Science has confirmed the Bible time and time again. It is only (humanist) scientists who disagree with the Bible; real science has not and does not contradict the Bible.

Who the hell told you that those people are my neighbours' wives?

A more relevant scripture for ethics major to have quoted is Matthew 5:27-28, where Jesus says,

"You have heard that it was said, `Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.

And while we are at it, what proof do you have that there is a God?

Have you looked for proof? It's right here. Read More

And what proof do you have that Bible is God's word?

I believe it is because it says so throughout. Actually, the real question is "How do we know the Bible is true?" We have over 20,000 copies of New Testament manuscripts alone which serve to corroborate the recorded historical events. This is not to mention secular ancient manuscripts, such as Tacitus and Josephus. Dr. Nelson Glueck, a Palestinian archeologist, said in his publication Rivers in the Desert, "As a matter of fact, however, it may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has every controverted a Biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible." Hundreds of prophecies have been fulfilled over the centuries exactly as they were foretold in Biblical manuscripts. Several prophecies are unfolding before our eyes today!

God is a scientist, not a magician. Science has confirmed the Bible time and time again. It is only (humanist) scientists who disagree with the Bible; real science has not and does not contradict the Bible.

Who the hell told you that those people are my neighbours' wives?

A more relevant scripture for ethics major to have quoted is Matthew 5:27-28, where Jesus says,

"You have heard that it was said, `Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.