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God and Evolution.. (pg. 16)
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by sherman
I would just like to point out the differences between the writings of the Old Testament and the New Testament make a big difference in how they can be percieved. The Old Testament was written however many thousands of thousands of years ago, and so its origins and actual meaning cannot be really proven or disproven at this point in time. However, the New Testament, where Jesus first appears, can be considered quite reliable and factual. There are something like 25,000 early manuscripts (dating from the first few centuries A.D.) of the New Testament existing today, the oldest from about 100 A.D. from Egypt, hundreds of miles from Asia minor where the New Testament is believed to have been written. Compare these with similar works written at the time, such as the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote The Annals of Rome around 116 A.D. The earliest surviving copy of this is from A.D. 850, over 700 years later, and yet this is accepted as quite historically accurate.
I know that now you will bring in the question of the reliablilty of the first manuscripts of the New Testament and how it should matter if there are thousands of existing copies of it today if the whole thing was based on a made up story of Jesus. I could understand this if the people writing the new Testament were gaining something personally for spreading the story of Jesus. I will point out, however, that the disciples of Jesus that were spreading Christianity and writing the books of the New Testament had much to lose and nothing to gain. They were persecuted for their beliefs and were hated by most everybody for what they were doing, and lived their lives on the road, with hardly any personal posessions and were eventually tortured and killed for their beliefs. Why would these people go through all this pain and suffering for a lie they made up? It just doesn't make any sense if you think about it.
One last thing, you might be thinking about how over time the manuscripts might be misread and miscopied after thousands and thousands of copyings and recopyings. This is also another common misconception. The thousands of copies spread across a quite large area including Europe, Asia, and some of the norhtern parts of Africa all match up with each other almost word for word, with only small mistakes such as word placement that don't change any of the meanings of the sentences. So, considering all of this, the New Testament is quite historically accurate. |
Now hang on a minute... absolutely nothing you've said can prove its historical accuracy.
As montie himself said, Jesus was a cult leader. Every cult leader has much to lose, but they certainly do NOT have nothing to gain! They have followers to gain. And in the case of a severely hierarchical religion like Christianity, the "leaders" had a lot to gain by controlling the masses. Christians forced conversions. There's no denying the occurrence of this throughout history. If they forced conversions, they obviously had something to gain. Okay, perhaps the people who wrote the new testament had nothing to gain directly, but they were followers of the Christian leaders (we'll call him/them Jesus if you like), and they just did what they were told because they thought they feared going to hell otherwise.
Just because copies of the New Testament are consistent, doesn't make them accurate. There's a world of difference between the two. I cannot and will not accept the New Testament as a history book without corroborating evidence from other non-religious history books. Proving motivation for a set of actions ("they had nothing to gain") does not prove the partaking of those actions. |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by montie
I'm not sure exactly what your saying here. Do you mean that people look at these like some sort of farytale which tries to explain the history of man or of mankinds condition, such as like a movie like the Matrix does? |
Sort of. Think of it this way. There are those of us who never saw the Matrix, those of us who saw it and thought "bah... rubbish", and those of us who saw it and think "that's kind of cool, I wonder if there's more to reality than we know about it." Now imagine another sect of people who watch the movie every day and start praying to the God Neo for having liberated us from the evil machines in ancient history.
There are people who take the "Fall of Man" literally, just like those who believe Noah's Ark actually existed. Not everybody does, but some people do, and some people do but say they don't. Those are the people I'm reflecting on here.
Now, the rest of your post I agree with, for the most part... I mean it could well have happened that way. Except that Judaism prohibits work on Saturdays, not Sundays. Other than that, I've got nothing to argue against there.
| quote: | | Haha I'm glad "You're OK with me believing it" that makes me feel alot better about myself :D |
Oh and I'm sorry for the implication of that... I just meant to say that if people want to believe that, it's none of my business to tell them they're wrong - I just don't want to hear them telling me they're right. ;) |
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| sherman |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Now hang on a minute... absolutely nothing you've said can prove its historical accuracy.
As montie himself said, Jesus was a cult leader. Every cult leader has much to lose, but they certainly do NOT have nothing to gain! They have followers to gain. And in the case of a severely hierarchical religion like Christianity, the "leaders" had a lot to gain by controlling the masses. Christians forced conversions. There's no denying the occurrence of this throughout history. If they forced conversions, they obviously had something to gain. Okay, perhaps the people who wrote the new testament had nothing to gain directly, but they were followers of the Christian leaders (we'll call him/them Jesus if you like), and they just did what they were told because they thought they feared going to hell otherwise.
Just because copies of the New Testament are consistent, doesn't make them accurate. There's a world of difference between the two. I cannot and will not accept the New Testament as a history book without corroborating evidence from other non-religious history books. Proving motivation for a set of actions ("they had nothing to gain") does not prove the partaking of those actions. |
DigiNut, if you will please try and listen to someone else's arguments for once instead of just trying to put everything together how you have already decided from the start, just hear me out. In my post I was talking about the original church leaders, Jesus' original disciples, not the later "Christians" who were just using the religion for their own gains. Do you really think that the earlist church leaders would go from place to place preaching, knowing full well that every time they spoke out they risked torture and death if they knew the basis of their beliefs was a sham? Would this really give them enough incentive to try to gather followers? Obviously they didn't care about money or prestige since they were all eventually tortured and then died, all of them basically penniless. I would think that this would give you an idea that they weren't just doing this because they themselves wanted followers, but because they truly had reason to believe that Jesus was the son of God. And since they had been with him constantly for many years and knew him very well, do you not think that they had good reason to believe these things? I personally don't see how you could believe that these people would be in constant danger and eventually die painful deaths for something they knew to be false, just so that they could gain a few followers. That just seems like too much work with little or no gain for something that could be done much more easily without risk to their lives for speaking directly against the church of the day. |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by sherman
DigiNut, if you will please try and listen to someone else's arguments for once instead of just trying to put everything together how you have already decided from the start, just hear me out. In my post I was talking about the original church leaders, Jesus' original disciples, not the later "Christians" who were just using the religion for their own gains. Do you really think that the earlist church leaders would go from place to place preaching, knowing full well that every time they spoke out they risked torture and death if they knew the basis of their beliefs was a sham? Would this really give them enough incentive to try to gather followers? Obviously they didn't care about money or prestige since they were all eventually tortured and then died, all of them basically penniless. I would think that this would give you an idea that they weren't just doing this because they themselves wanted followers, but because they truly had reason to believe that Jesus was the son of God. And since they had been with him constantly for many years and knew him very well, do you not think that they had good reason to believe these things? I personally don't see how you could believe that these people would be in constant danger and eventually die painful deaths for something they knew to be false, just so that they could gain a few followers. That just seems like too much work with little or no gain for something that could be done much more easily without risk to their lives for speaking directly against the church of the day. |
What makes you think they knew the basis of their beliefs was a sham? Besides which... when did I even say that it was a sham?
Once again, I'll point you to the fact that motivation is not an argument when talking about cultism.
Destructive Religious Cults
P.S. The personal comment was not necessary. I refuted your argument - my "agenda", whatever you think that may be, is unimportant in this context. |
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| montie |
| quote: | Originally posted by sherman
DigiNut, if you will please try and listen to someone else's arguments for once instead of just trying to put everything together how you have already decided from the start, just hear me out. In my post I was talking about the original church leaders, Jesus' original disciples, not the later "Christians" who were just using the religion for their own gains. Do you really think that the earlist church leaders would go from place to place preaching, knowing full well that every time they spoke out they risked torture and death if they knew the basis of their beliefs was a sham? Would this really give them enough incentive to try to gather followers? Obviously they didn't care about money or prestige since they were all eventually tortured and then died, all of them basically penniless. I would think that this would give you an idea that they weren't just doing this because they themselves wanted followers, but because they truly had reason to believe that Jesus was the son of God. And since they had been with him constantly for many years and knew him very well, do you not think that they had good reason to believe these things? I personally don't see how you could believe that these people would be in constant danger and eventually die painful deaths for something they knew to be false, just so that they could gain a few followers. That just seems like too much work with little or no gain for something that could be done much more easily without risk to their lives for speaking directly against the church of the day. |
I agree with you here mate. The early church leadears and deciples of Jesus fully believed in what Jesus had taught.
Just going back to my comparison of Jesus to a modern day cult leader. Most fo the followers are devout to the beliefs of their cult, many have even commited suicide thinking that would bring salvation, as many of the first christians died believing they were martyrs. They did believe they had something to gain, their salvation.
The early church was much much different than what it evolved into. Early christians were persecuted and thought of as "s" because they were mostly pacifists. As Jesus had taught forgiveness and that revenge was a sin. It wasn't until the roman emperor Constantine (i think it was him) converted to christianity (for political reasons and because his mother or wife had converted I don't remember which), did Catholicism start to develop into what it is today.
Then with the reformation, you have the development of the fanatical Christians.
There is alot of historical events in the New Testament that can be backed up by evidence. The miracles and revelations and such are of course up to debate as those are personal accounts and don't have any proof backing them.
Also the last book, Revelations, was actually just a political satyr about the emporor Nero who burned down Rome because he wanted to rebuild alot of the city and blamed it on the Christians.
| quote: | Sort of. Think of it this way. There are those of us who never saw the Matrix, those of us who saw it and thought "bah... rubbish", and those of us who saw it and think "that's kind of cool, I wonder if there's more to reality than we know about it." Now imagine another sect of people who watch the movie every day and start praying to the God Neo for having liberated us from the evil machines in ancient history.
There are people who take the "Fall of Man" literally, just like those who believe Noah's Ark actually existed. Not everybody does, but some people do, and some people do but say they don't. Those are the people I'm reflecting on here.
Now, the rest of your post I agree with, for the most part... I mean it could well have happened that way. Except that Judaism prohibits work on Saturdays, not Sundays. Other than that, I've got nothing to argue against there. |
Ah yeah I get what you mean on the matrix thing. I can see, and have seen examples of people thinking like that. (on a side note, the whiczowski brothers took alot from ancient theology and philsophy when they wrote the matrix)
| quote: | | Oh and I'm sorry for the implication of that... I just meant to say that if people want to believe that, it's none of my business to tell them they're wrong - I just don't want to hear them telling me they're right. |
No worries. I never was trying to say I was right. How can I? I don't even know what I believe. :)
But I know what you mean, I find pretensious religous zealots who try to push their views on people very annoying. You gotta ignore them, don't fuel their fire. Even if you do debunk their arguement (which normally isn't hard), they aren't gonna stop. |
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| Orbax |
I think saying that Jesus did it for the followers is slightly ludicrous. Walking around impoverished and un armed in enemy territory preaching against the status-quo would be sheer folly, there is nothing to gain in reality.
All of them were persecuted tortured, and I beleive only 1 disciple lived. Being crucified, being crucified upside down (His CHOICE, he said he didnt deserve to die like Jesus, so they hung him upside down. You think at that point he would be trying to gain still?) being put into kettles without water and being heated over fires to death are the least among the ways the followers of Jesus were destroyed. The Romans werent known for their friendly nature.
Jesus himself was lashed 40 times, dragged to the site, crucified, embalmed, smothered, and drowned (in that order, unless you believe he died on the cross :) in which case it ends there, but still...)
None of them became rich for their beliefs, or popular among non-christians. Any benefit argument is, again, ludicrous. Unless you think Jesus and all of his followers were madmen, in which case they wouldnt be good moral leaders. So if you think that they brought no decent morality to the table, i guess you can say that they were all crazy, and who knows why crazy people do anything. |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orbax
I think saying that Jesus did it for the followers is slightly ludicrous. Walking around impoverished and un armed in enemy territory preaching against the status-quo would be sheer folly, there is nothing to gain in reality.
All of them were persecuted tortured, and I beleive only 1 disciple lived. Being crucified, being crucified upside down (His CHOICE, he said he didnt deserve to die like Jesus, so they hung him upside down. You think at that point he would be trying to gain still?) being put into kettles without water and being heated over fires to death are the least among the ways the followers of Jesus were destroyed. The Romans werent known for their friendly nature.
Jesus himself was lashed 40 times, dragged to the site, crucified, embalmed, smothered, and drowned (in that order, unless you believe he died on the cross :) in which case it ends there, but still...)
None of them became rich for their beliefs, or popular among non-christians. Any benefit argument is, again, ludicrous. Unless you think Jesus and all of his followers were madmen, in which case they wouldnt be good moral leaders. So if you think that they brought no decent morality to the table, i guess you can say that they were all crazy, and who knows why crazy people do anything. |
Circular reasoning. You're using this to prove that biblical records of this time are historically accurate, and using the biblical records to show that this happened.
I believe that some of his followers may have been tortured or killed or persecuted, but they believed that they would achieve eternal happiness. They believed that their lives meant nothing. That's what a cult is. That's why even modern-day cults commit suicide and go through other kinds of weird torture.
Incidentally, I never did say that Jesus did it for the followers. I said that there is only minimal solid evidence that there ever was a Jesus, and even less evidence on who he was or what he did. As far as I'm concerned, if he existed, he was an average cult leader.
Jesus-preaching is among the worst of preaching for me... you have to understand that only Christians (and Christian derivatives) believe in this. At least Creationism isn't faith-specific, all kinds of different religions believe that there was a god-like Creator. But Jesus? Meh, don't ever hope to get a positive response from me on that one. |
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| Orbax |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Circular reasoning. You're using this to prove that biblical records of this time are historically accurate, and using the biblical records to show that this happened.
I believe that some of his followers may have been tortured or killed or persecuted, but they believed that they would achieve eternal happiness. They believed that their lives meant nothing. That's what a cult is. That's why even modern-day cults commit suicide and go through other kinds of weird torture.
Incidentally, I never did say that Jesus did it for the followers. I said that there is only minimal solid evidence that there ever was a Jesus, and even less evidence on who he was or what he did. As far as I'm concerned, if he existed, he was an average cult leader. |
i wasnt saying anything to the historical accuracy, im just saying if true>they had nothing to gain (except salvation, which is basically a grenade jumper theory, and if u believe that nothing Ill say is gonna really mean anything). |
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| montie |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
Circular reasoning. You're using this to prove that biblical records of this time are historically accurate, and using the biblical records to show that this happened.
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It looks like you are using circular reasoning also to prove Jesus did not exist and that the early christians started their religon for
personal gain :)
| quote: |
I believe that some of his followers may have been tortured or killed or persecuted, but they believed that they would achieve eternal happiness. They believed that their lives meant nothing. That's what a cult is. That's why even modern-day cults commit suicide and go through other kinds of weird torture.
Incidentally, I never did say that Jesus did it for the followers. I said that there is only minimal solid evidence that there ever was a Jesus, and even less evidence on who he was or what he did. As far as I'm concerned, if he existed, he was an average cult leader.
Jesus-preaching is among the worst of preaching for me... you have to understand that only Christians (and Christian derivatives) believe in this. At least Creationism isn't faith-specific, all kinds of different religions believe that there was a god-like Creator. |
There is much evidence from many other sources besides the Bible that Jesus was a historical figure. In fact I remember learning about reading about the historical account of Jesus in several history books (not religiously biased, if you can say any history book is unbiased :))
As I said earlier, someone had to start the religon. Yes the 12 Apostles did it, but Jesus gathered them and they continued to spread the word. Just like Muhammed was for Islam (there are even accounts of Jesus in the Koran, he is thought of as a misguided prophet by Muslims) or Siddhartha was for Budhism. And I don't think Jesus put himself through for personal gain. There are no accounts i know of him living luxoriously. I'm pretty sure they did what they did because they firmly believed in what they were teaching. Hell the guy thought he was the son of God, if someone went around today doing that they would be put in an insane asylum.
Also remember christianity was not an organized religon until 200-300 years after Jesus's death. Not until Constantine adopted it. Already after it had started, there were different sects arising cuz it spread and people adopted it and incorporated their own religons into it.
But all this motivation and religous mumbojumbo is of course debateable. Everyone has their own ideas, and put faith where they see fit (or how they were spoonfed and told to).
I just think it is silly to argue the actual physical existance of Jesus and if he was the person who started Christianity. Now his motivation is of course arguable.
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But Jesus? Meh, don't ever hope to get a positive response from me on that one. |
Haha your being as stuborn as Orbax was :D |
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| Orbax |
| quote: | Originally posted by montie
Haha your being as stuborn as Orbax was :D |
meh?:conf: |
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| montie |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orbax
meh?:conf: |
:p |
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| DigiNut |
| quote: | Originally posted by Orbax
i wasnt saying anything to the historical accuracy, im just saying if true>they had nothing to gain (except salvation, which is basically a grenade jumper theory, and if u believe that nothing Ill say is gonna really mean anything). |
I'm not sure what you mean by "grenade jumper", but isn't salvation the ultimate aim of every religious man?
Also, there's no need to make it so black-and-white in terms of what they had to lose or gain... a lot of cultists really are fanatical believers regardless of where it gets them in life. People are impressionable, often looking for something to latch onto, and religion is often the answer because it's a convenient one.
Christianity took all of Judaism's enigmatic mysteries and made them easier for the masses to swallow - it did away with the strange laws on fabric and kashrut, and instead of basing the entire religion around an imperceptible deity, it gave a physical persona, a "demigod" if you will. It wasn't hard to convert those Jews who weren't already orthodox and rigid in their beliefs.
Might I remind you, Orbax, that Jews have been persecuted throughout history, far longer than Christians ever were, and yet the religion is still around today. If we are to believe all the old religious books, they were persecuted ever since they broke off from Paganism. I doubt if that implies that there's anything inherently special or correct about the religion, just a very strong adherence to one's lineage and tradition. |
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