Christmas poll

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Originally Posted by TheBaron

A man, shows up in town with the power of GOD at his fingertips and not one other person, not even a scribe of the roman community thinks this is important enough to jot down? Not even a foot note? No one but his friends wrote down anywhere, in any text, anything of his existence? I mean for an average man I'd say sure only his friends wrote about him, but this man started a following that required the intervention of the roman government. So much so that they hunted him and his friends down and brutally killed them all.

The Romans where educated, we have tons of documents from the era regarding works from philosophers and story tellers and yet there is no document uncovered other than the bible that this man ever existed.

Please stop responding with what the bible said they did over and over again. I am telling you that this is not proof of the existence of Jesus. I have read the accounts of Jesus and his apostles, and I don't need you to regurgitate it for me.

What I am telling you is that you have no proof that those accounts in the bible are true beyond your own faith. You also may want to reconsider if you are thinking you can prove the bible as an accurate reference, the religion is faith based for a reason, to try and prove something as fact that god intended as faith could be considered as attempting to undo his work.

So based on the simple idea that gods word is intentionally based on faith, the only two options for you is; either the bible cannot be used as scientific evidence, or you believe that you know better and know some miraculous way to turn a faith based document into scientific fact.

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That was very well put.... for about the 100th time in this thread..

Faith is Faith... Proof is Proof...

Trying to erase history was not and is not uncommon...the same goes for making up history.
I think to some degree it all requires a bit of faith be it science, God, or climate change and everything else in between.

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Originally Posted by gssixgun

That's all thanks...

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Wow thank you for pointing out how simple the truth really is.

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Originally Posted by gssixgun

That was very well put.... for about the 100th time in this thread..

Faith is Faith... Proof is Proof...

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Let's blow the lid off another crock of baloney, shall we?

This so called "Socrates", some sort of brillant philosopher.... or merely a power play by a bunch of disgruntled college kids?

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Socrates (pronounced /ˈsɒkrətiːz/; Greek: Σωκράτης, Sōkrátēs; c. 469 BC–399 BC<SUP class=reference id=cite_ref-enc1911_0-1>[1]</SUP>) was a Classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students. Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity

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Socrates, Wiki

Yes, folks, fool me once with that Bible nonsense, but I won't be taken in again with more hearsay and fictitious fabrication not backed by cold hard facts filed in triplicate!

A young Plato was languishing at the local Athens Starbucks, under appreciated, and forlorn. Nobody was listening to his talks, ideas, and he couldn't get any of his theories into publications of the day. So, he concocts a ficticious "teacher", a great master of philosophy. That way, it won't seem that he is blowing his own horn, but rather the ideas would have sprung from studying at the feet of the master!

And so, if Plato was a liar about his teacher, what else was he lying about? I'd have to say he pretty much was a liar through and through! His ideas about natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy are therefore all laid bare as bold faced lies by this miscreant!


Let's recap:
Socrates never existed.

Plato was a blatant liar.

Most likely Aristotle was in on the whole thing as well.

Apparently the answer is No.

Unless we all agree to believe in the same God :)

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Originally Posted by hoglahoo

lol

When you regain your strength, you might poke your head into this thread as well: http://straightrazorpalace.com/conve...ssion-god.html

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Since no one here seems willing to do research let me do a little for you.

Josephus.. The Testimonium Flavianum (already mentioned) He also wrote "that the High priest Ananias convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin & brought before them a man called James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, & certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the Law & delivered them up to be stoned.
No schloar to date has successfully disputed this passage.(This is a reference to the brother of Jesus - who apparently had been converted after the appearence of the risen Christ if compared to John 7:5 and 1Cor 15:7.
Josephus also corroborates that Jesus was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem and that He was a wise teacher who had established a wide & lasting following despite being crucified under Pilate. ( show us some scholarly work that disproves this.) Jesphus was interested in political matters & struggles against Rome, so for him John the Baptist was more important because he seemed to be a bigger political threat than Jesus.

Tacitus.. In AD115 Explicitly states that Nero Persecuted Christians as scapegoats to divert suspicion from himself for the great fire that devasted Rome in AD64..........Nero fastened the guilt & inflicted the most exqusite tortures on a class hated by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of our procurator Pontius Pilate .

Pliny the Younger.. Governor of Bithynia in N.W. Turkey (AD111)......I have ask them if they are Christians and if they admit it I repeat the question a 2nd & 3rd time with the warning of punishment awaiting them. If the persist, I order the to be led away to be execution; for whatever the nature of their admission, I am convinced that their stubbornness & unshakable obstinacy ought not go unpunished....... They also declared that the sum total of their guilt or error amounted to no more than this: they had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses Alternately amongst themselves in honor of Christ as if to God, & also to bind themselves by oath not for any criminal purpose, but to abstain from theft, robbery & adultery....... This made me decide it was all the more necessary to extract the truth by torture from 2 slave-women they called deaconesses I found nothing but a degenerate sort of cult of cult carried to extreme lengths.
This is an important reference because it talks about Jesus as God, that Christians maintained a high ethical standard &that they were not easily persuaded to say the least.

Thallus.. (AD52)made reference to the darkness that the gospals had written about.

Scholar Paul Mainer said in a footnote in his book Pontius Pilate - This phenomenon evidently was visible in Rome, Athens, & in other Mediterranean cities. According to Tertullian it was a "cosmic" or "world event. Philegon, a Greek author from Caria reported in the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad (i.e. 33AD) there was the greatest eclipse of the sun & it became night in the 6th hour of the day(i.e. noon)so that the stars even appeared in the heavens.There was a great earthquake in Bithnia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea.

The Jewish Talmud.. Mentions Jesus . Calls Him a false Messiah who practiced magic and was condemned to death.

Professor M.Wilcox summed up the Jewish writings this way: The traditonal literature, although it mentions Jesus only quite sparingly, supports the Gospel claim that He was a healer & miracle worker, even though it ascribes these activities to sorcery. In addition, it preserves the recollection that He was a teacher & that He had Disciples & at least in the earlier Rabbinical period not all of these sages had made up their minds that He was a "heretic" or a "deciever"


I've already mentioned Professor Simon Greenleaf's work and have not seen any disproving evidence towards him. There are many others but we will stop with this last one.

Sir William Ramsey.. Oxford University (Atheist) Spent 25 years doing archaeological digs to try to disprove the book of Acts. Instead of disproving Luke's account Ramsey's discoveries kept supporting it.Finally, he concluded that Luke was one of the most accurate Historians who had ever written. After this Ramsey became a Christian.

There is a whole lot more but if what evidence is known is not eniugh to convince then mere unbelief becomes willful unbelief and no amount of evidence will ever influence someone who is hardened to that point. Also the Bible is one of the most reliable documents of antiquity and Jesus references willful unbelief when it came to the Jewish Pharisee.

It use to only take 2 witnesses to condemn some to death for a crime. In the US someone is innocent until proven guilty. There is ample evidence here showing Jesus to be who He said He is. The Defense rests. Now let's see the evidense prosecution has to the contrary. Any takers?

Evidence will only influence, Proof only comes in a changed opinion or life in the case of salvation.

Philosophy and religion are two wholly different topics. Socrates, Plato or Aristotle never claimed to be immortal/divine/superhuman. Philosophy is open to interpretation and argument, and does not require that people dedicate their time, money, and effort to understanding / believing it. Whether or not Socrates existed is neither here nor there. He never really contributed much in terms of science -- just philosophy. I don't think you can make the same argument regarding any historical scientific contributor.

Science is "above" humanity while religion "requires" humanity. Without humanity, there would be no religion because religion requires humans to sustain it through preaching / oral tradition. Its tenets are not observable (feelings, suspicions, hairs on the neck, are neither measurable nor constant).

Aristotle had a number of ideas about scientific method and physics (i.e. "the elements") that were advanced for his time but have been disproved over time, experimentation and observation. So, you can call him a liar because he was "wrong", but in reality he got the ball rolling so his successors could figure out what was "right".

Take Archimedes as a simple example of how science is above humanity. He figured out how to measure volume using water displacement. Now, if he hadn't have written down what he found, the same thing would have been found by somebody else because the test is repeatable and observable.

Religion has the luxury of being "right" from the start, and unchallengeable throughout its existence.

It's for these reasons that I don't think the "Socrates argument" holds much water and that the "Aristotle argument" is ineffective.

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Originally Posted by Seraphim

Let's blow the lid off another crock of baloney, shall we?

This so called "Socrates", some sort of brillant philosopher.... or merely a power play by a bunch of disgruntled college kids?




Socrates, Wiki

Yes, folks, fool me once with that Bible nonsense, but I won't be taken in again with more hearsay and fictitious fabrication not backed by cold hard facts filed in triplicate!

A young Plato was languishing at the local Athens Starbucks, under appreciated, and forlorn. Nobody was listening to his talks, ideas, and he couldn't get any of his theories into publications of the day. So, he concocts a ficticious "teacher", a great master of philosophy. That way, it won't seem that he is blowing his own horn, but rather the ideas would have sprung from studying at the feet of the master!

And so, if Plato was a liar about his teacher, what else was he lying about? I'd have to say he pretty much was a liar through and through! His ideas about natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy are therefore all laid bare as bold faced lies by this miscreant!


Let's recap:
Socrates never existed.

Plato was a blatant liar.

Most likely Aristotle was in on the whole thing as well.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by ENUF2

It use to only take 2 witnesses to condemn some to death for a crime. In the US someone is innocent until proven guilty. There is ample evidence here showing Jesus to be who He said He is. The Defense rests. Now let's see the evidense prosecution has to the contrary. Any takers?

Evidence will only influence, Proof only comes in a changed opinion or life in the case of salvation.

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Evidence is a contributor to proof.
–noun
1. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.

That's the dictionary, not the Bible.

I'll play along with your "proof" of Jesus existing, but you have squat (outside of the testaments of people who believe blindly in things) in terms of proving that "He is who He says He is". As I mentioned before, I said "Yes" in the poll, but mentioned that it didn't matter because that's not what's important in history. Anybody can exist. Nobody can be immortal.

If you want to use courtroom speak, the prosecution rests. And good luck getting a jury to indict based on your "evidence".


EDIT: By the way, how did we wind up as the prosecution? We aren't prosecuting anybody. We are the jury. We require evidence to convict.

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Originally Posted by Oglethorpe

Philosophy and religion are two wholly different topics. Socrates, Plato or Aristotle never claimed to be immortal/divine/superhuman. Philosophy is open to interpretation and argument, and does not require that people dedicate their time, money, and effort to understanding / believing it. Whether or not Socrates existed is neither here nor there. He never really contributed much in terms of science -- just philosophy. I don't think you can make the same argument regarding any historical scientific contributor.

Science is "above" humanity while religion "requires" humanity. Without humanity, there would be no religion because religion requires humans to sustain it through preaching / oral tradition. Its tenets are not observable (feelings, suspicions, hairs on the neck, are neither measurable nor constant).

Aristotle had a number of ideas about scientific method and physics (i.e. "the elements") that were advanced for his time but have been disproved over time, experimentation and observation. So, you can call him a liar because he was "wrong", but in reality he got the ball rolling so his successors could figure out what was "right".

Take Archimedes as a simple example of how science is above humanity. He figured out how to measure volume using water displacement. Now, if he hadn't have written down what he found, the same thing would have been found by somebody else because the test is repeatable and observable.

Religion has the luxury of being "right" from the start, and unchallengeable throughout its existence.

It's for these reasons that I don't think the "Socrates argument" holds much water and that the "Aristotle argument" is ineffective.

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I posted this thread to find out if people believed that Jesus was a person who actually existed (i.e.- was actually born, seeing as we are celebrating Christmas, I thought it appropo), not as to whether or not He was the Christ, religious beliefs, etc.

For many pages the historical validity of his existance was debated, prior to taking a turn into discussions about faith vs. reason or what not.

In my previous witty, and cunningly crafted (:p) post in regards to Socrates I am not so much calling into question the merits, or not of philosophy, science, et al, but rather the fact that I think most folks believe that Socrates actually existed, even though all we have to go on is the same "facts" as we have in regards to Jesus, that being, accounts written about him by the people who were close to him.

PS
Faith is not blind it is Heart felt and informed.

Faith is the reality of what hoped for, the proof of what is unseen.
Heb 11:1 HCSB