Metis: "Peter's house in Capernaum was certainly not a church ?"
To see why you're likely mistaken about the house's remodeling into a house church, see:
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-sites/the-house-of-peter-the-home-of-jesus-in-capernaum/...
In the video Sheldrake formulates a thoughtful challenge of the universal assumption that the amount of matter/ energy in the universe remains constant.
T(9) The Church of the Holy Sepulchre now covers the traditional site of Jesus' tomb and Golgotha, the rocky hill on which Jesus was allegedly crucified. The church is visited by countless tourists each year. Jerusalem church tradition recognized that the tomb had been covered by a Roman...
Ben, as a starting point to answer your question, please watch this YouTube video in which biologist Rupert Sheldrake refutes your claim in his book, "The Science Delusion," which is retitled "Science Set Free" in its American edition. I'd greatly appreciate your perspective on this...
Then there are well documented materializations and dematerializations of seemingly physical objects in physical mediumship and (for church people from whom I have heard eyewitness testimony!) in ADCs and NDEs. For more on this, see future posts in my NDE and ADC thread.
A common mistake in such discussions is the assumption that one of 2 unintelligible brute facts must be true: either the Big Bang was created from nothing by an eternal Supreme Being or some sort of matter/ energy continuum always exists for no reason whatsoever. For me, the last assumption is...
Not everyone realizes, as I do, that TRUTH IS MEASURED IN DECIBELS! I need capitals in order to SHOUT and thus secure the attention of poor listeners. Some may deem me arrogant for saying this. But God has given me the grace to be humble--because I don't think I'm half as good as I really am.
I want to thank Fantome and Sayak for engaging my thread and I will be thinking about what they both said.
Discussions of the Bible vs. evolution usually focus on the Genesis creation story, bur neglect the biblical passage (Proverbs 8:22-23, 30-31) that, for me, expresses the principles of...
Authors like Michael Newton and Dr. Ian Stevenson like to tie in faith in reincarnation with alleged past life recall of young children who claim to recall a prior life on earth. Most reincarnationists are referring to such a version. But if you expand that to include past lives in other...
OK, I'll resist the temptation to start a new thread on this topic and will instead offer a shorter version of my response that will answer my question posed above about 3 biblical texts that imply the preexistence of the soul.
(1) Jesus's disciples apparently believe in the preexistence of the...
I don't want to hijack this thread. But let me make a claim that I will back up in a new thread: In ancient Judaism, the teaching of Jesus, and the teaching of the early church, we find a belief in the preexistence of the soul. But there is no Jewish belief in reincarnation in the Judaism of...
The theory of evolution is foundational to modern scientific disciplines and thus needs to be taught for its heuristic value. Intelligent Design advocates need to admit that they lack a comprehensive alternative theory to offer the education system. This deficiency leaves them with the...
Let me pause to reflect on the question of whether my premonitions require divine revelation or whether they might be explained in terms of poorly understood laws of consciousness and a fresh perspective on the classic mind/ body problem. Perhaps it is not either/ or. The fact that I saw into...
Jimmie, ignore boorish skeptics who have no concept of powerful life-changing spiritual experiences. Just seek God for an ever deepening connection with Him. Your testimony absolutely inspired me. And for what it's worth, my own electrifying life-changing experience not only made me psychic...
Jesus rarely gives a direct answer to a question. He typically answers a question with another question, or responds with a parable, or digresses to an issue He deems more important for the questioner. Also, I'm struck the implication of Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus never...
True, and what in intrigues me about this is His refusal to explain the parables to outsiders (so Mark 4:12). Jesus wanted ;people to project themselves into His stories and meditate on what each parable might mean for them. In other words, Jesus felt that spirituality is better caught than...
I mean, Jesus hung around with sailors. C'mon, tattoos are to be expected. Not! Seriously, what intrigued me about the tattoo claim is that we have no reliable descriptions about His physical appearance. That's one of the reasons why the new evidence for the Shroud of Turin's authenticity...
(8) Atheist Morton Smith is a genuine scholar. In his unique book, "Jesus the Magician," he reconstructs the version of Jesus' life as told by His Jewish detractors. I have summarized his findings in the paragraph below. The main source is the Platonist Celsus (170 AD), who interviewed Jewish...