There is NO Historical Evidence for Jesus

[Alien826]

Paul never claimed to be the Messiah...... but there are many who have and here is a few. Which makes it a true prophecy.

"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!" The Virgin Mandy

 

[Thrillobyte]

No it is not

Yes it is.

 

[SDavis]

Yes it is.

 

[Colt]

You're barking up the wrong tree with your preaching and proselytizing.

Carrying a grudge is like taking poison hoping someone else will die!

 

[SDavis]

"He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy!" The Virgin Mandy

 

[Colt]

How condescending!

It’s just true! Playing the victim for sympathy gets people a lot of mileage. It’s their identity and an excuse all wrapped up in one.

 

[YoursTrue]

That wasn't the issue. It was a deflection from someone who can't face the truth.

The belief in hellfire, or the idea that God would allow conscious torture of anyone is not only reprehensible but untrue. The subject came up and I responded to it.

 

[YoursTrue]

Why not?

There are some things I leave for others to figure.

 

[YoursTrue]

You don't believe in hell. Fundamentalists do, others believe in universal salvation, still others believe in annihilation, some believe in purgatory, some do not. All this should tell people just exactly how scatterbrained Christian thinking is. Where is God or Jesus in all this to straighten out the chaos? Doesn't this tell you, Coulter that God has gone AWOL--that he simply doesn't give a damn about any of you?

Hell? What is hell, do you think? Maybe there's more to it than you think.

 

[YoursTrue]

You don't believe in hell. Fundamentalists do, others believe in universal salvation, still others believe in annihilation, some believe in purgatory, some do not. All this should tell people just exactly how scatterbrained Christian thinking is. Where is God or Jesus in all this to straighten out the chaos? Doesn't this tell you, Coulter that God has gone AWOL--that he simply doesn't give a damn about any of you?

See, this is part of the situation I find with people saying things they aren't willing to explore.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Carrying a grudge is like taking poison hoping someone else will die!

Are you a licensed therapist? Do you have the professional experience to tell others how they should or should not feel? If not, you have no right to tell me how I should or should not feel. If you are, you still have no right to tell me how I should or should not feel. You are nothing more than a stranger on the internet to me, and I couldn't care less what you think, and I certainly won't listen to you telling me how I should or shouldn't feel. I'd like to reiterate that you are barking up the wrong tree with your preaching and proselytizing. However, since you appear determined to impose your personal beliefs on me, I suppose I should point out that RF is an online forum and not a church. Nevertheless, the Christian DIR may suit you better since you seem to have such a passion for preaching. But if you want to preach about your Christian beliefs and try to convert unbelievers like myself, then I recommend finding a pulpit in a church or a street corner from which you can proclaim your Christian beliefs to your heart's content. And finally, I suggest that you focus more of your attention on that plank in your own eye instead of trying to point out the speck of dust in mine. With that said, this is my final response to you.

 

[YoursTrue]

Are you a licensed therapist? Do you have the professional experience to tell others how they should or should not feel? If not, you have no right to tell me how I should or should not feel. If you are, you still have no right to tell me how I should or should not feel. You are nothing more than an internet stranger to me, and I couldn't care less what you think, and I certainly won't listen to you telling me how I should or shouldn't feel. I'd like to reiterate that you are barking up the wrong tree with your preaching and proselytizing. However, since you appear determined to impose your personal beliefs on me, I suppose I should point out that RF is an online forum and not a church. Nevertheless, the Christian DIR may suit you better since you seem to have such a passion for preaching. But if you want to preach about your Christian beliefs and try to convert unbelievers like myself, then I recommend finding a pulpit in a church or a street corner from which you can proclaim your Christian beliefs to your heart's content. And finally, I suggest that you focus more of your attention on that plank in your own eye instead of trying to point out the speck of dust in mine. With that said, this is my final response to you.

I find that what cOLTER says there makes a lot of sense about carrying a grudge.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

The point of the article was that NO prayers get answered that scientists could discern. They tested about 1800 patients. Divided into three groups. Two groups were prayed for. One was not. Members of one of the two groups prayed for were told they were being prayed for. The second was told they might be prayed for. There was no discernible difference in results. Some members of the group told they were being prayed for actually did worse than the others, scientists think because they felt pressure to have to prove to the scientists that they were healed. Here is a thumbnial of the study:

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer - paasp network

The question whether prayer can heal illness has for years been the subject of speculation.To once and for all obtain an...

paasp.net

Informative. I can speak from personal experience that praying was a total waste of time for me, and if I remember correctly, it was for you too.

 

[dybmh]

When I was a dumb as a rock Christian...

Ex-christian bible critic, eh? Yeah, that's pretty typical. Most bible critics that preach the anti-gospel are ex-christians. You're not wrong in what you're saying, of course. The facts are the facts. But your conclusion is exaggerated. But that makes sense, because Christianity IS in a lot ways an exaggerated religion. So, when a Christian leaves the faith, the backlash can be equally exaggerated.

It's true that historians of the era didn't write about Jesus' miracles, but, would they have written about Jesus' miracles? Is that their genre? Are you looking for cake recipes in a merck manual? And let's pretend that they would have written about them. Just because they didn't, doesn't mean the story is completely false, nor that the miracles didn't happen. It just means that the scope was exaggerated in the gospels. Even the apostles could have existed and performed miracles, but their sphere of influence could have been exaggerated. If the events were actually much smaller, involved less people, had less impact, then the historians wouldn't have written about them. And that's assuming they would have written about them at all.

So, you are taking the lack of evidence, and assuming that the historians MUST have written about it, and since they didn't then the story MUST be completely false. Or at least that's what it seems like you're saying. When, it's actually not known. Something probably happened, no one's sure what that was. But the jump to, "it's all false and fiction" is a leap not much different than the leap of faith you were familiar with when you were a Christian. Old habits die hard.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

You don't believe in hell. Fundamentalists do, others believe in universal salvation, still others believe in annihilation, some believe in purgatory, some do not. All this should tell people just exactly how scatterbrained Christian thinking is. Where is God or Jesus in all this to straighten out the chaos? Doesn't this tell you, Coulter that God has gone AWOL--that he simply doesn't give a damn about any of you?

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I tried to emphasize this in my previous post earlier today.

Of course, Christians aren't united, and they never have been. The majority of Christians have the perpetual habit of accusing other Christians of not being "true Christians," and this accusation is as old as Christianity itself (read 1 Corinthians 1:10–17). The problem I have with Christians accusing other Christians of not being true followers of Jesus is that they can never agree on what the Bible truly says, and they constantly argue, insult, and fight one another about what they believe the Bible teaches. The truth is that if you ask the same theological question to a broad group of Christians, you will receive very different answers. All of these Christians will cite the Bible in an attempt to defend their answers, even though their answers are very different and contradictory.

It is also worth noting that they don't agree on whether salvation in Jesus Christ is unconditional or not, although they all read the Bible. Some Christians claim that a person's salvation is conditional, and they would quote a few scriptures they believed supported their belief. Some Christians claim that a person's salvation is unconditional, and they would quote a few scriptures they believed supported their belief. Yet other Christians claim that baptism or speaking in tongues is required for salvation, and they would quote a few scriptures they believed supported their belief. They contradict each other.

Questions about how to properly baptize believers (fully immersed in water or sprinkled with water), whether it is biblical for women to be pastors, and about the alleged end times (pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, post-tribulation, and the rapture of Christians) would elicit the same kind of derision among Christians. Not to mention the churches staking their claim as the "true church" and implying that Christians in other churches are wrong in their theology and biblical interpretation. They even argue about whether Jesus' mother remained a virgin after giving birth to him or if she had other children after him.

The truth is that Christians are very divided and intentionally separate themselves into different churches and adhere to different doctrines and scriptural interpretations, which has occurred in both historical and contemporary Christianity. Catholics and Protestants have different church doctrines, dogmas, and interpretations of the Bible. So do Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Messianic Judaism, and Orthodox Christians, which include Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Greek Orthodox. Also, there are Baptists (First Baptist, Second Baptist, Southern Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Anabaptist, Freewill Baptist), Methodists, Mennonites, Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God, Apostolic Church, Pentecostals, Quakers, Church of God, and many other Protestant churches that aren't on the list. In fact, the precise number of Christian denominations is debatable.

Ironically, they all believe that they are correct about their beliefs and everyone else (including other Christians) is wrong about theirs, but then they have the audacity to claim that the Bible is the word of God and Christianity is the only true religion in the world. In my opinion, there's no reason to believe any of them. I think it's ridiculous for any Christian to claim that their biblical interpretation and theology are correct while insisting that other Christians are wrong, that the Bible is divinely inspired, and that Christianity is the only true religion in the world. It is ridiculous, in my opinion, that Christians apparently expect non-Christians to accept the Bible as divinely inspired and the final authority on moral issues, yet they can't agree on what the Bible actually says.

 

[YoursTrue]

I don't care what you think. You are also a stranger on the internet who has no right to tell me how I should or should not feel.

lol, another laugh tonight...

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Enjoyment obviously varies from person to person. I have no doubt many Christians are perfectly happy with their choice to remain Christian, even after finding out the gospels Jesus is a mythical figure. Possible reasons would be they enjoy their fellowship with like-minded people at Church, at parties, at functions, etc. In short, they've established a certain kind of lifestyle with people they enjoy being with and they don't want to give this up by becoming a Jesus-denier.

I have a friend who said that after he read the Bible and researched the claims of Christianity without the rose-colored glasses, it was an eye-opener for him that he had been so naive to believe what he believed when he was a Christian. He is a fan of the Matrix films, so he compared his leaving Christianity to taking the red pill and waking up to reality and facing it, no matter how hard it is. He also stated that the Christians who have read the same or similar information to what he has read and continue to be Christians are analogous to the character Cypher in the first film, who chose to take the blue pill in order to continue living in a fantasy world. He chose an elaborate fantasy to avoid confronting a brutal reality. As he said in the film, "Ignorance is bliss."

 

[YoursTrue]

I have a friend who said that after he read the Bible and researched the claims of Christianity without the rose-colored glasses, it was an eye-opener for him that he had been so naive to believe what he believed when he was a Christian. He is a fan of the Matrix films, so he compared his leaving Christianity to taking the red pill and waking up to reality and facing it, no matter how hard it is. He also stated that the Christians who have read the same or similar information to what he has read and continue to be Christians are analogous to the character Cypher in the first Matrix film, who chose to swallow the blue pill in order to continue living in a fantasy world. In other words, he chose an elaborate fantasy to avoid confronting a brutal reality. As he said in the film, "Ignorance is bliss."

Poor John Lennon, seems he looked forward to the world being as one. Not sure he understood what heaven or hell was anyway -- but he got a few things straight in theory and vast review. Hey, have a good one.

 

[YoursTrue]

I don't care what you think. You are also a stranger on the internet who has no right to tell me how I should or should not feel.

I could say the same about you...hmm? I agree with cOLTER about grudges to an extent.

 

[dybmh]

Easy. I talk to my SO. She tells me she heard the same thing. We talk to our neighbors, they all agree. We look on the internet. Lots of people are posting the same thing. The media gets hold of it. It's now all over the news. Now just about everybody is talking about it. It's spreading like wildfire. It becomes obvious that everyone agrees about the what the message was, as nobody reports that they heard something different.

OK, let's say that happens. What happens when the messages stop? What happens in 1000 years? Would anyone still believe?