Dan Cleary
Doesn't bug me a bit. I am comforted by the knowledge that all these pinheads will share a special place in hell. This is one question that you don't want to be wrong about.
Yeah, I'm comforted thinking about the suffering of other people.
Go mentally masturbate to your sick fantasies. Good thing hell isn't real.
Well you have proven one thing, that you're incapable of employing reason over vitriol. Come back when you mature a bit more. Goodbye.
Did you not read the second part of his comment? "This is one question that you don't want to be wrong about." Meaning, that folks ought to be good and sure that their beliefs are right before mocking the Lord, because if they're wrong, they will be sharing a place in hell. Are you sure you want to continue to believe there is no place called hell?
Sad that some spend more time planning for a picnic than they do for eternity.
That isn't very wise. My faith not only gives me peace of mind now, it'll help keep the heat off me later.
Divine justice will take care of itself.
Well we should have taken Summit High School sophomore Jeff Shott and crucified him and let him see how fictional that turns out to be.
there are places that do that and worse to "non-believers". Perhaps he should take a holiday and promote his atheism.
I am just going fictional, even though I would actually nail him to a tree after flogging him it really isn't happening.
Even Bart Ehrman, renown New Testament scholar, former "preacher" now "happy agnostic" and HUGE critic of Christianity, says Jesus is a historical figure in his latest book: Did Jesus Exist?
It's a very small minority of scholars who even make this argument, outside some of the kooks in the Jesus Seminar like Robert Price
Ephesians 6:11-13
The Prophecy Man teaching Revelation part 5 ( video)
http://frankdimora.typepad.com/the_last_chronicles/
Teaching the Book of Revelation with Frank DiMora part 5
I covered the Church at Ephesus and Smyrna in part 4 and, I continue today with the Church of Pergamos. Below is a link that will take you directly to parts 1-4. I will keep adding the links to this page as I post the next teaching.
Frank
FREE Bible prophecy documentary book download proving our generation will see the return of the Lord. If you aren’t saved yet this is a must read!
http://frankdimora.typepad.com/the_last_chronicles/
Download The Last Chronicles of Planet Earth April 16, 2012 Edition by Frank DiMora
We can only win this fight on our knee's in prayer!
Fictional? That's a funny word. And speaking of ,have you read the book "Did Muhammed Exist" yet? Gee, with so much extra biblical evidence of Christ's existence, such as Tacitus, Josephus, you'd think that the same manuscript and extra biblical evidence would be a standard that is applied to Islam too? What's that you say? Where's the beef? As far as Islam is concerned there isn't any. Can't say the same for Chriist. Unless of course you're a word burner. Or belive that ignorance is bliss. Yeah that's the ticket. I wonder what Lenon is thinking right about now. Could this be it:
I would have sent my child as a "honest or honorable democrat". We all know that that would be the epitome of "fictional".
Would the costume include their head shrouded in a mock halo?
I heard that one of the dems prezs uses that costume a lot, it comes with a lot of reverb added as he reads words from a scrolling screen.
Thats pretty lose reason to hand out scholarships. "What's that? You mock Christianity too? Great! Here is some money for college."
And of course the ever present maintaining of "separation of church and state" IT DOESN"T EXIST! You want to talk about something that doesn't exist and it's the separation of church and state. I don't understand how lawyers can argue that one when the counter argument is just "show me in what legal document of this country's founding where it says 'separation of church and state'".
Jefferson made it pretty clear in his letters that the establishment clause implied separation of church and state.
Yes he did. He did not believe the state could dictate what a church did, but he had no problems with people of faith professing their faith in public places, including government.
They just want to hate. That's their logic. You did a great thing posting the "political correctness" thing, which fits right into this.
This is stupid as hell.
I'm an atheist myself, and sometimes support these kinds of organizations.
But this time all they're doing is being inflammatory for no good reason.
"Gaylor's father, who recently passed away" and is screaming from Hell hoping his daughter doesn't make the same mistake he did....
"If there were no God, there would be no atheists." ~G.K. Chesterton
The event described in this post demonstrates well the atheists' dependence on irrational fantasy and abandonment of reason.
Nicholas Copernicus, Sir Francis Bacon, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday, Gregor Mendel, William Thomson (Lord) Kelvin, George Gabriel Stokes... Did these men depend on an abandonment of reason? What about Buzz Aldrin, who held a Communion service on the moon after the landing of Apollo 11? Was he irrational, living in a fantasy? Charles Duke? Rick Husband?
I assumed you have been typing your comments on a keyboard hooked to a computer. Tell me, was your computer made with a bunch of parts put into a large box and the parts soldered randomly by spraying molten lead into the box as it was rotated, then redone again a bunch of times until the computer happened to be made, or did someone make it?
Am I abandoning reason because I believe someone made your computer and programmed it?
that's so ridiculous... it literally makes no sense, because as you said, everyone generally agrees that Jesus EXISTED. the debate is on whether or not He was/is God, whether He rose from the dead. people who don't believe that believe He was just a "good moral teacher." (but i and a lot of us here know He's more than that...)
i absolutely cannot stand these "freedom from religion" groups. you can be an atheist without being like the people in these groups, who go out of their way to offend, insult, and silence religious people. it's almost like atheism is a religion.
They criticize and say believers are stupid and don't know anything, but...how do they themselves know just the opposite?
There is no way into Heaven except through Him...These people are sad and unwittingly lying to themselves a 1-way ticket to infierno... I personally believe hell to be bereft of God's love...a punishment worse than dying of fire infinitely... Indeed, if he'd had dressed as Mo-Doofus... there'd have been beheadings in all over the Arab world... Someone needs to sue that school.
Interesting,
atheist giving awards to a Jesus figure, now thats an spiritual inspiration the atheist will deny.
God tells man you meant it for evil but i meant it for good.
Your way's are not my way's.
Jesus said to the christians;
The world cannot hate you, but me it hates, because i testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.
Even in mans ignorance Jesus The Christ is raised and praised.
Oh foolish man, how far you have fallen without remedy.
Never forget to remember, your salvation is at hand, don't clasp the fist, that you cannot grasp the hand that reaches for you.
in the masters serivce
Do we assume Jeff's parents approved of his costume? Scripture tells us "God is not mocked" so I will leave this to Heaven and make my comments brief. Disgusting!
Yep, let them try one dressed as Muhammad....Liberal cowards know they can do this with Christians.
Draw Mohammad day. Dawkins called Islam a "great evil". During a zombie walk somewhere in the US, someone dressed up as a zombie Mohammad. Hitchens was critical of the Koran as well as the Bible in "god is not Great".
I love how you guys ignore that stuff, but whine when Christians are targeted.
They might get away with this kind of behavior with Christians but they won't with God because as Scripture tells us "God is not mocked".
So let me get this straight. If this kid was praying to Jesus in school, he'd be suspended, the ACLU, Americans for Separation of Church and State, "Free thinkers" and this atheist group would be up in arms, but because he DRESSED like Jesus he gets a scholarship. Hmmm. These people are blind fools.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 53:1
I pity them.
As I understand it, he dressed like Jesus, not to get a scholarship but, because it was fictional character day. The atheist heard about it later and awarded him the scholarship.
But to your point: If he had dressed like Jesus on Historical Figures I Admire Most Day, he would have been sent home or forced to remove his costume because that would have been offensive. The sad truth is that, in government schools today, it is perfectly OK to mock Christ and Christians however it is totally unacceptable to honor Him in any way.
"Secondly, atheists only deny Christ’s deity – not his historical existence."
Wrong. Most educated atheists know much more about the era of Christ than you think. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't know much about atheism other than the boogey men you hear about from others.
Having said that, the stunt was stupid. But being a punk doesn't mean there is historical evidence of an actual Jesus, aside from the circular reasoning of "it's in the bible, and the bible says it happened, therefore it happened." You need to find contemporary accounts of Jesus that are not in the Bible.
There's very little of anyone's writings which have survived from the the 1 year to 30 A.D. That doesn't prove that Jesus didn't exist just because anything written about him was written from about 70-100 AD. which is written in the Bible. The Bible, especially those books written by Luke as Rshill pointed out, are historically accurate even down to some of the Roman governors of the time. Luke was a physician, so he was very detailed and deliberate in his accounts.
Of the handful of manuscripts which have survived from the 50's to the 70's no one mentions Jesus, but that's because none of the authors- from Phaedrus, Seneca, Lucan and Petronius ever knew Jesus. After 64 there were so few Christians remaining in Rome because of Nero, and they were outlawed, so it wouldn't make sense that much was spoken of Jesus by any of the Roman authors. Jesus was a nobody from a small town in the "backwoods" of the Roman Empire so none of the authors would have written about him. Most concentrated on the big names of history such as Julius Caesar, Cicero or Alexander the Great.
You also have to consider, Jesus was a Jew, and any of the Jewish fathers from that time practiced Judaism, not Christianity, so they wouldn't have bothered mentioning him either.
We can't base the writings of the times of and after Jesus in the same way we do now. Christianity had just started, not like now where it's spread to all nations. So back then, it wouldn't have been a known religion as it is now. Rome was largely secular in those 100 + years, so anyone writing "news" would not have bothered with a new religion, especially one coming out of the outpost of Palestine.
No one denies that the Christian church existed in the 1st century, but it was still a small religion from a remote area of the Empire. So, how can we expect a massive amount of writings about a man from a small town in Palestine, who was Jewish when so little writings of anything survive from that time?
Much of what is taken as real, from ancient history is believed eventhough there is based on fewer sources than the eyewitness accounts written of Jesus.
Tacitus, mentions Jesus and Christians, Lucian of Samosata mocks Jesus and Christians, Josephus the Roman historian and Jewish Pharisee mentions Jesus, Josephus tells mentions Jesus' brother James and the high priest Ananus. Suetonius a court official under Hadian mentions Jesus and Christians. Plinius mentions Jesus. Tertullian mentions Tiberius and Pilate and Jesus. There are more, but you get the point.
Jesus was as real a person as Alexander the Great, but Jesus is Emmanuel, "God with us". He is alive and wants a relationship with you. He loves you and died for you. I'd suggest you learn about Him in the Gospel of John.
ABiC, I think you might as well be saying this to a rock, of which most atheist BELIEVE is their ancestors.
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
They worship the creation more than the Creator.
ABiC, You paint a pretty picture with the alphabet too.
Poignant on target and always with taste and thoughtfulness.
That's something I've pondered for a long time. I mean, when you look at the intricacies of a flower, or the color patterns on a cheetah, or look at the way nature works: trees breath in co2 and convert it to oxygen, we breath in oxygen and breath out co2. Stuff like that, ok, can be looked at and explained scientifically- but also can be explained Biblically and it's perfectly reasonable to see a creator in it all.
All we can do is pray more folks will take a minute, put down the intellect and look around.
As for creation, all I can say is that being an artist, never EVER have I left a blank canvas, some paints on a palette and my brushes out, and find a completed piece of work done the next day. ;-)
Your commitment to spread the truth by finger tip is very admirable.
I am to slow to put my thoughts to type.
What I fail to understand is, how most evolutionist whether they are atheist or not readily BELIEVE in Evolution without having any REAL substantial EVIDENCE, discount Christians for their belief by FAITH in a Creator and Savior.
They have no more evidence than we do but they try to convert their faith into evidence.
I have to admit, it's hard to tell someone who doesn't believe, but we never know who might be ready to know the Truth :-) I'll keep doing it as long as I'm able because we must. We can always hope folks will see the Glory of God before they stand before Him in judgement. Thanks FreeMan :-)
Thank you Timerunner. I appreciate that, but since I read a lot, the info I posted, a lot of it was from various books I've read, so I can't claim it ;-) But thank you and God Bless!
There's no contemporary sources of Alexander the Great either. No one ever questions his existence.
uh, no. i have barely heard any debates on whether Jesus actually existed at all. many people believe Jesus existed but was simply a "good moral teacher," but He wasn't God and was just a normal man like everyone else, who was killed and did not rise from the dead.
the debate here isn't whether Jesus existed. the debate is whether He is God.
As someone who studies history for history's sake, I find that most militant atheists "know about history" in the same way that conspiracy theorists "know about 9/11", i.e., lots of out-of-context facts and confirmation bias.
The evidence for *any* ancient historical event is always scant and usually a century or two after the fact, due to the paucity of records that have survived to the present day. Compared to other historical figures, the existence of an itinerant preacher named Jesus in early first century Judea is remarkably well-documented. Only special pleading and conspiracy theory logic can make the idea that he didn't exist seem plausible.
Of course, most Christians are ignorant of history too, but that's no excuse.
In my original post I spoke of contemporaries of Jesus. With fantastic miracles happening there should be at least a few "oh my gosh, guess what I just saw" accounts. Written at the time they happened. Not decades or hundreds of years later. Where are they? One poster said not many historical documents of that time exist. This is true. All we know is that whatever has survived, there aren't any accounts of Jesus that were written while he was alive. While it was happening. Some people don't need evidence, and that's fine. The people that do are apparently the scum of the earth, as I can deduce from all the personal attacks against me here.
My husband laid dying in a hospital bed and the doctors had just about given up on him but I did not because I had faith God would heal him. That was over two years ago and he is alive and well! Can a unicorn do that?
Tell me, whenever you drive on a busy highway, do you hope whomever made your car did a good job? Do you hope nothing will fall off? If you've ever flown in an airplane, do you have faith in the pilot? If you were walking along a deserted beach and found a rolex watch, would you believe that watch just popped into existance, or was there a watch maker involved? People act on faith every day. It is not much different having faith in a higher power, even if you've never seen Him. For those of us who do have faith in God, we see evidence of Him everywhere we look.
"Someone does not come to believe in Jesus due to historical accounts but because of faith."
Faith is a problem. Tell me, what would you think of someone who believed in unicorns and claimed they believed it on faith? How is it any different than a god?
"Someone does not come to believe in Jesus due to historical accounts but because of faith." Well said.
Thanks for the suggestions. I am familiar with those works, and I've been interested in this subject for many many years.
I understand your original comment. If you ever have time though, you ought to read the book Cindy suggested, A Case for Christ by Lee Strobell and Only a Carpenter by Josh McDowell. Both are small books, not long reads at all, but are very intelligent and well thought out books by men who both set out to disprove the Bible and the life of Jesus. I'm not saying they will necessarily change your mind, but they may give you some things to think about that you haven't heard before. :-)
There's a good reason there are no contemporary accounts of Jesus; most of the people to whom Jesus preached were simple people who lived in an agricultural society which is why He used so many agricultural parallels such as seed, sower, corn, wheat, tares, etc. The educated among them did not appreciate the teachings of Jesus because He told them the truth and they liked the status quo, so they were not about to encourage the people and looked for ways to get rid of Jesus. This is all in the Bible. The Roman govt was no different and they wanted complete control and so just as today there was conflict between "church and state". We have those like myself who believe in Jesus, the govt trying to control and the religious leaders in many cases fighting both the govt and "true" believers. Not much has changed.
Someone does not come to believe in Jesus due to historical accounts but because of faith. Without giving detailed explanation God created man as a triune being; spirit, soul, which consists of mind, will and emotions and a physical body to relate to the world around him. One does not communicate with God with the mind but with the spirit. Faith is not a mental exercise but a spiritual experience.
If you ever decide you really want to know if Jesus is "real" ask Him with a sincere heart and He will reveal Himself to you. This can be done anywhere; in your home, car, or anywhere you desire. I know Jesus is real but not because I was raised to believe in Him but because I wanted and needed to know Him. Jesus tells us in the Bible He will not turn anyone away for any reason, so if you have a desire to learn the truth go to the Source and let God show you. God IS Love and He longs for you to do so.
I have to say I like you too americanbornincanda. You always give likes to people who call me a heathen but you also give likes to my political comments as well.
There is no contemporary accounts of people who knew Jesus or witnessed anything that he did. Like the bible, anything we know of Jesus was written many years after the fact. I doubt that he was a historical figure. I doubt... I am not certain. However, whether he was historical or not, the things that are attributed to him, the wisdom of what he said, is true, it's divinely inspired if you will. While I doubt he existed, many of the things he said about man's relationship to the divine, well, I know they are true from my own life.
I don't think you're scum rjcylon. God doesn't make scum. But you have to realize there is not many historical documents of anyone person of that time in existance today. You might not believe the Bible because you see it as a religious book only, but it really is Historically accurate, and there were some such as Peter who did write of the accounts of Jesus, and he was an eyewitness. James also wrote of the accounts of Jesus and he was Jesus's brother.
Peter writes, For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Archaeological, historical and geographical evidence shows that the Bible is authentic, as well as manuscript evidence. If the Bible is an authentic recording of history at the time it was written, why can't people believe the Jesus of the Bible is not authentic?
After all, there are more manuscripts available from the time than there are manuscripts of any other historical figure of the time, yet people believe men such as Alexander the Great existed.
I personally don't have enough faith to be an atheist. To believe that this world came about by mere chance is too much for me.
Well the word atheist is very loaded. I don't agree this world came about by chance. I also don't think that the miracles Jesus was told to have made are unlikely. There is a lot of truth (wisdom) in the New Testament. Faith as small as a mustard seed really does bring about the miraculous. When Jesus said (supposedly) that the "kingdom of heaven is at hand"... well that's true. There is a larger and deeper meaning behind the Bible, and it is not in any way diminished by the questionable historical truth of an actual, living, breathing Jesus.
me too. i mean come on, the universe magically exploded into existence for no reason at all? and then life just randomly formed on its own? lol!! and they think OUR beliefs are crazy....
four years ago, in high school- public school, NOT Christian school- when i learned about evolution in bio class, the teacher and textbook directly admitted that scientists have not figured out exactly how life began. there are things they don't understand about how life began. again, this was a public, evolution supporting school that taught us that scientists did not understand how life began.
science is wonderful... but it doesn't hold the answers to everything.
Yeah, they teach facts in science classes. Like the fact we don't know exactly how life began or that evolution occurred. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean God exists.
And anyone who thinks it takes faith to not buy into a claim really needs to get an education. I don't believe in God for the same reason I don't believe in unicorns. There's simply no reason to believe the claims.
I agree. Science has become just as much of a religion as anything else. Is belief in Global Warming not a religion?
In my view you basically have religious people AND those who worship science saying "the world works this way, because of my beliefs". But I don't think they are mutually exclusive.
The problem is that people are expected to take sides, to not think these things out for themselves. Any scientist who expresses belief in the "supernatural" is immediately shunned and becomes an outcast. And anyone who has deeper spiritual beliefs but doesn't take scripture at face value is considered a heathen, immoral, etc.
Geeze, that's what I call killing two birds with one stone!! That's a rare feat! You not only called the kid "a jerk" but, in the same breath, trashed believing Christians as stuck to the "it's in the bible, and the bible says it happened, therefore it happened." That's adding insult to injury!
If the story was just about what the kid did, my response would have been "what an idiot". But the author said that atheists all agree in that Jesus was a historical figure. That just isn't true. Believe it or not, I can disagree with his assertion and also think that there's really no point of dressing like Jesus just with the idea to insult a bunch of people. And an Atheist group giving him a scholarship for insulting people is petty and childish.
Then read some concurrent history from that era. You know less than nothing about what you're talking about. Josephus and Roman writings immediately thereafter for starters. The words of various and sundry Caesers themselves. Wow. Really?
The existence of Jesus was never in question for 1600 years until the so-called Age of Enlightment. There are in fact many non-biblical accounts that allude to Jesus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus. The New Testament should not be discounted, it's an historically correct document concerning names and places, so why not Jesus? It was written in one generation primary by men who knew Jesus personally or knew his apostles.
Consider this, Jesus never held political office or led an army like Alexander the Great. His ministry was only 3-1/2 years and he very much kept a low profile. As a result he left a small paper trail. Yet he had a huge impact on history. Ironically people never question the existence of his apostles who all by one died for him, nor do they question the existence of Pontius Pilate who existence wasn't confirmed until the 20th century.
Rshill is a bear, but his heart is in the right place ;-).
I do have to say though, Jesus' lineage was also traced to (and through) King David. There's evidence of his being a real person and king.
Thomas! There are zero personal attacks in that post sir. On those ocassions where my posts contain a bit of ridicule, there are also lots and lots of meat on the bones. I like Math and therefore also enjoy adding hominems. There are none here though.
Geneticists have already shown several years ago that every man, woman and child on this Earth came from one woman. Guess what her name was?
I have anihilated your non-arguments here on this page, in a friendly, fact-filled manner. If you can't stand the heat, turn up the AC and take off that wool hat.
I'm wearing a freakin' bear suit and feel comfortable as heck. Granted, it could be the refreshing Alaskan river I'm feeding in.
Well I guess you'd have to historically verify the existence of Adam and Eve now, but this is off topic. You can't handle people who disagree with you without making personal attacks, I think that's your main point, and message received loud and clear.
Yep, I remember that. The way they portrayed the dynamic between John Adams and his wife, made we want to throw up.
Say, have you ever seen in the New Testament where the entire lineage of Joseph, Mary and Jesus were traced all the way back to and from Adam and Eve all the way to the stable in Bethlehem? That'd be tough to do with an imaginary character right?
It's a photo from the HBO series "John Adams". My avatar is of the guy that played Thomas Jefferson.
The disciples wrote about what they witnessed. Luke the physician took notes as he went. That is obvious, as it is in the books written by the other apostles. "Historians" are proved wrong early, often and late. The Apostle Paul started writing letters to the newly forming churches immediately after Christ's death and resurrection. Why are you trying to lie to people?
Nice hat. Horatio Hornblower? Read something other than garbage from "theory lovers" for a change.
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