WHY PEOPLE DON`T NEED GOD AS BEFORE???

Obviously this makes me believe the Bible and the Christian faith is not trustworthy, instead of believing that it's all true because it can't be scientifically proven. Like Oli said, "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence". Why would I believe what's in the Bible? Why does anyone?

It's a book with an agenda. If a book has the agenda of promoting national socialism, no one would ever read it, no one would believe a word of it because we all know that the author will have distorted the truth to get his points through. Why is it not the same with the Bible? Not only was it written with an agenda, it was written with an agenda thousands of years ago; no book that old is trusted for the facts it presents unless scientific research has confirmed them.

Hey Oli - enough with the self-flattery! Even people with high IQs are more honourable if they are modest. I know so myself (not to brag, I'm estimated at 150).

 

Roel, it was not written as a 'in 2,000 years time people will read this and build their faith on it' - it was written as 'this just happened. All those people saw it & can tell you it was true.'
Yes it has an agenda - but then show me something that does not - or why do we have 'scientific studies' every few years with exactly opposite results (my favourite is the butter vs margarine debate).

To me (and feel free to disagree) the joint facts of the thousands of witnesses (why has no discrediting literature been found?) and the fact that most of the NT was not meant to be preserved for posterity, but was pieces of specific advice for specific churches at specific times (the letters), gives it a lot of credibility in terms of a historic source...

Regarding IQ:
I have done numerous IQ tests, and had results ranging from 80 to 160.
Draw your own conclusion.

 

It was written with an agenda: those who wrote it believed the stories they wrote down to be true, and wanted people to read them and believe. Facts are not important if you want people to believe your own designs. Of course it wasn't written with the eye on distant generations, after all these Christians believed the end to be nigh. However it was still written to convince others, and as such it's almost completely worthless to objective viewers.

Why has no discrediting literature been found? Perhaps because contemporaries who did not believe in the new emerging sect found their shows too ridiculous to comment, or simply ignored them as just another sect (which was after all very common at the time). Or perhaps because 2000 years of Church censorship has destroyed all the good sources and left us only their own propaganda. Yeah, I know that probably isn't what happened, but there has to have been some selective source gathering in the 1000 years in which independent scientific research was non-existent.

 

Errm, why are are witnesses regarded as the least reliable source of evidence in police cases? Because people see what they want to, or can be convinced after the event that they saw something they didn't. Like 10 years ago the police in Hull had getting on for 4,000 calls one night about a UFO over a park area - turned out to be searchlights from a grand opening reflecting off clouds. D'ohh.
Just a thought.

You took half of your tests when you were asleep? :lol:
Sorry about the self-flattery - I've got nobody else to do it for me :cry:
Oli

 

How could Jesus have become accepted? The plan was to get tortured and killed. He must have been rather discrete with the miracles in order not to spoil the plan.

I have a question: Jesus was a good Jew. He wanted corruption out of The Temple, to abandon some rituals.

But what did he want the disciples to tell the world? What kind of message, shortly? Judaism´s first and importantest rule is Do to your neighbor (next? - I don´t remember how´s it called) as you want that he would do to you. You know what I mean. Essentially, it doesn´t compel to love, though. Did Jesus want people to love one another or was it he message that He will come in the foreseeable future, which He didn´t.
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Can anybody explain?

 

Isaac wrote

Will we ever know what Jesus wanted to tell the world. We know what his disciples thought he wanted to tell the world, and what subsequent writers have thought they meant, with the odd bit of "spin" added.
It all comes down to your interpretation of things, or the interpretation of those who taught you - hence the numerous and bloody disagreements over religion.
Oli

 

All the gospels were written after the death of jesus and only one was written within the lifetime of any first hand witnesses. As such the contents of the gospels are subject to interpretation and spin by the writers (some were written by commitee as well).

The fact is further complicated in that the gospels were written in ancient greek and have been translated several times to finaly end up in the english version we know. Each translation is again subject to personal intepretion. None of the original gospel documents are thought to exist though there is considerable conspiracy theroies surrounding the catholic church and their "secret librarys".

Therefore it is very difficult to know exactly what jesus was thinking or wanted. I seriously doubt he wanted to die nailed to a cross which is a horrible way to die. ( I went to a church school and we demonstrated a mock crucifction to show how it worked in real life and not in the middle ages pictures, it's really nasty!)

I do believe that jesus preched peace, tollorance and love (he opperated a form of communisim with his disciples) which was why the Jews never took to him. They wanted war, hate and the destruction of the roman oppressors. His turn the other cheek conflicted with the old an eye for an eye of the OT.

FNG

 

Yes, all have their own slight slant, being written by different people for different audiences. Why do you think we have all 4?
Cross-checking!

Leaving aside the quite humourous conspiracy theories ( ), most recent translations of the Bible do go back to the original Greek, and it is fairly normal for those who actually study the Bible to have a variety of translations in order to be sure of getting the best idea of what is meant. After all, it is not easy to translate directly between languages, and harder still when 4,000 - 2,000 years of cultural change has happened.

Agreed, I doubt he wanted to. But it is made clear that he knew he had to. So, being the faithful & good son of God that he was, he chose to continue along the path that lead to the horrendous event instead of running as far from Jerusalem as he could.

Well, I'm mostly with you here as well. Yes, he was not the 'earthly' saviour they expected, freeing them from the Romans. Jesus was to be a 'spirtual' saviour, freeing them from the debt of sin (spouts Gospel message ).

 

Ricky, whats your view that Jesus was married with kids? And I'm not talking about the Davinchy rubbish, just in general.

Obviosuly the gospels don't touch the subject, but given the period it would be very odd for a 30 year old to be single and tradeless.

Therefore the obvious assumption is that Jesus became a carpentor and was married at the time he went off to collect his disciples. The family would have stayed behind with Jesus' father.

Presumably Jesus would also have brothers and sisters though again I am not aware that the gospels sazy anything.

FNG

 

After the actual events of Jesus's life, his most loyal followers wrote down that he said he knew about his destiny. "It is made clear" that he was going to die on the cross and he was ready to face it. So then, we have the fact that people can't know things before they happen, and the fact that those who say Jesus did, wanted him to do so since they wanted to see in him the son of their god. This doesn't sound overly convincing. It seems more like Jesus did some preaching, gained some followers, and then was crucified for preaching a heretical belief - not too extraordinary in those days. However, his followers then wrote about him in the most glorious terms, as someone who had seen it all coming and nobly faced his fate. Of course, without the texts they gathered and pried loose from the Jews in those first centuries they'd have been nowhere, but luckily for them they did. And now we have over two billion people on the Earth who believe them.

It makes me sad...

To me, it seems much more likely that certain biased persons wrote their own romanticized view of the life of Jesus after his death, whereafter their story was mangled and added to by centuries of churchly developments until it is what it is now, than that all the impossibilities of the Bible are explained by the assumption that there is a Supreme Being who sent his Son to die for us, making him a Part of the Holy Trinity of God, God, and God the Man. :-?

 

Wife & kids? To be honest, it doesn't really matter if he did or not. The point of Jesus is that he was God appearing on earth & living as a human. The only difference being that he did not sin. I see no reason why wife & kids should not be around, but I also see no reason to assume that he had them.

Siblings? Well, many believe that James (wrote a 'book' that got into the Bible) was his brother. Again, absolutely no reason to think that he did not have younger brothers & sisters - just none that were older!

Well, that's kinda the response I expected to get .
There is no real answer - it comes down to what you are prepared to believe, I suppose...

 

Surely Christ's Bride is the Church.

 

Don't think so, since there was no Church in his lifetime.

 

Many theologians do refer to the Church as the 'Bride of Christ', IMO largely because of the pretty good tie-in between the wedding values found in the Bible and the relationship of Christ to Christians.

 

That's what I meant.

 

Yeah, sorry, I was just making it clearer.

 

No apology required.

Thanks for explaining it in more detail.