http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-christians10apr10,0,6204444.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate PoliciesMany codes intended to protect gays from harassment are illegal, conservatives argue.By Stephanie Simon, Times Staff WriterApril 10, 2006 ATLANTA ? Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
I wonder what would happen if we sued for the right to speak poorly of Christians in the workplace or in college? Would that be free speech, or intolerance? Is intolerant speech tolerable?I know one thing — if hatespeak is not tolerated, then exceptions to that rule based solely on religious belief is illegal. Belief in a deity does NOT grant you exemption from the law!
Depends who you ask. A conservative biblical scholar is going to date the first gospel to around 40 CE., but there is simply no physical evidence for such a date, only conjecture based on theological requirements. Of course, there’s also really no physical evidence for the more widely accepted (at least in historical and archaeological circles) dates of between 60 and 110 CE, with Mark being the earliest. The main reason for postulating these dates comes from the historical mismatches in the Gospels that I mentioned before. From Wiki:
Also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharisees
Some jews accepted it. But yes, Christianity only flourished as a religion for gentiles.
I would be very interested to see an example of this.
Personally? I get many impressions, most of them along the lines of “that’s just ridiculous!” and “I can’t believe people take this seriously!”
The Gospels weren’t popular until the 2nd century. Just who would they have asked? Anyway, it is because of the very details you cite that we know the Gospels to be post-temple writings.
But we do have similar resurrection myths from all over the Mediterranean that pre-date Christianity.
Again, Christianity flourished in the Greater Roman Empire. There were plenty of poor folks throughout the empire who were more than happy to hear about it.
Um… not sure I referred to it as a ‘scam,’ but there were plenty of critics, weren’t there? In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ own family calls him insane (3:21).
Even if I were to accept that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts (I think I’ve made it clear that I don’t), I really wouldn’t expect much of anything from eyewitnesses except that they are notoriously unreliable sources of information. Do you believe in flying saucers? Or Bigfoot?
Fair enough. That is certainly your prerogative.
Must be all the medication I’m on.
Hmmm… I don’t know. I would imagine quite a lot, as my reasons for not believing are many and varied. They certainly are not limited to biblical criticism. We haven’t even touched upon critiques of the philosophical arguments for god or the epistemological validity of faith (or lack thereof). Yeah, to be honest I would say that I’m pretty far gone in the other direction at this point. I think about deism every couple of years, usually when reading about E. Fredkin’s digital physics theorems, but that’s a far cry from Christianity.
“Shouldn’t that be expected of eyewitness accounts?”
Not at all. You would think everybody who saw the same thing should remember it almost identically. When have you ever heard two people arguing like this:
“Did you see Bob sweating blood just now?”
“Are you crazy? He was perfectly calm!”
Except in this case, Bob may never have existed.
No mention of the destruction of the temple even though Jesus prophezised of it. No mention in acts of it either, neither of the deaths of Paul&other disciples (in the 60′s). This suggests that the gospels were written at atn eraly stage.
Now that is pure speculation. It could be, could also be that the gospels speak in plain text.
Luke mentioning the tetrarch Lysanias, Johns description of the dam of Bethesda, dam of Siloa for example. These things were considered to only exist in the gospels until the arceological finds were made
Well if we are not going to be objective about it there is no point discussing it.
No they weren’t popular. Thats why the jewsih community had all motivation in the world to shoot it down. Paul mentions learning of the gospel when visiting Jerusalem at an early stage, the 40′s or 50′s, so it existed. Paul himself presecuted the christians, how could there be christians without a gospel?
Do we know that now?
Well i don’t know in whose favour that speaks. Mine maybe?
Thats emotionalism. Could they also accuse him of being a con artist? Nope.
Again here we have the crux. Were the so erring they would have been dissected. I don’t think you get away with something like this if it is false, especially considering the environment it came about in.
No contesting story exists.
Interesting. Well, maybe God created different life elsewhere, who knows? I am not saying it is impossible.
However in won’t put my faith in anything but God.
What is the biggest problem you have with the gospels? First thing that comes to mind.
Is there anything that would “override” these and convince you?
So you acknowledge that there are two possible directions? Are they both valid?
Huh?:)
well reluctant the parachute qoute is on another store http://www.cafepress.com/udonman3
Goose,
God has nothing to do with aliens. God has nothing to do with anything. God isn’t even a figment of your imagination; worse, he/she is a figment of somebody else’s imagination, which you have adopted as the truth.
You said “Perhaps the gospels spoke in plain text”
Well then we wouldn’t have all these contradictions, were we? Reality only goes one way. Or, to quote Ayn Rand:
“A is A.”
And of course there’s a possibility aliens exist; in fact, they almost certainly do. What r4d was talking about was drunken hillbillies seeing UFO’s. Or drunken lumberjacks seeing Bigfoot.
No, what I was talking about was the very nature of eyewitness accounts, whether those eyewitnesses be ‘hillbillies’ or air force pilots. There are plenty of eyewitness accounts for UFO / extra terrestrials, but not a shred of hard evidence. In fact, all the physical evidence tends to point to some pretty mundane explanations. But people see what they want to see, and they believe what they want to believe (they even remember what they want to remember.) An individual’s personal experience, his perception, should always be taken with a grain of salt, and external verification should always be demanded before passing verdict.
I’ll give a more detailed response to Goose’s post later tonight.
Goose:
Waitaminnit:
A. They were orally transmitted up until the 2nd CE
B. There were LOADS of contesting stories.
DD:
Or Bigfeet spotting UFOs?
Hehe r4d, I was joking when I referred to all UFO-viewers as drunken hillbillies.
The solar system is huge. The galaxy is even huger. The universe is massive beyond comprehension. Now they think there are multiple universes.
In all that unimaginably enormous space, there’s a great chance of other life. But even if that life was intelligent enough to find our little planet in all this emptiness and travel to us, what makes you think they have nothing better to do than to fly over the countryside at night in stereotypical round ships, leaving circles in our crops?
Aliens could exist in completely different dimensions, which we are currently incapable of comprehending. They could exist billions of light-years away. They could be as small as bacteria or as big as mountains (or smaller and bigger, even). They could be dumber than slugs or smarter than supercomputers (or dumber and smarter, even). They could be capable of time travel. We just don’t know, and probably never will.
As for bigfoot. . . having lived in Canada my entire life, I can safely say that bears have big feet.
GooseHenry,
“However in won’t put my faith in anything but God.”
What god? Why not Zeus or Odin? There is as much evidence for them as for for the judeo/christian/muslim god.
Most scholars nowadays agree that the earliest gospel could not have been written before 70 AD and probably later. The others were written much later.
Then there is the problem of gospels that are not recognized by the churches. Why is that? For a simple reason. Emperor Constantine called together a group of christian leaders in 325 AD at the Council of Nicaea. They were to decide what christian dogma was once and for all.
They voted on what would go in and what would stay out. So, a bureaucratic committee decided what chritianity is. Maybe today we would call it a focus group. Anyone who disagreed was called a heretic and thrown out of the official church and persecuted.
Of course everything didn’t run so smoothly. Constantine had a tendancy to change his mind and sometimes supported the heretics, who then became the official church. Over the next centuries, it took another Council of Niceae, a couple of Councils of Constantinople, and various other ecumenical councils to establish order and bring the dissidents into line or expell them.
Now, thanks to this process of editing and re-editing we have the definitive version of god’s/jesus’s word.
Wow, conservative Crhistians really want it all, don’t they? Even the supposed “legal right” to be intolerant of anyone not sharing their narrow religious views. When will someboday say “Enough already”??? Such arrogance and disregard for basic human respect is disturbing. Maybe they can grant legal rights to sexist and racist remarks while they’re at it, too.
Christians are f*ckers